So that was 2013...

As we near the dawn of 2014, I've been inspired by a friend to take a look back on the past year. It does seem like only yesterday that my niece, a very close friend and myself found ourselves in the common room of Westminster College playing 'Fleeced', but that was a whole year ago now! So what has happened between then and now?

Well lots, there have been 365 days after all! But I guess if I'm really going to reflect on the past year, maybe I should be a little more specific.

I've finished my second year of my theology degree and started my third and final year.
I've rejoiced over some of my marks and cried over others.
I continue to stare at piles of books and scratched my head wondering how I turn what I've read into an essay that answers the question posed.
I'm beginning to accept that I now think more like a theologian than an engineer; although I still like a good diagram and look for a logical and systematic approach!
I've got on a plane and travelled to foreign parts on my own! (Huge moment and was very pleased to see a friendly face when I got off the plane at my destination.)

As in many years, there have been ups and downs:
Moments when I've wondered what I'm doing there and others when I've know exactly why I'm there.
There have been days when I've wished I could have had a second attempt at them.
There has been a new addition to the family, my third nephew, who is a joy and at nine months loves to give you a wave.
I have been to new places, seen new things, as well as continued to enjoy calling Cambridge "home".
I have managed another year of not managing to visit a number of good friends, but I do think of them often and miss them a great deal.
I've made new friends, whilst other friendships appear to have sadly come to an end.

So 2013 draws to an end and a new year dawn; a year in which I will finish my degree, start my year in pastorate with another minister and start the process that will hopefully lead to a call to a pastorate and ordination! So nothing to big happening!

Words...

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

I wonder if the person who came up with that rhyme was trying a bit of reverse psychology on themselves in the vain attempt to deal with one of those conversations where if the words were not meant to hurt then the other person involved really made a bad choice of words. We all know that words can hurt! They are our primary means of communication and even if we don't set out to hurt someone with what we say, sometimes the words we choose convey the wrong meaning. Sure we can all interpret words differently too, and we can turn innocent sentences in to something that they are not. But words do have power, which we all have the tendency to forget at times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU

Of course, words don't just have the power to knock a person down and hurt them, they also have the power to build someone up, give encouragement, and even change their life. The You Tube video I've shared here struck me as an amazing example of how some very simple, but well composed words can make a huge difference.

Well chosen words...change conversations that can be misunderstood to conversations that are thought provoking;

Well chosen words... give an incentive to change rather than desire to dig one's heels in.

Well chosen words... are the difference between hurt and love.

The Church has a lot of words, some used well and others used not so well. However, in the season of Advent, the Church's thoughts are very much drawn to words, particularly 'the Word'. For it was 'the Word' coming into the world that made things happened; changed it. And it is the returning of the Word in the world that there is a longing and looking forwards to. But 'the Word' isn't just something of the past and the future, it is also in the present. For as there are words in the world, so the Word is still in the world, for it is made know through our words.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." (John 1.1-3)

So remember your words and chose them with care, for today they may come to mean something more than just being a few words.

Music - something I listen to or something that accompanies me?

Those that have readily viewed my blog will possibly have spent a moment or two looking at Fred and George, who form part of my pastoral portfolio paper that I have to complete for my theology degree. They are part of my theological reflection on a placement at the local hospice, but only form a small percentage of my final submission. For alongside them I must also write a piece that is a theological reflection on an aspect of my church placement, which I undertook during the last academic year. So after a year at St Columba's what else could I reflect but music!

Now if you don't know St Columba's Church, Cambridge, then this might seem an odd conclusion, why chose music over some pastoral encounter had at the church door or over coffee? Well, music features heavily in the life of the church, which is at times a blessing whilst at other times a cause of many a headache, especially when trying to craft an act of worship. However, as I have started to read and think about how I might unpack the tensions I came across, I have started to think about my own relationship with music.

I guess I could kinda class myself as a musician, although not a proficient one, and music is a significant part of my life; the CD towers in my room are witness to this. But as I've read about composers such as Bach, Olivier Messiaen and James MacMillan today, along with the views of Schleiermacher, Barth and Bonhoeffer, I've begun to wonder what place music does have in my life. When do I actually sit and listen to music?

As I am writing this, there is music playing, but am I really listening to it or is just accompanying what I am doing? Am I really hearing what the composer and the performers are trying to say through the notation they are causing to resonant out of my speakers? If I'm honest, most of the time the music that resounds around me is a companion. For me to sit and listen without any distraction is rare, especially when it comes to purely instrumental music. And maybe that is why, when my full attention is given to some piece of music, I sometimes find myself slightly disturbed by what I hear, particularly when we get to the eclectic tones of 20th century music. When there are only musical notes and no words, I have to look within the music for something that I wouldn't have to look for if it were a song. I don't have this problem when I'm actually playing the music, maybe because I'm too busy trying to remember the key signature or count so that the rhythm is kinda right; but in playing music I find it easier for the music to become a part of me, because the music is as much about me as the notes on the page. Where when I'm listening, I have to let the music in, I have to let the music take hold of me, as I do when I playing a piece I know well. But just maybe that's what needs to happen; the eclectic tones may then not be so eclectic, and the mystery that they are trying to protray no longer such a mystery. Maybe if I do spend some time actually listening, I'll hear something life changing!

Although it will never stop be a companion!

Praying?

When I started at Westminster I was struck by how often we prayed. We prayed in the morning, we prayed at a lunchtime, we prayed at the start of every class and occasionally we prayed as the day drew to an end. But in the last couple of days I've had two questions asked of me:

1. Have you got anyone praying for you?
2. When do you talk about/get taught about spirituality in college?

And then I looked around me... now we sort of pray in the morning, we still occasionally pray as the day draws to a close, but we are not currently praying at a lunchtime and none of my classes have started with pray so far this term.

Now, prayer and spirituality are not things I find easy or am at times particularly comfortable with. Part of that is my tradition, part of it is where I have been on my journey with God.  However, I see what people are saying: where is the prayer and through what do we come to understanding of our spirituality? Maybe what some would call spirituality, I don't recognise as spirituality. Maybe in what I do on a daily basis is where I learn about spirituality. Maybe spirituality is another one of those fuzzy theological terms that is so hard to define that it is even harder to sit and talk about it specifically. And prayer... well that can be in everything we do, so it doesn't especially mean we have to get down on our knees. But sometimes maybe we do need to get down on our knees!

Now as I have discovered, I fall into the Generation Y group, where spirituality is not a term I may ever truly get my head around. But on the other hand, prayer is something I do get. And if the events of the past week have taught me anything, they've taught me that it is time to get back to the praying.

So my challenge is to pray more, however hard or easy I find it on a daily basis. It is also time to ask others to pray: to pray for the joys and struggles that I face as an ordinand on a daily basis and to pray for a theological college and community, which many hold dearly in their hearts, which faces changing and challenging times.

Another 'new' home

I am once again packing my life into boxes, to then unpack them in a new room. Luckily, this time I'm only moving from one wing of Westminster College to another wing, but it is still a task which is far from fun. However, as I sit in my new room I am struck how 'at home' I already feel.

The importance of feeling ‘at home’ has been an issue that has again raised its head for me over the last few weeks. In conversations I have had with new students, I have been reminded of the struggles I had during my first term at Westminster. The struggles of where was home and how do I, if I have to, make this place home. The importance of ‘home’ is one of the reason why I chose to remain in the college grounds with the builders, rather than move out to rented accommodation else where in Cambridge. Westminster has become ‘home’, and ‘home’ is a stability that I find I need when the rest of my world is in chaos. If I know where home is and know I can get back there easily, then I know I can get through everything else. Maybe this seems a bit strange coming from a person who has led a fairly nomadic life and who will continue to live such a life. In my 32½ years, I have lived in six cities on a permanent basis and have had prolonged stays in at least two others. I have already moved house more times than the national average for the lifetime of a Briton! Therefore, home you would not think is something I would find important. But it is, and maybe even more so than for a person has lived in the same place their whole lives. I don’t really have a hometown—I have a town I was born in, because for the time I live somewhere, however long that might be, that place becomes my hometown. It becomes the place where when I get of the train I say, "I’m home". And when I move on, the transition is never an easy one—but what makes it slightly easier is God. In faith I have moved, particularly in most recently years when I have controlled where I live, and through faith I have a spiritual home—a home that goes with me wherever I am and gives me sanctuary from the tumultuous storms of life.

So from my ‘new’ home to you in your home
may God continue to bless the places we call home.

Community around the table

As it was my last Sunday on placement, and after some wise words from my Supervisor on its structure, I thought it was worth publishing my final sermon of the summer after reflecting on Proverbs 25.6-7, Luke 14.7-14 and Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16.

The table, an inanimate object, which easily becomes cluttered with the everyday, but it is the object which stands at the focal point of our sanctuary. Here we have the table. But why a table? Well what is it that we use a table for, apart from, as in my case, a dumping ground? Predominantly we gather round the table to eat, and we strive to do this as often as we can. When I started at Westminster one of the only expectations that was made of me was that I would aim to eat lunch in college everyday. For lunchtime is an important time in the daily life of the college because it is the time when the fellowship of the community can be built up, because it is the point in the day when most of us are around whether we are student, staff, sabbatical or visitor. It is around the table we are most at ease to welcome those strangers into our midst, as well as leave behind the distinctions that exist outside the dinning hall. It is where people get to know people rather than it being a place where one tries to out wit another with some piece of knowledge or prove they have learnt something in the past week; although that’s not to say that sometimes conversations won’t enter in to the realms of theology. And so it should really not come as any surprise that we find Jesus sitting around a table eating a lot in the gospels, particularly in the gospel of Luke. The table, as we have heard, was a place that not only provided Jesus with the opportunity to teach, but, probably more importantly, was a place where Jesus found that fellowship could be established and maintained. For Jesus, as it should be for us, the table was a place where a community could come together and bond, simply because they were all involved in the same activity—we all have to eat. It is around the table that we learn what Jesus was getting at in his parable to the guests and his subsequent comment to the host; for the table is a communal place where all can come together and where ultimately all can be welcomed, because it is a place where no distinctions should be made.

So we have reached another point in the gospel of Luke when it is time for Jesus to once again sit down to a meal. However, this time it is not with his usual crowd of social outcasts and undesirables, but with, well, people you just wouldn’t associate Jesus with. He was in the house of the leader of the Pharisees just about to have dinner with society’s most desirable! Did he get the wrong address? Or did he randomly pick a house on a street and decide that was where he was going to eat on the Sabbath? No, Luke implies Jesus was invited. Invited? Not what you would expect from a Pharisee, but Luke does tell us that there was an ulterior motive—the Pharisees wanted to keep an eye on Jesus (14.1). And how could Jesus refuse the opportunity for a bit of ‘table-teaching’ with such an esteemed host and guest list. If only he hadn’t been so obscure with his choice of words; for he told a parable which wasn’t exactly like Jesus’ other parables, but its construct was, according to the definition of the word ‘parable’, a parable! It was a statement being used to convey meaning. Jesus, as in many of his parables, set about to illustrated a point that needed to be made if the kingdom of God was to be realised. But what was Jesus’ point, for personally on my first reading of the parable, it made very little sense, but then I am not versed in first century Palestine etiquette. Jesus had been sat doing a bit of social anthropology—observing the social behaviour of this group of people he was dinning with. And this led him to come out with a story about which seat to choose when invited to a wedding banquet. Now, Jesus’ words could quite easily just have been heard as words of wisdom and the indirect point Jesus had been attempting to make missed, because the story echoes the wisdom of Solomon, particularly the two verses from Proverbs 25 about it being better to be invited into the presence of the king than to put yourself forward. Jesus’ words could quite easily have been interpreted to mean that he was encouraging the social etiquette that was being practiced, but was that really what Jesus was doing or was there something more subtle he was observing? Was Jesus just pointing out that if a person chose a seat in the lowest place at the table, then the host would recognise this and give them a place of honour, or was he trying to address the attitude in which one chose that lowest position at the table? If one sits down in the worst chair expecting to be invited to sit in a better chair, then that is no better than sitting in the best chair to start with. But if one sits down in the worst chair not expecting to move, then one has acted humbly and is worthy of being offered a better chair. Jesus’ parable was questioning the guests understanding of what it means to act with humility and was once again challenging human nature. He was challenging that underlying need that we have and will all feel at one time or another, that need for recognition, for approval; that ‘well done’ we all continually seek. Humility is not just about our actions, but about our attitude in those actions—we can put on the persona of humility, but are we really acting with humility if we are actually seeking recognition for our actions? That was Jesus’ challenge to the guests at the table and is one of the challenges Jesus posses to us at the table through this passage in Luke. But that was not the only challenge Jesus’ table-talk raised.

Jesus didn’t just address the guests at the table, he also addressed the host. Obviously, at the dinner party which seat the host should sit in was not in question, but his reasoning for his guest list was. Did he invite the old priest, Shaphan, to dinner because it was the Sabbath and he knew Shaphan had no one else to eat with? Or did he invite him because he knew that this would mean an invite to the old priest’s house and his housekeeper makes exceedingly good cakes? Acting with humility is still at question here, but the challenge has been widened. What does it mean to act with humility in the context of hospitality? Hospitality is something the Jewish people pride themselves in; it is bound up with the Law and in living in the footsteps of their ancestors. Their scripture places great importance on providing for the stranger within their midst, especially as the stranger may not just be a stranger, but as in the story of Abraham, an angel. But there is hospitality and there is hospitality. One can fulfil the law by doing the bear minimum or one can act with humility, ignore all social boundaries and share all that is available to share without any expectations. This is the hospitality Jesus is getting at in his words to the Pharisee, the type of hospitality Jesus wasn’t seeing, for Jesus was really the only guest who wasn’t within the bounds of the Pharisee’s social group. The hospitality Jesus is calling for in the words he speaks to his host at this Sabbath meal is radical hospitality and what God requires, even from within in the bounds of the Torah, because this is what God’s kingdom is about. When the gospel writers talk of Jesus eating with the social outcasts and undesirables they are showing us Jesus putting this radical hospitality in to practice. That is why the early church continued to live with radical hospitality being an important part of their ministry, even when it was most dangerous, and why in some of the Epistles the church is reminded of it, as in the letter to the Hebrews. Because the Church is acting for the good of God’s kingdom, it should be a place of radical hospitality and therefore reaching out to the margins of society, to the poor and the needy, and welcoming them to come and eat at the table.

Fred Kaan, a URC minister and hymn writer, wrote these words:

The church is like a table,
a table that is round.
It has no sides or corners,
no first or last, no honours;
here people are in oneness
and love together bound.

The church is like a table
set in an open house;
no protocol for seating,
a symbol of inviting,
of sharing, drinking, eating;
and end to ‘them’ and ‘us’.[1]

Here we have a table—a table which we gather around because it is a place where we can join together in community and build up our community. However, here we also have a table which symbolically stands for what the church should be—a place where it does not matter where you sit, although you are always welcome at the front; a place where it does not matter about nationality, ethnicity, sexuality or social standing; a place that welcomes friend and stranger with the same mutual love; a place which witnesses to the fellowship between God and humanity and where fellowship with God and humanity can be found.

The church is like a table,
a table for a feast
to celebrate for healing
of all excluded feeling,
(while Christ is serving, kneeling,
a towel round his waist).[2]

Amen

---

[1] Rejoice and Sing 480, verses 1 and 2

[2] Rejoice and Sing 480, verse 3

 

Reflection on a year

Whilst I have been attempting to write my sermon for tomorrow, my mind is wondering to the other things I have to do this week as my placement at St Columba’s Church and Fulbourn URC draws to an end. One task is to write my reflection for my final placement supervision, and so I thought I might as well post this on my blog as well as submit to my Supervisor.

Over a year ago I went to see my College Principal, who was acting as my Tutor at the time, and said I needed experience and guidance in how to tackle pastoral encounters. I am an introvert, so putting me in a room of strangers with whom I am suppose to talk to kind of doesn’t work (it doesn’t always work when I’m in a room of people I know). Even if I dare to step out of the corner I have placed myself in, I struggle to make contact because I really have no idea what to say. Maybe it is something in my subconscious: a deranged idea that I have nothing worth saying, or that if I say something no one will hear me anyway. Who knows, all I know is that I’d rather not be there, as well as, very oddly, at the same sort of wanting to be there. If I had the power of invisibility I think I would have it sussed. However, ministry is primarily about pastoral encounters, so if this is what God has called me to do, then there is no hiding in the corner anymore or wishing I was invisible. I needed help to work this through and that is just what I was given.

From day one of my placement, I learnt that this was something that I was not going to overcome, but like my dyslexia, something that with time and perseverance I would learn to manage. A year down the line, walking in to the hall after the morning service isn’t quite as daunting as it once was. I do still find myself wondering what I do once I have my cup of coffee in my hand, but have moved towards making my way around the room and talking to people. Going to visit someone at home or in hospital is another task I have found very difficult to do. However, with the experiences I have had and the visits I have made accompanied and unaccompanied over the year, have given me confidence that this is not something I will never be able to do. This past week particularly has shown me this, as I have managed to do my first home visited when I hadn’t even arranged to go and see people. This required me to be strict with myself and not let the other things that had to be done push it of the bottom of the ‘to do’ list, I had to fix the time I was going in my diary, but once done, felt like a massive step forward. I still have a long way to go, and need to build my confidence in not being scared of silences or knowing what to ask or how to respond, but I am being to learn this is doable.

Pastoral encounters are not confined to just visiting, coffee, or shaking hands at the door. They are also occurring in an act of worship. What is heard may or may not speak to a situation a member of the congregation finds themselves in. What is offered as worship may or may not provide the space for an individual to connect with God. Any act of worship must be constructed in the context of the pastoral concern for the congregation whilst clearing being focused on what we are about—worshipping God individually and as a community. This has not been an easy task, especially when preparing for Sunday morning is not the only thing that has to be achieved in that week. I know that at times I have lack confidence in what I have prepared and struggled to pick the right tunes for the right hymns. My lack of confidence at times has not been without cause, particularly if there has been one area of my sermon where I grappled with what I’m saying, where the words have not come together quite right. Having someone else look over what I have written to either reassure me or point me towards what I’m missing or not quite grasped has been really beneficial. For a relative novice at sermon writing, having someone who will critically look at my sermons has not only help my confidence but has caused me to wrestle more with the theology as well as the exegesis of texts, and I hope has caused my sermons to improve. However, it is very easy to get dependent on this and there is not always going to be someone there to do that for me. This summer, when I have had the time on my own in pastorate I have had to do the process on my own, which has not been easy with some the passages the lectionary has offered. It is something, however, I feel I have successfully achieved, although when you have spent a long time staring at your own work it is much harder to be objectively critical.

My time at St Columba’s and Fulbourn has been invaluable, and something that not many of my fellow students at Westminster College have had the opportunity to do so early in their training. Maybe it is something that not all of us need to do, but it is something that although it has been hard work and at times exhausting, I am pleased I have done. It means that now I am looking forward to my final year and my nine months of supervision in pastorate, rather than dreading it.

Peace of Iona

Since visiting the Isle of Iona the other day I have been thinking about why people feel that it is a place they should make a pilgrimage to. I have to admit it wasn't quite what I expected, though I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting. It is clearly a tourist trap for the islands of the Highlands, with people flocking on to the ferry, many of whom end up at the Abbey, but the Abbey is no more than a stone church. The windows are no more than clear glass. There is no vaulted ceiling to gaze at in wonder at the craftmanship. It looks a church that in place has seen better days as the bracken grows through stone work. As I stood by the altar (yes altar... it was definitely not a table even it declares itself as a table) and looked out at the body of the Abbey, I struggled to see what it was that made this sacred ground worth make a pilgrimage too.
So it was St Columba's stomping ground, fair enough.  But is that only reason to be a pilgrim to such a place. What about that peace, that absorbing holiness, which I have experienced in other such places?
Maybe it was this particular day, maybe it was me, maybe I was expecting something that was unrealistic. But then I walked outside, I walked down to the beach and looked out across to Mull. Maybe what I was looking for was not within four stone walls, but what was outside surrounding it. Maybe that's why St Columba sat on a small hill outside to Abbey to work, rather than sit enclosed within it.
Who knows, but all I know that I will come back again to sit and stare out across to Mull.

Maintaining that new life in Christ

After much battling with Scripture over the past few weeks as I have faced the challenge of writing one and on occassions two sermons during the week, I thought I would share with you my sermon for this Sunday. I've chosen to concentrate on the Epistle, Colossians 3.1-11, but the gospel reading which accompanies it is Luke 12.13-21.

SERMON

Life is tough: there is no getting away from it, although sometimes I’m sure we all wish we could. And life as a Christian sometimes feels even tougher because of the example of Christ that we are trying to live up to and because of the continued seeking of God in every situation. Sometimes an unholy life seems far more attractive than a holy life. And this is where Paul’s letter to the Colossians finds them. They were struggling with living a holy life—their past attitudes to life were creeping back in. God’s plan was not just a little difficult to make out; it was completely unintelligible. The only way they seemed to know how to inform their present and their future was with their knowledge of their past. But Paul in his letter called for this to stop because the past was not to be determining the present and future anymore, for the past was buried when they died with Christ. He reminded them that the present and future were now determined by Christ, because of the new life they received when they were raised with Christ. What Paul was doing was reminding the Colossians of their baptisms and what it means to be baptised.

Baptism: the sacramental act which is first and foremost a gracious initiative of God—as St Augustine put it: baptism is an outward sign of an inward and invisible grace. However, this means that baptism is not just a gift of God , but that it is also our human response to that gift[1]. As a human response it is a means for us to confirm that we recognise we are one of God’s people and brings us into membership of the Church. It also marks the new life in Christ that has been embarked on—a new life metaphorically represented by Paul as clothing. The clothing which is your old life stripped off and your new life put on. In some Christian traditions the taking off of your old clothes and putting on a new white robe after emerging from the waters of baptism has turned Paul’s metaphor into a symbolic act. As the waters of baptism have the significance of washing away the dirt that encrusts our lives, so the new clothes give another dimension to our baptism that is often lost sight of. But as hard as it is to keep ourselves clean, white robes are notoriously difficult to keep clean too.

But firstly, what do these new clothes help us do? Well as any uniform does, they allow us to be identified, but as the argument went with school uniform when I was growing up, they are also the means for us to be undistinguishable from each other. There is no way for us to discriminate each other because we all look alike. So as Paul tells the Colossians to realise that once they had become one with Christ there was no longer Greek, Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free (3.11), so must we see that in the Church there is no longer black, white, rich, poor, employed, unemployed, Cambridge United supporter or Cambridge City supporter. Putting on Christ in our baptism means that our only defining feature becomes the image of Christ, and maybe more pertinently the image of God, we reflect. The same defining feature as every other member of the Church, whatever their denomination or theological stance. This is because through our baptism, not only have we been made one with Christ, but we have also been made one with each other as part of the body of Christ. A theme that is not only here in Colossians, but something Paul tells other congregations he writes to. It is there in his letter to the Galatians and in his first letter to the Corinthians. We may have differences underneath our outer garment of Christ, but it is that outer garment that the world should be seeing and therefore what should unite us as we strive in our common goal of proclaiming the gospel. Actually, recognising this and acting in accordance with this, is as much a part of the proclamation of the gospel as is living a holy life and going out and telling people the good news that comes from Christ.

So that’s what our new clothes do for our relationship with each other, both with those inside and outside the Church, and for our communal life as the Church, but what about our individual lives? How does putting on Christ and wearing Christ affect that? Well if wearing Christ affects our relationship with each other then it must affect our relationship with God. Wearing Christ puts us right with God and right by God. God is not at a distance, but closer than touching distance. God allows us to see the world through him, but God also gets to see the world through us. By this I mean that through how we pray for the world, God get to see how we interpret the world. This closeness between God and humanity that wearing Christ brings means that how we view our lives must also change. When putting on Christ our living should become holy, our lives should become God-centred rather than self-centred. In Luke’s gospel we have the parable of the Rich Fool (12.16-21) who sets out to store up all his earthly treasures in one place, believing that with this done, he could live his life to the full. But then he does not make it, death comes before he has chance to live and his earthly treasures, well, there is no place for them in heaven. The Rich Fool misses the point of life and demonstrates the life which needs to be left behind when we put on Christ. Earthly treasures—our possessions, things that are material to life—should no longer be the focus of our concern. Our concern should be to live a life that is truth. This is more than just speaking or living honestly, it is about a life which as God-centred is free to see the reality of life, and importantly the reality of our own lives. For being clothed in Christ, isn’t just a means of covering up what is underneath. You don’t put new on over old, the old is removed before the new goes on. Paul reminded the Colossians that they had stripped off their old life and put on a new life. Baptism is part of that journey, part of that transit from old to new. And going back to the approach that has been and is taken in some Christian traditions of taking of old clothes, going through the waters of baptism and then putting on a new set of clothes, speaks of the cleansing of the old before the new. However, although Paul’s metaphor appears to make it a one step transition and is used as such in the act of adult baptism particularly, it is far from that, and maybe why the Colossians ended up slipping back into their old ways.

Baptism happens. We either make a conscious decision ourselves to be baptised, or the decision is taken for us. But at whatever point we take that step it doesn’t mean that we won’t struggle with what it means to live a holy life. It does not mean that our nice white robe won’t find itself getting a little grubby and slightly tatty looking. Baptism as that gracious gift of God and that human response which either marks for us the start of a new life in Christ or is for us simply a response to that life that God has made possible through Christ, does not entirely bring to the end what has been. It does not prevent us from getting distracted by the ways of the world. We are human after all and get easily distracted. Now, there is only one baptism—at whatever point we are baptised we have been welcomed into the family of God and are among the saints. But this does not mean that we should never revisit our baptism; that we should not look again at the promises made on our behalf or by ourselves. We do need to sometimes give that robe a bit of a clean off and make running repairs. That is why it is important we take time to make our confession to God; to look at the reality of our lives and recognise that we are not getting it quite right, that we have distanced ourselves from God’s guidance and sustenance. That is why it is important to reaffirm our baptismal promises and rededication ourselves to the service of God. Taking time to remind ourselves that to live a holy life, to live that new life in Christ, does not just require us to make one decision, to accept that gracious gift of God’s grace and go through one sacramental act, but that it requires maintenance. We need to repeatedly acknowledge God’s gift to us and how we loose sight of what that should mean in our lives and reaffirm the fellowship we have with each other and with God.

So as a community of God’s people,
let us remember that we have been baptised
and reaffirm our commitment to follow Christ.
In baptism, God has set us as a seal upon his heart.
In baptism, God has brought us into union with Christ,
made us one with all his people in heaven and on earth
and assured us of everlasting life.[2]

Amen

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[1] World Council of Churches, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111, 1982

[2] Introduction from Renewal of Baptism Promises from Worship: from the United Reformed Church, 2003

Two weeks later...

Wow... two weeks (well almost) of being on my own in a pastorate and I survived and more importantly they survived. Two weeks ago I was loosing sleep over whether I could actually do this, and two weeks on, I'm just about back to only loosing sleep over my sermon. It has been a couple of weeks which have I guess shown me more of the reality of ministry. There has not been any one checking up on me; however people have been emailing me or coming to find me to tell me what they are doing. I realised the other day that could have spent the last two weeks watching TV and nobody would have know. Me not being in the office wouldn't phase anyone. Of course you have to deliver the service on Sunday and turn up to anything that you're expected at during the week, but other than that, the only person you appear to be accountable to is yourself.

This is something that I'm just not use to. When I was working for the NHS, my boss was pretty flexible, but we were expected to be in the office each day, unless otherwise agreed, and we did have weekly progress meetings and he'd appear every so often during the week to check up on something or other.  Then, of course, there were annual reviews. Now, annual reviews do exist within the church, as well as in college life, but weekly progress meetings or someone popping in to see how the sermon's going? I suppose you could say as ministers we are accountable to our congregations every Sunday - however, some of us could get away with spouting rubbish from the pulpit, as long as we have picked the congregation's favourite hymns.

Sometimes the only critic you have is yourself. But there is being critical of yourself and being critical of yourself. I know I am very good at putting myself and what I do down, but I also know when I could have done better or haven't put as much effort in as I could. And in ministry, this we then have to reconcile with God, for its for the good of God's kingdom we are working. It's not always going to go exactly to plan or be exactly right, and there will be weeks when however hard I try, my sermon will be far from perfect. But if I can honestly say on Sunday morning that I have at least attempt to wrest with what God's say in a text, its ok to pick the congregation's favourite hymns to cover up the interpretive mess that seems to be the resultant sermon.