The Word of the Lord surrounding all being

After four years of theological study and church placements, my pre-ordination training draws to a close. Hopefully, in 10 days time I will receive my leaving certificate from Westminster College, Cambridge, which will state that I can go forward for ordination into ministry of Word and Sacraments in the United Reformed Church. A long, tiring, exciting, and sometimes scary journey is coming to a close, although in fact it is only the beginning!

So how do I feel about this?

Well, in my normal style, as I think my tutor has come to know so well over the years: I don't really know! Or do I...

Meet Henri, my third morph sculpture...

When I started to think back over my time on the living ministry programme, which is the final piece of my pre-ordination training, I came to the conclusion that the only way I might go some way to expressing where I have come to is through another sculpture. Here is a figure, who could be controversial; who speaks of insecurity; who is open to receive whilst quietly, even prayerfully, reflecting on all that they see and hear. The words of Scripture have come to cover them, some words and phrases standing out, whilst others have been interpreted to give meaning to what lay ahead in the future. What it means to live with and in the Word of God is a reality, yet causes the individual to bow their head in humility and honour of the awesomeness that knowledge holds.

The prophet Isaiah wrote: "All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flowers fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever." (Isaiah 40.7-8, NRSV) The words of God are weighty and can cause one to crumb and wither. Yet, there is much strength, freedom and reassurance in the words of God.  The fact that it was there in the beginning and will be there at the end, should prevent one from fading, and really truly enliven them.

In the past four years, in just the past nine months, I have wrestled with Scripture. I have listen for God's word and struggled to hear. Yet, as I have found myself more and more drawn into Scripture, I have come to know although I may not always hear it, God's Word surrounds me and is within me. And for this I am truly thankful, because it is this that has truly prepared me for the next phase on my journey as a Minister of Word and Sacraments.

Waiting...

So one of today's task was to write another pastoral letter for my placement churches, and here it is. Some of the task that have to be done in ministry require a level of honest that puts you in a place of vulnerability - this letter is no exception. These words come from within current experience - and not just from standing waiting for a train! 

Rushing down the steps on to the platform just to see the train slowly pulling away is one of those really infuriating moments in life. Now on the Underground really there should be no need to get frustrated, but people do. I was with a friend the other day when this happened to us, and my friend exclaimed, “Well now we will have to wait 4 minutes for the next train!” In the grand scheme of things, 4 minutes is nothing especially when we apparently spend 653 hours in a lifetime waiting for trains and buses. Yet, when you are waiting, 4 minutes can seem an age. But all the same we must wait.

The Christian calendar seems to me to be made up of periods of waiting. Before Christmas we have Advent, when we wait for the birth of Christ. We are currently in the season of Lent, when we appear to be waiting for the death of Christ. Then from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, we wait for the resurrection of Christ. From then we wait for Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and then we appear to wait for the cycle to start again. Christians are known as the people of the Way. Reflecting on how much time we spend waiting, maybe it would be more appropriate to call us the people of the wait! That aside, it is not an unknown wait that we experience though; we do know what lies at the end of each period of waiting. This you would think would make the waiting easier, just as the time ticking down on the platform sign telling you when the next train is due might do. But does it? Or does it make the wait feel even longer?

Psalm 13 starts with the cry, “How long, O Lord?”, and it is a cry that is uttered elsewhere in Scripture (e.g. Psalm 6.3, Psalm 35.17, Habakkuk 1.2 and Revelation 6.10). When we are waiting with the expectation of something, how easy it is to cry out ‘how long?’ And how frustrating it is when the only response we get back is “patience”! Yet, in some sense that is what we have in these periods of waiting in the Christian calendar. They are periods of time that give us the space to reflect and prepare; to be patient before God. If we were to rush from birth to death to resurrection to spirit without pausing and reflecting, would we actually see what each event was and is about?

One of the things I very quickly found after starting my placement was that whenever I cried “how long?” it wasn’t because things were taking too long, it is because things came around too soon. This meant that whenever I missed the train or the bus in the morning and had to wait, I found myself getting frustrated because I felt like I was losing valuable time sat at my computer or in conversation with someone. However, it was not lost time, it has actually been some of my most valuable time—the time when I have been made to stop and wait. That is why the periods of waiting in our yearly cycle, I think, are invaluable. They cause us to stop and think; to reflect on what has been and what is to come. They also cause us to be in the moment.

So take heart! Do not get frustrated by the periods of waiting that come your way, because the times when we have to wait are as valuable and meaningful as the times when we don’t. Remember the last verse of Psalm 27: "Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!"

New Year?

I realise I have been a little lax in keeping my blog up-to-date in recent months with my muses. Maybe this is because I don't seem to have time to sit and do much musing these days, or because most of my musing ends up in my sermons. Yet, as I am learning, there are times in ministry where musing is not just needed for the sermon, for there is always the magazine pastoral letter to be written. So here is my reflection on the turning on the year that has recently been published in the church magazines of my pastorate, which appears to have got people talking and even causing one person to re-write the beginning of their sermon the other week (alas not my supervisor's, but I can live in hope that will happen one day)...

With the dawning of a new year there is that sense of a new start. The battered diary of the year past is tucked away, if not thrown in the bin, and our crisp, new one, which this year we are going to keep in better order than before, is opened gently to a pristine blank page. With the dawning of a new year there is the chance to leave the past year behind.

But how many of us actually get to the 1^st January before having to open our new diary? How many of us have that joy of putting last year’s diary away? Things have to be planned and organised in advance so the new diary is opened long before January actually arrives and already looks battered and worn out as the new year dawns. Things don’t end and start with the turning of the year, they continue, so last year’s diary needs to stay close at hand just to remind us where we are and what’s been done. That new start with the new year isn’t such a new start anymore, in fact its not really a new start at all, its just another day. The chance to reflect, to start over, to hope with the coming of a new year seems to be lost because ‘life just isn’t like that’. 

The 1^st January can just feel like another day, but I don’t think we’ve completely lost sight of the fact that a new year has dawned. We may be a little more prepared for the year that lies ahead than just having a new diary, but there is no less hope to be had; no less dreaming to be done. 

We have just finished the season of Advent, moved through the season of Christmas and are now heading for the season of Epiphany. These three seasons are seasons where as the Church not only do we celebrate new beginnings, but also faithfully look forward with hope. As the magi travelled from the east, the only certainty they had was the star in the sky and all they could do was faithfully following it in the hope it would lead them to the Christ Child. And as the story goes, it does, although they do take a slight detour which has unforeseen repercussions. But the negative of the story shouldn’t overshadow the positive—things may not quite go to plan, but a ‘maybe’ isn’t a good enough reason not to set out on the journey at all; not to have hopes and dreams and work towards them. Anyway, whether we like it or not, new starts happen which make us look forward—the seasons change, years end and start. 

There is that English tradition of the bells of church steeples near and far ringing the old year out and welcoming the new—marking that transition of the year as we watch the clock turn from 11.59pm to 12.00am. In a sonnet for the New Year¹, Malcolm Guite, chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, beautifully used the image of these bells to show the significance the turning of the year:

…As surely, soundly, deeply as these bells
That sound and find and call is all at once.
‘Ears of my ears’ can hear, my body feels
This call to prayer that is itself a dance.
So ring them out in joy and jubilation,
Sound them in sorrow tolling for the lost,
O let then wake the Church and rouse the nation,
A sleeping lion stirred to life at last,
Begin again they sing, again begin…

The dawning of the new year should be the chance for us to begin again, but not in the sense that we forget all that has gone before. The tolling of the bells are to reawaken us to hope; the future hope that entered the world as baby that first Christmas and the hope that has been given to each of us by the man who was hung on a cross and then conquered death that first Easter.

¹ Malcolm Guite, 2012. Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year. Norwich: Canterbury Press, p.18

 

'Parent in God'?

The titles we give things in organisations can be funny at time. Of course, many are straightforward and describe an individual's job, but other times you have to wonder what whoever came up with title was thinking.

This week my supervisor was talking about the minister he worked under when he was at the same point in his training. But this minister was not my supervisor's supervisor, he was his 'Father in God'! I have to admit, this did make me giggle - not because my supervisor isn't old enough to be my father, because he is - but because it has the sense of one of those titles that gives a strange gravitas. What was the church/college thinking when they came up with this idea?

Now this was 40 years ago, so inclusive language wasn't such a big issue. I guess if we were to reinstate such terminal for our supervisors today, they would now be called 'Parent in God', but I have to say this does not help the title any and does conjure up the image of the Godfather! But although it does seem a slightly ridiculous title, and one that many would find awkward to use today, I suppose I can understand it. This year for me is about learning from someone who has significant experience in ministry and to some extent the relationship that will form is very much like the relationship between a parent and child. My 'parent in God' is here to shown how to do and not to do things; to explain things to me, that I don't understand; to encourage me when I find this tough. And it is not just about my own learning, for as many of the parents I know tell me, they are forever learning from their children.

Now I don't think I will ever refer to my supervisor as my 'father in God' or even my 'parent in God', but I do, on reflection, like the concept especially as I know the guiding hand my supervisor will be over the next nine months.