Not being able to see the wood for the trees

'Can't see the wood for the trees' is one of those sayings that easily rolls of the tongue when things are not particularly straight forward. Yet, as I found myself stumbled around a wood looking for a path, the saying took on a different meaning.

Having taken a few days off to regather after the busyness of Easter and try not think about what is ahead in the next few weeks, I took the opportunity to do a bit of walking. With my map reading skills being not as good as they could be and fairly indistinct paths, it was surprisingly easy to close my mind off; for a while at least. However, it was not long before my mind drifts back to what I was trying to escape from. But as I walked through a wood the other day, looking for markers that the map said were there but all I could see were trees, the wood suddenly opened up before me, as did my thoughts.

If you stand still long enough in a wood, in a fairly short period of time you no longer just see trees. Suddenly you are no longer surrounded by birdsong without sight of its source; there are wrens, robins, finches flitting from branch to branch, stopping briefing to whistle a call. There is a scurrying in the undergrowth and then a dart of grey as a squirrel running up a nearby tree. From behind a clump of gorse strolls a pony happily grazing and seemingly oblivious to your presence. With very little effort, at least on your part, the wood soon shows itself not just to be tree upon tree, but so much more.

And in that moment, I may not have found the fence I was looking for, but I did find a bit of meaning.

During Lent I thought a lot about waiting and how the Christian calendar has a number of periods of time which we could easily class as waiting times. But why? If we are to be missionaries and evangelists, living out the Gospel, that's all about action. However, do we not say 'actions speak louder than words', yet, how often do we do things without thinking them through first? God does use these moment, but there is always the encouragement to wait on God first. In waiting, what our actions will be become better defined as we begin to see more than what is just before us. We begin to see the wood and not just the trees.

'Deep in the Wood' E Colechin 2015

Pilgrim, Celebrity or King? Palm Sunday Sermon

Mark 11.1-11 (NRSV):
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
‘Hosanna!
   Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
   Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. 

Have you ever been involved with arranging an event where an important guest is to be welcomed? There is much preparation to be done; decisions to be taken over who will and will not greet them. It must also be decided how their presence in your midst will be announced to those outside, for there will always be others who will also want to catch a glimpse of your invited celebrity. But of course this then leads to the question of ‘crowd-control’! And in the midst of all these decisions, you then have the list of requirements of that individual, or their entourage, to deal with. And if you are very unlucky, then that entourage will want to scrutinise all of your planning down to the detail of which crockery you’ll be use for tea. There is no doubt about it, welcoming a celebrity is a minefield, but it is also a crowd puller! And if it is a crowd you want, then a celebrity you must have! Yet, this was not what was going on in Jerusalem. Jesus wasn’t exactly an invited celebrity; demonstrated by the fact that it was him who did all the planning of how he was going to make his grand entry. And that grand entry, well, was not exactly grand, more a little ad hoc. However, as with everything Jesus did, it was more carefully planned than it seemed on the surface and in this case in more ways than one! 

Firstly, however, he was a crowd-puller: the streets were lined, flags were flying—well leafy branches—and there was much cheering and jubilation! The description of the scene, not just in the gospel of Mark but within all the gospels, reminds me of the film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Now in light of John Lennon’s controversial comment about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus, a comment which was maybe taken slightly out of context and he did apologise for eventually, the film may not be the best choice of analogues that I could have made. However, the film although primarily about the manic nature of life on the road as a pop group, demonstrated how much the Beatles’ lives were plagued by hordes of screaming fans. They could not go anywhere without being chased by a group of teenagers. People were infatuated with them. And this still happens to this day. There are those who will camp out on the streets of London overnight just to be able to get a glimpse of Will and Kate! Those that travel half-way across the world to stand at the back of a crowd and wave a banner! And this is what was happening on the streets of Jerusalem. People may not have been waiting for hours on street corners for Jesus to come by, but when they heard he was coming they were rushing to be there. They were going to be one of those who could say ‘they were there’, ‘they saw him!’ 

‘Hang on a minute’, say the commentators, this kind of welcome was not uncommon in Jerusalem at that time. Although the gospel descriptions speak of a welcome we would associate with a big celebrity entering our city; for Jerusalem this was a ‘norm’ as they were always coming out to welcome any pilgrims entering their city. They would wave branches and festoon the pilgrims way. They would shout blessings upon the pilgrims in welcome. And, although Mark doesn’t quite put us at the time of the Passover in chapter 11, the way the story unfolds in Mark’s telling suggests Jesus’ triumphal entry was at the time when Jerusalem would have been welcoming many pilgrims into the city. However, it may have been Passover; Jerusalem may have been welcoming its many pilgrims; but the blessing that the crowds shouted at Jesus was not quite the blessing upon Jesus that would have been shouted at normal pilgrims. Actually, it wasn’t really a blessing at all—it was a proclamation! The crowds were proclaiming Jesus as Lord! The festivities may have had the look of a pilgrim’s welcome, but it was more than that. In what the crowds shouted there were royal undertones, and overall Mark’s telling points the reader towards something more political, as well as something with a level of meaning that clearly the crowds to do not understand and nor do those who accompany Jesus. 

Now, if Jesus was a big celebrity character as his ability to draw crowds would suggest, maybe what the crowds were shouting in Jerusalem came from the fact they had just got a bit carried away. How easy is it to say something in the heat of the moment, and then later realise that wasn’t quite what you meant to say? Hindsight is a great thing, but as John Lennon discovered, it is very hard to back track on a comment made in the heat of the moment, especially when its meaning has been misinterpreted. However, biblical scholarship is fairly certain that the gospel writers did not document events in ways that did not have some deeper meaning within their portrayal of the Jesus story. Admittedly, though, we don’t always see that meaning at first glance! All the same, in the context of what happens next in Mark’s story, the shout of the crowds is not just political, but also comical and dramatic. It sets up conflict, establishes confusion, reminds us that maybe we haven’t quite got our heads around this and neither have those whom we are reading about. 

Mark brings the reader back to the idea, over and over again throughout the gospel, of how much people really did not understand who Jesus was, and to some extent how much Jesus did not want them to know who he was. But here in chapter 11 is a turning point—Jesus in getting on that colt and riding into Jerusalem made a statement. This action fulfilled prophesy. Jesus was portraying himself as that messianic figure; that long awaited messenger of God who would be the people’s salvation. And the voice of crowd would suggest that they got it. At last the fog had lifted and they saw who Jesus was! But did they? Or does the short-lived celebration of Jesus’ presence with them just reinforce Mark’s message about how much Jesus and his presence among the people was not understood? Verse 11 does not exactly state Jesus’ presence in the city as ground breaking—he arrives at the temple and looks around, then heads back out of the city. Where are the crowds now? If they really believed Jesus was the Messiah they had all been waiting for, why had they not followed him and why were they letting him leave the city? 

But of course, Jesus was not the Messiah they were all hoping for. For starters he didn’t storm the gates of Jerusalem; he quietly and gently entered through one of the open gates at the plodding pace of a donkey. The Jews were wanting revolution; they wanted release from the control of the occupation of the Romans. They weren’t going to start this revolution themselves, however, that would have been suicide. They wanted someone else to do; someone that they would be happy to call their leader or if things went pear-shaped, to be their scapegoat. But Jesus never towed the party-line, and he definitely did not come to wage war or to conquer on the day he entered Jerusalem; he came in peace. In fact, his riding on a donkey symbolised just this. Apparently at that time, a colt was the animal princes would choose to ride when they wished to signify peaceful intentions. Therefore, Jesus’ procession spoke of royalty, but not the royalty that the Jews were looking for and wanted. So was this why the crowds dispersed? 

Clearly, God’s definition of Messiah and the Jews definition of Messiah did not match. The Jews thought the Messiah would be the one who would save them from there oppressors; where in fact the Messiah was to be the one who would save them from themselves. And that salvation was not, however, just to be limited to those people at that time, it was to span the world and time itself. We talk about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and for a fleeting moment we get a glimpse of it. But Mark, in his telling of that day does not hold us in the moment long so that we come to see that the triumph isn’t really on that road into the city. Rather it is on the road out of the city—the road Jesus will travel at the end of this week. 

Mark shows us Jesus as celebrity, we glimpse the Jesus who is king, but we are also reminded that Jesus was a pilgrim. His pilgrimage though was not just to the temple, it was one of special standing that would change the course of God’s relationship with the people of the whole world. 

Today is Palm Sunday, a day where we very often get caught up with our palm waving and our shouts of ‘Hosanna’. But the Church in its focus on today has changed. Many congregations now only briefly wave their palms and then moments later find themselves at the foot of the cross. They will follow through the litany of Passion, rather than the litany of Palms. This maybe speaks of how we tend not to spend the week travelling with Jesus as we possibly once did—the busyness of our lives just doesn’t allow us. Yet I am well aware that within our own tradition, journeying through Holy Week is something that we just don’t really do. What is important is the resurrection, and what happens before it is neither here nor there—right? Wrong—to understand, we need to see the whole story. It is exactly this that Mark is getting at through how he writes his gospel. It is the reader who comes to understanding, not ultimately the characters of the story. But if I think it is so important that we should have followed through the narrative of the Passion, why have we today only entered through the gates of Jerusalem and got as far as Jesus’ first visit to the temple according to Mark. Well, because there is much to learn on each step of this pilgrimage. When Jesus pauses, we should pause too. Take in the scene. Ask what does it mean? This final week of Jesus’ life is one that is transforming, and the meaning of that transformation comes through every action Jesus takes. We should, therefore, not hurry through. Nor should we go straight from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without passing through the temple, the upper room, the garden and finally journey the road from the city to the cross. For it is through the whole journey that the Pilgrim Jesus, turns from Celebrity to King—not just to the King of the Jews, but to the King of us all and the one whom we now call Saviour and Lord. 

Amen

Wilderness...

I suppose the advantage of being in a pastorate situation at this time of year rather than in academia means I'm actually spending more of my time reflecting on the season. Don't get me wrong, I haven't ignored Lent for the past three years, but I don't think I've given it quite the due consideration that it requires. It has, unfortunately, taken second place to essay deadlines and looming exams. However, even before heading off to theological college, I can't honestly say that Lent has ever featured heavily within the liturgical years I've cycled through. Maybe it is the tradition that I've grown up in and the liturgical freedom it affords that has allowed me to sail through the 45 days with only a cursory glance. Or maybe I have just been too lazy to look!

This year things are different, Lent is at the forefront of my daily reflections and my weekly worship preparation.

But what angle do I come at Lent from? Do I do the whole self-denial thing? Maybe spend time sitting in sackcloth and ashes doing penitence? Or maybe I should go on a journey it to the wilderness?

Well pastorate life really doesn't allow you to head off at a drop of a hat on some sort Lenten pilgrimage. Nor does it really allow time to sit around in sackcloth and ashes, especially if you don't what people to think that pressure has finally got to you. But it doesn't stop you from wondering and reflecting on what it might mean to head off into the wilderness, just as Jesus did.

As I was driving home from my weekly visit to Cambridge the other day, America's 'A horse with no name' came up on my iPod playlist, and it got me thinking. So often we reflect on the wilderness being a place of loss; when we're not sure which way to go, we saying we're in wilderness times. We think of it as a place of hardship and a time when we wrestle with who we are and what maybe we are being called too. And on reading the story of Jesus' time in the wilderness, or even following the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness, I don't think it is wrong to see the wilderness that way. But what if it was a place of relief too? The chorus to the song 'A horse with no name' goes thus: "I've been through the desert on a horse with no name. It felt good to be out of the rain. In the desert you can remember your name, cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."

Yes, the wilderness is a place where we struggle, but I also think that it is a place that allows us to remember who we actually are too. Its a place where we can reflect on the world we live, the world that surrounds us without either of those worlds encroaching on us.

If you have a spare 10 minutes, take a look at this video, see that Jesus did not just wrestle in the wilderness, he also to delight in the world around him and remembered who he was!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xb8-mkSNSg

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.

Am I really ready for this?

Today the reality that my final year of training for ministry in the United Reformed Church is about to start hit. Although it has been a week since I moved out of the comfort of Westminster College to a flat which is a very long way up with a view across London, it wasn't until I walked into town to meet a member of one of the congregations I will be working with over the next 9 months, that it really sank in that 'this is it' and all being well 12 months from now I will be gearing up for ordination (if not already ordained)!

Four years, when you start out, seems a long time. It lures you into a false sense of security that by the time the four years is up you'll be ready for anything that life as a minister will throw at you! Well, with only 12 months to go, and just about to embark the part of my training which puts me within a church-setting for most of my week, I can in no way say I'm ready! I think I'm still trying to get over the shock that God thinks I'm the right person for this.

Yet here I am at the start of year four, with the process of finding my first pastorate about to beginning and the start of my internship (or living ministry programme year) a few days away. I don't feel ready for this, but as I learnt this morning, I am ready for this. I may not know how to deal with every situation I might find myself in the next 9 months, let alone the rest of my ministry. I may not know the right words for every encounter I will have and I will definitely get them wrong at times. There is every possibility that I will stumble and even fall flat on my face. But none of that really matters. What matters is that I'm ready to give it go and answer the call God has made on my life.

So although my knees are knocking and I would rather hide away than head out into the big scary world on ministry, bring it on! I am not ready, but that's ok because apparently I am ready! (And once I know what that means I will let you know.)