Who's side?

Now that the academic year is over and I'm sat with my feet up, watching the world go by with plenty of time to muse about life, the universe and everything, I thought it was time to get blogging again. Don't want to let my theological reflection practice to slip!

Hmmm... to be sat around with my feet up, watching the world go by - now that would be nice. In reality I'm blogging to avoid sermon writing! Now almost a week back on placement and just about to start writing sermon number 3! The delusion that as a minister I only have to work Sundays has now well and truly evaporated.

As a student minister, being attached to a church in Cambridge has its advantages and disadvantages. There is always plenty of intellectual and simulating conversation to be had and you get to meet some amazing people who have done some amazing things for the advancement of knowledge and society. However, there is also a high population of retired ministers - Cambridge must rival Bognor in the statistics! When you add them into the mix with the academics, other ministers who are based in Cambridge with no pastoral charge and the members whose husbands, wives, parents and/or grandparents where ministers - the congregation becomes all of a sudden very daunting. Every at of worship you lead has the tendency to start to feel like an accessed service.

So when your supervisor turns to you and says he wants you to experiment, imagine the fear that gripped me. However, this was just a midweek service in the chapel with a congregation of around 8 individuals, who I have learnt over the year are not too scary. Fear subsided a little - then the congregation walked in - of the 10, four were ministers! If I could aparate, that moment was the moment I would have used that skill; but alas however much I wished I was somewhere else I remained where I was. But at least I could proved my supervisor and my college tutor wrong spectacularly!

There are some days when you have to wonder whether God does take sides - yesterday was one of those for me. Unfortunately, the experiment worked and my supervisor and tutor were proved right. No spectacular mess ups, theological fopars or fish impressions - only words inspired by God and delivered through the strength of God, for I didn't do it on my own.

Maybe God doesn't take sides, God just knows what's best. But since my tutor didn't witness the experiment, I might be able to keep my comfort blanket for a little longer :)

The demon in my head

From about the age of 10, the education system pretty much wrote me off. Sure I could do maths, but reading and language were a mystery. I had teachers who defined me as backward, whilst others told me I would never survive Secondary School because I could not do dictation let alone read anything that was more complex than something that you'd find in a 6 year old's reading bag these days. I was not a child you would 'statement', but I was also not a child that anyone believed would get very far. Luckily I have a mother who thought otherwise.

Twenty-two years down the line and I have just completed my second year of a theology undergraduate course at the University of Cambridge. This is not my first degree either, I have already successfully completed an undergraduate masters and postgraduate masters in engineering. However, the last 22 years have been a continuous battle - not just with the words on the page, but with a demon telling me I can't and shouldn't be doing what I'm doing and how ever hard I try to prove it wrong, its still there.

This week was results week, never a good week in my life especially these past couple of years. I doubt and over analyse. I beat myself up over the smallest of errors and the most insignificant comments. I convince myself I did not work hard enough or put enough effort in. I am very rarely happy with the results that are written on the piece of paper, because however high or low the marks are, I have still failed.

All of this I know is stupid, and there are plenty of people who will read this and tell me to stop being stupid. But I do wonder somedays whether if my dyslexia had been diagnosed at the age of 10 things may have been different. Would I be sat here now, two years into a Cambridge degree? Would I have spent the last 22 years trying to prove a point?

Who knows, but maybe it is time to say whatever point it was I set out to prove I have now proved. But please forgive me if I occassionally still beat myself up.

Dead week...

This week in the Cambridge Easter term is officially known as 'Dead Week' and I have to say at the beginning of the week, it was fairly apt for how I felt - dead. On paper the Easter term looks like it should be a walk in the park: no lectures, maybe a couple of supervisions, but the rest of time is free to finish essays and revise for those four exams that are all over and done within a week. But that is so far from the truth - everyone's stress levels rise, heads are full of looming deadlines and little else matters. And then the students hit this week and everything sudden stops... essays handed, exams written, no reading to be done yesterday... and so we crash, we crash into a week of nothingness.

Now because this is a theological college, a week of nothingness is not really an option. There are things as ordinands we must do which are not covered in the academic syllabus, so we have had other things to do and a couple of seminars we've needed to attend, but there has been time just to pause, to recover and return to life.

Over the week, I have come to realise how lost I had become within this world of looming deadlines over the past six weeks. I'd moved from word to word, book to book, worry to worry, praying that I'd have the strength to finish each essay and write each exams, but that was about it. There was not really a world outside the world in my head... God kind of became more about theory than practice, more about was in my head than what was in my heart. And when I did go to seek a place of peace, to seek a space to be with God in practice, all I found was discordant noise, literally as well as metaphorically.

Now the melody is coming back, that peaceful space with God returns, and another step in learning about ministry has been taken.

From Palms to Passion...

Holy Week... this is not something I do regularly, but I think how I feel about where this week leads I sum up to some extent in the sermon I preached this Palm Sunday evening. Through Holy Week, St Columba's, Cambridge and Fulbourn URC, my two placement churches, are walking in through the seven phrases Jesus' spoke from the cross, starting last night with "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23.34). Here are my thoughts on those words... 

It is the day of the triumphal entry, but rather than lingering on the streets with our palm branches, we are heading straight for the cross. We’ve heard the words of praise and adoration but are not remaining there; instead we are going straight to the words of mockery and scorn, words to which Jesus prayerful responds: “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing”.

This is a phrase that some of us will know by heart, one we’ve heard repeatedly at Easter, and ‘Father forgive them’ seems pivotal in understanding Christ’s actions on the cross. However, it is one of those phrases we tend to remove from its context. Although it tends to remain within the context of Christ’s Passion, how often do we consider it in the context of Luke’s narrative? What was Luke trying to tell his readers, and us, by placing these words of Jesus at this point in his account?

Well for starters this phrase doesn’t really seem to belong where we find it. It makes the passage slightly awkward to read, what comes before doesn’t naturally lead in and what comes after it doesn’t naturally follow on. It has the feeling that it should belong somewhere else; that whoever was copying out Luke’s words got distracted and accidently copied out this phrase from another point. Or maybe it is in the right place, but the scribe was so carried away with what they were reading that they missed copying out a sentence or two. However, although there are textual variations in the Greek where this phrase is left out completely, it is there and it does have importance.

So what is happening? Why put this, the first of the two prayers Jesus utters from the cross in Luke, here? Is Luke trying to highlight Jesus’ death as martyrdom? Jesus innocent of any crime alongside two who were not innocent, but being treated the same way. The words Jesus utters don’t really reflect this, so this seems to be a more far fetched interpretation of the event. Luke is however credited with the authorship of the Book of Acts, in fact it is the sequel to the gospel of Luke, in which the narrative of Stephen’s martyrdom includes Stephen speaking very similar words to those spoken here by Jesus—“Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7.60, NRSV). Is Stephen’s martyrdom demonstrative of Jesus’ martyrdom and vice versa? Possibly, but there is a slight difference in emphasis in Stephen’s words to those of Jesus, for in Jesus’ words there is a level of ignorance implied. So although there are parallels and Luke seems to textual tie the events together, the difference in emphasis signifies that Jesus’ death was not just a straightforward martyrdom, but something more. For Jesus didn’t just die for what he believed in, his death was part of his challenge to what others believed. Jesus’ death was part of the reworking of humanity’s understanding of God.

So if Jesus’ death is more than martyrdom, what are his words saying? “Father forgive them”—forgive who? The two criminals and the Roman soldiers who find themselves either side of this phrase? Or is Jesus asking forgiveness for the Roman and Jewish Ruling Elite who have sent him to the place they call the Skull? Or maybe the disciples who now seem to be nowhere to be seen? And what about us? Plenty of unknowns there then! So does what he say next help? “For they know not what they are doing”. Forgiveness for those who don’t understand the meaning of their actions? Well this might make sense if Jesus saw the letter of the law of Moses to be the be all and end all, for in Leviticus 4 (4.2) and Numbers 15 (15.25-29) atonement—reconciliation with God—can be sought and will be given to anyone who has unintentionally sinned. But the criminals knew what they had done, and the Romans and the Jewish leaders knew what they were doing, and I expected even the disciples had some clue. I would even think we most probably know when we’ve done something that isn’t right before God. So if that is the case, Jesus’ words with respect to the law of the Old Testament make very little sense. So why does Jesus ask forgiveness on our behalf when he knows we can’t be forgiven? Well to begin with Jesus wasn’t bound to the law of Moses—he came to break it open. Secondly, maybe its not ignorant sin that Jesus is asking forgiveness for, maybe it’s for known sin which contains a lack of understanding and lack of faith that Jesus asks forgiveness. The Romans and the Jewish leaders didn’t entirely grasp who Jesus was, and I think if we are honest we sometimes struggle to grasp who Jesus is. The disciples ran because of fear and ultimately a lack of faith—the step of trust required to stand by Jesus at the point of his death was for some a step to far to take. And I’m pretty sure most of us can relate to that one, sometimes it is easier to run away from what God is calling us to do than to take it on. 

The image of Jesus portrayed in Luke is one of compassion and obedience. Characteristics which are demonstrated in just this one phrase—obedience to the father, compassion towards those who are mocking and abusing him. Obedience and compassion are therefore why what can be ultimately said about Jesus from the words he speaks at this point in Luke’s narrative, is that Jesus is signifying his position as the supreme intercessor. With his words he intercedes for the criminals, the Roman soldiers, the Roman and Jewish Ruling Elite, the disciples, God’s people and us. By taking on human form, Jesus entered into humanity and at one level became one of us—using the words of the prophet Isaiah, he became numbered with the transgressors—from which point he could intercede for the transgressors, for everyone then and now. The role of intercessor is not solely the responsibility of Jesus; we too can be the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 as we are numbered with the transgressors and so are also in the place where we can make intercessions for them. However, the location of these words set Jesus’ status as intercessor apart. For here is Jesus in the hardest of places, at life’s lowest, most desperate point, and he still intercedes. He still prays for those who had got it wrong, who had missed the point, who had deserted him. He prays a prayer that many of us struggle to pray even when everything is going well. Therefore, Jesus as the ultimate example can be summarised in one brief speech—“Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing”. Jesus breaking open humanity’s understanding of God and living out what each of us can do for each other in our relationship with God.

Maybe its time to sit and wait

I realised the other day that I have blogged less and less as this year has gone by. Not sure whether this is because I have less to say or whether its because I have less time. Might even be both!

Anyway, I have been preparing a sermon over the past couple of days based on Psalm 27. Now, I keep being reminded that it is important to look at scripture in context, but I'm going to break this rule and give you final verse of the Psalm, which has really got me thinking. (If you want to put it into context well why not open a Bible, or even just put Psalm 27 into Goggle.)

Psalm 27.14 
“Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.”

Why has it got me thinking? Well I seem to be running around like a headless chicken at the moment. I cross things of a list then add ten more things to that same list. Life is so full but if I don’t spend time waiting on God, what’s it all for? If I don’t spend time waiting on God, am I actually missing the point?

Then again to ‘wait for the LORD’ seems very open ended. How long do I have to wait? Today, tomorrow, next week are all looking busy, I don’t have time to just sit and wait? This I think is an excuse we use far to regularly against why we can’t sit and wait on God, but I wonder what would happen if we did just stop and wait?

I fear that now is not the time to experiment, but maybe in my first sabbatical!

Lack of sleep...

I should be currently reading about the Catholic Reformation and not writing my blog, but it has been a long week and I keep getting distracted so I might as well get distracted in a slightly productive way.

This week it was my turn to be assessed on my delivery of worship and preaching. Now, to say I have been a jibbering wreck about this for weeks is a slight over exaggeration, but I have lost sleep over it. You would think having spent time now on placement in a church where though I wasn't delivering a sermon every week, I was involved with the leading of worship, this wouldn't phase me. But preaching in chapel to your peers and the College Senatus is a whole different ball game. These people are really going to tell you what they think at the door and not just shake your hand and say "lovely hymn choice, vicar".

BUT WHY should I loose sleep over preaching in chapel and not over preaching out in the church? Yes, it is different, but should I not give the same attention and care to the worship I craft wherever I deliver it? Now before people think I'm putting myself down, I know the effort I put in to Thursday was no different from what I would have put in if I had been preaching this Sunday to a congregation of complete strangers. I guess what I am musing is that I wish sometimes I did occasionally loose sleep over preparing for a Sunday, rather than just for this one Thursday a year.

 So here's to lack of sleep... may it be a frequent visitor when wrestling with Scripture :o)

Being sheep and shepherds

So with term being in full swing again, we have, once again, the delights of Life and Service, and this term we are considering that great elephant in the room of every church: pastoral care. In class this morning we briefly touched on some of the imagery which is attached to being a pastor, incuding the image of the shepherd. This is a Biblical image that apparently more and more people are struggling with, but it is an image I have used quite a lot in association to sheep and it got me thinking about a sermon I gave over the summer.Therefore, here is my sermon on being both sheep and shepherds, with reference to Jeremiah 23.1-6, Psalm 23 and Mark 6.30-34.

Not only do sheep and shepherds appear at regularly intervals throughout the Bible, but they are used as metaphors in both the Old and New Testaments. Three examples of their metaphoric use we’ve read in Jeremiah, the Psalms and Mark. The image of a sheep is used by individuals in reference to themselves, for example as in Psalm 23, whilst else where Israel, Judah and even humanity as a whole is equated to being like sheep. And as demonstrated in today’s readings, you can’t have sheep without a shepherd or vice versa. But this metaphoric duo is not confined to the Bible, it has been used throughout history to describe the relationship between gods or kings and nations. Apparently King Hammurabi of Babylon called himself a shepherd and Homer regularly styled the Greek chiefs as shepherds of their people. For rulers in the ancient near east, their ability to tend their people like they would ‘pasture’ sheep demonstrated their legitimacy to rule.

But being a sheep or a shepherd is far from glamorous. Sheep are not the cleanest of animals and do have the tendency to flee at the sign of any danger. They are not stupid animals, research has shown that their IQ is on par with cattle, just below that of pigs and they’re apparently good problem solvers. However, their stomachs do tend to rule their heads and their strong lead-follow tendency isn’t a characteristic most people would want to be associated with. And when it comes to shepherds, in Biblical times and earlier they were usually teenagers, the poor or the elderly. They were lonely figures, isolated from society, seen as the lowest of the low. So what is it about sheep and shepherds that nations and great rulers are likened to them? And why are they recurring images associated with God and his people? Ok, in times gone by, shepherding was something that most people would have a working knowledge of; but was this the only reason, or like many of the metaphors we meet in scripture is there something much deeper which makes them as meaningful today as they were yesterday?

Nations, groups of people, flocks of sheep, though they can be self sustaining, are easily scattered and individuals lost if there is no protection or leadership. The only defence mechanism a sheep has is the ability to run; to run without any thought to the way they are going as long as it is away from the immediate danger. And the direction that one sheep runs in will be a totally different direction to another. And humanity has a very similar defence mechanism—it is much easier to run away from our fears, problems, troubles than to face it. But with a shepherd, sheep have someone who can easily lead them to fresh pastures, someone in who they can trust, someone who will lead them safely from danger, who will be their protection. And do we not look for leadership in times of trouble? Is it not the rulers, the kings of the world, the political leaders, who nations turn to for guidance in times of conflict. However, as Jeremiah’s prophecy demonstrates, sheep need a good shepherd if they are going to be cared for in the right way; highlighting another important point about shepherds—they very often cared for sheep that were not their own. The nation of Judah, God’s sheep, had been under the care of their kings, God’s chosen shepherds, but Judah had been neglected by the kings. Because of this Judah had been scattered, they found themselves in exile. They’d been failed by their shepherds because the shepherds were more concerned with their own welfare than those of whom they had been trusted to care for. Judgement therefore came on both the sheep and the shepherds.

Jeremiah’s oracle, though one of judgement, was also one of hope. Though God was ‘firing’ the current shepherds, that wasn’t the end. God wasn’t going to leave the flock scattered, to fend for themselves, to be without leadership, guidance or protection. And God hadn’t given up on the idea of having shepherds; but they would be the right people for the job, they would be trustworthy, obedient, they would care for God’s people as if they were their own, they would lead them to safety. Because of these new shepherds, the flock would have no longer anything to fear and would be one again.

Roll forward about 700 years and Israel and Judah have been restored, but they are still people who are ‘like sheep without a shepherd’. The new shepherds, the Davidic kings who Jeremiah had prophesied about, had they been the ones who had led God’s people home? If so, what had happened to them? Or were the people still waiting? 

One commentator suggests that Mark reporting Jesus as saying “like sheep without a shepherd” alludes to Old Testament imagery which would imply to the reader that Jesus was the one who was the longed-for king of Israel, the Messiah, one who would be like Moses teaching and feeding the people. And in Mark’s description of the scene and the events that happened around the verses that we’ve read, Jesus does both teach and feed the people. Jesus sees a whole group of people waiting on the shore, people who were without direction, without purpose, looking for someone to lead them. However, was that his role? Mark’s view would advocate that and in John’s gospel Jesus refers to himself as the good shepherd. But Jeremiah prophesied about not just one new shepherd, but many shepherds. Were the many shepherds just put in charge until the time was right for the one, true shepherd to come? Or are we missing something?

Shaun the Sheep—that well-loved Wallace and Gromit character, who, as some of you will know, now has his own cartoon series. Shaun isn’t like the other sheep, he doesn’t display the characteristics which are typical for a sheep, but ones which are more typical of a shepherd. According to the theme song, Shaun is a brave courageous leader; he is a father of invention with a charismatic knack for causing havoc in the pasture; he’s pure gold and if his mates get into trouble he’ll return them to the fold; he even mucks about with those who cannot bleat! Remind you of anyone else I’ve spoken about this morning?

So can a sheep, be also a shepherd? Well, obviously in the world of cartoons and make-believe anything and everything is possible. But what about Jesus? His humanity made him one of God’s people, one of God’s precious flock. John the Baptist called Jesus the ‘lamb of God’. Ok, Jesus was not a sheep like the people of Israel were sheep, or in the way which we are sheep, but his human experiences meant he knew what it meant to be human. And is it not easier to lead, to guide and to even protect something you really understand? Shaun understands what makes the rest of his flock tick, because he is not just their leader, he’s one of them. In the same way, Jesus understood the people of first century Palestine, and he even understands us today, because he has been there, he’s been inside the realities of life. Jesus—shepherd and sheep.This, however, does not answer my quandary over Jeremiah’s prophecy. What did God mean by those words? Who are the shepherds who will tend to his people?

Though Jesus went around teaching and feeding the masses, he did not go alone—he took with him the disciples. And as they went he equipped them to carry on the work he had started and then sent them forth to equip others with the aid of the Holy Spirit. Jesus showed the disciples that they were not just sheep but also shepherds. And so it is that the Church is not just the place where God gathers his people, his flock, it is the place for equipping new shepherds. We are both sheep and shepherds. It is our responsibility to continue the work God started through Jesus, to follow Jesus’ example and with his help, gather God’s people, the scattered and the lost, then care for them. For we have been there, we’ve been those scattered sheep, those lost sheep, so now God can work through us.