Ian Black

Challenging our priorities

2012-01-22T15:02:00.000Z

There was a film back in the 1980s called Brewster’s Millions. It was about a man who was given aninheritance which even without allowing for inflation would still make theEuromillions jackpot look small. Butthere is a condition. If he can spend$30m in 30 days and not gain any possessions he will inherit $300m. Option B is to just take a $1m. I can’t remember the full details of the filmnow, but it’s a comedy and things go from crazy to mad. It is very hard to spend money on that scaleand not gain any possessions. You cangive it away very easily and ‘buy’ untold benefits for lots of people – nodoubt we can all think of plenty of good causes who would benefit from such afortune – but that’s not what was intended. The strange thing about money is that the more you have the more yougain and the less you have even what you have can be taken away from you, we getcaught in a poverty trap.

This came to mind when I read the words in the epistlereading, from 1 Corinthians (7:29-31). Here Paul is struggling with explaining whereour priorities are to be. He puts it ina series of odd sounding opposites. Among them is ‘let those who buy be as though they had no possessions’ (v30b). Those who mourn are to be as though they arenot mourning and just when you’ve cheered up, those who rejoice as though theyare not rejoicing. The even odder one isthose who are married are to be as though they are not. That could get you into all sorts of troubleif taken too literally.

Paul’s point is that no emotional state at the moment is thelast word on who we are or where we are. The concerns of the day, while they matter, are part of a passing orderand ahead of us lies a kingdom that is eternal and deserves our trueallegiance, when the chips are down. Paul is calling for us to restore our sense of perspective and the ironyis that when we do that it has some very earthly spin off benefits.

We are in danger of being obsessed by money and the lack ofit. Things are tight for many ofus. Pay freezes, or increases whichdon’t match inflation; the cost of essentials rising beyond what is sustainable;we may well feel poorer. To add insultto injury the news is focused on bosses’ bonuses enticing the green-eyedmonster from his lair within us. Paul isactually asking us a fundamental question. Do you have enough and before you answer, how are you deciding what isenough? The spin off benefit is that wedon’t get envious because these things are not to be what defines who we are;we refuse to play the game.

We need to remember that Paul didn’t live in a large house,with a fast car or company yacht. Hedidn’t have a large expense account or the latest flat-screen HD 3D 50 inchTV. He lived modestly and was thankfuleach day that he had food and shelter. He did this because his heart was not on this passing age and amassinggreat personal wealth or comfort, but on the glory of God in which we live andbreath and have our being.

Now, this understanding helps us see what the other readingsare fundamentally about. The story ofJonah is one that lends itself to children’s books (Jonah 3;1-5,10). A man is given a job, runs away, get’s thrownoff a ship, is swallowed by a big fish, spat out on the shore and decides he’dbetter do the job after all. He preachesto the people of Nineveh, modern day Mosul in Iraq, and they repent, theychange their priorities, which is what repent means. The result, disaster is averted, God changeshis mind and decides not to obliterate them after all. The key is their changed priorities.

Enter then Jesus taking a walk by the lakeside (Mark1:14-20). He spots Simon andAndrew fishing. He suggests that theyraise their sights beyond the here and now to the big questions of life anddeath and new life. The same goes forJames and John, whose nets are broken and need mending. On one level fishing nets get torn and thereis nothing unusual about finding they need mending. But the gospels have a habit of hinting at adeeper meaning too. Are these brokennets an allegory of life being broken, of the need for a fix? And fixes come in different guises. There is the drug fix, lust fix and retailtherapy fix, the satiating of cravings with things which don’t reallysatisfy. Then there is the putting rightkind of fix, the dealing with the root cause and making the changes that reallysort out the problem.

‘Come and follow me’ is the call that cries out to us fromthe page of the gospels. It is joined byits twin call, repent. Followinginvolves changing our priorities from being obsessed with the here and now, theever-greater acquisition of possessions and consuming. This may sound bad news for the economy, ifwe don’t consume manufacturing doesn’t produce and decline turns intoslump. But we have seen whereunrestrained consuming beyond our means leads us and it is a fool’s paradise.

Christian Aid used to have a slogan about living simply so thatothers may simply live. We have thismorning the spiritual rationale for that. Christ calls us to follow him and in the process to make sure ourpriorities are focused on the right goal. None of this means that we are not concerned for justice and for thedignity of all, or about poverty. Thisis actually a basis for that because the concern is not with my enrichment inisolation of everyone else. The irony isthat when we change our priorities everyone benefits.

Sermon preached at St Theresa's Roman Catholic Church, Crossgates, Leeds Sunday 22nd January 2012

Post Secular

2012-01-21T16:47:00.000Z

I have learnt a new phrase and the phrase is 'post secular'. It seems that we have moved on from post modernism to post secularism. I had a hunch this was the case but it is always good find out that others have been thinking the same thing because it acts as a barometer that you may just have got it right. A bit of a recap for those not used to such labels.

Modern is what happened as a result of the industrial revolution. With that came what is called the enlightenment when science and rational thinking began to dominate how the world was seen. Along with that came a confidence that progress would make things better. This got severely dented in the trenches of the First World War. The obvious question was how could we be progressing if we end up with the slaughter and carnage of the Somme and Passchendaele. If it was wavering, the Second World War pushed modernism over the edge.

No one knew what to call the new scepticism that emerged so it got labelled post modernism, because it came after modernism. This meant that the idea of progress was dead in the water. Things evolve and move forward, developing and changing, but don't necessarily get better. Post modern ways of thinking question inherited forms of authority; everything has to prove it's place. In a world where we became more aware of different views, post modernism is one where everything and nothing is true. It is all about what the individual thinks and what makes sense to them. There is no overarching source, or meta narrative to give it the label. With this a secular world view takes the ascendancy.

Secular means that there is no need to refer to a religious narrative to explain anything. Religion to the secular is just one competing claim among many. The secular mindset doesn't really understand religion so it prefers to talk about faith communities, looking more at the social structure of particular groups who bond together under a 'religious' cultural umbrella.

The trouble with this is it quickly becomes atheistic and that is being found wanting. Not because everyone is suddenly finding God again, or at least not the culturally expressed gods of major religious systems, but because secularism is essentially empty. However much we understand about science and social differences, the numinous questions of 'why are we here', 'where did everything come from' persist. Marcus Brigstocke, the comedian who has given religion a particularly hard time, found himself being unsatisfied with the overt secular doctrine of nothingness - see previous post.

So we have moved on from post modernism and its secular ideology. We haven't gone back to a pre-modern acceptance of religious systems as the inherited source of authority. So we are not ex-secular or ex-modernists, we have moved on, which makes us post secular.

The good bit for those of us tying to reflect from a religious perspective is that we are not as out of step with the contemporary mood as we have previously been told we are. We still have to justify our case and that is no bad thing.

News of the deaths of two women

2012-01-15T17:21:00.000Z

I learnt this week of the death of two women who have had an impact on women's lives in the Church of England.

The first is Rosalind Runcie, whose death was reported in a tweet by the Church Times on Friday. As the wife of a former Archbishop of Canterbury she was for a while the nation's premier Mrs Vicarage. Her generation had to battle to not be chained to the flower cupboard and scones rota of church life. She wrote a chapter for a book in the 1980s called 'Married to the Church?' which dared to say that being married to the vicar didn't mean that you had to be an unpaid curate or run all things female in the church. This was of course before women clergy, but my wife has benefited enormously from the mould being broken by Rosalind's generation of clergy spice.

The effect has been that the clergy wives who followed were free, by and large, to carve their own space in church life according to their own gifts. No one can avoid the fact that living in a vicarage impinges on home life - from meetings and visitors in the evenings to homeless callers to the door for a sandwich and a hot drink. All the family end up mucking in with these to some extent, even if it is just answering the door and never knowing who will be there or how strange they may be. The advent of clergy husbands has just served to diversify the role of clergy spouse.

The second death I heard about was Amanda Evans, whose death notice I picked up in the Church Times on Friday. Amanda was a curate in Faversham when I was the neighbouring vicar. I was working to open up the church to women's ministry and through the quality of her ministry in the town she paved the way to the rescinding of the anti-women's ministry resolutions which were in force because of the history of the parishes. (My predecessor had left the Church of England over women priests being admitted and took something like two thirds of the congregation with him to become Roman Catholics. Not surprisingly those left behind felt a woman's role was something to move towards rather than jump straight into.)

Those who were uncertain or even against women priests would be heard to say "I don't agree with women priests, but Amanda is OK." Gradually the irony of that statement would dawn on them and they'd realise that Amanda was a woman priest so if she was OK may be women priests were too. As is so often the case, experiencing the quality of her ministry moved opinions. It is a tale that I have seen first hand time and again since.

Amanda was also very kind to our then young family and we shared journeys to Spiritual Director training sessions. Her untimely death saddens me.

May they both enjoy the rest prepared for the good and faithful servants which they were and the resurrection in which we all long to share.

Moral news

2012-01-13T20:30:00.002Z

The Leveson inquiry into how the press behave (following various scandals) has produced some amazing moments. None more so than the owner of the Daily Express saying that he didn't know what the word ethical means. He said everyone's ethics are different and deciding can be a fine line. With so many competing voices it can be confusing, so here's a bit of a quick guide to ethical behaviour.

Truthful: Quite simply not telling lies and not being misleading or so 'economical with the truth' that it creates a completely different picture of what is actually true. Don't make it up, don't take phrases out of context so that they appear to mean what they don't actually mean. Don't twist someone's words so that they are distorted and become a completely different quote!

Respect: Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. That means that no one is to be regarded as just news fodder or have their emotions disregarded when splashing them over the pages. Yes, some people behave in odd ways, but whatever the story it involves real people and they have a fundamental dignity that needs respecting.

Honest: We need to know that we can trust what a journalist writes otherwise there is no point reading what they print. When people behave in a way that means they are trustworthy they have integrity.

Privacy: Telephoto lenses enable pictures to be taken from a distance. There are moments when this is justified but there are moments when taking pictures infringes privacy. Someone walking in the park with their children is private as is sitting on the beach relaxing or by the pool in their house or as a house guest. A photo of someone somewhere or doing something which compromises their position is more likely to be in the public interest - see below.

Public interest: This is not the same as what interests the public. The rule of thumb should be what story does this tell and what difference does it make; how does it matter? Genuine investigative journalism to expose corruption and vice, dishonesty and lies is the triumph of a free press. Some journalists do this at great personal risk. When they are guided by high principles they are to be commended and praised.

Deception: Hacking the phone of a dead teenager and deleting messages so that their parents think they are alive when they are not is deplorable. Pretending you are someone so that you can fool their bank or doctor into revealing personal information is deceitful. These are not moral!

There are moral grey areas in some of these, but the principles of truth, respect, honesty and justice provide a good starting point.

New Year Act of Dedication

2012-01-01T22:34:00.000Z

The Methodist church has a tradition of the Covenant Renewal service around the beginning of the New Year. It is a spiritual rededication of commitment to live in God's covenant of grace. The Church of England has resources for something similar in Common Worship. Different places will require different styles of language. Below is my reworking of the Anglican Common Worship texts, based on the Methodist Covenant prayer, in a responsorial style with some additional material.

Eternal God, in your faithful and enduring love
you call us to share in your gracious covenant in Jesus Christ.
In obedience we hear and accept your commands;
in love we seek to do your perfect will;
with joy we offer ourselves anew to you.
We are no longer our own but yours.

In all things
All let your will be done.

In all that I am
All   let your will be done.

In all that I do
All   let your will be done.

In all that I say
All   let your will be done.

Whether I am full or whether I am empty
All   let your will be done.

When there is work and when there is none
All   let your will be done.

When I am troubled and when I am at peace
All   let your will be done.

In all my relationships, friendships and dealings
All   let your will be done.

May this year and all my days
be dedicated in your service
and to your glory.
All Amen.

New Year checklist

2011-12-31T11:35:00.003Z

Three-quarters of us will make New Year resolutions. According to an occupational psychologist, Kim Stephenson writing in the Independent, how we fair depends on three things: they need to matter to us; we need a plan to complete them and there needs to be something positive in it for us to do it - a motivator. New Year’s resolutions are often a sign that we realize there are somechanges that need making and we intend to try better this year. To do this we need some kind of yardstick tohold up and see how we measure up. The bibleclearly helps, but here is a new year’s checklist to pull together a fewthreads.

Time with God: When Jesussummarized the law, love of God was his number one commandment. Everything else flowed from it. No relationship can survive withoutcontact. Just like we need to spendtime with friends and loved ones if we are not going to become distanced fromthem, we also need to do this with God. We do that through our prayers, through regularly receiving communion, throughfinding ways to help us grow in faith – reading books or blogs, magazines orwebsites, on our own or in a group.

Money: The bible says moreabout the right use of money than anything else. God is generous to us and calls us to begenerous with what he gives us. Now isthe time to take a look at how much you give to the church and othercharities. What will it buy? How much is it as a percentage of yourincome? Is it regular andcommitted? Just like we can’t pay thebills without income, neither can the church and other charities. Do you regard your money as being all for youor is it a gift that you can share?

Making a difference: The second commandment Jesus highlighted was to love your neighbour asyourself. He told us to be yeast in thedough to make it rise to the challenge and to be salt to bring out the flavour. We are to make a difference for good, to bepeople who bless. What do you do that is a blessing to others and transformsthe community? What could you do? How do you vote, demand that your taxes arespent and do you look at where your shopping comes from so that those whoproduce it are paid a fair price and not exploited?

Exercise: This may seem astrange one to include in a New Year spiritual makeover, but exercise keeps usfit in more ways than just the physical. It improves mental health and reminds us that we are human. Be realistic though. Are you really going to go to the gym thatoften – would half an hours gardening be more likely or walking to church ratherthan taking the car. The physical andthe spiritual walk side by side in the bible, so naturally that it is not oftenspelt out. Idleness is not encouraged.

Deep breaths: The biblegives nine virtues for godly living (fruits of the Spirit): love, joy, peace,patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Email, phones, texts and social media make itso much easier to comment straight away. The first response is not always the best one or the kindest. Does what you are going to say build up? Is it gracious and will it bless? If you have to complain or say somethingwhich will be hard to be heard is there a way you can say it that doesn’tcompletely squash and leaves room for dignity? If they don’t take advantage of it, that’s their look out, but it’s astart to offer it.

Work, rest and play: According to the psalmist it is a vain thing to rise early and go to bedlate. God gives to his belovedrest. How is your life balanced? Is there time to enjoy God’s goodness and berecreated? Are you getting enoughsleep? Are you allowing others to havethe space they need and do you recognize that people need to livebalanced? Do you spend enough time withthose who matter most to you? What do youneed to change?

What else would you add?

Beetbox Nativity

2011-12-24T13:03:00.001Z

A new take on the Christmas story from a beetboxing vicar in Devon.

Christmas Rev

2011-12-21T15:18:00.000Z

This series of the TV sitcom Rev has been a mixed offering. But the last few have been profound. None more so than the end of the Christmas Special on Tuesday (20th December). In it we saw the central character, Adam, the vicar, rushing around from service to social project to event to pastoral crisis. He meets himself coming back.

It ended with Christmas Day and a lunch in the church for an unlikely collection of people. The last shot was of the trestle tables at the front of the church and as the characters took their seats the camera panned back to give a modern take on Leonardo da Vinci's painting 'The Last Supper'. The image was powerful.

When we want to ask not 'what would Jesus do' but what did he tell us to do in remembrance of him, the gathering of community, made up of God's rich variety of people, is at its heart. Do this - gather together, rich and poor, old and young, educated and those who struggle to read, the injured and those who injure, those who make a fool of themselves at times - which is just about all of us. All have an equal place because all have an equal need. All have a place because all have extraordinary qualities inside them which can flourish when accepted, shown dignity and loved.

Just like a mixed group find a place for awe and wonder at his crib - shepherds drop by and wise men make a special trip - so those who follow him are urged to find places for everyone. When we want to know what 21st century disciples would look like, look around at who's near by.

Rat-like!

2011-12-09T12:19:00.001Z

It would seem that we have got rats wrong and need to change our language. Admittedly they may have been responsible for spreading the plague and disease but it is not fair to use them as a term of abuse. According to a report in the Daily Telegraph they are not the deceitful, selfish characters that we thought. A study has found they would go to the aid of a fellow rat in need, even ignoring chocolate to carry out the rescue. They are faithful and miss one another when apart - so the term 'love rat' will itself have to be dumped.

Contrast this with the social attitudes report, revealing increased selfishness among human beings, and we come off worse - see previous post. Of course we do the same - we go to the aid selflessly of others in need, we share what we have and we miss people when they are not with us. The difference comes in how far we extend this altruism - just to those we know and count as being 'ours' or are we compassionate and generous to those we don't know?

There's a challenge from the rats!

Sharing the gift

2011-12-07T21:19:00.001Z

According to the latest British Social Attitudes report we are getting more selfish. The evidence comes in a growth in nimbyism (no building spoiling my view), not so much interest in making sacrifices to protect the environment and a decline in interest in fairtrade. Add to this an increasing hostility towards those needing support on benefits, less tolerance of tax rises to boost spending on health and education and we have a portrait of a less altruistic society.

Times are tough and when the going gets tough we find out what we are really made of. So if resources are scarce do we share or horde, make sure that everyone benefits a little or guard what we have with hostility towards anyone we see as a threat?

This is the season of generous love and gift. We celebrate God's generous gift of himself in Jesus. God shares of himself, gives freely for our benefit. God does not blame us for our failings, but takes the consequences on himself in Jesus. The child in the manger shows God's way of grace and goodness, sharing and sacrifice, gift and generosity.

As with all surveys the answers depend heavily on the questions asked. I'll leave it to others to assess whether the conclusions match the data. In the mean time this is the season to be reminded what should shape and define our character. It is not grumpiness and hostility, but love and gracious gift.

New wine and old wine skins?

2011-11-30T23:06:00.001Z

This evening the Bishop of Ripon & Leeds talked about what it means to be a diocese and the role of bishops, cathedrals and other structures in this. It may sound a dull subject but the context of reorganisation in precisely all of those structures gave it an edge for his audience. The three dioceses covering West Yorkshire and the Dales (Ripon & Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield) are facing amalgamtion and so it was worth the effort to think around the issues at stake.

He said the Church of England is fundamentally rooted in the parishes - local communities. When these parishes come together to make a diocese they give an economy of scale that can provide support for what they are trying to do. But the diocese is more than just a group of parishes. As the parish means the church serves an area, so a diocese serves a wider geographical area and provides a vehicle to address the common issues that raises.

Bishops encourage and sustain vision. Their leadership is to ensure that the mission to places is focused. He felt that the changes being proposed will enable the church to related better to the civil communities it seeks to serve.

Where I had the most questions was over his comments on cathedrals. When an area has more than one cathedral - the new diocese will have three and there will be two further areas that won't have one - I am left wondering what a cathedral is. To call it the mother church (which he did) and have three of them means we have three mothers. To say it is the focus for the areas when two of the new areas don't have one leaves me scratching my head as to whether this means two areas are impoverished. If they are not impoverished then what have the other three areas actually got? If they have got a big church that provides a focus for a given area then this begins to redefine the peramenters in such a way as to start to invent a new entity. I think I have more thinking to do on this. For me it is pertinent because I am on the governing body (Chapter) of Ripon Catheral, so I am reassessing what we are and indeed what we will be!

The questions that followed took the discussion a little further, not least on the importance of ethos and coherence for a group, and how we are better abled to interface with the concerns of the world and how the gospel is relevant to those.

2 minute guide to Advent

2011-11-26T21:35:00.001Z

Advent begins this year on 27th November - the earliest it can be. This is because Advent counts the four Sundays before Christmas and this year Christmas Day falls on a Sunday... I'll leave you to do the maths.

In the meantime, here's a two minute guide to what Advent is really about.

Overwhelming 'yes' to women bishops

2011-11-15T09:57:00.001Z

The dioceses of the Church of England have been voting on whether or not they support women being made bishops. This round of voting has taken place in the diocesan synods (regional/county representatives from parishes) and in many cases these have followed similar discussions at a more local level, in the deaneries (much more local groupings of parishes).

The result has been overwhelming support for women bishops. 4345 votes were cast nationally, with 3253 voting in favour (75%), 974 voting against (22%) and 118 abstaining (3%). There were also following motions, designed to stiffen provisions for those who oppose this development and these have largely been rejected, though the voting is not so easy to assess because not all the votes were on the same motions, and not all of them have been made public.

Statistics can of course be abused and misused. They only tell what the presenter has chosen to select from the available data. But with that caveat, this voting shows overwhelming support for making women bishops. The caveat is that diocesan synods are not necessarily representative of local churches - my hunch is that they are more conservative so the support would probably have been much stronger if everyone in the pews was canvassed - but that hasn't been done. This is because the electoral college is drawn from Deanery Synods and there is not strong competition for these places within parishes. So it is a fairly narrow field. Most people aren't involved in the governance of the church.

This may seem dull, but the next level is potentially even more skewed. The national body, the General Synod, is elected by the deaneries and not everyone bothers to vote, just like in civic elections. So the result is that the consistency of General Synod has more people against than this voting would reflect. According to the most recent statistics available (2010) nationally only 7% of parishes have expressed any form of opt out from women priests allowed by the law which permitted them.

There is clearly a strong moral pressure from these votes for General Synod to allow women bishops on the same terms as men, with a code of practice allowing male bishops to care for the small number of parishes that do not accept them. This is generous. No other body would adopt such discrimination but the desire of the national church has been to keep hold of those who don't want women clergy, but only in a way that doesn't damage the integrity of the church by making women bishops less .

It is therefore difficult to predict what General Synod will do with this. But this round of votes represents overwhelming support for the move. If they don't it will call into question the electoral validity of General Synod.

Chad Varah

2011-11-12T22:00:00.001Z

Today (12th November 2011) would have been the 100th birthday of Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritans. Chad trained for ordained ministry at Lincoln Theological College and served his curacy in that city. One of his early tasks was to conduct the funeral of a young girl who had committed suicide because she didn't understand what was happening when she started her periods. This experience profoundly affected him. He thought that it was a shame that there was no one this girl could have spoken to.

The idea was later born of setting up a centre where people could come for advice and counsel. When he became vicar of St Stephen Walbrook in London in 1953 he got his chance. He asked for a group of volunteers to look after those waiting to see him and found that many didn't bother waiting for him. Talking with the volunteers did the trick. He handed over the role to these Samaritans, who were there for those who came in need and didn't pass by on the other side.

Today the Samaritans is a worldwide organisation giving 24 hour support for the lonely and suicidal. It does a tremendous job and is his lasting monument.

Chad Varah died on 8th November 2007 aged 95.

11.11.11.11

2011-11-11T19:10:00.001Z

Today is the 11th day of the 11th month and this year this falls in the 11th year. Add to it the traditional time of remembrance at 11.00am and we have the complete set. The synchronicity of this makes it feel poignant because it has a resonance for those with tidy minds.

The eleventh hour is synonymous with crunch time. To step in at the 11th hour brings us back from the brink of disaster or calamity. Eleventh hour reprieves bring a tight rescue. A small delay and the consequences are irreversible. Sometimes decisions have to be made and to avoid them means that a particular course will follow. The 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in the 11th year confronts us with the decisions we make to take a stand or not to take a stand, to intervene or not to intervene, the moments when history changes.

Robert Runcie, a former Archbishop of Canterbury and holder of the Military Cross from the Second World War, said that war is always a sign of human failure. It means that other options have failed or been shut down. Nothing but force will stop an aggressor and that brings much suffering and death.

The day of elevens is the anniversary of the cease fire which brought an end to the First World War in 1918. It is the bringing back from the brink of destruction and killing. It is the full-stop to hostilities just before the clock moves into a new period at midday or midnight.

May our remembrance give us pause to reflect on all that makes for peace and true harmony between people, on what resolves conflicts so that they are brought to an end rather than just a pause in hostilities until the next time. In South Africa, after years of hatred and oppression under apartheid, this was achieved through the truth and reconciliation commission. The process involved restorative justice. This requires the honest admission and facing up to hurts caused and injuries inflicted. It is only then that the hurt that leads to anger and aggression can be put to rest.

Whatever the conflict the eleventh hour reminds us that time is limited and it will run out. Before it is too late and hostility breaks out it is time to seek the peace that comes through honest and humble acknowledgement of the sins that separate us from one another and from God.

St Paul's Cathedral

2011-10-31T23:20:00.001Z

The protest around St Paul's Cathedral in London has claimed another scalp. The Dean of the Cathedral has resigned, stating that new leadership is required and taking personal responsibility for the way the cathedral is being portrayed (whether rightly or not). At the same time the prospect of legal action to remove the camp looms.

The Chapter of St Paul's have my sympathy. This is clearly an intense situation and they can't win whatever they do. If they allow the camp to stay they will not be able to function as normal, as well as anoy the neighbours. If they remove them they will be accused of siding with the vested interests of money. Much of this is confused, not least the thinking of journalists who seem to be rich on criticism and poor on what the cathedral should do. They have been caught off guard and are dealing with something few feel they have a need to think through in advance.

Threats always have to be real ones - otherwise it is a dangerous bluff game and if that bluff is called the person making it looks silly, or weak. The closing of the cathedral looked like a bluff that backfired. The threat of legal action has to fast forward several stages to what happens if the protesters say 'you and whose army' and it is very likely that is precisely what they will say. If the cathedral are not prepared to enforce legal action - though others may - then they are left with a moral request. If it is ignored they then have to put in plans to accommodate them while they try to persuade.

The lack of clarity of demands from the protesters makes this an extremely muddled situation. That said they have caught a popular mood that the economy is not working for the majority of people. There is outrage at excessive pay and bonuses for a few while most struggle with rising bills and real-terms pay cuts. So the protest is touching a raw nerve and the church is not being seen to connect with it. This is a shame because it does and that voice is just lost.

I can only imagine the stress being felt by colleagues in St Paul's. It is not easy to be the one facing a media storm and protesters on a mission - the matter being much more complicated than they give credit for. Some of their actions are like bullying - masks and confrontaton do not help. I continue to hold them in my prayers and that the church will give voice to the concerns being highlighted and not just the tents.

The unplanned challenge of the tents

2011-10-28T17:16:00.001+01:00

St Paul was a tent maker. The irony of the cathedral in London named after him being forced host to a tented protest camp has been pointed out by several people. The precise focus of Occupy London's protest is not at all clear - from those interviewed it seems to range from the end of capitalism as a financial system (probably an unrealistic aim for one protest) to anger at casino banking and out of touch bonuses. Their website says they want a financial system based on justice for all. When many are struggling with rising fuel prices for home and transport, the average shopping basket costing more each year, 50% pay rises for the super rich seem to be taking the mick.

The protesters have a point - well I can have sympathy with something of what they are trying to draw attention to. Whether occupying St Paul's churchyard for the long term is realistic, I'm an not convinced. I can see the safety issues for the cathedral - the camp presents a security risk at a time when manhole covers are sealed for some events. Other safety concerns can be overcome with good will. So all in all I can't see them being allowed to stay long term.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of all of this the blogging world is pretty clear that St Paul's has lost the media battle. They should have come out straight away and said 'it's a fundamental right to protest and democracy requires debate, but you can't stay because this camp is a security risk for us'. Up front and transparent. The other safety issues were a matter for negotiation. The result of their vague health and safety concerns was that they have been portrayed as being more concerned for the money they are losing - though cathedrals can't afford to lose any money given the tightness of their funding so the loss of £16,000 a day is a real concern. They have also appeared to be frightened of upsetting the big money in case it goes away. That said the Stock Exchange have said they have no problem with a protest, it's the tents they object to.

One of the problems is with how the church is perceived. It is seen as an institution which exists because it exists rather than as a movement. Movements have a clear purpose and without that purpose they lose their way, even get parked. The unintended, even on the side challenge from the St Paul's camp is for the church to rediscover it's movement credentials.

It does this every time it tells the story of its faith and finds imaginative ways to inspire faith, making it infectious. It does it every time it cries out for justice and reminds the rest of society of its moral heart. It does this when it provides sacred space for prayer and special moments to be marked. It does it when it provides a sanctuary amidst the clamour for breathing and reflection. It does it when it provides or supports social provision - soup kitchens, homeless and asylum projects, lunch clubs and community larders.

As a movement the church has a vibrant future, because it is as a movement that it has travelled down the centuries. Tents are for people on the move and a question we have to face with our fabulous cathedrals and parish churches made of stone is how much they help us remember this faith on the move and when they block it. As a vicar with a Grade I listed building in my care, this is a challenge I live with daily. Sometimes our buildings are part of the problem.

May be we need a festival of the tents in the church's year to counter this. Tents feature quite a bit in the Old Testament. Moses went into the tent of meeting to converse with God. The Ark of the Covenant was sheltered in a tent before the Temple was built and because they were people on the move, it travelled from place to place. The first story of Solomon wanting to build a Temple for the Lord was met with God scratching his head. What did he want a house for, he had a tent. Given that no place could contain him and he moved where he willed, a tent seemed to fit him better. Later on God seems to like his new house, but that may be more it's fans wanting praise for their efforts and looking to bolster stability. A house of stone is harder to knock out of the way and ignore - so it has it's benefits. Take St Paul's out of London and the skyline would be impoverished and iconography changed.

These camping protesters provide a symbolic challenge to the church of the tent maker. They remind those of us who live in religious houses of stone that we are fundamentally a movement not an institution. Without the movement there is no point to the stones.

Pumpkin season

2011-10-26T12:23:00.000+01:00

We are entering theseason of pumpkin carving. Millions ofthe gourds will be sold over the coming days to be hollowed out, shapes scaryand fun carved into them and lights placed inside. Some may even make use of the innards to cookup tasty treats. The effect can bemagical and warming, especially if the image carved is not too scary.

As the nights draw in,the clocks go back and the hours of daylight shorten, lights shining out in thedarkness has a natural resonance. Notsurprisingly many religions have festivals of light around this time – not leastDiwali for our Hindu brothers and sisters.

For Christians thisseason is a festival of the holy being shown in human lives. The word Halloween comes from the old wordfor All Saints Day – All Hallows. The ‘een’bit refers to the evening before. SoHalloween is the evening before All Saints Day. All Saints is when we remember how God calls us to be lights in theworld so that how we live proclaims his love.

As we look at thepumpkin lights the question for us is how do we live as lights in theworld? Do we make a difference? Do we challenge the darkness of injustice; dowe use our words to bless or curse; do we go to the aid of those in need anduse our money for the relief of poverty and hunger? Are we someone who has hope carved into ourheart, someone who brings joy and rejoicing? Are we essentially someone who is thankful, for whom each day is a giftto be celebrated?

The saints are peoplewho allow the light of God to shine in them and through them. Some have become celebrities and theirstories are well known. Most are unsung,but the difference they have made is no less important or vital.

What we choose to carveinto a pumpkin says something about us. Do we choose to celebrate good or evil, hope or fear? As pumpkin lights abound, so may the truelight that lightens all goodness and blessing.

Also posted on Rejesus blog

When to shake hands?

2011-10-11T11:59:00.001+01:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury has had a meeting with President Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe. The BBC news showed pictures of the archbishop shaking Mugabe's hand on arrival. Other leaders, including Jack Straw and Prince Charles, have been criticised for shaking Mugabe's hand in the past. I haven't heard anyone criticise Rowan Williams for this, most seem to be praising him for his bravery in meeting him in the first place, along with a number of African bishops, and for challenging him on abuses in his country.

Handshakes are simple acts of humanity - they are a sign of people greeting and show that there is no weapon in the hand of greeting. They are also very powerful gestures of good will and that this is someone we would like to do business with and are prepared to so. They are also open to manipulation as a sign of congeniality and support. Everything is fine really, when the truth could not be further from the case.

In 1983 Rowan Williams, then a lecturer in Divinity at Cambridge University, wrote a book called 'The Truce of God'. It was about peace and what makes true peace. In it he told the story of King Henry II refusing to pass the peace with Archbishop Thomas Becket in AD1170. Days later Becket was murdered in his cathedral in Canterbury. Refusing to pass the peace harbours hatred and leaves it unchallenged. Rowan Williams' point was that the challenge from the gospel to make peace even with enemies is poignant.

This passage has remained with me since I first read it. I have never knowingly refused to pass the peace with anyone, even those who I know wish me harm or are out to get me! I have only known two people who have refused to shake my hand and it is not pleasant to be subjected to that level of hatred. It also closes off any hope of restoration or resolution. The general opinion of those who observed it was to think the less of those who refused.

There is a world of difference between a loving embrace or even warm hand shake and one that just acknowledges the other's humanity. The latter is particularly important in disputes. There can be no constructive way forward without it. Restorative justice, where the pain and injury are acknowledged, is not possible without human greeting and meeting, and restorative justice lies at the heart of true peace. Anything else is either to allow hostilities to continue indefinitely or to paper over the cracks which leaves nothing changed.

Rowan Williams has shown himself to be an inspirational leader and a brave one as he has challenged Mugabe on the abuses in his country. I continue to pray for the people of Zimbabwe in all they endure.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-08T10:46:00.005+01:00

News of Apple’s founder Steve Job’s untimely death has brought sadness on severallevels. It was humanly sad that someoneshould succumb to cancer at the age of 56. It was too young. His death alsotook away an incredible creative genius, one which has revolutionized the livesof us gadget fans. Phones with touchsensitive screens, more computing power in the palm of my hand than I couldhave imagined just a few years ago, stylish and compact equipment that givesadded pleasure to the task of writing this piece, the computer generated imagesbehind films like Toy Story. His influence on our culture has beenenormous.

Addressing students atStamford University in 2005 Steve Jobs said the following powerful words.

“No one wants todie. Even people who want to go toheaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death isvery likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. Itclears out the old to make way for the new.”

What I find remarkableabout those words is the great acceptance of death as the destination we allshare. So much of how we live seems totry to pretend that death is not inevitable and is some kind of abuse of ourrights. Facing mortality is an importantpart of knowing who we are. It is alsoone of the building blocks of developing an adult faith, one that is grown uprather than infantile. By his ownadmission it was facing his own death, that life is limited, that broughtthings into focus for Steve Jobs.

I am grateful to SteveJobs for his technological brilliance and the flourish of his inventing. But I am also grateful that the head of aninternational mega company should have the humility to know and face his ownmortality. In so doing he has helped usall realize that we exist for a purpose and that purpose is bigger than we are.

The spiritual quest is ajourney into that bigger purpose, God, to be in union with God and know that we areloved by God.

Also published on rejesus website

Death penalty

2011-09-24T10:21:00.000+01:00

The death penalty has been back in the headlines with the execution in the United States of Troy Davis, a man who protested his innocence of shooting a police officer. It has raised the debate, or war of words, between those strongly in favour of executing convicted murderers, child abusers, terrorists and rapists, and those who oppose the death penalty for any crime. At the extremes there are those who try our mercy to its limits. The Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred nearly 100 young people last month will clearly never come out of prison and that makes you wonder on the point of keeping him incarcerated for the rest of his life. The protestation of innocence in the USA reminds us of those who have received pardons 20 or 30 years later and for some posthumously.

In the debate on Question Time on BBC1 on Thursday the conservative MP Priti Patel argued for its use as a deterrence. Private Eye editor Ian Hislop countered with hanging the wrong people is not a deterrence. That for me is the knock down argument against the death penalty. Beyond reasonable doubt does not equally certainty. Miscarriages of justice are compounded if the person has been killed. It was bad enough to have demonstrations in the streets over police shootings of unarmed men, multiply that by the number of potential hangings and we could well reap a harvest not yet seen.

Those who murder forfeit their right to life. They deserve death. But a civilised society knows that this is not the way forward. Justice tempered by mercy is the way of a civilised and healthy society. Justice should be administered with a cool head, not in the heat of the moment. The ancients knew this with their concept of sanctuary. In the Old Testament a number of towns were to be designated places of refuge where the accused could go so that justice could protect them in case of false accusation or excessive retribution.

Justice is not served by appealing to our basest emotions.

Marcus Brigstocke - agnostic atheist

2011-09-18T15:58:00.003+01:00

Last week the Church Times carried a very interestingfeature about the comedian Marcus Brigstocke. He is very bright and has a sharp mind. He has been withering in his assaults on religion and has often achieveda great cheer from the youthful audience when he has done this. Despite this, he is very funny, and took thelead role in the musical about Monte Python, Spamalot, when it came to the Grand Theatre a year or so ago. Why would someone like Marcus Brigstocke bein the Church Times?

It seems he has been goingthrough something of a conversion experience. He has not become a card carrying Christian or devotee of any othercreed, but he has gone through something of a transition and the prompt camefrom an equally surprising corner. Hisassaults on religion won him great praise from the vocal atheists, like RichardDawkins. He began to receive invitationsto speak at their gatherings and the more he was asked to do this the more hethought, “I don’t know if I agree with you lot. I’m not sure we’re on the same page at all.” He has also concluded that the vocal atheistsare not cleverer than everyone else. Hesays, “I was an atheist when I started reading The God Delusion [Richard Dawkins anti-religious best-seller], bythe time I’d finished it, I was an agnostic. I was going to read it again, but I was worried I might turn into afundamentalist Christian.” He has turnedthese questions into a new stand-up act and a book, God Collar, and it surprises his audience and readers.

What is interesting here isthat the best argument against atheism has turned out to be atheismitself. As Marcus Brigstocke says,“Atheism is nothing. It does nothing,says nothing, and provides nothing. I amsearching for something else to believe in.” He would like to believe in God, but at the moment his head won’t lethim, but he’s not happy with the militant atheism and its fundamentalnothingness either. I know of other highprofile non-believers who have said the same to me. Marcus Brigstocke is open to the right kindof faith and then he may well sign up. Ican imagine if he does he’ll turn into a latter day St Paul who turned frommilitant, even violent, opponent of Christianity into its champion.

Time and time again itturns out that what people reject is not God but the narrow or shallow faiththat they encounter. Sylvia, Gillian andI frequently meet people who have had a bad experience of religion elsewhereand what they encounter here is like a refreshing breeze to their souls. It is because we celebrate our liberalcredentials here. We take all of thecontemporary questions seriously. We tryto reconcile faith with new discoveries in science, psychology and socialstudies. We examine what history reallytells us, not what some half-baked ‘it’s always been like this’ approach wouldtry to kid us has been the case. I amconvinced that one of the pillars of this church’s growth over the last decadehas been its liberal theology. It ismissionary because it connects with real life as it really is and the questionswe know we have to face. As the churchnationally faces all sorts of challenges that is something we must stand up forand not be brow beaten over by others who would try to impose something lessintellectually robust.

I feel sorry foratheists. They are essentially sayingthat there is nothing and no point to anything. Life passes the time between birth and inevitable death. When we die, that is it. A funeral holds the emotional attachment tothe person and gives us a rite of acknowledging its end, but beyond that it isthe hygienic disposal of biological material. I don’t think many people really believe that. And yet there are local funeral directors whothink a humanist celebrant for the funeral is no different to a priest. They have even asked for a burial of crematedremains in the churchyard while claiming the deceased was Church of England andwhen pressed tell us that the funeral, we knew nothing about, was taken by ahumanist celebrant. They were rathertaken back when I put in a formal complaint about this and are dismissive of myobjections. There is a fundamentaldifference between a humanist funeral and a Christian one and that differenceis the difference between nothing and everything!

When we stand before acongregation we stand for belief in God; that our life comes from God, is heldby God and our final destiny is with God. St Paul was talking about something of this in our first reading (Philippians 1:21-end). When he agonises over thepoint, that he’d quite prefer a ‘Beam me up Scottie’ result, to be takenstraight into heaven and therefore not have to bother with the conflict, withthe hard work of building churches and helping people grow in faith, it is thepurpose behind the work that keeps him going. He knows in himself that the work he is doing touches the foundation ofthe universe and the purpose behind everything that there is. We are to “live in a manner worthy of thegospel of Christ” (v27). Not to be“intimidated by [our] opponents” because they are their own destruction and inturn reveal the seeds of our salvation (v28).

And then when we turn to thegospel reading (Matthew 20:1-16), with the parable about rates of pay, we arein danger of getting hung up on the wrong point. The point is not that Jesus is an unjustemployer, paying exploitative wages for the hardest working, while the late risingget the same for less work. The point isthat the focus is on the purpose behind the labour not the labour itself. The reward is that God is gracious and givesus life. Living in accordance with thatliberation and contentment is the reward. Living against it is its own punishment. And when we convert we rejoice in the pennydropping at long last. Thought you’dnever get there. The focus is on God,not on our ego. That was the mistake ofthe first to be hired. They were moreconcerned with their own reward than the task and purpose in front of them.

Marcus Brigstocke is notthe first person in history to struggle with faith and to find atheismwanting. St Augustine of Hippo, aspiritual writer from the fourth century, had a similar struggle and wrote thisup in his Confessions – still a penguin classic. His famous prayer is that our hearts arerestless till they find their rest in God. This is where we find truth. Ifsomething is true the hostile, robust attacks will actually be their owncounter argument, because they will be found to be unsatisfactory, the mathswon’t add up. Equally they will demandthat our faith is robust and not half-baked. For me that means being a liberal Christian. Nothing else makes sense.

Sermon preached in St Mary's Church, Whitkirk, Leeds 18th September 2011

Prayer

2011-09-16T12:04:00.000+01:00

One of the most reassuring passages in the bible is when thedisciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray as John taught his disciples topray. Whenever I talk with people aboutprayer I can see their ears prick up and slowly they start to admit that it isnot something they find easy. If youfind prayer doesn’t always come easily, you are not alone. My books of prayers were born in some aridtimes of inviting people to pray and then finding that I had no words to offer– not a comfortable place for a worship leader! What I could do with, I thought, was something to fall back on and so Istarted writing.

I am old enough, and young enough, to remember the Men fromUNCLE, the 1960s TV spy series, with the two central characters Napoleon Soloand Illya Kuryakin. When they wanted totalk to their base they would get out a pen-like device and utter the iconicwords ‘open channel D’. That is prayerin a nut shell, the getting ourselves into the place where we can open thechannel with the divine; let’s call it Channel D. It is as much, probably more, about whatcomes back as it is about what we send out. It is the place where we can ‘be’ with God.

For those who can weave words with poetry and ease Jesus hassome words of caution. One man went intothe temple to pray and he was like Shakespeare. The words were brilliant and God must have been impressed. Another man came in, knelt down quietly andsaid ‘have mercy on me a sinner’. Whichof the two had opened Channel D? For Jesus it was the second man, not thefirst. However much of a flourishingperformance we can put on, either in public or private, if our heart has notbegun with opening up to God then the words are empty and are not prayer.

When we pray we are not giving God his instructions for theday or week ahead. God is not waitingfor us to tell him what to do. God isthe ultimate self-starter. In thesilences, and we need to ensure that there are silences so that God can get aword in edge ways, God has some things for us to do and we need to be alert tothe Spirit’s stirrings which come in many and varied ways, but always inprayer. Prayer is where we pour out ourdesires to God – make my friend better, stop my neighbours rowing, keep my childrensafe, protect me when temptation comes and I struggle... The list is endless. Sometimes we seem to be in tune with the willof God and it happens. Sometimes we arenot and it doesn’t. Sometimes we are intune with the will of God and it still doesn’t happen because other forces areworking against God’s kingdom (which may of course be us).

But prayer always changes things and the closest ‘thing’ itchanges is us. Because we take some timeevery day we begin to change our wills to the will of God. And yes it does need to be every day. Just like any close and intimate relationshipneeds to be nurtured through very regular contact so does our relationship withGod. God is the root of who we are andwe do not flourish without being with him. Some years ago I took over a group of parishes that had been through avery difficult time; it was hard to know where to start. I started with prayer and slowly with renewedconfidence in God’s grace things started to happen. I felt there was a purpose and people startedto comment that something was different. One woman put it dramatically about the church used to be dark to her,now she felt it was light. Wow! Life can be hard and draining – spiritually,emotionally, physically. Without prayerwe will quickly run on empty and that is spiritual death.

People want to know about prayer and they want to learn topray. Many think it is complicated. But it isn’t, though we ‘professionalprayers’ make it seem complicated sometimes. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them he gave them a simple formof words which we now call the Lord’s Prayer. This classic staple for our souls opens Channel D by addressing God, itlongs for the will of God which it describes in terms of the kingdom, it asksfor bread and it seeks forgiveness for me and for others. That is not a bad place to begin; it’s not abad place to end either.

Sometimes other people’s words can help us express what weare finding it difficult to say. Theycan open new horizons for us and even become a doorway through which the HolySpirit can inspire us. But sometimesthey are like king David being given Saul’s armour to face Goliath, they don’tfit and we can’t move. We need to findour own spiritual clothes, with our regional accent and the view from ourwindow. Shakespeare is beautiful, but Ifind it hard to follow the plot at times because I didn’t grow up in the 1560sand 70s, I grew up in the 1960s and 70s. Prayer is always at its best in our own words because that is personaland comes from the heart.

The Psalms have been called the prayer book of the Bible. One Psalm invites us to be still and knowthat God is God (Psalm 46:10). That iswhere prayer begins and where it ends. When we want to use words we can start to pour out our hope and dreams,our desires and fears for ourselves, for friends, for the world. But it is always the opening of ‘Channel D’so that we can be fed by the riches of God’s grace which is far more abundantthan we could ever imagine.

Article written for the Baptist Times, 16th September 2011

9/11

2011-09-11T13:31:00.000+01:00

Ten years ago today I was on my way back from a funeral visit to a remote house in the marshes near Luddenham in Kent. I pulled over to let a tractor pass and as I was pulling out a car came hurtling round the corner and smashed into me head-on. It was only when the man from the council came to spread sand on the road, to cover various engine fluids, that I heard about planes crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York. It sounded completely surreal.

At home my wife was having an even more strange day. Our young children were watching some children's programme, or so she thought only to find that they were actually watching repeated images of two planes passing into the twin towers as if they were made of sponge cake. I then came on the phone and the day became completely strange.

9/11, September 11th, has become synonymous with terror, death and the murder of innocents. The numbers killed that day have been dwarfed since with many more thousands of civilians killed in military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in what has been termed the war against terror. Today is a day to focus on the core values that shape us and how we approach others in the world. The methods we use to combat terror must not themselves assault the values we want to protect. This is one of the messages of Eliza Manningham-Buller in her Reith Lecture on BBC Radio 4 last week.

The world changed ten years ago. The tensions that exploded that day were there before, but the response to nations accused of state sponsored terrorism has cost many lives. Whether the response has proved effective is for history to determine in years to come. What remains true today, as it has been since the time of the Biblical writers, is that peace requires justice, justice within nations and between them, in trade and in politics.

My prayer for 9/11 is that we hold those who weep, whatever nation they belong to, and commit ourselves to uphold justice and the inherent dignity of all people. When there is tension that it is not allowed to fester, or pushed to the extremes, where evil can be born and the worst in human nature let loose.

New Term

2011-09-08T18:10:00.000+01:00

When theChurch of England started founding schools several centuries ago it did sobecause it knew it was changing society. At the foundation was the ‘three Rs’: Reading, Reckoning and Religion –not what most people think they are. People needed to know their religion for their spiritual health, theyneeded to be able to read so they could read the Bible and read basicinstructions, and they needed to be able to count so they could add up how manyrows they had completed on the loom or how many seeds to sow or how manypennies something cost. Those threebasic educational aims were to enable the ordinary person to function.

Schoolsdon’t talk about the 3 Rs today and haven’t for quite a long time. Today they focus on core subjects for similarreasons: this is what we need to function today. A person needs to be literate, numerate, havean understanding of science and know some basic IT. Spinning around these like a satellite aremodern foreign languages and the need to study these goes in and out of favourwith the latest educational fashion. Students need a working knowledge of the major European languages andprobably could do with knowing Chinese too.

ReligiousEducation remains a compulsory subject, though often branded philosophy andethics, for the same reasons it was 200 years ago. We need to know who we are and have anunderstanding of how we fit into the universe. We need a basis for our moral thinking and we need to understand whyother people think differently. Engagement with the subject varies enormously but it is not old stylechalk and talk, learning Bible passages. It is often explored through particular issues and questions – moral andphilosophical – and films like the Simpsons and Bruce Almighty can be a goodway in.

TheChurch of England has been involved in schools since the earliest days ofChristianity in this country. The firstschools were in the monasteries and bishops households. Later schools were established and the firstreally big expansion took place during the reign of Edward VIth by reapplyingthe money released by the abolition of the chantries. These Grammar Schools provided an educationfor the sons of those wealthy enough to be able to afford for their child not towork. William Shakespeare attended oneof these schools.

Twohundred years later, on the back of fear from the French Revolution, the Churchof England started to open up education for all (boys and girls) through amassive expansion in local schools. Thereason was to counter the revolutionary zeal by educating young minds; tell themwhat to think from a young age and they won’t revolt! It worked to an extent, we didn’t enteranother civil war, but the long march to emancipation and democracy is whathappens when you educate people. Theystart to see that they are not that different from their masters; their‘betters’ are actually not better than them.

Educationbrings social change and that doesn’t take place in a vacuum. TheChurch has a massive contribution to bring to this, not just because we’ve beenthe major driver since the beginning. Atthe level of the underlying philosophy and ethics we have a frame called theGospel of Jesus Christ which provides the lens through which we view everything. It sets the tone and shapes the ethos. By understanding what ‘I think’ I can be in abetter place to understand what ‘you think’. I can have some tools to help me evaluate competing truth claims andwith the core subjects of the curriculum can work out what makes sense and whatdoesn’t.

The National Society is celebrating it’s 200^th birthday this year. It provides a mechanism for the Church’sengagement with educational policy and supporting the work of schools. The future of Church Schools is a currentdebate. When they become ghettos forisolation, they are a force for division in communities. When they serve to make faith visible andtherefore challenge the assumption that secular equals neutral, they ensurethat schools truly prepare their students for the diverse world of today.

Educationis one of my core priorities in ministry. Any school that wants to come to this church is welcome and we make ithappen. I am also frequently in theschools. I know many others are committed to this tooas teachers, governors, parents and students.

At thebeginning of a new school year we can celebrate our involvement in educationand recommit ourselves to the important contribution we make to the ethos ofall our schools.

Opening letter in 'Landmark', St Mary's Whitkirk Parish Magazine September 2011

Risk and self-giving love

2011-08-28T16:48:00.003+01:00

‘Stay safe’, ‘take care’! These are things we may find ourselves saying to those who matter most to us all the time, or if we don’t say it we will think it. The more experience we have of the world, the more we become aware of what can happen and it can worry us. I have a friend who was quite spooked by burying a young baby when he was a curate and was anxious about his own child until he got beyond that stage. Life is inherently dangerous and ultimately will cost us. It is easy to understand where Peter’s concern for Jesus in our gospel reading (Matthew 16:21-28) came from. Peter has a habit in the gospels of saying what’s on everyone else’s mind, it’s just he has the courage to say it or hasn’t learnt to self-edit, so blurts it out.

The disciples have seen in Jesus someone who is different to all the other hotheads and potential Messiah figures that they had seen previously. There was substance to what he said. He made everyone feel special and gave them hope. They dared to commit themselves to him and follow him. The last thing they wanted was for him to go the way of all the others who had stood up to the Romans and end this promise on a cross. The prospect of this was no victory but just another crushing defeat.

Whatever your faith death is not just some kind of fantasy falling asleep. It is final and we don’t see the person again on earth. All that they were and all that they stood for comes to a halt and if anything is to survive it has to be picked up by someone else; the baton has to be passed on. For Peter the movement hadn’t become established so there was no prospect of the baton being handed on and he was thinking of a very secular movement with the overthrow of the Romans as the overarching goal. Kill the leader and you snuff out the challenge to the Romans.

However much we dress up the cross of Jesus, it remains grotesque. It is a vile torture, bringing death in the most painful and humiliating way that the Romans could dream up. On its own it is a symbol of defeat and annihilation. It is only with Easter, with Jesus overcoming it that we enter any prospect of this defeat becoming a victory. And it is only through the light of Easter that we can see the self-giving love displayed in Jesus on the cross in a positive light, because this is where the legacy and baton handing on comes for us. The movement that emerged after Easter is the movement in which we share today by gathering here to worship and committing ourselves afresh to following the way of Jesus, to being his community, his body today.

Sometimes we have to stick our heads above the parapet and take a risk for the sake of a greater cause. Those in Libya who have risked everything to lead their country to freedom from a despot now have the prospect of building a new nation. How that will happen and what it will look like is an open question and some difficult shaking out lies ahead. Less dramatically, those who risk befriending the unknown stranger, or risk feeding the homeless and showing kindness to those who are difficult for others to bother with step out of the comfort zone to embrace the way of the cross. The cross is self-giving love and it is inherently risky. Sometimes we risk being misunderstood, sometimes we risk our own safety, sometimes we risk our reputation and good name.

Despite all of the promises of the death of spin we know that our politicians are so media conscious that it is very difficult to know whether they would ever embrace the way of the cross, the way of risking being misunderstood. If they do it would be a sure sign that this is something they feel passionately about, because it matters more to them than their career or personal ambitions. A politician who stands up and says even if this proves to be unpopular we must do it any way is pursuing something that matters deeply to them. The gain from the unpopularity must not be personal behind the scenes with oil or other trade deals, though. Wilberforce fighting the slave trade in the 18^th century and Robin Cook standing up to Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq 10 years ago both displayed this self-giving risk. Far from personal gain, they cost both of them dearly. The way of the cross is the way that is so important that it trumps the usual caution and care that we might take. This separates it from just being reckless or an adrenalin junkie.

The Arab spring-come-summer-come-autumn looks like it might be in this category. It will rather depend on who emerges to take the crowns and whether this is truly for the people or just replacing one power-hungry person with another. But this is very much a time-and-space bound political struggle, very much like many thought Jesus might represent. His struggle was on a different plane altogether.

Jesus embracing the cross takes all our struggles and transcends them. The victory he offers is beyond political power and local struggles. His dying and rising affirms that these are all vulnerable to future threats and nothing is permanent, nothing has a secure and certain future. So the power struggles for emerging democracies may be successful or they may not, but for those who have died, to not to have died in vane, there needs to be a hope that transcends these so their lives are held and honoured for their own sakes.

Jesus’ words to Peter, ‘Get behind me Satan’, are not a political rallying cry, they are a statement of don’t limit my agenda to just the political. Yes Jesus and the way of Jesus is very concerned for justice and peace, very concerned for treating people with honour and respect, but it is not just about that. The reason we worship Jesus, rather than just honouring him as an inspiration, is because he holds ultimate hope for us, hope that reaches beyond the limits of the political to the eternal. This hope comes to us through risk and the victory of the cross, over the cross, in his glorious and life restoring resurrection.

Sermon preached in St Mary's Church, Whitkirk, Leeds 28th August 2011

Unlocking love's way

2011-08-23T09:32:00.003+01:00

It always amuses me that the symbol of St Peter is keys. Peter gradually came to be seen as the chief apostle and he was given keys. All vicars have keys given to them, so many, more than they can carry - same for churchwardens and curates - we almost need a wheelbarrow for them. I have a big bunch of keys for the church and an equally big bunch for the church hall. And we've been sensible here long since replacing the massive foot long church keys that many village churches have with up-to-date security keys. Keys are even mentioned in Canon Law as being for the incumbent to determine who can have one and who can't!

Keys are a very powerful symbol. They allow access and they restrict access: they provide boundaries. It's always interesting in a church community to observe who has keys and who doesn't and who would desperately like them and why. When I was a prison chaplain, having keys was a tremendously powerful thing to be given because I could go anywhere and those I was visiting couldn't. The keys had to be kept on a chain which was attached to my belt and for ex-offenders someone carrying keys on their belt brings back memories they'd rather forget. I had to have this pointed out to me when as a recent graduate I worked in a half-way house in Poole in Dorset and because I was given so many keys I kept them on one of those hooks on my belt - one of the residents told me that this reminded them of the prison they had just left and of course I stopped straight away.

The reference to Peter being given keys in our Gospel reading (Matthew 16:13-20) and to locking and unlocking draws on a passage from the Old Testament, from Isaiah (22:22). Coming from the 7th century BC it was a sign of hope that the key to the house of David will be given to the king and "he shall open and none shall shut; and he shall shut and none shall open". It comes from one of those times when the power politics in the Middle East was unstable and there was a great anxiety about where it was all going - just like today. Who would come to the fore and therefore who to make the alliance with was a pressing question - just like today. The message was don't put your trust in such alliances, they will ultimately fail you because they are built on unstable relationships. True hope comes with God and being faithful to God. The king having the key alludes to freedom and being no one's subject or vassal nation. They will not have to look over their shoulder all the time. It's an interesting passage for Jesus to pick up on for Peter and for the later Gospel writers to repeat.

Over the centuries this passage has been seized by the power hungry and the history of all established churches has some dark moments locked away in the cupboards here. But keys remain an enduring symbol for us. For our own times the challenge is more about unlocking and allowing access than it is shutting people out. That is one of the reasons I have been keen that whenever anyone is doing anything in the church they come in through the porch door, leaving it open so that others can follow, and not the tower door, locking it behind them. Obviously it depends what you are here to do, but people coming in is what we want and many love to find the door open as they pass.

We unlock doors in so many ways. We unlock doors in one another through relationships that enable us to flourish. Generous people foster and nourish generosity in others. When we encourage and affirm what is good we see people grow and blossom before our eyes. Faith that is natural and connects with the human will be infectious and inspire. The most holy people are actually the most human too. These are all doors that we unlock in one another and adopting them takes us closer to Jesus giving keys to Peter than any power politics will ever do.

When I think about my own journey of faith and my own journey in life, it is the people who have unlocked the doors who have helped me grow. Those who have shown me love and in whose company I have delighted helped me grow as a person. All of us need this and we shrivel, become locked up inside, if we don't have it. Talking a child protection expert recently she told me that those who have been abused who don't go on to abuse themselves have had someone who has shown them a different way so that the cycle could be broken. I think one of the more interesting aspects of the riots the other week is not how many joined in, but how many did not. They didn't spread as far as they could and the whole country did not disintegrate. The response was far more people were outraged than joined in. I think there is a rich source of sociological research in why some joined in, why some walked away and why even more never had a thought to do this in the first place. And in this we'll find far better solutions than knee jerk justice.

The solution for the riots is not rocket science. It requires long hard steady work with people who have become locked up inside and all that builds people, unlocking who they are. People need to find purpose for their lives and they need to know that there are consequences to what they do. Balancing purpose and consequences lies behind the elusive word responsibility. But you only discover purpose if you feel someone cares about you, truly cares, and here churches have a tremendous part to play because the heart of the Christian gospel is that God cares for us. We are loved and lovable. We are not futile and random but created out of love, for love. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose day our church calendar kept yesterday, wrote these remarkable words in the 12th century.

"God was the first to love. God, who is so great, loves us so much: he loves us freely... His love for us opens up inside the way to love... How gently he leads us in love's way, how generously he returns the love we give. How sweet he is to those who wait for him!"

This remains a radical message that our world and our society needs to hear as desperately today as it ever has done.

Every child is born with two people who should love and care for them as their number one priority, who should help them grow in this love. Every married couple needs to know that their spouse has them as their number one priority, above everything else - career, money, sickness, health, in good times and in bad. When that is not present the rest of society ends up picking up the pieces because the effect is damaged people who need healing and loving. All children need to learn that boundaries are part of caring, that there are consequences because there is a purpose behind everything.

This is where true security lies, in the loving that is our purpose and in which we grow and flourish. We will not find it in false alliances built on unstable relationships and fear. The problem for some rioters was in them finding their identity through gang culture because the primary relationships were not in place. The keys given to Peter are to unlock hope for everyone, hope that comes from "the love of God which opens up inside the way to love".

Sermon preached in St Mary's Church, Whitkirk, Leeds 21st August 2011

The Real Thing

2011-07-29T10:41:00.005+01:00

I don't normally get steamed up about these kinds of thing but when the company behind a new night club in Wakefield called Religion tries to claim that the words 'Mass', 'Resurrection' and 'Salvation' are not specific to a particular religion then they need to go back to school. They are clearly associated with Christianity and to claim otherwise either shows a massive ignorance of the religion or is a desperate attempt to defend the indefensible.

What is interesting is that this hard nosed marketing strategy has chosen to piggy back on the Christian Church. We are frequently being told that the Christian faith is no longer part of the popular culture and yet here is a night club appealing to young people using core terms from it. They have even called the night club 'Religion'. There was a song a few years ago by Faithless which included lines about God being his DJ and the club being the church where he goes to heal his hurts. Drink, drugs, dance and sex are all ways people use to mask the pain, but they don't heal it. As one of the characters in the brilliant series Exile said troubles don't sink in the booze, they float!

Religion can of course be used as a mask and a drug too. Karl Marx made that accusation in the nineteenth century, calling it the opiate of the people. When engaged with healthily religion provides the lens through which we can make sense of the world, hold and be held in our pains and joys and provide the reason to celebrate, mourn and delight in all that is good. Human beings have devised religious ceremonies since the dawn of time (well human time) to mark birth, coupling and death and quite a lot in between. It has and does help us engage with life, not try to blot it out. Drink, dance and even sex have a place in this as part of the celebration and sharing in intimacy, but on their own they leave us feeling empty.

The night club is misusing core terms from my faith. That gives us an opportunity to point out where the real thing lies, where real presence can be found.

Seeds, Social Care and Salvation

2011-07-24T16:54:00.005+01:00

Over the past few years I have chaired a number of permanent exclusion panels as a school governor. These are never a pleasant job. There is always a recognition that the school has come to the end of the road for a particular student and that mainstream schooling is not for them. It can also be necessary to protect the education and learning of others and sometimes the safety of staff and students.

Often I am struck by how the young person concerned has a long history of social factors that have disturbed them and set them off on the wrong track from an early age. Some people have the dice loaded against them and are on an uphill struggle from the beginning. Parenting is a heavy responsibility and some people are better prepared for it than others. No one is fully prepared, it taxes the best brains, but some just can't cope with being an adult themselves let alone guide and nurture another. There are parenting classes to help parent the parents and initiatives like 'Sure Start' have made tremendous headway. Cuts in services like this will bring a bitter harvest.

Over the last few weeks the gospel readings in many churches have given quite an array of images of the Kingdom of heaven. Some have taken the image of seeds - mustard, wheat and some undefined - and each of them has grown into the harvest. Some have fallen on unpromising soil or been choked by weeds and the yield has not been impressive. The reference to the seed bearing fruit a hundred/sixty/and thirtyfold two weeks ago is actually not a very impressive harvest. It is average and any modern farmer would be looking to increase productivity. The reading today (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52) gave the additional images of treasures that are of so much value that someone will sell everything to get hold of them. These are so precious that they are worth more than anything else we can possess. Also running through several of the images has been that of judgment, where the evil are destroyed and the righteous are gathered safely and kept.

The power of these images is that they work on many levels. At the social level we can reflect on how small beginnings and intervening at the early stages make a tremendous difference to someone's life chances. The young person whose home life is so dysfunctional that they can barely function socially needs help from a very young age. Indeed the whole family needs support and there is quite a bit of work going on in Leeds Children's Services at the moment to tackle this with a multi-agency approach to try to break the cycle. It also works at the spiritual level where working in harmony with the values of God's kingdom is so life-transforming that it works like yeast making the whole of our lives grow and flourish, where it transforms our society. It is so valuable that it is worth more than anything else we could possess or allow to possess us.

Then there is judgment, the separation of wheat and weeds, of different types of fish from the net. There are consequences to our actions and the actions of others in how they affect us. A child who is abused by neglect, or physically, or emotionally will carry the scars and damage possibly for the whole of their lives. There is always the child inside them that is damaged and needs protection. If the cycle isn't broken by others showing a better way and helping them discover their inner worth and dignity then it will be visited on the next generation. Who bears the guilt for that? Each person has to confront or be helped to confront what they carry and part of the defence mechanism is that we bury this very deeply and can be quite resistant to that. So the earlier it is confronted the better. There may well come a time when it is beyond being confronted. Certainly child protection advice is that an offender will have to accept that they can't work with children again. There is no second chance with this, at least very rarely.

But how far does this judgment go? Does the one abused and failed by dysfunctional families really find they are condemned by accident of birth to the eternal fires of hell and damnation? How much can they be to blame for what they did not choose and did not influence? I have been accused of being too compassionate before but I just don't like the idea of salvation being based on the accident of birth. This is not based on any concept of justice that I recognise. Equally I don't like the idea of salvation being a reward for my own efforts. That is a very English heresy called Pelagianism, where salvation is down to our efforts. The challenge from the Reformation is that salvation rests on God's grace alone and not on any work we may do.

Salvation comes as God's gift. We don't deserve it and don't earn it. We don't bring it about by our own actions. There is no tick box bureaucratic angel with a clip board at passport control in heaven adding up if we have enough heaven points to get in or have just slipped up once too often so need to take the elevator to the eternal basement. Salvation is offered to us despite all of this mess and comes because the God who gives us life cherishes that creation enough to want to give it a place in his eternity. Redemption is the gift of a critical upgrade that deals with the glitch that leads to the failings and hurt, the pain and suffering we inflict on one another.

My hope is that those who come before permanent exclusion panels are given some imaginative intervention to help them discover the dignity that is theirs and that they need. This is a treasure worth more than a lifetime's gathered wealth because it is who we are and who we have it in us to be.

The desire for hell and punishment comes from the pain of the injured. The anger is directed at the symptoms of a damaged person and is itself part of the need for redemption. Those who are happy to condemn others to hell are themselves showing that they too need God's healing grace and rest on the gift of his salvation, not on their own righteousness - or indeed self-righteousness! Whenever I want someone to burn for eternity it is because I am hurt by them and it is the lashing out that comes with extreme pain,not that I do very often, but extreme acts trigger extreme responses as with the events in Norway this weekend. In my calmer, more measured moments I can see the need for healing all round. And I leave the judgment to God, who sees at a depth we don't even see in ourselves.

The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great price. It is more valuable than anything else in the world. The salvation it brings springs from God's gracious love, God's healing love for all, and thankfully not from our own efforts.

Sermon preached at St Mary's Whitkirk, Leeds 24th July 2011.

What does God look like?

2011-07-12T14:50:00.004+01:00

What does God look like? The cartoonist will draw an old man with white hair on a cloud. For Christians he is unknowable except through what he chooses to reveal. The most complete picture that we have is what we see in Jesus.

The question was the theme of a lecture in Ripon Cathedral last week by Daphne Hampson, a systematic theologian specialising in post-Christian thought. Actually her theme was concerned with how we should think of God, which is not the same as picture though they are related. She regards Christianity as being untrue and immoral because it is irredeemably patriarchal, male-centric. Only a post-Christian perspective can emancipate humanity from the male definitions of everything. Our culture is defined by men and even women are named in it by men. This stems from Adam naming Eve in the tradition and that sets the tone for the whole of our conceptualising.

The principal challenge concerns God being revealed in the particular and the unique. Jesus is the particular and unique revelation of God. His maleness is the problem because, by definition, that sets up a limiting aspect on God and comes out of the assumption that to be male is to be 'normal', and normative, to be anything else is to be 'other'.

Her view is that we need to reinvent the vehicle in a different shape because what we have is inadequate for the full mystery and wonder that is God. The world is made up of two genders - male and female - so our conceptualising should reflect this.

A response

The general is made up of lots of particulars that have convergence about them. They don't just exist in isolation but neither are they without their unique qualities. Yes each individual event and person is intelligible because they contain sufficient similarities with others events and people we have seen and known. We know what it is to cross a bridge because we've seen others, but this bridge may still be unique in other qualities.

What makes Jesus similar is his humanity. He is a person like everyone else. That is classic Christian Christology. His nature is fully human. The divine aspect or character can also be taken to be shared because the point of him is that because of his humanity the rest of us can share in his divinity (St Athanasius).

For some this is an incredible picture language of what it means to be human created in the image of God. We are made for God and our hearts remain restless until united with the divine (cf St Augustine of Hippo). But the picture may well contain a startling breaking into this dimension of the eternal dimension. That remains unknowable for certain and so the mythical is the only level that we can really operate with - how is our religious language a picture for us expressing the deepest imagination of our religious longings and perceptions.

I think ultimately Profession Hampson was arguing against a fairly rigid view of the Christian faith. There are different levels of reality and philosophical understanding. From the perspective of the poet and artist things don't have to be so neatly bundled up and this is where I found her thesis left me unconvinced.

Jesus may well be the third person of the Trinity in an eternal unity. We cannot know this side of that eternity. But deep within the faith that brings this way of seeing God, way of imagining and picturing God, there is a profound sense that humanity and indeed creation contains the seeds of divinity which is the passport to its salvation. This is expressed in and through Jesus. If we place into the equation the resurrection experiences of the first disciples and the birth of the church which flows from these we are made to wonder that it just might be true.

The particular and the general, the unique and the shared do not have to be mutually exclusive. Her challenge that our language limits us is valid and pertinent. There is a subtle revolution taking place in our language and thinking of God alongside the journey that is taking place in every other area of our lives. Christianity is by no means separate from this. I don't think many people actually hold the faith that she was challenging.

News of the World vs Real Good News

2011-07-10T15:40:00.002+01:00

This has been a week when the news gatherers have themselves become the story. As the week has gone on what sounded like a very disturbing story about phone hacking of celebrities and politicians entered a whole new level of depravity. I thought the hacking of Millie Dowler’s phone was bad enough but that was just the beginning and more keeps emerging. This is nothing short of moral bankruptcy. Whatever the law there is basic human decency that tells us all some things are not an acceptable way to behave, so hiding behind ‘I didn’t know it was illegal’ is no defence. I for one will not miss the News of the World on the newsstands. The bright ray of sunshine in all of this has been the pretty much universal revulsion uniting the nation about what has gone on – though of course people bought the paper for the news it gave.

The parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23), at its most basic level, tells us that people are complicated and we are not all the same. So when the gospel is proclaimed, when we hear it, it makes contact with whatever else is going on in our lives, has gone on and how these have shaped us as people. What is true of individuals is also true of communities. So some will be ready hearers, eager for the latest news. Nothing penetrates very deeply and when the going gets tough, the plant withers; the gospel doesn’t really take root. Some are hard and embittered. That is like pinging a seed against a wall. It will just bounce off. If it does rest on the ground it will be eaten by the birds or just be unable to get any roots in to be sustained. There are the thorns, weeds and nettles, the concerns; the background noise that is so loud everything else gets choked. The path that means others trampling around us cause good news to be destroyed – and the newspapers are very good at depressing us here, at providing a general climate of doom and despondency that tramples on the good news stories and hope.

So whoever we are, the gospel doesn’t just drop on us and have the same effect. It can take years for the soil to be ready, for us to be ready. I know this because there are people who have taken a long time to respond here, to begin to look more closely. Which is why I find mission to be the long haul and sometimes we just play the part of a causal labourer in the field. We do a bit and others further on in the season will move it on. Sometimes we are fortunate to be present at the birth, to be the harvester – to mix metaphors – and reap what others have helped to grow.

I’ve missed out the good soil. The well dug over, well prepared, rich in nutrients, with the right amount of water and drainage, just the right ph. balance for growing the gospel in us. What makes one person ready or open to start digging and another closed is extremely complicated, but often it involves someone showing us a better way. Those who break the cycle of abuse will have other role models who have rescued them by their inspiration and their example. Those who have struggled with their own addictions to whatever it is will have those who have given them a reason to want to live differently and provided the support when the going got tough. Those who have wondered what life is about will have seen someone who seems to have a peace that they crave. Those who ask about the gospel and explore it further will have found someone who speaks their language and doesn’t bombard them with religious techno-speak, but puts the divine into the language they get. The list could go on. The point is we all require a gardener, or an army of gardeners, to prepare the soil that is us so that the gospel seed can grow in us.

Our communities need this too. That is why we have a church. It is here to be a sign and symbol of God’s kingdom in our midst. When we go out and about and contribute to the debates of our day, the concerns of our communities, we are either helping to prepare the soil or trampling on the ground and compacting it further. Fortunately it isn’t down to just one individual, because no one could bear that weight on their own, and it is the cumulative effect that makes the difference – how does this person, this encounter match the others I’ve seen and heard.

The relevance of all of this for the News of the World story is that just proclaiming the gospel on its own is no defence or guarantee of a changed life or behaviour. For behaviour to change we need to take a look at the influences at work. Connections have to be made between the text of the gospel and the context of our lives, between what a given story says and what that means for our lives. The Private Investigator at the centre of the news storm had become hardened in some ways that have prevented an emotional link with those he was hacking. Hacking a politician to see if you can get the truth behind a story, while an invasion of privacy, could have a public interest defence, at a push. But hacking a dead teenager’s phone or the distressed messages of the grieving and anxious shows something had become very cold and remote. And it’s not sufficient to just say he needed to hear the gospel to be a changed person. I know nothing of his faith and nothing of what he knew or didn’t know. But hearing the gospel on its own does not work like installing a critical update on a computer. We aren’t just reprogrammed. There is more to faith than knowledge. This was an ancient heresy called Gnosticism, which saw the gospel as being special knowledge the possession of which was the salvation. The gospel is about transforming lives and that is deeper than knowledge.

The story of the News of the World has rightly revolted most people in this country. But before we sit too comfortably, none of us are immune to the different ground conditions in the parable and there are aspects of all of our lives that can be like those different soils. Where are the places in us when the call of Jesus finds receptive soil, where it can grow and flourish? Where are we hard and crusty, bitter and repellent? What is like the nettles and weeds, the pressures that choke and threaten? What needs clearing and where do we need protection to enable us to flourish? What is the path that gets trampled on? Each of us has these places that need God’s healing touch, the assistance of other gardeners to help transform them into rich and receptive ground.

The News of the World story has reassuringly brought mass revulsion. It shows that there is a fundamental decency abroad in this nation. The response is to encourage and show a better way in journalism, in our moral standards, in the ways that we honour and respect other people. It is to remember that even politicians and celebrities are human beings too for whom privacy remains important – and they may need help in realizing that too.

The gospel as seed needs soil to grow in. All of us have work to do on aspects of our lives to make us a more receptive place for it to take root so that we may flourish and continue to flourish.

Sermon preached in St Mary's, Whitkirk, Leeds 10th July 2011

2 lectures in Ripon

2011-07-10T15:18:00.006+01:00

I gave my brain a bit of a work out last Thursday by attending two lectures. The first was on the source texts and manuscripts of the Bible - a bit of CPD for the cathedral college of canons in Ripon. When William Tyndale produced his first translation of the Bible into English in the 16^th century, the precursor to the King James Bible, he based it on just six manuscripts of the Greek text themselves much later copies. This formed the backbone of the King James Bible in 1611 whose anniversary is being trumpeted this year. Since then more manuscripts have come to light, and many of them much older. Today there are 5,000 known and they don’t all agree.

So there is a great deal of scholarly effort put into deciding what the original may have said. Sadly we don’t have the original manuscripts and are always working from later copies. Some contain mistakes and some have been changed to make more sense to changed circumstances. The Bible is not as clear as some would like to believe, so whenever anyone says ‘it says in the Bible’ quite a bit of selecting and editing has gone on in the background.

I have been unhappy about the phrase 'This is the word of the Lord', which has become the standard response to any reading of the Bible in church. It is used unthinkingly and implies what most of us don't believe. The Bible was not dictated by God and taken down shorthand by attentive secretaries and there isn't one definitive source text, so what we mean by the word of the Lord is somewhat complex. There are alternatives being trialled in various places and I hope this might develop into something of a movement and become more widespread.

The second lecture was billed to be by a feminist theologian from Oxford, Daphne Hampson. She objected to this title and preferred to be called a gender inclusivist. Her point was that defining someone as a feminist assumes that the alternative is to be masculinist and she objects to both. The translation of this is that one tries to look at the world through female eyes only and the other through male eyes only and given that the world is made up of both then they both give a partial picture.

I’m not sure that any one person can do both since we are either male or female and that colours how we look at the world. We get a better picture when we join together and share our insights. The rest of her lecture was about how most of the ways we look at the world have been shaped by men and are therefore skewed. Religious language is by definition a partial picture of what reality is really like because it is often based on only one half of the gender divide. (She made some more challenging comments too, which I will blog about on another occasion.)

Now my guess is that some readers will by this point have steam coming out of their ears. Bear with me. Both of these lectures reminded me that, as St Paul put it, ‘we see through a glass dimly’ (1 Corinthians 13). We are not granted perfect vision and need to check out our assumptions and conclusions about God, life, the universe and everything. We check them against the other information we know which includes the different experiences of others, never assuming that what we think sets the boundaries of what is normal and anything else is abnormal.

This is one of the challenges of the anniversary of the King James Bible. It was a translation designed to set the boundaries of what was to be considered normal, but over the centuries it has been proved to be partial because so many more source documents have come to light – from 6 to 5,000. The Gender Inclusivists, not the snappiest of descriptions, do the same with how we see the world and the language we use to talk of God.

The summer is usually a time when our diaries and activities slow down. We get chance to take a breath and in the cool of a shady tree allow the swirling mixture of thoughts and competing voices to distill a little. It becomes a time to start to check whether we have seen correctly and reassess in the light of new information. Everyone needs this kind of gap in what can otherwise become frantic activity. Even if we are not drawn to reassess the gender bias of language and culture (it has to be said there are other things to do in the summer!) I am hoping for some space to start to fill in some of the hidden pieces of the fuller picture of God’s wonder and mystery.

Thomas, McEnroe and the basis of faith

2011-07-03T20:58:00.005+01:00

What do the following have in common:

Victoria Azarenka of Belarus
A pneumatic drill
A train whistle
A trombone
A circular saw
And a tractor?

The answer is that they all make about the same volume of noise in decibels and Victoria Azarenka is the tennis player who this year broke records for the volume of her grunting on court at Wimbledon, reaching 95 decibels. For some, well for most, it is an annoying addition to tennis, no doubt part of the psychological warfare of the match, an attempt to intimidate their opponent because they don’t tend to do it on the practice courts.

There was a time when disputes over whether a ball was in or out would lead to tantrums, supremely with John McEnroe who became famous for shouting ‘you can’t be serious’. Now hawkeye and the ability to challenge with a slow motion action replay have removed these.

Thomas is the apostles’ appeal to hawkeye and the slowmotion action replay, to the third ref off pitch. He doesn’t believe what he has been told by the other disciples who claim against normal sense that they have been visited by the resurrected Jesus. Thomas says what everyone says. The dead don’t come back to visit us and he’d seen enough dead people to know that once you’re gone, you’re gone. Any further encounter belongs firmly to another dimension and time, but not here and not now.

Thomas requires rational proof. He won’t be fobbed off and won’t take easy answers. His is not simple belief. Well actually it is, but it isn’t simplistic, because he requires the literal direct vision that we are not granted, so our faith, our belief is more sophisticated than his, unless we have the kind of faith that swallows 5 improbable things before breakfast, that is.

So Thomas points to what faith is. It is not proof. It is not certainty. It is also not completely irrational. We don’t know for certain anything. The universe may be the product of random causes that just by chance managed to slot together in intricate manner so that the fine tuning that make something rather than nothing, against all probability, are able to bring it into being. The beauty of the rainbow to the relative strength of the ant, the ingenuity of human beings and the fragility of a newborn baby; the power of emotions and music, art and loving. All these things could be just by chance. How amazing that would be – such a coincidence producing so much. It would make you want to praise the stars and quarks, the awesome wonder, the atoms that make us.

Thomas stands with those who say ‘how do you know’? He demands that we admit what we don’t know whether we wear a white coat or a white stole. Thomas insists that we make sure our faith is based on something rather than nothing, that it does stand up to critical questioning and is not just wishful thinking. The basis of our faith is awe and wonder, the life that is life. It is the power of whatever those first disciples experienced that turned them from broken men and women into champions who would and did die for their faith. It is the power of the Spirit that lives and breaths in the church today. The basis of our faith is no more irrational than saying it all came about by chance and neither stance can be proved with certainty.

Today we welcome Gillian as she begins her ministry among us. That God is still calling people like her to serve in his church is a sign that we are no mere antiquarian society. We don’t just look back but we look forward in hope – the hope that is our life and the basis of our faith. It is a sign that the church is not dying out but has life in it yet! The church has a way of being refreshed and renewed for the challenges of each generation. The call is to proclaim the faith afresh in this generation and Gillian was reminded of this earlier on today. The intellectual challenges have to be addressed and met. The key weapon is the grace of God which comes to us in prayer, in the sacraments and in that wrestling with the scriptures and the great wealth of knowledge that we have amassed and continue to develop. But in and through everything there must be a deep and profound faith and trust in God who is the source of our life and our final goal. This must lie at the heart of our strategies and our mission, it is the root of our ministry in its great variety.

A new deacon takes us to the foundations of our faith and can be an opportunity for not only the ministry of this place to be revitalized but for our faith to be refreshed too. Recently I saw some comments on facebook purporting to be advice for new curates from more experienced clergy. Actually they were more jaundiced than experienced and they are not the same. The advice was forget all the theology from your training. I don’t agree. We need the intellectual rigour that comes from someone fresh from engaging daily with big questions. We need it because faith must stand up to today’s questions and not harp back to what is in effect past superstitions. We need Thomas who will say ‘how does this stand up’? The pressures of ministry can stop you thinking and it is important that clergy do not stop thinking, that they keep asking questions, that they disturb communities with their questions because Christian comfort is not the same as becoming complacent, in fact comfort is more about being provoked and disturbed than it is about being allowed to sit quietly.

The questions we are to be disturbed by are those which emerge from daily living. They are the cry for justice, the hunger for understanding, the need to be loved and accepted and therefore how much we really make space for those who don’t fit easily.

Whether Gillian does this like a trombone, a pneumatic drill or a tennis star serving aces, the effect needs to have the decibels, the conviction, to help us ask deep questions and like Thomas not be fobbed off with easy answers. This is the path that deepens faith and strengthens hope because it takes our questions head on. The feast of Thomas is a good day for an ordination.

Sermon preached at St Mary's, Whitkirk, Sunday 3rd July 2011

Priority of Service

2011-07-01T20:06:00.006+01:00

On Sunday I will be welcoming a new colleague as she begins what we call her title curacy with us. In the Church of England you can only be ordained if you have a place to serve, what is called your title. This is because ministry has to be rooted and grounded somewhere specific, it is not free range. It takes place in context and is therefore lived out in real places with all the current issues and vision for that place which that brings. Over the coming weeks and months she will have to work out what this means as she begins to hear the stories that make up the bigger story of this place. After nine years I am still hearing some things for the first time because it can take a very long time for some stories to emerge and of course it is a work in progress, so just when you think you have it, it changes. The beauty of a new colleague is that she will see things many of us have stopped noticing or at least will see these fresh so spot things we don’t see in quite the same way. We will learn from her as she learns from and through us.

Everyone who is ordained is made a deacon first. This is not temporary or transitional, as some people seem to be calling it. The ‘real goal’ is not priesthood. Deacon is a ministry in itself and those of us who have been made deacons remain deacons for the rest of our lives. The name comes from the Greek word for service, as in waiter or carer or someone who looks out for the needs of others. It reminds us of the Christ who came among us as one who serves, not one who lords it over others. No one is below us and the gospels are full of moments when Jesus showed us firsthand what this means.

Deacons wear their stole in a different way to priests. They wear it ‘Thunderbird’ style, over the left shoulder and tied on the right side. Those with keen eyes will have noticed that on Maundy Thursday, when it comes to the washing of the feet, I wear my stole that way. Apart from stopping it from flapping around, it is symbolic of Jesus who took a towel, wrapped it round him and washed his disciples feet. I have a strong commitment to having been ordained deacon first, to the primacy of servanthood in the church’s ministry and structures. Even those called to leadership are called to a servant leadership, which looks to how leadership serves the Kingdom of God and all it’s citizens, not just the interests of the most powerful or who can do the most for you.

Like all clergy, deacons serve to remind the rest of the church what they are called to be. Just like they have to have a title, so their ministry needs to relate to a community. So Gillian will be a visual aid for us all that service lies at the heart of the purpose of the church. We seek to serve God in worship and prayer. We seek to serve one another in practical ways. We seek to serve our communities through relating the gospel to the issues of our day, be they political, social or ethical – local and global.

I don’t believe in the false separation of clergy and lay people. It is a hangover from the past. All of us are laity in that we are all part of the laos, the people of God. We have different roles and functions, and there are spiritual charisms, graces that accompany these. What we do affects how we are treated and how we behave, but essentially the primary sacrament of initiation remains baptism because that is how we become followers of Christ. There is no greater calling than that! The role of ordained clergy is to remind us all of that calling.

My new colleague will remind us that everything we aim to do is to be rooted and grounded in service – not of ego, but of Christ. So often we do that through recognizing the Christ in one another be they stranger and friend.

Opening Letter in Landmark, Parish Magazine for St Mary's, Whitkirk, July 2011

New Fees

2011-06-26T15:47:00.005+01:00

The Church of England has just issued the new fees it is proposing to charge for various services for the next 3 years. This follows a national review of the method and level of calculating these. Some of them have tidied up previous anomalies and some have created new ones. These fees will be discussed by the General Synod when it meets in York in July.

Some reports have been mischievous. The Daily Mail concentrated on the percentage rise without making it clear that the new fees include things which were previously added on. So the fee paid to a verger to look after 'front of house', help set up and clear up afterwards is now included whereas before it was something the local church had to add on. The result of this is that churches will be out of pocket here - or at least not adequately assisted with the costs involved. Heat and light are now part of the basic costs of the church so deemed to be part of the basic fee, whereas some churches used to add on extras in the winter. I didn't used to do that; it didn't seem to sit well - as if we weren't going to put the heating on! But it is expensive to heat churches so I could understand where those who did were coming from.

When compared to other costs, the church fees are a drop in the ocean and generally compare very favourably to other 'providers'. A civil celebrant for a wedding will typically charge £300 and an additional £60 if a rehearsal is required. The church will charge £160 for this and the rehearsal is part of the package, as are various conversations before hand to discuss the wedding and prepare for marriage. At a civil ceremony can be on top of this, where all Church of England clergy are licenced to fulfil this function as a matter of course, so no additional fees are required. A civil celebrant charges around £160-£200 to officiate as a funeral, where the church fee for the priest is £130. To put this in context, it costs £75 per letter to spell out someone's name in flowers and a simple arrangement for the top of the coffin can easily cost twice that.

The new anomalies come in fees for graveyard matters. To agree an additional inscription on a headstone in a church cemetery or graveyard the current fee is £36. From 2012 it will drop to £20. Leeds City Council currently charges £81 for this. The fee to bury someone in a church cemetery or graveyard will be £155 if following a church service. Leeds City Council currently charges £983 to bury in a council cemetery. The digging of the grave is on top for both, but there again the council will charge £760+ and the church gravedigger £450. The new church fees are unrealistic here and bear no relationship to either the costs of running and maintaining a cemetery or to the 'market rate' being charged in council cemeteries. While the council fees may be regarded as being high, there is still a long way for the church to go before it could be accused of profiting from grief. It costs £6,000 for us to maintain our church grounds and then we can only afford a certain number of mowings a year and much additional work is carried out by volunteers. Twenty burials at £150 will not cover this and we will be faced with a shortfall next year.

Some of the rationale behind the new fees I support: transparency (the previous fees displayed no discernible rationale to them that I could find), equality (they will be the same everywhere) and there is provision for waving the fees where there is pastoral need to do so - sensitivity and poverty. One cleric has suggested not charging any more than 10% of the total spend on a wedding. With the average wedding costing £18,000 that leaves quite a lot of scope to be explored! I have waved fees where it was clear that the couple were going to a local pub for their reception involving a tray of sandwiches and also where there was a clear pastoral need - as in when I conducted the funeral of the groom a month after I conducted their wedding. There was no way I was going to charge fees in the face of such a tragedy and didn't bother to find out if anyone further up the hierarchy agreed - I was just not going to do it.

The fees help to pay for the church's ministry and they need to be set at a realistic level so that that ministry can be sustained to be available when it is needed and wanted. Some of these new fees have missed the mark.

Corpus Christi

2011-06-23T21:22:00.004+01:00

Interesting sign on the gantries on the M1 yesterday: 'check your fuel level'. Not a bad message for the feast of Corpus Christi, when the church gives thanks for Jesus instituting the Holy Communion during the Last Supper. This is when he took the bread and wine and gave them a new significance as signs and channels of his grace - a memorial of his Passion and Resurrection. The bread he made to stand for his body broken and given for all. The wine, his blood shed for us.

For many Christians the Communion is a means of spiritual renewal and refueling for Christian living. As it reminds us of Jesus it connects us with all that he was and is for us, to his commission to live like him. I know my need of times of refreshment and that includes spiritual as well as physical renewal. Without times to fill up I will quickly run on empty and then I start to lose focus, get grumpy and don't respond well to the many demands and enquiries that come my way, often from people who don't know how to ask for what they need.

We don't do anything in our own strength. Everything is to be enfolded with prayer, calling on God's grace to shape and feed us. At the end of a busy few days - even weeks - it would have been easy to sit at home with my feet up this evening, but gathering together for the Eucharist provided a point to reconnect with the heart of the purpose that gives me focus.

Pentecost: two dates, one theme

2011-06-12T14:05:00.004+01:00

A quick bible quiz to start with, ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ style.

When is Pentecost?

A) Easter Day

B) Harvest Festival

C) 50 days after Easter Day

It’s a trick question because the answer is all three! And keen listeners to our readings (Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23) will have spotted the clues. So question 2 for a bit more info.

What is the Day of Pentecost?

A) Gift of the Holy Spirit when the disciples spoke in tongues

B) Gift of the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai 50 days after the Exodus

C) Day the Holy Spirit was given when Jesus showed his wounds in his hands and side on Easter Day.

Again it’s a trick question because it is all three and that came out from the readings too. Let’s begin with the easy bit.

The Pentecost is a Jewish festival. It commemorates the giving of the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai 50 days after the people of Israel escaped from slavery in Egypt. Leaving the precise chronology to one side, that’s the way the tradition has handed it down. In the Jewish practice it’s also been associated with harvest. The link for the first years of the Christian faith was that just as Moses passed on the Commandments, the Law to guide them in their faith, so Jesus after the new Exodus of the Resurrection at Easter passes on the Holy Spirit to guide the church in their faith and living.

So that’s the easy bit, the link with the 10 Commandments and harvest. The harder part is getting our head round the clear differences between the two accounts In Acts and John because no matter how hard we try the time differences don’t reconcile.

Acts is very clear. The disciples are in one place. Jesus has been appearing to them on several occasions since Easter Day. He is taken from them at the Ascension with a great promise that they will be given another comforter and guide, someone to strengthen them in their faith and living. This comes in a dramatic way on the Day of Pentecost when they start behaving very strangely, speaking in tongues so that like in Doctor Who where the TARDIS translates for everyone, everyone can understand what is being said, whatever language they speak. Pentecost is, remember, 50 days after the Passover, so actually not quite the same as 50 days after Easter - so there’s a bit of fiddling with the timing already, perhaps our first clue to what has gone on with the discrepancy between the accounts.

John’s gospel has its own way of setting things out. It even gives a different day for Good Friday. While Matthew, Mark and Luke have Jesus die the day after Passover, John has him die at the same time as the Passover lambs are sacrificed – the point being he is the true Passover lamb. That makes it a day earlier. So we shouldn’t be surprised that he drags the gift of the Spirit forward several weeks and drops it into Easter Day itself. That is quite clear from the text. This takes place on Easter Day. And there is no doubt what is being said either, Jesus breathes on them. That is a biblical phrase full of meaning. It takes us straight to the creation when life is breathed into human beings. Now new life is being breathed into the disciples on Easter Day, following the resurrection.

How do we square these quite dramatic differences? Which is right and which is wrong? The short answer is we don’t know. No one can know, but often John has a way of carrying the earlier tradition and the other three gospels, the synoptics as they are called, carry the embellishment. If John is the earliest version then Acts could reflect a later spiritual charismatic experience which gave the disciples the kick up the backside they needed to get on with things. What is more, there is a view that the stories and traditions about Jesus and the formation of the church were passed on through the liturgies of the church and shaped by them. These liturgies may have stretched things out over 50 days, with all of the symbolism that carries with the Exodus, to fully explore Easter before moving on. One of the clues is that the maths doesn’t quite work because we time the 50 days from Easter and the Jews from the Passover, a few days before. So there have already been adjustments for theological purposes. It is not so easy to find a reason for John changing the date.

Whichever date you decide is the oldest tradition, the gift of the Spirit remains vital for the life of the church, for the life of the followers of Jesus. It’s not accidental that the words for ‘Spirit’ and ‘breath’ come from the same root in Hebrew. We are not given a rulebook to be followed as some kind of manual. This new covenant, which is born of Spirit not of stone tablets, is deliberately not set in stone. It knows that it will have to adapt and change, that it will need to think things through afresh in the Spirit of Jesus. So we don’t have to live as though today is the same as yesterday. It clearly is not. We don’t have to worry that we may be called to change our minds as understandings develop. The idea of the equal role of women in the church today is perfectly consistent with the movement of the Spirit opening up new possibilities in just the same way that including Gentiles, non Jews, was for the first Christians. When deciding whether a development or innovation is consistent with the movement of the Spirit the fact that it is a departure from the past does not present a knock down objection. We need to argue at a much deeper level about what it says about who we are in relation to being children of God. Nothing is set in stone and that is deliberate.

If the Spirit will lead us into all truth, as an earlier passage of John declares, then it will reveal that truth in a way that can be cross referenced with other information, with other facts. So there is nothing to fear from science, nothing to fear from social sciences or any other discipline. If we want to claim something to be true we should be able to back it up and support it. And where we can’t we may find that we have to ask if we are wrong. It may be that the point in question can’t be tested: it may be that it works at the level of poetry and therefore it’s meaning will carry the truth that can itself be backed up because it works.

Today is the Day of Pentecost – give or take a few days, or weeks – the day our liturgy, our worship, celebrates the gift of the Spirit, after 50 days exploring Easter fully. The gift of the Spirit is God inspiring us and calling us to work out how the good news Christ brings relates to our lives. That is what the Archbishop of Canterbury was doing in his editorial in the New Statesman, a piece much misquoted and misunderstood this week by journalists from whom we should be able to expect better. His points in brief were that if the government is going to make the changes it proposes there needs to be a bigger debate than is currently happening so that it can test its legitimacy; that the opposition needs to work out what it would do otherwise, if different, so that it can provide a coherent alternative for that debate and thirdly that the plans need to be based on the principle of well-being for all. That all seems to me to be both eminently sensible and also blindingly obvious. It stands up to scrutiny from other sources and can therefore claim to be consistent with the Spirit’s stirrings inspiring us to relate the gospel to our lives.

The Spirit nudges us in the direction of greater revelation. The precise date of its first alighting on the disciples or being breathed into them may be lost to us, but it’s link with carrying the torch of faith into the new places our lives take us is central and vital to us.

Sermon Preached at St Mary's, Whitkirk, Leeds, Sunday 12th June 2011

Archbishop and Radical Policy

2011-06-09T22:47:00.004+01:00

The BBC seems to have distorted what the Archbishop of Canterbury has written in his editorial for The New Statesman. They have focused on him criticising the coalition government, where I think he has said something much more profound. In short he has said three things:

1. The government's reforms and plans are of such a magnitude that they require a major public debate on the scale of a general election to test their legitimacy. This is not happening.

2. The opposition has not formulated its alternative so is not offering a coherent critique of government policy.

3. Plans need to be based foremost on promoting well-being.

There's enough radical thought there without making it up or twisting his words for easy headlines. I've been saying this for a while so would agree with him completely.

MI6 Cup Cakes and the Mothers Union

2011-06-05T20:29:00.007+01:00

What’s your favourite piece of news this week? One of mine was pointed out to me by my eldest son, James, which he spotted on Yahoo. MI6 foiled various would be bombers by hacking into a Jihadi magazine website offering information on making bombs. The result was that when anyone tried to download the information, instead of getting the plans for death and destruction, they got a recipe for cup cakes. I love the idea that in the midst of such a serious issue our security forces still have a sense of humour: 007 being mischievous. The worrying side is that there is a periodical for would be bombers.

The other one that grabbed my attention yesterday was the call from Reg Bailey from the Mothers Union for better protection for children from the perils of internet porn and other inappropriate material. Parents almost need a degree in computer programming to block this stuff and then most teenagers will know more than them any way so if they want to will probably know how to get round it. What is more many mobile phones come with access to this stuff as standard, so the problems are magnified. The call is for the blocks to be standard rather than requiring specialist knowledge. It’s also not just the hardcore stuff; it’s also the persistent eroding that comes through softer images and the culture this creates. I complained to a hotel recently on their feedback form that the room TV package came with adult channels as one of the first options on the screen and the radio stations were several options through the sub-menus. Talk about in your face.

The Chief Exec of the MU has been heading up a government working party on this. His report also talks about the subtle pressures on children from our over sexualized society. Girls carrying playboy bunny girl pencil cases and emulating the worst excesses of pouting, thrusting, botoxed celebs are not being given healthy role models.

These came to my mind when I read Jesus’ prayer for protection in the Gospel reading (John 17:11). Jesus’ prayer is actually that his disciples will be one, will display unity, but for this to happen it needs to be based on healthy images of what it means to be human. Unity is not fostered by debased behaviour and distorting the self-image of young minds. Rather this sows the seeds of disruption and confusion. Into that clarity vacuum all sort of mixed up emotions and messages flood. So a prayer for unity is actually a prayer for the attitudes that make unity more likely rather than less likely; it is a prayer for hearts and minds to be protected from all that distorts and corrupts. These things are not just about what we do as individuals, but touch the kind of society we live in and to which our children are subjected, the atmosphere in which they grow up.

The other day, I came across an African idea or notion. It is the concept of ‘ubunto’, which stresses the importance of community for our existence, for who we are. It is because ‘we are’ that ‘I am’. In the African way of thinking, in the light of ‘ubunto’, if we are to understand ourselves we have to understand the environment that shapes us and in which we exist. Our society has been infected by a virus that is excessively individualist, which tries to separate ‘me’ from ‘we’, ‘I’ from ‘us’, and in the process cuts the very chords that make us who we really are. It comes in the shape of the attempts to privatize ideas, and faith is placed into that box, as if our society can in some way exist separated from these. It is a myth and it is being challenged because it has been found to be mistaken.

Archbishop Rowan Williams said this week at the Hay festival that if we are going to understand Shakespeare we need to understand the Christian worldview that shaped him. We can bring this more up-to-date because the same goes for more contemporary artists. I was disappointed by a profile of the pop star Lady Gaga the other week that seemed to talk about everything except her religious outlook. She is clearly from a Roman Catholic background and songs like ‘Judas’ are just shot through with religious imagery, likewise her song ‘Glory’, which was written after her grandfather died, which seems to display a deep faith. Even her coming onto the stage in a coffin at the Radio 1 Big Weekend displays some grappling with bigger questions, though I’d love to hear her being interviewed about that one!

To understand ‘me’ you have to understand ‘we’. This is the case with all of us as it is with understanding artists and their work. This should not surprise us because the Hebrew scriptures are about people in community, the story of the group rather than the story of individuals.

So our worship and our faith can never be just about my relationship with God on my own. It is always about how this is lived and how it relates to others. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to those around us, but we also bear a heavy responsibility to continue to tell the story that shapes our society for the good of all and the liberation of all. Without that wider context we miss the point of what our faith, of what our life, is for. We are made to live and be in community. Everything about us is hardwired for that and our faith is the operating system to make that work.

If we are to take Jesus’ prayer seriously it requires us to be concerned for the role models that the young are absorbing. It requires us to be concerned about how their minds and our own for that matter are being changed not just by new technologies but also by what these enable access to. Not everything is healthy.

We are called to be witnesses to the good news of Jesus and his Kingdom (Acts 1:8). For that purpose we need the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. Christ has promised this and in his grace we can help shape a world that sets the moral tone for healthy people to develop and flourish. A world where justice is king, where dignity for all is upheld and where true unity can abound.

Sermon preached at All Saints Church, Leeds & St Philip's Church, Osmondthorpe, Sunday 5th June 2011

End of the world postponed

2011-05-25T15:25:00.003+01:00

Well we seem to have survived. Saturday 21st May came and went and despite apocalyptic claims to the contrary, we are still here. A much publicised American evangelist had predicted that the world would end on 21st May, he has now said he got his sums wrong and has made a forward diary note for 21st October instead. Excuse me if I continue to make plans for 22nd onwards.

These strange and astounding claims are made from time to time with startling certainty and can leave the more rationally minded at best bemused, possibly mildly amused at the eccentricity. At worst they can have tragic consequences as people who are more vulnerable dispose of possessions leaving themselves destitute or even lead to suicides. We are reminded through these that mental illness can have spiritual manifestations.

No one knows the time or the hour. We don't know this for ourselves let alone our planet, or even the universe. It began, so it probably will end one day, but the time scale predicted by most scientists is so far in the future as to be off radar.

One or two commentators have pointed out that apocalyptic claims appeal to people who feel either powerless in the world or unable to cope with modern life's fast changing nature, so much so that they want it to end. The result is to want it to end for everyone. When that means lying down in a field waiting for the end, it is benign for others. When it turns murderous, as with the worst cults, then we are left shuddering. A more gentle form is those who long for the lottery to end all their problems leading them to a new land of promise and endless security: capitalism's apocalyptic expectation and hope!

So far from being figures of fun, these prophets of the apocalypse point us to the vulnerable and those damaged by contemporary life, those who find it difficult to cope. They deserve our pity and concern. The form is different, but the malaise behind is actually far more familiar than we may have thought.

Liquid Generosity

2011-05-15T14:36:00.003+01:00

A joke was printed in the church magazine the other month. It was about a church appeal. The good news it said was that we have all the money we need. The bad news was it’s in your pockets. It makes people smile. But it’s true. We do have everything we need, locally and nationally, and internationally. We have the food we need, we have the resources we need and we have the money we need. But so often it is horded and not shared. Sometimes we are trying to live beyond what can be sustained – and oil and the burning of other fossil fuels come into that category – so we need to change the way we live. With rising prices and wars to secure the supply, with the growing awareness of the environmental impact, we know we have to develop alternative energy sources if the lights are going to stay on – and of course some should be turned off.

The fair-trade movement has shown us that with a different way of thinking about supply and demand, with a fundamental principle that the supplier needs to be paid a fair price for the goods they produce, and fair means enough to live on, we can transform poverty. Today Christian Aid is focusing on coffee, and fair-trade coffee has now gone mainstream with all of the major supermarkets offering their own brand. From what tasted like ditchwater 30 years ago, it is a product that has been revolutionised. We haven’t bought coffee and tea without the fair-trade logo for something like 20 years now.

Both of our Bible readings this morning were about generosity. The first more overtly than the second, though the gospel provides the foundation for it. The last line of the gospel reading gives us the key point: Christ came that we ‘may have life, and have it abundantly’ (John 10:10). Abundant life is not just something for the future, we are set on a planet that provides for our needs and makes life flourish. It is our duty to ensure that everyone benefits, not just a few super rich. The Sunday Times each year publishes a ‘rich list’, listing those with the greatest wealth. The Independent on Sunday counters this with what it calls a ‘happy list’, those who make a difference to the world and make it a better place. My nephew, who spoke here last year about the Joshua Project in Bradford, was included in this year’s list for the work he is doing to transform the lives of young people in a poor community and to improve their lives: abundant life being shared to make a difference.

We have many examples of this in our communities. The lunch club that meets on Tuesdays provides a point of contact and social gathering for those who come. There are many ways of caring for neighbours in need and looking at how we can provide opportunities. The hall is used by many groups that make a difference for the youngest and the oldest. Those who get involved in politics and strive to allocate the resources so that our common life can be well ordered are hopefully aiming to foster and nurture abundant life for all. I saw a trailer for a TV programme with the BBC political editor Nick Robinson where the residents of a street take over for themselves the services provided by the council and it looks like things don’t go well. Their eyes are opened to just what the public can be like when they have to face what it means to be community rather than just individuals who consume.

One of the major attacks on generosity in recent years has come from the way we have come to see ourselves more as consumers than as citizens. It’s as if we have jumped from being subjects, people subject to an all powerful lord or monarch, and gone straight to defining ourselves by means of what and how we consume. Consumers know they have rights, but no concept of the responsibilities that go with those rights. Consumers throw things away without any thought of where it goes or how its replacements will be produced. Landfill is not the answer to rubbish, so if you don’t want incinerators you have to throw less away.

The stage that was missing in this move from being subjects of an overlord and from the spirit of deference that died in the 1960s is the growing up stage to be responsible adults who take responsibility for ourselves and those around us. The process, with the modern opiate of consumer goods, didn’t encourage this. The passage from the Acts of the Apostles (2:42-47), our first reading, which spoke so directly about being generous and holding things in common, encourages us to grow up and behave like adults. We have to realise, and the first Christians knew this, that unless we stand together we fall apart. The best way to live is to take the gifts God gives and ensure that they work for the common good, because that is actually the best way to bring about abundant living. Hording for ourselves actually brings death and isolation. We end up in fear as those who have nothing and are shut out become a threat and so the ones being mean reap a bitter harvest.

This is more than relevant to Christian Aid Week, which asks us to expand our horizons to the poorest people in the developing world. But people who are generous locally are actually generous globally. The adage ‘charity begins at home’ means this is where we learn how to be generous, not this is where it should stay. Generosity is a liquid rather than a solid. And the thing about liquids is that they flow. They are very difficult to trap and contain. If there is the slightest gap they will seep out and start to soak everything around them. This irrigating generosity makes abundant life grow.

It is not religion that is the modern opiate of the people, as Karl Marx called it, it is being consumers without a mature and developed sense of the responsibilities that goes with it. The point of his opiate comment was that it is something aimed to keep us in our place and it’s gone septic. It’s gone septic because the corresponding notion of democratic living requires us all to take charge of our communities together. Yes there will be leadership, and there needs to be otherwise you get anarchy, but it has to be one that coordinates for the common good. This is some of the thinking that lies behind the big society, and churches have been there for 2,000 years, so we know a thing or two about it and have a spirituality to sustain it. But it will require a social change, it will take a transformation in social thinking, for it to catch on totally and we will see how this is encouraged and nurtured.

The message from the Acts of the Apostles is that it is only together that we can reach out to receive the gift of abundant life held out to us. Just treating it as a commodity to be taken privately and horded will mean we fail to grasp it in the first place. When abundant life really gets hold of us we find that liquid generosity comes with it and that changes the world.

Sermon preached at St Mary's Church, Whitkirk, Leeds Sunday 15th May 2011

Lady Gaga: Judas

2011-05-12T15:50:00.001+01:00

The singer Lady Gaga is known for her provocative outfits and music. Her latest song, Judas, has also caused a bit of a stir with some in her home country, the USA. The song begins with Jesus and his disciples riding motorbikes, with Lady Gaga playing the Mary Magdalene character riding pillion behind Jesus. Each of the disciples has their name written in studs across the back of their leathers. Jesus is the leader of the pack. The biblical references come thick and fast, as do the references to other films and songs. There is a scene of her washing Jesus' feet in quite a sensuous way. That is the point of that scene in the bible, the woman who does this is of questionable virtue and those with Jesus take great offence at her provocative behaviour.

Later there is a scene reminiscent of Jesus being arrested. Lady Gaga's character produces a gun which turns into a lipstick and she uses this to mark Judas' face. Is she making a deeper point about how virtue is sold out, how sexuality courts danger, how vanity leads to destruction?

The point of the song is a profound one. Jesus is her virtue, but Judas is the demon she clings to. There is a dark side to us which can exert a very strong pull over us. Judas, who betrayed Jesus, is not as foreign to us as we may like to think. And in the gospels Judas is not the only one who betrays Jesus. Peter denies him three times, all of the male disciples except John run away; it is only the women, among them Mary, who stay through to the bitter end. It begs the question, what are the ways that we cling to the Judas demon at the expense of the Jesus virtue?

The song also raises questions about where we place sexuality in our faith and outlook. Is it actually a vice or a virtue? What makes it one rather than the other? How much has traditional Christianity become labelled as viewing sexuality as inherently sinful, whereas with the marriage service and its delighting in a couple delighting in one another it should be something at the heart of our faith. How much of our sexuality is virtuous, and how much of it is laden with guilt - justified and not justified?

Far from taking offence at Lady Gaga, she has given a great discussion starter, and reminded us of some profound truths about ourselves, how we view ourselves and the interplay between virtue and vice.

Democracy and Easter

2011-05-08T14:23:00.005+01:00

This week democracy has been in the news, in obvious and not so clear ways. We went to the polls on Thursday to exercise our democratic right and responsibility in electing councillors. We also had the chance to say whether we wanted to change the voting system to AV and decided overwhelmingly to leave it as it is.

The less obvious link to democracy came in the discussion around the death of Osama bin Laden. One of the more interesting points being made by a number of commentators was that the Arab spring, as it is being called, the surge for democracy in several Arab nations is a sign that many of the people in those countries have rejected the way offered by al-Qaeda. They have turned their back on narrow divisions, and Christians and Muslims have joined together to seek a democratic system. How this develops we wait to see.

Peace and liberation have a way of asserting themselves. In time bullies and tyrants overplay their hand and are overthrown. A generation has grown up in Northern Ireland who can’t remember the troubles, many more have had a taste of peace and there is a determination not to go back to sectarian strife.

In these days after Easter the readings in many churches give us the accounts of the earliest days of the Christian faith. There were attempts to stamp out this new faith, but truth will not be silenced. Just now we heard how two friends were walking to Emmaus after reports of Jesus’ resurrection were circulating (Luke 24:13-35). Together they struggle to understand what has taken place and together they support one another in their growing understanding. The story of the encounter on the road to Emmaus has become a metaphor for discipleship. It has even given its name to a course for new Christians called ‘Emmaus’.

It is not accidental that the accounts of the church’s first days are about people being together rather than on their own. It is not accidental that the accounts of the struggle for democracy are about people being together rather than on their own. We are made to work things out together and not alone. There is a song in the charts at the moment by Charlie Simpson called ‘Down, Down, Down’ which expresses this very simply. Towards the end it includes this refrain, repeated several times:

“If people on earth could just get together
then maybe we could find a place for each other.”

Voting and the emerging struggle for democracy in the world help us see that the new life of Easter leaves nothing untouched. As it liberates from death so it brings hope to spring up in our common life too. Rather than driving people apart it draws us together.

Talk on BBC Radio Leeds, Virtual Service 8 May 2011

King James Bible

2011-05-01T14:29:00.003+01:00

In the churchyard, next to the wall by the church hall, is a chest tomb gravestone which says:

“Sacred to the memory of Mrs Catherine Wade of Halton the last descendant of the family which in the 14th century produced the Reformer Wickliffe.”

John Wycliffe was from Yorkshire, but spent most of his time as an academic in Oxford. His story begins a little while earlier with the resurgence of learning which we call the Renaissance. This ‘new birth’ in learning brought the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible into wider circulation. These were compared with the Latin version then in use and they didn’t always match up. As this was pointed out the response from the church authorities was not encouraging to say the least, indeed many of those who raised these discrepancies were charged with heresy and disciplined, some killed.

What emerged was as much a political battle as it was a theological one. The struggle for the Bible to be in English was partly to sort out these discrepancies but also to force the hand of obstructive bishops. If the people could understand the Bible in their own tongue they would know what it said and doctrine would have an open and transparent measure; the development of tradition would have to explain itself rather than just be imposed.

John Wycliffe joined in this debate and argued that the Bible should be in the vernacular – the common tongue – so that people did not have to rely on priests for its interpretation. He was all for people being able to read it for themselves:

“Christ saith that the gospel should be preached in all the world. Holy writ is the scripture of peoples for it is made that all peoples should know it.” (Karen Armstrong The Bible, 2007, p154)

Wycliffe translated the Bible into English and was attacked for doing so. A chronicler at the time hissed that he had:

“translated from Latin into the language not of angels but of Angles (English), so that he made the Bible common and open to laity, and to women who were able to read, which used to be reserved for literate and intelligent clergy.” (Gordon Campbell Bible: The story of the King James Bible, 2010, p9)

That is of course exactly what he was trying to do but for Wycliffe this was an accolade not an insult.

So begins a long journey, which travels through the troubles of the Reformation and the untidy movement and counter movement which that represents. Some of those involved were killed, martyred, for their determination and efforts. William Tyndale, whose work forms the backbone of later translations, was strangled before his body was burned at the stake in Antwerp 1536. The irony is that a year later an official version, using much of his work, was published in England and placed in every church. The idea that the Church of England was formed only to sort out Henry VIII's marriage problems is just not true. There was a religious movement accompanying it which used these political events to bring in theological changes and the Bible in English is a major part of it.

We are very familiar with the rapid changes that occurred between the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The accession of James I in 1603, grandson of Temple Newsam House – his father having been born there – brought these squabbling factions to his in-tray. His response was to commission a new Bible. There were things in the existing official translation he didn’t like and so this was an opportunity to get rid of them. What is more a translation commissioned by him would have his backing and reinforce his standing. It took 7 years, but in 1611 what we now call the King James Bible was released. It wasn’t actually a new translation, it was a revision of the previous ones and much of it is Tyndale’s work so its language is more 16th century than 17th century in style. In other words it was quite old fashioned when it was published.

Because it was a revision and not a new translation it was not entered in the register of new books at the Stationers Company. So we don’t know its precise publication date, but 2nd May is the traditional date and in the absence of other information that is why we are commemorating its 400th anniversary today.

The King James Bible was the standard text for 350 years until the middle of the last century when it was revised and brought into more contemporary language. The version we use regularly, the New Revised Standard Version, is itself a revision of it. This took account of more recent scholarship and that is in the spirit of those who struggled, even died, to bring about the KJB.

The Bible is not just a work of literature, though it is that. It exists to inspire faith and help shape our faith. It doesn’t do that on its own because we have the journey of the ensuing millennia which leads us to today and we have all of the current understandings which have radically changed the way we see the world in some ways. We call this the appeal to Scripture, Tradition and Reason in our Anglican way of understanding authority. For Scripture to be part of that it must be understood and in a language that connects with who we are. The King James Bible belongs to history; I don’t think it has a place in our regular worship, though it is good to use it today for interest’s sake. It is an important marker on the journey to keep the Bible accessible. The story of its production is the story of the struggle to have the Bible in English and it is fundamentally linked to the Reformation, which is written into our title deeds. I would say the same about the Royal Wedding on Friday with its archaic language, just not relevant to contemporary living. Fantastic spectacle that it was there was an opportunity to showcase the best of contemporary Anglican liturgy and it was missed, which to my mind is a shame.

We honour the people and the tradition which produced the KJB by making sure that the Bible we read is contemporary, the fruit of the best scholarship available and that it enables, in Wycliffe’s words, the gospel to be ‘preached in all the world’ so that all peoples may know it. And if that sounds familiar, it should. It was how our gospel reading for this morning ended. ‘But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that through believing you may have life in his name.’ (John 20:31)

Sermon preached in St Mary's Church, Whitkirk, Leeds Sunday 1st May 2011

Royal Wedding

2011-04-30T15:19:00.005+01:00

Yesterday an estimated 2 billion people across the world tuned in to watch the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. It was a wonderful and heart warming occasion. There were several star performances, not least from the bride who carried herself with great decorum and seemed so calm in what must have been a whirl of emotions at where she found herself. Her sister was brilliant as a bridesmaid, and having seen so many in operation over the years, she was up there with the best.

The occasion seems to have captivated the nation and given us all a much needed focus of unity and celebration of our national life. One street party organiser referred to it as a brilliant excuse to get neighbours together and foster community spirit. These big shared occasions are good at cementing our identity in a positive and inclusive way; they are a living out of hope not hate and faith not fear. The new anthem by John Rutter will I am sure become the staple of many choirs up and down the country. The setting of Ubi Charitas by Paul Mealor was not one I had heard before but liked very much for its quiet and reflective depth and intricate harmonies.

If I have any questions about it, they are to do with the use of the old style of service from the 16th and 17th centuries, the Book of Common Prayer. This was a showcase event for the best of Anglican liturgy and what was shown was archaic in linguistic style and tone. Personally I find that regrettable not least because most of those watching it will think that this is what the Church of England is like and it is not.

In 17 years of conducting weddings I have not once been asked to use the old language service. To a bride and groom all have welcomed the contemporary forms of words, with of course lots of traditional elements in the ceremonial.

I wish them both much love and happiness for their future together. I am delighted that Prince William has been able to choose his bride (and Catherine her groom!) without being presented with a copy of Debretts directory of aristocracy. Her coal mining ancestry, just a few generations back, gives her a Cinderella quality and it fits well with our more egalitarian approach. The monarchy just received the renewal that it needed.

Good Friday

2011-04-22T16:31:00.002+01:00

A number of people have requested that I make the addresses I gave at Ripon Cathedral on Good Friday (21st April 2011) available online. Please click on the link to download the text.

The budget and charities

2011-04-05T11:26:00.006+01:00

The Chancellor’s budget statement back in March was a mixed box for charities.

Gift Aid

The big announcement was the introduction of a new scheme to allow charities to claim Gift Aid on up to £5,000 of small donations without the corresponding paper work – collecting tins and loose change collections. This could bring a windfall into the church’s funds of around £1250 per annum. The downside is that we have to wait until April 2013 for it to come in.

The other sting is that the transitional relief on Gift Aid donations – introduced to compensate for the reduction in the basic rate of income tax from 22% to 20% – has now ended. We can now only claim tax equivalent to 20% on donations – in other words 25p for each £1 given. Previously it was 28p. (It’s more than 20p because the donation is treated as being the net amount after tax and therefore has to be ‘grossed-up’.)

Inheritance Tax

The other announcement was the inducement to leave at least 10% of your estate to a charity through your will. The tax advantages are for those whose estates by my calculation will be worth over £370,000. Then any tax due will be at 36% rather than the standard 40% for inheritance tax. Of course any gifts to charities through a will reduce the value of an estate for inheritance tax purposes anyway, so the more you give, the less tax has to be paid. Estates worth less than £325,000 (including after charitable bequests) do not pay inheritance tax.

Gifts through wills are a significant source of money for charities – and we are a charity. Recent donations have enabled various projects which without that funding would not have been possible. This is long term planning, but we’ve been here for over 1,000 years, so we tend to think long term! If you would like to talk about this further please let me know. Bequests can either be for general giving or can be for a specific purpose – say the maintenance of the church buildings, to further the church’s mission, for music. If you specify the purpose then we can only use it for that purpose and it becomes ‘restricted income’ in the accounts.

End to Tax Return Donations

To help fund the introduction of online claims for Gift Aid, the government are withdrawing the ability to have any tax refund due to you paid direct to a charity. This will be for tax returns for 2011-12 onwards.

Income Tax Thresholds

The aspiration to increase personal allowances to £10,000 will mean that some people will no longer pay tax and therefore won’t be able to give through Gift Aid. As this progresses, we can expect a reduction in our income from this source.

For those who pay tax at higher rates, the threshold where this applies is reducing as the aspirational allowance rises! Any donations made to charities under Gift Aid increase the basic rate band and so there is an inducement from the government to encourage higher rate tax payers to be generous!

For the future

The consultation on how to integrate National Insurance and Income Tax will be an interesting process. If they are amalgamated this will make the basic rate 32%, rather than the current 20%. The knock on effect of that would be for employees under 65 no change at all because that is what they are paying at the moment in total. NIC is not a headline tax and so most people don’t spot it! For those over 65 or who have significant unearned income – not currently liable to NIC – that would be a tax hike. My guess is this kind of collateral damage is what the consultation is to address – though given the government’s determination to reduce the deficit in the short term I wouldn’t rule anything out! However on the plus side a basic rate of 32% would mean that Gift Aid donations would be worth 47p for every £1 given! That would nearly double our income from this source. We will see what this brings...

Prior to ordination Ian was a tax accountant.
Inheritance planning is complicated, so specialist professional advice should be sought.

April Fools

2011-04-01T13:58:00.005+01:00

So which of these are obvious April Fool stories? The Independent has two contenders. Firstly, the Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson owns a lighthouse on the Isle of Man and is in a planning dispute with ramblers over blocking a path they have been accustomed to using. It has the hint of the absurd, but then there are a number of stars who have wanted to protect their privacy and the story seems rather straight. So I think this might be genuine.

Next Portugal has sold Ronaldo to Spain to help with their national debt. Footballers are so well paid that some of their cash would probably come in handy for most European governments at the moment struggling to balance the national books! There are lots of facts which bored me rigid when reading through this story, but at the end the idea that Vince Cable would propose a Ferrari tax to help fund a counter bid, it must be false.

The local Evening Post has a story on its facebook page of a pets social networking site to help them keep in touch. Now I'm friends with a friend's dog, so this is not quite as odd as it sounds, except that I don't really believe it's the dog who does the typing. So, I think I've spotted another one.

The truth can be stranger than fiction and sometimes you really can't make it up. But what seems foolishness depends on what we think is sensible. To Romans the idea that a hero could be crucified was foolishness. The ideal man in Roman thinking was a macho man and so crucifixion represented the ultimate emasculation and humiliation. There was no way that God could be associated with such a person let alone be such a person. But as St Paul goes on to say 'the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom' (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

The origins of April Fools is not clear, but it seems to have its roots in the various pranks of masking identity and playing tricks. We see this in Shakespeare in his plays, like 'A midsummer night's dream' and a number of others where people switch and play with what is real. And that is the point. It is a childlike playing with reality that enables us to explore the difference between wisdom and delusion. And as we know, things that look crazy can be the best course of action and things which look so solid and sensible come crashing down. It is a strange rule that the more generous I am the more I seem to have. The more I try to hoard the more I find money slips away. But then that may be because money is a resource to make things happen, not an object to be adored for its own merits.

Risking being mistaken as fools and thereby challenging what really counts as wisdom is part of our calling. This is how God approaches the world in creating anything rather than nothing. There is a foolishness built into the plans of the universe and living in tune with it is paradoxically the beginning of wisdom. It is foolishness to risk the cross and yet through it the wisdom of the purpose behind the universe is revealed. Love expends itself and in so doing gives life in all its fullness.

For all who dare to be mistaken as fools and challenge what really counts as wisdom today is our day.

Census 2011

2011-03-26T17:54:00.004Z

This Sunday is census day. If you haven’t already filled in the form, then it is time to get out your black pen and take part in the ten yearly census of who we are as a nation – including working out how you describe what you actually do in your job in no more than 34 characters. This will give a picture that will shape decisions about public services for the future and provide historians of the future with a well of important data about the makeup of this nation. The last census revealed that far more people claimed to be Christian than had previously been thought and this information provides weight for arguing that hospitals need chaplains. So whatever the temptations to put Jedi or whatever under religion, there are implications that can be far reaching.

I don’t expect that many of us will have a moment of profound revelation while ticking boxes and assessing who lives in the household or is a staying as a house guest for the weekend. But it is an opportunity to look at what we have written and say with honesty, this is me. This is who I am and who shares my lot. This is who stands before God, comes to the well of life and is filled with his grace. This is the person who is loved by God and whom he calls to follow him. And I am part of the tapestry of our nation.

Set this census alongside the Christian Aid 'Count Your Blessings' sheet, which along with thousands of others I am using this Lent for reflection and to make a daily gift towards their work, and we see the contrast in the picture. We see what we have and just how much we have to be grateful for. Today’s reflection gives us a girl in Bangladesh who, like the Samaritan woman in the gospel story who meets Jesus at the well at Sychar, has to walk for three hours to fetch water for her household each day. We can be stirred by this to ask why does someone still have to do this in 2011. Surely this should have ended by now?

Is our response to this census, and indeed the count your blessings sheet, one of thanksgiving or are we like the Israelite people in the Old Testament who moan and grumble with tiring repetition? All through they received amazing gifts: a cloud and fire satnav to guide them, a way to cross the Red Sea, quails and Manna and a spring of water. Yet they soon forget and grumble. Will nothing satisfy them? Will nothing satisfy us?

A census gives us a self portrait of our life and invites us to reflect on it with thanksgiving and hope.

Seeing hope in the cross of Christ

2011-03-20T17:32:00.005Z

There are a few creatures which just give me the judders. They tend to be the things that slither and crawl and bite. So whenever crocodiles come on the TV I can feel my toes curl and lift my feet off the floor. The other group are snakes. Susan and I went to a party a number of years ago and it was themed as a Bedouin tent. For some reason best known to the host he’d employed a woman to walk round with a snake. So I spent the evening making sure she was at the other end of the room and there was no way we were going to meet.

Snakes have featured in our readings for the second week in a row. Last week the serpent egged on Eve to take a bite out of that apple in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). The result was their eviction and all sorts of calamities. This week there is a passing reference in the gospel to a snake on a pole in the wilderness (John 3:1-17). This refers to a story from the Book of Numbers (21:1-9), where the people are moaning again in their wandering around the wilderness. God sends snakes to bite them and many die. It carries a warning, moaning can kill. It slithers around us and works very subtly. In time it swallows us whole, squeezing all of the joy of living out of us. The bite injects poison into the blood stream of the body – be it a person or community. The bible has a very graphic way of imaging vices that can destroy.

The remedy to this malady is for Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole so that all can see it. Miraculously those who look at it live. This is not about worshipping an idol, which is very much on the banned list of the Old Testament. There is no claim that the serpent on a stick has magical powers. The idea is to be reminded of God and the Law which should shape their lives, which is one of the messages that the Book of Numbers is concerned to get across. The second century BC Book of Wisdom has a reflection on this story. The terrible rage of wild animals came upon them, destroying by the bites of writhing serpents, but this warning is alleviated by “a symbol of deliverance to remind them of [God’s] law’s command. For the one who turned towards it was saved, not by the thing that was beheld, but by you, the Saviour of all” (Wisdom 16:5-7). The serpent is a representation of God’s healing. There were mythical serpents, some flying and fiery – it’s bad enough when they are slithering, without them being airborne – and it may be that this story has its roots in those.

With the hindsight of psychotherapy, we know that there is great wisdom in confronting your fears. Look at the thing that spooks you and take away its power. The myth will be worse than the reality, though snakes do bite, so a little fear is not a bad thing for self preservation, just get it in perspective. The reminder from this snake is not ‘confront your fear’, but ‘remember who you are and who God is’. God is with you and if you live with and for God, you will have what you need to make it through the dangers and trials around you.

The desert is a dangerous place and some of its creatures are vicious. It has often been taken as a symbol of the life of faith. In the desert we are reduced to our most basic. We are exposed to the elements and the beasts, provisions are limited and we have to live simply. The excesses belong to the oasis and cities. Lent is of course our desert time. We journey through it reduced to what really matters and with a greater simplicity to remind us who we are and who God is. We travel through it to remember that God is with us and ahead of us. We come from God, travel in God and our end is in God too. This is medicine for the soul and it combats the moaning, the grumbling and the poison these inject into our souls from so many sources.

The reason this story of a snake being raised on a pole is mentioned in the gospel is because John makes a link between it and Jesus being lifted up on the cross. The cross has become the central symbol of our faith. For some it is bling, with a man on it, for some it is plain and wooden. As with the serpent in the wilderness this reminds us of who we are and who God is. It does confront our fear, the fear of death and despondency. There is poison that can infect us. The cross, in showing God’s love for us, a love that will give of itself completely, does not end in death but in life. It takes us to the resurrection that turned it from a symbol of defeat and shame to one of triumph and glory. But the pain and the suffering are there and precisely because they are there it has earned the right to speak to who we are and where we are.

Like many I have been silenced by the immense power of water in Japan. Pictures of before and after are awful in their terror. Towns and villages have not just been destroyed, but erased from the landscape. The forces that have done this are the same forces that enable this planet to support life in the first place. That which gives us life also limits it and takes it away. When we want to make sense of this we need a reminder of who we are and who God is. We are mortal and the desert and the cross remind us of that. We are vulnerable to many dangers and the desert and the cross remind us of that. We are beloved and the cross, Jesus lifted up for us, reminds us of that. The symbol we need is the cross of Christ because it carries the pain and it proclaims our hope.

Snakes make me shudder. The images from Japan silence me. I know I am mortal, you can’t be diabetic and not know that, and sometimes I find that easier to accept than at other times. In the cross of Christ we have not just an image, but God’s love held up for us. That helps us live now with hope and thanksgiving and also look forward to all that shall be with confidence in his unfailing goodness, whatever may bite us in the meantime.

Sermon preached at St Mary's, Whitkirk, Leeds 20th March 2011

Doing the sums of academies

2011-03-18T20:59:00.005Z

I was at a meeting earlier this week exploring the new academies policy for education. This is where schools can convert from local authority control to a greater degree of independence by becoming new look academies. The hook is the prospect of greater control over admission, setting their own pay and conditions for staff (though the unions will no doubt press for parity here), greater freedoms over the curriculum and the ability to change the length and dates of their terms and the timing of the school day.

There are also some financial enticements. All schools have lost £104 per secondary student and £44 per primary pupil from their budgets for 2011-12. This has been top-sliced out of LEA budgets directly. Those who take up the academy offer now will gain £104 per secondary student and £44 per primary pupil. It would seem a no-brainer. But wait, there are stings in the small print. In becoming one of these remodelled academies the school will also take on responsibility for the pension scheme deficit.

Hang on a moment, they will what? Government pension schemes are underfunded and this has been known for a long time. So if schools have to take on this deficit, from their existing budgets, by magic a major problem for the future will be transferred off the minister's desk and into every staff room. Given that school budgets are already overstretched, this burden does not seem very realistic. Certainly it will add a further strain to already strained finances.

Schools that convert will also have to find the support services that are currently provided by the LEA from elsewhere. The more that convert, the less these services will be viable for the ones remaining. A major change is in the making and there is a big question mark hanging over how exposed this leaves them for the future.

I've been a school governor long enough now to know that bright ideas come and go in education. The ones that don't stack up usually mean that sooner or later a u-turn has to be made to plug the unsustainable hole that emerges. Something tells me we have the makings of another one here.

Best reply to Richard Dawkins

2011-03-14T19:34:00.006Z

Professor Brian Cox seems to be the man of the moment. Previously famous for being the keyboard player in the 1990s group D:Ream, whose song 'Things can only get better' provided the soundtrack for Tony Blair to make his triumphal entry into Downing Street in 1997. He is now a premier division physicist working at Cern on the Hadron Collider. If anyone still thought all pop stars are thick, this proves beyond doubt they are wrong. Another big name in a new field is Revd Richard Coles, formerly the keyboard player for The Communards, now Church of England vicar and Radio 4 star of Saturday Live. Keyboard players are clearly a clever lot - I am biased!

I've heard two interviews with Brian Cox this week. Firstly with Jo Whiley on Radio 1 and today on Start the Week on Radio 4. In both interviews he gave the best riposte to Richard Dawkins' militant atheism that I have heard. He simply says that while he doesn't believe in God there is nothing incompatible between science and religious belief. There are many scientists who do have a faith. Get over it. The science he presents in his current TV series, Wonders of the Universe, is infused with awe and wonder and he marvels at all he beholds. Science is simply the study of nature. That awe and wonder is for me the starting place for religious belief.

He says that we know a great deal about several billionths of second after the big bang, but nothing about the big bang itself. It is so refreshing to hear such a major scientist admit what he doesn't know and what is currently unknown. While this could easily become a God of the gaps faith, it does show that science hasn't ruled God out.

Resetting the spiritual sat nav

2011-03-10T15:06:00.002Z

There are quite a few major debates occupying our time at the moment. How to bring the nation’s finances back under control after having maxed out on the joint credit card brings us competing certainties. Many of these are actually intelligent guess work based on the study of the past, but the lack of consensus leaves us confused. Money is tight, jobs are fragile.

Internationally old power structures are facing challenges they have not seen in generations. Iraq and Afghanistan have shown us that the removal of one despot does not bring immediate solution because the new order has to be created and embedded. When some refuse to accept its legitimacy or have a radically difficult vision and refuse to accept the direction then a very difficult period ensues.

Within the church, nationally, the progress towards the consecration of women bishops is making its slow progress. I did think this was a certainty, just a matter of time, but the minority who are opposed to it are very well organised and have a powerful voice – a disproportionately strong voice – in our decision making structures.

In Yorkshire the review of how the dioceses are organised offers the prospects of a shake-up bringing three dioceses together as one mega diocese covering West Yorkshire and The Dales. Locally, we continue on our smaller scale version of creating a new team ministry with Halton, Osmondthorpe and All Saints.

It is precisely in this kind of world that we need Lent to help us. Lent takes us to the core of our faith and is a time when we renew the hope that directs us. It culminates in Easter at the end of this month, the most important festival of the Christian Year, and we prepare for it by giving ourselves space to refresh the frame through which we observe and assess the world around us. Much of this comes through the power of story, principally the Bible stories, which are timeless in their scope. There are power struggles, rebellions against God and neighbour, moral codes to cope with finance, reminders of the importance of leadership and authority structures, assumptions about acceptable ways to behave towards others so that all flourish in justice and liberation. There is sin, which lurks in all of us, that has to be confronted, confessed and forgiven.

These stories include quite a bit of struggle and often the struggle is within the people themselves. It looks like it is about outside triggers, but the source of it lies in the hearts and minds which get distorted and lose sight of the route map that should guide them.

Lent is a time when we can reset our spiritual sat navs to help us journey through the traffic jam of issues we face. In it we acknowledge the struggle within which no one else may know about but we know about and God knows about. Our aim is to be renewed to face the world.

Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales?

2011-03-05T16:05:00.005Z

The dioceses commission proposals for the Church of England in West Yorkshire and the Dales were discussed by the Ripon & Leeds Diocesan Synod this morning. They gave a cautious acceptance to their being one mega diocese with five areas, but with some significant qualifications. The first was that 'due diligence' be carried out on the financial risks. This is code for making sure that one diocese is not exposed to risks and liabilities that will hinder it's mission. This is a very real concern because the dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield are felt not to be in good financial shape.

The idea of the new diocese being named after Wakefield was rejected overwhelmingly. To call it anything other than Leeds (if it has to be a single place) is just nonsense given the prominence of England's third city! Other possibilities include 'West Yorkshire and the Dales', which has the merit of being none of the above but something neutral.

These matters can sound like internal navel gazing when the mission of the church needs all the energy and time it can get. But these questions affect the identity of our gathering together. Just like individual Christians don't stand on their own, so churches don't either and need to relate to others. How that relating takes place for support and sharing matters.

The benefits of a larger grouping were described as shaping the church to be more resilient for the future, providing a more fluid economy of scale and enabling greater coherence when relating to civic structures of government. At the same time devolution to smaller areas would provide focus on the ground. To my mind that focus will be so concentrated that the larger area will be too remote to be owned on the ground. Pulling such a diverse and disparate larger grouping together will be a big ask.

This was just the first stage of an informal consultation before the formal process begins! But a real proposal has been put forward so it has to be taken seriously because it may just grow legs and since the Diocesan Synod has given a cautious welcome to it, it is likely to do so in some form.

Birth pains of creation

2011-02-27T18:36:00.007Z

Here’s a phrase you won’t hear me say very often! I was listening to Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 on Friday. I don’t know why, because it‘s one the few things that has me reach rapidly for the off switch, but somehow it stayed on. I found myself listening to a discussion about pain relief for childbirth, the relative merits of epidurals and other methods. For some the pain of childbirth is a distant memory, either faded by the joy of being a parent or may be it still makes you shudder or is tainted with sadness; for some it is very fresh; for some it is something to look forward to or just not part of your life!

As an image for how creation works, how life is, I find this a very powerful one. This is no afternoon stroll in the park. It captures the pains and the screaming, it takes its own time and the child comes when it is ready, whatever we do. Sometimes emergency action is required. Sometimes things go badly wrong and we stare into the abyss that is tragedy. There are no pains as raw as those of a parent losing a child. I think experiencing the birth of my children is one of the things that has made me particularly conscious of how precarious our life is and how fragile it is, but how incredibly special it is too.

We’ve had a few more reminders of how fragile our life is this week with the earthquake in New Zealand. When the earth shakes, something that we are used to being stable and solid, we talk about the bedrock and Jesus used the image of building houses on rock for stability against the waves, when the rocks shake we know we have nowhere to go. We are exposed to the elements and are as vulnerable as we can be.

Our first reading (Romans 8:18-25) used the image of labour pains as a way of talking about life and it is an evocative image because it speaks of there being purpose behind the pain. When we look at the suffering that we endure, this is not random and hopeless. Yes it hurts, but St Paul talks of it as being part of bringing new life into being. If we look at the aches and groans, the anxious moments and horrors, we are not looking at ultimate meaninglessness, a big void that shows how pointless everything is, but at what is a transition to something more glorious to come. Let me explain a bit more.

It is popular at the moment to refer to this life as being no rehearsal, there are even a number of pop songs that include that in their lyrics, that this ain’t no rehearsal. This is the real deal, the main event. Well, what we experience and share now matters. It makes us and shapes us. We love and that loving means so much to us. But for those of us who believe that there is a life to come, then this can't be the final word. Something very important is missing from that way of talking about life and death and all that surrounds it, even grief, especially grief. The hope we have is that “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). There is something about this life that is held in bondage, held captive, held prisoner, to decay and death. We know it is not perfect by any means and our grip on it is precarious. But as children of God, as children of his promise, we look for a time when these restrictions will no longer confine who we are and what we are. We don’t know exactly what this will mean but it is a longstanding hope shared with countless people across the world and across time.

I meet lots of people who are facing very difficult stages of life. For some they are finding that health is deteriorating, they have to give up things which they used to enjoy – they just can’t do what they used to be able to do. If this is all there is, if the ‘life is no rehearsal’ school has the final word, then this is a desperate plight indeed. And even if it’s not, these things can be difficult to cope with. But when we see the struggle, the pain and anxiety, as being part of the labour pains of the new creation, of the kingdom to come, there is a hope to hold us through this that something wonderful is about to be born. We enter here a profound mystery that tantalises us with a glimpse at the purpose of everything that there is.

This birthing awaits us all and one of these things about getting older is that you become more aware of it. There was a time when it all felt so far away as to be out of sight and mind, but that gap is closing and catches up with us all, sometimes suddenly and without warning.

Viewed from this angle, Jesus’ comments in the gospel reading (Matthew 6:25-34) about not worrying about tomorrow, or about our life, but strive for the kingdom of God, make more sense. He isn’t saying that clothes or food or shelter don’t matter; quite the opposite. Our heavenly Father knows we need these things. He is encouraging us to raise our sights beyond them, beyond the pains and struggles of now, because they are like birth pains, the prelude to something more glorious to come. That hope, that vision, can change how we experience what we are going through now because we know that there is a greater glory yet to be born.

For some the birth pains are greater than for others – indeed they are different for the genders; men don’t experience the pains of child birth in quite the same way as women, though that may depend on how hard they squeeze the hand in the delivery room. There are parts of the world where these pains seem to be very sharply borne. The struggle though reflects the bondage to decay from which we yearn for liberation. The confidence is in God’s kingdom in which everything is held.

This passage is part of the great Sermon on the Mount teaching. It began with the beatitudes, moved onto being salt and light, teachings about anger, moral behaviour and being someone who is trustworthy, about peace and forgiveness, charitable giving, prayer, fasting and where we locate our true treasure. So not worrying but being confident in God’s goodness is set in this wider context of living as people who trust in God in all things and allow that graciousness to spill out in everything we are and do. There are times when this is difficult and things happen to shake our confidence, not least when the earth literally is shaking beneath our feet and buildings tumble to the ground, as in Christchurch in New Zealand. We are encouraged to trust in God because he is the source and goal of our life. Everything else is like the birth pangs of his kingdom. And then we glory in the new life that is born.

Sermon preached at St Wilfrid's Church, Halton, Leeds 27th February 2011

Taking atheism seriously

2011-02-18T08:45:00.006Z

Last night Bishop Richard Harries gave the first lecture in this year's St Wilfrid's Lecture series at Ripon Cathedral. The theme is 'The Question of God: the role of faith in contemporary society' and Richard Harries gave himself the title 'God outside the box: taking serious atheists seriously'. The key was in the double 'serious'. He doesn't have much time for the loud ones, who have become a caricature of themselves and throw verbal punches at caricatures of faith, usually fundamentalists. Most of what Richard Dawkins attacks isn't recognised by most believers.

The atheism he was more concerned with was those who stare into the darkness and find nothing. It is the problem of pain and radical doubt, as he called it, that he feels we need more engagement with. We have, he said, a tendency to talk glibly about God, whereas he would prefer more glimpsing of transcendence and a sense of journeying; transcendence becoming the direction in which we tend.

The were anecdotes, of the never had it so good generation being desensitised through comfort to the deeper questions and meaning. Many are spiritual, but object to Christianity and find it morally objectionable. His response was not very clear, but he feels we have to show Christianity to be a reasonable position to take through the world being intelligible and seeing purpose through God being in the pain and joy in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is God entering into the consequences of life. The purposes of love will prevail. Ultimately he is a universal pessimist, there is nothing so bad it can't get worse, and a cosmic optimist because of the resurrection: transcendence awaits.

Nineveh's wish (Som Baoutha)

2011-02-14T17:59:00.008Z

There was an interesting post on Canon Andrew White's facebook page today. Andrew is the Anglican Vicar of Baghdad. Today he noted is the beginning of three days of fasting which he called Nineveh-tide. I confess I have never heard of this before so it sent me off to do a bit of research.

The ancient city of Nineveh is near modern day Mosul in northern Iraq. In the 6th century the region was struck by plague. The bishop, knowing they were the successors to the city in the Old Testament story of Jonah, suggested that they followed the example there. In the story God sends Jonah to warn the people of Nineveh that unless they amend their ways they will die. Jonah didn't want to go and tries to run away. He boards a ship and is caught in a storm which threatens to sink the ship. He feels he is to blame and tells the sailors to throw him overboard. They duly oblige and as he hits the water he is swallowed by a big fish. He spends three days inside the fish and prays to God for forgiveness. His prayer is answered and he is delivered to dry land, unceremonially vomited from the fish. Jonah completes his task, the people of Nineveh respond to his message and the city is saved.

The bishop saw in this story a model to save the people from the plague and instituted a three day fast for repentance. The plague is said to have stopped and on day four they celebrated. Today the Assyrian churches in the area commemorate this with three days of fasting and prayer around three weeks before Lent (which begins 10 before Lent in the West). Som Baoutha (from Syriac for 'pleading') is a spiritual preparation where self examination and repentance are central. It provides a reminder of their identity as the spiritual successors to the people of Nineveh who in the story responded to God with repentance and thanksgiving.

I am grateful to Andrew White for pointing out a practice from this ancient part of the world. I shall pray for them every time I read the story of Jonah.

Confession app

2011-02-13T14:35:00.003Z

The Roman Catholic Church has just released an app for iPhones to help with preparing for confession. Costing £1.19 through iTunes, the confession app applies a tick box approach so that users can record where they have fallen short. As an aid to focus it will have its value, but there is a risk that we start to see sin as purely a matter of legal infringement, where just following the rules keeps us on the straight and narrow and deviating from them gets you on the naughty step. When the rule is ‘don’t murder’, well few would argue. But when we start claiming loop holes to avoid confronting the true state of our heart then we miss the point. And of course the app may help confront this and open up the hidden depths behind our actions.

This is what Jesus was up against in the passage from Matthew’s gospel this morning (5:21-37). He confronted four areas where loop holes and point missing were particularly prevalent: anger and murder, adultery, divorce and swearing oaths. It comes from a longer section which goes on to tackle two more: getting your own back and hatred. These will pop up next week: some one else gets those. This week I get adultery, divorce, murder and oaths! In each of these checklist sins, Jesus takes what we think is straightforward, exposes the loop hole mentality and takes his hearers back to the original intention.

We start with the seemingly blindingly obvious. ‘You have heard it said you shall not murder’. That’s simple enough. I don’t plan to kill anyone. But if looks could kill, how many of us would find ourselves in the dock on a murder charge? Under Jesus’ rewriting of this commandment, the answer is probably all of us. He keeps going. If you insult someone, you are guilty. If you humiliate them, calling them a fool – even if they are, you are on the wrong side of the line. Name calling and defamation of character require time for amendment of life. And then when we think it can’t get worse, when we are the cause of anger in another, when we wind someone up so that they are at their wits end with us, we are told to go and sort it out. It’s no good coming to church with great gifts or seeking peace when the source of the conflict is elsewhere.

Of course people can take offence at us not because we have done anything particularly but because we trigger other things in their heads. Psychologists call this transference, where emotions really due somewhere else get transferred to someone else. Clergy experience this all the time, but then so do all of us because it’s a basic human failing that we all do. We can’t blame anyone or even accept the blame ourselves for other people’s hang ups.

Jesus’ point is that a mere tick box approach doesn’t begin to touch the scope of sin in our lives and around our lives. No I haven’t murdered anyone, but there’s quite a body count when it comes to anger, malicious looks and insults – thought, if not actually spoken.

Adultery also seems obvious when thinking about someone who is incapable of fidelity, to put it politely. It gets more difficult when relationships are strained and temptation walks in; when one is treated cruelly and finds consolation elsewhere. That is to view this passage through modern eyes. In Jesus’ day adultery had a very specific definition. It only applied when it involved a woman who was either betrothed or married to another Israelite man. So a man committing adultery was not violating his own marriage, just that of the other man! The double standard gets worse because it’s only the woman who was expected to show unconditional fidelity. Jesus tells them that this kind of thinking misses the point. Adultery is not just about a physical act, it begins in the heart. Under his ethic, women have the same dignity as men. This is one of those places where Jesus shows women much greater respect than later commentators, and especially the church, have acknowledged.

It gets worse. If looking at women lustfully, with adulterous fantasies if not intent, is enough, then one answer is the say that women should be hidden. Put them under veils and hide them out of the way so that natural beauty cannot be the cause of sin. Jesus was quite happy with the company of women as part of his disciples and he is quite clear here that he expects his disciples to behalf themselves. The issue here is not about women but men and by extension about the person coping with the attraction not the object of the attraction. Indeed it is the very objectification of another person, treating someone as an object, that is in his sights for judgement.

Adultery naturally leads on to divorce. It would be easy to say Jesus places a blanket ban on divorce. He isn’t encouraging of it and doesn’t treat it lightly by any means, but as always it is the context of his comments that are most important. The view at the time was that a husband had the right to put away his wife. If he did, she was free to remarry and it was expected that she would. The law concerned means that the husband ceases to have any hold over her. He can’t remarry her himself once he has divorced her. The abomination here is not the divorce but a man remarrying his former wife. You think EastEnders has bizarre plot twists!

Jesus is saying that there is no action that the husband can make that can break apart the marriage in the eyes of God. Marriage is to be permanent. The only caveat is adultery, which was seen as breaking the marriage bond. A husband was not only allowed to divorce in those circumstances, he was expected to. A husband who didn’t was guilty of condoning her behaviour. The challenge here comes from the Old Testament prophet Hosea who used his own wife’s infidelity and his refusal to ‘put her away’ as a sign of God’s faithfulness to his people. Even when they went straying after other gods, God would not desert them and would be like the cheated husband longing for their return. Scandalous and ridiculous, but ever-loving and deeply desiring of his wife’s return, this is how Hosea presents God. So Jesus echoes this Old Testament bond and covenant between God and his people and applies them to husband and wife.

So this passage is not really about divorce but about the closeness of the marriage bond, the covenant that it creates. Jesus expects his disciples to love and forgive without limit. There are problems where the marriage has died and where it is abusive, but I don’t think this is directly what Jesus is talking about. Except he has such a high view of it that trying to work things out and being committed to do so and not give in too easily would follow from this. If adultery can be the result of actions of the heart, as it were, and if adultery breaks the bond then there is a door way to sensitivity when it is necessary.

Anyone who has been a witness in a court will have had to swear an oath. I think refusing to do so would be contempt of court, though there are non-religious versions for those who object to the mention of God. Again, Jesus is not dealing with the obvious here. The point is that our character should be so based on truth and honesty that oaths are unnecessary. It is not the sanction of an oath that should determine our trustworthiness, but the character of who we are. If we say ‘yes’, it should mean yes. If we say ‘no’, then likewise. Whatever we say we should mean and should be relied on. A statement at the beginning of giving evidence that this is what we will do is not forbidden as such, it’s just that we should not need to have the threat of a sanction to be a truthful person.

In all of these cases – murder, adultery, divorce and oaths – Jesus demands much more from his disciples than a mere tick box approach to morality and behaviour. His concern is for the purity of the heart and everything else flows from that. It is what is inside a person that reveals their character, not looking for loop holes. A confession app may help with focusing our thoughts and self examination, but such checklists are no substitute for the attitude of the heart.

Sermon preached at St Mary's Church, Whitkirk, Sunday 13th February 2011

Wedding Show

2011-02-12T19:55:00.005Z

I've been to my first wedding show today. I was helping staff the Church of England stand at the Ripon Cathedral Wedding Show. It was great to meet excited and happy people making plans for a celebration of love and their commitment to each other. The Church of England stand was there to explain more about church weddings, dispel some myths and be present among all the dream-making.

The models parading on the fashion show brought a wow factor to the event. There were marquees, stately homes, photographers and cake decorators. Talking with one of the marquee firms they started at £3,000 and with the catering prices rocketed quickly to £10,000 - £15,000 and rising. The average spend on flowers is £1,500. Little individual cheeses for the guests as a novelty for the tables came in at £1+ each - so for 100 guests that's £100+ on novelties alone. Handmade and custom decorated cakes could be £500 for the really creative. Dresses, think of a number. The average wedding costing £15,000 plus was very quickly reached and viewed through the rear mirror! By contrast, at about £560 the church wedding service was loose change in the planning.

I was left wondering how much a commercial firm would reckon they would need to charge to break even if they were running our parish churches, many grade I or II listed gems of architecture. The Church of England has this week been discussing fees and we await the outcome, but they won't get close to matching the commercial pricing structure. We offer exceedingly good value for money.

Weddings is one of our specialities in the church and it is one of our resounding successes, with overwhelming customer satisfaction. It is good that people want to mark it with flare and sparkle. The exchange of vows, though, is the most important part of it and ironically it is the cheapest.

Multiculturalism

2011-02-07T21:28:00.003Z

What is the opposite of a multicultural society? Is it monocultural and therefore an intolerant one? Is it one where those of different cultural backgrounds share their gifts and all are enriched? Is it one where different groups live in ghettos and avoid all contact? The answer probably depends on what you understand the term multicultural to mean. The Prime Minister has opened up an old debate and clearly his comments do not come from a neutral base. They were made at a conference on security and therefore some have taken offence at the implied slight on those from a non-white background. We could add those from a non-Etonian-and-monied background too, because to claim that even white Britain is monocultural is plainly not true. So some degree of diversity is a given.

The question is how much diversity can a society accept before it starts to fragment. There has to be a core that holds all within it together. There has to be a social contract that all buy into so that they can function with a degree of peace and stability. The debate that has been raging for several decades now is what should shape that core.

Clearly British culture and society is founded on a Christian heritage, which began 1400 years ago and has gone on a journey that embraced the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries, passing through what is called the Enlightenment (the affect of science and industrialisation on the world of thought) and after the World Wars of the 20th century led to an increasingly secular outlook. It remains built on Christian principles and treasures these in the form of human rights and the fundamental equality of all people. There are other cultural reference points too.

Few would dispute that those who come to this country have their opportunities enhanced by learning English and accepting the liberal democratic basis of the society they inhabit. The freedom to dissent remains a cornerstone of our political system and the freedom to worship or not to worship is also part of how we are.

The people of Egypt are going through a struggle to define their identity at the moment in the form of political unrest. Many want to change their government. No doubt behind this there are competing convictions about the shape of what will emerge and how much that will be peaceful is yet to be seen.

I am not convinced that Britain is a multicultural society in terms of all cultures being of equal dominance. We are cosmopolitan in flavour but there is a dominant culture which is the result of centuries of history. But it isn't static and it changes with the influences on each generation, those who come and those who go. We have many different cultural groups within us and they enrich us by their presence. Overtime they become part of who we are and must if they are not to be ghettoised. Every society, though, needs to know what the ground rules are even if some want to work to change them and that has happened with attitudes to women's equality and sexuality to name just two.

These debates provide an opportunity for us to reflect on what matters to us about who we are, what shapes that identity and how we embrace and learn from those who move in next door.

Bank Holidays

2011-02-05T14:54:00.003Z

This year the 'Easter' holidays and bank holidays are a mess. Because the date of Easter falls on one of the last possible dates many local education authorities have plumped for an early 'Easter' break. With a royal wedding extra bank holiday thrown in to the mix, schools in Leeds will only be open for 7 days in April. This will be highly disruptive to their flow. Because of this I will be taking my post Easter break in Lent!

The government has just announced a review of the early May bank holiday. It always feels like a bank holiday at the wrong time of year to me. We're not long back from the Easter break, it isn't time for a half term and we get a long weekend - well I don't but those who don't work at weekends do. I have long thought that what we need is a bank holiday in October, around the time of the half term. The spacing of terms and half terms gives a good pattern for work and rest, ensuring regular time off for renewal and spending time with those who give us life.

I'm not convinced that any new bank holiday should be linked to a sea battle off the coast of Spain in 1805 (Trafalgar). Surely we should be celebrating who we are today and looking forward. No doubt it was an epoch shaping event in its time, but there have been many of those, and we do have Remembrance Sunday to recall the losses and results of war.

Whatever is decided in the long run, a late Easter and pre-Easter school holidays have not been a good mix.

Sacrificial living and giving

2011-01-30T16:26:00.005Z

Candlemas has a special resonance (Luke 2:22-40). The story has all the elements which new parents know so well: strangers making adoring comments about the newborn, the deep need to go to a holy place to give thanks for the child and seek God’s blessing. For our older friends it has the honouring of the aged Simeon and Anna who in their separate ways have kept the torch of faith and hope alive through some dark and unpromising days. They have ensured that the rumour of God was kept alive, as one person has said about the church. Mary knows her child is special, every parent does, and this is confirmed. What will this child become? Well we know this story from the other side.

The story also includes elements that are strange to our ears. Another name for today is the Purification of Mary and it carries that dark undertone that women are made unclean through childbirth. This was translated into our own culture as the churching of women and many of you will remember it well. How times have changed and in 18 years of parish ministry I have never been asked to church any women, to purify them after childbirth, and would ask some serious questions about whether they really see themselves as being unclean if I was asked to.

We’ve had a reminder this week of what happens when undertones turn septic with the murder of a gay rights activist, David Kato, in Uganda. He was beaten to death with a hammer on Wednesday and his photo had previously been used by a Ugandan newspaper in a story calling for gays to be executed. Language can be dangerous because it justifies attitudes and the actions that follow. If those attitudes are life affirming, then it creates the framework for moral behaviour. If they are hate filled then it becomes a cancer that leads to death and destruction. The Anglican Communion needs to shape up here. It really can’t say with one breath ‘treat people nicely’ and yet with the other shout that gays are evil. When we don’t object to the some of the vile things that are being said by some church leaders we become complicit in where these statements lead.

So we have in Mary going to the Temple to be purified Jesus making his entrance in a world with certain attitudes and assumptions about women and God. As we follow his story we will find that Jesus leaves neither of these unchallenged. He will change the way we see ourselves, others and God.

The other element in this Candlemas story is those pigeons. The religious custom of the day required a sacrifice of either a pair of turtle-doves or if you couldn’t afford that, two young pigeons. We could find pigeons easily in our back garden and on the church roof; turtle-doves are a bit harder to lay our hands on. This is their offering to God and as a sacrifice it means the birds would be slaughtered. To celebrate life, life was offered. The Old Testament is mixed on this. The older passages say that God found the smell of the meat cooking to be a pleasing odour. Later passages say that God has no need of sacrifices. If he wants meat, since he made it all, he can get his own. What God requires is justice and mercy and to live in a way that honours him. In fact when that does not happen he finds the smell of the sacrifice repugnant. So already at the time of Jesus the tradition about sacrifices was mixed and had a thread of significant dissent.

After Jesus’ resurrection the church very quickly moved away from sacrifices. In fact, there is no mention of them. It saw Jesus as the one sacrifice to remove all others. Once he had died, once God had given himself for us, how could anyone equal that let alone top it. But the language stayed on, partly because pagan cults and Jewish practice were still sacrificing and the images were around them to allude to. The language that the first church writers, like St Paul, use takes sacrifice as an offering, a gift of our time, our money and most importantly ourselves. The life that is offered is our own life and the prayer we use each week at the end of this service picks up on this. ‘Though [Jesus] we offer [to God] our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice’.

If we give ourselves in this manner there is nothing in our lives that is kept back. The whole of who we are, the whole of everything we have is seen as being given to God. This is no loose change mentality. The number of people who say at the door when we have a retiring collection at baptisms ‘Oh, I haven’t got any change’ is very high. Well for the casual visitor that is one thing, but it is not good enough for those of us who profess to be living this every minute of every day. And nothing short of that is asked of us. Living the Christian life touches every aspect of who we are, or it doesn’t touch anything really.

So the attitudes we display are part of what we call sacrificial living. The way we celebrate, be it the newborn or lives of long service, is seen through the lens of gifts from God and to God. How we decide how much money we will give is intimately bound up with how we see our lives belonging to God and being completely for God. Over the new few days and weeks letters will be going to everyone who is part of our planned giving scheme asking you to review how much you give to support the work of the Church. You are the people who have signed up to be regular supporters of the work of the church and so we need to ask you to reflect prayerfully on the support you give. I don’t know how much people give individually but I know some take this very seriously and some take the loose change attitude. The level is not necessarily the point here, after all it was the poor person’s offering given for Jesus in those two pigeons, so rich doesn’t necessarily equal better. What counts is the attitude of heart, because with that generosity follows.

So when you receive your letter, this is about so much more than just paying the bills. It is about paying the bills because our income quite simply is not enough, but it is really about where the church and your life in Christ fit in your total world outlook. Candlemas tells us that it is about everything. The Christ who was brought to the Temple 40 days after his birth took the sacrifice from being a few birds to being his very self: attitudes, life, money, everything. He asks no more of us, but no less either.

Sermon preached in St Mary's, Whitkirk, Leeds Sunday 30th January 2011

Blue Monday - light to the gloom

2011-01-23T14:39:00.006Z

How’s your week been? Apparently last Monday was supposed to be the gloomiest day of the year. The third Monday of January is calculated to be the day of deep depression with credit card bills arriving after Christmas excess, the party mood is a distant memory, the days are dark, the nights are dark, the weather is miserable and so are we. I heard this week that one psychologist has even worked out a mathematical equation to give it a numerical value: W + D – d x TQ over M x NA, where W = weather, D = debt, d = salary, T = time since Christmas, Q = time since failing to quit whatever we resolved to quit at the New Year, M = motivational level and NA = need to take action. Do the sums and it is likely to be a very small number. In text speak: colon, open bracket; sad face.

If we add to this inflation running at 3.7% and pay rises running at, well possibly zero unless you are an investment banker, youth unemployment at one in five, with unemployment for Yorkshire overall at about 9%, then the winter blues are biting. We may well feel like a people who are walking in a land of deep darkness looking for a light to dawn, to pick up the image from the first reading (Isaiah 9:1-4) and quoted in the gospel (Matthew 4:12-23).

There was another report this week with a group of young people being given a chance to grill a bishop. At the end of their question and answer session with the Bishop of Sherborne in Dorset a number of them referred to the church as being an antique organisation. Antique programmes are quite popular at the moment with Cash in the Attic, Flog it, Antiques Roadshow and a few I don’t know about. They all talk about hidden treasures: some to be valued and cherished, some to be cashed in for a holiday. Not everything that is old is worn out and useless, not even in our youth obsessed celebrity culture. And not everything that appears to be new is actually new either. A light dawning for deep darkness is as relevant today as it has ever been.

Those readings, though, carry a deeper layer than a vague looking on the bright side of life. The lands of Zebulun and Naphtali are northern coastal regions, occupying the area between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea. At the time Isaiah was speaking they were under the occupation of Assyria. Perhaps these are words of hope to an oppressed region, a region cut off from its spiritual and cultural roots. By the time of Jesus they had become multicultural settlements, where the nations abounded, which of course included Gentiles to Hebrew people. Jesus choosing to go there reinforces his significance being for all nations, all peoples, all time. This is the gospel that gives us the star journeying magi as the first visitors to the infant Christ, so Matthew is making a point.

This is where he calls his first disciples; northern fishermen! You can’t get further from the metropolitan elite. The focus of Jesus is not where we expect it to be. I’m tempted to make a link between that and the obsession in the diocese commission report about train journey times to London, but I won’t! Suffice to say that Jesus’ focus is different to the priorities of so many administrators and governors down the centuries. This man turns priorities on their heads and gives his attention to those everyone else hasn’t even noticed or got a foot note for.

So the people who walk in darkness become those who are regarded as being outside the circle, however we draw it, and to them the light dawns. I would ask who is off your radar, who would therefore be those walking in darkness, but by definition because they’re out of sight we don’t see them. And that remains true today as much as over the last 2,000 years. There was a time when faith has been off radar for government, not because they were hostile as such, but because I just don’t think they understood it. I heard John Battle, the former MP for Leeds West, talking this week about gathering the heads of civil service departments together when he was the Prime Minister’s envoy to the faith communities, to focus their attention on how faith impacted on their particular areas. They just couldn’t see it until he started pointing out just how faith is integrated into the whole of a person’s and community’s life. The light started to dawn on their land of deep darkness and there is now a wider acknowledgement, though I still think there is a tendency to try to compartmentalise and privatise faith, which misses the point big time.

If Jesus came back today would he walk into cathedrals like this, or even our parish churches? Would he choose Anglican, or Roman Catholic, or Methodist, Baptist, United Reformed or one of the new church networks that have formed over the last ten or so years and have bypassed the British Council of Churches structures? Would he go in search of a northern mosque or Gurdwara to find someone to call to follow him? Some have said the new ecumenical movement is between different religions rather than between Christians, though in this Christian unity week we know we still have a lot of work to do. Jesus didn’t call his first disciples from the synagogue or shrine. He found them at work, by the sea shore. They were off radar and doing something else. But they weren’t disinterested because if they had been they wouldn’t have responded.

The challenge from Jesus going to the multicultural northern territory is that the mission of the church is to break outside of our boundaries and expectations, to go boldly where we haven’t thought before. Before we start to get too frightened about this his method was to talk normal, not churchy, to make connections with the real lives of those he met and to make faith sound natural.

His message was simple. It was the good news of the kingdom. In other words, this is God’s world and we are his. We live best when we acknowledge that and when we honour the image of God in all our brothers and sisters. Here the light dawns on the deep darkness of feeling you don’t know how to connect with this or don’t fit in, on the darkness that shuts some out by not noticing that they are there socially, economically or spiritually.

This may be a gloomy time of year, there may well be pressures weighing us down, there always have been. The call from God remains the same for us and so does the hope he holds out to us. The kingdom of God is among us and we are called to follow him, to let the light dawn on our own darkness and in that light to make sure no one is excluded socially, economically or spiritually.

Sermon preached in Ripon Cathedral, Sunday 23rd January 2011

Baptism service needs to be user friendly

2011-01-17T21:08:00.003Z

I have felt for quite a long time that the baptism service for the Church of England is not fit for purpose. It is far too wordy and too churchy wordy at that. It needs a fundamental rewrite. With this in mind I am really pleased that a motion from the Diocese of Liverpool calling for some simpler material is going to be discussed by the church's General Synod in February.

The move has come from clergy in parishes with significant levels of deprivation who have just found that the form of words we have misses the mark. I have to say I think it misses the mark for areas that aren't particularly deprived too. It's allusions and assumptions don't start where the vast majority of people who come for baptism are at.

The shock in an accompanying comment from the Secretary General of the General Synod is that the current service wasn't road tested before being published! I had heard this from someone involved in it before, but it is astounding that something as important for the mission of the church as the rite used by thousands of families with limited regular contact with churches wasn't tried out before being made compulsory. Home goals and bullet wounds to feet come to mind.

The House of Bishops feels that completely revising this service would open up a Pandora's box of argument. They think that the way forward is to provide additional alternative texts that can be used instead of the really out of touch bits. That is probably a wise and pragmatic solution. I look forward to what emerges and not least to these being tried out in real parishes by real clergy with real families before they are finalised.

Behold the Lamb of God

2011-01-16T13:21:00.005Z

I had to be in Ripon Cathedral on Friday and while I was there I took the opportunity to take some photos. Photography has become something of a rediscovered hobby for me and I wanted something to use for the diocesan worship committee facebook page. Looking at what I took later, I noticed that I’d taken a couple of images of a lamb carrying a banner or standard of a red cross on a white background – the cross of St George. One of them was taken from the roof of the crossing in front of the choir screen. The other from the bishop’s seat and it is of course part of the diocesan coat of arms.

The lamb is a symbol of Christ risen from the grave and it popped up in our gospel reading this morning. John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus coming towards him, declares “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29-42). But why is Jesus referred to as the Lamb of God? What allusions does this pick up on for the reader of John’s Gospel? I want to suggest three things that lie behind this declaration.

The first is to do with the lamb’s job, to take away the sin of the world. This picks up on some wider Jewish thought around the same time, from the Testament of Joseph, about a conquering lamb who will destroy the evil in the world. John was not referring to a fluffy lamb, skipping merrily in a field, looking cute and cuddly. In Matthew and Luke John the Baptist refers to Jesus with a ferocious picture of judgement. He will carry a winnowing fork, clean out the threshing floor – itself a fairly violent image, gather the wheat and burn the chaff. Jesus means business to John the Baptist and you’d better shape up because here comes judgement. That’s the starting point, perhaps, but John the gospel writer doesn’t leave the image there, certainly not as we travel through the gospel. So let us move on to the second image.

Fans of Handel’s Messiah will instantly hear ‘behold the lamb of God’ set to music. That work gives us various passages from the book of Isaiah called the songs of the suffering servant. It’s in the last of these that the servant is compared to a lamb being led to the slaughter (Isaiah 53). Who this servant is keeps biblical scholars going for hours, some identifying it with a prophet, some with the community or nation and some make it a group of people. John the Baptist gives no hint that he expects the lamb to suffer and die, but then no one expected the Messiah to suffer and die, so this idea is one of those after the event reflections when the first disciples tried to make sense of what they had experienced. The Lamb of God, the servant who had suffered, rang bells with powerful passages in the book of Isaiah.

These two ways of seeing the lamb, judgement and suffering servant, come together in the third. The sacrifice of the lambs for the Passover feast gave an added depth to thinking about Jesus as the lamb. It is John who breaks ranks with the other gospel writers and has Jesus crucified not the day after Passover, but on the day of preparation for it so that his death takes place at the same time as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed. The allusion is powerful. Jesus is the true Passover lamb, who will give us passage from the bondage of sin and death to the promised land of God’s kingdom. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians refers to Christ as our Passover lamb sacrificed for us (5:7). The context is telling people to sort out their lives and get rid of what he calls the old yeast in them of malice and wickedness and replace it with the new of sincerity and truth. That’s not a million miles away from winnowing, clearing out threshing floors and separating wheat from chaff, just a little less violent in its image. Jesus achieves this through the cross and resurrection and we remember this every Easter.

By referring to Jesus as a lamb John sets us up for a richer understanding of what it means to destroy the works of evil, to bring in judgement. Jesus as the Messiah, the longed for one, the one anointed by God to save them, takes a different course to the one they expect. They want a warrior leader who will kick out the Romans and they get a suffering servant who will lead them to a different new kingdom of heaven. They want a new Passover and are given one, but one that transcends political land grabs to travel not to the other side of the Jordan but to travel through the waters of death to new life. Jesus is going to make them scratch their heads in bewilderment and wonder, and it’s all there in the simple declaration that he is the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world.

Before we settle down too comfortably with this – if the suffering lamb and Passover lamb is a comfortable image – John’s followers ask Jesus where he is staying. They clearly want to find out more about him and hear what he has to say. His reply is not ‘follow me’ as it is in the other three gospels. John has him say ‘come and see’. They are invited to follow him but in doing so have their eyes opened to see the mysteries at the heart of everything; to understand that in him is life and that life is the light of all people (John 1:4).

The passage ends with Peter being told about Jesus by his brother Andrew. Peter is not present at the beginning of this scene. It was his brother who introduced him to Jesus. Peter who became one of the principal leaders of the church had himself to be led to Jesus. You never know who you are talking to in this world. We don’t know what the newest Christian will go on to do or those who start out looking a little odd or unpromising grow and develop into becoming in God’s grace. Those who we baptise or sit at the edges of occasional services, none of us know what the grace of God will work in them and stir up in them. We do know that all of us have been like Peter and had to be shown where to find Jesus, to have the Lamb of God pointed out to us.

The Lamb of God is a rich image. It carries notions of judgement and the challenge to shape up, and those are not popular concepts today. That judgement, though, is also held with one who suffers for us so that he can destroy sin in his resurrection and draw us to his kingdom to come. The lamb calls us to embark on a journey that is life changing and restoring. This lamb is our hope and salvation.

Sermon preached in St Wilfrid's Halton, Leeds Sunday 16th January 2011

Diocese Commission proposals for Yorkshire

2011-01-15T16:00:00.003Z

Structural changes do not fill all of us with excitement. They are about how an organisation functions and in that respect concern the back room functions of the Church. These though can affect the front line and if the back room doesn't get things organised there can be a pile up on the front line highway. So the diocese commission report and proposals for reorganising the Church of England in Yorkshire matters.

The background is that the commission was set up because there was a feeling that the current shape of the dioceses in Yorkshire doesn't help the mission of the church. The Church of England nationally now carries the strap line 'A Christian presence in every community'. The implication is that it sees how it relates to those communities as being important. The boundaries of the dioceses do not align with the local authority areas. This means that no one can speak for the Church of England to these areas completely. The proposal is to do some tidying up of parish and diocesan (area) boundaries to sort out the anomalies. This seems to make sense.

The main proposal to dissolve the dioceses of Bradford, Ripon & Leeds, and Wakefield and form a new mega diocese with five areas is more puzzling. Sheffield is left alone with minor boundary changes. York is bizarrely being looked at separately. The five areas, each with an area bishop, cover Leeds, Bradford, The Dales centred on Ripon, Calderdale and Kirklees centred on the larger towns of Halifax and Huddersfield, and Wakefield. They propose that the senior bishop over the whole lot be based in Wakefield. This is clearly the smaller job so he (she not an option at the moment) would have the spare capacity for the massive task of forging a sense of identity and belonging.

This is where I have problems with the whole plan. Each of the areas will have its own bishop, archdeacon and council (or Synod), be responsible for local pastoral changes, clergy training and recruitment, and in the case of three have their own cathedral/principal church. These are the major ways that a diocese relates and so they will largely become a diocese on their own. A wider sense of cohesion is not encouraged if the different regions don't meet. It is going to be a big ask for this lot to relate to each other and without an obvious focus or centre this is just not going to happen. Wakefield as the place for the cathedral - the principal church and focus - is just not viable. The report mentions repeatedly that Leeds is the hub and the western end of Wakefield diocese does not relate to Wakefield. There is no way it is going to feature prominently for the dales. So if this goes ahead the areas will effectively ignore the cathedral, which the report mentions is happening with Bradford Cathedral at the moment.

Sadly Leeds does not have a church that would be a magnet for the whole body. Leeds Parish Church is a peculiar building, more like a college chapel, so would not function well as a cathedral. Ripon Cathedral is one of the shining glories of the Church of England and has the premier choral tradition of all the contenders. If Wakefield can be considered, being situated at the southern edge of the new diocese, then Ripon is still in the running by the same token.

All in all this report requires further work. Its proposals just don't commend themselves as logical or obvious. They sound like an attempt to squeeze an expanding waistline into the wrong sized jeans! New tailoring is needed.

Open the stable door and let the Christmas horse bolt

2011-01-09T20:59:00.007Z

Our church year has now entered a strange period. The world around us has tidied away the Christmas decorations and packed away the crib set along with the Santas, the flashing lights and sending the Christmas cards for recycling. Most think the wise men came weeks ago along with the shepherds, so only placing their gifts in our crib scene on Thursday makes it seem like they are late and have missed the party. But the wisemen are not part of Christmas. They are part of Epiphany and this is one of those church seasons that needs some explanation to our ears.

Epiphany means making something known and during this season we explore the ways that who Jesus is was made known. Firstly the magi are his being made known to the world, to people beyond the confines of the Hebrew people and those who happened to be around at Bethlehem. Today the spotlight moves to his baptism as an adult and how his vocation was made known at that moment. It is given drama with a proud paternal voice from heaven declaring him to be the beloved, with whom he is well pleased (Matthew 3:13-end). The focus shifts from cute family, insular and self contained, to the whole world. For the first three Gospel writers Jesus’ baptism is the beginning of his ministry. So this is when God among us starts to impact on us and confront us. The Kingdom of God has come to us and we have to respond to that.

Epiphany is a season of the incarnation and covers the whole of January. Its purpose is to remind us that God in Christ changes how we see God and how we see the world in that light. The incarnation is the belief that God is among us, in the world and not just the originator of the world. This is no absentee landlord. His presence has a purpose and that purpose is to draw us into the very heart of God. A 4th century writer, St Athanasius, said that ‘God became human so that we may become divine’. The stuff of our life is so much more than dust and ashes. The fabric of what it means to be human has God’s branding sewn into it. In fact this is saying more than that, the fabric of what it means to be human has God sewn into it. This is a profoundly challenging faith and it jars with the popular mind that would like to keep God at a distance, remote and neatly packaged in the preserve of private thoughts. Safely contained like that, God can be sidelined and controlled. God has other ideas and the incarnation is his way of breaking free from the confines we like to construct.

Those constructs take various forms. We do it ourselves in our churches by having sacred areas and even referring to churches as God’s house. God lives here no more than he lives in a field. He is as present in the homeless shelter and drug den as he is in a service with incense and candles. God is present wherever we are and whatever we are doing. There are no secrets and no ‘no go’ areas either.

There is a political dimension to this and today the way we order of common life is brought under the searing judgement of Christ. Concern for the poor and those who struggle on low incomes is not just sympathy, a call for a bit of loose change from those who may otherwise buy yachts and super cars, it is a challenge to how we organise the world. The challenge comes from God being present and in the world, so that when we act unjustly and set up systems that keep people poor, hording for ourselves, we offend God, the God who is in them as much as in us. When we abuse and insult, when we dishonour the dignity of another, we don’t just offend them, we offend the God who is in them as much as in us.

This is all covered by that word ‘compassion’, which takes being moved with sympathy to do something about it. Whenever the gospels say that Jesus had compassion he did something about it. It is linked to mercy and the Good Samaritan is commended because he showed mercy and compassion; he did something about the man’s plight (Luke 10:25-37).

This is how we will spend the next four Sunday’s reflecting on Jesus, on God incarnate among us. This is not a remote God sitting in a cloud observing from a distance. This is God seen to be here with us, in us, sharing the fullness of what it means to be human, its joys and sorrows. And the mystery is that both are held, joys and sorrows. The sorrows spring from the purposes of God as much as the joys do. To claim anything else is to argue for there being two gods, a good one and a bad one. That is not the Christian faith. A report recently said that two thirds of people blame God at some stage in their lives and if you are going to blame anyone, express your anger for when everything is upset, then God is the one who is responsible. In Christ he takes responsibility for that and doesn’t duck it. The world is how it is because God made it this way, allows it to be like this. God gives the freedom for the choices we make. We are shaped by that freedom and the response we make and believe there is a future ahead of us released from the boundaries of this life. Some of this I think I understand and some I don’t.

The message of this season is that Christ and his presence among us is for life not just for Christmas. So much is it for life that it challenges us to think how his good news changes the way we behave and the way we order of common life. With this in mind, there is an interesting development at the moment which I’ve just spotted this week and am thinking through. A group called 38 degrees, with the strapline ‘people, power, change’, has sprung up and is using new electronic ways of communicating to call our politicians to account. They have taken their name from the tipping point for an avalanche. Once the snow overhang reaches the critical angle of 38 degrees it will come tumbling down. Their point is that there is a moment at which public opinion reaches a critical point and the public respond. They claim not to be allied to any political party and they are an interesting social development, though no doubt people like George Osborne don’t see it that way, but then he’s been on the receiving end this week of a direct challenge to him to plug the £120bn tax loopholes so that the rich pay their share of getting the economy straight and not just the lower and medium paid. Something to watch, perhaps, and see how this develops over the coming months and years, maybe even be part of.

We have now entered the season of the Epiphany when we have opened the stable door and let the Christmas horse bolt. The focus is on the importance of Christ’s coming for the whole world, the ways that is made known and its significance for how we live. The season ends with the Feast of Candlemas at the end of the month when we celebrate Christ as a light to enlighten all peoples. Our church seasons are a way that we tell the story of Christ. God refuses to be held captive, be it in the crib or church, and will burst out whenever we try to contain him because this is his world and he sets the boundaries. We don’t set them on him! Epiphany makes this known to us and calls on us to make a response to live in his light.

Sermon preached in St Mary's, Whitkirk, Leeds Sunday 9th January 2011

Wise men's fourth gift

2011-01-07T12:18:00.004Z

TV over the Christmas break was not fantastic, to say the least, but there were some gems. The irony of the Top Gear team recreating the journey of the Magi in their Christmas Special was perhaps deliberate. Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond do not always exhibit the qualities we associate with wise men. But on Boxing Day, they gave us a very 21st century 1200 mile road trip from Iraq to Bethlehem. There are perils today, as there would have been 2,000 years ago. The direct route west would have taken them through Mosul and a war zone. That didn’t appeal to them.

They tried to travel east, but the BBC is banned from Iran so that produced a dead end too. The only option left was to travel north into Turkey, the ancient route. This turned out to be more dangerous than Iraq, taking them into another war zone, this time between Turks and Kurds. This route took them through Syria and Jordan and trying to get into Israel with those countries’ stamps on your passport can cause problems, so they had two passports with them, one of them being kept ‘clean’ for the Israeli authorities.

The journey involved the usual capers and lunacy associated with the trio, but it does show that even today the journey of the Magi is no mean feat. You only make a journey like that for something truly special. The severe weather warning of ‘only travel if your journey is absolutely necessary’ applies to this big time.

The Magi remind us of the long history of what is today a very troubled part of the world. Iraq is the seat of the ancient kingdoms of Babylon and Assyria. These are ancient civilisations and places of deep learning. Today intellectual thinking and the quest for understanding calls by to pay homage at this crib. Today then is an opportunity to think about the importance of theology, of ensuring that there is a place for our brains and intellects in our faith.

There are many occasions when I think religious belief is not honoured as a serious intellectual activity. We only have to think of the way RE is regarded in schools and there is also a general rubbishing of faith perspectives in the media, though the picture is complicated because the pastoral and spiritual is deeply respected. One of the reasons behind the negative image is because religious people do not always show themselves to be very bright. Prayers sometimes sound more superstitious and almost like magical incantations than communing with the divine, the source of everything that there is. There are approaches to the bible that can sound like the intervening 2,000 years has taught us nothing about science, genetics and how we understand the world to work. When we enter the world of political comment there is ancient wisdom our not-as-bright-as-they-like-to-pretend bankers seem to be recidivist at forgetting, but we also operate under a different financial system today which is much more global and sophisticated and that has to be taken into account.

Today we are reminded of the honoured place intellectual thinking has in our faith and everything it has contributed to shaping our moral framework. One of its major contributions is that Christian faith gives us an overall picture when we have to struggle with new discoveries. It places a creator at the centre of everything. There is only one God, not two competing forces of good and evil. Everything is gift; all that we are and all that we have comes out of God’s gracious and loving activity. We have no right to expect anything, but are given everything. Human rights spring from this grace, from gift, rather than from expectation. God is faithful and even though ‘in the midst of life there is death’, which can come suddenly and without warning, the life that ends is held and honoured to the point of being drawn into the very heart of God. We believe in justice and that everyone is fundamentally of equal worth and value without exception or qualification.

This equality does not mean that we are all the same. We are not. Some have to lead and when that leadership is vision filled and inspired it sets us alive, it is a source of blessing. There are complementary roles in every aspect of our lives and all groupings, be they homes, businesses, churches or other charities, have to work out how this will work best, which may not always be the same as how it used to be organised.

The Anglican shape of this quest for knowledge and framework has three strands to be balanced. When assessing what is true we look at scripture, the bible; tradition, the shape and journey our thought has taken to lead to this point; and reason, how other disciplines and studies impact on what we know. This threefold Anglican understanding is our gift to the Christian world and it is one of the principle reasons I am an Anglican. I don’t want a pope; I don’t want to turn the bible into God – that’s bibolatry; I don’t want to be locked into a view of tradition that never changes, that’s just ignorant of what has really happened. I don’t want to chuck out all spiritual truth and restrict my thinking to the material only. I also don’t want to think of God as some kind of puppeteer, pulling strings in a game of destiny. Scripture, tradition and reason are the short-hands for a faith that takes our brains seriously in our quest for the divine and our response to the gift that is our life and hope.

So the Magi don’t just bring three gifts in the treasure box. With the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they also bring themselves, their intellect and their search for truth. They bring 'faith seeking understanding', as St Anselm put it in 11th century, and with it remind us that faith must and does excite the brain as well as the heart.

Sermon preached in St Mary's, Whitkirk, Leeds - Feast of the Epiphany 6th January 2011

Bible in English

2011-01-04T09:35:00.003Z

The New Year is famous for being the time when we take a look at our lives and make resolutions about how we are going to improve in various ways. For some it may be getting more exercise, cutting out the cakes, trying not to be so bad tempered or be a bit more assertive, to use the bus rather than the car where possible, recycle more rather than throwing it away... The list can be as exhaustive as we care to make it. The New Year is also famous for being the graveyard of these good intentions. We start well, but something just doesn’t seem to happen.

For Christians the Bible is the text which shapes how we decide what is good (= keep) and what is not good (= change). This does not operate like an instruction manual for a new phone or computer (if you can find one, rather than download the ‘read me’ file from the website). The shaping and framework it provides comes through stories and a record of how different communities at different times have felt God’s guidance and inspiration. If we are going to absorb it’s message, and therefore allow it to set the tone, then we need to know what it says. That comes in two stages. Firstly, we need to have read it. Secondly, we need to keep reading it so that we remind ourselves of things we may have forgotten or see something in a new light because it seems more relevant this year than it did last.

The Bible is a remarkable book. It is ancient wisdom and carries timeless messages. Some of it shows its age and the world view in which it was written. Some of it is bronze age, some it comes from the time of the Romans, and quite a bit from the time in between. We need to know this when we read it today, but that does not make it irrelevant. I am always surprised by how contemporary it can be. But then human beings are the same in themselves today as they were 3,000 years ago, driven by passions and longings, love and vision, sometimes hatred and obsessions. It begins with God and ends with God and talks quite a lot about God in between.

This year (2011) is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. This was not the first translation of the Bible into English, there had been others previously. There is a grave near to the church porch which claims to contain the last remaining descendant of the family which produced John Wycliffe in the 14th century, the Reformer and one of the first to translate the bible into English. The King James Version, though, was the standard text until the middle of the twentieth century. Some of its scholarship has been improved, some of its poetry has not been. (BBC Radio 4 has an interesting series on the King James Bible.)

To help us mark this anniversary, I invite you to join with me in the E100 Bible Challenge. ‘E’ stands for Essential and ‘100’ stands for 100 days. The idea is to read a passage of the bible each day for 100 days and over that time to get a good understanding of what it is about. We won’t read it all but will follow a scheme that has chosen passages to give the key themes and stories. If you’ve never read the Bible before this is a good way of finding out what is says. If you have read it often, this will provide one of those rare opportunities to get the shape in a fairly short period of time and see how familiar passages fit with others.

We will begin the week beginning 9th January and end the week beginning 3rd July. This will run for 5 weeks followed by a two week ‘catch up’ break around the school holidays. And yes, the Easter holiday does fall during Lent this year. This magazine includes a leaflet setting out the programme we will follow. There is also a book of detailed notes for those who want to have more information. It is perfectly acceptable to read the passages without notes if you would prefer. Various resources can be found on the accompanying website. We will also post updates on the church website.

You don’t have to use the King James Version of the Bible – it is written in seventeenth century English, the language of Shakespeare: beautiful to listen to, but not always easily ‘understanded of the people’ today. There are a lot of translations in contemporary English. The one we use in church is the New Revised Standard Version - Anglicised edition (that is, UK spellings rather than USA ones!). There are apps to download to iphones (I have a bible app on mine) and there are online versions too. There are links on the church website.

I hope many will join in with this. There will be an opportunity from time to time to come to the church hall to talk together about how we are finding this and discuss together what we have noticed. The Scriptures are important to us and so it is important that we know what they say.

Christmas with strangers

2010-12-29T12:34:00.004Z

Church congregations at Christmas fluctuate for imperceptible reasons. Bad weather, the day of the week it falls on, the proximity to the start of school holidays can all affect who is about and who is not. Last year was not quite total white out, but showed a significant reduction on previous trends due to the snow lying deep and crisp and even. This year was better, but still not quite the bursting at the seams of a few years ago.

One group markedly absent, by and large, was the regular congregation - those who rock up week in week out. By far the biggest service of the year, the crib service on Christmas eve, was almost totally filled by people who either don't darken the doors at other times, or do so very occasionally. The same was the case at the midnight and on Christmas day, though to a lesser extent. This means that a major Christian festival has been celebrated with if not quite complete strangers, with people who are not the usual faces that I process in to see.

It is not so much that there was no room in the inn, that the Holy Family was turned away at the door by those who should have welcomed them, as the ones who turned up to worship and adore were strangers. This is how it is in the gospels in the shape of shepherds and magi. For the church, the regular family may well have been elsewhere, and may well have been detained by other factors - flu, cold, ice, but the result is that the church's mission at this time of year is staffed by a few hired hands (clergy) and just a handful of those who are usually there. The community aspect has been largely absent. The effect is worship as event. The feedback on the door was appreciative of that event, but those who came did not encounter a community of faith and so have not been helped to form a longer term relationship with that community of faith, though our facebook group has picked up a few more friends.

It highlights for me the observation that churches have more than one community associated with them. There has been a trend over recent years in the church to privatise it round the ones who pay the bills, the regular congregation at the main Sunday service. The language of 'members' has crept in to infect our thinking. Congregations have begun to see themselves as the ones who own the church and stopped seeing the wider aspects of its focus. At times that wider community make themselves known, though somehow they have been photoshopped out of the picture, partly because those who take the photo are not there when the others are, so don't see them.

My guess, and there is quite a bit of guessing when we are in the middle of fast social change, is that a smarter way of relating is needed so that those who dip in for event worship can be networked into community. This is easier said than done, but it does rest around networking. Funding that requires some sophisticated donor relating.

It is easy to be disparaging of those who only attend worship occasionally, but they have an honoured place in the Christmas story. It was strangers not friends who turned up to worship and adore at the manger in the guise of shepherds and magi. This makes them as much part of the family photo as those whose image usually sits on the mantle piece. That is one of the radical messages of the gospel.

Enduing appeal of self-giving love

2010-12-26T13:16:00.003Z

I heard a very powerful interview last Sunday morning. It was with Canon Andrew White, who is the Anglican Vicar of Baghdad. Not the easiest parish in the world, to say the least. Christians are leaving Iraq in droves because they are persecuted and unlike those who are complaining about Christianophobia (as they are calling it) in this country, about which I am not myself convinced, I think it is much more complicated – more ignorance than hatred – in Iraq persecution equals death. Andrew White has said that he will not leave and has said to his congregation “I will not leave you, please don’t you leave me”. He is a very brave man, embodying a sacrificial ministry in a long line of people. He has MS and so feels he has little time left to be able to do many things. He could spend that back in the UK with his family, gardening and painting, walking in the hills, generally enjoying the mobility that he still has. He hasn’t. He has decided to dedicate the time he has to make life better for others and witness to the love of God in Christ. I think he is a remarkable man and probably earning a future place in the Anglican calendar of people to be remembered.

Today our church calendar moves on from oxen lowing and baby giggles. The heart-warming comfort of the crib is so yesterday. Today we commemorate Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Boxing Day is blood coloured because we remember blood being spilt violently by an angry mob. It is not by accident that we remember Stephen on the second day of Christmas, because the blood of the martyrs has for so long been the seed of the church. It is those who will risk their lives for the sake of the good news brought by that baby in the crib that make the most powerful statement that there is that this matters. No spin, no fancy gimmicks. This is life offered, life transformed, life affirming. You only make this kind of self-giving sacrifice for someone you are passionate about, something you believe in at the very foundation of your being. This is action that speaks more powerful than a thousand words.

If that wasn’t enough, these days between Christmas and New Year are among the most powerful that we can hold in our calendar. Tomorrow we commemorate John the Evangelist; the gospel writer who gives us the most profound reflection on the birth of Christ, the Christmas Gospel. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... and that Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have beheld his glory.’ (John 1:1-14). The reason for all this celebrating, commemorating, the reason for lives being transformed is spelt out in story and theological reflection by John. The Gospel is what drives and inspires these lives given in service.

Then on Tuesday we will want to cover our ears because of the most piercing of screams. Holy Innocents is one of the most grotesque stories in the Bible. The murder by Herod’s soldiers of children under the age of 2 and the screams of their parents cut through any cosiness that we may have clung on to. This Christmas gospel has a place for the deepest pain that there is, the loss of a child. The light of Christ shines on the bleakest of landscapes and the hope he brings goes to the toughest places. If this gospel can survive that, it can survive anything.

Wednesday we remember the murder of an Archbishop in his Cathedral as we recall Thomas Becket’s spat with Henry II going wrong. Henry was not an easy man and Becket had a stubborn streak in him too. The reason for his murder is obscure today, clergy privilege and with abuse claims shaking the Roman Catholic Church to their core and no profession is exempt here, no one can claim exemption from the law and due justice. But Becket has been reinvented to stand for prophetic political challenge to those we elect. Christians need to engage with the public sphere, with civic life, and ask deep penetrating questions about the implications of policy. When they do so they need to be able to stand up to scrutiny themselves, because there will be henchmen who will counter, as well as smart journalists checking that we know what we are talking about. So this gospel touches the ordinary policy and accountability for all who hold public office, clergy included.

We get a day off on Thursday. Time for a walk and reflection. Friday brings us a local boy, or at least one with a local connection. There is a tomb near the porch of this church that claims to hold the remains of the last descendant of the family that produced John Wycliffe in the 14th century. John Wycliffe was from Yorkshire, further north, and spent most of his life as an Oxford philosopher and theologian. He was held by most of his contemporaries to be a brilliant scholar. He got into trouble when he started applying his learning to how the church was governed and to translating the scriptures into English. He is an interesting one to sit next to Becket because he questioned the very privileges that Becket died defending. He also wanted to translate the scriptures into English so that everyone may understand them.

Ten years after his death one critic was scathing. He had translated the gospels “from Latin into the language of Englishmen, so that he made common and open to the laity, and to women who were able to read, that which used to be for literate and perceptive clerks.” That’s seems a pretty good epitaph to me! This coming year we will be encouraging all people to open the scriptures and read them as we take up the E100 Bible Reading Challenge. This coming year is the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, a bible commissioned to be understood by everyone and read by everyone. Today the Bible being in English is celebrated, not scorned.

These days after Christmas, our calendar gives depth to our adoration of the cute baby in the crib. So important is this message that men and women continue to be prepared to suffer for it, to give themselves for it, to be inspired by it. Long may that continue and the greatest missionary tool that we have is ourselves: lives given in the service of Christ. That will convince much more than any words or gimmicks. It is what the world is looking to the church to find and is deeply upset when it doesn’t find it. Equally its respect is unparalleled when it does.

BBC Nativity

2010-12-25T12:44:00.002Z

Over the last four nights I’ve been watching the BBC Nativity. Written by Tony Jordan, better known for Life on Mars, Hustle and EastEnders, this is a nativity for grownups. He read round the gospels that give us the stories and then decided he wanted to approach it from understanding where these characters came from. So it begins with Mary and Joseph’s betrothal, with perhaps one of the best lines from a prospective mother-in-law, ‘At least he has his own teeth’. All of the characters are given depth and we see them all making their way towards the crib from very different places. That makes it a tale for today, because we are doing the same thing. Some of the characters know where they are going, some haven’t a clue, some are curious about something they don’t yet understand.

We see Mary and Joseph betrothed and with a growing love for one another. The angel’s arrival at what we call in church the Annunciation, breaking it to her that her life is about to be turned upside down and inside out, comes in a way that she is not quite sure is real. Was she dreaming or sleep walking in a half sleep? She doesn’t understand what he has said because it doesn’t make sense; it is outside her normal experience. But the moment of conception is given with Mary feeling an overwhelming sense of love and warmth embrace inside. Now that kind of religious experience is not unknown and my guess is there will be many here tonight who have felt a spiritual moment when the warmth and love of God has felt tangible and all embracing. No doubt it’s not been understood, but then that’s the thing about God he isn’t understood! And yes, he does turn us upside down and inside out.

We see a shepherd struggling with low pay, oppressive taxes and the cost of medicine for his sick wife and baby. His frustration stirs anger and he wonders about direct action. We’ve seen quite a bit of that recently where political frustration, even a sense of betrayal focused around university fees, has erupted. I’ve no doubt there are anarchist and other politics at work in these, but there is frustration. Times are difficult and about to get harder with VAT rising and inflation outpacing pay rises, perhaps interest rate rises are on the horizon too – well it will come one day. This nativity carries our political aspirations, frustrations and how these play out in real lives.

We see the magi, curious of cosmic alignments and echoes of prophecies – some it has to be said wrenched out of context – so intrigued that they will make a 1,000 mile journey. Today they may well be stuck at terminal 5, but their journey had its perils. While the code of the desert is that nomads greet one another with hospitality not suspicion, people needed a reason to make such an epic journey. This was no Sunday afternoon jaunt with granny. Something great was about to happen and they felt that there would be a bridge between heaven and earth, between God and human beings. The dawning of consciousness makes us wonder about the purpose of life, the creator of atoms and quarks and the mystery that is anything rather than nothing. The magi are our moments of awe and wonder, of feeling that the life we have has its origins in the very purpose of the universe itself. We look to God within and without and hope that God is not distant but close by.

We see the hostility towards Mary, unmarried and pregnant. Not so shocking today. I baptise lots of babies from parents who aren’t married. In a society when the care structures were provided by the multiple generations of the family, to be outside those was to be vulnerable in the extreme. So stray outside those bounds and you created problems for others and the threat that posed was enormous, hence moral outrage. There was no place for her in the lodgings, in the family. Moral codes have their origins in some very practical issues, so when the consequences change so does behaviour. Though my guess is that the young will always explore one another and have done for millennia. Jesus’ conception has been given an angelic spin for respectability, but Mary carries with her all our loving, sometimes muddling, sometimes mistakes. She carries the care structures that we have which go beyond family bonds and the sometimes failings, sometimes strengths of those families.

We see Herod, paranoid and brutal. He is suspicious of these magi coming uninvited and unannounced into his territory. He fears threats to his power and will be vicious in removing opponents, real and just imagined: it doesn’t matter to him. Life is dispensable. Power must be held at all costs. Keeping it is the policy and everything else serves that. Herod is the lost plot king. We elect leaders today and we do so on their proposed policies, the ideology that directs them. We have justice and when rulers don’t measure up, we remove them. We have very brave journalists and sensation seekers who will expose the inner thoughts and there are red faces when Wikileaks, the Daily Telegraph or whoever it is makes known what they would prefer was not known.

All of these characters provide more than the backdrop for the nativity story. They enable us to enter the story through their stories; they are us in our different places as we approach the nativity. We come in wonder, in fear, we have frustrations and anger, there is faith and trust, sometimes the overwhelming sense of presence as the mystical comes close, we have to journey to find and if it matters we will journey, sometimes we are ashamed of the secrets in our hearts and sometimes blamed for what does not belong to us. It is to people like us that Christ comes. It is to call people like us to follow him in his “grace and truth” and we gather here tonight to behold that glory.

The nativity is not just for children; it is very grown up and we bring our very grown up lives, aspirations, hopes and fears with us. May Christ present among us fill all our lives with his light and peace this Christmas and always.

Shaking Ambridge to the core

2010-12-20T12:48:00.006Z

Breaking news: the BBC has said that the 60th anniversary edition of the Archers will "shake Ambridge to the core" and it will never be the same again! They have something planned but are keeping what close to their chests. So it's a must listen to episode coming up on Sunday 2nd January 2011. Corrie had a train crash, EastEnders a death fall and murder. What will Radio 4 come up with for Britain's longest running soap?

Short of everyone being abducted by aliens it's not clear what can shake Ambridge any more than they have done so already. The death of Phil Archer was a major moment; the father of the village's death was moving and meant that a new generation took over. The Vicar is married to a Hindu, there's a gay couple living together and totally accepted. Emma Carter caused a paternity stir over which Grundy brother was the father of little George, adding insult to injury by committing the act with Ed just before her marriage to Will. The two now have issues with one another! Matt has gone to prison for fraud, Pip lost her innocence to an older man and was dumped by text. With that brief resume, it's rather difficult to think what can shake it all any more. If it goes on in life, it takes place in that village. As a now bishop once said to me, there are only so many sins about and you tend to find them wherever you are.

Soaps are fantasy worlds. They offer a constancy, but also enable us to play with our thoughts on contemporary developments in society and the wider world in a safe environment. We can shout at Vicky whenever she comes out with another of her more irritating comments. We can despair at Will's anger management. We can decide that Helen is being crazy or Tony needs to enter the 21st century, depending on your view about IVF for single women. The world of soaps doesn't stand still any more than the world of real life does. That's what makes them so appealing.

I will tune in for the 60th anniversary edition, not least because I do most nights, but given what happens in the ordinary course of plot twists, 'shaking Ambridge to the core' has quite a few options!

More on Student Fees

2010-12-15T09:35:00.007Z

It has taken me a while to get to the bottom of what is really going on with the student fees hike. This is partly because the Government hasn't actually issued a white paper on what they are planning and seemed to have been making it up as they went along. This means that the MPs were debating and voting last Thursday on partial information. That is astounding in itself!

The amount to be borrowed will have to be greater under the new plans. It is currently something like £23,000 - maintenance and tuition. This doesn't include any other bank overdrafts they may have. Nothing is repaid until the graduate earns £15,000 and then they pay £37.50 per month per £5,000 earned over that. Most pay off their loan in about 11 years. If they don't, it is written off after 25 years. If I had been to university under this scheme, I would only just have paid off/had it written off this year.

The new scheme will clock up a debt of something around £45,000. Nothing will be repaid until the graduate earns £21,000 and then they will also pay £37.50 per month for every £5,000 earned over that. If it is not paid off before hand, the term of the loan has been extended to 30 years. Under the new scheme I would have 5 years to go. None of these figures include interest accruing on the debt because the calculations are just too complicated for my calculator to cope with!

So clearly a new graduate will pay less per month under the new scheme because of the higher threshold before repayments start. But, and it is a big but - something like £22,000 of a but - they have borrowed double the amount so will be paying it off for longer and will clearly be paying more off. What is more, interest charges will mean that the longer you borrow for the more you will pay back.

The affects of this on the housing market and other consumer spending can only be guessed at this stage, but it will clearly restrict graduates ability to spend because a chunk of their income is already spoken for. The relationship between student and tutor will also change because one is the provider of a service being paid through the nose for and the other the consumer who will expect them to deliver. Parents also seem to be taking a much keener interest in what is on offer from universities. This year I've noticed that lots of parents have not only been taking their offspring to uni open days but have tagged along - they want to see what their sons and daughters will be getting for this eye watering debt.

The assessment to be made is whether a university education is worth £45,000. Personally I would say it is. A degree expands the mind, the outlook and the opportunities. Higher education is worth it for its own benefits, the value of learning and the enrichment that brings. Society is the better for graduates who can critically evaluate, analyse at depth and delight in learning. University is also a great time to shape who we are and the values we will live by. Many also find their 'life partner' and that is well worth £45,000! I don't agree with the fees hike, but if I was 18 again, I'd still go.

Student fees

2010-12-07T21:19:00.009Z

I've been trying to work out why current university students are so angry about the coalition government's plan to triple university fees when it won't apply to them. Surely it should be year 12 and below students on the streets and their parents? It will affect my youngest son, but not my oldest. Then it dawned on me that theses students all voted for the first time this year and many of them voted Lib Dem, partly because they said explicitly and clearly that they would not vote for this kind of raising of uni fees. They feel they have been had and they have been. The word of Lib Dems has been proved worthless in their eyes.

The fact that they feel so angry and have taken to the streets on this, rather than shrug their shoulders in cynical resignation, is actually a healthy sign. Far from political indifference, a generation of students have suddenly become political activists and shown that they care. I don't condone acts of violence, but these young voters have been let down big time. Their vote has been cynically abused and they have a right to feel angry and show it. If the Lib Dems survive this I will be surprised.

The new government has a massive deficit in public finances to sort out. They also have to sort out the casino mentality in the financial system and the culture of tax dodging. There was a very interesting article in Monday's Independent by Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Public Policy at Cambridge, arguing that the government needs the Thatcherite zeal to deal with bullying bankers just like she dealt with bullying trade unions. He identifies £40bn per year in tax lost through avoidance and evasion. He argues that the government concentrating on benefits, students and public services means they are avoiding the real issues.

There is a need for a proper debate about the cuts and their necessity. This just does not seem to be taking place. No doubt some are raising the critical questions in the margins but apart from Ed Balls challenge during his leadership bid, the debate seems to be deafeningly silent. Talking with year 13 students £9K a year would make them think twice about applying to university. It will lead to a massive debt, far greater than before, though this doesn't have to be repaid until they earn currently £21K. For an easy guide to the rules, see Radio 1 Newsbeat page here. The argument that students earn £100K more over their working lives works out at a mere £3K per year; not that significant. Taking into account that this is an average, most are not in the super league here. Where is the calculation of the public benefit of higher education? It would seem that the rise in university study was an aspiration that this government does not wish to continue and this is their way of trimming the system. In my day only 3% went to university. Over recent years it has been around 40%.

The figures are clearly disputed. A letter in the Independent maintains that lower paid students will pay less under the new proposals than under the old. If that is true then there has been a monumental failure on behalf of the government to get that message across.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of student fees, and although I have a personal interest in this I think there are more wrongs than rights, when a party dumps a pledge made to young electors so quickly it cannot expect its integrity to remain intact. For politicians this is fatal. The message is that they can't be trusted and I would not expect anyone to trust them with a vote again, how could you?

Honesty and trust touch who we are. Some hard lessons are being taught by some young idealists. That is where the hope in this lies. These young people are our future and their anger rather than resignation is encouraging.