Feast of St Joseph- stay connected

This is rather an odd day. I’ve led communion services where there’s only been 2 of us before, that’s usually the case when we hold a eucharist at the hospital chaplaincy; but I’ve never presided over a eucharist in a situation like this, of course very few of us could even imagine such a time and situation as this. 

There’s Paul and myself here now but I have no idea how many people will share in our communion today as we attempt our first St Michael’s service recording. As many of you will now be aware the church as a whole has taken the unprecedented step to suspend all public worship, so our challenge and call is to find alternative and creative ways of sharing our worship with you and continuing in our communal life even though that communal life is being lived out apart for now.

You might be wondering why, half-way through Lent, we're back at Christmas in our gospel reading today (Matthew 1:18-end), but today is in fact the feast day of St Joseph, so he is central in our gospel. And there’s two things I take from this reading in our current situation.

Firstly about Joseph himself. We really know so little of him. After Jesus' childhood he completely disappears and so most of the year, outside of the Christmas story, he's completely overlooked, and yet he is so important. I remember I mentioned this briefly in my midnight mass sermon; Jesus and Mary have Josephs name and therefore his protection. With Mary, Joseph creates a home and a family in which Jesus grows and is nurtured and in which they go on to welcome further children.

It’s reminding me of all those people who are important- central- to the crisis we find ourselves in right now. The overlooked, those labelled as unimportant until there importance is central to the well being of each and everyone of us; care staff, domestic staff, delivery drivers, supermarket workers, porters, lab staff and so many others whose worth to the functioning of society is only now becoming clear to so many of us.

Secondly the reading is a reminder of the most central truth of our existence; God is with us. Emmanuel. It may not feel like it, but through all of this mess God is and always is with us. For our highest of highs and lowest of lows we have a God who chooses to be alongside us and experience our hardships, pain, our grief and confusion. All of it.

And we're reminded of the angels words to Joseph, the words we need right now; “do not be afraid". I believe this is the most common phrase communicated to us from God within the scriptures. I don’t know if it’s true but I have read that it’s written 365 times- once for every day of the year.  Whether that’s true or not doesn’t detract from it being something God wishes to get through to us more than anything else. God is with us, do not be afraid.

That is of course much easier to say than do, and for many of us this is a time of disruption, fear and unknowing. We’re still in the Lent wilderness but none of us could have imagined this is the place we were being led to. 

As people of faith we’re called to be different, and whilst we must live within these new boundaries I implore each of us to use our fear of the unknown and channel it into making connections, of finding new ways of being church, new ways of serving and supporting our community. God is with us. Do not be afraid.

Intercessions

Let us pray for the Church and God’s world

and, inspired by the example of Joseph,

for grace to grow in faith and holiness

and to follow ever more closely in the way of Christ. Joseph was the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah: may we value our family life at home and in the wider family of the Church. We pray for all the members of our community and the wider church who are actively seeking out new ways of being church in our daily changing world. We pray for churches coming together to support the most isolated and the most in need.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Joseph was asked by the angel to not be afraid and to trust in God’s will: may we have no fear when we hear God’s call to his service. We pray for all those called to serve others. We pray in particular for NHS workers and those working in shops selling vital provisions. We think of those who cannot work right now and those who have lost their jobs.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Joseph was a man of integrity, protecting Mary from the societal disgrace she may have experienced. May we lead lives of integrity and be concerned for others.

We pray for those leading communities and nations right now, that they be people of truth and integrity.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Joseph protected Jesus and Mary from the wrath of Herod: may we always seek to shield those who are weak and vulnerable.

We pray for those who are ill, those who are suffering with mental health conditions, those who are frightened, the most at risk groups and those who are isolated and lonely. We offer our prayers for those on our church healing list.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Joseph took his family and returned to his native land: we remember those who have died recently and those anniversaries fall this week. May we, with them and all the departed, be welcomed to the banquet of eternal life.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Almighty God,

we give you thanks for Joseph

and for the whole company of your saints in glory, with whom in fellowship we join our prayers and praises; by your grace may we, like them, be made perfect in your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

2nd Sunday in Lent 2020

We’re well into Lent now aren’t we? Are any of you doing anything special for Lent this year? Given anything up and taken something up? I find I’m really enthusiastic at the start, I absolutely love Lent, which I realise is a bit weird, but it can get to the point where it starts to feel really hard depending upon what it is I’ve taken on or given up.

I doubt any of us have gone to quite the extreme, whether due to Lent or because we’re Christians, of giving up all or possessions like Jesus says in our Gospel reading this evening.

Now it’s really hard to say exactly what Jesus means here, some have taken it literally, like the Franciscans and other religious orders who take a vow of poverty, some have said he’s talking specifically to this particular group of people and others have pointed out that Jesus often uses extravagant and exaggerated language to emphasise a point. Whichever of those you believe Jesus is telling us it’s not an easy path to follow him, there may be a cost to us and we need to weigh that up.

Lent gives us the opportunity to explore this in a safe way. We’re invited to follow Jesus into the wilderness and spend time with him. To understand and deepen our commitment to this Lent journey we may choose to deny ourselves something or take up a discipline that asks something of us.

But we know Easter is coming, we know we get to celebrate at the end of the 40 days and nights. What if we didn’t know how the story ended? Would Jesus’ teachings be enough? What are we prepared to sacrifice, what are we willing to go through or even give up for our belief in those teachings? My answer is I don’t know, I don’t know how far I would go, but each Lent I try and take time to explore these questions, to ask myself can I carry the cross? What is the cost of my faith? What is Jesus asking of me, today, here and now.

I believe that the sacrifice we’re asked to make, the cost to us, is love. That doesn’t sound difficult on the surface, not like a sacrifice at all, but the love that’s asked of us is deep and unconditional, and I struggle with it every day. 

We’re asked to love those who don’t love us, those whose opinions and actions we find hateful, those completely unlike us in every way. Because we’re not just asked to love people we know, or good people, we’re called to love those who’ve committed crimes, those who’re racist, those who hurt women or children. And to us that probably seems impossible. It’s so much easier to not love, or feel justified in not loving someone because of the awful things they’ve done.

But if we believe Jesus’ teachings then we believe that God loves each and every one of us equally, God loves me as much as someone who’s committed a hate crime or murder. A difficult and inconvenient truth. Every person made in God’s image has the capacity to reflect God’s love. Our challenge through Lent is to ask ourselves what are our barriers to unconditional love? What are our prejudices and who do we feel we can’t love? And can we lay these aside to more closely follow Jesus? If we can leave some of them in the wilderness at the end of Lent maybe we’re a little bit closer to reflecting God’s love in the world.

Luke 14.27-33 (Evening Prayer New Testament reading for today)

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

1st Sunday in Lent 2020

So we find ourselves once more at the beginning of Lent. I’m going to be completely honest- I love Lent. It’s probably my favourite part of the liturgical year. Maybe because I like routine and orderliness. I love structure and Lent gives us structure – a structured way to enter into the wilderness (like Jesus in the gospel reading), which is anything but orderly; yet Lent gives us a way of entering the wilderness with Jesus and a way to confront what we find there.

We start on Ash Wednesday with a service that moves us to ask ourselves “who am I?” by exploring our choices, the things we’ve done and thought and said, and examining which of those choices didn’t come from a place of Godly love. We also confront our inevitable death, and if we’re going to die how then do we want to live? Who are we and what are the things which have the capacity to draw us away from God?

We have readings this morning all about temptation, and a reminder of the things which do have the capacity to draw our eye from God and move us out of or away from our relationship with God.

There’s been a shift in our language in that we often talk about sins, plural; individual activities or acts which are bad or wrong and by these actions we ourselves become sinful or have committed a sin. Jesus (and Paul) most usually talks about sin, singular, no s on the end, which Sarah Heaner Lancaster defines as anything which takes us out of relationship with God.

This much broader understanding I feel is perhaps a more helpful thing to take into the wilderness with us during Lent. 

I said on Wednesday in that solemn Ash Wednesday service of remembering that one of the things we remember and apologise for are the times we forgot we aren’t alone, because they're the times, when we forget that God is with us - the very meaning of the word Emmanuel – that’s when we fall out of relationship with God, and make the choices that don’t mirror God’s love that is very much within us.

So maybe a question to ask ourselves at the beginning of our wilderness journey this Lent is what are our temptations? And by that I mean the things which run the risk of taking us out of our relationship with God. Lent gives us a safe space to give space and time for these questions and explorations, knowing that like Jesus it’s the Spirit who leads us and sustains us in the wilderness. As we work towards Easter Day we can use Lent as a safe space to explore who we are and how we want to live our lives, hopefully in a way which mirrors Gods love to those around us.

Based upon Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7, Romans 5.12-19 & Matthew 4.1-11

Ash Wednesday 2020

I wrote this for this morning's school service where 90 children came to St Michael's to share in a pared down Ash Wednesday service with ashing. 

I decided to read it again at our main service this evening; we're told to come with the faith of a child and sometimes we need to hear something very simply put.

Ash Wednesday isn’t about thinking of the things we’ve done wrong so we can be reminded that we’re bad people; it’s remembering that God created us from goodness for goodness.

And we get to ask the question why; why, when we’re created good do we sometimes not act kindly, or why do we create space in the world for unkindness to happen?

Today isn’t about thinking that one day we’ll die so that we can be sad; Knowing we will die should help us to see how we should live now.

But we don’t remember our choices and our deaths on our own; we use this day to remember together, as a community, because we don’t live our lives alone, we live our lives together.

And today we apologise together for all those times we chose something that wasn’t loving, that wasn’t kind, and for when we forgot that we aren’t alone; when we forgot that not only do we belong to each other but to God.

Today we recognise together our good and bad choices. We recognise that like God’s wonderful creations the plants and trees we’re capable of amazing beauty if we choose to live lives based in love. Like holy soil nurturing the things which grow in it, we grow in love.

Lent begins today. 40 days and 40 nights to take us up until Easter. 40 days and 40 nights where we think about the best way to live in the world, the best way to use our wonderful gift of a life. 

Let’s just take a moment, a tiny snapshot of time, to stop, to remember and to think of our amazing capacity to love  and to live kind, beautiful, flourishing lives, lives which mirror the love God has for us.

Lent 2019; Ash Wednesday

This Lent I won't be blogging daily but once or twice a week. I've produced daily posts during Advent and Lent for several years and I think this year it's time to approach things slightly differently.

For me Ash Wednesday is a reminder of the transient and impermanent nature of our lives. There's a freedom in reminding ourselves that whatever is troubling us today will one day pass, and yes even a freedom in reminding ourselves "we are dust and to dust we shall return"; it should sharpen our focus onto the things which truly matter to us.

This Lent I'm using the Sacred Space Lent 2019 material. Today was a reminder that no matter what we choose to present to the world God knows our true selves, and loves us.

I'm going to try and include music in my posts and what I'm sharing today is music I've used in several more sombre services including today's service with imposition of ashes. I thank my friend Tracy for introducing me to it.

Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18
[Jesus said,] “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Celtic Lent Day 1

After last year's mystical Lent, this year I'm having a Celtic Lent, using the Northumbria Communities Daily Prayer Book Two. I'll be working from the Eata series, using the readings and reflections for May (Contemplative Awareness) and July (Reflecting Celtic Thought).
Alongside this I'm using the Lent prayers from the Lindisfarne Scriptorium.
Today's meditation reflects upon what we can learn from a monastic way of life:

Pray constantly, in order to have a pure heart, in order to see God everywhere, in order to pray constantly...may we have eyes to see and hearts to respond to Christ's presence in the here and now
Christopher Jamison

Today being Valentine's Day as well as Ash Wednesday feels rather odd but both ultimately celebrate love. It's out of love that we have this day set aside where we're reminded that our days are limited as an encouragement to use the time we've been given wisely. In the words of Gandalf the Grey, all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. Becoming more present to the here and now helps us the discern how to do this. Where are we being called to? What work have we been given to do? Who has been sent to us to love?

Scripture
Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
Philippians 4.5

Act 1 - Circles

It feels like I've only had a moment to catch my breath since finishing the Advent/Christmas blogathon and now Lent has arrived. This year that means not only countdown to Easter but the countdown to Easter school (a big chunk of my final few months of formal ordination training), which begins the day before Palm Sunday. Between now and then there's quite a bit of work to do.

This year for Lent, after three years of Love Life Live Lent, it felt like time for a new challenge so I've signed up for 40 Acts: "40 days of giving back, doing good and living generously"

Every day a new act pops into my in-box with a short, medium and longer suggestion of something to do. Today was all about thinking about the circles of people you belong to, their interconnectedness, praying for them and thinking how your generosity could benefit them in Lent - I made a doodle as you can see!

I took part in the Ash Wednesday service at St Michael's this evening. It's a quiet, penitential service, which some folk might hate the idea of, but we're all broken, imperfect beings and sometimes we mess up. It's good sometimes to reflect back on some of the not-so-great things we've done and said, or things about ourselves or in our lives that may be harmful to us or others. Lent should be about flipping that stuff around and 40 Acts helps by giving us ways to make the world a bit lovelier.

Faith, my daughter blew me away when I got home from church. As part of today's act she's made a WhatsApp group of her best friends and will be telling them each day's act, letting them know what she's doing and encouraging them to join her. It's prompted her friends to ask questions about what Lent is and why we do stuff. I appear to have a little evangelist!

“He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” 

 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”  

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:27-29)

Say Sorry

I was listening to something the other day - can't remember what as my memory is soup these days - but it pointed out that often when someone makes a public apology it's along the lines of "I'm sorry if my actions offended you/upset you/hurt you." It's not very often we hear someone admit they made a mistake or did something wrong, they're upset at the consequences of their action but not the action itself.
Christians are called to continually examine and assess their actions to decide if they could have acted in a way that was hurtful or harmful, and if so to make amends, not repeat the behaviour, and to say sorry; to admit we did something wrong.
The amazing thing about God is that, no matter how many times we mess up and have to say we're sorry, he'll still forgive us. Every time; so long as we are truly sorry, even if it's something we messed up before and swore we wouldn't do again. We never run out of second chances, even if we can't forgive each other or ourselves.

I think the word "repent" carries a lot of baggage, but what it means is to turn around, do a 180 degree turn to turn our backs on what we've done that's harmful and turn towards what isn't.
When I asked my kids if there was anything they were sorry they'd done the replies I got were taking other people's chocolate - an ongoing saga in our house - and shouting at each other. In return for their honesty I told them I was sorry for when I was snappy with them or didn't listen properly. I really am sorry and I don't want to ever do it again- but being honest I know I probably will...and I'm pretty sure the chocolate thief will return!! Being a Christian doesn't stop me doing things wrong, but it does help me to reflect upon my actions and try and sort stuff out when I do mess up.

Matthew 3:2
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

Say Sorry

Today, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of Lent and I would usually this morning have attended the traditional service with ashing at St Michael's. Having been in work all day this wasn't possible. This, coupled with an incredibly busy day, has made me feel that I'm not really starting Lent in a way that feels right or familiar- but this can be a good thing.
There was a discussion (on Facebook) earlier today about how familiar and therefore devalued the word "sorry" has become. Familiarity can be a comfort but it can also mean you take sometning for granted.
Today's LLLL action is to think of something you've done wrong and say sorry for it. We forget what a powerful thing it can be to be truly sorry- and to know we are absolutely forgiven.
The kids went to bed thinking about what they were sorry for. Children think saying sorry is some sort of magic that makes everything better, but as we get older we know that what we, and others, say with our lips we don't always feel in our hearts. This goes especially for forgiveness. Whilst we say we've forgiven someone the pain of how we were wronged can still linger.
How amazing then that no matter what each of us has asked God to forgive in us today we know he will grant that forgiveness. I think I need to be sorry for not being as forgiving as I should be.

Matthew 3.2: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

But we will all be changed

It's just one week until Ash Wednesday and Christian or not many people will try and give something up, or do something different, for Lent.
Followers of my blog will know that last Lent rather than giving something up I (and my kids) took something up- following Paula Gooder and Peter Babington's Love Life Live Lent booklet. This gives a different activity or action for each day- something to help make your bit of the world just a little bit lovelier.
The tagline is "be the change you want to see", a reminder that if we do want to live in a more loving world, first we have to change ourselves.
Wonderfully we won't be on our own this year- some of my fellow St Michael's family are up for the challenge too. I will again blog through my own experiences.
Anyone one else who wants to join in just let me know- I've ordered some books (£2.50 for the adult version, £1.50 for the kids) in the hope that instead of giving something up I can entice you to take something up this Lent.
It begins on Tuesday with a pancake party! Who could resist?

I'm sorry!

So after the marvellous pancake parties yesterday (the Jenklets celebrated at home with Nana) we are brought down to more solemn activities today as we are asked to "say sorry".
For the kids I've given them each a post-it note and told them to write down something they're sorry they did to each other recently. For myself attending the Ash Wednesday communion service with Ashing gives the opportunity to focus on the ways in which I feel I can be a better person, the things I've done that I wish I hadn't and to say sorry.
Writing this blog also gives me a chance to say sorry- being to caught up in daily life, work, kids and church there rarely seems to be an opportunity to stop, to spend time with friends, to truly listen to them and realise the ways in which they may be hurting, broken or in need.
So to my friends- I love you and I wish I saw you more. Maybe this year I'll be a bit less rubbish!

Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart O God

www.livelent.net