Advent word - light

Light is a remarkable thing. A rainbow, for example (such as the one displayed over Flixton at about 3pm today), is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky (thanks Wikipedia). In the right circumstances light is transformed into one of the most striking natural phenomenon.
It's often down to circumstances what we are- our beliefs and understandings, what we like, what we do, where we are in the world and we should celebrate our differences and marvel that we're not all the same.
But we should also remember that people's circumstances can mean they're in bad situations they're not responsible for, and good fortune is often just good "luck". Light doesn't become a rainbow through it's own efforts.

We will be a more luminous epiphany of the love of Christ not only when we love, but when we recognize Christ present in the loving hearts of others, whatever their beliefs or understanding of God.

-Br. Mark Brown

Advent word - Proclaim

I'm sometimes eyed with suspicion for my sunny outlook on life. Even when things are tough I try to remain positive and see good where others maybe don't, and find the joy in the everyday. It may sound twee but I believe goodness is everywhere - hope is everywhere, even if it's not always obvious.
The God Jesus shows us is a God of joy, hope, love and equality; we should reflect that in how we live and how we treat people.

The gospel Jesus proclaims is that in God’s economy everyone will be fed, but we have to be willing to share from the riches that God has given us. In order to do that we have to stop and recognize the goodness that God has given us in our lives.

-Br. Jim Woodrum

Advent word - Listen

As Christian's we're sometimes more inclined to talk than listen - we have something wonderful to share, something we think everyone should know - yet it's more important to listen. Listen to our communities, listen to the people in our parishes. Find out people's stories, find out their needs. If all the church does is talk then what good are we? Our faith should move us into action.

On the cross, exposed and vulnerable, Jesus draws the whole world in a loving embrace. Everything hangs, everyone is the  held here. Jesus holds the people of Charlestown and Ferguson and Baltimore and all around the globe. Jesus listens to the grieving and grappling, the terrorized and troubled, the frightened and crying. Jesus listens to all the heartache, all the questions. On the cross Jesus bears the weight, the weight of the world, holding us all in his wounded hands.

-Br. Luke Ditewig

Advent word - renew

Today's photo was taken on our date day- going to see Fantastic Beasts.
Annual events which are often in many ways unchanging, like the Christmas traditions we enjoy, can shine a spotlight on what has changed for better and for worse over the previous year. There's been quite a lot of change in my marriage in the last 12 months- change of jobs, change of roles, ordination and at times it's been a difficult year.
One complaint you hear a lot in relationships is about change; one partner feels the other has changed and aren't the person they fell in love with. My viewpoint is that change is inevitable and healthy. My husband and I are 38 and 43, we were 17 and 21 when we started dating- how unhealthy would it be for us to still be the same people we were 21 years ago? We've been shaped by relationship, children, joys, disappointments and bereavements.
Change will happen, and it can be scary, but it can also be a renewal, something which breathes new life; something which transforms.

Christ is all in all. He is here symbolically in a stone altar He is here sacramentally in bread and wine. He is here spiritually in hearts lifted up and returned to us renewed, transformed, consecrated.

-Br. Mark Brown

Advent word - Love

Tim Booth sings "love can mean anything", Johnny Bramwell's take is "to be loved is to be divine". If we're honest we probably take a lot of what we think about love from the lyrics of the songs we listen too, in the same way much of our theology is formed by hymns.
My stance is probably somewhere between Booth and Bramwell; love, which can take many forms, does indeed give us a glimpse of what God is like. Most of the metaphors we have are inadequate to explain or understand divine love. Jesus works with the parent/child metaphor, which comes the closest to helping our understanding but which we will still never fully understand.

Falling in love is one of the most profoundly spiritual experiences a person can have. By falling in love we discover our capacity for selflessness. We experience what it means to entrust ourselves, our souls and bodies, to another. When we fall in love as God does, we too will ultimately “stretch out [our] arms of love on the hard wood of the cross,” just as Jesus did.

-Br. James Koester

Advent word - Shine

It's that time of year again so I'm going to attempt daily blogging through Advent, this year following the Society of St John The Evangelist's (SSJE) Advent Word. Each day they give you a word and image, encouraging people to respond with their own image.
The image I've used today is my bedside light. I've been working night shifts so this is mostly what I've seen when I've been at home.
Each day there's a really short reflection which goes with the image and word:

Rather than experiencing the sorrows of our world as a source of desolation, hear the news as a clarion call, as motivation and clarification for what we are to be about as followers of Jesus Christ: to bear the beams of God’s love and light and life, especially to those who wouldn’t otherwise know it.
-Br. Curtis Almquist

The word "shine" in terms of faith always reminds me of the baptism liturgy; after we give a lighted candle we all pray together "shine as a light in the world, to the glory of God the father". This is our prayer for the child, that they will shine in the world and in doing so reflect something of God.
These are uncertain times, maybe if more of us try to "shine" and bring light to others it will bring the comfort that comes when a light is shone in a dark place.

Instagram-Perfect life

Preached at the main service 23rd October 2013 (a healing eucharist) and based upon Luke 18:9-14

Pressure to be perfect is something which I feel permeates our society. Not just to strive for physical perfection but for every aspect of our lives to be picture perfect. I feel the pressure to not only look a certain way but to be a perfect homemaker, expert gardener, top chef, have interesting hobbies, go to the gym, see the newest films, read popular books, be up to date with current TV, current events and politics, listen to the right music, have the newest gadgets and the right things. It’s exhausting.

This obsession with achieving a picture or Instagram perfect life is all about what people see on the outside, it says nothing about who we are inside and what we really think and feel. It creates a separation, a disconnect, from our spiritual self, our lives become all about what’s on the surface, which is what’s going on in our gospel today.

On the surface of things the Pharisee is a good man, a holy man, an upstanding member of society. He’s middle class. He appears to be doing all the right things; praying, fasting and giving to charity, but there’s that disconnect. His contempt for the outcasts- thieves, rogues, adulterers and the tax-collectors- reveals that his is a superficial faith, concerned with how he appears to be. He thinks that he’s morally better, and if we’re looking at the surface of things we might be inclined to agree. “I’m holy” he says, “not like these people”.

Next to him we have a tax collector, a sinner, a self-confessed sinner, and that’s the big difference between the two men. The tax collector is honest about who he is, and he’s honest with God. He’s not interested in trying to make himself look better, or compare himself to others whose offences are worse. “God, be merciful to me a sinner”. He knows himself, what he is and never tries to hide that from God. His petition is honest and raw.

Jesus tells us that it’s this second man who finds favour with God, not the man who appears Holy. The tax-collector doesn’t try and present a sanitised view of himself to God, he brings everything that he is, including his brokenness and puts himself into God’s hands. This is something which is really important as we think about wholeness and healing today.

There’s a saying that I’ve heard- do you want your church to be a museum of saints or a hospital for sinners? I think most of us come to church not because we consider ourselves to be holy or righteous but because we know that we aren’t. We love God, we want to be the people he created us to be, but we keep getting it wrong- I know I do.

You start your day with the best of intentions- today will be a good day, today I won’t slip up. I won’t shout at the kids, I’ll be productive, I’ll be patient with my colleagues, I won’t be sarcastic, I’ll treat my spouse gently and I’ll do everything lovingly. It only takes one little perceived failure in this to make us think we’ve failed at it all. So we start again the next day- striving to be a more perfect version of ourselves.

But what if God doesn’t want us to be perfect? He created us a diverse and imperfect people. What if the most important thing for us to achieve a more whole relationship with God is for us to simply be honest with him?

There’s an initiative in the US called The Hearth which aims to help people build community and address suffering by sharing stories. It’s director, a man called Mark Yaconelli, says that we as Christians are reluctant to share our stories unless it’s something that’s behind us, something where we can identify where God was at work. The stuff we’re still grappling with, the things we haven’t figured out, the things we really need to confront now are the things which we don’t share and aren’t honest about. But we can’t hide our true selves from God, even the things we particularly don’t like or wish we could conceal.

We don’t know what happened to the tax collector after today’s gospel story, whether he went on sinning, but his honesty and his cry for mercy meant that he had a much more rounded and whole relationship with God than the Pharisee.

Healing in any relationship can only come when there’s honesty and acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Only then can there be true reconciliation. I’ve been reminded a lot in recent weeks for various reasons of the Truth and Reconciliation commission set up in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid and chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Hearings started in 1996 with a mandate of restorative justice, to bear witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations under the former political regime, as well as attempting to repair and rehabilitate. This was about restoration, not reprimand. To repair a country almost destroyed by a system of division and hate.

This was in sharp contrast to the Nuremberg trials set up after the collapse of Nazism. There’s a lot of criticism of the commission, a lot of which is tied to our human ideas of what justice is. Our own justice system is based on ideas we perceive as biblical; crimes require judgement which results in punishment, but our interpretation is filtered through the legal and philosophical lens of both the time the biblical books were written and the times they were interpreted.

I can’t help but wonder if the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was one human construct which has got the closest to maybe how God does things, in line with Jesus’ teaching from today’s gospel.

Acknowledgement of the things we do that aren’t what God would want, and a call for mercy creates a bridge between ourselves and God. It opens us up to his reconciling ways. There’s no sign the tax collector turned from his way of life, but he did acknowledge it and that’s what God wants from us.

As theologian Jane Williams puts it: if God really is loving and teasing and forgiving, like he is in the stories Jesus tells, then we all have a chance. You have to want God, just God, offering the chance for God to see you as you really are and love you.

This is where healing begins; being fully ourselves before God, the good and the bad, and realising that we’re still loved in our imperfect state. This acknowledgment begins the healing of our relationship with ourselves, the healing of our relationship with God and the healing of our relationships with each other.

God doesn’t want perfection, he wants us to be the people he created us to be, aware of our imperfections, and most importantly aware of our need for him.