Celtic Lent Day 18

God is the friend of silence. We need to find God, but we cannot find Him in noise or in excitement. See how nature, the trees, the flowers, the grass grow in deep silence. See how the stars, the moon, and the sun all move in silence.
The best way to show gratitude to God is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.
Teresa of Calcutta

The Moor
It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God there was made himself felt,
not listened to, in clean colours
that brought a moistening of the eye,
in a movement of the wind over grass.
There were no prayers said. But stillness
of the heart’s passions — that was praise enough; and the mind’s cession
of its kingdom. I walked on,
simple and poor, while the air crumbled
and broke on me generously as bread.
R. S. Thomas

Sometimes we're trying so hard to find God that we forget to just stop, to pause, to remember that God is all things, waiting for us to realise it.
I'm really bad at stopping, of letting the silence wash over me, but I never regret it when I do.

Scripture
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
   like a weaned child with its mother;
   my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
Psalm 131.2

Celtic Lent Day 17

Be Still
You do not have to look for anything,
Just look.
You do not have to listen for
Specific sounds
Just listen.
You do not have to accomplish anything,
Just be.
And in the looking
And the listening
And the being,
Find
Me.
Ann Lewin

I didn't start today in the best frame of mind; I was weary, not in the mood. I was anxious, preoccupied with household matters and feeling like I wasn't bringing a decent enough version of myself to work. As I walked through the doors I prayed, hoping my mood would improve, hoping I would see God reflected in those around me and, if it were in any way possible, I could reflect something back.
I expected nothing from today but what unfolded was a day filled with joy, laughter and a reminder of why I love my job. Sometimes we come without expectation and God surprises us.

Scripture
‘Be still, and know that I am God!
   I am exalted among the nations,
   I am exalted in the earth.’
Psalm 46.10

Disturbing the peace

Short homily based upon John 2.13-22

In the gospel reading we see Jesus the Prince of Peace as Jesus the disturber of the peace; he’s the radical, the subversive, the disrupter. 

The deal between the temple and these small businesses started out of necessity; pilgrims came from all over to visit the temple and wished to offer a sacrifice when they got there, so the animal sellers were providing a useful service. Only temple coins could be used to buy the animals, so the money-changers were needed.

The problem came when they got greedy- escalating the prices for their own gain, within God’s House. Jesus’ disruption brings attention, which he must have known would happen.

I’m sure we can all think of other examples from history where those seeing or suffering injustice have become disrupters to get their cause noticed and effect change; anti-slavery campaigners, Suffragettes, The Civil Rights movement, The Stonewall Riots. The pattern of Jesus’ behaviour is a familiar one.

It’s a reminder that we have a God who was fully human in every way, not just the serene peacenik we sometimes paint him as. And it’s a reminder that we’re still called to disrupt the peace when we see injustice. 

In recent years we’ve seen huge marches, peaceful but in their own way disruptive, to focus attention on the future of the NHS, for women’s rights, to demand we don’t ignore the Syrian crisis. We’ve seen protest within our own diocese against the spikes placed outside city centre buildings to prevent the homeless sheltering, an action which led to the spikes being removed. 

Now I’m not trying to incite the congregation to riot, but we have a pattern of Christian living set for us by Jesus and that includes challenging injustice, and where necessary a little disruption.

Injustice and marginalisation of certain groups are still part of our society, and as long as they remain so it’s our duty as Jesus-followers to shine a spotlight on it. If injustice makes you angry how can that anger be challenged and used for good?

I get angry when I see people unable to work though illness or disability forced to fight for the basics to live upon, I get angry when the bible is used to oppress and control people, I get angry when gender or sexuality still cause people to be treated as less. 

We each need to ask ourselves what injustice makes us angry? Could it be that God is stirring something within us? How can we channel and use that sense of injustice? 

Our religion may bring us comfort but it’s not a comfortable religion. Jesus was a man who challenged systems. He overturned cultural norms, challenged the authorities, undermined the establishment, and generally shook everything up. This is all part of our inheritance. Christianity never has been, and never will be, about maintaining the status quo.

Celtic Lent Day 16

There is not in the world a way of life more sweet, nor more delightful than continual converse with God...If I were a preacher, I should preach nothing else but the practice of the presence of God
Brother Lawrence

Anyone younger than me might have no clue who Thora Hird is, so for the uninitiated she was a northern comic actress very much present on UK TV screens during my childhood. She was also one of our most recognisable Christians, presenting Songs of Praise spin off Praise Be.
I remember watching an interview with Thora towards the end of her life, whilst she still lived independently. Her daily routine was a constant conversation with God, whether in formal prayer or searching for the sugar. I can't remember if I was attending church at this point, but I remember thinking that continual conversation was the sort of relationship I wanted with God.

Scripture
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
Ecclesiastes 3.1,6

Celtic Lent Day 15

We must not grow weary in doing little things for the love of God, who looks not to the greatness of the deed, but to the love. Some failure at the start should not dismay us. Habit comes finally, and that produces the action without our thinking about it, and with wondrous joy.
Brother Lawrence.

We've just got back from seeing the latest Marvel film, Black Panther. Without wanting to give spoilers away there's a point where a character choses love of their country over their lover. It does make you think about the nature of love, in all its guises, and whether one sort is greater than another. I'm not sure if I have an answer to that, only that we are beings made for love. This can actually make us selfish, as we think of the world in terms of how things effect the people or things we love most, caught up in our own happiness; but it can also make us generous-hearted, hospitable and open-minded as love as an action, not a feeling, radiates out from us and effects the world around us.

Scripture
Sow for yourselves righteousness;
   reap steadfast love;
   break up your fallow ground;
for it is time to seek the Lord,
   that he may come and rain righteousness upon you. 
Hosea 10.12

Celtic Lent Day 14

It is enormous self-deception to believe that the time of prayer must be different from any other. We are equally bound to be one with God by what we do in times of action as by the time of prayer at its special hour...
It is only necessary to realise that God is intimately present within us, to turn at every moment to him and ask for his help, recognise his will in all things doubtful, and to do well all that which we clearly see he requires of us...In this unbroken communion one is continually preoccupied with praising, worshipping and loving God for his infinite acts of loving-kindness and perfection.
Brother Lawrence

As a Minister in Secular Employment, someone who feels a priestly call to the place and people where I work outside of the Church, it's central to my theology that I believe in whole-life worship; all that we do and all that we are forms part of this continual worship and communion.
All that we do praises God.
This doesn't mean I live a holy and blameless life but it does mean that every good decision and every bad, every cup of coffee on the fly and shared cake in the office, every short word, wrong decision, celebration and bereavement: each and every part of life, both in and out of work, is offered to God.

Scripture
Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Luke 24.35

Celtic Lent Day 13

Duntulm Bay, Phil Baggaley
(Click to listen to today's reflection)

In the simple joy of time spent with my friends, eating, drinking and laughing, I think I do get a glimpse of the life God intends for us.

Scripture
He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.
Ecclesiastes 3.11-13