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What do you most want?

It’s a dangerous question to ask. Let me be clear and say I’m not asking because I can guarantee to supply what it is you are asking for. It’s getting near to Easter as you read this, and so I can offer you a bit of cake or a chocolate egg if you come along to our family event on the field on Good Friday, but I’m not sure how much further I can stretch than that.

There’s another reason it’s a dangerous question, though. You see, it might just be that asking what we want reveals what is most important to us. We might think it is what we – well, think – or even what we believe, but I reckon if you put your mind to it, you’d quite soon realise how important the things you want are to you. And when I say ‘want’, I don’t mean the things we might feel like in the moment but not tomorrow – I mean some of our deeper longings. Often they are connected with what we really need, whether we realise it or not. It’s the place where the two meanings of want - desire and lack - overlap.

As I’ve been preparing for Easter this year, I’ve spent some time asking myself what I most want, inspired by a phrase of St Paul’s that begins “I want to know Christ.” He doesn’t just want it for himself, though: he prays for the churches he has planted that they would know Jesus better. It’s what I’ve often thought of when I’ve prayed for the churches here, or for individual people who’ve asked me to pray for them: that they would know Jesus better.

Perhaps reading this, you feel it’s not a question of knowing Jesus better, but of knowing him at all. What does it mean to know him?

Well, this is where Easter comes in. You see, that phrase of Paul’s – “I want to know Christ” – is just the start. Knowing Jesus, Paul goes on to say, is about knowing the power of the resurrection, and about sharing in his sufferings: it’s about becoming like him in his death so we can share in the resurrection. Knowing Jesus is a matter of life and death, a matter of his resurrection to eternal life on Easter Sunday following on from the death of the crucifixion just two days before. Knowing Jesus is believing that he died for us, so that in the end we might be raised with him.

So “What do you want?” really is an Easter question. And I know what I want: I want to know Christ. What about you?

The other day one of my children said I had cooked something that looked so nice it should be on Instagram. (Please be assured that this will never happen again.) Actually I remember now, it was pancakes, so it must have been Shrove Tuesday.

I wonder when the last time was that you had some food that someone else cooked for you that was really delicious. So good that you will remember it for a long time. Maybe you have a great cook in your household, or you were visiting someone else, or out at a restaurant. I bet you can still taste it now.

Here’s a much harder question: what did you have for dinner last Wednesday? Can you remember? Just an average Wednesday. Maybe the fridge was running low, and you had to dig some leftovers out of the freezer. But it’s a tricky question, isn’t it?

Most of us don’t have the finest food every day, certainly not three meals a day, so we will have eaten thousands of things we don’t remember, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe some of them were junk food, but lots of them will just have been good solid stuff, healthy and nourishing and bit… unmemorable.

We might not expect all our food to be spectacular, but we live in a time where life, fuelled by the things people put on Instagram and everywhere else, is often made out to be that way.

When I was growing up, I remember being told quite often that the ordinary everyday food was just good for me. I think I probably say it now myself. And lately I’ve been wondering if there are things I can learn from this that can help me to follow Jesus better as well.

You see, I think the Bible invites us to expect that we will see God do amazing things if we listen to him prompting us to join in with what he is doing. That we’ll see people come to faith in Jesus, and lives and communities transformed, sometimes in a moment. That was the experience of the early disciples, both as they followed Jesus around, and when they headed out for themselves after Jesus had returned to heaven. I’ve seen enough of it to want more.

But the Bible describes real people, with real lives, and so I know there were times between miracles. Times walking with Jesus on the road; time eating not just the amazing meals which are recorded in the Bible, but the everyday ones which we have to imagine for ourselves. The moments they might have put on Instagram, and the ones they would rather forget. All of it part of a life which is glorious not because of its hashtag highpoints, but because of the constant, transforming presence of Jesus.

Recently I found myself thinking again about the Olympics, and reflecting on what an amazing gathering it is, with people coming together from all across the world with a shared purpose, a shared spirit. Like me, you’ve probably watched the opening ceremony and seen teams large and small from countries which you know well, have visited yourself, or perhaps needed to be reminded of.

As I thought some more I remembered how many different nations and peoples are mentioned in the bible. If you ask Google a question like this, rather than spending all week trawling through 66 books full of names, you’ll find that the answers vary, but there are certainly dozens of different ones, from Spain to India, and Italy to Ethiopia. Not just mentions, either; the story of the bible takes us to lots of different places.

I’ve not travelled to many different countries, unlike some of you: I know that one thing that lots of people were itching to do as lockdowns lifted globally was to get in the car, or on a train or plane again. The bible story reminds us that people have always travelled, and until recently perhaps more than ever.

That got me wondering not so much where you might have travelled to, but where you might have travelled from. I’ve had the most fascinating conversations with people in the villages who have ended up here from all over the world, and enjoyed hearing their stories, but I reckon there are lots more. If you’ve got time to chat about the place you came from, and how you moved here, I’d love you to get in touch so I can come and say hello. Maybe we can start making our own list of the different places people have come from. It might even be as long as the bible’s.

The bible’s story of the nations ends not with where people come from, but where they are heading. The book of Revelation, right at the end of the bible, paints a picture of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” It reminds us that the reason that all these nations are mentioned in the bible is because of God’s desire that, one day, they will be united in him. A gathering from across the world with a shared purpose, a shared spirit.

It's an amazing picture to look forward to, but in the meantime I’d love to gather some more stories of people who have come from different places to make their homes here. Please get in touch and I’ll pop by and say hello.

I have recently spent a lot of time listening on loop to a song called Assembly Bangers, which might very well have made it to Christmas number 1 by the time you read this. It is the top-selling song on iTunes at the moment, because everyone my age remembers singing them when they were at school. You can find it on YouTube, but please buy it as well because all the proceeds are going to Foodbank charities. It has caused some controversy, if only because you can only fit a certain number of songs into 3 minutes, so lots of people’s favourites missed out.

One which I particularly remember began “When God made the garden of Creation.” You may well be humming it now. It went on to describe how God made the world, in words which are both too numerous for the tune and enormously repetitive. It’s quite something.

With the remainder of my word limit this month, hopefully I can say a little bit more about God and Creation than that particular 90s assembly classic managed.

In some ways the Bible is a book about gardens. It begins in Eden: the garden of Creation. It was here that Adam and Eve lived in God’s presence, and he saw that it was good. It was here, too, that they turned away from God, and were sent away from that place.

At Easter it was in a garden that Jesus wrestled with God, coming to understand that in order for us to come back into the relationship that we enjoyed with God in the beginning, he would have to die in our place.

Moving forward now to the last few pages of the Bible, the book of Revelation describes a vision of Eden restored, with the tree of life which Adam and Eve reached for now bearing fruit for the healing of the nations, and the curse that was on them removed.

So these three great moments in the whole story of Creation play out in a garden. And this is one of many reasons for us to stop and think about how we relate to the world that God has given us, through Adam, to steward and care for. The song reminds us (repeatedly) the God created the world out of love, and that part of our worship is to love it as he does.

This January on Sunday morning we’ll be asking some big questions about what it means to care for God’s creation, and we’d love you to join us. Flick through the magazine to find out more.

Last week I was with some minister friends I meet up with a few times a year. We catch up and pray for each other, and end up talking about all sorts of different things. This time one of us wondered out loud whether it did anyone any good to be constantly checking the news to see what else might have gone wrong since last time we looked. As a group we’re all roughly the same age, and we remembered back to when we were children, when it was pretty tricky to find a news bulletin between breakfast and lunch, or dinner and bedtime.

There are lots of reasons why reading too much news might be a problem, but one of them is probably the news itself! It’s difficult to know which came first: did we decide we wanted to hear serious (so mostly bad) news, and so the newspapers printed that sort of thing, or did they decide the bad stuff was good for us, and so that was what they published?

The news stops being good for us when it makes us afraid. Do you look back now, like I do, and wonder how much the constant drip of statistics and reports about Covid made you even more afraid than you needed to be, horrible as the virus is and was?

Some of us in the churches have been thinking and praying about the Christmas story, and noticing the angel’s words to the shepherds “not to be afraid, because there is good news.” In an age when things have apparently got so bad that the Collins dictionary word of the year is “permacrisis”, there is good news, so you don’t have to be afraid.

The shepherds were simple people scratching out a living as best they could, but there was good news. Mary and Joseph were a young unmarried couple surrounded by rumour about her pregnancy, but there was good news. The wise men were foreigners receiving an uncertain welcome from the authorities, but there was good news. The whole nation lived under Roman occupation, which might have seemed as permanent as our crisis today, but there was good news.

I love the Emeli Sandé song Read all about it. I listen to it often, because it reminds me that as Christians we have good news to sing and to shout about, but often we are biting our tongue and the nation-changing words don’t find their way out. We should be like the angel, daring the papers to print that good news, not being afraid.

This Christmas we want to help you not to be afraid, and to believe in spite of everything that there is good news. We’re going to do that by not being afraid to sing and shout about the good news that we have. We’re going to find our voices, and give you the chance to hear again about Jesus who has come into the world to bring good news that God is with us, and he loves us. Good news, the angel said, for everyone; good news for you.

Over the years I have written a lot about remembering in November. It seems the season for it, with All Saints’ Day on 1^st November reminding us of all the followers of Jesus who have gone before us, followed by Remember remember the 5^th of November, and then Remembrance Day after that. Some churches also use 2^nd November to help people think of relatives who have died in recent years as well. Put together, that is a lot of remembering.

But I wanted to remember back a lot less far, to something I did last November. For the second time ever, I think, I went to a Thanksgiving dinner. You’ll know this mainly as an American celebration, and an opportunity to get the turkey in early a full month ahead of Christmas, which I suppose they might as well call “Turkey 2: The Sequel.” The one we attended last year had a whole load of the traditional accompaniments, like pumpkin pie to follow, and with the turkey the very odd side dish of sweet potato with marshmallows on top.

In our family we use food to celebrate special occasions that we are thankful for, but these tend to be the normal ones like Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries and so on. I don’t know if we are so good at being thankful more widely. The bible is different: it’s full of people bringing food offerings to God, and celebrating with food themselves, as a sign of all the things that they are grateful for.

One of the most famous feasts in the New Testament comes at the end of the story of the Prodigal Son, where his delighted father calls for the fatted calf to be brought and prepared as the centrepiece of a great banquet to celebrate his coming home.

It’s in the spirit of these great thanksgiving feasts of the bible, and especially with the Old Testament festival of Passover in mind, that Jesus’s followers began one of their own. Amongst the various words that the church has used for communion is the Greek word Eucharist, which in the end only means “thank you”. So when we gather and use bread and wine to remember Jesus, we are thanking God for what he has done for us.

But I’ve never been convinced that a communion service is the only place to do that. Every time I sit down and eat, I want to celebrate what Jesus has done for me. On Sunday afternoons at the Church Hall there hasn’t been much wine so far, but we have been eating together, partly as a reminder of what Jesus has done for us. We’re doing it remembering his encouragement that all of us can come and sit and eat with him: that we’re all invited.

So please take up God’s invitation, and come down on a Sunday afternoon and sit and eat with us, but wherever you sit, and whenever you eat, remember to find things to thank God for.

We all knew the day would come when the Queen wouldn’t be there, but somehow we didn’t quite expect it, did we? Part of that was that it seemed to come quickly, with her meeting prime ministers old and new on Tuesday, and dying on Thursday. But more of it must be that most of us can’t remember a time when she wasn’t there.

There were so many striking images and moments in the period from the Queen’s death, up to and including her funeral. The crowds lining the streets through Scotland as the coffin drove from Balmoral to Edinburgh; a host of state occasions as King Charles visited all four nations in about as many days; and of course the queue.

At the same time, like with all bereavements, it was the little things that struck you. I saw a photo on Facebook of an order of service for someone who was made a vicar, somewhere, the same evening the Queen died. They found out 10 minutes before they were supposed to start, and after a few phone calls they went ahead. The photo showed the text where the vicar promises allegiance to the monarch. “Queen Elizabeth II” had hurriedly been crossed out, and “King Charles” written in blue biro. Then someone must have realised that wasn’t enough, and had added “III”, this time in red.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that I have had a lot more conversations about life and death in the last couple of weeks than I normally do. Times like this confront us with our own mortality, and they’re meant to, I think. They’re meant to make us look at our lives and ask ourselves what we want to be remembered for. There’s no point wishing we could all be the Queen, and hope to do great things, but we can all do small things with great love. Actually, the best stories about the Queen haven’t at all been grand gestures; people have been remembering her little interactions with them, and how much her care and attention meant.

But more than what it means to live this life as well as we can, the Queen has pointed us beyond it. Christmas after Christmas she reminded us that God had come into the world; that Jesus was in our midst, and that eternal hope was within reach for all of us. In her wonderful Easter message in the early pandemic, she reminded us all that “As dark as death can be — particularly for those suffering with grief — light and life are greater. May the living flame of the Easter hope be a steady guide as we face the future.”

The Queen’s extraordinary funeral service, which may have reached over 4 billion people across the world, spoke beautifully of the eternal hope that we have because of Jesus. The Archbishop of Canterbury drew on that same Easter message as he followed the Queen in quoting Vera Lynn, reminding us that when we believe in Jesus we can be sure that we’ll meet again. It means that there is a time when we will be with the Queen again, but more than that, a time when we will be with Jesus; and like the Queen, will cast our crowns before the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.

Hello everyone

The demands of printing mean that I am writing this in August, and so I am looking out at my back garden, which is now less like (an excuse for) a lawn, and more the aftermath of a wheat field at harvest time. The ground is just so thirsty.

At the same time, the news is full of the increasing cost of living. I am getting worried emails from my energy supplier, checking I am keeping an eye on my Direct Debit. I am wondering what will happen if my bills are twice as high in January as they are now. It is so expensive.

And I’m listening to two people aiming to be our next Prime Minister both trying to establish that we can rely on them to lead us through a time of enormous uncertainty. What kind of commitments might they make which will help us to be convinced of this?

For the last week or two I have found myself coming back again and again to a very well-worn chapter in my bible. Isaiah 55 says something, I think, to each of these 3 questions.

First of all, it invites the thirsty. “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters.” At the moment we don’t need to imagine what physical drought feels like, but these words address spiritual thirst. Deep down, are you thirsty? Do you long not just for the normal kind of drink, which we need to top up again and again, but what Jesus describes as “rivers of living water”? Isaiah says, “Come.”

Second, he invites those who can’t afford it. “You who have no money, come and eat! Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without cost.” The price of milk went up about 20% in a lot of shops through June and July, having been pretty steady for the first half of the year. Like us, you will have started to work out what you might not be able to afford soon. Isaiah promises us something which is without cost. So come.

Incidentally, if you and your family are struggling with food costs, please get in touch. We can provide some help through our little foodbank, or point you elsewhere. At our All Invited sessions on Sunday afternoons in the autumn we are expanding the food we offer to be more of a proper meal than just drinks and cake, because we know it might help some of you. Please come.

Finally, as we worry and wonder about how politicians might help us, Isaiah offers us help that lasts much longer than any one Prime Minister can: “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David.”

The invitations and promises that God makes through Isaiah, over 2500 years ago, end up being fulfilled through Jesus. Some other time maybe we can go into the rest of this amazing chapter, but the thing that strikes me most today is how it doesn’t depend on what someone might do if they become Prime Minister, but what Jesus has done – in living, and dying, and rising again for us. That’s what this everlasting covenant is built on.

I need to stop now, because I’ve written too much already, so I’ll just remind you of the invitation again. To the thirsty; to those who can’t afford it; an invitation depending not on what we or anyone else might do, but what Jesus has done: “Come.”

I spent some time this month wrestling with my various thoughts about the resignation of the Prime Minister, and the beginnings of the campaign to replace him, with many candidates eager to put their names forward. I wrote a whole article about how leadership is to do with character, and how when we recognise that, we can find reasons to hope.

And then it was one of those mornings where I was so captivated by a single sentence in a passage of the bible that I was reading, that I thought I should probably inflict something a little bit different on you!

As we pray online most mornings we have been reading through the beginning of Mark’s gospel. It’s not unusual that you read that Jesus goes off in the morning and finds himself somewhere to pray, and on almost all those occasions Jesus also gets disturbed in some way as crowds follow him, or his disciples come and interrupt what he’s doing. That’s certainly what happened in our reading today.

But the thing that really struck me was what the disciples said to him: “Everyone is looking for you!”

Word has got around about Jesus, you see, and so people are going looking for this man who speaks beautiful truth about God, and through whom God’s power is working in amazing ways.

Most of the people around Jesus would have been Jewish believers, and so very open to the reality and the presence of God. But I wonder whether it isn’t pretty much true today, still. “Everyone is looking for you!”

Sometimes people tell me that they are looking for Jesus. They tell my friends as well. A vicar colleague of mine I met in the supermarket the other week had had a conversation just like that the same afternoon. It happens today, and it’s amazing and exciting. The health warning here, by the way, is that people who are openly looking for Jesus to tend to get found!

More often, people are aware of looking for something. Now more than ever we can fill our lives with things, but those things can get quite hungry, and demand more and more of us. That’s true even of things which are really good in themselves: maybe you’ve noticed that?

Other people aren’t conscious of looking for anything. Perhaps you feel completely content with how things are. Or perhaps it’s more that we live in a very different world to the one that Jesus’s friends did, where God seemed such a present reality.

But I wonder. Hear those words again, written not about a something but a someone; about Jesus. “Everyone is looking for you.” Do you think that’s true? Do you think he’s what you’re looking for?

If you were out and about in our churchyards over the last month or so and you thought you saw me on my knees, the chances are that I wasn’t either diligently praying or experiencing profound desperation – although those things do often coincide in my experience. It was probably that I’d seen something interesting on the ground and wanted to have a closer look.

It’s been very exciting this year especially to watch some bee orchids coming up in the churchyards. I took the picture you can see here the day before I sat down to write this. I find it extraordinary that here is a plant that has managed to make itself look like a bee so that a bee will come along and do what (birds and) bees do and carry off some pollen to the next one. It’s an amazing thing. I’ve seen on Facebook, by the way, that some of you have got these lovely plants coming up in your front lawns as well, which is quite an advert for No Mow May, isn’t it?

Whenever I see a properly spectacular flower like this, I’m reminded of Jesus’s word to his listeners on the mountain: “Consider how the wild flowers grow,” he says. When I read these words I like to imagine that Jesus is looking around at the beauty around him. “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.” It’s true, isn’t it? No matter how smartly turned out we are, none of us is going to look as amazing as a perfect wild flower. No ironing, no shoe polish, no make-up – just immaculately clothed by the Creator.

Jesus’s reason for mentioning this, by the way, is not to get people so interested in the flowers around them that they stop listening to anything that he’s got to say. His point is really that if God cares enough about a single flower to dress it that exquisitely, how much more will he provide for us, the crown of all that he has created?

There are so many reasons to worry at the moment. The war in Ukraine is still profoundly troubling, and here at home the cost of almost everything is going up and up and up. I’ve spoken to some people who are concerned that the autumn might bring an increase in Covid numbers again, and yesterday on the news the talk was of the possibility of a summer of strikes.

But don’t worry, Jesus says. Not because we stick our heads in the sand like an ostrich. Nor running round shouting “Don’t panic” like a sort of 21^st century Corporal Jones. (Cultural references bang up to date there.) Instead, gently but firmly, “Don’t worry”, because we can be certain that Jesus is alive, that his kingdom is coming, and one day everything will be made new.

There are quite of lot of famous last words out there. You never know quite whether they are true or not, especially when they are as funny as Oscar Wilde’s: “Either this wallpaper goes or I do.” But what about famous first words?

It’s a year of Jubilee, and so I have been reflecting on some of the things the Queen said at the very beginning of her reign, 70 years ago. Here are some words from her Christmas message in 1952, looking forward to her coronation the year after:

At my Coronation next June, I shall dedicate myself anew to your service. I shall do so in the presence of a great congregation, drawn from every part of the Commonwealth and Empire, while millions outside Westminster Abbey will hear the promises and the prayers being offered up within its walls, and see much of the ancient ceremony in which kings and queens before me have taken part through century upon century. Pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve him and you, all the days of my life.

These words are drawn from a lovely book about the Queen and her faith that we have bought some copies of, and hope to share with village residents in different ways in the weeks to come. When you read about the Queen dedicating herself to service, both to God and to her people, you recognise that she has fulfilled that commitment throughout her long reign, and that she goes on doing it. God has heard her prayer and kept her faithful to that pledge from 70 years ago.

Amongst Jesus’s first words as he began his ministry was a clear and beautiful statement of why had come: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour…”

There are some big and beautiful themes here, but one of them, the idea of freedom and the year of God’s favour, also connects with Jubilee. In the Old Testament God’s people counted years in sevens, like the days of the week, and at the end of every seventh lot of sevens (49 years if you are keeping up with me!) there was a year of Jubilee. The fiftieth year was a holy year, a year of freedom. A year of reset as everyone was to return their own land and their own family. A year for the liberation of slaves and the cancelling of debts.

So Jesus picks up on a huge idea, and identifies himself as the place true freedom comes from. And as we watch Jesus through the gospels, and we hear the stories of Christians today, we notice freedom coming. We notice sins forgiven and sickness healed and death defeated and stigma erased and so much more. We notice that Jesus lives up to those early words, and embodies that freedom which he promised. Just as the Queen has kept her word beautifully for 70 years, Jesus has kept his promise of freedom, and he will keep it into eternity. And it’s there for all of us today.

It's a year of Jubilee!

Welcome then to May, normally a month of many bank holidays, although of course this year slightly fewer, given that the one at the end has been pushed into June as part of the Jubilee celebrations. There’ll be more of that next month.

Mayday is an important one for me. My sister’s birthday is on 1^st May, and she made sure we remembered that, and now also my sister-in-law’s. (She’s not as bothered!) I lived in Oxford for a while, and over there May Day is big business, with choristers singing from the tower at 6am, Morris dancers everywhere, the pubs open at breakfast time, and students attempting to jump off the bridge into the river, if the police couldn’t stop them.

Given this dangerous activity, it would hardly be surprising if that’s how Mayday became a distress call as well. It was certainly a dangerous day in Oxford. But I knew where it actually came from, because I remembered hearing about it on an old episode of the comedy Red Dwarf:

Mayday, mayday. I wonder why they call it "Mayday".

Eh?

The distress call. I wonder why it's "Mayday". It's only a bank holiday. Why not Shrove Tuesday or Ascension Sunday? Ascension Sunday, Ascension Sunday. 15th Wednesday after Pentecost, 15th Wednesday after Pentecost.

It's French, you doink! "M'aidez" - "Help me". "M'aidez"

Let’s leave aside the question of whether a TV sitcom is the best place to learn French, and focus on the call itself: “Help me.”

It’s not always easy to ask for help. I particularly struggle with this when I am in a big shop looking for something. The quickest thing would be to ask someone, but for some reason I prefer to wander up and down the aisles for minutes on end, until I find it. I can get away with this if I am on my own, but not if I am with my family, because they think it is ridiculous. I mean, it is ridiculous.

It can feel like there is a lot to lose in asking for help. I’m admitting I can’t do it all myself; that I am weak and imperfect and insufficient to the task. When I ask for help, I am making room for other people, but most of all I am making room for God.

The bible is full of people like you and me who make loads of mistakes, but the one thing most of them get right is asking God for help. They realise they can’t help themselves, can’t save themselves, often can’t even make the right decision when it’s staring them in the face, but they know to ask God for help.

That first May when I lived in Oxford was remarkable for all the Mayday shenanigans, but the real reason I remember it is that it was the first time I really asked God to help me, to save me, to forgive me. It was certainly not the last time, but it was the first, and I’ll never forget it. With the fear of heights I’ve developed since then I can’t imagine singing from a church tower, or jumping off a bridge, and I was never one for beer at breakfast time, but I’m not going to stop asking God for help. It changes everything.

We have all been watching with horror the scenes on the news from Ukraine in recent weeks. Or maybe we have. Sometimes I’ve found it hard to watch at all, and I’ve wondered why. Do I need to pray for more compassion? Is it just that the last couple of years have just worn me out a bit?

Elsewhere in this magazine we have put a bit about Ukraine, and we encourage you to look at the words of Psalm 31, being used by lots of Christians there, if you would like to reflect and pray. I think a miracle would be a good thing to pray for.

Earlier this week someone pointed out to me that the video of one of the songs we have sometimes used in church, a version of the creed, was filmed in Kyiv a few years ago. You can see people walking through the streets, lovely buildings old and new. You wonder how long some of them will still be there; I’m conscious of the time that has passed between me writing this and you reading it.

Yesterday the creed popped up again when I was reading a book that goes with the course we are doing at the moment about unanswered prayer. Regular readers (hello again to all three of you) will remember me writing about that a couple of months back. The writer points out that the creed is full of miracles: God created everything; Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin; he ascended into heaven. It seemed fitting to me that a place now in need of such an extraordinary miracle should have so many of them sung over its streets in that video.

There’s one more in the song, and in the creed, of course. He rose again, it says. In a way that’s our prayer for Kyiv, isn’t it, and for the whole of Ukraine. We’re praying for an extraordinary miracle: that it might rise again.

Easter says that death isn’t the end of the story for any of us; that however it comes, it can never have the last word. Easter says that Jesus rose again, and that we can rise again through faith in him. Easter invites us to pray for a miracle; to believe in miracles; to expect a miracle.

We have seen some extraordinary defiance from the Ukrainian people in the face of overwhelming opposition, and that first Easter was a time of defiance too. Jesus faced death and hell and all that was evil in the world. The opposition was overwhelming, and for a while it looked like it had won. But Jesus had done enough miracles to believe in them, and burst from the grave to bring life and light and hope.

That’s Easter faith. That’s what we believe. That’s the name of the song, by the way: This I believe.

Happy Easter everyone.

You led me to the Cross

It’s not easy for most of us, is it, to think of a favourite song? There are so many that have spoken to us at different times. I always wonder how long the people on Desert Island Discs take even to come up with just eight.

And we might be the same about pictures, too, whether it’s paintings by our favourite artist, ones our children or grandchildren have done for us, any image that is meaningful to us. It’s hard to choose a favourite.

For me, the same goes for passages in the bible. You can’t just pin it down to one. As followers of Jesus we try not to – we recognise that God can speak through any of it at any time, most of all bits that aren’t our favourite.

And I saw your face of mercy in that place of love

This morning, though, I found myself coming back to one that has always helped me see Jesus, and what it means to follow him. Not surprisingly, because people haven’t changed quite as much as we’d like to think in 2000 years, his friend Peter doesn’t like the sound of the hard times ahead of Jesus. He can’t see what Jesus is talking about.

You opened up my eyes
To believe Your sweet salvation
Where I'd been so blind

It doesn’t surprise me, because I don’t always see it either. As much as I try to follow Jesus, I find myself going in all sorts of odd directions. With all I have, I resist denying myself, taking up my cross, and following Jesus as he heads towards a much more important Cross of his own. It’s why the little cross you can see here in the picture is so precious to me. The triangle is the shape of the chapel at a lovely retreat place I know, but most important is the road up to the cross. It’s not straight and obedient, but wandering and wiggly, so that you wonder if you’ll ever find your way there. But you do, and in the end it is so worth it.

Now that I'm living in Your all forgiving love
My every road leads to the Cross

As I wrote that last bit, I worried to myself that I was making it sound like it was all about me. Me finding my way to the Cross, me walking in the right direction. And so I was grateful for the chorus’s invitation to pray that Jesus would keep me heading the right way:

Jesus keep me near the Cross
I won't forget the love You've shown
Saviour teach me of the Cross
I won't forget the love
I won't forget the love You've shown

So as we head towards Easter, may you walk in the way of the Cross, and find mercy and salvation, forgiveness and love. May your every road lead to the Cross.

Have you been playing Wordle?

Like lots of the best games, it is very simple. Every day, they post a new five letter word puzzle on the website. Every time you put a guess in, it tells you letters which are absolutely right in green; letters which are right but in the wrong place in yellow; letters which are wrong in black. And so, by a process of elimination, you should get there in six goes. Normally it is ok, but sometimes the words are really hard. Or you might get lucky: I guessed the right word second time this morning. Probably never to be repeated! It is clever because you just have one go every day – it gets you back the next time because you can’t play enough to get bored.

Of course there are different ways of playing. One obvious way is to start with the most frequent letters – ETAIONSHR. I often pick a word from these letters for my first go, and then try and use the rest of them in my second one. Because I am friends with too many vicars on Facebook, I know that one of the words that some of them like using is ATONE.

This is a word we don’t use very often, but which you will probably recognise as meaning that you are sorry for something and you want to make amends. It’s a ‘putting-things-right’ kind of word.

Lots of us will have an understanding that when we get things wrong, we have a responsibility to put it right, and of course we do have to be sorry for stuff like that. But when I hear the word atone, I think of something different. God sees that something has gone wrong – that I have got so much wrong – but he doesn’t leave me on my own to sort it out.

The other day it was a really difficult word – PROXY. And that is exactly what Jesus is. In order to put things right he died on the cross in my place, and restored my relationship with God forever. People sometimes say that atonement means that where God and I were apart, now we are “at one” through Jesus. I’m not sure if that’s very good English, but you get the point.

POINT, incidentally, was the word I got in two guesses today. Like I say, it was just chance. I tried STARE and I got the T right, but in the wrong place, so I used some of my other common letters and made POINT. Of course, having good fortune in a word game doesn’t honestly matter. What is really important is the extraordinary blessing of having Jesus – of knowing that I am “at one” with God because of him.

I can’t remember when I was first told the way to remember how to spell stationary or stationery, probably when I started working as a typist at Norwich Union fresh out of City college.  I can’t quite believe it but as part of our induction we (there were 3 or 4 of us who started at the same time) had weekly spelling tests with our manager.  She gave us a list of 300 words we had to learn.  Anyway, when you’re writing about envelopes or paper it’s stationery, when you’re writing about standing still, it’s stationary.  As the schools/colleges/universities re-open I like to see the stationery they have in the shops – in the widest possible sense.  Journals, planners, A4 or A5 writing or refill pads, pens, pencils all excite me and maybe others reading this too.  Being stationary, doesn’t have the same excitement but I need both in my life.

At times we need to be stationary.  We need to catch our breath and rest, wait a while to restore our souls.  Like the Psalmist says, He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.  Being still is good for you – yes even those activists amongst us.  It helps our well-being or keeping well.  Being stationary doesn’t mean you have to sit doing nothing. How many of us take the opportunity when we’re stationary in traffic to listen, really listen to some music or the talking on the radio or a podcast.  That reminds that the bible tells us to meditate on the words of the bible, to not clear our minds but to chew over words from scripture.  Savour them.  Really take them on board.  For there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.  As we enter a new season of the year, autumn, we as a church, are entering a new season.

This month we are excited to start (or maybe re-start is more appropriate for those of you with long memories of village life), youth ministry in the villages.  Come along to the playing field on the afternoon of Sunday 12 September to find out more.  Also this month we will be joining in the Big Church Read (https://thebigchurchread.co.uk/) and reading Bouncing Forwards by Patrick Regan. If you’d like to join us, get in touch with me.  In our Sunday morning gatherings we have some visiting speakers who are going to help us look at the life of Joshua from the bible.  Joshua was a man whose life didn’t stand still but like many of us, learnt that in order to bounce forwards, he had to listen and spend time with God.  The Hebrew translation of the name Joshua is Jesus, and Jesus ministered to those who he met in the same way as Joshua lived his life, having first spent time with God.  Before we could launch the youth ministry or decide what book to read in our groups, we similarly asked God and listened for his voice.  Do you want to learn to do the same?  Come and join us for there’s lots to be excited about this month – new stationery, being stationary but also Bouncing Forwards.

(Lyn Marsh)

It’s Freedom Day! I write this on Monday 19th July, as the sun streams in through my window, and my phone buzzes to let me know that Covid-19 restrictions are lifting all across the country. I scroll through my diary for August, September and October, and I spot a few things. A family holiday here, a bit of quiet and retreat time there, and otherwise… not very much. Three inviting months of extended leave. 90 freedom days in a row!

I am not writing any of this to make anyone cross, although sometimes you succeed by accident. I am doing it because like you, I know that freedom isn’t quite as clear as that. I don’t know what things are like 2 weeks from here as you read this, but on Freedom Day there is a lot of concern about growing virus numbers, and whether we should all give up wearing masks, social distancing, and all the other things which have become part of life through the last year.

It’s similar with my sabbatical. Amongst the various other things that the Church of England doesn’t allow me three months’ leave from are doing jobs around the house, being the Dad Taxi, or (and somehow this is worst of all) making packed lunches. 

Hopefully when we grow into an adult, you see, we discover that freedom is about more than just doing what I want. I have the choice to limit my freedom for the sake of someone else; I might hate wearing a mask, but if my friend is really worried about meeting me without one on, hopefully I will put him first. There might be something a bit annoying about making sandwiches in the evening, but I love my children enough not to want them to go hungry. 

I suppose when you think about Christianity you might imagine it as a big long list of things you can’t do. A whole load of ways that your freedom is reduced, lots of them a lot more annoying than packed lunches. 

But in the end, I don’t follow a list. I follow a person, Jesus. 

I have a relationship with Jesus, and just like I would wear a mask if my friend asked to put them first, I am going to do what he asks and put him first. I have a relationship with Jesus, and just like I am not going to give up doing things for my children because I don’t want to let them down, I am not going to give up on doing things for him, because I don’t want to let him down. I have freedom to choose to do those things for him, and those things are what I choose to do. And first of all I remember everything that he has done for me.

I won’t be doing church jobs for a few months, but I’ll still be following Jesus, and I’ll still be looking forward to seeing you at school, and in the street. Maybe we’ll end up talking about what it might mean for you to follow him as well.

If I asked you to list a few ways you could tell that someone you were talking to was really interested in you, I wonder what you would say? It might be to do with how good they seemed to be at listening: are they looking you in the eye? Do they seem distracted – worst of all, are they fiddling with their phone?

But one way might be something that I have already done in this article: they ask questions. The other week I was talking to someone in the village and I was really struck by the thoughtful questions they asked about my family, my plans for my sabbatical next month, and so on. One of the things you might notice about Jesus, if you read through the gospels, is that he is constantly asking questions. One reason he does that is that it is a good way of responding to someone who is trying to catch him out, but just as often it is because he is really interested in the person he is talking to. I’ve just been reading the amazing passage where Jesus asked someone, “What do you want me to do for you?” Now there is a question!

Over the last couple of days I have been reflecting on some slightly different questions. They are the sort of questions that you might ask one another as the pandemic eases, we begin to meet up a little more, and we have the chance to reflect on what has happened over the last year and more. I offer them as a chance to reflect for yourself, but most of all to take interest in someone else.

1. What has your experience been of the pandemic? (What are you grateful for? What have you struggled with?) At an online session I took part in yesterday they took a poll of everyone there (over 100 of us) and most people thought there had been a mixture of ups and downs. Some people have liked working from home. Others have been really cooped up with their family, or been very lonely.
   
   
2. What have you learnt through this experience? Have you done without some things that you have found you don’t really need? Or just got much better at doing things online than you’d imagine?
   
   
3. What has been your source of strength or hope through this time? Some people have built particular things into their routine, or connected with close friends or family in important ways. Someone I know has been reading through the Psalms every day and often shares with us how it has encouraged her.
   
   
4. How do you want things to be different post pandemic? Of course there are things we want to be different from how they are now - masks, distancing, sanitiser and all – but a more interesting question is how they might be different from before. One of my friends wonders if we’ll ever be able to blow out a birthday cake again, but you can probably think of a more meaningful example!
   
   
5. Have you found yourself praying during this time? if you have, then that is not surprising, because apart from people who prayed sometimes already, about 5% of people had started to pray by last May when they didn’t before. It isn’t just us in our churches who are praying more: everyone is.

So there are 5 questions for you to take and ask each other as you reflect on the pandemic, to help you to take interest in. I’ll be praying that as you do it, you hear the voice of Jesus asking what he can do for you as well.

It will be June by the time you read this, but I am writing it at the point of the next step in the government roadmap. It is a probably a bit of a stretch to imagine that you are reading this sitting in a café, but you never know. Perhaps you have had a couple of friends in the house, or you are going to go to a restaurant for the first time since Christmas. Maybe you will hug a few family or close friends.

For our churches it is an important time, because we decided at that point on the roadmap to begin to meet in person again every week, and so this month is the first following a pattern which we hope will continue for some time. (We are carrying on online as well.)

But even now, with lots of news of the Indian variant in parts of the country, we do wonder, don’t we, if things will progress quite as we hope they might. Most of us by now have had a vaccine or two, but will that be enough to keep to the plan?

The trouble is we are creatures of habit, really. We want lots to be familiar and the same, and it helps our brains not to get tired by working out new things all the time. To some degree, we want to be in control, and when that doesn’t happen it unsettles us a lot.

This weekend coming, as well as celebrating meeting together in person again, we are remembering Pentecost, and the amazing gift of God’s Spirit coming on his church. It was an extraordinary time, as people gathered for the annual routine of a Jewish religious festival were overwhelmed by the presence and reality of God. Expectations about God being interested only in certain people or certain places or certain ways of doing things were blown away by an amazing wind of change. Followers of Jesus came to realise that God wanted to live in each of them as they chose to follow him, and that it was a promise for everyone.

This year we have seen a lot of change, most of it out of control, and none of us has liked it very much (unless you have shares in Zoom, or Amazon, or hand sanitiser, in which case there is a link to our giving platform on our website). So we can easily forget that God made us to change, and grow, and it is the most positive and natural thing to do that. And Pentecost is just a day when we remember an amazing change we can all make any day of the year: choosing not to hold onto what is familiar, or we can control, but recognising how God sent his Holy Spirit for everyone, and Jesus is for everyone. It’s a change you can make that no-one else can unmake or go back on, because God always keeps his promises.

Rob

Like many of you, I stopped for a while on 17^th April and watched the footage from Windsor of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral. I know, like me, lots of you are still praying for the Queen and all her family. Like all these national occasions there was a huge amount of ceremony, and many people involved, but in the end, as for so many families through the pandemic, it was just 30 people spread through the space. Most striking of all, for me at least, was the walk through the castle grounds, with Prince Philip’s coffin followed by his children and grandsons, walking mostly in pairs. Two, by two, by two they came, brought there by the death of someone they loved.

After Easter we often read the famous story of the Emmaus Road. It’s a story of grief experienced as a pair, but with an extraordinary ending. Two of Jesus’s disciples are walking; one called Cleopas, and another who goes unnamed. Like lots of us who gather with a friend, in a time of bereavement, as they walk, they talk. As they meet Jesus, not recognising who he is, their faces are downcast. And they say something amazing to him: we had hoped. Jesus has died, and we had hoped…

A year ago, when I last really thought about this story, maybe it was with the idea that we’d be locked down for a month or two and then it would all blow over. Maybe that’s what we were hoping. We had hoped. And now a year on, I know lots of people feel a lot more hopeful with the vaccine rollout, but still there is that question of whether somewhere in our hearts, hope is something that belonged to the past. Like the disciples, we want to say “Look, haven’t you heard what’s been happening? Where have you been? Are you the only person in the world who doesn’t know about Covid, and lockdown? We had hoped.

For the disciples, hopelessness is connected with not seeing the risen Jesus. The women have seen him, but the disciples have gone looking and they haven’t seen him, yet. I don’t know about you, but quite a lot of people I talk to want to see Jesus. That’s all my job is, really: helping them to see Jesus.

And when the two disciples do see him, it changes everything. They had been heading away from Jerusalem, and the sadness they connected with it, but on meeting Jesus they rush back, full of hope and purpose. It’s an extraordinary turnaround, but it’s the sort of thing that happens when people see Jesus. The news that he is alive always brings a turnaround of the most amazing kind.

In our churches this summer we want to find new hope and purpose after a difficult year, and we are going to do that by looking at Jesus – by seeing him. Why don’t you join us, whether online, or in person from Sunday 23rd? We’d love to see you as we see Jesus together.

Happy Easter, everyone!

We hope that you are reading this in time for Easter weekend, and all the great things we have planned from Maundy Thursday through to Sunday morning. We hope most of all to create some opportunities to meet together in person for everyone who thinks that’s appropriate for them, as we celebrate Easter together. There is loads of information about everything we've got going on on this site and on our Facebook page.

I’ve spent some time looking over my messages for the last few months, and I noticed that I began 2021 looking forward to the better year that we were all hoping for. I don’t know if we quite feel that we are there yet, but the vaccine numbers are increasing, and the balance is tipping a little.

Holding on to hope is so important. For Christmas I was given a little badge with just that word on it: “hope.” I have been wearing it for some of our online Sunday services, and quite often at funerals too. It’s a little something but it feels good to put it on, and create a little spark of light when things can seem dark.

Other people have noticed that it is an important time to hope as well. We have a lovely children’s book, produced this year, called The Book of Hopes. Over 100 famous children’s authors and illustrators have made contributions; the editor describes them in the introduction as “professional hunters of hope.”

This Easter, none of us in the churches wants to make any claim that we know better than you the answers to a lot of the difficult questions we have all been asking this year. None of us knows better than you how we conjure up hope out of the really tricky and very raw material we have been working with. We don’t look at ourselves, or each other; instead, we’d tell you that we think that Jesus brings hope.

The Bible is a Book of Hope, and among the dazzling reasons for hope it contains, one stands over all of them. Peter, Jesus’s best friend and as close to the events of the first Easter as anyone was, writes that it is by rising from the dead that Jesus has given us living hope.

Hope in Jesus is living hope. It is hope, Peter goes on to say, that can never spoil, perish or fade. I bet there is not one of you reading this who hasn’t seen hope fade this past year. Hasn’t seen it spoil, or even perish. That was just 2020, wasn’t it? But Jesus rose from the dead, and he is unfading, spotless, imperishable, and so hope in him is living hope that can never die.

Sad to say, I am not one of life’s optimists. But actually, I don’t need to be, because Jesus’s hope is real and alive. It’s not so much a badge I pin on, as the thing that I live in, and that lives in me. It does not spoil, or perish, or fade, and I don’t need to go hunting for it. It has come to me, and to all of us, in Jesus, our living hope, who has risen from the dead.

I don’t know what you’re up to at the moment – pretty much the same as yesterday, probably – but in our churches we are thinking about going deeper in our faith. I like ‘deeper’ for a few reasons, but one of them is because with God, we can always go deeper. It’s a bit like being at the seaside; we might be sitting on the beach just looking and wondering; standing on the shoreline dipping our toes in; or swimming around half a mile out; but all of us can go deeper.

We started off thinking about going deeper into the Bible. I might ask if you have ever read it, but you might equally wonder why you should. I’ve been looking at Psalm 19, which talks all about the Scriptures, and I think it depends on what you want.

We might think that what drives us most as humans is what we believe, or how we think or feel, but what if it is something different? What if it is what we love, what we long for… what we want? I wonder now, locked down again, a year almost since the first one, what you really long for?

Here’s a few possibilities. We might want not to be worn out. We might want to have an idea of what to do. We might want to be happy; to see clearly; we might want something that lasts: something we can trust.

Well the fascinating thing is that those are exactly what Psalm 19 promises us that we will find in the Bible. I want not to be worn out. “God’s law refreshes the soul.” I want to know what to do. “God’s law makes wise the simple.” I want to be happy. “God’s precepts give joy.” I want to be able to see clearly. “God’s commands give light to the eyes.” I want something that lasts. “The fear of the Lord endures for ever.” I want something I can trust. “The decrees of the Lord are all righteous.”

Do you want some of those? Do you know someone who wants one of those? Or put the other way round, do you know anyone who doesn’t want one of those? You are promised that you will find all of them in the Bible.

In our house we have two letters from the Queen. Written a generation apart, one says that the Queen commanded that it be written; the other, a bit more 2020 than 1989, says that she wished that it be so. We have the bible (as a favourite song lyric of mine goes) because “the King has given words to us to tell us what he’s like.” It was God’s command and his wish that it be written.

And what’s he like? Well it sounds to me that he wants us to be refreshed; to have wisdom; to be happy; to see clearly; to have something lasting and trustworthy. That’s what he’s like; that’s what he wants. And it’s in the Bible that he promises it will be found. Time to go deeper, don’t you think?

Hello everyone!

Writing to you now it seems like we’ve had a month of water in our villages and our churches.

It started with the amazing floods on 23^rd/24^th December; lots of you will have seen the river flooding all the way down through Stoke, Dunston and Caistor. We were sorry to see the damage it caused especially in the Mill car park, but at the same time it created an amazing temporary landscape, with otters swimming in plain view in the middle of the village on Christmas Day, and even running across the Norwich Road – look at the Stoke village Facebook page for both videos.

With the Vicarage so close to the river we look at it a bit nervously, but the slope is so steep it never quite gets up this high. But we didn’t escape: when we got to the church building for our Christmas Eve event the water was six inches deep in our boiler house and the power had cut out.

Closer to home, the other day water started to come up through our floor, and even as I write the plumbers are digging up the concrete to try and see where it is coming from.

The Bible talks about water over and over, and the images are similar, but different. One of the Old Testament prophets, Ezekiel, pictures a great flood of water, flowing from the temple, as the glory and presence of God fill it. The further that Ezekiel wades into it, the deeper it gets, until it’s so wide he couldn’t even swim across it. (I am encouraged by the way he first spots it in one of the doorways, which is just about where it was coming from in our house.)

But this water isn’t a destructive force; it brings life. The Dead Sea is made new, and filled with fish; fruit trees grow on its banks and bear fruit constantly because of the water that is flowing by them.

It seems to me that when Jesus and his friends visited the temple for Tabernacles, one of the Jewish festivals, he must have had this image of living water flowing from the temple in mind. But he said something amazing and different; he told his audience that the thirsty should come to him and drink, so that living water would flow not from the temple, nor a leaky Vicarage, but from within each of them.

Your recent experience and mine reminds us of how disruptive water can be in the wrong places, but Jesus wants to satisfy our thirst. Jesus wants us to experience water that brings life: the living water of his Holy Spirit. Jesus’s water can be disruptive, actually: it can upset our way of thinking and living, and change things forever, but it always brings life. And look how it flows out, as well. The water you drink when you are thirsty is good for you, but Jesus’s living water in you is good for everyone you meet, and it is meant to flow out of you.

We can all receive this water from Jesus today, but we have to see the need. We don’t come to Jesus saying we are fine, or managing, or ok in the circumstances, because after all it’s hard for everyone. We come saying, I am thirsty. I have learnt, and mostly remember, to come saying that I am thirsty. And so can you.

This article appears in our monthly magazine, which we deliver to every household in the villages we serve, but you can find recent copies in the Resources section of this website too.

Happy New Year to all of you! After a year which seems to have been full of darkness, with you I am hoping and praying that 2021 will be full of colour and light.

You might have read last month as I wrote about how hard it is to see colour in the dark – about the difference between painting when it is light and when it isn’t. It got me thinking about the difficulty that some of us have with colours even when we can see them.

While we talk about “colour blindness”, it’s not usual that someone can’t tell the difference between any colours at all. Normally it is shades of red, yellow and green that are the problem. (Presumably the traffic light joke goes without saying.) I knew that it was more common in men than women, but apparently as many as 1 in 12 men have this trouble. I expect most of them realise before too long.

This New Year, starting on 14^th January as you can see from our website here, or the big banner at the Church Hall, we will be running our first online Alpha course. We’ve done lots before in the churches, but always in person. By doing it online we know we will be safe from Covid-19 complications like changing tier restrictions, quite apart from any risk of infection. But it also means that if you might normally struggle to get out in the evening for any reason, as long as you have the internet you can still join in with us. Perhaps watching something on a screen and chatting about it online afterwards is an easier way to explore faith than with a physical group of people you haven’t met before?

So while doing Alpha online is safer for us in a mixture of ways, there is still a risk that you will end up seeing things very differently. You can take my word for this, because about 20 years ago now I did the Alpha course. Through Alpha I came to realise that until then I had believed in Jesus, but I hadn’t really thought it was very important. I found out that he had given everything for me, and from then on he meant everything to me as well. It made me want to live for him. This year hasn’t been easy for any of us, including all of us who follow Jesus, and being a Christian for me has never been about finding an easy way, but following Jesus brings life and joy and peace: eternal life and joy and peace.

When I discovered all of that, it was like suddenly looking at things in a different way. It was as though I was seeing the world in colours I had never noticed before – had almost been blind to. Everything shone. I could see things in a whole new way.

That’s my story of coming to see who Jesus is, but you could have one this year too. Maybe our Alpha course could be the start of you discovering something wonderful in 2021, and it might really be that better year that we have all been hoping for.

Hello everyone

We thought you'd like to hear about our plans for our morning prayer meetings from 1st December - we are going to have some readings and reflections based on Michael and Rosemary Green's Advent book In Touch with God, focusing on wonderful prayers from the Bible. Do get yourself a copy - it's available in lots of places online, including very cheaply for Kindle via Amazon. And come and join us, every weekday morning at 9am, and Saturdays at 10am. You can join all our meetings here https://us02web.zoom.us/j/385426921 except for Wednesday 2nd December, when we will be sharing a communion service on our Youtube channel "Venta group of churches." (We hope lockdown isn't extended, but if it is we will do one or two more of these as well.)

(After Christmas, we will be holding morning prayer meetings at 10am on 27th, 29th, 31st December, and 2nd Jan, before the usual pattern resumes on 4th January.)

This week I have given a surprising amount of thought to a Youtube video I saw of a Japanese game show called Slippery Stairs. As far as I can make out (and I don’t know any Japanese) it is a pretty simple idea, but an outrageously difficult challenge. Six or seven contestants in different coloured bodysuits have to climb to the top of a set of stairs made of ice, down which water is being poured constantly from two enormous taps. It looks almost impossible.

But hard as it is, they still take it on. Again and again they come, our plucky band of hapless Power Rangers, climbing and slipping and sliding and climbing and slipping and sliding. The video I watched was a 9-minute rollercoaster of emotion as time after time you thought one of them was about to get to the top, only for them to slip on the last step, or one of the others to grab them and pull them back to the bottom. And throughout an audience cheers them on, places bets, and laughs at their misfortunes. It is very, very odd.

So what was it that attracted my attention – apart from the jumpsuits? Well actually it was the strange and brilliant way the video illustrated everything that the Christian faith isn’t. Let me explain.

There’s an idea about following Jesus that it is about climbing to the top of such a slippery set of steps. The odds are stacked against us from the beginning, and we will fall down over and over, with only the slightest chance of getting to the top. We will exhaust ourselves thinking that if we could only just outdo the people around us, only somehow get there first, we will win the prize. But chances are, we’ll just fall down to the bottom again. And there will be people there to laugh themselves silly at our every mistake. God will be watching on, from the top, impassive, even absent.

As much, and as often as it might seem that way, it is not like that at all. Faith in Jesus isn’t about getting everything right, and slipping back to the bottom if we get it wrong. It isn’t about scrabbling to the top to get close to the prize. It isn’t about competing with someone else, because maybe there isn’t enough grace to go around. Instead, it’s recognising someone who is not absent, but who comes to meet us in our sin and mess and brokenness; someone who will pick us up every time we fall, whose love and generosity are more than enough for anyone who ever asks for them. God is not impassive because the word itself is connected with not feeling suffering. But we know that God knows what suffering is like, because Jesus stumbled and fell for us, Jesus endured people’s scorn and shame for us. Without Jesus, faith would ultimately be as difficult as this strangest of games, but we can hold on to the promise that with him, God makes all of this possible for people like you and me.

A couple of weeks ago I unexpectedly found myself posting on Facebook about the way that lots of people like me, who are involved in church life, and especially leadership, would be beginning this week to feel our way back into things after some kind of summer break. Most years August is a different time for us, but perhaps less so this year where so little has been the same as before.

It struck me that we were not really feeling our way 'back'. Instead, we were looking forward and conscious of facing enormous uncertainty about what the church will look like in the months and years to come. It feels like a huge moment of opportunity and possibility, as we ask questions about what it means to be church in this culture and generation that we should have addressed a long time ago. But often there is an equal and opposite amount of fear and anxiety, because so many things that seemed certain in February feel so far away now.

There are lots of ways we could react to this, but one that I choose quite often is to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task instead of hearing what God is saying to me. I should hear him cheering me on, but often the voice in my head sounds more like "Rob, this depends on you," and, "You're not up to this." You'll notice they are not a brilliant combination.

They are not true because first of all, all sorts of great people around me do all sorts of great things every day. Some of you will have had time off work over the summer, and surprise, surprise, your school or business or office or whatever was still there when you got back. People managed. It doesn't really depend on you.

I am also learning to embrace the not-being-up-to-this. You're almost certainly better at your job, or looking after your family, than I am, but you can’t do everything. The amazing thing for me in following Jesus is that I know he is one person who is up to it - the all-sufficient one - and he is with us. And if we follow Jesus, then we can hang on to his amazing promises, like “In this world we will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

Having said all that, what might very well happen is that I forget it tomorrow, or later on this evening. Do stop me if you see me about, and ask me if I’m trying to do everything myself, or not feeling up to it, or both at once. It might help me. But there is a chance I’ll ask you as well.

Recently I have been wondering how much we doubt whether God truly accepts us. We certainly doubt whether people accept us, don’t we – and sometimes with good reason. Think about the Black Lives Matter movement, which is very much to do with someone being equally accepted and valued no matter what they look like. Think about how so much on social media is to do with being accepted: I write or post things that I think will please a certain group of people out there, and I will be accepted by them. I do the right thing, I say the right thing? Notice that the first one of those is about simply being accepted for who I am, and that the second one is about doing something in order to be accepted.

But what about God? Does God accept me? Can I know that? And does he simply accept me for who I am, or is it about me doing something in order to be accepted? In the book of Acts, Peter and Paul, two of the earliest and most influential followers of Jesus, are trying to work out what it means to be accepted by God.

We are sure that these Jews on the one hand, Jesus’s own people group, are accepted by God, but on the other hand are what the bible calls the Gentiles. That is everyone else, that is me, and probably you. It was always God’s intention that the Jews should be his way of blessing the whole of humanity, but now the plan expands and says that the gospel is for everyone, and the gospel is going to work through everyone.

But other people start to push back. The acceptance of God is too radical. The grace of God is too free, and people start to say, “You have to be circumcised to be saved.” You have to do the right thing, you have to look the right way. I.. errm… hopefully no-one was checking, but you know what I mean. People are keen on measuring acceptance by whether others do the right thing, or look the right way. But God hasn’t opened a door of obedience, or appearance; he has opened a door of faith.

The demand is repeated: “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” For those people, acceptance is not about faith; it is about obedience, and appearance.

But gloriously Peter will not have this. He says that far from looking out the outside, at appearance, “God sees the heart.” It is a consistent message of the Scriptures. God sees the heart.

For Peter and for Paul there is no difference between people: we are all equally in need of the saving grace of Jesus. There is no question of their acceptance being earned, because it is through the grace of Jesus. So you can know that God accepts you. You can know because God looks at the heart that is looking to him, looks for faith rather than only obedience or appearance. You can know because God does not discriminate against anyone, and does not demand anyone more than he does of anyone else.

This lockdown time has been an interesting one, hasn’t it? As far as I’m aware, there has never been such a long period of restriction on our freedoms, combined with the worry for our own health and for our friends and families.  Now that we’re beginning to come out the other side of it, I’ve been reflecting on how it has affected different people, and what has made it so challenging to so many of us. There have been some positives for most of us, though - getting to know neighbours better, appreciating the quieter roads during daily walks, noticing the wildlife in our gardens that we might have busily rushed past in more normal times... We have worked together to gather up crates and crates of supplies for the food bank, and people in our community have helped each other with shopping, prescriptions and so much more.

But still the overriding experience has been a tricky one, and I wonder if one of the main reasons is that coronavirus has shown us that we can’t always be in control of our lives. It has felt like a problem too serious to manage, an “enemy” too big to stand up against, and that has made a lot of us feel small and powerless.

It has reminded me of the story of David and Goliath in the Bible, which some of you might be familiar with. God’s people, the Israelites, were used to fighting against other armies, as they moved through contested land. But they weren’t used to being faced off by someone so much taller and stronger than any of their own soldiers that they felt doomed to failure! They ended up trapped for days as Goliath stood in their path, not knowing what to do for the best.

You might think that the solution would have been to find the very strongest Israelite soldier to attempt to overpower Goliath. Or to come up with a plan to outwit him, meeting brute force with superior intellect... But it turned out that God’s plan was for the smallest and least impressive of all of them to defeat the giant. The shepherd boy David stepped forward with a slingshot and some pebbles, and that was that.

David knew that he was tiny and vulnerable compared to Goliath, but he chose to trust God. He found the strength to do something terrifying, by realising that God was bigger than anyone or anything, giant-like or otherwise. During this time of uncertainty and worry, we have all struggled with having our choices taken away and feeling afraid in different ways. But we can ask God to help us trust him, even if we never have before.

In our house we have been listening to a new children's song about this story, which includes the line “when all I’ve got is a slingshot, you’re the power in me... when I feel little like little David, you’re the power in me”. If you have felt a bit dwarfed by coronavirus and its effect on our lives, why not ask God to help you trust him and rely on his strength - just like David did.

As I write we are in the midst of making plans to open some of the church buildings for people to pray from the beginning of July. There are pages and pages of advice from the Church of England, the government, and all the questions we all have locally about what to do to give people the opportunity to drop in and pray and maybe chat with someone about where God is in all of this. And all the time the news is changing and the advice is changing. It makes everything such a complicated business.

Over the last few months while I have found so much of what is going on really complicated, I have tried to remember three things that I noticed from one of our Easter readings, and which I have been mentioning at most of our online services since. (Do check out elsewhere in this magazine how you can join us on Zoom or Facebook, or give me a ring if you would like to dial in on the phone.)

Uncertain about the reality of the Resurrection (ring any bells for any of you?) Jesus’s friends gather in fear of what might happen to them. The religious authorities had arrested Jesus and crucified him; maybe would they come for his friends as well. Twice it says they locked the doors, presumably both times out of fear, though this is only mentioned clearly once.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the disciples again gather in an upper room, anticipating the fulfilment of Jesus’s promise: the gift of the Holy Spirit. At that point it describes how they are “constantly in prayer.” It has interested me that the disciples seemed to remember to pray here, where before they only resorted to being afraid. In some ways their circumstances hadn’t changed, but their mindset had and this was part of the beginning of the Pentecost story. They remembered to pray.

Secondly, there is a need to recognise that Jesus is with us. Twice the disciples lock themselves in a room. Twice Jesus appears to the disciples. To you and me, of course, the idea of someone appearing in a room when they are locked out of it is the stuff of miracles, or at least magic tricks, but for Jesus who was locked in death but broke out of it, locked in a tomb but escaped from it, this is pretty standard stuff! It really does emphasise Jesus’s overwhelming desire to be with his disciples, and that they would recognise that he is with them.

Then comes a twist in the story. It was surely unsettling for the disciples to realise that now that they had Jesus back, he was seeming to talk about going away again. But Jesus has a plan, and instructs them in John’s gospel to “receive the Holy Spirit.” And everything that they do from that point on is empowered by the Spirit of Jesus, who assures the disciples that he is with them always.

So I have been remembering to pray, both myself and in meeting more often with others from our churches, finding a place to bring my anxiety about the future (by which I mean anything that is going to happen from a point about 30 seconds after I stop praying) and to put my trust in God.

I have been recognising that Jesus is with me; if he can rise from the dead, if he can break free from the tomb, if he can get through locked doors, then nothing need be a barrier to him getting to me. Everything that might separate me from him, including the things that I have done, has been put aside at the cross.

And I have been receiving from the Holy Spirit. This morning as we prayed we remembered how at the very end of the bible it says, “Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” It’s not any more complicated than telling God you are thirsty.

Three simple principles that bring us to a place of grace, and faith, and rest. I really recommend them to you.

Thank you so much to everyone who sent us in pictures of them, their families, and neighbours, all having a splendid socially-distant time on VE Day. It was lovely to see your celebrations, and to hear from those of you whose memories go back that far. Some of you have also shared with me about how hard it was during wartime, and the way that it affected life, and your family, in an ongoing way. Perhaps that was part of other people’s conversations as well.

I can’t remember VE day, but I do go back 25 years to the 50^th anniversary in 1995. Back then my grandparents were really well, and it was a privilege to be with them in their village celebrating, with the bunting everywhere and the 1940s music and the questionable pork products. All the same it was hard for me to imagine that they had been through it, and that they had once looked like this instead of being nearly 80.

VE Day was such a significant day, but it was really one in a series of such days. We all know how important D-Day was, the summer before. Once the Allies had landed in France, a big part of the work was done. We also know that the war didn’t end in May 1945: it went on right through the summer until VJ Day on 15^th August. But even then, the consequences of years of conflict reached into many lives, and many years into the future.

As I think about the story of Jesus, and compare it with some of these huge events in the history of the modern world, I notice a few things.

First of all I wonder if D-Day is a little bit like Christmas. The Allies landed on the beaches, and they began to take ground decisively, moving across Europe. In one translation of John’s gospel it describes how, in Jesus, God ‘moved into the neighbourhood.’ He had arrived, and as he grew in age and then in influence, God’s kingdom advanced through him.

And then I wonder if VE Day is more like Easter. The end of the war in Europe was a decisive moment. It was a time of great celebration, because freedom had been won. But it was won at a price. There is a lot of disagreement about the number of military and civilian deaths worldwide during the war, but it might be as many as 85 million. You might not find this a helpful comparison, but as I write Johns Hopkins University estimates the total number of worldwide deaths from Covid-19 to be 372,000. That gives us some sense of the enormity of it. There is a tremendous cost in the Easter story too, but here it is different. The weight of suffering for human evil, sin and mortality is borne on the shoulders of Jesus alone. The death toll is 1. It was an awful cost for Jesus, but for us there is freedom and life worth celebrating.

But the war didn’t end in May 1945, the suffering didn’t end there, and even afterwards there were consequences for people in the rest of the world, and for years to come for all those whose lives would never be the same again. Even now we live in a world where I am convinced Jesus has won us an amazing and eternal victory on the cross, but we suffer. In the midst of a global pandemic we don’t need reminding of this. But just as VE Day gave people so much to look forward to, now through Jesus we really can look forward to the time described at the end of the bible, where there will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” For the moment, all the pictures of people around the world rejoicing on that day are the stuff of my imagination – and hopefully yours – but I look forward to when they are as real as anything you’ve enjoyed looking at in this month’s magazine.

Over Easter weekend I was listening again on and off to the BBC radio commentary of the amazing Headingley test match against Australia. It’s one of several games last year which you might call the Ben Stokes match. We obviously don’t have the rights to show you the final moments of that amazing game, but here is a photo from a dramatic reconstruction we staged in the back garden of the Vicarage. You can see a bit more of it on our Youtube channel which I mention below. It is one of those games where we will always say to each other, where were you? I know where I was as the game reached its climax. I was sitting outside a café in Wales, concentrating on my wife and children whom I was on holiday with, and definitely not being distracted by the game. You can tell from the other picture, can’t you?

I remember heading out from the holiday cottage pretty despondent that England were down to their last batsman, and still 73 from victory. Everything said that it was over, and that Australia were about to win. It was a matter of time. And then came the first stirrings of hope, as Stokes started to hit six, after six, after six. Jack Leach at the other end did his valiant bit, but was reduced to a spectator for long periods. Unbelievably, he did it. Stokes got England over the line, the crowd and the nation erupted, and at one point BBC correspondent Jonathan Agnew cried, “It is an incredible day.”

On Easter Sunday, we remember something that so many of us have heard time and again. And for me, no matter how often I hear that Jesus is alive, I find myself as thrilled as if it is the first time. It is wonderful and new. I think of this story of a man conquering death, and sin, and hell, and I recognise that if it were not true, you just couldn’t invent it. It is so incredible, but so good. What Jesus did for us, what he won for us, is so good.

Because that’s how we feel, isn’t it? We won. Jesus did it, he did it all, but we won. Forgiveness, salvation, eternal life, won for us. On that day, last summer, most of us could only sit and listen. Most of the rest of the England team could only sit and watch. Ben Stokes did it. One man. But we won. That’s a message for this Easter isn’t it? Jesus has won, so we have won. It is not what we did, but what he did for us… what we couldn’t do. Only Jesus could win the battle over darkness and hell and fear and death. And for all of us, as long as we believe and say yes, Jesus did that for me, there is light, and eternity, and hope and life.

It is not for one summer or one Easter, but for eternity. One incredible day after another, forever, through Jesus. Happy Easter everyone.

It was wonderful to gather together as church on 22^nd March, even though we had to meet online rather than in our buildings. About 45 of us appeared on screen to celebrate Mothering Sunday, and to think together about some things that Paul says to us about God in the bible which can really help us at this difficult time. If you have access to the internet, I have put a video of this on Facebook and Youtube, which you can find by searching for “Venta group of churches.” It was filmed in Stoke church shortly before we were asked to lock the building.

I sent people looking for things in their houses, starting with something with their name on it. For most of us our name says something about the family we belong to. Mothering Sunday is a day to celebrate the human family big or small, but we also thought about what it means to be part of God’s big family, who all have the name of Jesus in common. We are adopted into it, born again into it, through faith in Jesus, and it is bigger than any place or event: it is about what the Holy Spirit has done in our hearts.

In terms of God’s family, we belong together because we share the same Father. In Ephesians 3 Paul connects the idea of having God as our Father with prayer. At this time we have to pray, and we can pray. God is an amazing Father who loves to hear us pray about anything – and he really does hear.

Then we went looking for plants in our house. Most of us could find one of these. Paul talks about us being rooted and established in love. Lots of you know from your own experience or have seen elsewhere what it is like when a family root each other in love. It is a place where we thrive. A plant needs roots that go down deep to draw in all the good stuff that it needs, and keep it firm and secure. That’s what we can do with God. We can put our roots deep down in him, we can draw on all the goodness he has to offer us, we can trust that he will hold us firm in the storm we find ourselves in.

Last, we found a measuring device of some kind – a ruler, a tape, a jug, and so on. We remembered Paul’s encouragement to us that God can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. We measure and count so many things all the time. You will have heard lots of numbers about coronavirus. Some of them are helpful to us. Others could make us a bit scared. Paul says that there is something we cannot measure – and that is what God can do. No person, however much they might like to, can do the immeasurable amount that God can. I can understand if, at the moment, you feel like God can only do a very little, if at all. The good news for you is that he can do immeasurably more. Some of you, on the other hand, will be thinking, God can do the most amazing things! The good news for you, is he can do even more. He can do more than any of us can imagine!

And with this in mind, we keep on praying. There are resources on our website to help us pray. We are meeting as churches every day to pray, and you can join us online or on the phone, if you have no access to the internet. Just give me a ring on one of the numbers on the front of the magazine. And take care, stay well, and God bless all of you.