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Let’s talk about our generation!

As my teenagers are extremely fond of reminding me, the proportion of things which are older than me is getting smaller and smaller as the years go by. Even with my advancing years, occasionally I am surprised that something is much older than I remember, and I had this just now when I went to look up My Generation by the Who. In my mind I knew, really, that they had lots of hits in the 60s, but I think there is something timeless about it which makes it always feel very urgent and new.

It’s a very interesting song, because its main message is of a new generation who want to be listened to, but the way they seem to expect that to happen is partly by the current generation “fading away” – as if old and young somehow need to compete for attention, and there isn’t enough room for both of them.

In our churches over the years we have done all sorts of things to try and provide for everyone, rather than prioritising one group over another. We have a mixture of things on Sundays; we take equal care with baptisms, weddings, and funerals; we run school holiday clubs and youth groups as well as weekday gatherings for older people, and bereavement events every year.

But there’s always a bit more that we can do. At the moment we are in the process of thinking and praying about how we will gather as churches from September, when Cathryn and I and those teenagers I mentioned will have moved on to a new place. One of the things we have been looking at in particular is our morning and afternoon Sunday gatherings in Stoke, and what we can do to bring together the different generations reflected by these two congregations. We are going to have a little go at this when we meet together at the Church Hall on 14^th June, and you are welcome to join us for this – of course, you are welcome to join us at any of our events and services all round the villages and all through the month.

The Bible promises all of us who know Jesus that we have an inheritance waiting for us that cannot perish, or spoil, or fade, so even when generations or vicars or anything else come and go, there is nothing to be afraid of. And there’s certainly no reason to be worried about anyone else coming and taking what’s ours or pushing us out; every generation is God’s generation.

Where are you off to?

This is a question I am being asked quite a lot at the moment, as we continue to get ready to move on to new things in the summer. It’s a funny mixture of excitement at something new, and recognising how much we are leaving behind, and how much there is still to do.

“Where are you off to?” is a question that we meet in the bible as well, in different places and in different ways. At this time of year, just after Easter, two disciples are walking on the road out of Jerusalem to a place called Emmaus. They meet a man on the road whom they don’t recognise, but who turns out to be Jesus. The question is, what are they doing there?

They should be in Jerusalem. Jesus is alive, and word is getting around, but these men have not seen it, maybe don’t believe it, and certainly don’t feel it. So it is that faced with this mixture of confusion and disappointment, they decide not to stick around, but head out of town.

It’s here, heading in entirely the wrong direction, that Jesus meets them. “What are you talking about?” They explain to him that they have been talking about the events of Easter weekend, but the whole description is tinged with their uncertainty: they talk about Jesus in the past tense; they list reasons not to believe; most poignantly of all, they explain how “we had hoped.”

It’s not the obvious place for Jesus to reveal himself, when you think about it: two people are struggling to believe, even when the evidence for faith is strong, and they are heading in the wrong direction. But it is exactly here that Jesus allows himself to be seen.

Isn’t that so encouraging? It tells us that Jesus isn’t here for heroes of the faith, or people who doubt or struggle to hope. It tells us that he is even here for those of us who end up heading in the wrong direction. The story (which you can read in Luke 24 in the bible) is not completely comfortable, because Jesus does call the men foolish for not realising what has happened, which we might not like to be confronted with, but it ends in a glorious place. The men describe how their hearts burned within them as Jesus explained that everything had happened just as their friends had told them. And best of all, they turn round and head back to Jerusalem, full of confidence about where they are off to, and the wonders that await them when they get there.

The other day we took delivery of a consignment of palm crosses to give out at our service on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter. The idea of them is that they connect what happened on that day, when Jesus came into Jerusalem and the crowds celebrated him as king, laying down palm branches on the road in front of him, with what happened just a few days later, as some of the same crowd called for Jesus’s crucifixion, and watched on as he died on the Cross.

Cathryn was in when the courier arrived with the box of crosses, and he handed over the incredibly light package with a slightly bewildered look on his face. “What have you ordered?” he asked her. “A box of air?” An intriguing exchange followed as she explained what they were, and why we needed them.

At the risk of saying something really obvious, the Cross was actually incredibly heavy; it had to be to support the weight of a grown man. Three of the gospels describe how, when Jesus was unable to carry it the 600 metres or so from his prison cell to the site of the crucifixion, having already been beaten by the Roman guards, another man called Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry it for him. Even though Jesus would only have carried the crossbeam, and not the vertical post as well, it would have probably weighed up to 40kg, much more than he could manage in his exhausted state.

The emotional and spiritual weight of the Cross was heavier still. People who read the gospel stories of the crucifixion (and you might like to this Easter) often notice that there is surprisingly little description of how physically horrible the crucifixion was. This is surprising, because it was infamously painful – so much so that we get our word “excruciating” from it. No, what we mostly read about is the emotional and spiritual suffering that Jesus endures, including most famously his anguished cry of abandonment as he feels that even God the Father has left him on his own: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It is utterly extraordinary that Jesus would willingly go through that for you and me, but it is only the beginning of Easter weekend. Those words of Jesus on the Cross are from the beginning of a song in the Bible which we call Psalm 22, which probably goes back as far as King David, 1000 years before Jesus, but seems to point towards him in a remarkable way. Wonderfully, the end of the Psalm sounds very different from the beginning:

future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!

Jesus has done it. His Resurrection on Easter Sunday proves that he has defeated evil and sin and death and everything that could separate us from God and from eternity. Because of that, even 2000 years later future generations are telling the story, including to drivers on the doorstep.

Jesus has done it! Happy Easter, everyone!

Hello everyone

At the beginning of February, Cathryn and I started telling people around the churches and the wider community that we will be moving in the summer, because I have been appointed to a new post in two churches in and around Swaffham.

I expect there will be a chance to say a bit more about this in a future Free for All, and certainly an opportunity, for anyone who wants to, to say goodbye once July comes, but for now I thought I would write about something I have found myself doing as part of the process. You see, for their magazine (because all churches seem to have a magazine!) I have been writing a little paragraph about myself and the rest of the family so they can get a sense of who we are, ahead of us arriving.

I wrote about 200 words, and it could have been much more. This is the sort of thing you might have done yourself, of course, on a job or university application, or written about a friend in a reference that they needed for themselves. You might have found yourself asking what to write. Of all the things you could say, what is relevant to this situation? What is an honest reflection of the person? How do I sum up all of that appropriately in just a paragraph? Big questions.

Over the last few years I have spent a lot of time reading over a chunk of the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, even trying to memorise all of it, only partly successfully! It’s a bit longer than the biography paragraph I’ve been writing, but about the same as these articles which I write every month. In this passage he writes something like a biography of the people he is writing to, but rather than concentrate on where they all come from or what they have all done, he focuses on who they are because of what Jesus has done for them.

I often describe reading these verses as like a mountaintop experience – and not just because I am distracted by the Winter Olympics. Paul reminds the Ephesians that they are holy, faithful, blessed, chosen, blameless, adopted, given grace, redeemed, forgiven, included, sealed, guaranteed an inheritance – and on it goes. If you are anything like me, you will find it completely overwhelming that anyone else, and especially God himself, would look at you in that way. Maybe you think that you can’t possibly considered holy or blameless because of all the mistakes you make every day. Maybe you have been hurt by rejection, in a relationship, or at work, or back in childhood, and couldn’t imagine that anyone would choose or include you. Maybe you like the idea of this mountaintop experience, but in all honesty you feel like you’re stuck at the bottom and can’t possibly imagine getting up there.

Well if that’s you, there is good news, because in the next chapter Paul goes on to say that all of us who believe in Jesus are up there already. He has put us there by dying and rising for us. No mountaineering or chairlift or cable car required – we’re sitting up there with him. And that same invitation is open to everyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus yet. Through him, we can experience all of that wonderful list of truths I mentioned before, not just now but forever. Next time someone asks us for a paragraph about ourselves, we can write something like that. Maybe that’s what I should have done in the first place!

Recently I have been spending a lot of time listening to a podcast called Beyond the Happy Clappy. If you don’t know the phrase “happy clappy” you are in good company, because just before our wedding one of Cathryn’s extended family asked us if the service was going to be a bit “happy slappy!” it’s a slightly mocking term for churches which are characterised by more modern music with a band, and the expectation that the Holy Spirit will be working noticeably as people gather. It’s the sort of place where I have spent a lot of my Christian life, and where I feel at home, so I don’t tend to say it myself.

The podcast has tried to look back into the history of the happiness and clapping in this country, and especially how it has become so commonplace in the Church of England. At the same time, it is looking at some of the absolutely remarkable things that happened as churches began to embrace this from about 1960 onwards, and wondering about if and when and how we might see them happening again with that same sort of intensity.

It's easy to get nostalgic, especially in these villages where a lot of ministry of that kind, and a lot of remarkable things, were happening in the 80s and 90s. There’s a risk that you feel, or communicate, that that was the best of times, and nothing half as good has happened since. But it’s also easy to be cynical, and downplay the value of what God was doing then, and the lasting fruit it has had in people’s lives.

I don’t want to be either of those things. I want to be hungry, and curious. I do that because for myself, I haven’t really seen it: I was in church in the 80s and 90s, but by the time I really heard of the Holy Spirit those heady days weren’t quite here any more. But I also do it, because I just wonder from things I am hearing on this podcast, and right across the country, if something like that isn’t beginning to bubble up again.

Lots of the language I am hearing used as people try to discern what God is saying is to do with old wells being opened up, and new ones being dug. It’s being connected with an ancient story in the bible, where Isaac goes back to his father Abraham’s wells and does just that; he opens up the old ones, and digs new ones.

In these times of great global uncertainty it might seem odd for me to suggest that the future of our church, and maybe of our nation, is found in a little story tucked deep within the Old Testament. But what if it is? What if we all believed that God could reopen those spiritual wells I have only heard about, and dig new ones in our generation? What if – to quote a very happy-clappy song – we all believed that we would see him do it again?

Happy New Year!

Some of you will have houses like mine, where the whole festive season has been heavily populated with people singing songs to get ready for Oliver! the musical at Framingham Earl at the end of February. Even if you are in a different (I didn’t say fortunate) category, you might very well know the show, or the original 1960s film. Many of the songs are of course very famous, like “Food glorious food” or “Consider yourself”.

Another one you might know is “I’d do anything”: in fact, this was the name that the BBC also gave to the reality show where they were looking for new people to play Nancy and Oliver in the West End. In the song, the Artful Dodger and Oliver tell Nancy and Bet all the things that they would do to win their love, from painting their faces bright blue (this was some time before Braveheart or the Smurfs or Avatar) to fighting with terrifying Bill Sikes, and many more things in between. At the end they sum it all up with “I’d do anything, anything for you!”

Recently I’ve been reflecting on a line from a modern song that we have sung a bit in church, and I have bumped into in other places as well: “Blessed are those… whose joy it is to give it all for Jesus, and for Him only.”

 For a long time I have agreed in my head with the idea of giving it all for Jesus, and I have tried my best to do that in my life and ministry, but this song has reminded me of something I think I might have lost track of: to give it all for Jesus.

I think people try and give their all for lots of things. You might do it for family, or in your work, or for a cause bigger than yourself, and there is a lot of good in all of that. But in thinking about giving it all for Jesus, I’ve noticed the other things I can give it all for which look a bit like Jesus, but are actually something a little different. Maybe I think I want to give it all for Jesus, but in truth I want to look good, or at least feel good about myself. Maybe I want the bishop to think I am one of the successful vicars. Maybe I want as many people as possible to like me. Do you begin to see how I can make all of those look a bit like giving it all for Jesus?

In the end I need to give it all for Jesus not because there is blessing in doing that, which I believe there is, and certainly not because I have to do it to make him love me more, or even at all, because I don’t. I need to do it because Jesus is worth it, and only Jesus; it is “for him only”. There are lots of ways to start a New Year, and lots of resolutions we might struggle a little bit to keep. One of the simplest, but most life-changing, is to begin saying to Jesus “I’d do anything, anything for you.”

What makes Christmas? What makes a perfect Christmas?

I know there are lots of reasons to think Christmas comes far too early, but when you are writing articles like this in the middle of November, it does really help that the adverts are all on already.

This year there are two very different, but particularly good ones, from opposite ends of the supermarket spectrum.

Waitrose have imagined a perfect Christmas romance, where shy beardy Joe Wilkinson meets superstar actress Keira Knightley at the cheese counter, and falls in love with her through the course of the Christmas season. All is lost when Joe finds a present in her house from a mysterious Mark, but after Joe declares his love with his Nan’s turkey pie, she reveals that Mark is her brother, and that she loves Joe too.

Tesco have gone the other way. A presumably right-wing Grandad has upset the family by “having an opinion”; a couple bicker over the way he is writing Christmas cards; two others sit awkwardly with a neighbour they have nothing in common with; a game of Pictionary descends into a full-on row about who Mum loves the most; a brother and sister can’t get on well enough just for one family Christmas photo. “Christmas isn’t perfect”, a voice says, “but that’s what makes it Christmas.”

Somewhere in the combination of these two very different stories is something like the true meaning of Christmas. On the one hand, we don’t live in a perfect world, and so we won’t have a perfect Christmas. People will argue, turkeys will be overcooked or undercooked or somehow both simultaneously, and someone will be ill. For all the very stylised pictures of the nativity story (my main complaint is how clean everything always is) the truth is that Jesus was born into the muck and mess and chaos of human family life, in the midst of an oppressive regime. Christmas has never been perfect.

Except it is. You and I aren’t perfect, and the world isn’t, but at the heart of Christmas is a love story like no other. It doesn’t start at a cheese counter – even a lovely Waitrose one – but at the moment before the creation of the world when God chose to make us out of a desire for love and relationship with us. And God wanted us so much, that despite us turning away from him, he sent his Son at Christmas. It is even more unlikely than the Waitrose advert, as God bridges a gap bigger still than the one between Joe and Keira, and all of humanity is embraced in the greatest romance there will ever be.

I hope you have a lovely Christmas, even if bits of it won’t be perfect. But most of all, I hope that this Christmas your attention might be caught by the great love story of the Son of God who came to be with you.