Sunday, December 23, 2018

Stop Preaching - Start Singing (A Sermon for Advent 4)

Middletown Dreams by Rush - one of my favourite songs.
There is something evocative and beautiful about a song.

Songs have the capacity to transport us to far off shores or to the innermost parts of our being; to lift or to lower our mood. Music also can carry or even tell a community’s story - think about the music you enjoy and the way that it hangs as a backdrop to your own life or the way that you have enjoyed in sharing it with others. Music can also tenderly hold our hopes and dreams - the psalms in the heart of the Old Testament do just that - they bring every gamut of human emotion and experience into the presence of God.


Ariana Grande at teh One Love Manchester concert.

But that is true in the secular sphere - cast your minds back to the One Love Manchester concert organised by the singer Ariana Grande following the terrorist attack at her concert held at the Manchester Arena where 23 people died and 139 people were injured; or further back to the Live Aid concerts. The music performed on those occasions carried themes of love and justice which transcended politics, race and creed and carried a universal hope.


There is also something about a song which touches our hearts in such a way that enables us to enter into the reality and experience of that which is being voiced. When we listen to love songs we find a new language to express our deepest feelings for another. When we hear a song crying for justice it gives us new solidarity with those who long to be set free. In other words, in the same ways that the food that we consume becomes part of us to enable us to live - we are what we eat - what we sing shapes our inner world in such a way that it can cause us to reshape our outer world individually and corporately - we are what we sing or what is sung over us. We are both homo sapien and homo musicus.


Humanity’s experience of God can be described as the greatest love song ever sung. In the words of Scripture and in people’s experience of the Divine we hear a simple three-line song - I love you, I want to be with people like you, will you be with me? It is an invitation to hear the song of love and to join in.


In our Gospel reading, we encounter Elizabeth and Mary pregnant with children, but pregnant with so much more.  They are also the many in our world who long to see different opportunities, possibilities and outcomes brought to birth: the hospitalised woman longing to be well; the accused man longing for justice; the hungry family longing for food; the refugee longing to be accepted in their new homeland; the workless on unemployed longing for meaningful employment; the middle-aged housebound man longing to be pain free; the gay woman longing to be accepted by her parents and her church; the elderly grandfather longing to be lucid and heard.  They all sing their own songs with countless others, all of which echo God’s song of love and community for all.



Mary supremely sings of this pregnant longing. We hear this song read as scripture, we sing it in our hymnody, we pray it at Evening Prayer but all too often, the song doesn’t sound like good news to us because we are by in large well fed, or rich, or in positions of power and might compared to others locally and globally — or if we benefit from systems that oppress.  Mary articulates an end to economic structures that are exploitative and unjust. She speaks of a time when all will enjoy the good things given by God.

If we only hear the Magnificat as scripture or an evening prayer we fail to hear the call of God through it to the transformation of our lives and of our world, and we all too easily hear the words but do not listen to what they say of the love that God has for us all but especially for those that we all too often push to the margins or silence or disempower.



We have closed our ears to Mary’s radical song of resistance, even though there is so much oppression and evil in the world. We have turned Christmas into a cattle-lowing, no-crying-he-makes Jesus, Silent Night. With only hours before we celebrate his birth, we are in danger of soft focusing the manger scene failing to realise that the birth of her son in animal feeding stall are the actions to accompany the song Mary sang in Elizabeth's company. With only hours before we celebrate his birth, we are in danger of airbrushing out impoverished social outsiders like shepherds who are not just called to the manger by angels, but because they join in in a version of Mary’s song.



Today we really need to hear Mary’s song; we need to listen to what Mary’s song says to us; we need to listen what Mary’s song says about us; we need to hear what her song says about those we don’t/won’t/can’t/shan’t see or hear.  But we can only do any of that if we are singing too.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

324 Bus Route To/From Maple Cross

Some of you locally may have heard that Arriva have announced that they are reviewing the 324 bus route which runs to and from the Maple Cross/West Hyde communities. This bus route is a life line for many in both communities and it's withdrawal would be a real blow socially and economically.

Today I have written to local councillor Phil Williams, and I enclose my email to him below. If this issue concerns you, please add your voice by contacting him too.


~~~


Dear Phil,

I am sorry that I am bit late to the party on this.

I was very concerned to hear recently that Arriva are considering a review of the 324 bus route to/from Maple Cross. The community is not well served with bus services with a disjointed R1 service. The W1only runs on Sundays.

Just under half of the population on the Maple Cross Estate is outside of the normal working age bracket (under 18 and over 65) and a quarter live in rented or social housing. From TRDC own development framework, you note that,

‘...The area has limited services, with the exception of a primary school and local shop, and is therefore reliant on surrounding areas. Access to healthcare provision has been identified as a particular issue for the area…'

Maple Cross JMI school is a transformative presence for good in the community, and the local shop provide some means of social interaction and shopping and the Maple Cross Community Centre works hard to bring people together, but the community relies on other services such as local doctors and dentists elsewhere. Reducing community transport such as a regular bus service would be very detrimental for residents of the estate and surrounding area.

According to social research, 16% of the population on the estate have no access to a car or van. 20% of the 16+ year olds have no qualifications and 7% of the working age population are on some sort of out of work benefit. Whilst these figures may not be particularly startling when compared to other areas within Three Rivers or nationally, they demonstrate that reducing access to public transport to and from the estate will limit social mobility and potentially employability as whilst there are some major employers on the estate, these largely require a specialist skill set.

Social isolation is a significant issue recognised by the Government with the appointment of Tracey Crouch MP as 'Minister for Loneliness' who was charged to continue the brief began by the late Jo Cox MP. The Government acknowledged that this is an issue that cannot be resolved by Government alone whether nationally or locally and will require a multi disciplinary approach. That being the case, the removal of a vital communications link will surely only exacerbate the issue.

I urge you, on behalf of my parishioners, to communicate with Arriva the inappropriateness of their proposal as the knock on effects go way beyond the financial viability of the route, but tap into what it means to be a community in the first place.

Yours sincerely

Simon

Thursday, July 05, 2018

Local Sport for Local People - UPDATE

My last post was about the redevelopment of the sports hall at William Penn Leisure Centre. FOllowing the Rickmansworth Area Forum meeting last night, I have written to all 39 District Councillors again. I enclose the text below.

~~~

Dear all,

I wrote to some of you recently, deeply concerned about the future provision of hall space to play team sport at the William Penn Leisure centre in Mill End, and I enclose the text of that letter below:

...I am writing to you to express my grave disappointment that you made a decision without consultation to change the facilities at William Penn Leisure Centre. I believe that this change will be for the worse, and to the detriment of whole community.
As part of the tendering process for the facility, I understand that the size of the current sports hall will be halved, and one half converted for use as a soft play area. The hall is a well used community facility, especially during the daytime, with many local groups including soft tennis, badminton, walking netball, return to netball, girls netball and five aside football all using it weekly. This dreadful decision will impact groups that meet at the weekend too like Tae Kwan Do where 3 generations of a family regularly take part in the sport, enabling quality time as a whole family whilst modelling that sport is something for all generations.
I do understand the economics too - whoever wins any tender, in this case Everyone Active, has to make profit on the facility, and the council need to make sure that it doesn’t run at a loss, but I’d like to suggest that if this plan goes ahead there will be significant financial ramifications, as many of these groups will no longer be able to meet at all.
When you made this decision as part of the tendering process, I believe that you did not take into account the shear number of local people who use the hall facility. I accept that some of the groups are relatively new, but nonetheless, a decision was made by you on data that was just not accurate. The netball groups probably amount to 60-80 people each week, for example.
Team sport at this level, which was specially encouraged as part of the London 2012 Olympic games legacy and is usually part funded by Sport England, is a really important part of caring for people’s physical wellbeing. I do not need to tell you the significant amount of money the NHS currently spends on ailments caused as a direct result of obesity and inactivity. Team sport such as those mentioned above are a great way to counter that rise in the present and the future. Halving the size of the sports hall prevents many of those existing team sports from being played at all on site - you cannot play netball or five aside football on half a court or pitch. You just can’t. I am aware that part of the proposed refurbishments will include an all weather 3G surface outside, but netball cannot be played on that surface, neither can badminton. By halving the size of the hall effectively stops those groups from meeting.
Team sport also builds community. As a faith leader locally this is something I am passionate about. One of the benefits of local team sport is that it brings people together who otherwise would not meet, and it allows friendships to be built. To lose the sports hall in any useable form will stop those sports happening for local people at a time that works for them. Other venues are available outside of the area (e.g. in Watford and Hemel Hempstead or indeed in some cases in the evenings or weekends), but the fact that these groups meet at a local venue at a time that suits those who attend is meeting one of your own priorities as a council for 2017/18.
The loss of this sports hall could also have other ramifications. In the event we needed to hold a big community meeting in a neutral venue, the sports hall is an ideal space. In the event of a major incident that hall will be an essential asset . I was Vicar of Leverstock Green following the Buncefield explosion. I know first hand how the Fire Service worked with Herts County Council and Dacorum Borough Council to use the hall at Jarman park for triage and temporary accommodation. Whilst we wouldn’t want to keep a hall solely for those reasons, the loss of that space could have a significant impact in a major incident.
I understand that the hall space will be redeveloped to become a soft play area. These sorts of facilities have become a God send for parents and their kids. Many of the bigger ones locally (in Watford for example) are part of bigger chains. They tend to be housed in much larger buildings with significantly more space and therefore more facilities. I am not convinced that the proposed space in William Penn with Gambardo’s for example, and talking anecdotally with local families the appeal of a bigger space is greater. Whilst soft play facilities allow parents to have a coffee whilst their children have fun but what they don’t do is model a healthy lifestyle. Children seeing and knowing that their parents play team sport though demonstrates that sport is an important part of a healthy lifestyle for all.
The introduction of a soft play area into that space in William Penn is not a golden bullet either. I am not sure that the addition of this facility on site would create sufficient revenue to offset the loss of monies from the closure of all the local groups mentioned above.
By following through on this redesign you are in effect saying to our communities that profit is much more desirable that maximising the opportunities for local people in Mill End and Maple Cross to play team sport and to take some responsibility for their own emotional and physical wellbeing. Yes, I am aware that Three Rivers are not obliged to provide our community with the sports facilities that we enjoy at William Penn, but I would argue that it would be in our shared interests to keep them and that it is probably your moral duty to maintain them for the benefit of all'

Subsequently I have had email replies from a few of you, and conversations on the telephone and in person with a couple of you and I thank you for that.

I would like all 39 of you as our representatives to be aware again, that the decisions made back in September last year as the tendering process began, and signed off in April, were made based on inaccurate information about regular hall usage on a weekly basis. At the Local Area Forum last night, it became clear that no-one involved in the decision took into account the current regular usage of many groups including wheelchair basketball, netball, taekwando and other groups. What also became clear last night was that the tendering process initially began with 6 companies offering to take on the provision, which after others withdrew for various reasons, left the council with Hobson’s choice - Everyone Active.

Good practise says that when tendering for work one should always look to have quotes from three companies/contractors before proceeding with work. It seems that the you, through your Leisure Committee, decided to run with the one offer from Everyone Active who incidentally look like they are beginning to hold a bit of a monopoly on managing facilities like this as they currently run 2 facilities in Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamstead, Slough, St Albans and South Oxhey to name only a few. I am quite frankly staggered that a tender was agreed on under these circumstances.

It became clear again at last night’s meeting, that this bid was signed off without consultation with current users or the wider community. As a contract has been signed Cllr Lloyd told the assembled that there would be financial implications for reneging on the contract signed to the tune of around £63,000 annually. I am curious to know where that figure comes from or what it equates to? Do you really believe that Everyone Active would make more than that annually in their new soft play, cafe and clip and climb facilities? I would suggest not, as bigger facilities are available at the XC in Hemel and Gambardo’s (which incidentally is running at a loss!)

This must not become a party political issue. It is an issue to do with the wellbeing and health of all of our constituents. I am well aware that some of you in receipt of this email serve wards that will benefit in other aspects of this project to do with work in South Oxhey for example, but I am sure you will agree that there are many who will use these facilities from across the district, and not just those who live within walking/cycling/driving distance.

These facilities at William Penn are a community asset. I understand that the previous provider was not managing this asset well, but I am shocked that the chair of the Leisure Committee advised that, ( it’s in the minutes) once the press and public were removed, to make a decision focussing more on finance rather than future leisure provision which could be worked out a a later date.

I have also written to David Bibby, MD of Everyone Active, to ensure that he is up to speed on the feeling of some within the community

I look to hearing back from you and seeing you at up coming Leisure Committee and full Council meetings within the next fortnight.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Local Sport For Local People

Some of local women who's weekly netball will be affected.
Photo from the Watford Observer
http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/16255477._Huge_buzz__at_netball_festival/ 
Our local district council (Three Rivers) has successfully put out to tender the management of the local leisure centre, which was won by a new company. As part of that tender, a proposal has been agreed already by Three Rivers to halve the current sports hall and turn one half into a soft play area.

This will affectively stop many local people, some of whom come to our church communities, from taking part in team sport at a time and place that is easily accessible to them. As Christians we worship a God who takes our bodies very seriously, and medical research has shown that keeping physically active is good for us physically but emotionally too.

The loss of this facility would be significant.

Tonight I have written to local councillors and I enclose the text of the letter below. Could I ask if you, if you live in the WD3 post code, to spread the word and encourage people who are concerned, which may yet include you, to write too?

William Penn Leisure Centre

~~~

Dear all,
I am writing to you to express my grave disappointment that you made a decision without consultation to change the facilities at William Penn Leisure Centre. I believe that this change will be for the worse, and to the detriment of whole community.
As part of the tendering process for the facility, I understand that the size of the current sports hall will be halved, and one half converted for use as a soft play area. The hall is a well used community facility, especially during the daytime, with many local groups including soft tennis, badminton, walking netball, return to netball, girls netball and five aside football all using it weekly. This dreadful decision will impact groups that meet at the weekend too like Tae Kwan Do where 3 generations of a family regularly take part in the sport, enabling quality time as a whole family whilst modelling that sport is something for all generations.
I do understand the economics too - whoever wins any tender, in this case Everyone Active, has to make profit on the facility, and the council need to make sure that it doesn’t run at a loss, but I’d like to suggest that if this plan goes ahead there will be significant financial ramifications, as many of these groups will no longer be able to meet at all.
When you made this decision as part of the tendering process, I believe that you did not take into account the shear number of local people who use the hall facility. I accept that some of the groups are relatively new, but nonetheless, a decision was made by you on data that was just not accurate. The netball groups probably amount to 60-80 people each week, for example.
Team sport at this level, which was specially encouraged as part of the London 2012 Olympic games legacy and is usually part funded by Sport England, is a really important part of caring for people’s physical wellbeing. I do not need to tell you the significant amount of money the NHS currently spends on ailments caused as a direct result of obesity and inactivity. Team sport such as those mentioned above are a great way to counter that rise in the present and the future. Halving the size of the sports hall prevents many of those existing team sports from being played at all on site - you cannot play netball or five aside football on half a court or pitch. You just can’t. I am aware that part of the proposed refurbishments will include an all weather 3G surface outside, but netball cannot be played on that surface, neither can badminton. By halving the size of the hall effectively stops those groups from meeting.
Team sport also builds community. As a faith leader locally this is something I am passionate about. One of the benefits of local team sport is that it brings people together who otherwise would not meet, and it allows friendships to be built. To lose the sports hall in any useable form will stop those sports happening for local people at a time that works for them. Other venues are available outside of the area (e.g. in Watford and Hemel Hempstead or indeed in some cases in the evenings or weekends), but the fact that these groups meet at a local venue at a time that suits those who attend is meeting one of your own priorities as a council for 2017/18.
The loss of this sports hall could also have other ramifications. In the event we needed to hold a big community meeting in a neutral venue, the sports hall is an ideal space. In the event of a major incident that hall will be an essential asset . I was Vicar of Leverstock Green following the Buncefield explosion. I know first hand how the Fire Service worked with Herts County Council and Dacorum Borough Council to use the hall at Jarman park for triage and temporary accommodation. Whilst we wouldn’t want to keep a hall solely for those reasons, the loss of that space could have a significant impact in a major incident.
I understand that the hall space will be redeveloped to become a soft play area. These sorts of facilities have become a God send for parents and their kids. Many of the bigger ones locally (in Watford for example) are part of bigger chains. They tend to be housed in much larger buildings with significantly more space and therefore more facilities. I am not convinced that the proposed space in William Penn with Gambardo’s for example, and talking anecdotally with local families the appeal of a bigger space is greater. Whilst soft play facilities allow parents to have a coffee whilst their children have fun but what they don’t do is model a healthy lifestyle. Children seeing and knowing that their parents play team sport though demonstrates that sport is an important part of a healthy lifestyle for all.
The introduction of a soft play area into that space in William Penn is not a golden bullet either. I am not sure that the addition of this facility on site would create sufficient revenue to offset the loss of monies from the closure of all the local groups mentioned above.
By following through on this redesign you are in effect saying to our communities that profit is much more desirable that maximising the opportunities for local people in Mill End and Maple Cross to play team sport and to take some responsibility for their own emotional and physical wellbeing. Yes, I am aware that Three Rivers are not obliged to provide our community with the sports facilities that we enjoy at William Penn, but I would argue that it would be in our shared interests to keep them and that it is probably your moral duty to maintain them for the benefit of all.
Yours sincerely,

Sunday, March 04, 2018

Gospel for Body Hackers: From Dust To Glory (based on John 2:13-25)


We are in a world where science fiction drives science fact. I read recently of people gathering in Austin, Texas for the annual Body Hacking Con. A conference where people have experimented with body modification gather to share and talk. Body hacking is actively changing one's body to better reflect one’s belief of what your "ideal self" would be. People like Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow - yes, that's his legal name - has the chip from his Sydney travel card implanted into his hand or Angel Giuffria.  She is an actress with a striking, personalised bionic arm.  "Older prosthetics were all made to try and blend in. I never really cared about hiding it, but that was the only option …I kind of like the idea my arm can match my personality by adding lights and colours and matching it to my outfit…” 

Bodies. We all have one. Some of us may not like ours much but we all inhabit one. We desperately want to change them but maybe not in as extreme ways.  We compare ours to others. We analyse them, take them apart, and we like some parts more than others.  Yet bodies play such a key role in the story of God which we tell.


Jesus seems to spend time with anybody. In the previous section of John’s Gospel he has been mixing other bodies of people at a wedding party in Cana. And after a brief stop in Caesarea Philippi, he’s on his way to Jerusalem. This story of turning the money changers tables features in the other Gospel accounts too but it’s not told this close to the beginning of the Gospel. And I wonder whether it is because it allows John to raise at this early stage the importance of bodies in the story of salvation? There’s no account of Jesus birth in Bethlehem in John’s Gospel - but this account of clearing the Temple asks some fundamental questions about where God is located.

“… [Jesus] drove all of them out of the temple… 16He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

Pauline Dakin’s parents separated when she was 5 years old, in part because of her father’s drinking. When Pauline asked why they had left leaving her father behind, her mother Ruth fobbed her of and told her she would tell her when she was older.  By the time she was 11, she had attended 6 different schools. Around this time, Stan Sears had come into their family - a minister who ran a support group for families of alcoholics to which Ruth had gone to seek support. There then were years of relative normality.  After graduating and insisting to know more about the moves and her earlier life, Pauline arranged to meet her mother at a local cafe. Over a table her mother slipped her a note in an envelope that read ‘take your jewellery off and put it in the envelope.’ She complied and her mother took her to a motel room where Stan was waiting. There she was that for the past 16 years their lives had been in danger from the mafia and that their family had been targeted because her father had been involved in organised crime. Suddenly her life was full of half truths and stories and layers of meaning. She couldn't wear her jewellery because it needed to be tested for bugs.

Pauline Dakin
Over the following years, Stan’s stories became more elaborate to the point finally where Pauline, no longer believed them, and set up a sting. She called her mother one day to tell her that her house had been broken into, which wasn’t true. A while later, Stan arrived with stories of men being picked up in the street having broken into her house looking for things. When Pauline told that the story wasn’t true, she recalled how sad Stan looked. Pauline eventually went to see a psychiatrist to try to understand more where she was told about a syndrome called ‘follie a deux’ in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from a dominant personality (Stan), to a less dominant personality (Ruth). Years later Pauline did forgive her mother for the years of lies, but Ruth, her mother, never did stop believing all that Stan told her.

Stan and Ruth in the early 1990s

This story of the cleansing of the Temple has many layers of meaning to it. The Temple was doing what it normally did one Jesus arrived.  The vital trades are in place for the necessary exchange of monies, animals, and grains for the required sacrifices. Nothing is out of order at this point. Jesus orders that his Father’s house not be made a marketplace. For the temple system to survive, however, the ordered transactions of a marketplace were essential. Jesus is accusing no-one of malpractice but instead is trying dismantle the whole system intimating that the Temple is not needed at all.

The Jews ask for a sign from Jesus, an authoritative reassurance that what He did and said was true. But both looking back to the sign He performed at Cana and forward to the 6 miracles recorded over the next chapters of the Gospel, what they did not see was that the signs ultimately point back to Jesus Himself and his reference to the Temple here or to the woman at the well or to the blind man all in John’s account - reinforce the sense that you can look for God in signs and stories - but an authentic experience of Him only comes through spending time with the one who abides with us, who is with us for the long haul, who knows what it is to be human because he came as one of us - Jesus himself. For in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell…

God made the decision to be incarnated, but if we take the incarnation seriously, and that God loves the world, I think it must mean that God loves every body, everybody, every person, every expression of what it means to be human, whether we fall into an accepted social stenotype or norms or not. Otherwise, incarnation - God becoming fully human and experiencing that in every respect - is partial and penultimate. You can’t be partly human, selectively human. If you are human, well then, it means the whole thing. I’m not saying that a Middle Eastern male Jesus experienced what it is to be a black man under apartheid in South Africa or gay white woman in Edinburgh, but what I am saying is that He has experienced our motives, emotions and drives in every fundamental respect. He has lived us from the inside out and loves us that way too. In the end, Jesus is saying that his body is the location of God, which means in turn ours is too as it is through our bodies we read and hear Scripture and receive Jesus’ body and blood in the sacrament of Holy Communion, and in so doing our bodies, our lives are transformed from the dust of which we are made into the glory that we are promoised.

Lent for us is hungry body in the wilderness, a body anointed, a body beaten, a body on the cross, a body laid in a tomb. The only way we can get at that is to embrace our own bodies. Lent, Easter and beyond, cannot be fully captured or experienced in our liturgy or our preaching. Instead, Lent invites a deep reflection on the role of bodies in faith and in life.  God is counted on Jesus’ body then and therefore ours now to be the places where He is to be found because He loves the world. God is counting on it because God being embodied in Jesus ended on the cross.  People are still looking for signs of God present in our world, but God is embodied in our world still and people can have an authentic experience of Him and His love for us and all the world… through you.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Walking In His Shoes


The most striking image I have seen in the days since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, is that of a bereft mother, her arm around another, both unconsolable at the death of their children. And the reason that the photo will live with me is because on the forehead of one mother as she embraces the other is the symbol of our mortality and the sign of our salvation - an ash cross.

We receive these ashes at the start of Lent as a sign of repentance, of our yearning for God’s forgiveness, of our intent to live our faith more truly in the face of our mortality. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return,” says the minister ‘blessing us’ with a blackened thumb. The ashes that mark our foreheads only last for a day, but the mark this makes on our hearts is meant to endure for the entire 40 days of Lent.

And yet this is not the first time we will have been marked in this way - we will have received a similar sign and symbol at our Baptism and again at our Confirmation.  The cross marked on us reminds us that we journey the way of Christ, all too aware that we cannot avoid it and should not shy away from it.

And yet we do shy away from it. We try to down play it’s horror, trying to explain it away as a symbol of the love of God and in so doing, denying the judgement it exercises on Jesus, his ministry and the world. But as we grapple with the cross, we all too often fail to acknowledge that here, at it’s foot, salvation was wrought for us and our relationship with God was forged afresh.

Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the four we have in the canon of scripture and  it’s author wastes no time in telling us things they think we don’t need to know or that may be considered commentary rather than essentials, so for example, there is no birth narrative in Mark - no manger, no shepherds, no angels or wise men. Scholars reckon it’s because Mark just didn’t think it was relevant to the story that the author wanted to share with his readers and hearers. Scholars also reckon it is the oldest of the Gospels we have with Matthew and Luke sharing  many of the same stories about Jesus. We arrive, almost breathless, at what we hear this morning after a whirlwind of healings, teaching and miracles.

Jesus has been in Caesarea Philippi, the city founded by Philip II, son of Herod, as his seat of power. It was the site of natural springs in a pretty desolate landscape and so was an area historically dedicated to the Greek God Pan, the God of desolate places and fertility. It was a wealthy trading hub - a clash of cultures, traditions and languages. In that religiously and political diverse environment Jesus teaches about who he is and what he has been sent by God to do.

‘… He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it…’


John Hesp still lives in Bridlington with his wife. I say still, because he recently won £2million at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. But he hasn’t left his job as a caravan salesman or moved house. There are no designer clothes or Rolex watches. He has gifted money to family members and invested some in a business. He still drives the same car and has gone back to playing poker once a month with friends. But I wonder what you would do in his shoes?


Jesus has invited people to be in his shoes since the beginning of the gospel. He invited fishermen to literally come behind him, to walk in the dust of his shoes, to listen, learn and do as He has done. To follow. But here the rubber hits the road - in this multicultural, multiethnic, multifaith place, a seat of power, a place of wealth, Jesus nails his colours to the mast - or perhaps more correctly - looks ahead to what was to come at the cross. This isn’t Jesus predicting his fate - it’s him knowing what He is to do. If Jesus yielded to Peter’s tempting to take another path, Jesus’ status as Son of Man would have been in doubt. He might have gained things, perhaps even the whole world, but he would have lost who he is as the Son of Man, bound to suffer rejection and death. But more than that, the essential identity that Jesus is tempted to forego – taking up his cross – is the identity and temptation that faces anyone who would come behind him, who would follow, who would walk in His shoes. 

This morning, Jesus invites us take up our cross. Not His, but our own. We must take responsibility for following Him ourselves. We must carry the sign of what it means to be His disciple everywhere He goes, and there is nowhere in our own daily living that Jesus does not go. We carry that cross into school, into our workplaces, it comes with us as we drink coffee with friends, or sit at the bus stop. We shoulder that cross at the bedside of a sick spouse. We carry it to the graveside of a deceased neighbour - because in all of these places Christ goes before us and we follow. That is what it means for us to be a disciple, to be a Christian - to speak and act as He would in these and countless other places.


But the temptation we face is to leave our cross here. But if we do, we are no longer following Jesus and have given up on the life that He counsels us not to lose.  The Greek word here is the one from which we get our word psyche - our whole selves, our very identity as people. And that life is now so intertwined with the one whom we follow as we bear His mark from Ash Wednesday; from our confirmation; from our baptism. In other words as soon as speak to others as ourselves and not as we have heard Jesus speak - we have put down our cross. As soon as we respond to others in any other way than Jesus would, we have put down our cross. Our cross is hard and heavy - following Jesus is and will be sometimes be really difficult - but in carrying it - we accept the life He offers us and all the world as He heads to Jerusalem, knowing what He must do there.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Lent As A Habit Forming Season

Here's a version of what I said at 8am and 11am this morning for Lent 1...

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I discovered this week that some psychologists reckon it takes around 6 weeks for us to break out of the cycle of a habit, 6 weeks to become used to a new ways of living or thinking or acting. When we are struggling with a new discipline or skill, that period of time can feel like forever - will we ever master it.  It is an interesting accident perhaps that Lent now lasts around that length of time - 40 days - as we seek to grow in faith and become disciples of Jesus once again.

This morning’s Gospel takes place in the wilderness. Many of us hear the word desert here, but Mark is clear - this is the wilderness. It is a sparsely populated place between conurbations but it is not lifeless, but it can be dangerous as it is where wild animals live that may attack a flock; it is where bandits dwell that may attack at the roadside. It is also a place to where people flee from their problems to seek safety but it is also somewhere that one may be driven against one’s will to confront them in both cases the stories of Moses and Hagar are good examples. The wilderness was also a place of encounter - for many including John the Baptist and the Essene community who wrote and cared for the library of books we know as the Dead Sea Scrolls - it was a place to go to get away from the noise and bustle of the urban environment, and in a different physical landscape to allow the inner landscapes of our hearts to encounter God. It was a strange dangerous and spiritual place. A places where if you were to survive you needed to rely on the provision and protection of God.

'...And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him… 12And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness...'

If you type the word retreat into Google you end up with pages of listings of days of yoga, spa, fitness, reading, writing and the opportunity to book luxury apartments. The popularity of retreat has gone exponentially through the roof as it were. The ‘because your worth it’ culture in which we live has discovered the need for some sort of self care. In the most extreme cases, the number of 30 and 40 something who are now taking silent retreats as a way to detox from this digitally noisy instant news world. This counter culturalism remains so fascinating that it pops up on tv too, most recently on BBC4’s ‘Retreat: Meditations from a Monastery’ which had no commentary but filmed some of the daily lives of monks and allowed their life to be the soundtrack was not voyeuristic but entrancing and enticing.

For me at least, the most transforming of these sorts of programmes was simply called The Monastery and was based at Worth Abbey. 5 individuals lived the life of a monk there for 40 days and it had a transformative effect: It is fair to say that everybody on the show had been affected by their participation in some way. Four out of the five had either changed their job, or were going to change their job soon, and all it seems had utterly transformed the focus of their lives and their faith.

It is interesting to note that it is God the Holy Spirit that literally throws Jesus out into the wilderness. And part of Jesus being there for 40 days is to make him the new Moses linking the 40 years that Moses lead the Israelites, but I also noticed that Jesus is the new Noah too. Noah sent out the dove which returns with an olive twig in its beak indicating that the land was dry and a new start can be made, so the dove descends on Jesus According to St Gregory Thaumaturgus, the Father is “pointing him [Jesus] out right there as the new Noah, even the maker of Noah, and the good pilot of the nature which is in shipwreck.”

The glory of the new Noah is greater than the old. The first Noah’s righteousness preserved his own life from the flood. By contrast, the righteousness of this new Noah leads to his death, that a “shipwrecked” world might be “piloted” to resurrection life. And it is this rediscovery that we are encouraged into during these days of Lent.


The wilderness may times for us where we feel spiritually dry and lifeless. Where we feel barren, broken or alone. Times where need exist one day at a time - only just getting through. We all have experiences like that even if we are not brave enough to admit to them to ourselves let alone to others. God the Holy Spirit forced Jesus into that same environment as he entered the wilderness. Mark only gives us scant details - he was tempted, he was in with the wild beasts (a reference in the Old Testament to oppressive leaders in surrounding nations so here perhaps referring to the wild environment and the real challenges of existing safely there) and the angels waited on him (in other words God cared for him through it all.)


As we begin our journey into the Lenten wilderness some thoughts: Jesus must have experienced brokennesss and loneliness in that environment and in it God cared for Him. When we experience the wilderness internally where we feel lonely and uncertain of a direction - God loves us and cares for us - even when it feels like all around is barrenness bleakness. If you are not in this place I encourage you to reach out to someone here, or someone you know who is, and gently love them. You will be an angel waiting on that person. And if you are in that place, and all you see is rocks, sand and wild animals - know that one of those animals will be a hand to love and care for you and not attack you.


Lent can also be a place where God’s spirit drives us. It is not a time and place of austerity for penitence’s sake, but it is the gift of time to rediscover what it means to be a disciple - which is what it means for us to be Christian.  In our urban, visually noisy world which is still looking for an alternative way of living, there is a hunger for stillness and space, I encourage you to model it - find some time each day to detach yourself from the world. To find some space and enter a wilderness of silence for a few minutes each day: to intentionally stop, still down, be silent, maybe quietly reciting a simple prayer like the Jesus Prayer or a favourite verse of scripture - and invite Jesus, the New Noah, to lead you through the tricky landscapes of your heart and life - the bits that only he and you see - so as to learn once more how live the life of Resurrection hope again in 6 weeks time.