some things cost more than you realise

This is a video commissioned by Muse and MTV Exit as an initiative against human trafficking. 

It is easy to think it happens somewhere else. Next week I am going to a conference in nearby Croydon called Preventing Modern Slavery/Human Trafficking in Croydon. Because it happens on my doorstep. And yours too. And we wear it. Some things cost more than we realise. 

For more information about human trafficking see Stop the Traffik or YCAT. Because people shouldn’t be bought and sold, and slaves should be free. If it’s works in your community, use this video to spread the word.  

to breathe in the woods

One of my monthly disciplines is a quiet day. This is a day I try to do life differently. And as the name suggests, it’s meant to be quiet. Life in ministry is rarely quiet, so hearing myself think, let alone God speak, can be tricky. Sometimes on my quiet days I walk the parish, or go to London. You can find God in the urban. It’s from this that the Lent Sessions (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) came, from images of our parish estate.

Often I go to the countryside. I’ve always loved the rural outdoors. Sometimes with a friend, sometimes on my own. Often I see things that spark my thoughts. Today I was thinking and trying to pray about life, how it is so full, of good things and hard things, important things and things I wish weren’t important, like rotas and not being the Messiah myself.

It can be hard to see the wood for the trees, as Jesus would have said if he’d lived in England and been less obsessed with corn. 

A quiet day can be like walking in the woods and approaching a clearing. Everything can feel a bit enclosed, dark. But ahead are glimpses of daylight. 

As you walk towards it, you can see the scenery begins to change. The trees becomes thinner. There is an end to the mud.

For me, I am drawn to clearings. Openings. Places where daylight penetrates. This of course is more than a clearing. It’s a beautiful valley. 

Seek out the places that give you life. If that is walking the pavements, do it. If it is escaping to the country, do it. It gives you the chance to see a different perspective, a different view. Then when you look back to where you’ve come from, and to where you will return, it somehow can seem more manageable. Even beautiful. 

Because you must come back. And you cannot live longing to be in the clearing. It can give you new life to go there, but you must be able to breathe in the woods.

Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope! (Romans 15.13, The Message)

the parable of the forest

There was once a man who bought a forest. Only it wasn’t a forest, it was large wilderness. There was nothing much growing in the field except some grass, some weeds and scrubland bushes. How people laughed at him when he called it a forest. But he paid a huge price for this forest. 

Some friends gave him some advice. To turn this into a forest, they said, you need to take some mud from the ground, and fashion it into the shape of a tree. They showed him. It was an impressive sculpture. But it did nothing. It did not grow, it did not seed, it didn’t even blow in the wind. In fact, soon it dried out and crumbled to the ground. 

Then they suggested he take some of the weeds and bushes and twist them together into the shape of a tree. It was an impressive sculpture. But it did nothing. It did not grow, it did not seed, it did blow in the wind but the wind dried it out and it soon crumbled to the ground. 

Instead, the man took 12 seeds. Oak. Birch. Ash. Cherry. Pine. All of them different. He imagined all his land covered in a rich mixture of trees. This would make a beautiful forest, he thought to himself, holding the seeds tightly. 

He set to work. He dug a small hole, and in the centre of his land he planted the acorn. Soon he had planted all of his seeds across his land. He gazed across the expanse. It looked no different. Give it time, he thought. He watered his seeds. 

Soon some other people came by. They laughed at him: how’s your forest coming along?! I can see a beautiful forest, he said. Most people laughed, and moved on. Some, however, stayed. And as time went by, the seeds began to grow. The man and his new friends watered them, tended them, protected them.  

Soon, when the 12 trees blew in the wind, they dropped seeds. Some of these seeds landed in good soil, and began to grow. Other small trees grew around the 12 trees. 

When this happened, the man told his friends he needed to go on a journey to oversee the growth of the forest. He told them that he was still the owner of this forest, and was entrusting them to tend it. But it’s not a forest, they said, it’s a huge area of wasteland with a few trees in. But it will be a forest he said, and I want you to tend the forest from its central oak to the edges of my land.

So the man who owned the not-yet-forest entrusted its growth to his friends, whom he had taught. As time went by the trees became a woodland, and the woodland a forest. There were big trees and small trees and clearings, and the forest attracted birds and insects and animals of all shapes and sizes. Over time the man’s friends passed on their knowledge of tending and growing the forest to their children, and their children…  and the trees grew and grew and grew. 

It turned out that the man really had bought a forest after all.

…

Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” [Acts 28, The Message]

All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. [Ephesians 1, The Message]

the fergascension

The Fergascension. To retire and ascend to the realms of football gods. I’ve just invented  a new word and equated Sir Alex Ferguson with Jesus. Oops. Not good for a Liverpool fan. 

They’ve often wondered what would happen when he would go. Now he is gone. But… not gone. Forever he will glare down in the words emblazoned on the stands; forever he will be present loitering in corridors as Director and Ambassador (ok not forever, unless he really is Jesus). Retired and ascended to the realms of football gods. The Fergascension (there it is again). I can feel a BBC montage coming on. 

Image from BBC News

So the succession narrative begins. How do you find a new ‘you’, when nobody else can be ‘you’? If you think that’s a problem for Alex Ferguson, imagine being Jesus. Sir Alex has started a momentum – a football team is never finished, completed, unless you can control time, tackles, temperament and the temptation of mercenaries. Jesus had started a momentum, a movement – not yet a church – and he was about to hand this momentum over.

Handing over momentum is a tough call. Much easier to hand over a completion than a momentum. Momentums can easily be changed, the identity of the founder can be lost; completions are, well, completed. As a twitchy and control-freaky minister, perhaps I speak for myself. And football managers. 

Jesus had to sit down. He had to sit down at the right-hand of God, in the place of power. So he slipped away, in contrast to football managers, leaving the completion of his work in the untrained and untested fragile hands of men and women whose food he had shared, feet he had washed, who’s tears he had wiped and by whom he had been betrayed, shunned, misunderstood and reunited. And who had never led a momentum. Not a good succession policy. 

But in contrast to Sir Alex, Jesus is still in charge. He has not retired only to stalk the corridors of power with a hairdryer and a trophy cabinet. He has not retired at all (you cannot retire from being God); he has not even handed power over to us (with that power we would die) (or something); but greater and more mysteriously he has allowed us to share in being him.

To share in being him?

This means that we share in his power, but we also share in his suffering. As we become his body, we are that body broken as well as that body resurrected. That’s some succession narrative. Do we really want that job?  Without going all Dan Brown, is it a poisoned chalice? Not as much as being Chelsea manager, I guess.

Jesus handed his momentum over to us, and still we carry it, sometimes bouncing it wildly or losing it in the wind, sometimes dragging it to a stuttering halt and declaring it a completion; but always Jesus manages to wrestle it from our tight grip or place it back in our outstretched hands, never stalking us and regaling us with tales of his successes because he does not have a cabinet of trophies but a story of death and of resurrection.

He doesn’t have a stand with his name emblazoned on it but a body of followers who are his body and who bear his name.

May we be people who carry Jesus’ momentum with care and with abandon; as the disciples left their hopes for completion in the locked room and followed the momentum of the Spirit into the wild unknown, may we do the same. 

Look not to the clouds, for his feet are here. 

saying goodbye

One of the most poignant things that I do is take the funerals of those who have lost children, especially those they have never held alive. This is a time to be with people in grief, where there are no easy answers, no memories to treasure, no life to recall. Just silence. 

It so happened the day I got the call this week, I came across this spoken word piece from the excellent Dai Woolridge, written for the charity Saying Goodbye, who provide support for those who grieve the loss of children. 

I thoroughly recommend it. 

…

If he seems familiar, I featured Dai’s spoken word Christmas Chord before, and we used it in our Carol Service. 

broadly christian

People are very polite, but I often feel like I’ve walked into the wrong room. Like an astronaut in a fruit market, people haven’t a clue what I’m talking about. Assemblies, weddings, funerals, baptisms. I talk about Jesus, but there’s a radical disconnect between what I am saying and what people hear; and between what lies behind what I say, and what people hear.

Last weekend I spoke at a local Scouts District St George’s Day parade. I was asked to give an address that was ‘broadly Christian’. I understand why. I told a friend, who laughed and said,

“How can you be broadly Christian?! Surely you’re either  Christian, or not?”
“You obviously don’t know much about the Church of England,” I replied.

this isn’t me

I know why I was asked, though. I don’t do being ‘broadly Christian’, but I can do being a Christian sensitively. You get me, you get my Jesus-ness. Asking me to be broadly Christian is like asking me to be broadly human. I either am or I’m not. I just might choose not to flaunt my humanness to the goldfish, though it’s my humanness that keeps it alive.* [* hopefully this metaphor will be forgotten in 7 seconds] 

How do you do speak in a ‘broadly Christian’ way? In the Scout context, I talked about working together for community and how this plays out for a follower of Jesus: servant leadership, like Jesus; caring for the unloved, like jesus; loving our neighbours, like Jesus. 

I may have slipped from being ‘broadly Christian’, into being specifically Christian, because I am specifically Christian. But hopefully sensitively Christian. There’s no explicit evangelism, no altar-call, no telling people what they should or shouldn’t do. No points-scoring. Jesus was always publicly much harsher and much more challenging to the leaders within the faith than he was to the followers on the edges of it. 

But I am not just a motivational speaker, a self-help guru, a comedian (!), a children’s entertainer – I am a church leader, one who represents the church – who represent Jesus – to the community. So what I say has to be specific. It can never be bland platitudes. Talking about following Jesus as if he’s real seems a good place to start, even if people don’t quite get it. Yet. 

…

Addendum (!?)

After reading this, one of my friends said Eddie Izzard summed up what she thought was ‘broadly Christian’ – only watch if you can handle a bit of mocking and some bad language. Consider yourself warned. 

  

let’s get ready to mumble

I want to celebrate small church. Big churches get noticed. Most of what happens in churches is small. Because most churches are small.

A small thing is like a mumble. Brief, barely audible. Lost in a puff of wind. Except. Except that I walked past the Big Top at Spring Harvest before the session started, what a noise – 5000 humans mumbling in a big tent turns tiny noise into big noise. That’s lots of small churches, all together.

Our little church on our council estate doesn’t have a massive list of ministries. But what we do we try to do well. Through coffee morning and play group we try to build supportive friendships in an environment where they can be rare. We talk about Jesus, when we feel brave, and invite people to church, and sometimes they come. Sometimes they keep coming. Small church matters. 

Coffee morning Christmas dinner

Some mums from other church have helped us start a new group called Mumbles. This is a 5 session group run by mums from different churches with the aim of supporting mums struggling with motherhood and who have questions about God. It’s based around a prayer mumbled by many mums when life is tough. One person came to the first session, and it was so important for them. Small church matters.

Another local church has a Saturday football session and I help out. We we have 15-20 boys aged 7-21 playing together, learning football skills, yes, but also teamwork, maturity, life skills, and holding the vicar to his own no-swearing policy. Why do we allow ourselves to be sworn at and run ragged on a Saturday morning? Because of Jesus. Small church matters. 

At vicar college we were encouraged to think of new and radical ideas and ways to be church. They are all well and good. Here I have learnt that the classics can still work.  Coffee morning matters. Playgroup matters. Home group matters. Scouts matters. Football matters. Giving lifts to old ladies matters. Bothering to do Sunday school for 2 kids matters. Talking to people matters. Supportive relationships matter.  Small church matters. Because of Jesus.

The kingdom is full of small things. Be encouraged by the small things. One mumble on its own is barely heard. It can be disheartening. But many mumbles together can change the world.

Let’s get ready to mumble. 

broad church, broken world

On the face of it it was just another detective story. There are so many on TV it’s as if creative drama ideas have gone into a double-dip recession. And unusually for ITV, it wasn’t a Morse spin-off. But Broadchurch has surprised me – ITV-drubbing snob that I am – by holding my attention across all 8 episodes. 

** plot spoilers ** don’t read if you haven’t seen it yet!!

Broadchurch got better with each episode, as it exposed the flaws in the characters and peeled back the hidden layers. And the final episode was extraordinary, I think, for a 2013 drama. It was told simply, powerfully. The ‘reveal’ was patient, and even though I had guessed who it was 2 episodes ago (never trust the minor character with a speaking role) it actually didn’t matter. This was no Poirot-style shallow quick-fix nonsense, nor was it cliche-driven histrionics.

Paedophilia. There is nothing – nothing – that lights the touch-paper in our culture quite like it. Rarely is the subject covered in anything other than a sensationalist way.  Rarely do we get an insight into the gradual beginnings of unhealthy relationships. Rarely do we get a chance to catch our breath before the mob are shouting about the categorically evil ‘other’ who can do this sort of thing. 

Real life is complicated. Real relationships are complicated. Real life doesn’t contain the simple black and white categories our (predominantly) unthinking culture (and media) would like us to have. Real life is a broad church of broken and breaking people, of healed and healing people, of people with hearts of glass who shatter and cut and who can be – really can be – restored, though always scarred. The scars are important. 

The broad church that we try to be, to hold together, following Jesus in our own uniquely broken ways, this broad church is one in which we sob with the broken. When worlds fall apart, whether through bad decisions or external circumstances, we try to be the ones who find a way to sob too. Sadness is universal. Broadchurch showed families torn apart, and maybe it got to me because that is what I see. 

Broadchurch left me sad, but it did not leave me feeling hopeless. Not just because for once the vicar wasn’t the easy target. But because the story did not end with mob justice, but a community of broken people standing together (I know it was cheesy, but we needed something!). And there was no easy resolution between the two families, because there is no easy resolution in real life. Rarely is a series able to hold these two in tension. Rarely are we, the people, given the trust in ourselves to be able to see this. 

“You wanted easy answers, and scapegoats, and bogeymen. The world’s more grey.” [DI Hardy]

Following Jesus means that we cannot mete out cheap justice. Following Jesus means that we face impossible situations head-on. Following Jesus means that we shoulder the burdens of the world but we do not do it alone. Following Jesus means that we see into the hearts of all people and by the grace of God we can carry on, we can even find love for those we understand the least, for those we want to hate, for those who confuse us because they do not fit, and those who make us angry because, as the question was asked twice: how could you not know? 

Evil is not ‘other’, darkness is not ‘over there’. But in the darkness – from within it, not from outside of it – shines the light. From within the darkness there is always hope for – and even from – a broad and broken world, and a broad and broken church.   

…

I have written previously about a more personal encounter with this subject in reputation

when the tide is out

I went for a run during the Spring Harvest conference on a surprisingly sunny day.  This is what I saw and what it made me think….

when the tide is out
suddenly all that was smooth and covered
and made of just water
is a massed mess
of sand
and puddles and pebbles
and weeds

when the tide is out 
we can feel exposed and bare
when the things we use to cover the mess beneath
are removed, vanished,
disappear like the tide
we feel naked, trapped, frightened

when the tide is out
our boats can no longer float
when the tide is out
everything is still and the busyness of the waves
that blur and distract is gone
and we are left
alone

when we are tired and drained and wrung out
and messy
and feel as useless as a dry harbour

may God meet with us
may God warm our rock-pools with his sun
may God show us our mess is his beauty
may God refresh us and remake us
and repaint us in brighter colours
and show us when the tide is out we can stand
where we could not stand yesterday

may God give us his rest
until we can float on his tide again. 

intentional generosity: a christian challenge to punitive welfare reforms

It goes without saying that a minority will take for granted the generosity of the welfare state. It also goes without saying that the majority will not. What we have to decide is: does that matter? Yes, of course. So what then do we do… Do we take away benefits from everyone because of the bad choices – and yes, sometimes criminal behaviour – of the few? Do we offer support to those in need even when we know that support may well be abused?

Yes. Yes, not because we are woolly-minded liberals who are happy to be taken for a ride. Yes, because our model for love is Jesus and is by definition self-giving. We give in full knowledge of rejection. We are taken advantage of, and we give again. We do it because we believe that love gives. Of course there are consequences for its abuse. Of course there is no bottomless pit of money. Of course when we see people deliberately milking the system that must be challenged. At the poorest AND the richest end. 

But we believe that we help those at the bottom, whether they are there because of their own bad choices or not. When I worked in a drop-in centre for street homeless people we knew full well there was a tiny minority for whom this was a lifestyle choice we were enabling. But we also knew the true stories that put the majority there. We knew there were those who were genuine, and truly needed help. To help those, you must help the others. To truly show love, you give without prejudice, in the knowledge that there are those who cannot and will not survive without it.

Yes, some will abuse it. Yes, that rightly makes us angry. Does it make us withdraw help? No. We give knowing that our gift will be abused by some, and taken for granted by others. Our model is Jesus, and he gave everything. Punitive Welfare reforms that target the most vulnerable in our society are not acceptable within this model of thinking. Neither is the vindictive and divisive language against the poor, by elected politicians, writing then all off as thieving, idle drunks.

Bringing Jesus into it doesn’t make it easy, by the way. It’s not like a naive belief in fairies that makes you want to treat everyone like a flower. No. This is hard. This is no doormat philosophy. Faith isn’t a vain superstition or a crutch for the weak and indecisive. And this is where we show it. Faith necessarily prompts a conscious and intentional decision to show generous love in the face of possible rejection and abuse. Compassion comes from the Latin for ‘suffering with’. It has a cost we willingly accept – generous love. Worked out in the Welfare system. 

Madness? Maybe. Fairness? Probably not. The right thing to do? Without doubt.