unbalanced

unbalanced

I’m unbalanced.

Whether that is worrying or reassuring depends on where you are standing and who’s head you are in.

I’m unbalanced because I think using a human brain, usually my own.

I’m unbalanced because it is impossible to grasp the whole of life and bottle it within the synapses, impulses and emotions of a human brain.

I’m unbalanced because it is impossible to grasp the whole of life and try to speak it using the unreliable and inadequate method of human speech.

I’m unbalanced because it is impossible to understand what Jesus was all about and do it justice in a few sentences, words, or a human lifetime.

So, I choose the bits I overemphasise.

Jesus’ smile, more than his frown.
Jesus’ welcome, rather than his rebuke.
Jesus life, death and resurrection, rather than one or the other.
(Or more likely for many evangelicals, just the middle one.)
Like many evangelicals, the ascension confuses me, so I tend to overlook it.

I’m unbalanced, but would rather be unbalanced and tipping towards those than unbalanced and tipping towards the tight-lipped, overly serious and always right.

There’s something worrying about people who are 100% certain.

Something worrying about people whose thinking has no flexibility, no space for being wrong, no acknowledgement that we are all unbalanced.

I try to hold my crazy beliefs lightly, and seriously.
And irreverently, so I don’t disappear up my bum and out my own navel.

I’m unbalanced because I think the quest for wisdom begins in acknowledging that.

I‘m unbalanced because I don’t think there is another way to be.

I could, of course, be wrong. I find that quite exciting.

the holy naiveté

the holy naivity

If only Jesus told harmless stories  that didn’t cut to the heart of power and poverty and sex and anger and lust and arguments and family and truth and pain and hope and death and how to be truly, madly deeply in love.

If only Jesus was more like Santa and we could pretend he existed for a few days a year and then ignore him because he’s made-up just like Winnie-the-Pooh or the Ninky-Nonk.

If only?

There is a hope I have, a naive hope, that all this holy nativity stuff isn’t just the quaint children’s story it often seems. That it isn’t a quaint story at all.

There is a hope I have, a naive hope, that kingdoms shaking and the powerful quaking cannot just be reduced to 3 wise men, some fumbling shepherds and a pantomime Herod.

There is a hope I have, a naive hope, that peace on earth actually means, well, peace on earth. On actual earth!

I hope that you hold to this naive hope with me. I hope that this Christmas has more meaning for you than it ever has. I hope that it sparkles with love and glitters with the reality of mind-and-body-soaking love.  I hope that the love  and the hope of Jesus fills us and our aching hearts, fills us and our fragile families, fills us and our beautiful communities.

I hope that the holy naiveté of the holy nativity touches you, as I hope it touches me.

A very Happy Christmas, and thank you for reading!
God bless, Kevin

many of horrors. many of love.

So Matt Cardle’s shabby soft-pop croony karaoke X Factor song is number 1. Some people will settle for anything. We really will. Pale imitations of the real thing. Either because we’re lazy, or don’t expect to receive anything better, or don’t realise there is better out there. Of course this can apply to lots of things, from Tesco’s water-filled chicken to cheap chocolate to, of course, music.

biff this

No-one expects the X Factor to work miracles; nobody really expects the X Factor to be about music – it is after all a pantomime entertainment show on which contestants and performers and judges are scripted, guided and if there’s a danger they might get it wrong, they are auto-tuned or made to mime. But it’s good fun (at times!), and it keeps people who made flashy lights and ‘cheer spontaneously now’ cards in business.

What really gets me though is the lack of effort at the end. The song is always, and without fail, awful. A damp squib, a pathetically lazy, badly thought-through pile of poo. What should be the climax of 6 months of being taught to sing by Sinita and to dance by an aerobics teacher ends up as the most bland and boring performance of the lot. It shouldn’t happen. After all the effort that goes into different song styles, into finding the ‘unique’ thing – shall we say the X Factor – of the winner, all they do is a cover version. This year at least the cover is of a decent song, but they might as well say Matt Cardle has won, now go and buy Many of Horrors by Biffy Clyro to celebrate. As soon as he has won, Matt Cardle is pointless. An irrelevance.

biffy clyro

Even so, maybe we can turn this into something good each Christmas. Maybe we can use the disappointment of a feeble unimaginative cover version every year as a reminder that Christmas isn’t about being feeble and unimaginative at all but is about wonder and beauty and creativity. Maybe we can even find ourselves at the point where we thank the X Factor for showing us each year that there is another way to live, another way to do Christmas; we can thank them for being all that we don’t want to be in order that we can be who we are meant to be.  Beautiful. Orginal. Unique. No pale imitations, no shabby cover versions. Us, and our creator God.

No longer many of horrors, but many of love.

Maybe, just maybe.

the santa clause

Father Christmas came to our church toddler group. At least, one of our wonderful ladies in her 80’s dressed up very convincingly! It was fun, the children (and adults) loved it. But how thin the ice we skate on, how thin the line between truth & lies, between story &  myth… How thin the line between harmless fun stories and giving confusing mixed messages to everyone… How thin the line we walk as followers of Jesus as we ponder How To Do Christmas About Jesus Without Ignoring Father Christmas, telling the revelation of God through JC without violating the unwritten cultural Santa clause and spilling the revelation that FC is a myth, a story, a made-up nonsense.

Should we try to shoehorn Jesus in to the event; or have Jesus giving out presents? Or ban Father Christmas? Some would, probably Christians who would ban any sort of fun. So what then?

father son christmas

I was thinking about how Jesus would handle it. He was well known for taking themes and ideas from his culture and transforming them, changing them. Ritual cup-cleaning became cleaning our hearts. Cup cleaning wasn’t in itself bad.  Fishing for fish became fishing for people. Fishing wasn’t in itself bad. Wealth became not a sign of blessing to hoard but an opportunity to give. Wealth wasn’t in itself bad.  Paul took the idea of an unknown god and made him known. Way back in the Old Testament, prophets challenged the idea of trusting fallic fertility poles for crop-growth to instead trusting the creator god; they challenged sacrifice for self-interest or ritual’s sake to instead  sacrifice as part of worship of the living god.

Our faith has always taken cultural norms and ideas and turned them into a way of talking about God, Yahweh, Jesus. So back to Father Christmas…

Maybe Jesus would say that Father Christmas sounds good, but how Jesus is even better. Maybe he would say Father Christmas is based on Santa Claus who is based on St Niklaus, a Turkish bishop who left presents for the poor so they could enjoy Christmas,; and that he (Jesus) is even more generous than that. Maybe he would say Father Christmas just brings pieces of stuff that don’t last, but he brings peace in the heart that lasts forever. Maybe he would say that Father Christmas sounds like a parental bribery method to reward or punish children for behaviour based on old religion, whereas he is full of grace and his foremost concern is not our behaviour, but our hearts. He gives us grace, whether we are good or not, because none of us deserve presents. Or his presence. Maybe he would say that central heating and subsequent lack of chimney’s put an end to the Santa’s impossible deeds but all manner of cultural and technological shifts cannot put an end to Jesus’ impossible deeds.

Maybe he would invite us to take all that is good about Father Christmas and increase it, build on it, grow it.

Maybe he would find a way to tell the Christmas story, including the Santa Claus clause, and it would work.

Maybe he would even dress up and make the children laugh.

Now there’s a thought.

inflatable vicar

I was listening to a vicar talking about ministry being about living with disappointment. He said that often ministry feels like pushing a stone uphill, so that each encouragement needs to be savoured as if it were your last, before the weight of the stone you are pushing forces you back downhill again. Sounds a bit depressing. Indeed.

The trouble is, that vicar was me.

In conversation with a mentor though, I heard myself say this and began to think. Is this really how it is? Or is this some kind of desperate self-preservation – if I remain disappointed, then no-one can get in there first. Like the way I mock my own knobbly knees or pointy nose before anyone else can. It steals their thunder. It protects me.

A change of word helped. I was encouraged to think in terms of feeling deflated rather than disappointed. Deflated is like a balloon than can be re-inflated; disappointed is like a cancer that eats away at all that you are.

The real question is, why do I feel deflated? Because things are going really well. And even if they weren’t, ministry is not about ‘doing well’ or things ‘going well’ but about being in the centre of God’s will whatever happens. Even so, there have been great encouragements amongst wonderful people beyond all our hopes when we moved here. So why deflated?

Because I have within me this longing, this yearning, this aching desire for the kingdom of god to transform, to come, to inspire and enrich and to overflow. And this longing will always remain only partly fulfilled until the kingdom comes fully, and not in part; until that to which we look to in advent is no longer for looking towards because it is fully here. I can always be more changed, more transformed; others can always be more changed, more transformed; we can all always always always sit at Jesus’ feet and encounter him in greater and deeper ways.

So this yearning within me is (I pray) an honest hoping, a holy discontent with the status quo, because I do long and will always long for more, for better, for bigger. Because God can, and because I want not 1 person to ‘get it’, nor 2, nor 22, but everyone:  as Jesus said, from Jerusalem, through all Judea and St Helier and the ends of the earth.  Big hope! Indeed.

So deflated I may sometimes be. But no longer disappointed. And definitely not disappointed with people, if any of my folks are reading this!! You are my hope and my inspiration; your stories of hope and change are what re-inflates me. And so I sit,  awaiting re-inflating by the pneuma, the wind, the breath, the Holy Spirit of God at work in us. As it was him that gave me the absurd and wonderful and unreachable and hopeless and hopeful and unexplainable hope in the first place.

Fling wide, you Gates.

talking down

Last Sunday evening one of our teenagers climbed on the roof again, the first time for ages. Having promised I would call the Police if it happened, I did, after giving him the chance to come down. He didn’t. The Police duly came. Due to the freezing weather (pre-snow) they called the Ambulance. And the Fire Brigade (don’t you just love the word ‘brigade’. Very quaint). Our little street has never had so much drama. In the end I managed to talk him down after 2 hours, so the harnesses and hunky firemen were not needed.

So happens next?

A freezing teenager with hands cold as ice, shivering, still cross with everyone for not just leaving him alone… well, if we transpose this to some people’s idea of God, and how he will treat us on the other side (which is actually this side, but more of that another time…), the freezing hands should not be warmed but  made colder to teach a lesson; rules have been breached, a line has been crossed, justice must be done. And justice always means pain, rejection. Punishment.

Funnily enough we didn’t do that. A warm house, time to think, a conversation with a Police Officer – all accepted. A hot drink (rejected) and cheese on toast (rejected – but yummy in my tummy). Love says: this behaviour is not acceptable but you are loved. Love says: this behaviour is not acceptable but I understand the turmoil in your mind and I want to help you. Love says: you have ruined my evening but love is patient and love is kind even when love is stretched to the end of its tether. What punishment works but love, nothing like the chesed (continuing love) of Yahweh of course, but love all the same.

Justice is of course a part of this, and not apart from this. Because I don’t believe the justice of God depends on formulas like science experiments. You’ve committed this sin so you are out; you have been good, so you are in. Tally up the votes like in X-Factor and chuck you out or keep you in? I think not. Because true justice isn‘t so blinkered. True justice knows that people do things wrong because of things that have gone wrong because of things that have gone wrong… True justice knows that perfect love drives out all fear; that the strength of love is stronger than the strongest punishment; that for those who know no love, love is terrifying enough. And beautiful enough. And unexpected enough.

The grace and love and forgiveness of God must always be terrifying. To those who know it, sometimes not terrifying enough. To those who don’t yet know, terrifying indeed.  And beautiful. And unexpected. And utterly transforming.

At the end, maybe we will all be talked down by love.