to the unknown god

I wonder when you last prayed? Was it this morning, that the alarm clock wouldn’t go off, or when you realised you hadn’t done the right homework and would be in even more trouble? Was it a few days ago when you nearly got hit by a car crossing the road in the split-second of blind panic you shoot a prayer like an arrow ‘just in case’ there’s a power up there listening. I take a lot of funerals as part of my job, and most of the people in those families are not church-goers or religious but they believe in God when someone dies. They pray then. 

A couple of weeks ago the Bolton footballer Fabrice Muamba had a heart attack on the pitch, and the response from his team mates and thousands of supporters was what…? To simply wish him well. To write a card? To send him good vibes? To read his star sign to see if it mentions recovering from a heart attack? To tell his family all the bad things religion has done? Or… was it to pray? 

His whole team came out in t-shirts saying ‘pray for Muamba’. Which is fantastic and demonstrates that the doo doo hits the fan we know – we know! – there is something out there, someone out there, someone who might just be able to help. It’s an instinct we have, it’s a connection we have with out creator that even if we have forgotten about, our souls haven’t. 

So when we pray, who do we pray to? A nameless face, a ball of gas, a statue, an idea? Maybe we are praying to a mystery, maybe we are praying to whoever you want God to be? 

I think not. 

I believe that I know who the God is that we pray to. I believe that God isn’t nameless and faceless, that God doesn’t hide away behind the clouds. That God in’t just for certain people at a certain time. And that God isn’t reserved for those who ‘feel’ the spiritual or like to have a fuzzy feeling and say [Darth Vader voice] *The force is strong with you..*.

And I believe God is here.  

My faith is rooted in actual historical events. I believe that the God we pray to in emergencies is revealed to us through Jesus, who is present here by his Holy Spirit. I believe that the man Jesus was actually God, that he actually gave us a face and a name. I believe that God so loved the world – that is, you and me and this earth – that he came to earth as one of us to show us, to be present with us. I believe that he so wants to be in relationship with us that instead of staying far way and hoping one day we’ll discover him for ourselves he came looking for us. 

You see, there is this dividing wall between us and God, it’s what prevents us from being in a relationship with him. God is a God of love and goodness and compassion and every time we don’t live like that, like he does, and all the time we don’t recognise him as God, it’s like a new brick in the wall. Jesus came to break down that dividing wall between us and God. And not just to break it down, but at the same time to transform us so that we might be able to approach God and be in relationship with him. 

Because all that bad stuff we do when we don’t live lives of love and goodness and worship sticks to us like charcoal, makes us dirty. And God is clean, like Morgan Freeman in a white suit in Bruce Almighty. So he makes us clean. When we trust in him, when we follow him, Jesus makes us clean. When he embraces us. We don’t have to be clean before God will embrace us. That is so important. Morgan Freeman’s suit takes on our dirt. We don’t have to be good, fine, sorted, religious to be embraced by God. In fact, it’s because I’m not good, sorted and religious I know I need Jesus. 

That is what happened that first Easter. Jesus took all the bad stuff – we call it sin – on himself, so that we might be holy and be in relationship with God. Paid the price to free the slave. That’s me. You.

This is the God I believe in. A God who came to be with us, who searched us out; a God who answers prayer, who isn’t a nameless and faceless force; a God who is Jesus, who came to break down the wall that divides us and God so that we might live as we were meant to live, in relationship with God who made us and loves us. A God who is personal. A God who shows us love. Love that is real and true and deep, not a love that goes up and down on a tide of emotion like a teenage crush or tugs at the heart strings like the backstories on X Factor. Love, unconditional and unfailing love. 

That is the God I believe in. This is the God to whom we pray. He’s called Jesus, and he is here right now by his Holy Spirit. Do you want to know him? 

metatarsals and muambas

Picture from BBC News

God watches football and weeps. All that energy in the stands as men set an example to the church in the way they passionately lament and rage and love and endure and enjoy and get their feelings out there in words that might not perhaps make it in the Psalms… 

Football is generally determined by the direction the stands face. Inwards. The care and the passion and the prayers are all focused inwards. Except sometimes. Sometimes something happens that draws some of that passion and energy and turns it outwards. Suddenly the yelling and the rage and the lament is not directed at the sponsored pigs bladder or the teenage superhero who will always disappoint but at the nameless, faceless entity called… God.

Remember the metatarsals? I think it was the 2006 World Cup when The Sun urged us to pray for Beckham’s foot. A frivolous prayer. And now we are urged to pray for Fabrice Muamba. Suddenly people who never give a thought to praying anything beyond wining the FA Cup are not frightened to pray. Out loud. To wear t-shirts and leave flowers.

What does God do with these prayers?  I think he welcomes them. He’s not like some tardy old wealthy uncle who gets upset when people only talk to him because they want to borrow money. Or a miracle. He welcomes them. 

Does that mean he answers them? Erm… if you mean does he say Yes and make Fabrice Muamba better? Erm… if only prayer was like a magical incantation, a formula. Maybe God asks a question back. That’s the thing with prayer, it’s a conversation not a monologue. It’s Facebook Chat not a status update. Maybe God says, thank you for your prayer; now tell me about yourself and how you are going respond whether or not your prayer is ‘answered’. If you want me to intervene in his life, can I intervene in yours?  

Image from BBC Sport

Maybe God hears these prayers and weeps. Not because he doesn’t want to hear them – he does – but because he wishes he heard more. And maybe because he wishes the energy that is devoted to praying for single, well-known individuals could be devoted to praying for communities or even countries. Like the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, from where Fabrice Muamba fled as a refugee aged 11. Or maybe these prayers acted as a catalyst for action against heart disease and the millions of football fans with terrible diets saw a glimpse of what can happen to even healthy people and changed their ways. 

Prayer has strings attached. Prayer comes with our own responsibilities. May we be people who begin to help the football stands face outwards, to be people who pray and act for individuals and communities and countries. And may we be people who welcome the fact that our God is suddenly hearing a whole load more prayers than he used and that he does not turn them away.

As we pray that, we also pray for Fabrice Muamba, his family, friends and colleagues. And for the victims of the shootings in France… the bus crash in Belgium… the street homeless in London…  the lonely old lady next door…

May our actions be prayers that rise like incense. 

weeds

We were praying for our community this week. It was active prayer. One of the things we were invited to do was cut some weeds down, weeds that choke growth of faith.

God really spoke to me about weeds. That there are so many weeds in our community. Weeds that choke, weeds that block, weeds that take valuable life and steal all it’s beauty.

Sex and sexualisation. Inadequacy and failure. Lack of wisdom. Love lost and love never received. Debt that entangles. Drugs that ensnare. Families that just don’t work. Lack of aspiration. Unrealistic aspiration. Lies that form the web of life.

We are called to weed. That is why you can’t separate so-called social action from preaching the gospel. For the good news to be able to grow, someone needs to do the weeding. Being a part of clearing out the crap is part of what we do. Even though we bring our own fair share with us.

People who weed get hurt. Scratched. Tired. But without weeding, nothing can grow. So let’s pray for the weeds to go. But as any gardener knows, praying for the weeds to go makes no difference. You have to get stuck in.

Anyone up for it?

rocket shoes

I was going to school with my 6 year-old on Friday and we were running a bit late. Quite late actually, so he really was running a bit to keep up with daddy’s long legs. Between breaths he turned to me and said

‘why don’t we pray to God that he bring us a super-rocket-boost to wear and we get to school and not be late’

and I thought for a second and said that I didn’t think God answered questions like that very often with a yes. I said he was more likely to say that if we wanted to get to school on time we probably should have left a bit earlier.

He looked at me again and said ‘what about special rocket shoes?’

and I thought isn’t that how so many of us pray to God. Maybe not for rocket shoes though sometimes they would be useful.

Other parts of my week were spent in conversation with people in various different stages of crisis – physical or mental illness or total family breakdown or bereavement, some very immediate and some very long-term over years and years, and with those who think they are too evil to be loved or too insignificant to be properly noticed.

So the prayer for rocket feet was particularly pertinent. One person’s rocket feet is another persons healing or reconciliation or hug. It’s good to pray. I think next time I’ll pray for rocket feet and see what happens.

Which sort of contradicts myself. Well, no-one said I should be consistent.

economical with prayer

I believe in an interventionist God. Which means that I believe God interferes with the natural order of things every now and then. But in a unique and often misunderstood way.

Superheroes are interventionist. They drop in, tackle the bad guys and leave. Doctor Who is interventionist. He flies around messing with worlds and saving humanity and leaving. Mercenaries are interventionist. They will intervene wherever depending on the contract.

Image from ASBO Jesus

God is different. Because his intervention is relational. From Abraham to present day and most obviously in the person of Jesus, God prefers to be embedded, involved, entangled. Incarnate. So swooping in from the Bat Cave or the Tardis or wherever, intervening to knock a train back onto the rails or catch a falling piano before it crushes a child is not really his scene.

Though he breaks his own rules. So he does do that. Which makes him complicated.

Today I saw a headline stating the EU was “praying for a miracle”. This is the God many people would like God to be. Mostly silent and undemanding, but available to rescue us when we truly cock things up. The ultimate super-sub you hope you don’t need but keep on the bench just in case.

Will God provide a miracle to rescue the world economy? Will Greece suddenly discover on Monday morning they have enough money to cover their debts? Would that be a worthwhile intervention from God? After all, the poor who’s jobs and savings are most at risk will benefit.

Or maybe God has already intervened. When he gave us minds to think and hearts to feel. When he gave us consciences and ethics and the ability to think in community. That so many of us have chosen to ignore that and gamble our money or spend money we don’t have – personal or sovereign – and get into unmanageable debt does not put any obligation on God to “sort it out”. Does it?

I believe in an interventionist God. But not one that works to formulas or demands or contracts. One that is already intervening because he is here, embedded and incarnate. He lives in us who call ourselves church, and if we are his body we need to be doing what he would do. Putting ourselves in dangerous positions challenging the ruling elite, giving up our own wealth and time for people we don’t know who are being beaten up by the system we are a part of, loving God and our neighbour more than we love our own families and our security.

God has heard our very economical prayer. But he won’t sign a short-term contract. He’s in it for life. Are we?

a gentle clearing of the throat

prayer is so often like a careful excuse me
bravely ignoring the ‘do not disturb’ sign
but only to quietly slip a note under the door…

or it’s like a gentle clearing of the throat
to draw attention
without causing tension
or making a scene

shout.pray.listen

prayer feels like it ought to involve
more SHOUTING
some shoving and
some flouting of the rules
some yelling because we should be telling it like it is
not quietly murmuring
but loudly stirring
earnestly yearning for God to hear
to act
to reach from his pedestal
to change all that is cruel and heartless and human
inhuman
inhumane

because his name means God with us
because prayers mean God help us
our cry is say something to us

yet in this moment of tension
aggression
shouting and pleading
we pause…

and in faith are conceding, of course,
to hear
we must listen.

….

this is an edited version of a poem that first featured in rants in your pants

the elephant in tahrir square

There have been tanks in Tahrir Square, and horses and even camels… and a great big elephant that no-one talks about.

What has happened in Egypt has been momentous, and will continue to be remembered as a remarkable event. It brings back memories of the toppling of Eastern European communism in 1989 and Apartheid in South Africa in 1991 – largely peaceful, grass-roots revolution, which the powerful cannot simply ignore or suppress.

Other things can be ignored though. There were martyrs, of course. Could a largely peaceful revolution have happened without the initial violence and the torture of prisoners? We will never know. And then there is prayer. Prayer is notoriously difficult to report. I cannot imagine John Simpson talking about the power of prayer. And in a Muslim country with a small and largely oppressed Christian population, the prayers of whom?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787

This picture above (from BBC News) stood out for me. It highlights everything of interest, yet totally ignores the several hundred people praying. They are really quite obvious. Bloggers should never be considered more important than pray-ers.

This reminded me of another picture (below) that dropped onto my Facebook wall the other day, showing Christians protecting Muslims at prayer in the Square.

prayers, protests & protection

Prayer is the elephant in Tahrir Square and the elephant in the news room, that which cannot be reported because no-one understands it or wants to credit prayer with achieving anything. In such a deeply religious country as Egypt, with some of the oldest Christian communities in the world, this is an interesting elephant.

It’s partly our ‘secular’ news culture that avoids talk of things religious unless they are divisive, frivolous, controversial or gay (or all of them). And I think it’s partly our attitude to seeing Muslims at prayer. Christians at prayer in churches seems quaint, a little dull, irrelevant; Muslims at prayer en mass in the outside, to the frightened-of-Muslims public, looks slightly sinister, in their straight lines, all moving together; our paradigm of Muslims in the news is of shouting, fighting, and being angry. This breaks that stereotype.

Maybe that’s why it was ignored.

We pray now for a peaceful transition of power.

prayers. pauses. punctuation.

It's, like, Emma

Emma Thompson has caused a stir by, like, complaining about yoof slang creeping into every day speak. Like saying ‘like’, ‘innit’, that sort of thing.  Apparently its sloppy, and makes you sound, well, stupid. Others have waded into the debate saying ‘street speak’ is fine, has always happened, that one of the main people who flouted language rules and made up new words was some bloke called Shakespeare.

I’m not here to talk about grammar though.

What I am interested in is the idea of filler words. John Ayto of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (reported by BBC News) said that using words like ‘like’ is a normal way of stalling a sentence, giving yourself time to think. Like saying ‘um’. In our highly grammatical speech sometimes we just need to slow down and we make noises to hide from the silence.

Now think about prayer. How often when praying out loud do we hear ourselves using filler words that sound so holy but are really just fillers, or punctuation, sounds we make to fill the silence. Does this sound familiar:

Lord, we just pray that Spirit you would come, Jesus, we just pray that you would move Lord, father we ask this in jesus name.

We really only needed to say hello.

So easily we can fill our prayers with words. But in prayer there is no need for filler words. Sometimes there’s no need for words at all.

The thing is, there is nothing inherently wrong with these words, and the last thing I would want is the grammar police making people even more frightened of praying out loud than ever. We (just) need to think about our words, our theology of the Trinity, our use of the word ‘just’; to pray what we mean, and pray it once instead of repeating the same sentence 3 times to make our prayer seem more earnest.

Even so, if when you pray, you need to use filler words then use them, because better to pray and, like, give ourselves time to think and stuff; to punctuate our sentences with the names of the Trinity; to confuse God with random sentences;  better all those and more, than never to pray at all.

So maybe this whole post was filler.

upping the ampy

This post is about Mary. And it is a bit different. You hear it, rather than read it. Some of you may like that. Some of you may not. It’s just an experiment really. It was written for the congregation at our church, but if you find it useful too, more’s the better! Think of it as like a takeaway leaflet – it could be junk mail, but then again it may actually be useful…

It’s on You Tube because I can’t upload audio to the blog.Yet…!

So, plug your speakers in, get a cup of tea and enjoy.

Meanwhile, if you don’t want to listen to 13 minutes of Kevin, hows about 4 minutes of the Mumford & Sons instead. Similar message, really, just with more banjo. Or it’s tenuous, but an excuse to listen to them.

But I will hold on hope
And I won’t let you choke
On the noose around your neck
And I’ll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I’ll know my name as it’s called again

‘Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it’s meant to be…

……………………………..

when

sitting, listening, waiting
for the almighty, the holy.
come bend your head towards me
speak, for I am listening.

and so I listen.
and so you speak.
and so I hear… nothing.

the almighty does not speak here.
the
almighty
does
not
speak.

here.

I look and see you with your open arms,
your open hearts.
I hear you with your happy songs,
your joyful smiles,

I listen.
I do.

when, almighty god I hear about
when, almighty god I sing about
when, almighty god I read about
when, almighty god I love and defend and give my everything for
when, almighty god I long to hear from

when will I hear from you?

……………………………………………………………………………
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