Waiting for the man to come

I love the Finan readings in July (from Celtic Daily Prayer). Not only do they contain lots of good things from Henry Drummond, but also the thought I shared yesterday and this one today by William Griffin:

'Those who do not believe in Jesus laugh at the prophecies he made but did not keep; but those who do believe, wait. Some, in the first few centuries of the Christian era, fled into the deserts of Egypt, there to weave mats one day, unweave them the next, waiting prayerfully for Jesus to come again. Others, realising that Jesus will come when he will, and not a moment before, set about the market the mats woven in the desert and to witness to their faith in the marketplace.'

That's about as wonderful a definition of what it means to wait on God as I've read in a long while. But it's also a terrific reflection on what the Christian community is for. Do we hide away praying that God's Kingdom would come or do we mix it in the market place with our neighbours, showing by our lives and our words that the Kingdom is both here and coming?

The Plain man's pathway to heaven...

I've just finished Chris Haigh's The Plain Man's Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England (Oxford 2007). And what a fabulous book it is.

Ok, I'm slightly biased as Chris was my tutor on my special subject at university back in the 1970s, and reading his prose is like hearing him speak - the more so in this volume as it started life as the Wiles Lectures at Queen's University, Belfast.

He sets out to explore the nature of faith in England between the 1560s and 1630s by seeing what kinds of cases were coming up before the church courts. In doing so, he paints a rich and varied portrait of the beliefs of ordinary people in the years of upheaval in religion from the accession of Elizabeth 1 to the outbreak of the English Civil war.

In many ways he makes the case - something I have believed for a long time - that the Revolution of the 1640s and 1650s was a continuation of the Reformation that had started with Henry's desire to divorce in 1529.

Along the way, Haigh uncovers marvellous anecdotes and tales of people's beliefs and disagreements over how church should be run. It's refreshing for a preacher or minister, for example, to read of the number of cases brought before the courts of 'gadding to other places to hear preachers'. It appears that even 400 years ago consumerism was alive and well in the church as people travelled some distance to hear a particular preacher or avoided their parish church in favour of another down the road because the minister was more to their liking.

I guess one of the major findings of his reading is that people disagreed over religion - sometimes pretty vehemently - but generally speaking they got on with each other. They continued to work together, share harvesting together, be neighbourly to one another. Only occasionally did religious differences spill over into hostility and then only for short periods - until the Bishops' War of 1639 showed that such differences could actually tear the world apart (and maybe indicates that tolerance was only ever skin-deep).

One thing that is absent from Chris' account - though I'm not sure how much you'd expect it to show up in the records he so carefully analysed - was any reference to separatist congregations or even to those who might be so non-conformist that they were labelled not just 'puritan' but 'baptist' or 'independent'. I wonder if there is any trace of early baptist life in the court records Chris looked at.

Anyone with an interest in Reformation history, the history of Christian churches in England, or just generally in fascinating history brilliantly told and brought to life, should read this book.

Hearing and doing the Word together

A while ago I blogged on an essay I was reading by Walter Brueggemann (it's here with a couple of helpful comments attached).

In particular Tim asks about metanarratives and individualism. I'm always a bit suspicious of questions about metanarratives (partly because I'm not 100% sure I know one when I step on one!). Brueggemann is probably suspicious of metanarratives understood as overarching stories that give the tellers of those stories power over their listeners.

And it's for that reason that I suspect Brueggemann is more communitarian in his understanding of how preaching works than my previous post might have suggested. It's always the problem of commenting on one essay in a collection. But it is fair to say that the focus of the essays is on preaching which is a solo activity in almost all its incarnations - I know that Alan and Eleanor Kreider have pioneered dialogue-style preaching (and I've even done it once with a colleague) - but overwhelmingly, preaching is an individual act.

Listening has the potential to be a collective act. In most of our churches, however, it seems to be equally individualistic. People come and hear and leave and process the content of a sermon on their own.

One of the things I'd like to explore - which is, I think, part of the process of trying to make preaching more of a dialogue - is how congregations can be helped to listen to sermons together. How can we make the hearing, weighing and applying of the Word an act that we do as a community.

As a Baptist, I think I believe that hearing, understanding and doing the Word of God is the most collective thing that we can do. It's our whole reason for gathering. All theology, says James McClendon, is biography - the story of God and the story of his people. Preaching is one of the components of that biography.

As my sabbatical draws to a close and I think about teaching programmes at church through this autumn, one of my concerns is how do we make this a reality. How do we preach, teach, listen, learn and live as a community of God's people?

Reasons to be hopeful..?

I'm not back at work yet - another week to go (yay!!!) But tomorrow I'm speaking at the final session of the current Street Pastors' training course in Brixton, so I've been doing some thinking not only about that but also what might be in store for us at church in the autumn.

This year's Spring Harvest tackled the subject of hope and one or two people came back from that wanting to explore the issues it raised further. At the same time I've been thinking about Christian identity as it's unpacked in 1 Peter.

So, this morning I mused on whether it would be good to do a Little reflecting as a church on Christian hope, using 1 Peter 3:15 as a springboard: '..in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.' (TNIV)

What reasons do we have to be hopeful? In the midst of the credit crunch, rising food prices, international threats and instability, where's the hope? Clearly Peter's first readers had it and their neighbours noticed. Do we? Does anybody see it? Does anyone ask us about it? And most importantly, are we able to tell them anything useful.

It's clear that Spring Harvest opened up a way of talking about Christian hope that was unusual, unsettling but attractive to a lot of people. I think that's probably worth exploring in the autumn. But what should I be thinking of including in a such a series? Answers on a postcard...

Seeking the welfare of the city

I've been reading Henry Drummond's The City without a Church. I do this every July because the Northumbria Community's readings for the month come from it. I love it. It never fails to move, inspire and challenge me.

Drummond is almost forgotten Victorian Scot who worked with Moody and explored the frontier between science and faith. He died in his late 40s and left a substantial body of work on science, faith and spirituality. You can check out his work here. The Northumbria Community has produced The City Without a Church as part of its How shall we then live? series of booklets. Check out the community website here for details.

The City without a Church is a meditation on verses from Revelation 21 & 22 and is a call for Christians to live their faith in the grubby realities of our city rather than hide away in our churches. It's written in a simple and direct style that continually asks us 'why not?' Here's a flavour:

'I make this, then, in all seriousness as a definite practical proposal. You wish, you say, to be a religious man. Well, be one. There is your City; begin. But what are you to believe? Believe in your City. What else? In Jesus Christ. What about Him? That He wants to make your City better; that that is what He would be doing if He lived there. What else? Believe in yourself—that you, even you, can do some of the work which He would like done, and that unless you do it, it will remain undone. How are you to begin? As Christ did. First He looked at the City; then He wept over it; then He died for it.' (booklet p11)

There is a glorious, down-to-earth optimism about his writing that sits uncomfortably in our slightly cynical, ironic times. I'd say that he's a pioneer missional thinker. He repays careful and reflective reading. So why not read it with a friend or a home group and ask how you might put it into practice in your own communities?

Result!!!!

So, I bit the bullet and bought the guitar - the lovely Simon & Patrick guitar - from the shop down the road. Not only did I save myself a couple of hundred quid, but I also supported my local economy - so I feel doubly good.

I've now done nearly everything I wanted to do with my sabbatical - and I need a rest!

Next week I'm hoping to record some songs on Clifford's set-up so I can see what they sound like.

I will also be revising my book outline for the publisher - a promising first meeting has led to a second meeting where some revisions in what I'm proposing and some fleshing out of things is required. I think it's looking good but it'll be a month before I know for sure.

I'll also be thinking about going back to work. Curiously, I am looking forward to this!

Redefining power and greatness

Thanks Bob for drawing our attention to Job 38-41. I'm not sure the contrast I was making is between God's moral greatness and the extent of God's powers; rather I think my point is that the way that God uses his power - extensive and out of this world as they are - is in love and grace.

I think Job's response in chapter 42 is awe at the 'otherness' of God, at the breadth of God's grasp of detail and the big picture and at the fact that his (Job's) story is only one of the billions God is constantly focused on. I think God's response to Job's repentance is interesting. He first tells Job's very sound friends that they haven't been speaking for him when they've been offering Job advice. Then he restores Job.

The heart of the story is that in the mystery of suffering, God is at work - though we haven't a clue where or how or why (and while we're in the midst of it, we're in the dark and often our friends aren't as helpful as they think they're being!).

But I think this is a different issue from the one I was thinking about in my previous post.

I guess I start from the place that God's power is seen supremely seen in Jesus on the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5) and that expression of power redefines the meaning of the word (hence Colossians 2:15 - disarming power through suffering so we can be forgiven and the world remade).

I'm not sure I'm expressing myself entirely clearly, so I need to think about it some more. Once again thanks, Bob, for your comment.

God's greatness and grace

Has anyone else noticed how often people pray along the following lines: 'we thank you that despite your greatness (outlined in terms of creativity, power, etc), you still love us'? Is anyone else uneasy about it?

This has troubled me for a while. Surely it's because of God's greatness that he loves us, it's an outworking of his greatness, a sign of his greatness; indeed surely his greatness is grace-shaped, he is only great because grace shapes everything he is and does. In short, he loves what he has made. After all, doesn't John remind us that God is love...?

My disquiet about the language of 'despite' is that it defines greatness in the way fallen humans exercise it. The great men (and women) of history are men of power, military prowess, the iron fist that creates the context for the odd velvet touch; people to whom acts of mercy are a condescension not their default position.

Mercifully this is not how God expresses his greatness. He expresses his greatness by raising the poor from the ash heap, pouring his grace into sinful people so that they might choose to follow the way of his Son. Hence Psalm 72 models human kingship on this divine way of handling power and not vice versa.

Perhaps if we got our picture of God right, we'd get our ethics as the followers of Jesus sorted.

Lessons in preaching with Walter

As part of my sabbatical reading, I've been tackling Walter Brueggemann's new book The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering Word. I thought I ought to read at least one text that will help me in my day job.

In fact, I'm also reading Chris Haigh's new book The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, an investigation of the nature of belief in post-Reformation England, which as well as being fascinating (and beautifully written) is also offering considerable insight into the formation of disciples in our context (not sure this could possibly be Chris' intention!)

This afternoon I read Brueggemann's essay 'Preaching as Reimagination' which consists of 16 theses about where preaching currently finds itself. It's truly stimulating stuff.

In particular, I really appreciated his insistence that we need to preach the text that's given and not our theology (and how the text informs it). I was always taught at college that we need to preach what the text says (a pretty obvious lesson) rather than what we want to say. And we need to avoid at all costs makiing the text fit our systematic theology by bringing in caveats from elsewhere that flatten the meaning of a text or lesson its impact.

Brueggemann offers an even more nuanced take on this. 'the preacher, if taking the text seriously, does not sound the whole of "biblical truth" in preaching but focuses on one detailed text to see what it yields.' This is crucial, in his view, because the text constantly questions our theology, what he calls 'the long term stabilization of a larger reading.' I agree.

The essay as a whole suggests that preaching should be helping listeners to reimagine the world in the light of a particular text. Such reimagining happens as listeners are taken into the narrative world of the text being read, encounter God as a character in that story (and respond to him in one way or another) and then reflect on how encountering God as that character in our story in the context we live it out would change the way we see - and even construct - our world as followers of Jesus.

I wonder if this would work? I wonder how you do it? I'll have to see when I get back in the saddle...

In the meantime, I'm loving the Fleet Foxes eponymous first album - a sort of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young meet Fairport Convention in post-grunge Seattle. It's quite lovely - though I haven't got a clue what any of the songs are about (I'm just marvelling at the wonderful harmonies they achieve).

the trials of car buying

Well, we've just bought ourselves a (nearly)new car! It happened quicker than I expected but it's good to get it over and done with.

Having agonised about what type of car to go for - Focus C-max, Citroen C4 Picasso, Volkswagen golf - we decided this morning that we really wanted a more comfortable version of the car we've got - a Renault scenic.

So, off we went to the dealer, having checked websites for used car values, talked to him about what we wanted, test drove a vehicle that's only six months old and done just under 9,000 miles and was on their books at a very competitive price. And we decided to buy it! Well, it's something we only do once every six or seven years, so why not?

Apart from having everything we were looking for - a wheel at each corner, low C02 emissions, power steering, central locking, you know the kind of thing... - this one has a six CD changer located under the front passenger seat and a good beefy sound system (how sad am I to think these things matter)

We get it next week...

Now we're having a cup of tea wondering what we've done!

Life returning to normal

Hanging on for the dvla this morning, the phone system played me David Gray's Sail Away, not the best song in the world, but a considerable step up from a tinny electronic Greensleeves! And once through, a lovely Welsh lady was very helpful. Thanks, Swansea.

This week, our last before Linda starts her new job, will be spent sorting stuff out at home and in the garden and visiting folk. We have to buy a new car as ours is on its last legs - though it did a trouble-free 1600 miles in France (not bad for a ten year old Renault that's done 93,000 miles!) - so I'm trawling websites and dealers looking for bargains on the greenest car we can afford.

I am also getting my thoughts together ahead of a meeting next week with a publisher for what would be the biggest book I've written. More on that later.

I have another month of sabbatical left, so I'll be doing some thinking, some writing, some planning - and a lot more chilling...

Tudor London's lessons for today

While in France, I read the latest installment in C J Sansom's increasingly brilliant series of Tudor crime novels featuring the lawyer/sleuth Matthew Shardlake and his reliable assistant Jack Barak. Called Revelation, in many ways this is the best so far, not so much for the plot - which is a clever serial killer conceit - but for the creation of a compelling atmosphere of fear. Set in the days after Thomas Cronwell's fall, in the run up to Henry's last marriage to Catherine Parr, Sansom catches the ugly mood of uncertainty on London's streets.

The plot concerns a series of murders perpetrated to fulfil the seven vials prophecy in Revelation. All the victims were once gung-ho for reform and had cooled in their ardour. This allows Sansom to get under the skin of opinion in the early 1540s, a time when the first flush of reform in England was being rowed back by an increasingly conservative king and Privy Council led by London's Bishop Bonner and Winchester's Stephen Gardiner. A beleaguered Thomas Cranmer, still archbishop of Canterbury and enjoying Henry's love and support, is under attack from conservatives in and out of the court. London's streets are awash with suspicion and fear as reformers are increasingly arrested for holding views that only a few years previously were mainstream.

In the course of creating a totally believable Tudor London, Sansom throws sidelights on our own uncertain times, where different fundamentalisms - Christian, Islamic and secular - clash and create victims all round. The war on/of terror is nothing new - it was fought in Tudor London against different enemies and, then as now, pretty much the only victims were innocent folk from both sides.

It's a great and moving novel that left me wanting to read all four of them again. I can't wait for the next!

Final evening in la belle France

It's our penultimate day in France and we're in a Premiere Classe hotel room (sounds better than it is!) with free Internet, so I thought I'd bring you up to speed on our travels.

We're in Amiens, having come from Rouen this morning. We left the Charante on Monday morning after a really chilled break. The gite was great, the pool in particular was fab and the region offered interesting site-seeing opps.

I especially liked Saintes which has lots of Roman remains, including a really well-preserved late first century amphitheatre. The sun shone the second time we went there which was lovely.

I've finished Len Sweet's Gospel According to Starbucks and think it's one of the best things he's written - concise and thoroughly enjoyable. I'm also reading Mark Everett's autobiography, he of the Eels. It's really well-written and entertaining, as well as extremely poignant - he's been through a lot and come through with a really mature take on life.

Started dipping into Walter Brueggemann's latest on preaching - stimulating but hard-going for a holiday!

As far as listening is concerned, I've been loving Yeasayer, Joe Jackson's latest (Rain), Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid and The Cinematic Orchestra Live at the Albert Hall.

Back to blighty tomorrow and my sabbatical travels come to an end. It'll be time to take stock and think about what the future in Bromley holds (at least the autumn...)

A rainy day in France...

Greetings from La Belle France! I wasn't expecting to have internet access here but I have for the moment. And it's raining, so I thought I'd blog a bit.

I finished John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia yesterday. What a fantastic book! I've been an admirer of Gray's since hearing him at the London institute for Contemprary Christianity soon after his Straw Dogs was published. He was provocative and very interesting.

Well, Black Mass doesn't disappoint. It's a surgical strike against the secularist myth, against the notion that any kind of utopia - such as the neo-con dream of democracy for all - can be achieved. More than that, it is a startling and brilliant analysis of the roots of all such utopian thinking in the Christian story. His assertion that secularism is a product of Christian eschatology minus God is rather wonderful. And he demolishes the arguments of secularism's heroes with panache and gusto.

It should be said that he is no particular friend of religion. But he is astute enough to see that religion answers an innate and deep human need and therefore has to be accommodated in whatever society we try to create.

I found the book wonderfully stimulating and provocative. I shall blog about it further when I've had time to process it.

I'm also reading Leonard Sweet's The Gospel According to Starbucks which is a terrfiic restatement of his EPIC theory of living in relation to coffee. As well as offering a truly attractive picture of how the followers of Jesus should live, he offers all sorts of fascinating facts about coffee. What more could you ask?

The journey goes on

It's been all go since returning from Prague, so I haven't had a chance to sort pictures or reflect on the experience.

I've been reading a manuscript for a publisher which is good and sorting things out for going to France tomorrow.

I also had a chance to catch up with a few friends - always excellent.

So, I'll not be blogging for a couple of weeks. lots of updates when I return.

Waiting for our ride to the airport

We're all packed up and waiting for our ride to the airport. It's been fabulous in Prague and we're sorry to be going home after a month (I could have stayed for another at least!)

We had a great evening yesterday - dinner with Phil and Alex (a lovely young couple working here for another year; Alex is looking for a church in the UK from next autumn - she'll be a considerable catch!) Then on to Ungelt to hear Chicken soup a wonderful jazz-fusion band.

We'll be leaving with lots of good memories - I'll post some pix once we're home and have sorted outthe 400 or so I took(!) - and having made a bunch of good friends. I hope some of them will be our doorstep in the UK at some stage - we'll certainly be back on theirs.

So, now it's a week at home and then off to France for a fortnight to recover. Sabbaticals - they're tough and not everyone can keep up!

Our earthy identity - and why it matters

We had a lovely communion this morning, gathered in a circle and saying a liturgy influenced by central european baptists and the Northumbria community.

It was simple and profound. The community here is a bit special. It's also unreal and unreproduceable elsewhere. But it gives hints and pointers to ways of being church elswhere that are very attractive.

One of the reasons for this is its conscious striving to be a baptist community. Here our identity as baptists is taken really seriously. I've just had a conversation with a serbian who has has a masters in Anabaptist and Baptist studies, about who we are. Again McClendon was named, Dayan pointing out that theology as biography has to be the place where we start to create baptist community. Everyone's story matters, everyone's story has something to teach everyone else about what it means to live by the one story at the heart of our gathering, the story of man from Nazareth who is the Lord of glory.

Again, I was struck as we broke bread and shared wine this morning, how vital it is that Jesus was fleshy, sweaty and earthy (no decetism here!); and how our stories with all their pain and laughter are caught up in his.

This is the kind of place that makes you look at things in fresh, appealing and suggestive ways. I'm sorry our time here is almost over...

Meandering in Europe's loveliest city...

It's raining this morning. Hopefully it'll brighten up after morning chapel (which includes communion).

Steve and Val are leaving today. It's been great to spend this month with them. They are a great couple and have been a real laugh to be with as well as a source of insight and wisdom on a whole range of issues.

I think we'll do a gallery today. I still haven't seen the El Greco in the Sternberg Palace. A couple of days ago we went to Vysehrad, the other castle and cathedral that overlooks the city on the opposite bank of the river from St Vitas and the royal palace. It's starker but still impressive. it's also the place where the Czech Republic's great and good are buried in a fabulously crowded grave yard.

Prague continues to be a delight. Last night we went out to eat with Steve and Val and Tima and Iulia (a super Russian couple who are seeking settlement in the UK and who'd be an asset to any church that called them). We walked in the Old Town Square and drank coffee at the art decco concert hall, having eaten at our favourite Architcture Club restaurant. Blissful...

Offering a tangible welcome

Also this morning, we had one of the most moving infant dedications I've been to for a while.

The couple had a daughter of about four and a son who'd been born very prematurely and struggled for a while. But now at just over a year was a strapping lad and they'd come to give thanks.

As part of the service, various members of the church bought the child gifts that symbolised hopes and dreams for him - a book for his learning the story of the world and God, a toy for him to develop a sense of adventure and playfulness, anticeptic cream in thankfulness that he had come through the dark valley of ill health into a place of relative vitality, and so on

It was very moving to see the church symbolise its hopes for and welcome of this new arrival in this very tangible way. So this is another thing I'll be thinkiing of introducing back home.

Sharing our common life

We had a lovely agape following the morning service at Sarka Valley Community Church. I think with adaptation, the model would work back home. So we'll probably try it.

It was a church lunch that began and ended with a communion liturgy - breaking bread at the start and sharing a common cup at the end. It was really cool to share wine with people you were laughing and chatting with and dropping the words of institution into the conversation as the cup reached us.

We also sang three great songs - all influenced by Iona's John Bell in some way - this morning. Again, these are works that will make their way back home.

Here's a flavour of one of them (an excellent communion hymn):

As once you served a waiting crowd
when someone shared their bread
so still, through freely offered life,
your hungry world is fed

For, having planted seed corn deep
in every human heart,
there, quickened by affirming grace,
your kingdom's work can start

The final verse says:

Then break me with the hands of grace
that living, I may prove
a generous bread of kingdom life,
of healing, peace and love.

(words by Pat Bennett/music by John Bell)

There were lots of goodbyes to say today as many of the students who've lived here for the last year are heading home. Many tears were shed and email addresses exchanged, a sign that deep relationships form over an academic year; students were valedicted and sent back to their churches to fulfil the ministries that God has prepared them for over the past year.

We also welcomed a group from Baylor University in Texas who are here for a few days as part of a six week tour of europe.