Jesus, He Knows Me (Matthew 25:1-13) 3rd Sunday Before Advent, Year A

Jewish Wedding Photos: Avi & Jacob by Parekh Cards on Flickr. CC 2.0.

Although only one in six weddings in this country are now religious ceremonies, you can nevertheless imagine that over the years, I have developed a stock of stories about weddings I have conducted.

One of my earliest – which featured the bride’s mother from Hell, who wanted to change everything I’d agreed with the couple – was also memorable for the number of bridesmaids. Fourteen, to be precise. They arrived at the church on a specially hired bus.

The bride was also thirty minutes late. Never have I seen a bridegroom look so petrified as he waited.

We don’t know what the rôle of the ten virgins was at the wedding in Jesus’ parable, but ten young women seems like small fry to me after those fourteen bridesmaids. And they, like that extremely nervous bridegroom, were also waiting a long time.

Kenneth Bailey, a great American scholar who spent most of his time in the Middle East seeking to understand the Bible in the light of local culture, made these observations:

Weddings would normally take place in the seven months of the hot and cloudless summer, and so the celebrations would take place in the cool of the evening and into the night. The bridegroom would leave the celebration party at his own house, and journey through the village to collect his bride, whilst the party remained outside the house awaiting his arrival. The bride would then be placed on the back of an animal, and the groom would lead her back through the village, taking the longest route possible through all the streets so that the whole town could see and join in the celebration. The exact time of the return would therefore be unknown, and could be longer than expected.[1]

With that background in mind of the ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom, understanding that Jesus is the bridegroom whose return we are awaiting, what do we learn about how to wait wisely in contrast to the foolish virgins?

Perhaps a key point for us is that the bridegroom refuses to open the door to the foolish virgins, saying, ‘Truly, I tell you, I don’t know you’ (verse 12). I infer from that statement that the bridegroom in contrast did know the wise virgins.

We prepare for the coming of Jesus by making sure we know him. What does that involve?

Firstly, spending time with him:

FInd the time to spend with one another by rawpixel.com.

At the heart of any relationship is the need to spend time with each other to get to know one another. In this case, however, Jesus already knows us better than we know ourselves. But there is still an onus on us to spend time getting to know him.

That brings me back to what I say quite a lot about using all the spiritual disciplines we can muster to draw near to him. We need time worshipping, and so it’s important that we put aside dedicated time together on a Sunday to do that. Worship is a priority. As I said elsewhere the other week, worshipping together is not simply something we do when we don’t have a better offer. It’s vital.

We can also find ways to worship on our own. We can incorporate that into our regular Bible reading. It’s no good just listening to the Bible in church on Sunday, we need time with Jesus in the Scriptures during the week. We wouldn’t wait seven days to eat ordinary food, so why wait that long for spiritual food? It is, I believe, the primary way God builds us up, and not least because Jesus himself said that the Scriptures point to him so that we may come to him for eternal life.

If you don’t have a regular pattern for spending time on your own reading the Bible, ask your friends what they do. Ask me, if necessary, for some recommendations.

Then there is of course prayer. At its heart, prayer is talking with God. It’s therefore a core way in which we spend time with him and get to know him. Prayer is not just for those emergency situations when they arise. Prayer is not just for when we want or need something. Prayer is talking with God about the whole of life. It prepares us for the day and enables us to reflect on how the day has gone in God’s eyes.

Taking Holy Communion is another way of spending time with Jesus. It’s not something to be mocked or trivialised. It’s about taking the time to meditate upon all that Jesus did for us on the Cross, and then expecting by faith to meet with him when we eat the bread and drink the wine.

You can add to this list with plenty of other ways of spending time with Jesus: fasting, simplifying your life, keeping silence, and so on. If we want to be ready for his coming, we shall want to spend time with him now, in advance.

Secondly, pleasing him:

figured someone should let you know by Jamelah E on Flickr. CC 2.0.

If you invite someone to your home for dinner, you will usually ask them in advance if there is anything they don’t like to eat or can’t eat. If I turned up at your house for a meal and you served me artichokes, I would know you hadn’t asked that question, because I can’t eat artichokes without being ill. Whenever medical professionals ask me about allergies, I have to list this.

When I was growing up, my Mum often cooked a pot roast on a Sunday as a cheap way of doing a roast. Then on Monday, we would have cold meat with bubble and squeak. Bubble and squeak was the only way my Dad could eat green vegetables. Apparently, he had told my Mum at the beginning of their marriage that he had an adverse reaction to greens, but she thought he was being childish. So one evening she cooked a meal with greens and insisted he ate them, only for him to become violently ill. She quickly learned that to please Dad you didn’t serve fresh greens. They needed a second cook – hence, bubble and squeak – to get rid of whatever irritated him.

If you want to know someone and be in a good relationship with them, then you will want to please them. This holds true for our relationship with Jesus as well. In Ephesians, Paul urges his readers to ‘Find out what pleases the Lord.’ And I think we can safely assume that if we find out what pleases him, we then go ahead and do it! This isn’t a theoretical exercise!

And that’s why this theme for me follows on from spending time with Jesus. Because if we have truly spent time with him in the ways I suggested and more, we will have begun to hear from him about the things that please him and the things that grieve him. We will have gained insight from the Scriptures about his will. In fellowship with our Christian family we shall get an idea of how specifically to put those things into practice.

Remember too that it’s not about finding something spectacular to do. Consider these words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:

²¹ ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?” ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”

Most of us here have heard a lot over the years about what pleases Jesus. It’s important we get on with those things if we want to be ready for when he appears in glory.

Thirdly, keeping short accounts with him:

Google God by David Woo on Flickr. CC 2.0.

‘Keeping short accounts’ was the expression given to a habit of shopkeepers to pay off their tabs immediately. If they had a bill or a debt, they didn’t leave it hanging around. They cleared it as soon as possible.

This idea has been taken up by Christians as an image of the spiritual life. Why would we want there to be barriers between us and Jesus? If we’ve done something wrong, or if something bad has happened between us and someone else, we need to resolve it urgently if we are to be in good relationship with Jesus. If we let things fester, they become harder to resolve.

What does this mean in practice? There are several examples. One is that if we have fallen out with someone, we seek to put things right as soon as possible. In another part of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells people even to leave their gift at the altar to go and seek reconciliation with someone. It’s that important. So if you know something is wrong between you and somebody else, seek to put things right at the earliest opportunity. If that person is present at this service, can you have a private word with them during The Peace before we take communion?

We also need regular confession of our sins. One of my aims in devising an order of service is never to leave out the confession of our sins and the assurance of God’s forgiveness. And that’s every week. Each one of us has surely failed Jesus since last Sunday. We all need to confess our sins. Let’s not deny these things nor delay dealing with them. Short accounts.

If someone has hurt us, we need to bring our wounds to Jesus and ask for his help in coming to a point of being able to forgive the offender. I put it that way, because I know that when the hurt is deep it isn’t always easy to come to a point of forgiveness immediately. It’s the destination we need to get to, but there are occasions when the first thing we need to do is pour out our pain to Jesus and then ask him to help us make that journey to forgiveness. Don’t avoid beginning the process, getting started may be the way we keep short accounts here.

Beneath all these examples is the need to avoid the build-up of grudges, guilt, and shame. When we bury such things or ignore them, it has a dangerous and detrimental effect on our relationships. Have you ever had the sad misfortune to meet an extremely bitter person in a congregation? I have on a few occasions, and nothing could be further from the Gospel and the life and teaching of Jesus, right up to his death on the Cross.

Conclusion

The kingdom of God, then, is like a wedding where we know the bridegroom, Jesus, well. We spend time in his presence. We seek to please him. And when things go wrong, we put them right as soon as possible.

If that’s what the kingdom of God is like, then it’s worth asking: does our church look like a colony of that kingdom? And is my life also a signpost to the kingdom?

[1] Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Mediterranean Eyes, circa p270, cited by Ian Paul.

November 8, 2026 0

Circuit Lent Sermon Series 5: Corporate Disciplines, James 5:13-20

James 5:13-20

Rule Of Life. From rawpixel.com. Public Domain.

We come to the fifth and final sermon in our Circuit Lent Sermon Series. It began by asking what the purpose of Lent was and answered by saying it was about reorienting ourselves towards Jesus. It continued in the second week by examining our relationship with God, something I looked at in terms of friendship with Jesus.

But to grow and maintain that relationship requires we adopt virtuous habits – or ‘spiritual disciplines’ – that help us tune into God better. And so over the last two weeks the series has been about inward and outward disciplines. Those are often disciplines (or habits) that we practise on our own. In this final week, we look at habits we exercise together – corporate disciplines.

Today, we are going to explore four corporate disciplines that help us draw closer to God in Christ.

Firstly, guidance:

Are any among you suffering? They should pray. (Verse 13a)

Perhaps we think of guidance as an individual discipline, and it certainly is that as well. If we are serious about following Jesus, we shall want to know his direction for our own lives.

But it is also something we need to do together. Not only are our brother and sister Christians involved in discerning our individual guidance (as we shall see), we also need to seek guidance together for our life as the church. Is that not what this church did under my predecessor’s leadership when you went through the process that Methodism calls Our Church’s Future Story?

And just because this church did that a few years ago doesn’t mean we can now not worry about God’s continued guidance. We always need to be like ancient Israel in the wilderness, who followed God’s presence as seen in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. It is a continuous process.

So what are helpful ways of discerning God’s guidance together? One author described it like this. He spoke of a harbour that was treacherous for boats to navigate safely, due to rocks. However, the harbour authorities had cleverly erected three lights. If the three lights were lined up as seen from a boat, then that boat was on the right course to make harbour safely.

He then suggested that Christian guidance is like that. For major decisions, we need three ‘lights’ to line up. They are the teaching of Scripture, the counsel of wise friends, and circumstances. It is the Enemy who wants us to rush our decisions. In contrast, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is full of grace, mercy, and love, and he is happy for us to test out things to be confident of his guidance.

An old acquaintance of mine used to say that any time she thought God was asking her to do something, she would reply ‘No.’ Why? Because she knew that if it truly were God, he would ask her again.

Let’s be serious about seeking God’s guidance together, but let’s also take the time to line up our harbour lights.

Secondly, worship:

Vibrant worship experience with raised hands by Caleb Oquendo at pexels.com. Public Domain.

Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. (Verse 13b)

God is always worthy of our songs of praise. (I shall say something separate but related about cheerfulness in the next point.) Whether we are cheerful or sad, we can know his faithfulness in his goodness in creation and his love for us in Jesus. We may have our doubts and our questions, but God continues to be faithful, even when we don’t understand him. We may only understand later, but as an act of faith we continue to praise and worship him.

Worship can also be individual, but it is powerful when we gather together and worship as a corporate body. We bring our differing gifts and use them to worship, because we share in common the truth that God has redeemed us in Christ and his saving death on the Cross.

Therefore, let worship be a commitment and a priority in our lives. Let us not make feeble excuses to avoid assembling together as the Body of Christ in worship. None of that ‘It’s raining so I won’t bother coming to church’ talk. That doesn’t honour God. How much is he worth? What about those in other countries who travel many miles over poor roads and possibly in dilapidated vehicles to come together as God’s people and praise his holy Name?

God is worthy of our worship. It is our sign of allegiance. I am fond of pointing out that the Greek word most commonly translated ‘worship’ in the New Testament is one which literally means, ‘To move towards and kiss.’ But this is not a romantic kiss. It is the kiss of allegiance. Think in our culture of a new Prime Minister or a new bishop being appointed. Each of them has to go and see the King and ‘kiss hands’ as a sign of loyalty to the monarch.

Worship is how we do that, and particularly at the sacraments. Remember that we get that word ‘sacrament’ from the Latin ‘sacramentum’, which was the oath of allegiance that a Roman soldier took to the emperor. At the sacrament this morning, we pledge again our allegiance to Christ. That is what worship is for us, and it is at its most powerful when we do so together.

Thirdly, celebration:

Aftermath of a festive celebration scene at freerangestock.com. Public Domain.

Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.

Those words again, but this time I want to major on the words ‘Are any cheerful?’ Just because we believe in the majesty and the holiness of God, we do not need to excise joy from our common life as the church.

And just because we rightly weep with those who weep, it does not mean we should not also rejoice with those who are rejoicing. And that is what celebration is about.

Is it not wonderful to hear how God is working in our lives? Is it not a cause of great joy to know that God has answered a prayer, that he has provided for a need, that someone has cause to know that he has come near to them?

But do we give opportunity for that? One of my past churches did, in a very specific way. They designated one Sunday a month as ‘Testimony Sunday’, and there was a part of that service on that day where anyone who had a testimony of God having been at work in their lives could come to the front and share that briefly with the congregation. We laughed, clapped, and sang together in response. It built up our sense that God was very much alive and active. Therefore, it built a heightened atmosphere of faith in the church.

Would it not be good to do something like that here? Maybe we too could do it in the morning service. At the very least, let me encourage you to write up accounts of what Jesus has done recently for you and send them in to be published in the church magazine. Perhaps that could be part of the appeal for articles every time we are putting together the next newsletter. Please tell the church family how God has blessed you lately.

Doing things like this encourages people. It lifts a sense of gloom and replaces it with light. It builds up the church. Don’t you think we’ve had enough discouragement in the church in recent years and decades? Don’t you think that God is still in the business of being God and of transforming lives for the better?

Then let us tell our stories. And therefore, let us celebrate together.

Fourthly and finally, confession:

Reconciliation, Coventry Cathedral at geograph.org.uk. © Copyright David Dixon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. (Verse 16)

You might think that after all the talk of guidance, worship, and celebration, it’s a bit of a downer to conclude with confession. Dave, if you want joy in the church, why do you now end on a note of misery?

But actually, this is not about doom and gloom, even though we are sorrowful for our sins. Look at the context. This confession is in the context of seeking healing. And while I am not for one moment saying that all sickness is caused by sin, what I do see here is that confession removes barriers to blessing. Unconfessed sin gets in the way of God’s work. It is a blockage. We confess our sins at least in part so that God’s grace may flow with less hindrance among us. Living with unconfessed sin is a sure way to block the blessing of God in our lives, so let us confess as a way of removing the blockage.

Here’s another thing, though: I’m listing confession as a corporate discipline. Isn’t that a bit alien for Protestant Christians?

No, not at all. For one thing, it’s by no means accidental that we include the confession of our sins and the assurance of our forgiveness in our corporate acts of worship. Not only will each of us individually have failed Jesus in the seven days since we previously met, we also sin together and therefore jointly need confession and forgiveness.

Moreover, there are biblical examples of God’s people confessing their sins together, not least when they as a body have gone seriously astray from their Lord.

But it is also helpful sometimes for an individual to confess to another Christian. I am not advocating Catholic-style confession, because I have serious reservations about what is prescribed in that form in response to confession. Nor do I think there is something priestly about ordination, because all Christians are priests before God: we all have access to him through Jesus Christ.

Yet it can be healing to say in confidence to someone we trust – and yes, this can be someone who is in a pastoral relationship with us – I have messed up badly, and I need to know the forgiveness of God. Without giving concrete examples that would betray confidentiality, I can assure you that as a minister I have had people come to me and confess the darkest of sins, some of which they have lived with for many decades. To let them know that they are forgiven is to see a burden fall from them and to release them into new freedom in Christ.

Now perhaps I hope you see why I say confession is not in the final analysis about doom and gloom: it leads to the joy of the Gospel.

Conclusion

And the joy of the Gospel is where all these spiritual disciplines lead us. Whether inward or outward, solo or corporate, the cultivation of virtuous habits that enable us to tune in more to Jesus can only lead us to the abundant life he came to bring.

So let us use these time-honoured practices of the church to set our minds on things above and let our lives be shaped by Jesus.

You know the old adage beloved of computer programmes, ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ Let’s stop feeding our minds with garbage, feed them instead with the goodness of Jesus, and instead live ‘Goodness in, goodness out.’

March 22, 2026 0

Worship In The Midst Of The World (Isaiah 6)

Isaiah 6:1-13

I expect you’re aware of the custom whereby just before the Sunday service starts, the duty steward prays for the preacher in the vestry. Over the years, I have heard a variety of such prayers, the worst being one Good Friday where in his prayer the steward called the death of Jesus a mistake.

But another common one starts something like this: “Dear Lord, we gather here today to leave the world outside behind and concentrate on you.” Now I guess that could be interpreted more than one way. But is our worship really an escape from the world?

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord (verse 1a).

Is that just a date in Isaiah’s diary? I don’t think so. If all he wanted to tell us was the day on which he had a powerful experience of worship and commissioning, he would surely just have named the month and the day of the month. ‘On the twenty-third day of Nisan,’ or something like that.

No. Locating his divine encounter as happening ‘In the year that King Uzziah died,’ Isaiah affirms that worship takes place in the middle of what is happening in the world. The events of history do not drive our worship, for sure, but worship is located in the midst of politics, economics, and every power that competes to shape our lives.

What does this worship look like?

Firstly, glory:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³ And they were calling to one another:

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’

⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

I once arrived at a church as a visiting preacher and was greeted by a member of the congregation who said, “I hope you’re going to entertain us today.” This brought out my Mister Grump side, and I replied, “Well, I hope we’re going to worship.”

We must get rid of this idea that worship is entertainment. It is a prominent heresy across all sorts of Christian traditions and worship styles. Worship is to give glory to the triune God, who is holy, holy, holy. We are here to honour his name and to give thanks for all he has done. Worship is God-centred or it is not worship at all.

Archbishop William Temple gave a famous definition of worship:

Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose–all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.[i]

None of this is an escape from the world, for God is the greatest reality there is. Moreover, as the Creator of this world and its Redeemer, God is where our focus needs to be, without having an escapist mentality.

So while it’s not true to say that ‘the world sets the agenda’ – that was one of the heresies from liberals at the World Council of Churches – it is true that we come to focus our energies on God, who created the world we live in through Christ and by the Spirit, and who also redeems the world through Christ and in the power of the Spirit.

Secondly, confession:

⁵ ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’

⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’

If we truly encounter the living God in his glory in worship, then we shall realise quickly that we do not match up. That’s what Isaiah realises, and not only for himself. He admits not only his personal sin, but the sin of the nation. A true encounter with God will blow away once and for all the idea that we’re all good, decent people who merely make the occasional error in life. It will relieve us of the comfortable illusion that we are good enough for eternal life.

Furthermore, here our lives are calibrated not by the popular standards of the world but by God and his holiness alone.

Initially, this leaves Isaiah with a sense of hopelessness. He cannot get beyond ‘Woe is me! I am ruined!’ That’s desperate.

But God can get beyond it. A seraph brings a live coal from the altar, the place of sacrifice. It is God who provides for Isaiah and God’s people to know forgiveness and the removal of their sin.

If you remember the painful story in Genesis where God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, you may recall how Isaac asks his father who will provide the lamb for the sacrifice. Abraham replies that God will provide the lamb. And he does – mercifully not in the way he was expecting.

Ultimately, we believe that is what God supremely did with Jesus at the Cross. The Lamb of God was provided. Now our sins are removed as we confess them. They have already been atoned for at Calvary.

The regularity of our failure is why we confess and receive assurance of forgiveness in every Sunday service. It is God’s free gift. We have not earned it. God has reached out in love to the world at the Cross. Will we look at the worldly horror of the Cross and allow it to cleanse and transform us?

Thirdly, God’s word:

⁸Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’

Following confession and forgiveness, the way is clear for us to hear God’s word. That’s why the reading of Scripture and the preaching come next in a typical Sunday service, by the way.

There’s no reading of Scripture in the Temple for Isaiah. It’s questionable what, if anything, they had in written form at this point – not much, for sure. But in any case, God speaks directly on this occasion.

If we are to be worshippers in the midst of the world, we need to hear God’s marching instructions to us. ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’

Therefore, the reading and proclaiming of the word is to have an honoured and central place in our worship. It is not that with a variety of preachers we get to hear a whole host of different opinions, because the job of the preacher is not to foist their sentiments or even prejudices on the congregation; it is rather to proclaim what the Word of God says.

Therefore, there is another steward’s vestry prayer that both encourages me for its meaning but also humbles me by reminding me of the expectation on my task. It is when the steward prays that the congregation may hear your word through me. That is profoundly sobering!

This is not to say that a congregation should be uncritical of what the preacher says, although I do note the old joke which asks what the favourite Sunday lunch in a Christian household is. The answer is, ‘Roast preacher.’

But it is to say that we should be like the Berean Jews, whom Paul encountered on his missionary travels. In Acts 17:11 we read of them,

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

In some old pulpits, the preacher was confronted by a small plaque. On it were the words of the Greeks who came to meet Jesus before the crucifixion, where they told the disciples, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’ Our prayer and aspiration for worship needs to be that we see and hear Jesus, so that we know what he is expecting of us in the world.

Fourthly and finally, response:

And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’ (verse 8b)

Isaiah responds to God’s word. He is willing to go into the world on behalf of his God. We learn in the subsequent verses that he can’t necessarily expect people to respond positively to what he has to say, but nevertheless someone must go, and then if there is no redemption there will be no excuse. People will not be able to say they were not warned.

How does this play out in our worship? Within the service, it comes in the intercessions, which are meant to be a response to the word. (I’m not sure they always are, but that is the theory.) If you were used to services where the sermon was the climax of the service before the final hymn and blessing, but then noticed a change, where the intercessions followed the sermon, well, this is why.

And so it’s right that in our intercessions we pray not only for ourselves and the church, but for those in power, authority, or influence. If you read the Bible carefully, you will realise that the divine commands are not limited to God’s people. You will hear prophets speaking to kings and nations and all in authority.

This is a holy task. In the early church, those who had not yet been baptised and professed faith and who were undergoing catechism classes would leave the worship before the intercessions. Why? Because intercession is a priestly task, and they were not yet part of what we later called ‘the priesthood of all believers.’ But for those of us who believe, we are acting as God’s priests when we intercede in response to the word.

But the response doesn’t stop with the end of the prayers or with the blessing at the conclusion of the service. The genuineness of our response to the word is tested by what we do when we leave. At the end of the Latin Mass, Catholics were effectively told in the liturgy, ‘The Mass is over: now go out!’

Isaiah did that. It’s our calling, too. Like him, we may or may not see success in response to our bearing God’s word to the world in word and deed. But Isaiah kept faithfully doing it in response, because to do so in the world was intrinsic to true worship. May we do the same.

[i] William Temple, Readings In St John’s Gospel, on John 4:24.

June 15, 2025 0

Sabbatical, Day 25: Ash Wednesday Soup

I’m going to be nice about Iona today. Specifically about one of their confession prayers.

Yes, you read both of those sentences correctly. The confession in chapel this morning was more refreshing – and challenging – to my mind. It was modelled on the verse in Isaiah 55 where God says ‘My ways are not your ways’. It thus consisted of a series of stark contrasts between the ways of God and of humans. So we got a clearer focus on God in the confession as a result, in my opinion.

Wednesday is not a normal lecture day here. After morning chapel, students keep silence until 10 am when they meet in their pastoral groups, then at 11 they all meet together with the Principal for Community Coffee. I’m not sure what happens in the afternoons – I think it must be free for study. I decided I would observe silence with the students before taking another walk into town to buy presents for Debbie and the children.

Trinity was the first place I ever observed any extended silence, on college Quiet Days. At first it frightened me. There is something terrifyingly loud about the way one’s own thoughts invade and clamour for attention. Yet silence, with the accompanying discipline of solitude, is a sign of health and vitality in the life of the Spirit. On one of those Quiet Days, I remember deciding I would read Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s ‘Life Together‘. Figuring it was only ninety or a hundred pages, I was sure I could get through it easily in one day. I couldn’t. Bonhoeffer packed such a punch with every sentence, the book kept stopping me like brakes on a car. What I most remember is him saying that no-one is fit for community life who cannot also embrace solitude. This morning, the silence was not a ringing in my ears but a recharging of my batteries.

Then I went off present-hunting. I found an art shop and bought some little models for the children to paint. I won’t say what I bought Debbie, because she occasionally reads this blog. I just hope she likes my purchase.

Lunch was suitably spartan for Ash Wednesday: soup and bread. But it wasn’t gruel. There was a choice between carrot and coriander soup (which I normally consume by the gallon) and a fish and cream soup. Both were accompanied by two types of bread: one was a tomato bread, the other I’m not sure, but it was good. I got through two bowlfuls of the fish and cream soup. Debbie dislikes both fish and mushrooms, and they are two things I love, so if I’m not at home to eat and I get the chance, I take advantage. This one had vague similiarities with the most wonderful soup I have ever tasted: cullen skink at Sheena’s Backpackers’ Lodge cafe in Mallaig, the fishing port at the northern end of the Road to the Isles in Scotland.

At the end of lunchtime, I had the joy of spending twenty minutes or so catching up with my old tutor John Bimson.

What to do this afternoon? Still feeling very disciplined after the morning silence, I read more of Goldsmith and Wharton’s book ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You‘, especially the chapters on personality type in the church. I concentrated on those sections specific to my own personality type of INTP. Time and again, I read paragraphs and thought the authors had met me. Yes, I am someone who likes to bring new vision to a church, because I’m more about the future than the present, more big picture than fine detail.

And – apparently, my personality type often gets frustrated with regular local church ministry and ends up in sector ministry. In particular, my type often likes to engage in research. I felt another underlining of the sense I’d had at Cliff College a fortnight ago about doing a PhD. Well, no, more than that: I felt like the research idea came up and mugged me again.

So to the weekly college communion service at 5 pm. Trinity is an evangelical college, but very much what is called an ‘open evangelical‘ college. It is not hardline Calvinist/fundamentalist. Secure in a commitment to biblical authority, it believes there is value to be found in other Christian traditions, too. Today that meant the Lord’s Supper conducted in a more Anglo-Catholic style, complete with incense, processing and the like, and of course an ashing ceremony. I don’t think a real Anglo-Catholic would have recognised it as a complete facsimile, not least because the music was mainly from evangelical and charismatic sources. But it was a genuine attempt to be sympathetic. And I find the imposition of ashes to be a powerful symbolic act. It sends a tremor through me every time. I’m glad we have it in the Methodist Worship Book, too. I haven’t washed mine off yet. The only pity was that just the first half of the words were used with the imposition of the ashes: ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return’, but they forgot to say, ‘Turn from your sin and follow Christ.’

On to dinner and another great conversation with the other former lecturer of mine who is still on the staff here, John Nolland, along with his wife Lisa. John has ‘a brain the size of a planet’ and authored the three volumes on Luke’s Gospel in the Word Biblical Commentary. More recently, he has written a highly acclaimed commentary on Matthew for the New International Greek Text Commentary on the New Testament. We learned from some top-class scholars here, and so do the current students, with staff such as Gordon and David Wenham here, to name but two of many.

During the Peace in the communion service, the Principal, George Kovoor, shared the Peace with me and then continued the conversation. He invited me to book an appointment with him to chat over coffee for half an hour. The only problem is, I shall only be able to offer tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if he has space in his diary for then at such short notice. I’ll let you know tomorrow whether it comes off. I hope it will. He is a genial man, and if you click the link I gave to him above you’ll be exhausted just reading about him. I spoke to him on Monday, explained who I was and he told me he was a Methodist minister, too. It’s true. He is Indian, and was ordained in the Church of North India, which is a united denomination. Yesterday, he gave a notice to the community, saying that he was going to play a student at table tennis. He wouldn’t ask for prayer, because last time he played someone and asked for prayer he won, and he didn’t want an unfair advantage this time. Turns out he won anyway.

See you tomorrow.

February 26, 2009 5

Sabbatical, Day 24: No Sleep Till Brekkie, More Lectures And The Bristol Tourist Trail

I don’t do well on first nights in new locations. Not on the evidence of this sabbatical, anyway. Having barely slept before 4 am on my first night at Cliff College a fortnight ago, I didn’t sleep before 1:30 here, then woke at 5:30 with a vile headache. (Not that I know what a nice headache would be, you understand.) At 7 am, I decided I needed a large dose of tannin, so I took the pint-sized mug I’d brought from home and made my first tea of the day. The pain slowly subsided over a period of several hours, until it was gone by late afternoon.

Trinity does worship differently from my time. Twenty years ago, nearly everything was Alternative Service Book. Except when Paul Roberts inflicted chanted Book of Common Prayer services, that is. Though the ASB has been replaced in the C of E by Common Worship, the college seems to have themes for particular weeks. This week it’s Iona Community worship, widely popular in many parts of the British church but something that drives me nuts. I have no problem with a liturgy that emphasises social justice and makes no division between work and worship. However, I have found several of their liturgies and some of their songs hectoring and lecturing. Not only that, the confession used this morning was fundamentally inadequate. I like the mutual confession approach of Iona (service leader confesses and congregation pronounces forgiveness, then the process is reversed), so I’m not critical of everything. But this confession started from the point that we had hurt ourselves, then others, then the world. Absolutely no reference to the rupture between humans and God that is central to confession. Remind me never to use it in worship.

There were good things – not least the brief testimony of a student as to what God did in a prolonged experience of a spiritual desert. And the guy who read the Gospel reading did so with great feeling. Those were highlights.

Lectures were more relevant this morning. The operating paradigm (I’m at a theological college – out come the long words!) was still that of the large church, but I felt that more of today’s material was translatable or adaptable. We began with a session on team leadership and issues around teams. We then looked at how to run a meeting, largely taken from the old John Cleese video ‘Meetings, Bl**dy Meetings‘. Finally, a few thoughts about some common mistakes made by leaders.

This afternoon had an optional session. I opted out. It comprised some BBC videos on assertiveness training. While that’s an area I could do with improving in, I needed some air and some exercise to counter the effects of the much improved food. I decided I would try to find some old haunts. Off I went across the Clifton Downs, down two roads whose names may just betray Bristol’s slave trade past – Blackboy Hill and Whiteladies Road – and on down, eventually to Park Street, where I used to frequent three shops. I knew that SPCK would have been long gone after the business atrocities that have been inflicted on that chain of bookshops. Sadly, Rival Records is no longer around – I remember buying Bruce Cockburn‘s World Of Wonders in there during my first year. And the Evangelical Christian Literature bookshop is now a branch of Wesley Owen, stocking everything from N T Wright to Joel Osteen. Insert words such as ‘sublime’ and ‘ridiculous’ as you see fit. I think I’m right in remembering that ECL had been founded by George Mueller.

Not being home today means I’ve missed Shrove Tuesday with the family, but Debbie told me tonight she and the children had decided to postpone pancakes until Saturday. I’m glad they have. Pancakes and their toppings are one of those simple pleasures where it is a joy to see the fun Rebekah and Mark have. Two small pancakes with toffee ice cream here at lunch time were delicious, but no replacement for being with the children. As to toppings generally, I’m a fan of those English Provender jars – no, not the garlic, ginger or horseradish, rather the raspberry coulis or the Belgian chocolate sauce. The latter has been harder to find in the supermarkets recently, though.Looking at the website tonight, I’ve noticed they now do a Fairtrade chocolate sauce, though.

More seriously, I had to miss a hospital out-patient’s appointment Rebekah had this afternoon. Eighteen months ago she had grommets inserted in her ears after protracted episodes of glue ear and consequent poor hearing. They still haven’t solved the problem. One grommet fell out a few months ago, and today they could see congestion in it. She may have to have more grommets fitted, poor lass. Recently, we’ve let her start answering the telephone, but conversations with her are punctuated with “What did you say?”

Tonight, I’ve just spent the time quietly reading. Next stop a spot of supper then an early night, I hope, to catch up on last night.

February 24, 2009 10

Sabbatical, Day 18

Thank you to everyone who has offered prayers and advice regarding Mark’s illness. He has now been clear of vomiting for two days, but the problem has moved to the other end. He remains reluctant to eat, which brings back all the fears of the two years (only recently ended) during which he barely picked at food. However, it could just be the bug. He also remains pretty tired.

Today, I drove to Kent and picked up Rebekah from her sleepover. She had been rather subdued, but was much closer to her usual more-bouncy-than-Tigger self today. Pat, her old childminder, has come to stay with us for two days.

On the way back, we were coming over the new bridge-like slip road from the A2 to the M25 when we hit one of those first-gear-if-you’re lucky traffic jams. It did not surprise us remotely when it cleared the moment we got through the tolls at the Dartford Crossing. Tolls were introduced here with the south-to-north tunnels and the north-to-south Queen Elizabeth II bridge. Once the bridge was paid for, they were due to be abolished.

But governments are good at lying. Or at least of playing along with a previous administration’s policy, and then changing when it suits them. So, as is well known, once the crossing was paid for, the tolls were kept in place. Now it is supposedly a congestion charge. So let’s just call that the lie that it is. When the tolls cause traffic to stack up in the way they do, fuel consumption worsens badly. Therefore they do not save environmental damage, they cause more pollution. It can hardly be argued that the tolls work by deterring people from taking that route and that if they were abolished more people would use it for two reasons. Firstly, those on the route often have little practical alternative. Secondly, the few who might change would be on the roads anyway. No, the Dartford tolls only increase greenhouse gas emissions and human tempers. So let’s just call the government a big fat teller of porkies. I know people will find it hard to believe in a dishonest government, but there you go.

So little has happened on sabbatical topics today. However, I have just noticed this report on the BBC News site: the Vatican says that the two sexes ‘sin in different ways’. Never mind personality differences, there are sex differences in terms of preferences for the classic seven deadly sins. For women, the popularity of sins comes in the following order:

1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Anger
4. Lust
5. Gluttony
6. Avarice
7. Sloth.

For men, it is

1. Lust
2. Gluttony
3. Sloth
4. Anger
5. Pride
6. Envy
7. Greed.

So now you know. The top three in the men’s list sounds very much like the profile for certain seedy men’s magazines, such as Zoo and Nuts (which I’m not going to dignify with links).

The Vatican is reacting to a decline in the practice of personal confession. One third of Catholics no longer consider confession to a priest necessary, and one in ten consider it an obstacle to their relationship with God. All this, despite the fact that the Catholic Catechism still states that

“immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell”.

The objections to confession sound vaguely similar to traditional Protestant objections to the rôle of a mediator between humans and God other than Jesus Christ. All this at a time when some streams and traditions emanating from Protestantism are rediscovering the importance of accountability groups, which may not have the formalised place for the priest, but which can respect the injunction in the Letter of James that we should confess our faults to one another. I don’t suppose we’re going to wave to each other as we pass one another going in the opposite directions, but isn’t this one of those cases where it would be good to listen carefully to one another and pick out strengths and weaknesses from the various traditions?

Finally tonight, something that should have drawn a comment from me yesterday. I visit an osteopath every couple of months, as I have previously written. Yesterday, I saw Tom again. In addition to treatment for my usual neck and back issues, I mentioned that a practice nurse at our doctor’s surgery had recently diagnosed some pain in my heel as plantar fasciitis.

Tom being Tom, he not only proceeded to treat it and give me some exercises to do, he launched into an explanation of the condition and the physiology. He told me how the plantar fascia is like a mesh that changes shape, tensing and relaxing, in relation to the movement of the foot and pressure on it, and said something about energy storage that I confess I don’t now understand. He explained how the fascia is linked to the calf muscle. When the latter is tight all the time, it puts strain on the plantar fascia. Therefore, he prescribed some gentle stretching exercises for the calf muscle that would release it and therefore relieve the plantar fascia. He said that unless we started to work quickly, the condition would set in for months and months.

In the midst of the explanation about how things should work in this part of the body, Tom suddenly said, “He thought of everything, didn’t he?” Now Tom knows my profession and has dropped hints before about believing in God. It was he and not my previous, Christian, osteopath, who told me that the discipline was founded by a Christian, Andrew Taylor Still. However, one thing Tom has never suggested to me that he is a Christian or a disciple of any other faith.

I imagine he might be one of the many who hold to a belief in God without ‘formalising’ it, but my concern here is less with theorising about his convictions. My point is that I wasn’t ready, even within a friendly, warm relationship to make an appropriate response. Sometimes I am so into building a good relationship with someone and avoiding the preachiness of my Christian youth that when an opportunity for spiritual conversation comes up, I blow it. Someone must know how to keep a good balance!

February 18, 2009 2

Tag: confession