a blog by howard jameson @ gatheringgrace.org

Lent no 4 - ...and to dust you shall return.

"The body of Christ" I said, as I placed the quarter wafer in her upturned hands, just as I had done countless times before. But I paused for the briefest moment allowing my hand to remain in contact with hers. Words didn't need to be said because there weren't any.

We all live in the shadow of our mortality, its just that most of us for most of the time can get on without even thinking about it...until, that is, something intrudes into our complacency and an unspoken terror rears its head into our imaginations and we know that something is coming to an end. And then what do you do - cry in self-pity or rage at the injustice of it all? Those would just be words and there aren't any.

The dust of Ash Wednesday is a liberating and life enhancing act of honesty.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

But this is no existentialist oblivion on offer. Instead it is the gateway to life and life in all its fulness...

Turn away from your sin and be faithful to Christ.

Lent no 3 - travel in silence...

Just stop for a moment - right now. What can you hear? The birds perhaps. More likely a car or aeroplane engine (the infernal combustion engine!) or the thump thump thump of a distant stereo. Noise is the curse of our age. For most of us noise is designed to fill the space where we used to think.

Silence is sometimes no less comfortable - the awkward silence where we don't know what to say, the empty silence where the only words would be to acknowledge something in public that is best left unacknowledged.

But silence can be a gift. The silence of intimacy and the silence of acceptance.

I know which of the three I would prefer this Lent in my walk with God.

Lent no 2 - what a performance...

We were discussing various types of music we use in Church on a training day and the speaker played the Matt Redman song "Blessed be your name".

"The problem is", somebody commented, "that style is about performance".

I think that the person had not meant this to sound rude, but rather the style of music and the syncopation were fine for those who were comfortable with a 4 piece band and immersed in the development of popular music since the 60s, but the label "performance" stuck during the ensuing discussion. Nothing was mentioned (as I knew would be the case) about an organ voluntary or a choir anthem also being very specific musical styles requiring a similar degree of ability in order to play or sing. I did want to point out that when I play "Blessed be your name" on the guitar in Church I normally expect everybody to join in, as opposed to the other examples above.

Yesterday's Gospel at Ash Wednesday Communion was from Matthew where Jesus challenges those for whom an act of giving or prayer or fasting was a performance. If you want people to be impressed by your devotion then help yourself and go right ahead. Your reward will be there for you - other people speaking well of you. For these people the important element was what was shown on the outside, not the attitude of heart.

The opposite extreme is no better, though. Devotion without heart and understanding. Then it is just a matter of going through the motions.

So let our journey of Lent be a voyage of rediscovery; finding ourselves afresh in our worship and giving and people with a heartfelt and grateful response to the love of God.

Lent no 1 - so it begins...

Ash Wednesday comes round again, with the significant shift in mood, and we do the rounds today of the villages with quiet Communion and ashes signed on foreheads in the sign of the cross.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Morning Prayer readings today included a line from 1 Timothy that I had not been aware of, despite its resonance with our contemporary situation.

"Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment". (1 Timothy 6:17).

Turn away from your sin and be faithful to Christ.

The themes for Lent this year which have been coming into focus in my mind are the twin challenges of moving on and growing up. I recall moments in my teens when the prospect of a mortgage and no more long summer holidays dawned on me and I wanted with all my being NOT to have to take on new responsibilities. I wanted to put time on hold and stay in a place where other people made decisions for me and bore the responsibility of it all. I think there is a good reason why we can't stop the clocks in this way - it would not be good for us. Moving on, in our current situations, means letting go of the past and facing up to today's decisions. Growing up means being willing to start to bear more responsibility for ourselves. I don't mean those to be read without reference to the most important element in these equations; God's immeasurable love for us. I can think of no better starting point...

Safari 4...

...is beautiful. Top Sites!

Values: redecoration, youth and the road ahead

A couple of ways of accessing this morning's sermon.

There is an audio with the A3 posters done as slides. I have removed the embedded version as I couldn't get it to play, although it seems to run perfectly in Slideshare which is here.

I apologise for those who, like me, love the approach in...

"Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)" (Garr Reynolds)

...but I used some bullet points in the slides just to hold some information (I didn't use them live). This wasn't a Powerpoint originally, so I just uploaded the versions of the sheets I blu-tacked to the walls.

Also this is now up as my latest Podcast, and now that I have worked out how to hack the audio out of our PA and into my Mac I can do this more often.

UPDATE 25/2/09. I can't get the Slideshare site to work either now, so I'll try when I have time to sort that out. I've also added this to my Lent bloggings as the theme of this is one half of my own Lent theme for this year.

Tag lines

We live, so it seems, in the age of the tag line. Everything needs to have a Title (so you know what its name is) and then a Tag Line (so you know the essential elements in one snappy sentence). For the moment my tag line for this blog is "a virtual soliloquy" - do you notice the slick potential double meaning to the word virtual there?

I nearly dropped a clanger last week as I had been talking to somebody about one of the less nearby Farm Shops, for which I invented the comedic tag line "local shop - London prices", but we then met somebody who worked there and one of us started to say something about only having been talking about the shop recently, but the potential hole in the ground opening up was halted by a quick change of subject.

Perhaps we are so keen to differentiate ourselves from others or from the perceptions people might have of us that we feel the need to slip this sentence in under the radar. I have had several attempts at (not quite seriously) creating tag lines for some of my Churches...

• small Church - big ideas
• Church isn't what it used to be (unless you're a traditionalist in which case we'll try to keep it the same)
• you don't have to be bad to worship here - but it helps

Any better ones?

Preaching

There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence or persuasive logic fell from his lips...He is the bore of the age, the old man whom we Sindbads cannot shake off, the nightmare that disturbs our Sunday's rest, the incubus that overloads our religion and makes God's service distasteful.

(Trollope, Barchester Towers, quoted in Why go to Church?)

Drama: liturgy and re-enactment

I remember once going to see the play Death of a Salesman and being so absorbed in the drama as Willie Loman descends into the realisation of his actual worth (the life insurance would pay out better than his earning potential) and drives off intent on killing himself. Willie then reappeared on stage - but the play had ended and the actor received his due applause, but just for a moment I was still in the drama of the play and the Actor-still-as-Salesman was still the Salesman, so how could he be there bowing?

Occasionally a play is quite clearly a drama within something greater, some of Shakespeare's plays spring to mind where the Narrator directly addresses the audience - has the play started when he speaks - if not what is he doing?

I am reading...

"Why Go to Church? 2009: The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book" (Timothy Radcliffe)

...and because of what I have previously experienced about drama in the context of theatre I am wary of the use of drama when applied to the Eucharist. I know we are re-enacting a moment with symbolic action and (we hope) emotional engagement), and it quite clearly a re-enactment (rather like one of the stripped down minimalist adaptations of a well known play) rather than an attempt to redo the original. But it is very difficult to apply the word "drama" and make the emotional engagement stick. The best plays capture the imagination so that, albeit briefly, it is not a drama I am watching but the real deal. Too often our attempts at the drama of the liturgy are as amateur as a primary school production (but without the charm of seeing our children involved which makes up for it all).

I have even been in a service where the Priest has spoken of the drama of the liturgy, and this is a real risk because people don't opt into engagement with an act of drama by invitation - they have to be captivated by surprise or delight.

I am writing this whilst also chickening out of trying something in the next few weeks. Following on from the Refreshing the Song day I went on I have been trying to write some simple liturgical "songs" that we could use as a Gospel Acclamation, but being allergic to the dots when it comes to music I think I might have to wait until the house is quiet so that I can record them.

Something which made me laugh recently...

"Can you remember what you preached about last Sunday?"

"No, I can't", I replied (having just completed three back to back services).

"Neither can I", I was told, "but it was very good".

Still smiling...