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Worship in a time of mourning

I have been learning a lot in the last six months as I have served some of the local churches. In full-time ministry there was always a strong sense of connection between the responsibility of leading at the front on a Sunday, and being part of the life of the church family for the rest of the week. In my current role I lead services in a number of churches but play no part in their on-going life for the other six days. This has certainly made me realise the sense of absolute privilege of leading, particularly in a place where up until that moment I was an unknown quantity, and also for me the degree to which there is a deep and rich joy to be had in leading and preaching.

Tomorrow, I will be leading and preaching for the first time in a new place (for me) and also for the first time in this period of mourning for the Queen. For the last 24 hours I have been wrestling with how to set the right tone and catch the mood so as to lead appropriately. I do not feel that by tomorrow I will be anywhere near able to adequately reflect on the multiple elements in the emotional eddy and flow I, for one, am experiencing; the loss of someone whose dignity was a source of reassurance in troubled moments, the historic significance on the end of the longest serving British monarch and the steadying hand on the tiller of Government that she brought, and her regular witness to her Christian faith in her Christmas broadcasts. There is too much here for me to make sense of and encapsulate in meaningful words as we still try to process events and emotions. 

Six months ago I took my father's funeral. If you have ever had to speak in public on such an occasion then you will probably recognise the sense of turbulence of emotion and you will understand my relief at being able to say what needed to be said with the right amount of emotion (hopefully, enough for people to know that I meant what I said, but not so much that it became awkward or distracting for those in the congregation). I had been given sufficient time then to process and write (and edit and re-write) - a month, as I recall - and so the words I spoke publicly I can look back on and still regard them as saying what needed to be said. It is worth remembering that it is better to honestly acknowledge the incompleteness of the time for processing (and in doing so giving people the permission also to not have finished processing events for themselves) than it is to use words that are not yet sufficiently formed as to serve their intended purpose.

We will certainly incorporate some of the suggested prayers of thanksgiving and allow some silent space for reflection, and leading a church family in worship during a time of sadness is at least as important as at any other time. We will also pray for our new King, Charles III.

Immediacy vs the long view

It is now nine months since I left full time Parish ministry. I had to complete an official document recently and one of the questions caused me to stop and think - full time employed? no, part-time? no, unemployed? not really, student? hardly, so I ticked home-maker. 

For twenty years my life was marked by the need for immediacy; multiple deadlines and balancing several different diaries (home, church, schools and so forth). There is a lot to be said for that productive busy-ness brought on by competing demands. Eugene Peterson is right to warn us to the danger of being "the busy pastor". We should regard this, he says, like we might think of "the embezzling bank manager" - it is simply not right. I don't think he is saying we shouldn't have lots to do - the problem comes about when our busy-ness defines us and we find our egos being boosted by the lack of empty space in our calendars and how many people have come to depend on us in some way.

For nine months my life has not had such pressures. I have been ministering a couple of Sundays per month in local churches (and it has been a joy getting to know some of the smaller villages around and about). However, one senses one can easily be the cause of "a disturbance in the force", as it were, so there is much to be said for holding back a little. A few weeks ago I was in a Church getting ready to lead and so I checked with those setting up what "the norm" was. There was a helpful list of things, one of which was the they say the Gloria. I announced at the start that I was going to lead the service as closely as I possibly could to how I understood they did it most weeks, no boat rocking from me, but when we got to that point and I announced that we stand to say the Gloria, an older lady on the front row in a wonderful stage whisper asked, "Why aren't we singing it?". I smiled some days later when I came across a paragraph in the Rule of St Benedict concerning allowing members of the clergy in to join the monastery. 'If an ordained priest asks to be received into the monastery, do not agree too quickly'. Wise words indeed.

I have just handed in my second MA assignment. I picked up the first book to prepare for this in the middle of April, and so I have spent four and a half months concentrating on one or two questions concerning the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have been excited and then baffled, been exhilarated by new insights and left despondent by realising how little I knew (more than once) and then wrestled with getting all that into the word limit. This feels a very different learning experience than the couple of times per annum CMD days offered by the Diocese. Certainly, this concentrated learning is having a far greater impact on my preaching output and reflection than the innumerable training days I have had, but which now have all blurred into one.

I have a week to pause and let my brain run free before the pre-reading on my next module, and so I am reading about tides and rock pools and enjoying the long view.

Fruitfulness

Six months ago to the day, on a dark December afternoon, we marked the end of my time in north Bristol with a tea party. I was glad of the chance to celebrate together, especially after the confinement of lockdown, and was touched by the lengths folks had gone to - organising the tea and inviting some special guests. We had asked for some plants to go in containers on our patio; an acer and a fig. Being the coldest and darkest time of the year, and as a result of the recent poor weather, both these plants were bare of foliage. Obvious jokes were made about fig trees being barren.

Six months later and a lot has changed. We are excited to see fruit on the fig and elsewhere in the garden! But this has got me thinking about fruitfulness, not just for fig trees but also in ministry.

There is always sadness looking back - the mistakes made, but more so those moments when people weren't able to make the step needed to receive a healing etc, and things were left unresolved. Ministry is also hard and there were many occasions when I had to echo the words of Habbakuk 3

¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not blossom,
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
    and there is no herd in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation.
¹⁹ God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    and makes me tread upon the heights.

So there is the first piece of fruit - learning to allow the failures and frustrations to drive you into the arms of God rather than into cynicism or self-pity.

For a variety of reasons I have found myself twice in the last month driving through some of my old haunts and just as it was fun driving the familiar streets (and knowing the short cuts and parking places), so too it was good to be able to offset some of the memories of hard times with happier ones combined with a sense of compassion for people that stands the test of time - to be able to pray for them as you pass their house. So that (for me at least) is the second piece of fruit - that sense of being opened up by effort spent caring for others. I was struck by something I had read by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that

Jesus' 'being-for-others' is the experience of transcendence. Only through this liberation from self, through this 'being-for-others' unto death, does omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence come into being. Faith is participating in the being of Jesus...Our relationship to God is...a new life in being 'there-for-others', through participation in the being of Jesus. Transcendence is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but the neighbours within reach in any given situation. God in human form.

which is an important counter to the idea that transcendence is about me, now, my experience and feelings.

The fruit in this present time is different; space to read, study, explore and learn is invaluable and the luxury of being able to see what turns up - to enjoy the invites and chance encounters.

I look at the figs growing on the fig tree most days and marvel at the miracle of fruitfulness taking place so shortly after the barrenness of the winter months.