I’ve been reflecting recently on what I’ve started calling the “messy bed test”.
It runs is as follows. My younger son, for reasons known only to himself, likes to mess up our bed. He likes to pile up the pillows, mound up the duvet, push the bedspread onto the floor, and then sort of burrow into the bedding. I suppose it’s a sort of den or something.
By any objective measurement this is a pretty benign activity – it only takes 2 minutes to straighten out the bed again, and he’s not doing any harm at all, and he loves doing it.
What is interesting is how my reaction varies to (what feels like) his daily question: “Can I mess up your bed?”
Sometimes I smile to myself and say, “ok, yes.”
However, sometimes my reaction is more along the lines of “No, you can’t. I’ve only just made it, I’m trying to get the house tidy, and its me or Mum who are going to have to sort it out again.” I do my best to convert this into “I’m sorry no – not today” before it actually comes out of my mouth. It’s amazing how forgiving children can be. But I digress – this post isn’t intended to be about my shortcomings as a parent!
The difference between these two scenarios? Entirely me. The request hasn’t changed. The amount of time and effort to re-make the bed hasn’t changed. What has changed is my ability to handle what I perceive as an extra demand being made of me.
In this way, it becomes an indicator of my own mental state and stress levels. The reason I say “no” to him is because I can’t cope with it. It shines a light on my inconsistencies – why should the answer sometimes be yes, and sometimes no… or sometimes having your head bitten off?
Now of course boundaries are right and proper, and where ever there is a boundary a child will push it. It is also reasonable not to want your bed to be messed up, and to say “no” to this request. My point is simply that it is sometimes the trivial things like this which act a bit like rev counters, and show when we’re pushing the limit, and in the red zone. Or, if you like, it’s a sort of litmus test
It seems apt at this time of year, where there is a lot of remembering going on, to think about the past, and in particular people from the past. One thing I have noticed is that people from my past don’t always stay there, and in particular having changed to another church locally, there are an lot of familiar faces.
In fact, there have been one or two folk where I’ve had to pause for a minute, and think to myself about how we “signed off” last time we saw each other. Are there any unresolved issues kicking about – which always mattered, I guess, but are a little bit more immediate now I am their curate? Thankfully so far the answer has always been “no”.
Maybe its just me, but I find it very easy to want to “write off” relationships, especially where they are professional rather than social. My natural reaction when I get bad service is to walk out and say to myself “I’m never going back there again”. Even better if I can deliver a cutting parting shot that makes it clear exactly how I feel. Or to quit a job out of frustration and stick two fingers up at the boss on the way out. Or to say deeply hurtful things as a romantic relationship ends, and vow never to see or talk to them again.
As with other things, being ordained brings what was always true into sharper focus – that we cannot live this way. The theological point is that the other person is made in God’s image, and loved and cherised by Him. The practical point is that I might go to a person’s house for a funeral visit, and discover that they are the person I swore at in the restaurant the night before!!
Anyone who follows The Way, who calls themself a Christian, is God’s representative on Earth. We are each Christ’s ambassadors. I don’t believe that we have the luxury of burning our bridges, or “writing off” relationships. How we treat other people is taken as a proxy for how God feels about them. We never know when someone from our past is going to randomly walk into church, or join our Alpha group. What will their reaction be to seeing us there – perhaps realising for the first time that we’re a Christian? How is our ambassadorship reflected in the last conversation we had?
Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. To get to the other side.
Chances are you’ve heard this joke a million times – I certainly have. It’s the classic children’s joke – utterly daft, amusing because it’s pointless. It sets up an expectation of an unexpected punchline, but then no.
There are million of daft jokes out there – “How do you know if there’s an elephant in your fridge? Footprints in the butter.”, “What’s yellow and very dangerous? Shark infested custard”, “What’s brown and sticky? A stick” and so on. I love these jokes. They’re not particularly big or clever or witty or erudite, but they make me smile, and sometimes laugh.
Except that the chicken crossing the road joke turns out to something quite different. I have told this joke for probably 40+ years, and it has never once in that time – nor in any else I have spoken to – even occured to me that it has a second, euphemistic, level of meaning.
Until I saw these tweets:
OMG I’ve *just* got the “cos he wanted to reach the other side” punchline to “Why did the chicken cross the road?”. WTF you guys?
Like Kat (and incidentally, I’ve no idea who she is – that’s twitter for you), my jaw dropped. The Other Side. The joke is actually about death!
Of course it is. It’s obvious. Staring you in the face. After all, How many other “crossing the road” jokes are about getting squashed, or at least the dangers of roads?
Q. Why did the hedgehog/squirrel/turkey/frog/… cross the road?
A. To visit his flat-mate.
A. To show what he was made of.
A. To prove he had guts.
A. To prove he wasn’t chicken
I’ve always understood these other jokes in that way (or at least felt like there was some trick I was missing)… why did it never once even occur to me that the original chicken joke is along the same lines? These are quite clearly gross being run-over jokes, so why shouldn’t the original be? The answer, of course, is that I attached an interpretation to the joke the first time I heard it – “to get to the other side of the road”, and I didn’t realise that I had made this interpretation or assumption, let alone reconsidered or revisited it. It’s not that I considered and dismissed an alternative interpretation, it’s that it never even crossed my mind as a possibility, and likely never would had not an external factor intervened.
This then becomes (for me at least) an example par excellence of interpretative blindness. We have not only failed to interpret something correctly, we didn’t even realise that we’ve made an interpretation, and that other interpretations may be possible. For a children’s joke this isn’t a big deal, but when you look at politics, culture, or indeed the Bible, suddenly it matters a great deal. When Jesus tells a parable, we may interpret it as normative (this is, it is establishing a norm for behaviour – how we should be going about things). What if it is actually descriptive? Could Jesus be saying “we all know the world is like this – make sure you’re not being as silly as this example”? The massive danger is that we don’t even realise that we are interpreting it a certain way. So we neither question or own understanding, nor can make sense of anyone who comes at it from a different angle. It’s not that we realise we haven’t got the joke – we think we have got it, but have actually missed the point altogether.
This recast joke also demonstrates a paradigm shift beautifully. Paradigms are the way we make sense of the world, how we see and understand it. They are our mental models. A paradigm shift happens when our understanding changes in a radical, irreversable way – that once our viewpoint has changed, we can never again go back to our original understanding. You might describe it as a light-bulb moment, I suppose. In the case of the chicken joke, I (and now you – sorry!) can never again understand this as a joke simply around an animal trying to cross a street. It will forever more be a dual joke, with two meanings. When there is a paradigm shift, we realise that our previous model was incomplete, and now our understanding has grown and developed. It’s a bit like Harry Potter – you think you understand a given character’s role and motive, but at the denouement it’s all turned on it’s head, and you suddenly understand Snape was actually trying to save Harry (or whatever). So when you re-read the passage again, you know understand what was actually happening. Your original interpretation has been proved wanting.
The ultimate example of this is Jesus – nobody conceived that God’s great Messiah would be born in obscurity, and executed by the Romans. Yet if you read the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament, this great paradigm shift occurs, when you see that Jesus is actually fulfilling the prophecies and promises. Just not in the way anyone expected. And people today I think still struggle to understand Jesus (not helped, it must be said, by the Church a lot of the time), but perhaps not even realising there is something to understand.
Who would have thought that all this could come from a 13 word kids joke!
I recently had the pleasure and privilege of being at a clergy study day, at which Rowan Williams was speaking on prayer. He is a excellent speaker and theologian, and gave us much food for thought. A number of things he said struck me, either as new ideas, or timely reminders, so I thought I’d jot them down here. I must make clear that all of this is my paraphrase/understanding of what was said. The nature of a post like this is that it’s a little disjointed, and really just a collection of thoughts. Anyway – here goes!
Prayer is ultimately looking forward to the end times, when God’s kingdom comes in all its fullness. Prayer is about creation finding its place – a place of restoration, reconciliation, and homecoming (like we see in Romans 8).
“Prayer is something to do with inhabiting God’s future here and now.”
Perhaps most profoundly, prayer is what is always going on. The Father loves, Jesus mirrors it back, and this is prayer. Underneath all of us, all the time, is this reality – the universe itself exists because prayer is eternal. So when we pray, we are not starting something new, but joining in with what is already going on. We sometimes think of prayer as a last resort, or perhaps as a duty (a bit like phoning your mum once a week!). No – it is all around us, all the time.
“We are not initiating a transaction, but slipping into an existing ongoing action.”
Part of the point in praying is to bring us back to the place where we see something of the mystery of God. Where we allow God to be God, to be reminded of the seriousness of God. And is the church which prays – whether we are joining in the prayer of heaven corporately, or individually, it is the church in prayer. Prayer is enabled by creating space and time for looking, listening, breathing. By gazing and attending. It’s not so much that we punctuate with space, but rather a style and pace that slows the rhythm. How we speak. How we act. How we move and breath. Being present and prayerful.
“Busyness must not crowd out attending to the seriousness of God”
Prayer is about intelligent gratitude. About wonderment and a gaze. And as we gaze, we find the gaze turns on us. Prayer is being where God can look at us. Of active beholding, and awareness of God’s beholding of us. Being in this light, we increase both our knowledge of God, and our knowledge of ourselves. We respond like Peter responding to Jesus doing something holy, generous, and Godly – “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man”. (Luke 5) The light of God lights up areas of ours lives we are not pleased with. The steady habit of exposure to the light, little by little increases our self-awareness, leading to a simple clarity about who I am and what I’ve been. Looking into the depth shows us something ourselves. I look into the mystery of God’s generousity, and I see something of my own un-generousity. But God does not look away when he sees what I am. God looks patiently and lovingly at me, at the whole of creation.
“Repentence and confession are not preparatory before we can approach God, but response to relationship with God.”
Looking into this mystery leads us to increased self-knowledge and confession, which leads in turn to awareness of the world, and intercession. Intercession is an attempt to be aligned with God’s loving purpose.
“What God beholds in me
He beholds in my neighbour
and in all of creation
which feeds our hope”
God has willed us to be will-ing beings, and gives us boldness to ask him. Like the doctor who says “I can’t help if you if you don’t tell me where it hurts”, God says “I can’t help you if you don’t bring to the light what you long for.” The psalmist is not ashamed to bring his desires to God, even when they are not edifying. Ultimately our prayer is “Your will be done” AND “what I long for is …”
Prayer helps us grow in humilty and self-awareness. Prayer helps the church grown in humilty and self-awarness.
“Prayer opens our eyes – but our eyes must also become acustomed to the light. In prayer we see more of God, and more of the world we’re in.”
One of the things I have had to come to terms with is to what extent the stuff we do at the front of church is/should be a performance. There is no question in my mind that leading a congregation in worship (in the broadest sense) is a performance, and that is right and proper, and should be approached as such. For instance, when I presided at communion for the first time last week, I practiced the words, the actions, the movements, and timings beforehand until I could do it naturally, and in a way that helps us all feel safe and able to relax into worship. But I also really enjoyed it, as a ‘performance’, and therein lies a danger, it seems to me.
As sure as I am that we should be aiming for excellence in all our worship (although I would define ‘excellent’ according to our local context and abilities, rather than an arbitrary global standard), the worship – and performance – is never for its own sake. We must never lose authenticity, or pretend to be something or someone we are not, for the sake of the ‘performance’. Too many stories are told of the ‘Sunday’ christians (and, indeed, vicars), who are one person in church/public, and quite another at home. Neither should we lose sight of the fact that it’s not about us, about me. We are not meant to lead like Danbo in the picture above! Our job is to point people to Jesus, and get out of the way. Much like the backstage crew at a show, or special effects team in films, we are doing our job best when people don’t even notice us. And it is these twin dangers – of putting on a show, and of making it all about me – which have led to me to this soul-searching over the years.
You see, way, way, back in the dim and distant past, I used to be a teenage bedroom radio DJ. (Bear in mind this was pre-Internet, so broadcasting for real wasn’t an option). I had a mixing desk, twin turntables, even some jingles taped off the radio. And although no else was listening, I loved playing tunes, saying links, making up the news and weather and stuff. No wonder then at college I got stuck into student radio, with a proper studio, desk, jingle carts, cans, monitors – the works. We also actually broadcast over the air (on 999AM, seeing as you asked). Admittedly it was still usually only me listening to my shows, but in theory someone might have had a radio, and it might have had AM, and they might have tuned it to 999, and ….
The point is, there is a part of me that loves to entertain. To be “up front”. To inform, teach, challenge, inspire, make think, amuse. To perform. Whether that’s on the radio, tweeting, blogging, posting photos – whatever. I would imagine that a similar force drives anyone in the media.
Before I was ordained, I used to lead musical worship at Church, usually on my guitar with a band. And I absolutely loved doing it (and still do). Music is still the primary way I get lost in/with God, and I was always worshipping when I was leading the band. It is a such a joy and a privilege to get to play and sing your heart out to Jesus, but bring others along with you. It was and is never just about the music and/or the playing….
… but equally I do really enjoy just being up front on a stage, playing and singing, as a performance. Recently I was fortunate enough to be a part of the band that played at a big Dicoesan Conference – and it was an absolute blast. It was the most fun I have had in ages. To be on stage at a Convention Centre, playing for 900 people – wow! Especially when the band stopped playing, and we all sung unaccompanied – just breath-taking. Preaching is another example. I love preaching, and part of what I like about it is being up on stage, standing up in front of a bunch of people and speaking.
And, do you know what? I’ve come to think that’s ok. It’s ok to enjoy it. It is – in part – a performance. But it must always be an authentic performance whose purpose is to draw attention to Jesus, and draw people closer to him.
On Saturday I am going to be ordained priest at Ripon Cathedral, and I’m writing this at my ordination retreat at Mirfield. It has been a bit odd trying to explain to people that I’m being ordained again, but that’s the way we roll in the Church of England. This time last year I was preparing to be ordained “Deacon”, and this time around it’s “Priest”, or “Presbyter”.
It is rooted in the threefold historic orders of ministry – Bishop, Priest, and Deacon, with (if you’ll excuse the gross oversimplification) the Bishop particularly being about oversight, pastoring the pastors; Priest being a shepherd of God’s people, and holding the body (i.e. the church) together; and Deacon being servant-hood and looking outside the church, both in terms of sending out and bringing in. I would add an implicit fourth order of ministry of everyone else in the church, who actually get on with the business of God’s mission to a hurting and broken world. The idea is that these orders are cumulative, in the sense that as a Deacon I didn’t stop being an agent of God’s love and mercy to the world, and when I become Priest I won’t stop being a servant, and when I become Bishop… hang on, might be getting ahead of myself there. 🙂
To be honest, I hold the orders of ministry fairly lightly. I’d not really come across the term “Deacon” before I started exploring ordination, and certainly couldn’t have told you what the diaconal ministry is – and I’ve been in the Church of England all my life! I know that some people do feel a distinctive call to the particular ministry of a Deacon; I personally have always felt drawn to the “priestly” ministry. I do think ordained ministry is helpful in terms of how we organise ourselves, and set apart/commission certain people to take up certain roles and give them the authority and training so to do. This actually happens all over the place in our society – police, politicians, teachers, refuse collectors, the list goes on. I wouldn’t say that ordination is exactly like this. It’s more about “being” than “doing”; Something you are, rather than something you do.
It is only right to note that many in the Church have a much stronger view of ordination, and the priesthood in particular. And don’t get me wrong – it is a huge privilege, and I’m humbled and awed to be leading Holy Communion for the first time on Sunday. But I don’t claim to really understand ordination, or have an answer to the question of “why” I should be ordained. But I do believe that God has called me to this particular ministry, and I’m trying to be obedient to His call.
On the drive over yesterday I was listening to Radio 4, and the book “The Crossway” by Guy Stagg is being serialised. One line from the passage being read really resonated with me. The book is about a literal pilgrimage, but I reckon that faith is captured beautifully in his description of pilgrimage as:
“Setting off in the hope that the journey would make sense by the time you arrived.”
At my old church, we used to run a summer Holiday Club for local children, where we did usual sort of Sunday group stuff over a whole week! Of course, the highlight was the daily drama, where (in theory) the teaching from the day would be explored and we would travel together on a spiritual journey of learning over the week. But it was also a whole lot of fun, with silly jokes, daft costumes, and a real pantomime feel. One year in particular stands out in my memory, which was when the Club was called Kingdom Quest, and the daily drama was loosely inspired by Spamalot. That year I was able to go along for the whole week, and got cast in the drama as the Black Knight. There is actually video evidence in existence, but I’m not about to make that public! Anyway, one of the songs the Black Knight sings is about being “All Alone”, and how he is travelling a “long and winding road.” While I haven’t travelled “all alone” (far from it), the road to ordained ministry certainly has been long and winding.
I first felt what I now recognise as a call to ordained ministry in the mid 1990’s, when I was worshipping at Holy Trinity Brompton in London. This was around the time of the so-called “Toronto Blessing”, and I was prayed for to be filled with the Holy Spirit. As I was prayed for, I felt a sense of anointing that God was calling me to minister to His people, to equip the saints (from Ephesians 5, a verse that has stayed me along the whole journey, and is one of my “life verses“, a concept I’ve blogged about in the past on my other site). And this was to be within His church, as my occupation. But just as clearly was the sense of “… but not yet”. At the time I understood it by analogy – if I was going to be a football coach, I needed to first of all be a player of the game myself. If I was to disciple people to be Jesus in the 9 to 5 office environment, I needed to have lived that life first. Now please don’t get me wrong – I’m just talking about my own personal sense of calling, and how I understood the “not yet”. I’m not trying to establish a general principle for church based ministry!
I’m also not trying to set myself up as a sort of super-Christian or guru. In fact it’s more or less the opposite – I don’t know if you’ve seen the leadership diagrams where there’s a pyramid, with the very apex representing the overall leader, supported by the all the minions below? I would say that Christian leadership – and ordained ministry in particular – is more like an upside-down pyramid. The vicar is right down there at the bottom of the pile, the least important person in the overall scheme, whose job it is to serve and support the vast majority of the church who are out in the world doing the work of the Kingdom. Others have a different view of the church and of ordained ministry, but I personally find this view helpful.
I suppose ever since that point all those years ago I’ve been working towards this, and trying to discern when the time was right to throw my lot in completely (and am still working on that!) But I have always been mindful of the direction of travel, and made choices about where to spend time and energy based on this sense of calling. So while I have only been an ordained minister for a few months, I would say that I’ve been in ministry for 20+ years. And actually much as I dislike the nomenclature of “priest”, I have come to see that (musical) worship leading – which I have done for the majority of those 20 years – is a very close cousin of the “priestly” ministry.
I genuinely do not know where this road leads – the past 4 or 5 years have been very much one step at a time. Approaching the Diocese. Going to a Panel. Studying at St Hild. Being a self-supporting (horrible phrase) curate. We’re at St Mark’s for another 3 years at least, and perhaps by the time I’m signed off God will have revealed the next step to us!
Spring Harvest has always held a very special place in my heart – as a young person I would travel to Skegness, to be spiritually fed and inspired, to see hundreds, if not thousands, of other people my age worshipping God. Just in case you haven’t heard of it, Spring Harvest is a Christian festival – essentially a bible week – with loads of teaching, seminars, workshops, worship, prayer, and so on. It’s for the whole family, with different streams of activities tailored for specific age ranges, and across all the sites and weeks about 20,000 people go in total. I would say that it is a large part of why I am a Christian today. So I was very excited when Spring Harvest came to Harrogate this year, and booked on it as soon as the lines opened. If I’m honest I wasn’t sure how well it would work – the whole Butlin’s thing is somehow a part of Spring Harvest. But I needn’t have worried!
The past few years have been really hard work as I’ve been training for ordination – lots of intellectual effort as we’ve studied theology together, and somewhere along the way I think that I’ve got either scared and/or cynical about emotions (and especially emotionalism). A sort of disconnect between head and heart, if you like. Of course we have to use our God-given brains, and critically assess and reflect on things… but we also need to use our God-given hearts, and love and be loved, and at times be overwhelmed and lost in (His) love.
And overwhelmed I was. My heart is lost to Jesus again, in a way that I’d lost sight of. I’ve rediscovered why I’m a Christian, let alone an ordained minister, and it is simply because of God’s love.
The key moment for me was one evening, when a big appeal was made from the front for people to become Christians. Maybe 5 or 10 people put their hands up, and my reaction (to my shame) was “Oh, that’s nice.” But 2 things happened which changed all that. The first was the speaker challenging our lukewarm reaction, by saying “If someone had just got out of a wheelchair, or if we’d seen a tumour shrink before our eyes, we’d be getting excited – but what’s happening here is a far more precious miracle, far more exciting.” The second was that, a few rows in front of me, a man of about my age put up his hand. The speaker said something about starting a new life in Jesus, and the man’s teenage daughter just leant against him, put her arms around him, and hugged him.
That was when the full weight of what was going on hit me, and I just wept. Her Dad, who had been lost, was now found. Her Dad, who could never “get” the most important thing in her life, was now a part of that. Her Dad, who had been missing out on so much, had come in from the cold and joined the party. Obviously I know nothing about that family situation (and I’m not suggesting that everything suddenly will be a bed of roses), but I’ve come across enough non-Christians husbands/fathers to know how much tension it can cause around money, time, Sundays, prayer, ethical choices, and so on. But much, much, more than this, Jesus is the most important person in my life. He gives my life meaning. Imagine not being able to share that with someone you love – and then at last person responds to God’s gentle love himself, to Jesus invitation freely given. I was seeing God’s grace in action, a life being saved, and it moved me to tears.
I was also deeply touched by some of the worship songs, in particular the Bethel song “You make me brave”. Even typing the words now is sending a shiver up my spine, and making my eyes prickle!
As your love, in wave after wave,
Crashes over me, crashes over me.
For you are for us, you are not against us
Champion of heaven you made a way for all to enter in.
You make me brave.
You make me brave.
You call me out beyond the shore into the waves.
God loves us.
He loves you and he loves me.
He loves us passionately, recklessly, wantonly, extravagantly, overwhelmingly.
Jesus is calling you and me into something exciting, scary, dangerous, exhilarating, life-giving – the ride of our lives. The invitation is free, and it will cost everything. But it’s not down to us. It’s not our load to bear. Jesus has already done everything that needs doing. He makes me brave.
And do you know what else? I love Him back, recklessly and extravagantly. He is my everything.
PS Spring Harvest is coming to back to Harrogate next year, on the 13th – 17th April 2019. The booking lines open in June, and I cannot commend it highly enough to you.
The second idea for child-friendly prayer/worship was from CBBC’s Art Ninja program(!), specifically The Day of the Bug episode (although I’m guessing the iPlayer link will expire in a week or so).
It needs a little bit of organisation and time – but the basic idea is that you create a large (A4 or A3) picture of your fingerprint, with the prayer bit being that we’re each special and uniquely made by God, so all the fingerprints are different. It is a two-stage process (especially with lots of children), so is probably best done either over two days/sessions, depending on your context.
You will need:
An inkpad
A piece of paper per person
A photocopier, or scanner and computer and A4/A3 printer
PVA Glue and glittter
(optional) cardboard picture frame slightly bigger than A4 or A3
You start by taking a fingerprint of each person, using an ink-pad and paper (remember to name/label each one!)
Then blow this up, using a photocopier or scanner/printer, until it nearly fills an A4 (or A3) sheet. Again remember to label each one.
Now, carefully paint PVA glue over the blown-up fingerprint lines.
Then cover the whole page in glitter, so the PVA glue is covered.
If using a picture frame, when the PVA is dried, frame it!
Once they’re framed, you can display them all, and use them as a celebration of how we’re made!
Recently I was fortunate enough to be a part of the band that played at a big Dicoesan Conference – and it was an absolute blast. It was the most fun I have had in ages. To be on stage at a Convention Centre, playing for 900 people – wow! Especially when the band stopped playing, and we all sung unaccompanied – just breath-taking. Preaching is another example. I love preaching, and part of what I like about it is being up on stage, standing up in front of a bunch of people and speaking.