Yesterday I was asked how it is that I can take funerals, his first concern was that I had to stand in front of all of those people and speak, his second concern was the words that I was using. There were a lot of people yesterday, standing room only in the Chapel, and more folk outside. The funeral was for their friend, he had died following a battle with cancer at the young age of 42.
There were a lot of people, but whether there are few or many most of the words in the funeral service are the same ( there are choices in the liturgy). My response is this, I can do it because I believe it, I believe passionately in the words of resurrection hope that I proclaim, and I believe passionately that, that hope is open to all.
I believe that Jesus was fully human and fully divine and as such he came, dwelt amongst us, was crucified, died on the cross and was then raised to life through the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe it and I believe that others need to hear of the gift of life, fullness of life that God has for them...
To be able to hold out hope to the hopeless, and the grieving is an enormous privilege and for me to have integrity it must be sure proclamation. Yes there are times when I have questions especially when faced with the suffering of others, but my hope is secure, if vulnerable at times. The young man whose funeral I conducted yesterday and his family were/ are not regular church goers, but they are believers, and cancer did not have the last word...
"I am the resurrection and the life" says the Lord "those who believe in me, even though they die will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."
I was invited to talk today by somebody who wants me to lead her funeral, it will likely happen in the next few months, and apparently I was recommended to her. Blushing aside I accepted this unusual request, made more unusual because she does not believe in God as such...
Although with a little digging I soon discover that I don't believe in the God she doesn't believe in either...
For her the word "God" is confining and smacks of hierarchical religion, so much so, that although she wants John Ch 1 (or part of it read) the naming of God is problematic. We will talk more, before I left however I explained that God is named in several ways in the Bible, and these descriptions are far from confining.
She wants to continue the conversation, and I am pleased that she does, but I am left asking questions... how has naming God become such a negative experience for so many folk who would describe themselves as spiritual?
I know there are many communal and personal stories that tell of a boxed in oppression by the establishment and for that I am profoundly sorry, for we have boxed in God and made him into a super-tyranic despot, a parody of freedom and one who is ultimately stripped of power and made into a scapegoat. A scapegoat upon whom we heap all of our questions and frustrations and hurts...
...Suddenly God begins to sound a lot like Jesus, and people respect Jesus, so how do we begin making connections in a Post Christian Age?
I need to begin thinking outside of the box, to begin to introduce the God of grace and mercy, the God of light and life, for this is the God I have encountered and begun to know, for in the words of Psalm 18:
he caught me—reached all the way from sky to sea; he pulled me out Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos, the void in which I was drowning. They hit me when I was down, but God stuck by me. He stood me up on a wide-open field; I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!
(Psalm 18: 19-20)
I want others to be surprised by the love and grace of God, but for some that will mean introducing them to the God who is beyond the box of their deepest fears and imaginations...
And so I pray, Lord help me to help people to see, even when I see through a glass darkly...
At South Milford today we experienced one of those services when God simply takes over today.... no there was no hysteria, no falling on the floor, no sudden evidence of miracles or anything like that. BUT God was powerfully present and very much in control. The focus, as it was for many others was Christ the King, the hymns and the liturgy had been chosen by me, and we were to follow the lectionary readings. No shocks then!
In the notices at the beginning of the service it was brought to our attention that Debbie's Dishes an outreach project elsewhere in the District who are in desperate need of a new dishwasher. This had no big impact, and although I explained to the congregation what the project was about I left it at that.
We prayed and sang, King of Kings majesty, and also The King is among us...
Then we heard the Scriptures...
I had been intending to preach on the reaction of the thief on the cross, how he recognised Jesus, and Jesus response, I had been intending to ask about our responses to Jesus, and how we see glimpses of his coming amongst us.
BUT the wrong reading was read, except that the wrong reading was very right... We heard the gospel from Luke 24 instead of Luke 23, and it focused on Jesus appearing to his disciples in a closed room after the resurrection .
The sermon changed, and it must have been Spirit inspired, because it wasn't what I'd prepared at all, and it made sense! I spoke about the reality of the resurrection bringing us hope, noting that God's kingdom is not some distant airy fairy possibility but something real and tangible, and something that we need to enter into now. Christ as King of kings and Lord of Lords is a reality, and he longs to move amongst us in power NOW! But his power is not a domineering power, but the power of peace, and love and service, and a power that God pours out on his people by the Holy Spirit.
We shared communion, using the second part of the Easter liturgy...
And then before we left one of the members suggested that we should give half of the collection to Debbie's Dishes, the rest of the congregation agreed, and so that is what will happen. Maybe that does not seem remarkable, but this is a small congregation who are embarking on a brave and expensive remodelling project, a project that will turn their traditional Chapel into an Arts Centre that the whole village can use, a project originally inspired by wanting to retain the premises so that a local dance school can continue to meet. The could have ignored the need elsewhere, but chose instead to be generous, mirroring in their actions the servant nature of Christ, who left the heavenly realms for earth's grit and grime.
These folk so often give generously of themselves and their time, and I pray that God will bless them, that they can continue to be a blessing....
One more thing to add. My husband Tim has recently been discovering the gift of drawing worship, he sketches as he listens and his pictures become a form of prayer. This morning he drew what turned out to be an ordinary person, dressed in purple ( a royal colour), yet basic clothing, and surrounded by the glory of God. In her hands she held a bowl and towel.... glory and service, royalty and ordinariness, Christ reflected in his people....
I offer you two quotes to think on ( though I encourage you to read them all):
#9 0n joy:
Joy is most intimately related not to happiness but to sorrow, not to fullness but to the void of non-being. Joy is ontological vulnerability, a leap across the abyss of difference. Sorrow is a small hole in the flute through which joy breathes its tune.
#5 on smiling and sadness:
When the church’s theological rejection of sadness was secularised, sadness became a pathology requiring medical intervention. The medicalisation of sadness is the final cultural triumph of the Protestant smile. If Luther or Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky had lived today, we would have given them Prozac and schooled them in positive thinking. They would have grinned abortively – and written nothing. The truth of sadness is the womb of thought.
This all connects with my own sense that to often we forget the gifts offered to us by grief and lament. Too often we feel that we must gloss over life's difficulties, and we ignore our brokenness and vulnerability at our peril.
In his excellent book Psalms of Life and Faith, Walter Brueggemann commenting on our covenant relationship with God says:
"Where there is lament, the believer is able to take the initiative with God and so develop over against God the ego-strength that is necessary for responsible faith. But where the capacity to initiate lament is absent one is left only with praise and doxology. God then is omnipotent, always to be praised. The believer is nothing, and can praise or accept guilt uncritically where life with God does not function properly. The outcome is a "False Self", bad faith that is based in fear and guilt and lived out as resentful or self deceptive works of righteousness. The absence of lament makes a religion of coercive obedience the only possibility." (p. 103-104)
I am struck again and again by one particular phenomena that has cropped up several times in my ministry over the last year, I have noticed again and again how difficult it is for Christians to engage with their sense of grief. There have even been occasions where guilt for feeling grief has been the overriding emotion! To dare to ask questions of God at times like this is seen as a lack of faith and a false self emerges as the true self is denied any form of hearing. The result is an angry, almost bitter faith that has no time for tears.
By contrast unchurched people are far more gracious with themselves, they dare to weep and to question, and very often the tears and the questions bring them closer to God as they realise that it OK to be sad, and even to yell and shout at God.
In the post before this which coincidently is on "Thankfulness" I wrote about being thankful for finally being able to talk about depression. I am convinced that I would have begun to not only heal, but have a more responsible and mature faith earlier if I had not been so convinced that I should present an all is well exterior to the world, or be known to be a failure as a Christian!
I now believe that lament is a gift, and a gift that we do well not to ignore, we have a wonderful resource in the Psalms, and maybe it would help us to remember that Jesus wept over Jerusalem:
But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.( Luke 19: 41-42)
and over Lazarus:
When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him,and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them.
They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” (John:33-36)
and struggled in the Garden of Gethsemane over his own fate:
He walked away, about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” Then an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him. He prayed more fervently, and he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. (Luke 22: 39-44)
We should not brush our sadness, our grief and our deep and painful questions aside, for in denying them we deny ourselves, and dare I say it we even shun the God of all comfort by making a loving God into something very different- a cold and demanding tyrant!
And finally I wonder if, when we turn away from sadness, grief and lament, whether we also turn away from real joy?
Two more quotes from Ben Myers:
"Why are clowns so frightening? Their demonic aura comes from the fact that they never stop smiling. Hell is the country of clowns, where tormented strangers smile at one another compulsively and forever. The devil is the name we give to the Cheshire Cat that is always vanishing just beneath the surface of our world, leaving everywhere sinister traces of a cosmic painted grin. This grin is the secret of history."
"Happiness is analogous to joy as Facebook is analogous to friendship, or as a brothel is analogous to marriage. Happiness is the gratification of desire. Joy does not fulfil desire but exceeds it so majestically as to obliterate it. Joy is ascesis, the criticism of desire. The criticism of desire is also desire’s purgation and renovation. Joy is the baptism of desire, its drowning and rising again. The fullness of joy is an ache of absence. ‘Our best havings are wantings’ (C. S. Lewis)."
Photo: Snettisham Beach in Norfolk- a place I will always be thankful for!
With the American holiday of Thanksgiving being less than a week away, I tried to think of some questions for Friday Five that could be connected to this, but in a new way. So here is my one try:
Name five things that were unexpected in your life that you are now grateful for.
1. My family- it isn't an unusual story , but I wasn't planning to marry and start a family as early as I did, but on finding out that I was pregnant with my eldest son I fought against all encouragement to have an abortion. I married his dad 4 months after Paul was born and we have been married for almost 30 years now! Paul was soon joined by 4 other siblings, and now by his lovely wife Louise and her three girls.
In many ways I grew up with my children and they have been my teachers! I am thankful for all of the experiences we have been through together, for the good times and the bad times ( and there have been a mix of both)!
Pictures:
1.Jo this summer in Zambia- helping out at an orphanage
2. Chris eating curry...
3. Jon- not sure whether this was in a play or just Jon being Jon!
4. Emma at a friends wedding- we don't often get shots of Em away from the boat or cello, but I think this is lovely!
5. Paul, Louise, Ollie, Georgia and Ellie at Paul amd Lou's graduation last week.
6. Tim and I on our 25th Anniversary- walking on the beach.
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2. The church, it drives me crazy and I love it, without the support of the local church at different times and in different ways I think that my own story would have been very different. Through God's people I discovered the love of God, acts of kindness and challenges have all played their part. This is a story I hear over and over again...
I was not brought up in the church, didn't go to Sunday school, and have come to really hear the gospels for the first time as an adult- that is often why the church drives me crazy, so often we assume that people know the good news...
But though it drives me crazy I am thankful for it, and I love it....
Picture: Cafe Church on Mothering Sunday 2010
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3.Being allowed to talk about depression...
Now that may sound crazy, but it is true, I believe that I first suffered from depression when my children were small, and again when we moved to Texas where I had a very severe bout of what I can only describes as sheer misery ( and I made everyone else's lives miserable).
At the time I did not have the courage to seek help, and it was not until I was hit by a severe bout of depression in late 2006 that I did so. Seeking help allowed me to own my own f eelings and to take time out when I needed to. I have learned that there are times when I need medication and that there is no shame in that. As I have opened up I have found that others respond, often telling their own stories of fear and isolation.
My only regret- that I did not seek help and speak up before!
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4. The Bible and the chance to study it- I can remember longing to own a Bible as a child, I don't really know why (except that maybe it was a God-given longing)...
It has been a source of encouragement, comfort, challenge and frustration, I have learned to ask questions of it, and not to simply read it as an out of context document, or a dry text-book.
I love it and am thankful for it, and to the Methodist Church for giving me the time and space to study it!
5. My body- does that sound odd?
Let me explain, as a child I was plump, as a teenager although slim I was tall (I still am :-) )... and I hated my body.
I used to stoop, and was convinced that I was ugly. It has taken me years to become comfortable in my own skin. Over the last year I have made a concerted effort to get fit, I've completed a 67 mile bike ride, and taken up dingy sailing with my husband Tim ( he has sailed for years!).
In September I joined a local gym and have been swimming at least three times a week. I also practice tai-chi. I feel better for it, my body looks better for it...
Connected with that Tim and I have begun to cultivate a vegetable garden, the exercise and fresh veggies have all contributed to our general health. How sad that it has taken me over 40 years to become comfortable with my body- but I suspect that it is not an unusual story...
Now to work on the diet....
Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Philipians 4: 6-7 (The Message)
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