Eternal Echoes

bread and wine, tears and hugs... ( at the Comfort Zone)

This evening in the midst of demands and requests, in the midst of hugs and tears and unsaid prayers, in the midst of being unable to meet need for simple things like tin openers and sleeping bags. In the frustration of not being able to help, knowing that our little drop in the ocean is never enough, of trying to close our ears to grumbles and keep on keeping on, we paused and prayed, broke bread and shared wine...

It was not a nice thing to do, not an add on to the evening but a central point that drew us to the point of being there. As I "laid" the table I was aware that in some sense it was being laid in the presence of the enemy, I don't say this lightly but want to call out a dehumanising system that says to somebody asking for help; "I am sorry you don't meet our criteria" or "I am sorry you are in the wrong place, go home they will help you there", but the fact is that this so called civilised nation has disenfranchised many people from applying for help anywhere, that the message  and the stark reality is that too many are simply passed from pillar to post they don't and can't belong anywhere. In stark contrast the message at the table is simple; "all are welcome".

As I laid the table of welcome in the presence of overwhelming need and frustration at the system and myself, as I poured the wine into the Chalice I was aware more deeply than ever before of the power of the blood of Christ, and the wine was not only blood but also tears and sweat.

This evening the response to communion was overwhelming, real raw prayers were said, heartfelt prayers were said, and God was with us, in the bread, in the wine and in and through one another. When a homeless man who you haven't been able to give a sleeping bag to hugs you and says "you've done more than you can know" you know this truth, God is with us, when prayers are offered for the "staff"  and thanks is given, and we ask for simple things like towels and underpants, God is with us...

Our only response together, to sing Amazing Grace and to hug one another, for God is with us... and so we carry on, for God is with us...

Blackpool a place of beauty and of pain...

compelled by love ( all this for you)

Before I start I will state that while I am a Methodist Minister ( Presbyter) the views in this blog post are my own views and while I hope that they will in some way reflect the views and mission of the Methodist Church, they remain simply my views.

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I am responding to Quentin Lett's Radio 4's Programme "What's the point of...?" broadcast this morning at 9am, and to be broadcast again this evening at 9:30pm. Today he was asking "What's the point of Methodism?"

I am not going to  enter into a long critique of the programme which raised some interesting points about our history and origins, and spoke of both scriptural holiness and social justice in a positive way. I am not even going to touch the possible ensuing conversation about whether we should of shouldn't join with the Church of England, but rather I want to speak of what I felt was missing because it is because of what I felt was missing that I find myself in the Methodist Church today often slipping on my "dog-collar" and wondering " how did that happen...!"

I know the answer to my own often voiced rhetorical question, it happened because of the love and grace of God, it happened because I found in Methodism a way to Christ that I had not found elsewhere, and it is the love and grace that I find rooted in the Arminian theology of Prevenient Grace that has set me free to stand in a place where I can begin to say that I am here because Christs love compells me.

Let me say now that I am a "convert," I do not have a history of Sunday School or a good solid Methodist upbringing or a good solid anything upbringing for that matter, I came to faith by discovering the power of prayer at a difficult time in the life of my then young family. Through prayer I discovered a God who was very real and very present, but my journey into faith was not so easy; I struggled with the sense that I was not acceptable and tried to obey all sorts of rules to make myself acceptable. For some reason I could not accept that God loved me for me.  The more I tried to make myself acceptable the more I invented God as a monster in my own eyes failing to see the true revelation of his love in the person of Jesus. It was only when I began working for the Methodist Church as an outreach worker and was fortunate enough to begin studying at the same time that another theological window, another way of thinking about God, and thinking about how God might think about me opened up.

What if the God that Jesus revealed really identified with the poor, reached out to the oucast, healed the untouchable, and included the unclean, the foreigner and the sinner; anyone who could that could be labled "other" by those trying to create an exclusive community? What if God loved us first and calls forth love from us? What if God is bigger and more inclusive than I could possibly imagine?

As I began to follow and worship this God, not the angry monster God I found that I could begin to love and accept myself, it was the revelation and the still unfolding revelation of this love that drew me into ministry, that drew me beyond my own small confines and boundaries to love " the other", discovering that they are not other at all but that we share a common humanity.

Some of the most powerful words in the Methodist Worship book ( for me) are written in the Baptism Liturgy, those words; "All this for you" are preceded by the declaration of God's revelation in the person of Jesus, including "for you he lived and showed Gods love".  

It is this revelation that set a flame burning within my heart, it is this revelation that stirs my soul, it is here that "God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who  we really are. ( Romans 8:16). Precious, beloved children of God, made in Gods own image. Surely if I am a precious, beloved child of God then so is my neighbour, and more challengingly the one I call "other" for any reason, in fact the other is who I am particularly called to love, for it was to the other that Jesus came! The truth then is that not only can I be drawn beyond my own boundaries, but to declare that there are none, there can be none! As a friend of mine says " there is nothing secular except for sin", and all sin is is that thing that seperates us from God. So with boundaries and barriers gone we can live out our theology, and all are ( now) welcome at the table!

All of this is hugely challenging for the Methodist Church, because as the Radio show revealed Methodism appears to be built on certain standards and values, traditionally calling people to sobriety and a morally upright way of life, to social action and to have a passion for justice, but what it missed is that the source of these lies in the move of God.  John Wesley's own journal contains the telling declaration ;

"I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.."

It was this assurance, this experience that compelled him, this experience, this assurance that compelled many of those who were touched by his preaching and the movement that followed Methodism is primarily born of the Spirit, an experienced encounter with God, and while this is not unique perhaps its expression in concern for the poor and a desire for social justice is a mark of that move and a particular gift. Yes we sing our theology, but there is a reason that the Methodist Hymnody is important, music made the message acessible and memorable and is well known to touch the heart and the spirit in ways that words alone cannot. Yes many Methodists are passionate about Social Justice and politics but these all have their roots in the move of the Spirit that Welsey experienced as his heart was strangley warmed.

Our problem? I want to suggest that it is the phenomena known as " convert and lift"- that is to say that as people took on the moral values and aspirations and possibilities of living differently that we lost our roots, Methodism became middle class and lost the Spirit. Oddly I came from a middle class background and the Spirit found me! That said I know many passionate and committed people called Methodist, people who serve, people who love, people who light up a room with the love of God that flows from them, people who are passionate not only for God but through God for their neighbours both local and global.

Will we die out? Not if we dare to follow the way of Christ and dare to give ourselves away, not if we allow the Spirit to inspire and equip and guide us, not if we fan into flame the gift within us and recognise afresh that we are a movement and not an institution. More than anything  we need a fresh fire to fill our hearts and that fire must be of God not of our own striving, and it must be a fire of grace, a desire to include rather than exclude, to accept the other, to include the other, to identify with the outcast, to become as Christ...

I leave you with a story from last night at our Drop in here in Blackpool " The Comfort Zone", one of our community members bounced in full of energy and love carrying a bunch of flowers, her gift to us for no particular reason, and expression of love and joy, she blessed us all. It was another members birthday, touched by his story we bought him a card and a cake, he was really pleased, but when it came to cutting and sharing his cake he refused, he wanted to take it home and to keep it for himself. At the end of the evening we gathered around the table to share in prayer and communion, and neither were excluded, such is the love and grace of God with us, and that should bring us all to our knees! Love is stronger than death....

All this for you!

Maybe what we need is a rebranding exercise, as the programme mentioned we were also once called Enthusiasts! A discipleship movement shaped for mission! Called to life in Christ, living out a calling to love, to justice, to holiness and compassion. Maybe what we need to rediscover is that flame that so set Wesleys' heart ablaze, the Spirit of God calling us to live out our inner experience in Spirit and in truth.

Let us take up the cross 
till we the crown obtain, 
and gladly reckon all things loss 
so we may Jesus gain.

Image: Canvas 1 of Waves of Grace - mine ( a comission for a church in Blackburn)

 

 

our chains are gone. our hearts set free....

Amazing grace,

the sweet sound 

of voices raised 

lifted this broken

vulnerable crowd,

and crept into the injured 

corners of our hearts

and soothed our souls

as a cleansing flood,

this group of truly wretched

wretches knew how to

sing the real raw words

with wonder and awe,

and God was with us,

 

a mystery beyond our comprehension

yet closer than our

breathing,

and God IS with us

for we left the table

filled with heavenly

joy

we had remembered,

and we were re-membered,

amazing love,

amazing grace...

Broken: Image mine

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How do you describe the indescribable, that is what I was trying to do with the poem above, trying to capture of something of the amazing experience of standing in a circle of those who know something of the heights and deths of what grace is.

We gathered together this evening as one, the folk who come to the Comfort Zone for food and friendship, and those of us who cherish the honour of being called friends. The Comfort Zone met as usual to provide food and clothes to those in need,  and as usual we who give receive more than we give, but when we gather at the table all differentiations are gone, we are one in Christ and the singing and prayers revealed that powerfully.

As we shared the bread and wine the desire to serve one another broke through any so called order and with the wine and bread blessed and the appropriate prayers said the sharing began. Once again we sand Amazing grace, our chains were gone, our hearts set free as heaven touched earth afresh, we left one another with hugs and prayer and and assurance that God truly is with us.

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Lessons from a hedge, a hug and a Greenbelt prayer

I have spent quite a bit of time today pruning a hedge and cutting back some very overgrown shrubs, the result is a tidy front garden and a back garden that looks like a lunatic with a pair of clippers has been let loose. I have been brutal with the shrubs, they were eating up the light in my garden and pushing over my neighbours fence, as a result I have exposed a 4ft width of ground to the light, cut away a load of dead wood and overgrown tangled branches. I haven't dug the shrubs out because I hope they will grow back much more healthily in the spring. I like them, they all produce flowers at different times through the season, but the pruning was necessary.

Today for me the pruning became a prayer and a parable, over the last year or so I know that God has ( with my cooperation and sometimes even willing...) carried out a fair amount of pruning in my life, the old has been chopped away, the ground has been exposed and I feel a bit like my garden looks, a bit stark, bare and vulnerable, but also prepared for something new, I could not have prepared for something new carrying about the burden of overgrown stuff, stuff that was dying and bent and brittle. 

So as I cut the branches away today I gave thanks to God for his care in my life and prayed for the possibilities that new growth might bring, I was affirmed last week to receive an encouragement fro a visitor to New Central Church here in Blackpool who told me she had attended the Shoppers Service last year too and had noticed how much I had grown ( odd when you feel cut back) in my preaching, and while I can't see it obviously she could so I give thanks for that potential too.

It would have been easy to leave the shrubs and the hedge as they were, on the outside they did not look unhealthy, it was only when I began to cut away at the tangle of branches that I understood how messy and unhealthy things were. My life had been like that, so as I cut away the branches I enacted again a prayerful letting go, something I was privileged to experience powerfully at Greenbelt last weekend when Mpho Tutu read an extract from the book she and her father Desmond Tutu have written together on Forgiveness. It not only helped me to do some personal letting go, but also to engage with loving and firgiving myself. Here is the prayer:

I will forgive you

The words are so small 

But there is a universe hidden in them,

When I forgive you 

all those chords of resentment pain and sadness that had wrapped

themselves around my heart will be gone

when I forgive you

You will no longer define me

You meassured me and assessed me and

decided that you could hurt me

I didn't count

But I will forgive you

Because I do count

I do matter

I am bigger than the image you have of me

I am stronger

I am more beautiful

And I am infinetly more precious than you thought me

I will forgive you

My forgiveness is not a gift that I am giving to you

When I forgive you

My fogiveness will be a gift that gives itself to me

 

There at the Greenbelt's glade stage at Boughton House a weight lifted from me, and while I might pick it up again from time to time I know I can also put it down again, let it go again and feel the lightness of the discarded mess and branches that held me being swept away. The service ended with a reading from John 21, the restoration/ recomissioning of Peter, and in that moment  I found myself restored. When the service was over I bumped into ( and I don't believe in coincidences like this) the one person I know who not only knew something of my story but whose own story is similar, the prayer had affected both of us, we shared briefly and parted with a hug, and God was in that encounter calling forth new life.

I bought the book!

Across the Glade at Greenbelt

silence, mystery and awe ( Greenbelt moments 1)

silence held him

as he reached out

to touch the mystery

of broken bread, 

bread

broken for him,

in this incense laden place

full of prayers,

of wonder and holiness,

heaven touched earth here

as the wordless communion

opened his eyes 

to the mystery of how

God might be with us...

did his heart sing

in that moment,

I do not know,

but this I do know

his wonder touched my heart

and mine sang

as our eyes met

in the silence...

One of the highlights of Greenbelt for me was the Silent Eucharist on Sunday afternoon, it was made more special by one little boy and his family. The children entered in to this silent act of worship with a real sense of awe and wonder, they shared the peace beaming at the people around them and lighting us all up, they loved being able to cast their prayers as incense on charcoal, but the whole thing was made for me as the youngest took the bread that was broken and offered to him, his eyes were like saucers and his wole face lit up. Surely God was with us.

Photo from The Mount  at Boughton House ( mine)

Hunger...

I find myself surrounded by hunger, and surrounded by food, my hall at hone is often stocked with cans of beans, meat pies, Pot Noodles, ginger biscuits and packs of tea, hardly a day passes when I am not given something for the Comfort Zone, and I am grateful. Lynn our Chaplain brings more food, she is given more food than I am, we are always being given food, we are always sharing food, we are reminded again and again how we are all in need of basic provision, and how this basic need joins us to one another.

The Comfort Zone is a drop in for vulnerable, needy and homeless people in Blackpool, we open on a Monday night for a hot meal, and on Wednesday morning for breakfast and sandwiches. At both sessions we distribute food bags...

People are hungry, hungry for food, hungry for companionship and hungry for God...

Not a week goes by without a request for communion/ The Eucharist/Mass, I am  asked for all of these because we draw folk from a variety of backgrounds, and all are served equally, we have an open table, and we meet God together, for he is in the midst of us. 

There are times when we draw together in peace and calm, and times when we need God to break into our turmoil and angst and so we come to the table, we come in need, we come in desire, and we come because we are hungry. We are hungry for bread and wine that feeds our souls with the remembrance that God IS with us, here in the midst of us knowing our hurts and pains, knowing our vulnerability and frailty, God IS with us, here to draw us, here to feed us. 

We gather in our need, members of a community, volunteers, staff, and "clients" ( we need a better word), and around the table we are one, there are no barriers or boundaries here for Jesus himself is our host. He is with us as we approach his table, with us in and through his story, tangibly present as we become aware of the move of the Spirit, and then wonderfully, miraculously, mysteriously we feed on him. Together we become what we eat, and God is in our hands and in our mouths feeding our souls, we cannot leave unmoved or unchanged. If we do I suspect we leave unfed, we will be hungry...

I find that my own hunger for God has been awoken in this community, here I am able to be vulnerable for vulnerability is all around me, that does not mean that I spill my soul but that I own it, I own my light and my darkness, I own my joys and my sorrows, and I own my hunger for more and more of God. I need this bread and this wine, I need the prayers of invocation and consecration and I am finding myself changed for I am meeting God not only in the mystery but in the very bread that I break and the very wine that I offer. I can no longer dispose of the elements without thought I must consume them. There was a time when my pragmatic thinking ( very Methodist) would have allowed me to simply dispose of the elements without thinking, but that is no longer true, food is important, a gift, and this food has become sacred, holy, a touching place and must be treated as such, I am hungry for God, so I cannot throw God away, I must partake of him in the fullest way that I can... there can be no crumbs at this table, not baskets left over, yet he always offers more...

I finish with a poem and a couple of links, the poem I have shared before:

 

Eucharistic thoughts

.

I want to meet you

in chewable chunks of grace,

to savour the flavour

of your gift…

.

I want to spend time

contemplating the wonder

of your givenness,

I want to be

nourished, challenged

and transformed!

.

I want to gulp down

deep draughts

of your love,

to feel it’s fire

filling my heart and soul

warming my bones!

.

I want to be cleansed

and restored

as I meet you

in the brokenness of bread,

and in the cup freely offered.

.

I want to go different,

to be different!

Will you meet me here?

.

Is it right that

I should leave your table

still hungry?

 

 

Being myself with integrity

Thinking outside the box

Still outside the box

Both of these reflect my developing thinking. 

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