A quick visit from a plumber and the leak is sorted. A day and a half of minor hassle. It doesn’t compare to having six feet of foul water in your kitchen and needing eighteen months to have a home again.
Our Father in heaven from the heavens come blessing and curse, and we have spoilt the sky and turned the controls of the weather towards trouble. God forgive us, and give us hope of a better future.
Give energy and insight to the scientists and engineers who are trying to find ways for us to live with minimal fossil fuels.
Give courage to us when we need to make big changes in the way we live.
Soon, soon, we pray, bring honesty back into the public discourse, and confront us truthfully with what we need to know.
May the love of Jesus Christ be around us everywhere we go.
Moses goes up the mountain: Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain. The mountain is a place of mystery, a high up place where we can see what is hidden to people on the plains, or a clouded place where we can hardly see at all, and what we can see is confusing, shapes with no scale. Jesus’ companions see something they’ve never seen before, and a door is opened to a truth of who Jesus is – for Jesus is the fulfilment of ‘the Law’ (Moses) and ‘the Prophets’ (Elijah). Then the door slams shut and the mysterious strangers are hidden in the cloud. Jesus’ mates wanted to make shelters for Moses and Elijah, because the mountain is also a dangerous place. But they cannot nail down the holiness of the place – the holiness will have to live only in their memories, for God is always on the move. The two mysterious visitors have gone as quickly as they came. I suspect that people like to make ‘shelters’. Churches are like shelters for Christians’ faith and worship, far from the frightening, edgy world outside. God in a church is almost tame. But I’d like to consider it possible that God is also ‘out there’, the Law is being tested and the prophets are speaking ‘out there’ too.
Anyway, even the best of shelters isn’t perfect, and a device in the bathroom has sprung a leak which is coming through to the kitchen. We’re in the middle of a couple of days without a water supply until a plumber comes.
God of love, as the rain falls from the grey, merciless sky, have mercy on us. Have mercy on the people of the Calder Valley. Have mercy on all who bear the burden. Forgive us our wrongs. Forgive us for all we have burnt when we didn’t need to. Forgive us the mess and poison of human existence. Renew us in our minds and in our feelings, so we can make our planet a new and friendly place, hospitable to a new generation.
Not been out much this week – the weather’s not been great, although not so spectacularly bad as on the weekends that sandwich this week.
The Lectionary readings trouble me a bit. Lots of people can trace in Matthew’s gospel the concerns of an early Christian community that’s already falling out with itself. (Of course, people in churches never fall out, do they?!) You can see this in the editing of the gospel, like the bit about being reconciled before you worship together. At the same time though, people like me go to worship or take part in communion with loads of relational loose ends in our heads. The worship itself helps reconciliation.
Also seemingly present in the way Matthew’s edited is the need to say that Jesus has not turned his back on Judaism, but developed it. And here is a very high standard of behaviour prescribed for the people of Jesus. There’s some of the same faultlines in the church that concern the letter writers. Is it all about where we put our faith, or about what we do? – Well, it’s about faith, but real faith has consequences for our actions (the big ‘therefore’ of Romans 12:1).
Anyway, what bothers me most of all in the high standard which Jesus prescribes for us is divorce. It’s obvious to me that sometimes people are better apart: although it’s almost always more complicated than I imagine. Bear in mind that marriage was different then – and divorce – for a start it was asymmetrical and unfair on women. Also remember forgiveness: let no-one imagine they are perfect, but also let no-one imagine they can’t be forgiven – by God if not by those they have hurt.
A lot of this stuff is about personal behaviour – about being naughty or nice, but we see elsewhere that there were also political dimensions to Jesus, like what he said about the Pharisees for example. And it seems to me that the personal connects to the political – if we respect our neighbour, we are more likely to respect someone on the other side of the planet.
The daffs by my right ear have turned from buds into flowers quite suddenly…
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, whether you’re a one or a two.
Nice walk along the Trail this morning. Just glimpses of the tops of cumulonimbus capillatus incus above the lower clouds. Intense but short-lived pulses of graupel traced out the path in white…
Next Sunday’s Lectionary… There are some nuggets here, like the last verse of the Matthew reading, immortalised by Jimmy Cliff. …or like the distillation of all choosing in Deuteronomy 30:19, “Choose life”. Every choice is in some way a choice between life and death – of course we don’t think about every small thing that way, or life would be intolerable. But there aspects of every choice which are like this … like what to eat – is it healthy or not for me? How much harm was done to the atmosphere in transporting it to the shop or in farming it? Are the words I say going to drive someone closer to the edge? …or draw them back? There are ghosts of that choice ‘choose life’ in every decision, small or large. In Deuteronomy, choosing life means loving, obeying and being faithful to God. And the choice is spun as a matter of self-interest – choose right and you will prosper (as a people presumably). Maybe my motivation is different – wanting right to prosper, or God’s kingdom to prosper, or simply wanting to have some integrity. Anyways – ‘choose life’ – that’s it. And ‘let your yes and your no be no’ -it’s not about foul language but about bringing the troops in on your side. What you say isn’t made any truer by claiming God’s support. Also, be discriminating when you listen. Are you really convinced when someone says “I swear to God I didn’t do it”? No? Then you should also be sceptical when someone claims God is on their side. And of course that applies to my utterances too. Remember Alan Bennett* playing a paedophile teacher saying “that doesn’t apply to me”? Sorry, couldn’t find that on Google. Once again, Jesus is setting the bar high: maybe impossibly so. More on that later.
It may have been someone else – like Peter Cook
We worship you God, you alone. Fame, we can ignore it. Vast wealth, we can do without it. Power, we can let it go. For we worship you, God. You made the universe, set it all in motion, and presided over its development. You made the rocks and sun and moon and stars, and you give life. And we praise and thank you God. You made the furthest away thing, millions of years away, and yet you are close to us. You came into our world in Jesus, to give us a new start when we went wrong. And we praise you and thank you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord…
Once again, the Calder Valley gets it. How long will it be before they get adequate flood defences? It’s not fair – it’s not as if the people of Hebden Bridge are known for being petrolheads, or the people of Mytholmroyd burn vast amounts of coal.
God of love, have mercy on the people who have been hurt by the wind, the rain: homes, livelihoods, ruined, families broken, sudden fear, and the weary repetition of misery. God save all children of earth.
I looked through the kitchen window, and a beautiful moon was setting, almost full. With storm Ciara coming, the full moon is not good news for coastal regions.
God, protect all people from the storm. For those on the sea, on the roads, by the rivers and in the fields, we ask that lives will be spared.
God protect us from ourselves, save us from our addiction to oil: teach us to consider others who share this planet.
Unprotected Christ, crucified because of humanity’s wrongdoing, walk with us in the shadows.
Spirit of God, breathe gentleness into us, inspire us to care.
Further to the report of my tram day, the Airport Tram passed close to where I used to work, on the south side of a little road round the back of what used to be Timpsons. It looked as if it was now surrounded by razor wire. Not sure what to make of that.
We passed various things, nearby and in the distance, Anfield (distant), Aintree (near), old railways, new roads, the woods where reclusive and sick red squirrels are said to live, Blackpool Tower (very distant and barely visible through the anticyclonic haze). Squirrel pox was a great threat, and contagion seems to be a theme of the week, whether it’s squirrel pox, the new type of coronavirus, or destructive philosophies. Protection and rejection are similar…. What to do?
God, protect us from the dangers of this world. Give us grace to know when to open our hearts, even though we want to close the doors. Help us to unleash the love of Christ.
I had a good day Saturday, starting early, getting and all day ticket, and riding around on Manchester’s trams. Good to see and hear how there’s a different ‘feel’ in different parts of the city. I do like it.
Next Sunday’s lectionary is here. The Isaiah passage seems to echo last week’s from Micah. That bit of Isaiah is said to be about the time after exile – the people need to learn to live with integrity. But their corporate life seems to be dis-integrated – they worship avidly, but treat one another like dirt. This will not do. “58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” … For ‘your own kin’ here, my belief is that with the coming of Jesus the people of God is not defined by a gene but by a meme – the good news of God’s love in Jesus. To me, my ‘kin’ is at least everyone who follows Christ, and probably much wider than that, too, everyone whom God loves, I must love too. In Matthew, what caught my eye was this, Jesus says … “…5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” How high is that setting the bar? Look at the what precedes it, and the answer is probably ‘very high’. But being a Christian is partly about learning to live with the fact that we don’t always do right, and stand in constant need of forgiveness – and not just from God, but also from our nearest and dearest, and from people far away and from those whose pain we do nothing about even though we can.
In the news last week, here’s a statement from Nike made before the recent stuff about running shoes that confer an unfair advantage … ““We respect the IAAF and the spirit of their rules, and we do not create any running shoes that return more energy than the runner expends,” a spokesperson said before the change.” Well, I’m glad to know that Nike respects the laws of thermodynamics. We wouldn’t want them to be creating any perpetual motion machines.
