Month: April 2020

I realise I ought to know better, but I really am not sure what a sacrament is. A look at the Wikipedia page didn’t really help me. It’s something like a material way through which we can know the holy amazingness of God. But that can’t be it, because if that were it, then every word of grace, every deed of love would be a sacrament, and perhaps for some, a sacrament more powerful than a costume drama at the front of church.

Next Sunday’s Lectionary passage includes the story from the Road to Emmaus. If anything is a sacrament, what we read about in this story is. Two disciples invite a stranger on the road to come in for a meal – and in that meal they discover the Lord Jesus. The thing about this communion-meal is its randomness. It is not planned. It is not part of institutional life. It just happens. If anything, it is part of daily life. It has more in common with Jesus’ injunction in 1 Corinthians 11:25, “In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” than a pre-planned ritual has. The cynical side of me wonders if the way the eucharist has developed (in all those denominations which use it) is related to cementing the power of the institution. Remember the lingering fear of the word, “excommunication”.

And yet… And yet, what churches do to remember the Last Supper is still powerful and deeply meaningful for millions of people, including me. From those little individual cups of non-alcoholic red stuff, to the precious chalice in the hands of someone with elaborate robes, and so on – all these things are reminders, and more, of the Son of God’s last meal with his mates, of his execution, of his risen life among the community.

Maybe if I’d paid more attention to what I was taught in college, I’d’ve been able to tie this stuff down – but I suspect that in the end, it can’t be tied down.

Another day of experimentation today. Although my droplets are almost certainly benign, I still feel I ought to protect other people from them, just in case. So I wrapped a woolly scarf around my face. This was not as good as the tea towel: it was hard to keep it in place, and when I got home I had to pick fluff out of my beard for a while. Also I didn’t want the extra complication of specs, so I left them at home – which is probably not a good idea.

I’ve tried going for a little walk with a tea cloth. It just about reaches. It is surprisingly smelly and not very porous. When I breathe hard, like uphill, the air squishes out in streams around the edges. However, I’m pretty sure that the ballistic efficiency is much less than with an unguarded face … so something like this is worth persisting with.

It’s a nice morning too, fair and breezy. I’ll not be worshipping with the church this morning, as I’m still a bit low on remaining broadband allowance.

God of love,
we pray that all people who need it
will feel included in praising you…
whether they are too sick,
unconnected to the internet,
unable to master the technology,
at odds with the church they know;
may all sisters and brothers feel they are
part of the community.

Letters in the newspaper are often interesting, diverting or even thought-provoking. But they don’t always make you think again so radically as this. I have been trying to follow government advice, but most of it is based an answering the wrong question – “how do I protect myself from the virus?” This is important, true enough: but equally important, and seemingly not given so much weight, is “how do I protect others from me?”. So, wash your hands before you go out and after you touch your face, and yes, wear a mask. So I think I have some sort of scarfy thing upstairs that I may experiment with before I go out next. This is important, because it is, AFAIK, possible to pass the virus on when you don’t even know you’ve got it. It’s extremely unlikely I have it, but you never know. PS I also wipe the seat in a public toilet after I’ve used it (you didn’t really need to know that).

Jesus said, “…love one another as I have loved you.”

God of love
help us be more loving,
aware of the hurt and trouble
we often cause one another
and aching for a more just world;
but nevertheless committed
to love courageously,
to forgive as you do,
to dig deep
when it all seems too hard.

It is amazing what people working in the NHS, GIG, care industry and numerous other professions have done over the last few weeks. They deserve every bit of praise they can get.

There are heartwarming stories of ageing people doing amazing feats of endurance to support the NHS. And there is the Thursday clap. This is obviously a great thing, although I personally find it awkward.

But when all the fine words have been said, and all the effusive thanks has been given, I think what I’ll do is to give my vote to someone who’s actually going to look after the NHS. Don’t get me wrong: the NHS is facing unprecedented (though not completely unpredictable) stresses, and any government would find it a struggle to keep things running smoothly. But at some point, somebody is going to have to say, this is going to cost you more taxes: are you willing to pay for it? (And that goes for education, too – even more so). The ‘small state’ is completely unsuited to dealing with anything like this.

I am a bystander here. We are retired and don’t really have any role to play. We are well and haven’t had the virus. We are surrounded by hills, and an allowable short walk takes us to reservoirs or fields. There are local shops and postal options. Not everyone is so lucky. Many live in the city, lucky even to see the hills. For huge numbers of people in the UK and worldwide, this is a grim time. May God bless them.

One way or another, the sun is a brilliant source of energy. It drives the weather, so wind, waves and hydroelectric. Plants use its energy to build energy-rich compounds that we can use for food or fuel. The energy locked up underground in coal and hydrocarbons has the same ultimate source. Maybe we can cut out the middlestage and use solar cells in more places than we use them now. Cells are neither particularly cheap nor particularly efficient, (and I guess, the commercial world being what it is, that cheaper means less efficient and vice versa) … but they are being improved in both respects. Don’t say the sun never shines in northern England – it’s shining here today. Unfortunately our roof points in the wrong direction. But anyway, something for everyone to think about.

I had an early walk again this morning, to avoid meeting too many people – a couple of miles of delight before the day begins. Today there was a drone above me for a minute or two. I still feel it’s not quite right to be out at all: but I don’t think I get near enough to anyone to put their life or mine in danger.

Counterintuitively, not walking very much seems to leave me less energetic than when I was walking reasonable amounts. It’s a mood thing I guess.

God of love,
we praise and thank you
for the energy of the sun,
the way it gives us life,
the way it lights our planet
into glory
and paints the dull rock of our moon
in silver.

Much excitement on Monday, as my attempted sourdough starter was definitely fermenting after several days: it smelt like sick, but who cares? So I tried to add some flour to part of it and try to make some proper bread. But the dough wouldn’t rise. This time I went unleavened and made some flatbreads. Last night, they were ready – they were tasty and interestingly chewy. This morning, after a night in the tupperware, they are basically baker’s biltong. I think I’m going to cut them into strips and gnaw on them to stave off the boredom. I don’t think Janet will feel any need to help use them up. I made an excursion to the local supermarket this morning and we have some proper bread. I’m OK with a short walk early in the morning – it’s easy to avoid people, especially on roadside pavements, and there aren’t many people. But negotiating the shops is harder. I forget the circulation protocols; or I don’t know what to do when I meet someone filling shelves (theirs is a job where it’s impossible to avoid people – Tesco should be giving them PPE); or I can’t organise my shopping in the order that we have to walk past stuff; or I get in someone else’s way. I really don’t want to have the virus unknowingly and give it to someone else.

So we’re not exactly trapped here – but we don’t go out much. Maybe in ten, twenty, thirty years, being indoors is going to be my life all of the time: and that would be normal. I probably need to get some more strategies in place for this.

So, a bit of an anticlimactic bread story. This coming Sunday is often called ‘Low Sunday’, the anticlimax after Easter. Days like Low Sunday are the bread and butter of a living faith – they sort out the women from the girls and the men from the boys. If you can join in worship when there’s no great ‘oomph’ in it for you, if you can love and serve when it hurts to love and aches to serve, if you can keep on going when you don’t really fancy it somehow, then you know your faith is going deep.

In this world though, things are worse than a mere anticlimax. It is a dark time, especially as the US seeks to undermine the global fight against the virus.

I believe that for the United Reformed Church in nearby Yorkshire, the fifteenth of the month is a day of prayer about COVID-19, for the duration. I believe that Jair Bolsonaro declared a day of prayer and fasting a week or two ago – good for him – although I’d be happier if he listened to advice and did more to protect his people.

God of love,
we ask you to comfort those who mourn,
bring healing to those who are sick,
work hand in hand with science and medicine
to bring this horror to an end.

We remember those thousands,
tens of thousands
who loved and were loved,
each one who will be missed.

We particularly think of the
uncounted, untested people,
those vast numbers who are ill
or facing death,
those who have been forgotten by the statistics,
and those who will be broken by
a new poverty.
We pray for the uncounted ones;-
people in residential care
people who can’t be counted
because their governments are poor
or secretive.

We pray, as the virus spreads
silently and unrecorded
through shanty towns,
markets and bus stations,
subsistence farms,
among people forgotten by the developed world.

Living God,
may your love and mercy
fall upon this whole world
from pole to equator.

Living God, holy Spirit,
breathe hope into our lives;
breathe on, where breathing is hard,
the rasping struggle of life;
breathe on, where people must
breathe through charcoal and cloth,
behind visors, trying to care,
trying to be personal,
where everything about the environment says,
“impersonal”.

Breathe hope, where hope seems almost gone,
give hope to people deep in grieving.
Where everything is ending
and springtime is another world,
holy Spirit, whisper to us
rumours of a new beginning.

Lord, in your mercy-
-hear our prayer.

This was good, from the BBC. It says a lot about Easter. The Lectionary for next Sunday is here. Psalm 16:5 goes like this, “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.” It’s happy days, but as we read in the Gospels, both in Jesus’ prayer in the garden, and in Matthew 20:22 or Mark 10:38, where Jesus speaks to James and John or their mother (depending on whose version you read), “the cup” of doing God’s will can be bitter. It’s as they said on the radio, tears and alleluias around the graveside.

Thomas the Twin (John’s gospel reading) is one of my heroes, both for his scepticism, and for the way he believes (which he does in the end) – for his belief is not about just agreeing to a statement, it is about something deeper, ‘faith’, relating to God: it’s about following Jesus, walking his way, for he says “my Lord and my God”.

Meanwhile, a virus which started as a small thing far away is now causing massive grief and hardship. We continue to fight it with science and prayer. Science and prayer can be a good team – pity they seem to fall out sometimes. When we eventually clamber out of this dark valley, may we do so with more respect and love for one another, and a heightened sense of social justice.

Happy Easter.

I went for a walk of exercise and remembering in the Easter dawn.

The lurid sky could be a ‘shepherd’s warning’. It could be a reminder that my Christian faith is ‘not normal’ – there is something rare and exotic about it, for I believe that Jesus is alive, and is the living presence (acknowledged or secret) in every deed of love and every greeting between disciples, whether we are separated by no distance, 2m, or an internet cable.

Things are, or course, ‘not normal’, but with the recent near misses of SARS and MERS, we should be ready for the current experience to be repeated. I pray that God will support our governments in the difficult decisions they have to make; and I pray that these people will have the decency to find their decisions difficult.

I seem to remember, from either the days of records, or of tape cassettes, that sometimes, when listening to very quiet music, you would get an accidental muffled preview of a loud passage to come. Either the neighbouring groove had pushed on the wall of the one you were trying to play, or the next bit of tape had magnetised the part it was jammed up against. Not sure how it worked, but I do seem to remember these events. The whispered promise of resurrection seems to infuse even today’s day of emptiness.

Jesus, God of love,
refugee
from the land of the living,
have mercy on us
in our days, months, years
of emptiness.
Take us by the hand,
take all people, and
lead us all to a
new beginning, a new hope.

We pray today for
all people in grief,
who are missing someone they loved,
and still do,
whose love now has nowhere to go.
Give them comfort and strength,
in their shock and anger,
their confusion and loss.
Even today, when funerals are not what they should be,
may every uniquely wonderful person
be given the honour they deserve.