Month: November 2020

In Sunday’s Lectionary we read in the alternative Psalm (95), “O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” And there’s something very similar in the other Psalm, 100.

“A joyful noise” – now I don’t know Hebrew, so I’m not sure, but from the way it’s translated it looks as if the joyfulness is more important than the accuracy of the music. Anyway, that’s always been my opinion of good worship. However frustrating it may be if you can’t harmonise with someone who’s not singing spot on, just feel the passion. Sometimes, of course, that passion will be manifested in an all-out attempt to get it right – but whatever, it’s the passion that’s key.

Nice walk this morning, only the last twenty minutes or so in drizzle. Just as I got in, the mileage on my app ticked up from 6.07 to 6.08, which was a small disappointment to me as 607 used to be the number of the trolleybus to Shepherd’s Bush (not from here obviously). I like numbers, especially ones with associations. The 607 became the 207 bus, and I actually rode on that once or twice.

188716 was my mother’s Co-op number.
142857 is a magical number, being the bit that repeats when you write 1/7 as a decimal
3.14159 is another piece of magic, as is e, although I can’t remember exactly how much that is.
1.61803 is the golden ratio, which I also had to look up. I thought it was nonsense until I realised when I was processing pictures for the Prayers For Places webpage that quite often (not always) I was intuitively cropping them to roughly that ratio. Maybe it’s nonsense anyway.

Speaking of numbers, I hear rumours that the government intends to have a public sector pay freeze. This makes perfect sense – if you look at the overall redistribution of government money during a pandemic, it’s gone away from the police and others who have helped so much and into such vital services as pubs and the horseracing. Of course people in precarious work need to be supported, but priorities, dear boy.

It’s been wet overnight and the trail had many puddles. I tried to give an escape route to one puddle, but only succeeded in bending my stick. So that’s both sticks that now won’t telescope. However, I reckon I can swap parts so that I end up with one that telescopes and one that doesn’t. By the time I was walking, the clearance had come…

Sunday’s lectionary includes Jesus’ story about people being separated like a shepherd separates sheep from goats (they must have had quite complex flocks in those days). I think I need to come back to the raw straightforwardness of “…for I was hungry and you gave me food…” Maybe I should stop trying to overcomplicate things and just listen to Jesus.

A couple of questions about the Ephesians reading in Sunday’s Lectionary. Here is the last art of the passage…
“1:20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,
1:21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
1:22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church,
1:23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
It is a great encouragement to read this stuff when you start believing (however mistakenly) that the world’s gone mad. But I have a couple of problems, both to do with the fact that Christ is in the hands of people who are all too human. Christ “is far above all rule and authority and dominion”, and I’m reminded of the passionate demands of Trump’s chaplain that the forces of evil (i.e. the Democrats) be overcome. Surely this is to be prayed for earnestly if Christ is above all authority? And if Christ is above all authority, you don’t have to play fair – you can lie and cheat and break the law and filibuster all you like because you are serving a greater power? Not true. Because however much you name Christ, it’s not necessarily true that you’re serving him. At the very least, you have to know and keep his teaching. The more your vanity is engaged with the project, the less likely it is that you’re serving a greater power.
Secondly, the church “is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” That’s all very well – and the community of Christians is the best thing we’ve got as a witness to the love and forgiveness and honesty of Jesus. But the reality of the church – this rag-tag band of saints, child-abusers, hypocrites, fence-sitters, narcissists and down-to-earth daily servants of Jesus – is that we’re not always very good at being the body of Christ. It’s not just the institutional church – it’s people, and even Christians are sometimes utter bastards.
I do see the possibility of change – after all, we are the body of Christ.

May God protect everyone from the wrong that church people do.
May God forgive us, and help us all to begin again.

Pray for the people of Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala as Hurricane Iota makes landfall…

…So showing my age here – graffiti have moved on. Next Sunday is about the ‘reign of Christ’. What does it mean to say that the one who preached and practised forgiveness, mercy and love ‘reigns’? It is unlike any rule that we’re familiar with – it is not by coercive power. Christ reigns now in the lives of all who love him, however imperfectly. And at some time, in some way, times will come when that ‘reign’ will be uncovered, not so furtive. Speaking of which, ‘eucalyptus’ would be a good name for an insurance company, because you would be well covered.

Meanwhile, though, money talks – in many influential circles at any rate. It seems possible that if you can pay for clever lawyers and accountants, you can be rich for your investors and poor for the taxperson. As yesterday’s parable suggests, it would seem there are many people who become rich not by creating wealth, but by reallocating wealth in their own favour.

At a time of a pandemic, and when we are also thinking of the consequences of war, it may seem not so important to speak of the suffering caused by road traffic. But in a typical year, upwards of a million people are killed on the world’s roads. It’s not always just ‘accidents’ either. The roads can be brutal, although those sitting comfortably behind the wheel may not realise it. My walk last Friday on the narrow footway of the A628 from Tintwistle to Hollingworth for a parcel was just one more reminder of this.

Merciful God,
as we think of all the people who have died
on the roads,
we give you thanks for their lives,
for the people they were
to those who loved them.
And we ask that you will bring comfort
to those who mourn.
And we pray for all people
who have killed others on the roads.
We ask you to forgive them
as we would want to be forgiven.
We pray for the fire, police and ambulance services
who have to deal with the consequences
of road collisions.
We pray that the roads from this day on
will be safer,
that you will strengthen the work
of organisations such as Brake, Road Peace and Cycling UK
who work for safer roads.
We pray that you will turn round our ideas,
so that we have respect for one another
and value human life.
through Jesus Christ our Lord…

A bit of a grey day – the rain hasn’t started yet, but is predicted before too long. Sounds like the ideal to to stay inside and add to the Prayers for Places features.

For tomorrow’s lectionary, there’s a military metaphor (in 1 Thessalonians). I’ve known some people who turn away from military metaphors because they seem to give support to military activity. And certainly, it seems to me that the metaphors people use do give us some kind of insight into the people they are. But I’m not so sure about rejecting the military kind of metaphor. Because what Paul has in mind is a struggle completely unlike war. It’s the struggle of love against hatred, which takes place within us as much as it takes place beyond us. Maybe there’s an Islamic scholar out there who can say whether that’s paralleled in the notion of jihad.

But yes, we do choose metaphors that say something about us. I had my doubts about textile metaphors until I realised I was using them too. Jesus drew his illustrations from the social and economic life of his time, which was often brutal. One of our SAGEs gets inspiration from train travel. I sometimes choose sciencey metaphors which need more explaining than the actual thing I was trying to say; so, pointless really.

Also I’m a little confused by the fact there seem to be three different kinds of European men’s football happening during this international break. I’m not keeping up!

Living God,
bind us together in love
with all those people we
cannot see,
or touch,
or hear.

The leaves are mostly gone now.

It was raining when I got up, but by the time I went out, the weather had pulled away to the east and the morning sun was making the drips sparkle on the leaves.

I hope we can get vaccinated, but there’s still a long way to go, especially for nations at the back of the queue. To the casual observer (me), the current lockdown is not noticeably different from how things were a couple of weeks ago. Are we taking this seriously enough? I suspect even a return to the old furlough scheme may not be enough to reassure those on low pay and worried about keeping going.

When I went out this morning, I discovered one of our fence panels lying on the pavement. I wedged it back in with a couple of pieces of rotting found wood, which will do for a while. But the underlying problem is an enthusiastic bay tree next to it. I often favour the temporary fix over addressing the underlying problem. That can be for another day. Glad I’m not running a country.

In Sunday’s Lectionary, the Judges reading, we see the shadow of ‘industrial warfare’ as known in the twentieth century. The Canaanites’ commander lived in ‘Harosheth-ha-goiim‘, which according to Wikipedia means ‘Smithy of the Nations‘. Can you imagine what such a place would be like?The heat and the hammering, making instruments of war. ‘The Nations‘, the ‘goyyim‘, were those peoples not of Israel. And the Israelites were justifiably afraid of nine hundred chariots of iron. War was a constant reality in those days. Maybe the Israelites weren’t so well armed, but they had their faith, and they had Deborah the prophet.

It’s also, Janet tells me, 100 years since the Unknown Soldier was finally laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, with due solemnity and ceremony, saluted by King George V. I wish that today’s heads of state could respect the war dead as much – they are not ‘losers’.

But what do we learn from the wasteland of war? We don’t want it to happen again – but that’s easier said than done. Sometimes it’s hard even to imagine another way. However it worries me when we move towards belligerence when we don’t have to. Sometimes an angry leader will resonate with the anger of his or her people. Sometimes the ground has been tilled by years of scapegoating. It can happen anywhere, north or south, east or west.

It can happen here.