Grown-up faith

I am reading a new novel by my friend, Karen Jones, called Sister Acts. It's the second in her "Babe's Bible" trilogy. It might not be to everyone's taste! It's about gritty contemporary issues and aimed for a younger readership than me. But I'm enjoying it. Among other things it does show that Bible is still highly relevant.

This passage really struck me, where a bishop is seeking counsel from his spiritual director, a nun.
"'Teach me how to take these thoughts captive, Sister,' he pleaded.
"'You must take each one to the cross in prayer. You must see yourself come to the cross, bringing each weakness, each longing, each unmet need. See yourself rise up and take your place on the cross with him. Let the nails be driven into your flesh with him. Die with him there, and then be laid in a tomb with him. Then, and only by his leading, rise with him and live by his Spirit the new life he gives you,' her face shone as she spoke."

Taking one's thoughts captive sounds easy. Oh yes, I can control my mind! The reality is much harsher. It's a matter of grim will, assisted by the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost at Maldon

Someone asked me if I could put up all of my friend, Rob Wiggs' sermon from last Sunday. He's kindly allowed me to do so. So here is what in the trade, I believe, is called a guest post.

Pentecost at Maldon 19^th May 2013

As you probably know, I am really interested in envy and rivalry, in inferiority and superiority, and in how we can get these monkeys off our backs and live in freedom and joy. When you are young and worldly you worry about people being more beautiful than you, more popular, more clever and better at sport.  And to get free of these things is really important. They stop us being happy. Ok, but what are the religious forms of inferiority that persist among Christians into later life? People who are bothered by God, and I am deeply in favour of being bothered by God, worry that they haven’t really experienced God, and they look at other people and say, what is it that they have that I haven’t got? Wouldn’t you agree that you only have to look at Father xxx and John xxx and it is just obvious that they are oozing with a knowledge of God that the rest of us don’t understand?

But, of course, this is all rubbish. Let me tell you something that a famous Indian priest, Anthony de Mello, taught. All you have to do to experience God’s Holy Spirit is simply to breathe in. Anthony de Mello spent a huge amount of his life teaching people to breathe in, and hence to receive God’s Holy Spirit. When you have learned how to breathe in you will stop worrying about other people and whether you are beautiful because you will have received God’s Holy Spirit, and nothing else will matter again in the same way. There is nothing living that is not enlivened by God’s Spirit. What must we do to be saved? Breathe.

When I was young in the late 1960s people and early 1970s people used to come up to you and ask you if you were saved. I don’t think they do that now. But it used to worry me. I was never quite sure if I was saved. And then in the late 1970s the question changed. People used to ask you if you had received the Holy Spirit. And I really didn’t think I had received the Holy Spirit. And even after I was ordained I used to worry sometimes that one day people would find out that I wasn’t saved and that I hadn’t received the Holy Spirit. And I used to feel deeply inferior around evangelical and charismatic people. Really religious people scared me, to be quite frank, even after I was a priest. And it was something to do with being made uncomfortable and the fear that they might find out that I am a fraud.

But then I made the most wonderful discovery. I started to breathe. And as I breathed I came to recognise that I am indeed a fraud and a phoney, but I can no more stop God loving me than I can stop breathing. And that made all the difference. In the languages of the Bible, both in Hebrew and Greek, breath, wind and spirit, are all the same word. When Jesus rose from the dead, he breathed on his disciples, who were, like me, frauds and phonies, and he said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’. And he thus filled them with his spirit, authority. And it was the same at Pentecost. A sound like a violent wind is heard, and the disciples receive the Holy Spirit’ and they became authoritative, free, not inferior to anyone.

I want to spin a fantasy. And the fantasy is that the parish project for 2014 is that as many of us as possible learn to breathe. Let me explain how it would work. You would sign up at the end of December to the following commitment. Simply this. You would promise that for 10 minutes at the beginning and the end of every day you would sit still and pay attention to your breathing. Let me tell you what I think would happen.

First we would discover that it is immensely difficult and  many, perhaps most,  would give up. Then we would discover that many of us would need friends, some kind of community to keep us to it. So we would start to have to do it together sometimes. But let us also suppose that many of us did stick to it. What would happen to us ? Over time there would rise up little sanctuaries of freedom. Think of all the nonsense that swirls around in your brain – all the rubbish that is there simply because you are a member of a noisy non-stop society that is terrified of silence. Think of the accusing voices that you are forced to be in dialogue with. My son, whom I love dearly, and who I believe, loves me, nevertheless admits to me that I exist in his brain as a kind of accusing and disapproving voice whom he can’t appease. Do you have angry conversations in your head with your enemies and your accusers ? Or with the things and people who make you afraid ? Do you lie awake in the night in some unwelcome conversation with the spirit of the future, the spirit of how things might turn out, but which is nevertheless a false and lying voice that is never quite so real during waking hours ?

What I am trying to draw attention to is the fact that our brains are never empty, that they are occupied by some kind of spirit, to use biblical language, and frequently by spirits that are not for our flourishing. So what would happen if we committed ourselves to this silent breathing. Not, absolutely not, instant transformation. But what would be beginning would be some kind of spiritual warfare. The dominance of the spirit of the age would be beginning to be broken by the Holy Spirit.

As I have told you before, the Biblical word Satan literally means ‘the accuser’. And the Biblical word the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, means the Counsel for the Defence.

It is as if both our brains and the whole world we live in is a kind of court, and there is an accusing voice abroad in the world that is against our flourishing, that we might call Satan. But there really is also the Paraclete, the counsel for the defence, the Holy Spirit, who speaks up on our behalf, who battles with and silences the accusing voice and pours into our hearts and pours into our lives his gifts, love, joy peace, gentleness, self control and the rest. These things are free, gifts of grace, but they can only be received by those who would give their lives for them. And sitting quietly paying attention to your breathing is a wonderful place to start.

What I am describing is easy, but it will also cost you everything. That is the extraordinary knife edge which is the missionary frontier.

Just breathe

Last week we had a delicious lunch with our friends Rob and Lib in Essex. Rob and I have known each other since university days, and known each other well enough to interfere significantly in each other's lives in the sort of way that only good friends can.... He sent me the text of his sermon on Pentecost sermon which addressed what I reckon is a common Christian experience, the feeling of insecurity and inferiority - in other words, not being sure about whether we are "saved" or destined for heaven and suspecting we're not good enough and others are all better than us. I'd say this is because we haven't grasped the hugeness of God's grace, or as Frederick Faber put it "the wideness of God's mercy". Like baptism, it's not what we do that counts; it's what He does and has done eternally. We really need to get rid of our own sense of self-importance. Anyway here's a short extract from Rob's sermon:

"Let me tell you something that a famous Indian priest, Anthony de Mello, taught. All you have to do to experience God’s Holy Spirit is simply to breathe in. Anthony de Mello spent a huge amount of his life teaching people to breathe in, and hence to receive God’s Holy Spirit. When you have learned how to breathe in you will stop worrying about other people and whether you are beautiful because you will have received God’s Holy Spirit, and nothing else will matter again in the same way. There is nothing living that is not enlivened by God’s Spirit. What must we do to be saved? Breathe."

Touching the face of God

Leafyschroder sent me this prayer based on Victor Hugo. It comes from a website called Praying Each Day. It is for 22nd May (http://www.prayingeachday.org/May22.pdf) presumably last year. It reflects on Les Miserables. 

"We who weep come to you, Lord, 

because you always share our sorrow.

We who suffer come to you, knowing that you cure.

We who are afraid come to you, because you smile on us.

We share in your life because you share ours 

and so we know, God of love, 

that 'to love another person is, indeed, to touch your face'.

May we live in your love forever. 

Amen."

This week I've been away talking in London and Chelmsford about the sanctity of human life. Something I profoundly believe is that not only did God mysteriously and wonderfully create life, but also in the incarnation God made it sacred (John 1.14 - "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us... full of glory"). With Western eyes, we tend to think this means He became a perfect physical specimen, but in fact St John tells us His glory is revealed only on the cross, in that battered, helpless and all too mortal body suffering to the very end. That should make us radically redefine our view of "dignity".

Stephanie's Hope

I've mentioned Bo Stern, whose husband has ALS/MND like me, before. I hope she won't mind my copying her latest blog post here. I know you'll appreciate it.

"Oh, I love this guest post by my sweet friend, Stephanie Nelson. Never let go of hope.

'Hope.

It was her middle name. 

All we knew was that she was on her way; we didn’t know her gender or her diagnosis yet.  One Sunday morning, our pastor preached about hope, defining it as “confident expectation.”  I leaned over and whispered to my husband that I liked it for a name if we have a girl.  He playfully rolled his eyes at me, standing firmly in his resolution not to discuss baby names until we find out the gender. 

But I tucked it deeply into my heart. 

It was tucked into her heart too.

Photo credit:
http://www.etsy.com/transaction/39221728

Evelyn Hope was born with so many congenital heart defects that at 12 days old, in the NICU of a prestigious research hospital, the doctors told us there was no hope for her and that we should let her go.

I knew where she was going and I knew I’d go there too someday.  I had days that were full of faith, but also days that were full of tears.  Sometimes the line between the two is very blurry, especially when your eyes are puffy, and brimming with a constant and thin veil of salty water that runs down your cheeks at all the moments you wish it wouldn’t.

The truth is I that I had never before really longed for Heaven.  It was a default option because I didn’t want to go to Hell.  I realize this isn’t very spiritual of me, but it’s true.  So much of grieving is learning when to hold on and when to let go.  Having – and losing – Evelyn was God’s gift to me so that I could place my hope in His promise of Heaven. 

Letting go of what I thought my life should be.

Holding this view of Heaven before me every day.

Heaven is where I will embrace her again, and spend endless days by her side worshipping Jesus together.  Knowing this gives me courage that I can greet every morning with faith, and rest in knowing that I am in His hands.  My trials and triumphs are hand-crafted by Him in order to bring me into a deeper relationship with Him.  Even when I want to call it quits in the midst of the dark days and even when I feel that sadness might rend my heart, I hold on to hope.  Knowing Christ more fully is worth the pain it might take to get there.  And spending eternity with Evelyn, compared to the breath that is this life, is just the icing on the cake. 

I did let Evelyn go.

But I will never let go of hope.' 

Stephanie Nelson is the author of “See You in a Breath,” and wife to Chris and mother to Clara and Jonathan. Her passions, in order are: Knowing Christ, loving her family and church, writing, reading, politics, and talking her friend’s ears off."

There's a lot I identify with in that, including her old default position on Heaven and hell! "Having - and losing - Evelyn was God's gift to me..." - that is some statement.

Spring in Sussex

Over the weekend we visited our family in Ashburnham near Hastings, a lovely estate which is the home of a large Christian Prayer and Conference centre. The weather was clear and sunny, mostly, if a bit chilly. Spring had definitely sprung in East Sussex. I've written previously about visiting there last autumn - Ashburnham. This time we heard a nightingale singing in the bushes near the family's garden on two evenings - the first time I'm sure I've heard one. There is something special about listening to its varied song in the twilight.

On the Sunday morning we attended the small local church in the centre of the grounds next to the once grand house. The people were very welcoming, but I especially liked the invitation to communion which the visiting minister used. It was something like this:


"This is the table, not of the church,

but of the Lord. 
It is made ready

for those who love him,

and those who want to love him more.

So come, you who have much faith

and you who have little,

You who have been here often 
and you who have not been for a long time,

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed,

Come …

Not because it is I who invite you. 
It is our Lord.

It is his will that those who want him

should meet him here."

I believe these words come from the Iona Community. I like the way it's phrased as an invitation from Christ and is addressed to people who are aware of their imperfections. It's not the well, it's the ill who need a doctor. The good news is that in Christ we have the perfect doctor.

PS I've just come across this quotation on the blog called Goodness and Beauty:
“If I were a nightingale I would do the work of a nightingale; if I were a swan, the work of a swan. But I am a rational creature, so I must praise God.” – Epictetus. Right on!!