Be far more retro!

Here's my article for December:

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Christmas is often a time when we indulge in nostalgia, recalling happy memories of past Christmases with family, friends and loved ones.    And perhaps trying to re-create those memories by carrying on family traditions, listening to the classic Christmas songs, and putting up the same decorations in the same place.  A visit to church for a carol service might also be part of an attempt to re-live those treasured times.  Because nostalgia plays such a big rôle in our experience of Christmas, it is a common theme in Christmas advertising, where companies try to persuade us that buying their products will help us replicate the feelings we cherish.

Fr. Philip Hall, the parish priest of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church of All Saints of Lincolnshire, Lincoln, wrote in his November newsletter of a current advert trying to persuade us that the “magic of Christmas” is to be found in retro-style decorations. However, he says, “we need to be far more retro”!  If we want the 'magic' of Christmas we need to go back not to our childhood, or even to the idealised Victorian Christmas, but we need to go back 2,000 years to remember the spiritual roots of our celebrations.

One reason we often look back to a 'golden time' of Christmases past is that those celebrations, especially when we were children, were responsibility-free – all we had to do was enjoy the presents, the food, the parties, the people.  We didn't have to worry about arranging them or paying for them; they just magically appeared!  As adults, the necessary but mundane, behind-the-scenes preparations often take the lustre off our enjoyment of the very experiences we work so hard to create.  No wonder we want to feel Christmas like a child again!

What we long for is a re-enchantment of Christmas, and not just of Christmas but of the whole of our lives: we wish it could be Christmas everyday, as long as it's the 'magical' Christmas we remember, not the pressurised adult version!  Fr Philip is right that if we want to re-enchant Christmas and our lives we need to be far more retro and go back to the source: Christmas is 'magical', not in the sense of wizards but in that it reveals to us another realm of reality beyond the mundane, natural universe; it reveals the super-natural to us.

Religions might affirm that the supernatural exists, or even that we might enter the supernatural realm after death, but Christmas tells us something far more wonderful; that the supernatural realm entered our natural realm as the baby Jesus, so that the supernatural could dwell amongst us, and our mundane world could be re-enchanted.  A re-enchanted world is one that has a meaning and a purpose; a naturalistic world, one that exists through blind chance and the laws of physics, has no ultimate meaning or purpose and is dis-enchanted.   Jesus comes to offer us life in all its re-enchanted fullness (John 10:10) that as we live in relationship with him, he lives in us. So if you feel discontented with the mundane, why not come to church and be far more retro?

Where can we find real and lasting community?

Here is the sermon I gave at the 2025 Broughton Town Council Civic Service:

Matthew 10:1-8

10 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and illness.

 

2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

 

5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” 8 Heal those who are ill, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.'

Sermon

As well as to asking God to bless us and guide us, our Civic Service is another chance to celebrate all that's good in our community. And so much of what is good in our community is done by volunteers. Alice has just read a poem praising volunteers who willingly give up their time to serve others. That includes many of you who are here today! So it's great that we have this opportunity to give you recognition and praise, which is so richly deserved.

It is always great to celebrate our community and those who work so hard to create that community, but it is perhaps even more necessary these days. Because we live in world where people are increasingly isolated because their attention is being given to online spaces rather than the people around them. This is not just a young person's phenomenon – all of us, whatever age we are, are susceptible to the addictive nature of online content, delivered to us through the handy, ever-present portal of our mobile phones. Community is breaking down because we care less about our neighbour and more about funny things that cats do.

Another downside of spending too much time in the online sphere is that the algorithms filter our content so that we increasing only see content we like and that we agree with. Therefore we are fooled into thinking that the majority of the world thinks like we do, because the majority of the content we see agrees with us – we operate in what are known as echo-chambers. So, people that disagree with us seem to be in a minority, and are often portrayed as ignorant and even dangerous. We saw this particularly with the response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk: some people's feeds portrayed him as the Messiah, other people's feeds said he was a very naughty boy. He was either a perfect saint or an evil sinner, with no nuance at all. With no grace at all.

Our discussions have increasingly also lacked nuance and grace , and instead of listening to other people's opinions and evaluating them fairly, we simply ignore them and, if possible, cancel them so no-one else can hear them. We may still have community but they are often online, mono-cultural and mono-opinioned communities, where no dissenting views are allowed. 

God is a fan of community. God himself is a community of three Persons in one. In Genesis when he created the universe, he created a huge diversity of plants and animals to live in harmony together. And when he created humans, as the pinnacle of his creation, as the only creatures made in his image and likeness, he declared that it was not good for Adam to be alone. And when God the Son became incarnate as Jesus, he gathered around him a community of twelve disciples.

 

We heard in our reading who those twelve men were, and it is easy to think that that list is insignificant; but on closer inspection this list tells us some important things about what true community is like. Most of the names, like Simon, are Hebrew or of Hebrew origin, but some, like Philip are Greek. Although all of the disciples are Jewish, their names probably reflect varying degrees of contact and comfort with non-Jewish people. We don't know much about their occupations but some were fishermen; some were owners of fishing businesses, and one was a tax collector, so there were varied levels of education and wealth.

 

But perhaps the most striking feature of this list is that Matthew was a tax collector and Simon was a zealot. As a tax collector, Matthew not only collaborated with the occupying Romans by collecting taxes on their behalf from his fellow countrymen, but he would have also extorted more tax than was due for his own commission: he was a thief and a traitor. Simon, on the other hand, was a zealot, someone who believed that the occupying Romans, and their collaborators, should be driven out of Israel by armed force. Ordinarily, Matthew and Simon would not have spent time together – these days they would have wanted each other cancelled, and denounced each other as holding views which are unacceptable in modern society.

 

But here they are, together in the community that Jesus brought together. I'm sure there were some animated discussions about how to deal with the Romans, and also what the relationship between the Jews and the non-Jews should be, but they didn't walk away from each other, nor did they expel each other from the group.

 

As humans we naturally want to spend time with like-minded people, and will often divide ourselves according to any number of factors, both trivial and serious. So what made the disciples stick together? The answer has to be the presence of Jesus.

 

Jesus didn't just want students who would learn his teachings and then go out to pass them on to others; he wanted to create a community. Their message wasn't just that the kingdom of heaven had come near because God has come to earth as Jesus; but that the kingdom of heaven had come near because Jesus was forming a kingdom community, people living out what it means to belong to the kingdom of God. So the signs of that kingdom were healings and the driving out of evil: the physical healings were signs of the healing of our fallen, sinful nature and also of the healing of divisions between people; the driving out of demons were the sign of the defeat of the causes of those divisions.

 

And this was all possible only through Jesus: it was by grounding their identity in Jesus that the disciples could rise above the other identities that divided them; it was by working for the higher cause of living the kingdom of God on earth that all other causes became insignificant or found their real fulfilment; it was by Jesus' death that the power of the malevolent forces, and of sin, was broken.

 

We have gathered to celebrate community, even at a time when communities are being splintered by fear, suspicion and ambition. Well done to all of you who work so hard to build that community by serving others, often voluntarily. But if we want real and lasting community, we need to be praying that God's kingdom would come, that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. True and lasting community can only be found by gathering together around Jesus: not just around his teachings but by becoming part of the community that he founded, the fellowship of believers, that brings the kingdom of God near, by living that kingdom now.

On the displaying of flags

 Here's my sermon from this year's Remembrance Service at Broughton:

First Reading (Ephesians 6:10-17)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Second Reading (John 15:9-17)

Jesus said “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.    I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command.  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.  This is my command: love each other.”

Sermon

This year we've celebrated the 80th anniversary of VE and VJ Day – commemorating the end of the Second World War.  A common feature of these celebrations is the use of flags, often as bunting and also in parades and on promotional literature.  And today, as every year, we've paraded the Union Jack, and the flags of the Ex-Service Association and the Guiding and Scouting groups.

In recent years, flags have become more common on lamposts and cars and houses; and this use of flags has become the subject of much debate and heat in both the traditional media and on social media.  Much of the discussion being around what it means to fly these flags and if, where and when it is appropriate to do so. 

Flags and banners have always been used to communicate: we think of semaphore and naval flags being directly used to communicate messages.  Flags also signify belonging to a particular group, for example to indicate where a group is on a battlefield or to whom a property belongs.  Sometimes the group is one whose purpose is clear: think for example of the Nazi flag or a pirate flag.  People who display those flags are very clear in what they are communicating about themselves.  

Part of the problem with the contemporary flying of flags, particularly national flags, is that they are flown for many reasons, and the flag itself doesn't convey the motivation.  Therefore people make assumptions about the motive behind the display of the flag, and will often angrily defend or condemn it based on their assumption.  That is not to say that there aren't good and bad reasons to fly a flag, but merely to say that without other evidence it is impossible to know the reasons behind flying a flag.  

So let's think about what might be good and bad motives for flying a flag, without judging which of these motives lie behind any particular flag that's displayed.

Someone might fly a flag to show that they are proud to belong to that group or nation or region, and this is generally a good reason for displaying a flag, assuming, of course, that that the group is not an evil one!  For us, to be proud of being part of our nation is a good thing.  We are a nation grounded in Christian values, and although we are not perfect we are not irredeemably immoral.

Linked to this, the national flag is sometimes a desperate cry from those who are proud of their nation for their nation to take better care of them, and who fear that the values of the nation they love are being eroded.

However, when this spills into an attitude that their nation is far superior to others, the flag becomes a symbol of xenophobia and hatred of people of other nationalities.  Racism is, of course, a bad motivation.

So how should we respond?  Firstly, we need to remember that the motivation behind displaying flags is often unclear.  We need to go beyond what we perceive the message of the flags to be and to give a space to actively listen to the those who put them up.

But secondly, and more importantly, we need to look more closely at the flags themselves.  The Cubs and the Scouts came into church last Thursday and we were thinking about flags and we noted that the Union Jack is made up of three national flags that all have crosses on them: the cross of St George for England; St Andrew for Scotland and St Patrick for Ireland.  We also thought about why the cross is important; because it reminds us of the cross Jesus died on.

There are two aspects of the meaning of Jesus' death that are particularly relevant to the issues we're considering.  Firstly, the issues of national identity; interaction with other nationalities; and class division were all around in Jesus' day, but he didn't take sides on these issues because he knew the problem wasn't really a political one.  He knew, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian church:

our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

The real battle is a spiritual battle: there are malevolent spiritual forces that love to stir up division, fear, anger, hatred and pride.  But, as Paul wrote to the Colossian church, Jesus disarmed those forces, triumphing over them on the cross (Colossians 2:15).  However, though Jesus has won the war, there are still battles for us to fight, so we need to stand firm with the armour of God.

On Thursday we also listened to a song we're going to be singing in a few minutes: “When a knight won his spurs”.  This song reminds us that we battle against the dragons of anger and the ogres of greed, which lie behind so much conflict, from personal to international.  But the song also reminds us of the characteristics we need in these spiritual battles: the shield of faith in the victory of Jesus to protect us, but we also need to be gentle and brave, and gallant and bold, with joy and setting free truth.  So to remind us of that the Cubs and Scouts made an English flag and chose four of those words to put one in each quarter of the flag (see the picture above for the results!).

But the second aspect of the cross is that it was the way Jesus showed his love for us (John 3:14-18).  He laid down his life, so our sins, which separate us from God, could be punished and therefore forgiven (Colossians 1:13-23).  If we want to accept his forgiveness we also need to accept his commands ("If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love") and the chief among them is this: “love each other as I have loved you.”  Jesus died for us while we were still sinners, while we were his enemies (Romans 5:6-10) and, in the same way, he calls us to love others, even our enemies – even those who fly flags for a reason we don't agree with.

So as we see those flags flying, let's not rush to a conclusion about why they are there.  Instead let's look at the cross on them, as the Bishop of Blackburn, Philip North, has written:

...each one pointing us to the saving work of Jesus Christ through which we are reconciled to the Father and so to each other.  We listen, we understand, but above all we hold the cross high, for in that symbol is the only true and lasting source of unity.

 

Guys, cancel culture and forgiveness

Here's my November article:

1st Hibaldstow and Scawby Scouting group bonfire 2025

It's been many years since I saw children outside shops asking for a 'penny for the guy.'  Even then it was a dying practice, and if you actually gave them just a penny they scowled at you!  The tradition of lighting bonfires to celebrate the foiling of the treasonous Gunpowder Plot started the same year, 1605.  The earliest records of effigies being burned on them was 1625, although these were effigies of the pope and the devil. An effigy of Guy Fawkes was used at a display in 1647 at Lincoln's Inn Fields. From then onwards, 'guys' have been made and burned on bonfires, sometimes representing Fawkes himself and sometimes representing other, usually contemporary, figures of public anger.

Although the anger directed towards these 'hate figures' can be deeply felt, it doesn't lead to actual violence against the person represented.  In some ways the 'guy' is a way to voice and to vent that anger in a controlled manner.  What is more dangerous is what has been termed 'cancel culture.'  This is when people or groups call for someone who they have deemed to have said or done something unacceptable to be ostracised, boycotted, shunned or fired.  The transgression may be a heinous crime or it could simply be an opinion that the 'cancellers' find offensive or merely disagree with.

Crimes should, of course, be exposed and punished, and the judicial system is the means to achieve that.  And throughout history there has been public dispute over opinions, often involving lambasting and lampooning – freedom of speech, including the freedom to criticise, is important to uphold.  What is different with cancel culture is the vitriol and the all-encompassing extent of the cancelling, which is often fuelled by social media.

The targets are not just cancelled from the time of their offence, but the whole of their previous history and achievements are demanded to be erased. It is a chilling echo of George Orwell's words in his book '1984': 

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.

However, more worringly, the deeming of someone as deserving cancellation results in them being seen as unforgiveable and even to their assasination as being both justified and a cause for celebration.

Because of his words and actions, Jesus was seen as a threat to the interests and power of both the religious and the secular leaders of his day.  They too wanted him cancelled, and they thought they had by crucifying him.  Jesus' response was not anger or vengeance, but forgiveness, both whilst he was dying (Luke 23:34) and when he came back to life again.  Though he was rejected by those he had created, which is the ultimate treason, he accepted death so that they, and we, could be forgiven (Romans 5:8).  We have offended God by our sin, but he doesn't cancel us, instead he offers us forgiveness and eternal life with him.

Attention, desire and character

Here is my article for October:

 Image by kp yamu Jayanath from Pixabay

There are many sayings that connect our choices with the consequences of those choices: how many of us were told as children when pulling a funny face, “if the wind changes your face will stay like that!”; or the slightly more logical “you are what you eat”?  I heard another recently that is much more profound: “what you give attention to, your heart will desire.” It is both a warning and encouragement: the things we fill our minds with will become the things we crave.

There are many benefits to modern media but one of the draw-backs is the constant stream of 'content.' No sooner have you finished one show or video or reel or article than the next one pops up. This means that sometimes we are exposed to a wide variety of materials (although the algorithms eventually narrow that down!) but it also means that we skip past 'uninteresting' content (i.e. normal life!!) trying to find something that gives us a dopamine hit. Thus the ordinary becomes boring and real life becomes drab.

The truth that what we focus on eventually shapes our character is one of the reasons that I maintain that Halloween is never 'harmless fun' but is always dangerous. To surround ourselves with decorations that celebrate and trivialise the forces of evil is to allow them to become influences on our lives. The mixed message of wicked, nasty or violent things being praised and rewarded with sweets is particularly dangerous for the impressionable young minds of children – ordinary life becomes boring compared with the exciting thrill of the darker side of the supernatural. But even for adults giving attention to the sinister forces will lead to an openness to further interaction with them and then a desire for continuing interaction. Hence the interest in witchcraft, Wicca, mediums, psychics, spiritism, ouija boards, tarot cards, horoscopes and other occult practices. All these expose us to forces that want to control our lives, but not for our benefit.

Knowing that what we give attention to our heart will desire, the Apostle Paul encourages us, saying “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things” (Philippians 4:8). However, before we can do that we need “to be made new in the attitude of [y]our minds” (Ephesians 4:23), so we cry out with the Psalmist “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Jesus, who defeated the power of the forces of evil on the cross (Colossians 2:15) and who promises life in all its fullness to those who follow him (John 10:10), offers each of us that fresh start, and as we pay more attention to him and his word, we'll find that he is the one we were desiring all along.

Conkering King

Here's an extended version of my article for September:

Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

With Autumn fast approaching, golden brown leaves will be falling to the ground along with various nuts and seeds, and perhaps the most nostalgia-inducing of all is the conker. The shiny mahogany-brown shell can evoke happy memories of childhood games, or even just the joy of collecting as many as you can. The game of conkers, like many traditional games, has many different variants, rules and scoring systems. Often a conker's score increases by defeating another conker, and it's designation reflects that: so, a conker that has beaten one other is called a 'one-er'; then if it defeats another it becomes a 'two-er' and so on. A variant of this is that the victorious conker receives all the victories of the defeated conker: thus a 'four-er' that defeats a 'two-er' becomes a 'six-er' (or sometimes a 'seven-er' if it also gets a point for the victory too – cue many a playground dispute!!).

Sometimes games and sports are seen as practice for, or imitation of, battles or geo-political events. And the system in conkers of ranking based on previous victories, and in particular of absorbing the victories of the defeated conker, has a parallel in ancient history. From the twelfth century BC onwards, it was common in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent for the supreme ruler of the area to be known as the “King of Kings” often because they or their predecessors had defeated the other rulers in the region. Two of the Persian kings mentioned in the Bible, Darius and Xerxes, referred to themselves as the King of Kings, and variations of this title were used by the rulers of the Greek Empire which defeated Persia to become the regional superpower.

For us, the title 'King of Kings' is more usually associated with Jesus, and is often paired with a similar title 'Lord of Lords' – and these words will have many people thinking of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah!!  The visions of the four earthly kingdoms in Daniel chapters 2 and 7 teach how “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever” (Daniel 2:44). Jesus' earliest followers saw that Jesus was the King of that promised kingdom, and therefore the ultimate King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The odd thing about this is that Jesus never had a position of power or authority during his earthly ministry. His death was that of the lowest criminal and the few followers he had at that time deserted him. The inscription on his cross ('Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews') was deeply ironic, as was the crown of thorns and purple robe the guards made him wear before his crucifixion, and Pilate's declaration “Here is your king!” (John 19:14). However, Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that it was because Jesus laid aside his divine majesty, to become human so that he could die to take the punishment we deserve for our sins, that his Father raised him from the dead and “gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.” So we have a choice: either follow earthly authorities who grasp self-interestedly after power which will fade, or follow the One who gave self-sacrificially for us and will rule forever.

From Church to Gallery: what art teaches us about faith

Here's my August article:

The Crucifixion by Jacopo di Cione

The school holidays, and holidays in general, can often involved trips to museums or other places of cultural heritage. This year I went for the first time to the National Gallery in London, and spent a very pleasant couple of hours looking round it. I started in the “Medieval and Early Renaissance” section, where the majority of pictures are paintings on religious themes, usually commissioned for churches and chapels.

As I looked at the pictures, I thought about how they ended up in a gallery rather than being in their original setting. Some would have been moved so that they wouldn't be destroyed during the Reformation. Others came from countries like Italy where this wouldn't have been a danger. However, there was little on the descriptions of the artworks which told you about their journey. But whatever their history, the result is that these artworks, created for sacred spaces and to be used in the context of Christian worship and devotion, are now displayed in a London building to be looked at by thousands of people from all across the world.

This led me to ponder something else: what are all these people thinking about when they look at these artworks? Do they know the biblical stories that are depicted? Do they think of those stories as being true or as being like the Greek myths that other pictures show? Are they inspired to worship or do they just admire the aesthetic or technical qualities?

Although we may not visit art galleries every day, it seems to me that many people live their lives with a similar attitude; they admire the fruits of Christianity but they rip them from their context. As historian Tom Holland showed in his book “Dominion”, the values of Western civilisation derive from the Christian worldview. Values such as equality and compassion, and even our esteem for science are rooted in the Christian faith. Yet our society wants to hold on to these values but reject the Christian narrative and devotion that gave rise to them. Like religious artworks in a gallery, these values might be admired, but they make little sense outside of their original setting.

As Nietzsche famously wrote “When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality”.   An example of this is human rights; as Yuval Noah Harari points out, a secular worldview means that “Human rights...are just a story that we’ve invented. They are not an objective reality; they are not some biological effect about homo sapiens.” Whereas Christianity grounds human rights in the doctrine that God made humans in his image and likeness.

So we have a choice: either try to hold on to Christian values without the Christian faith which underpins them; or come to know the God who makes sense of our most beautiful and cherished values.

Poppins and prayer

Here's my article for July:

@broughton_primary

This year's summer production at Broughton Primary Academy is Mary Poppins, the story of a magical nanny who comes to look after two unruly children who are trying to gain the attention and love of their strict father and pre-oocupied mother. The story starts with Mr and Mr Banks advertising for a new nanny, with help from Jane and Michael, their children. However there is a big difference between what Mr Banks is looking for and what the children are wanting.

Mr Banks thinks that a British home should be run with precision: “Tradition, discipline and rules must be the tools / Without them, disorder, catastrophe, anarchy / In short you have a ghastly mess.” Jane and Michael, however want someone who will play games, is kind and witty, and who will “Take us on outings / Give us treats / Sing songs, bring sweets. / Never be cross or cruel / Never give us castor oil or gruel / Love us as a son and daughter.” Mary Poppins arrives and responds to the children's advert, to the bemusement of Mr Banks, although she doesn't fulfil their wishes in quite the way they expect. Her first game for them is to tidy their nursery, though she finds the fun in it by animating the toys and clothes so they tidy themselves. Later on one of their outings is with their father to his workplace.

These unexpected fulfilments of wishes make me think about the topic of prayer. Often people think of prayer as being like a divine vending machine: you request something and you get it. Therefore they get disillusioned when their prayers are not answered that way and consequently doubt that God exists. Prayer, however, is much more relational than that: God hears and answers our prayers, though the answer can be 'Yes', 'No' or 'Wait' and even when the answer is 'Yes', it's not always in the way we imagined.

We see this in the prayer attributed to the late fourth century Bishop of Constantinople and famed preacher, John Chrysostom, that includes the phrase “Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of your servants, as may be most expedient for them.” This asks God to answer our prayers but in the way that is best for us, which is not necessarily by giving us what we ask for nor by giving us what we want in the the way we want. And the prayer then focuses us on what is most important for us; asking God to grant us “in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the world to come, everlasting life.” Our deepest need is to know God, both intellectually and personally, which in turn is the way to everlasting life.

So if you've been put off prayer because God hasn't seemed to answer them, I encourage you to try praying again. (For help go to www.trypraying.org). But this time be open to God granting your requests in the way he knows is best for you.

(P.S. As ever, their production was fantastic - well done to the staff and children!!)

True Fatherhood

Here's my June article:

This month there is what Bert the chimney sweep from Mary Poppins might call a “fortuitious circumstance”: Father's Day falls on Trinity Sunday. Even if you believe that Father's Day is a made-up cynical ploy to get us to spend more money, perhaps it's good to be reminded to be grateful to people who have a positive impact on our lives.

Of course not all fathers do have a positive impact on their children's lives; tragically for far too many people their fathers (whether by their presence or their absence) cause mental, physical and emotional damage.   And so we need to be aware, as we do on Mothering Sunday, that Father's Day is not a day of celebration for everyone – many people do not want to celebrate their fathers, and other men may have had children who died or may have never been able to have children despite wanting them.

Trinity Sunday is the day that Christians remember that throughout the Bible God reveals himself to be 'Trinity', i.e. One God yet Three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each Person is distinct from the others (unlike water/ice/steam that can only be in one state at a time) but there are not three parts of one God (unlike a three-leaf clover). The doctrine of the Trinity is more fully expressed in the Athanasian Creed, which you can read either in its traditional form or in a modern version, you can also watch the teaching on the Trinity here from our current Discipleship Service series looking at the Apostles Creed.  This is a complicated doctrine to get our heads around, though we shouldn't expect the infinite God to be easily understood by our finite minds! The important thing to remember about the doctrine of the Trinity is that it wasn't a result of philosophical thinking about God, but instead was the fruit of experiencing the divinity of the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, alongside the revelation in the Bible of their divinity and also the one-ness of God.

The relevance of this for Father's Day is that some would argue that because some people experience earthly fathers as destructive and abusive, and emblematic of an 'oppressive patriarchy', then we should not refer to God as Father. In other words, for some the Trinity is 'triggering'.  However, it is precisely because our earthly fathers (and we ourselves if we are fathers) are fallible that we need to hold on to the Fatherhood of God.

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God the Father is eternally Father - he is the original prototype of fatherhood. He didn't look around for metaphor to describe himself and choose 'father', instead he shaped human society so that earthly fathers might give us a glimpse of him. So our experience of earthly fathers, whether positive or negative, should propel us to seek out our perfect heavenly Father.

So however Father's Day makes you feel, seek out the Father who loves you with a perfect love. To do that, come to the Son, Jesus, who said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

The 'Phoney Peace' and the now-and-not-yet Kingdom

Here's my article for May:

This month we commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, which is viewed by many as the end of the Second World War. But of course it only marked Victory in Europe; the end of hostilities between the European powers, it wouldn't be until VJ Day in August 1945 that the Second World War would end, with Victory over Japan. Just as the start of the war was dubbed 'the Phoney War' because of a lack of fighting, so we could call the period between VE Day and VJ Day, 'the Phoney Peace'. Peace had started and was more-or-less guaranteed but the war was not yet over.

This sense of 'now-and-not-yet' is also characteristic of the Christian faith. Last month we celebrated Jesus' death and resurrection and at the end of this month we'll be celebrating his ascension. Behind these historical events lie spiritual events. The apostle Paul tells us that on the cross Jesus triumphed over the rulers and authorities in the spiritual realm, taking away their power (Colossians 2:15) and that after his ascension Jesus was given the position of ultimate authority, ruling over all forces, authorities, powers, and rulers (Ephesians 1:20-21). However, we still see evil forces active in the world and we still pray to God “your kingdom come: your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” so where is the triumph and rule of Jesus?

The answer is in the now-and-not-yet nature of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God has been inaugurated by Jesus' death and resurrection but it won't be fully consummated until Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. As John Piper says

The decisive battle against sin and Satan and sickness and death has been fought and won by the King in his death and resurrection, but the war is not over. Sin must be fought, Satan must be resisted, sickness must be prayed over and groaned under (Romans 8:23), and death must be endured until the second coming of the King and the consummation of the kingdom.

So we can see signs of the Kingdom even now: as people come to a personal relationship with God through Jesus; as people are healed or find in God the courage to cope with tragedy; as those whose lives were dominated by sin or addiction are freed through repentance and the work of the Holy Spirit within them. Yet we also see the continuing effects of a world broken by sin.

As we live in this 'in-between' time we can both rejoice as we see the signs of the Kingdom coming as well as long for the certain future when “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4). And on a personal level those who have Jesus as their King can be certain that, although they won't be perfected until Jesus comes again, as the Spirit works in their lives they will become more and more like Jesus, battle by battle, because the war has been won.

Becoming a New Creation

Here's my April article:

This year we've been having some work done on the Vicarage including having a new kitchen fitted. Anyone who has had work done on their house will know how disruptive it can be, but hopefully the end results make all the trouble worth it, because after all the chaos there's something new - a new creation.

Easter is all about new life and new creation: chicks hatching out of eggs; spring flowers growing from dormant bulbs; new-born lambs gamboling in the fields; and chocolate… well I'm not quite sure how that fits in! These are symbols and God-given signposts of how Jesus' resurrection ushers in a new creation: that is the new heavens and new earth that will fully come when Jesus returns (Revelation 21) but can be seen in part here and now. But this new creation is not just about the world being redeemed, renewed and put right, it is also about us as individuals being redeemed, renewed and put right. In both cases, this new creation comes through disruption.

This sounds very similar to countless self-help books and motivational talks. Phrases like "No pain, no gain" are applied not just to physical transformation but also to personal, mental, professional and even spiritual transformation. The message from the transformation gurus and influencers is that you need to kill your old self in order that your new self can emerge, and this transformation is hard work, disruptive and painful, but worth it in the end.

But this is not the message of Easter. It might seem like the new creation of Easter only comes after the hard self-discipline of Lent and the self-sacrifice exemplified by Good Friday, but that would be a misunderstanding of the Christian message. Jesus is not a transformation guru who coaches us from the side, encouraging us to work harder. Instead he tells us that we cannot transform ourselves, no matter how hard we try: we don't need a trainer, we need a Saviour.

Just like I would not be able to fully fit a new kitchen but need someone else to do it for me, so I cannot transform myself. That's why God says "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you…[and] I will put my Spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). It's God who transforms us; we do not create a new heart within ourselves because we cannot. We need something from outside of ourselves to redeem, renew and put us right. We don't just need a better version of ourselves, we need God's Spirit to transform us and re-create us. The pain and disruption we need to go through is not the pain of self-correction and trying harder to be good, it is the pain of admitting we cannot redeem ourselves no matter how hard we try; it is the pain of swallowing our pride and admitting we need help. This is the message of Easter: God offers us the new creation we long for and that we cannot achieve by ourselves.

Faithful or Traitor?

Here's my article for March:

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

“Are you a Faithful or are you a Traitor?” This question reverberated around the heads of many people who watched the latest series of 'The Traitors' which bills itself as being “the ultimate reality game of trust and treachery.” IMDB summarises the show as “Twenty-two strangers compete in a series of missions for a chance to win £120k. However, amongst the players lie the 'Traitors', who meet in secret and decide who to eliminate from their fellow players known as 'Faithfuls'.” The Faithfuls have to try to guess who amongst them is a Traitor and vote them to be banished. It's basically an elaborate game of wink murder!

I only started watching it halfway through the previous series, but it has an addictive quality akin to morbid curiosity, and I'm not quite sure what to make of my interest in it. There is something about the premise of the show which revolves around lies and deception that makes me uncomfortable, and although “it's only a gameshow” it involves real people trusting other people and often being really betrayed. And I'm not sure whether it makes it worse that these are 'good' people pretending to be bad, but doing actual bad things in order to win a game. In some ways I'd rather it were 'bad' people doing bad things because ironically at least they would be being 'faithful' to their nature.

But perhaps what really makes me uncomfortable about the programme is the mirror it holds up to me. In reality I am like the 'Traitors' – projecting a 'good' persona to hide my inner self-interest. Jesus was the first to use the word 'hypocrite' in the way we use it today (before that it simply meant an actor), and he once said to the religious leaders of his day “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28.)

The temptation is to blame our surroundings for the way we behave; just as the contestants justify their behaviour because 'it's the game', so we say we have to be self-centred because the world and everyone else is fallen. However, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin exposes that as simply an excuse. There are many jobs that we say we will do 'when we get around to it', but the COVID lockdown proved that many of those jobs don't get done not because of lack of time and opportunity (there was plenty of that in lockdown!) but instead because of a lack of will and motivation. According to Douglas Murray, Original Sin teaches us that “we are this very, very contorted being which is capable of incredible greatness and beauty and kindness and forgiveness and also capable of their opposites and that it's not that you are one and other people are the other but all of us all of us are both all the time.” In the perfection of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose disobedience and self-centredness, and demonstrated that the problem is not our environment, but ourselves. As is often said “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”

Jesus likened himself to a doctor (Luke 5:31) who both diagnoses the problem but also offers the remedy. In Lent we are encouraged to face squarely our hypocrisy, not to crush us with guilt but to direct us to Jesus who took on that guilt, our guilt, on the cross. We are all 'Traitors' but the one we betrayed died taking our punishment – that is a priceless prize!

Unconquerable

Here's my article for February:

This February, the seventh Invictus Games will be held in Vancouver and Whistler. The Invictus Games were founded by Prince Harry as an international multi-sport event for wounded, injured and sick servicemen and women, both serving and veterans. They were first held in London in 2014 and speaking at the launch, Prince Harry said that the Games would "demonstrate the power of sport to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and demonstrate life beyond disability."

The word 'invictus' is Latin for 'unconquered' and according to the Invictus Games website “The term embodies the fighting spirit of the participating men and women, as well as their motivation to move on with their lives, to gain a new place in life, and to not let themselves be defined by the trauma they have suffered.”

'Invictus' is also the title of a poem by the Victorian poet William Ernest Henley that is closely linked with the Games – the 2016 hosts Orlando said “the 16 short lines of the poem encapsulate the indefatigable human spirit, which is at the heart of the Invictus Games.” The poem is an example of stoicism in the face of the author's medical difficulties, including the amputation of his leg as a teenager due to complications from tuberculosis. He talks of his “unconquerable soul” and that despite his circumstances he has not “winced nor cried aloud,” his head “is bloody, but unbowed.” It ends with the famous defiant cry “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.”

This is not just stoicism but it is a belligerent declaration of individualism and self-determination. The 'fighting spirit' that motivates the competitors to move on and demonstrate life beyond disability is very commendable, but in this poem it takes a dangerous turn into arrogance and hubris. Henley disregards “whatever gods may be,” only thanking them for making his unconquerable soul, and also disregards any consequences of his actions either in this world or the next.

This is partly because he doesn't believe in God and therefore this life is just a “place of wrath and tears” and after death is only “the Horror of the shade.” Contrast that with the view of the Apostle Paul: “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself...But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9. Paul lists the things he suffered in 2 Corinthians 6:4-10 and 11:23-27.) Suffering and adverse circumstances will make us either rely on ourselves or turn to God for help. Paul says that God is the one who can raise the dead, who can bring something good out of something bad and that because eternal life exists, this life as meaning and purpose. What good is it to be captain of your own soul if you don't believe there is a destination to sail to?