Looking forward

I am glad I began this series of posts with the story of Jason, he didn’t turn up for Mass today. Nor, more importantly did She.  I still hope he might connect that Tuesday or Thursday we are open. I am sad that we can’t do 24/7…we managed it in one the two churches in the last parish . But that was because I lived next door.  

And there was the famous incident of Romeo and Juliet sleeping under the altar…but that’s a story for another day… I was in that parish for eighteen years and after sixteen years  or more a couple of people did begin to articulate “It’s great that we can keep the Church open!”  But I wonder if it’s open now.






 

I didn’t mean to project a false humility about my encounter with the broken J.  But worry that I may have done that.
I think ( after a long time) as a pastor that I still don’t have much of a clue.
This series of posts is about the last two months of my full-time ministry as a parish priest.
It is not that I am going to stop being a priest. I am one of those who think that ordination ontologically changed me and I will be ‘a priest for ever’ [Hebrews 7:17 ” For it is declared: "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.””]
This may be a romantic idea , but it works for me in my understanding that the call to priesthood is a universal charge on my whole being.
I am inclined to think that I cannot divorce myself from my priesthood. There is is a lot of psychoanalysis, no doubt, that could transpire. But so what it works for me!
I don’t want to be divorced from my priesthood, and I don’t think my priesthood is rejecting me.
So, this is quite an important reflection for me, because in two months I will celebrate a Eucharist as a parish priest, knowing that this will be the last time I will celebrate as a parish priest…and this after nearly forty years.
It’s taken a little while to work this through, but I am pretty sure that I am not defined by being a parish priest.
I may be defined by being a priest, but as close as I have been to parish life,  I can move away from it.
The curiosity of this is that I will have a bit of a break ( maybe six months) and then I will pickup locus work here and there .
I don’t quite know what locum work will be like. I know a lot of people in the Diocese and have a fairly good feel for how local parishes work, so I can do this.
I think I will do it gladly and with joy. I will pander to my own need to preach…and to be appreciated for being able to do this relatively well.
I think that ‘preaching’ is one of my charismatic gifts. And can act out of that model.

I wonder if you have questions about all this. And would be glad to respond.
Leave them littered around..either on the blog or on Facebook. And I will see what I can do

On being boring

Eldest daughter was a bit put out that she went to Church on Good Friday and I didn't even notice she was there!
Later in the day she told me
"You preached too long!"
"I only preached for 10 minutes"
"It was too long!"
You can't win them all, and your family are a preacher's worst critics!
"Any way, " she countered when she realised she was maybe just being argumentative, "you always say the same thing!"
"So what did I say?" I countered.
"Well you always say how death is so important that we shouldn't run away from it!"
I said no more, content that at least one person had heard what I had intended to say!

Don't always get it right!

Yesterday an elderly parishioner passed out in church. Right in the middle of my sermon!

This happens from time to time and is not usually because they have been so overtaken by the Holy Spirit that they swoon. It seemed a little more serious than that, and indeed was.

Despite the fact that I had been thinking during the week that I needed to do a bit more/better sermon preparation in order that the receivers might be able to have a chance of receiving it well...and I was a little bit more conscientious...I just decided that it was best to jettison it in mid-stream.

Not much else you can do when all eyes and ears are elsewhere.

Important lessons?

We always need to be coy about how much of the preaching exercise depends on we preachers any way.

Perhaps the incident was a sermon in itself. I was able to draw out a 30 second reflection after the ambulance had been and gone that what I was actually talking about was the presence of Christ in the world, and that so often we didn't cope well with things like a medical emergency during worship because we have invested so much energy in making worship a cocoon against the approach of the world.

Any way, A was taken off to hospital and says (in her nineties) that she plans to live for another 20 years!

Simple gifts

By its very nature my job means I spout a lot of words into the atmosphere. It can be vaguely disconcerting because you are never quite sure if people are hearing what you are saying (or for that matter if what you sayign is worth being heard!).
Yesterday morning for example things seemed to be going quite well then I noticed that M (who notoriously absents herself from mental engagement with sermon and/or worship) had sort of connected...but about 5 minutes in became quite animated. She was obviously watching what was going on behind me!
Then H was looking in the same direction.
I felt a degree of anger well up within and wanted to turn round and see what could possibly be more fascinating than me! I resisted the temptation and the desire to publicly chide them.
The stupid candle, which hadn't been changed because for the third month in a row the rostered sacristan hadn't done her job, had gone up in a blaze of glory. Obviously far more more interesting than the proclamation of the Gospel!
It is easy to be judgmental. I have absented myself from too many homilies in the past to be judgmental about those who couldn't give a stuff about what I am saying.
Any way. God, who is rich in mercy, allowed me to have two simple gifts the next time round.
There were a number of young kids in the later service...it's always difficult to compete. But they were good and indeed..delightful.
It was great when asking a rhetorical question "After all we people of faith know that Jesus is alive, don't we?" To have a little 3 year old voice say "Yes!" without looking up from her drawing and without any casuistry, total conviction!
Then after the service, checking that the oldies were OK, I asked K who's having a rought trot at the moment (and who's had a helluva life...but she would never see it that way) how it was going.
And she beamed, in way that I had worried she had forgotten how and said "OOOh you know Easter, Don't be alarmed!"
She was quoting back some of Mark's account of the resurrection about which I preached on Easter day (here). It is worth it if one person listens!

On being self-righteous

As a callow youth, early in my days of ordained ministry I was occasionally aware of older clergy looking at me wryly when I was pontificating. In those days I would often think they didn't like enthusiasm (often true) or were resistent to change (also often true).
But I also recognise that sometimes they may just have thought I was stupid and/or naive (often true!)
Hence a previous post (here) does at least allude to the fact that, as the song says, "Regrets I have a few!" - particularly the naivety of not realising that when ever you think you clearly understand what God is saying that you need to be cautious.
I sometimes say that the real problem for me is discerning when "The voice of God!" is really the "voice of Stephen". An exercise in self-validation.
So I am cautious about saying this or that is God's voice. I am wary of those who do likewise.
One such is Danny Nalliah, a Victorian pentecostal pastor, who stated that he believes God revealed to him in a dream that Victoria would be punished for passing abortion laws last year. he has drawn the construction that these awful fires are that punishment (some comment on Wikipedia here)
He has, rightly in my opinion, been roundly criticised (see here and here )
That Jesus repudiates this cause-and-effect sort of theology is evident in a number of different places in the gospels.
That all preachers need to be cautious about their own Messiah complex is less well understood.
I say to all non-Christians. We are not all like this.
The quiet faithful pastor of Marysville, Norm Hart and his wife are now without house and church. They are not being punished by God, for other people's sins.
God most certainly did not allow hundreds of people to die and be injured in order to vindicate Pator Nalliah's view of the world.
God bless those Christians (and others) who see that the best witness is to stand alongside people in the midst of trouble; and not to make self-righteous capital out of it.

The horror

We can only but imagine the horror of the bushfire tragedy in Victoria; South Australians remain tight-lipped because we know that there but for the grace of God are we!

In the awful Ash Wednesday fire of 1983 I remember that from the pulpit of St Michael's Mitcham, I asked the question "Who is to blame?" (there was a lot of focus on this question at the time and for some years afterwards). My naive response was "I am to blame".
I went on to postulate (perhaps pontificate is better) that I had not exercised one prayer for what was well-known to be a dangerous situation. I am some what embarrassed about this even though there is an element of truth in bringing to the congregation's attention the fact that we tend to not take much responsibility for anything beyond the smallness of our own lives.
Augustine suggests that prayer is not about getting God to act in a certain way...ie. it is not about manipulating the deity like some sort of spiritual slot machine...it is about understanding what God is doing, can do and how we can cooperate with that.
In that sense I think my point is worth making. We do need to learn the lessons of the past, and indeed the present. (whether we are spiritual or not).
I imagine that this present tragedy will demand some very, very strident changes. But that debate is yet to happen.

New, newer, newest!

The Rev'd Giles Fraser (pictured left) writes about current troubles in the Anglican Communion, and does so perceptively (here). As one who presumes to preach, I am ever mindful of the fact that I take my life into my hands (or perhaps my mouth) when ever I begin to speak those words "In the Name of the Father....." as if I have some authority.
Strangely I believe I have, indeed my Bishop told me as much when I was ordained as a priest...Take authority to preach. You may or may not agree that this gift is real, I happen to believe it is. I would even give some testimony to "feeling" it to be so; this may just be wishful thinking but it seems real enough to me.
Fraser's point is that we are ever tempted to make our own covenant and call it God's, and more specifically to take God's covenant and demand more of people than God demands. Fraser says:

..... Paul, explaining the new covenant, writes: “For you are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ.” Then comes that famous bit: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3.26-29). The Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright — basically, Mr Covenant as far the present crisis is concerned — gets it spot on: “All those who believe in Jesus belong at the same table.”

This is a statement not of radical exclusion, but of radical inclusion. I have made this point on a number of occasions with those who make this rule and that rule: to my mind God is inviting people in not shutting people out. Fraser puts it more eloquently

Yet there are those for whom this new testament is not enough. They want a new new testament, creating a sub-division within the category “all those who believe in Jesus”. They want to write a new new testament that will distinguish first- and second-class Christians. And the sign of this unbiblical covenant is to be sound doctrine, as defined by a small coterie of conservative Evangelicals.

This is dangerous territory but it is, as I say, perceptive. Using profoundly religious language ...."all those who believe in Jesus", we then define what that means not according to God's magnanimity but according to our narrow understanding.
However we line up in current debates we need to be aware of the temptation to name our own narrow orthodoxy as God, and that I suggest is idolatry.