Momentous times...

As I write on Thursday 19th September, millions of Jewish people all over the world have completed their first day of celebrating Sukkot. They build shelters in their gardens (or move into the garden shed, or decorate a room up with branches) and are obliged under Jewish law to have a really good party with lots of eating and drinking. 

Some rabbis even take the line that it is their religious duty to get a bit tipsy at Sukkot. Elisa and I saw an amazing display when we were on sabbatical in Israel which included footage of incredibly severely dressed ultra-orthodox Jews getting plastered at Sukkot! It's a mistake to think of Hebrew religion as sombre. The Jewish year has three weeks of holidays and feasting to just a single day of fasting.

Sukkot is a Harvest Festival. Just like Christians celebrating God's goodness in bringing forth bread from the earth. We celebrated at St Andrew's Wraysbury last Sunday, and a great time we had too, with the New Life service, and a slap up harvest lunch afterwards! St Michael's Horton are going for it on 6 October and Wraysbury School are doing one too soon. What a great coincidence that we and they celebrate the harvest at about the same time. It's just that the Jews take it a bit further: eating, drinking, and going back to nature.

We might feel sorry for British Jews camping out in the damp and cold of September. But it's a very sensible time to go camping in Israel, where the stifling heat of July and August has finally eased up and going outside is bearable again. This reminds us that Sukkot will always have an extra dimension for Jews actually living in the land of Israel. For them, it is not just enjoying the goodness of God's bounty. That food and drink is the fruit of the Promised Land. The Sukkot feasting is a tangible, edible participation in God's love for them: the love that took them out of slavery and brought them to a place where they could be free. They are in shelters because they have to remember that once they wanderers in the desert - until God gave them a land.

But Sukkot is just one part of a very busy few weeks in the Jewish Calendar. The seventh month starts with New Year - that's the Feast of Trumpets for Leviticus scholars. Then it goes on to Yom Kippur on the tenth day, which this year fell last Saturday. This is the Day of Atonement in English versions of the Bible, when every Jew is obliged to confess and seek forgiveness. On the fifteenth day starts the whole week of rejoicing which is Sukkot - in English the Feast of Tabernacles, i.e. of shelters or tents or sheds. Think of it as a gigantic Spring Harvest, where an entire nation goes camping together to rejoice and seek God.

What we have here really is the symbolic rebirth of the nation:

• Rosh Hashana - the New Year begins
• Yom Kippur - cleansing from wrongdoing so as to renew relationships and start again
• Succoth - participating in God's goodness by eating the fruit of the Promised Land

For Christians these will always be deep portents of what God was going to do in sending Jesus:

• Atonement through the cross. By happy coincidence this year Yom Kippur fell on Saturday 14th, which in some Christian Calendars is Holy Cross Day.
• a joyful New Life where we participate in the love of God: this comes through Jesus' resurrection and the gift of the Spirit.
• the communion service brings these wonderfully together - we remember a body broken and blood poured out for our sins, but we also feast on a living Presence that brings God's love to live inside us.

We reflected on these things together up at Horton last Tuesday at the midweek service. Here are some of our thoughts...

• Just like the Jews at Yom Kippur, we all stand in need of mercy and forgiveness. Why do we find it so hard to say "I'm sorry, I was wrong?" It's bad for our ego, but good for our souls! 
• Do we laugh at ourselves enough? Do we see the great joke – that God should choose the likes of us to build his kingdom, knowing how fallible we are and how often we mess up? Is camping at Sukkot about letting go of the material and egotistical things that so dominate our lives and often bring so much stress with them?
• Do we see God as a generous giver who gives the land and the fruit and everything in love for us?
• Is our practice of Christianity joyful enough? Remember the ratio - 3 weeks of feasting to a single day of fasting!
• Let's see Jewish people as our older brothers and sisters in faith. I'm not trying to say we should be uncritical of everything the state of Israel does. A quick flip through the Scriptures will show you that such position is not biblical, because they so often got things wrong - just like us. But I am saying that we owe them everything - our God, our Scriptures and our beloved Messiah all came via the Jews. We should thank them and bless them for such a wonderful inheritance.

And finally, an ancient Hebrew prayer that their younger brothers and sisters in faith can also share in at Harvest Time: 

Baruch attah, Adonai Elohenu, Melech ha'olam: hamotzi lehem min ha'aretz - 

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe: you bring forth bread from the earth.

With a little help from my friends…

I am delighted to report that Elisa has been discharged from the fracture clinic and has got rid of her plaster cast! She was getting so frustrated with it, as she loves to be up and doing. We were quite a picture, the pair of us, lying on our respective sofas, Elisa with her injured foot up and me moaning about my sciatica (it's lots better now.)

If there's an up side to being poorly and in pain, it surely comes through the kindness of others. While Elisa has been in plaster we have had so much help from people: putting on cold compresses, taking us to hospital, bringing meals, cakes, cards, flowers, tomatoes and runner beans, offers to help with housework, cheering us up with a visit... Not to mention all those who have prayed for us. You realise how caring and thoughtful people are.

What we've been through has been unpleasant and inconvenient. But it hasn't been real suffering of the sort millions of people go through all over the world, trying to deal with war, persecution, famine, disease and disaster. What we have seen on a very small scale however is surely also true for bigger, badder events. Isn't all suffering a call for compassion? We don't understand it, we call out, "Why?" And yet it has at least this meaning for us, which is the call it sends to us to respond to our suffering brothers and sisters. A world with no suffering would also be one where the beautiful, tear-watered flower of compassion could never bloom.

This is the heart of the Gospel story. God responds with compassion for the sufferings of lost and broken humanity. When he gives his Son Jesus for us, it is because his heart has gone out to us. God is moved by us. That's why he expects us to be moved by one another's sufferings too.

And one last reflection on it all. In the course of my pastoral ministry I have often met people who are too independent. They may be going through a hard time – but they think they have to demonstrate that they can make it on their own: "I don't need anyone else!" The truth is we do need each other. Our sufferings should draw us together, not push us apart. We shouldn't stifle other people's desire to help, to reach out with love. It enables them to be that little bit more like God.

Perhaps it would be a good rule never to turn down a kind or generous act?

A most interesting chat with my chiropractor yesterday. Rupert asked me if a lot of people are praying for me, as he knows I am a vicar. I said yes, people have been really supportive and are praying a lot. Then he said that he thinks I am making very good progress and am well ahead of where he expected me to be at this stage. We thought together about the value of prayer in speeding recovery.

I forget who it was who was once challenged whether answers to prayer are really just coincidences. Whoever it was said, "When I pray, coincidences happen…"

(I've checked up on this now. The full quotation is, "When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't" - Archbishop William Temple.)

Anyway, thank you for all your prayers for me while I've been poorly. The chiropractor reckons they are working!

Guilty Pleasures

Not everything's straightforward when the incumbent is recumbent. Typing blogs and e-mails is actually quite hard when you're supposed to stay lying down: there just isn't a satisfactory position for the laptop. You can't just run down and fetch stuff when you need it: most of the things I need to refer to are down in my office where the big computer and filing cabinets are. As I'm limited for now in some respects I'm making a nuisance of myself in other ways - e-mails, facebook, blogging...

And then there's deciding what to read. Although it would be fantastic to catch up on some great work of scholarship or a really challenging novel, the truth is I don't feel too much like it. You get dozy in bed, more so on painkillers, and it's not comfortable to struggle with a heavy tome (in either sense of the word "heavy") So you go for something, not exactly trashy, but a little lighter, to keep your mind off your troubles while not overtaxing it.

So - I expect you've guessed it - my guilty pleasure is Harry Potter. I know, I know, I'm not a teenager any more, and I should know better. Ben and the other children finished with them years ago. And some Christians would wonder if they are good for my spiritual health - all that wizardry...

What's amazed me though is how Christian they are. In the last book Harry goes back to the village where his parents are buried. There are significant epitaphs on two grave stones. One says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." This is a straight quotation from the words of Jesus in the Gospel, where He advises us that earthly goals can never satisfy us - see Matthew 6:21. So what is the preaching of Jesus doing in a kids' book?

The second is on Harry's parents own grave and says, "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." This is another Bible quote, see 1 Corinthians 15 v.26, from a chapter that is all about the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. Is J K Rowling really an evangelist?

The graveside location reminds us that the special protection Harry has always enjoyed from the attacks of evil has come about because his parents, his mother especially, laid down their lives to save him. This is referred to as "deep magic" somewhere in the story, a magic Voldemort is incapable of understanding, and surely a reference also the "Deep magic from before the dawn of time" that brings Aslan back from the dead in C S Lewis' books and which the White Witch is equally incapable of comprehending.

For Voldemort has foolishly tried to gain immortality by forging horcruxes. The word "crux" means a cross, but these are crosses of horror where someone has to be murdered before they gain their power. In an inversion of the true cross, where Jesus lays down his life so that others may live, Voldemort takes others' lives so that he may live - but in fact this life is a loveless living death. His name I supposed is intended to mean "Death Wish."

In the final showdown, Harry defeats Voldemort by the values of the cross. He lays down his life, deliberately handing himself over as a sacrifice in order to spare others. As a result, not only are they protected from Voldemort's evil spells, but Harry himself is brought back from the dead (just read it!) and goes on to defeat his uncomprehending arch-enemy.

There is a deliberate echo of the Gospel story here. It's time J K was outed as Christian I think...

Love and Death

There's been a bit of a spat in the Church Times lately about the words of one of my favourite hymns. In Christ Alone contains the following lines:

Till on that cross, as Jesus died,
the wrath of God was satisfied...

A lot of people want to change it to "The love of God was satisfied." They are very uncomfortable with the idea of God being angry and even label it "bad theology."

But what kind of love is it that never gets angry? Does God not get angry when chemical weapons are launched on innocent children? When loan companies destroy desperate families through loans at one thousand percent interest, if not even more? When wicked men groom vulnerable girls for exploitation? When half the world starves while a small minority wonders which Ferrari to take out for a spin today?

If these things don't make God's blood boil, how can He be a God of love in any sense that is meaningful to us? In what way does He love His children if He feels no anger about the bullying, persecution and injustice heaped on them? What sort of namby-pamby love would stand by unmoved and unconcerned while watching people being abused and humiliated? And how can the atonement won for us at such great cost on the cross possibly reconcile anything to anybody if it fails to deal with the deep offence that people give to his love?

The critics are right about one thing: it certainly is uncomfortable. Suppose God is angry - not because He doesn't love enough, but because we don't. It was our hardness of heart that got Jesus roused - see Mark 3 v.5 - our ability to be blithely unconcerned with the needs and sufferings of others. It wasn't because He didn't love enough, but because love turned out to be far deeper and fiercer than we thought.

So give thanks that there is a way out. God's anger and love do meet on the cross - and make way for us to enter into that fiercer, deeper love forever.

Finding comfort

It was wonderful having people round to pray with me and anoint me with oil for healing on Wednesday night. Spiritually it seemed very significant to have people from all three local churches involved - St Michael's, St Andrew's and Wraysbury Baptist. There's a very special power and blessing released when God's people come together in unity. It was a lovely time in God's presence together, and it felt so good to be prayed for and loved in this special way.

So to the $64,000 question - am I better? Well, yes - a bit. Sorry, not exactly an earth-shaking answer I know. But the pain is definitely less than it was, so I am taking fewer painkillers and I'm feeling less foggy as a result. I can sit up for a bit longer, though the chiro says sitting is not good for me and I should avoid it as much as possible. Standing and walking are still pretty rough though.

So for now it seems I have to stay in the Lord's treatment room a little bit longer: "Come unto me and rest." I've still got lessons to learn about letting go and letting God, the value of doing as well as the value of being, about my worth not being dependent on my activity and achievements.

Thank you everyone who is praying at home as well as those who came round - your prayers are greatly appreciated too. Thank you everyone who has e-mailed in or rung up with words of comfort. You are a real encouragement, especially those who have been there and know what it's like: it's reassuring to know that I'm not going to be stuck like this forever! 2 Corinthians 1 v.3-4 says,

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any kind of trouble with the same comfort we ourselves have received from God.

So thank you for comforting me! And I will try to remember what it was like when I go round visiting people who are housebound or bedridden. It's easy to take their troubles for granted and forget how frustrating and hopeless it all feels. I hope I will remember what this felt like and be of a more real and less glib encouragement to them. The Lord will make a decent vicar of me yet!

We vicars have this hope that one day, someone will remember something from one of our sermons...

Perhaps some of you remember my talk the other week, when we all got a glass bead to represent the pearl of great price, from Jesus' parable. In the story a pearl merchant finds one of such huge and perilous beauty that he sells everything he has to get it.

We thought of the pearl as representing our longing for God - how can we find the One who so surpasses the worth of all other things that He is worth abandoning everything else to receive more of Him - yet nonetheless Who gives meaning and value to those lesser things which would otherwise prove empty shadows without Him?

But what if we turn the parable round? What if the pearl also represents our value to God? Suppose the searching merchant isn't us looking for God, but God looking for us? Christian spirituality trusts that God is the One who searches for us in our lostness, and gives His very best and finest, His own Son Jesus, to buy us for His own.

So we are God's pearls beyond all price, just as he is ours. I get my pearl out from time to time (yes I have done this talk before) and have a little feel of it, just to remind myself that I am precious to God. I especially do it when I'm nervous about a challenge, or things aren't going too well, and I may be feeling a bit down...

So now's a good time to get that pearl out, with some pain kicking in and the frustrations of being stuck in bed. Yes, God still cares, Jesus shows us just how much on the cross, come sciatica or whatever else may. I hope you've still got yours...