As I write we are just under half way through our Lenten journey. We have yet to arrive at Holy Week, probably the most difficult week of Lent. On Ash Wednesday we may have started with lots of good intentions to make a good lent, with perhaps a particular focus in mind. I did, but as time has gone on, many dreadful world events have distracted me, and my prayer has become increasingly centred around the plight of all those thousands of ordinary people, just like you and me, whose suffering, despair, and loss is so difficult to fully comprehend and while it has touched me deeply it has also made me deeply frustrated at our powerlessness in the face of all this awfulness.

As I reflect on these things, I take heart from the fact that Jesus Christ our Lord knows and understands what terrible suffering is like, at the hands of people who seek to dehumanise those they regard as their enemies. We have seen this dehumanisation so clearly in the actions of both Hamas and the Israeli government and IDF and also in the actions of Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine and also in so many other areas of our troubled and broken world.

So in the remainder of Lent and as we approach Palm Sunday and start to recall the events of Holy Week, we have the perfect opportunity to listen and to engage with the retelling and reflect on Christ’s Passion of unimaginable cruelty.

To quote the famous words of the mediaeval mystic Mother Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), ‘And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’. But it’s very important for us not to hear Mother Julian’s words as a ‘happily ever after’ fairy-tale ending to all the dreadful and distressing things that are happening around us in the world, because they’re not and they’re not just wishful thinking either. What they do however, is to offer us a glimmer of hope and in our lenten journey, the whiff of Easter in the air.  Now that’s not to say that they’re just a tea and sympathy response to all the suffering and loss causing hurt and distress to many thousands of people around the globe. 

T. S. Eliot ends his poem ‘Little Gidding’ with the words ‘The fire and the rose are one’. For me the power of this image lies in the fact that both fire and rose have positive and negative effects. Fire can be a source of warmth and light, but it also has the power to destroy. Roses are flowers of incredible beauty, but their thorns can draw blood if you don’t handle them carefully.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, doesn’t obliterate what happens to him on Good Friday. It doesn’t blot out its pain, or its darkness or its God-forsakenness, as if it never happened. What it does is it transforms it. It offers a new God-given perspective from which to view it, but it doesn’t erase it. The bruised body of a young Jewish man buried in a garden tomb on Good Friday evening still bears the marks of a crown of thorns and the cruel nails and the soldier’s spear. 

The Pascal Candle that we’ll light in St Finnbarr’s between sundown on Holy Saturday and dawn on Easter Day will burn with a flame lit from the new fire of Easter; but it’ll also be pierced with five grains of incense in the shape of a cross, symbolising the wounds of the crucified Christ. ‘The fire and the rose are one’.

Blessings
James

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity runs each year from 18^th until 25^th January. Now you might be wondering why it’s these particular dates.

The 18^th January is when we mark the Confession of Peter when he was led by God’s grace to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ when Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” getting a variety of answers and then “But who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” You can read the full exchange in Matthew 16:13-20. 

The 25^th January is when we celebrate the conversion of Paul the Apostle and what happened on the ‘Road to Damascus’ when Saul who had been persecuting the early Christians became a follower of Jesus and was renamed Paul.

The theme of Christian Unity is reflected in the fact that Peter was Apostle to the Jewish Christians and Paul Apostle to the Gentile Christians. Aspects of this will be discussed in our Lent Study when we will be studying Paul’s Letter to the Galatians which was written to address divisions over such matters. Outline details of the Lent Study can be found later in the Newsletter.

Back to the week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Each year the Christian’s from a particular country prepare service and daily reflection materials and this year’s service was prepared by an ecumenical team from the West African state of Burkina Faso (formerly French Upper Volta and then on independence the Republic of Upper Volta). The theme chosen was ‘You shall love the Lord your God… and your neighbour as yourself’ (Lk 10:27) the material being based on the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

This parable is of course one of the best known passages of Scripture, yet one that never seems to lose its power to challenge indifference to suffering and to inspire solidarity with those who are marginalised or outcast. It’s a story about crossing boundaries and emphasises the bonds that unite the whole human family regardless of race, creed, religion, ethnicity and so forth.

In choosing this passage for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the churches of Burkina Faso invited us to join with them in self-reflection as they (and we) consider what it means to love our neighbour in a world riven with war and conflict, where there are many people displaced or persecuted. Communities in the UK may be less vulnerable to the sort of acts of mass violence that there have been recently in Burkina Faso, but there are still many living with the memory and/or the threat of serious violence, centred on issues of identity and belonging. 

Ecumenical services were held in St Finnbarr’s on Monday 22^nd and in St Andrew’s on Wednesday 24^th January, prayerful events that demonstrated a visible unity of local Christians. In these services people from across denominational boundaries reflected on the fact that there are also groups within our own communities, including people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people seeking asylum and others who for one reason or another are marginalised and who feel particularly vulnerable to misunderstanding, hostility and even violence.

Loving our neighbours as ourselves is something that we should all reflect on regularly, especially during Lent and in particular the question: “and who is my neighbour?”

Blessings
James

Glory to God in highest heaven, and on earth, peace to all in whom God delights.

So sang the angels as they told the shepherds of the birth of Jesus.  Across the world those words are proclaimed in nativity plays and carol services; in places filled with joyful worshippers, excited by the festivities past and yet to come. But they are also proclaimed on battlefields and in refugee camps. They are heard in Israel and Palestine, in Russia and Ukraine and in the darkest places in our own communities. They are heard by people who have little to be excited about or to look forward to.

Yet in all these places it is the same message: the message of Peace, the Christmas message of Peace on Earth. Many of those who gather to listen to the Christmas story are seeking the same thing, a place and time of peace.

Too often those same people find themselves caught up in conflict, poverty and loneliness, yet all are those in whom God delights for God delights in creation, in us and in the wonders that we perform.

So I ask that we consider what we do this Christmastide. Do we hear the angels cry, then smile and drop off back to sleep around the campfire, or do we get up and go to find the Christ child? Do we put the call for peace into action? Do we gather with Jesus and demand justice and security for all? For let me assure you, God delights in all of us, God reveals that in his love for us through the life, death and resurrection of the child we gather to celebrate Christmas.

Last Christmas we prayed for those caught in conflict in Ukraine, and one year on, we pray for them again, and this time they are joined in our prayers by those whose lives are under constant threat as war wreaks its terrible toll in the Middle East; in the Holy Land. We pray for a permanent ceasefire there, and call on our leaders to see that peace is the only way forward, while the war they pursue or facilitate will only deepen the wounds.

Against that backdrop, how can we rejoice at this time, when there is so much suffering? But rejoice we must, as we retell the story of the love that came down to us, and all the time remembering that we are called not simply to listen to the angels but to respond, to be the peacemakers, in our homes, in our communities and in our hearts.

God bless you and may you rejoice this Christmastide wherever you are.

Blessings
+Mark

The are many deeply troubling events and situations in our world just now. Over the past year or two many of the old certainties, both political and personal, seem to have been swept away. And so it was for Jesus’s Disciples after His death and resurrection and for His followers ever since, but if our faith means anything, it must speak to us in troubling times as well as times of joy and celebration.

At such times, we need to choose either to live by the ways of the world or by the ways of God. That doesn’t mean separating ourselves off as a holy huddle focussed in on ourselves, hiding away from a world of dubious motives and evil actions and having anything to do with the other people living in it. No, we’re called to be in the world but not living by many of its cherished values; to be God-centred rather than self-centred.  In Advent, as we start a new church year, we have a few weeks to pause and reflect on what Jesus the Christ really means in our lives; and how we might respond to that realisation.

In our tradition, we re-tell the story of Jesus each year. I find that leaving the old year behind at the end of November and starting a new year on the first Sunday of Advent gives me a boost, just when I need it, when the days are short and winter is really beginning to take hold. It’s that sense of anticipation, that waiting to see what’s going to happen, that pause before the busyness of the festive season.

However, once things have started, most of us want to get to the conclusion as quickly as possible, preferring things to happen at once if not before. However waiting is an important discipline in our lives. The scriptures remind us that “those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength”. In fact, patience is a wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, allowing us to take our time and live in the moment rather than always wanting to have arrived at some point in the future.

In Jesus’ time, people had waited a long time for the coming of the Messiah.  We all might long to see more decisive action from God; bringing justice and peace to our world and some stability and certainty, not least in the Holy Land where such appalling things are happening. In the Christ Child there is a clear sign of God’s commitment to us, in spite of our waywardness. In Jesus, God is with us, as one of us, a mystery “which passes all understanding” and one that we need time to reflect on. God’s gift to us in this season of expectant waiting, is the space to prepare ourselves to be able to sense and accept all that God longs to give us.

Let us keep a watchful Advent, so that when the time comes, we may celebrate with joy the one who came, the one who will come again, the one who promises to accompany us each step of our life’s pilgrimage, however uncertain the times.

Blessings
James

I’ve been away this past week or two in Cheshire staying with my sister who is convalescing after sustaining a number of fractures. It has been a very frustrating time for her as she is not able to do much and is largely immobile. I have in the course of this also spent quite a lot of time on trains, which to my surprise ran largely to time.

As I travelled, a quite appalling situation has been unfolding in the Middle East. We have seen just how low humanity can stoop in the way that people treat other people. The history of conflict teaches us that increasing the level of violence rarely achieves anything except escalation, until eventually there has to be a sitting down to talk about it and resolving things through negotiation. Along the way there is generally an appalling loss of life and often many of those killed and maimed are not ‘combatants’ but innocent men, women and children.

Contrasting with some of the worse aspects of the human condition, I have witnesses many acts of kindness during my time away. Random acts of kindness to strangers on trains and at stations as well as the kindness of friends and neighbours of my sister who have brought round cakes, meals, flowers and those who have just dropped by for a bit of a chat.

Whilst I was in Cheshire, the rains from Storm Babet struck. This was of course a day or two before they arrived in Angus and Aberdeenshire then coming on to Sutherland and Easter Ross. Massive amounts of rain running off fields and overwhelming the culverts and brooks resulted in a great deal of flooding around my sister’s village and I spent a happy day bailing out a cellar until someone kindly lent us a pump to keep the water below ground floor level!!

We watched as cars and lorries rushed at the flood waters outside the house and every so often one would stop, the engine overwhelmed by the 18 inches of water. On one occasion a lorry driver was very abusive to a driver whose car was stranded in the middle of the flood, using language that I wouldn’t dare repeat here, because his progress was being obstructed, but one or two of those who passed by stopped to offer advice or see if they could help. Sadly we were marooned and couldn’t get out without letting water into the house – perhaps I should have taken a pair of waders:-)

In the Gospel this Sunday, Jesus says:

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I give grateful thanks that many of the people that I encountered during my time away seem to embody that message and I hope and pray that others will see their example and do likewise.  Our world and particularly the Middle East so desperately needs that.

Blessings
James