Nigel Wright

Courage, Integrity, Conviction

The first Sunday of 2010 saw the Wright family attending Windsor Park Baptist Church. We have been before when visiting family and received a warm welcome. This time things were different... in a better way... a new pastor who has been settling in over the past year seems to have brought a stronger sense of community and fellowship to the church and it shows in a very welcoming and worshipful way.

The sermon was cleverly integrated into the worship and the celebration of communion.

The theme was a great focus for the New Year - Who will you serve in 2010?

The text: Joshua 24:1-15 - with a specific focus on Courage, Integrity and Conviction

My memory of the main points:

1, Joshua had to show courage

            - will we serve God?

            - acting on the opportunities to serve takes courage

            - the choices may not be popular 

2, Joshua had to show integrity

            - Joshua lived what he believed

            - he new the role of God on his life

3, Joshua had to show conviction

            - love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, sole and strength

"But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord"

An inspiring way to start 2010 - many thanks.

Thinking about faith and work stuff

I have an invite to speak on faith and work on Sunday (a subject matter that I am very passionate about) and the following is a snapshot of the quotes I find help in getting to the "foundations":

Creation is physical & it is only into humanity that God breathes his Spirit.

We are neither physical bodies with a spiritual side nor spiritual beings trapped in physical bodies.

In our very formation we represent the full integration of the physical with the spiritual.

“Spirituality should lead you into the world not lift you out of it”

Martin Buber

Jewish Philosopher

 

“Even when the word work is understood in its commonly used sense, it can be the thing that points us to the sacredness of all life. It can inspire us, ask the best of us, demand of us that we become more than we currently are…

Work can be a place where human beings come together in supportive and creative relationships, building something worthwhile. People have some of their best ideas at work.

 

Work at its best is life giving.”

  Rosemary Lain-Priestley

    Anglican Priest

 “The reimaging of the workplace would help fulfil one of the crucial needs that every individual has: the need to belong.

We want to belong to a group, to a family and particularly to the place in which we work.

Here is the point at which an immense creativity could be released in the workplace. Imagine how lovely it would be if you could be yourself at work and express your true nature, giftedness and imagination.

There need be no separation between your home, your private life and your actual world of work. One could flow to the other in a creative and enriching way.”

    John O’Donohue, Irish Poet & Scholar

 

 

 

Spectrum of Enquiry

I came across this while looking for something else, it is the end of my very first "proper sermon" while on my first placement during training, a little idealistic perhaps, (who... me?):

"We are all of us somewhere on the spectrum of enquiry, on our journey of faith, somewhere between a society that tells us that the material has all the answers and an inner consciousness that tells us otherwise. And all the while God is waiting to be invited more and more into our lives.

But what does it take to fully accept the call of Christ on our lives, what does it take to follow him, and is the price too high to pay?

CS Lewis puts it as follows:

“It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to his personality, that I begin to have a real personality of my own.

Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes everyday and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

The key is “to look for Christ”… “to turn to Christ”  .. to accept Christ as the way, the truth and life - we will not do it in our own strength.

When we turn to Christ we have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit…. there with us every step of the way. We may not always recognise it, but we do.

We take this journey together as the body of Christ, the royal priesthood, the community of believers and with all the angels, archangels and all the company of heaven as our support."

Man & possibilities!

“The man who understands himself from his possibilities understands himself from reflection on himself. Now, in revelation, man should be snatched away from his reflection and should obtain the answer to his question only from and before God. The foundation for the question of man is laid by the question of God. This is where the basic difference between theological and philosophical anthropology lies”[1]

 

Pondering on this Bonhoeffer lecture at the moment and particularly on these two extracts...

 

“… man understands himself not in reflection on himself, but in the act of reference to God, i.e. only at the point where he finds within himself possibilities by virtue of which he can stand before God…Man understands himself in the act of reference to God, which only God himself provides.”

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[1]Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Inaugural Lecture: Man in Contemporary Philosophy and Theology – taken from No Rusty Swords (London: Collins,1971), p. 60.

Yahweh, the God who delivers

In thefridayservice we are on the journey with the Exodus story and last night we took the opportunity to do a bit of theology as we recapped on the story so far (we are at the ten commandments) .

It was an opportunity to make sure we weren't missing the bigger picture, or the smaller one, and ensure we are well placed as we enter the 12 chapters of laws and regulations that follow the ten commandments.

Attached are the notes (Download Yahweh.doc ) I prepared in preparation, as promised, please remember they are only outline notes prepared predominantly from Walter Brueggermanns Theology of the Old Testament but arranged and worded a little differently.

A few key items that came out of our meeting

- don't focus on the command structure without the emancipation (and vice-versa).

- the commandments were a huge gift to fend of pre-Exodus exploitation and brutality within the community to establish a society of dignity, freedom and well being, rather than one of coercion, fear and exploitation.

Reflections on Priesthood

Last week I spent the bulk of the week with twenty some fellow curates on residential training at Scargill house. A time that for me was blessed, relaxing, stimulating and affirming.

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The subject matter - The changing roles and nature of the Priesthood in the Church of England today.  A huge and often controversial subject matter!

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It was, in my opinion, wonderfully and very ably led by Kenneth Leech who very cleverly led us through three days of gathering our experiences, exploring those experiences, reflecting on those experiences and sewing the seeds of response (a good bit of Practical theology in process)…

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It is not possible to capture the whole three days and much of it was confidential, there was a great deal of openness and honesty that added an unexpected wealth to the proceedings…

A few items from my notes, (that aren’t confidential!), just a very few from 10 pages of scribbles!

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- Don’t fall into the balance trap – Integration – how to do the things one does in a more prayerful and contemplative way.

- Aquinas – “Through Baptism one is Ordained to the Eucharist”

- All people through their Baptisms are called to be Priests – all Christians share in the Paschal mystery

- Ordained – pointers/concentrators of energy – hallowed to represent the community, a public responsibility

- Priests only make sense at the point where sacred and secular meet (I’m really having to “chew” on this one)

- atmosphere of question and discussion required in and around gatherings

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A big thank you to our IME director for putting it all together, to Kenneth for leading it and to Scargill for looking after us so well… oh and nearly forgot, many thanks to the Diocese for financing it…

the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit

"Protestant theology was born when the magical-poetic power of the word was rediscovered and democratised.

Every individual was to read the scriptures as one reads a poem, alone, without intervening voices of interpretation. Hermeneutics were to be silent, so that the believer could hear the voice of the stranger: the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. It was believed that the forgotten words written in the flesh and the Word coming from the past would meet and make love - and the miracle would happen." (1)

(1) Rubem A. Alves, The Poet, The Warrior, The Prophet (London: SCM, 1990), P. 102.

 

The Poet, The Warrior, The Prophet

A dear friend brought me a book last Saturday… “I think you’ll like this”… she wasn’t wrong.

The book is The Poet, The Warrior, The Prophet by Rubem A. Alves[1] and as it describes on the back of the book: “Here theology goes hand in hand with literature, with poetry and story, to create an unforgettable atmosphere of wonder and vision”.

It encapsulates the power of story and poetry and how intrinsic this is to how we work out our journey of faith. If you like a systematic dictatorial (or “totalitarian” as Alves describes it) approach to faith and teaching then this probably isn’t the book for you, but then again…

Unfortunately so much of church teaching is seemingly dictatorial and ceases to be a living exploration of, and relationship with, the Word through the Holy Spirit. I am only half way through the book but feel affirmed in my continual stance of promoting story and exploration as key to our journey of faith.

Another great book for getting across the power and importance of story is James Hopewell’s book Congregation: Stories and Structures[2], much more in the research mode than spiritual inspiration but it ought to be at the top of all theology undergraduates research reading (in my humble opinion!).

Back to Alves, it is difficult to take a short extract to give a flavour as the book flows so intertwined and effortlessly so I borrow again from the back cover:

“… he conjures up a picture of “words which are good to be eaten. That in turn leads to worship, and particularly to the Eucharist, in an exploration of the area where “word and flesh make love”. And it leads to politics and prophecy – and ultimately to the theme of the resurrection which Rubem Alves suggests is the one truly theological problem.”

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[1] Rubem A. Alves, The Poet, The Warrior, The Prophet (London: SCM Press, 1990).

[2] James F. Hopewell, Congregation: Stories and Structures (Philadelphia, USA: Fortress Press, 1987).

Graduation Day

So the day came and many of us didn't want to attend our degree ceremony, or if the truth be told we felt we didn't have time and after all we had had our commendation service in June and Ordination service on the 1st of July, so why another...

Yet we had promised each other we would attend Leeds University and celebrate our achievements...  and so some twenty four of us did, joining the other 150 or so University of Leeds Students. It is good to stop and reflect - so easy to squeeze the reflection bit out of life and ministry - to be caught up in the business of ministry, despite telling ourselves at College that we wouldn't fall foul of that trap!

And a good time was had by all - it was great to catch up with friends from training and enjoy a bash afterwards, a big thank you to Ik... for pulling it all together and the Chaplaincy team at the Uni for allowing us to use their space.

If you really want to see it, then go to this site and view ceremony 11.

If that doesn't grab you maybe an evening with Alan Bennett will!

That they may be one

Today I used a prayer as a blessing, towards the close of a remembrance service, it was Jesus’ prayer to his Father in John 17.

The central point of the prayer is “that they may be one” in God’s love!

A number of people asked me where it could be found and the whole prayer can be found in the Gospel of John, chapter 17, verses 20 to 26.

It is almost beyond comprehension, particularly the closing lines, “I made your name known to them – yes, and I will make it known; so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

There is so much in the prayer for so few words, Tom Wright (no relation) captures a huge amount in his book John for Everyone, and in particular:

…there is no excuse for Christians not to work a fresh in every generation towards the unity Jesus prayed for. If we are, essentially, one in faith, there can be no final reason why we may not be one, also, in our life and worship. [1]

Our sermon this morning stressed the point that remembrance requires response… no excuses?!

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[1] Tom Wright, John for Everyone, Part Two (

London

: SPCK, 2004), p. 100.