Two years ago, I broke a tooth
While eating an iced bun, no less.
(There’s no dignified way to break
A tooth it seems, I must confess.)
James’s Blog: Filling.
easter
James’s Blog: Forgiveness Plus.
With everything that’s going on it might be easy to forget that Easter is on the way. We lose sight of Easter at our peril, especially at a time like this, so that’s what I’m going to write about for the next couple of weeks. I’m sure you’ve had your fill of talking about the Coronavirus anyway…
James’s Blog: This Post-Easter Blog is Far Too Long.
Sometimes a song or a story or a poem will generate a powerful emotional response in me by putting into words something that is buried deep within, something I haven’t really given shape to myself yet. This is what art does. Why just the other day I was listening to someone explain how he had been left shaken by listening to a short story that somehow managed to encapsulate his own experience of childhood. Read more
James’s Blog: Bank Holiday.
(I warned you that I’d be writing more poetry. Good poetry doesn’t need an explanation, so you can be sure that what follows is not a good poem. It came out of a thought I’m sure many of you have had; Easter is now so normalised that it can be easy – even for followers of Jesus – to take for granted things that shouldn’t. Anyway, it’s not a great poem, and comes across a bit more cynical than I’d like. I don’t want you to think that I’m some kind of Easter Scrooge – I actually quite like chocolate eggs and holidays, but I also quite like the last two lines. If I had the time I’d try and fix what I think is wrong with it, but there’s an Easter blog due, so…) Read more
James’s Blog: Halfway There.
We’re about halfway through Lent – the length of time where we prepare for the good news that Jesus would not stay dead.
I think I like the idea of Lent more than I like Lent itself. Don’t get me wrong, I think Lent is a good thing – a timely and excellent reminder – and I’m sure that many people benefit from it’s place in the calendar. However, because things like reflection, discipline and ritual all have an important home in my spirituality, I don’t think that they’re tools that should just be dragged out of storage for a forty-day chunk of the year. I try to make them a regular habit and so that aspect of Lent seems – dare I say it – a tad redundant to me.
Furthermore, Easter is not a time where things slow down and opportunities for reflection increase – quite the opposite. I imagine many of you face the same situation. For me, Easter sees an increase in workload regarding children, family, school and church. Making time for solitude and space for reflection feels like even more of a luxury at this time of year, so I’m grateful that it’s already a part of my life. Instead my greatest need during the March/April madness is to make sure that I’m constantly inviting God into the middle of whatever smoke and thunder makes up my life each day.
Although it’s important and totally right to celebrate Easter each year, I know that I need Jesus and his resurrection every day of my life. I suppose that my hope is that I carry the attitudes of Lent with me 365 days a year, instead of for just forty.
James’s Blog: Ash Friday.
What can you build from dust and ashes?
From remnants scattered after flames?
Wealth of a life all burnt, destroyed,
Nothing of joy or hope remains. Read more
James’s Blog: “Peace Be With You.”
(Once again our church sent out some daily reflections over the Easter period. Below is the short piece that I wrote for Easter Sunday.)
While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
Luke 24:36
Sometimes I just don’t get Jesus. I mean, there the disciples are, having a conversation (and they were hidden away, so it was a private conversation), when all of a sudden Jesus appears and says, “Peace be with you.” I mean, I was always taught that it was rude to interrupt, but Jesus doesn’t seem to care. He intrudes and cuts them off in the middle of their discussion to offer them something that they hadn’t even asked for, like one of those annoying cold calls in the middle of dinner.
If Jesus really wanted to help, surely he would have gone out and about in Jerusalem and made sure that everyone saw him. Maybe he could have walked up to Herod’s palace, or Pilate’s residence, and knocked on the door with his nail-pieced hand and given them a telling-off. Then everyone would know that the disciples were right, and they wouldn’t have to hide any more, and everyone would want to listen to what they had to say.
Instead, he arrives when they are least expecting it, and gives them – of all things – peace. Peace is all right, I suppose, but what good is peace when everyone thinks you’re a heretic and wants you arrested? What good is peace when your whole world has been turned upside down, and you’re about to undertake the most incredible and demanding adventure you’ve ever known? And when Peter and the other disciples stood there, in the future years, awaiting their own violent deaths because they had followed Jesus, do you think that they stood there and said, “Thank goodness that at least I have peace.”?
I mean, is that the best thing that you can think of? The thing that you would want? For Jesus to intrude unexpectedly in the middle of your doubts and questions and struggles and say, “My peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled.”? Is that really what the resurrection story is about? Is that really what we’re supposed to do with Easter during the rest of the year?
Yes. Yes, it is. “In this world you will have trouble,” said Jesus, “but take heart, for I have overcome the world.” Because of Easter, Jesus is able to interrupt any struggle, any difficulty, any challenge and bring peace. You might prefer him to take away your problems, but he never promised that. Instead, he brings something better. Peace in the midst of problems. We need Jesus to intrude and offer us this peace, because there’s nowhere else that it can be found.
James’s Blog: Upside Down Food.
Today we remember the Passover that Jesus shared with his friends before his death; that moment when Jesus took physical, created things and imbued them with a clearly defined spiritual significance. Whatever you call it, Communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, it has its roots in the bread and wine of this final meal.
Across the world and across history, the Church has regularly remembered this moment, born in the anguish of the Last Supper. It’s ironic that while we devote so much of our efforts to fleeing from suffering, we repeatedly return to this bittersweet moment because we know that it is here that God places something special into His creation.
When I did my Master’s degree, I wrote my dissertation on suffering, because I thought that if I was going to have to write a dissertation, it should be on a topic that was going to be useful for pastoral ministry. Suffering seemed like a pretty obvious subject to look at. One of the things that I’ve learnt is that, like Communion, suffering only makes sense through the eyes of faith. Without faith, the bread and wine is just food and drink. Without faith, the cross is just a scene of injustice. Without faith, suffering is pointless. With faith, however, the bread and wine become heralds of a perfect future. With faith, the cross becomes the ultimate victory. With faith, suffering becomes a place where God meets us and does His work.
This is Easter! It’s the moment when God took the worst that the Enemy could throw at Him and turned it on its head. It’s the moment when suffering becomes the vehicle of salvation. And Easter is every moment in your life when you look at suffering through the eyes of faith.
James’s Blog: The Music of Easter.
We had nice weather last Friday. It was somewhat glorious, to be able to collect the children from school without needing to wear a coat. Spring is at hand, despite the best efforts of the weather system known as The Beast from the East, who has been trying to prolong winter. Winter, I think, is always trying to hold back spring. It won’t work though. You can’t stop the changing seasons.
Easter is also at hand. If you listen, you can already hear the Palm Sunday crowd, its praises echoing forward through time. The Pharisees tried to stop it, their own little Beast from the East tantrum, but that didn’t work either. It’s no wonder that we can hear it all, two thousand years later. Jesus himself said that if the crowd didn’t get it out of their system then the stones themselves would have to take up the song; it’s just that powerful.
Later that week, there was more music, though it was more muted. After their last meal together, Jesus and his friends sing a song before heading towards the garden. A glimpse of spring on the darkest night of the year. Winter tries its luck again: “The one I kiss, he’s the one that you want.”
And it seems to work. The friends scatter. Jesus is tried by a kangaroo court and nailed up to die.
But you can’t hold back the changing seasons, and you can’t hold back the magic of Easter song. Even in the darkness of Gethsemene night; the darkness of that Friday eclipse; the darkness of the tomb, we know what’s coming.
The ice is thawing, the green shoots are peaking through. For us, spring will turn into summer and summer into autumn and autumn back into winter, but as far as Easter is concerned, winter is behind us and always will be.
James’s Blog: What if it’s Already Happened?
Easter is a topsy-turvey time. Everything is back-to-front. Suffering brings salvation, death brings life; the established order of things is turned on its head. Yet we spend so much of our time and energy trying to make things work in a world where we believe that death is stronger than life and that despair is greater than hope. Read more
