Listening to the stones

Chocolate Teapots (1st September 2013)

Back on with the lectionary this week. New session begins.

Luke 14:1,7-14

So Jesus' talk about the banquet and where to sit: at the top or the bottom with the hope of being moved up... It's all a bit tricky this Christian Capitalism: sit lowly so that you might be promoted and build up some credit.

Let's look again at that image Jesus gives us:

If you eat only with those who are the same as you, then you've lost or risked nothing. It doesn't cost you a thing ethically, morally or justly. You've given nothing sacrificially. You've just balanced everything, kept the equilibrium.

Kingdom values enable us instead to do things that are costly. Real hospitality is costly, it is me, being rich, giving space, food, and most importantly a place to someone who is normally in my debt in the secular world. It is a bout taking a risk for strangers realising, in truth, we are all strangers.

Sunday, Sunday

It's been a while since my last blog entry. Forgive me. But things are starting up again and the festival is taking over (it has its own facebook site. Just search for BearsdenFestival). It has been very busy. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

But we're slipping towards Sunday once more. We had a songs of praise last week (was that just yesterday?!). Now facing this Sunday coming and thinking about all-age communion. We're going to have the theme "Gathered in God" and using some photos of the congregation being added to the table during the service which will be covered in a fishing net. All very symbolic.

What other hymns might you imagine being used on this occasion? It is communion but not a formal communion so what hymns might bring us to the table together in this more creative context where we can spread the story out a little more and inger with it a little longer, gathered in God in bread and wine?

What hymns move us closer to this place of being caught in the net? What music and hymns move your soul and break open that sense of belonging beyond the obvious?

Looking forward to this week...

Chocolate Teapots (30th June 2013)

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

The whole mantle thing is interesting. We use it like a symbol because it is a symbol of course. When we pick up the mantle of someone before us, be it Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Nelson Mandela etc we talk as if we take on some of them, we want to be versions of them and do a version of what they did. Little mirror images.

Hmmmmm…

Elisha was always meant to be his own person. He wasn’t ever meant to be Elijah. Continue the story, the vision, the calling, but not be him. Elisha wasn’t to be a version of Elijah. he was to be himself because the story had been passed to him, the Spirit, the word: he was to tell it, speak it, be it. It was a new era.

The mantle was a symbol, not of the person, but the Spirit of God (for mantle can be translated as spirit): the energy of God has been reborn in a new person. No clones here. And a double share? Well, yes! The echo and memory of the old invested in the anxiety and enthusiasm of the new. That is one heck of a lot of power: memory and enthusiasm. You can do a lot with that.

Hymns and songs that might inform this passage? Incidental music? How would you read the passage to make it more of an encounter with God?

Chocolate Teapots (23rd June 2013)

1 Kings 21:1-21

Elijah and Naboth's vineyard. It's a great big metaphor.

No prophecy in a vacuum. That's about it this week. No prophecy in a vacuum. Which means when any of us proclaim God's Good News it is done in the middle of everything else that is going on. It isn't neutral nor does it sit on the fence. Prophecy compares what is going on in the world with what God expects to be happening in the world. In fact without the context, you haven't got any prophecy at all.

All the mess of the world and all the politics of G8 summits and all the machinations of the church struggling to be relevant and all the neighourhood stories are the contexts for prophetic utterances. Without that context then you may be saying something righteous and doctrinally sound and beautiful, but it ain't prophecy, it ain't the word of God or at least it ain't the word of God that is relevant for this moment.

You can't suck the air out of God's Word so let the world back in to hear what God is saying.

Chocolate Teapots (16th June 2013)

1 Kings 19:1-15

God is more 'god' when God keeps silence rather than all the roaring and fire and thunder, and lightning etc. My God is a quiet God. I don't know if God even has a mouth or lips or can make any sound. The pharisees wanted Jesus to call down some great sign or wanted  heaven to roar or something like that to make God 'God'. And the bible is full of great miracles and noise and voices and stuff. But God is more 'god' when there is silence: just a presence, just a purpose, just a calling, an urge, a movement that says 'there are things bigger than you can ever speak of, hear, understand or comprehend.'

Here's Elijah getting the same message. Signs and wonders are easy and they make God sort of magical and awe inspiring. The silence is different. It's more powerful. It's everything that's left when the noise runs out. It's what is behind all things that try and make themselves noticed by drawing your attention towards them. It's the vastness that holds everything that clangs and shouts and is certainly not empty. The silence is always there. Sometimes you can't hear it because of the noise but it is always there. Noise isn't. It always runs out. That's why silence is more God-like than earthquakes, wind and fire.

My God is the quiet one.

Any hymns that might be appropriate (except Dear Lord and Father of Mankind). What symbol might be placed on the communion table to represent this silent God? What other music might be played from popular culture that might help draw us from contemporary to ancient?

Over to you...

Chocolate Teapots (9th June 2013)

We're using last weeks reading this week so that we can read Elijah chronologically.

1 Kings 18:20-39

Elijah at Carmel. It isn't exactly and easy read and one we'd like to apologise for, I hope. It's not a text you want to boast about or even imitate in our religious life today: "My God is bigger than your God!" That's playground theology and really ought to stay there.

Then Elijah goes on to say, "If you don't agree with me then you'll all die!" Great! (Remind me why am I following this God?).

But part of me wants to preach this text because it is so terrible. This is what religion can end up doing to us.

Yet on the other hand there are so many texts that are written from the underside and the victim of such terror. How many times does God say 'No!' to sacrifice etc. Perhaps the Bible invites us then to criticise it, to read these passages and say, 'Hold on a minute, didn';t you say back a few books that this kind of religion was over?' This kind of passage reminds us how the bible can become self-serving and we can rewrite it in our own image.

It's a terrible story. One to preach honestly and recognise what can happen when we take ourselves and power too seriously.

Chocolate Teapots (2nd June 2013)

We're not quite sticking the the lectionary over the next six weeks. The OT passages dot about a bit so we're going to take them in chronological order. It means swapping this week with next week and then doing the same with weeks 3 and 4. Just so you know...

1 Kings 17:8-16

Great story but it is one of those where you really need to separate the miracle from the meaning. There are three miracles: jar of food, raising of the dead and some generosity. The faithful know which one is the most important!

We've got a jar of oil and a bag of flour. Both exists in a state of a loaf away from extinction, in other words there is enough for one more meal but after that, there is nothing. Except that's not how generosity seems to work. When  generosity is shaped in the lacuna of God then there always seems to be enough for one more loaf, one more act of Table Fellowship, one more feast of blessing.

Is the miracle that the jars never run out, or that the generosity never runs out, no matter how close to extinction you come? That's the faith questions. the miracle is easy. It's out our hands. It's God's gift and for those who hunger in Africa or find themselves increasingly visiting food banks here in Scotland then it is a non-question. For those same people, however, the generosity question is the significant one: can we be generous with our very survival? Can we be generous with the very last of what we have? It's a big questions to the West. It's a big questions to us all.

Of course the real miracle is that some are generous with the very last of what they have, and are willing to give away their final crumbs of hope. How can we get to that stage in our faith?

Any hymns that speak into that, or music? What about a creative way of telling the story?

Chocolate Teapots (19th May 2013)

Acts 2:1-21

She is Spirit

She unsettles our comfort and comforts the unsettled;
And her spark lights the candle that burns through the dark;
She is the imagination of artists and poets and preachers;
the muse for the scientist, the architect and the teachers;
She dares to renew and longs to recreate,
being catalyst and yeast and disturber we need;
She’s the curve in the banana, and the spice in the chilli;
The colour in a rainbow and the squeeze in a hug;
She is the protest at injustice
    and the impatience for change;
The blessing in the water
    and water of life;
She is the chord in the chorus
    and the chorus in song;
The midwife of creation
    and creation’s big sister;
The love-song of God
    and the dance steps of life;
She is the energy of imagination on which all theories are built;
Her ideas are the visions that birth revolutions;
She is the breaker of walls
    pirouettes over boundaries;
and the question that implodes every prejudice we have;
She is the silence in words
    and the word breaking silence;
The moment in eternity holding eternity in one moment;
She is the brokenness in bread and the shimmer in wine
    and the grace that opens the table where all come to dine;
She is the doubt in our certainty and our invitation to question;
The daring that breaks stand-offs
    and the enticement to change;
She is the first and the last and the greatest and least;
the signature that turns each conflict to peace
She is the maker of adventurers
    and the unknown in every map;
the journey, the traveller, the companion, the trek;
She is the mover and shaker that comes out from heaven
and chooses to live with and dance with us here;
She is...
She is...
She is the Spirit.

Chocolate Teapots (12th May 2013)

Acts 16:16-34

If there is ever a time to read a story, this is it. Taking individual bits of it, trap us in the minutiae of story and we lose the greater picture. Instead tell the story from start to finish to get the roller-coaster ride that is the journey of faith.

Few of us will end up in prison. Even fewer of us will experience and earthquake designed to set us free and an even smaller proportion of us will get the opportunity to baptise whole households into the faith.

What we will have plenty of, however, is opportunity. Do we have eyes to see where the opportunities lie? Dare we believe where opportunities might lie for us, especially in times and places that seem all bound up? By reading this story, we set free the imagination that recognises opportunity seems to be found at almost every turn. It might not be in the dramatic form Paul and Silas experienced and in many ways I am grateful for that! Opportunity might be more a way of life, a way of living life that trusts God’s spirit of optimism and imagination. That might be enough to cause our own metaphorical earthquake. Take care.

Chocolate Teapots (5th May 2013)

Acts 16:9-15

Hey, a geography lesson:
ecclesiastical style;
Pauline style.
Not just an itinerary
but a spread of gospel -
one town to the next,
one city to the next.

What’s happened here?
The faith is an urban faith?

It is centred in the centres of discussion and debate,
in the hothouses of politics and social issues.
It is in the places where change is rapid
and different ideologies face each other
that the faith seems to be alive.

Paul’s second tour
shows us the maturing of the faith:
not a belief structure based on controlling weather patterns
or harvests
or atoning an angry and unpredictable God,
but a structure of belief
that takes on
and uses the language of ideals,
that sit with different philosophies
and argues its principles and worth,
that comes face to face
and finds its place beside the issues of the world.

This isn’t a geography lesson,
this is an insight into where Christianity lives and breathes!

And dare we still take Christianity
on the journeys Paul took it:
into the centres of power,
and preach it?

How many more Lydia’s
are waiting to hear?

We have a BB parabe this Sunday so any help with hymns and ideas and ways of reading this passage will all be very welcome to add to the mix of what might happen on Sunday...