Faith Lessons from TV 1 - Smallville

Every so often we can learn an important lesson about faith whilst watching a TV programme that, on the face of it, has very little to do with Christianity.

On Tuesday evening I found myself watching Smallville on E4.  For those who don’t know Smallville is concerned with the story of the young Clark Kent and tells of how he eventually grew up to become Superman.  The particular episode was called ‘Homecoming’ and one of Clark’s allies from the Legion of Superheroes in the future, Brainiac 5, travels back in time to show Clark that he still blames himself for his adoptive father's death years prior, he is abandoning his friends in the present, and that his fear of his own future is unfounded.  This leads to Clark gaining new self confidence and beginning to show the support for his friends that he should.

I was immediately struck by the parallels in my own life.  As a Christian it I easy to dwell on all the times that I’ve failed God; all the times I’ve sinned, all the mistakes I’ve made.  Whilst it is good for us to acknowledge our sinfulness and our need for God it can also lead us to dwell too much on the negative and to think far too little of all the positive, loving, life affirming and God affirming things we have done as well.

As Christians we can become almost paralysed by our own lack of self-worth and fear of failure.  Whilst it is good to be humble and to acknowledge our need for God it is also good for us to remember that through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and with the empowering of that same Spirit we can do mighty things for God.

Clark Kent has his super powers and by the end of the Smallville episode he realises that he can indeed fulfil his destiny and become the world’s greatest superhero.  We have a far greater power in our lives through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and if we rely on his guidance and empowerment, if we walk in his way and do God’s will, then we too can do good things an fulfil the special calling God has for each and every one of us.

Saying Goodbye...

Over the past few days I've had to say some goodbyes to some people and its been hard.

College term has come to an end so far as the Anglican Ordinands are concerned (the Methodist Student Ministers do an extra week) and so last week there were a number of services/events to mark the moving on of my Anglican brothers and sisters to ordination.  The reality that people I had spent time with, shared laughter with, engaged in deep meaningful conversation with and shared worship and fellowship with were leaving suddenly hit me quite hard.  It was particularly hard at the Leaver's Ball when I knew that I would probably been seeing many of them for the last time.

I will have to go through the same set of emotions this week too as the second year Methodist Student Ministers prepare to leave college.  On Friday we'll have a Leavers Service and Dinner and the goodbyes are going to be difficult again.  Some of the leavers have touched my life and faith in quite profound ways and I will miss their love, concern and patience.

Last night at church we had the last service at our church from a Minister who is leaving my home Circuit at the end of the month to move to a new station.  The service was excellent with a very powerful sermon about trusting in the Holy Spirit.  This Minister has been an encourager to me over the past few years, helping to support me through Local Preacher training, candidating and now through my first year traing to become a Methodist Minister myself.  She has also made a really valuable and siginificant contribution to Circuit life and ministry and she will be greatly missed by many people, myself included.  There is a Circuit Service to say goodbye, of course, but yesterday evening marked Poulton Methodist Church's goodbye.

Of couse there are a lot more goodbyes to come in my future, not least next year when I have to say goodbye to the college community itself as I (hopefully) move into Circuit Ministry as a Probationer Minister.  Goodbyes are never easy and I don't think that they ever will be but I thank God for all those lives that have touched mine in profound ways and helped to make me the person that I am; and I look forward to all the people I have yet to meet who will also become important to me.

Lindisfarne, Thin Places and Celtic Spirituality

On Wednesday the college organised a quiet day for us on Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island.  It’s taken me a couple of days to process the experience and to write something that hopefully will make some kind of sense.

I’d visited Lindisfarne many, many years ago on a family holiday and the main thing I remember from that occasion was that it was a long walk to the castle from the main car park on my relatively short 12 year old legs.  I don’t think there was a shuttle bus to the castle in those days!  I don’t remember much else, other than nearly being caught by the tide on the way back!

Studying theology and ministry in Durham has inevitably brought about an encounter with Celtic Christian spirituality.  Relatively new to me it is something I have embraced over the past few months because I feel that in many ways the Celtic Church was closer to the first Christians in terms of faith and life than were are today.  I get a lot out of both ancient and modern Celtic Christian hymns and prayers and O love the idea of ‘thin places’; physical locations where it seems to be possible to feel very close to God.

So I arrived on Lindisfarne full of anticipation of the day ahead and was not disappointed.  Immediately after I dismounted from the coach I felt the almost tangible presence of God’s Spirit.  The Holy Spirit permeates the island in the same way that he/she does some Cathedrals and churches.   It sounds like a cliché but Lindisfarne does feel holy in a very real way.

After a mug of coffee and a short prayer service we were encouraged to do our own thing, to use the time available for personal prayer and reflection.  This was some thing I was very keen to do; but first I wanted a taste of another big aspect of Celtic Christianity: hospitality!  Another student and I decided to go for lunch together in one of the local hostelries before going off on our own.  We received a warm welcome from the landlord and enjoy a delicious meal of fish, chips and peas washed down with a pint of the local real ale.  It was the freshest fish I have eaten in a long time with light golden batter and the chips were perfect, crispy on the outside and fluffy within.  The beer was excellent, malty and full of flavour!

After lunch I walked across the sands to Cuthbert’s Island, which is on the South East tip of Holy Island near St Mary’s church and accessible when the tide is out.  I stood in the remains of Cuthbert’s stone shack and thought how that dedicated man of God had spent hours isolated on that island with only the Scriptures and God for company.  Like many of the saints the example of his life and dedication to God is both inspiring and humbling.  Standing on the highest rocky outcrop of that island, with the sun in my face and the wind at my back I dedicated myself again to God and to his calling on my life and received his loving assurance that he is with me every step of the way.

There was more exploration of the island including a delightful half hour in the harbour looking at the boats and lobster pots and reflecting on a simple and honest way of life that is slowly disappearing.  Some aspects of modern life are, of course, much better, but I wonder if we have lost something in loosing our connections with the natural world and the simplicity of good honest living as we walk with our God.

The day ended with a service that was supposed to be on the beach but ended up being in the church due to the almost inevitable rainfall.  The service was very moving and a time of great blessing; especially the fish finger sandwiches we finished off with.

I will return to Lindisfarne again; perhaps in company or perhaps alone on retreat but I will take something of the place with me where ever I go and I think that the Celtic Christianity which formed the community there centuries ago and remains to this day will continue to be an important aspect of my own faith journey.

Life's Trivialities - or Why I Stopped Reading Superman Comics

One of the things I’ve recently realised over the past year since I started training as a Student Minister is how things that once seemed to be really important to us can become trivial, unimportant, lost to a bigger vision of life.

Once of my big passions until comparatively recently was American superhero comics (or comic books as the Americans call them) and I really needed my weekly fix of Superman and Batman.  I would go to the local specialist comic store the day they came in, almost the hour they came in, such was my enthusiasm for them.  This was a weekly habit and I would really resent it if I had to go later in the day; or even worse, on a different day.  Since Christmas though my interest has suddenly waned.  It isn’t that I can’t afford to buy them, or that the quality of the writing and art has deteriorated (far from it) or that I think there is anything intrinsically wrong with a 43 year old reading superhero comics; it’s just that I’ve lost interest completely.  What was so important to me has become a triviality, unimportant, irrelevant to my life.  I almost feel that I wasted time reading those comics when better things could have been occupying my time and grabbing my attention.

I wonder if there is something about ministerial formation, about the way the God is working in my life and bringing transformation that is working on a deeper level than I had realised.  I expected to learn and grow during my time at college (I refuse to use the word seminary – far too American) but I hadn’t realised that the change would be at such a fundamental level that interests I had held for years, consuming passions almost, now seem to be trivial and unimportant.

Knowing that one is being changed is an interesting feeling and should be a scary proposition.  What if I don’t like who I become?  What if my family and friends don’t like who I become?  These are the fears and yet for me they are nothing because the one changing me is the one who gave up everything to save me and sinners like me.  What safer place can I be in than the hands of God? 

Lord Jesus, let these dry bones live again to do something great in your name.  Amen.

Proud To Be A Methodist!

I always look forward to receiving The Methodist Recorder, which I pick up from my local newsagent.  I could take out a subscription and have it delivered; but I like to support local businesses in my area and its always pleasent to chat with the girl behind the counter who used to be a member of the children's drama group at church.

There's always a lot of interesting stuff in The Methodist Recorder and I'm surprised that more Methodists don't read it.   As well as the news there are interesting debates on the letters page, wonderful sermons and articles, notes for preachers, reviews and other interesting content.  This weeks was particulary good as the centre four pages were devoted to a new campaign by the Methodist Recorder called Proud To Be Methodist.  This campaign really appeals to me because I the past two or three years I have come to the conclusion that I am indeed proud to be a Methodist.

Let me explain.  I have been brought up in the Methodist Church, attending a Methodist Sunday School and then going on to attend Poulton Methodist Church.  apart from a brief sojourn in the Church of England when I was at university (both a really lively evangellical church and an Anglo-Catholic church) I have always attended a Methodist church and yet I never really identified myself as a Methodist.  If asked I would have probably said that I was a Christian who just happened to attend a Methodist church.

I would now say that I am mostly definately a Christian, but also that I am a Methodist Christian and proud of my roots in the Methodist Church which I believe was raised by God to spread scriptural holiness.  I started to understand just how Methodist I was when I started to study the Local Preachers' Faith & Worship course.  This has continued through my time as a Student Minister at a joint Methodist and Anglican training college where the experience of sharing lectures, worship, prayer and fellowship with Anglican students has enabled me to discover that whilst we agree on the fundamentals of the Christian faith there are also areas of difference that make us distinctively Methodist or Anglican.  I realised that my faith and Christian understandings had a distinctly Methodist flavour and I am proud of that flavour and of the understandings it can bring not only to Methodism but also to the world-wide Body of Christ.

I am now proud, in the best sense of that word, to call myself a Methodist, without in any way seeing myself as superior to the adherents of any other Christian denomination.  I am proud to belong to a church that believes in the power of preaching, that believes that all people need to be saved and can be saved, that has a history of concern for the poor and downtrodden and a church that is connexional and is governed by a Conference rather than by Bishops or a local congregation.  I am proud to be part of a Christian denomination that has an open communion table, that emphasises the assurance of salvation and scriptural holiness.  I have, for many years, used the Methodist quadrilateral of reflecting using scripture, tradition, reason and experience and believe that this brings a good balance to applying our faith to contemporary issues and Christian practice.  I know that these things are understood and valued within the wider worldwide church but also recognise them as Methodist in origin and emphasis.

Perhaps, most of all, I am proud to be a Methodist because it is the church that has nurtured my Christian faith and the church I believe God has called me to serve as a Presbyter.

Pride is often seen as one of the seven deadly sins and it is said that 'pride goeth before a fall'; but I don't think that it is in any way wrong to say that I am proud of the denomination that has given me a spiritual home for nearly 44 years and which I believe God still wants to use to help to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.

I am proud to be Methodist because Methodism is, at its best, a missional and discipleship movement contributing towards Jesus final command to 'go and make disciples of all nations.'  To be part of such a movement is an honour and privilege.

The Post Office Queue - More Interesting Than You MIght Think!

There are some things that are inevitable in life.  Birth is one, death is another and in between the two you can be fairly sure that virtually every time you enter a Post Office you will be forced to join a queue.

I just wanted three stamps.  I know that there are lots of places you can buy stamps these days, including supermarkets and newsagents, but they come in books of six or ten and I only wanted three.  I'm also quite old fashioned in some ways; I get my milk from the milkman (or should that be milkperson in these politically correct times), I get my meat from the butchers, I get my fruit and veg from the greengrocer and I buy my stamps at the Post Office.  I accept that as part of the process I will have to queue.

The Post Office I went to has an enlightened policy.  Instead of a queue at each window there i one queue that feeds them all,  stopping scientific discussions of why the queue you choose is inevitably the slowest moving queue.  So I entered the Post Office today to join said queue and as I waited patiently (yes, you doubters, I was patient) I engaged in one of my favourite pat times, people watching!

There was a young lady with a pram containing a chortling baby.  I noticed she had no wedding ring.  Was she a single mum abandoned by the childs father?  Maybe she was living happily with somebody who provided for her and the baby, a father who stayed out of love for his partner and child.  Perahps she was married and just not wearing a wedding ring.  Its easy to act on first impressions and make judgements, but how wrong we can often be.

Behind me was a lady reading a newspaper as she stood waiting.  I hadn't seen her and jostled her paper with my elbow, dislodging several pages in the process.  I picked them up, apologising profusely and received a warm smile and a thank you.  Such moments bring a glow to the heart, a moment of real engagement with somebody I've never spoken to before and maybe never will again.  How many lives do we touch fleetingly as we make our own journey through life?

There was an older gentleman wearing a three peice suit, crisp white shirt and impeccably knotted silk tie.  In his button hole was a fresh carnation.  Was he off to a wedding or was he just one of the old school who think a gentleman should be correctly dressed at all times?

Another person who caught my eye was a man of similar age to myself, wearing baggy tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, with the hood down.  For some reason I was reminded of a baby in a baby grow and found myself uncharitably wondering why an adult would want to dress like an infant.  This was wrong of me.  What business is it of mine how other people dress?  If he's comfortable in tracky bottoms and a hoodie why should that be grounds for critiscism?  The answer is that it shouldn't.  Our society is far too obsessed by how people look when what really matters is what's inside, what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'.

As I looked at all these wonderful, individual, amazing people I reflected what a wonderful and amazing God we have; a God who loves and cares enough to make us all different, who takes time in creating individuals and who loves and cherishes each and every one of us.  May I see others through God's eyes and love them as he loves them.