Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

new life, here and now

3/26/2020

Our Gospel reading today (John 11.1-45) is the extraordinary story of the raising of Lazarus – a story of resurrection not just for the future, but into every day, earthly material life. I want us to concentrate on the three commands that Jesus gives in this story. Over the coming week you might like to ponder each in turn for a couple of days, and see how God speaks to you and the circumstances of your life through each one.
The three commands are these:
Take away the stone
Come out
Unbind him and let him go...

baptism in a Covid-19 world

3/22/2020

Today a very few of us (in line with current health guidelines) gather to baptise Charlotte. And we do so in the face of perhaps the greatest global crisis we shall see in a lifetime. Yet, in some ways, what better time to baptise someone! What better time to remember the great themes of baptism, water, life and light...

test or gift?

3/1/2020

Who likes tests? When I was at junior school I did – that was because I was a smarty pants and enjoyed getting all, or at least most, of the answers right. I even enjoyed testing myself. I was probably really annoying to some of my peers! Time goes by though and the tests get a little more exacting and sometimes even scary. Academic tests are one thing – or even exams in music or dance – but life throws tests at us that we had not expected and for which it is much harder to prepare – sickness, unemployment, the break -down of relationships. These test our character and the strength of our relationship with God.

One of the meanings of the word temptation which appears in our reading today is ‘testing’. But just what is being put to the test and why?

what is holiness?

11/2/2019

What does holiness, and being saintly, look like to you?
Where have you seen and experienced holiness, in the lives of other human beings you might call saintly?
On this feast of All Saints it is right for us to ponder for a moment, and to reflect, perhaps with others, on what we have seen and heard… what, I wonder, do we see, and who and what do we call holy? How does this fit with the patterns and pointers we find in our Scriptures and Tradition?

queer sheep, women's coins, and rainbow repentance

9/13/2019

Taking up today’s Gospel (Luke 15.1-10), I want to speak about three things: queer sheep, the value of women’s coins, and rainbow repentance; about how queer sheep need revaluing; about how women’s coins challenge Church and world to rainbow repentance; and about how rainbow repentance involves renewing pride in queer sheep. Firstly though, let me speak of a cartoon highlighting these themes. For, like a good picture, an insightful cartoon can paint a thousand words…

the wisdom of the homeless woman and the animals

9/8/2019

Years ago in the east end of London, I met a remarkable little old lady. She was what some call a ‘bag lady’: a homeless woman who carries her possessions with her, perhaps in just a pair of plastic bags. Her story was typical of many homeless people, although very unique, like that of every homeless person. In this lady’s case, she would tell a very brief biographical tale on a kind of continuous loop. This began with the words ‘I was a Barnados girl’, which, when repeated would start her off again on her abbreviated life-story. Was she then a sad person lost in a tiny, poor and vulnerable world, cut off from the rest of us? No, not exactly. For, in some ways, she was more in touch with existence than most, if not all of us. For this seemingly poor and aged waif had an amazing quality: namely the ability to see the plants and the animals alive around her, even in the middle of such a busy and environmentally threatening city as London then was. If you walked along with her for just a minute or two, she would point out, and open your eyes and ears to, the animal and plant life you almost always missed: the grass and the sometimes beautiful flowers which pushed through the concrete and the cracks; the birds and the insects and the urban wildlife, which, sometimes incomprehensibly, managed to thrive in the otherwise all-too-human jungle of the city. Almost everyone else was too busy, or too self-obsessed, to ‘consider’ these ‘lilies of the field’ and ‘birds of the air’. It took a similarly overlooked human being to notice and to celebrate these astonishing signs of God’s resistance. And, as she drew you into such contemplation and celebration, you thereby discovered the presence of mystery and grace.

stand up straight

8/24/2019

Jesus invites us to stand up straight, in the knowledge that we are loved and lovable – and in this story of the woman bent double he provides us with an icon, a window, onto that truth...

an inflammatory message

8/17/2019

Sometimes the message of Jesus is inflammatory – there are no two ways about it! Today Jesus expresses this very directly as he says, ‘I came to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it was already kindled!” Now this is not at all comfortable. Most of us prefer to avoid conflict and live life peaceably. We are much more at home with Jesus’s messages about love and peace and kindness, treating everyone with respect and seeking to welcome everyone. So, what are we to do with today’s story about how Jesus comes to bring division, even into the intimate unit of the family?...

keep turning up

7/27/2019

So, it’s straightforward is it? Ask, seek, knock – and you will get some kind of response – not necessarily the response you were hoping for; but at least a response. And if we ask for the gift of the spirit, Jesus is saying God will always give us that gift. It sounds like a transaction – right words in, right results out, a bit like a vending machine! Yet prayer, and Jesus’s teaching about prayer, is not as straightforward as it might appear, or perhaps as we might hope. On the one hand in this passage Jesus sounds very reassuring – God will treat us better than we treat our own children; we can be assured of God’s care for us and God’s responsiveness to our needs. Keep it simple – ask for what you want and you will receive it, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. But on the other hand, it really is not quite like that, is it? We all know of others if not ourselves, who have prayed for help, for healing, for relief from suffering in all kinds of terrible circumstances, and it seems as though their prayer has fallen on deaf ears. So, what then? – was their prayer not ‘good enough’; their faith not ‘strong enough’; their moral calibre not high enough? Surely this is not how it works? Yet I have known folk despair of God’s love for them and reject themselves as unworthy and unfit, simply because God has not appeared to answer their legitimate, heartfelt prayers. This is not the kind of God I want to know or associate with – and it is not good enough to say; ‘it’s all a mystery and one day we will understand!”...

warmduscher

5/29/2019

I learnt a new word this week. It is a German word – warmduscher. And it means a person who likes their shower warm – not cold, not hot, just warm – and they won’t experiment in either direction. In other words, they are a person who prefers to stay firmly in their comfort zone. They are a person who is very resistant to change. And you know what, that is most of us! – no wonder it is so hard to get elected to government on a program for change! It is really hard for most of us to try something new, because as human beings we are hard- wired to stay safe, and not risk change.

Which brings us to today’s story. Three things strike me in this story. The length of time the man has been waiting at the pool. The clarity of Jesus’s question ‘Do you want to be made well?’ and the mystery of why Jesus chose this person to heal on the Sabbath. Let’s think about them in turn...