Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

beyond embarrassment: the cry of the blind

10/27/2024

healing of Bartimaeus by William Blake

Deep faith is often embarrassing. Maybe that is a reason we human beings avoid it. We typically prefer to seek to live ‘good’ lives, or the opposite: to seek to be respectable in our opinions and behavior, or, alternatively, to find value and reputation in kicking against, or rorting, the system. Admittedly, in choosing radical pathways, we may also conceivably live out of the vulnerability of a type of deep faith. Yet that also risks centring ourselves in our own egos. Deep faith however is not only about letting go of human conventions but also about letting go of ego, into God in godself. The expressions of this can be quite embarrassing, even alarming. Maybe that is why organised religion, including much of our Uniting Church traditions, often tries to keep deep faith under control, in liturgy and in church life. Imagine, for example, if, like Francis of Assisi, we were indeed to heed Jesus’ to the rich man and give away all we have to the poor. What if, like the original Quakers and Shaker communities, we were to be so overcome by the fire of pentecostal love that we would literally move in the Spirit, shaking and quaking, in our prayer and witness? No wonder, faced by the zeal of early Methodism, that Bishop Joseph Butler famously told John Wesley that ‘enthusiasm is a horrid thing.’ That, surely, is not simply a classic English reaction to faith’s embarrassments. It also expresses much general unease about the consequences of letting go into God. For deep faith is beyond embarrassment, as we see in today’s Gospel story (in Mark 10.45-52)…

bending and unbending - what are we sharing in worship?

8/21/2022

Jesus and the Bent Over Woman, by Sister Barbara Schwarz, www.artafiregallery.homestead.com

Today’s Gospel story is one which resonates powerfully with me. For I had lower back problems for many years, and I still vividly remember my back going into total spasm as I once tried to change trains at Strathfield station. I was bent double and simply could not move, despite the help of others. It was a key moment in which I began to realise that my life, and especially my relationship to my body, had to change. I had to start listening to my body, in which so many emotions, not least denied gender and sexual emotions, were trapped. Not simply physically, but in other ways, I had to learn to bend and unbend, more fully to know and flow into my life and spirit. Now, of course, not all our ailments and physical challenges have obvious spiritual connections. However many, in my experience, do, and this is certainly part of what the Gospel writer is trying to say to us in our story today. For whilst we may speculate on the likely form of physical arthritis with which the woman may have been afflicted, Luke is calling us to recognise our spiritual arthritis and its potential for transformation in God. At this time, in the life of this community, and the wider Church and world, it is perhaps well worth reflecting upon. Indeed, as we continue to ponder our own mission calling together, it is good to ask what bending and unbending might represent for us, not least in our prayer and worship life. For whilst it might be tempting to consider today’s Gospel story in relation to many whose physical bodies and lives need unbending, I believe that the great mystic Evelyn Underhill had it right when she said:

We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do… forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by, and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be.

Prayer and worship, she, and I, would propose, are about helping us with that fundamental verb: bending and unbending our lives and bodies, our whole selves, be-ing, in relationship to the Spirit of all…

repairing the breach

3/6/2022

Today I would like to introduce you to an old friend. Do you like their orange flowery skin and scrunched up green and other patterned ears? I call them Angell – with a double ‘l’. They come from my first year at theological college, in some of the darkest days of Margaret Thatcher’s time as UK Prime Minister. For I brought Angell home from a church fête stall during a formation placement. This was in Brixton, the scene of two (in)famous ‘uprisings’, or riots – depending on your outlook – led by Black British people. The immediate cause of the first of these, in 1981, was a response to extraordinary ‘stop and search’ laws and police brutality. Tensions were particularly high after a suspicious fire in which 13 black teenagers and adults had died. The final straw was the so-called Operation Swamp 81, named after Mrs Thatcher’ speech in which she claimed the UK ‘might be swamped by people of a different culture.’ The 1981 Brixton Riots lasted for three days. They triggered similar ‘uprisings’ across Britain’s inner-cities, and led to the landmark Scarman Report, which began the long journey of addressing racial injustice and police reform in the UK. It was fuelled by a powerful cocktail of poverty and deprivations of many kinds, as well as race. In Brixton, the large African Caribbean population were at the centre. And it is out of this background that Angell comes, so called after Angell Town, a particularly challenged and challenging housing estate, after which the Church of England parish was named. So Angell reminds me always, both of the very real violence involved in today’s Gospel in the Temptations of Christ, and of the continuing struggles for what Martin Luther King called ‘the beloved community’…

how do we offer hospitality in the face of abuse?

10/17/2021

Many years ago, before entering ordained ministry, I worked for the probation service in England. I was an assistant house manager for a hostel for what were called ‘hard to place’ ex-offenders. ‘Hard to place’ – whom do you think that included? ...
Well, it referred both to those who had committed the most serious of crimes and to those who were liable to cause physical and reputational damage, including those who had committed arson or who might be seen by the wider community as scandalous. We had men who had committed so-called ‘minor’ offences – some of whom, to be honest, could sometimes be the most awkward residents of all. We also however sometimes had men who were on ‘life license’ for taking the lives of others. Certainly, we always had at least one man, or several, who had committed sexual offences. Perhaps that group of people were also always of the greatest underlying concern, at least in terms of risking public outcry and our own limits of hospitality. For appropriate relationships with those who have committed sexual offences is rightly vital. What then does that mean, today, for churches?...

resurrection - re-entering the garden

4/5/2015

by Jon Inkpin for Easter Sunday, 2015

I would like to ask three leading questions this morning.

The first question is: Does anyone here have a garden?...
What does it look like?   What do you do with it?
Do you realise we have a special garden – called a Quiet Garden – at St Mark’s? You might like to check it out sometime…
Gardens are so often a delight, aren’t they? – not least in this ‘Garden City’ of Toowoomba.

My second leading question is: Have you ever done anything wrong, or had something done to you, which was wrong, and which maybe made you feel bad or ashamed?... All of us I suspect!
Have you ever felt afraid, or suspicious too?    Have you ever felt betrayed, or been betrayed?
Again, all of us experience these things, don’t we?
This part of what Holy Week, and especially Good Friday, is all about, isn’t it? - facing up to our sin and shame, our fear, suspicion and betrayals. So what then is Easter about? – and what has it to do with a garden?   The answer is: a whole heap of beans, running over and flowing everywhere! When we see that our whole life is transformed, just like Mary Magdalene in our Gospel reading today: which leads to my third, and the most important, leading question of all in a moment…

beyond separation - the light that heals

12/12/2014

by Jon Inkpin, for Advent 3, Year B

What does light mean to you? Let us reflect upon it. For light is at the symbolic heart of Advent and Christmas, as it is of our Gospel reading this morning. Indeed the Gospel writer John says of John the Baptiser, ‘he came as a witness to the light.’ So what is this light and what difference does it make to our lives?

Our Gospel reading today is not entirely helpful. For a number of reasons, our lectionary compilers missed out 11 verses between the first few verses (verses 6-8) and the following ones (19-28). Which is a bit of a shame. For verses 9-10 especially, are, for me, key to understanding both the light of John’s Gospel and John the Baptist’s role. For verses 9-10 say this: ‘The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world, He was in the world, and the world came into being through him: yet the world did not know him.’ In other words, John’s Gospel is saying that what we know as the light of Christ is that which lights up everyone, but we, as human beings, fail, so often, to grasp this. As a result we become separated, or feel ourselves separated, from true reality. This is the root of the brokenness and divisions of our world, of our personal relationships, and of our own personalities. If we are not connected, or do not know ourselves as connected, to eternal light, then how can we shine to our fullest.

This is at the heart of the ministry of healing in which we share in our eucharist today. As we pray, we do so to be reconnected and renewed in the light of Christ. For, in the light of Christ, all things are interconnected and re-illuminated. The ministry of healing, you see, is not a special separate act. It is an affirmation and demonstration of our deepest reality: that we all come into being through the light of Christ and that we all shine best when we allow that light to flow through us and between us...

veriditas - the greening of our souls

12/7/2014

by Penny Jones for Advent 2 year B

It gave me great joy yesterday to see everything so green after the rain. I am sure we are all taking delight in the clean fresh scent and the signs of new life. It would not be too fanciful I think to say that our bit of the world has been ‘baptised’ over the last few days.

The great medieval Christian mystic Hildegaard of Bingen coined a particular word for such ‘greening ‘ of the earth. She called it ‘veriditas’, from the Latin word for green. For her it best described the first shoots of green leaves poking through the white snow after a long winter in her native Europe. It was the sign of new life. And so too for us, as rain restores life to our parched land we see fresh potential for life in the renewed greenness of our land.

When we think about baptism and the ministry of John the Baptist which we recall today, veriditas, the ‘greening’, is a good picture to have in our minds. It is a picture that works at many levels. It describes the ‘greening’ of the outer world, the created order on which we rely for daily life. It describes the ‘greening’ of our inner world, the work of God in our individual souls. And it describes as well the transformative work of the Holy Spirit within our society and wider political systems...

what is it about trees?

9/6/2014

by Jon Inkpin, for Forest Sunday in the 'Season of Creation' 7 September 2014

What comes to your mind and heart when you hear the word forest or tree? What forest or trees do you recall? With which forest or tree do you most identify? Probably all us have a particular forest or tree which comes to mind: a special forest or tree which has, or has had, importance to us, perhaps going back to our childhood. Perhaps it is a single tree, in, or on, or beneath which we have played, or met a lover, or found refreshment. Perhaps it is a rainforest, or a stand of eucalypts in which we have spent some time. Perhaps it is a forest or a tree we have encountered in another place or time, on a holiday or a journey. Whatever it is, it will have shaped our life and awareness in some way...

standing on holy ground

8/30/2014

by Jon Inkpin, for Pentecost 12A

What do you make of religious experience – not religious ideas, religious morals, religious activities, but religious experience? Does it make you awkward, uncomfortable, even embarrassed? Many secular people find it to be so. Even many Christians avoid talking about it. To a degree, this is understandable. Religious experience can be very intimate and personal. It is not always something we want to hawk about and have discussed in public. It is after all a holy thing, and St Paul warned us not to throw holy things before the ignorant, the swinish, lest they be trampled underfoot. It can also be misused, like those Christians, and others, who sometimes tell us that unless we have their kind of religious experience – perhaps their kind of conversion or charismatic experience – then we are not Christians, or acceptable to God, at all. All that, as I say, is understandable. Yet, if it keeps us from religious experience, or reflecting on our religious experience, then it is a huge problem. For, as we see in today’s great story of Moses and the burning bush, religious experience is central to our Faith. Encountering the living God is not an embarrassing extra to life. It is at the heart of our being and our becoming. For, as Saint Augustine said, our hearts are ultimately restless until they find their rest in God...

die harder in precious light

4/17/2014

for Good Friday 2014, by Jonathan Inkpin

Throughout the Christian centuries, artists have created many moving images of the Crucifixion. One of the most powerful recent examples is found in the work of the Scottish artist David Mach. I first came across this two years ago in the wonderful Galway Arts Festival in Ireland. It was part of an exhibition entitled Precious Light, which was created as part of the celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. This exhibition included a whole series of large and hugely dramatic collages based on many of the great stories of the Bible, each transposed to one of the great cities of our world. The centrepiece however was ‘Golgotha’: a massively arresting larger-than-life sculpture of the Crucifixion, made from steel girders and re-shaped coat hangers. By its sheer size, its searing suffering and sharp sensation, it challenges us and calls forth response: what do we make of Crucifixion? It is the challenge and call of Good Friday...