abbotsford.org.uk

New Spill the Beans

Tis complete - ish. Here's Spill the Beans - resource material for worship and learning written by a few Scots in their local places for local people.

You can have a look at it for free (we've been piloting it for a while now). Here are weeks September 4-October 16. If you like it and would like to use it then you can download but if you'd like to use it for the whole season up to Advent then we'd humbly ask for a donation but that isn;t for yet becasue we're still finishing off publishing all the weeks up to Advent. When that's available, and you lime it, then we'll tell you what to do.

Following this there will be material for Advent through to end of Epiphany, followed by Leant and Easter material and then finally material from Pentecost through to the beginning of September. All lectionary based. All freshly written by people who have all the anxieties of living and working in congregations who all need different things.

We have a website here where there will more information and further downloads. But for now you can downoad it here Download Spill-the-Beans-Pent-2a-Booklet-4sep-16oct-2011.

Or you can click the picture.

Crumbs in the hand

Pour crumbs into a big bowl then cup crumbs in your hand with each verse and then let them pour out again

Hold in your hands a few crumbs of faith
and watch the saviour move towards you

Hold in your hands a few crumbs of hope
and wait for heaven include you

Hold in your hands a few crumbs of silence
and hear the whole universe call your name

Hold in you hands a few crumbs of bread
and know the bread-maker has just broken bread with you

From every borderland
every neighbourhood
every tradition
every culture
let us meet here
for God is shifting love’s borders
to make space for us all

Waves and Crumbs

Two stories back to back in the lectionary, last week and this week, that speak into one another in times of change which is where we are at in Abbotsford.

A: It is safe in the boat: a place of security while the waves swell and the wind blows. It is a good place to be.

B: It is safe in our own land, security in the culture and friends we are familiar with and we are cushioned by sharing the same thoughts about those beyond the border. It is a good place to be.

A: But taking that step…

B: Taking that journey…

A: Stepping out of the boat…

B: Stepping across a border…

A: And suddenly everything changes.

B: And the familiarity is gone.

A: And the security disappears.

B: And the encounters challenge you.

A: And it’s then you have to trust what you want to be true, to be able to walk on water and keep your sight on Jesus.

B: And realise a new place offers a new challenges to old ideas.

A: I walked on water, the impossible water, for a moment. I saw what I was heading for and trust was more powerful than anything else for that moment. Gravity, common sense, physics all fell away when trust took over, a longing for what was possible. And I walked.

B: I had my daughter healed simply by the trust I had in what Jesus was able to do, even if he didn’t see it that way at first. He called me a dog. He told me, like any Jew would do, that I wasn’t like them. I was a foreigner, yet he was in my town and I told him that even the dogs are allowed crumbs from the table. And it was like an epiphany. A light went on and it dawned on him that what he was talking about: the love and grace and inclusivity of God, was not just for Jews, but for all. And my daughter was healed.

A: I stepped out the boat and I am not scared to get my feet wet any more.

B: I stepped out from the prejudice and challenged what Jesus thought about people who were not like him and I am not scared to think differently anymore.

A: I tasted adventure.

B: I tasted bread.

A: The boat remains safe but the adventure calls me to the waters edge.

B: My own land remains safe but the kingdom grows in the meeting place of differences.

A: The adventure calls.

B: And the crumbs taste good.

Why should the devil have all the good camera shots?

With the riots down south not as bad last night as it has been over the weekend there has been a clear reaction to it all: twitters coming together to clear up the mess. Something like 90,000 have been involved in that.

To me that's how to defeat violence. It may not stop it. That's a different thing. But to defeat something you show that it has no life by bombarding it with the opposite reaction saying: "This doesn't have a place, nor does it have momentum, or long life."

You do something that has more power to change things, something that is more long-lasting, that has more integrity, something more decisive and counter-cultural. I want the cameras to show just as much clean-up as looters because that's the real news: people making choices against what hurts and that more people want that by a long shot than the minority who would do down their own community and their own people and their own neighbours, but it doesn't seem as photogenic. Why should the devil have all the good camera shots?

 

Chocolate Teapots (14th August 2011)

Matthew 15:10-28

From purity laws to their exception. What a great way for the realm of God to move. From outlining what ought to be done in the name of religion that illustrates our dedication to God to a fine example of treating everyone as an exception to those rules.

But the best bit is is that it is Jesus who is the one who learns it. Here he's got a foreign woman who doesn't comply to the purity rules but she seems to crack open enough space for the reign of God to push through all the purity rules and perhaps keep the justice and inclusion and generosity of the kingdom out. She challenges Jesus to think about what he's talking about and what he's been brought up to believe about others who aren't of Israel and in the biggest pause and heaven shifts uncomfortably and the truth being thrown back in it's face, he recognises the turning moment and lets go of a whole lot of cultural prejudice in order to grasp hold of the new culture of the inclusive nature of God's grace.

That's a woman I don't want to meet but one who holds the voice of heaven in her throat. I hope the spirit give her voice today again.

Little Faiths

Given the last month has been about seeds and growing faith from the smallest things, today we lived through the cutting comment of Jesus: O ye of little faith. But even with his own words, Jesus makes that positive: from little things, big things grow and the little faith Peter had to step out the boat, even as he doubted, grew and grew, into the Apostle we call The Rock.

We used the contemporary reading below and there were lots of tiny 'faith's printed out on small pieces of paper and people were invited to cover the cross with them, a symbol of what little faiths together can do.

O ye of little faith

"How sweet the name of Jesus sounds" plays in the background. The word 'faith' is printed small on small pieces of paper and after the reading (for two voices) people are invited to take one and stick it to the cross, thus a whole lot of little pieces of faith making up it's shape. You won’t see them individually but they are there and they are enough.

O ye of little faith

he said when I stepped out the boat
and found my feet sinking among the waves.
I of little faith,
yet he had faith in me,
and so I walked with him
beyond death,
and into resurrected life again.
I don’t know how much faith I have
but I know who I trust.

O ye of little faith

he said as we were hurled in the storm
frightened of waves and death
and a voice that calmed the abyss.
We of little faith
yet he had faith in us
and we followed him
through miracles and healings
that brought life again.
We didn’t know how much faith we had,
but we knew who to trust.

O ye of little faith

he said to us
as we worried about tomorrow and what to wear
and he waxed lyrically of the lily
clothed in her natural god-given beauty.
We of little faith,
yet he had faith in us
that we might open our eyes
and seek first the kingdom all around us.
We didn’t know how much faith we had,
but we knew who to trust.

O ye of little faith

he said to us
as we watched him exorcise the demon from the boy
after transfiguration.
We of little faith.
Yet it was enough for him
to have faith in us
for he found a mustard seed size of faith within
and told us it was enough
to move mountains.
We didn’t know how much faith we had
but we knew who to trust.

 

 

Water-walker

as the setting sun fell away
and the wind took the space of light
the waves
like a claw
shaped the tension
between stability and capsize
and the ghost called
from among the swell
‘step out! step out!'
and as Peter’s foot
sank into the waves
with the first steps
of an impossible journey
the miracle was born:
not that Jesus was a water-walker
but that Peter
with a surge of belief
that tore through doubt
loosened himself
from that which he was familiar
but the devil of deception
robbed him
with a last pull
and faith fell away
and in that single moment
the Saviour caught him
‘o ye of yet little faith’
which hid a promise
that realises
from little seeds
kingdom’s grow
and this was only the start
for a disciple who always willing
to get his feet wet 

Summer Caption

Traditionally known as the silly season, here's a wee photo for you to add your own  caption to cheer us all up.

Chocolate Teapots (7th August 2011)

Matthew 14:22-33

This is a great story metaphor until the moment we start taking it's metaphor too seriously: step out the boat and keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. It's fine as a general rule but the reality of faith is that it comes and goes, sometimes we can't look anywhere else but Jesus and most of the rest of the time there's no where more we'd rather not look.

"O ye of little faith, why did you doubt". That's me, 100 percent , clearly. "O ye of little trust, why did you hold back", well now, that's a little less black and white. If it was all about calculating the amount of stuff I believe and reaching a critical mass that allows me to step out the boat and not sink, then we'd be waiting a while. But if it is about trusting what I see because I trust who I see, then that's a very different thing. I don't need to know what it means, I just have to rely on the dream, believe in the dare I've been given to step out. This is relationship based and I don't need a full brain to do that. I need a beating heart, a foolish soul, and a sense of adventure.

What have we done to church people that our churchianity has stripped us of a relationship with God so much that we hold back, that I hold back?

Bad Theology Alert: This must be seen as a metaphorical miracle surely and you can't make the modernday eqivalent jumping out an aeroplane and God will catch you, if only you had enough faith. Faith is defined as a quantity of beliefs that protects you from all comers but a relationship of love that holds you in trust in among all the difficulties. Or something like that...