abbotsford.org.uk

Chocolate Teapots

Ah, Chocolate Teapots, so named because a member of this congregation described himself thus after saying he would like to be part of a dialogue between the two of us over the week's texts yet in all the time we did that never offered any words on any of the texts (though he offered far more in other ways that affected things just as much). He would say each week that he was as much use as a chocolate teapot. Thus began a weekly reflection on one of the lectionary texts that may itself have been as much use as a chocolate teapot to whoever reads them.

However, the form chocolate teapots is now going to take will probably change, though I am quite certain it won't disappear. I am moving to a different congregation and this Sunday is my last as minister in Abbotsford. Just saying that makes you bow your head in humility and not a little grief. But the people here are the most fabulous theological clan and have more practical theology, human insight and daring imagination when it comes to scripture and life than I ever met in all the corridors of a university.

There have been many stories told here, a lot of laughter, a healthy cynicism and the gracious and trusting ability to sit at a tangent with scripture and see the funny side as much as the serious side of being a community that has no answers but loves the questions. And the stories that have created the most debate have always been justice issues and bread and wine. Pride is one of the deadly sins but by God I'm proud that these are the topics people have responded to most. Because of that and only because of that, I will be visiting this blog as the whole community evolves through the work of the people here. That's always been this community's life force (of course it has) and always will be.

So no Chocolate Teapots as such this week. The lectionary texts are not the best ones for a good parting, but rather better for a parting that was long due after an unhealthy relationship. Thanks to those who chose the texts this week!

Which brings me to what has always been the life-giving part of this blog and as usual to look to you for insight and laughter through which most of the theology of this faith community has been expressed and lived: what texts would you use for a 'last' Sunday...?

Chocolate Teapots (28th August 2011)

Matthew 16:21-28

Here's a new advert for the outside of the church building: Come on in and we'll make you carry a cross. In fact, come on in and we'll show you how to lose you life and deny the world and all things. Come on in and we'll make you suffer, and that's not just listening to the choir murder the hymns or the preacher prove that he has a theological degree, we're talking suffering for others sake. Please do come on in, we really are quite friendly.

If you were writing an advert for the church you probably wouldn't put it in such terms. Perhaps you'd mention the friendly welcome, the fresh coffee, the desire to care for the community. That's what we do here. But Jesus, who clearly didn't work for Saatchi and Saatchi, thought that wasn't getting to the nub of the matter.

Justice, grace and kingdom God-style doesn't come any other way than to carry it's weight, feel it's pain and know how it breaks you before it brings life. Maybe we just aren't honest enough about the faith. Not to others. To ourselves.

Chocolate Teapots (21st August 2011)

Matthew 16:13-20

A name for a name. This seems to be a 'I'll tell you yours if you tell me mine' sort of conversation. Names contain values and meaning. It's not just a nice sound but contains the hope and aspirations of the person so choose your name wisely.

Names make the difference because perhaps the names come alive when we speak them and believe them. They have a power given to them, latent and patient until we find them sounding on our lips and we believe them. then they have life as we infest and fill that person we speak of with our hopes and dreams and longings and needs and faith. Dare we speak of Jesus as we believe him to be, not in the heavy laden 'Messiah' language which he doesn't want to be known by, but the everyday language that connects with people and people can understand and be drawn to...

Jesus: bread-breaker
Jesus: table-maker
Jesus: justice-bringer
Jesus: sin-bearer
Jesus: word in the silence
Jesus: authority's advesory
Jesus: laughter of heaven
Jesus: glutton and drunkard
Jesus: water-walker
Jesus: crowd-feeder
Jesus: life-fullfiller
Jesus: blessing-giver
Jesus: friend of the friendless
Jesus: anger of injustice
Jesus: companion on the way
Jesus: within

 

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...

Chocolate Teapots (31st July 2011)

Matthew 14:13-21

There's a very easy exegesis for this passage: Why in the Name of God do we wait for a famine to happen on the scale of the Horn of Africa right now before we begin thinking about sharing.

We could let the Kingdom of God break in right now simply by sharing (the kingdom is not a place but a way or life remember!) but...

Given this is the only story that is in all four gospels and indeed on one of them twice: that's five times, then perhaps it might be important. Don't wait till everyone is starving, 'You give them something to eat!' I don't know is Jesus was talking tongue in cheek with that reply given the disciples question of 'Tell the people to go home and get something to eat,' but it was a one phrase manifesto of the kingdom: don't just stand there - do something.

Well, go on.

Chocolate Teapots (24th July 2011)

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Soundbite after soundbite after soundbite of the kingdom. Here is Jesus with his best one-liners hardly giving people a chance to think about one image before he tumbles into another. And it's all about small things and growth. Not about managing decline (wee lesson to the church).

With what shall we compare the Kingdom of God:

It's like finding the penny policy you've been paying into for a generation is now worth more than a bankers bonus...

It's like finding the dream you had one night keeps you awake the next night and is crowding out your daylight hours too...

It's like seeing your one year old daughter grow into a woman and know she's able to take on the world...

It's like being kind to one person who passes on the generosity until the whole church is teaming with compassion...

It's like a Chinese whisper that starts with one word "light' and grows to become the whole story of faith...

It's like a loaf of bread that is broken once and then again and again and again, enough to feed a whole community...

It's like a song that starts with only one line and finishes in a symphony...

It's like a mustard seed, a pearl, yeast, a net and becomes more than anyone bargained for...

It's like the journey of faith, that starts with one step and just keeps on going with one adventure after another...

It's like a silence that makes others pause and hold breath until a whole nations reflects on what it has done...

And please don't let the list stop there. Please add some more...

Chocolate Teapots (17th July 2011)

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

O boy! Here is the way of the gospel - again! This is a bit of a poke in the eye to those who want to sing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' and similar songs that suspect we are always at battle. If we were then this parable isn't true.

A farmer sows seeds (in Jesus day it was possibly wheat) and someone else comes in and sows 'weeds'. This was probably the plant darnel that, when fully grown - and really only then - is very like wheat but without as many ears and is rife in Israel and known as a weed, apparently (if anyone can confirm or correct please let me know).

Now we could suppose we are at battle and have to get rid of the weeds, pulling them up as soon as we see them. Thosw who edited the Bible have taken that to mean people in the church ought to be pulled out if they don't measure up to our churchiness as if there is a 'them' and 'us' and as if churchiness is an appropriate standard (I wonder if each of us is both wheat and weed?).

But I've never seen God do something like that. I've never seen God intervene and pull out the baddies and hang them out to dry. I've never seen God strike someone despite what we sing in our 'Soldiers of Christ Arise' type hymns. I've never seen God 'take out' the enemy like some Hollywood film.

What I have seen is love redeem hatred. It strikes me the parable says pulling out the weed ruins everything. Our power is in redeeming those 'weeds' around us (again what if we were both wheat and weed?). Our work is reconciliation by growing among the weeds. There is no God who will come in with fiery swift sword. But there is a God who will love unconditionally. That's the only power we've got, and the more we want to pull out 'weeds' the less we are able to love those we are called to redeem.

And why do we imagine we are the ones who do the redeeming? Are we not often the ones who need redeemed? We would have been pulled years ago.

Chocolate Teapots (26th June 2011)

Matthew 10:40-42

Basically, don't go head over heals in welcoming some famous individual because you don't welcome individuals. You welcome the community: you welcome all that individual stands for. So if you welcome a banker, then you welcome all that banker stands for, and if you welcome a teacher, then you welcome all that profession stands for, and if you welcome a carer, then you welcome all that carer stands for. That seems to have been the social norm in Jesus day: not the individual, but everything that goes along with that individual because when Jesus talks about 'welcoming in the name of' he means welcoming in the reputation of... you welcome the goals and ideals and principles of that person.

So you could get quite a reputation with the company you keep.

By the same token, if you welcome the hungry, you welcome all that the hungry stand for (and include Jesus in this bit), and the same with the poor, and the left outs, and the lonely, and the cultural misfits... And welcoming a Christian or a follower, what would people be welcoming then?

Chocolate Teapots (19th June 2011)

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

When we talk of God we are describing the limits of our culture because we can never step out of that culture. Well, we can but we just move into another culture with limits.

The image of the Trinity can be just such a bind to cultural expressions of God. But it can also be the freedom to express God in limitless ways. Perhaps it was initially created to prevent heresy but it can also be permission to be creative and expansive and think outside the box we've put God in. Creation helps us there with the great hymn of the beginning: God is breaking out, being imaginative, putting things together in different kinds of relationship. Very Trinitarian.

Dare we? In order to do that we need eyes to see and are willing to see. We need to use poetry and metaphor and allow them to bring together concepts we haven't before. We need to be alive to the imagination. And in many ways these aren't always the most generously accepted gifts in people because we can't really define them, or control them, which, perhaps, is itself an image of the undefinable God.

Chocolate Teapots (12th June 2011)

Acts 2:1-21

Big celebration time or big problem time. It seems everyone has the idea that the spirit is a nice gentle dove like creature who soothes all the world's problems. In my experience she is the one who creates them. She's a total provoker who disturbs the status quo, not just all those who are not us, out there in the world doing injustice, but also and mainly us who are habit-shaped and have some kind of neurosis that seeks to maintain belief and routine as it is. To us, this spirit who is the most wild imagination of God is a nightmare.

She's the fly in the ointment, the blemish on the skin, the rash on the hand, the graffiti on the wall, the thorn among the roses, the cuckoo's egg in the nest. She disturbs the way things are expected to go and we can take the challenge or let it go. So come Pentecost we're all thinking its a big party, but little do we realise what we're lifting the lid on. This heavenly demonstrator doesn't leave the world or the church unchanged. If the church is the same by the end of the day then perhaps the Spirit has found some other institution to bring back to life.