Rev elations

The outcome of the in/out referendum is an enormous political shock that is reverberating around the world – voting trends give a picture of a divided Britain : divided between those who are cosmopolitan and those who are traditional; between the young and the old; between cities and countryside; between the wealthy and the poor; between Scotland/Nr Ireland  and England/Wales. Such a huge political decision which ends a 46 year political union, which has toppled a Prime Minister and shocked the political classes, leaves us to wonder at the disconnect between those who lead and those whom they lead. For those who are elated and delighted at the outcome the narrative of victory is one that tells of: freedom from out of touch elites who rule from Westminster and Brussels; power to take back control of our borders; power to change our country for the better For those who are despairing at the outcome there is shock, anger and disorientation – the United Kingdom they thoug...

This weekend our nation and commonwealth gathers to give thanks for the long life and ministry of Queen Elizabeth II as we celebrate her 90 th year. We know that she still leads a remarkably full working life and we may well reflect today on how she has managed to thrive so long in such a demanding and public role. This week I’ve been on a conference and one of the subject areas was ‘building resilience for leadership’. We could easily have used Her Majesty as a shining example of someone who has displayed a remarkable resilience in leadership; not only is she the longest serving monarch in British history, but also the world’s oldest ruling monarch; and of course during those years there have been trials and challenges. But what is resilience? It includes the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; a certain toughness and clarity of vision and role. Our Queen remains remarkably steadfast and committed to her task. But, resilience is more than its formal definition sug...

Perhaps we could enter imaginatively into the face of God and more importantly into how God looks at us. It might not be easy to conjure up such an image; God’s face being hidden to us, but, what about his regard? How do we imagine him looking at us? The passages that we’ve looking at for Sunday 5th June from 1 Kings (17:17-end) and from Luke (7:11-17) reveal to us that God looks with compassion on his children, especially those who suffer, mourn and who are the least and most vulnerable in society, as women were. Elijah and Jesus are shown to have deep compassion on the two widows that they meet. They raise their sons from the dead; they act out of their very real compassion.                                                   ...

This week is being marked out by the Archbishops of   York   and   Canterbury   as a week of prayer in our nation, that ‘thy kingdom come’. At St Andrew’s we have been looking at the Lord’s Prayer and we have been having a go at writing our own version.  Below are some other resources to help you pray this week. Christ Has No Body Christ has no body now, but yours. No hands, no feet on earth, but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks With compassion on this world.   Teresa of   Avila Come, Holy Spirit: Come among us, come upon us. Come, Spirit of Truth – enlighten our minds; Come, Spirit of Love – enlarge our hearts; Come, Holy Comforter – strengthen and heal us; Come, Holy Fire – enflame and purify us; Come, Breath of Life – inspire us in our witness: that all may be drawn to know you and to praise you One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Fruits of the Spirit Galatians 5:22-23 1.   ...

I was quite struck by the man who took a photo (wrongly labelled at first a selfie) of himself a nd the hijacker of a plane, which turned out to be an instance of some love affair gone seriously awry. It got me thinking about personal identity and our modern ability to record and diary everything in the minutest detail. Does such an ability to photograph, record and write the details of our lives mean that there is nothing left to hide, nothing left to learn, everything laid bare? What will historians make of our time and culture; will they understand everything, or does the profusion of information, detail and self-disclosure obscure reality? Or to put it another way:- Would the disciples have taken a selfie with Jesus on the beach? If so, would that photo have proved for all time that Jesus was resurrected? I have a sense that the resurrected Jesus couldn’t be recognised in a photo from the past, even if we did have such a photo.  And I sense this because recognising...

When my mum was in her 20's she nearly died of a brain  haemorrhage . She tells me that her parents prayed that if her life was saved they would give her to God. This sort of bargaining with God at times of crisis is common to all of us and the story of Hannah and Samuel is a similar story – Hannah bargains with God: ‘if you open my womb, I’ll return the gift back to you’ – and she fulfills that vow; she brings her weaned child to the temple to give him as a Nazirite to the Lord. (a Narzirite is set apart, they can drink nothing made from grapes, they can't cut their hair and they must avoid corpses).  I suppose both these stories encourage us to reflect deeply on the nature of God’s relationship with us – can God really be influenced by the prayers and bargaining of God’s people? Can humans given anything to God and if so what? What are the implications of our answers to these questions? Answering these questions necessarily brings us up sharp against the gap be...

The Presentation of the Christ-child in the Temple Within the Christian tradition we do a lot of looking – we look at Jesus all the time – we tell the stories about his life, we enact out the dramas of his birth, adult ministry, death and resurrection; and today’s story is about Jesus being looked at again – presented in the temple, taken, blessed and recognised as the light of the world. Looking at Jesus is a vital part of Christian life – we learn everything from him, but the gaze is not one way – Jesus also looks back at us. Timothy Radcliffe writes that Joy begins by letting ourselves be looked at by Jesus ( What’s the point of being a Christian?) Jesus knows intimately about the ways in which humans look at one another – being a part of our world he was exposed to the range of human emotions – he was looked at with love, with gratitude, with fear, with hope, with mercy, with compassion, with hatred, with judgment and with condemnation. On the Cross he was naked and...