Rev elations

St Peter, free on pixabay I work at Chelmsford Cathedral as the newly installed Canon for Evangelism and Discipleship and what better model than St Peter when we're thinking about discipleship? The first thing we learn from St Peter is that it’s normal to get things wrong, miss the point, not understand. Peter is so eager and keen as a disciple, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t make mistakes. The most profound and painful learning experience for Peter comes after Jesus’ arrest. Despite Peter’s enthusiasm, despite his confident claim that he will follow Jesus whatever the cost, he is found wanting at the time of trial. The context for the passage from John’s Gospel that we are using (see below) is Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus after Jesus’ arrest. At three separate occasions and by different people Peter is recognised as one of Jesus’ followers and each time he denies that he is: ‘ You are you not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?’ He denied it a...

Sunday 23 rd June, Trinity 1 (Galatians 3.23-29) A robe of St Francis of Assisi, Florence I wonder how much thought you gave to what you would wear this morning. Clothes have an extraordinary power to communicate and can be used to demonstrate wealth and power, or to reveal poverty, for instance. They can also convey changes in identity or role. It was a peculiar part of the liturgy on Sunday evening when I was welcomed to this Cathedral as a Residentiary Canon and I was clothed in a cope by Nicholas –it was a powerful metaphor signalling a rite of passage, a change in role and identity. I was now part of the team, wearing the same special clothing. In the letter to the Galatians, St Paul writes about being clothed with Christ - and this is a powerful idea. What does it mean to be clothed with Christ? What would Christ’s clothing look like and what would it say about us? Church ministers wear clothes that tend to denote Christ’s kingship, but how often do we wear vest...

Anyone who seeks to say that God exists and that they have something to say about God, or even for God, is walking a very fine line between insanity and megalomania: religions have fallen foul to both and still do. With that in mind, how can I stand before you as a priest, a person who is meant to be a sign of God in the world? Am I mad or a psychopath? And yet I stand here, and you are here too...... The most important thing I can say to you, is that I do, because of a sense that life is a mystery. That mystery of my existence and of yours isn’t easily located in all the other narratives that I hear and have heard through my life, about creation, purpose and meaning, or lack of it. Science and humanism offer us much, but not that.  There’s a mystery at the heart of me that’s profoundly invitational – by which I mean, it invites me to believe that my existence isn’t just a matter of flesh and blood.  And this mystery can be explored through the medium of p...

Sometimes you come across something which cuts through life and gives you a fresh way of seeing. For me, recently, it was whilst reading Esther de Waal’s, Living with Contradiction (pg.67-68) in which she quoted John Austin Baker, who said: The way to find fulfilment of the personality is not to escape from pain by refusing to love (which is suicide) or to love and possess what we love (which is self-centredness) but to love passionately with mind, heart and soul and then to endure the pain of letting go. This pulled me up short. Such sentiments appear to be inhuman, surely union of those who are in love is what God has ordained in nature? Love seeks out the beloved, seeks out their presence, delights in it. What does it look like to let go of what we love? And why would God want that from us? One of the most obvious ways is when someone we love dies. Their absence is forced upon us of course, but somewhere in the grieving process there is inevitably a need to let th...

Ash Wednesday- Reconciliation Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and     make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen Division and separation are a normal part of creation, a fluctuation between unity and separation is part of what it means to be created – we cannot escape it. Two people come together ‘are one’ and a new life is made. The foetus is part of its mother when it is in the womb – but its full identity is generated through separation from the mother.  The life of God, the Trinity, is a perfect and mysterious performance of the interplay between independence and unity – the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit experience both unity and separation, both communality o...

Climbing mountains has always been to me something of a mystical experience, from walking through and above the clouds on Ben More on the Isle of Mull, to the palpable sense that the atmosphere has changed, to the altered perspective that one inevitably gains, accompanied by the sheer effort and (if one is lucky) the mysterious isolation of the mountains, are all suggestive of ‘the other’. I remember climbing Schiehallion in Perth and Kinross as a teenager, having left my parents behind, gaining height and breaking out in spontaneous singing. It is sheer delight, after the effort, to see and gaze upon the world below. The Feast of the Transfiguration is on the 5 th August, but between the end of the Epiphany Season and the wait for the start of Lent we are treated to the story of the Transfiguration in the lectionary. The story is accompanied by a corresponding story from Exodus – the story of Moses receiving the 10 commandments from God, with a mysterious change in his appearan...

Jeremiah 26:1-16 In the Jewish religious tradition, prophets call the people back into right relationship with God .  Through cajoling, prophetic sayings and pronouncements, prophets face the wrath of the  people  – for they speak the truth and it’s not always well-received. Especially if the message  is ‘God is  not pleased with you!’. Jeremiah was rejected, abused, attacked and threatened  with death. In this passage (26:1-16) Jeremiah is let off lightly and the people concede that they should  listen to him,  rather than kill him as, ‘he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God’.  But, if could have been so different…. What role do prophets, can prophets play in the life of the Christian faith today? Prophets are there to remind us of the essential nature of our Christian faith.  They are to recall us to our right mind. They are to encourage us to follow the laws of God  and not th...