SOUL SURMISE

THE MUMFORD AND SONS COMMUNION LITURGY

This is a wee liturgy I put together for our Sunday morning communion at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church based around the Mumford and Sons song Roll Away The Stone...

 

There is a theological gem stealing past the dragons at the door of radio, television, internet and music press just now. From a band out of London called Mumford and Sons come economical, poetic couplets of devastating spiritual potency -

“It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But you say 'That's exactly how this grace thing works’
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with the restart”

It is a succinct definition, in pop song, of the crux of what makes Christianity unique. It is not what you do on the road to recovery that can change your heart; it is God’s welcome of grace at the restart. God loves us first. It is his act of love that redeems the lost cause. It is unmerited. It is unconditional. It is offered without need for a prior effort to sort it out. The welcome itself sorts it out and the efforts that follow are different as a result! Almost too good to be true. Definitely the only hope for the humans that the Mumford boys call “giddy things” (well the men anyway!), hearts that are “never pure” and souls that have “fragile substance.”

This table, Christ’s table, in this sacrament that remembers his death is our welcome. It is a symbol of Christ’s self giving act that releases the potential of grace but more than that. There is something mysterious about this act that cleanses and strengthens, that changes our heart. If you lean in and listen you will hear that welcome, as Jesus said to the disciples in Matthew 11 v 28-30 - “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." It’s God whispering, “come on in... take off your coat... take the weight off your soul... let me wash your feet...”

And in that welcome... by grace through the work of Jesus... the restart...

PRAYER

Lord, we come to you as Jesus did that very first last Supper

To give you our thanks

Thanks for this bread and this wine that we will take to remember

To remember that he who was first became last

So that we who should have been last could become first

Not because we took a long walk to work out our recovery

But because you welcome us into your love

That are not just words spoken

But actions of love demonstrated

Lord God we give you thanks

 

And Lord we seek forgiveness

For the bridges we have burned

Lord as we come towards your welcome

We remember the bridges burned

Bridges of justice across the world

Bridges of reconciliation across this city

Bridges of community around the neighbourhood

Bridges of the body here in your Church

Bridges of friendship in our closest circles

Bridges of family nuclear and extended

Bridges in our own psyche

Bridges towards you

Forgive us

Change our hearts

In this act of welcome...

AMEN

 

THE SACRAMENT – we played Pierce Pettis’s song You Did That For Me

 

THE RISING PRAYER

God we have enjoyed your welcome

We have languished in it

And so we rise

To continue in the heart of your welcome

To go and take the long road home

Believing that as we travel towards home

Home often comes to meet us on the road

As we go

Help us to be bridge builders

In our world

In our city

In our community

In our Church

In our family

In our souls

In our relationship with you

We pray that this welcome will have changed our hearts...

In Jesus name

AMEN

 

 

Corinne Bailey Rae's Prayer on Fairtrade Fortnight

SONG FOR A HEALTHY SOUL – Corinne Bailey Rae: Love’s On Its Way

At the end of Fairtrade Fortnight 2010, when we have again upped the justice for many of the world’s poor and exploited, I am drawn to the prayer right there in the middle of Corinne Bailey Rae’s cathartic new album The Sea. Love’s On Its Way is a prayer. It begins “Oh Father” confesses misunderstanding the great mysteries, looks at the state of the world and then after more confession asks that her response to this world would not be just the prayer but the action of her life: -

“I want to be able to say that I did more than pray

I did more

Than just spend my money

Just writing letters

Than just going out marching

I did more than talking and saying the right thing

Wearing the right thing

It’s time for uprising...”

 

In many ways to pray is an easy thing. We can pray alone of in Church or in more full on prayer meetings that God would change the world. God wants more. We can give money too. The Irish, north and south, are great charity givers. Name the cause and we’ll send money. There are endless telethons, street collections, Church lunches, fundraising gigs and bungee jumps. God wants more. There are also an incredible amount of marches, internet campaigns and a creative fest of imaginative way to petition. God wants more.

 

Corinne’s prayer if for uprising and that is what Jesus was about in his heralding in the Kingdom. We look to a day when prayers of petition, giving to charity or taking to the streets will all be unnecessary. We look to a time when the man who receives a fair wage for his work on a Western Cape vineyard sits under his very own vine as the Old Testament prophet said he would! What Jesus was about when he asked us to pray “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done/On earth as it is in heaven...” is exactly what Corinne Bailey Rae is praying about on Loves On Its Way. Pray that love is on its way is and then live the uprising that brings it in!

PETER GABRIEL - SCRATCH MY BACK

The fear is that many will dismiss this as just a covers album, an album to fill out the catalogue, to release while writing for the next real record. Dismissing Scratch My Back would be a serious error. The surprise that you feel when you hear that someone like Peter Gabriel is making a covers album should give you the hint not to dismiss it. An artist like Gabriel is hardly likely to do some cheap karaoke type record to fulfil contractual obligations. He must have some other interesting imaginative plan at work. Indeed, there is talk of the artists he has covered on this album then covering his work elsewhere... “you scratch my back and I’ll...” Ah! Anyway we can review the next volume in the series when it comes, this one is an astounding success. Gabriel is a creative sort and has made the sum of these twelve songs so much greater than the parts by producing them without drums and guitars and blending them into a lamenting statement of the state of the world in 2010.

The covers that are useful are the covers that give another angle, catch another hue of the original. Gabriel adds lashing of depth here to a range of artists’ work from David Bowie to Talking Heads to Randy Newman to Radiohead to Arcade Fire and Elbow. How he does it is by giving the songs these stripped back orchestral arrangements and creating a lament for the twenty first century world. The way he pieces the songs together and the way he then places them alongside each other opens up little vistas of powerful understatement.

The most inspired for me is Paul Simon’s Boy In The Bubble. Here is a song that has been conditioned in your mind with smiles and suns in its jaunty South African township rhythm. Gabriel turns it on his head and brings out the guttural cry of lament. Yes, it is still the day of “miracles and wonders” but “the bomb in the baby carriage” takes a more profiled place and “don’t cry” becomes the saddest of cries to a generation whose tragic inhumanity to human is revealed in the even more painful slo-mo! Likewise the suicide bomber in Talking Heads Listening Wind; haunting and menacing. Lou Reeds’ new song Power of The Heart becomes the hopeful spiritual, raising love to a transcendent thing somehow able to give us the strength to stay resilient through the world of Arcade Fire’s My Body Is A Cage and Radiohead’s sparse piano ballad Street Spirit (Fade Out).

Though Peter Gabriel’s song Biko might have been instrumental in changing my life, by awakening me to the injustices of South Africa where eventually I would take hundreds of students whose lives would also be changed, I have never been a massive fan. I have been an admirer of his art, social action and musical philanthropy for sure but that rhythmic Gabriel sound was just too clinical for my deeper longer musical tastes. This is my conversion album and that is not saying that it took other artist’s talents to do the converting because the words and music might belong to others but the songs here are totally under Gabriel’s ownership and craft. And at last my tastes are salivating!  

TIGER WOODS AND WHAT REALLY MATTERS

The night that I came home to find out that Kurt Cobain had died I remember thinking that the newscast was an outworking of the Biblical verse, “Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless.” Cobain seemed to prove that life after God was so pointless that suicide might be as good a way to deal with it as any. Last Friday as I sat in a Pittsburgh hotel room listening to Tiger Woods’ efforts to kick start his public recovery I couldn’t help being drawn to another verse, “What good is it for a man to gain the world and forfeit is soul.”

For over a decade I have winced at Woods’ lack of emotion and bland personality. As a pastor of people I couldn’t help but feel sorry for this young man who was programmed from a very young age to be a one dimensional success. It worked. Without doubt Tiger plays golf like no one else ever has. Yet, I always felt that he played a like a spoiled soulless robot and could never quite understand the public’s adoration.  Tragically I seem to be proven correct that the cost of the tunnel vision that got Tiger to the top of his sport has him now languishing in an addiction clinic and going on Friday’s Press Conference failing miserably in an attempt to mature his humanity, perhaps thirty years too late.  

There were two things that stood out for me in the Press Conference. Firstly, Woods spoke of believing that he was beyond the rules. When he betrayed his wife with what it seems might be a whole string of affairs he justified it to himself; the rules didn’t apply to him. This is the mark of someone who had been made to believe that he was above the rest of humanity and I guess when you are told from the age of two or three that you are special and gifted then perhaps you are conditioned to believe it. Again tragically, he was not gifted in the skills of humanity but in swinging a golf club. Perspective in what matters in life is lost and anything can and did happen.

The other thing was his strained efforts at telling us he needed to be different and a better person. Ah! At last, perhaps way too late, what matters. My fear for Woods is that these skills are easier learned when you are mixing with your peers at 7, 11 or 15 years of age. It is hard to believe that it will be easy to develop a fully rounded human being this late on in a life that can still to easily fall back on his billions of dollars rather than real hard worked for character.

Friday’s effort to meet his public failed miserably. One can only pray that Woods can somehow dig deep enough to see what really is success on this planet and restore his marriage and find the real trophies and satisfied feelings that humanity in its fullness has to offer. It is all a lesson to the world that follows the success story of Woods rather than the humbler more treacherous following of Jesus. Woods is a paradigm example in a world where money, fame and success are the sought after holy grail. Even as I visited schools with my daughter last year we were fully exposed to the sales pitch which promised to make our children great at sport or music or academia. Hunterhouse College, where my daughter finally decided to attend, stood out like a diamond in coal (or a little coal in a bag of diamonds might be a better image!) with its sales pitch of pastoral care, development of personality before exam results etc.

As the Woods story unfurls it will be an opportunity to remember what is important and what we as teachers, pastors, parents or whoever are attempting to develop. Again, the Bible comes to mind and you wonder if Woods has the spiritual insight to understand a little more clearly what Jesus meant when he called the poor and the meek the blessed!

 

REHUMANISING PEACE

(This is the script of my homily at Clonard Monastery during Week For Christian Unity... not word for word though...)

The day before I got a phone call asking if I would consider becoming the minister of Fitzroy, I was chatting to a friend about who might be whackey enough in our entire denomination to call me as their minister. I suggested that I might get a phone call from Fitzroy to which he responded, “But you wouldn’t go there... they talk to Catholics...”

Tonight I presume that you are those he was talking about. I count it a privilege to be invited by you, warmly welcomed by you and to be now... heaven forgive me, speaking to you. I am not sure what damage we are doing to each other by gathering together to share our faith in Jesus around singing his praise and reading the Scripture but hey someone will find something wrong with this moment that I call blessing.

My friend’s comments were not a surprise to me and therefore sadly did not disturb me. I have heard all the rumours about Fitzroy. My predecessor Rev Dr Ken Newell found that because he spoke to Catholics, many within Protestantism negated everything else that he and Fitzroy believed. The blatant lies that are nothing short of the most outrageously imaginative fiction have no bearing on the truth of the Biblically based spiritual strength of that congregation. My friend actually believes that his comment is a virtuous Christian stand when really it is nothing short of sectarianism, the sectarianism that has divided us for so many years and caused so much hurt and pain in our communities. Yes, he and we might never have pulled the trigger but in our dehumanising of one another we are pointing our hearts.

Sectarian stereotypes, caricatures and labelling. It allowed people in our small community to so dehumanise that they could carry out the most violently heinous of acts upon fellow citizens. Many times in the aftermath the killers were also dehumanised as animals. Jesus lived in that world too. Your theme for the week has been “you are witnesses of these things” from the end of the Gospel According to Luke. Tonight’s reading was from the beginning of the same Gospel where Jesus reads Isaiah in the synagogue kicking off to his own ministry to give the poor, the captive, the blind and the oppressed their freedom and full humanity. In between those verses we are witnesses to Jesus ministry of interrupting dehumanisation with the loving warmth of grace. There are a range of people that Jesus walks around that were dehumanized. The tax collector, the leper, the prostitute and the Samaritan woman are all people dehumanised by the centre of social, political and religious power in Israel. Time after time we are witnesses of Jesus crashing down those barricades to bring grace, redeem, save, rehumanise those who have lost the preciousness of their humanity, made in the image of God.

My favourite Irish theologian, who walks very happily between his mother’s Catholicism and his mother’s Protestantism is U2’s Bono and he speaks of interruptions of grace. God interrupts our lives by his grace to rescue us. God interrupts history by ending apartheid or the Troubles. We join God in bringing his Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven by becoming grace interrupters. It is what Ken Newell and Gerry Reynolds and many of you from Clonard and Fitzroy have been doing for years. Let us not grow complacent. Our community still needs rehumanising. As witnesses of Jesus ministry we must move on. We must be interrupters, rehumanisers in our own communities and across those “peace walls” and “barricades” that the spirit of the age builds up.

In rehumanising I am not talking about conforming. Neither do I mean denying our differences theologically. My friendship with Father Gary Toman at Queens has been a real encouragement in my faith over recent years but I know that Gary went away perturbed many times at the seeming anarchy of everyone getting their chance to interpret Scripture and have a plethora of positions on baptism and communion etc. I on the other hand am a contrary wee Ballymena man who could never live under a Majesterium! We made each other more Catholic and Presbyterian and were happy to feed the soul beneath our different creeds.

Neither can we deny the hurt that we have caused each other. We carry deep wounds physically, emotionally, mentally, culturally and need to bring those before a grace that can interrupt our pain so that we can by grace reach out to those who we feel have caused that pain. Jesus never said that grace would be an easy thing to give. He just called us to follow him into our world to do as he did.

One of my favourite West Wing clips is when after an attack on Americans in Gaza fictional President Bartlett is expected to launch an immediate attack to assure the American people that they are strong and safe. He refuses a revenge strike and instead, against even his own staff’s advice, says he is going to seek peace. He looks at his critics and says, “I am trying to find a way to make peace... and when I do you can go on television and explain why you were against it.” To my friend who wouldn’t want me to come to Fitzroy because he didn’t want me to talk to you I would like to say that when we make peace I’d like him to stand in the fulfilled Kingdom of God and tell Jesus why he thought that was a bad idea!