Kant

After lunch today seven of us were staring at novelty dice from a Christmas cracker. Sudden illumination: how about a really simple game? We had just one rule: every time someone rolled a six they could invent a new rule. And just one explanatory remark: rules have to be what Kant called "universalizable": they should not refer to specific people. (Thus: "every time someone rolls a two then the die reverses the current direction of travel" is universalizable; "every time someone rolls a five then they should hit Edward on the arm" is not.)

It worked amazingly well ...

"We are called to obedience, not to triumphalism"

Talked again today, this time at the earlier service. Technically this was a "last minute preaching slot" (though actually I knew about it more than a month in advance): I stood in for Catherine, since she was away in Barcelona for a weekend with son number one. I recommend this newly established tradition, by the way: as children reach the age of independence so they take their mother off on some exotic trip. Daughter number one took Catherine to Krakow last August. I await with interest the destinations to be chosen by son number two and by daughter number two in due course.
Meanwhile Olivia audited the talk. She was kind in her comments afterwards, so here it is ...

HTC 0930, 12 December 2010

Matthew 11:2-11 (and Isaiah 35:1-10)

Three main characters play their parts in our Gospel story today. There is Jesus, of course; there is also John the Baptist, in jail for speaking God's truth to power, for calling a spade a spade. And there is a more shadowy figure, not nearly as significant as he might think, but present nonetheless.

Let us take up the tale from the start of verse 2.

1: Consider John the Baptist, thrown into prison for his blunt descriptions of the dodgy legality of the sexual entanglements and complications of the Galilean royal family. John would know that he was no longer a good prospect for a life-insurance policy. The monster Herod the Great was now dead and buried, but had left a son who was a ruthless ruler, for whom the death of a prophet would be no great matter. John's popularity with the people would protect him for a short while, but people soon forget …

So here is John, in prison, afraid, lonely, perhaps cold, hungry, tired. John knows he has fulfilled his purpose by baptizing Jesus. John has commissioned Jesus as Messiah; probably he expected an Elijah figure, a super-prophet, one who would burn up corrupt rulers and cruel empires with unquenchable fire (Mt. 3:11-12). John will be ready to die now, his task complete. And yet … isolated in his prison-cell, he hears disturbing questions. When will Jesus make his move? Why is Jesus mixing with tax-collectors and sinners? Not what would be expected of a super-prophet. So John sends his messengers to Jesus, and their message is pathetic and reproachful in equal measure (verse 2). “Have we got it all wrong?” John asks, “Should we give up on you?”

Similar feelings are no strangers to us today. “O Lord,” we cry, “When will you confound these mocking sceptics? When will you pour out the fire of revival on Your people?” Being a Christian today can be like supporting your football team when times are hard; church leaders opening their mouths only neatly to insert both left feet (none of this in Coventry right now, I hasten to add!); bishops scoring own-goals; the Anglican church appearing to strain every sinew, to spare no effort, to leave no stone unturned, simply to re-enact absurd caricatures of Christian obsessions on a 24/7 basis. And always there looms an overwhelming avalanche of human need and crisis. It is absolutely right to want our Lord to return, to make all things new, to rescue his people and His creation. But what do we do while we wait?

2: Read Jesus' reply to His lonely, anxious, imprisoned colleague. It's a two-parter. In verses 4-6 Jesus says, in effect, stop looking for what you expect to see, and start looking for what is there plainly in full sight. Look at the evidence. No, Jesus is not going to make the super-prophet move. No unquenchable fire of righteous fury, not yet. Instead – He's actually quoting the Bible here to make it quite plain – He's going to do the thing about bringing good news and salvation, not Elijah but Isaiah 35. Moreover, this isn't just talk; He's doing it right out in full sight of everyone. John's messengers are urged to report back the actual evidence, the practical and physical signs that Jesus is fulfilling the Messianic mandate not by bringing judgement but by bringing mercy.

This is not a one-off. The strand of rescue winds all through Jesus' ministry. He says much the same to His disciples on Ascension Day (Acts 1:7-8). Judgement is deferred – for now – and today is the Day of Mercy. What's more, Jesus says to us, He's sharing the task with us. We are to go in His name. We are to proclaim the Day of the Lord's favour. We are to give practical help: to stand with the lonely, to explain to the confused, to treat people as hugely valuable to their Creator God. We won't see 100% success – some days we'll rejoice over just one in a hundred – but our Lord Himself didn't see 100% success so why should we? We are called to obedience, not to triumphalism.

3: So who's the third character? Well, Jesus and John know only too well that they are moving and speaking and acting in the real world, within which there can be real and irreversible consequences. Powerful and ruthless men can act suddenly and arbitrarily, and can bring everything to ruin. So Jesus chooses His words with some care in the second part of His message to John (verses 7-11). Just as John's messengers are about to start back, Jesus gives them something intensely political, something that will reassure John hugely, and yet is concealed in a kind of code. The “reed swayed by the wind” (verse 7) is the image on King Herod's coins. Herod thinks he rules everything from his fine palace in all his soft clothes (verse 8). But what really counts is John the prophet, who truly is the forerunner to Jesus the true Messiah, the real king, Jesus who brings justice and mercy and healing instead of fire and swords and brutality. Herod may think he is in charge, and Jesus and John may choose their words with care to avoid Herod's interference, but ultimately Herod is nothing, of no account, utterly of no significance whatsoever compared with the Kingdom of Heaven (verse 11).

That is what it means to fear the Lord. If Jesus is Lord of all then this gives us strength to stand up to bullies, because we know we serve One who is unimaginably greater. We won't do this imprudently, we won't do it carelessly, we'll plan, we'll be wise like serpents as well as innocent like doves, but we'll be ready to stand at the right time because we serve the Creator Lord of the Universe, prudently, carefully, wisely, bravely.

This speaks to us today as we face difficult times. We know that He who is with us is greater than any possible opposition, so we are full of hope for what our Lord will make of our lives. But we also know that our Creator God is Lord of the ballot box, Lord of the spreadsheet, Lord of the realistic and common sense business plan. So we won't be frightened of such practical topics. We won't be obsessed by them, but neither will we run away from the realities they present.

So I'll now suggest three options for how this passage might work itself out in practice. Our Lord is Lord of the ballot box, the spreadsheet, and practical planning, so here is one for each of these.

• Ballot box. On the 20^th March 2011 we need to elect around five representatives for our PCC, and 2 new church wardens. We – all of us – need good people in these posts, full of the Spirit and wisdom. As part of the PCC they will have real authority to make decisions for us all. What they think will matter. As anyone who's been on the PCC will tell you, individually they won't get their own way on everything but they'll be there to discuss, to advise, to persuade, and ultimately to vote. So why not aim, before Christmas, first to pray about who might be good for this, and second to have two definite conversations with friends about whom you all think might be strong choices for these posts. And take it from there; see where the Lord leads you as you pray and discuss and think.
• Spreadsheet. You'll have seen from the monthly update, we face a challenging financial year! That's as true for HTC as it is for many of us. I'm not sure that as a community we find it as easy as we should to talk about money – or maybe that's just me. But if you too find it hard to talk about money – not just church giving but also where to shop well, or how to keep to a household budget, then why not aim, before Christmas, first to bring it specifically to God in prayer, and then to have a relaxed conversation with a friend whom you trust, to see if you can share together some useful tips. Who knows where the Lord might lead you as you pray and discuss and think?
• Practical planning. Most of us have things we'd like to see happening – whether it's to do with children's work at church, or making opportunities to be with good friends, or simply having more time to be together as a family. Why not aim, before Christmas, first to bring this specifically to God in prayer, and then to have a relaxed conversation with friends or family who might want to be involved. Who knows where the Lord might lead you as you pray and discuss and think?

I've tried to be very specific and practical here, because I am very struck by how practical and specific Jesus was when He replied to John the Baptist. The example set to us by our Lord is of rejoicing in our loving Creator God, not letting practical issues get between us and our Maker, but being aware that our God is a very down-to-earth practical common-sense Creator, who loves to help us make the most of His Creation.

Amen

Adrenaline

This isn't really about wardening, but it's all part of life's rich tapestry.

I've just come back from making a presentation to a visiting panel of international reviewers. To make it interesting, I had just 15 minutes to cover the two principal areas in my department (probability and statistics). To make it even more interesting, I had to represent not only my own department but also the research groups from four other fiercely competitive university in the Midlands region. All squeezed into quarter of an hour. I tell you, there were many times in the preparation of the presentation when I thought of Ford Prefect's revision of the Earth entry in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

After the fifteen minutes was over I retired to the back of the room and a wave of tiredness swept over me. And a little while later I started feeling ferociously hungry. Adrenaline does funny things to the system ...

Life is one long continuous blur ...

Last Sunday it was my privilege to give the talk at the 1100 service. I didn't feel I did a very good job, and had decided to let the talk fall to the dust and vanish away; however some people were very sweet about it so I thought perhaps I should publish it here. Especially as life is indeed one long continuous blur right now; hard to find time to compose a decent post otherwise!
W

HTC 1100, 28^th November 2010

Isaiah 2:1-5 (also Matthew 24:36-44)

Today we have had two passages from the Bible, and neither of them are quite what one might expect. Our Gospel passage is frankly disturbing. Our Lord is speaking of difficult times to come. The best scholars tell me that he is warning of judgement; judgement on Jerusalem the City of God, but also more generally of judgment on societies which build social, financial, and religious systems but are not centred on justice and truth (Matthew 24:3: remember James Hill's sermon of a fortnight ago, and “not one stone will be left on another”). Our Old Testament passage, on the other hand, paints a visionary picture of peace and fulfilment – but when we look at the context we'll discover that passage too is surrounded by ominous warnings.

One might prefer an easier time this Sunday morning! But for myself I think I need from time to time to pay attention to the Bible's hard sayings. I need to be confronted with judgement and the holiness of God, or else I'll forget how wonderful His love is for me. I need to listen when the Bible tells me difficult things; I need to be made more sensitive to the questions that really matter: What are we really all about? What is the point of our story? Who are we actually meant to be?

Most days of my life, I get through the hours without ever once asking myself that sort of thing. It can be a frantic business, trying to earn one's daily bread. The weeks speed past like a smooth blur, September merging into October, October sliding into November, and here we are teetering on the brink of December already, with just 24 shopping days left to Christmas – or 28 if circumstances force you to go shopping on Sundays.

Church can be like that too. There's always another demanding detail to consider; Darkness into Light, will we have enough candles to go round? Nine lessons and Carols; have we fixed up the wardening duties properly? and will the choir kids manage not to lose their money when they go speeding round the church in a state of high excitement after Midnight Communion? Plus the ongoing saga of keeping a medieval building watertight and ship-shape, and the ever-varied and always fascinating soap opera of a community learning to get along with each other.

But What are we really all about? What is the point of our story? Who are we actually meant to be?

Without apology, I'm going to focus on our Old Testament passage – this is not a choice to avoid the difficult Gospel reading, but a reckoning that when Jesus spoke His words He was consciously standing in the tradition of Isaiah and the other prophets, and sometimes the best way to hear His word to us is to work backwards to the prophets who spoke before Him, whom He loved, and who therefore mean much to us as well, and who help us to understand Jesus better.

So then, Isaiah. Isaiah offers an answer to our questions in a wonderful vision, with phrases that have burnt their way into our language: swords into plowshares, nation shall not take up sword against nation. It has inspired music and poetry and all kinds of art. It was a beautiful vision when Isaiah declared it, and it still strikes chords with us today. Still we cry for “Peace on Earth”. Still we long for a time when nations will stream to the Lord's temple.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, a time to touch base again with this vision, a time when once more we should ask the important questions of life: What are we really all about? What is the point of our story? Who are we actually meant to be?

So let us take a little time this morning to think about the situation when this dream was first declared. If we can get some kind of sense of the context in which Isaiah spoke, then maybe it will help us to allow this vision to make contact with us here and now, to permit this vision to act as a kindly compass, pointing out directions in which we may need to move.

Look for example at the chapter immediately before our chosen passage. It's a surprising contrast. Isaiah speaks the word of the Lord to the Lord's people, and it is a scalding word as if from a parent to rebellious children, a word to a people who “do not understand” (Isaiah 1:3). It speaks to a people who are in deep conflict with their own natures, a people for whom “there is no soundness – only wounds and welts” (Isaiah 1:6). Their wonderful city has been reduced by cruel invasion after cruel invasion, to little better than a ramshackle shack on an allotment (Isaiah 1:8) – do you see the echoes of Matthew 24:3 here? Worse, their attempts to relate religiously are described as meaningless to God, even offensive (Isaiah 1:10 onwards). I have to say that I find this an extraordinary feature of the whole Bible – I'd have assumed that God would, well, you know, be more on the side of religious practice and church establishment, but here his prophet Isaiah represents God as being achingly bored by all the religious festivals and ceremonies (Isaiah 1:13-14). Isaiah says, God is far more interested in the detailed practice of justice and the careful protection of the weak (Isaiah 1:17). Yet another thread that we see Jesus pick up in the Gospels.

We could go on, but I'm sure you get the general idea. Our passage from Isaiah is not set in the middle of a tranquil religious idyll of peace, harmony and prosperity. Look at the rest of chapter 2 and you get the same story. Isaiah was not proclaiming the Word of the Lord at a time of political security and safety. We might be dealing today with the effects of a credit crisis, and learning to live with the traumatic results of a failure of financial trust; but Isaiah's prophecies speak of the appalling effects of a judgement on Jerusalem that has people fleeing in terror to hide in the barren rocks, using poetry that has since echoed through the world in a hundred spirituals that tell us there is nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide from God's judgement (Isaiah 2:10). We may think that Isaiah seems to be talking about a dream far beyond belief, but this dream grew out of a time of turmoil and danger and fear.

So, having noticed the context, what's the thrust of the passage? What can we take away from it for our own lives? How does it help us to answer our questions: What are we really all about? What is the point of our story? Who are we actually meant to be?

1: God's truth for all humanity

In all of these troubles, in all of these dangers, Isaiah says we should lift up our eyes to look with hope to a time when things will be very different. The mountain of the Lord's temple will be established high above all else, and all peoples will stream towards it (Isaiah 2:2). Now I don't think Isaiah meant that there would be a kind of religious boom or bonanza – probably not, given the rude things said about organized religion in the first chapter! It seems to me, he was talking about a time to come when God's truth would be made plain, when it would no longer be just the possession of a tight little ethnic group, but would be the liberating truth for all peoples of whatever language or culture.

2: God's justice for all humanity

Isaiah goes on to assert, there is going to come a time when disputes and disagreements are going to be resolved, not by raw power, nor in favour of the people who know all the legal tricks, nor in favour of the people who are rich enough to buy the law for themselves, but by the word, the truth, the authority of the Lord of the Universe (Isaiah 2:4a). There will come a time when your voice will be heard by the Lord, no matter how powerless you are, and it won't any more be too difficult to explain what you mean because at your side will be the Lamb who was slain and who now lives.

3: God's peace for all humanity

Our passage was written in a time when violence between small states was a routine way of settling disputes, and when huge empires were reaching ruthlessly out across the land to engulf countless peoples. Everyone would have known of the burden of spending money on swords and armour which would be useless for the practical purposes of gathering in the harvest, the waste of sending off their strong young men to train for war when they were so badly needed on the farm back home. And Isaiah declares, there is going to be a time when we don't have to do that any more; when our lives can be set free from the insecurity and fear and sheer waste of conflict (Isaiah 2:4b).

What about now?

So what does this say about how we should now live? How does this passage help us to answer our questions: what are we really all about? What is the point of our story? Who are we actually meant to be?

The first thing is to recognize that in extraordinary ways, and above all in the saving life and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can see Isaiah's vision already now struggling to come true, new life bursting forth. No, we don't yet see all nations streaming towards God's truth; justice is sadly still often a matter of whether you have deep pockets to pay the bill; and we know only too well that by no means are we yet free from the curse and oppression of armed struggle. But, as James so helpfully set out for us two weeks ago, we now do have a Truth to set all peoples free; a temple which is not made from stones but is to be found in the resurrected body of Jesus Christ; a Messiah who is drawing all kinds, all languages, all cultures to Him. As David reminded us last week, our Gospel is a wide-open Gospel, one which reaches out to rescue even those who have reached the end of themselves and who feel they are hopelessly lost. On His cross Jesus Christ promised eternal life to a hopeless criminal facing a richly deserved doom (Luke 23:40-43); the same Jesus Christ offers you grace and a new start, no matter how much you think you deserve anger rather than love. We have learned from Jesus a new language which says (for example); I, Wilfrid Kendall, a white Caucasian male, am to consider myself the brother of all who call on the name of the Lord. And look at us all here today! Drawn here this Sunday morning from many different continents, many different cultures!

Today is Advent time, whether now in late November or in any month of the year; God's Kingdom is here in Jesus Christ and the body of all His disciples, even though it is not yet what it will become, even though it has so far yet to travel. We know there is much that is wrong with our own society; and yet we prosper in and enjoy a society which has been deeply and profoundly influenced by the Christian gospel of brotherhood and love and service. We know we aren't yet guaranteed the freedom from war of Isaiah's prophecy; indeed our Gospel passage includes stark warnings from our Master of just how difficult things might become before the long-awaited arrival of the Son of Man; and yet we do see the promise of nations talking and discussing, rather than invariably resorting to brutal wars.

So the first thing is to recognize that in extraordinary ways, and above all in the saving life and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can see Isaiah's vision already now struggling to come true.

And the second thing is to recognize that in all this we are called to live as people of the Way, as travellers with our Lord Jesus Christ at our side. What are we really all about? Travellers on the way which God has set before us. What is the point of our story? We travel towards the light of the Lord. Who are we actually meant to be? The Body of Christ, planted here in all the routine of our daily lives, by our service and commitment and love to be living witnesses to the living Truth. What can I do to practice that over the next week? Perhaps, to resolve that each time I meet someone this week then I should remind myself that I am meeting someone who is of enormous value to the Lord of the Universe. Perhaps, to aim to remind myself at a set time once a day that I have been chosen by this Lord of all for a particular purpose, and that His purpose for me is right at hand in the present situation of my life, no matter how unlikely that may seem. Perhaps, to remind myself that I am called to a journey by the One who is just and who favours the weak and powerless, and therefore that it is proper for my behaviour to mirror His.

In extraordinary ways, and above all in the saving life and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can see Isaiah's vision already now struggling to come true.

And in all this we are called to live as people of the Way, as travellers with our Lord Jesus Christ at our side.

As Isaiah urges at the passage's end: “Come, … let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5).

Amen

Who is it?

Couldn't resist posting this short clip:

<Youtube video  (13 seconds)>

What is Good News for students?

This Sunday I thought I should write about a really significant and strategic issue, something that matters.

Practically at our doorstep, here at Holy Trinity Coventry, there is a large university which serves 20,000 students. It's not clear to me whether collectively we at HTC are doing all we should for these 20,000 souls. One might put the point in sharper biblical focus: does this geographical closeness amount to a divine encouragement to lift up our eyes to the harvest, and consider whether we might be some of the labourers being called to assist? Of course, the need is not the call; obedience to our Master is not simply a matter of knee-jerk responses to every unmet opportunity that might come by (that way leads to burn-out). But on the other hand the need can be the signal to open our eyes to a genuine call, something which we should make a real priority. Let us consider together ...

My thoughts on this were given a sharp kick at the end of September. We were approached (by the other nearby university) to see if we might participate together with other churches in a student welcome event. Trouble was, we needed to supply a couple of students or near-students to speak; and that's where we ran into a road-block. HTC has plenty of older people who would be happy to come along and speak at such an event, but is very very short of students. We tried our best, but in the end we had to pass on that opportunity. That gave us pause for thought: as a church we lack people in the early part of the 20-30 age-range. It was a salutary experience for us to have to confess to this unwelcome fact, and to admit that we had no idea of what to do about it.

Now it's possible to overstate the matter. For example, just today I was chatting at the 0930 service to a student who is president of the university mountaineering club; moreover we offer a friendly welcome to several Nexus students each year. But it doesn't exactly match the 20,000 souls studying next door; moreover many of the thriving 20's groups of ten to fifteen years back have now moved on to the next stage of challenge in the Christian way. We need to face facts: we have a gap at that point of our age-spectrum, and that limits us in several significant and strategic ways,

A question one should always ask: is the perceived need actually already being met by someone else? I don't know the answer to this, though I know places to which we might address the question. It is my impression that other churches are in a better geographical position to provide well for the other nearby university, but perhaps this is not so true for our neighbour. Some of us are involved in the work amongst international students, and we should listen to what they have to say. Another of our number is the Anglican chaplain, so for sure we should ask her opinion! Certainly our Christian brothers and sisters at the Cathedral next door do their bit; but one wonders whether our Lord might be beckoning us over too, to take part in the demanding work of harvest: 20,000 souls.

So: if in fact it is right to hear the Lord's call in these facts, how then might we respond? Here comes the second trigger to my thoughts. My son has just started his first year at a university far from home, and has ended up finding himself with the Methodists there. Many things attracted him to them, but one thing struck me forcefully; they invite their students into family homes for lunch on Sundays. As a parent I wanted immediately to send these people a thank-you note for being so kind to my son - and I realized that for me and for my son part of the Good News here is that he is being given loving hospitality when far away from home, right to the direct and tangible point of being fed - rather well! So perhaps one possible ministry for HTC would be to seek to welcome students into our homes after our services for Sunday lunch.

Practical issues abound. If we were to take this on, then it would need to be a shared effort by a range of us, prepared to commit to this over an extended period of time. I talked to someone in the 0930 who had been involved with a similar ministry in his previous church, and he made that point strongly to me. No point in going off half-cock; if we were to do this then we should make sure we would stick at it. Luke 14:28 comes to mind.

Moreover, the natural families to do this are families with young children and families whose children have just left home; and these people are largely in our 0930 congregation. OK, so that makes for a problem; how do we cover the gap between the end of service at 1030, or the end of breakfast at 1100, and the start of the meal at 1300? It also thins out the number of students; fewer of them will roll up at 0930. (On the other hand, with 20,000 next door perhaps we need there to be a bit of thinning if the task is to be at all manageable.)

These and other matters would need to be thrashed out before taking on something like this. Moreover there's a kind of Gospel logic at work here; were we to take this on then we would need to be ready to change as new people were drawn in. For example our old 7:30 pm service changed hugely twelve years ago as a result of the influx then of young twenties. Christian hospitality and outreach is never just a one-way street; it changes us too, and we'd need to be ready to accept such changes. All the more reason to take some time to consider; is this really a call to us as a community, whether that be the whole church or the 0930 congregation? Might this be one of the adventures to which we are being called in the next couple of years of our Christian journey together? 20,000 souls ...

I would be so interested to hear other peoples' thoughts on this ... do feel free to leave comments in the comment-box!

What do we really want to do?

Several decisions this week in the wardening business, all at least involving the question of where should we spend our efforts when there is so much that could be done lying so close to hand. Not an unusual experience, I have to confess, whether at work or at home or at church. As far as I can see, the only way through involves trying to find honest answers to two questions: (1) "what do we really want to do?" and (2) "what would be the best way of achieving that?".

Very tempting in a busy world to skip over question (1) and go straight to question (2). But how does one know what is best without figuring out the direction in which one really wants to go? That way exhaustion lies ... there's always another task that someone somewhere wants you to do.

So we tried the questions out at Sunday family lunch. Interesting exercise: what is a given church service really for? Easy answers include "to worship God" -- but the Bible tells us that our whole lives are meant to be worship, and worship lies as much out of church, in not letting the world squeeze us into its mould, as in church singing songs. Or, "to nurture our children in faith" -- but how can that be an end in itself, unless we demonstrate in our own lives to our children that faith is something worth living for? One could ask, "what would Jesus do?", and that's a good idea -- but it doesn't necessarily go in a comfortable direction; the follow-up to our Gospel reading of the day sees Jesus more-or-less violently chucked out of his synagogue because they didn't like his sermon. I've got my own ideas about what some of our church services are really for, but that's just me. So I'll be waiting and listening to see what others say, because sometimes one can hear the divine voice far clearer in others' voices than in one's own imaginings.

Anyway, as wardens we found we could make some progress on our particular decisions by sketching some provisional answers to "what do we really want to do?", and then fixing on a couple of tentative shots at "what would be the best way of achieving that?", after which some practical decisions seemed to make themselves. But I think we'll be coming back to these basic questions quite frequently.

"We made our own entertainment back in those days"

This week we watched our way through The Lavender Hill Mob, in 10-minute chunks on Youtube. Wonderful filming, superb script, all in glorious black-and-white. Took me back to the old days, back when our family bought its first television, for the express purpose of allowing me and my sister to watch Dr Who. The very first episode we watched was one in which the Daleks appeared, and we found it so scary that we wouldn't come out from behind the sofa. We stuck to Stingray for a long time after that. Have a look for yourselves

<Youtube clip (1 minute)>

(but you won't entirely re-create our original monochrome experience - this introduction and indeed the whole series was filmed in colour from the start).

I love the bit when Marineville starts to descend into its protective underground configuration, and Commander Sam Shore warns "Anything can happen in the next half-hour!". Some people want church services to be like that. Can be a challenging prospect for wardens, though.

On true magnificence

It's cheesy, I know, but I loved "The Magnificent Seven" when I was a kid. It was something about the dash and elan of the seven gunmen, hired to protect a village of ordinary farmers; and also something about the pathos of the ending, when the surviving gunmen realize their lives only have any meaning when seen in the context of the prosaic, unglorious, and enduring life of the village they have protected.

<Youtube clip>

As the lead gunman Chris says, "Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose".

A couple of decades ago, I was involved in a group for people seeking to learn about Christian faith (so long ago that it was before Alpha!). I was particularly impressed by a lad who was ex-Army, Warwickshire Fusiliers. He told me about the essential rôle of the infantry. They don't do twice-the-speed-of-sound, he told me, nor do they do high-tech armoured vehicles weighing 50 tons, nor are they primarily involved in any of the other glamorous tasks of a modern army. What the infantry do is this; they hold the ground. Once they have dug in, it is extremely difficult to remove them. And (stripped of the military baggage of this analogy) that's the local church for you. Usually not glamorous, sometimes dull, but once they are dug in to a local community then they are the fact on the ground, very very difficult to remove. Paul the Apostle knew this (Ephesians 6:13).

It's easy to get frustrated with a local church; I know this too well. The church can be too slow or trying to rush ahead too fast; the vision can be limited or too extravagant; people may be working hard but wasting time and energy by working at cross-purposes, or failing to communicate properly when they can't deliver on promises made on rota lists; the focus can be excessively prosaic or dangerously super-spiritual; the community may be stuck in a past glory which no longer works or may be jettisoning invaluable tradition in favour of hollow modernity. And yes, it is frustrating, and it's worth struggling to persuade people to do things better. But in the end the church is like the community of farmers in "The Magnificent Seven". All the workshops on church growth, all the books on new ways of worship, all the weekend courses are like the gunmen; useful for a season, but only when they aid those who hold the ground itself.

It seems to me that the late great Mike Yaconelli had the same thought when he wrote A better idea than Youth Ministry (PDF). Westerns, infantry, St Paul, youth workers, all with the same thought ...

Made in Dagenham

This Friday, Catherine and I discovered we were temporarily childless (convocation of three in London, another enjoying the student life in Aberystwyth). So we decided to eat out, and then go to a movie. It's been a couple of decades and more since we had such freedom of action; a startling novelty.

We chose to dine at the Royal Bengal Restaurant in Earlsdon, whose efficient and cheerful service and delightful food exactly hit the spot. (I'd love to get a voucher for a free meal as a result of this post, but somehow I don't think that is going to happen.) We then had an hour to spare before the film, so we wandered through Coventry city centre - before then we'd never been in Coventry on a Friday night - and strolled over to the café at the Belgrade Theatre. That's quite the watering hole to visit in Coventry, or so we discovered; just the place to run into friends going to this play or that. Now we know our next choice of a place to go to when the next free Friday evening turns up.

And then it was time for the main event: Made in Dagenham at the Odeon Skydome. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was very impressed; I enjoyed the photography, the subtle acting, and the passion for fair treatment of all workers. Sly digs on the way at the marxist cant of the male trade unionists (but there's more than one kind of obnoxious cant, as any Anglican can testify from sad experience); good portrayal of a trophy wife whose History First from Cambridge is ignored by her rich husband; and especially a fine scene when the heroine speaks at the TUC congress ("When did we stop fighting?" - strong resonances with today's problems). But best of all is the depiction of real effective and enabling leadership displayed by the heroine; the kind of leadership that works with people instead of dominating them.

Highly recommended.

Of course, brought up in a large family of two brothers and four sisters, I'm not sure I've ever been really able to convince myself that women can't be as effective and powerful as men. So the film did not have to work to persuade me of the justice of the cause. And now, after years working in an academic department with a strong complement of highly impressive women, and two decades as a worshipper in a church where women routinely serve in all kinds of leadership rôles to great effect and with charisma, without ever compromising their femininity, it's hard to imagine why any rational man might want to shut out or restrain the other half of the population. Of course men and women tend to take different approaches, though I suspect many of these differences arise from social conditioning and the demands of societal rôles. But there is so much to be gained by allowing the two approaches to challenge and refine each other.

So there is no need to tell you where I stand on the issue of women bishops, is there?

The art of talking

Yesterday I had to spend some time listening to new PhD students presenting their first-year work. It's part of the job: not only to figure out whether they are making a good start, but also to see if they need advice about presentation skills. And we do a fair amount of presenting ourselves: one-hour lectures two or three or six times a week, speaking in ten-minute slots at big conferences, presenting research talks, advocating cases for research grant applications, fifty minutes to persuade sixth-formers and their parents that our department is a good place in which to learn, five-minute sudden-death presentations in the department (one of the tallest toughest meanest professors there to chair the session, counting down the last 10 seconds on his fingers, and boy are you in in a whole new world of trouble if you over-run). And for me, once each year, the closest I get to stand-up comedy; a presentation to a cohort of 80 statistics PhD students on "How not to give a presentation". First time I gave it, the most distinguished statistician I know told me afterwards how he had heard "it had gone badly." I smiled and said "yes, very badly." He smiled too. "You must do it again next year, but make it even worse."

You could almost say, we talk for our living (if you miss out all the other stuff that comes across our desks, but that's a story for another time). It's not just teaching. I don't think any talking is "just teaching", even teaching itself. There's always elements of crowd control, persuasion, stand-up, oratory as well; it's just the proportions that vary.

And we tell our students: you can learn a lot from a good presentation, because the information flows freely. But you can also learn from a bad presentation; figure out what is going wrong, and ask yourself whether you do it too.

Why are presentations important to us mathematicians? Apart from the obvious cases (when one has to persuade, or to advocate), we know there is another vital point. You don't learn how to do sums by just sitting there and listening; you have to do them yourself on your own so that the answers become part of you. And you don't really know you can do them yourself until you can get up in front of friends and explain how the sums get to be done. In the talking is the doing and the learning as well.

Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that quite a lot of academic talking could be done better. It isn't that the talking is bad as such; but things get in the way. The speaker doesn't look at the audience; or they start with an apology ("so if you are beginning with an apology then why waste my time by starting at all?"); or they speak too quietly, or too monotonously, or they use jargon inappropriately; or they run over time (curiously, the very worst people for over-running are the mathematical cosmologists - almost as if they've spent so long thinking about the life-span of the universe that they've lost all sense of human-scale time). Consequently it's good to coach early PhD students in presentation skills; in the long-term that might be the single best thing one does for science and for humanity.

So I thought long and hard when I had the opportunity to talk to almost all UK statistics PhD students on presentation skills. Some people think the way to get people to give good presentations is to give them a template, a list of rules as to what to do, and a course on the use of powerpoint. Good practice has its place, but one should keep it firmly under control. In the end an effective presentation, whether it's a lecture, or a sales pitch, or advocacy, or a sermon, whatever it is, it is ultimately about you the presenter, relating to them the hearers, and it's about your personal integrity concerning the subject on which you seek to speak. And each one of these three factors changes from occasion to occasion, and always it depends on you and your personal integrity. So there can't be any general rules on how to do it well; it all depends, it's all individual, it's all very very personal.

On the other hand one certainly can set down ways in which to do the job badly. So I decided the best way to convey presentation skills to the PhD students was by way of an awful example; a session within which I would pack as many ways of going wrong as I could, break as many rules as I could think of. I reckoned I broke twenty discrete rules. At the end of the session, when everyone had stopped laughing, I invited the audience to list as many of these as they could manage. We stopped counting at thirty ...

And maybe if each of those 80 students learns as a result to save 5 minutes in the hour of presentation time, and gives 2000 presentations overall, to average audiences of 30 people, then each of my stand-up comedy routines will save about 45 person-years of time. Each time I make a fool of myself that way, allowing for sleep-periods, I've saved the equivalent of a human life. Not bad for 60 minutes of idiocy.

So you'll be wondering what this has to do with wardening, or with church. Have another read. Just about everything I've said is relevant to preaching - which also mixes persuasion with teaching and which is also deeply personal and all about integrity. And Christian truth is just like mathematics; You don't learn it by just sitting there and listening; you have to do it yourself on your own so that the truth becomes part of you. And you don't really know you can do it yourself until you can get up in front of friends and explain how the truth works out for you. I'm not saying every Christian needs to be a preacher - there are many different ways of explaining how the truth works for you. But in the talking is the doing and the learning as well.

Straight from my Facebook status

Wilfrid Kendall met an Anglican chaplain today (true story).

Me: If you've visited Holy Trinity Coventry then you may have met my wife.
Ch: I met many people there.
Me: Her name is Catherine.
Ch: Oh I did meet someone called Catherine. She told me she was from Guiseley.
Me: That's her!

MORAL: "Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does, he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - that lovely man, Canon Sydney Smith

The argument room

By way of introduction, here is one of my favourite Monty Python sketches:

[Youtube video (6'07")]

When I became chair of Warwick Statistics, more than ten years back, I had to learn fast in a hands-on-way about dealing with people. This, you must realize, is a difficult task for an abstract mathematician, more comfortable with α-β-γ than with real characters. But when you've got to learn, you've got to learn. Over the course of my three-year stint as chair the truth gradually dawned on me; the people I should treasure, the ones I should nurture and value above all else, were not necessarily the people who agreed with everything I said. No, the ones who taught me how to be a better head of department, who protected me from my mistakes, who brought out my very best, were the ones who disagreed with me, the ones who brought me the bad news, the ones who always looked on the dark side. They gave me the full three-dimensional view of reality. Charged as I was with the responsibility of growing and protecting my beloved department, they became some of my most important and valued assets.

Obvious lessons here for a church warden clambering up the learning curve! If I want to serve my church and my Lord as well as I can, then I need to be open to the people who don't think like me, the people who value parts of church life that I don't really get, the people whose definition of Christian discipleship may have only a very small overlap with mine. And in order for that openness to happen, I have to show I am listening to them; I have to concentrate hard to try to see things from their point of view; I have to communicate to them, without pretense or manipulation, how I respect them and I respect their position. It isn't automatically easy for someone who has spent all their life in the astringent cut-and-thrust of mathematical debate, but it's the only way.

It was some comfort to learn, a couple of years after I ended my term as chair of Warwick Statistics, that a fictional president of the United States and his chief-of-staff took a rather similar view:

[Another Youtube video (3'47)"]

"The President likes to hear from smart people who disagree with him."

So what does a churchwarden DO?

So what does a churchwarden do? That question has been hovering around in my little black churchwarden's notebook since I started this job. Wikipedia starts helpfully: "Churchwarden:  This article is about lay office. For smoking pipe, see Churchwarden pipe". The hyperlink continues, "They have the added benefit of keeping the user's face further away from the heat and smoke". Clearly there is a deep truth concealed therein.

It appears that the office of churchwarden dates way back to the 14th century, perhaps originally concerned with keeping animals out of the church (hence the long stave of office), and generally tasked with maintaining good order in the churchyard and the church, and having a care for the church fabric.

Unsurprisingly, the role has developed somewhat over the centuries.

These days at Holy Trinity Coventry the churchwardens are most visible as people who stand at the back of church[*] in a major service, and who occasionally process up to the front with their staves, leading a small column of people carrying the bread and wine, and the offertory. Early in this blog I've written about what it feels like to be performing this role, very much in the public eye, observed by up to a score of previous churchwardens who will know if one puts a foot wrong. Fortunately they are a forgiving lot, who have not forgotten what it feels like to be up at the sharp end all on one's own.

But in reality being that kind of public monument is a very small part of the job. In practice one is part of a group of four (the full complement of wardens at Holy Trinity Coventry) working in a team with the treasurer, the parish secretary, the vicar and the curate, and several others. There are legal responsibilities, and trusteeships of charities, and specialist roles for each of the four wardens, but perhaps the main task is to try to understand what is happening in the wide and complicated world of Holy Trinity, and collectively to seek to contribute towards the end of making it all run together smoothly and well. So this weekend, for example, I've been doorman at our beautiful parish centre for Coventry Heritage Weekend, helping make it available to the people of Coventry so that they can see it and learn about its history through a guided tour; I've stood at the back of Play for Pakistan and applauded players of horns and oboes and musical saws; discussed practical issues of minor building works; counted money (and checked, and re-checked, and got a fellow-warden to check my checking); and been teased mercilessly by my friends on the sound-desk because I wear a suit when doing the warden bit. (I find the suit helps. Don't ask me to explain why; I've never needed to wear a suit for anything else; it probably is something strange and personal, but it works for me.) Fortunately for my bad memory, if there is a face in the congregation that I don't know then I can ask the verger, or the congregation leader (I think we are calling them congregation lay pastors now). Usually if there is a job to be done then there is a person who is doing the job, so my first thought should be to figure out who is that person, and how to smile and say thank you to them.

So what's the big task for a churchwarden today? My current best working description for myself is, I watch. I am there to watch out to see that things work together, and to try to help when they don't. I am there to try to look ahead to guess how things might develop in the future, and what we should be doing now to get ready. That can be prosaic (when should we start thinking about the next Coventry Heritage Weekend so as to be ready when the Council asks what we are going to do?), or challenging (every year people finish their terms on our vital Parochial Church Council; so isn't it already a good time for our church people generally to begin to think about who might best replace them?). In the end, as always, it's all about people,

and their Maker,

who (as was pointed out in the sermon this morning) is always several steps ahead of us ...


[*] I mentioned the back of the church. But in a cinema this would be thought of as "front of house". What Would Jesus Say? perhaps our usual terminology for churches is all back-to-front!

"You can't work all the time"

"You can't work all the time" was the advice floating around the mathematical world when I started my career about thirty years ago. Easy to ignore, easy to suppose it didn't apply in one's special circumstances, to imagine that somehow another few hours spent hurling oneself against the intransigent Problem would somehow magically transform into a golden solution. But then one would be forced to take time out - whether because of sheer mental exhaustion, or a heavy head-cold, or helpful friends dragging one down to the pub - and the difference afterwards would be striking! Moreover I finally discovered the importance of annual holidays when we started having kids; time out at Easter and time out in the summer can make all the difference between stale paper-pushing and real productivity.

These days I take my time-off more seriously. No point trying to work on a Sunday; I know my performance will be poor and I will pay for the indulgence in terms of two wasted days the next week. Futile to avoid the annual holiday; I'll be regretting it all through the next term. Based purely on an objective evidence-based approach, either one takes time out or the wheels start spinning in the mud.

So we had a good break over the summer: trains, castles, butterflies, and taking a long time to get up in the morning.

It's not all a matter of pragmatic efficiency, of course. If work is all I do, then how will I ever be able to say, "I am not a number, I am a free Man!". How ever will I escape The Village?

Because of the fourth commandment, adequate rest is a matter of holiness - and the commandment is about ensuring adequate rest for those about me, as well as for myself. This is why one of the chief duties of a Vicar's Warden is to fix the cleric with a stern but loving eye, and say, "So how did you spend your day-off this week?".

Was my summer break long enough? probably not: I think I will have to pay careful attention this year in order to make sure I have enough time out. But I can see the difference it has made when I review my two blogs just before the break ...

When one is most truly oneself

It's been a month that has passed in a blur: finishing off tricky chores that need to be processed before the summer break. And now I am extremely ready for that break, especially after this afternoon, when I spent 30 minutes of near panic, convinced that I had lost my cash card, till Catherine (may she be blessed eternally) suggested gently that I look through my wallet once again, with the result that I discovered my card in a slightly different pocket from its usual one.

So that was enough of a Sign for me that I decided to let the rest of the day go. We had a birthday meal for James, and drank quite a lot of wine, and then watched The Big Bang Theory (Catherine thinks this is a documentary about living with nerds). And I felt I was myself again. All we lacked was the company of Edward and Michelle ...

Nehemiah and today

The last couple of weeks have gone by in a blur. First there was an intensive week teaching a graduate course in Bristol - deeply fulfilling, because most of this year's cohort of first year UK Statistics PhDs were attending, but draining, because I started the week tired. Then a research workshop at Warwick, combined with all sorts of crazy admin stuff.

So no blog last weekend. Sorry!

This weekend we finished off the sermon series on Nehemiah, with the lovely story of chapter 8 (the people, weeping because they felt so inadequate; the teachers, telling them not to weep on such a celebration day but to have a party because "the joy of the Lord is your strength" - and to send food to those who had none). This series has worked so well, both intellectually and on an emotional level too. Why? I think, because it is a story, and people work well with stories. Because it is a story about a struggle, and that's where we are. Because it tells us that when we join together with God we can accomplish so much more than we ever felt to be possible before, and we sense this is a thought we are going to need to keep clear in our minds over the next months and years ...

Quickly after Singapore

So here is how the talk ended up - the one I mentioned in the last post. The single point is highlighted in bold red - you won't be able to miss it!

HTC 0930, 4^th July 2010

Nehemiah 4:1-23

Loving Father, when we come to your Word it is tempting to treat it like a mirror, in which everything is a reflection of ourselves. As we consider the book of Nehemiah today, give us the grace to allow it to be a window, through which we look into lives quite different from ourselves, equally loved by You, whose different experiences have much to teach us; and give us the grace to allow Your Word indeed to become a loving but truthful teacher, to show us how best to move onwards in our journey home to You. Amen.

Introduction

I find this passage stirs up all sorts of memories in me, both old and new.

First memory. Thirty-eight years ago I had just left school, and was going to college in the autumn, and needed something to do in between. I decided to take the opportunity to spend four weeks at the Wycliffe Bible Centre in the Chilterns, helping to build new buildings on their construction site there. Frankly I was completely unskilled labour, and it was good of them to take me on, and it was very useful for a bookish studious lad to spend four weeks bashing holes in the ground with a pickaxe. I'd never known that digging holes was such hard work!

Towards the end, they kindly gave me the chance to be more creative, under careful supervision. With help, I built a wall! Not on the scale that we hear of in our passage, just four feet of wall, three feet high, slap in the centre of a field, just right for barbeques. It may be there still today; we dug good foundations and we tried hard to line up the bricks in proper order. Or maybe it was removed in favour of bigger and better walls; I know my place, I'm not proud, I'm no master bricklayer.

Second memory. Four or so years ago, our old pipe organ here at HTC finally fell into complete disrepair. Our musicians had been coaxing it along for years, but it had come to the end of all organs. We started an organ fund – if you're up for a stimulating challenge and fancy a spot of major fundraising then do let me know – and sadly, reluctantly, the old instrument had to go.

Now organ removal of any kind is an expensive business. Fortunately, amongst us there were some people who understood what had to be done, and they told us that with proper supervision and with very careful planning we could do the job ourselves, and save thousands on thousands of pounds. Well I'd never attempt such a project all on my own, but I trusted the people who told us we could do it. We obtained the necessary permissions from the diocese, and our builder experts put their heads together with our health-and-safety experts, and they devised a very careful and very detailed plan, and called for volunteers.

So I volunteered what time I could. I'd never taken down a pipe-organ before. Strictly speaking, I don't think I could claim to have done so now; my rôle in the process was confined to making cups of tea, and (under careful supervision) carting away the rubble. My wife on the other hand gained great fame for the passion with which she used a sledgehammer, but that's for her to tell.

Third memory. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had to make a crazy four-day trip out to Singapore. Long story, but it was the 70^th birthday of a dear friend and work associate, and they had organized a special conference out there, and they said they'd pay my airfare at the cheapest rate for which I actually got a seat inside the aircraft, and I simply had to go.

It's twelve-and-a-half hours to Singapore; 750 minutes, or 45000 seconds. Every moment of which I was sitting next to someone with extremely sharp and prolonged elbows. On the flight back the person with the elbows must have been sitting next to someone else, because this time my neighbour had a head-cold and sniffed loudly and enjoyably on average every two minutes. That's 375 sniffs. And, by the time each flight ended, I felt tired and my eyes were bloodshot and every time I moved I was painfully aware that I smelt as if I had not had a shower for two days.

Building the wall

I'm sure you can spot the points at which the passage brought back these memories to me. There's the ruined wall of Jerusalem, not four feet long, but winding round a whole city. Vast amounts of work required: rubble having to be removed; old stones of the wall needing assessment to see if they were so badly burned as to be useless; steady, inexorable labour of building and lifting and digging and taking away. Added to which; major practical constraints. In those days a city wall was a vital element of a community's security: Proverbs 25:28¹. You didn't build the first 100 yards completely and then move on to the next bit, because a wall with holes is no use at all. You had to build everything at the same time, first 1 foot high so at least it might be a minor trip hazard to any attackers; then 3 feet high, then half-height so it would give some degree of protection against sharp pointy things, and so forth. So you built in a hurry, because as soon as you started building then the neighbourhood gangs would start getting ideas about coming in and knocking it all down before it got too tall. Added to which, as if it wasn't already difficult enough, there was the known hostility and aggression of local politicians, who kept dropping hints to the local security forces about the possibilities of fast promotion for anyone who just happened to generate an unfortunately fatal friendly-sword incident down at this new Jerusalem project. So the work would have had to be interrupted from time to time, as people stood together, family by family, armed and ready, showing they were not to be pushed around, nervous in the hot midday sun, eyes flicking round at every quick movement, stomachs turning acid-sour with the tension and anticipation.
And as the wall rose so the danger increased. I imagine a risk assessment being carried out: yes, building while carrying sharp swords was a very bad idea, but it would be an even higher risk to be separated from one's weapon when one might need protection at a moment's warning. So one carried the heavy stones, while one's sheathed sword would trap itself awkwardly between one's shins, working, working, working, from as soon as the dawn gave enough light to work, right through till it got so dark that one could see the stars. And then one would snatch a bite to eat and straight away be told which hours of the night one was to serve on guard duty, and which hours one would sleep on hard ground, with only the burned stones of the old wall for one's pillow.
Read verses 4 and 5 with this in mind. These builders are tired and afraid, and they are being ground down by the abuse and ridicule showered upon them by their enemies, and they ask their God to give the enemies a dose of their own medicine. It's not polite, and it's not very Anglican, but it's who these people are, in the tension and the fear and the stress of those times. Someone once said, the most dangerous animal on earth is not the tiger, not the wolf, not the shark, but man. It is passages like this in the Bible that make us face up to the danger and the aggression and the violence that lie concealed within each one of us.
But there is another rôle model to notice here. Look at Nehemiah, ceaselessly working to encourage and protect and organize his people. We've heard before in this series, “No vision without implementation”. Nehemiah has had the vision, and now we see him performing the implementation. There is prayer, but also practical planning (verse 9). There is careful and astute response to danger (verses 13-14). Nehemiah never fights a battle; he just makes sure that no battle ever happens. There's a price to pay; look at the sweat and exhaustion expressed in verse 23. There is real and vivid leadership: look at verses 19-20, which form the key part of the passage for me today. Every one has to work widely separated from each other – that's the nature of the task – and yet be ready to join together the moment a crisis arises. So Nehemiah tells them all, to pay attention to the trumpet, to be ready to react instantly, to be ready to drop everything at a moment's notice, because where there is danger there they will find Nehemiah, calling for them to come and fight at his side with the Lord God's help.

They have to pay attention, even as they labour under the hot sun, moving the rubble, lifting the stones into place, tripping awkwardly over their swords. They have to pay attention, even at night when they snatch sleep on the bare and bumpy ground, or as they struggle to keep their eyes open, standing on watch through the night to protect their brothers and sisters, parents, children.

Building today: paying attention

And what of us? Last week in Singapore, sleepless in the middle of the night because it wasn't really the middle of the night as far as my body was concerned, I started wondering about this passage and its relevance to us today. The thought of Nehemiah and the trumpet came flashing into my head; I believe the message of this passage for us today is, to pay attention! We face some challenging years as our community works its way through the present financial crisis; pay attention! Look out for each other, don't just focus exclusively on the work on your own part of the wall. Develop situational awareness of what is going on in the Lord's work next door, in the other church service, in the cathedral across the road, in the wider church in Coventry, the UK, the world. Listen out for the alarm calls; in Nehemiah 4:20 they used trumpets, but these days the grapevine will tell you of friends in trouble quickly enough if you pay attention. I notice that our young mothers do excellent work in looking out for each other when the hard work of parenthood gets too much, making sure there are opportunities to come round and have a stress-relieving chat or a cup of coffee; let's the rest of us use this as a rôle model, and be ready to look out for each other when the strain begins to tell. And we've got to be realistic; no one of us can do very much of this paying of attention; each of you is not being called to bear all the troubles of the community entirely on your own; but you won't have to if all of us all together pay attention to each other.
This trumpet call is not just about pastoral care, either. We need to pay attention to money matters. We'll be needing to be careful with the church finances, because God invented arithmetic and He expects us to honour His wonderful gift of 1+1=2. We will need to review our own giving, because HTC has to balance its books and pay the right rate for what it needs. Let's be careful with our own finances too: the Lord gives us money to spend wisely and well. But also let's not forget to pay attention to opportunities to exercise the kind of outrageous generosity that Jesus Christ modelled for us; why not pick something that appeals to you – Youth for Christ, Three Spires Tots, or HTC Organ Fund, or whatever – and see if you can make it your considered prayer over the next month to pay attention and find out if it is at all possible to contribute something extra to one of those. We discussed something like this at PCC last Monday; we know money is going to be tight this year, and it's going to be tight for everyone, but might it be that the Lord is saying to us, “Look, in world terms you are a rich church, and I have blessed you with all sorts of good things, so pay attention and see whether you can use a portion of my blessing to bless others?”. Talk to me, or to another PCC member, if that rings a bell with you; we need to know, is this what the Lord is saying to us?
Nor should we confine this trumpet call only to pastoral care and to money. The way we treat each other matters – as we will see next week in the next section of Nehemiah. People tell me I am not always as good as I should be at considering what effect I have on others; what I think of as endearing honesty and bluff directness can come across as tactless and crass insensitivity. And at times I focus so hard on achieving a goal that I forget to thank others for help, or to respond politely and accurately to invitations. I need to pay attention.
The New Testament word for all this paying attention is discipleship: learning the discipline of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners, the one whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light (Matthew 11:30). It isn't always easy being a disciple, because the Lord calls us to stretch beyond ourselves and become the amazing people that the Father created us to be. How does that call come to you right now, right at this instant? Maybe it's a call to pay attention to the example of Nehemiah and develop your praying into careful, detailed planning and practical action. On the other hand, maybe it's a call to pay attention to Nehemiah in a different fashion, and figure out practical ways to submit your detailed planning to the Lord in prayer. Our God came to be with us by taking the form of a baby boy, whose swaddling clothes needed changing every time he did a poo; our God knows about details and care about details and paying loving attention. There's as many different ways to develop discipleship as there are different kinds of people to be disciples, so at the end of this talk maybe the call for you is, pay attention, bring this to our loving Lord in prayer, decide in what way might it be most profitable for you to pay attention in the next week …

Amen

1“An open town, and without defences; // such is anyone who lacks self-control.”

Quickly from Singapore ...

As if I were Dr Who in his Tardis, here I am in Singapore, jet-lagged and wide awake at 0530 local time, 2235 back home in Coventry. Travelling is so much easier on family life these days; I've just signed off from an internet chat with Catherine so I feel up-to-date in all the important ways - the day has gone well back home and everyone there is safe.

I'm here in Singapore for just 3 days - silly silly timing, but the only way I could squeeze the trip into a busy work schedule back home. Why so important to come to Singapore? because Louis Chen is turning 70, and the local Maths and Stats departments organized a special conference in his honour.

And we do that sort of thing in my job: we go to birthday conferences for old and dear friends, and we celebrate all they have achieved - in Louis' case a very great amount of achievement indeed - and we do business; we give talks (mine seemed to go well), we make new friends, we get new ideas (my list of things to think about has extended substantially).

I expect wedding parties in 1st century Palestine were like that too; the occasion itself mattering hugely, but all sorts of useful business and contacts and alliances being made on the sidelines.

Does it help or hinder the churchwarden side of my life? well it certainly makes life more complicated, and means I have to re-jig my participation on rotas in complicated ways, and rely on friends to cover for me. On the other hand - I've blogged on this before - church communities and academic research communities have some remarkable similarities, and that does help. In both cases, when you get really down to what matters, it's the people and their relationships. Not in a vacuous fuzzy warm-feeling kind of way - both kinds of communities have jobs to do, and hard edges, and discipline (indeed the church must have pretty much invented the idea of discipline - think "disciple"!) - but because when all is said and done it's people who are at the heart of things.

Which is where I came in, because when I woke up for this wakeful spell I found myself preparing my talk for Sunday week 0930 service. I think I've got the three or four main points sorted. Not only do they all start with the same letter, but they are actually all the same phrase. Well, here in Singapore at 0530 local time the passage seems to be saying just one thing to our people, just one thing very loud, very clear, very distinct. We'll see ...

Making a difference

Some of the most powerful moments in drama are concerned with peoples' need to feel they are making a difference. Consider the famous "Band of brothers" speech in Shakespeare's Henry V

<Youtube clip>

or the dark and moving "Battle of the line" speech from the cult SF TV and film series "Babylon 5"

<Youtube clip>?

But how do we make a difference? The desire does not guarantee the result.

There's a saying I can't track down, that one invariably achieves much less than one hopes in a single year, but on the other hand one often achieves much more than one could imagine in five years. This rings true for me. Last week we as churchwardens wrote down what we hoped to have achieved after 12 months. All I could hope for was to have made a start on my key objective. But in five years it is possible that the accumulated systematic effect of steady application might make a difference.

I think it is easy to get distracted by the modern cult of performance targets and measurement. The Hawthorne effect claims to account for much measured performance improvement as arising simply from the effect of people being studied, rather than the intrinsic merits of any particular change. Thus one can form the impression that alterations in strategy, variations in detail, reorganizations of structure, all provably lead to dramatic measurable improvements after definite and quite short periods of time - and then be continually disappointed when these changes do not translate into effective change in one's own experience. All because the measured changes arose from the good effects of extra attention being paid to the subjects of the original experiment, not at all from the technological innovation. (It's only fair to note that the wikipedia reference above says that the existence of the Hawthorne effect is hotly disputed by certain social scientists. Fair enough, but also reasonable to note the vested interest; such people would tend to dispute it, wouldn't they ...) 

Personally I lean to the view that what makes the difference is personal relationships.  When people feel valued, when they notice that they are being attended to, when they are convinced that what they are doing is worth while, will make a difference, then they are prepared to make extraordinary efforts over long periods of time. And all these prerequisites are delivered in the currency of careful personal relationships, and nurtured over substantial periods in which consistent attention is paid to the things that really matter.

What have I got to prove this? It's all anecdotal of course, but I recall the six or so years I spent in Hull as an ordinary member of a church there, and seeing how it took most of that time for many people to learn to trust an incoming southerner and decide I might not after all be some transient who would inflict bright ideas on them and then shoot off somewhere else, leaving them to pick up the pieces. Or the twenty years I have spent in my present department, and noticing how the leadership when I arrived was determined to trust people to do the best they could, and how that has over the decades built a community committed to excellence - not just individually but corporately too.

If you want to make a difference, then sometimes the way to make the difference is to spend the time, the days, the years, even the decades, consistently focussed on building trust and cooperation. In the language of mathematics, big changes come from small perturbations directed towards the same end over a long period of time. Bit of a moral there, not just for a churchwarden fortunate enough already to be serving a wonderful community, but also for people wanting to make a difference at work, or when joining a church, or when contributing to a more general enterprise ...

This weekend after a very busy week ...

This weekend after a very busy week I had to prepare a talk for church, and also a talk for work on Monday. This is one of the talks, in lieu of my weekly blog ...

HTC 1100, 13 June 2010

Nehemiah 2:1-10

Introduction

Here is the story so far of our Old Testament reading. We begin with Nehemiah, son of Hacaliah, an exiled Jew living in a country far far away from his homeland. Nehemiah rises to the very top of the civil service of the mighty Persian Empire. He is cupbearer to the king Artaxerxes – I had to look this up to find out what it meant – think of someone who is always close to the king, who is at the king's hand for every discussion, every council, who is trusted to ensure that the king's wines contain no poisons, who is responsible for the safety of the king's signet ring, and for the king's finances. Think of a combination of chief finance officer, presidential aide, and commander of security. Nehemiah has come a long long way.

Nehemiah will hear all the politics, know all the concerns, be able to name all the main players in the machinery that runs the Persian Empire. He will be aware that Artaxerxes has had to deal with two major revolts – one in Egypt that lasted 5 years, another in northern Mesopotamia in a highly sensitive region, close to the aggressive Greek city-states who soundly beat the Persians 35 years ago at Salamis, and who may be looking for an excuse for a further play-off.

Nehemiah will also know that someone who has risen so high is also someone who has far to fall. You'll remember similar Egyptian officials mentioned much earlier in the story of Joseph, a cupbearer and a baker who are cast into prison by Pharaoh when things go wrong. In that earlier story, the cupbearer is restored to his former high position, but the baker comes off very badly and loses his head literally. It is dangerous to be the confidant of a king.

And last week we heard of Nehemiah's reaction to shocking news from home, brought by his trusted brother Hanani (Nehemiah 1:2); his home city of Jerusalem remains a shambles, defenceless, walls broken down, gates burned to ashes; a previous attempt to restore the defenses has failed completely and indeed is now forbidden by imperial decree (Ezra 4:7-23).

1: Praying that feels

Nehemiah is shattered by this news, and in last week's OT reading we heard how he turned to prayer. Note the timing and the place: Kislev (Nehemiah 1:1) is a winter month, perhaps the end of November; Susa is the Persian winter palace, far to the East, perhaps 200 miles east of Babylon, four months hard travelling from Jerusalem. Nehemiah engages in focussed and determined prayer for some time, weeps, wonders what to do, worships, waits.

Nisan (Nehemiah 2:1) is a spring month, perhaps end of March. Nehemiah has waited four months, four months of distress and concern for his people, four months of wondering. The waiting and the weeping come at a cost; Nehemiah's face starts to show the strain. This is not cheap detached prayer, it is not an interesting intellectual or spiritual exercise. This is prayer that arises out of commitment, out of care, out of a deep and profound grief and sorrow. Suddenly, disastrously, unexpectedly, the king notices. Nehemiah's personal tragedy intrudes at the worst possible time, just as he is fulfilling his position of trust by bringing wine to the king.

Remember the Joseph story, and the sense that cupbearers and other officials can fall from favour suddenly and fatally. Ancient historians tell us, such people were expected always to show their joy at being in the king's presence. Bringing their personal concerns to the king's service was highly unprofessional, and not a habit that would at all recommend them to a life-insurance salesman. Nehemiah's head is still on his shoulders, but he may already be a dead man walking. Nehemiah 2:2b: “I was very much afraid”. All Nehemiah can do is tell the truth to the king about his sadness.

2: Praying that plans

When I was a very young Christian, a friend said to me, if I knew that my prayer was going to be answered then would I dare to pray at all? It's a thought to bear in mind, to help us focus our prayers on what is really on our hearts, to get to the connection expressed by our Lord when He encourages us to ask for what we really want (eg, Matthew 7:7). Here we see Nehemiah's committed and focussed prayers being answered before his very eyes. Firstly, the king responds not with anger but a question (Nehemiah 2:4, “What is it you want?”). Nehemiah clearly sees that this is the crucial moment, takes an instant to ask his God for help, and …

… suddenly the king and Nehemiah are engaged in sorting out a major renovation and re-ordering project, planning details, times, letters of instruction, letters of protection, everything.

It leads me to wonder exactly what kind of praying we should think Nehemiah has been doing in those past four months. My own picture of prayer is sometimes rather limited, constrained to set phrases, set patterns of behaviour. But when I see Nehemiah coming straight out with his shopping list, knowing exactly how long he needs, aware of all sorts of practical details, I just have to wonder whether much of those four months might have been spent by Nehemiah planning out matters in great detail before his mighty Lord. Something along the lines of, Almighty God, if somehow you were to choose me to do something about this, if somehow you were to make it possible for me to go, then I'd need such and such amount of wood for the gates, and I'd need letters of protection along the way, and the best place to get the wood is probably by contacting Asaph the local forest warden, and …

praying that plans, indeed.

Nehemiah knew the risks he was taking, bringing this matter before the king. But he would have also known there was a chance of being able to reverse the previous imperial policy, of getting the king to back the rebuilding of Jerusalem as an opportunity to build up a strong community loyal to Artaxerxes in a key area of his empire. I don't think Nehemiah left behind his knowledge and his experience when he got down on his knees. Nehemiah's praying was praying that planned.

My own view of prayer was greatly enlarged the other week when I visited the 24/7 prayer rooms in Priory Row. Let me recommend that to you, as we face our own challenging times here in Coventry. I found myself writing, and drawing, and covering my hands with sticky red paint, all in different kinds of praying; very liberating, very creative, very inspiring. Don't miss out on the 24/7 prayer room – it's a wonderful experience. Make time some evening this week to drop by for an hour (though if you are like me then to your great surprise you'll find yourself wanting to spend longer!). And let's all do prayer that plans, each in our own way, as we face change and opportunities in the next few years, because the Bible's story of this faithful man, praying creatively in a crisis, this story is there to encourage us to look and pray and plan beyond the crisis, to see what the Lord wants us to do here and now.

3: Praying that goes forth

And finally, Nehemiah's praying is the praying of someone who is ready to go forth. He sets out on a four month journey, leaving behind the comfort and privilege of a life at court, facing 12 years as governor rebuilding his city. There will be careful implementation of the original vision; dealing with a demoralized community always ready to turn against itself; night after night of anxious watching, dealing with disappointments and false prophets, seeking to restore a sense of commonwealth and (Nehemiah 2:10) always the deep jealousy and unremitting hostility from powerful locals who want the project to collapse and fail. Time and again in the remainder of this account, the personal voice of Nehemiah breaks through to say, remember me, oh Lord, remember how difficult it has been for me, remember how hard I have had to work and how lonely it has been, and don't let it all be for nothing.

I wonder sometimes how Nehemiah might have thought of himself and his own times. Nehemiah 1 conveys the sense of someone who is aware of how deeply his own people have offended the Lord God, how necessary Nehemiah finds it to repent. (As the leader of the 0930 service said today, in a phrase which for me had the impact of a word of knowledge, “we need to be honest about our brokenness, or else we only have a soft gospel”.) I think perhaps Nehemiah would have seen himself as simply not in the same league as the Bible characters who came before him, who worked miracles, and fought successful battles, and defied overwhelming odds. But when I think of what Nehemiah and his colleagues did, how they worked together to use the opportunities and trust they had gained by service in a huge empire, all to restore God's people and to deliver their city; when I think of the care and planning and commitment they showed, not in winning great battles but in careful and astute management to make sure the battles never happened, why then I think of them as absolute stars. So Nehemiah and his colleagues are a wonderful example to us today, both to each of us separately and also as the community of Holy Trinity in the heart of Coventry; to use the position and the voice we have gained in this city to recommend to people the Kingdom of God; to learn to work with other Christians in the Lord's service, to learn to pray with feeling, to learn to pray through planning, and to be ready to pray the prayers that go forth, into whatever future the Lord has planned for us.

I was going to say “Amen”,
but really this is only the beginning ...