As I enjoy a bit of time to myself while Rachel plays in a soft play area, I thought I would share some thoughts that surfaced over the course of today…
Rachel and I went for a haircut earlier today and while talking with the man cutting my mop, we talked about some of the things ministers and hairdressers share. One comment that he made was people tend to share a lot of the happy parts of life with a hairdresser as opposed to ministers, who share in grief or sadness (unless they are getting their hair cut for a funeral).
As I listened, I realised that I was very comfortable in discussing many aspects of what the future holds as well as the privilege of being a minister. Then I realised that I was looking at myself as we talked.
Do people open up more in this context because they are looking at themselves? Do people take a good look at themselves and decide to ‘reflect’ on what is going through their minds?
Do people see the hairdressers as a mirrored confessional where we empty our troubled minds and hearts before leaving with a clear head, a fresh style and a fresh outlook?
Over the summer months, the Spill the Beans material is focussing on the story of David from shepherd boy to sovereign ruler. In the series Windows to God…Mirrors of our Souls, we are using David’s story to reveal elements of God as well as reflect on aspects of our own lives…
What do we see in the mirror?
What do we see in ourselves?
Are we a true reflection of what is going on inside?

It has been a great day and I wanted to share something from it…

Yesterday, my friend and fellow probationer Brian contacted me to ask if I could help him to set up a Skype connection for a funeral that was to take place today. Intrigued and without a school assembly to go to, I jumped at the chance to help.

And so today after 45 minutes, a webcam and a wireless extender, we had a connection to stream the funeral from Kirkintilloch to Canada. The family across the pond had Skype on their television set, which meant that they could see and hear everything clearly.

After a short discussion and some minor adjustments to the position of the camera, I left the laptop unattended in order that I may prepare the iPad to record the service as a backup in the event of the connection dropping. As I looked over at the laptop screen, I was amazed to see that the brother-in-law of the deceased was sitting quietly, looking at the sanctuary beginning to fill with people. Even several thousand miles away and out of sight of everyone else, he chose to sit peacefully in quiet contemplation as he waited for his family to join him in front of the screen for the service.

As we drew closer to the start of the service, the family turned off their microphone. This is part of what made this experience so powerful as all I could see was a family talking to one another and wiping tears from their eyes. As the service progressed and the Rev. Mark Johnstone began to bring memories of the deceased to mind, I watched a sister sitting across the Atlantic Ocean laughing at humorous tales and sharing comments with her family. At this point, I felt quite emotional – it felt wonderful to have been able to help make it possible for a family to share in the celebration of the life of a loved one without distance being a barrier…

Thanks to Skype, stories, sorrow, sadness and smiles were shared. It was a privilege to have been able to help make that possible…

Many of you know that I love technology – I even preach from my iPad, which I know many other people are planning on doing in time to come. I have now helped two churches (including Trinity) make the idea of installing screens in their sanctuaries a reality with a number of other churches looking to follow suit.

But in spite of all this, I know that there are limits.
There are buildings where such installations would not work or would require a great deal of thought; there are situations where it is best to leave the screens shut off and folded back against the wall…
But there is a place for technology in the church and today’s example was just one of many…

As may be the case for a number of Spill the Beans users as well as those who decided to break away from the Gospel for a spell after Easter, some people have been journeying through the first letter of John where we struggle to avoid the fact that God loves each and every one of us as his children.

When the time came for me to preach on 1 John on April 29th, it became clear that it was going to be difficult to escape doing another sermon on… you’ve guessed it! Love…

I wanted desperately to find something new, exciting, and challenging, but alas the text had its way with me — all I could hear was that bloomin’ four letter word — a word that has become so overused, misused, and abused.
You know the one I am talking about . . . love!

I am just as guilty of this… A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Church of Scotland HQ to tell me that I do not need to do a second Church Law essay. I immediately said out loud – Yes! I love you!!!

It’s very easy to do isn’t it? But it’s nice! It’s great to be passionate about things, to enjoy someone or something, as much as to say that we love them.

There is, however, the risk that if we say something too often or for the sake of it that the shine is rubbed off it and the meaning that is carries begins to disintegrate.

In his introduction to the letters of John, Eugene Peterson writes in The Message:

…the two most difficult things to get straight in life are love and God. More often than not, the mess people make of their lives can be traced to failure or stupidity or meanness in one or both of these areas…
If we want to deal with God the right way, we have to learn to love the right way. If we want to love the right way, we have to deal with God the right way…
God and love cannot be separated…

Still, in an attempt to steer away from using the ‘L’ word too much, I turned my attention to the Gospel reading for that Sunday.

There are some scholars who also believe that 1 John was written to allow people to make sense of John’s Gospel and suggest that 1 John should be read in light of John’s Gospel. These same scholars have reason to believe that this section of 1 John is supposed to explain what Jesus meant when he said that he was the Good Shepherd in John 10. This was news to me as well as I have always gone back to the 23^rd Psalm or Ezekiel 34 for my reference so I was keen to see what happens when I used this approach instead.

Before I go any further, I need to make a confession. There is a type of painting that many people use to depict Jesus as the Good Shepherd, which I really don’t like. It’s the kind of painting in which Jesus is shown holding a pure, white lamb against his pure, white, dirt-free clothing. I don’t like these images for one reason and one reason alone – I don’t think that this is what a good shepherd looks like. And as we explore these passages a bit more, you will see what I am getting at.

Look at the first two verses of today’s reading from 1 John as they appear in The Message:

‘This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears.’

Now look at these verses from John 10:

‘I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf come and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravaged and scattered by the wolf. He’s only in it for the money. The sheep don’t matter to him.’

When we love somebody with the love described in 1 John and that of a Good Shepherd, we go to the ends of the earth for them. We will go to places where we wouldn’t normally go. We are prepared to take risks to help them when they are in distress. We are prepared to stand in the way of things that seek to harm those we love.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this would be achieved without getting our hands dirty. Going far from home in order to pasture the flock, shepherds would go for days without a bath, or change of clothes, sleeping outside on the ground in the rain and facing the dry, dusty heat. Clearly, far from beautiful, shepherds are dirty, even filthy, and they probably do not smell very nice.

Is this a startling image for Jesus? Jesus as a dirty, filthy, stinking shepherd. This tells me that Jesus is someone who will get his ‘hands dirty’ in order to lead us to life. It tells me that no matter what kind of a mess I have made of my life, Jesus will not hesitate to come and join me on the way in order to lead me through the dirt, the mess, the trouble that I have made of my life.

Jesus truly is a good shepherd. What makes him such a good shepherd is that he has not, does not hesitate to take on the pain, brokenness and mess of our human lives, joining us on our way, so as to lead us to freedom, healing and life.

And that is what this passage in 1 John is telling us to do:

Let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love.

We are being called to love a love of truth and action. A love for the unloved, a love for the marginalised, a love for the poor, a love for the excluded, despised, rejected. A love that will not let go. A love that abides people and abides with people.

It is in loving such love that we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us; by the Spirit he gave us.

When writing this, I couldn’t not shake these words from my head and so I will close with them, because I feel that they sum things up perfectly.

‘What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
But what I can I give him, I will give my heart.’

I have finally decided to sit down and get this blog up to date…
So what has been happening since I last posted apart from the whole of Easter?!

As a Candidate and University student, it was very difficult to get too ‘involved’ with the plethora of events that take place in the run up to and the week preceding Easter Day. This year, it was an entirely different ball game and I feel very privileged to have been part of such a wonderful series of events.

During the month of March, I had the pleasure of working with the Calderside Learning Community Chaplaincy Team to bring the message of Easter to over 300 P7 pupils across schools in Hamilton and Blantyre. From the devouring of Creme Eggs to reflecting upon the Crucifixion of Christ, The Easter Code, takes its participants on a journey through the events of Easter.

Beginning at the point where Bubblegum ‘n’ Fluff ends, we acted out a ten minute Gospel, which stops at the point where Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem. The journey then continued with the young people moving around different stations, some of which were set up inside the famous Calderside Chaplaincy Team gazebos! (The one shown here is the tent where we show the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane using the video The Miracle Maker.

I got a terrific opportunity to lead the different stations and experience what message they had to offer. I learned an incredible amount about Pesach, the Jewish Passover meal, with its variety of symbols, signs, scents and savourings!

I really enjoyed hosting the Gethsemane tent however as it was great to speak with the young people about the fact that the right thing to do is not always the easiest. In the video clip, we see Jesus asking if there is any other way. From there the attention turns to temptation as a road out of the garden appears and the chance to bail. But Jesus knew that he had to go through with this for it was not his will but his Father’s. We compared it to school life where sometimes when people are picking on others, it is all too easy to join in or walk away and pretend that it is not happening instead of telling someone who might be in a position to stop it. I could see the cogs turning in the heads of some of those present by the way they were engaging in our conversations, which was great!

Through different media and discussions, five topics were covered in the course of this journey: Sharing, Seeking, Serving, Struggling and Sacrifice, which allowed the young people present to see what Easter is really about.

Having been involved in both of the chaplaincy team’s programmes and now thinking towards where I hope to begin my ministry, I hope that I will be able to take these ideas with me to wherever I end up and share them with the young people I get the honour of serving in the days ahead.

After recovering from the repeated building and taking down of the equipment required for The Easter Code, it was time to think about the events of Holy Week. This year, Karen (my supervisor) and I worked on the theme of …holding the story of love…, which you may have followed at the blog published especially for that week.

That week was special. To have been able to help put such a creative and thought-provoking series was something that I have been desperate to be able to do since doing ‘bits n bobs’ throughout my candidacy.

The process of weaving together a tapestry of words, textures, symbols and songs in a way that transports us through the events of Holy Week in a way that people with some understanding of the events or none at all can feel included and challenged by what Easter means to us in the twenty-first century.

On Easter Sunday, we moved from holding to letting go – letting go of our grief andgrievances, just as Mary had to let go of Jesus. Each of the congregation were given a small token with a crown of thorns – the same as the one on the back of our Holy Week bookmarks. Towards the end of the service, the congregation were invited to come up and put these tokens at the foot of the cross as a symbol of leaving our burdens behind and picking up a daffodil, a symbol of new life, new hope and new beginnings…

Hi everyone!
Sorry for the lack of posts of late… I will get something posted as soon as time allows.

For the duration of Holy Week, I have created a separate blog if you want to read some reflections.

http://trinityholyweek2012.wordpress.com/

May God be with you throughout your journey through Holy Week and beyond…

Further to the above comment on Facebook…

Agnus Dei with Lyrics

I recorded this on my 30th Birthday present from Karyn, which I’m still getting used to so apologies in advance for the level balance!