Default

Throughout August 2012, at our informal 4pm congregation at Malmesbury Abbey, instead of one 20-25 minute sermon we will be having a TAKE 3 series– where three speakers have 5 minutes each on the same predetermined text. No collaborating, no secretly preparing a carefully balanced 15 minutes together so that one speaker magically speaks on the Father, the second on the Son and the third on…we would be throwing food and jeering at the last speaker for such blatant contrivance. Potentially we get three people saying exactly the same thing three times, potentially we get three insights that intersect and illumine, and then the congregation get to vote. Actually there is no (formal) voting at all, but the congregation do get five minutes to discuss in groups what the text and the three talks have stirred up in them. This has been fun and interesting and pretty fruitful when we’ve done this in the past and breaks the mind-numbing monotony of my preaching.

So in July I will give two pieces of advice to our mini-preachers. Firstly, five minutes is not nine minutes. Do the maths, 2000 words do not fit into 300 seconds without some sort of illegal stimulant. And secondly, be aware of your default setting – the thing that we always get up and say, the point we always make in spiritual conversations. You know the sort of thing - the church needs to re-engage with the poor; we need to pray more so that things will change; people are living less holy lives; the UK is about 3mm from spiritual catastrophe; we need to go deeper in worship. Sometimes we present our default as ‘the gospel’ so that we can say the same thing every time and our brothers and sisters can hardly argue against ‘the gospel’. Sometimes we feel the Lord has ‘laid on our heart’ precisely what our default setting is, a remarkable coincidence. (The only thing laid on my heart is cholesterol.) We all do it – let’s come clean.

I know a preacher whose default will often lead him (helpfully) to the perspectives of the Church Fathers on our journey together; another for whom we really should wake up and follow the radical Jesus in an transformative missional community (he’s absolutely right); and another for whom St Paul’s writing is a regular clarification and a stirring challenge (it is) - even if he’s been speaking on Old Testament cookery. I love these preachers and their teaching and I hope they will show me similar mercy when I rather predictably encourage the church, yet again, to get out there, to see God at work in the world and join in, and to live lives which commend the gospel to those for whom it is an irrelevance (we should.)

But I think, if we're honest with ourselves and can push past the awkwardness, we can dig deeper. Jung writes about our shadow side, or dark side, but I have a feeling that the lives we live are formed by something far less sinister but ultimately far more compromising; a subconscious laziness that allows us to drift back again and again to our habitual spiritual default. And we flip back to it when we leave the building or shut the Bible or say Amen (if it has been our default to go to church, read the Bible or pray in the first place.) The Lord is doing a new thing. Go, install, reconfigure, reboot.

The Church of St Peter & St Paul

It’s as if they know, somehow. The Church of England seems to be rather suspicious of joy, not quite convinced that too much happiness is acceptable, or even English. We devotionally spend 40 days in the wilderness with Christ, join with Him at a footwashing Passover and open our hardened hearts to the pain of the cross and the silence of the tomb. And then the church suddenly explodes with a truly remarkable Easter joy, hallelujahs all over the place, as for once Anglicans seem prepared to allow resurrection life, power and joy to surge through us. We are ecstatic and Easter is exhilarating, and somehow... they know. So, deep in bowels of synodical government, a scheme is devised to set us free from this heavy burden of joy, and to bring us back to ‘normal church life’ (whatever that might be). Let them have an Annual General Meeting, they say, let it be complex, let it be pernickety, and if at all possible could people kindly attack one other over trivia. And if anyone is still displaying signs of joy let them lose the will to live at the AGM as the person next to them asks a question in microscopic detail about the church accounts – something to do with depreciation generally does the trick. I think someone is on to us.

Why can’t we just be like the joyous Spirit-filled early church, simply praising God, sharing food, healing the sick and proclaiming the Gospel. That pneumatic wonder, where  there were no council meetings (except Acts 15 of course) and no delegating authority (except Acts 6 of course) and no elections (except Acts 1 of course) and no difficult financial matters (except Acts 5 of course) and no disagreements (except Acts 15:36-41 of course) and no AOB or matters arising (except the Epistles of course.) Can’t we be like them?

Malmesbury Abbey AGM, Sunday April 29^th 2012: 10.30am coffee, 11am Communion, bring a packed lunch then our meeting from 1.30-3pm. Expect the book of Acts – all of it.

Eric Cantona, and why not?

Eric Cantona is not going to be the next President of France. Nicolas Sarkozy can sleep a little (not much) easier as the only decent player ever to play for Man Utd has revealed, in an interview with the Big Issue, that when he was seeking support from French mayors for his recent presidential bid, Cantona was actually involved in a publicity stunt to raise the profile of a homelessness charity, the Abbé Pierre Foundation. Good for him, but a shame really, because a man who is prepared to jump into a crowd kicking, with his studs showing, might just have the physical and emotional resilience for leadership without the assistance of a guillotine. (Much easier with one.)

Listen to somebody writing about being a leader in another environment – the church. It was written in the Church Times in 1998. ‘Living in the Christian institution isn't particularly easy. It is generally, today, an anxious, inefficient, pompous, evasive body. If you hold office in it, you become more and more conscious of what it's doing to your soul. Think of what Coca-Cola does to your teeth. Why bother?’ It is a profound sadness that anybody can accurately describe leading other human beings in those terms – what are we? why do we behave like this? – but it’s a deeper, deeper sadness that their observations are of Christian leadership. Who brews the Coke? Is it the institution? Is it the leader themselves? Is it the world we serve in? Is it the disciples they work alongside? Yes (x4).

The man who wrote those words has just caused a vacancy to arise at the very top of the Church of England. Maybe he was having a bad day, but I doubt his opinion has changed too much in the intervening 14 years, and I for one wish him well and am grateful for his leadership. So, in the absence of any phone call from Lambeth Palace for myself, the campaign for the robust, stubbly, Gallic leadership of Archbishop Cantona begins here.

St Arbuck's

Before Easter two tourists came into Malmesbury Abbey. They walked up to the stewards’ desk and asked ‘do you have a café?’ The stewards answered no, and then the couple turned around and walked straight out. I was tempted to say that they ‘flounced’ out, but it wasn’t that dramatic really. You’d want to ask them were they not a little interested in seeing the tomb of the first king of England, Athelstan the Glorious? Did they not want to stand on the site where saints since the 7^th century have said their prayers and feel the holiness? Did they not want to use one of our three toilets? (They’ve got stained glass.) No, for them it was all about coffee – and to be honest I am relatively coffee-fuelled too and understand their dependency.

They should come back as this Monday, 23^rd April, Clare Cork, our new Café Manager, opens the Abbey Café for the first time. If each of our 50,000 tourists stops off for a cup of tea and a cup cake, we will be totally stuffed, but happy. Why are we doing this? Well it will certainly enhance our tourists’ visit – a king, stained glass, toilets and a sandwich – and it should be a distinctive new watering hole for Malmesbury, with monks singing and Fairtrade drinks. It will help us pay to keep our 12^th century building from falling down around us, and it should welcome those who really need a welcome or even a chat and a prayer. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.  (Matthew 25:35)

It would be great if you stopped by in the early days, and if you have two hours a week to volunteer and don’t mind smiling and washing your hands we have a job for you.