Take 2

One question I have been asked consistently in the last month is this: ‘will The Malmesbury Nativity be the same as last year?’ I am really quite proud of myself; at no point have I answered ‘actually, it’s going to be twins this year.’ A longer and more helpful answer follows.

Last year we wanted a new mix. Carols that had a live band and nodded in the direction of the contemporary folk rock; actors who were trained actors, not vicars pretending; a set that brought everybody close to the action, rather have people 20 rows back straining to see; and something really ‘Malmesbury’ not a generic Christmas play. So we created a script with Aldhelm, William, Eilmer and Hannah Twynnoy as the story tellers—a play within a play. But what we also really wanted was the birth of Christ from the Bible; not The Snowman's Christmas Miracle or What the Donkey saw in the Manger One Starlit Night with the Church Mouse.

Our challenge was to take the birth narratives of the gospels of Luke and Matthew, word for word, NRSV, not a word changed or added, and bring them to life in such a way that over 1000 people wouldn’t realise that they had just been listening in to the Bible. This also meant that Simeon’s prophecy of Mary’s anguish (Luke 2:35) turned up before the Magi, and put the agony of the cross into the nativity story with subtlety, as Luke intended.

So is it different this year? No; St Matthew and St Luke seem pretty happy with their scripts and scenes 3-6 remain the same. And although we thought of introducing King Athelstan, we’re holding him back for a future year.

So is it different this year? Yes. The beginning and ending are not the same and we’ve added a new song. For those of you who remember last year, there has been some big change in the Old Man’s life and he won’t be listening to Sport’s report. You’ll just have to wait and see. 

Tickets are still available for 4 of the 6 performances. Young children are particularly welcome to come dressed as a shepherd ,angel, magi, Mary or Joseph.

2½

I sat in a group of about eight or nine vicars during the summer, pity me, none of whom were from this area and one of whom asked this question: ‘Does any one of you seriously want everybody on the planet to become a follower of Jesus?’ As I said ‘yes’ I realised that mine was the only hand that went up in the room—which really rather surprised me. I thought about my answer for a second, just in case I’d made a stupid, idiot mistake, or to consider whether it was a trick question. (I always remember the quiz contestant on TV who when asked who wrote Beethoven’s 5th Symphony answered ‘was it Handel?’) But then my maths A level came charging to my rescue, and I said ‘2½.’ Now it was their turn to look bemused back in my direction. ‘There are approximately 7 billion people on the planet,’ I said,  ‘and approximately 2 billion Christians of one flavour or another. Now if each of the 2 billion Christians were to be so inspired and flowing with love, mercy and truth that 2½ people become followers of Christ though their witness, well that would mean 7 billion followers of Jesus on the planet; job done.’

On reflection it was an over simplistic answer and not much of a mathematical model. On reflection I wonder why some people are vicars. And on reflection I think a more honest answer would have been 3½; because although I might have a half decent chance with the other 2½, I consider the turning of myself into a follower of Jesus to be a lifelong project with plenty of bumps on the road. But I’m glad that I did the maths. Because when somebody asks me why we work so hard to raise our game with our welcome and hospitality at the Abbey, when somebody asks me why we put on richly creative projects like Advent Carols Services and Skate Parks, and when somebody asks me why we cram about 175 people into weekly discipleship groups and will be running Alpha Courses incessantly, I know the answer—2½.

PS Please invite 2½ people to church this Christmas. You bring them along, we’ll tell them about Jesus.

Hope

The year begins. Almost unnoticed by the high street, the school, the work place, and even the church – our church year begins today; Advent Sunday. At the abbey we have moved all the chairs so we can celebrate the new church year by falling over each other. The everlasting beauty of the Church of England is that even when we completely change the seating arrangement, everybody still finds their normal place to sit in.

Advent Sunday at 6.30pm the light will come into the middle of the darkness, beauty arrives in the silence, the divine word in the chaos of the world. Advent is a season of hope.  What is it that will remain with us after our Advent Carol Service? For some it will be the beauty of choral worship as it echoes around the 12^th century walls of the Abbey, drawing us a little closer to heaven and the song of the angels. For others it will be the stillness, as we stop and sit in silence and listen to the timeless word of God written 2,000 years ago or more.  For me it will probably be the Advent carols themselves, the richness of the harmonies on the organ and the depth of the longing for God in the texts. But perhaps for many it will simply be the candles, the light shining in the darkness. Most of us have seen a candle before, but not all of us will have stood with 300 others and held candles symbolising the light of God, shining in the darkness of humanity. It is a powerful image.

As 2 billion Christians worldwide mark Advent Sunday today, it is easy to imagine the tangible darkness of the church in the Philippines, or in Egypt, or in Syria; yet they meet in hope today. And as the year ends in the UK each of us knows somebody for whom the darkness is also very real, and it looks like personal debt or job vulnerability or relational breakdown or sickness or loneliness or spiritual searching. But Advent is not a festival of darkness; it is a reminder that whatever shape or shadow the darkness takes in our lives, God is there, and we, the church, will always be a people of hope. The Light shines.

Our advent texts proclaim again that ‘the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.’ Jesus Christ is that light.  May you, and those you love, seek and know His holy presence in the days and weeks of Advent.

60 pages

Over the last few years as a church we have had a good look at the writings of Paul (Romans, Ephesians, Colossians) and in recent memory (the last three months) allowed Luke to shake us up a bit with the parables of Jesus. And it’s not just St Luke and St Paul; last January and February 1 Peter was the text we began the year with. (Actually, as many commentators agree that Mark’s gospel was a source for Luke’s gospel, and most also agree that Peter’s preaching was the key source for Mark, when we read Luke, Peter is also in the picture; if you follow.) We’ve also had some good wrestles with the Old Testament; David, Joseph, Elijah and Moses and a few years ago took 6 months to travel through the whole Old Testament.

However what has been troubling me a bit is that a man that wrote 60 pages of my Bible hasn’t had much of a look in recently. 60 pages! If you have a really small Bible with large print that's probably over a hundred pages. After Paul and Luke, St John is the major contributor to the New Testament and we are going to be spending 2014 with him as a church.

In January and February we will explore the nature of God and the nature of love from 1 John. (2 John and 3 John will also pop up, but blink and you’ll miss them.) During Lent we will be looking at what it meant for individual people to meet with Jesus; Nicodemus, Lazarus etc. and then during Holy Week it will be John’s account that takes us through to Easter Day when Bishop Lee will be preaching. Most of us have either avoided the book of Revelation altogether or got an unhealthy obsession with it. In May to July we’ll address that and also take Revelation away on our church weekend away. When you are on holiday in August you’ll miss the ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus recorded in John, and then in the autumn our attention will be the signs and wonders of John—feeding the 5K, walking on water. And then when we open our Advent calendars next year Revelation 22, Revelation 12 and John 1 will be behind the little doors.

E-mail me or call Sandie to join a new small group for 2014 and get the most out of an extraordinary year.

FS Kelly

Text of a talk from Remembrance Sunday

I’d like you to listen the beginning of a piece of music written in the year 1915. It’s called Elegy for Strings, and as you listen perhaps you will hear the sadness of war, or the stillness after a battle, or hope, or the lack of hope – listen to a minute or two now:

Elegy for Strings on You Tube

That piece was written by a young Australian composer called FS Kelly, Lieutenant-Commander FS Kelly; you’ve never heard of him, and perhaps you can imagine why. It’s a beautiful, sad piece fully titled, Elegy for Strings In Memoriam Rupert Brooke. Now you may have heard of the poet, Sub-Lieutenant Rupert Brooke, and recognise the opening words of his poem The Soldier, written in 1914:

If I should die, think only this of me;

that there's some corner of a foreign field

that is for ever England.

Sub-Lieutenant Brooke died of malaria, on an Allied Forces hospital ship in 1915. It was moored just off a Greek Island, and one afternoon he was indeed buried in some corner of a foreign field. Overwhelmed with sadness, his friend FS Kelly wrote his Elegy for Strings at the base camp for the Gallipoli campaign, where he was serving. Gallipoli. You see it’s not so much the year FS Kelly wrote his music, or even for whom he wrote his music, although both are significant; but that a young Australian composer and soldier could write something of such sad beauty at Gallipoli; a place where over 120,000 Allied and Turkish forces died.

On Remembrance Sunday we look back together, sometimes not too far. We are glad to see humanity at its sacrificial and its best; but we don’t rose-tint the view, and we also remember humanity at its saddest and its worst. On Remembrance Sunday we will never reach any easy conclusions, and all we can probably predict with certainty, is that the generations that come after us in this place, will be remembering conflicts that we haven’t yet conceived.

But we are in this holy place today, to say that even in humanity’s darkest hours, God’s grace abounds. God’s word reminds us that out of slavery and captivity in Babylon came a rebuilt nation; it reminds that St Paul sat on a Roman death row as he wrote some of his most inspiring words to his dear brother Timothy; and of course it tells us that Jesus Christ lifted his head as he was crucified, looked us in the eye and called out to each of us: Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Just as the beauty of FS Kelly’s music was birthed on the bloodied beaches of Gallipoli, today we remember that the most holy is found right in the middle of our most unholy. And therefore we have hope.

FS Kelly was wounded twice at Gallipoli, but, unlike many others, the young composer survived and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Sadly, in November 1916 he was killed rushing a machine gun post in the Battle of the Somme. He is buried nearby; in some corner of a foreign field.

Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord

They shall rest from their labour,

and their deeds will follow them. (Rev 14:13)

Tomorrow

Malmesbury Abbey is familiar with conflict. In the year 939AD King Athelstan the Glorious, the first King of all England, was buried here. Athelstan had led his English and Welsh forces in a decisive victory over the Scottish, Danish, Norse and Irish at the Battle of Brunanburh; and he chose to be buried here alongside the men of Malmesbury that fought alongside him. His tomb, a later medieval offering, is in the North Aisle, just behind the organ. Much later, on 21st March 1643 the English Civil War raged just outside the doors of the Abbey; you can see the cannon and musket shot holes on the wall to the left of the porch. I think we beat Tetbury that day. And it’s not all ancient history: just 10 days ago the Abbey was filled with the serving military of 9 Logistics from Buckley Barracks, as, in a service led by Padre Richard Priest from our own 4pm congregation,  we marked with prayer and worship their safe return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

But of course for many, whose lives were lost and affected by the global wars of the 20th century and the ongoing conflicts of the 21st century, Malmesbury Abbey is an annual place of remembrance, a place of profound sorrow—as it is this weekend. For civilians like myself, it is possible to feel something of a fraud. Personally, I have no experience to remember, I’m unfamiliar with the reality of battle. I don’t know what it feels like to serve in the military, what it feels like to have that final embrace before you fly out, or what if feels like to put your foot on the soil of another nation dressed in the uniform of your own country. So how do I remember?

Perhaps I remember by considering my peaceable life, and the democratic governance  of our nation, and the eyes that didn’t live to see it. And I hold before myself the words of the Kohima Epitaph and remember tomorrow:

When you go home

tell them of us and say,

for your tomorrow

we gave our today

Interrupted

Breakfast on Tuesday was fun as we celebrated a birthday in the vicarage, but then on my way around to the Abbey for Morning Prayer I remembered that I was in a bad mood with somebody and it rose to the top of my priorities— aren’t we dim? Anyway, we gathered quietly in St Aldhelm’s Chapel and at 9am the liturgy began and shortly we arrived at the psalm for the day, Psalm 36. It was all about the wicked, oh excellent I thought, it’s all about that person who’d put me in a bad mood. But as I read on, even in my coffee-free daze, I realised that the wickedness the psalmist sings about is not just everybody else’s wickedness and by the end of verse 4 I was in that ‘guilty as charged’ place that we often inhabit devotionally. Fortunately the psalmist changes tack in 5, your love O LORD reaches to the heavens, and by verse 7 I was approaching restoration through how priceless is your unfailing love. God is kind.

I turned into a schoolboy during the Old Testament reading. Most days at Morning Prayer Annette is there with us, but not last Tuesday—until Micah 7:2. ‘All men lie in wait to shed blood, each hunts his brother with a net’ or ‘each hunts his brother with Annette’ as I heard it. That’s where she is, hanging out with King Hezekiah. Snigger.

But the set readings weren’t finished with me yet. We sat down from the hymn and in the silence of the Abbey John 19 was read; Christ was crucified, and Christ breathed his final breath.  John 19 is much easier packaged on Good Friday, in late October it is horrendous. Somehow in Holy Week we shape the rhythm of the week to make a place for the cross on the Friday, but last Tuesday it was a holy interruption of God. Think each thought with the cross in mind, live each moment with the cross before you. And of course we don’t, and I didn’t, and perhaps one of the greatest sins of the church is our forgetfulness. But with Christ before me, as I hope he is before you now, for just a moment I remembered that his humanity was lost that I might recover mine, and his breathing stopped, that I might breathe again.