God is like a sleeping bag

 

Maybe,

God is like

a sleeping bag.

 

On one of those dark nights,

When life was battering you,

You found him;

climbed into him:

you rested in his gentle holding.

 

And then the morning came,

And you thought about how you could keep God with you.

It was easy at first:

Folding the end of him and rolling him up.

But the bag in which you would carry him,

soon seemed full.

Some of you will be experts at this,

but when God is your sleeping bag

don’t expect to stuff the last bit of him in.

 

If you could, what good would He be to you?

That sleeping bag stuffed into its own bag?

I guess you could lay down and rest your head on him.

He may soothe your thoughts;

smooth out your anxieties.

But how would He touch your heart?

How would He cradle your soul?

 

I guess you could sit on him.

He may enable you to take the weight off your feet,

whilst you wait.

For something; for someone.

Or maybe you could use him as a meditation cushion?

As you sit on God would He seep into you

And still you?

 

But I am not sure

That He will ever let you squeeze him into that bag.

I feel that as you begin to enclose him,

He will expand;

He will open out.

And when you go to pull the chord and hem him in,

You will look up and see that He has spilled out

And stretches beyond your grasp.

 

He gave you rest.

He held you in the darkness.

Is it impossible to carry him with you,

so that He is there when you need him again?

Is there something that you can carry that will contain him?

 

Yes!

You can carry him inside yourself.

In that space of your soul

Which longs for his presence,

and echoes the universe in its capacity to expand.

When you carry God inside you

your soul will grow.

God will gently push the edges outwards,

Sometimes slipping through its porous perimeter

And touching the world around you.

 

And if your soul should ever

become full of God,

He will pour out of you,

and cover the world

in a blanket of love.

 

 

 

Love is like a sleeping bag

 

Maybe,

Love is like

a sleeping bag.

 

On one of those dark nights,

when life was battering you,

you found her;

climbed into her:

you rested in her gentle holding.

 

And then the morning came,

and you thought about how you could keep Love with you.

It was easy at first:

Folding the end of her and rolling her up.

But the bag in which you would carry her,

soon seemed full.

Some of you will be experts at this,

but when Love is your sleeping bag

don’t expect to stuff the last bit of her in.

 

If you could, what good would she be to you?

That sleeping bag stuffed into its own bag?

I guess you could lay down and rest your head on her.

She may soothe your thoughts;

Smooth out your anxieties.

But how would she touch your heart?

How would she cradle your soul?

 

I guess you could sit on her

She may enable you to take the weight off your feet,

whilst you wait.

For something; for someone.

Or maybe you could use her as a meditation cushion.

As you sit on love would she seep into you

And still you?

 

But I am not sure

that she will ever let you squeeze her into that bag.

I feel that as you begin to enclose her,

She will expand;

She will open out.

And when you go to pull the chord and hem her in,

You will look up and see that she has spilled out,

and stretches beyond your grasp.

 

She gave you rest.

She held you in the darkness.

Is it impossible to carry her with you?

So that she is there when you need her again?

Is there something that you can carry that will contain her?

 

Yes!

You can carry her inside yourself.

In that space of your soul

which longs for her presence,

and echoes the universe in its capacity to expand.

When you carry Love inside you,

your soul will grow.

Love will gently push the edges outwards,

Sometimes slipping through its porous perimeter

And touching the world around you.

 

And if your soul should ever

become full of Love,

She will pour out of you

Like a blanket

Settling gently on the world.

 

 

Sermon                                                                     John 3:1-17

About this: A recent sermon which includes one of the most famous Bible verses.  The Bible text is included in the talk. The formatting of this as I published it to the blogsite is a little strange - sorry about that!

Let’s start with the truth!  This passage includes one of the most famous verses in the Bible.  It is a familiar passage.  Yet, the truth is, when I sat and read it to start preparing for this morning I thought: Crikey!  What does this mean?! I felt very much with Nicodemus in his puzzlement about Jesus’ words. 

Please don’t let the familiarity of these words get in the way of their meaning. Let’s be curious, question and grapple with these words to truly understand what is being said to us.

I’m going to focus in on a few verses but let’s also walk through the story to put those verses in their context.

Verses 1+2: Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.  He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’

So, the first thing to notice is that Nicodemus is a man of standing in the Jewish Ruling Council.  He comes to visit Jesus at night because he doesn’t want to be seen, but these initial words of his tell us that he recognises Jesus as someone special.

Verse 3: Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’

Jesus’ response to the compliment that Nicodemus gives him is provocative.  Honestly, if you heard this for the first time – as Nicodemus did – would you know what Jesus meant?  This phrase is often translated as being ‘born again’ – for me that translation carries a lot of baggage.  It feels as if the concept of being ‘born again’ was adopted by the Evangelical wing of the church and became a definition of an Evangelical Christian and therefore associated with a set of Evangelical beliefs.  Being a ‘born again Christian’, for me, has become tainted with a sense of being exclusionary: a sense of people saying I’m a more authentic Christian than you are: I’m a better Christian than you are.  I find this translation, which talks of being ‘born from above’, more helpful – I am drawn to it. 

Understandably, Nicodemus doesn’t understand what Jesus is saying.  I think what Jesus is saying is that in order to see God’s kingdom something has to happen to us: something that we are not in control of.  I was not in control of my own physical birth – none of us choose to be born.  I think this being ‘born for above’ is also out of our control.

Let’s continue reading Jesus’ response to Nicodemus in the Message version of the Bible.  Verses 5-8:

Jesus said, “You’re not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. When you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.

“So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”

The first thing to say about these words of Jesus is that they are a bit harsh!  They are harsh for a reason.  Jesus is talking to a leader of his faith – the Jewish faith – and this leader does not understand how God works.  Nicodemus is in a position where he would be teaching about God and yet he needs Jesus to teach him things which – to Jesus – are basic.  However, I don’t think the fact that we are not leaders in the Jewish Council lets us off the hook.  How long have you been a follower of Jesus? How well do you understand what Jesus is saying here? These are the fundamentals of our faith – we need to grapple with these words.

So, what is Jesus saying? Firstly (look at the words highlighted in yellow), I think Jesus is pointing to the mystery of God.  God – God’s spirit – is not in our control.  We can’t see it; we can’t fully understand; we can’t put it in a box; we can’t decide who it touches and when it touches them.  The things of God are from God – we can not manufacture them.  God is God: outside of our definitions and control.

Then (looking at the words highlighted in grey), how do we respond to our God?  Just because we’re not in control doesn’t mean we should do nothing.  We need to put ourselves in a position to receive God’s touch. We need to submit ourselves to God; we need to be baptised into a new life.  We need to do what we can to put ourselves in God’s way.  We’ll come back to this…

Verse 9 shows us that Nicodemus still doesn’t understand (and let’s be honest – do we really understand what Jesus has said?).  Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by this? How does this happen?”

And so in verses 10-15 Jesus vents some of his frustration with Nicodemus. Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher of Israel and you don’t know these basics? Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the things of God?

“No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

In trying to get Nicodemus to understand what he is saying Jesus mentions an old testament story that Nicodemus would have been very familiar with (The story can be found in Numbers 21: 4-9).  He gives Nicodemus a bridge into what he is saying.  In the desert God commanded Moses to make a bronze snake on a stick and lift it up.  Anyone who looked at the snake was healed from the poisonous snake bites they were suffering with.  Jesus says in the same way it is necessary for him to be lifted up – so people can see him and trust him and gain eternal life.

And then we come to the famous verse!  Let’s read it along with verse 17 – in the Message version:  This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. 

Again, please don’t let your familiarity with these words stop you from being curious, grappling and questioning.  Sometimes reading familiar words from the Bible in a different translation can help us to question a bit more.  I honestly looked at these famous words and thought: what does this mean?  I have been grappling with these words – questioning them.  I’m going to share what came out of these words for me but please do grapple yourself!

So, here’s what I observed:

I notice that God GAVE his son.  And knowing that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one we know that this means he GAVE himself.  I heard recently on a podcast that one definition of love is to give your life for someone else.  God is the definition of love and he demonstrates this at high personal, incarnate, expense.

He gave himself so that no-one need be destroyed.  My understanding of this verse is evolving.  One way of understanding what Jesus did is that he paid the price – of his life – so that we can be reconciled with God.  I find this idea difficult – why would a God who is love demand such a price to be paid?  What I see played out in life is that when I walk outside of the way of love it leads to me to destruction and the destruction of others.  I think we all know this at a visceral/instinctual level.  We know we mess up; we hurt people; we destroy.  Jesus shows us the way of love in completely giving himself: he is the way, the truth and the life.  The way of love looks like failure – it leads Jesus to death.  The way of love worked out in our own lives may also look like failure.  But we know that this self-giving way leads to resurrection: to new life.

Note that ANYONE can have whole and lasting life by believing in Jesus.  But what does it mean to ‘believe in Jesus’? In my grappling with the text this was the central question that came up.  I think in the 21^st Century when we think of a person who believes in Jesus we think of someone who believes that Jesus lived, died and rose again.  But these words were spoken to Nicodemus – Jesus was sitting right in front of him – he didn’t need Jesus to tell him to believe in his existence!  So, what did Jesus mean when he said to believe in him? In my Cruden’s concordance I found a definition of believe that makes sense to me: to be fully persuaded.  Am I/ are you fully persuaded by Jesus in all he said and did?  Being fully persuaded by Jesus is not an easy path: it is the narrow way: if we take Jesus’ words seriously they are going to have an impact on our lives.  Jesus calls us to be his apprentices – to draw near to him, learn from him and become like him – this is the kind of believing he wanted for Nicodemus and this is the kind of believing he wants from us.  This understanding of believing gives us a lot more to work on (remember I said we’d come back to what we can do?!).  It is not an overnight zap and change – this was never how Jesus changed people’s character when he was on earth.  We are on a journey and our call is to daily walk with Jesus: walking in his way; being formed by and responding to the spirit.

It is so important that we read verse 16 with verse 17.  Jesus didn’t come to condemn or accuse (equally we should not condemn or accuse).  Jesus came to put things right and to teach the way of Love, with the ultimate consequence of giving his life.  He loves us that much.

God is mystery and will work as he wills.  But we do have a choice.  If we are fully persuaded by Jesus we can live out our lives as his apprentices: learning the way of love.  And, when we do this, we will have glimpses of that kingdom.

Photo by Bhaskar Agarwal on Unsplash

 

Musing #9: Reality

“Our hardest and holiest work is to not look away”

Yesterday evening I went to the shops and when I got home my 15-year-old daughter was watching a Dispatches program on Channel 4 entitled, Kill Zone: Inside Gaza.  The graphic footage of what has happened and is happening to people in Gaza was harrowing.  There were no advert breaks during the program but, where the adverts would have been, a notice warning viewers that they may find some of the images distressing and that they included footage of injured children. I asked my daughter: Do you want to watch this? She nodded.  So, I sat with her, and we watched the horror that is reality for so many unfold before our eyes.  Knowing that this reality is only one of many around the world which seem impossibly inhumane and unliveable.

What should I do as a parent?  As a mother my primary concern was for my daughter: how would she respond to these images?  And yet I watched children with multiple injuries and listened to them talk of the multiple family members they had lost.  Their reality is so bleak.  As I went to bed I looked out my window and thought that in another part of the world, somewhere I can not see, that reality continues.

A couple of days ago I was listening to a radio discussion about a novel set in the near future, or may be the present, which deals with climate change.  In the novel one of the characters observes people laying out their towels on a British beach in the sunshine and says to another character: How can they do this?  How can they carry on as if nothing is happening? Don’t they realise that this is our planet falling apart? (or words to that effect).  In the discussion the author and the other participants talked of how we live in two different realities: most of us are fully aware of the effects of climate change and the suffering and radical changes they will bring, but at the same time we have to carry on with life, so we do. 

The realities of our own life in the here and now tend to supersede any other realities that we know of.  We tune out some of the news we hear: we numb ourselves to the pain that we know exists.  And, often, we have pain and anxiety in our own reality which can not be easily brushed aside: it is as real as the suffering on the other side of the planet and as real as the suffering that is coming.

The quote above is from Rabbi Sharon Brous.  These words - our hardest and holiest work is not to look away – struck me as true on so many levels.  It is easy to look away; to carry on as if nothing is happening; to let things happen to other people; to ignore the person I had an argument with.  But is it right? What is hard is also holy work: when we face the ugliness of humanity something shifts in us.  If we can stay with that pain we open up cracks that let Love in, even in the midst of the suffering.

We can not function and take on all the realities that exist on our planet at the same time: the pain would break us.  But neither do I want to ignore them.  I know that when I sat down to watch that program last night – doing so not because I wanted to but because I wanted to see what my daughter saw – I opened myself up to the suffering of other human beings.  I witnessed other lives and, in some intangible way, I let their souls speak to mine.  Did anything change?  In the horrendous situation I was watching, the news this morning would seem to say a resounding no.  But, did anything change?  Somewhere inside me I think something did, because I recognised and acknowledged another human being in pain.

At the beginning of Rabbi Sharon Brous’ reflection that I read this morning she says: A Rabbinic text from the ninth century declares that every person is accompanied, at all times, by a procession of angels crying out, “Make way, for an image of the Holy One is approaching.”

Every person… My prayer is that we will know that for ourselves, and that we will honour it in each person we meet and in those that we see in their suffering on our screens.  Let us not turn away from them but do the hard and holy work, reaching out – in what ever way we can – into the pain of our kin.

 

All is Well: A Journey in Contemplation

g Reality

It may seem like a strange question, but: what is reality?  It seems to me that in the clamour of modern life we have lost our hold on what reality is.  Many of us know this through our experiences of social media.  We scroll through posts and know that, whilst we can touch base with people, much of what we see is not ‘real’.  More than ever before, we have the opportunity to curate our own lives and to portray a life that is not real.  We can reach across the ether and ‘hold hands’ with a friend – give them a virtual hug – but this can come at the price of not living in the present: not interacting with the people on our doorstep and the environment in which we live.

Human beings are amazing creatures and the exponential rise of technology means that many of us – especially in developed nations – live lives that are insulated from what it means to be alive.  We don’t have direct contact with the source of the things that enable us to live: our water comes from taps; our food comes from shops; our heating comes through radiators.  We take for granted: shelter; full stomachs; clean water and warmth.  And in the same way that we have lost contact with the physical sources of life, so too have we lost touch with the spiritual source of life.  God/Love gets lost in all the superficial things we hold onto and we seek solace through various forms of addiction – to food, drugs, alcohol, pleasure.  Always seeking more, bigger, better.  Trying to hold on to youth and beauty instead of seeking the inner wisdom that comes from a life in touch with reality.

This is not to say that life is easy.  Life trips us up all the time.  It throws ‘curve balls’ at us that knock us off balance.  And sometimes that fall is exactly what we need.  Sometimes that fall takes us face-to-face with reality and we are able to let go of the things that have blinded us.

It is a hard message to hear, but a true one.  We need to spend some time in darkness, and we need to recognise our current trajectory given our lack of care for our planet.  Human beings are amazing creatures, and yet despite all our knowledge and scientific discoveries we too often run away from the truth.  When there is bad news there is only so much we can take and then we seek comfort – comfort that is often taken at the expense of others who are far away enough for us to ignore.

I struggle with this.  I struggle to live in a world where I know that other people suffer, where the planet is being exploited and destroyed, where it seems that too many of us – and in that I include myself – are too lethargic, or scared, or selfish to act in love for the whole of humanity and the planet.  It is all too much – the problems seem too big to even conceptualise, so I disappear back into my comfort zone.

I believe that God wants us to live in reality.  To face the darkness and, indeed, to dwell in it sometimes.  It is there that we can escape the clamour of the world: we can find God and God can find us.  It seems counterintuitive in many ways and yet it is the pattern of nature - life leads to death and death to life – the very pattern that Christ as a man lived out in his time on earth.  He did not turn his back on the realities of life – he reached out in love and when death sought him out he absorbed the hatred that put him there and accepted his path.  In accepting his path, he found life.

In many ways it seems crazy to be writing these thoughts and ideas under the title of ‘All is well’ when our world is such a mess.  But I honestly believe that when we face the reality and ugliness of our world and ourselves, it is then that God/Love enters us with the reassurance that ‘all is well’, and we become aware of a bigger reality.  A reality that is cosmic and beyond our understanding. We gain a peace that we don’t understand and yet is more real than any we have previously experienced.

Meditation has been described as ‘practising dying’.  In meditation I sit in silence and I let go of all that is inside me: I just sit.  The way of contemplation is a ‘letting go’ not just of the physical, but also of the ego – a letting go of myself.  Jesus taught us to give up our lives and take up our crosses.  Why such a tough request?  Because that is the way of life and peace.  God does not come to punish us in this, he comes to us in Love and wants us to find the Love that he planted in our souls at the very beginning; that he planted in the whole of his creation.

The darkness we experience is sometimes an unknowing.  Whilst I am energised to understand more about how our universe functions, I am conscious that there are always more questions.  Whilst I love to find out more about how people work and to find empathy, I am always faced with people and situations that surprise me and that I don’t understand.  Sometimes I need to let go of the desire to understand and sit in the mystery of it all.  God/Love is mystery and sometimes our journey is a road of un-knowing.  Sometimes we need to unpick what we thought we knew and trust the falling; trust the mystery; trust the darkness.  Let go of our need to be in control and trust that God/Love will always catch us.

Through darkness we find light.  Fighting for justice and peace, valuing our planet and every human life, is not something we can do without this inner journey.  We will burn out; we will lose hope.  We need to do the inner work that takes us to the real reality; that affirms that ‘all is well’.  Then we will live in hope and faith, and love will be our source and our guide.

 

Love says

Love says:

I am here

 

I am in the waiting.

Pregnant with the life

that will unfold.

 

I am in the

sound of the wind,

and in its silence

as it comes to rest.

 

I am in the pause,

in the full stop,

the comma.

 

I am in the snatch of time

between your busy thoughts.

 

I am in each Nano second,

which passes

without your noticing,

beyond your grasping.

 

I am within the sound waves.

Caught in the bird’s song

And the hum of traffic.

 

I am the infinite space

Between each molecule.

In the narrowest gap

which opens up into my expanse.

 

Love says:

I am here

I am not in the stillness.

I am the stillness

that seeps into you

as you sit in my loving gaze.

 

Sermon: Acts 17:22-31 and John 14:15-31

Theme: The Lord of the Dance

Yesterday at church those leading the service talked of how our faith is like a dance, in which we are learning to tune into the music of God’s love and move in response.  In looking for what to share on my blog I found something I wrote in May 2017 on these two passages which feels like it is exploring the same theme.  How do we understand God? How do we tune into the music of love and join in his dance?

In the verses in Acts Paul is talking to the people of Athens.  They ask him to explain ‘this new idea’.  They are thinking people but what Paul is saying is something different – I love that they want to understand.  I find myself standing with them saying, ‘Yes, Paul, please explain!’ 

Paul in his ‘tuned-in-ness to God’ understands their desire, and he speaks to them because he  wants the unknown to become known (v 23); he explains that God does not live in temples built by hands (v24): he describes how God wants humans to seek him out, reach out for him and find him, ‘though he is not far from any of us’ (v27).  In verse 28 he uses the Athenian’s own words to explain that God is with them: ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’ ‘We are his offspring’.

I sense that searching for God in my own soul.  I sense the presence of God when I slow down and pause.  I feel like my life’s journey is to return home to the place inside myself where God/Love dwells and this is a journey that we are all on however eloquently or uncomprehendingly we articulate and understand it.

Then we come to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John. We see that Heaven’s strategy is relationship and starts with the relationship ‘within’ God – between the three parts of God.  Jesus says in verse 16: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counsellor to be with you for ever – the Spirit of truth.

God is ‘three in one’.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The relationship between these three is at the heart of our faith.  The Holy Trinity is a difficult concept but as we struggle to understand we find the deeper truths and the mystery that is God.  We will never fully understand ‘him’ but that shouldn’t stop us trying and, in the process, beginning to unwrap that bit of God’s kingdom which lives within us.

The relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is sometimes understood as the ’Divine Dance’.  There is movement and harmony and it is centred around Love. Jesus says in verse 20: ‘you are in me, and I am in you’.  Jesus is in the Father and we are in him, and he is in us, and the Holy Spirit ‘lives with us and will be in us’ (v17).

The intertwined nature of the relationship reminds me of a Celtic knot within which we find no ends.  The flow of the ‘three in one’ is beautifully illustrated in this ancient art.  And that image is deepened when we realise this is a static symbol of something that is moving and flowing.  It is a dance of love into which we are invited: we are invited into that Love energy.

Yesterday at church we sang ‘The Lord of the Dance’.  I tend to associate this song with my 70’s Primary education – a favourite in assemblies.  But yesterday I heard its truth.  Jesus is the Lord of the Dance and invites us to join in.

“I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me: I am the Lord of the Dance said he!”

I would encourage you to listen to ‘The Lord of the Dance’ and to consider Jesus’ words: You are in me and I am in you.  What does that mean to you?  How does that reality sit with you?  God lives in you…  Have you found ‘him’ in there yet?

Picture by Caleb Woods on Unsplash