From Ashes to Hope

This week I went to York Minster to start Lent with the beautiful ancient ceremony which gives Ash Wednesday its name:  receiving a cross of ashes on my forehead. Why ash? Because it is a symbol of mourning and mortality, given to each person with words echoing those I last heard at my father's funeral in late December: "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return". To many, Lent is a time of giving things up, of disciplining the body and reflecting on our frailty and failures. While this is valuable, it raises the question of what the purpose of discipline actually is. What are we training for? 

In her sermon, the Dean encouraged us to think differently about Lent: rather than trying to punish ourselves because we are not perfect, let us put in the effort to pursue excellence.

In the Footsteps of St Cuthbert

Waves crashing around the rocks at Amble.
Coquet Island is behind the rock

My visit to Northumbria at the beginning of May was shaped by its connections to holy places and people that played a part in the history of how we came to know Christ in Britain. We stayed in a B&B with a view over the bay including Coquet Island, where Cuthbert once lived as a hermit until he was persuaded to become bishop of Lindisfarne. We walked along the bay to Alnmouth, where the ancient church in which Cuthbert was ordained bishop has now been washed away.
 A highlight of the trip was a visit to the Franciscan friary at Alnmouth (which I had heard much about from friends who are members of the Third Order of Franciscans, following the way of St Francis in everyday life under vows but not in a residential community). We had tea and conversation with a range of people staying with the friars as a retreat house, before evening prayer filled us with a sense of peace and the presence of God. St Cuthbert in particular resonates with me, and I read much about him before my birthday trip to Durham a few years ago to see the Lindisfarne gospels.
One place remains to be visited on another occasion: the holy island itself, perhaps next Easter with thousands of other pilgrims.

Holiness in Action: The Girl in Black

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town… …But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back, Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black. (Johnny Cash, Man in Black)

This year I discovered another resonance to the Good Friday tradition of wearing black for the day, as my husband asked me if I was aiming to look like Johnny Cash, who famously wore black as a constant reminder to all who saw him that not everyone had riches or fame to rely on. 

His song was in my head all day, and got me thinking about how fasting and mourning can help us to connect with those who are on the edges. On the day which Jesus died, it seemed all hope was gone. Evil had triumphed, the authorities had had their way and fear and injustice was all you could expect if you happened not to be rich or powerful. So this seems like an appropriate theme for Holy Saturday: Even if by definition hope refers to the future, for the Bible it is rooted in the present. Anne Lamott puts it like this:  

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.” 

So will we take up the challenge? Will we learn to lament the state of the world as it is, where the powerful usually triumph and the poor are forgotten? 

Holiness in Action: God at Work

"People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening” (Ps. 104:23). 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it another way: 

"After the first morning hour [of prayer], the Christian’s day until evening belongs to work." 

Indeed, for many of us a full hour to pray before our work starts would be a blessed luxury! This balance of our time has been the same for centuries. When the Benedictine order of monks was founded on the principle of "work and prayer", where work informed prayer and vice versa, without holding one of these to be more important than the other. But have we lost this perspective today? Do we instead consider them to be totally separate activities?

Many people put a very hard distinction between work and prayer saying "I can feel God close to me when I'm in church, but God can't really be interested in what I do all day, can he? It's only what I do to pay the bills." But the Creator of the universe delights in what we do, because our work reflect the image of God himself as we engage in creating and maintaining order and beauty in God's world. 

So does God care whether the trains run on time, or if a whole community like Western Cornwall are cut off by rail because of a collapsed sea wall (as happened at Dawlish last year)? Does God care whether the law is upheld, justice is done, people are served, children are educated?

Holiness in Action: The meek shall inherit the earth

This is the second in a series of Lent meditations considering the concept of "holiness in action" - how do we apply Jesus' teaching to today's world? 

This week I read a passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings on the Sermon on the Mount which I found very challenging. Jesus said:

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Matt 5:5

But who exactly was Jesus talking about and how should we apply this principle today? Bonhoeffer wrote that the meek are: 

"those who renounce all rights of their own for the sake of Jesus Christ. When they are berated, they are quiet. When violence is done to them, they endure it. When they are cast out, they yield. They do not sue for their rights; they do not make a scene when injustice is done to them." 

I am not sure that I agree. Was Jesus meek? While he went "like a lamb to the slaughter" and championed non-violence when Peter tried to free him by cutting off one of his assailant's ears, his previous form was distinctly combative. Does a meek person go to a respected rabbi's home to declare that his host and others at the table were like "whitewashed tombs" that made great effort to be outwardly holy but were rotten underneath, doing nothing to help the poor or support people in their faith?  

Holiness in Action: For the Love of God

"How great is the Father's love that he has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" 1 John 3:1

Welcome to the first of a new series of weekly reflections for Lent about faith, work and sustainable living inspired by Wesleyan theology.

John Wesley founded the Methodist movement with his brother Charles in 1738 after a deep experience of the love of God which John later described as being "strangely warmed" (my friends in the Cambridge Methodist Society at university had hoodies declaring that they were instead "warmly strange"). 

My husband is a local preacher, and has been telling me for years of the riches to be found in Methodist theology about “holiness in action”, or applying faith to real life. This Lent, I’m taking up the challenge: to read all of Wesley’s 44 sermons (now available to read online!) and explore what they can teach us today.