Elucidations

  Working recently as a School Chaplain helped me see things in a fresh light. The term ‘sinner’ can be an insult among young people. When we start the eucharist confessing our sins I explain that when we say we are sinners we are recognising all of us do wrong things sometimes. Elucidating sin is a perilous business because no one speaking of it can be distanced from its pervasive influence. There is one extreme downplaying its nature. The people the world might fear most are those claiming innocence from sin. Another extreme, taking Christ’s teaching in Matthew 5:28 literally, sees a lustful thought as the end of the road with God. I remember a friend at university convinced that as he could not stop the thoughts he might as well act on them and have sexual intercourse with his girl friend. It was great to meet him years later back in church attendance, a happily married man. The association of sex with sin impacts the understanding of both. I recall preaching an altar call in th...

  Years back I had a charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit in a Leeds Church. I came late to the service and as I came through the door heard loud harmonious singing without intelligible words. I fell to my knees awed by something so out of this world with hundreds of worshippers going with the flow of a holy humming successively rising and falling then dying down to silence. After that silence I heard one or two voices speaking words of consolation as if from God to the gathered worshippers along the lines ‘I love you… I have a way forward for you… trust in Me’. It left an impression deep in my soul sowing the seed of being open to the Holy Spirit’s gifts of tongues and prophecy mentioned in scripture. By contrast in terms of charismatic experience a young couple came to see me who had fallen in love at their workplace. Both were already married and one of their existing partners was awaiting the birth of their first child. As Christians they insisted their relationship was fr...

Jesus Christ will come to judge the living and the dead’ says the Apostles’ Creed so that God who is truth sees the ultimate triumph of truth over falsehood. It is Christian faith that we live in hope of that moment of judgement to come individually and generally. The doctrine of judgement extrapolates from those of creation and redemption linked to the person of Jesus Christ seen as having won the right to assert the definitive triumph of good over evil and truth over falsehood. ‘Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known’ (Luke 12:2). Christ himself demonstrated such unveiling of truth throughout his earthly ministry and encouraged people to face up to their shortfalls offering forgiveness and healing. ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’ (John 8:32). Facing the truth is a great human problem addressed by Christianity. That we humans find it hard to own our shortcomings is linked to bad experiences in our pas...

  Why so many faiths? I come across people who believe in God but will not sign up to a religion either due to the hypocrisy they read of or to confusion about which of many religions is most credible. People today are more aware of the variety of faiths across the world than their parents or grandparents through the revolution in global communications over the last half century. With so many faiths to choose from, they rightly ask, how do you decide which one is right? Elucidating, shedding light on the variety of faiths, risks being patronising towards faiths I have not known from the inside. I am impelled to do so by a conviction that the instinct for meaning, and hence religion, is in every human heart. This surely is why our species is called ‘homo sapiens’, translated ‘man who is wise’. I sense God’s love and holiness at work in believers from other faiths than my own, let alone unbelievers, and see how they contribute to the common good of society. They do so by upholding va...

  The coronavirus pandemic has been a repressing force like a brake or imprisoning ball and chain. Barred from leaving home without necessity we felt like caged hamsters on the wheel of a routine going round and round looking forward to release from both cage and wheel. The pain of our isolation was amplified by the suffering and deaths of family and friends we kept distance from following unassailable yet heartbreaking logic. In a pandemic we cannot do what we want to do for our sake and for the sake of others. Societies that accept, or have to accept, heavy regulation from government have accommodated better to this than open societies where restricting freedom to do as you like seems alien. Stepping away from people on the pavement is now ingrained and lack of intimacy with others is having widespread effect on mental health. It is a painful scenario at the time of writing although vaccinations bring hope of reducing the pain of coronavirus to something like the annual onslaught...

  Brusher Mills was the last and most celebrated of New Forest snake catchers. He died in 1905. A picture survives of him clutching a haul of adders in each hand. Brusher was something of an eccentric. He had a particular way of winning favour with young ladies furtively dropping an adder near a group of them retreating until they screamed. Then he appeared to rescue them from peril! Christianity can be viewed like that, scaring folk with demands to make them feel inadequate and presenting them the Saviour. Like Brusher’s tactics for winning ladies there are forms of evangelisation which do damage to truth, especially the truth about ourselves. To some Christianity looks good in principle as an altruistic movement but harsh in galvanising individuals to a cause built seemingly on self-hatred. The founder of Christianity warned, after all, that ‘those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it’ (Matthew 16:25). How can Christiani...

  ‘Twas God the word that spake it, He took the bread and brake it, And what the word did make it, That I believe and take it’. In twenty seven words Queen Elizabeth I devoutly summarises millions of words uttered and written about the presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the eucharist.  Her words cleverly duck and dive around how the words of Christ are said over the bread and what actually happens to the bread. The beauty of the sentence is its stress on what the Bible says, capturing an emphasis of the English Reformation, whilst not attempting to reduce the categorical and presumed transformative words of Jesus, ‘This is my body’.  The Reformer Martin Luther held to the same biblical faith and fell out with the more radical views of Zwingli and Calvin which disowned any transformation of the eucharistic elements: ‘Since we are confronted by God’s words, “This is my body” – distinct, clear, common, definite words, which certainly are no trope, either in Scriptur...