Virtual Methodist

As I warned, gentle reader, this past week I've been elsewhere, and doing as little as I could humanly get away with. I have, however, taken the opportunity to go to the cinema a couple of times, once to see the "Blind Side" which I would heartily recommend, and once to see "Clash of the Titans" which I would heartily recommend that you avoid...
The first was warm, life-affirming, well scripted, directed and acted while the second was a shambling, pretentious mess. The first was focused on a decision that was at least partly prompted by the leading character's religious convictions, but that religious dimension was not over-egged. The second was a remake of the 1980's Ray Harryhausen epic, for the digital 3D, new-atheist age producing a plodding, earthbound, humourless, pseudo-humanist take on Greek mythology. Ironically the only smile it induced in me was the nod to the 80s cheesy classic, when the clockwork owl which played such a prominent role in it …

Taking a short break from work and blogging in my usual post-Holy Week exhausted state... Hope to be back in the saddle next week. Don't pine away in my absence.
When I return I promise I'll do something on the issues that lie behind the play "Over the Bridge" as I said I would this time last week... my only excuse was that I was a tad busy since then.
Also want to flag up that in future I'll be disabling the direct link with my Facebook site as it seems to be playing silly beggars at the moment, resulting in some posts appearing up to 2 days late... Instead I'll do a manual "share" until such times as the problem seems to be sorted.

Anyway, until I see you in the blogosphere again....



Shalom

Well today at our Easter morning family service I underwent the indignity of weighing myself in front of the whole congregation at the end of my attempt to "Lose Weight for Lent", with sponsorship going to Dundonald Family and Community Initiative and the Methodist World Development and Relief Fund...

Some suggested that in order to cut down on weight I should have donned an "mankini" but sense prevailed and no-one was traumatised. But those who have sponsored me (and indeed I myself) were surprised and "delighted" to have discovered that I have lost exactly 1 stone (or 14 pounds for our American cousins) in the course of these past 6 weeks.

I had all my excuses ready incase I hadn't lost anything, or (as I feared) had actually put on weight, after making such rash promises...

But the emphasis in worship today was not on me fulfilling my promises but Christ fulfilling his promises to rise from the dead... not on the stone in weight that I had lost, bu…

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Luke 23:44-46 (ANIV)
Yesterday's reflection was entitled "It is Finished..." but I wasn't quite finished, and neither was Jesus. Luke's gospel has him using some words of another Psalm, this time Psalm 31, before, finally, breathing his last.
William Barclay tells us that this was the first prayer that every Jewish mother taught her child to pray last thing at night… The Jewish equivalent of the old English prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
Should I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
We've reflected previously on the relationship between Jesus and his mother… Had Mary taught Jesus this prayer? But if his mother had …

knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty…" A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:25-30 (ANIV) Completed… fulfilled… finished… Three words all drawn from the Greek word “telos” “the end…” Eugene Peterson reflects that repeated use better when he uses the word complete in all three places… And in many ways that word gives a better sense of the words that John’s gospel uses, in that “finished” can tend to give the despairing idea that everything is “done” defeated… As I am sure that his disciples and his mother felt that day… But the word complete carries the idea of "completion"… wholeness… perfection… nothing missing… The final piece of the jigsaw completing the pict…

Sometimes there is a lot of debate as to exactly what the last thing a dying person has said. When the playwright Oscar Wilde died, there were a number of last words attributed to him. One story has him sipping champagne in his bed and saying "Alas, I am dying beyond my means.” Another, more famously has him saying "Either this wallpaper goes, or I do!" He may well have said either, both or neither at some point in the whole process… they certainly sound like him… But they are unlikely to be his very last words as he is said to have converted back to Catholicism on his deathbed and a priest was with him up to the very end, and because of the sanctity of the confessional relationship between priest and parishioner, the priest never disclosed what words were exchanged between them.
Throughout this week I've been looking at the 7 recorded comments of Jesus on the cross. As I wrote earlier, they’re drawn from all 4 Gospels, because no one contains them all. Indeed Matthe…

Happy New Year!
No I haven’t lost the plot completely. Over 400 years ago, when they changed over from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, they moved the New Year from the beginning of April and spring, to the beginning of January. And those who refused to change were treated as fools. They were invited to non-existent parties and other pranks were played on them, and it is thought that this may be one of the origins of April Fools’ Day.
But actually all around the world, in many different cultures there are light-hearted festivals at this time of year celebrating the change from winter to spring… Hope, in place of despair…
Easter is part of that. In its pagan origins it was a celebration of fun and fecundity summed up in a decorated egg.
In the Christian celebration it is an exploration of the grounds of hope for humanity.
This week began with the seemingly foolish image of the King of Kings entering into Jerusalem on the back of a humble donkey. In John’s Gospel we read:
The next …