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The Politics of the Kingdom (a revised reblog)

As many of you know I'm currently on sabbatical and largely staying off social media and other sources of news, but the coverage of this week's English local elections and the Welsh and Scottish devolved assembly votes has been hard to avoid. But whilst rootling around on my blog to find material for a writing project I am working on about Christ as King and the Kingdom of God, I came across this dialogue that I posts almost exactly 10 years ago in the wake of elections that week and thinking about issues of sovereignty that were looming with the Brexit referendum the next month... how little did we realise how much the results of that would still be rumbling on after a decade!  So I thought it was worth another post, with a slight amendment... As I said then, I'm not entirely convinced by the fetishism of democracy, especially given it's tendency to be subverted by tribal interested or the undue influence of those with vast amounts of money, which has been emphasized o...
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The Last of the Boxes

Yesterday was, as noted previously, the last of the lasts in this circuit, after spending the last 13 years back in this part of Belfast, and 8 years as Superintendent of Belfast Central Mission. Thankfully the BCM board are letting us stay in our current Manse until after I have had my sabbatical and move to my new post in July, so I won't have to spend all of my sabbatical filling boxes. But I cleared my office at BCM HQ in Grosvenor House on Thursday and posted the attached photo on social media. This is the first of two pieces prompted by the photo (I haven't finished the other one yet). Throughout my time in BCM when at that desk I have been very aware of the pictures of the 11 previous Superintendents looking down on me... wondering whether they would approve of what I was doing or where things were at. The space left for me as the 12th Superintendent in that seat always had a certain inauspicious sense of "completeness" to it, although I genuinely h...
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Believing Thomas

As promised today I will be preaching in Donegall Road Methodist for the last time in my current role, and will be focusing on today' lectionary reading from John 20 and the story of the much maligned "Doubting Thomas" and Caravaggio's treatment of the story. I won't be using the following monologue that I wrote a few years ago when looking at this story elsewhere, but I was surprised to find that I hadn't previously posted it here. So here it is... It picks up some of what I am saying today but also builds on my assertion last week that the greatest proof 9f the "resurrection" is not some finely reasoned argument in a sermon, but radically changed, hope-filled lives, be they Mary, Thomas, you or me.. I wasn’t there… I just needed time to myself. I couldn’t face being cooped up in a room with the rest of then after the women had come back that morning babbling about the tomb being empty… None of us believed them, and I just had to put so...
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The Last of Lasts

And so, after a series of "Lasts", some formal and some more informal, I am coming, at last, to the last of the lasts... At least in my current role. On Sunday 12th April at 11.30am the only service on the Belfast Central and South Circuit will be taking place in Donegall Road Methodist Church with the Circuit Superintendent Robin Waugh leading and me preaching for one last time... Everyone is welcome... those from elsewhere on the circuit... friends from other churches (admit it you often mitch off your home church on this "Low Sunday" anyway)... family... passing acquaintances... There will be refreshments beforehand from 10.45am. As a bit of a spoiler, I will be referring to the attached piece of art in the sermon (which isn't written yet, but there is plenty of time). It "The Incredulity of St. Thomas" by Caravaggio and it is usually to be found in the Bildergalerie of the Sans Souci Palace, in Potsdam, Germany, but I saw it "in the flesh...
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Do We Believe in Hell Anymore?

Many years ago when I was only a first year ministerial student, the minister I was serving with assigned me the challenge of preaching on the phrase "he descended into hell" from the (old style) Apostles Creed, at our Good Friday service, as part of a series we were doing on the creed at the time. It took me down a whole rabbit hole looking at medieval theories of the "harrowing of hell" which has stuck with me down through the years because of their poetic power. And  there is also a part of me that finds it hard to shake off the medieval imagery of hell that you find in the attached picture of  "Christ's Descent into Hell" by a follower  of Hieronymus Bosch (mid 16th cent.)  from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.   However,  when I look back at the text of that sermon (yes... I've surprisingly still got it though, for good reason I have never preached it again) I didn't major on that idea. That's because the original Greek text of the ...
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A Return to the Shadow of the Cross

As part of out circuit Holy week events this year on Wednesday evening we hosted "Play It By Ear", otherwise known as Chris Neilands and Ross Jonas who are funded by the Methodist Church in Ireland to use drama to explore faith issues. They performed their latest piece "The Chair, the Table and the Cross" which looked at the events of Holy Week from the perspective of a Jerusalem carpenter's workshop. It was an all age piece, so it didn't go too dark or deep, but thinking about it later took me back to a a couple of things. The first was the attached oil painting, "The Shadow of Death" by William Holman Hunt, this version being his earlier, darker one painted between 1879 and 1883,  in the Manchester City Art Gallery. And the second is a scene I posted here before, way back in 2008 in the wake of watching an episode of "The Passion" produced by the BBC that year (I've still not seen the whole thing).  My thoughts then took...
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Benediction

Today was another "last" with my friends and colleagues at BCM HQ (including some of the Puddleducks team included in this picture) hosting a farewell coffee morning. Unlike most of the other events I prepared my reply to the nice things said about me, including this concluding Benediction, taken, in part, fron a longer series of beatitudes in my recently published book of poems " Hedge Songs ." Blessed are you who are burned-out and  overworked, picking up the pieces of broken lives in a broken world, because you will know the breath of God filling your lungs and spirits. Happy are you who say “Stop! This is not right!” in the face of impossible odds, because God’s got your back. Blessed are you who are changemakers rather than just reacting to change, because change is the crack in the universe through which God pours in opportunity. Happy are you who weep now at partings, but refocus on the future, because the same God who blessed you in the pas...
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