Virtual Methodist

An adaptation of a very old monologue based on a piece from New Irish Arts' "I Witness" 2 decades ago, but re-written as a partner piece to the post on Friday, as part of the livestreamed service from the Agape Centre led by my colleague Emily this morning while I was conducting the service in Grosvenor Hall. You can watch Mel Lyle's delivery of it on the recording on our Circuit YouTube Channel. I saw him… with my own eyes… although I didn’t recognize him at first… it must have been the tears… I thought he must have been the gardener, and I gave him a hard time about where they had put the body… I can’t imagine what he thought… I gabbled on until he said “Miriam”… My name… though you know me as Mary… Whatever way he said my name cut through my distress and confusion and I saw him as clearly as I see you now… my dear teacher… “Rabboni” I said as I rushed to embrace him… But he wouldn’t let me… Something about not holding him back from returning to his father… So I did...

(Thought for the Day on Radio Ulster, Easter Monday 21st April 2014)   Alleluia. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!    Alleluia! With those words Christian churches across the English-speaking world began or ended their services yesterday. But let me let you into a secret… There are many pastors, priests and preachers who, by the end of the last service yesterday, were secretly thinking Alleluia! It is over… Because whilst Holy Week and Easter is THE most important week of the Christian calendar, it can end up like the spiritual equivalent of a decathlon… with services throughout the week, prayer meetings, home communions, extended vigils on Good Friday and early morning services yesterday, often followed by baptisms, communions and/or special Easter celebration services… Some of my friends think that Holy Week is the only week of the year I do a full week’s work… But many ministers down tools on Easter Monday for a few days, and frequently take the S...

The title of this post could have been used to describe the happenings on a Chicago golf course last night, but it actually refers to the book by former Bishop of Durham, N.T. (Tom) Wright. I apologise in advance to facebook friends and fellow Goodreads members as this is substantially the same review that I posted via Goodreads this morning... But I thought it was worth taking a slightly more leisurely look at some of the issues raised there. I first read this book about four years ago on the recommendation of Glenn Jordan. It took me about four months to get through it the first time, as it is not an easy read... I actually finished it whilst on exchange in Grand Rapids, so it was a pleasant accident that our exchange partners, Geoff and Pam Hayes were with us yesterday evening for our "Good Book Group" who had chosen this book to read way back in March. So, whilst Europe and America were slugging it out in Medinah, a group of Irish and Americans (including some golf add...

A reblogged monologue by Herod Antipas inspired by today's Gospel reading from the Lectionary in  Mark 6: 14-29 . Wrote it three years ago as per the lectionary cycle, but didn't use it until this morning... If I was being generous to fellow preachers out there I should have re-posted it a few days ago... But I didn't want to spoil the effect for the few members of my own congregation that occasionally stumble onto this blog. Why!? Why could the damned dipper not keep his nose out of my personal life? And why could Herodias not simply ignore him? What harm could he do once I’d locked him away? Yes, he went on and on about the immorality of our relationship, but what did she expect? He’s a religious fanatic… But if he is one of God’s prophets I don’t want his blood on my hands as well as my marital sins… But she didn’t care… She wanted his head on a plate… Literally. And she knew just how to get it… The same way she got me in the first place… I’ve always been a ...

After an Easter sabbath rest from our reflections on Genesis 1 & John's Gospel, we return for a final time, based on Genesis 2-3 and John 20: 18 two stories which culminate with a woman in a garden... I saw him… with my own eyes… although I didn’t recognize him at first… it must have been the tears… I thought he must have been the gardener, and I gave him a hard time about where they had put the body… I can’t imagine what he thought… I gabbled on until he said “Miriam”… My name… though you know me as Mary… Whatever way he said my name cut through my distress and confusion and I saw him as clearly as I see you now… my dear teacher… “Rabboni” I said as I rushed to embrace him… But he wouldn’t let me… Something about not holding him back from returning to his father… So I didn’t… But he asked me to go and tell his friends and family that he had risen and was returning to his Father God… So I did… to a mixed reception… but they saw that I was right in the end when they s...

Writing this at stupid o'clock, because I've just come down from a local hilltop where I had the privilege of sharing in the scattering of ashes of a member of my congregation. Her husband is a Kiwi, and it is, he tells me, a Maori tradition to do such things at dawn... I've been to the top of this particular hill for dawn services before... but those have been at Easter, at a time of year when the sun has the decency to lie in for a bit... This morning we had to be there for shortly after 4am. I needn't have bothered going to bed! Anyway, my body clock was clearly worried about missing my early start and I was up even earlier than I needed to be... And as I thought about what was to come, both this service and a later more conventional interment of ashes, I made a start on this short poem/reflection, which I finished on my return a few minutes ago... So this is for Carole, Paul and family... Dust on the breeze Is that what life comes to? A hilltop offers fresh perspect...

Whilst doing all I possibly could to avoid the royal hoo-ha I came across this gem on Euangelion ... Yes, its another flashmob advert... Though I don't know and don't really care what for... But this is a song of praise in Arabic to the risen Messiah in a Beirut shopping mall this Easter, against a background of upheaval throughout the Middle East. Now that is worth getting excited about... (although if truth be told, I'm not too sure that the English sub-titles are terribly accurate as they seem to have translated "Meshiach" as "Jesus"...) He is (still) risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Jesus said to Martha by the tomb of his friend Lazarus: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" "Yes, Lord," she told him... John 11: 25-26 (ANIV) Martha believed before Jesus had proved his power in the resurrection of her brother... and before his own resurrection... Do we believe with the benefit of hindsight? REFLECTION I am The resurrection and the life Resurrection – not life after death But life before, beyond and despite death Resurrection – not immortality of a disembodied soul But embodiment of your soul in a body to be enjoyed eternally A body that doesn’t creak, or crumble or decay. Resurrection – Not reanimation of a rotting corpse But new life in a new body Re-creation in my image My life Liberated from the grave A fresh start A new beginning A new Genesis I am And you can be... Check out this song ... which we used as part of o...

Here's another possible contender for Christmas No1 if there was any justice in the world. I'm not a big Sufjan Stevens fan but I picked this up over on this side of sunday ... The melancholy touched with the hope of resurrection within it is so poignant, particularly when it is contrasted with the bright lights of the video. Such Christmas lightshows used to be the sort of things you only ever saw in America, but like everything else it has made the trans-Atlantic hop and is very popular here... especially in working class areas. I used to work in an area where the lights on many houses at Christmas were so elaborate that queues of cars used to snake slowly through the estate every night from early December to early January... It was way more impressive than the city centre lights. But I knew that behind the bright lights and the closed doors lay broken hearts, strained relationships and shattered dreams... Celebration of the incarnation is ultimately only good news of great j...

OK... Back to the "Book of the Dead" (a great pre-Christmas topic!), or as it should be known "The Book of Coming Forth by Day" because it was written to cover that period when a deceased person's spirit (or Ba) would be out and about during the hours of daylight, scouting for safe-passage through the Duat, or underworld, to the afterlife... The spells/prayers within the book offered various ways to avoid some of the various traps that an unsuspecting spirit could fall into en route like cheats in a computer game (more on that next time)... But in many ways the process begins, not with death, but with the "opening of the mouth"... After the complex process of mummification, the priests then have to ceremonially open the mouth of the deceased, with an adze so that the ba spirit, in the form of a human-headed bird, can flit freely between the underworld and the mummified body... Because there was a belief that the spiritual life was only a half-life, and...

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, but...

Just finished reading another of the books chosen for our church's "Good Book Group": " Jesus - The Final Days ." It must be said that one of the deciding factors was the fact that it was relatively short, and at little over 100 pages its a quick read, but contains a lot of scholarship within it. It's essentially 3 lectures looking at the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, with Craig Evans covering the first 2 and Tom Wright dealing with the third (does anyone else write about the resurrection from an evangelical perspective these days, and indeed, does Tom Wright write about anything else without bringing the implications of the resurrection into it?). Whilst the scholarship is rigorous, the writing style is accessible and, especially with Wright's section, engaging. So if you're wanting to read something relevant over next weekend, or indeed if you're a preacher panicking about their Good Friday/Easter sermons, then you could do worse tha...

Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero was assasinated 30 years ago today while celebrating the eucharist. This piece by Romero, like Martin Luther King Junior's "I have been to the mountaintop" speech, is remarkably prescient, aware that any of us are only part of a much bigger picture, but is also pregnant with the resurrection hope that we will be celebrating in a few days time, not a "cross you fingers" or "touch wood" type of hope, but the sure and certain hope, which is not just about pie in the sky when you die, but God's kingdom come, his will being done on earth as it is in heaven. It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that cou...

After posting the previous rant in the middle of the night, I came across this quote whilst catching up on some of my filing... its from a certain Michelangelo Buonarroti, who probably knows more about religious art than I do. He apparently got a bit indignant with his fellow artists who were forever depicting Christ dead on the cross. he said: "Paint him instead as Lord of life. Paint him with his kingly feet planted on the stone which held him in the tomb!" OK... Michelangelo didn't necessarily follow his own advice (which of us does), but it is a useful corrective! Shalom

Not a commentary you might want to refer to in sermon preparation or in personal devotions... But a very amusing 30 minutes. Look Away Now , the comedy sports programme on Radio 4, has done a live commentary on the Bible in the style of Radio 5Live Saturday afternoon premiership football coverage… So if you like sports and haven't had a sense of humour bypass, you should enjoy it... And definitely the most exciting account of the resurrection I've heard anywhere... You need to get in quick though... It is only available on BBC's own self-destructing i-player... A metaphor for the modern disposable world!