Virtual Methodist

The fourth of South and Central Belfast Circuit's Advent Candle liturgies, this week a particularly short one based on Isaiah 7:10-16 (and pertinent whoever came out on top in the election in the UK last week). VOICE 1:              Hear this you who are in government!  VOICE 2:               Is it not enough to try the patience of the people? VOICE 1:               Will you wear out the patience of God as well?  VOICE 2:               The Lord himself will give you a sign:  VOICE 1:               The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son VOICE 2:       ...

Today is a day when we celebrate love, although all too often what is described as love is little more than lust. But all genuine human love is an echo of the God who is love, and who has loved us with an everlasting love that is greater than any human love we could imagine. I originally wrote this  performance poem for 2 voices , male and female, for an event in May 2007 run by the Down District of the Methodist Church in Ireland, staged at the Waterfront in Belfast, celebrating the Life and Work of Charles Wesley, born 300 years previously. It is based on numerous passages of scripture, especially the Song of Songs and the First Letter of John. A night for singing songs… Old songs and new songs All based on an older song… THE song… The song of all songs The song of a lady for her lover The Lord for his beloved… A song which began before creation… A song of love which called light into being A song of love which breathed life into clay A song of love wh...

The fourth of our Advent Candle Liturgies at Belfast South... You know it's source and pattern by now... Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.   Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.    This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. I John 4: 7-10   (NIV-UK) Love is the wick that is central to the candle. Love is the flame that burns continually in the heart of God. Love is the unquenchable light given by God to burn in the darkness. Love is the light given by God to burn in our hearts. (The candle is lit.) Let us pray: Source of light, shine in our lives and in your world with your eternal and infinite love. Through Jesus in whose name we pray. Amen....

When we were planning the 4 Corners Festival some of our thinking was coloured by the theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity "Is Christ Divided?" and some by the fact that many in the room had also been involved with the Hope and History Campaign in the run up to the Haass talks. In that there was a reminder that the New Testament includes a call to love our neighbours, and even our enemies. This is in response to God’s reconciling, redemptive love for us, and a reflection of our role, as Christians to be ambassadors of that reconciling love, calling on people to be reconciled to God and to each other. However, such high-minded ideals take a bit of work... Reconciliation with one another requires a process that includes the recognition that our enemies are human beings... and loving such enemies may not be an instant thing... especially when that enmity has cost us and ours dearly. So when EBM offered to host an evening with Jo Berry and Patrick Mag...

We're celebrating "Home Mission" Sunday a week late in Belfast South Methodist, but as part of it we are exploring what loving our neighbour means for us seeking to love our neighbourhood on the Lisburn Road... As part of that we are trying to hear what Jesus said in a story based on another road 2000 years ago. I originally wrote the following dialogue, which we will be using this morning, for the "Connexions on a Journey Event" at the 2004 Methodist Church in Ireland Conference in Dublin, as a partner piece to the " Companions on a Journey " poem I have recently reposted. I went back to find this dialogue and discovered that it got a whole 2 hits the first time I posted it... It's probably due a reblog... Voice 1:  A lesson on the road… Voice 2:  A dangerous road… Voice 1:  A difficult lesson… Voice 2:  One which we haven’t learned 2000 years later… Voice 1:  What must we do to inherit eternal life… Voice 2:  That’s easy “Love the L...

28 years ago I headed off to university in Edinburgh kicking the dust of Northern Ireland off my proverbial sandals, never intending to return, like many of my generation, particularly on the Protestant/Unionist side of the divide. I had had enough of the Troubles in my native statelet... they had been going on for most of my life, and by that stage I felt, quoting the words of my least favourite Shakespeare play "A plague on both your houses." 3 years later, however, a group of people some of whom I knew, most of whom I didn't, came together as Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland (ECONI) to draft and release a document entitled "For God and his Glory Alone". The title was a conscious and direct challenge to the motto of the UVF and mental framework of many Ulster protestants brought up on the mythologuy of Carson and the Somme etc - "For God and Ulster", which too often got reversed in practice with people putting Ulster (or at least the s...

I came across this video earlier in the month on facebook, and nearly posted it then given that I saw it against the backdrop of community tensions in Belfast over the flying of the Union flag. But I thought I would hold it over to play in the light of this week's Advent candle theme of "Love." I also do it in the light of the act of thanksgiving for the work of Dundonald Family and Community Initiative  that we are having today in church because it is unfortunately having to close because of lack of funds. There were those who objected to having that as part of this morning's service incase it took the focus off the message of Christmas, but actually, for me DFCI's closure puts the message of Christmas into stark relief...  God so loved the world that he didn't establish a "programme" or "initiative" - he sent his son (John 3: 16). He took on flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood (John 1: 14). There are times when we, as C...

Number 4... The week beloved of all Two Ronnies Fans and the "Four candles" sketch ... Indeed I laughed and reposted this picture earlier in the month... But I am reminded again this morning, as I head down the Ards Peninsula for the rehearsal of a wedding in my former church at Glastry, that the love we mark with the lighting of this candle is not a "candlelit dinner, chocolates and roses" type of romantic love, but a sacrificial, messy, vulnerable love, that was reflected first in a baby born in a byre, swaddled in cloths to cover his newborn nakedness, and ultimately revealed in the brutal death of an innocent young man, stripped naked and nailed to a cross... Over the past three weeks we have lit three candles—for hope, for peace, and for joy. Today we light the fourth candle - the candle of love. With this flame we signify the love of God that reaches out to embrace us and all the world. A love that is stronger than kings and empires, stronger than gri...

Yet another reblog ... But I've put it up here again as a number of people asked me for a copy after a brilliant performance of it, at short notice, by Sharon Thompson during our service this morning... It is based on John 8: 1-11 , exploring what happened to the woman "taken in adultery" after her encounter with Jesus. I suppose I was looking for love, but I got more than I bargained for. Everyone talks about love... But there’s precious little of it about. When I was a kid, my Mum and my Dad both called me “Love...” “Love, would you give me a hand to set the table...” “Would you run down to the market for me, Love...” “Look love, would you clear off and give my head peace...” It’s an easy word to say... its not so easy to find. And let me tell you I’ve looked. I’m not blaming anyone else... I made my bed, and I lay in it... The only trouble was I lay in it with someone else’s husband. He told me he loved me... he promised he would divorce his wife, but of course that ...

It was supposedly meteorologist Edward Lorenz who first suggested the "Butterfly effect" which,  in one version, suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in China can ultimately cause a hurricane off the coast of America… This has become one of the most widely quoted illustration of that branch of mathematics known as "chaos theory." Well, if that’s the result of 2 butterfly wings, then is it any wonder that the collapse of 2 skyscrapers in New York have produced such chaos in the past 10 years? It devastated the lives of not only those who lost loved ones that day but in many subsequent events the world over. They may have been called the World Trade Centre, but their effect on world trade was probably greater in their demise than during their existence… their fall was like the beginning of a row of dominoes toppling, with the affects spreading wider and wider with the passing years… The cloud of dust they kicked settled on the lungs of thousands of...

Don't often post other people's stuff here... But I found this so powerful that I thought I should. It's a performance poem based on John 4: 4-30, and I have attached the original YouTube video below. A word for women, and men, everywhere... "to be known is to be loved, and to be loved is to be known." I am a woman of no distinction of little importance. I am a women of no reputation save that which is bad. You whisper as I pass by and cast judgmental glances, Though you don’t really take the time to look at me, Or even get to know me. For to be known is to be loved, And to be loved is to be known. Otherwise what’s the point in doing either one of them in the first place? I WANT TO BE KNOWN. I want someone to look at my face And not just see two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears; But to see all that I am, and could be all my hopes, loves and fears. But that’s too much to hope for, to wish for, or pray for So I don’t, not anymore. Now I keep to myself And by that ...

The theme that I am working on for my end of year sermon brought this dialogue back to mind... I posted it earlier in the year , but I thought it was appropriate for old year's night and the dawning of a new year. May the Light of Christ's Love burn brightly in your life in the coming year despite the gathering darkness of economic depression... The darkness will never overcome it. WOMAN: A night for singing songs… MAN: Old songs and new songs All based on an older song… WOMAN: THE song… MAN: The song of all songs WOMAN: The song of a lady for her lover MAN: The Lord for his beloved… WOMAN: A song which began before creation… MAN: A song of love which called light into being A song of love which breathed life into clay WOMAN: A song of love which gave us liberty… Yet pursued us when we went astray. MAN: I have loved you with an everlasting love… I have been eternally faithful to you. WOMAN: If only I could say the same. Yet I have not loved you as I should; I have not lived the...

A call to worship and act of corporate confession based around the Shema (Hebrew for "Hear..."), which is the call to worship in Jewish Synagogues (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5), and Jesus' incorporation of this in what he described as the 2 greatest commands in the Law. Hear, O Israel the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Which is the greatest commandment in God’s Law? 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' The second is? Love your neighbour as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. There is no commandment greater than these. From Matt 22:36-40, Mark 12:29-31 and Luke 10:27-28 Response O Lord our God, the one and only We confess before you our lack of love. We have not loved you as we should. We have not loved others as we love ourselves. We have been self-centred and self-satisfied. Yet out of your eternal love for us you sent your son To show us how to love and to ...

WOMAN: A night for singing songs… MAN: Old songs and new songs All based on an older song… WOMAN: THE song… MAN: The song of all songs WOMAN: The song of a lady for her lover MAN: The Lord for his beloved… WOMAN: A song which began before creation… MAN: A song of love which called light into being A song of love which breathed life into clay WOMAN: A song of love which gave us liberty… Yet pursued us when we went astray. MAN: I have loved you with an everlasting love… I have been eternally faithful to you. WOMAN: If only I could say the same. Yet I have not loved you as I should; I have not lived the life I could. I have sought out the shadows Rather than living in your light Yet still you love me… Why? MAN: I am love… No more… No less… And you were created to be loved. To be loved and to love… WOMAN: Yet love turned to lust For luscious fresh fruit For knowledge, for flesh, For riches, for power For fresh tasting morsels to devour… Love became lust; Lust became lechery; L...