BEING EASTER PEOPLE

The lilies and daffodils gracing our Easter gardens  in our churches may be fading a little after a week, but Easter, with all its life and colour and hope is very much with us.

One of the Easter hymns I have always loved says trenchantly:

“We are Easter people, and alleluia is our song!” 

That’s a pretty strong statement, isn’t it.  The most important thing about us is that we are people of the Resurrection.  

Is that how you feel this morning?  It is dull outside, but, as I look at our little garden, I am filled with hope.  The Spring flowers know that they are things of beauty and colour.  They bloom happily and bravely in spite of our inconsistent weather. In fact, they use the winds and the rain to shine out and remind us that , underneath all the frustration, pain, loneliness and sickness that is part of every life, there is also the possibility of something better just around the corner. 

And that we can find colour and beauty and hope if we look for it.  That is being an Easter person. It’s good to be wakened up by birdsong rather than by the inharmonious sound of the alarm clock these days isn’t it. Our migrant  birds are back with us, giving us flashes of their bright green, blue or multi-coloured coats as they go about their business of feeding the young,  bathing themselves in our tiny bird baths, pecking the seeds we put out for them, and of course filling our world with song.  The birds too know it is Resurrection time. If you don’t yet realise that the lovely sounds filling our skies and our gardens, hedgerows and lanes are the bird’s version of ALLELUIA then listen to their song more attentively! 

To be an Easter person does not mean going around with a silly grin on our faces, or by telling people in pain or trouble that “it will get better.” That’s putting us in danger of being at best, surface sort of people, and at worst,  hypocrites.

We don’t know whether this trouble will immediately fade away because of our prayer.  What we do know is that God will help this person to bear the pain. As Easter people, our task is to support, to be there in good times and bad, to reach out and just hold their trembling hands.  Sometimes that is all we can do.  Words can sometimes be meaningless but a gentle presence is comforting. Easter people know that.

I am still chuckling over something one of our Sisters gave to me recently. She puts up a “Thought for the Week” for the staff in her organisation. This is the one I am chuckling about just now:

Dear Lord,

So far today I’m doing alright.

I have not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or self-indulgent.

I have not whined, complained, cursed or eaten any chocolate.

I have charged nothing to my credit card.

BUT

I will be getting out of bed in a minute, and I think I will really need your help then!

Wonderful, isn’t it. But, although we cannot hear it often within our lives, Alleluia is really our song because, although we know what our clay is made of, we also know that we need help.  We need the hope that living in the power of the Resurrection gives us.  We also need to give that hope to others in any way we can – the comfort of a nice cup of tea, the smile that says “I’m so glad to see you”, the ear that is bent  towads others, listening attentively to what they are saying to us, letting them feel that they are important, no matter how old, how sick, how difficult they are. 

As Easter people we have the opportunity to put in love where it doesn’t exist, to BE that love at the centre of our world.  

What an opportunity!  HAPPY EASTER TIDE TO YOU ALL.

Photos used with permission of artist copyright (C)2014 Poor Servants of the Mother of God

                                                                  

To serve us all our days....

 I have, of course, changed a well-known title of a book about a dedicated teacher after the First World War which was written by R.F. Delderfield and published in 1972. It was a lovely story  which was so inspiring. It was called  "To serve them all my days."   You may have read it, if you haven't, it is worth looking at.

But the inspiration of the teacher's dedication to his pupils no matter what they achieved or failed to achieve must, ultimately, have come from the one who told us that "he came, not to be served but to serve."
 

This special week, which we call Holy Week, shows us what being a servant really means when Christ talks about it.

Last Thursday we had the image of God in an apron, as one poem calls it.  Jesus took off his outer garments knelt down at the feet of his disciples, and washed their dirty feet! That was the work of a slave in those times.  No wonder Peter was horrified, and tried to stop Jesus from doing such a menial task.  But Jesus told Peter in no uncertain terms, that he could have no part in his mission if he didn't submit.  It was the living out of the mission statement he had offered to his own people in Nazareth, who rejected him.

"The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me", he cried out, "and he has anointed me to give good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to give the blind new sight, to take away the chains of oppression, to proclaim a year of the Lord's favour!"   (Isaiah 61: 1- 2)

That is the mission statement of a servant of the people.  He was to be the Good Shepherd, giving his life for us, stupid sheep that we are, going the wrong way most of the time, but always being called back to his love, his forgiveness, his care.

Holy Week brings that forgiveness, that care, that love so close to us.  We see it each time with new eyes.  Didn't Jesus promise to give us new sight?  Well he does, all the time.  We are drawn inexorably into the horror, the wonder and the exultation of the Passion and the Resurrection.  The Servant God leading us once more into a realisation that we have to follow the same path - the path of love, the path of caring for others.  That is being Christ-like.  We are invited to do what he did, take the heavy burdens from the shoulders of others, give them hope and light in their darkness.  That sounds very noble, but in practice, in small ways we can all do it.  Smile at someone who looks downcast, say a little prayer for that person as we pass by - offer our friendeship and support to those suffering, put love at the heart of our Church and our world.  Love often comes in very small parcels, but without it, the world would be a grim place indeed.

Jesus, who is love, saw that.  He showed us the way of fidelity, the way of a servant. He served us all his days, and continues to do so now he is risen.  But he has no human hands, no human feet to walk among us now, he expects us to use ours. He has passed on his mission to us, and, for the time we are here, we have the obligation to bring the light of Christ which was dimmed temporarily on that first Good Friday, and obscured during Holy Saurday to that brightness which came with the first Easter Sunday morning.  How can we refuse to do that when he suffered so much for us?  Ours is really such a small return of love for such a total giving on the part of the Servant King.  We say, in faith, re-echoing the words of The Servant Song (click for music):

Will you let me be your servant,

let me be as Christ to you:

pray that I may have the grace

to let you be my servant too.

I will hold the Christ light for you

 in the night-time of your fear,

 I will hold my hand out to you

speak the peace you long to hear.

That is what we are called to do. If we fail to do this, then Christ's sacrifice on the Cross and his Resurrection from the dead will be, as far as we ae concerned, in vain.  And that would be terrible.

Let's pray that the Servant King may reach out, during this year of Faith to all those who need his love most. 

Have a lovely Easter.  We will pray for one another,  so that, like the first disciples, we may hear him say to us gently: "Peace be with you. Do not be afraid!"

THE LORD HAS RISEN , ALLELUIA!   HE HAS RISEN INDEED, ALLELUIA!

 

 

All photos and images owned by SMG. Drawings by P.Macauley. Copyright 2013. 

To be a good shepherd...

...you have to be half a sheep yourself!

The old shepherd's words rang around the kitchen of the hillside farm in the Lake District.  His companions looked up, fascinated.  "What do you mean?" one of them said eventually.  The apple-cheeked shepherd smiled.  "I think I mean that to be a good shepherd, you have to learn to be half a sheep yourself", he replied.  "You see, sheep are strange creatures, they run away, get lost, fall into holes and crevices, get burrs and thorns in their coats, don't listen to what the shepherd or the sheep dog is persuading them to do, go the wrong way and end up in a slimy pool or a muddy ditch..."  He grinned ruefully. "Come to think of it, they aren't much different from ourselves!" 

"Thank you!" whispered one of the crew of cameramen grouped around the table. The others looked at their host enquiringly. "You really think we are as daft as that!" another said.  "Maybe not", the shepherd replied.  "You appear to be very clever, especially when you point those lens at something that looks like a shrivelled bit of human hair, and when you put it up on the screen later on, it is beautiful - magic!"  The crew sipped their drinks reflectively.  The compliment seemed to be a little two-edged, but they let it pass. "Tell me", a third one asked the old man "how on earth did you find that shivering bundle over there and realise it was your lost sheep?"  "I've told you", said the shepherd, "but I'll tell you again."

"An hour ago, if you remember, you came with me to look for one of my new lambs that had got lost."  They all nodded their heads in agreement.  "You came with me in the storm to film what I did, and to tell the public who watch your programme on the BBC what a real shepherd does in lambing time, and especially what skills he uses to find an errant lamb who is out there, defenceless, cold and possibly suffering from an animal form of hypothermia.  Okay?"  They nodded again. "Well you found out tonight didn't you?"  "Not really" said the youngest crew member.  "It was pelting with rain, the wind was howling fit to blow us all over that hillside, and you want us to believe that you heard that lamb over there," as he pointed to the little new-born creature who was lying contentedly beside the open fire, sucking on a miniature bottle of warm milk "bleating piteously for it's mother!"  "Well, not exactly"  said the old man,  "but yes, I did know that he was somewhere down there, crying out for help.  Call it an instinct, if you like.  I prefer to call it 'being half a sheep yourself'  after fifty years or so working on a sheep farm!"

"Now you are going to ask me again what on earth I mean by that!" the shepherd smiled. "Yes we certainly don't know what that means" the youngest cameraman replied.  "Please tell us. Our viewers would be interested." The old man smiled. "For me, that means knowing your sheep so well that they become part of your family, part of who you are yourself.  To be half a sheep means that I learn to understand them, to protect them, to anticipate their needs, and to really love them.  That way, I can look out for them and guard against any dangers that might come to them. They are my life." 

There was a silence in the room.  "Yes, I begin to see," said one of the cameramen who had not spoken up to this. "You have to think like a sheep, feel like a sheep, know what dangers they are likely to get into, so that you can be a good shepherd to them."  "To put it in a nutshell!" answered the old shepherd.  "Would you like my job?"  They all laughed. "I think it's going to be a good series" said the chief cameraman. "We'll call it  'The Good Shepherd'. "

That BBC production is now gathering dust in the archives of that august organisation, but it made a real impact when it was released.  Many letters were received asking about the work of shepherds and some even made reference to Jesus as the one who called himself The Good Shepherd.  He became the full sheep of course, taking on our nature, leaving behind the glory that was rightly his to live our life with all its joys and sorrows, hopes and disillusionments. 

Did you know that one of the earliest representations of Jesus is that of the Good Shepherd?  I remember being in the catacombs and seeing a rather crude etching of a young shepherd with a lamb across his shoulders carved on the wall opposite me.  It was so vivid and seemed to reach out through the centuries to tell  me something about how those early Christians saw Jesus.  They were imprisoned, frightened of persecution, hidden away from the Roman authorities and the groups of dissident Jews who would condemn them and execute them for their beliefs.  Yet they comforted themselves with the Jesus many of them had known personally by depicting him as the Saviour, the Good Shepherd, the one who would look out for them and lead them to safety.   The Good Shepherd. The words he used must have often been read in those twisting passages of the old Roman cemeteries on the outskirts of the capital city:

"I am the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd lays his life down for his sheep. I know my sheep and they know me.  I have other sheep who are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them too. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one fold and one shepherd."

John 10: 14-17

This Sunday we keep the remembrance of this wonderful image of Jesus as Saviour.  The Resurrected Lord who reaches out through time and space to us, his sheep, his silly sheep, his wandering, unfaithful sheep and offers us that same protection, love and contentment that he first gave to the First Christians. 

Frances Taylor, our Founder,  made her First Holy Communion on Good Shepherd Sunday!  Not in a lovely ivy-covered Church in the safety of the country, but in the kitchen of a military hospital out in the Crimea in the middle of a blood-bath!  She always loved to think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd who took on our life to lead us to his.  Praise him!

Do you like this hymn she wrote to celebrate this feast? Here is the first verse and chorus:

I met the Good Shepherd but now on the plain

As homeward he carried his lost one again.

I marvelled how gently his burden he bore;

and as he passed by me

I knelt to adore

O Shepherd, Good Shepherd,

thy wounds they are deep;

the wolves have sore hurt thee in saving thy sheep.

Thy garments all-over with crimson are dyed;

and what is this wound they have made in thy side?

(Mother Magdalen)

Have a lovely feast day, fellow sheep!  Thank Jesus that he became a whole  sheep to save us and to protect us from the enemy!  God bless.

The Resurrection

A happy Easter to all of you!  We have journeyed through Lent, and experienced the loneliness and the fear of the Passion, as well as the heart-warming act of Jesus as Servant, washing the feet of his disciples, and then giving us the wonderful gift of the Eucharist.  I suppose many of you celebrated the Seder meal, and became part of the first New Testament Seder, picturing Jesus going out into the darkness towards Gethsemane with the beautiful sound of the Hallel psalms ringing in his ears, yet knowing he was betrayed and soon would be captured and disowned.  But now we are warming ourselves, not at the brazier of Peter which just took away for a time the cold winds of fear and guilt, but the great sun of the Resurrected world.  Alleluia!

May I share with you another Resurrection?  I’m sure you have many of your own, which I would love to hear, but I’ve always been captivated by this one. Please send in your own stories of hope after despair.  Jesus offers us the fruits of his rising from the dead all the time. 

Here is my contribution:

An old man shuffled painfully along the cobbled streets of London.  He was stooped, awkward and obviously in pain. His face was pale and there were lines of pain etched deeply on his cheeks.  People passed him by, avoiding his eyes which seemed bitter and hard.  His name was George Frederic Handel.  The great musician of the 18^th century.  He had suffered a stroke some months before, and doctors held out little hope of his survival. “I am finished!” he said to himself. “I can no longer compose music.  I cannot hear those wonderful melodies in my head.  Point and counterpoint harmony no longer have any meaning for me.  I might as well die!”  Despondently he shuffled back to his lodgings.

When he got there he found a thick wad of paper rolled in a parcel standing on the hall table.  “Not another MS”, he muttered. “Will they never realise that I am no longer a musician?”  Listlessly he picked it up.  It was from his friend who had always supported him, so, listlessly he tore open the paper.  It was the story of the life of Christ.   He read on, without much interest, until he saw this:

“.. the crowds were appalled at seeing him, so disfigured did he look, that he seemed no longer human,… “   “Like a sapling he grew up in front of us, like a root in arid ground. Without beauty, without majesty we saw him no looks to attract our eyes, a thing despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. A man to make people screen their faces. He was despised, and we took no account of him.”   Fourth Servant Song:  Isaiah 52: 11 – 15.

“Why, that’s me!” he cried, “I am despised and of no account too!”  So, fascinated, he read on.

Afterwards he was to say:  “I saw the heavens open and I heard the most beautiful music.  Words poured into my mind.  “He was despised and rejected yet by his wounds we are healed.  I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH” he cried exultingly at the four walls of his hallway.  ALLELUIA!  For ten days he never came out of his room, refusing to eat or drink.  But he gave us The Messiah.  His greatest work.  The most famous oratorio in the world. 

London refused to put it on, as they thought he was finished.  So he went to Dublin, and they gave us “Oh thou who bringest good tidings to Sion”  “He was despised”  “I know that my redeemer liveth”  and of course the famous Alleluia chorus.  And so many more.... Handel lived on for some years after this, and became the most feted musician of the time.  Everywhere he went, he brought the portfolio of The Messiah.  It was his Resurrection. 

What are your experiences of Resurrection?  Thank God for them today, and go about humming “Alleluia, alleluia, alle- luia!"  Enjoy this wonderful time - the Springtime of the Church and ours too.

God bless.

ALLELUIA

THIS IS THE DAY THAT THE LORD HAS MADE. LET US BE GLAD, AND REJOICE IN IT.

Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?  (Luke 25:5)

When you think of Easter what image do you see?
The hint of longer, lighter days to come...
the hills bursting with new-born lambs...
the scramble for the hidden, coloured eggs in garden, house or field...
the Easter bunnies, or the dark-coated ribboned eggs decorating the sideboard?

All these perhaps, yet each is but a faint, far-off image of what it is to us as Easter people.

Our song is ever and always the alleluia of the angels as they look on him whom sin has pierced and love has healed... now risen and glorious, standing triumphant against all that would demean or limit us and offering without price the promise of a life that holds eternal joy.

Praise him!

"I wish you all a Happy Easter, full of graces; graces of renewal of spirit, of fresh strength and energy in our Lord's service."
(Mother Magdalen)

After the Easter Vigil, we should be full of joy and hope. 
So we pray:

Come, Risen Lord Jesus
Easter in us,
Be a day-spring to the dimness of us today,
and always that we may bring glory to you. (Joyce Huggett)

If you have the energy, get up at dawn to see the sunrise and pray... If not, just enjoy the day and sing "alleluia" in your heart.

Happy Easter!

Holy Week

We are at the threshold of Holy Week, the most important week of the whole calender.  This week reminds us of how much we are loved.  It is the week of our salvation.  This is the time when, as Luke puts it, Jesus "set his face like a flint" as he journeyed to Jerusalem where, in the tradition of all the prophets, he would be slain.

There is one difference, however, between the death of the Old Testament prophets and that of Jesus.  This is the story of the unfolding of salvation history. The tragic events of which lead us through betrayal, injustice, envy, hatred, and indescribable torture to a humiliating and lonely death on a gibbet with a howling mob spitting, snarling and cursing below him.

Yet this death was to lead to the explosion of joy we know today as Resurrection.  It was to open up for us the possibility of living for all eternity in that same joy and blessedness. It was the gift of forgiveness for past sins, the breaking of the stranglehold of Satan over us, the forging of a chain of love that was to unite Heaven and earth, reaching out through time and space to all peoples throughout the world until the end of time.

 Calvary is the place of the skull, the place of death, but it is also the refuge of sinners, an inexhaustible well of healing, a centre of reconciliation and of love.  Every drop of blood that Jesus shed on that first Friday we call good, was redemptive.  Each pain-filled gasp of sound that issued from his parched and cracked lips was an appeal to our heart.  "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing!" he cried out on seeing the upraised fists, hearing the imprecations of hatred and envy below him, feeling the agony of pain as he tried to lift himself up on the nails in order to get breath in his lungs to speak because his whole body was contorted and out of sync. What a God! When the chips were down, and Jesus was dying in unspeakable pain as he writhed in agony on the Cross as the sky darkened around him and his eyes were blinded by blood and spittle, then his whole being shone out with love - a love that resounds today in us as we reflect on what he did for us. 

Let's remember to spend some time this week on staying close to him and to his Mother Mary, standing so bravely at the foot of the Cross as her lovely, innocent Son gasped out  his life for us.  Let's think of that poor man dying beside him who only asked for Jesus to remember him. Think of it - what a God!  No saying, "well, you've been a very naughty boy, so you'll have to suffer a lot in the next world!"  He saw that man's sorrow.  "This day you will be with me in Paradise!"  That is love, that is total forgiveness.  Two men dying together, one innocent, the Son of the Eternal God, the other a thief, who had led what we call a bad life, who, in his own words, deserved to die.  Play the Taize chant "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom" (click on title) and think of that scene.  Thank him for all the times you have received forgiveness and a chance to start again.  He is so close to us in Holy Week. Hold hands with Mary, and ask her to give you courage.  What a woman!  She knows what sorrow is, she will listen and heal and make you feel better.  She is, after all a mother, and that's what good mothers do.

Have a lovely Holy Week starting with the joy of Palm Sunday, and ending, or should we say beginning with Easter Sunday.  We shall be praying for you too. 

Tomorrow we will talk a little about the Eucharist and the Seder meal, the meal Jesus ate with his disciples before he went to Gethsemane. We call it the Last Supper.

God bless.