Say One For Me

is a dedicated prayer website from the Church of England.

You can post your own prayers during Lent which runs between March 8th and April 23rd this year and these will be prayed for by various Christian communities throughout the country.

Prayers will be moderated to make sure they don't contravene the guidelines of the site and may be edited to retain privacy.

This year there is also have a Facebook page where you can post your comments and any answers to prayer.

Give it a go here or via the 'Places to Pray' tab above...

Please feel free to pray others' prayers while on the site.

Lent - The Manhatten Project

With thanks, again, to Paul Roberts...

A friend of mine recently visited New York, spending four days doing most of the obvious sights available to someone lodging in mid-Manhatten. But he was caught on the hop by his reactions to the Rockefeller Center. John D. sounds a thoroughly nice guy who liked to do things philanthropically, especially by taking a big risk building the Center with his own money when all other sponsors had pulled out in the wake of the stock market crash on Black Tuesday. By going ahead anyway, he provided much-needed employment at a time when no-one else was hiring. He described his surprisingly negative reaction to the frescos within the center and Rockefeller’s sense of what human rights might look like which is placed on a stone at the front of the building.

The frescos in the Center are a celebration of the achievements of Man and human progress, which are unremittingly positive:

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the Dignity of labour, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a liking but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man’s word should be as good as his bond; that character not wealth or power or position – is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individuals highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His Will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.

This is a wonderful creed, which aims at the best for everyone, but ultimately bases its faith solely upon the human being, albeit with some niche found for faith in the penultimate article.

How do we square this monument of 20th century rationalist humanism with the history immediately preceding and following it. The glorying in human cleverness is incredibly positive, yet it was preceded by the slaughter of WW1, the tragedy of the Great Depression and was about to be followed by the gulags, the gas chambers and nuclear vaporization. What kind of faith manages to sing a triumphant hymn of praise to human beings when sandwiched by such huge, appalling examples of our inhumanity and brokenness?

On this Ash Wednesday, as we enter the Holy season of Lent, we are confronted with that same juxtaposition of our incredible God-given nature as people. Our abilities and drives. Our striving for betterment. This is rammed up against our capacity for hatred and barbarism.

Lent brings us up short, it reminds us of the bittersweet story of the whole of Scripture which commences with the wonder of creation, the paradoxical nature of human beings and their broken relationship with the Creator who on every pages goes on saying - I love you, I long to be with you, will you be with me?

As this story unfolds, God and humanity struggle against one another. Human power is a real thing and God sees it as an increasingly negative thing, having no limit. Rockerfeller’s hopes for human dignity are in a sense a striving after power and dignity. That striving though is sandwiched in history between periods of our worst inhumanity and depravity. His hopes for us as a race have deafened us to God’s love call to us, which reminds us that our power dignity are God given.

Lent is a time of, what the Orthodox, call ‘bright sadness.’ It is a gift from the church. It is a time for us to acknowledge humanity’s capacity for goodness but also a time to remove our fingers from our ears and the ears of our hearts and hear God calling in love to us again. It is a time to renew our relationship with him in prayer - listening to Him; in fasting - to remind us of our need of Him and our need to make time to be together; in almsgiving - in giving our time, talent, our riches, ourselves to others in need blesses them and us.

My friend had a dream, having returned from New York’s skyscraper lined horizon, of a little child building a sandcastle, then another coming along and kicking it over out of jealousy. Heaven help us: human nature, in all its beauty, needs some fundamental healing and the longer we walk this planet, the more obvious it seems to me, that we cannot fix ourselves by ourselves. Lent reminds us of that fact, and of the God who loves us, but instead of standing aloof above us shaking his head at what we have done and what we have become, instead joins us on the beach and rebuilds the sandcastle with us. Amen

Silence on the Mountaintop

Here's a version of what Tim Bourne, who is one of the Lay Readers here, preached this morning, based on the readings for the day which can be found here.

~~~~~~

Today our readings lead us to think about the Transfiguration, when Jesus was acknowledged as God's own son in the presence of his closest friends, Peter, James and John. This is the last Sunday of Epiphany, the time in the church's year that began after Christmas with the baptism of Jesus, marking the beginning of his ministry, and ends now with the Transfiguration, marking the end of Jesus' ministry of travelling and teaching and healing, and the beginning of the period of Lent that leads us to the foot of the cross. It's a landmark moment; Peter didn't know how to react, and perhaps neither do we.

There's something about being on a mountain. We no longer believe that the earth is flat and covered by a great dome, with heaven above it, but somehow there's still a feeling of being somehow closer to God, “closer to Head Office”, as a friend of mine put it.

This isn't something new. In today's Old Testament reading, which you can find on the Bulletin, we learn how Moses was given the Ten Commandments on top of a mountain covered in clouds.

So as Jesus' disciples climbed with him “up a high mountain”, they may have felt a growing sense of God's presence. Then when they reached the top, suddenly His glory became real and visible, and God himself spoke to them out of the cloud: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’

This moment was important to Peter, and it remained vivid in his memory, as we can see from his account of it in his letter, our New Testament reading.

As our gradual hymn we sang “Be still, for the presence of the Lord is moving in this place.” When God is most visibly and tangibly with us, often the most fitting thing to do is to be still and treasure the moment.

Silence is powerful.

There are times when we should not be doing anything, not even speaking, just being still and listening.

Lent starts this week, and that’s a good time to think about the role of silence, both when we’re together and when we’re on our own. Not just to listen, although that’s important

Also to give ourselves time to “tune in” to God

There are many ways to pray, and finding the ones that work best for me, or for you, is not easy.

Silence can help us all, but we may need to use it in different ways - there is no one right way to pray.

- think about a bible passage
- imagine you’re a character in a bible story
- look at something in nature, perhaps a leaf, and think about the God who made it
- use a book about prayer

Another aspect of prayer - it isn’t all asking, and it isn’t all thanks, or praise. When you’re with a close friend, there are times when you don’t need to talk; it’s enough just to be together. Peter just had to say something
Have you felt like that?
We feel that something has to be said to break the silence
, but we’re probably wrong, just as Peter was.

Yesterday I was at a Reader trainee selection conference. We had two striking demonstrations of the power of silence.

On the negative side, during an interview one of the candidates was apparently so afraid of silence that she talked non-stop, and there was barely a break long enough for us to get a question in! Probably it was mostly nerves, but we did wonder what would happen if she led a discussion group! Don't worry – we had a laugh about it afterwards, but she did get selected for training.

The candidates are asked to take part in leading worship at some point during the day, and on the positive side we were all struck by the way one of them made careful use of silence, and pauses when speaking, to heighten the sense of God's presence.

Words are sometimes necessary, but if God speaks through us, it’s more likely to be through who we are and what we do, rather than directly through our words.

“Silence is golden”

Silence is a friend, not an enemy; don’t be afraid of it.

This Lent, why not give some time to just being quiet with God, in whatever way works for you.
Amen.

Living the Love of God

Uwe Holmer with Margot and Erich Honecker.

Eight times the Ministry of Education in East Germany said no to Uwe Holmer's children when they tried to enroll at the university in East Berlin. The Ministry of Education didn't usually give reasons for its rejection of applications for enrollment. But in this case the reason wasn't hard to guess. Uwe Holmer, the father of the eight applicants, was a Lutheran pastor at Lobetal, a suburb of East Berlin. For 26 years the Ministry of Education was headed by Margot Honecker, wife of East Germany's premier, Erich Honecker....

Then when the Berlin wall cracked, Honecker and his wife were unceremoniously dismissed from office. Under indictment for criminal activities the Honeckers were evicted from their luxurious palace, suddenly finding themselves friendless, without resources, and with no place to go. No one wanted to identify with them.



Enter Uwe Holmer. Remembering the words of Jesus, 'If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,' Holmer extended an invitation to the Honeckers to stay with his family in the parsonage. His charity was not shared by the rest of the country. Hate mail poured in. Some members of his own church threatened to leave. Pastor Holmer defended his actions in a letter to the newspaper. "In Lobetal," he wrote, "there is a sculpture of Jesus inviting people to himself and crying out, 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' We have been commanded by our Lord Jesus to follow him and to receive all those who are weary and heavy laden, in spirit and in body, but especially the homeless. What Jesus asked his disciples to do is equally binding on us."

In this morning’s Gospel reading, in this section of what some call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us to what may seem an impossible task - to love our neighbours, to pray for our persecutors and, in so doing, to become more like our heavenly father.

1. Love Your Enemies. The love that God commands of us is love so great that it even embraces our enemies. When Jesus said he must have startled his audience, for he was saying something that probably had never been said so succinctly, so positively, and so forcefully before. We naturally love people or things which are beautiful. The love of which Jesus speaks here, however, and which is most spoken of in the New Testament, is agape. It is the love that seeks and works to meet another’s highest welfare. This kind of love is the love that God is and shows us, and expects of us.


God’s love sees all the hatefulness and all the wickedness of the enemy yet desires to free them from his hate, to do them the highest good, to rescue them from them sin, and save their soul. Our “enemies,” of course, do not always come in life–threatening forms. Often they are people who are simply mean, impatient, judgmental, self–righteous, spiteful. God commands us to love them. Whether a conflict is with our spouse, our children or parents, our friends or a devious business opponent or spiteful neighbour, our attitude toward them must be one of love. Others say retaliate. Jesus says reconcile. Jesus commands us to love our enemies. How can we do that when we don’t want to?


2. Pray for Your Persecutors. Charles Spurgeon said, “Prayer is the forerunner of mercy. ” When we start to pray for someone you don't get on with, God begins to answer your prayer by changing our attitude toward them. We must love them because of who they are—sinners in need of God’s forgiveness and grace, just as we were and do. We must pray for them that they will, as we have done, seek His forgiveness and grace. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor who suffered and eventually was killed in Nazi Germany, wrote of this teaching of Jesus, “This is the supreme demand. Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God. For if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition upon ourselves and pleading to God for them.” Love our enemies and pray for them. Why? Because God’s desire for us is thirdly,

3. Become Like Jesus. To love our enemies and to pray for our persecutors shows that we are children of our Father who is in heaven. Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” The heart of all that Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount—in fact, the heart of all that He teaches—is contained in these words. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

God’s will is nothing less than that we become like him and love like Him. But what does that mean?

If I say I love my wife, you can see evidence that I do by the way that I support her, the way that I care for her, the way that I react to her and so on for she is worth loving!

What of our enemies though? Are they worth loving? Enemies usually stand against us, oppose us, hamper our hopes and dreams and sometimes endanger us. Yet Jesus asks us to love even these because God does.

We can only love even those we find unloveable and pray for them, when we consciously, daily, willingly, lay aside our reputation, lay aside our rights, lay aside our self-righteousness, lay aside our pride, and lay aside a version of Christian faith that is all too often so heavenly so as to be of no earthly use, and instead stand with Uwe Holmer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Martin Luther KIng jnr., Maxamillian Kolbe, Gordon Wilson, Desmond Tutu and countless others known and unknown to us, and trust Jesus Christ to give us His love and enable us to live His love for all, friend, neighbour, enemy. Amen

God Grant Justice...

I have been gripped by a story of humanity, faith, perseverence, and hope this week. I am of course referring to the rescue effort to free the 33 miners from underground in the San Jose copper mine in Chile.

What was it about this story that so captivated the us? Was it tenacity? Was it human perseverance? Was it engineering skill? Was it the miners’ faith and trust in God? For me, in all honesty, it was all of those and more. It seemed so unlikely that those miners were alive at all. It seemed unlikely that those miners would ever resurface. It seemed unlikely that the miners would be together emotionally in any way and yet, against all odds, their story - a rescue into the pitch black underworld snatching back the stranded one by one, has gripped us all. The rescue moved me because it is a story of the triumph of good over evil, of hope over despair, of life over death.

The other story that has moved me this week is the counterpoint to that of the Chillean miners. This week the inquest opened into the deaths of 52 people when bombs ripped through tube trains and a bus in three locations on 7th July 2005. Seeking justice for the dead and injured, the coroner’s court has heard harrowing evidence about the extent and arbitrary nature of the attacks, but also stories of incredible courage as civilians and members of the emergency services ignored warnings about returning to the bomb blasted scenes to search out the injured and the dying. As the carnage of those attacks is turned over one shard of metal at a time, we notice again and again the hand of human compassion reaching out to embrace, to hold, to heal and console.

This morning’s Gospel reading sounds like it is straightforwardly a parable about prayer. The Gospel writer Luke even tells us so - Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart, and yet as we take a closer look there is more to this story than first meets the eye.

The judge in the story, then as now, has extraordinary power. He is the last port of call to administer justice according to the laws of God. The judge in the story exercises not the law of God, but is a law unto himself as he is not willing to hear the widow’s case.

The widow, throughout the pages of scripture, is a vulnerable victim - she could not inherit her late husband’s estate. Widows were dependent on the generosity and support of others. All the widow wanted was justice, but the judge flouted the judicial protocol of the day by refusing to even hear her. Eventually he relents though because she is so persistent. The judge does the right thing for the wrong reason. Jesus’ story says that if the unjust can be persuaded to act justly, the point surely is that those who pray to a just and loving God should never give up calling for justice in their cause, because the one who is righteous, namely God, can be trusted.

God is the protector of those like the widow and the judge of those who persecute them. As I read and reread the passage three words stood out - God grant justice. Yet waiting for God to grant justice can so often be the hardest part.

To experience the justice of God, we must place ourselves within the will, within the life and in the presence of God. The widow receives justice from the judge because she makes it her business to be in the judge’s face. She is constantly in his presence. Similarly to receive the justice of God, we must be open to the presence of God. There is an inextricable connection Jesus seems to be saying between persistent prayer and the justice of God.

God is like the judge in the parable, in that his justice is unexpected and surprising. God’s justice stands contrary to what we expect, desire or deserve. God is a god who not only forgives a murderer like Moses who killed an Egyptian guard or Paul who persecuted and murdered early followers of Jesus, but uses them to reveal something of His loving purposes to the world. The rescue of the Chillean miners touched me so much because this daring mission brought these men back to the surface alive. In turn it reminded me of the God of justice who engineers a gripping rescue through Christ’s life, death and resurrection, into the pitch black underworld of our lives, snatching us, the stranded, back one by one, back into the presence of His Father whether we feel we deserve to be there or not. God doesn’t write us off as a mission not worth executing, but but instead He goes the extra mile to search us out and bring us back to himself in love.

So often our lives can be torn apart like a bomb blast. Our hearts warped and twisted - whether of our own doing or through the actions of others - and the God of Justice gently and slowly helps us sort through those experiences, offering us the nail-pierced hand of perfect compassion - reaching out to embrace, to hold, to heal and console. To plead our cause in prayer to this God is to not find us ignored by Him. Waiting for that justice to come is painful, but God assures us, it will come.

Three words stand out from the Gospel - God grant justice. To know God’s justice is to know God. His justice is not a piece of clothing that He puts on and takes off like his favourite jumper. It is who He is. But to know God, we must know His Son Jesus Christ; not know of Him, not know about Him in an intellectual way; but to know Him as the one who asks us to follow Him and to discover more about His God and Father through what we see and experience as much as through what He says about Him. All too often though I hear - I believe in God, but He hasn’t answered my prayer. But what were you praying? Are you prepared to get in His face with your request day and night? And who is this God you believe in? I believe in the law of gravity but it will not save my immortal soul and does not love me into new and eternal life.

Friends it is not possible to call ourselves Christians and not in some way be following Jesus. For we are not Christian if we are not in some way going deeper into the life of faith - discovering more about God through what we see, experience and discover with others, as much as through what Jesus teaches in the scriptures.

Friends, if this morning you long for a faith that is more than an intellectual exercise or assent; if you long to discover more about a God who longs to help make sense of the broken fragments of your life and transform for good; if in your deepest being you long to be taken from the darkness into the light and love of His presence then let me assure you that you are placing yourself within the will, within the life and in the presence of the God of justice. If this is you this morning and you want to know this more for yourself then pray with me these words:

Holy God, faithful and unchanging: enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth, and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love, that we may truly worship you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God,now and for ever. Amen.

Word as a Wordle - Trinity 20

This week's Gospel reading from Luke 18:1-8, looks straightforwardly about prayer...

Then Jesus^* told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” ’^* And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’^2345678

The need to persistently pray is the purpose of Jesus telling the parable in the first place and yet the Wordle this week seems to show an other angle to this story that I had not really noticed before...
Three words stand out - God grant justice. Re-reading the passage there is a strong connexion between praying and imploring the God of justice to act, especially in favour of the downtrodden and marginalised...

Need to tease this out more in the light of the 7:7 enquiry and the rescue of Chillean miners and our listening to God discerning our priorities as a church...

God Spaces

I have just been reading Lesley Fellow's blog - always worth a read - and I spotted a like to the Pray-As-You-Go site. A site of daily prayer available to download on to your MP3 player.

One of the things that I am hoping for in the months that lie ahead is for all of us to take prayer seriously. I don't necessarily mean that it is serious stuff, but that as Christians it is our lifeline. Unless we are regularly, daily, constantly rooting ourselves in God, then we become more distant from Him. As we become more distant, we become less and less aware of His presence with us, His desire for us, His will for our lives.

Prayer is about stepping into a God-space, aware that we are there together, speaking listening and being.

There are some other excellent resources out there that I would encourage you to explore:
- The Sacred Space website
- There is a downloadable resource created by Bruce Stanley over at the ReJesus website
- There are some good resources on the Church of England's own website and also here and also daily prayer is available here
- If you are on Facebook can I also commend Mark Brown's 'Praying People' resources. An opportunity to post a prayer and know that literally millions of people around the world will pray for you and with you.

These are just a handful of great resources.

If you know of more, or find others helpful please post a comment...

Don't Panic! - The Wave

Click the photo to read the the post...