Post by JEM on Jun 8, 2020 14:41:37 GMT
JOHN GODDARD'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 2020 May 11
I grew up in a place full of the beauty of creation, in the High Peak of Derbyshire on the edge of the Peak District. I enjoyed watching the birds in our garden, but the beauty of creation was not really my passion – that was trains! I was a trainspotter. I built model railways in my bedroom, and travelled the country by train to see trains. For £5 this 14 year old could buy a one day ‘Round Robin’ ticket which allowed me to travel from home to Crewe, up to Glasgow, across to Edinburgh, south to York, and back home via Sheffield, and still find time to spend an hour or two in the paradise that was Doncaster locomotive works. I would travel through glorious parts of our country, and visit historic towns and cities, but I wouldn’t actually see them, because I was more interested in locomotives and rolling stock.
All this is by way of saying that by the time I was 30 and beginning to become fascinated with the natural world I wasn’t necessarily very knowledgeable. During my first pastorate after college I was living and ministering in a rural Oxfordshire community on the edge of the Cotswolds. One Sunday a lovely couple from church announced that their field would be open that afternoon as the orchids had begun to bloom. This field was on the edge of Otmoor, and I have a feeling that the reason they owned this field was to prevent it being ‘developed’. It wasn’t a terribly large field, and it was maintained by them solely as a place of natural tranquillity. I loved this idea and so headed off to the field that Sunday afternoon, said hello to the owners at the gate, and then quietly strolled meditatively around the field for 10 minutes or so, to enjoy the orchids. Eventually I returned to my friends and confessed I had no idea what an orchid looked like – were they the pretty yellow ones? I’m sure we laughed, but I needed to be taken and shown the delicate fragile beauty of the purple orchids (I think they were Green-Winged Orchids). They also showed me the pretty yellow Cowslips! I had looked, but I hadn’t seen…
Some years later I spent a wonderful day, courtesy of a fantastic gift from Karen, in the company of the woodlore and bushcraft expert Ray Mears, in the glorious Ashdown Forest, Sussex. I had wandered around in woods before, but there was something transformative about being in a group of people in the company of an expert guide. Trees stopped being simply trees en masse and became individual living organisms as Ray helped us to stop and look and wonder. I noticed for the first time the cold, barren area surrounding a magnificent Beech tree, where little can grow in the darkness of its immense canopy and with the dense fall of leaf matter and old beech nut husks. We marvelled together at the massive and intricate mounds constructed by Wood Ants, and watched with fascination as they defended their nest by spraying Formic Acid at the Bluebell tapped on the nest – something you could see because the acid turned the Bluebell white! We spent some time sat underneath an ancient Yew tree in the company of the late Chris Boyton, a craftsman skilled in the age-old art of making bows from Yew. He spoke with quiet authority and passion about a skill and craft I knew nothing about. I simply knew I was in the presence of a master. That day in the Ashdown Forest I saw the familiar woodland with new eyes, as my eyes were opened by expert guides.
There’s a simple worship song from the 1970s (arguably not a golden era for worship music…) that says:
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus,
to reach out and touch him,
and say that we love him.
Open our ears, Lord,
and help us to listen.
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus. (Robert Cull, © 1976 Maranatha! Music)
I can’t remember when I last sang this in a service, and not just because of lockdown restrictions, but I think God is speaking to me again through its simple message. I need to have my eyes opened to what God has done and is doing. We need to have our eyes opened to see the works of God in Christ in this beautiful messed up world of ours. I recognise that for me this is often something that comes through the wisdom and grace of others. In a similar way to having my eyes opened to the wildflowers of a meadow through the people who knew that meadow, or the treasures of the woodland by those who knew the woodland, so I often find that my eyes are opened again to see Jesus through the words and experiences of fellow pilgrims; those who have gone before and whose writings fill countless books, and those who still walk the way of Christ and who speak and tweet and blog and preach, who paint and sing and write and bake, who love and weep and laugh and listen. Even in lockdown, or perhaps especially in lockdown, I need the fellowship of others to keep my eyes open to God in Christ. And others will need me to walk with them too.
Open our eyes, Lord. Amen? John Goddard, 11th May 2020
JOHN GODDARD'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 2020 May 18
Justice and inclusion. - I was gently teased about how I looked on Facebook yesterday. Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those critiques of our image focused social media world of photoshop and filters. It was simply an old friend and colleague observing that I was still wearing a suit to deliver my sermon on YouTube, whereas her church had discovered pyjama church weeks ago! I’m not sure the world of YouTube is ready for me in my pyjamas, but the truth is that I feel comfortable wearing my battered old blue jacket when preaching. It’s about me maintaining some semblance of normality in the midst of a rapidly evolving context. When I was deciding in a hurry what lockdown worship might look like I knew that I wanted to iron a shirt and put on my jacket, not quite my rod and staff but certainly a sense of comfort.
This conversation reminded me of one of the leaflets sent to me by the Methodist Church when I began to train with them as a Local Preacher back in 1983. The leaflet was about how to dress as a Local Preacher. This was a leaflet sent to all new preachers, but perhaps had particular relevance to a teenager in the early 1980s when fashions were wild and changeable! The leaflet did not talk about jackets and ties and haircuts, but simply suggested that good advice was to dress in a manner least likely to draw attention to how you looked and therefore away from what you were saying. If the congregation left discussing the shirt you were wearing rather than the hymns they had sung and the words you had spoken then the issue was yours as much as theirs.
In my current church I usually wear a jacket, but never a tie. I wear a clerical collar for Parade services, funerals and weddings, and for ecumenical gatherings, but most Sunday’s it’s an open necked shirt. Seven years ago at my induction service I was asked by a senior colleague a few minutes before we began as to whether we were wearing ties or not. Having almost always worn a tie for some reason I suggested we lost the ties, and that meant the new normal was born!
Why on earth am I talking to you about jackets and ties in a thought for the day, and especially one with a heading Justice and Inclusion? One reason is to highlight the sexist nonsense and abuse visited upon many of my ministerial colleagues who are women. The misogynistic and sexist comments which often begin by referencing their appearance highlight a persistent battle faced by many of my colleagues because in the view of a few ministers should be men. In case you are wondering the sort of things I mean take a moment to watch this video from North Carolina in which ordained men are asked to read some of the sexist and hateful comments faced by their women ministerial colleagues: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/umc-female-pastors-video_n_5d095148e4b0e560b70aca71?ri18n=true
I know we live in the UK, but whilst the context and language might differ a little the inequality and abuse does not. So when I start to wonder about whether I should where a jacket and tie or not, I am reminded of the numerous unfair and sexist judgments women face on a daily basis, and I am reminded that I must speak up and speak out!
But there is another justice and inclusion issue tied up in the tale of my old blue jacket. Like many children of the 1970s and 1980s I had a large collection of buttons and badges demonstrating my loyalties and interests. There were Boys’ Brigade badges, enamelled pins of trains, and the inevitable cheap and cheerful Jesus Saves button badge. Over time they disappeared and for many years I would seldom have a pin on the lapel of my jacket, except for a poppy for Remembrance Sunday. That changed about five years ago when some friends produced badges based on a design by our colleague Dawn Cole-Savidge. It shows a number of people sat on what look suspiciously like church chairs, and in their midst is a rainbow-coloured elephant. This is, of course, the rainbow-coloured elephant in the room.
Over the last couple of generations our society has had to work hard to realise the full extent of exclusion and prejudice levelled against those who are lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer – those whom we usually group together as LGBTQ. Society has begun to change, moving away from legislation of deliberate prejudice and exclusion towards creating a society of genuine inclusion and justice. There is still a way to go, and to our shame our churches have seldom been at the forefront of this particular campaign for justice. Too often we have been the ones dragged reluctantly into creating some form of accommodation rather than celebrating difference and recognising the Creator’s image in all humanity. This is an ongoing struggle, and a conversation that many otherwise good, kind, loving Christians would prefer not to have, because it will upset some people. But we need to keep on gently challenging and campaigning and preaching and loving until all our churches are safe places for all God’s people – regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sexuality.
And so we come full circle to my old blue jacket, which if you look carefully (see the videos on the Saffron Walden Baptist Church YouTube channel) has a small white button badge on the lapel, with a picture of the rainbow-coloured elephant in the room. I put my jacket on, and I remember. I need to do so much more than wear the badge, but the badge is important to me, because my LGBTQ friends are important to me, and so I wear my jacket.
What is important to you? What really matters? Where do you see injustice, and how will you work to include rather than exclude? Listen for the voice of God, and respond! Amen?
I grew up in a place full of the beauty of creation, in the High Peak of Derbyshire on the edge of the Peak District. I enjoyed watching the birds in our garden, but the beauty of creation was not really my passion – that was trains! I was a trainspotter. I built model railways in my bedroom, and travelled the country by train to see trains. For £5 this 14 year old could buy a one day ‘Round Robin’ ticket which allowed me to travel from home to Crewe, up to Glasgow, across to Edinburgh, south to York, and back home via Sheffield, and still find time to spend an hour or two in the paradise that was Doncaster locomotive works. I would travel through glorious parts of our country, and visit historic towns and cities, but I wouldn’t actually see them, because I was more interested in locomotives and rolling stock.
All this is by way of saying that by the time I was 30 and beginning to become fascinated with the natural world I wasn’t necessarily very knowledgeable. During my first pastorate after college I was living and ministering in a rural Oxfordshire community on the edge of the Cotswolds. One Sunday a lovely couple from church announced that their field would be open that afternoon as the orchids had begun to bloom. This field was on the edge of Otmoor, and I have a feeling that the reason they owned this field was to prevent it being ‘developed’. It wasn’t a terribly large field, and it was maintained by them solely as a place of natural tranquillity. I loved this idea and so headed off to the field that Sunday afternoon, said hello to the owners at the gate, and then quietly strolled meditatively around the field for 10 minutes or so, to enjoy the orchids. Eventually I returned to my friends and confessed I had no idea what an orchid looked like – were they the pretty yellow ones? I’m sure we laughed, but I needed to be taken and shown the delicate fragile beauty of the purple orchids (I think they were Green-Winged Orchids). They also showed me the pretty yellow Cowslips! I had looked, but I hadn’t seen…
Some years later I spent a wonderful day, courtesy of a fantastic gift from Karen, in the company of the woodlore and bushcraft expert Ray Mears, in the glorious Ashdown Forest, Sussex. I had wandered around in woods before, but there was something transformative about being in a group of people in the company of an expert guide. Trees stopped being simply trees en masse and became individual living organisms as Ray helped us to stop and look and wonder. I noticed for the first time the cold, barren area surrounding a magnificent Beech tree, where little can grow in the darkness of its immense canopy and with the dense fall of leaf matter and old beech nut husks. We marvelled together at the massive and intricate mounds constructed by Wood Ants, and watched with fascination as they defended their nest by spraying Formic Acid at the Bluebell tapped on the nest – something you could see because the acid turned the Bluebell white! We spent some time sat underneath an ancient Yew tree in the company of the late Chris Boyton, a craftsman skilled in the age-old art of making bows from Yew. He spoke with quiet authority and passion about a skill and craft I knew nothing about. I simply knew I was in the presence of a master. That day in the Ashdown Forest I saw the familiar woodland with new eyes, as my eyes were opened by expert guides.
There’s a simple worship song from the 1970s (arguably not a golden era for worship music…) that says:
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus,
to reach out and touch him,
and say that we love him.
Open our ears, Lord,
and help us to listen.
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus. (Robert Cull, © 1976 Maranatha! Music)
I can’t remember when I last sang this in a service, and not just because of lockdown restrictions, but I think God is speaking to me again through its simple message. I need to have my eyes opened to what God has done and is doing. We need to have our eyes opened to see the works of God in Christ in this beautiful messed up world of ours. I recognise that for me this is often something that comes through the wisdom and grace of others. In a similar way to having my eyes opened to the wildflowers of a meadow through the people who knew that meadow, or the treasures of the woodland by those who knew the woodland, so I often find that my eyes are opened again to see Jesus through the words and experiences of fellow pilgrims; those who have gone before and whose writings fill countless books, and those who still walk the way of Christ and who speak and tweet and blog and preach, who paint and sing and write and bake, who love and weep and laugh and listen. Even in lockdown, or perhaps especially in lockdown, I need the fellowship of others to keep my eyes open to God in Christ. And others will need me to walk with them too.
Open our eyes, Lord. Amen? John Goddard, 11th May 2020
JOHN GODDARD'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 2020 May 18
Justice and inclusion. - I was gently teased about how I looked on Facebook yesterday. Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those critiques of our image focused social media world of photoshop and filters. It was simply an old friend and colleague observing that I was still wearing a suit to deliver my sermon on YouTube, whereas her church had discovered pyjama church weeks ago! I’m not sure the world of YouTube is ready for me in my pyjamas, but the truth is that I feel comfortable wearing my battered old blue jacket when preaching. It’s about me maintaining some semblance of normality in the midst of a rapidly evolving context. When I was deciding in a hurry what lockdown worship might look like I knew that I wanted to iron a shirt and put on my jacket, not quite my rod and staff but certainly a sense of comfort.
This conversation reminded me of one of the leaflets sent to me by the Methodist Church when I began to train with them as a Local Preacher back in 1983. The leaflet was about how to dress as a Local Preacher. This was a leaflet sent to all new preachers, but perhaps had particular relevance to a teenager in the early 1980s when fashions were wild and changeable! The leaflet did not talk about jackets and ties and haircuts, but simply suggested that good advice was to dress in a manner least likely to draw attention to how you looked and therefore away from what you were saying. If the congregation left discussing the shirt you were wearing rather than the hymns they had sung and the words you had spoken then the issue was yours as much as theirs.
In my current church I usually wear a jacket, but never a tie. I wear a clerical collar for Parade services, funerals and weddings, and for ecumenical gatherings, but most Sunday’s it’s an open necked shirt. Seven years ago at my induction service I was asked by a senior colleague a few minutes before we began as to whether we were wearing ties or not. Having almost always worn a tie for some reason I suggested we lost the ties, and that meant the new normal was born!
Why on earth am I talking to you about jackets and ties in a thought for the day, and especially one with a heading Justice and Inclusion? One reason is to highlight the sexist nonsense and abuse visited upon many of my ministerial colleagues who are women. The misogynistic and sexist comments which often begin by referencing their appearance highlight a persistent battle faced by many of my colleagues because in the view of a few ministers should be men. In case you are wondering the sort of things I mean take a moment to watch this video from North Carolina in which ordained men are asked to read some of the sexist and hateful comments faced by their women ministerial colleagues: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/umc-female-pastors-video_n_5d095148e4b0e560b70aca71?ri18n=true
I know we live in the UK, but whilst the context and language might differ a little the inequality and abuse does not. So when I start to wonder about whether I should where a jacket and tie or not, I am reminded of the numerous unfair and sexist judgments women face on a daily basis, and I am reminded that I must speak up and speak out!
But there is another justice and inclusion issue tied up in the tale of my old blue jacket. Like many children of the 1970s and 1980s I had a large collection of buttons and badges demonstrating my loyalties and interests. There were Boys’ Brigade badges, enamelled pins of trains, and the inevitable cheap and cheerful Jesus Saves button badge. Over time they disappeared and for many years I would seldom have a pin on the lapel of my jacket, except for a poppy for Remembrance Sunday. That changed about five years ago when some friends produced badges based on a design by our colleague Dawn Cole-Savidge. It shows a number of people sat on what look suspiciously like church chairs, and in their midst is a rainbow-coloured elephant. This is, of course, the rainbow-coloured elephant in the room.
Over the last couple of generations our society has had to work hard to realise the full extent of exclusion and prejudice levelled against those who are lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer – those whom we usually group together as LGBTQ. Society has begun to change, moving away from legislation of deliberate prejudice and exclusion towards creating a society of genuine inclusion and justice. There is still a way to go, and to our shame our churches have seldom been at the forefront of this particular campaign for justice. Too often we have been the ones dragged reluctantly into creating some form of accommodation rather than celebrating difference and recognising the Creator’s image in all humanity. This is an ongoing struggle, and a conversation that many otherwise good, kind, loving Christians would prefer not to have, because it will upset some people. But we need to keep on gently challenging and campaigning and preaching and loving until all our churches are safe places for all God’s people – regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sexuality.
And so we come full circle to my old blue jacket, which if you look carefully (see the videos on the Saffron Walden Baptist Church YouTube channel) has a small white button badge on the lapel, with a picture of the rainbow-coloured elephant in the room. I put my jacket on, and I remember. I need to do so much more than wear the badge, but the badge is important to me, because my LGBTQ friends are important to me, and so I wear my jacket.
What is important to you? What really matters? Where do you see injustice, and how will you work to include rather than exclude? Listen for the voice of God, and respond! Amen?