Held in Common

Sing to the Lord...

Tricia Coleman and Tim Drummond gave this talk as part of "Everyday Church" at a recent service at Christ Church...

At choir practice, Esther [our Director of Music] helps us to make the most of our voices with vocal exercises and practice, and the younger members use the Royal School of Church Music Voice for Life workbooks to work on their musical knowledge. Recently, we all looked at the sessions designed to enable singers to develop their understanding of their choir’s role, its background and the motivation of its members; and to encourage singers to reflect upon their own experience as members of a choir...

Neighbours with Faith

We held a rather special event on Friday 28 March 2008 in Epsom, at St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church. With financial support via the Diocese of Guildford and the government's Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund, we were able to hold an event called Neighbours with Faith.

You can find a collection of photos of the event here.

The evening was planned and delivered jointly by the Epsom Anglican Group Ministry and the Epsom and Ewell Islamic Society.

We gathered together about 140 local Christians and Muslims (and a Rabbi!) and held a meal (Western and Eastern food) together. People naturally mingled, across gender and faith commitment. Our MP, Chris Grayling was present and spoke supportively, as did our Mayor, Cllr Jean Steer. Our keynote speaker was Rabbi Danny Rich, Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism, chair of the Kingston upon Thames Interfaith Forum, chair of the Dittons Branch of the Council of Christians and Jews, and a local magistrate. Local police Community Support Officers attended.

The aim was simply to encourage local Christians and Muslims to sit down, chat, eat together and enjoy each other's company. It was a great success, and it was vastly appreciated by all.

We don't know whether anything like this has been tried before, but it was certainly a first for Epsom!

We plan to hold another local event like this, perhaps in the summer - probably a barbecue across the Muslim and Christian faith communities.

Omit, delete, ignore - and read the little words!

Here's something from our Heart and Mind session the other day. I'm putting it up here because I think there are some important guidelines we mentioned which deserve a wider audience.

We were looking at the Book of Romans, and focused in on chapter 1, verses 14 to the end of the chapter.

Those verses have often been read - and often still are - as a bit of a diatribe against the human tendency to sin, especially towards sexual sin. (It's apparent that this text is still being read in this way if you look as some of the more immoderate expressions in the current debate on sexuality across the Anglican Communion!)

James Alison, in his excellent, thought-provoking book "Undergoing God", points out (and I paraphrase!) that this is not the only, or even the most natural, reading of the text.

Putting it simply, he suggests that Paul is drawing his readers or listeners - and particularly his Jewish Christian listeners or readers - into a position where they find themselves fulminating against the vices of others, and especially others they do not like or agree with.

James Alison points out various principles of reading which lead his to this conclusion.

First - ignore what Paul (or whoever) did not write! Since we know Paul wrote all of Romans, this can only mean... the verse numbers, chapter numbers and paragraphs!

This is how our earliest copies of the New Testament look:

No verses, no paragraphs, no chapters. All written in uncial (basically capital) letters. No punctuation!

So what does this mean, here? It means: don't stop reading at the end of chapter 1! Just because there is a chapter break there, it doesn't necessarily mean that Paul has finished his argument.

Second - look out for tiny keywords! And - what do you know? - there's one of them at the very beginning of Romans chapter 2. "Therefore...", Paul writes. Where there's a "therefore", you can be sure that Paul was linking up what he's now saying with what came before. And that means that Paul's discussion hasn't stopped at the end of chapter 1, but carries on into chapter 2. And it means that Paul's BIG POINT, the climax of his argument, is coming now, in the first verses of chapter 2.

Here's what he writes:

"Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things..."

This means (according to James Alison - and I'm pretty convinced, myself) that this whole passage is not a diatribe against sin, but a warning against Paul's readers/hearers not to judge others, or to assume that they are themselves without fault. As Paul says in Romans 3:23: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..."

So: a radically different reading - and all because we remembered to ignore the markings in the text (which are a later, only sometimes helpful, imposition) and take more note of link words.

Worth remembering as we read?

Dare to be different...

There are some very interesting secular web sites around the net, and Slow Leadership is one of them, in my view.

How's about this? "Do you dare to be different?" According to the management consultant who writes it, this takes three steps: 1. Slow down; 2. Let go; 3. Open up.

I've certainly found that advice along these lines is something I'm often giving to those who come for spiritual direction or simple pastoral advice.

Somewhere buried in this advice is something quite counter-cultural, in that most things around us shout out that we should be trying harder and succeeding and producing more; and quite counter-intuitive, in that we often feel guilty at not being better or more organized people, and feel that we have to try harder to attain these and other goals.

This secular wisdom does chime with a principle of faith: that life, growth, hope, peace are gifts of God to be found, discovered, almost serendipitously, and to be nurtured as something unearned, as something we receive open-handed. And our hands cannot easily be open unless we sometimes slow down, let go, and open up.

Bidden or Not Bidden...

Dean Ayres, our recent curate, took this photograph of the plaque at the entrance to the chapel at the Sacred Heart of Mary Convent in Little Ealing. I thought you'd enjoy seeing it.

For me, what it says is a huge comfort. Even when I forget to ask God into a place where I go, God is there. Mind you, since God is capable of doing the unexpected, this could be a challenge, sometimes, as well as an encouragement!