Chelley's Teapot
Random thoughts posted in a Tea Break.
If you're looking for something deep and profound...
you probably won't find it here!
"Take some more tea," the March hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."
LEWIS CARROLL - ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Friday, January 24, 2014
A blog post! A blog post!???
Yes, I did type that title while saying to myself "A handbag?!" ("Importance of being Earnest" of course!).
But it could be said that it's nearly as surprising to find a post on here as it was for Lady Bracknell to discover that Jack was 'found' in a handbag!
Anyway, enough of that... I decided this evening that, having made attempts over the years to write various poems, I would go on a little journey of rediscovering and gathering them up. Having found a number buried away in various files on my computer I then started looking through my other (neglected) blog Chelley's View to see what was there... and found a few. I have to say that the couple I had posted on 'one of those social media type places' though were the ones that I had been most pleased with. So, having ventured over there, I then came back here - and wow there's a lot of blog to go through! The last I-don't-know-how-long on here may have just contained sermons (sorry about that!) but there was a lot of stuff before. And I have to say that I've quite enjoyed starting on the trek of revisiting what was going on in my life, and my head (!) back then. I haven't got very far yet, and I'm not convinced I actually posted any poems on here, but I'll enjoy the recap!
Oh and just in case you wonder... Molly cat is still as daft and delightful as ever... and getting on a bit now. But aren't we all!
Ah, it's nice to be back.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me"
Saturday, December 29, 2012
An alternative to worry?
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Now to live the life!
Saturday, April 07, 2012
It's Friday - but Sunday's a-comin!
EASTER SUNDAY 2012
A SERMON FOR EASTER DAY (Mark 16: 1-8)
Today is a day for rejoicing!
Today is a day when we hold up the resurrection of Jesus in faith!
And today isn’t a day that’s just appeared from nowhere, out of the blue! But it’s a day that ends a journey and begins a new one.
When Mary Magdalene and the other women got to the tomb early that eternally significant morning, they had been on a journey.
They’d been alongside Jesus, had heard his teaching about the kingdom of God, had seen his miraculous deeds of power and healing, they’d supported and served him in his ministry, had witnessed the horrors of seeing him arrested, abused, condemned and finally crucified. They’d seen his dead body placed in a tomb and a huge stone rolled across the entrance. And on that morning they went once more to anoint the body of their Lord. What sorrow and anguish they must have been feeling that day.
But what they found when they arrived was far from what they expected.
They were thinking of practicalities – who was going to move that great stone for them? But when they got there they found that it had already been moved, and as they entered the tomb instead of finding the body of Jesus, they found a young man dressed in white sitting there.
Matthew, in his gospel account, tells us even more – he tells us that “suddenly there had been a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.”
Heaven that had seemed so eerily silent and distant when Jesus hung on the cross, was now in action!
But these women had no idea that they were going to be faced with heavenly beings, much less that they were about to encounter a risen and living Jesus! They were alarmed, what questions must have been running through their minds? But the angel reassured them, “Do not be alarmed, you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.” And he sent them to tell the others.
When all these things happened they didn’t know – none of them knew – that this was God’s plan all along. They hadn’t understood the direct and indirect things Jesus had told them would happen before he died. They didn’t understand and so the events of that morning were the most alarming, and amazing, surprise to them. Jesus was alive – it hadn’t all come to a crushing end when the Son of God was nailed to that cross – what had come to an end when he was nailed to that cross was the power of darkness and death, as they died, went down to the eternal pit with him. They didn’t know that it was Friday – but Sunday was coming!
And what was raised with the Son of God was a new life and a new way and a new light! Because the God who had clothed himself with humanity had given humanity a new beginning, and one that would stretch right through physical death and on into eternal life with him. A life that would be full of all the best of what God had created and a life that would be without the pain of the old – “no more mourning, or crying, or death, or pain.” But more than just the future hope was a breaking into our now, because the kingdom of God was breaking through – a foretaste of heaven, on earth! As Jesus had been teaching, and demonstrating, all along – the kingdom of heaven is now within our grasp, close at hand, and accessed through prayer, through him, just by faith!
That was their journey! Ours has been a little different.
We too have spent the last week remembering and reflecting on that journey – from Jesus’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem surrounded by praising people shouting out “Hosanna” (Save us now), to the last supper when he instituted the holy meal of bread and wine that they and we would share to remember him until he comes again. To his betrayal and arrest and crucifixion. We’ve reflected on his suffering on that cross so that we might have the darkness within us defeated, on that place that won us forgiveness as he took all our sin, our godlessness, our wrongs, on himself.
BUT even as we’ve done that, we’ve known that Sunday was coming!
We’ve known what those first disciples didn’t know – “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a-comin’”
On Thursday we shared a special team service recalling that ‘last supper’ and recalled how Jesus’ washed their feet as a demonstration of his loving service. I had the privilege of washing those who came forward as a sign of that service Jesus had first shown and it was humbling and moving – but even then there was that little well of excitement in my gut because I knew Sunday was coming! You know that feeling you had as a child on Christmas Eve – that growing excitement – it felt a bit like that!
On Friday we remembered the horrors of the crucifixion – we walked from the church to the chapel behind the cross, remembering all that Jesus had suffered for us – and that was a journey of sadness. We all walked silently, wrapped up in our own reflections. I was remembering what someone had said to me a few days earlier about how they found it really difficult to make so public an example of faith in those Good Friday walks of witness – how it made them cringe. But as I walked I thought about that – how that feels in our present age – and if there was any embarrassment in that demonstration of being with Jesus, or any feeling of shame, then it just lead me to think about the shame Jesus endured for me – falsely accused, whipped, spat on, beaten, mocked, and executed. And I thought of Peter who did run away when it all kicked off – unable to admit that he was one of them – one of those Jesus followers. But later the risen Jesus would gently restore him and re-commission him for service. But even as I took part in that service of reflection on Jesus’ suffering, I had that little well of excitement in my gut – it was Friday, but Sunday’s a-comin!
And today is Sunday! And I will rejoice because Jesus is alive! Because the kingdom of heaven has broken into our today, because I have access to that kingdom both in the future, and now. Because I have access to the God of love through prayer, and that was won for me by Christ. Because there is a wonderful life to come and because he transforms this one every time the kingdom breaks through when he heals and saves and forgives, and when he inspires faith and mercy and peace and love and service and hope and purpose and community.
We still know all too well that the last shadows cast by the darkness Jesus came to defeat, still overshadow us at times. I will rejoice today that Jesus is alive and his kingdom is close at hand, even though when I leave here today I will go and share communion with J in hospital. And when I leave the hospital I’ll go to my mum and dad’s and feel the pain of watching my dad endure what cancer, and its treatment, does. But I will still rejoice that Jesus has bought us, through his broken and risen body, a new life, and I’ll pray for the signs of that new life to be evident here and now – in my life, in J’s, in my dad’s and in yours.
It’s Friday – but Sunday’s coming! We live in the light of that Sunday every day, because he is alive!
And I pray that whatever remnants of Friday overshadow you, whatever storms are evident in your life, whatever you battle with or whatever gives you pain, that you will also be able to rejoice today, because Jesus is alive, his kingdom is close at hand, hope is real. We may sometimes rejoice through tears, it may sometimes still feel like Good Friday – but Sunday’s a-comin! Hallelujah!
Amen.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
A sermon of opposites?
TRIUMPH AND TRIAL, CELEBRATION AND SUFFERING! (Mark 8: 31-38) 4.3.12
I’m going to say a word to you and ask you to give me its opposite!
So… Heavy (light)
Dangerous (safe)
Clean (dirty)
Big (small)
When we think of opposites we usually think of something being one or the other – it’s either clean or dirty, big or small etc – we don’t think of it being both at the same time!
But when we look at the gospel of Jesus we seem to see opposites that do occur at the same time.
Which words would you use to describe the message and work of Jesus, or to describe the Christian life that flows out of the message and work of Jesus?
Would you use ‘triumph’ and ‘victory’ and ‘celebration’?
Would you use ‘trial’ and ‘suffering’ and ‘challenge’?
Those two sets of words seem to be opposites to one another. On the one hand, triumph and victory and celebration; on the other hand trial and suffering and challenge. But rather than the gospel and the Christian life being one or the other, being an ‘either/or’ it’s like God shows us that his love meshes them both together, because for now we live with the experience of them all. (Hands mesh together).
And that’s not a new thing! Look at the disciple Peter. In Mark’s gospel, immediately before the passage we heard today, Peter has answered Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?” with the words, “You are the Christ.” Well done Peter, who has begun to recognise the truth that Jesus is indeed the one who has come from God – the Messiah (or Christ – the anointed one) – the one who so long before, God spoke about through the prophets. It’s a triumph – a victory for Peter in his realisation and a sign of the victory of God’s plan through the coming of the Messiah.
But then look at what happens next… Jesus begins to teach the specifics and we’re told that he spoke plainly – that he would suffer many things, be rejected by the Jewish leaders and elders, that he would be killed (and after three days rise again).
Peter’s response to that was to take Jesus aside and rebuke him! I wonder what was going through Peter’s mind? “You’re the Messiah, the Christ! What are you talking about – suffering, rejected, killed”?!
This was not what played out in Peter’s understanding when he dwelt on what the Messiah was going to do! And for his rebuke he got from Jesus, “Get behind me satan!” Peter was throwing back at Jesus his entirely human response but Jesus couldn’t be deterred or discouraged from the plan of God and so he had to silence the voice that could sow doubt or deny what was coming.
Imagine a large company – business is going down the drain, workers are discouraged and worried about their jobs, morale is at an all time low. The management have been talking for a long time about drafting in a great business consultant who will come in and turn everything around, boost business, retrain and reenergise the workers, give a renewed sense of job security. And then they arrive – the workers recognise that this is the one, the consultant, and there’s great expectation.
But then instead of doing what’s expected this consultant says he’s going to break up the business, hand over the company to the administrators, lay off the workers and even say that his own job would go down the pan too in trying to deal with the mess!
It’s just an illustration but the difference between expectation and reality are a reflection of how far removed Peter’s expectation of Jesus the Messiah was from the reality of what Jesus said was going to happen!
Now of course, it’s different again for us. We have the benefit of knowing what Jesus meant when he said “and after three days he would rise again”. After the crucifixion would come the resurrection; after the suffering would come the victory.
We live in the time after the resurrection – Jesus is alive again – back where he came from. We live in the time when sin and death have been defeated on the cross. We live in the time of sure hope that God is making everything new and that we’ll experience his kingdom in all its wonderful glory one day. But we also live in the time when death still painfully interrupts life, when we can know complete forgiveness and the slate wiped clean but still struggle with some of the old nature. We live in the time when we see amazing answers to prayer as well as the time when God can seem far away as we call out to him! We live in that time of so-called opposites when we’re called to follow Jesus’ way of suffering while knowing that Jesus has won the victory over evil and sin and death!
I think a problem only arises when Christians take one half of those opposites I mentioned earlier and proclaim them as though the other half wasn’t enmeshed.
If you speak only triumph and victory and celebration (in a sense just resurrection) to someone who is in the midst of grief or struggle or pain (because there’s still a whiplash of these things in our lives) then it can cause them to lose any sense of finding God in their grief and struggle and pain. And God is there to be found! But what we do want is to be able to speak of a sure hope that out of pain God can and does bring healing and hope and life (sometimes right now and sometimes in a while) – that after the crucifixion comes the resurrection, that after Good Friday comes Easter Sunday! It’s something I’m aware of week by week when I meet bereaved families and conduct funeral services – how to balance the hope of resurrection and new life with the immediate reality of the pain of loss and separation where God longs to bring his comfort and presence.
Psalm 23 – “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me.” That has a reflection of what Jesus says to Peter, the other disciples, and the crowd in today’s verses – “take up your cross and follow me” – while we still live in the here and now we may need to make sacrifices for Jesus and we may even follow him to death as many around the world still face today; that in standing with Christ in faith, they lose their lives (but they also gain through him an amazing and eternal life). Jesus warned that it may be so, and said be willing to take up your cross and follow me.
On the other hand we need to not get lost in, or speak only of, trial and suffering and challenge. These are indeed a factor in the Christian life, just as they were in Jesus’ life and yet Jesus gave many signs of the reality and presence of God’s kingdom in the here and now. We can eagerly desire healing and freedom and hope and victory because Jesus won them for us on the cross.
Death and sin died with him and life and freedom and righteousness were raised with him – and all for us to follow in his wake. We should have expectation of the kingdom of heaven, of God, being seen and apparent – close at hand!
And I think all that means that we need to be GENTLE with one another, and gentle with the world. And by ‘gentle’ I mean sensitive to how the Spirit of God would have us respond to people.
Paul said to the Philippians: “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.”
And Peter said in his first letter, “always be prepared to give the reason for the hope that you have; but do this with gentleness and respect…”
Let the Spirit of God be your guide (so ask him to guide you) as you live in the light of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus; as you live with both trial, challenge and suffering AND triumph, victory and celebration; and as you speak the gospel news of both to the people you abide with and who cross your path. Be gentle with others – “mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice” while always holding on to the hope that in the darkness God is present and in the light we see the final act being played out – even now.
When I was a youth leader back in the 90’s, one day a member of the group asked me about how I coped with being a mum? “There’s so much pain in the world” she said, “when you love someone so much wouldn’t you rather not have the fear of pain and the worry for them?” And I answered her that the love was so amazing and such a delight that I would risk the pain to experience the love. I wouldn’t sacrifice the love in order to get rid of the pain.
For now they are enmeshed in our experience of life but God is bringing humanity to a time and place where the pain is finally vanquished for good and the love and delight is what’s left – “there will be no more death or mourning, crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away!”
And there is our hope and the good news we have to share with the world! We live in the light of BOTH Good Friday AND Easter Sunday.
Amen.
Monday, February 13, 2012
A new era...
I hadn't realised how long it was since I last posted on this (rather beloved to me!) Teapot blog until I came to post again. And this new posting era comes with the purpose of sharing thoughts by mobile. Seeing as I find it so hard to stop and reflect in the way I once found so useful I am trying a new way. Maybe, just maybe, the odd thought posted maybe helpful for someone else, and if not then perhaps the expressing will be helpful for me. Too many thoughts bottled up can be somewhat crippling, and if you're anything like me then analysis of others has a lot more grace applied than analysis of self! So this evening I assign myself the tasks of finding 'As Though' - a past post that gives me a good framework of perspective (and is archived here); and secondly to have a read of 'Amazing Grace' once again and just remember that God is better at grace than me!
Labels: analysis, grace, reflection
Saturday, October 22, 2011
We're going on a prayer hunt...!
I remember reading to my son when he was little "We're going on a bear hunt" and I'm sure I enjoyed it as much if not more than him! So, having remembered that enjoyment I decided to rewrite it for our Children's message on Sunday... with a bit of journeying of course and finding some 'gifts' along the way.
With all due thanks and credit to author Michael Rosen.
We’re going on a prayer hunt
We’re going to say a big one
God is listening
What a beautiful gift!
Oh Wow! Love! (find heart)
Perfect love for me.
I can’t ignore it
By skipping over it
Ok
God, help me feel it.
(Thankyou thankyou)
(Thankyou thankyou)
We’re going on a prayer hunt
We’re going to say a big one
God is listening
What a beautiful gift!
Oh Wow! Words! (find Bible)
A Bible full for me.
I can’t ignore it.
By skipping over it.
Ok.
God help me read it.
(Listen listen)
(Listen listen)
We’re going on a prayer hunt
We’re going to say a big one
God is listening
What a beautiful gift!
Oh Wow! Church (find candle - ring of people)
A family for me!
I can’t ignore it
By skipping over it
Ok
God help me be part of it
(Brothers sisters)
(Brothers sisters)
We’re going on a prayer hunt
We’re going to say a big one
God is listening
What a beautiful gift!
Oh Wow! Jesus (find a cross)
Forgiveness for me!
I can’t ignore it
By skipping over it
Ok
God help me receive it
(Sorry sorry)
(new me new me)
We went on a prayer hunt
We prayed some big ones
God was listening
What beautiful gifts!
AMEN!
Friday, August 26, 2011
RevGals Friday Five
I haven't played the Friday Five for ages but with the rain hammering down outside I thought now would be a good time!
Because it's one all about rain...
What do you do on a rainy summers day?
1. At home?
2. In your local area?
3. If you are away on holiday?
4. Name a rainy day read.
5. Is there a piece of music/ a poem/ story that cheers you up?
Bonus: post a rainy day photo!
1. Given my lack of 'domestic-goddessry' I am usually to be found looking out of the window at the washing hanging on the line and getting increasingly soaked; and at the same time thinking "should've got that in yesterday!" As it happens, today as I listen to the rain, I'm feeling rather smug that I have piles of DRY washing indoors because I didn't do my usual trick this time!
2. Well, it does rain a fair bit here in England so I usually just get on with what I have to get on with. Driving around in a car helps quite a bit, though if I am walking then I'm a 'put up your hood' kind of person rather than a 'carry an umbrella' type.
3. If I'm away on holiday then I'm likely to be out in it! Wellies on, waterproofs on, and jumping in puddles like a big kid! I don't let the rain stop my exploring tendencies. It helps to not be a very glamorous type who doesn't care about getting her hair wet and who very rarely wears make-up so no run-off issues!
4. As I'm a reader anyway, the weather doesn't really affect the choice of read - there's usually a pile of books on the go all the time.
5. Well given the subject matter, and also given that I like this song - it has to be "Why does it always rain on me" by Travis! And I've managed to find a very suitable live version... where it's pouring with rain:
Bonus: I don't have a rainy day photo available but perhaps that video counts!