Don't stop me now!

I preached a homily in chapel yesterday morning.

"What's a homily?" I hear you all mumble....

It's a very short sermon, a micro-talk, slightly longer than a tweet. About 3 minutes long, which isn't time to say an awful lot. Basically, you need to choose one point and stick to it. In front of the whole college.

The text I was given to work with was the story of Jacob wrestling with God (Genesis chapter 32), after which he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Which is apt, given that my walking posture is not exactly normal these days.

We opened with a very laid-back jazz version of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" playing as people came in for Morning Prayer (go to itunes and search for 'Jeroen van der Boom'), which is unusual in itself. It was important to choose the right style of this song, as the original Queen version at 8.15am would have been too much!

This talk was delivered with the chairs arranged facing inwarsd to the aisle, so that I could amble up and down and look people in the eye to challenge them at certain points. I hadn't anticipated how well this would emphasise the fact that I was walking - a very physical demonstration of my point!

My text follows:

As I was thinking about this homily I was sitting in a seminar considering the following verses from Matthew 9, and it struck me how appropriate they were for the message that was swimming around in my head:

And as Jesus sat at dinner in the house, many tax-collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard this, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick [do]. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

Do you need a physician? I wonder if you realize that you are sick? In last week’sDimbleby lecture Sir Terry Pratchett spoke of his Alzheimers disease, how over a number of years he noticed that his typing wasn’t as good as it had been, that he wasn’t noticing things, that gradually life was changing.

In our reading from Genesis today we heard of how Jacob wrestled with God, and had a sudden change in his leg. He was left with a limp for the rest of his life.

I wonder how that passage spoke to you. For me it was an interesting choice, because, like Jacob, I’ve got a dodgy leg. In fact I’ve got two dodgy legs. But like Sir Terry, I didn’t even know that I had for a long time. For several years before I came to Ridley people at work asked me why I was walking ‘like that’, and I, reassured by family, told them that I’ve always walked ‘like that’. It’s only when I got here and met a whole pile of concerned new friends, who were trying desperately to exercise their new found pastoral skills, along with a physiotherapist at my attachment church who told me that actually we’ve never had an acolyte who walks ‘like that’ and I really ought to get it seen to, that I started to think ‘maybe there is something wrong’. And within thirty seconds of meeting my consultant, he could tell that there was something not quite right with me. But the diagnosis had to wait until somebody had the chance to put some serious voltages through my legs…

You see, the motor nerves to my toes, feet and ankle are slowly losing communication with my brain. It’s called a neuropathy, and it’s unlikely that anything can be done about it. It’s taken 40 years to get as far as not being able to stand on tiptoes, and I didn’t even know I couldn’t do that until I was asked to… So I might end up walking with a stick. Now I understand why I was finding it so difficult to climb the 54 stairs to my study at the top of ‘A’ staircase last year. Now I know why my legs get tired in the middle of a long shopping expedition, or why I sometimes need to hold onto the chair in front of me during a long liturgical stand. Like Jacob I’ve been living with a limp. Unlike Jacob I didn’t even realize I had it. So if this time last year Jesus had told me I needed to see a physician (whether literally or metaphorically) I might have laughed at him and said “Not me, Jesus, I don’t need a doctor. I’m alright. You must mean somebody else.” But, if we’re talking in the same metaphor as Jesus, that puts me in the same place as the Pharisees, who thought that they had no need of a physician.

I know I’m not perfect – yet – but that’s the stuff I’m aware of. I know the things that I keep confessing and promising not to do again, but that keep coming back. What behaviours am I not aware of? Maybe sometimes I think “that’s just me, take it or leave it” when in reality I need to change something. There are the words that spill out of us when we're stressed or caught off guard that reflect the real inner 'me', not the professional ‘shields up’ public front that we start to develop here.

Are you busy saying “Don’t stop me now. I’m having such a good time” to Jesus?
What does he want to bring to your attention that you’re ignoring?

Picture (c) thebricktestament.com

Trouble at the top?

This window intersects my field of vision most days of the week - it's the east end of Ridley chapel. I gaze at it while waiting for things to start. I focus on different things - sometimes the different people, sometimes the tiny details, sometimes the shape of the stonework. In the winter I long for the summer mornings to come so that it is backlit by the rising sun. In the summer I wish that there were more buildings behind it because the sunlight is dazzling me!

Just recently I've noticed what's happening, but I don't know why. The figures, from left to right, are: St Peter, St Matthew, Jesus, St Luke, and St Paul. But Paul has obviously fallen out with Jesus about something, as all the others are looking towards Jesus - Paul is the only one with his head turned away.

Answers on a postcard please!

Score your vicar

It's been a bit of a quiet week this first week of term, which has meant that we've had time to complete a little project. The jokes might not mean much to you if you're outside the Ridley community of course, but there are potential applications of the candle technology in churches up and down the land.

Coming soon to a church near you

I can reassure you that the congregations of years to come have nothing to fear. Your future curates and vicars are as childish as anybody else when the snow falls. Emerging from Staircase Prayers this morning we were bombarded with a hail of snowballs from students and staff alike. I was just the test case - they were waiting for Principal Andrew to emerge. This appears to be some form of training for those who will be placed in northern counties where the local unchurched rabble stand outside snowy churches waiting for the vicar to leave the building.

[in the interests of appropriate academic practice I should state that some of these photos weren't taken by me, but I can't be bothered to find out whose they are]





On the left my snowman impression. The horns are a temporary feature, due to interaction of snow, cycling helmet and spiritual conditions. They've receded now.








On the right a Christmas card picture of the chapel.

Below the Royal Marines finest, Fred Frederick, fails to hit the target (apparently a rare occurrence):

By the way, Principal Andrew let it slip to me that he's been reading this blog. Watch out, here he comes again......look as if you're paying attention.

'Hello Sir. I think you'll find all is in order. Just practising writing for the church newsletter'.

p.s. be warned - Andrew can return snowballs as well he receives them.

A very polite telling off....

'C' staircase felt like a change. So this morning found us attending Morning Prayer not in the usual location of our Common Room but in King's College Chapel. You can see us walking there in the photo. Along the way we encountered Star Radio's Coleman the Patrolman, a roving traffic reporter who roves Cambridge on a bike instead of a helicopter. Being on foot I lacked a car horn so I greeted him with a verbal 'honk', which he returned with a blast from his handheld squeezy hooter. The japes these mature students get up to!!

Back to the plot. We arrived at King's with a few minutes to spare. The staff there looked a little astonished as 16 of us trooped in and down the main aisle in search of the service. As I was at the back of the group I got a ringside seat for a conversation with the college Chaplain, along the lines of:

Chaplain: 'Hello, there do seem to be rather a lot of you, I'm afraid we might not have enough seats for you all'

Us: 'That's alright, we can stand'

C: 'But the chapel is quite small'

U: 'Oh, don't worry, we can squeeze quite small' (strange, it looks quite big from outside...)

C: 'It would have been useful if we had known you were coming'

U: 'Ah, yes, we, err...couldn't find your e-mail address' (but it's a publicly advertised service?)

C: 'I don't think we'll have enough service books.....'

U: 'It's OK' (producing our own Common Worship books from our pockets with a flourish)

And so we proceed to the Chapel, feeling like we've been told off firmly but very politely. We discover that the reason for his concern is that King's College Huge Christmas Carol Service Chapel also has a number of small side chapels, and it's in one of these, the Memorial Chapel, that Morning Prayer takes place. I think the fact that it was Monday morning accounts for the fact that King's students had - cough - 'forgotten' about Morning Prayer, which was today attended by their Chaplain, 13 Ridley students and 3 Ridley staff! A very intimate and quite special time together. I suspect the Chaplain was actually quite glad to have company.

Afterwards we slowly made our way out, gawping at the architecture, the spectacular ceiling and 360 degree stained glass - we would normally have to pay just to get in, but attending services is free! You can get a feel of it by visiting the chapel website but it's no substitute for seeing it with your own eyes.

A full English breakfast in a local cafe followed, before the reality of the day's lectures intervened.