Probably not very ministerial language but there you go.  I have given up counting crises now, as every time I turn around there seems to be another one.  At least it looks as if I'll get away with giving away dangly skeletons at our Pentecost service (the valley of dry bones...) as the other Rev'ds are OK with it.

I think I am going to throw away the sermon I wrote yesterday, not because it's bad but because this week makes it seem wrong.  I am still using the BMS FACE thingy but don't feel that banging on about mega issues is helpful when several of my folk are in bits.  The theme is one of being set free, of chains that bind.  I wonder if here in costa del Dibley, the chains are something to do with stubborn independence, lack of openness, lack of trust, fear of judgement or rejection...  I can't help feeling that people might have been better placed to cope with their mega issues if they had shared them before they got so mega, that and the fact that then they might not all have come at once.

One of the songs I had already picked is one where, along with most ministers I know, the second verse prompts me to say something like 'yeah, right' because it has a naivety or unrealism that offends.  Yet parts of the song have an important message...

It was for freedom that Christ has set us free, no longer to be subject to the yoke of slavery...

Surely that is true (and it fits with some nice proof texts), just that sometimes we don't think about what it is that enslaves us - fear, insecurity, lack of self worth, absence of trust, stubborn independence.

Then the problematic second verse...

And in his presence our problems disappear...

Well eschatologically, yes, but in the here and now...  Maybe there is some perspective on them, maybe we find proof texts to show the spirituality of struggle and suffering, but they don't vanish, rather they lurk in the shadows waiting to pounce on us.  I don't think given the issues some of my folk are facing, or the culture of denial and secrecy, that this is a helpful thing to sing.  So I have rewritten the verse to speak of being held in the embrace of God's grace during our struggles. 

And in our struggles, our prayers he'll always hear, his grace embracing us in love... 

I will probably be taken on one side to have my heresies explained to me, as I did when I chose not to use triumphalist battle language a few weeks back, but my need to walk with bruised people means not offering twee answers or singing things that pressurise them into saying everything is good because God loves them.

I'd love to scratch the sermon slot altogether and get them to really share how life is for them, to really face up to the *&$^£"@* that constitutes some people's here and now, but the truth is that we are nowhere near that place.  If discipleship is in some way about community, then it is also about openness and honesty, but church has a long way to go to find that place.  So maybe my 'reflection' will be trying to help us move a step along that path, being set free from the chains of British stiff upper lip and self-sufficient independence (and maybe it's also the sermon that I need to hear!).