Tonight we had our AGM (zzzzz) followed by a very dull Church Meeting (even zzzzz-er).

This year, as last, I tried to inject a bit of life into the AGM by putting together a slide show in PowerPoint of highlights along with vaguely funny captions... no one laughed, a few didn't even look at the screen, and one scowled - she thinks this is a waste of time in a'business meeting' as she insists on calling it.  There weren't any comments on the reports and the elections were virtually non existent as we had no nominations for deacons or Treasurer.  I was losing the will to live even before we'd done the AGM stuff!

The main meeting was no better - we spent half an hour going round in circles over the Treasurer issue, fiddling with little bits here and there and never progressing the main points.  We did eventually come up with a set of actions, but nothing that will sort the issue very quickly.  We need a constitutional change to stand any chance of getting out of this position - which means yet more boring meetings.  Oh joy!

The one good thing, and it was good, and it could be really good, was an agreement to spend a whole Sunday working solidly on discerning our way forward as a fellowship.  There were a few dissenters - Sunday is a day for rest, not for doing work, even God's work (hmm, so why do I work Sundays then?!) - but most seemed reasonably keen on the idea.  This will take place on 27th April and sits nicely between our next Deacons and Church meetings.  I guess I have two prayers... one that it won't be boring and the other that we will actually come away from it with something concrete.  I'm not sure I can stand much more circumnavigation of the same spot!

This year's Good Friday event is now well on the way to being sorted... or at least my bit is!  Other people seem to need incredibly detailed instructions and I am more than a tad apprehensive that the person setting up the 'Communion' station has not grasped that what we want is a big loaf, a jug of grape juice and something a bit rugged - the fear is we get the Meths communion kit including frilly white cloths to cover it all up - I pray not!

'Experience Easter' is a multisensory event for all ages, spread over three rooms, with different foci (i.e. they are plural, as an aside, I am getting fed up with people round here saying 'foci' when they mean 'focus' but that's another story!).

I have two installations to produce - 'water' and 'oil'

Water will include various extracts from John (woman at well, foot washing) and Matthew (Baptism, Great Commission) as well as water for drinking and water for washing.  The essential nature of water for life will be flagged - from amniotic fluid, to seas, to rain, to blood - as well as its refreshing and restorative properties.  Touch, taste, sight and possibly sound will feature in this installation.

Oil will draw on accounts of Jesus being anointed (John, Matthew, Luke) and explore anointing for healing, commissioning and dying.  Scented aromatherapy oil, olive oil and baby oil will be on offer for people to anoint themselves (or each other).  So smell and touch very much at the heart of this one.

One of our challenges is to take people to Calvary and leave them sufficiently disturbed without being distraught.  Even our children's song will leave Jesus at Calvary in 'pain and agony' (although the activites will inevitably pre-empt Sunday)

I think I will need to provide guidance notes for all the installations, as I doubt they will be self explanatory or that folk will do them, but overall it is proving a positive experience to prepare for this and is allowing me to enter into the ideas a little more deeply.

I wonder how many people will choose to Experience Easter with us?  We will have sent out 1500 leaflets or thereabouts and had it announced in local radio.  I'd love to see 100 people come through the doors which would be more than twice what we get to a traditional Good Friday service - we shall see!

This week's sermon for Palm Sunday has been one of those that doesn't want to be written. I knew what I wanted to work with but it has been a hard slog to get it any kind of shape.

We are using the Matthew 21 Palm Sunday story (where you can, if you so wish, picture Jesus astride two donkeys simultaneously - to what does the final 'them' refer in verse 7 refer, coats or donkeys?) and the great kenosis hymn from Philippians 2.  It is the latter reading that I have been more drawn to, and which better serves my desire to enter into the mystery and intensity of Holy Week, and I have being playing around with ideas around what it means to say that Christ Jesus was 'emptied' or 'poured out.'  What is the relationship between the emotive outpouring of praise on Palm Sunday and the pouring out of Jesus blood on Good Friday?  What is the connection between Christ relinquishing divine privilege and Jesus expending his life's energy for others?

The sermon itself is trying to get people to engage more with Holy Week, to move beyond the idea of famliar stories and towards something of the mystery of Easter, to avoid skipping blithely from happy to happy and yet to recognise that we cannot unknow what we we do know.  I'm not sure how well it does/will succeed, but it has helped me to begin to focus.

And with it come a resoution to abstain from blogging next week simply in order to take the time to ponder and reflect some of what Holy Weekis about, not in a pious, self-righteous way, but in an attempt to allow it to confuse and unsettle me as my comfortable routines are disturbed.

In my preprations for Sunday, I came across a prayer by Dorothy McRae-McMahon in Liturgies for the Journey of Life,which I have adapted to form the invitation to communion (her words in italic, mine plain text)...

Life is a journey on many different roads

But God is always with us

 

Sometimes we lift our faces to the sun

And God is with us

 

Sometimes the journey is harder

Through pathways of pain

And fears in dark places

But God is with us  

Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus

 

Jesus travelled a journey

From the excitement of Palm Sunday

Through the poignancy of the Last Supper

And the agony of Gethsemane

To the abandonment of Calvary

And here, today, by God’s Spirit, he is with us

 

In our journeys

Of life

Of faith

Of love and laughter

Of sorrow and pain

We meet

To eat

To drink

To remember

To celebrate

To anticipate

And God is with us 

 

So come, for all is ready…

Now and then I check out the BUGB website to see what's new.  I did this morning, and noticed that the header bar has been changed from 'Lent' to 'Easter.'  I am not sure which liturgical calendar the webmaster is using but my response was 'not yet.'  We don't even get to Palm Sunday (or Passion Sunday for any RC readers) for almost a week yet.

For me this haste is unhelpful.  Easter is a process, an experience, to be entered into and felt deeply, painfully, gut wrenchingly, heart breakingly... and only then do we dare celebrate its other side.  Too many churchgoers will omit Holy Week - to date from my congregation there is just me going to a joint Passover Seder at D+2 on Maundy Thursday, several have said they will be 'otherwise engaged' on Good Friday  - and many won't even turn up for Easter Sunday, being off on holiday instead.  We seem to like 'happy church' with Jesus either safely alive and well or risen and ascended.  This is to our detriment spiritually and emotionally.

Recently I read a very profound post by Kez on death and Easter.  For my family Easter is always linked to death because my Dad died just three days after Easter 1990.  He had been ill for a decade so there was a mixture of release and relief when it finally happened - but it was, and is, a firm reminder that Easter needs death at its heart, and that skipping too blithely from Palm Sunday to easter Sunday isn't an option.

So slow down a bit, dear old BUGB, take the time to go the place of darkness - for unless and until we do, there is no true resurrection joy.

True to form, ASBO Jesus has something worth saying.

Where do I find church?  In the people of course!

I find church in a school hall on a Sunday afternoon, in a pub on a Thursday evening, in a garden centre cafe on on a Wednesday lunch time, in my house at various times, in other people's houses now and then...

I quite like the dotted outline of the church building - there is a delightful (maybe unintentional) humour that joined up thinking knows the church is not a building (though buildings are useful, don't get me wrong) but simply joining the dots in a childish fashion gives us a church = building picture.