That's a nice theologically erudite sounding title for some waffle on my recent sermon series!

In a few lines of text, the gospel writers give us a story that represents several months or years in the lives of the (fictitious) characters and told by Jesus to crowds whose response is unknown.  As I have worked with these stories, read what the clever Biblical scholars have said and hopefully allowed God a look in too, the 'time' factor in all of them has really struck me. 

In each story there is a chronos element - usually a long one - between planting and harvest (or lack thereof).  This seems to speak to me, and to us, about the fact that there are no quick answers, that everything does take time (perhaps even has a natural lifespan?).  To churches who look for 'results' from their programmes and/or ministers is a reminder that it won't be instant - indeed the fig tree suggests that we could expect three years of nothing before any fruit is borne (discuss!).  In 2006 when instant everything is allegedly the norm, it is good to be reminded of the need for long slogs, not recorded in dispatches with no outward "results" before we reach a harvest.

In each story there is a kairos element - a seasonal aspect when 'this is the moment' that the outcome happens.  Harvest or bonfire - it seems to recur through several of the stories but with the wheat and weeds is also the mystery of unknowingness.  Only at the kairos can we be sure what the 'harvest' will be.  Too much energy devoted to weeding out what we perceive as bad and we grub up the good too.  How much time and effort do we put into doctrinal purity and the 'right living' of others when God actually says 'leave it with me'?

I have enjoyed - is that the right word?  - revisiting these parables and have been both challenged and encouraged by them.  The creative tension (apologies to my URC minister-in-training sister who hates that phrase with a vengeance) between the chronos and kairos aspects intrigues me and also grounds my thoughts back into the reality of Dibley.

In our discussions with D+1, I find myself slipping into a judging mentality about what is essential and what is "froth" in an almost 'wheat/weeds' distinction.  Perhaps I/we need to allow the 'weeds' to stay in the garden while we tend the 'wheat'?  Perhaps while there is a distinction to be drawn between important/unimportant I/we need to beware value judgements on other grounds? 

There seems to be an interesting tension between the sower parable, where the weeds choked the plants, and the wheat and weeds, where they were allowed to remain: are there maybe different types of weeds to consider, or am I stretching the analogies too far?  Answers on a post card to the usual address.

After a free Sunday (hurrah!) and One World Week united service, we will move to a series looking at the four women in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus.  What do you know about Tamar, Rahab, Ruth or Mary? I am looking forward to a very different pre-Advent focus as we discover some of the skeletons in Jesus' family tree!  But maybe it's 'time' for a change?!

In this cynical old world of ours there are, it seems, still people who can stun us with their generosity.

With the demise of my old Rover 100 (Metro by any other name) I advertised her (it to the cynics) on Ebay and was amazed by the price she fetched.  Today the buyer sent me an email returning her to me with a request that I sell her for charity.  Having checked out that the buyer's account had not been hacked into, I have accepted my little car backand will be advertising her again in a day or two.

I doubt the buyer will read this unless he/she happens to spend time trawling around miscellaneous blogs.

Out of my selling price I had alreay decided to give a proprotion to charity and sent a day's tractor hire overseas via World Vision.  Alex, when your name comes up in the great hereafter I feel sure your Ebay generosity will be recalled (Matt 25) and as for me, well you've brightened my day and offered hope to people neither of us will ever know.  Thank you

Well, for those faithful readers who read last week's stuff, you were right, I escaped unlinched after today's service.  One person thought it was a good service - and had found the agricultural stuff interesting!!!  Someone else decided to announce he had loads of cooking apples free to good home.... ah me.

It has been a varied weekend.

Yesterday I was in Nuneaton at an induction service with a very lively and enthusiastic sermon based on Matthew's version of the beattitudes.  It was good stuff, and whilst I'm not sure I can recall all four "legs" of the sermon, it seemed a very encouraging message for minister and church.  Although I missed some of the more usual aspects of such services (where were greetings and endless folk to shake hands with the new minister?) it was a good experinece and I was glad to be part of this celebration of a new beginning.

After dropping off my passenger in Anthracite-juxta-Dibley (or Charcoal-cum-Dibley, or any other weird and wonderful code name for the adjacent town) I headed to Loughborough where I was stewarding for the Riding Lights production of 'Pipe Dreams.'  With their usual aplomb, the cast of four young actors held the audience's attention for a two hour show (with a short interval) which took us backward and forward in time and around the globe in support of the charity Water Aid.  For those who think Christian drama must be explicitly Biblical, polite and twee, well perhaps it was a bit of a surprise; certainly one of my fellow stewards bemoaned the move away from "the text," perhaps missing the faith-in-action message.  If it's in your area, it's worth a look and at £9/head not too dear.

This week I am due to be interviewed over the phone for the BUGB prayer guide 2007 and then am off to Swanwick with another fifty or so Baptist ministers for our annual conference at which I am involved in leading the closing worship.  I think I am sort of looking forward to both of these: the first is quite encouraging and the second feels like a privilege; both are a little scary.

In between times there's a sermon on "wheat and tares" to write, some reading to do (when I get told what it is) ready for my first college 'weekend' in Manchester and the church junior games group to visit...  So plenty of variety, if not much time to actually stand backand think about things.

Lots of people seem to be thinking about Church Meetings and things like membership or leadership at the moment.  Now and then friends from other churches, Baptist or otherwise, ask me my views on how things are being done in their churches (as if I somehow am qualified to comment!).  The more I read, the more I think that here in Dibley we do Church meetings rather well!  I've never had a really awful meeting in three years; no one has stormed out, no one has shouted or cried and although apathy can be the order of the day, our meetings usually include quite a lot of laughter.

When I arrived and prepared my first meeting in January 2004 I made a lot of assumptions - as did the good people of Dibley.  I arrived in good time, set out my papers and waited.  The pianist arrived and asked me which hymn we were singing - I had not sung a hymn in a church meeting for over ten years and was taken aback to find that people here assumed that everyone did.  The next meeting (3 months later!) I was prepared and carried a large pile of BPW's (red 1991 hymnbook) into the hall only to be told 'oh, we use the green book for church meetings' (c 1960).  Since then we have only sung once and no one seems to remember that we ever did.  (Bit of a blow when at D+2 we did on Monday...).  More interesting was what people said to me about the hymn - it meant you could arrive late and sneak in unnoticed, it meant that the meeting hadn't really started yet because it was the (sic) religious bit.

Since I arrived we have increased the frequency of church meetings to bi-monthly.  We often spend time in small group prayer at the start of the meeting, usually but not always with deacons expected to facilitate a group if it sits in uncomfortable silence.  Most meetings include some small group work on a topic of some import.  But possibly my greatest success is getting the finance and property reports tabled rather than read to us line by painful line!  Instead of 15 minutes of people staring into space, they stare at the pages for a minute or so and have the chance to ask questions before we move on.

For some of our folk, the demise of rubber stamping 'deacons decisions' - and with it the freedom to stamp their feet over what is suggested has been something of a blow: they can't moan when they've had an input.

Meeting with D+1 was a good way of seeing how far we have moved in our church meetings; reading other people's stuff which seems to advocate a far less participatory form of meeting troubles me; knowing that 'we always do x, y or z' is becoming a thing of the past inspires me!

Church Meetings are not my favourite pastime in the whole wide world, I still get hacked off with apathy and indifference and the inevitable huddles in corners, but I still belive in them and think they are a great ideal. Here in Dibley we don't do too badly.

On Monday night 18 good folk from Dibley, plus their 'vicar' and 17 from D+1, plus their 'moderator' met at D+2 whose minister chaired our first joint meeting to talk about what my apologetics tutor used to call "possible futures."  It was an interesting experience, and since then I've acted as punching bag for a few of my folk who needed to vent their frustration.  The big question that emerges is of course, what happens next... and the short answer is I really don't know.  I have some thoughts on process but most folk seem hung up on content, and specific bits of it at that.  Time will undoubtedly tell...

In the meantime, I have been working with the parable of the unfruitful fig tree in Luke (rather than the zapping of the fig tree that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in Matt/Mark) and the Johannine vine imagery ready for Sunday's joint service.  Is it maybe time to call a spade a spade (or more biblically, an axe an axe)?

Reading around the fig tree story has given me a very different perspective on it.  It takes three years from planting for a fig tree to reach maturity, after which it produce fruit.  A devout, Leviticus obeying Jew in Jesus' time would also have known that the first three years' fruit was forbidden and the next year's had to be given as a thank offering to God.  Thus seven years would pass by before the grower could benefit from the harvest of figs.  Once a fig tree begins to fruit, seemingly in those conditions it will be in fruit for up to 10 months a year (which makes it even tougher on the poor zapped fig tree).  Whether the tree in the story was three years old when the landowner first came to look for fruit or seven years old (i.e. not until after he could enjoy it) is a moot point, the fact is that he kept coming back for three years and found nothing.  Fed up, he told the gardener to cut it down.  The story ends with the plea from the gardener for one more last chance... but what happens next?

The vine imagery with its ideas of grafting and pruning is one I have worked with on and off over a number of years.  Reading it this week the fate of the unfruitful branches also struck me, but I chose to stay with the fruitful ones that get pruned... but once again the question remains, what happens next?

Sunday's sermon feels like a high risk strategy, allowing the reality of these stories (which is rather scary) to speak to us and ask us precisely this question 'what happens next?'  Time for these two churches is not infinite and if we don't do something - so there are some new shoots for a new season of growth then, axe-bearing land owner or not, we will surely die.

It is a little tough for my folk who, on the whole have come miles in their thinking and doing. It will undoubtedly be tough for D+1 who, if they are honest, know they face almost certain death unless they do something very soon.  I worry about what  my sermon might do to them, and then I go back and re-read the passage used at my induction from Jeremiah's call 'to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.'  In case the preacher is reading (and he will in due course, I'm sure) I do not have a Messiah complex, am not into meaningless gestures but perhaps I am a very naughty girl.  Three years ago, I heard 'build and plant,' for almost two years I have served an 'uprooted' community - am I now about to destroy?  Scary.

So, what happens next?  If I escape without being linched on Sunday I will let you know.