So, I'm thinking aoubt Sunday and chasing around the Bible looking at prophets great and small, true and false.  One thing that has struck me is that the communities of prophets tend to be the 'baddies', the false prophets who tell kings what they want to hear or prophets of false deities like Baal.  The 'prophetic community' concept is not leaping out at me as something that is inherently good.  Which is interesting because the Baptist union(s) clearly think it is good.  I suspect it is partly about the distinction between 'prophet' amd 'prophetic' but the study guide centres on individual prophets as models.  I have a few ideas of where I want to go, but am challenged afresh to consider just what a 'good' prophetic community might look like.

On the radio this morning an item was read out about a translation company in London that is advertising for translators who speak Glaswegian to help out their business customers.  Evidently Scouse and Geordie may follow... Bloomin' cheek!  Sounds like London-centricity gone mad to me.  Away an boil yer heid!

On Sunday afternoon, between the two services, I went to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to see one of my all time favourite paintings - a kind of homage/pilgrimage visit I guess - to see Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross.  As a child it was the first religious painting that captured my imagination, almost chanced upon as,on a rare visit to Glasgow to see my grandparents, we visited the museum and there it hung, splendid and awe inspiring.  I last saw it a few years back when it was temporarily housed at the St Mungo museum of religious art.  On Sunday I was very disappointed to discover it relegated to a dingy corner, poorly lit and missed by many people on their way to see other things.  Only in Britain...

Other more amusing and curiously British aspects of the experience were some of the curious and crazy juxtapositions.  Seemingly inches above the heads of stuffed African animals hung a Spitfire - something really bizarre about a giraffe able to eye-ball the (invisible) pilot of a war plane.  In the main atrium children built daleks from k'nex whilst overhead the mighty organ boomed out a free recital to people sipping coffee from paper cups in the coffee shop bit.  There was something delightfully irreverent and comical and curious and fun about the whole experience.  Something that you probably have to be British to 'get.'

I wish the Dali was better located, but maybe, just maybe, there is an important irony that on a Sunday afternoon when people enjoy the melee of music and natural history and science fiction and valuable art that Jesus sneaks into a corner almost unobserved...?

After Sunday's service I was chatting to someone about the sermon (something I haven't really done for many years) who commented to the effect that 'your said this, well you didn't but you did.'  I knew what she meant.  Part of the mystery of preaching is that we carefully (or carelessly!) prepare something and hope that somehow through it God will speak to people.  What they hear may or may not be what we think we are saying, but often what is heard is pertinent for them.  When I was a student, I used sometimes to ask for feedback from members of the congregation including 'what do you think the sermon was about?' I would usually get one fairly accurate precis of what I'd said along with three or four interesting, intriguing synopses of something else, conected to what I intended but not what I thought I was saying.  This is the mystery of preaching, I think.  And it is part of what makes it both privlege and responsibility to do it the best I can.

This week I think I'm preaching on being a prophetic community - but afterwards I'll find out what it really was!!

No, not a review of the amusing little novel of this name, nor yet a health warning, just a description of a church - any church - that seeks to be inclusive, the theme we are playing with this morning (and anyone who reads blogs before worship will get a few clues as to some of the thoughts in my mind this week!)

Part of our service will involve some 'pick 'n' mix' type sweets as a way in to thinking about inclusion, exclusion, preferences, prejudices, necessities and niceties (well at least that's the sermon I might have written if I'd had six months to prepare it!).  So, I have some sweets that suitable for veggies and some that aren't (they contain gelatine); some that I can eat and some I can't (they contain paprika extract); some with nuts, some without; some diabetics could probably get away with, some they can't; some I like and some I don't.  But that's kind of the point really - there are chocies to be made and nothing can suit absolutely everyone but can we find a way to accommodate most without losing the heart of what we are about?

A week or two back I was pondering the possibility of using a biscuit assortment for this purpose, and asking people what kinds of biscuit you never find in a selection box and why.  I think the answer is a ginger nut, because it taints all the others.  But what if church was like a box of biscuits and Jesus was the ginger nut who manages to taint all the others with something of God's love, mercy and grace?  I guess I can only be sacked once for blasphemy, so it's worth posting my rather odd analogy I think!  What if we, too, were the nuts (ginger or otherwise) who tainted the world around us with the love of God in Christ?  Might that be not too far away from being salt, yeast or light?