In the gospel of Mark, uniquely so far as I can tell, the evening after the triumphal entry to Jerusalem Jesus walks into the city and goes to the Temple, looking around at everything.  I have always imagined that he looked around not just inside the Temple about around him at the streets as he walked along.  This week as I have walked to and from work each day, I have been looking around me, at sights that are, for now, new and different, but will all too soon become essentially wallpaper.  There are interesting and intriguing shops just waiting to be explored (especially those that sell books!), there are closed shops waiting to be turned into yet another supermarket.  Then there are the people I begin to recognise: the girl in the pancake shop preparing surfaces for the day ahead, the man in the coffee shop waiting for early customers... and the beggars.

This is what has surprised me most - there are lots of beggars along the road I walk each day.  An older, eastern European (?) woman with a mouth organ who sits in the bus shelter, a younger man who poses with one copy of the big issues only yards from where the official Big Issue vendor stands, an elderly man who sits close to the ATM silently holding out his paper cup.  And here am I, on my way to prepare worship, to think fine thoughts in a warm, dry office.  I wonder what Jesus would do on my situation?

I was reminded of a verse of a hymn written by Alison Micklem when she was a student in Manchester, which reflects some of this tension:

As I pass you on the pavement

I avoid your stricken eyes;

Jesus tells me your my sister,

But you're hard to recognise.

I can love you in the abstract,

Face to face it's hard to do:

Jesus bids me love my neighbour,

Do I have to start with you?

It isn't so easy, is it, practising what we preach?  But then Jesus never said it would be.  I hope that my eyes will stay open enough to see what God needs to show me.

Well, it has just taken me about an hour to order a new driving licence online - what a palaver!  Of the filling of forms and the proving of identity there is, it seems, no end.  I understand about fraud and identity theft (though surely no one in their right mind would choose to steal an identity so uncommon as mine - there are to my knowledge only one other person with my first/last name combination in the UK and she is less than ten years old!) but what a lot of numbers and juggling and passwords (at least three were entered along the way).  Whatever happened to trust?

While I was at it I thought I'd pay my tax online too - except I didn't have the requisite paperwork with me to prove I was indeed the person who owed just shy of £20, due by 31 Jan 2010.  How nutty is that?!

So, I have obediently bisected both parts of my driving licence and put them in an envelope to send back to DVLA along with the car logbook (which is still only doable the old fashioned way and retains a sense of trust about it) and will pay my tax another day when I have the requisite forms with me.  Progress...?!

Last night I had a short 'welcome' meeting with the leadership team (for want of a better expression) of my new church.  Among the things we talked about was how best to handle the situations that arise when people knock on the church door requesting financial help.  I asked about keeping a supply of tins/packets that could be offered to folk who claim to have no food and shared my intended practice of going with people to buy tickets for trains or to top up key-cards for fuel etc.  We agreed that, as a general rule, giving people money is not a good idea, but that there does need to be a bit of flexibility and room for discretion.  It is important that we all know where we are in this, and other potentially complex issues.

All of which got me thinking a bit about the balance of rules and responsibility.  Someone once said 'God gave us ten commandments not ten suggestions' (actually there are 14 in the Decalogue if I recall correctly!) which all sounds fine until you try to define them.  'Thou shalt not kill, except when I the Lord thy God command it of thee.'  'Thou shalt not commit adultery but I the Lord thy God shalt not define exactly what constitutes said offence.'  Hardly surprising that by Jesus' time there were hundreds of 'traditions' to go alongside Torah as the poor old Pharisees tried to work out how the Law could be kept.  Easy for us to say they went about it the wrong way - confusing letter (which kills according to the apostle) with spirit (which gives life).

Principles, policies and practices (another advance hint of Sunday if you're checking!) are important for the healthy life of faith communities.  Too many 'thou shalt (not)' statements seem self defeating.  Too much licence and we lose the very thing we try to create.  Responsible, flexible, principled guidance seems to me a good way forward - if a challenge to discern and live with.

So, if you arrive on the doorstep of my (our) church cold and hungry and I'm there, I'll give you a warm, listen to your tale and, with the permission and blessing of the church, may even buy you a skinny latte and a bacon butty at one of the local coffee houses!

Having moved from a congregation most of whom would not recognise a blog if it bit them to one that avidly follows the adventures of this Baptist minister inevitably means some changes in what, when and how I write.  Not massive changes in content - I have never posted something I would be unhappy for me folk to know about or said anything I would not be willing to defend - but more a recognition that my 'working out' of sermon ideas will be much more 'offline' otherwise they'll all know what I'm going to say before I say it!  That said, 'boundaries and barriers' is one of the ideas I'm playing with this week (but you'll have to wait until Sunday for the others!!).

One of the things I have really enjoyed the last couple of days is rediscovering a separation of home and work that has not been easy, OK, has just not happened, over the past few years of working from home with no one around to say 'stop.'  The short walk from my temporary home to church and back acts as a welcome buffer between the two, allowing my brain to change gear in a helpful and healthy way.  It is fun (how sad!) to be part of the morning journey to work once more, to see the shop workers preparing for the days customers, to observe the joggers, students and parents setting about their daily routine and even someone working in an office above me who calls out 'good morning' onhis way in.  It is a helpful reconnection with reality after six years of munching my cereal whilst my PC cranked itself into action!

So, boundaries are important, and so are buffer zones, but not, I feel, barriers.  Tonight I have what anywhere else would be called a Deacons meeting at my flat.  We will meet informally over tea/coffee and biscuits (when I've bought them) to begin to tease out how we might work in the coming weeks, months and years.  I like holding small church meetings in homes rather than large buildings, and think that hospitality is an important aspect of ministry.  There is something about churches with slightly fuzzy edges in all sense of the word that feels good and Godly.

Btw, for those who want an online name for this new place, you'll have to wait a while yet.  After all, Dibley wasn't named in a day!

The last few days have seen some stark contrasts in Glasgow, a reminder if ever one were necessary of the complexity of human experience.  Even as I and my new companions in Christ were celebrating a new beginning, two teenage age girls felt that life was just too unbearable and chose to take their lives.  I absolutely do not accpet ideas of good/evil happy/sad dualism, and the headlines in no way destracted from my joy and happiness.  Just a reminder that there is work to do, that there are real, hurting people to be loved, and a God who, thankfully shares our joys and our sorrows.

May God in grace receive these two young lives with compassion and mercy, and may we who enjoy this life show it forth in all we do and are.