Two lasts today.

The last service I'll lead at D+1 in the morning - to complicate things it was our host but as the school wasn't available we went there.  Caused minor confusion when I blocked off the back three rows to make people sit closer togther - but they actually seemed to quite enjoy it.  It all went well and was a good last.

Then this evening last preach for the local Penties.  I have loved preaching there (typically 2 or 3 times a year) as they are a warm, receptive fellowship really working to bring hope to their local community.  Unusually among pentie churches they are tiny - less folk than dear old Dibley - but generous and hardworking.  They gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a card they'd signed with lots of lovely messages as well as laying on hands and praying for me.  It was a special moment, and I will miss them a lot.

Lots more lasts to come in the next few weeks - which I guess is indicative of how I've involved myself in the locale.  The move becomes more real each day - which is exciting and scary in roughly equal proportion.

This is, in a nut-shell, the essence of my sermon this morning, based on Ephesians 4: 1 - 16 with a bit of Psalm 51 stirred in for good measure.

Ephesians 4 is about what, exactly?

Unity - for sure, according to the various commentaries I looked at (unusually I have a few that cover this book) this is a 'given' of what is being written about; similarities with bits of Galatians or Colossians or even Romans and 1 Corinthians about unity, images of bodies and neither/nor suggest that unity-in-diversity is a reasonable expectation among Christians.  So I wasn't going to talk about that, despite the lovely list of seven ones with its hints of Trinitarian formulation.

Roles - certainly, it has a long list of them, but they can be a right turn off for those who don't see any connection with the list and themselves, so I wasn't going to major on the roles but their reasons - the equipping of the saints (believers) for service and the building of the body (church).  It's not so much which roles we have but why we have them: you can put out chairs to the glory of God or preach to the glory of mammon!

Attitudes - humility, patience, gentleness and love - easily missed, and with hints of Galatians 5 hints at the signs of God's spirit at work to bring us nearer maturity.  Certainly, I spent a bit of time on this - along with false humility and low self esteem, impatience and santified procrastination, doormatism and laissez faire licence.

Ultimately, I decided, this passage shows us the need for structure and organisation in the church - not a prescriptive list of 'must fill roles' nor yet a straight-jacket of slavish tradition - along with the kind of attitudes that build others up, allow them to take risks and grow in grace, discover their gifts and fulfil their calling.  Churches can fall pray to two extremes, in my experience: a kind of religious chaos (sometimes confused with 'waiting on the Lord' or 'being open to the Spirit's leading' when in fact reflecting a refusal to take responsibility) and the existence of religious dictators (including among others the 'flower dragon' and the 'premises orgre') and power bases.  Ironically, and sadly, both can co-exist in the same congregation.

By using David as the foul-up sine qua non (or some such) and Psalm 51 as an entry pint, we ended with a prayer for forgiveness and freedom:

Have mercy upon us, O God, according to your unfailing love;

According to your great compassion blot out our transgressions,

Wash away all our iniquity and cleanse us from our sins.

Where we have been guilty of false humility, publicly denying our God-given abilities in order that we might be seen as spiritual or that we might evade service

Lord, forgive us

Where we have been victims of low self-esteem, unable to recognise our unique gifts and skills, ignorant of our inherent worth, denied opportunities to flourish

Lord, release us

Where we have failed to be gentle, speaking harshly, belittling others, quick to condemn and slow to encourage,

Lord, forgive us

Where we been victims of cruelty or bullying, made to feel worthless and useless, limited in our ambition and thwarted in our service

Lord, release us

Where we have failed to be patient, wanting our own way, ignoring the needs and desires of others, swift to criticise and slow to listen

Lord, forgive us

Where we have been victims of impatience, forced into decisions too soon, denied the space to reflect, dragged unwillingly to new situations

Lord release us

Where we have failed to love, seeking only our own will, asserting our rights, considering only what serves our ambition

Lord, forgive us

Where we have been victims of hate or neglect, our voices unheard, our hurts untended, our longings and aspirations suppressed

Lord, release us

Where we have held onto power, sought self-aggrandisement, confused position with purpose

Lord, forgive us

Where we have abdicated responsibility, refused to get involved, confused wants with needs

Lord, forgive us

Where we have damaged your church, strained the bonds of peace, dashed hope and destroyed faith

Lord, forgive us

From the regrets of the past, the legacy of disappointment and the fear of failing

Lord, release us

To the hope of tomorrow, growing in grace, mercy and love

Lord release us

To live and work to Christ’s praise and glory

Lord, release us.

If you live in the UK you've seen the advert for recycling that has this strapline, and are familiar with the 'reduce, re-use, recycle' mantra.  So, good Baptist minister person that I am, I am carefully sorting through the accumulated clutter of, hmm, well more years than I like to admit, from GB camps, holiday clubs and other weird and wonderful miscellaneous outreachy type things and compiling a list of stuff to give away or sell on to clutter up other people's homes or church storage cupboards.

So far the 'treasures' (?) in the heap include inflatable palm trees, police helmets, several brand new badminton sets, an assortment of floor cushions and some sparkly hoola hoops.  The vast majority of this stuff I paid for, though the odd thing was passed on to me by others 'because I'm sure you'll find a use for it' and I was too polite to say 'no.'

Friends and colleagues in the Leicestershire area are likely to be emailed with the list of stuff in case they can put it to good use (and not merely add it to their own clutter heap) and the balance will find its way to Ebay or Freecycle.  Hopefully I will then move north with less stuff to clutter my nice new home.  Giant inflatable crocodile anyone...?

In the chapel at the National Memorial Arboretum is a delightful carving called the a story-teller which depicts a Christlike figure telling stories to an audience mainly of children.  Most are rapt; one lad is leaning over the edge of the sculpture to investigate a snail crawling up the side (evidently what the child said when photgraphed in this pose!)  The photo here I found online - the chapel was too crowded to get a photo today when I was there.

What struck me especially on this visit was the caption on the carving 'the past is the key to the future' - a statement filled with hope but I wondered how true the reality?

One of the most poignant for me is the Shot at Dawn memorial, where plain wooden stakes bear the names of men and boys executed for 'cowardice' in the first world war.  It is set in a quiet part of the grounds, away from the main drag, where the sunlight first touches the arboretum.  There is irony and beauty somehow mingled in this quiet space, where these men can be remembered. A small plaque has been erected adjacent to the statue of the blindfolded man bravely awaiting execution which says: "On 7th November 2006, the British Government agreed to give a posthumous pardon to all of those executed for military offences in the First World War."  Nowadays they'd probably call it post traumatic distress... but what have we really learned?

The Armed Forces Memorial bears the names of around 15,000 service personnel who died on active service since the end of World War II.  To see these names listed is very moving... But the more significant thing for me was that there is space for another 15,000.  Where is the hope?  Not enough to say 'we hope we'll never fill it up' when the last decades names fill a substantial amount of space.

If the past is the key to the future (and I have sympathy with the statement) then how so?

If this place can keep alive memories of the human cost of war, can help us to articulate and explore questions, then maybe it might be a more hopeful one.

A last thought.  In the chapel the two 'thieves crosses' have hand cuffs dangling from them.  Those of the 'good' thief are open, symbolising his freedom through Christ.  For the 'bad' thief, one is open and one closed - a deliberately ambiguous symbol that says (according to the guide who spoke) we don't know what happened to him, but like to hope that he was on his way to freedom.  Somehow I reckon most of us are a bit like that - as Brian Wren expresses it 'half free, half bound by inner chains... yet seeking hope for humankind.'  Evidently around 80,000,000 people died in wars/conflicts in the twentieth century... may this past be the key to a more hopeful future as we remember, and having remembered refuse to forget.

In Ruth's comment on my last post she alludes to theology that is 'after the fact' - i.e. that is made up, oops developed, to account for practice, rather than practice that emerges directly from theology.

This made me wonder if all theology is actually 'after the fact' - arising from or responding to experience or practice.  This would make all theology practical theology (which from an academic perspective lays heaps of emphasis on its emergence form experience/practice) - something I seem to recall was said by Moltmann, though I may well be wrong.

I also wondered how robust some of our theology really is either - is it maybe actually 'after a fashion', with the phrase meaning, as it did in my youth, 'kind of'?  If I'm honest some of my phraseology around little cup communion is definitely 'theology after a fashion.'

So, if anyone can come up with an example of irrefutably 'before the fact' theology, I'd love to know what it is!