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Remembrance Season
Starting 29th October, and running through until 9th November, ten daily reflections for this ‘season of remembering’:
- Saturday 31st October – Revelation 7:9-12 ‘For all the saints…’
I wonder if you’ve ever been part of a really large crowd? I’ve always enjoyed that experience – at least I did before covid. In particular my memories of great sporting occasions live long in the memory: there’s something awe-inspiring about a big crowd, isn’t there? Certainly, the roar of the Olympic Stadium as we cheered on Mo Farah in 2012 was a volume of sound I’ve never experienced – and that was just for his heat, not the final itself. There’s something profoundly moving about the sense of a shared experience, of an occasion which draws together huge numbers of people from all kinds of backgrounds into one committed community.
You see it every Saturday afternoon in the cathedrals of sport all across our country. Men and women (mostly men, admittedly) – many of whom would never dream of setting foot in a church on Sunday – gather to worship, singing their hearts out with arms outstretched in love and adoration, crying out pleading prayers when their teams are losing, studying the scriptures of the matchday programme to read the word of the boss and memorise the team sheet, and sharing a mediocre-quality drink of fellowship afterwards. Hang on, I’m sure that all reminds me of something…..
And that’s the point, isn’t it? These large gatherings at some level go to the heart of what it means to be human. We were made to gather in worship, and if we don’t gather to worship God, we’ll gather to worship something or someone else. Or both, quite possibly.
Tomorrow is All Saints Day, a day when the church celebrates… the Church! We give thanks for the faithful generations who have gone before us, and pray for grace to continue to be faithful in this generation. For many of us now, we’re used to practising that in quite small groups and communities. We don’t usually get that sense of walking into a vast crowd, all here to worship God. Which is one of the reasons why it’s quite healthy occasionally to go to one of those big events, like Greenbelt or Spring Harvest or New Wine or Prom Praise or the Big Church Day Out.
And one day, we will all get to meet God, and each other. That’s quite a mind-blowing thought, and possibly quite unsettling for some of us. I think there’s plenty of room in heaven, even the introverts will love it! But today’s reading gives us a flavour of what our worship will be like. A countless multitude of believers, from all across the world, worshipping God with great joy. This is our future. And in fact even today when we worship in our homes, or in small face-to-face gatherings, we are joining in with this vast multitude in heaven – millions of hearts all united in one global, universal act of worship.
One last reflection for today: let’s remind ourselves that the purpose of the church is not the church! We exist to worship God, especially God in the person of Jesus. It is to God alone that we give praise and glory, wisdom and thanks, honour and power and strength. Ultimately All Saints Day points us back to God, the one who countless believers in dozens of generations have worshipped. May praise and glory be to our God, for ever and ever, Amen.
- Friday 30th October – Isaiah 9:2-7 ‘The Prince of Shalom’Read more...
I suspect many of us at present find it hard to watch the news – you may, indeed, have given up on it altogether. There seems to be so much violence, so much instability, so many reminders that peace in this world is fragile and hard to maintain, however sophisticated we consider ourselves to be.
How we need ...
- Thursday 29th October – Isaiah 2:1-5 ‘Swords into ploughshares’Read more...
A few years ago, at the All-Age service for Remembrance at All Saints, I showed the congregation a paper clip, and asked them to come up with as many creative alternative uses for this simple object as possible. We had about 75 young people there, representing the uniformed organisations, and they weren’t short of ideas! Alongside the more obvious ones – ...
- Wednesday 28th October – Joshua 24:1-33 ‘You choose!’Read more...
When our children were little, one of their absolute favourite books was called ‘You choose!’ The idea was very simple: each large double-page spread asked a question: ‘what house would you choose to live in?’ or ‘what food would you choose to eat?’ The pages offered dozens of ideas, from fairly sensible to totally crazy, and we would all put our ...
- Tuesday 27th October – Joshua 23:1-16 ‘Careful to obey’Read more...
I don’t know about you, but I love the Winter Olympics, and have done ever since I was a child. Although I’m a sports nut generally, I must admit that it’s largely their infrequency – the fact that you only get to watch the luge or Nordic skiing or slopestyle snowboarding every four years – is what makes The Games so ...
- Monday 26th October – Joshua 22:1-34 ‘Jumping to conclusions’Read more...
It’s easy to rush to a judgement. We see something, smell a rat and immediately form a conclusion – usually a negative one. By nature, I’m as guilty of this as anyone: indeed one of my appraisals from a boss of mine in the past said this: ‘My one piece of advice to Matt would be to make decisions more slowly.’ ...