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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.
- Wednesday 21st January – John 12:12-19 ‘Blessed is the King!’Read more...
Palm Sunday is such a familiar story to many of us; we celebrate it every year, on the Sunday before Easter Day. The image of Jesus riding on a donkey into Jerusalem is one etched into our minds, and we usually approach the day with a mixture of excitement and awe. Excitement that privations of Lent are nearly over, that the ...
- Tuesday 20th January – John 12:1-11 ‘A preparation for burial’Read more...
The beautiful story of the anointing at Bethany is also one of the most debated – at least, John’s version is. Why does he change the details? And does this cast doubt on the reliability of the bible?
Let’s tackle this head-on today. And we have to start by acknowledging that this account does appear to be a ...
- Monday 19th January – John 11:54-12:2 ‘He withdrew to the wilderness’Read more...
Today’s passage is one that can be read on two levels. In narrative terms, it forms a ‘quiet moment’ between the two emotional peaks of the dramatic raising of Lazarus (ch11) and the even more dramatic return to Jerusalem, which ultimately led to his arrest, trial, death and resurrection (ch12 onwards). Knowing that a very powerful group now wants to kill ...
- Saturday 17th January – Psalm 34 ‘The Taste’Read more...
As we conclude our week, a reflection from the Psalms:
I’ve always loved my food. I don’t have a big appetite, but I enjoy eating pretty much everything – finding as much joy in cheese and beans on toast as a gourmet dish. At school it became a lunchtime ritual for my friends to dare me to taste ...
- Friday 16th January – John 11:49-53 ‘Better that one man die…’Read more...
Many years ago I was privileged to pastor a young lady who’d come to faith on an alpha course our church had run. I asked her how she’d found her way to Alpha. She replied that some people from church had been handing out fliers for alpha in the train station, and her partner had taken one. He’d got home, looked ...