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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.
- Thursday 15th January – John 11:43-48 ‘If we let him go on like this…’Read more...
Light attracts some creatures and repels others. We see this all through nature; and it’s not just the unappealing creatures who prefer the darkness: think of owls or leopards – beautiful animals, however deadly they are!
It’s easy to imagine that Jesus’ miracles must have been universally welcomed. After all, who could possibly be offended by bodies being ...
- Wednesday 14th January – John 11:40-44 ‘Lazarus, come out!’Read more...
Of all Jesus’ miracles, the raising of Lazarus is the most dramatic. The feeding of the 5,000 may have been on a larger scale, the walking on the water more terrifying – but the combination of extraordinary power and sheer pathos we see here gives this miracle a unique position in the gospels. John certainly gives it that kind of billing: ...
- Tuesday 13th January – John 11:38-40 ‘The glory of God’Read more...
‘If you believe, you will see the glory of God.’
It’s quite a promise, isn’t it?
When we talk about glory nowadays, we usually mean some great achievement, or something which merits great praise – this weekend we’ve had talk of FA Cup glory, for example, for the winning teams, especially those who registered shock ...
- Monday 12th January – John 11:28-37 ‘If you had been here…’Read more...
‘If only I’d been there…’ I wonder if you’ve ever found yourself thinking something like that? Sadly, many of us have, usually with a sense of loss at something we missed out on. It can also work the other way round: ‘if only you’d been here,’ someone might say to us – maybe an event we’d have enjoyed, or maybe because ...
- Saturday 10th January – Matthew 2:1-12 ‘They presented him with gifts’Read more...
One last reflection before we put our biblical crib scene away this year! Few characters in the bible grab people’s attention like the Magi. Who were they? Where did they live? What exactly was the star? And those gifts…?
Let’s start by reflecting that the Magi’s gifts of gold, incense and myrrh were all things they used in ...