Simon Says ...

My wife's away, and so friends are taking pity on me. On Sunday night I went to see some comedy with two friends (it was brilliant, thanks G&S). These friends had also invited two other friends. When I arrived I was told that these other friends hadn't been told what I do for a living. They never asked. At the end I went to answer the call of nature (or the call of two pints), and was then taken home. In the car, my friends told me that they'd asked their other friends to guess what I did for a living. Their guess? A drag queen! I guess I'll need something to fall back on when the Church of England disappears up its own entrails.

On Saturday, a new series of Doctor Who will send children of all ages back behind the sofa as the Doctor and his companion face monsters, the end of the world and all sorts of dangers. Watching Doctor Who was the source of more than one of my nightmares when I was smaller. This week, Christians mark Holy Week, the remembrance of the last week of Jesus’ life. This week we recall all the intrigue, the plotting and the violence. It is indeed the stuff of nightmares as we follow Jesus from a rapturous entry into Jerusalem to betrayal by a friend, desertion by his followers, a gross miscarriage of justice and finally execution and death. Christians mark this week, however, because we know that the story does not end there. On the third day after his death, Jesus was given new life. Jesus is alive and present with us now. And so we can face the dangers, betrayals, and trials of our lives, and even death, confident that we are not alone in all this. Jesus, who is with us, has been thr...

Ever since I was a child I've loved Holy Week because it is so dramatic. It is the point of the Christian year that we most get to enter into the story of Jesus. As I reflect upon it now, I begin to notice the different roles that we get to play. It is important, I think, to stay in character. On Palm Sunday, we take the role of the crowd as they wave palms and welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, hailing him as the Messiah. Churches that borrow donkeys for the morning are onto something here! Then, as we read the Passion Gospel, we continue as the crowd, all joining in the lines given to the mob calling for Jesus to be crucified. This year we read Matthew's account of the Passion, and so we all had to join in that horrific line 'His blood be upon us and upon our children'. On Maundy Thursday, we take the part of the disciples in the upper room. Our feet are washed and we share in the Lord's Supper. Then we continue in that role as we flee from danger as Jesus is ...

Every so often something comes along to remind us that even our worship takes place in the real world and has environmental effects. The BBC website is running a story about the danger to parrots caused by cutting down palms for Palm Sunday . It's good to be reminded, as I am about to go out to a Palm Sunday procession of palms, that the salvation that we celebrate this week is for the whole of creation!

or I spent this morning feeding back on a Willow Creek conference on leadership that I went to a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, I was disappointed. There were good bits, but generally more style than content. However, I have had my fill of good leadership training from the unlikely source of Jamie Oliver. Jamie's School Dinners has been compulsory TV in our house. And there's a lot to learn. Jamie walks into a new environment (a school kitchen) and it's clear that Nora the dinnerlady would not have been his first choice for a deputy (we get to see his number two at his restaurant). But he has no choice and as he invests time and energy into Nora, he comes also to rely on her. It's not that everything Jamie does is right. Trying to train up a borough-full of dinner ladies in three days is ambitious to the level of idiocy. And there are endearing moments when it finally dawns on Jamie that berating kids for not knowing the contents of a greengrocers i...

It's getting near to Holy Week and Easter and so I'm thinking about grace. My favourite definition (?) of grace is that of Philip Yancey - grace means that "there's nothing you can do to make God love you more; there's nothing you can do to make God love you less". This is a bold and helpful statement of what grace means, and it shows the radical nature of Christian faith. It is both liberating and terrifying. Grace is liberating because it takes our salvation (and the love of God is precisely that - our salvation) out of our own hands. We cannot initiate it, we cannot screw it up. However awful we've been, it matters not. The great testimony stories of God changing the lives of people who have murdered and committed dreadful crimes, from St Paul onwards, are testimony to this. There is, of course, massive room for misunderstanding here. The logic of grace is contrary to all our human logic, and so it is very difficult to grasp. Once we have grasped...

[Wow - no posts for ages (computer problems and laziness) then two in an hour.] Thomas Merton is my lenten reading. Just read this: "Christian tradition ... is a living and perpetual revolution" ( Seeds of Contemplation , p. 111) Take that Anglican Meanstreak!

Have you noticed how people gather around gates? School gates are perhaps the best place to see this, but people congregate around house gates and work gates and all sorts of gates. In older times city gates were important places where people gathered to discuss important matters and to trade. Gates are places where the security provided by walls is opened up a bit to allow folk to go in or out. They provide access from one side to the other. Often in our world and in our lives, we’re concerned with putting up walls, with strengthening security. This is vital, if at times sad. But without gates, we become prisoners of our walls. Without gates, the walls serve only to divide us from whoever is on the other side. Without gates we are trapped, cut off, we are shrunk to limits of our own making. Gates are on the edge of safety, in times of trouble they are shut and barred. But gates, allow us to see beyond ourselves. We can meet those from the other side of the wall, we can learn,...