Category Archives: baptism

For John the Baptist

He crunched into another locust, wiped the headless body around the last of the honey and popped the final morsel into his mouth. His thoughts were, however elsewhere. His cousin Jesus was on his way to the river. Although it was barely dawn, he stood up, adjusted his camel hair garment, and strode downhill, away from the small cave in which he sometimes rested, to the banks of the Jordan.
Pilgrims were already gathering. As he approached them they stopped chattering and looked to him to speak. A soldier came up to him and asked him “Master, should I stay in the army now I’ve been baptised? ‘ He recognised one of the men he’d baptised the day before. John answered him clearly and firmly so everyone could hear. ‘It’s fine to stay in the army. Work fairly for your pay and don’t abuse your position.’ Then a woman asked him ‘Sir, my sister has made a rich marriage but she will give me nothing. She says I may be a servant in her household but she treats all her servants poorly and I won’t go there. Make her share what she has more fairly with me.’
‘I can’t make anyone do anything’ he replied. ‘I can only remind you all that God requires justice, mercy and humility. Those who fail to show these things will be remembered for it.’
Someone else was approaching and the crowd fell back to let him pass. It was his cousin, Jesus. He came up to John and said ‘Baptize me, John, here in front of everyone, and then I can begin.’
John was not expecting the request. ‘Why me?’ He asked.
‘Its what you do’ Jesus replied. ‘You baptize with water’, his hand indicated the gathered crowd. ‘You give them a new start. I need it too please’, and he began to take off his garment.
‘I’m not worthy’, said John, ‘even to undo your shoes’, as Jesus stooped to do this himself.
‘Please John, do as I ask’, and they walked out into the river together.
The water was deep and dark and the current strong. When they were at the place, John raised his hand and called down God’s blessing on the water and on the one beside him:
‘God of the Red Sea covenant, may this water be a road of liberation, may all who come here find freedom and a new opportunity to be your people, made in your image, called to be faithful.
May this one who is baptised today, be your faithful servant all of his life, dealing justly, offering mercy, walking humbly in your way’.
And with that he plunged Jesus into the depths of the dark water.
As he rose up, water flowing from his body, a loud crack of thunder unexpectedly ripped across the sky. The crowd on the shore looked fearfully at the sky. John and Jesus held each other in an embrace as the earth shook. A dove flew up from the branch of a dead tree and the thunder rumbled again, like a voice, saying ‘My son, my beloved, listen to him’. The sun broke through the clouds and struck the faces of the two men in the river. ‘Live wet, John,’ He said and they made their way back to the shore.

Janet Lees, feast of John the Baptiser.

Growing faith through a school Chaplaincy

On a walk in the Yorkshire Dales, a boy aged 14, told me ‘You can’t believe anything you read in the Bible. I don’t believe any of it’. Are you surprised by his statement or does it fulfil your stereotype of 14 year old boys?
Another 14 year old boy told me, as Advent began one year: ‘Advent is about repentance, why don’t you preach about that?’
Boys of 14 are as varied as any other section of the population.
I meet adults who tell me they stopped attending church when they were about that age. Mid teens is an interesting time for faith, for identity and pretty much everything else in life. And that’s where the church comes in or rather it doesn’t. ‘Losing heart’ was a report last year about how churches were becoming less confident in their ministry to young people. Importantly, they were failing to answer the questions young people asked. More recently the Church Army (https://churcharmy.org/Groups/295770/Church_Army/ms/Young_Adults_research/Young_Adults_research.aspx), the Church Times (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/19-january/features/features/why-i-left-church-in-my-teens) and others have published reports and articles (https://jamesballantyneyouthworker.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/what-role-do-young-people-play-in-your-church-youth-group/amp/?__twitter_impression=true) on young people and faith, what it’s like, how to nurture it, how it goes, what hinders it (for example, http://discipleshipresearch.com/2018/02/losing-my-religion-millennials-and-faith-loss/).

As a school Chaplain they have interested me. They seem to point to the need for denominations to do a costly new thing if they are really going to encounter young people where they are. And that it seems is the problem.

Imagine if you can, a small school on the edge of a city in the north of England affiliated to a small, dwindling and ageing denomination. In that school a chaplaincy, open to all, touching the lives of more than just the students through staff, family, friends and former students. It’s there for them in the ups and downs of life, promoting good mental well being, giving, respect and how we might all ‘become peacemakers and builders of justice’, interpreting the Bible together, praying.
For five years this pioneering ministry was supported by the regional branch of that ageing and dwindling denomination, until about 4 years ago it decided that this particular expression was surplus to requirements.Upsetting and incomprehensible to those of us involved in the school and chaplaincy, we have now moved on to live and thrive in the school for the last two years.

Essentially two questions about resources and practice dominated the review of the chaplaincy four years ago. How much it cost financially and how it was taking potential ministry away from more traditional expressions of church. None of the reviewers addressed the faith development needs of the children and young people in the school, clearly indicating that, at the time they were of less value than the ageing and dwindling members in the traditional local churches. Retaining small numbers of older people, and the buildings they huddled into, was the mission of this kind of church. The prophetic voice was ignored, silenced and unwanted as it was uncomfortable.

What if we consider a different situation for a moment? Vincent Donovan, Catholic priest and missionary, tried to explain his experience of working with rural people in East Africa in the 1960s. Against the preferred way of operating advocated by his order at the time, he began to narrate the gospel in local villages. Eventually he asked those who had gathered to hear him, through the local village leaders, if they would choose baptism. When he received a positive reply, he tried to moderate the response, using his priestly eye to sort the wheat from the tares or the sheep from the goats. When he did that, he was gently but firmly reminded that he had invited everyone to be baptised.
The story illustrates both the costly and random nature of human response to the gospel. We have little if any control over the response, although the church mostly tries to do just that.

Yorkshire in 2018 is not East Africa in the 1960s but some of these observations hold true. The church still wants to regulate the gospel, who gets is and whether they have a right to it for example. Chaplaincy, which is open to everyone, is often rejected by the church: too costly and outside the church’s direct control. It includes too many people who will not have passed the church’s test for inclusion.

In the ageing and dwindling local churches faith issues will likely be different. The marks of faith in older people, the questions and resources needed to answer them are not necessarily the same as those needed for several hundred children and young people. The chaplaincy is a faith community that changes by up to 90 students every year and in which everyone moves on to new challenges and responsibilities in the same time frame. No one keeps the same role for forty years. Everyone learns something about their potential for leadership and what it means to ‘serve God and each other’ daily. In some ways it is monastic in its qualities. Daily work and regular worship side by side.

As the pioneer minister in the post it has been a difficult time. Challenging personally, in my own relationships, to my sense of call and identity and to my own adult faith development. Fortunately, outside the ageing and dwindling denomination, the Holy Spirit moves quite freely and there has been much evidence of energy transfer between disciples of all ages through the chaplaincy in this time, as we have ministered to each other.

Four years later, we begin to emerge differently. Like most of the young people, as far as I can tell, I no longer feel owned or obligated to the denomination that set me there and then abandoned us. So is this still part of the church? Again, as far as I can tell, it has the marks of a faith community. It experiences success and failure, people grow in their faith, worship appears relevant and reverent, God inspired, Spirit filled and Christ and focused.

In a school Chaplaincy everyone gets to hear if they wish to listen. And they do: needs are responded to, people are valued. Nearly a dozen people of all ages from 6 to 55 have asked to be baptised in the last 8 years of the chaplaincy. Did they pass the test? There was no test.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

JAL 01.03.2018

The feast of St David, missionary, preacher.

Water proof

I’ve always been fascinated by water, that marvellous molecule that make life on this planet possible. I’ve seen oceans, lakes, glaciers rivers and streams. I’ve seen rain fall on several continents and what happens when it doesn’t. I’ve drunk it every day of my life, or something made with it. I’ve used it in speech therapy and ministry and ‘Living Wet’ is my motto. However a drip running down the back of your neck on a damp morning’s walk is not the most exhilarating form of water.
Gilsland claims to be the wettest place in the Roman Empire. I’m not arguing. However, it does also win the award for ‘top toilet’.
It must be quite wet because the trail is on a temporary diversion here since a flood demolished a foot bridge. It means a stop for hot chocolate at the village cafe cum shop. I am now in Cumbria.
On the whole the weather dried up for the rest of the day, the wind coming and going. There was plenty of wall left until Hare Hill where I saw the last of it. Strangely it was also the highest remaining section, or so an excited family explained to me before they hurried on east to see some more.
There were puddles here and there and the odd little stream or brook taking its time amongst trees and stones. A few more drops fell from the sky just before the turning to Lanercost where the 12th century Priory was a welcome sight.

Trying to Live Wet,
I give thanks for these marvellous molecules,
Mindful that I do not dissolve before time.
As the rain waters the earth,
Gathers in streams and rivers,
and travels to the oceans,
There to rise once more in the clouds
May I also rise
On the Last Day.

All the baptised

I read a tweet that said ‘Church unity is the responsibility of all the baptised’.
Great, I thought: another one to add to the church this afternoon when we celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism for Jacob, who is 5 years old.
I’ll suggest he joins a Church Unity Commission straight away.
That’s the problem with unity; it has a musty smell and is reminiscent of stale biscuits. More 5 year olds doing Christian Unity would be a great thing. Too much of the time we think these things are just for adults.
This is a false idea. The church is all of us. It’s not about waiting until some of us are more grown up before we take our place. We already have a place: remember that.
The children and young people with whom I work are the Church now and for most of them these division in the Church and ‘different sorts of Christians’ is unfathomable. They just get on with following Jesus where they are alongside each other. To most of them denominational labels have less meaning than the sort of biscuits they prefer.
This afternoon, I shall ask him ‘Do you want to follow Jesus?’ not ‘and shall we dress like this, and meet at these times and say these words only, and let only these people do this, and exclude these ones and make these rules and so on and so on and so on. I realised years ago that once again I’d ‘gone native’ with them. But it makes sense to me too. The wide appeal of Messy Church points to it: make it messy, keep it simple, welcome everyone.
We are doing Christian Unity already, every day. As usual its taking the adults a while to catch up.

In our life and our believing
The Love of God.