Rev
Have you been watching Rev? Rev is a new BBC comedy-drama (Tuesday 10pm, BBC2), featuring the life and times of the Reverend Adam Smallbone, the hard-pressed Vicar of a majestic but dilapidated church in inner-city London.
Clergy in screen comedies tend to fall into one of three categories: shallow (The Vicar of Dibley), slimy (Four Weddings and a Funeral) or slapstick (Father Ted). Adam is none of those. He certainly isn't a model Vicar: there are times when he makes us laugh and blush and cringe. But in between the jokes, Rev has moments of great tenderness, where some of the joys and trials of parish life are laid bare. Fortunately for most of us things aren't so extreme as for Adam, but it's no coincidence that Rev has quite a following among the clergy of Birmingham: it's often pretty near the mark!
I especially appreciate the way in which the series gives us a glimpse of Adam's prayer life. Several times in each episode we see Adam at prayer: not just in church, but when he's doing the washing up or has been humiliatingly chucked out of the local Rastafarian house. Adam's prayers aren't perfect (whose are?), but we see his honest conversations with God, asking for guidance when perplexed, patience when angry, courage when afraid. As one priest has put it, we are given a real insight into the day-to-day life of a man who is 'trying to live by high principles in an increasingly unprincipled world'.
One recent episode featured Adam's college friend, the Reverend Roland Wise, a gilded sophisticate of a priest, admired by everyone from the Bishop down. Roland is sent to instruct Adam about the finer points of dealing with the media, after he has made a disastrous appearance on prime-time television. But it soon emerges that Roland's success has been all on the surface: deep down he has lost his sense of vocation and abandoned his life of prayer. In a touching scene, Adam falteringly helps his old friend to rediscover his calling. Kneeling on the dusty floor of the church, with discarded beer cans in the porch and a boarded-up stained glass window behind them, they are both touched by God's grace.
In this moment of stillness amidst 'the city's crowded clangour', they are able to tune their ears to the birdsong outside. And in a sublime scene, unheard of on a TV comedy show, Adam quotes a poem of Louis MacNiece. The birds singing in the trees are to him:
A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not notice when we die,
Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.
There in the midst of our daily lives, pointers to God are never far away: signs of God's glory and grace, ever-present, but so easily ignored.
Fr. Edmund
"Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16)
In the entrance of the chapel of the Queen's Foundation in Edgbaston you'll find a notice that says, "You are now entering a place of worship". Nothing unusual about that, you might think - except that the notice is on the inside of the door, not the outside. Facing you as you leave the chapel is a reminder that worship should happen outside the church building just as much as inside it. "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness", says Psalm 96, but it continues: "let the whole earth stand in awe of him": the praise of God is our duty and joy in all places and at all times.
As so often with our Christian faith, this is more easily said than done. How do you worship God in the hospital waiting room, anxiously waiting for tests? How do you worship God in the car, stuck in traffic and late for an appointment? How do you worship God when doing the things you least enjoy, whether homework, the tax return or the washing up? God is with us in each of these places and at each of these tasks, but very often we are reluctant to make him welcome.
The problem is with us and not with God. Sister Wendy Beckett says that "the real difficulty with prayer is that it has no difficulty":
"Prayer is God's taking possession of us. We expose to him what we are, and he gazes on us with the creative eye of Holy Love. God's gaze is transforming: God does not leave us in our poverty but draws into being all we are meant to become".
Often we think we can only worship God in our Sunday best. We feel that we must present to God only the parts our lives that are clean, tidy and presentable. But God knows us better than that: God knows us better than we know ourselves. So the best policy in prayer is one of openness and honesty, whoever we are, wherever we are, whatever we are doing.
Saint Paul famously teaches that "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you". As Christians we always have this bodily temple with us, a place to worship God that is unlocked and freely available. A church is a place of worship; the world is a place of worship, but above all, our bodies are places of worship, to be used to glorify God (1 Corinthians 6:19).
Fr. Edmund
O
'O' is an underused word.
I don't mean 'oh!' - as in 'Oh, not again', when the phone rings and I'm promised an end to all my financial worries by an upmarket loan shark.
I mean 'O' - the word that so often opens the collects in the Book of Common Prayer: 'O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed'; 'O God, who declarest thy mighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity'. The word at the beginning of many of our best-loved hymns: 'O love that wilt not let me go'; 'O for a heart to praise my God'.
To use 'O' like this is a powerful way of expressing our need of God, our desire for guidance, healing, justice and love. In many modern prayers the opening 'O' has been tidied away, but I sometimes smuggle it back in. I do so not out of love for the old-fashioned, but because that little one-letter word is a reminder that prayer is more akin to poetry than prose. Prayer is a conversation, not a shopping list. It is a dialogue in which we, in the midst of our muddles and trials and doubts, cry out to God to bless and guide us with his loving mercy.
And Advent, of all seasons, is the time for the word 'O'. At the beginning of the Church's year we turn expectantly to God, asking for the new life of our Saviour to be born among us. The great Advent hymn, 'O come, O come, Emmanuel' is a version of an ancient series of prayers used on the evenings immediately running up to Christmas. The prayers each address Jesus by a different name, praising an aspect of the mystery of his grace and invoking his help. Said slowly and reflectively over the days of Advent, they can bring us to a fuller awareness of Christ's living presence among us:
O Wisdom, uttered by the Most High God,
you fill the universe from end to end,
holding all things together with gentle strength.
Come, and teach us the way of understanding.
O Lord and leader of the house of Israel
you spoke to Moses in the burning bush
and gave the Law on Sinai to your people.
Come, with your mighty power, and set us free.
O Root of Jesse, symbol to the nations,
their kings will stand in silent awe before you,
and all who seek you will declare your greatness.
Come, and deliver us; do not delay.
O Key of David and Israel's sceptre;
no one can close again what you have opened,
or ever open what you have closed.
Come, and release your people from their prison,
where they sit captive, bound in death's dark shadow.
O Rising Sun, source of eternal light,
in you the splendour of justice is revealed.
Come, and bring light to those who wander in darkness.
O King of nations, the world is yearning for you,
the Cornerstone, uniting all in one.
Come, and save us, creatures of the dust of earth.
O Emmanuel, you are our King and Judge,
our Saviour, and the one for whom we wait.
Come, and deliver us, O Lord our God.
Fr. Edmund