IN THE MOOD ON THE MOUNTAIN

So, after a few days beating about the bush, here we are at last at the Sermon on the Mount. 

Perhaps it's because we've become so accustomed to hearing it on big occasions, that everyone seems determined to make it not just the sermon on the mount but also the SOLEMN on the Mount, or at the very least the SERIOUS on the Mount. Don't you dare suggest that it's good news, that sounds far too cheerful for proper religion. No, none of that lightheartedness here, straighten your faces everybody and we can begin.

Matt.5: 1 - 12, the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount constitute the first of our five Sunday Gospel readings from Jan 29 until Lent begins in March. (This year, Ash Wednesday is on March 1st, the very same day the crows start building their nests!!! How's that for an encouraging start?)

After all that jovial start let me say immediately that I am NOT suggesting that because a Gospel is serious it can't also be Good News, of course it can and vice versa. But these opening twelve verses certainly must have changed the mood among those listening to Jesus. Of course the words of Jesus as we have them in this so-called Sermon on the Mount, have been stage managed, theatrically arranged even, to help readers get the picture of Jesus the (very) early church believed in and wanted its followers to have. 

Matthew puts the Lord on a mountain to resemble a second Moses. (Luke has him on the flat plain where he comes across more as "one of us".) The whole Sermon is packed with nudges and winks to roots in the Old Testament designed to give it a convincing background.
 I'm suggesting here that this crowd of ordinary people, rich in neither material goods or status, (anawim) must have been over the moon to hear themselves told that, theirs was the kingdom of Heaven.

How better could they be motivated to become this man's disciples! These opening verses are indeed full of scholarly detail, but that should not put us off seeing the sheer unexpected happiness they bring and how they put his hearers in the mood to follow him. If he put a spring in their steps and a smile on their faces, then surely they were in the mood to follow him: the Lord of the dance.

FOOTNOTE TO BUZZ / SUNDAY'S TWEET

A response to a comment received privately

By the time our Gospels were written, Jesus was a distant  memory. True, some of his fans had various collections of things he said and did, filed away under different headings. Most of these had been memorised, not written down.

The Gospels are called Gospels because they attempt to persuade us that the GOSPEL (singular) is true and worth following.
The GOSPEL (singular)  is the belief that Jesus made all the difference about life here and hereafter.

The four Gospels try to persuade us of the GOSPEL (singular) by telling what looks like lives of Jesus but are NO SUCH THING.

The first (modern) attempt at lives of Jesus was made by Germans in the 18th century.Charles Dickens wrote one for his children, later.

I suggested the use of the word BUZZ  to picture how the Gospels make it sound at that stage in Jesus' life.
I did NOT suggest that there actually was a buzz. No one had recorded anything by way of diary or minutes.

 


 

HEALTH WARNING

Honestly everybody, your blanket refusal to make any comment even on the post about using Family as an image of the Church, is more than I was ready for.

Please reconsider your approach. If you can't manage the comment box, an email to me would do. It will be used anonymously. Val

AN INSIDE JOB

The house opposite my home has been vandalised; why, I do not know. When I first came to live in these parts, some years ago, the then owner of that house was in the process of building a porch to protect the front entrance from the elements. He was a big, strong, muscular man, who seemed to enjoy “seeing to things". He looked after his garden too in a care-taking kind of way. His wife, a neat little woman, had a face that betrayed long hours on the sun bed. There were no children, or if there were they had long since fled the nest and showed no desire to return. There came a parting of the ways. He left without so much as a wave; she crossed over to tell me it was all his fault. I might have believed her too were it not for the cheery smile on her face as she spoke to me and the spring in her step as she sat in beside the gloomy looking stranger in his BMW.

The house was empty for a time after that, and then a young couple arrived: arrived, and also departed. Scarcely had they begun to drag their things inside, than a dreadful screaming broke out. A day or two later the young man began the work of dismantling the porch, and I began to wonder if, since it’s building had once heralded my arrival, might not it’s dismantling be the sign that it was time for me to go. I was so distracted with this fearful thought that it was some days before I noticed that I had not noticed the young lady. It turned out that she had come, seen and gone. The young man continued to busy himself in the demolition business, but one could not help noticing that his work was frequently interrupted by visiting strangers. Eventually some official types arrived and affixed a large white notice to the inside of a downstairs window. The young man left that very same day and I have not seen him since. I have had it mind to cross the road and read that large white notice, but the house is on a busy corner, and I can’t summon up the courage to risk being thought nosey, or common. Perhaps some morning very early, but no, perhaps not.

Where the vandals came from I do not know and, given the amount of breaking glass there has been, I am surprised that I heard nothing. Perhaps it was an inside job. It is the ambition of every house after all, to provide someone with a good home. The great spirits of joy and welcome, love and forgiveness that lie waiting to be brought to life in the fabric of every house, may have flung themselves about in a fit of furious resentment at what might have been. I do not find the thought too fanciful, do you?

Quite the opposite, for recently as I look across at the lace curtain blowing forlornly in the breeze, I have found myself wondering about the first people to live in that house. I imagine them as a youngish couple, proudly taking possession of it and determined to make it their home. I think too of those who followed them, who moved in with their own dreams of a happy life, and who had moved on before ever I turned up. Perhaps we all carry around with us the seeds of a self - destructive vandalism, which, if we are not very careful, scuppers the best laid plans, undoes the fondest hopes. The more I see that lace curtain flapping out into the street, the more I find myself thinking of such a possibility. Does the sad neglect that has now overtaken the house, in some way reflect the lives of all who once lived there?  You might think this a mere speculation, but the odd thing is that I find myself caring. My heart wants to know what became of them all, how they all are.

Oh, I know that the situation will be resolved one of these days. New people will move in and set about arranging things to their liking. They may even stumble upon the idea of building a porch to shield their front door from the storm. But there is no porch to shield us from storms that come from within, they need no point of entry. Such storms can assail us at any time and the humble acceptance of this fact may be the first steps to another kind of caring, the sort no watching neighbour will ever notice.

THERE IS A VERY BAD COLD GOING ROUND AND I AM TRYING TO RESIST IT.

  THERE WERE EIGHT OF US

Can our families help us think more clearly 
about the church and its future?

Listen everyone:

You heard it in the musical Argentina,"the answer was here all the time". Remember?

Often when we church people are faced with a problem, we rush to call in experts with big theological books. But the answer may be much closer to home. Our own families may provide the answer.

Please read the first post which looks as if it's just about my  own family. But read between the lines and I hope you will be led to think of the church in simple Family terms. Then do as requested at the end in red. PLEASE

thanks,

val

 BEGIN HERE
 

A man who goes out into the world armed with five sisters, is clearly well off.  
I was one such and  I still recall my sisters names in strict chronological order in my, as ever,  hastily said, night prayers. Following on the heels of Mammy and Daddy and sweeping us three boys rudely aside, they announce themselves as Peggie, Frankie, Gerty, Molly and Angela. There are  just four now, to watch me stumble round in my seventies.  Frankie (Frances) departed for home awhile ago at a mere eighty one years. For the record I am the one remaining boy.

My feeling of being "well-off" with all these sisters began with my mother's allocation of domestic duties. The making of beds, peeling of potatoes, running of messages to shops in the village, these were all deemed "fit for females" while such onerous duties as gardening,(often entirely neglected), feeding the hens (chickens), and talking to neighbours and strangers approaching our gate, needed the attention of males. Ah, me! What a wise little world it was back then and what well trained wives each made in later life.

The birds have of course, long since, left the nest, flying in all directions but always careful to leave a forwarding address. Nor did the girls cease their caring role after the great scattering was done. Dear me, no! At family gatherings such as weddings for instance, or my own celebration of 50 years in the priesthood, the sisters have always unashamedly assessed the state of their male siblings as they carried out their social duties. A sagging midriff (me) always brought a frown of resignation while a smart handsome profile led to a smile of approval and the linking of arms. 

Now what's the point of all this on a blog meant to have universal appeal? Surely not a display of pride of appearance! Well, yes and no. For a start and to whet the appetite, readers might like to say which of the girls they think responsible for the medical warning that makes the title of this piece. But following that I don't mind saying that I do believe that as a unit we were/ are, worth getting to know. Indeed readers might find it helpful to compare notes with us to bring them to a proper appreciation of their own hatching and indeed to a proper understanding of that still greater hatching, the one known as The Church. For in these days of squabbling about roles and ministries in the church, the domestic layout of the Farrell brood, and of yours too, be they accidental  or otherwise, may have something to offer in securing a happy outcome to that great debate.

One last thing (or should that be final?) it may be that readers have questions to ask. Apparent contradictions may have shown themselves or even clear exaggerations. Well if you do have such questions, let me tell you that you can keep them to yourself. Whatever differences there were among the eight of us, we are the offspring of Mammy and Daddy Farrell and that should be enough to satisfy all visitors at our gate. Bye, bye, now.

USING OUR FAMILIES AS MODELS  FOR TODAY'S  CHURCH LET'S  ASK SOME SIMPLE QUESTIONS OF OURSELVES

AND SHARE OUR ANSWERS 

1. "A man who goes out into the world armed with five sisters, is clearly well off." What riches is the Church ignoring?
2. A Bad Cold Going Round: What could that be for the Church today? 
3. Attitude to strangers at the gate?
4. Allocation of duties in the church
5. What are we to make of "birds flying the nest"? 
6.What could it mean to leave a forwarding address?
7. Do we dare tell people that we are worth getting to know
8. Do we LOOK the part?

THE WELL AT SALFORD

It's more than sixty years ago now, even seventy, since I dallied there in the shade of the great Sycamore. That tree stood, a silent sentry at the lands edge, not part of the hedgerow, but mothering it from a rear position on the great bank that brought the Gees field to an end. The road swung gently to the left at that point and dipped as if in reverence. The tree seemed not to notice, for it had other duties. At it's foot there was the well. Older than the tree itself, an ancient place of visitation. The tree both presented the well to the world and protected it from it. I loved that Well.

It must have been a place of some importance in the days the Clachans thrived down every lane for when I came along a full century later, the council still tended it with care. By that time what houses there were in the vicinity all had their own private Wellheads; the treck into the sycamore's shade a thing of the past. But quietly and without any fuss, it remained on the Road Ganger's schedule, something to be attended to when the men at his command were round that way.

Wobbling down muddy country lanes between heavy buckets of water, is not how the agencies sell us the joys of the countryside these days, but if some kind soul were to say to me, "come Val, let us go together to the white-washed well we ran to see on those long-ago afternoon walks to Granny's" I would go willingly enough. My thirst would be not for the water the well still gives but for the voices of those who went there before ever I came to stand and stare. They came not for an afternoon walk but for the water they needed in their homes; the water springing from the earth on which they trod; the water of life.