Teenagers and Angels. A reflection for Compline that should have been about miracles.

My Yr 9 students - aged 13/14 -  have been studying Miracles as a topic this term and it has been a struggle from the outset, if for no other reason than spelling. If I have to correct “miricals” one more time, even though they have copied it from the board, I may run screaming from the building. You see “miracles” on the board, look down to your book and write “miricals.” How does that happen? Repeatedly?

Of course, the first issue is that of definition: what are we talking about when we talk of miracles? Blank looks from the hormonal hoards. It takes some time, and with heavy guidance from me, to decide on “A dramatic and unusual event which goes against the laws of nature and is caused by God or one of his agents.” This is where it all starts to unravel as we are taken down an unexpected line of discussion in relation to what constitutes an agent of God. Predictably angels come in for some considerable forensic examination and I find myself explaining the mindset of the medieval artist.

O.K. I say, I’m a Medieval Pope. They look less than convinced.

Jordan, you’re Michelangelo. Jordan looks pleased.

Michael, Old Boy, I need a nice fresco on the ceiling of my new chapel. Nothing fancy, just a Biblical story. How about the Nativity?

Right you are Guv.

So Michelangelo goes away and gets out his Bible. What’s in the story that I need to include? Stable, check. Mary and Joseph, check. Infant, check. Cattle, check. Shepherds, check. Wise men, Check. Innkeeper, check. Angels, ch … Angels? Oooh, Angels.

What does an angel look like? I ask.

Surprisingly for a group of avowed Atheists they soon build up a picture: M & S floaty nighty, pigeon’s wings and a tinsel halo.

Musical Instrument of choice? I venture.

“Harp.” They chorus happily, entering into the spirit of the occasion.

(I ponder, briefly, how far we have moved in five minutes from my lesson plan on miracles – sorry: miricals.)

I draw said angel on the board. It takes about six pen strokes but they pronounce themselves happy with the result.

So I ask them, How did we get to this?

“Well, it’s in pictures.”

“And adverts. Sir, Sir, Have you seen that advert for cream cheese where …..?”

And so it goes on. Having established that this image of angels is firmly established in the international psyche I try to point out that medieval artists were faced with a no-win situation in attempting to representing something visually where there’s not much in the way of description to go on.

I explain, They needed to get over the idea of something spiritual rather than human otherwise we’d be looking at these paintings asking “Who’s that man in the background?” or “Why are those women falling out of the sky?” The angel as we know it is an artistic compromise.

“Are you saying they don’t look like that then?”

I’m saying they might not.

“What do they look like then?”

O.K. I take a deep breath.  What does “angel” mean?

There is no response.

I offer them a clue, It’s a Greek word. Why did I tell them that? This is bottom set Yr 9. What are the chances?

Still no ideas.

There’s no real reason why you should know. I was just wondering if anyone did. It means messenger – or more specifically, God’s messenger. What does God’s messenger look like? Perplexed looks. This is marginally encouraging as it indicates some level of mental activity above and beyond maintaining a heartbeat.

Do you remember when Mrs. Cooper sent a pupil down with a message last lesson?

“Are you saying Emily was an angel?”

I’m saying Emily was a messenger. What does a messenger look like?

“Could be anybody.”

Exactly.

“I don’t get it.”

I sigh. I do that a lot with Yr 9. Why does God’s messenger have to look picturesque?

“Coz it’s an angel.”

And angel means messenger, I persevere. Why couldn’t anyone be God’s messenger? Please don’t say “because we don’t have wings.”

“So, right? Are you saying Sir that anyone could be an angel because they’d be being God’s messenger? Would they know they were an angel?”

Maybe. Not necessarily. Some angels appear to be spiritual beings: I’m just saying that the images of medieval artists might not always be helpful, that’s all. What was an aid to faith in the middle ages seems to be quite the opposite today: "Who'd believe in one of those winged things?"

“Yeah. Too right Sir.”

I remember going to a primary school nativity where the Head had dressed the angels as postmen.

“I don’t get it.”

Postman – messenger – angel.

“Oh right. Now I get it.”

“So…” We all turn to look at Lauren who has been looking at one of my inspirational posters above the board. It is one little corner of some huge painting. I don’t know who the artist was, but the breadth and scope of the painting must make him to the art world what Cecil B. DeMille was to the world of film. The little segment, so easy to overlook, shows two cherubim - or possibly seraphim – chubby winged infants anyway,  looking rather bored, it has to be said, peering down over the edge of a cloud as if at the pupils in my room. Underneath their imagined conversation is printed: I bet they don’t revise for R.S. Losers. “Are they baby angels?” Lauren is pointing.

No. That’s another artistic attempt to describe the indescribable that’s stuck in our collective consciousness.

Amazingly, they seem satisfied with this.

I make a mental note to put together a little unit on religious art and ponder, on the basis of this lesson, whether I actually have the confidence or knowledge to put such a unit together and have a moment of blind panic at the possibility that someone should innocently ask about demons.

We move on from angels and go on to talk about Prophets and Saints and, of course, Jesus as agents of God. There is a glimmer of hope that we might, at last, move on to talk about miricals.

Any questions on anything we’ve looked at so far?  Yes Jordan?

“Sir, who’s Michelangelo?”

Update: It was well received.

Jeremiah and the Prophets for today's generation. Sunday Sermon for Evensong

Jeremiah 6.16-21

¹⁶ Thus says the Lord:
Stand at the crossroads, and look,
   and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way lies; and walk in it,
   and find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ ¹⁷ Also I raised up sentinels for you:
   ‘Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!’
But they said, ‘We will not give heed.’ ¹⁸ Therefore hear, O nations,
   and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. ¹⁹ Hear, O earth; I am going to bring disaster on this people,
   the fruit of their schemes,
because they have not given heed to my words;
   and as for my teaching, they have rejected it. ²⁰ Of what use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba,
   or sweet cane from a distant land?
Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable,
   nor are your sacrifices pleasing to me. ²¹ Therefore thus says the Lord:
See, I am laying before this people
   stumbling-blocks against which they shall stumble;
parents and children together,
   neighbour and friend shall perish.

Jeremiah was one of the Old Testament Prophets. I don’t know about you but my knowledge of the Old Testament Prophets isn’t really as up to speed as I now realise it should be: I’m afraid the prophets rather exist in my mind as a broadly interchangeable amalgam of angry men who I’m always reminded of when I encounter the street preachers who lurk outside Harvey Nichols on a Saturday berating passers by with their one-theme theology of Hell and Damnation.

What do we know about the Prophets? We know that they spoke to their own generations and that theirs were generally words of rebuke: rebuke to a people who in different ways at different times had abandoned God’s ways, whether it was to do with issues of social justice in the way that the rich treated the poor, or with issues of apostasy in the way that the people forgot God and went their own ways. They weren’t much into prophecy in the way the name implies today – not foretelling the future, not in terms of detailed specifics so much as in their warnings of outcomes and consequences, along the lines of “If you carry on like this ……”

We also know that the Prophets were often ignored and despised in their own times and, again, I think of the street preachers outside Harvey Nicholls. I watch as people scurry past with their heads down, resolutely determined not to engage, and then, at a safe distance, their demeanour changes and their pace slows, their posture becomes upright  and the smile returns. They may even look back at those who made them feel uncomfortable and with a rueful smile raise their eyebrows at other passers by as if to say, “What a load of rubbish eh?” Of course there are those who are much bolder and who stand and heckle and jeer.

We’ll be long dead by the time history judges whether, like the Prophets of the Hebrew Scripture, these preachers have had anything worthwhile to say and so I’m not suggesting that we necessarily stop and listen to - or engage with - the street preachers but I am saying that in another time and another place men probably not so different from these felt called, as these folk do, to proclaim God’s judgement to their own people…… and received much the same reaction: indifference, amusement, a sense of superiority, aggression, the wish that they’d shut up and go away – after all, the last thing you want on a sunny day in the town centre is someone ranting on about God’s judgement … isn’t it?

How different are we from the people of Jeremiah’s day?

And what of Jeremiah himself?

The Book of Jeremiah tells us that he was called by God to prophesy Jerusalem’s destruction. In contrast to Isaiah, who eagerly accepted his prophetic call, and similar to Moses who was less than eager, Jeremiah resisted the call. However, the Lord insisted that Jeremiah go and speak as commanded, and he touched Jeremiah’s lips and put His words into Jeremiah’s mouth.

Jeremiah’s prophecies are permeated with a sense of disaster: Jerusalem would be destroyed at the hands of invaders because Israel had been unfaithful and had forsaken God by worshiping Baal. Israel had deviated so far from God that they had actually broken the covenant, causing God to withdraw His blessings. Jeremiah was guided by God to proclaim that the nation of Israel would be faced with famine, be plundered and taken captive by foreigners who would exile them to a foreign land.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, throughout his prophetic ministry Jeremiah experienced opposition, persecution and imprisonment. You can’t help but wonder how many people scurried past with their heads bowed determined not to listen or engage and feeling irritated that their routines had been interrupted by this merchant of doom.

So, lets have a look at Jeremiah’s words: Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

Well, we have the benefit of hindsight: we know how all this worked out for Jeremiah’s generation: But they said, ‘We will not…”

So what has this to do with you and I? It often strikes me with the Hebrew Scriptures that we are so far removed historically and culturally from those events that it really is hard to identify with the people at all. After all, we don’t live in a society which has built altars to a false God upon which to burn our children as offerings … but I guess some of you are already ahead of me here because we constantly build altars of one kind or another and while we may ignore the street preachers there are plently of prophets out there. They may not come from a priestly clan like Jeremiah and they may not speak overtly as men and women of faith but  let’s not fool ourselves that there aren’t prophets clamouring for our attention - be they politicians, economists, environmentalists, social scientists …. or Archbishops.

In Jeremiah’s time it’s clear that God’s solutions were known and the people had turned their faces against them and its hard for us here – because there is only so much that each of us can do – to fully identify with Jeremiah’s message. Should we be applying his message to the whole of society … or to the Church – and its legitimate to do both. Where are we to start?

It strikes me that whenever we are confronted with a passage from the Prophets we really ought to be challenged to make a comparison between our own times and their issues, and those of these angry and disturbing men. What can we learn? Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

I wonder about the people of Jeremiah’s generation as they are presented in this passage: are they refusing to accept Jeremiah’s world-view or are they refusing even to engage with the issues?

How like them are we when we are faced with the big issues of our own time? What are we putting our trust in for the future that might be bypassing God? Whose voices aren’t we listening to?

What debates can we enter into about the nature of these ancient paths where the good way lies? Who are we engaging with in these discussions? Are we having these discussions at all?

I’ve heard preachers tackle this sort of passage in the past and their conclusion has been quite simple: we must follow God’s ways, of course. Quite simple and quite simplistic. What are God’s ways in the comlex world of the second decade in this millenium? What are the ways of God two thousand years after the death of Christ and nearly three thousand years after Jeremiah? Are the ancient ways prescriptive rules or are they general principles? Are we bound by the moral, theological and cultural solutions of the late seventh century BC or are we empowered to look for more innovative solutions for our own generation guided by God’s Spirit?

Now, those are questions Jeremiah and the faithful of his age would not understand: the ways of God were indeed prescriptive as set out in the Books of the Law but we are not bound by those laws: We read in the book of Romans, “But now we are discharged from the law; dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” (7.6) and Hebrews (8.13), “In speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”

So we are freed from the guidance of the legalism of the code of Jeremiah’s day and freed for a “new comforter” in the guidance of the Holy Spirit today.

So how does that work? Let me give you an example: many of you will remember the 

excellent American T.V. series The West Wing, which charted the trials and tribulations of fictional president Josiah Bartlett and his staff. In one particular episode called Take this Sabbath Day, President Bartlett is struggling with a terrible political and moral dilemma. During the course of the episode the president, a cradle Catholic, is visited by his childhood parish priest and seeks his advice. One of The President’s senior staff is Jewish and is interrupted in the Synagogue in the middle of the Rabbi’s sermon, which can be heard in the White House over the mobile phone. A little later, a more junior staffer, coincidently a Quaker, is asked for her opinion. Each of the three, without knowing of the other two, offers the President their advice. It is the same advice. The President is reluctant to take it until his Chief of Staff points out to him The Lord sent you … “a priest, a rabbi, and a Quaker, Mr. President. What more do you want from him?”

In terms of guidance, I’ve often referred to that event in my prayers as “that West Wing moment”, confident that God knows what I mean. We don’t have Jeremiah with us today: that’s not to say that we can’t learn from him: after all he has given us the injunction: “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” but we have other Prophets today – those who speak the word of God to our generation if we would but listen. Who are they? (And they may be different for each of us – sacred or secular.) I hear the voice of God today in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Giles Fraser, but that’s me. They may not speak to your hearts. So who does? When do you have your West Wing moments and who has the Lord sent to you?

My wife’s answer was quite simple: “anyone who challenges me and makes me feel guilty.” She went on to mention the columnist Polly Toynbee which put me in mind of the environmentalist George Monbiot. Other friends presented me with a wider variety of modern Jeremiahs:  Aung San Suu Kyi, Martin Luther King. One American friend suggested the conservationist Rachel Carson. I was also offered Middle East expert Chris Hedges and I spent a happy half hour on the INTERNET looking these people up and concluding that, yes, I could indeed see why they are perceived as modern prophets: in a secular age where people are less and less likely to listen to religious leaders, the word of God is alive and well – and strident! As John tells us, “The Spirit breathes where she will, and you hear her voice …” (John 3.8)

So, perhaps the message of Jeremiah for us today lies in our awareness that prophets aren’t limited to the pages of the Hebrew Scripture and that the word of God is being spoken to our generation too. If we are being challenged to “Stand at the crossroads, and look (for) where the good way lies; and walk in it …” In what senses have we as individuals, as a church, as a nation, departed from the right path and who is telling us that today?  Are we, with Jeremiah’s generation going to say “We will not…” or will we heed the voices of God’s modern Prophets?

Amen

Summer dressing for men

We have had a long and unseasonally cold spring but now the sun is shining through. I was taking Daughter2 across the city and we started to comment on the summer fashion that was on display. I was, in turns, perplexed, shocked and occasionally, frankly, disgusted by what I saw parading by. A collective madness descends on the British public when the sun comes out and we feel that atavistic compulsion to discard our winter layers and show our sun-starved and pale flesh to the world.

That is not of itself a bad thing but, having travelled extensively around Europe, North, South, East and West in the Summer months, I note a tendency in the British, only matched and occasionally beaten by our American cousins: the journey from winter woollies to summer shorts by passes one significant stop-over - the mirror. The French, the Italians, the Finns and the Estonians do summer in style. We, on the other hand, are the sartorially lost and confused.

When I next change jobs I am going to join the fashion police: as a meterosexual male and misanthrope I offer the following observation of the British male in the sunshine.

* British men and shorts: this is not a marriage made in Heaven. Amongst all the ill dressed tides of humanity that swept past the car was an elderly man clearly wearing the shorts he was issued in 1946 on demob. Another man of indeterminate middle age wore the sort of genitalia defining very short shorts beloved of the 1970s soccer player. One overweight youth was wearing acres of baggy, bold, floral print.

* Varicose veins are not a fashion statement.

* Men who wear sandals with socks - black, brown and dark blue generally, tend to be given a wide berth by mothers with small children: it is an unconscious response designed to protect the young from exposure to evil.

* The wearing of sports gear as leisure wear: it's just lazy. Don't do it guys. Are you on your way to play sport? No, I thought not with that physique and a cigarette in your mouth.

* The wearing of combat camouflage: are you in the armed forces? (You wish.) No, I thought not. See previous response.

* Tattoos: why do we think they're called POLYNESIAN STYLE? (The clue's in the name.) Yes, because they look good on dark-skinned, muscular, Polynesian fishermen and not on skinny, ginger accountants from Wakefield. The upper-arm Celtic ring really did look cool in 1986. Its now 2012 (no, honestly) and its beginning to look like a serious lapse in judgement.

* Unless you've got that physique, shirts should always be worn unless you are within 50m of sea, lake, lido or river. If you do have that physique, cover up anyway. No-one likes a show off. Daughter2 watched one such young man walking through the park. All the time he was within the park's boundaries he was fine: the moment he stepped on to the street he became a dick-head. It's a universal truth.

* Wear only one pattern: shirt, T-shirt or shorts/trousers. Do not mix and match. You'll look like a train wreck.

* That hard-rock T-shirt proclaiming Up Yours Mother-F***er works on a 17 yr old. It does not look edgy on a fifty-something with hair growing out of his ears.

* And that Rolling Stones tour T-shirt 1991: no-one cares.

* Have you seen how much hair you have on your torso? I recognised you from Planet of the Apes.

* As previous. Grey wiry body hair escaping around the neck, belly and arm holes of your T-shirt is singularly unappealing.

* Allow me to introduce you to the concept of the anti-perpirant deodorant in the summer months. You smell and sweat patches are just not cool.

* That slim fitting shirt/T-shirt may have looked good last year. You've had a beer or two since then, no?

* No-one ever needs to see your navel.

* Crocs: don't even start me on that crime against humanity!

* The baseball cap was never cool.

* Look Youth, that woolly-hat-beanie-thingy looked good in January. You just look ridiculous wearing it with a vest top and shorts, right?

* Taupe, beige and pistachio for the over 50s have been banned by the new Coalition government, as has anything with suede inserts.

This is what you do:

* You are allowed to look critically in the mirror.

* You may throw clothes away - especially ones that make you look like a knob and/or no longer fit. Get over it.

* You must go shopping when the summer clothes hit the shops, not once in a decade under sufferance. Take your girlfriend/wife with you. You don't have one? Why am I not surprised?

Failing that. STAY INDOORS ALL SUMMER.

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

I live on the other side of the city. On my first Sunday here I was about 10 minutes late – a source of considerable embarrassment. The quickest distance between two fixed points, my house and St. Big’s is, of course, a straight line, so I looked at the street map of the city and worked out my journey: but it’s not a straight line when you are driving. Now, I’m not a great navigator and my map reading is poor but we now have Sat-Nav, although on that Sunday I'd left it at home and I found myself driving around the streets around here and noting how many churches there are in such a small area – that aren’t St. Big’s. But even when the Sat-Nav is working there’s still a risk that it’s not up to date and you encounter new roads, or roads you are familiar with have become one-way or, where I live, whole swathes of streets have been blocked off for months on end to stop the morning rat-run.

Hold that thought.

In our Gospel this morning, Jesus seems to be talking a lot about leaving his followers - about his death, and the disciples were rather anxious about where they would go when that happened. How could they live? How could they carry on the work of the Kingdom? They’d heard his teaching but how could they remember it all? How could they do it? How could they live in that close relationship with the Father that Jesus obviously had?

The answer is in the promised coming of the Holy Spirit, but that was still to come and at this stage they haven’t fully grasped the implications. In John's gospel, we hear Jesus using an interesting word to describe this third Person of the Trinity. She is called the parakletos - the "Paraclete" (or, as some of the children I teach have been known to call her, the Parakeet, which gives us a whole new set of interesting possibilities). The Greek word simply means someone who is called alongside. Our English translations understand this in a number of ways. She is the Comforter bringing us encouragement and healing. She is the Advocate who pleads our cause with the Father. She is the Counsellor, bringing us advice and guidance. She is the Helper who comes to our aid and, thinking about my lamentable sense of direction, why not our Pilot, our Navigator too?  The Holy Spirit as Sat-Nav?

Yes, I did deliberately use “Her” and “She” instead of “Him” and “He” then. In the creation story of Genesis we read that “the Spirit” - in Hebrew, the RUACH – “of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The Hebrew presents the Ruach in feminine tense, and with female characteristics, an idea that until recently we have lost or ignored, but an idea reclaimed by those wishing to recognise the inclusive nature of God. The Ruach is simply the feminine manifestation of Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Jehovah who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The point is that the one God has made himself known to us in three Persons - the Father, who is the Creator and Sustainer of all things, the Son, by whom all things were made and who came and taught and healed and died and rose again and who is Saviour and Lord, and the Holy Spirit, through whom God works in the life of the believer, applying the finished work of the Son to our lives, bringing about the character of Christ in our lives and fulfilling the mission of Christ through our lives.

It is important to grasp this three-in-oneness by which God is revealed to us if his work in us is to become complete. The Christian life is impossible without the work of the Spirit within us. But the Spirit focuses on the words and work of the Son who is, in the words of the creed, “eternally begotten of the Father”. If we talk about the Spirit with little reference to the Father and the Son, we’ve got things wrong.

Many charismatic Christians place entirely too much emphasis on the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Holy Spirit seems the only part of the triune God some Christians pay attention to in their worship, their preaching and their faith. And these Christians often try to put rules and restrictions on the Spirit: you only possess the Spirit if you have a certain kind of "born again" experience which can lead to a feeling of spiritual superiority, as if to say "I have the Holy Spirit and you don't."

However, many other Christians place entirely too little emphasis on the Holy Spirit. God the Father and Jesus the Son are the only parts of God they pay attention to and they nearly leave the Spirit out altogether. They assume the Holy Spirit is reserved for other people who are blessed with greater spiritual gifts. It's as if they downgrade themselves as second-class Christians.

The point is, you can't know God the Father or Jesus the Son without experiencing the Holy Spirit, yet many Christians have badly neglected the true place of the Holy Spirit.

So, what about the Holy Spirit? What should we say about her on this Pentecost Sunday?

The guidance of our Spirit Sat-Nav will always be in accordance with the road map and that road map is a combination of the teaching of the Bible - and I would argue with more emphasis on the New Covenant than the Old, the tradition of the church, personal revelation and religious experience, our own intellect and our own sense of being open to that same Spirit’s guidance as St. Paul says in his letter to the Phillipians, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” And yes, there are some new dead-ends that don't have a specific mention - and new developments and diversions which throw and confuse us and which change down the ages: the issues that face the church today aren’t always the ones it faced a generation ago and the problems and issues we struggle with today won’t necessarily be the same ones the next generation struggle with.

It's true that when the Holy Spirit first came to the church at Pentecost, She came with signs and wonders. There was the sound of a rushing wind and tongues of fire and people speaking in languages they had never spoken before. Elsewhere in the New Testament, there are other places where the Holy Spirit came with the power of healing or the gift of speaking in tongues.

But, some Christians read those few passages of the New Testament and decide that this is all the Holy Spirit is! There are other places in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit comes with the gift of teaching. Peter and Apollos and Phillip and many others receive the Spirit and begin to teach -- they speak clearly and understandably so that other people may know the gospel. This is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus calls the Spirit "another Paraclete" (14.16) because, the plan was – and continues to be – that after Jesus’ ascension, the Spirit would take the place of Jesus with the disciples, now as then: to lead us to a deeper knowledge of the gospel truth, and give us the strength and resources needed to enable us to undergo the trials and difficulties we encounter in our personal pilgrimages of discipleship and to develop us daily more into the likeness of God. There are places in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit means patience and strength through trial and suffering. There are places where the Holy Spirit means simply that someone has a solid faith which is an inspiration to others. In some places in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit comes before baptism, and in other places, after baptism. There is simply no way anyone can put limits on the Holy Spirit, who is free because she is part of a sovereign God.

Paul makes this very clear in his famous passage from 1 Corinthians: "There are varieties of gifts," he says, "but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord" (12:4-5). One person has the gift of the wisdom, another has knowledge with which to teach and someone else has the gift of healing. (A long way down at the end of Paul's list is speaking in tongues.) The Holy Spirit, like Jesus, is God's gift of Himself. She is here for everyone and shows herself in many different ways.

When Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit, that we may know where the Holy Spirit is present; he doesn't talk about pride or boastfulness or being sure of your faith or knowing chapter and verse of Scripture. Paul simply says that the signs of the Spirit are these: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Galatians 5:22). Live in these qualities and you live with God and the Holy Spirit lives in you.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit is the quiet strength of a faithful heart and sometimes she is the rush of a mighty wind. But She is here with us: our Comforter, our Counsellor, the Spirit of truth and will never leave us forsaken. God's Holy Spirit will abide with us now and always, even to the end of the age. Amen

The Secret Teacher writes an honest letter home

The Secret Teacher writes a devastatingly honest letter that can never be posted. The letter that can't be sent to your pupils' parents is published here: "I'm part of the this system. And I had to confess"

I only teach your daughter one subject, RE, which she is forced to do and she isn't terribly interested in it. I see her once a week for 50 minutes. As there are 30 other students in the class this means that, if I did nothing else all lesson, I could spend about 100 seconds with her as an individual a week. To teach her, to get to know her, to understand her as a young person. But, as you well know, there are some children in her class who demand much more of my time. This inevitably means that some students will be left with nothing. Unfortunately, that applies to your child. I'll be honest, I haven't held a proper conversation with her in weeks.

I teach 400 children. Slightly more, actually, but we'll call it 400. That means your daughter counts for 0.25% of the children I teach. It is difficult for me to honestly and accurately tell you anything about her, so please forgive me if I speak in vague generalities at parents' evening and try to avoid using your daughter's name. I might have forgotten it.

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/may/19/secret-teacher-letter-home

I had to read it three times to be sure it wasn't me!

It is absolutely spot-on. The only gripe I have with it is that it doesn't deal with the divisive issue of the Exam Board's guided hours. For R.S. the guided hours are between 120 and 140 hours, as with all other Humanities subjects. However, in my experience History and Geography get well over the upper limit while R.S. - consigned to 1 lesson a week  -gets considerably less. It is at this point that managers tend to put emphasis on the word "guided", as if teaching well below the minimum is O.K and you are still expected to get the grades, while the teacher puts emphasis on 120-140, as in our teaching time should be somewhere between the two.

Theistic Evolution: a reflection for Compline

²⁴ And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. ²⁵ God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

(Genesis Chapter 1)

Given the fact of human evolution, here is a good question for a quiet Sunday evening: if we last shared a common ancestor with the chimps between 5-6 million years ago, and humans have been gradually emerging through a series of hominid intermediates ever since, then why did Jesus die? The connection of thought here might not be immediately apparent. But behind the question lies about 1,600 years or more of church history.

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, the most commanding intellect of all the early leaders of the Church, whose influence, both brilliant and perverse, continues to the present day, is an informative place to start. Augustine believed that the Adam and Eve of the Genesis text were the progenitors of all humankind. When they disobeyed God and were cast out of the Garden of Eden, their sin was then inherited by all succeeding generations: the doctrine of "original sin". Their disobedience became known as the "Fall" (a worked theology not found in the Bible) and Augustine's doctrine of original sin was soon ratified by successive church councils, the Council of Carthage in 418 declaring that human mortality was a consequence of the Fall. The focus of Christ's death on the cross – the Atonement – then became Christ's sacrifice for the sin of Adam, whose disobedience had led to the consequent physical death of all humanity.

If the Augustinian account is correct, then there is clear incompatibility with evolution, in which anatomically modern humans first start appearing in Africa about 200,000 years ago through a process involving countless deaths over thousands of generations.

 So do we then just shrug our shoulders and say "well so much the worse for theology – science wins in the end"? Surprisingly, perhaps, not: nearly 1,500 years before Darwin, Saint Gregory of Nyssa (331-396) taught that the Creation was potential - that God imparted to matter its fundamental laws and properties, but that the objects and completed forms of the Universe then developed gradually, under their own steam, out of primordial chaos: a long way away from the traditional Creation Story of Genesis.

St Gregory, it would seem, is the father of Theistic Evolution, a term that refers to that part of the overall range of beliefs about creation and evolution which sees God creating through evolution: a view generally accepted by the major churches, including the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church and most mainline Protestant churches outside of the United States. American Creationists are not just arguing against an atheistic understanding of the process of evolution but, more generally, against the very possibility of evolution itself. For them, the pre-human world is no older than six literal days. The Earth is incapable of evolutionary development, even in response to a call from the Creator.

The tradition of interpreting the early chapters of Genesis figuratively – as a theological essay, not as science – goes back to two great thinkers from Alexandria: the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo, and the third-century church father Origen. In 248 Origen wrote that Genesis references to Adam are "not so much of one particular individual as of the whole human race". Figurative understandings of the Genesis text have been part of mainstream theology ever since. The literalist viewpoint is a recent phenomonen.

The first mention of Adam in Genesis 1.26-27 is clearly referring to humankind and the definite article in front of Adam in chapters 2 and 3 – "the man" – suggests a representative man, because in Hebrew the definite article is not used for personal names. Eve then becomes the representative woman.

The Genesis narrative tells the story of humankind going their way rather than God's way. On the day that Adam and Eve sin, they do not drop dead but proceed to have a big family, but now alienated from friendship with God in such a way  as to cause spiritual death. Nowhere does the Bible teach that physical death originates with the sin of Adam, nor that sin is inherited from Adam, as Augustine maintained. But the New Testament does teach that humankind stays true to type – all people sin by their own free will – and Christ dies for the sins of all. Christ is the second Adam who opens up the way back to friendship with God through his sacrifice for sin on the cross. The result is the "at-one-ment" that the first Adam – Everyman – is unable to accomplish by his own efforts.

Evolution's gift is a complex brain that endows humanity with free will, enabling personal moral responsibilities towards our neighbour and towards God. We are not puppets. God's gift is forgiveness and new life through Christ for those who realise how far we've fallen from using that free will responsibly.

The pupils have have spoken. I'm just not sure what they said.

In our ongoing cycle of management imposed self-improvement we have reached the stage in the school year when we are encouraged to seek pupil feedback. Someone has found a template evaluation sheet which has been adapted for each subject area. Mine is Religious Studies. The first thing I did was to remove the word "boring" from the list of possible responses: the form was clearly not designed by a teacher. Every child believes every subject is boring: it is a Pavlovian response.

I was gratified to discover that the vast majority of my students believe that I explain things clearly, that I am exciting and interesting to listen to, that my work is well presented and organised, that I am enthusiastic about my subject and that my lesson objectives are clear. There are two questions on the evaluation sheet which have elicited some interesting responses however.

• What should the teacher do less of?
• What should the teacher do more of?

Predictably some of my more disaffected students have answered for the first question:

• Religion
• God
• Writing - or in one case," writting".
• Homework
• Worksheets: (I don't use worksheets so I wonder where that one has been in his head in my lessons ).
• Copying from text books: (I tend not to use text books either).

When it came to considering what I should do more of, some pupils clearly saw this as a more general wish-list.

• Sing
• Dance
• Dress as a polar bear
• Paint yourself green and pretend to be a brocolli.
• Striptease.
• Kill .......... (insert name of child who has been getting on your nerves.)
• French

My lessons from now on will be very interesting.