As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

The prayers we shared of confession and for others were from the SeasonsFUSION material, and used the language of this story. Our opening prayer of praise was Nathan Nettleton’s rewritten Psalm 98 – with percussion. We paused at the point where creation makes a loud noise and – made a loud noise!

Being mother’s day, we heard a story about how mums are fantastic, and thought about how our mums are fantastic with hugs and good food, phone calls and gardening and more good food!

Our prayer for mothers was written by a friend of mine, Lynne Taylor, and spoken by two of our teenagers.

The young ones and adults separated for our various activities, the children to decorate cupcakes for their mums with Judith, the teenagers to talk God and life with Jim, and the adults to ponder love and fear, mutuality, and abiding in the love of God. (Read the reflection here: reflection 13 May S Agnew)

We came together again for communion, and as always, the kids were delighted to be part of serving bread and wine (we had an interesting conversation before worship about why grape juice and not actually wine, because at the Anglican school some of the kids attend, they have wine …) and collecting the cups.

I decided to send us out from the communion table – we gather in a circle around the table to receive the elements – rather than return to our seats to sing again (being mother’s day, and a longer service with communion, many would be wanting to get off to family gatherings in good time). So we heard a song ‘We need more love’ – and some of us danced to its groovy beat!

When we love, God abides in us. God and us and others are together in our vulnerability, together holding each other safe.

There are only two feelings, …

There are only two languages, …

two actions …

two motives, …  two results,

Love and fear,

Love and fear. (Michael Leunig, ‘Love and fear)

Those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. God’s love casts out fear. Jesus says: Abide in me. Abide in my Love.  Amen.

Here is a photographic & poetic engagement with this story: Abide in Love – Mark Hewitt. 

A couple of weeks ago, about half of our congregation went away together for the weekend, to Douglas Scrub, McLaren Flat. A beautiful, untouched wilderness on our doorstep – or just enough off our doorstep to feel as though we did ‘get away’.

It’s been a while since the Belair Uniting Family went on camp together, and the reinstating of the tradition is due to the enthusiasm of Mairi, one of our young folk.

Friday night, we gathered, stoked up the wood fire, played a few games to warm up and shake off the cares of the week.

As we shared supper, cradling hot mugs, I watched the conversations and felt as though the members of an extended family had gathered for a weekend away.

Saturday we all spent the morning on a bush walk, stopping to observe native plants, parasites and weeds, learning their names, listening to the birds – even seeing a black cockatoo (the first time for many), and a rescued orphan wallaby, and taking up the challenge of the adventure course.

Stopping for morning tea and lunch during the rest of the day, we then spent the late morning and the afternoon sharing together some of our gifts and interests – with a conversation about science and God, craft, life drawing, and a soccer match that saw some specky tumbles, and an injury to the minister … ouch. And the kids kept disappearing to rehearse their ‘items’ for the talent show scheduled for the evening!

Dinner was a shared affair, all of us having brought something to contribute, and the kitchen was a flurry of activity as meals were cooked and reheated, tables set, and recipes compared. In the midst of our joy, we paused to acknowledge the sadness felt by some of our members at the passing of a dear friend who had at last lost his battle with cancer. This community has a remarkable ability to sit in the often uncomfortable space of juxtaposition – joy and sorrow – that is the experience of life. What a gift to each other this is.

The talent show included music, dance, poetry, a visit from cookie monster and a very clever quiz. We are a multi-talented bunch of people! 

Sunday morning saw a scavenger hunt for the elements of worship – three groups explored the images of shepherd, wolf and sheep of one of the sayings of Jesus, and shaped prayers around these images and their responses to them. After morning tea, we brought our responses and prayers to a campfire place (though we didn’t light the fire), our musicians having rehearsed a couple of songs – we offered our thanks for the time we had together, and offered our prayers from our scavenger hunt and small group reflections.

Lunch, packing up and cleaning, and one by one, the cars drove away from Douglas Scrub, with plans already beginning to be hatched for the next Family Camp – next year!

I had been wondering if our conversations were rising to the surface level in recent times, but this evening, without really asking any obvious ‘big questions’, we wove our conversation around to deep places – not necessarily hard questions or difficult issues, but tonight the joyful depths of human experience, and I wanted to share some of our wondering, spirited conversation here.

At first we spent a fair bit of time getting to know each other, sharing our stories, enquiring of each other’s stories, which was important as we had new friends and returning travellers among us. As we heard each others’ stories, we discovered ways our stories have intersected, or nearly, connections we have through people we know.

As conversations wove around, we got onto some questions – I posed one that has been kicking around for me lately: does a poor attitude diminish a gift? someone had offered help recently, but done so from a position of arrogant assumption that his way was the right way, that what I had was broken and needed fixing, and he had the answer. the manner of the offer caused me to consider declining the help – how often do we foist ourselves and our ‘answer’ on others, without taking the time to hear their point of view, to discover if the question we think we see does in fact exist?

We talked a lot about language throughout the evening: its limits (when we are in a country speaking another language in which we are less than fully fluent, and we find different, somewhat odd ways to describe a mosquito bite, or feel childish in our expression, or exaggerated in our gestures and emotions in a desperate attempt to communicate and be understood); the way language is suggestive, has power over us (a letter from a doctor containing a diagnosis of anger management issues causing anger management issues before opening the second letter informing us of a mis-diagnosis) – then about how people in authority seem to have power over us, so that we will obey, even when we know the command, if followed, will lead to harm to us or another; the formality & familiarity expressed in language, done so differently in different languages; the way we can get to know another and communicate, even – profoundly – without spoken words.

We talked about art, theatre mostly, and books – about story, the stories that have moved us, challenged us, inspired us – Shakespeare, Ayckbourn, Ibsen, fantasy writers, feminine heroes (and a little about feminism or post-feminism …) … plays in the outdoor theatres using the environment to help tell the story … and, inevitably, Harry Potter (note to self: go look up Pottermore website).

So without really posing any ‘big questions’, tonight’s conversations were indeed spirited, touching on the things we hold most sacred – and even occasionally the Sacred Story of Christian spirituality (and whether we call ourselves Christian, followers of Christ, or people of Christian spirituality, for there is so much baggage associated with labels of Christian that we want to create some distance, which followed on from our discussion of feminism, which becomes so radical that we forget that the root meaning of feminism is those who believe in the equality of women with men, and want to distance ourselves from more militant men-hating feminists who swing with the pendulum to a contrasting extreme so that we, the generations to follow, have the opportunity to find a place of balance and equality).

If you are 18 – 30 ish and would like to participate in such spirited conversation that is informed by the Christian narrative, but not dominated by it, that invites questions and promises no answers, we welcome you.

(If you’re in a different age bracket, and are interested in gathering for such open, wondering, exploring spirited conversation, contact me too – if there’s enough interest, we can investigate a second gathering)

Contact me (Sarah) – 0408 087 754 | sarahagnew@adam.com.au

Most of our gatherings were shaped by the worship outlines in Seasons of the Spirit, for which I was especially grateful in a very busy lead up to Easter.

I would like to put here the reflection (Easter Day reflection 2012) I offered on Sunday morning, exploring the questions we sometimes want to ask of this story, and finding the story posing questions to us – may you live with the questions in all their disturbing, inviting wonder, this Easter season.

responding with creativity and song

singing Halle Halle Halle, with some of the musicians joining the procession, and the children waving branches, others in the congregation throwing towels and flowers and streamers in the aisle, we began our gathered worship in the spirit of joyful celebration that the story says surrounded Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem.

but Palm Sunday isn’t just a story of joy, it is also the first day of the last week of Jesus’ life, a week whose stories are also of love, anger, anxiety, fear, hatred, persecution, loss, sorrow, and grief. So we entered the stories with all their complexity, starting with joy, and also embracing the love and the anger, sadness, and fear.

as a prelude, we heard a bit about KCO, with photos and a song, certificates welcoming new campers, and celebrating one camper’s last year as she moves up to SAYCO.

the theme of wonder of the last few years of KCO became our theme today, as we then heard the story of Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem on an unridden colt (Matthew 1:1-11), and wondered – was it dusty or had it just rained, were the disciples embarrassed?, were there many children around … then we took time to engage in conversation exploring those questions, or to colour mandalas, reflect on songs or poems, or make palm branches.

telling the story

as part of our prayers of confession, we wrote on ‘confetti’ what we wanted to say sorry for, and threw that into the path / at the feet of Jesus.

our next story was the story of the woman anointing Jesus at a dinner, and Judas’ realisation that Jesus was not the king he was expecting. We wondered how many obstacles the woman had to overcome to get there, whether Jesus might have been embarrassed or uncomfortable, what motivated the woman, and what changed for the woman after that moment.

the song from Iona, don’t be afraid, was a refrain throughout these stories.

palms, prayers and creativity laid at the foot of the cross

our final story was of Jesus seeking figs from a tree out of season and getting angry at it, then returning to the Temple and throwing out all those selling and buying animals for ritual sacrifices, and the chief priests and the scribes plotting to kill Jesus: we wondered if the people set up their tables again after Jesus left, whether Jesus was angry or sad, whether Jesus’ actions made people afraid of him.

our prayers for others were prayers for those who are still excluded by unjust systems, even systems like the traders in the Temple who sold animals for sacrifices required by the Jewish religion, established for good reasons, but no longer fulfilling their goals faithfully; again, written on confetti and thrown at Jesus’ feet, while we sang another Iona song, Jesus Christ is waiting, which seemed to carry a lot of the emotions of Holy week in its verses.

then we brought our offerings, our responses of money and creativity and ourselves, to the foot of the cross (we have a cross hanging in the front of the church, and I’d pushed the communion table right up to it today) – we gathered here as I spoke a blessing shared by Steve Taylor on his blog this week:

Jesus, when you rode into Jerusalem

the people waved palms

with shouts of acclamation

here I extinguished the candle

Grant that when the shouting dies

we may still walk beside you even to a cross …

our gathering was also shaped by the Seasons of the Spirit FUSION materials.

our opening prayers were from Bruce Prewer, then with the help of the children we reflected on an image from Seasons, ‘Cap Stump’, by Zach Pine. It is a photograph of a eucalyptus tree stump with eucalyptus flower caps arranged in a pattern. we reflected on how life is a lit like that image – a bit grey and cracked and broken and lifeless, but also colourful and beautiful and joyful and life-giving. I had a go at drawing yesterday, and had a ‘tree stump’ for us to write in its rings the stuff that makes our days feel a bit cracked and grey; then we had all been given a flower as we arrived, and on those flowers we wrote stuff that livens a day back up again, stuff we are thankful for. the kids arranged the flowers in a pattern on our tree stump, and these became our prayers for each other.

God, life is pretty complicated, with good times and hard times, happiness and sadness.

We want to give to you these prayers that we have written and stuck here, because we know you listen, and you pray with us.

You are sad with us and struggle with us through the hard times in life.

You are happy with us and celebrate the good things in life.

We’re grateful most of all for that, for you being here with us always; and for giving us each other to share the sadness and the happiness, the messiness and the beauty of life.

Help us to see life as whole – hard and fun – and to remember you and each other.

Amen

after the children went to explore their story and make their banner for camp out next weekend, and with the teenagers sat at a card table continuing their creative explorations among us, we reflected on another image, Nicolaes Maes’s ‘Woman at Prayer’ (or ‘Prayer without end’), this and the contemplative prayer of confession were also included in the seasons resources. between the prayer and the words of affirmation, we sang ‘Father of Mercy’ by James Quinn from the English Hymnal (in Together in Song 472).

my reflection (reflection s agnew lent 4 2012), inspired by Psalm 107, John 3, and the Mumford and Sons song ‘Hold onto what you believe’, was framed with the refrain from the latter: hold onto what you believe in the light, when the darkness has robbed you of all your sight. I circled through questions of what is the darkness and what helps us to hold on in the darkness, and the affirmation that God holds on, even if we cannot, or do not … at one point the reflection became like a poem, reflecting on the nature of God’s holding on:

But somehow we manage to hold on, deep within, to what we have known in the light, when this darkness gradually gathers us in, and we remember this God that we once loved.
This God that – and here’s the good news – never stops loving us.
This God that loves us beyond imagination,
loves us to the point of incarnation,
and so the light beckons us,
never stops calling to us,
is not overshadowed by any darkness
we might create or enter or endure
choose light! the call from God echoes
through time and story, through word
and witness,
choose life!

and hold on

hold on to what you know of the light,
in the darkness that circumstance or choice
may bring
hold on to the light within
close your eyes against the darkness
and the fear, and see
with the light of Christ,
see the hope that will help you
to endure the darkness, the wild
untamed blinding night,
and you will find your way
home

and I finished with a rewrite of the verses from Psalm 107:

we turned from God, rejected the light
and endured a darkness of our own making,
with threats, fears and isolation

we turned away what sustains us, songs and prayers
and the presence of God,
we turned away the fullness of life

but we held on to what we had believed in the light,
when this darkness robbed us
of all our sight, and we cried out
from the darkness, we reached out
for the light and found God was here
all along
God held on

now let us thank God for this steadfast love,
for God’s abiding, for the light
that darkness cannot diminish

let us make sacred our songs of joyful praise,
for God’s lovingkindness endures beyond
our enduring, is deeper than our troubles,
and in its breadth gathers us in
from wherever we have roamed, however far
we have strayed from God’s Way

we are redeemed,
we are welcomed back
into the light and into life,
let us give thanks and be glad.

In between these moments, we took time to commission our members into their various callings – children at school – and teenagers and adults continuing education, and their teachers, families and friends who support them; adults finding their vocation, seeking and entering employment, building family life; those who have retired and spend a lot of their time volunteering, and all of us who volunteer; those who are older again, whose bodies are tiring, and whose wisdom and love offer support and encouragement for others, and all of us who pray and support each other.

those four commissioning prayers are included here ( (c) Sarah Agnew). you are welcome to use them in your communities or for personal prayer. please do not reproduce in print without permission.

Commissioning prayers for a new year

the kids, having heard the story of Abraham and Sarah, and God’s promise to make their descendants number more than even the stars, then wrote their names on stars and stuck them high up on the blue wall in the sunday school room. we also wrote the names of others in our community, though we ran out of time to get everyone up there!

this sunday we picked up the theme of call and wilderness for our reflection, and our reflection and prayers were shaped by psalm 19′s celebration of the way creation sings praise to God, and of God’s law that guides us.

may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you …

we considered the idea of ‘acceptable’, and letting go of things we find unacceptable in our lives (attitudes, behaviours), we visualised times when we have heard or felt creation singing and felt our deepest being joining in the song, and we remembered how God’s guiding commands help us find our way in the wilderness … read the reflection here: reflection 11 march 2012

at Belair, we have friends and family who are living and dying with cancer – we prayed together for them, and for us all, and continue to pray for awareness of God’s presence with us all through these difficult times.

We began with ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ as children danced around the people (made possible by being in the hall because of the heat) with rainbow coloured gymnastics ribbons, surrounding us all with the rainbow promise.

When the children and I talked about the story, they told me the story of Noah and knew it well, and we remembered how we feel when we see rainbows in the sky – happy, excited – and thought about other signs and happenings that make us feel happy on ‘cloudy’ days, like a friend smiling, or sharing with us. The children were going to a house down the road to cook us pancakes for morning tea, as part of UnitingCare’s Pancake Day event. We wondered whether as we put the money in the dish to send to UnitingCare to help people poorer than us, we might think about that money sending a rainbow of care and love to those people. The kids drew rainbows on their signs, and ass we counted the money later, one person remarked – that’s a good rainbow!

The reflection focused on the other story, the story of Jesus in the wilderness, as I pondered how it feels to be in the wilderness, the sorts of wildernesses we find ourselves in at different times in our lives, the angels who stand beside us when we are struggling, though there may be nothing more others can do for us but stand beside us, and the rhythm of life that takes us from God’s affirming call on our lives, the struggle associated with the changes that brings about for us, and the moving into confident living out our call to follow God’s Way of Love.

During Lent, we sometimes feel as though we enter a wilderness, because this is a time of reflection on the ways we have turned from God, and a season of turning back, letting go of the things that come between us and  God, simplifying, remembering the poor for whom Jesus came among us.

May your lenten journey be a season of simplicity, of remembrance, of returning into fulness of life with God.

Liz’s opening prayer drew on an experience of a ‘thin place’ on a high mountain in Korea. As part of the prayer, we sang some lines from ‘How Great Thou Art’ unaccompanied. Lovely.

Then the story of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain, appearing to the disciples with Moses and Elijah, and their response – wanting to hold onto the moment, not quite understanding the mystery, transfigured themselves by the appearance of God among them.

Rod shared more of the story of the climb up that hill in Korea – it really was a very long climb – and invited us to think about our ‘thin places’, the places it feels easier to be aware of, close to, God. The Tasmanian mountains, under the gum tree in our back yard, under the stars … there are many places we find ourselves closer to God, touched by the Sacred more deeply and profoundly than ordinarily.

Rod’s reflection began with the story of St Patrick encountering God in the thin place of the Irish fields, then wove through the encounter of the disciples with Jesus on that mountain and our lives – theophanies being less about the event and more about what God says to us through the encounter, and our response. To finish, a challenge: yes, we encounter and listen to God in the thin places, but will we also seek God and listen for God among the poor, the hungry, those who are also seeking Love and Hope?

We sang the song Liz & I introduced earlier, prayed for our elders our world and ourselves, and were sent out into the world with God.

What a joy to share worship with our dear friends Rod and Liz – thank you.