There are times when the only response is prayer.

God of love,  

We thank you for the life of The Queen, 

for her service to our nation, 

and for her faith in you. 

Be close to all of us who mourn, 

that we may we find comfort and hope in your love, 

through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Amen. 

Everlasting God, we pray for our new King. 

Bless his reign and the life of our nation. 

Help us to work together 

so that truth and justice, harmony and fairness 

flourish among us; 

through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Amen. 

I am writing this reflection on 31^st August, the anniversary of the death of John Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress. I have a Victorian copy of this book, which somehow came from Mum’s side of the family on the Brown Clee. Needless to say, I’ve never read the book in its entirety, although when at school I used it for an essay on John Bunyan and I have dipped into it. The pilgrim is a man called Christian, who weighed down by his own sense of sin, embarks on a journey to the Celestial City which he believes will be the key to his salvation. In the journey he meets both friends and enemies, places of danger and encouragement. He barely makes it alive through the Slough of Despair; at Vanity Fair he rejects sensual pleasures. 

Bunyan was a Puritan, a Christian who took very seriously the issue of sin and personal salvation. It is a living tradition, although not one I personally find often speaks to me. However, I can recognise many of the emotions and experiences that Bunyan turned into his fictional places; I have been in the Slough of Despond, I have visited Vanity Fair and most fundamentally, I have struggled with faith and the apparent absence of God, which Bunyan equates to the result of sin. You do not have to buy into Bunyan’s theology to recognise what he is talking about; the personal spiritual desert where you cast around for any support. Bunyan’s message is fundamentally that this is part of life; our pilgrimage is to pass through it, in the knowledge that God is both our path and our destination. 

Some of you may already know the above phrase; it was coined by Dame Deborah James, the school teacher who has recently died from bowel cancer, but in her manner of death shown us how to live. Knowing full well she was going to die, Dame Deborah decided to live to the full, to raise awareness of bowel cancer, to raise funds for research into it and simply to enjoy life  in the face of death. 

I was somewhat surprised to find out the Dame Deborah had opted for a church funeral; not the choice of the majority these days. Then I discovered she had been a head teacher at a Roman Catholic school. My understanding is that she found faith hard after her diagnosis; she was perhaps angry with God for what was happening to her. Jesus wasn’t exactly pleased when he prayed to his Father immediately before he was arrested and sentenced to be crucified. But the phrase “rebellious hope” seems to me to straight from the Judeo-Christian tradition; it describes the Old Testament prophets who dared to hope that God was still with his people in the face of disaster, it describes the attitude of the New Testament Christians who proclaimed their faith in the face of persecution and it also seems very appropriate to describe the message of Jesus himself, who accepted death to bring life. It is a phrase for anyone who dares to hope when life is at its most grim; for those who believe that the Kingdom of God is present in our broken world. 

I was at university when Salman Rushdie published “The Satanic Verses”. I never read it; I had glanced at copy of his first book, decided it was not for me and so I certainly was not going to bother with something even obscurer. Then of course came the uproar; the outrageous incitement to murder issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the book burnings and the years of hiding by Rushdie himself. But I also knew that blasphemy was not just a Muslim concept; until 2008, blasphemous libel was a criminal offence in this country and had been used by Christians. 

Blasphemy can be considered as the act of making offensive and outrageous claims against God. It can cover a host of actions, from a mild invocation of the name of the deity during moments of stress to an deliberate attempt to offend and provoke. Some can be deeply upset when their beliefs are subject to ridicule and I would argue that we have a duty of care with our words not to gratuitously cause offence. But sometimes satire and irony are legitimate forms of debate, as a way of challenging and testing ideas. As a Christian, when I read that a particular journalist “has no time for religion”, my reaction is often to read more to spot the flaws in his or her argument, certainly not to retreat into outrage and offence.  

Blasphemy is dangerous as it can raise particularly strong emotions; it is easy to imagine that God is on our side, we are engaged in a holy war against the blasphemer. The words of Jesus are particularly pertinent; his call to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us. His example is even more relevant; he was condemned to death for blasphemy by the religious authorities who were so sure that they were acting on behalf of God. How little did they know! Jesus’s response to those who killed him should surely be the basis of our response to those who offend us; “Father, forgive, they know not what they do”. 

This week I was at the bedside of my father as his life came peacefully to an end after 95 years. Death, loss, is never easy to deal with but I felt it was the right time for Dad to go and his ending was as good as I could have wanted. I am sometimes asked (or told!)  if having religious faith helps me to cope with death, particularly of those closest to me. I think by this people mean that I have a hope that I will be reunited with Mum and Dad, my grandparents and others once I am dead. The truthful answer is rather more complicated. A few years ago, a book was published called “Heaven is real”, based on someone’s near death experience when this individual became convinced that in Heaven a detached house with a car in the drive awaited the deceased, along with his/her relatives awaiting. To be honest, this picture of Middle-America suburbia sounds to me more like a vision of hell. The classic Christain picture is that after death, the deceased sleep until everyone is resurrected in a one-off event. I can buy more into this picture, but I am also reminded of the words of the head of Cuddesdon College, Bishop Humphrey Southern, who when I was training to be a vicar once observed that in his opinion, most theology is pious speculation. He was speaking tongue in cheek, but he was making a serious point. The General Resurrection has some truth in it, but I would not want to push it too far. What I think really gets closest to the truth are the words of a great American Old Testament Scholar called Walter Bruggermann, a man in his 90s, who was asked what he thought would happen when he died. He replied that in words to the effect that he neither knew nor cared about the details; for him it was enough that the God of Life prevails, even in the face of human death. As St Paul put it almost 2000 years ago, there is nothing that can cut us off from the love of God, not even death. Rest in peace Dad, and rise in Glory. 

In the light of the driest July on record, this is a poem composed in 2020 by the Rev Malcolm Guite, as part of a collaboration with the composer Rhiannon Randle. It references Isaiah 51;17-10 and Mark 13:32-42, but the words speak for themselves. 

Our burning world is turning in despair, 

I hear her seething, sighing through the air: 

‘Oh rouse yourself, this is your wake up call 

For your pollution forms my funeral pall 

My last ice lapses, slips into the sea, 

Will you unfreeze your tears and weep from me? 

Or are you sleeping still, taking your rest? 

The hour has come, that puts you to the test, 

Wake up to change at last, and change for good, 

Repent, return, re-plant the sacred wood. 

You are my children, I too am God’s child, 

And we have both together been defiled, 

But God hangs with us, on the hallowed tree 

That we might both be rescued, both be free.’ 

Queues at airports and the ports, train strikes and locally, trying to work out which roads are still open; travel at the moment is not easy. For most of us, the journey is little more than an irritation; we travel simply to arrive at our destination. But there is another way, where the journey itself is more significant than the destination; this is pilgrimage. To go on a pilgrimage is a spiritual exercise, the journey is a way of travelling deeper into ourselves. Pilgrimage is open to anyone who is wants to explore their own spirituality, whatever they might call that. Abdul Rashid, the England cricketer, has recently been talking about the Haj, his pilgrimage to Mecca. Undertaking this once in a life is considered a duty for a pious Muslim and it is clear it has had significant benefits for Abdul. He has spoken to his team-mates about how it has taught him patience, self-discipline and gratitude; all important attributes for a professional sportsman. Of course, there are other ways of learning these, but I suspect the experience of the pilgrimage will stay with Abdul and will have changed him.  

Billingsley Church is part of the “Small Pilgrim Places” network, but all of our churches are places where anyone can go to pause and reflect. There are many other places around us that also have this spiritual quality. And perhaps, if going to one of these, you get stuck behind a tractor or at traffic lights, that is also an opportunity to accept the delay and live in the moment, on your pilgrimage.