Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Places of God service - 12/02/06
At the request of Ian Mobsby, and in the general interests of making moot services accessible to those that can't get along to actual service, there follows an excerpt from the reflections used on Sunday night's service.
The main focus of the service was to get us thinking about how we can rediscover the presence/influence/goodness of God in our urban context. The following passage specifically explores the paradoxical nature of divine encounter, where words and beliefs are at turns useful and then redundant, and some biblical examples. More blogs will (probably) follow, helping to fill in the blanks for those that couldn't make it.
"We are met in this chapel for the purpose of offering an act of worship to our God. We believe he is present here, now, in this room.
We believe he fills the air we breathe, or somehow lives inside us, in our hearts, and our minds. Through the use of symbols, ritual and liturgy, we come to receive ‘spiritual food’, that will sustain us in the days to come.
Somehow it’s easier to believe that God is present in a place such as this chapel. There’s a sense of the sacred, of otherness, that we don’t experience elsewhere, that helps us to be open to God’s ever-presentness. It follows that it comes less naturally to us, or perhaps as impossible to imagine that God is present with us say, in the bathroom, or the on the platform at the train station, maybe even the idea of this alarms us slightly.
In the first passage just read out (Exodus 24: 9 - 18), Moses meets God in a dark cloud, which has been referred to since as a ‘cloud of unknowing’. We see that paradoxically, Moses sees God, and meets with him, in darkness, in the absence of light and sight. In the second passage(1 Kings 8: 12-27), Solomon acknowledges how incredible it is that God, whom the heavens cannot contain, will take up residence in the temple he built. And yet we know that God chose to do so, and made her presence known on many subsequent occasions, often however under the cover of cloud.
We have all experienced frustrating inconsistencies in our relationship to God. Sometimes we sense his presence, other times he seems further than moon. Sometimes we feel our words for him are apt and fitting, other times we realise that just opening our mouths would be a waste of time.
As we move into a time of meditation, using the everyday places symbolised by the stations around the chapel, we can remember that although our words are inadequate and cannot ever fully contain God or his truth, nor can the symbols and liturgy we use fully open us God, or God to us, he/she still chooses to ‘take up residence’ in and through the human vessles we employ.
Let us now seek to engage with God, whether it be through her presence or absence, whether through silence or words, through knowing or unknowing, through belief or unbelief, certainty or uncertainty."
The main focus of the service was to get us thinking about how we can rediscover the presence/influence/goodness of God in our urban context. The following passage specifically explores the paradoxical nature of divine encounter, where words and beliefs are at turns useful and then redundant, and some biblical examples. More blogs will (probably) follow, helping to fill in the blanks for those that couldn't make it.
"We are met in this chapel for the purpose of offering an act of worship to our God. We believe he is present here, now, in this room.
We believe he fills the air we breathe, or somehow lives inside us, in our hearts, and our minds. Through the use of symbols, ritual and liturgy, we come to receive ‘spiritual food’, that will sustain us in the days to come.
Somehow it’s easier to believe that God is present in a place such as this chapel. There’s a sense of the sacred, of otherness, that we don’t experience elsewhere, that helps us to be open to God’s ever-presentness. It follows that it comes less naturally to us, or perhaps as impossible to imagine that God is present with us say, in the bathroom, or the on the platform at the train station, maybe even the idea of this alarms us slightly.
In the first passage just read out (Exodus 24: 9 - 18), Moses meets God in a dark cloud, which has been referred to since as a ‘cloud of unknowing’. We see that paradoxically, Moses sees God, and meets with him, in darkness, in the absence of light and sight. In the second passage(1 Kings 8: 12-27), Solomon acknowledges how incredible it is that God, whom the heavens cannot contain, will take up residence in the temple he built. And yet we know that God chose to do so, and made her presence known on many subsequent occasions, often however under the cover of cloud.
We have all experienced frustrating inconsistencies in our relationship to God. Sometimes we sense his presence, other times he seems further than moon. Sometimes we feel our words for him are apt and fitting, other times we realise that just opening our mouths would be a waste of time.
As we move into a time of meditation, using the everyday places symbolised by the stations around the chapel, we can remember that although our words are inadequate and cannot ever fully contain God or his truth, nor can the symbols and liturgy we use fully open us God, or God to us, he/she still chooses to ‘take up residence’ in and through the human vessles we employ.
Let us now seek to engage with God, whether it be through her presence or absence, whether through silence or words, through knowing or unknowing, through belief or unbelief, certainty or uncertainty."
