Vestments - To Wear or Not to Wear, That is the Question!

Vestments – To Wear or Not to Wear, That is the Question

Until I went to study at Wesley Study Centre (WSC) I had never given the question of what a Presbyter should wear when leading worship serious consideration.  I had never thought about what I would wear when I started serving in Circuit as a Probationer Presbyter, partly because there seemed to me to be far more important things to think about!

To understand this you have to understand my Christian background.  I grew up, and spent most of my life worshipping in, a Methodist Church where vestments were not really worn.  The first minister I remember just wore a dark suit and clerical shirt when he took services, irrespective of the type of service.  His successor wore a black cassock with a plain black gown and preaching bands.  The next minister of the church wore what I now know to be a cassock alb; but was roundly mocked by some of the congregation for wearing what they all called ‘a monks robe’.  All the subsequent ministers wore suits and clerical shirts, without bands!

Despite a brief flirtation with Anglo-Catholicism when I was at Leeds University I naturally assumed that if I became a Probationer Presbyter I would wear a suit and black clerical shirt when taking church services.

Just before I left for WSC I was given a black gown, but couldn’t really foresee when I would actually wear it.

I was bemused at college, where Student Ministers from WSC studied and worshipped alongside Anglican Ordinands from Cranmer Hall, by the excitement of Anglican friends whenever one of the vestment companies visited college.  They would swarm over the cassocks and cassock albs with great enthusiasm, trying them on and adding various other bits and pieces, the names of which I can’t remember.  Some of them would even buy cassocks and wear them when leading morning or evening prayer or would don cassock albs for serving at Holy Communion services.  It all seemed to be very over the top and unnecessary to me.

The only thing that tempted me doesn’t come under the heading of vestments at all; and that was one of those marvelous Anglican cloaks that make the wearer, depending on height, look like either a hobbit or Count Dracula.  I will be getting one of those!

    

When I arrived in Circuit to start as a Probationer Presbyter I discovered that my predecessor had worn a cassock and stole for every service.  I decided they’d soon get used to the change and turned up for my first few Sundays at my largest church in a suit and black clerical shirt.  This seemed fine and I received no adverse comments.

Along came Remembrance Sunday and the service at the village War Memorial is one which is shared between the Methodists and Anglicans.  The British Legion came to see me about the public act of worship and made it clear they expected me to wear a cassock and were quite upset when I told them I didn’t have one. They looked happier when I said I’d compromise and wear the black robe.

I have subsequently worn that robe for every service of Holy Communion I have taken at my largest church and for every funeral service.  Comments receive indicate to me that it is much appreciated.  I don’t wear it at the three smaller chapels I serve because they have made it quite clear to me that they don’t like vestments of any kind; probably because they we all Primitive Methodists.  One of my Circuit colleagues who turned up in a cassock alb to preside at Communion was roundly and firmly told it was not acceptable to them!

I have another year as a Probationer Presbyter before, God (and the District Probationers Committee) willing, I will be ordained.  I have been doing a lot of thinking about vestments lately and wondered if I should, after all, consider whether or not to purchase and wear a cassock and/or cassock alb.  If I suddenly started wearing either now, after a year, it would look and seem odd, but ordination marks a natural moment for the change, if it is to be made.

I have already decided that after ordination I will start wearing preaching bands; and different coloured stoles to mark the liturgical seasons, but I’m still trying to decide if I should go all the way and wear a cassock and/or cassock alb at my largest church.

There are a number of considerations involved, not least of which is the fact that my wife really does object to me wearing what she calls ‘a dress’.  Is this a subject where I have to consider her opinion and feelings or do I lay them to one side if I feel it is right for me to wear a cassock or cassock alb?

A second consideration is why I would want to wear either a cassock or cassock alb.  It is certainly not for reasons of personal vanity or to try and set myself apart as something special.  That’s the last thing I want!  To my mind I think it is about, to a certain extent, subsuming my personality as identity so that I’m not so much seen as ‘Rick’ when I’m preaching or presiding at one of the sacraments, but as a Presbyter who is serving God as faithfully as I can and not doing so for any personal gain or glory.   I also think that appropriate vestments can add to the dignity of the worship of God, something lacking in some churches today.

This is something I’m still very much wrestling with.  Feedback will be very welcome and appreciated.

Christian Festivals - Am I Missing Something?

This is my first blog for a while, prompted by all the Tweets and Facebook statuses from people I know who are currently at Greenbelt and, a couple of weeks ago, from those attending the New Wine camp.  Thinking back, there were also a flurry of them around Easter, from Spring Harvest and ECG.

What promoted me to write entails something of a confession: with the exception of attending Greenbelt once, over 20 years ago, I have never been to a Christian festival, camp or other large event.

I sometimes wonder if I am impoverished as a Christian disciple and Probationer Presbyter in the Methodist Church because I don’t go along to these things.  Are they something I need to experience in order to give my best to the congregations I serve or can I serve just as well without going to them?

As I said, I did go to Greenbelt once, in the mid-1980s.  My main memories are that Cliff Richard was headlining and was far, far better than I thought he’d be; that the toilets (wooden benches with holes in them suspended over a deep pit) were probably the most disgusting thing I had ever encountered and that I was awfully glad to be sleeping in a caravan when the rain came down.  I came away from Greenbelt, despite my high expectations, feeling no different than when I’d arrived.  I certainly didn’t encounter God in any new or profound way.

And yet I keep on hearing about how great these festivals and big Christian gatherings are.  I hear from friends who have been to New Wine saying that their lives and ministries are transformed, friends who go back year after year.  I am told that I must go to the Keswick Convention to hear the solid evangelical preaching and be inspired.  I have friends who rave about Greenbelt and go back year after year after year.  Am I missing out on something?

Other friends tell me that I really don’t need to waste time and money attending the festivals and that there are much more cost effective ways of hearing some of the top Christian speakers and musicians they attract.  And it doesn’t involve sleeping in a tent, queuing for showers and questionable toilet facilities.

There is something spiritually uplifting about getting together with large numbers of brothers and sisters in Christ to celebrate our faith; there is the chance to be spiritually fed and uplifted in these big events that the smaller ones cannot provide: but will they make significant positive differences to my Christian walk and ministry?

I honestly don’t know.

What do you think?

Justice for the Poor and Oppressed!

There is an old Chinese story about a scorpion who needs a lift across a river.  He asks a frog to take him, but the frog refuses saying, “No, you will sting me and I will die.”  The scorpion persuades the frog saying, “If I sting you we will drown and I will die!  I will not sting you.”  The frog agrees to take the scorpion across the river, but halfway across the scorpion, true to its nature, stings the frog and they both die.”  It cannot help acting according to its nature!

This makes me think of the government, big business and the wealthy.  Both the current coalition government and the previous New Labour government have tried to justify tax breaks for big business and the wealthy by suggesting that in the end this will benefit the poor and needy in our society because the wealth generated will benefit all.  Thus tax breaks and other financial benefits are accorded to the wealthy whilst the poor and disadvantaged have their benefits savagely cut, because in the end all will benefit.

In fact this will not be the case.  The wealthy, with maybe a few exceptions, will continue to increase their wealth and hoard their riches whilst those on and below the poverty line continue to suffer deprivation and injustice; because big business and the wealthy are acting according to their nature.

Part of me despairs that there will ever be justice for the poor and needy and an equitable distribution of the world’s resources because none of the political parties in our country seem to really care about a truly just society.

Part of me hopes because I believe in a God who is the friend of those in need.  As he said through the prophet Amos: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent.  They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.  They trample on the heads of the poor and on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.” (Amos 2:6-7)

Please join me in praying to God for relief for the poor in our nation and world and in doing all we personally can to bring justice and practical for those in need .

The Assurance of Eternal Life

Please read John 10: 22-30

Most people I know enjoy a celebration.  We are in the midst of a Christian celebration at the moment as we continue to celebrate Easter, as we give thanks for the resurrection of Jesus.  We like to celebrate birthdays, wedding anniversaries and a whole host of other things.  It is not all that long ago that we celebrated Christmas.  We celebrate by worshiping, by giving thanks, by singing and dancing and feasting and enjoying the company of others!  A celebration is a time of great joy.

Our passage opens at a time of celebration, what was then called the Festival of Dedication but is better known today as The Festival of Lights or Hanukkah.  It was and is a time of thanksgiving.  It took place and takes place in December, very near to our own Christmas celebrations and is just as joyful.

Jesus had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival, a man who threw his whole heart, soul and being into thanksgiving. That is probably why he had come to the Temple, to Solomon’s Porch.  Instead of being able to worship he was surrounded by a crowd of Jews who challenged him, “How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

Why did they ask this question?  Did they genuinely want to know, or was it yet another attempt to trick Jesus?  Both are possible!  They may have genuinely wanted to know if Jesus was the Messiah.  If that was the case they would have been expecting a warrior who would use force to free the Jews from Roman rule and establish by might God’s kingdom on earth.  This, as we know, is not the kind of Messiah that Jesus was.  They may have been trying to trick Jesus into making a statement that could be twisted either into a charge of blasphemy in their own courts or a charge of insurrection to bring to the Roman Governor.  Either way Jesus could not answer them directly.

Jesus answer is that he has actually told them who he is, not directly by proclaiming, “I am the Messiah, the Son of God!” but by the things he had done and said.

Jesus said, “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me.”  Whilst Jesus consistently refused requests that he do a miracle upon demand to prove his authority from God, he points towards the signs he has given, like turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, feeding at least five thousand people and healing the blind, as proof that he does indeed carry the authority of God.  As William Barclay wrote, “every one of his miracles was a claim which shouted out that the age of God had dawned, that the Messiah had come.”

Jesus’ words, too, pointed towards his identity.  Moses had promised that “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.”  In Jesus’ time this was seen a Messianic prophecy.  In Mark’s gospel we read that the people said, “What is this?  A new teaching – with authority.”  Again, as Barclay writes, “The very accent of authority with which Jesus spoke, the way in which he regally abrogated the old law and put his own teaching in its place, was a claim that God was speaking in him, that in him the incarnate voice had come.”

Jesus then tells them very directly, “You do not believe me, because you do not belong to my sheep.”  By being determined to oppose Jesus because he didn’t fit their idea of what the Messiah should be, because his words and deeds challenged the traditional religion they had always followed; they could not hear the truth of Jesus’ words and deeds.

How many people is that true of today?  Jesus’ words and deeds are still so challenging in the 21^st century that many, many people still refuse to hear or understand them.  Even those in the church try to water those words and deeds down, to make Jesus less that he truly is.  They try to claim that Jesus was just a great spiritual teacher, or the greatest prophet or even the man who was closer to God than any human has ever been, but not God incarnate, fully human and fully divine.  Yet if we are true disciples of Jesus we will hear his voice and recognise his authority, the authority of the man who is God.

As Jesus goes on to assure us, there is great reward in being one of his sheep, in being a disciple of Jesus: that reward is eternal life and it is a reward that can never be taken away from us.

Jesus said, “I give them eternal life and they will never perish.”  Each one of us who hears Jesus’ voice, who follows our Good Shepherd, has received the gift of eternal life.  It is not something we get in the future, we have eternal life right now, here, today.  We can have the absolute assurance that we “will never perish!”  Yes, we will have to pass through death, but we can be absolutely assured that death is not the end but the beginning, it is just a passing from this life into the glory of everlasting indestructible life: an existence so wonderful that we truly cannot begin to even imagine it.

This eternal life that has been given to us can never be taken away from us.  As Jesus said, “No one will snatch them out of my hand.  What my Father has given me is greater than all else and no-one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.”  The Apostle Paul gave a similar assurance in his letter to the Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Sometimes Christians wonder if they have done something so bad that God cannot forgive them; that they have somehow given up their gift of eternal life.  This passage assures us that this can never be the case.  Once we belong to Jesus nothing and nobody can every take us away from him because his power is the very power of God the Father.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Nobody can snatch us out of the hand of Jesus.  If Jesus is our Lord we are his forever, we have eternal life now and it can never be taken from us.

 
This does not mean that we will never know times of struggle and temptation.  This does not mean that we will never know times of trouble, hardship or even persecution.  Those who preach that once we become Christians all will be well, that we will have trouble free lives filled with material prosperity are preaching a false gospel.  Jesus himself promised us only suffering in this life when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  That is not to say that we will only experience suffering as Christians, but it is saying that being Christian does not protect us from suffering and may indeed bring it upon us.  But we can be sure, from our passage this morning; that any time we suffer Jesus is with us, helping us, supporting us and strengthening us and that nothing can ever tear us away from him!  Even if we think we have been pulled away from Jesus we have not, he is still with us and all we need to do is remember that.