Hope and Pain: An Easter Message

This is a copy of an article I wrote for Seen & Unseen, the online magazine of the Centre for Cultural Witness at Lambeth Palace.

When I felt a twinge in my lower back at the age of 30, little did I know that this would lead to chronic pain for over 20 years and counting. Defined as persistent or recurrent pain that is present for more than three months, chronic pain can lead those of us who battle it to struggle to carry out daily activities or to socialise freely. Research shows that up to 15% of the UK’s population live with pain that is moderately or severely disabling. Whether discal, muscular, arthritic, or related to auto-immune or other conditions, medical researchers inform us that we are facing a silent epidemic of chronic pain in our society.

In the past 20 years, pastoral work has opened my eyes to the fact that those of us who face the ignominy and anguish of chronic pain cannot claim a monopoly on suffering. No stranger to significant hardships himself, psychologist and Auschwitz-survivor Viktor Frankl suggests that all suffering should be taken with utmost seriousness, however brief or minor it proves to be. The “size” of suffering, after all, is relative. It is, he claims, like releasing gas into an empty chamber – it doesn’t matter how much gas is released, it will fill the chamber completely. In other words, it does not matter how great or small our sufferings are, they will always hold the potential to darken our hearts completely.

Suffering and struggle have been particularly marked in our society in recent years, with the twin-tribulation of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis leading to so much grief, illness, depression, loneliness, poverty, and isolation. Some years back, I undertook hydrotherapy at the local hospital. With each patient having endured various injuries, many quite serious, I was struck by the plethora of scars in the pool each week – on backs, shoulders, arms, knees, and ankles. The many years of struggle and pain in that pool was all too visible, but, as I undertook my aquatic exercises, I recall thinking to myself: if we could peer into the souls of those around us, how many more deep-seated scars would we notice? Behind even the brightest smiles and the most cheerful demeanours are the scars of a thousand cuts.

Neither should we fall into the trap of believing suffering merely impacts us as we age. While it is true that there is a correlation between age and bereavement, illness, and disability, the dark hand of suffering is not partisan to age or circumstance. Many children and young people go through all manner of serious trauma and illness, often hidden to those on the outside. Research is showing a sharp rise in chronic pain in young people, for example, while teachers bear testament to the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of so many of their pupils. Moreover, when I was a university chaplain, I saw how deeply young people were affected by incidences and events, even those that, to others, may have seemed trivial. Younger generations are certainly not immune to life’s struggles.

Christians, of course, have always been aware of the philosophical questions surrounding the existence of suffering. The book of Job in the Old Testament details one of the earliest attempts to consider theodicy, while numerous scholars down the ages have grappled with the “problem of pain” (C.S. Lewis) and the question of “where is God when it hurts?” (Philip Yancey). Their musings are well documented and discussed, but, as a Christian with chronic pain, I have become less interested in the “why?” of suffering and more concerned with the “what now?” In other words, I am increasingly interested in how faith responds when confronted with the crippling and dehumanising personal impact of pain, grief, illness, disability, relationship break-ups, depression, loneliness, poverty, or anxiety.

During a particularly acute flare-up of back pain recently, I took short walks around our immediate locality. We live in a concrete jungle – there are houses, streetlights, cars parked down both sides of the road, and vehicles driving up and down, especially at school drop-off time. In my pain, I was struggling to see any hope in the incarceration of a city. Then I noticed something on our road that I’d walked past on many occasions. It was a small, solitary tree, which is about twice my height. For a brief moment it lifted my heart and I thought to myself how wonderful that someone had planted that tree, just to give some greenery to this urban sprawl. But then I noticed that this beautiful little tree had not been planted at all. Rather, it had broken through the hard, unforgiving concrete, desperate to reach up to the sunlight and take in the oxygen in the air. That small tree is, in many ways, an apt metaphor for the Christian response to personal suffering.

From the book of Acts and his letters in the New Testament, it is clear that St Paul had walked the gruelling path of pain and struggle. He faced prejudice, persecution, and prison, not to mention his battle with a personal affliction, which he called a “thorn in my flesh” (2 Cor 12:7). Scholars posit this may have been an illness or a disability, such as blindness. Yet Paul does not allow his letters to become dark, depressing diatribes of fear and hopelessness. Like that tenacious and resilient tree breaking through the harsh concrete, we witness hope and promise shining out of the pages of the epistles. Here was a man who knew suffering, but, through his vivid encounter of the person of Jesus, he had also grasped the profound meaning of hope. When we attend a funeral or a wedding, we will quite often hear uplifting passages of hope and joy written by him. Discussions around the tension in Paul’s epistles between “flesh” and “spirit” are well worn, but, when I read his letters, especially in light of the life and death of Jesus, it is the tension between “suffering” and “hope” that is most conspicuous.

This tension, of course, is not just prevalent in the Christian scriptures. It is hard-wired into the human condition. Just take the years of the pandemic, when people were either isolated, lonely, stressed, and anxious themselves or were journeying alongside others facing illness, grief, worry, and fear. During that period, I was a parish priest and would regularly visit people, standing socially distanced on their doorsteps. Yet, despite suffering seemingly being omnipresent during the pandemic, people did not generally regale me with their miseries. Rather, they wanted to inform me of moments of uplifting hope that had broken through their difficulties – the beauty of nature on their daily walks, the tireless care of the NHS workers, and the joy of meeting with friends and family, on zoom or outside in the garden. They seemed naturally aware that hope and suffering are inextricably linked. This fact is at the heart of our Christian experience – its recognition is one of those things that define Christians as Christian. After all, the very symbol that has come to represent the Christian faith – the cross – is both an emblem of torture and suffering and a symbol of liberation and hope.

Not that opening our eyes to moments of hope, love, and wonder is easy when we are going through difficult times. In the dark moments when my own chronic pain seems overwhelming and utterly debilitating, I am inspired by the words of the former poet laureate Andrew Motion: “I have seen the light – it flickers on and off like a badly-wired lamp”. There will be times when Christians will see God’s light clearly and its beauty and glory will dazzle daily. But there will also be times of doubt, grief, depression, anxiety, and physical pain. During those moments, we can learn to be sustained by the occasional spark of hope that will come to us, even in the very ordinariness and humdrum of our daily lives.

And so, in travelling through life’s dark moments, Christians recognise two powerful realities. One of these has long been championed by preachers and spiritual teachers – it is the presence of a kingdom to come in a heavenly future where there will be no more tears and no more suffering (Revelation 21:4). The other one, though, can speak powerfully into our present predicament – it is the presence of a kingdom all around us now, breaking through the harshness and bleakness of life, like that small tree bursting through hostile concrete. Theologians refer to these two realities as “inaugurated eschatology” and they can also help us to recognise profound moments when transcendent hope breaks into our lives. Opening our eyes to compassion, beauty, wonder, and awe can help us transcend our suffering, which so often seems all pervasive, and can lead us into a strange new world of God’s providence.

So, Christians hold onto the hope of the “not yet”, confident in the hope of life after death. But, as the old Christian Aid advert put it, we also believe in life before death. However dark and long our journey seems, hope is birthed when we take time and space to notice strange and uplifting moments of beauty, grace, and guidance breaking through our daily lives now. In these, Christians find, in the words of theologian Karl Barth, “indications, intimations and parables” of the coming reign of God.

After 20 years of daily struggle, I have made peace with the fact that I am likely to battle chronic pain for the rest of my life. However, I have also come to recognise that hope is not all about smiles, sunshine, and flowers. Hope is often difficult and demanding. It is about delicately holding the joy and challenge of life in a wonderful balance. For the Christian, it’s about both recognising God’s kingdom in the beauty, awe, and wonder of his created world and glimpsing it in our very earthly, wearisome, and draining lives.

But there was also something else about that small, resilient tree that was breaking through the hard and unforgiving concrete. On another walk, a few weeks later, I noticed foliage growing around the base of the tree. In the soil that the broken concrete had revealed were little green, sprouting shoots. Hope had begotten hope. And it is certainly true that the more we open our lives to recognising hope, however brief it may be in our struggles, the more it can inspire us to bring moments of light and comfort to others. And thus we live out, in the words of Karl Barth, so many “little hopes”, and, by doing so, we scatter seeds of new life and resurrection as we go, trusting that God will water them and bring his “hope, faith, and love” (1 Cor. 13:13) to fruition in the world around us.

Sparks of Love: Finding Meaning in Suffering

This is an updated version of an article written for a diocesan website on the second anniversary of the Covid pandemic. Some time has passed since then, but its message of hope and compassion is as relevant as ever.

For so many of us, the pandemic years were beyond difficult. We battled anxiety and worry, faced isolation and loneliness, and were laid down low by illness. And then there were those of us who endured heartbreak, loss, and grief. The pandemic left such devastation and alienation in our lives that it felt as if things would never be the same again. For some, it still feels that way. Reflecting back on that time now, it may seem that finding any hope, let alone meaning, in what we went through seems a futile quest.

The paradox of the Christian faith, though, is that it reassures us that light can be found in any darkness we face in our torn and troubled lives. Christian thinkers down the ages, reflecting on the biblical witness, relate the hope to be found in our pain and tragedy directly to God’s presence. God certainly does not want us to suffer. Our faith teaches us, though, that he does meet us when we do suffer. God is love, and just a spark of that love can powerfully illuminate the darkness through which we journey. In our afflictions he brings hope to us at the most unlikely times. ‘And here in dust and dirt, O here,’ wrote Welsh poet Henry Vaughan, ‘The lilies of His love appear’.

The experience of so many over the pandemic years was that God’s love broke through suffering in two ways in particular. First, it came through the kindness of others. Yes, in the great sacrifices that we witnessed by selfless groups of people, such as those working in hospitals and care homes. But also in the small, caring moments that we experienced ourselves, whether through words of encouragement, unexpected phone calls, or kind deeds. Second, moments of joy, however fleeting, flowed from the gifts that life offered – the gifts of nature, memories, laughter, art, music, friendship, and so on. We all appreciated, more than we ever had, precious moments with our families, uplifting walks in the park or countryside, laughter shared with friends, time spent with our pets, and uplifting worship, whether in a church building or online.

It is in the places where we were touched by God’s love, where we gleaned strength, hope, and meaning in the midst of the pandemic, that we discovered the why in our torn and troubled lives. This is when we witnessed Gerald Manley-Hopkins’s “grandeur of God”, Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s “patterns of grace”, and Philip Yancey’s “rumours of another world”. Through these moments of light and love, God helped us, and still helps us, to forge meaning from the apparent meaningless of our suffering. After all, the journey of the Israelites to the land of milk and honey began by learning how to find and appreciate refreshing water in the desert.

And so, however much it seems that our particular suffering might overwhelm us, recognising those moments of love and light breaking through is an option that all of us are gifted. This is often the only real freedom left to us when we face trials and tribulations. As such, our suffering has not rendered us powerless. Instead, we are free to embrace the life-affirming richness of our existence, even in the midst of seemingly dehumanising suffering.

By recognising this fact, pain can be transformed and suffering can be redeemed. Like the risen Christ, we will always bear the scars of our suffering, the nail-marks of our own struggles, but, in recognising where God’s love is to be found, we can still emerge from the darkness transformed and redeemed. As Rachel Weisz puts it in the film The Fountain (2006): “These times are dark, but every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by the morning light”.

What is the Church in Wales?

This is an updated transcript of a YouTube video that I was asked to write and present to celebrate the centenary of the Anglican Church in Wales in 2020. You can find the video itself at the bottom of the blogpost.

To some people it will seem strange that the Church in Wales was only established around 100 years ago. They’ll look at their local church buildings and say: “the church in our village is way older than that – surely the Church in Wales is an ancient Church?!”

Well, on one hand, they’re right. The Anglican Church in Wales is in the tradition of the ancient Welsh saints and so we have been present for 1500 years, with many of our church buildings being centuries old. But, on the other hand, it’s a bit more complex than that…

After the reformation in the sixteenth century, Wales became the land of the Nonconformist chapels, with their newly-erected buildings and their famous great revivals. The old church buildings that stood across Wales were, at that point, simply an extension of the Church of England. And the chapels resented the fact that the Church of England in Wales had special privileges. This resentment was especially strong because the Church was seen as an English Church.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, through the influence of the Liberal Party led by their charismatic leader David Lloyd George, disestablishment was pushed through parliament and the Church in Wales was formed through a separation from the Church of England.

And so, after 1920 the Church in Wales began to present itself as the ancient, national church reborn; no longer an English Church, but the Church of the people of Wales.

Between the wars the Church gradually became more independent and, at a challenging time for the people of Wales and taking its lead from the Old Testament prophets and the compassion of Jesus, its concern for social justice grew. Then, through World War Two, the Church offered hope and inspiration at a time of fear and suffering and grief.

In 1966, Wales faced one of its darkest days – the Aberfan disaster. Within 24 hours of the catastrophic event which saw the tragic loss of 116 children and 28 adults, Bishop Glyn Simon was at the village, standing alongside villagers in their grief. He even spoke for the nation when he condemned the greed and selfishness which had led to this tragedy.

Also at this time, prominent Church leaders began to be involved in campaigns for Welsh road signs, Welsh language television, and Welsh schools. Likewise, bishops and archbishops were also involved in political disestablishment, and the setting up of a Welsh Government. You could even see a similarity between disestablishment and devolution. Power was moved from England to Wales. Both of them set up a sense of national pride. 

And throughout all this time, the Church continued to give guidance on ethical and social issues – it protested against wars, campaigned for human rights, became a fairtrade church, and championed ecochurches in response to climate change.

Yet is hasn’t all been rosy for the Church in Wales over the past hundred years. By the 1920s people were already starting to question their faith. From the 1960s, there began a sharp fall in membership in the Church in Wales. People were finding other things to do on a Sunday. This was a huge challenge for the Church – how could it exist in a society, and for a society, if its beautiful buildings were being used less and less?

The make-up of church congregations have certainly changed in recent years. The Church has broadened its sense of inclusivity and has widened its notion of cultures, people, groups, and identities. We’ve seen support for asylum seekers and refugees, we’ve witnessed LGBT chaplaincies established. The first women priests were ordained in Wales amidst much joy in 1997. Less than 20 years later, the first woman bishop was consecrated.

By today, the Church is not looking to force people in through doors. It’s looking beyond the walls of its buildings, to go to where people are, reaching out and sharing the love and compassion of Jesus and the hope which comes to us through his cross and resurrection.

And so the Church still does what it has always done – baptisms, weddings, funerals, worship, and education (with its many primary and secondary schools). But it’s also involved in so much community engagement: foodbanks, job clubs, caring for homeless, offering help for those with drug or alcohol problems, children’s breakfast clubs, and so on.

Our real challenge as the Church in Wales today, though, is to find new ways of being “church”; new ways of connecting with people, of sharing God’s love, and of serving our communities. It is natural, then, that we are involved in innovative and pioneering ways of taking the Church to the people of Wales, whether through messy church (which reaches children and parents through craft and story), pub church, worship in apps or podcasts, dementia church, forest church, and so on.

We live in a fragmented age, which often lacks connection, compassion, and care. The Christian faith now offers something radically different. It gives people hope. It says to people “you matter; you are of value; you are loved”. And that is a message that can change lives.

Dafydd Iwan’s stirring Welsh anthem “Yma o Hyd” (“we’re still here”) has become famous in recent years and is often heard sung from the terraces at our national football matches. It refers to Welsh culture, the Welsh people, the Welsh language, and Welsh nationhood. But it holds a message that can also inspire the Church in Wales.

Through its ups and downs, through its highs and lows, the Church in Wales is still here. For the suffering, for the joyful, for those who are searching for meaning, for those who are asking the big questions, “ry’n ni yma o hyd”, we’re still here, and we’re looking forward to the next 100 years.

Veganism and God

This is a copy of an article I wrote for Seen & Unseen, the online magazine of the Centre for Cultural Witness at Lambeth Palace. The magazine aims to help us discover a world that is greater and more full of meaning and sense than we ever imagined.

                              

For many people, the month of January has been rechristened ‘Veganuary’. Through this global campaign, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, numerous people have embraced a plant-based diet. Founded by a married couple from York, Veganuary has become a worldwide phenomenon, with more than 700,000 making the pledge last year. A YouGov poll suggests that numbers participating informally are far higher, perhaps as many as 4% of Brits, 7% of Americans, and almost 10% of Germans. The campaign has also gained celebrity backing, with Paul McCartney, Joaquin Phoenix, Deborah Meadon, and Billy Eilish amongst the many star names backing the movement in recent years.

Yet there are some signs that the vegan bubble may have finally burst. The pace of interest in non-animal diets has started to level off and some analysts believe that “peak vegan” in the UK was way back in 2019. Figures by consumer intelligence company NIQ seem to confirm this. UK sales of both chilled and frozen meat alternatives have fallen sharply in recent years and prominent companies, including Oatly, Nestlé, Innocent and Heck, have withdrawn various vegan products.

Recent years have also seen an increasing number of posts and memes on social media feeds that are antagonistic towards the vegan lifestyle. It seems attitudes towards animals are slowly becoming incorporated into the cultural wars, with veganism often regarded as part of an over-righteous so-called “woke” ideology. Some Christians subscribe to such an attitude and are hostile to those who embrace plant-based diets. Others, on the other hand, take a very different stance in considering their scriptures and theological traditions, emphasising the absolute necessity of a holistic awareness of diet, not least in light of animal cruelty, uncompassionate means of food production, and environmental concern. There are, after all, numerous affirmations of the precious and holy nature of the created order in the Bible. This would have differed profoundly from non-Judaic teaching in the Ancient Near East.

The moral imperative to care for the environment and value all creatures is clear from the very first pages of the Bible. After each day in the Genesis account of creation, God regards what he has formed as tov, a Hebrew word meaning good, pleasurable, and delightful. At the end of the creative process, God then looks at the whole of his handiwork, and he sees that the wonderful harmony of the complex, intricate, and balanced ecosystem is tov me’od, meaning ‘very good’. Later, in the New Testament, Jesus asserts that only God himself is good. It therefore follows that creation can, in some way, reveal the goodness of God directly.

And so there are many Christians who are drawn to an awareness that everything in this wonderful world has value and significance – the strangers we pass on the street, our pets who share our houses, the squirrels who dart across our paths in the park, the snowdrops breaking through the soil in our gardens, and even the slugs in our flowerbeds. No wonder the biblical images of the glorious eschatological, heavenly future are ones in which natural world is at harmony.

The German phrase that theologian Albert Schweitzer used to express the ramifications of the biblical concept of the goodness of the creation is ‘Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben’, which is often translated as ‘reverence for life’. The word Ehrfurcht, however, expresses far more than its English translation implies. It suggests an attitude of awe and ultimate respect, and so carries with it an overwhelming sense of moral responsibility towards creation. For Schweitzer this was no abstract intellectualism. His principle of ‘reverence for life’ came to him as he worked among the sick in the heart of tropical Africa. While prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry maintain that cruelty in nature is one of the main stumbling blocks of belief in the divine, it was not a sanitized version of nature that led Schweitzer to his God-centred conclusion. Rather, when he was surrounded by suffering and death, both in the hospital in which he worked and in the unforgiving natural world of the jungle around him, he came to regard a transcendent ‘reverence for life’ as the only way of living that made sense.

Nature may well be ‘red in tooth and claw’, to use Lord Tennyson’s phrase, but humanity has been gifted with the potential to bring compassion and love to a world of pain and suffering. Most people already regard human life as inherently precious, but Christianity stands alongside other faiths in challenging people to consider the value the lives of non-human creatures. After all, Schweitzer suggested that every creature holds to the importance of its own life, albeit unconsciously, and this should lead people to solidarity with all forms of life. In this sense, an individual’s relationship with nature is far more intimate than we might think. ‘Wherever you see life,’ he wrote, ‘that is yourself!’

This recognition of humankind’s profound bond with other living creatures allowed Schweitzer to apply Jesus’ core teaching on love to the wider world – ‘the ethic of love widened into universality’, as he put it. This stands in marked contrast to the present status quo which views the only real value of non-human life to be its usefulness. No wonder that so many animals in modern industrial farming experience what Richard Holloway describes as a ‘double-dying’, as their everyday existence is as pitiful as their death. They live out wretched lifespans in disease-prone torture before being transported hundreds of miles in overcrowded trucks to their slaughter. But our society continues to turn a blind eye towards heartless factory farming practices. They are not only tolerated but justified with the argument that animals are little more than unfeeling machines who don’t really ‘suffer’ in the human sense of the word.

Such attitudes contribute to what the 1995 papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae refers to as the ‘culture of death’ of the modern world. We are not only shockingly merciless towards each other, but we extend our cruelty to the creatures with which we share the planet. In the large global corporations that dominate the food industry, animals are viewed as products to be reared to supply fast-food outlets. They are bred specifically for death. While nature itself is cruel, each creature is endowed with a fighting instinct for survival and a means to achieve it through armour, speed, disguise, poison or odour. We humans, though, offer no chance for such defensive capabilities to be utilised. Nothing is as uncaring and ruthless in nature as the hungry human.

Not that this recognition necessarily leads us to a purely plant-based diet. Even Schweitzer himself, who was a proponent of vegetarianism, ate meat on occasions. Perhaps the indigenous hunting communities of our world today can help us to bridge the gap between reverence for life and the killing of animals for food. While they are principally carnivores, many of these communities appreciate their utter dependence on the animals that are sacrificed so they might live and thrive. There is, therefore, a deep empathy and affection towards the hunted. In fact, compassionate ceremonies and rituals are often performed to show gratitude to the animals for the gift of their lives. The tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert will, for example, symbolically enter into the suffering of their dying prey by enacting their final death throes. Contrast this with our own food system, which is largely controlled by a small group of multinational corporations who attempt to hide the truth about what we are eating and the harsh treatment of both animals and workers in their factories.

In a YouGov survey, participants in Veganuary were asked to list their incentives for taking part. The main reason given, above environmental regard and personal health, was animal welfare. The concept of ‘reverence for life’ speaks into this concern. As such, in embracing the concept that all life is equally worthy of our attention, respect, and love, Christians could have so much to offer contemporary debate. Their perspective could have huge implications on the moral and ethical matters that we face today – climate change, food production, health care, emerging technologies, animal care, AI, and energy development. ‘Do not do any injury, if you can possibly avoid it,’ the great Welsh Celtic saint Teilo is purported to have said while reflecting on creation. The anthropocentric, human-centred paradigm does not, then, reflect a truly Christian worldview. Instead, Christianity holds that every part of creation reflects God’s goodness and non-human life deserves respect for its own sake, not simply because of its usefulness. The whole, wonderful web of life is considered to be valued and loved by God, not merely one strand of it, and the daily call of the Christian is to live out the compassion, care, and love that such an awareness demands.

Thought for the Day at Christmas: Unmasking the Real You

        

For many of us, wearing a mask at Christmas Day services is becoming a fading memory of an unforgiving pandemic. Yet the reality is that we continue to wear masks all the time and we have done all our lives. We will wear a different mask when we are alone with our families than when we are out with our friends or when we are talking to someone we’ve only just met. We wear a mask that suits each occasion, and we only reveal a little bit of the real us each time.  

In fact, I sometimes feel that I wear so many different masks in my life that it’s hard to work out who the real “me” really is. As I was growing up, a song by the rock band The Who called “The Real Me” was popular. The singer is desperate to find out who he really is and so he approaches people who he thinks might aid that quest – he talks to his doctor, his mother, and his priest. But he comes away no wiser from his discussions. He is lost and alone, full of anger and hate, unable to work out any meaning or purpose in his life.

The good news for Christians is that, because of the first Christmas, we are not left in such a dark and lost place. The birth of a small, helpless child in a dirty manger 2000 years ago guarantees meaning and purpose in our lives and really does bring, as the carol puts it, “joy to the world”. The early church theologian Athanasius reflected on the incarnation of Christmas by suggesting that God became human so we can become God. In other words, the birth of Jesus opens up a direct line to God’s love.

As such, all that Jesus was, all that he taught and all that he did, allows God’s love to flow into our lives. This both gives us an inner peace and inspires us to reach out to those in need around us. And so, we can find in Christmas the secret of finding our “real me”. Our “real me” is not our fiercely-independent selves, trying desperately to mould the world into how we think it should function and work. Instead, we come into harmony with our “real me” when we allow God’s love to permeate everything in our lives – all that we say and all that we do.

As a teenager, I used to attend a Christian youth group called JAM, which stood for “Jesus and Me”. It was a phrase I used to cringe at as an oh-so-cool adolescent, but those words “Jesus and Me” have stayed with me as they sum up what our faith is all about. To be a Christian means our lives becomes a duet, not a solo. Because of that first Christmas, because God became a person, the “real me” becomes “Jesus and Me”. This duet keeps our egocentrism in check and helps us focus on the important things in life, those things that are at the heart of our faith – compassion, hope, love, and peace on earth and goodwill to all.

And so the doctor, mother, and priest didn’t have any answers to life’s big questions for The Who – they couldn’t help the singer find his “real me”. But if we open our hearts this Christmas, then God’s love will start flowing through us and into the new year; it will flow into our relationships and will profoundly impact how we view others and how we treat the world around us. And when that happens, we are singing a beautiful duet and we will have found our “real me”.

This is Faith – What is the Immaculate Conception?

“This is Faith” is a series of short, accessible videos to explore Christian words and concepts, which are shared on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. The transcript below considers the concept of the “Immaculate Conception“.

What is the immaculate conception? Welcome to This is Faith, I’m Revd Trystan. Now, you might think it’s natural to talk about the immaculate conception at Christmas, but there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that phrase. And so it’s important to clear up what the immaculate conception isn’t… and so, most importantly, the immaculate conception does not refer to the virgin birth of Jesus. In other words, it’s not really to do with Christmas.

The doctrine of the immaculate conception is a Roman Catholic belief that refers to when Mary herself was born. So, Mary had a human mother and a human father, but this belief holds that sin was not involved when she was conceived. So, the immaculate conception is referring to the fact Mary was born without sin, which is why, in the Christmas story, the angel calls her “full of grace”, sometimes translated as “highly favoured“ or “blessed”.

So, the immaculate conception had been debated by theologians for many centuries, but was not made into an official Roman Catholic belief until 1854. Almost all Protestant churches reject the doctrine, claiming it’s not found in the Bible. Those in the Eastern Orthodox Church or my own Anglican tradition are somewhat divided on the question – most rejecting it, but some embracing it.

For Roman Catholics, though, this is an important doctrine – and the teaching about it has led to other beliefs that Catholics hold – for example, the belief that Mary never sinned throughout her life.

So, to summarise, the Immaculate Conception is generally a Roman Catholic belief and does not refer to the virgin birth of Jesus at Christmas, but to Mary’s own special and unique birth.

Okay, so Merry Christmas, please subscribe and share, come back soon, and, as we say in Wales, Pob bendith!

Harvest – Listening to God’s Call

The diocese of Monmouth in the Church in Wales asked me to produce a short video about harvest and vocation. Below is my explanation of why harvest is a good time to consider God’s call on our lives.

The word “harvest” is from Old English, meaning the season of “Autumn”. And so it became the word for reaping, gathering, and storing grain, fruit, and vegetables, which takes place for us during the autumn. In the Church in Wales, we celebrate, of course, the harvest festival at this time. It’s a time to give thanks both for food and for those involved in food production. And we also pray for those who are struggling with poverty or famine or drought. In our harvest services, we will often bring in food produce, which are distributed in the local community, for example in foodbanks or to the homeless, and some churches also put on harvest suppers, where the church community gathers together to eat, give thanks for food, and to raise money for good causes.

Now, I’ve been challenged this year to consider the relationship between harvest and vocation, between our autumnal festival and God’s call on our lives. And this certainly adds another exciting layer to the celebration of harvest. Yes, we thank God for sustenance and food production. Yes, we pray for (and practically assist) those who are less fortunate than us. But… we also thank God for the wonderful gifts and talents he’s given to us personally and we all also pray for clarity as to how we can use those to bring God’s love and compassion and hope and joy to our churches and communities.

So, a little challenge this harvest. Why not take time to listen to God’s call in your life. At the moment I’m watching the TV series “Foundation”, an adaptation of the epic tale written by sci-fi novelist Isaac Astimov. In it, humans have left earth and are now scattered on planets throughout the galaxy. On each planet, they develop their own traditions and beliefs. On one of these planets they have a religion which encourages its followers to undertake a torturous pilgrimage to a pool in a desert cave. If the pilgrims arrive there without succumbing to extreme heat and thirst, they are blessed with a vision and a calling that is completely unique to them. Now, our Christian faith does not demand such a dangerous and arduous journey to enlightenment, just as our God rarely gives us vivid and colourful visions. But God still does have a unique calling on each and every one of our lives.

The challenge to us is to open our eyes, ears, and hearts to recognising what God wants from our lives. Because he is calling you to use your gifts and talents in all sorts of ways. In your church, for example, you might be called to be a smiling welcomer at the church doors, or helping at social events that your church are running, or assisting at social justice ventures, like a foodbank or a homeless shelter, or to be a pastoral assistant visiting the elderly or the lonely, or a preacher in your church as an LLM Reader, or even a deacon or a priest.

Each of these ministries, and countless others, are as important as each other in the Church. St Paul reminded us the Church is Jesus’s body and every part of a body is important and has a unique and special role. So why not make this harvest a time when you give thanks for your God-given gifts and talents… and then take time and space to consider how they can be used for building up his wonderful kingdom of love, joy, peace, and hope.

Why I Follow the Counter-Cultural Jesus

A ministry area in North Wales asked me to produce a short video explaining why Jesus was important to me personally. Below is my explanation of why I follow the radical, revolutionary, counter-cultural Jesus.

What does it mean to follow the counter-cultural Jesus? So, I’ve been challenged to explore why Jesus is important to me. At the heart of my response would be Jesus’s assertion that he was bringing in a new kingdom. Today, just as much as two thousand years ago, many kingdoms are jostling for our attention and devotion in today’s world – political, economic, and even those pertaining to health, entertainment or sport. My own journey to follow Jesus sprung from my recognition that, in Jesus, we have something radically different from the kingdoms of the world. Something that has at its centre peace, love, forgiveness, and hope.

And so Jesus’s kingdom is truly counter-cultural as it steps outside the prevailing culture. The Jesus of the New Testament, supported by the Old Testament, is truly alternative and radical. When I was coming to faith I found that exciting and inspiring… and I still do. Jesus is not about competition, but compassion; he is not about wealth, but goodwill; he is not about selling, but serving. As St Teresa of Calcutta put it: “Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace”.

And so worshipping Jesus does not mean we are imprisoned behind stained-glass windows, giving glory to a distant Christ the King. Rather, it means we are inspired to break out of church walls to be Jesus the Servant to those people, broken and impoverished, who need us the most and whom we paradoxically see as Jesus. This is why the final words of services in many churches and denominations are: “let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord”.

You see, the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus demands that we do our part to usher in his downside-up kingdom. Worship in a church is not an encouragement for us to make-do with the world and get-by in our little lives, but it’s a rally-cry for revolution. And so we stand alongside the resurrected Jesus in injecting new life into people and structures, as well as transforming individuals and societies.

It is little wonder that Christianity was seen in its early days as a politically subversive faction. Jesus, with his talk of a new kingdom, was put to death as a rebel and the early Christians were put to death for refusing to bow to a worldly emperor.

Down the centuries the drive of our faith to change the world may have somewhat waned. There is even an embarrassment in some areas of our faith with any relationship between Jesus and social thinking and action. Yet, my faith in Jesus leads me to the same attitude as astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell when he reflected on looking down on earth from the moon. He wrote: ‘You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.’

This is what living out God’s kingdom is all about. This is at the heart of my faith. This is how I follow the countercultural Jesus.

This is Faith – What is Church?

“This is Faith” is a series of short, accessible videos to explore Christian words and concepts, which are shared on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. The transcript below considers the concept of “Church“.

What is Church? Welcome to ‘This is Faith’. I’m Revd Trystan. When I say the word “Church” what do you think of? You might think of a sacred building where Christians worship. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But in Christian theology, “Church” is defined as the community of the people of God. So, in that way, Church isn’t a beautiful old building – Church is the Christians who worship in the building, as well as every other Christian wherever they are.

Now, in the Bible, St Paul refers to the Church as the “body of Christ”. A famous Anglican priest used to bow to his congregation to remind them that they are Jesus’s body, and so they need to go out from that building and bring Jesus’s love, hope, and peace to their communities.

Now, in the creeds, which are the ancient Christian statements of belief, we’re told the Church is “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic”. There’s some misunderstanding about that phrase, but in a nutshell:

1) the Church is ONE because all Christians are brothers and sisters, whatever tradition they’re from.

2) the Church is HOLY because the people do God’s work – opposing oppression and living lives of love and compassion.

3) the Church is CATHOLIC – that doesn’t mean Roman Catholic – it’s actually from the Greek word καθολικός meaning universal, so the Church is across the world.

4) finally, the Church is APOSTOLIC, which means it’s linked to the apostles, the disciples of Jesus, who were there at the start of the Church almost 2000 years ago.

So that’s the Church! Thanks for watching, please subscribe and share, and as we say Wales: Pob bendith.

This is Faith – What is vocation?

“This is Faith” is a series of short, accessible videos to explore Christian words and concepts, which are shared on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. The transcript below considers the concept of “vocation“.

What is vocation? Welcome to This is Faith, I’m Revd Trystan. When I’m sending a message about vocation on my mobile, the AutoCorrect quite often will often confuse everyone by changing it to vacation. Having a vacation is important… but having a vocation, I would argue, is even more important.

The word comes from the Latin word vocatio – meaning “calling”. So, in a nutshell, Christians believe that God calls us to different tasks and roles and that is your vocation.

The first step, of course, is discerning that call – in other words, we have to work out what God is calling us to. So our vocation could be to something religious – we could be called to be a priest or to assist in church with children’s work or with visiting lonely people. But our vocation could be bringing light and love to other spheres of life – you could be called to be a nurse, a politician, a teacher, a journalist, and so on. And that vocation could also be something that’s not a paid or professional job – like bringing up a family or volunteering at a homeless shelter or campaigning for social justice, and so on.

Now, when I’m talking about vocation in churches, I’ll often use the analogy of vocations sometimes being like eating a lollipop and sometimes like munching a pack of M&M sweets… ok, let me explain… So, like eating a big lollipop, vocations last a long, long time – they can even last a lifetime (I’ll always be a priest); but they can also be like a pack of M&Ms – where you can have one vocation and then have another one and then another – you can even stuff your mouth and have two, three, four vocations at the same time.

The main thing for Christians is for them factor in time and space to pray and listen to God’s call and work out what is their vocation.

Big shout out to Saint Teilo’s High School Cardiff who suggested the word “vocation”. Please do share and subscribe. And as we say in Wales – Pob bendith!