Untamed Gospel

Martyn Percy

Description

Untamed Gospel complements The Bright Field and Darkness Yielding, and offers meditations, reflections, stories, prayers and poems for use throughout the church year. Each one focuses on the often startling nature of Jesus’ sayings and teachings, the raw honesty of the psalms and other biblical texts, and on contemporary issues, such as mental health and displacement, seen in the light of the demands of the kingdom of God.
A rich resource for worship, preaching, teaching and personal reflection throughout the year, Untamed Gospel contains hundreds of reproducible items, including seasonal reflections, stories, homilies, poems and some of Jim Cotter’s last writings as he was being treated for cancer: a moving sequence of prayer poems inspired by the psalms.

Sujets

• Biblical Meditations
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 août 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781848259928
• Langue: English

Extrait

Untamed Gospel



In the same series
Darkness Yielding
The Bright Field




Untamed Gospel
Protests, Poems and Prose for the Christian Year
Martyn Percy
with
Nigel Biggar
Jamie Coats
Jim Cotter
Sarah Foot
Carol Harrison
Sylvia Sands
Graham Ward





© The Contributors 2017
First published in 2017 by the Canterbury Press Norwich
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.
The Authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Authors of this Work
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978 1 84825 990 4
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd




Contents
Introduction
Part 1. Untamed Gospel: Protests and Promptings
1. Wisdom and counter-intuition – Martyn Percy
2. Human evolution to ‘higher things’ – Nigel Biggar
3. A gospel according to risk management, health and safety? – Martyn Percy
4. Horror or glory: what’s basic? – Nigel Biggar
5. The mustard seed and the yeast – Martyn Percy
6. On judgement, repentance and restoration – Nigel Biggar
7. Litter: a moral and spiritual problem – Nigel Biggar
8. In praise of moderation – Martyn Percy
9. Everybody wants a happy ending (reflections on Ian McEwan’s Atonement ) – Nigel Biggar
10. Healing the centurion’s servant – Martyn Percy

Story: The Pigs Can Swim – Martyn Percy
Part 2. Sermons and Homilies for the Christian Year
11. Waiting in Advent – Graham Ward
12. Two readings for Christmas: abiding – Martyn Percy
13. Candlemas – Sarah Foot
14. Conversion of St Paul – Martyn Percy
15. Having a laugh (in Lent) – Carol Harrison
16. Palm Sunday: what does it take not to bend? – Nigel Biggar
17. Holy Week – Carol Harrison
18. Reading the ascension – Martyn Percy
19. Pentecost – Sarah Foot
20. Transfiguration: a meditation – Martyn Percy
21. Michaelmas: Feast of St Michael and All Angels – Martyn Percy
22. St Luke – Carol Harrison
23. Bible Sunday – Martyn Percy
24. Christ the King – Carol Harrison
25. Remembrance – Nigel Biggar

Story: In the Beginning, the Word – Martyn Percy
Part 3. Sermons and Homilies for Other Occasions
26. The twilight zone – Graham Ward
27. The Angel of the Lord and Gideon – Martyn Percy
28. Martyrs – Martyn Percy
29. Witnesses – after the ascension – Sarah Foot
30. ‘Hear My Prayer’ – Martyn Percy
31. Shepherds – Sarah Foot
32. Odds and ends – Martyn Percy
33. Love actually – Graham Ward
34. Christian unity at Jacob’s Well – Martyn Percy
35. Debating the trivial things: tactics and strategies – Martyn Percy

Story: The Free-market Church – Martyn Percy
Part 4. Prayers and Poems
Readings and Poems – Sylvia Sands
A Psalm and Reading for Each Day of the Week – Jim Cotter
Poems and Prayers – Sylvia Sands
The Candle Trilogy – Jamie Coats
Kingdom Come: Spartacus, Untamed – Martyn Percy





For Dan and Nicola – Two Faithful and Untamed Ministers of the Gospel



Introduction
This new text complements The Bright Field and Darkness Yielding , 1 and offers meditations, short reflections, stories and poems covering the Christian year. These relate to our time − an age of anger, austerity, assertion and anxiety. The poems and reflections carry an intentional edge, mindful of the political dimensions preached and proclaimed in the ministry of Jesus, and his inauguration of the reign of the kingdom of God.
As with The Bright Field , the content of the book is structured around meze – a traditional range of Middle Eastern foods and appetizers that can be shared among friends dining together. The meze motif is deliberate. Some of the meditations and reflections are designed to be studied and discussed and, as such, are more substantial. Others are shorter and pithier, and can be grazed upon for more individual study. The variety offered is key to how the book can be used and read.
There are over 40 sections to dwell on, as well as stories, poems and prose. Like Darkness Yielding and The Bright Field , the authors have given a rather free range to their imaginations in writing these aids to reflection. They cover the life of Jesus, with homilies for the ascension, transfiguration and other feasts − as well as tackling more contemporary issues in the life of the Church.
I am sincerely grateful to my Canon Professor colleagues from Christ Church Oxford − Nigel Biggar, Sarah Foot, Carol Harrison and Graham Ward − for allowing me to use their material in this volume. Their stimulating preaching inspires thousands of visitors and worshippers every year. The Canon Professors of Christ Church hold almost unique roles in the academy and the Church. They hold senior professorships in one of the world’s leading faculties of Theology and Religious Studies, combining this with normal liturgical and pastoral duties in the Cathedral of Christ Church Oxford, as well as being full members of the Cathedral Chapter, and full members of the College Governing Body. I am hugely appreciative of their willingness − and the giving of their time − both to commit to this book, and for their collegiality and friendship.
It is good to be able to welcome and introduce the poetry of Jamie Coats in this anthology. Jamie is a layperson working for the Society of St John the Evangelist (SSJE) in the United States − an Anglican religious order of brothers. Jamie writes on contemporary monastic wisdom, and his work draws on Buddhist, Hindu and Christian traditions of meditation and silence. We reproduce his ‘Candle Trilogy’ towards the close of this volume.
It is a pleasure, once again, to be able to draw on material from Sylvia Sands and Jim Cotter. Sylvia’s work has reached thousands of readers, and her poems have a poignant and prophetic tone that is rarely matched by other contemporary poets. It is a privilege to be able to feature her work again (she contributed to Darkness Yielding originally, first published some 20 years ago, and now in its third edition).
Jim Cotter died in the midst of the busyness of Holy Week in 2014. His liturgies and prayers have been among the most influential aids to reflection produced by anyone in his generation. Jim was a poet-priest – someone for whom words were as important as the air we breathe. He wrote prayers, as one obituary put it, ‘in which unicorns danced’.
Jim was instrumental in the bringing together of Darkness Yielding , many years ago. Jim was a gay priest, and he often talked openly about the importance of gay clergy being out, and living in the open as normal. He was a natural radical and disturber, as well as a caring consoler. Moreover, his prayers and reflections underline how much of a visionary and a prophet he was. Many readers still have copies of his night prayers sitting beside their beds. A typical prayer of Jim’s was:
God be in my gut and in my feeling
God be in my bowels and in my forgiving
God be in my loins and in my swiving
God be in my lungs and in my breathing
God be in my heart and in my loving
God be in my skin and in my touching
God be in my flesh and in my yearning
God be in my blood and in my living
God be in my bones and in my dying
God be at my end and at my reviving
Our hope, as authors, is that the reflections, homilies and poems in this volume will enrich the spiritual lives of readers, accompanying them in their daily discipleship. Moreover, that the meditations and musings that follow will help us all awaken to the challenges of being a Christian in this age, renewing our vocation to enable the coming of the kingdom of God in our time.
The Very Revd Professor Martyn Percy
Dean, Christ Church Oxford ,
Passiontide 2017
Note


1 Martyn Percy et al. , The Bright Field: Readings, Reflections and Prayers for Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity and Ordinary Time , Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2014, Jim Cotter et al. , Darkness Yielding: Liturgies, Prayers and Reflections for Christmas, Holy Week and Easter , Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2004.



Part 1: Untamed Gospel: Protests and Promptings



Wisdom and counter-intuition
Martyn Percy
For those of you who are un