What sets you alight? What is it that makes you light up with enthusiasm and radiate that passion to all around you? What fills you with energy and makes you come alive? The flip side of this is to ask what dampens your beacon, squashes any exuberance and deflates your bounce. To use an illusion from Harry Potter, what dements you and sucks out the joy of living. What makes you feel like a wet weekend or a month on Mondays - or if Monday is your day off, a month of Tuesdays?

These questions stand at the heart of Paul’s rather convoluted seeming reflections in our first reading (2 Cor 3:12-4:2). There he used the language of glory for being set alight and of being veiled for the month of Mondays. He was talking about how the good news of Jesus Christ should set us alight, where without it our hopes are dulled. It is as if we have a veil removed from our vision and the light bursts in.

We have a tremendous hope and promise in Jesus Christ that should set us ablaze. It is a hope that should be the defining character of a church and provide the frame through which we view the world. But too often we allow other things to dull us and I am as guilty as anyone else of this. Perhaps where we go wrong is we don’t praise enough: we don’t praise God enough; we don’t praise one another enough; we don’t accept praise enough; we don’t celebrate what is good and holy and worthy of thanksgiving. We accept the media’s agenda of griping and moaning too much.

One of the things that our evangelical brothers and sisters do well is to begin their worship with a time of praise. The form it takes may not be to everyone’s liking, but it sets the tone for worship to be worship and our spirits can be lifted through it. We need to prepare for worship, we cannot expect to be able to amble in and just spring to it when the bell goes dong. Our hearts, our minds, our emotions need to tune in and this is something that the more catholic end of spirituality has known for a long time: the need to prepare for worship. There are devotional books that people used to have and I know that some people still use them today. Our red service book has a section at the beginning about preparing for worship and filling our hearts with songs of praise.

So, if we are going to be people who exude glory, who are set alight rather than veiled with a month of Mondays, we need to praise God and allow that praise to fill us with joyful hearts.

We also need to praise one another more. Glory is a difficult word to get hold of, but it carries notions of shining and brightness, sparkle and something precious. When was the last time that someone told you that you were precious and sparkle in their eyes? I know a bishop who goes around saying ‘thank you’ to people in churches for their ministry, for their faithful dedication in keeping the witness of the church and therefore the gospel alive. He told me that in one church someone came up to him and said in 50 years no one had ever said thank you to him before.

Keith and I were talking the other day about how much we treasure the letters and cards we get from people who take the trouble to write and say thank you and how much they mean. Not because we want people to adore us, but because being valued and appreciated is a vital part of anyone’s self esteem in ministry. No one flourishes under a diet of criticism and we can see it in children who become crushed when all they are ever told is that they are useless.

It is appropriate to say ‘thank you’ and to offer praise for the hours of faithful ministry that go into this church being the church. And by that I mean you who worship and make prayer a priority. Last weekend we were in a small village church where we were staying. The parish has been in vacancy for 3 years and looking round the tiny congregation it was hard to see what any new incumbent would have to work with. It would be so easy to crush them even further by saying that they were no good for the kingdom of God. That would be to miss the friendliness of their welcome to a family of strangers and the ordinary praying of people longing for the sparkle and bright shining light of glory.

This is in danger of turning into a group hug sermon - but don’t worry I’m not about to tell you to turn to your neighbour and tell them they are special as if in some kind of group therapy session. Actually that will come at the peace when we greet our neighbours and pass the peace. That greeting puts into practice the bright sparkle of glory and of being told that we are precious, that each and everyone is valued.

So the second aspect of praising is to live the praise of God in praising and valuing one another.

The third is perhaps the bit we overlook in so many biblical passages - it is to accept it. When Jesus was asked to sum up the Law he told his hearers to love God and their neighbour as themselves. It is the ‘as themselves’ that was and is the tricky bit. When Mark introduces his gospel he says that Jesus went about proclaiming that ‘the kingdom of God has come among us: you’d better believe it’ - well that’s a rough translation of what it says! Believing it, accepting it, can be the harder part of all of this. But it comes if we do the others. If we praise God, we find a song in our hearts that fills us with praise and thanksgiving. If we are told we matter and are precious, over time we believe it. But if we are told we are useless and rubbish all the time, we don’t believe it. So we as Christians need to take charge of our own and one another’s mental health and truly value what we have and what we are. We are made in the image of God, and are loved and precious in his sight. We should tell ourselves that more often, because if we do we might just begin to believe it and behave accordingly.

I rarely find that blunt people can take anyone being blunt back to them. This makes me think that their brusqueness is not direct talking but a sign of a bruised person lashing out in pain and turmoil. We need to break the cycle of that brutality where we find it through this kind of affirmation that grows out of praise.

And that can be the springboard to transforming the world. It can even become the gateway to understanding the Transfiguration which formed out gospel reading (Luke 9:28-36). Jesus’ appearance changed before them. He glowed with glory and the praise that belongs to God and flows from God. A voice is heard to say: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” A voice is heard to say: 'This is my precious, beloved Son'. A voice is heard to say: 'you are my precious and chosen ones'. That transforms anyone from a month of Mondays to the bright sparkle of glory.

© Ian Black 2004

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