Happy Christmas!!

Here's why!

Sooty Red

Last summer we visited the (reproduced) iron age house at the Chilterns Open Air Museum.  Unseen in the photo is the hole in the roof for the smoke to go out.  And the little thingies (demons, faeries, and the like) to come in as was universally believed.

Chimneys were a great invention.  We've dispensed with them in the centrally-heated-now but at the beginning they were a miracle cure for a very nasty problem.  But along with the chimney continued folklore about hearth-gods and chimney spirits.

What better place, then, for the magical Santa to come in by than the spirit channel of the chimney?  OK, so it messes up his red coat somewhat making the red a sooty red.  But he is a power for good after bogeymen of various kinds spooked the chimney.

At least in this respect Santa says something useful about Christmas.  I guess one way of retranslating the angel's instruction

you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins is

he'll go through a dark place for you but get very dirty in the process. 

Not so much sooty red as blood red.

Birthday

Today is the birthday of Horatius Bonar.

The depth of his devotional poetry is being rediscovered and rightly so. It is quite ironic that this pastor-poet wrote hymns from within a church that would not sing them! Until very recently the Free Church of Scotland would only sing Psalms.

Quite a journey to North Cali. But that's the joy of Christian music. Why not take a moment of time to listen this through? You haven't time? Well it takes longer than this to hear Jesus' voice usually so maybe, just maybe, make 2011 a year to stop.

To come.

To rest.

To learn.

To find.

Then, and only then, to walk in His company. It was good enough for Horatius . . .

Open?

Today we had our Open House. 

It's the day when everyone is invited to our house all at once for calories (sorry, mince pies) and tea/coffee.  This is Christmas, after all.

Of course an open house is one thing.  As we discovered last year when there was a couple of inches of snow on our hill, an open road is quite another.

And this year?

Let's make that 5/6 inches of snow, at least in places.  Eight hardy souls made it however!

An invitation is one thing, a way is something else.

Although Jesus is both.

Advent - a study in waiting

St Andrew's Day

I've spoken in a lot of places.  In front of thousands, hundreds, dozens and less than ten; in freezing cold and searing heat, before vagrants and fabulously wealthy people.  More stories than a blog could ever cover.

But one place I spoke I will certainly never forget and Scotland's day - St Andrew's Day -  is a special day to remember it.  It was February, it was cold and windy and it was Howmore Church on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides.

To the west of Howmore Church there is a small area of moorland, a beach and then the North Atlantic Ocean.  Some thousands of miles later comes northern Labrador and Hudson Bay.  To the east there is not much either, as the picture shows.   Yes, that building is Howmore Church.

Amazing to think, on St Andrew's Day, that the news of Jesus the Messiah that Andrew first shared with his Galilean brother Simon (later called Peter) reached as far as Howmore!  The ends of the earth indeed.

Synod

Rarely does the Supreme Governor of the Church of England stray into deeply theological territory.  I suppose that in the week after one of her junior bishops called her son Big Ears it is unsurprising that she is looking a little beyond her Church for virtue!

The Queen addressed her Church's General Synod thus,

"It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none."

Wow.  I wonder if she realised what she said?

This is profoundly true and far too little understood.  There is no difference in the duties and opportunities of virtue for the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Believer, the Nominalist, the Buddhist, the Muslim or the whatever.  This is explained by the apostle Paul:

For we must all of us appear before Christ's judgement-seat in our true characters, in order that each may then receive an award for his actions in this life, in accordance with what he has done, whether it be good or whether it be worthless. [Weymouth's translation] 

Virtue will indeed be expected all round.  Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Queen Elizabeth, Kim Jong-il, Barack Obama, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict and every one of the rest of us.  Does faith help virtue?  I think this is possible.  Indeed, our Lord said that his followers would be light and salt in a dark and rotten world.

 

But at the heart of the Christian message is no virtue.  Just the opposite in fact.  A cross.   Condemnation, not complements.   Death not life.  Savagery not elegance.  Blood not beauty. Bad not good.  Shame, not virtue.

 

What the Synodic observation lacks are two further observations:

 

1.  That people of faith and people without faith - all of whom have the same possibility and responsibility for virtue - ALL FALL SHORT.

 

2.  There is forgiveness through a crucified Saviour who calls us to him.

 

To put it another way - the call to virtue is universal, the remedy for our failing it is unique.  Thank you Jesus!  

Formidable

Our oldest Church member died recently.  The word most of us could agree well-described her was the word formidable.

You don't get to live to 102 years old without having some determination, and Evelyn had plenty of that.  And then some.  Even at a century old she was still, well, formidable.

Which brings me to Melville Beveridge Cox.

On the face of it he was decidedly not formidable.  He set out as a preacher in New England in 1822 before contracting tuberculosis.  You don't usually live to 100 after having TB.  He gave up preaching .

He moved and began working in a bookstore.  He edited a weekly Christian magazine.  He married.  That might be calculated to turn a sickly man into something a little stronger.  He and Ellen had a baby daughter, but not long after her birth both Ellen and the baby died of cholera.

The weakly widower volunteered for missionary work in South America.  This was refused but instead he was assigned to Liberia, the African state being formed from freed slaves.  There were doubts that this not-at-all formidable man would last long in Africa.

He began as quickly as he could with a church and two mission stations further up the river.  By now he had malaria, and 15 weeks into Africa he was dead.

This story of hopeless weakness is formidable too, however.  His story had so inspired other, stronger people that even as he died five further missionaries were en route to take up and expand his work.

In truth, all human formidability is to be found in God alone.

The Curious Incident of the Baptist Beer Barrel (and a Bottle of Whisky)

What might I find in the Church recycling bin?

An old sermon perhaps?  There'll have been a few of those that could be usefully composted I fear.  Some old hymnbooks?  No, you're wrong there.  Churches never throw out old hymnbooks.  Indeed, Christian newspapers contain baleful ads pleading with others to take ancient, useless hymnbooks into new ownership.  I assert you are more likely to find a collection of diamond jewellery in a recycling bin than a hymnbook. 

I suppose  in some churches there might be a weekly wine bottle from the Mass.  In a Baptist Church make that an old grape juice carton.

Yet if there is one thing nearly as unlikely as an old hymnbook in Baptist Church recycling it has to be what we found last week.  A barrel full of beer.  And a bottle full of whisky too!

What did we do?  What could we do?  What should we do?  How could such a thing happen?

We did exactly the same thing as we would have done if we had found old hymn books there.  Concluded it could not have been us, an enemy hath done this,  and called the Police.

Spending Review

Blog Action Day

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhoea, dysentery and other illnesses.

90% of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old. Many of these diseases are preventable. The UN predicts that one tenth of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supply and sanitation.

 

Every year our church gives thousands of pounds to help directly with building wells for people in Tanzania.  We praise God for our members Andrew and Miriam who have been willing to give some of the best years of their lives to help people have this most basic resource.

Worldcom

Most Sunday mornings I'm booked in to work. That's kind of par for the course for a Pastor!

When I'm not at my Church I'm nearly always at someone else's.  So it was a very unusual Sunday last Summer when I had to transport my daughter to camp and I joined the motorway hordes who believe they have found something better to do than go to church.  One of the larger buildings I passed, and shiny too, was this one.

It was Sunday and it was empty.  It looked very high tech and expensive.  Then again, the company concerned could well afford it as this extract from one of their reports shows . . . 

'For the quarter, the company posted consolidated net income, excluding goodwill amortisation, of $710 million, or 25 cents a share, equalling analysts' forecasts. The company reported net income of $1.3 billion, or 44 cents per share, excluding charges, a year earlier.'

More accurately I ought to state, they APPEARED to be well able to afford it.  This was WorldCom's UK headquarters (a mere rabbit hutch compared to its American cousins).  And yet, as we now know, Worldcom was moving forward in a way analagous with the Sunday traffic on the adjacent M4: at high speed on a road to nothing that lasts.  Now, after uncovering $11 billion in accounting mistatements, the CEO is in jail for a long time.

If only all those people driving past would learn the lesson of Worldcom and go to church.

Mmm.  But that CEO did go to church.  In fact, he taught Sunday School in a Baptist Church.

It is not where I place my bottom that ultimately matters, even when that place is a church pew.  It is where I place my heart.

Digory

Only as a result of my summer holiday in Cornwall did I learn the interesting story of Digory Isbell, a stonemason who, with his wife Elizabeth, opened their little cottage as a preaching station for John Wesley, the great evangelist.

Their gravestone at Altarnun church bears this inscription, which somehow manages to encompass the meaning of Christian marriage, sacrifice, spiritual warfare, obedience, promises and glory.  A kind of introductory course on Christianity written by two lives and a memorial,

Reader, may thine End be like theirs.

From early Life, under the Guidance and Influence of divine Grace, 

They strengthened each others Hands in God, 

uniting to bear their Redeemer's Cross 

and promote the interests of his Kingdom 

in the face of an opposing World, 

thus estimating Scriptural Christianity; 

in Youth, Health and Strength 

their conduct was regulated by its precepts;

in Age, Infirmity and Death 

They were supported by its Consolations 

And in a happy Immortality 

They enjoy their rewards.

Harvest Immortality

"Are you setting them out geographically?" my friend asked, looking at the swathe of harvest boxes in our sanctuary prepared for distribution following our Harvest Thanksgiving on Sunday.

I replied, "Just now we're still working on separating between each side of the River Jordan . . .". 

In case that's lost on anyone Jordan is a metaphor for life's final journey, as in

When I tread the verge of Jordan bid my anxious fears subside,

Death of death and Hell's destruction land me safe on Canaan's [i.e. the Promised Land's] side.

People have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure they live on beyond their earthly passing and the internet offers new ways of continuing when you've ceased to exist.  However I believe one very good way to attain earthly immortality is by getting your name on a Church Harvest Distribution List.

Scarcely ever have I sat on the Monday after a Harvest without dissecting a list of names between the living and the dead and for all my efforts this year we still managed to attempt a delivery to someone who had passed away in the summer.

Only the Lord can save your immortal soul.  But to save your name on earth?  Hey, just get on a Church Harvest List and your name will live on when you've gone.  In fact, some goodhearted soul will even pack you some food or flowers and come looking for you.  Tesco's may not deliver food to me after I'm dead but if I can just get on that Harvest list . . . .

55lbs

Today is the Anniversary of the diet I began last September 23rd.

There's 55lbs less to carry about now.  Which is the equivalent of . . .

or



or, perhaps most alarmingly,





New Saints

On the day that the Pope continues the labyrinthine ecclesiastical process of canonisation for John Henry Newman, and in the spirit of my previous post, I offer a somewhat more dynamic and wholly more glorious expression of saint-making. 

Simple really.

Simple really

Here we are in the midst of Mr J.A. Ratzinger's visit to the UK.  I am listening to Latin emanating from the middle of golden pillars shrouded in clouds of incense.

For me the most telling thing about this visit is how good it is at its simplest and how, as it moves into higher things political and ecclesiastical, it moves further away from the Carpenter of Nazareth.

Here are the wonderful words the Pope spoke to schoolchildren yesterday;

"Happiness is something we all want, but one of the great tragedies in this world is that so many people never find it, because they look for it in the wrong places. The key to it is very simple -- true happiness is to be found in God," he said.  "God wants your friendship. And once you enter into a friendship with God, everything in your life begins to change."

Or to put it another way, Sic enim dilexit Deus mundum ut Filium suum unigenitum daret ut omnis qui credit in eum non pereat sed habeat vitam aeternam.

I will

In the past week I have had time with families where people have just been married and where others are celebrating anniversaries and others are facing life-threatening illness together.  In tribute to them all and in gratitude for the marriage God has given me I offer J R Miller's moving description of a precious gift mistakenly maligned.

Not me

Steps

Some time ago I was visiting another church.  The meeting was over and the night was dark for it was getting late.

"There's a woman out there with a child" said an elderly lady who had come back in after starting out for home."

On the steps of the church a woman had been sitting with her young child.  Invited in, we heard her story and prayed to the Lord for her and her family.  It was a story of tragedy, separation, lovelessness and despair.

But she had sat on the steps of a church.  There was no way of her knowing that a meeting had been taking place as, by the time she was there, everyone was in the meeting at the back of the buildings.  Yet she chose a church building over the nearby fast food places - all lit up and welcoming - or the Public House round the corner.  In her despair it had been something to her just to get to the steps of a place where God's people meet and sit there, crying.

It reminded me of the woman in the Gospel who touched the edge of Jesus' clothing. One of the worst mistakes a human being can make - but plenty of even religious people make it - is imagine that there is a lot of preparation required to receive God's response.

Sitting on the steps will do.

Path

On the face of it this is a very ordinary picture of a very ordinary scene.

A tree, some shadows, some grass and a path.

Yet for me this short path has almost as much significance as any place or person in my life.

It is, looked at one way, a very expensive piece of path.  At the time of the incident I am writing about I was working in the City of London in finance.  It is never possible to predict how life might have turned out in other scenarios but by an estimate I worked out a few years ago what happened on this path had already  cost me over £500,000.

Looked at another way it was a place that, for all it cost me, money couldn't buy.  For it was on this path - at or near the spot on this photograph - that God spoke to me so clearly that I left my work in finance and used such money as I had already saved to start paying for a Bible College Course to train to work full-time in Christian work.  Many people have longed for such a calling and never heard it.

Why, though, did I add up the financial cost of the path those years ago?  Because I was fed up with news of someone buying a second or third house when we haven't a first?  Or another new car slotting into the car park next to my ageing homage to the Ford dealer's service record?  No.

The reason I did my sums was to check out a belief I hold that God only speaks unequivocally (in clear visions or audibly) when He has something hugely life-changing to say.  For me that path was the place that utterly reshaped my life by cost and call and adding up the cost helped me to see that.  The call was not in the particular of a calling to a town, pastoral ministry, a country or whatever.  Instead it reflected the most fundamental calling of all - just as the Saviour called his first disciples to leave their nets (in my case net profits) and follow wherever He leads.

Want unmistakable guidance?  Pause a moment before you ask for the most expensive encounter you may ever have in this world!

Hope

Today marks the beginning of a new football season.

As chaplain to Wycombe Wanderers Football Club I have stood in the sunshine (they were running of course) on the first day back in training over a month ago. This week - a month of training and friendly matches later - everyone is geared up for the new season and full of hope.

Of the 24 teams in our league I have not seen anyone at or around the Club who thinks we can possibly end up lower than 5th.  I think we'll do better than that.

There's just a little problem.

Every one of the 46 league games will involve . . . an opposition!  Not once in those 46 games will the eleven other guys say, "Hey, we thought you'd come fifth or higher.  We'll let you win to help you."  All our hope is based on ourselves, and we haven't seen the opposition - not one of them - yet.  In this way, thousands of football fans start every season full of hope that quite quickly fades away.  Watch this space!

But back in the real world of the Bible there is a hope that cannot fade:

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

Simply put, the believer's hope is based on a defeated opposition, not a waiting opposition.  Jesus is risen.  Death and sin are defeated.  This is a hope that cannot be ambushed by the Other Side! 

Hands

For the first time in absolutely ages we sang Nun danket alle Gott - well, Catherine Winkworth's translation of it - this morning.

One reason I chose it was because I heard it introduced by a nationally famous worship leader recently. "With hearts, and hands - we've all got hands haven't we?" he raises his hands as in prayer -"and voices". Cue the band. Cue a congregation thinking Martin Rinkart might have been encouraging some expressive hand movements in worship.

This was so far off the mark as to warrant a redemption, I thought.  Most of the people around Pastor Martin at the time were using their hands to bury corpses . . .

How much richer the truth is!

Trust. But then again . . . .

I enjoyed this classic good-bye letter from a Baptist Pastor.  You'll miss the irony unless you read to the bitter end, where I've added a picture to help . . .

Well, it is time to say goodbye. Twenty-one months ago I changed from being an outside consultant to your interim pastor. The different role has been good for me and for the congregation. 

There is a quality of relationship between pastor and people that is like no other.  It is one of affection, trust, shared spirituality, common faith, and mutual work and service. It takes time to cultivate and a lifetime to enjoy. . . 
 

You will read this after my last Sunday has passed and our formal goodbyes have been said. I will have returned the shepherd’s staff and the keys of the congregation. They will be waiting for a short time to be received by the pastor who comes after me. May you welcome him with grace and warmth. . . . 

Faithfully,
David

NOTE: Please return any books you have borrowed from me.
 

Faithfully,

Waiting

Waiting.

It has to be the most miserable way to live a life?  Stuck in the terminal.

We should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God, while we look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, will be revealed.

Last evening we thought about these words.  If we only have one life in this world why do Christians waste it waiting?  What good is it to believe mainly in the future?  Why would anyone want to lay up treasures in heaven when they've never seen heaven?  Why not just live life to the full and to hell (whoops . . .) with the consequences?

The Terminal shows that just because someone is waiting, doesn't mean life is meaningless.  To the contrary, Viktor ends up with some better relationships that the people rushing past him. 

Sure, this world could be a better place to wait in.  But the fact I am waiting for Another Place does not make my life useless - just a great deal more hopeful! 

Yippee!

Here's one of the most spectacularly encouraging news items I have ever read - male death rates have fallen by a quarter!

I confess I was sceptically thinking the rate had remained stubbornly at 100% with a couple of notable exceptions . . .

Mathematics

Nothing like a nice simple picture, eh?

Except that there is a plus on the left and none on the right.

In between there is an equals sign, but plainly that is wrong.  On the left there is a mathematical symbol as well as two carrots.  The three pictures don't equal the two pictures.  Unless you look mathematically.

This is helpful in studying the relationship between Natural Science and Religion.

The carrots are genetic, physical and observable but mathematics never has been and never can be.

The argument that all that is real and true must be sensorially perceived would mean that belief in a creator God who is invisible cannot be real.  Nor can mathematics.

So, if you find a mathematical sum that is real and true in the picture take heart.  There might be Someone else true too, Someone who lies behind all carrots!  Or possibly you just see some pixelian pictures of carrots and symbols that don't add up.

That way a lot of things won't add up either . . .

Building

Christians have every reason to be thankful for the work of Peter Brierley and Christian Research.  I hope that he'll excuse me picking some holes - some important holes, I think - in his recently-reported research reported to the Pentecost Festival.  Peter's strong point has always been collecting data and delivering it in understandable ways.  Interpreting it is tougher.

Let's take just one glaring statistic because I think it teaches alot more than it appears to teach: in 1990, there were (allegedly) 120,000 conversions and (definitely) 60,000 deaths, in 2009 there were (apparently) only 80,000 conversions and (definitely) 120,000 deaths of Church attendees.

Does this, as Peter deduced, show a lack of evangelism?

A conversion is only a conversion for sure when the pilgrim reaches the end of the journey.  Be faithful to the point of death and I will give you a crown of life.  Professions, not conversions then.  But are they even professions?  Aren't there still here the formal additions of automated confirmations, of aspirational declarations for other purposes such as getting the kids into the local faith school?  Ironically the deaths - those who have died in the body of believers - are more accurately described as converted.

And who does what here?  Instinctively we feel that the Church does conversions and God does deaths.  Yet with modern medicine we can hold death off quite significantly.  We cannot by our knowledge add a single soul by conversion.  Are these statistics a picture of what we are doing or of what God is doing?  If God is doing less converting do we do more evangelism or do we do more praying?   Is our hurt about numerical decline of the visible church more about gospel passion or our own pride and influence?

The Church is a building.  That's all it is.  A building, never a declining.  Added to, never subtracted from.  Every new believer one new living stone that will never die, not an inadequate shoring up of a wall that once had many more stones in. 

We are too earthbound.  Biblically, eternally, heaven-perspectively we belong to a number that cannot be counted but every day is added to until every last one of God's children is home and everyone left outside has to confess they never wanted in.

It is not the Church that is declining.

The statistics show that what is declining is the spiritual state of the country and the culture.

Medicine

On the verge of the World Cup Final between the Netherlands and Spain it seems only fitting to think Dutch.

Herman Boerhaave was a great physician nearly 500 years ago. 

When he died he left in his will a book to be auctioned.  It came with his highest commendation for he had written it himself and he was one of Europe's most respected physicians.

The auction proceeded to a substantial sum.

The book, however, was not what it seemed. Page after page was blank!  Right at the end Doctor Boerhaave had written:

Keep your head cool, keep your feet warm and you will leave doctors poor.

I sometimes wonder if there are not too many books (and blogs and twitters) and not enough wisdom.

Confession

David Powlison has written this interesting article on personal confession.

Among the great things he writes is the too-easily-forgotten certainty; God welcomes all who are weary with sin.

If I find sin an enemy, I can be sure of a very powerful and wonderful Ally.

Fabio

It took some getting used to, having an England football coach called Fabio Capello.  Surely that must be a musical instruction? Fabio didn't speak English but football is, I quote the Football Association, a universal language. 

No point in being sniffy about these things.  Our church frontage is Italianate (apparantly).  Why should we not integrate an Italian front to our national football team?  Success!!   Fabio led our national football team to a glorious qualification for the World Cup finals tournament in South Africa and then . . .

Then Fabio, previously known for his record of successive successes, became as English as apple pie.  He led us to ignominious sporting defeat.  Football is a universal language.  And everyone says the same thing - when England play in the World Cup they get knocked out by Germany (if someone hasn't knocked them out earlier, which very nearly happened).  Fabio speaks our language!  He's entered our culture!  He's integrated - one of us now - remembered for sporting defeat.

It was so different when he was appointed.  Then, from his very limited store of English vocabulary he uttered the priceless comment (on the prospect of being England football coach),

It is a beautiful challenge

That was a first.  No English coach has ever called it that.  Nor with the benefit of a wider vocabulary and the experience of failing will Fabio himself ever utter the phrase again.  A unique way to remember him.  It inspires me to a text from Ecclesiastes for Fabio;

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what He has done from beginning to end.

Fabio has certainly driven me to think less about football and more about eternity.  The rest is self explanatory. 

Except of course the text is really about God.  The unfathomable works of God are a cause for spiritual longing and praising His glory.  The unfathomable works of Fabio became a cause for switching TV channels and planning summer vacations instead.

Hearing

I owe this story to an elderly lady who told this tale about - an elderly lady!

The vicar dropped by to visit the lady who had been taken ill.  Because of her age and the seriousness of the illness it seemed time to prepare for the End.

"Vicar," said she, "You will take my Funeral Service when I pass away, won't you?"

"Well yes, of course, when that time comes."

"You'll do it, won't you?  Not the young curate?"

The vicar was a little alarmed.  He had thought the young curate was quite competent and  liked.  "Yes, I'll do it.  But may I ask why you insist on it being me rather than my colleague?  He's very caring."

"Oh, I do believe he's very kind.  But in the services I can never hear a word he says."

Rites

 

Saturday I was conducting a Wedding.

Sunshine, specially printed Orders of Service, specially chosen music, reunited family and friends, invitations to eat, specially smart clothes, flowers,  official certificates, smiling faces, photographers, bubbles, excitement, congratulations, toasts . . .

Yesterday I was conducting a Funeral.

Sunshine, specially printed Orders of Service, specially chosen music, reunited family and friends, invitations to eat, specially smart clothes, flowers, official certificates, faces in tears, no photographers, no bubbles, no excitement, no congratulations, no toasts . .

In every wedding there is a funeral.  Say it after me . . .

until we are parted by death

What a miserable thing it appears to be that in our most glowingly romantic hour we intone our certain end.  For a Christian this is greatly mitigated by its opposite, courtesy of our Saviour:

In every funeral there is a wedding.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea.  And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God.  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." 

Schumann

Robert Schumann is 200 today.



Of course he isn't.  His birthday is.

His short life petered out in an asylum, neither the first nor the last gifted person to live too short a life and despair in part of the short life he had.

Yet as I played Traumerei today (no, the video is not me - he's a proper pianist) I felt that it is better to have lived a short time with passion than to live a long, cold life.

Jesus only lived 33 years and he wept and he shuddered and he sweated as it were drops of blood and he stormed and he cared and he ached and he loved and he cried out.

Whitehaven

I only went to Whitehaven once.  Yet I clearly remember it without my memory being jogged by the killings committed by Derrick Bird last week.

Just as it has come into the media glare for all the wrong reasons, so I remembered it as such.  Before I drove there during a lakeland holiday the name Whitehaven somehow conjured a vision a little like its namesake in Queensland, Australia . . .

I drove over the hill down toward the town to be confronted by something like this, only wetter and darker . . .

A more depressing sight set between beautiful lakeland hills and the sea it was hard to imagine.  And I fully expected to maintain this personal prejudice against the rain-battered bricks of Whitehaven until the day I die for I have certainly never intended to return as a holidaymaker to reassess my view.

My view has been reassessed however as a result of Derrick Bird's actions.  For it was also in the rain that the people of Whitehaven gathered last evening to remember and respect those who were killed last week.   A thousand people.

What is beautiful about Whitehaven is a community where people care and support each other and, however stumblingly, turn toward the Prince of Peace.  Deliberately, or accidentally, they have reflected to us all the character of God in a world that they know better than most sometimes reflects the darkness of another prince. 

Sides

Today I was on holiday.

It being Jesus' resurrection day and professing to follow him, I went to church.

One of the churches I went to was populated mostly by people from Africa. I had not been to this church for perhaps 20 years, and then the congregation was almost entirely British, bigger and more boring.

But why would I go to church on a holiday week?  My daughter put in a word of discouragement -"You don't need to go to church, Dad.  You're a Pastor."

A totally deaf and dumb man was asked why he attended church.  Taking his notebook he wrote,

To show which side I'm on  

Last

The invoice makes it seem so very ordinary.  It blandly states,

28 May 2010  Posterior Composite Filling Lower Left Molar

I have been very blessed to have a dentist as a friend!  It goes without saying that he did not become a friend by being my dentist - that's about as likely as making friends by being a Traffic Warden - but having become a friend he became my dentist (and stayed my friend - perhaps even that is difficult!).

Thursday was disconcerting.  A relatively useful day fell apart as a result of an apricot.  It doesn't happen to everyone, and I've had several uneventful apricot encounters over the years, but this one ended with part of the previously mentioned molar sticking closely to the apricot instead of to itself.  A broken tooth!  A phone call.  A Friday drive to my friend's surgery.  A read of the National Geographic in the waiting room.  The most enormous drilling sound - no, it was alright, just a gardener next door power sawing a rhododendron bush!  The smiling welcome.  The chair (aargh).  The light.  The inspection and confirmation of the evil apricot's misdemeanour. "Shall I fill it now?"  The grimaced "Yes, please". Then,

"You're my last ever patient"

Some of the potential threat from such a claim was mitigated by me knowing that some time in the next month or so my dentist was moving over to a teaching post.  But it doesn't take much to set the mind racing in a dentist's chair.  My mind raced between two poles. 

Maybe this was his least important filling ever.  After all whatever happened it would be some other dentist that would next work on my molars. 

Or was it his most important filling ever?  A whole dental career leading to the grand terminus of one of my lower left molars.

Like good professionals everywhere he just filled the tooth as he would have done any other day.  And, having told me not to eat for a couple of hours, departed into post-patient paradise to eat with his staff in celebration.  I wasn't sure what to say as a patient in such historic circumstances, but of course with a numbed mouth saying nothing much was most suitable.

I am fantastically grateful to my dentist.  I vaguely feel the dastardly apricot let me in to a privileged moment.

What I know more certainly is that when on the cross my Lord said, IT IS FINISHED, he really was describing the finale that everything about him had led towards.  Not only the most important moment in his life, purpose and future, the most important moment for me and my dentist too.

Pentecost

Sing Out

Here's part of last Sunday Evening's worship at our Church.  We're lining up to sing one of our worship songs at the front of the Church building.

Why?

To remind ourselves, as Pentecost approaches, that the closed walls of the Jerusalem Upper Room were for the time before the Holy Spirit came.  Once He came down, the only way for the Church was (supposed to be) out!

Ordination

Yesterday we had a fantastic service in which one of our young men was ordained into Christian ministry. Hundreds of people came, and the Word of God was preached from Exodus 3, drawing us to the greatness of God who calls us.  If anything made the day a little less golden for me personally it was the reflection that whenever I've come to such days marking my pilgrimage points I always seem to be given Scriptures that are at once deeply meaningful and somewhat, well, disconcerting.

It started at my Baptism when, being baptised as a believer, I was blessed with 'endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ'.  I suppose one unspoken practical advantage of the Baptism of Infants practised in other traditions is that you don't get to comprehend any ominous texts if they're spoken over you.

On to my Ordination. The speaker chose for his sermon Ezekiel chapter 2, here translated in The Message,

"Son of man, stand up. I have something to say to you." The moment I heard the voice, the Spirit entered me and put me on my feet. As he spoke to me, I listened. He said, "Son of man, I'm sending you to the family of Israel, a rebellious nation if there ever was one. They and their ancestors have fomented rebellion right up to the present. They're a hard case, these people to whom I'm sending you—hardened in their sin. Tell them, 'This is the Message of God, the Master.' They are a defiant bunch. Whether or not they listen, at least they'll know that a prophet's been here. But don't be afraid of them, son of man, and don't be afraid of anything they say. Don't be afraid when living among them is like stepping on thorns or finding scorpions in your bed. Don't be afraid of their mean words or their hard looks. They're a bunch of rebels. Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern. They're hardened rebels. Only take care, son of man, that you don't rebel like these rebels. Open your mouth and eat what I give you."

When I looked he had his hand stretched out to me, and in the hand a book, a scroll. He unrolled the scroll. On both sides, front and back, were written lamentations and mourning and doom.

My ordination speaker was a good preacher (in the technique sense) though as it happens I can't remember a thing he said - just the forbidding chapter and the preacher himself.  The preacher, who for internet purposes will remain anonymous, a few years later did that 10th/7th commandment thingy of coveting his neighbour's wife and then some.  Not so long after he did it again somewhere else after undergoing the restoration/repentence routine, thus unintentionally giving me a lifelong demonstration of the very characteristics God warned Ezekiel about.

If the Word of God sometimes tastes to the ear like unpalatable cold remedies, it's because God knows the preachers who preach it and the hearers who listen.  As he kind of said to Ezekiel, "Swallow that, it'll do you good".

Shower

For some people what matters about this week has very little to do with events in Westminster.

Dave and Nick

Vote for change, we're always told.

But you don't have to vote for change because change happens whether we like it or not.  Now into the shoes (or perhaps mules or spats) previously worn by First Lords of the Treasury and/or Prime Ministers named His Grace the 1st Duke of Newcastle, His Grace William Cavendish-Bentinck, Henry Temple The Viscount Palmerston and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman arrive Dave and Nick.

It reminds me of the Church Membership List with which I was confronted on leaving training college on which not a single first name appeared.  If someone said that she was Elsie I simply had to best guess which of the Mrs or Miss Es she was, a process vexed with potential disaster.  Mr D. Cameron, Mr N. Clegg.

Now I have bizarre discussions about Ann, Ben, Carol or Darren before finding out later that the other party was talking about a different Darren, Carol, Ben or Ann.  Things have changed completely, yet in that peculiarly human way that sees the Garden of Eden replicated by people's Internet behaviour, nothing has changed at all.  The first name issue has become the last name issue! 

Dave and Nick, take note. 

Undecided

Here we are, the Sunday after the Thursday before, and we still don't know who'll be Prime Minister next month or which party(ies) will form the next UK Government.

A hung parliament.  It's all so wonderfully post-modern.

Nothing is certain.  Nothing is absolute.  Nothing is true for us all.  Nothing is inevitable.  Anything is nothing if I want it to be. 

I guess the financial markets, which are not so post-modern, will get some decisions made shortly.  And that reminds me that while everything seems to be relative, the opposite is actually true.  The future only has a single destination when it comes to bowing the knee.  Yep, Jesus has the Hung Parliament thing well sorted in the long run.

Dissembled

Having spent a busy May Day holiday weekend at home and serving my church and a nearby fellowship it's been time to catch up on what I missed.  I missed the Baptist Assembly in Plymouth so the best I could do was to catch up by reading some of the bloggers who had been there.  Some made me a little envious, others (these are Baptists and no two ever agree entirely) a little grateful that I was not there.  Then this - from one College lecturer much admired in the higher Baptist world -

Delegates (and this is very impressionistic) – nearly all rather elderly, middle aged, middle England, conventional, dated, Isle of Wight, Daily Mail/Telegraph. Not that all of those things are in themselves bad but they are certainly not representative of the wider population – overall really rather dull in comparison. On the way down I read Cole Moreton’s "Is God Still An Englishman". Moreton paints a now largely familiar picture of the last fifty years and the changes in English society and in particular how we do God. This certainly feels much more like the old England, and not in a good way.  

Can't get much more middle in England than Wycombe, more middle in age than me (currently - but heading for elderly I guess - ah, but so are you!), dated (at least my daughter thinks so), conventional (Bran Flakes nearly every morning), read the sports pages in the Daily Telegraph and do the crossword, even went to the Isle of Wight on holiday once.

Perhaps I should be glad I didn't go and comprehensively contribute to the gentleman's perceived problem.  But while we have Christian leaders who treat their brothers and sisters in these stereotypical ways we will never have the Church that Jesus came to bring.  After all, his first disciples were all Jewish, male, young adult, mid-Galileans as far as I can tell. 

Or perhaps it isn't only the politicians campaigning in Rochdale that need to learn to value people for what they are rather than dismiss them for what they're not.

River

This evening we looked at Jesus' amazing promise of the Holy Spirit.  He is the river that flows from Jesus for us.  Springing from the perfect Saviour, from the hill where Jesus died, from - as Ezekiel saw it - the altar, this river gives life in a world that is otherwise a spiritual desert.  A river of living water, never stagnant.  Never stopping, it is yet a place to rest.

Why is this 'amazing'?  Because the River is God himself.  Not a religious metaphor for a long ritual or an ecstatic spinning.  God himself comes to us.

When the General Election is over I do not expect to hear from the politicians much until we meet again at the next election.  Yet when Jesus went up to somewhere more exalted than Westminster or Washington or Brussels, God immediately came back to give us more and more life.  If only we could, we'd certainly elect God!  In fact, and more amazingly still, he elects us!!

Highlights

This week we had the second televised debate between the leaders of the three largest parties contesting the UK General Election on May 6.

Adam Boulton of Sky News who moderated the debate unintentionally damned it with this faint praise.  He wrote afterwards,  .... For me personally this really was fantastic and two moments stand out in particular...

First, talking to the audience before the debate and realising there were people from all walks of life who were pleased to be there.

Then there was the moment when the three leaders came on and took their places behind the podiums.  You could hear the countdown and you realised this really was going to happen.

Oh dear.  The two stand out moments both happened without any of the three of them opening their mouths!

This offered me some consolation this weekend when, beset by a stomach bug, I failed to finish a service for the first time in many hundreds of starts.  Disappearing from the platform in haste I ended up in a crumpled vomiting humiliation in the room behind the platform, the message largely as undelivered as the lunch was undigested.

The singular experience was not so bad for the congregants whom the wall spared from knowing any more than my disappearance.  They were able to continue their celebration largely undiminished, aided by my ever-competent wife who finished the service element in my absence.  Whatever the stand out part of the day was for those attending, I can be 100% sure it was not my message.  On another day I, like those party leaders, might have been fooled into believing it could have been! 

Grounded

"You cannot leave the ground where you are", declared the Controller.

The people crowded toward the place where they would set off up into the clouds.

Beyond them, however, smoke and ash billowed forth.  It was going to be a long wait.  Just as well not to try and go up, though.  Health and safety.

Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because Yahweh descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently . . . Yahweh descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up and Yahweh said to him, "Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see Yahweh and many of them perish."

What a hardship people have suffered in the past week trying to get home with a flying ban because of airborne ash from an unprounouncable Icelandic volcano.

But theirs has been a short wait compared to how long we'd have to wait to get up into God's presence.  It's never going to happen, really.  Good that he came down.