Christmas Card Mysteries: No 8

Christmas Day!

Surely, at last, the mystery is over and revelation begins.

Yet we remember those angels declaring peace to humankind and we see our world, even our neighbourhoods, no more peaceful and possibly less so as a New Year begins.  It is a mystery.  But this beautiful, troubling card helps.

With a little detective work (because we have had many canal holidays) I worked out that this is a picture of the Kennet and Avon Canal in Bath.  The text inside reads Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always.  The picture is certainly peaceful if one were to measure it in decibels. The crunch of footsteps in the snow and that's about it I imagine.

My recollection of this section of canal is that we became stuck on it in a lock and in a fairly scary place where it joins a river.  No peace there.  And given Bath's geography, evident enough in the picture, a decent snowfall is going to bring distress as well as peace.  Slippery pavements, impassable hills, cancelled events.  

The pictured idyll overlays a dark unease.  

Whereas Christmas? On Christmas Day it's worth reflecting that it is really the opposite.  Most of the participants in the first Christmas were dislodged or distressed at some stage - the mother, the shepherd, the fiance, the wise men, king Herod, the bereaved parents of Bethlehem, the children of Bethlehem.  

But the pictured disruptions and deaths overlayed a bright peace, in which and to which we continue to move.

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 7

It is rehearsed almost to the point of irritation that there was 'no room for them in the inn'.  And I write that as the chair of a charity that helps the homeless and lonely.  The near irritation derives from the patently obvious fact that it is far more significant that Jesus died deserted than that he was born 'not in the inn' though the latter is admittedly a portent of his greater rejection.

Unfortunately most Christmases are darkened by world events and it is also a cliched truth that Jesus's family were forced to flee their country.  Again, it was not general world politics but actual human hatred directed at king Jesus that is reason for the story, but it still reminds us that Christ is more easily seen in the tents than in the palaces.

Anyhow, welcome to my latest Christmas Card Mystery.  Mystery No 6 had disappearing shepherds.  This card catapults Christ beyond the experience of a humble birth and a toddler refugee experience: it makes him an orphan.  It's great news for Barnardos fundraising department.  Less good for the Catholic devotion to BVM*  who it seems, with Joseph, has left the kid in the hay in the open air to be rescued by passing shepherds and wise men.

And you thought parenting in 2016 was bad?

*Blessed Virgin Mary for the non-liturgical reader

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 6

This card is unusual in that, instead of crowding a chronology of things into one moment in the stable, it has three pictures to tell how the shepherds heard, looked, then went to the stable.

An obvious alarm is that they seem to have needed the wise men's star as well as the instruction of the angel to find the babe.  I'd always thought the angel's directions were rather good - 
"Today in the City of David a Saviour has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord! And this will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger."

But looking at the third picture it appears that even the previously unknown addition of the 'sat nav' star to aid the shepherds was not enough.

For yes, on picture 2 there are 5 shepherds, on picture 3 at the mangerside there are only 3 (plus the wise men).  Maybe two went to the pub?  Or midnight mass?  Still, overall a 60% attendance rate is something most pastors would be happy to accept . . .

Happy Birthday, Maurice White

Maurice White, founding father and general genius of Earth, Wind and Fire (EWF) would have been celebrating his 75th birthday today.  Sadly for his loved ones and many fans he died back in February. 

EWF formed part of my musical growing up background.  I was never a huge fan mainly, I think, because I was not into the relentless Californian feel-goodness that characterised their undoubtedly skillful music.     

This feel-good song is the more remarkable because its subject matter is the opposite - 

Somethin' happened along the way
Yesterday was all we had
Somethin' happened along the way
What used to be happy is sad
Somethin' happened along the way
What used to be was all we had

Perhaps on a birthday it is worth thinking about that Love which cannot die, does not die, the Love that is stronger than death.  The advantage of a birthday near Christmas is that such a Love is relatively easy to locate.

If you look in the hay.

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 5

Our morning Worship Service today opened with Once in Royal David's City.  Its last verse contrasts that humble manger birthplace with Christ's ascended glory - we will see Him but

Not in that poor lowly stable

A reflective knowledge of Middle Eastern housing in the First Century makes our ideas of a stable unlikely - animals were usually kept in the lower room of a house.  But never mind that.  This card has a stable with a gold roof.  Together with some nifty woodwork we have a stable that might just have been the best-looking building in Bethlehem.  It's so posh that the cow has been left outside.  So grand, in fact, that the star and the holy family are the second and third things that catch the eye after admiring the not-at-all lowly stable.  It's fit for a King - and that is its mysterious mistake.

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 4

The mystery of this card can be easily summarised in one question.  Given the evidential star, why are those Wise Men heading in the wrong direction?

Perhaps they are three other wise men.  But then, why are they on a Christmas card?

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 3

We've received a card with a quite alarming warning on the back.

You may think that at my age I should take such a warning in my stride and not worry about it.  But what worried me about it was that for the life of me I couldn't see how a Christmas Card warranted this health and safety warning.  Like most people (I like to think) I find 'contains nuts' warnings on packets of nuts a form of corporate insanity but at least I know that nuts are dangerous to some people.  But a card - not a toy, contains small parts  . . .????

Here's the card:

Eventually I solved the mystery.  The offending small part is the little red and white ribbon at the top left - the one you'd have swallowed as a 2 year old thinking it was a toy . . .

Inevitably I studied the picture to check that health and safety had been properly respected throughout the product.

Ah, there are two stockings above a live flame.  Paper wrapped presents where the sparks may fly on the hearth.  Electric lights where ones hands should hold the banister.  Presents on the stairs and a pile of them at the foot of the stairs. Filled glasses of plonk on the narrow mantelpiece above the fire.  The tree too near the fire.

That ribbon is just about the safest thing on the card!  

  

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 2

Luke 2:8 In the same region there were shepherds staying out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night.

It's a must-do reading at the Carol Service.

Today we received THIS card (it's actually a little longer than the photo)

From time to time card makers experiment with different shapes.  The designer of this card plainly designs bookmarks the rest of the year, but in the busy season it's 'all hands on deck' I suppose.

Elongation offers special opportunities one might imagine.  A card this long could have both Jerusalem AND Bethlehem on it.  Or even Nazareth and the holy family making their long journey from left to right or whatever.  Or there's the star, appearing to those wise men far away in the East.

It's a missed opportunity then, is it not?  The star has already arrived (early).  Instead, far away to the right we have the shepherds. That will be the shepherds that Luke told us were 'in the same region/vicinity'.  Well, these shepherds aren't!  

It's a mystery.

Christmas Card Mysteries: No 1

The Christmas cards have started to arrive!  I love Christmas cards, despite spending most Decembers blogging about the weirdness that many contain.

One thing that everyone once concerned themselves about was sending their Christmas cards in time.  The Royal Mail have helpfully always supplied deadline dates.  But now we live in a social media world and people can send their Christmas Cards for free.

I've had two already.

But why?

How long does it take to send an email or a Facebook message?  Surely the right time to send such cards is on the day they celebrate - Christmas Day?  But no - they seem in general to arrive BEFORE the deadline for posting to Pitcairn Island.  It's a mystery.

Truth be told I don't much care for electronic cards.  I'm struggling to articulate why.  This card is an example of why I'm struggling to articulate why.

I can't help thinking that with a design like this it might as well be tweeted as posted!

Psalm 102

St Andrew's Day (today) is Scotland's national day because of alleged stories of ancient saint's relics being taken to and enshrined there.  Thankfully, Scotland has given the world higher spiritual input than this.  Not least, psalm singing.

So,  

• Is it imaginable that God could ever be praised without a band or an organ?  And if so, how poor would that be? Well, that might work actually always bearing in mind the lack of organs and guitars in first century Galilee.
• Could Psalm 102 possibly be intended for singing? A Psalm perhaps, but all that sense of misery in it - and not even an added chorus bit? But yes, the Psalms are for singing.
• Can groups of people do the singing by themselves?  No choir or lead  vocalist? Apparently so.

1 To this my prayer O listen, LORD!
And let my cry for help reach You.
2 In day of grief hide not Your face.
Your list'ning ear toward me O bend;
The day I call, Your answer send,

3 For all my days go up in smoke,
And like a hearth my bones are burned.
4 Like grass my heart is crushed and dried;
I daily food forgotten leave;
5 My skin and bones together cleave.

With sighs and groans my frame resounds.
6 I'm like a desert pelican,
Or like an owl in ruined wastes.
7 I lie awake, as on the roof
A sparrow stands, alone, aloof.

8 All day my foes their taunts repeat;
Those filled with anger curse my name.
9 I food with tears and ashes mix,
10 For You on me in anger frown;
You raised me up to throw me down.

11 An ev'ning shadow are my days;
Like grass I wither soon away.
12 But You, Jehovah, sit enthroned
Forever; Your memorial
Abides through generations all.

Novemberish

The past day or two have not been heart-warming meteorologically speaking.  November has been in full swing with wind and rain and rain and rain and grey cloud and rain.  The adjectives for November say it all really.  T S Eliot called it sombre November; Robbie Burns wrote of chill November; for Ruskin it is dark; Thomas More labelled it sullen: Walter Scott calls it drear.

Once upon a time, one November day, an event of apparently little relevance happened at Lower Samsell, a place that few people had heard of then and scarcely a soul now either.  That November day was especially drear, dark or whatever other miserable adjective you can think of for one man.  He had been taking a Christian meeting in a farmhouse.  These, however, were times when the government prescribed how each person was to worship and this meeting did not fit the frame.  And so that November Sunday the speaker was arrested and incarcerated in the County gaol.

The gaol, understandably, offered few preaching opportunities.  He might have expected some clemency from the local Justice but his retort whenever asked about whether he had learned his lesson was, "If you release me today, I will preach tomorrow".  So of course he wasn’t released and it was, to all intents and purposes, 12 years that he was inside.

But you and I would never have heard of him if it were not for that dark November day.  For in that gaol, the silenced preacher discovered another ability entirely.  Honing that ability over the long enclosed years eventually gave birth to a book which from that time 450 years ago has never been out of print.  For in that gaol in Bedford, the prisoner preacher John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress.  

In his great story, Bunyan’s pilgrim also enters a Novemberish place.  It is called the Valley of the Shadow of Death and the pilgrim is warned by two other men to turn back at its threshold.  But the pilgrim says, this is my way to the desired haven, and launches, sword in hand, into the Valley.  He cannot see its end but he knows that the dark, dreary place is the path to a flowering destiny.  He emerges eventually, and singing,

   

Dangers in darkness, devils, hell, and sin,

Did compass me, while I this vale was in;

Yea, snares, and pits, and traps, and nets did lie

My path about, that worthless, silly I

Might have been catch’d, entangled, and cast down;

But since I live, let Jesus wear the crown."

Big Ben and the Birds

Every Remembrance Sunday at the cenotaph Big Ben is heard.  The remembrancers fall silent as a representation that the guns fell silent on the original Armistice day in 1918.

At the same moment a set of guns are fired by the Royal Horse Artillery and after two minutes the guns fire again to mark its ending.

We do our imitation of this silence (without the guns) in church.  

Silence is quite empty on the face of it.  In church we often imply the value of perhaps praying.  we do not mind that young children can't stay quiet.

There are no children at the cenotaph.  But neither is there quiet (even though David Dimbleby usually says that silence has fallen).

Big Ben is not silent.  After striking the arrival of eleven it faithfully ploughs on eleven times.  Time does not stop for our quietness.  Whether the guns fire on or not time continues to march.  In war human beings seem so big (if they're winning), so small (when they lose).  But time makes every human being small.  For me it is impossible to imagine the cenotaph ceremony without the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh: what I cannot imagine, Time requires me to accept as inevitable.  Even our bloodiest wars are doomed to be dwarfed by the relentless march of Time.

Then there's the birds.  As the artillery gun is fired every year there is the sound of scuttling birds.  Whether anyone notices I do not know.  It reminds us that whatever the immensities of human war, nature in some form, marches on.  Of course war ruins the natural world for a time, but all of us who have stood in normal looking fields or valleys or on normal looking hillsides and tried vainly to imagine that this was once where the battle happened know that Nature, like Time, dwarfs the greatest human conflicts.

How much more true this is of Nature and Time's Creator.

From Mosul with love

London is always full of surprises.

One of our church members was travelling by bus, wearing a Christian symbol.

"Are you a Christian?", a lady asked her.

"Yes I am"

"I am too!  I come from Nineveh, from Mosul, from Iraq.  We must pray.  They have attacked us but we are in London and we are safe now. There are many of us from Iraq and we have a church [in NW London] where we can pray."

You really never know who you may meet in this city.

Reformation Day

Forget Hallowe'en.

This is the day on which we remember how the Church was rescued from the institutional hopelessness of European politics and restored to some hope of understanding what God had revealed in his Word and his Son, the Word made flesh.

So let's have a quotation from a reformer.  Here's John Calvin (yes, he whose name is associated with predestination - as any Biblical scholar's should be) nonetheless setting out the simple glories of God's invitation in Christ:

“No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keeps us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief”

If the reader is confused as to why election is necessary with such a gaping gate of salvation available, the answer lies (as it does in Scripture) in the nature of the barrier represented in the last word of the quotation.

Sunday in Aberfan

This morning at Church we thought about what it must have meant to the Christians in Aberfan when, on this day (Sunday October 23rd) in 1966 they gathered for worship after a generation of the village's children had been buried in the catastrophe that was marked in its anniversary on Friday.

Who can imagine what that felt like?  We can't.

But we thought about a man who did - Kenneth Hayes, the Baptist pastor of its Chapel.  One of his two sons had died that awful morning and he led his remaining congrtegation on that shocking Sunday.

You can read about it here.

In this darkest of experiences the light was the great promise of God's word: 

 'What can separate us from the love of God? I am certain that nothing can separate us from the love of God, neither death nor life, neither angels or other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future..."

Aberfan

Yesterday I spoke at a Primary School Harvest Assembly.  One of the songs that was sung - by Year 3  (7/8 year olds) - was All things bright and beautiful.  Perhaps nobody else in the 400 plus people in the room realised the poignancy of singing that hymn this week.

On the morning of October 21, 1966 the primary school children sang it in assembly at the primary school in Aberfan, South Wales.  The assembly lasted from 9:00am to 9:15am.  I was many miles away in eastern England, though would have been an 8 year old in that assembly had Aberfan been my home.

Which is why I've thought about it a lot this week.  For 88 children just like me died at 9:15am straight after that assembly when the National Coal Board's reckless mountain of slag swept down the hillside and buried the school, sending into eternity a generation of my contemporaries, aged 7-9 and 28 adults.

There are many sad ironies about that particular hymn being sung which both at the time and on reflection have occurred to many observers.  Although we often blame Nature (and by extension its Creator who also makes the bright and the beautiful) for disasters, the Aberfan disaster lay squarely on the shoulders of man.  In South Wales at the time all that was dark and ugly in the landscape was man-made and all that was bright and beautiful was created by God.  But the hymn still feels wrong somehow,

Yet maybe today as the old school site has a peaceful memorial garden it is more helpful to think of the bright and beautiful as the long-term and the dark disasters as short term.  Of course they do not seem very short term to a village that lost a generation.  Yet worldwide from Cambodia to Congo to Hiroshima to St Petersburg there are places haunted by ancient awfulness which have returned to a brightness and beauty in their time.

I thought of that a couple of years ago when visiting the mountain retreat of the Third Reich in the Alps.  Beauty outlasts the Beast.  In the end nobody in heaven sings songs of mourning - not even the martyrs.

Monarchies

The 88 year old King of Thailand has died after a remarkable 70 year reign.

This leaves the Queen of the United Kingdom (and her other realms) as the longest reigning living Monarch (1952-present).

Bar one . . .

1 Timothy 1:17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Scars

Today at one of our meetings a lady (whom we dearly love) turned up looking like she had just spent a few rounds in the boxing ring.

In fact she had fallen over on her way and had somewhat bravely (or perhaps unwisely) continued to the meeting on the bus when an ambulance looked like a more suitable method of transportation.  We are surely not supposed to turn up at meetings with scars.  Or are we?

The Bible makes little pretence that following  that guy with the cross is going to be easy.  Chapters like 1 Peter 3 appear discouraging to the contemporary ear that is used to relentlessly positive input.

Yet the wounds (not the self inflicted careless ones of course) of the believer are the badges of allegiance, a direct link to the One we follow.  Here's Amy Carmichael's take on the theme:

Hast thou no scar?

No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?

I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,

I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star,

Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?

Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,

Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent

By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned:

Hast thou no wound?

No wound, no scar?

Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,

And, piercéd are the feet that follow Me;

But thine are whole: can he have followed far

Who has no wound, nor scar?

Back from holiday

September 28th is about the time when summer is definitively over in London.  Even for universities.

Alexander, working in London in 1928, returned from vacation on September 28th.  He hadn't cleaned up his food before he went away from his laboratory and so was greeted with a none-too-pleasant sight.

Yet that sight changed the lives of us all, interpreted by his medical-scientific imagination.  The mould was overpowering the bacterial culture and, at last, bacterial infection might be defeated.  In the words of Alexander Fleming himself, "When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic. . . but I suppose that was exactly what I did.”

While we plan the enjoyment of holidays they are not necessarily the places where the truely wondrous things happen.  They can happen anywhere and any day.

Silence

The other day I was speaking at a meeting and we had a problem with the loudspeakers.  That is not unusual.  The more specific problem was that we were hearing the radio through the speakers.  It was a fairly conventional station fortunately but irritating nonetheless.  we twiddles with a few buttons and knobs to no effect.  

The matter was resolved when a lady found that it was her radio (or at least the radio on her phone) broadcasting from her handbag . . .

This summer I wandered into St Clement Danes church in Central London.  As an island in the middle of a very busy road it must have wrestled with background noise for over a century.

I picked up a leftover Order of Service.  These days it is the Royal Air Force London chapel rather than a parish church so I was most impressed by the appropriateness of its advice about mobile phones - switch them to 'flight' mode.

Could the Great Fire of London happen in 2016?

It's the Anniversary of the Great Fire of London so here's a reminder of one of its legacies . . .  In the centre of London there are many monuments.  There is one monument, however, which is called Monument (it even has an underground station named after it).  It stands amid many tall buildings today, but once stood high above other buildings as befits its name.

Sir Christopher Wren did quite well out of the Great Fire of London for he was commissioned to design many of the replacement buildings.  And so, perhaps appropriately, it fell to him to design the Monument that still stands today near the spot where, in Pudding Lane, the great conflagration began.  If you laid the Monument (311 steps high) down its top would lay at the exact spot the fire began.

You might imagine that such an historic edifice would have remained largely unaltered but, in these Health and Safety conscious times, its viewing platform is now surrounded by a comprehensive fence, creating the sensation of climbing 311 steps to experience life as a budgerigar . . .

 

But look again.

There, 350 years late (the Great Fire was in 1666) is the Fire Extinguisher that would have made all the difference.

Quite why there is a fire extinguisher on top of a stone monument remains a mystery though perhaps of all the places in London this is the one where you'd have to say, "You can't be too careful about these things . . ."

The Temple of the Heart

Just round the corner near a Cornish fishing harbour is this sign.  It records that John Wesley stayed here and that the Methodists met here.  Too easily we institutionalise the way of Christ but, just as in the Holy Land, the true foundations of Christian faith are no longer present for they were the hearts that were changed, so here is a reminder that although the Church quickly becomes mistaken for buildings, publishing labels and international conferencing it is largely based in people's hearts, and therefore their homes.

Bronzed

The Olympics throw in many stories which we enjoy.  There is something very heartwarming amid the elitism of sport - and Sophie Hitchon has helped to provide it here.  Looking at her body language following her third place in the women's hammer you would assume that she has won gold.  Especially if you compare it with the bitter disappointment on the faces of some silver medalists - what, after all, is second place to an elite sportsman or woman?

It turns out that Sophie is excited beyond all expectations.  She has done her best - more than her best - and on her final throw.  Just as the A level results appear this seems to be a lesson worth embracing.  Of course, on the face of it, some will have their A*s and their place at an elite institution and drippingly good earning prospects.  

As a Pastor I have, every year almost, seen young people pass or fail exams.  For parents especially bronze seems useless (Sophie's family were not even in Rio!).  But, in the words of the old Scout Hymn, we are to be the best that we can be.  That's all.

The Lord told us that we will not all have the same number of talents.  We do have the same responsibility to use them at our best and in that is life's true reward.

Lightboat

There are three things about a light vessel.

It is not defined by its movement but by its position.  Living in a helter-skelter city in a helter-skelter age it is hard to appreciate the value of being rightly positioned rather than going at speed.  This is the curse of the church too.  We are not a denomination, we are a movement is the Baptist Union's current emphasis.  All this has a point.  But whether the point has much to do with Jesus's instruction to watch and pray is not clear to me.  

It must shine.  Our church's strap line is A Light on a Hill.  Being positioned well (at sea or on a hill) is not much use without lighting the world about us.

It mustn't sink.  If it sinks it is neither a light nor in the right position.  The Bible teaches us to stand firm.  

There is much that the Christian and the Christian Church can learn from a Light Vessel and almost nothing we can learn from a speedboat.  

Mrs Colville (continued)

So Mrs Colville returned to England unaware that her faithful door-to-door ministry and her discipling of one young man had, in the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, become a catalyst for a great Revival in Ulster.  We never know what faithful obedience might produce.

The beauty of older stories is that we can trace them into their future.  We cannot do this for our own.  And so we zip forward to,2016.  That's fairly contemporary for a blog in 2016!

For just a few weeks ago a famed Baptist Church in Edinburgh City Centre moved into its new building.  When I say 'new' I mean 'fresh' because the the building was a former Parish Church.

But what has this to do with Mrs Colville?  It goes like this.  A young woman came to life in Jesus in that Ulster Revival and was so moved by the power of prayer in it that she set about praying for her church in Edinburgh City Centre.  Now what we want to read here is that, a year later, a thousand people came through the door.  The truth is that as the 20th century began and she had been praying for 30 years the church was down to 35 attendees.  

But she had bequeathed to her family the vigour to trust and pursue in prayer.  And so it was that a new pastor arrived.  Joseph Kemp teamed up with a Church Secretary who himself had captured his mother-in-law's vision of revival.  And the rest, as they say is history.

There did indeed become a year when a thousand people were saved at the chapel.  There were prayer meetings that were measured in days not minutes.  And so today it is still possible to buy unwittingly into Mrs Colville's legacy not only as a student in Edinburgh City Centre but in many other places through the world.

Except that of course it is not that this springs from one woman.  She was the trigger but the power was the Lord's.  She did not even believe she was a trigger - but she did believe she was the Lord's!  And that will do.

Mrs Colville

Today at Church we thought about sowing seeds of goodness (Galatians 6:7-10).  It reminded me of Mrs Colville from Gateshead.  

What did Mrs Colville do?  It was embarrassingly simple really. In the middle of the 19th century she went from door to door seeking to tell people about the Gospel of the Lord Jesus.

She arrived in Ballymena in Ireland with the Baptist Missionary Society.  Going from door to door one day she was she found two ladies who were already conversing with a young man about spiritual things.  His name was James.  James subsequently sought out Mrs Colville for further discussion and his life began to change.

The story moves to Kells, a nearby village, where two young men - Jeremiah Meneely and Robert Carlisle - were walking home with the school-master following a school property meeting.  Robert asked them had they heard about the great change that had come over James.

That autumn, reflecting on James's change of life, Jeremiah was inspired to begin a Prayer Meeting.  After 3 months nothing much had happened, except two more men had joined.   On January 1st the first conversion took place as a result of the prayer-meeting.

But after that there were conversions one after another. By year's end about fifty young men were taking part in the prayer meeting.

From that meeting in North Antrim the seed of revival grew into the great Revival of 1859 in Ulster, one glimpse of which might be seen in this description of one of countless great meetings which often lasted days - I could not get into the building; every open window was more than occupied. In the vestry room there were those under conviction of sin; it was a scene impossible to forget and equally impossible to describe. An old man, a boy, and a young man were in varying stages of upset. They all wanted to be free from sin. “ I know that my redeemer liveth, the young man said. “I know that He can save my soul. I know that He can wash me from all uncleanness in the fountain of His atoning blood. But, Oh I have crucified Him, I have crucified Him."

Or this from the local newspaper in one town:  Common street prostitutes and public nuisances who had frequently been convicted for drunkenness and loitering are now clothed with attention to decency and struggling to earn their livelihood by honest labour, and by learning to read. They are all daily and humbly beseeching pardon for their past sin and in regular attendance at some place of worship.  At the Raceview Woollen Mills by twelve noon the factory had to close down as so many of the employees were crying out to God.

Mrs Colville had returned from her Mission Trip sad at the poor response.  Yet she had been the sower of a seed that, even in the amazing events of 1859, had scarcely begun to reveal its true harvest.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh . . .

A young lady was converted in that great revival of 1859 and all she could pray for was one thing. That revival would break out in her little church in Edinburgh. Time went by - thirty years went by - and she still had not seen an answer to her prayers.  But she was sowing in prayer as surely as Mrs Colville had previously done to lead towards that Revival in which this lady had been saved. But that will take another blog.

Martyring

The killing of Father Jacques Hamel while conducting morning mass in his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray is appalling at every level.  Except one.

It is appalling because of the even-greater-than-usual contrast between the savagery of the attackers and the fragility of the attacked.  It is appalling because of the religious framework of the attackers pitted against the religious framework of the attacked.  It is appalling because it crosses so many boundaries that are rarely crossed outside conventional war (and then quite rarely) - the young against the elderly, the cruel against the kind, the neighbour against the neighbour, the strong against the weak - I could go on.

In one respect this killing was, however, immediately given a different character.  Where the Press and the politicians used the words killed or murdered, some Catholics started to use the word martyred.  

Not only so, but the line of succession of being violently killed at the Eucharist or Mass has been traced through through Oscar Romero (1980) and Thomas Becket (1170), two famous martyrs.

Now there is a considerable theological gulf between Father Hamel, French Catholic Priest, and me, an English Baptist Protestant.  As to that gulf, God is for both of us the judge.  Nevertheless I like the sheer subversion of 'yet another killing in mainland Europe' being transformed by the word martyr.  For the deaths of all Christians who die because they are Christians are a testimonial of their crucified Lord.   "Can you be baptised with the baptism I will be baptised with?" the Lord enquired of his disciple.

To put it another way, very many Islamic leaders will be rushing out disclaimers that the extremists (yet again) in no way represent Mohammed, God or Islam or them.  Meanwhile, all the current Bishop of Rome needs to say about Jacques Hamel is that on that wretched morning he represented the story of the Lord and His love   Three men died, but only one of them died successfully.  Two of them wasted their lives and their deaths.  One I guess hadn't wasted his life, and certainly didn't waste his death.

Two Years In London

There are various ways in which it is now obvious that we have been in London a little while.  Here are a few:

1.  I think that a house costs over £1 million.  If it is a large house it is over £2 million.

2.  I believe that red traffic lights are advisory that something might cross your path as you proceed.

3.  I expect to see a crime committed most months (this month so far it has been a hit and run driver and a bag thief at the supermarket)

4.  There is always a bus coming.  Well, unless you really, really need one.

5.  No meeting of any kind ever starts on time.

6.  Half the population is at school/college.  The other half is their parents.

7.  Jeremy Corbyn is a popular local politician.

8.  A steady job is one that lasts more than eight weeks.

9.  Parking space is more precious than a £1 million house.

10. The countryside is found way up north in the London Boroughs of Barnet and Enfield.  There might be more of it further out but I've forgotten.

Enduring Politics

The current politics of Britain are as amazing as anything in my memory: the leader of the Conservative Party exiting when not required to do by his parliamentary colleagues and the leader of the Labour Party refusing to leave when told to go by his parliamentary colleagues.

In Christian Ministry I have never been much attracted to siding publicly with party politics and when I read the rants of Church leaders that do I am even less inclined.  But as David Cameron left Downing Street yesterday - unable to move straight into his £3.5 million West London home because it is currently rented out at £7,800 plus per month, and humming happily as he returned into the PM's house after making his public announcement - it illustrates a vast contemporary trend that stretches deep into the life of modern Britain.  It is a trend further illustrated in the public faces of the referendum campaign who quickly disappeared from view, at least until Boris was resurrected last evening.  When the going get's tough the tough just go.

Into this whirling world of 'I'm off now - byes' has stepped Jeremy Corbyn.

He represents many strange anomalous things over against proper contemporary politics.  Teresa May decimated the front bench of politicians she sat with but (unless another surprise is in store) she will incongruously face Mr Corbyn at her first Prime Minister's Questions.

Quite a lot of leadership theory seems to revolve around instant departure; in the business world as well as politics, in the church as well as in education.  Yet Mr Corbyn, together ironically (he's a republican) with the Queen represents those outdated qualities of sticking at it.  As such they haunt the swirling world of proper 21st century leaders with the potential value of enduring.

Christians may think all sorts of things about all of this.  But at least they should recognise that the apparently quirky quality of enduring is, in their discipleship and in the church, a very divine quality.

Summer Sundays

We had a very good time in the Lord's presence today at church.  But who is 'we'?

Every summer in my ministry life these July Sundays present an exaggerated version of the constant challenge - where is he/she gone and why?  No response to this ever seems to me to work very well.  Blithely assuming that usually healthy people are healthy later uncovers some sudden illness and a sense of neglect; unwisely imagining that someone who is a strong Christian could not be lapsing yields a later story of having witnessed too lazily the first signs of decline; pursuing the absentee on the other hand provokes a sense of Big Brother and loss of freedom - in short, July presents like a multiple choice question where each answer is wrong.

In general it is not, in my general experience, wise to assume the best (which is why many services begin with confession).  Any reading of history yields support for the view that many a non-engaged Christian is simultaneously disengaged from the Word of God and from God himself as, centuries upon centuries ago, the great Eastern preacher John Chrysostom, preaching on John remarked;

If a harper, or dancer, or stage-player call the city, they all run eagerly, and feel obliged to him for the call, and spend the half of an entire day in attending to him alone; but when God speaks to us by Prophets and Apostles, we yawn, we scratch ourselves, we are drowsy. 

And in summer, the heat seems too great, and we betake ourselves to the market place; and again, in winter, the rain and mire are a hindrance, and we sit at home; yet at horse races, though there is no roof over them to keep off the wet, the greater number, while heavy rains are falling, and the wind is dashing the water into their faces, stand like madmen, caring not for cold, and wet, and mud, and length of way, and nothing either keeps them at home, or prevents their going there. 

But here, where there are roofs over head, and where the warmth is admirable, they hold back instead of running together; and this too, when the gain is that of their own souls. How is this tolerable, tell me? Thus it happens, that while we are more skilled than any in those matters, in things necessary we are more ignorant than children. If a man call you a charioteer, or a dancer, you say that you have been insulted, and use every means to wipe off the affront; but if he draw you to be a spectator of the action, you do not start away, and the art whose name you shun, you almost in every case pursue. But where you ought to have both the action and the name, both to be and to be called a Christian, you do not even know what kind of thing the action is. 

The European Union (3)

After reading some of the comments in social media it is a relief to get to this:
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5743/eu-referendum-statement-by-archbishops-of-canterbury-and-york

The European Union (2)

My posts have temporarily been absent after the death of my Mum.  In another post or two I'll write about her.  She died at the beginning of June.

So disappointed

I don't have any words left.

I'm just too upset

It is a sad day

am deeply saddened

Just some of the kind of sympathetic, caring things friends and believers wrote to me in my bereavement.

Except that these quotations are not from my sympathy cards but are some of the more repeatable extracts from various believers - including pastors - posting their responses to the electorate making a decision they didn't like about the EU.

My Mum was a believer in Jesus who was saved by God's grace, blessed me, my daughter and very many people over very many years.

The European Union is a politico-economic bloc of 28 nations.

I fail to appreciate why an unwelcome political decision in a democratic country is attributed the same language that folk write in their condolences to me.  But if they think that the UK outside the EU is going to be like me without my Mum then they have a very poor grasp of death and bereavement.

The European Union

Much Christian hand-wringing seems to be going on over the approaching European Referendum.  Several normally opinionated friends of mine have appeared bewildered because, well, they cannot get opinionated about it.  In a Cathedral notice I saw online they are diligently arranging for a Christian from each side of the debate to answer questions in a forum.

I think earnest Christians suffer more in such circumstances because they are very desperate to be politically serious  (if this is you please stop reading now).  While a neighbour might vote on the basis of the niceness or nastiness of the latest East European worker they have met or others on the basis of their favourite or least favourite politician's stance or others because now Stephen Hawking has told them what to think (again) the Christian tries to (and here I quote a friend's conversation) discern what the Spirit is saying to us at this time.

I've decided to stick with my friend's quotation and to wonder whether the Spirit of God is saying anything about how to vote in the EU referendum. 

The juxtaposition of earthly nations' treaties is not irrelevant to salvation history.  It forms a kind of wallpaper in the room of God's activity; it sets a mood, provides a backdrop and is caught unmistakably in any snapshot of God at work.  Most memorably in the Gospel story the Roman Empire and its granted but fraught Jewish autonomy region is there, spreading on into the events of the Acts of the Apostles.  The Old Testament is full of treaties and because Israel was in a Covenant with God these treaties sometimes take on a foreground, theological significance.  This is because an international treaty in that Testament often signified a lack of faith in the covenant with God.

I have read some heavily reasoned arguments  by earnest Christians but if you want my advice it is to trust the Holy Spirit whichever way the vote goes, ignore Stephen Hawking (who is planning a spaceship to get away anyway) and carry on discussing your options with the guys at the pub.

Oh bother.  There goes my last vestige of hope of being invited onto the Baptist Union Faith and Society Team.

Missing Notes

I was listening to an organist bemoaning this amazing Fugue by J S Bach (s. 948).  It is not the famous one of the same notation (in D Minor) but it has many spectacular elements in it as you will hear.

It is usually played on the harpsichord.  The organist pointed out that he'd heard harpsichordists didn't care for it much either.

For a harpsichord (which has a much smaller keyboard than a piano) there are a few impossibly low notes.  For an organ (with its pedal board of low notes) those notes are easy, but there are very few of them.  That's what the organist was complaining about.  "It's not really for organ".

What does all this musical stuff add up to?

Perhaps this.  That just because life isn't a perfect fit for us, some talents under-used, some requirements out of reach, we should see in our imperfections the beauty created by the Composer and forget our limitations by comparison.

Happy Ascension Day!

I suppose it is understandable that there is a very limited celebration of Ascension.  Our minds are so earthbound that the thought of God joining us down here (Christmas) gives us a buzz that one of us (Jesus) joining the Godhead's throne up there doesn't give.

Given our earthliness it is typical that one of the old English customs that survives from Ascension Day (though often carried out on another date these days) is the beating of the bounds.  By this custom the margins of each parish were marked and noted.  Though in time blessings from above were also invocated it seems very weird that the movement of the Son of God from earth to heaven should be accompanied by the earth people marking out their plots of earth.

Anyway the clue is in the ascending, the significance of which is not where heaven is but that Christ is no longer on earth in the flesh.  Humanity has another home.  Instead of beating the bounds, Jesus has broken the bounds for us.

Great minds think (April 2016)

So, as the month that began with All Fool's Day comes to a close we recall that it also contained this announcement - the grand plan to send tiny spaceships propelled by laser beams to explore our galactic neighbourhood.

Nobody would deride the great achievements of Professor Hawking, made more memorable by the physical limitations from which his great mind operates.  And does anyone doubt the elevation of the human spirit that is attained by the longing to boldly go where no silicon chip has gone before?

On the other hand there is nothing like one of these kind of grand projects to cast doubt on the sanity of the rich and clever and perhaps of us all.

Anyway, here's two ideas to choose from:

'Earth is a wonderful place, but it might not last forever. Sooner or later we must look to the stars. Breakthrough Starshot is a very exciting first step on that journey.'  Professor Hawking 

That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.  But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. The Bible

It's a tragedy

People have been dying a lot recently.

Only in the past week we have seen the funeral of Ronnie Corbett, the death of Victoria Wood and the suitably mysterious decease of Prince.

Today, St George's Day, we remember the mysterious George (about whom we know little more than we know about the Dragon) and the more-mysterious-than-we-often-think William Shakespeare, star of stage and screen (though the screen was a time coming of course).

Four hundred years is a while and thus nobody is saying how much they miss William or that their 'thoughts are with his family' (whatever that phrase means when uttered by a politician).  Simply put we first encountered old William as dead.  We've never thought of him otherwise.  I think he would approve.

A few weeks ago we went to watch Hamlet and although we have seen many Shakespeare plays we had, surprisingly, never seen this famous one.  The subtleties of Shakespeare are legendary, but the one very unsubtle thing about Hamlet is that it is a tragedy.  At the end the major players are all lying dead on the stage (or off stage).  It is not subtle. "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions".How true it is and how untrue.As we move through Easter toward Ascension Day the Greatest Drama of All is revealed to be death's crushing defeat as every one of its supposed clients is raised up to stand before the throne of the Man who left death dead.When resurrections come they come not single lives but all as Christ commands.