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?