The Wonders of Christmas Cards 7: Where did you get that hat?

My favourite card this year wins the day for its utter daftness.  It is impossible to look at without it smiling.  Perhaps it is no surprise that it was sent to us by someone who smiles a lot themselves.

When you look at this picture, and after you've smiled, this is the question for Christmas Day - why could this picture only be on a Christmas card?

The car could be on any card except a serious Thinking of you kind of card.  The dogs could be on any fun card.  The background scene is quite Christmassy but could be on several other types of card - Thank You, Birthday, etc. 

As far as I can tell, what makes this a Christmas picture is the dog's Santa hat.

Headwear can be an accessory but as it is so close to a face and so visible it makes a big impact - in the recent cold spell I noticed that all manner of men in woolly hats look largely the same age whether they are in their 30s or 70s.

The baby born today grew up to be a man and we only have one record of his headwear.  One day he was given a crown of thorns, his coronation as king.  And on a cross hung the crowned king from Christmas, the Saviour of sinners.  In the partying we must find room for a prayer.

The holly bears a prickle,

As sharp as any thorn,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

On Christmas Day in the morn.

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 6: Let's turn to Carol number . . . .

Singing Angel is the name of this picture - it's on the back of the card, trust me.  It has holly on its head - I think this may be a misunderstanding of holy, holy, holy which angels are known to use.

The angel is singing from a book.

This strikes me as very strange.  Truth be told I know pretty much all the basic Christmas Carols off by heart after just a few decades of Christmases.  What's with this angel which has had far longer (if heaven works like that which I don't think it does) to learn the words and the music?  Maybe it's a junior angel, still learning the material?  Still, you'd have thought they'd have used the senior angels for something as important as Christmas . . .

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 5: What's the point?

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

We speculate as to the nature of the star that appeared to the wise men.  We don't think the shepherds have anything to do with the star (they saw angels) but few Christmas artists seem to care about that detail.  On this card the shepherds have seen the star:

Few cards I have ever seen have a star quite so luminous as this one.  I'm surprised, given its brightness, that the wise men could look at it at all unless they had glasses with special lens.

Given that the star in this picture has transformed into something nearer a portent of Armageddon the mystery is why the shepherd is pointing at it.  If his mate can't see THAT star he has a real problem.

Having noticed this it occurs to me that a great deal of Christian effort at Christmas is similar however - pointing at the blazingly obvious.  Whole school nativities are presented portraying a season dedicated to animals (as far as I can tell a nativity with live animals cannot have any animals as the only ones mentioned in Scripture - sheep - were left in the fields), or dedicated to babies.  Babies are not the solution but the problem I think, growing up in sin and needing the blazingly obvious real Christmas focus - a Saviour. 

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 4: Religion? Pah!!

Understandably perhaps I am a little wedded to the nativity story on Christmas cards.  But snowy church scenes are nice enough.  I am a good Baptist though, and tolerant of others foibles about such things. so that the wonderful world of nature or great celebratory designs are appealing in their way.   There are cards, however, that stretch even the tolerant mind to that simplest of all questions, "Why?"  Here's three so far.

Do you think about snow angels at Christmas?  No, I thought not.  But at least we know what they look like if we see one.  Or is that a picture of a Maker of Snow Angels?

Ah yes, the Christmas unicorn with toadstools.  The what?

This seems to be Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer going to a party as a cow pat with holly growing from its head.

So let's say it again - people are so different and we can't expect everyone to have an eye on the Bible or the Church at Christmas.

The first card, to be fair, comes from a Jewish friend: it is amazingly kind of her to send us a card at all.

The second card, to be fair, comes from one of Sarah's Uni friends: can't expect her to think nativity!

The third card comes from a Baptist Minister . . . !

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 3: DANGER!!!!

Look, I've no idea why the shepherds are looking at those birds, and I've no idea where baby Jesus has gone.  But I'm just glad he doesn't seem to be in that stable because any minute now the lamp is going to set the hay alight and those lambs are going to be toast (sorry, roast).

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 2: Angelic Supination

So often Christmas cards raise complicated theological problems and this one is just of that kind.  Dwelling as spirits and unfallen in sin angels remain tantalisingly familiar and unfamiliar to us.  From time to time - Christmas was such a time - angels are known among mankind.  Known or unknown they are able to assume human form and many of us, myself included, have had a moment or moments when we wonder whether the mysterious person we met was, in fact, an angel.

Although the Bible does not specifically reveal it to us we assume that angels are quite fit and well.  If pain and disease is consequential of the Fall they could only assume a failing human body, surely, for a particular divine purpose.  Enter this Tearfund Christmas card:

Even a cursory, non-medical look at those feet discloses a real problem.  Have you ever seen feet more turned in (supinated) than this? 

There's no operation for it.  Most usually it is treated by the use of insoles or built up footwear.  Here we see the serious problem this angel faces because it doesn't wear footwear, flies a lot and anyway is a spirit.  As far as I can see this is untreatable.

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 1. Foot(hoof)prints

Any reader of this blog will know that come December I cannot resist offering some examples of the weirdness of Christmas cards.  Long before I blogged, in that other age when 'post' involved red boxes rather than blue buttons on screen, I always tried to find something interesting about every card we received.   I learned that a second look often finds amazing things.  Here's one from the first batch we received this week (some senders are very efficient!),

It's a fine picture, with three fine camels.  The stable is even further from the town than it usually is (why is it often positioned far from the houses like a country bus stop?) but that is quite a routine card issue.  My attention is drawn to the hoof marks in the sand.

A set of them confirm that the first camel has hoofed it from the desert.  But the  second camel?  Has it been walking exactly in the hoof marks of camel number one?  Because there are no more hoofmarks behind it than behind the first one.  And camel 3 must be doing the same because there are no spare hoofmarks around it either.

Many of us must know the moving but now overused prose poem Footprints.  It tells of how the Christian sees footprints in the sand where God and (s)he have walked together and a section, when life was tough, where a set disappear.  Had God left?  No, he's carried the believer in those times.

Maybe the first camel had carried the other two?

Happy St Andrew's Day!

This is my favourite picture from my Sabbatical and on St Andrew's Day it seems appropriate as it comes from Scotland, and the Isle of Harris.

The question is, what is the building in the middle of this picture?

The answer is obvious.  It is a bus shelter.  And it is easy to imagine on this windswept moor that shelter would be very important.  Life-saving might be nearer the truth given the (understandable) infrequency of the W13.  Three hours wait?

Isn't that a sheep waiting for a bus?  But no, of course not.  Sheep, even in Harris, don't wait for buses.  The sheep is in the wrong place.

On reflection, though, I imagine that over a year this construction has many more sheep in it than people.  It may have been put here as a bus stop, and look like a bus stop but it is really mostly about sheep.

And when the lifelong fisherman from Galilee whose name was Andrew (and whose day today is) began to follow Jesus he looked and sounded like a fisherman, and looked like he should have been a fisherman, but the Lord told him 'from now on you will be a fisherman of people'.  Or to put it another way, from now on you are going to be all about sheep.

Sabbatical Picture No 12 The power of powerless women

By the North Sea on a Northumberland hill stands the Victorian memorial of Grace Darling.  Her story ( you can read it by clicking here) was one of Victorian England's most famous and only added to by her untimely death not long afterwards.  Grace was a very devoted Christian.  It is easy to assume that all Victorian young women were but that is simply not true.

It is equally easy to assume that in 21st Century England no young women are likely to be very interested in God, and certainly not with any concept of him being a living, helping friend.  That theory is blown aside in the Church whose graveyard contains Graces memorial and where her life is still celebrated.  Here is a page from the book where visitors can leave their prayers . . .

Sabbatical Picture No 11 Eucharistic Lipstick

I thought I'd attend General Synod (yes, the Church of England General Synod) on my Sabbatical.  I was in Yorkshire, it was in Yorkshire, so why not? After all, I am never going to have the Ecumenical credentials to go along as the Baptist Union observer (if they have one) and this blog entry will help to demonstrate why.

So there I was, seeing what was gripping the Established Church.  It turned out to be whether liturgical resources should be created for transgender people to renew their commitment in their new gender identity.  Except it became clear fairly quickly that this was no such pastoral-litugical discussion but a power struggle between the wings of the Church.

On Sunday morning the Synod were special guests of York Minster and even though I am no fan of hierarchy the interesting prospect of a Eucharist led by the Archbishop of York with the Archbishop of Canterbury as the preacher was too hierarchical to resist.

On the plus side there were a lot of people there.  Most of them were wearing General Synod badges so the armed police outside probably regarded me more suspiciously for not having one to wear.  I tried to enter in as saintly and Anglican a way as I could.  It occurred to me that the effect of my lack of a badge was to give me the appearance of being a Minster regular amid a sea of visiting Synodites (that may not be a word but the alternative might be Synners . . .).

I took my seat (well of course it wasn't MY seat but who was to know?) at the end of an empty row.  In this way I left fate or God (hard to know in this setting) to decide who sat next to me.  Few congregations can have so many people in dog collars and various states of overdress as they busily greeted one another (but not me).

A middle aged lady and her friend sat next to me - at least she said "Hello".  Middle aged she might have been but her umbilical link to her mobile phone was definitely teenage.  In between sending and receiving messages she said,
"Sorry about the phone.  I'll switch it off in a minute. Do you worship here regularly?"
"No, I'm only in York doing research."

She returned to the messaging and that was all that she found out about me.  I did better.  I found out all about her - but not until much later.  What I quickly worked out was that she was a great deal more interesting to the gathered persons than I was, and more interesting to herself than I (or as it turned out the Eucharist) was.

The service began and somewhere in the 20 minutes of standing at the beginning (and people complain when Baptist churches sing three songs and stand for nearly 15 minutes!) the phone was abandoned at last.  Presumably she wasn't messaging the Archbishop of York at the front but in his own Cathedral he was surprisingly hesitant.  General Synod probably does that to an Archbishop.

Archbishop Justin of Canterbury preached and he, too, seemed greatly restrained, as though he was giving a press statement which, to all intents and purposes he was.

I always get the jitters at Anglican Communions because of the walking up the front bit, and this was all the more confusing for the fact that my row were to head backwards to the middle of the Minster.  Before that the Peace and my fellow-worshipper stood little chance of sharing it with me because her phone was out again and several people came to, I presume, wish her well.  Perhaps a better word for the Peace would be The Connection, then the phone could have its rightful place there.

When hundreds of people have to take the Eucharistic elements logistics are complex; the Minster did it well but it took a while.  When I returned to my seat my neighbour seemed to have adopted a new, slimmer phone.  Closer inspection (as the choir intoned an adoration of the Bread of Angels) revealed that she was in fact holding a mirror and doing her lipstick.

Caught in the act, as it were, she apologised, pointing out that she had an interview with The Times straight after the service.  Presumably our Lord would have used a mirror, but probably not lipstick, had this been his next appointment directly after the Last Supper.

His next appointment was Gethsemane.

The woman I shared this bizarre Eucharistic distraction with is certainly well known once you dig around a little.  She isn't bringing the C of E any closer to Jesus from what I can make out but she had a peculiarly beneficial effect in me by demonstrating exactly what not to be like in any Lord's Supper, however grand.

Sabbatical Picture No 10 Lindisfarne Priory

Few ruins have been more celebrated, photographed or visited than those of Lindisfarne Priory on Holy Island, Northumbria.  Nor is this a recent phenomenon.  Before photography, great painters came to the island or the coast nearby to paint these evocative ruins.  

But why are they ruins?

Way back in the time of the Viking raids the then monastery was indeed ransacked and much blood spilled.  But these ruins do not belong to those days.  Their glory owes a great deal to the wonderful story of St Cuthbert, the Celtic hermit and missionary bishop (yes, he was both) who is most prominently honoured in Durham Cathedral but whose true 'home' was this and nearby islands and islets.  So Cuthbert, who is still popular, brought their glory - from whence ruination?

They were not ruined, as many monasteries were, by the actions of Henry VIII, the Dissolution. Henry was rather keen on them as a defence against the Scots.  Rather, they seem to have been gently worn away by a lack of enthusiasm to be based at this remote outpost, and eventually the failing buildings were cannibalised by the island's village for stones to build houses.

Speaking to a London minister this very week, he observed that his church was characterised not by division or unsound doctrine but by apathy.  For all their photogenic beauty these ruins are, in fact, a testimony to loss of interest.  On which basis no church is entirely safe. 

Sabbatical Picture No 9: A Palace with Worms

A long way from nearly everywhere the old cathedral of the Isle of Man stands ruined on a peninsula that is almost an island near the town of Peel.  Like many old seaside religious centres it is hard to grasp, travelling from London today, how significant such places have been before global cities and international air transportation.  But observation of the magnificent hilltop ruin appraises the onlooker of its former importance.

It is a suitably spooky ruin to make a fitting reflection for Hallowe'en, but the more so because it is made memorable to me by a self-penned epitaph.

Samuel Rutter was a classically trained clergyman with all the right connections who ended up as the Bishop of this magnificent outpost (having for many years been its Archdeacon too).  By the time he was appointed he was weakening physically, but was still a loved and respected bishop by the islanders.

In 1662, not many years after taking up his bishopric, Samuel died.  He saw it coming and bequeathed to posterity his own epitaph which sits in the midst of the old cathedral addressing every generation of people who seek fame and fortune in this world (as Rutter would certainly have been perceived to have attained via his friendships with nobility in England's troubled Civil War period).

In this house which I have borrowed from my brothers the worms

in the hope of the resurrection to life

lie I SAM by divine grace Bishop of this Island.

Stay reader, behold and laugh at the Bishop's palace.

It is never wise to take our personal bishop's palaces seriously: we should lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. 

Sabbatical Pictures No 8 Impossible Trees

Years ago I travelled to the Outer Hebrides to visit a friend and later to work on a children's mission.  The latter included a memorable winter sea crossing and a stay in a caravan that only just maintained its connection to the land by means of several large chains as the gales howled around us!

Obviously the Outer Hebrides were no place for trees.  And there were none.  The odd shrub leaned from constant wind attack, most of its branches leafless.  A few hedges well placed in shelter behind walls offered slim vertical greenness.  Otherwise it is all grass and stone walls (and some of the stone walls have scarcely survived).

Yet in Stornoway, in the extensive castle grounds, there are not only trees but a veritable forest.  You could as easily be on a Kent hillside as on an Outer Hebridean bay.  The combination that achieved this is quite simple:

a) It was deliberately planted;

b) The trees are close together for protection;

c) It is looked after.

The existence of a body of people following a man who lived, died and lived again two thousand years ago is unlikely in the 21st century climate.

But the church is

a) Deliberately planted;

b) Together for protection and prospering;

c) Always looked after.

Sabbatical Picture No 7 Still Standing

Storm Ophelia blew through yesterday amid the inevitable 21st century meteorological hysterics - unprecedented, catastrophic (this is a really pop twitter-ism just now), life-threatening (true - but so is the M25 and so why isn't that in the traffic news?).

On the edge of the North Atlantic people live, and lived, for whom Ophelia was just a noticeably windy few hours.  These standing stones show that like Stonehenge the exposed moors of the Isle of Lewis have more history of settlement than London, though faring less well in the last 2000 years or so.

There aren't many warm, still summer days on the Atlantic coast of the Isle of Lewis.  But that didn't mean that people couldn't be warm and still.  The secret is having a fire (conveniently achieved by walking outside and cutting some peat) and by having very thick stone walls (conveniently achieved by utilising vast numbers of boulders broken off the land by the weather).  Unlike the sad stories currently circulating from the balmy climes of California and Iberia (where wildfires are destroying people, their lives and their homes) the crofters of Lewis lived with storms in houses that in part still stand.

The secret of a peaceful life is not found not in the climate, but in the refuge we have found.  

My life is hid with Christ in God, wrote the apostle.

Sabbatical Picture No 6 The Baptist Font

Baptists are in short supply in Jerusalem.  There is nothing new about that.  You may find some near an American Pilgrimage Tour Bus (though there are, to be fair, a handful of Baptist churches in Jerusalem).  Baptists might wish to point out that the first Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 2) were practicing Believers' Baptism which basic jewel of Christian truth was recovered largely thanks to our Baptist forefathers in church history.

Commonly Christian visitors to the Holy Land think of being baptised in the River Jordan, where Christ himself was baptised by John.  A minor tourist industry engages in indiscriminate baptism there which I would howl at theologically were it not that in one of my churches I discovered that one of the most conservative, dependable and hard-working ladies of the church was baptised there on a pilgrimage and it had been her key spiritual moment (as well as her only baptism).

The picture here is not the River Jordan though.  It is in the Anglican Cathedral - St George's - in Jerusalem.  Was the Bishop who built this (otherwise very English) cathedral a closet Baptist?

The answer is no.  This is a diplomatic baptistry (the icon behind it is a clue).  The high Anglican Bishop had it built to indicate his positivity toward the Orthodox Christians in the city and its surrounds.  (As most Baptists probably don't know, the Orthodox Church generally practices baptism by immersion, though most commonly (and scarily) to not-yet-believing infants.)

Today the baptistry is used sometimes, though ironically it was built with no real intention that it should be.

Baptist Churches in Britain usually have a baptistry that was built with the intention that it would be used.  In last year's submitted statistics (though the strongest churches can't be bothered with such things as a rule) the 2000 churches in the Baptist Union averaged one baptism each.   So we have built baptistries that were intended to be used and we don't use them.

Sabbatical Picture No 5 A Street Corner

It smelled of urine and dilapidated cars and vans were parked at weird angles on the sidewalks.  Posters were pealing from the walls, mostly advertising gigs. Weeds grew between paving stones.  Washing hangs from grubby balconies.  Was it Hackney?  Or Leeds?  Bristol?  No, it's Jerusalem.

Just a street away from the tram line - but a street away that tourists would not generally take - here is city life in the Jewish part of Jerusalem for some of its inner city residents.  Few would be surprised to find this kind of scene in the Arab or Palestinian part of the city - but here, in the Promised Land??  How easily we romanticise a name - Jerusalem, all godliness and gold.  I venture that few of the home-owning Christians of England would readily swap their situation for these streets, even those who get dewey eyed singing about Jerusalem.

Referencing Blake's poem Jerusalem, standing on this street in the modern, Jewish Jerusalem a dark satanic mill on the next corner would not have seemed so much of an incongruity as the poem supposes.  Never did the importance of a Jerusalem that descends from heaven (Revelation 21) strike me as so important as it did here.

Sabbatical Picture No 4 The Poster

There are few more politicised places in the world than Jerusalem.  The time I spent there was relatively peaceable but 'peace in Jerusalem', despite its Biblical pedigree, seems almost a contradiction in terms.

Mr Trump had visited Israel not long before I was there.  In the UK our Prime Minister invited him to visit almost before he sat down in the Oval office but later reflection has led to some pause as to the wisdom and timing of such a visit.  Outside the USA - and in several parts inside the USA - this poster would not have survived a night, never mind several weeks.  In several parts of Jerusalem it wouldn't have survived ten minutes.  Yet on this and several nearby boulevards it and its cousins hung undisturbed long after Mr Trump had departed West.

Such is the black and white politics of modern Israel.

Will true peace ever come?

By one measure Jerusalem had its chance and blew it.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"

But the same Book that tells me of that missed opportunity, tells me that the King of Jerusalem will return one day and, following the End, peace will be the everlasting state of affairs.

Make Jesus Great Again.

Sabbatical Pictures No 3 The Walls

The Walls of Jerusalem are very evocative for Jews and Christians.  So much so that on any given day there were odd (I use the word ambiguously) people standing on the current walls reading passages of the Bible out loud to nobody in particular.

There are several Biblical reasons for doing this if you choose to find them  This, from Isaiah 62,

I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem;    they will never be silent day or night.You who call on the Lord,    give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem    and makes her the praise of the earth.

As ever Jerusalem provides far too much complexity for us simple souls to know what to do.  The walls on which this and other passages were being read aloud (in English of course, and with a South African or American accent depending on who it was) were built to protect Muslim Jerusalem by Suleiman, whose famed inscription reads,

he who has protected the home of Islam with his might and main and wiped out the tyranny of idols with his power and strength, he whom alone God has enabled to enslave the necks of kings in countries (far and wide) and deservedly acquire the throne of the Caliphate.

I have severe doubts that the readers are intending to promote his 16th century (AD) plan.  Also, the walls are in the 'wrong' place biblically speaking and do not surround Zion with which in the scriptures they are associated.

But this picture from those walls contains a nearly hidden addition to this story.  For, looking out toward Bethlehem, in the far distance it is possible to see another wall, the 21st century wall that divides Israel from the West Bank.  Whether you are Palestinian or Jew - or for that matter a foreign visitor - this is the real wall of Jerusalem.  It, and the issues it represents to Jew and Palestinian alike, are the real cause for prayer.

Sabbatical Pictures No 2. By the Pools of Bethesda

A plaque tat needs no further comment in the place where it happened.

Sabbatical Pictures No 1 Church of the Dormition, Jerusalem

It's September and I'm back at work so it must be time to start blogging again.  And what better way to reflect on my Sabbatical than with a few pictures?

Here's one:

I was very excited to take this picture because, years ago on my first visit to Jerusalem, it was somewhere that made a big impact on me yet it rarely appears prominently in brochures and books.  It is in a chapel beneath Dormition Abbey on the Hill of Zion.

Amid the typical mosaics of many of the chapels this ivory and ebony chapel stands out.  It was a gift to the Abbey from the Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and it shows the wonderful simplicity of the Christian story that can be reduced to 6 pictures!  This is useful in Africa I'm sure, but stunning in the ecclesiastical, political and religious quagmire that is Jerusalem.

The Church, or Abbey, is singular testimony to the complications of Jerusalem.  Whilst (on the day I visited) it is a peaceful hilltop spot with a very nice cafe and bookshop the history is quite different.  Built in the 20th century it became the front-line when in 1948 the State of Israel was formed but not including the walled old city which is next to this church.  Jordanian troops patrolled the old city walls and Israeli troops took potshots at them (and vice versa) from the large tower of this church.  It was basically a frontier command post.

Nor has peace arrived for this church today.  Being adjacent to the Jewish Quarter has made it a target for graffiti and worse by Jewish extremists.  In a fascinating commentary on Jesus himself, although this building is pretty much entirely about Mary (dormition = fell asleep = allegedly where Mary died) the abuse in the graffiti has always been aimed at Jesus.

Not so much has changed in 2000 years.

Home

It would never work in an estate agent's (realtor's) window or website.  Yet until the 1930s this was home to a Hebridean family and, as necessary, their livestock.  

What no picture can convey is how nice it is.  The smell of burning peat, the warm shelter from the wind howling off the ocean outside, the self sufficiency of a setting in tune with its natural surrounds. 

Having a very good internet connection has become important (and ironically my mobile phone signal was way better there than it is in Muswell Hill).  Yet this connectedness has come at a price of disconnectedness; from each other in family and community, from the rhythms of night and day, wild and gentle weather, from connectedness to animals and to the land around us and probably most profoundly a disconnectedness from our own souls and from our God.

Are we at home in contemporary London?  Is that even possible? 

Graih

Just returned to town from a three week road (and boat) trip that included a Retreat (not long enough), the Keswick Convention and even (briefly - twas more than enough) the General Synod (!).  But from the Isle of Man I loved visiting and hearing more about the above ministry which I first heard about several years back from the church's then pastor.  Coming from London it is amazing to see this kind of work being done, needing to be done, and being done so well in such a place as the island.

Praise God for these guys.

A Sabbath Day's Journey

In the hotel there are two lifts/elevators to choose from.  This is inconsequential most days of the week, but come the Sabbath (Friday sunset) it becomes religiously and practically significant.

The notice tells us that the lift on the right is the Sabbath Elevator.  You could enter it as a Gentile but, inviting though it seems, it stops at every floor (7 in the case of this hotel) while the door opens automatically and closes.  By doing so it prevents the devout from having to operate electrical switches (work) on the Sabbath.

I did get in it once.  I stood for a second or two with nothing much happening and decided to use the non-Sabbath elevator (even though I was on Sabbatical).

For me the Sabbath Elevator was too much like hard work. 

Stones and stoniness

It's a lump of decorated stone.

It is, though, very old. 

It is on display because it illustrates the way in which synagogues became places of considerable art, the people showing their communal commitment to religion, their culture and possibly their God by expensive and expansive decoration.

It may be a lump of stone, but it says something.

It speaks, but it cannot listen.  That could only be done by the people who attended the ancient gathering place.  Did they listen?  Well, they heard words each week.  Then, beneath these ancient stones came another day.  The voice that spoke was the voice of God himself.  

These are stones from the synagogue at Chorazin in Galilee.  

Jesus commentary:

“Doom, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had been given half the chances given you, they’d have been on their knees long ago, repenting and crying for mercy. Tyre and Sidon will have it easy on Judgment Day compared to you" (The Message, Luke 10)

Jerusalem's Windmill

There is a green hill far away outside a city wall.  And on it there stands the windmill.  This is not at all what we expect.  It is one thing to find a windmill in the Netherlands or Kent, quite another to find one outside the walls of Old Jerusalem.

This windmill was both a success and a failure.  

It was a success in that it was built as part of a project to get Jews to move out of their enclave in the old city onto the more spacious land outside.  This seems a simple enough idea now, but in the insecurities of of the nineteenth century with about 20,000 Jews in this enclave of the great Ottoman Empire, moving outside the walls was a daunting idea.  With the help of the windmill a colony was successfully formed outside the cramped squalor of the Old City.

Moses Montefiore, a British Jewish banker provided the funds, but its familiarity to an English eye is down to the fact it was designed in Kent.  And that is why it has survived (more later).

It wasn't a success as a windmill once it encouraged the Jews out of the enclave.  The photo contains a clue for there is a Jerusalem summer sky.  Of course it might be blowing a gale with a blue Middle Eastern sky - that's not unheard of, but rare.  The Kentish windmill lacked the Kentish wind.

But as history turns out (and nothing in Jerusalem is ever simple) its Kentishness saved it.  After the Second World War the Jews were organising themselves to form a homeland State and their enemy was the British.  The British determined to destroy the windmill which was functioning as a gun turret.  But the men sent to destroy it found that it had been designed in Kent - their home county.  So they simply blew the top off it to make it unusable but preserved.

And on another hill near the city the Maker of All showed greater mercy to those he had made.

Zion's Gate

Psalm 87

On the holy mount stands the city he founded;

    the Lord loves the gates of Zion
    more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
Glorious things of you are spoken,
    O city of God. 

As part of my Sabbatical I have spent some days in Jerusalem.  Previous days in Jerusalem had been hurried pilgrimages but due to a combination of plans and unexpected circumstantial changes this time I was had days to explore.  

Here is Zion's Gate.  Like many things in Jerusalem it is not what you first assume it to be - or perhaps more accurately want it to be.  For this gate is, as might be expected by the name, next to Zion's hill but the hill is outside the Old City wall, not inside it.

Walls are human constructs and cause confusion in many ways.  Today's international political hot potato a couple of miles from here is the wall (you can see it from this wall) built between Israel and the West Bank.

This Old City wall had many stories but until 50 years ago this year it had, since the modern founding of the State of Israel, formed the border between that State and Jordan.  The marks in the wall are not the result of weather but of bullets.  The Israelis were outside on Zion's hill and the Jordanians inside on the Old City wall, a tense stand off that in other places nearby required the UN to intervene to rescue, for example, stray footballs and family pets caught between the two sides.

It is ironic and thought-provoking that having (joyfully) dispensed with this wall as a barrier the Israelis have felt it necessary in this century to build another one between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  It is a metaphor of the human condition - a metaphor written into the First Story when Adam and Eve are walled out of the garden.

God loves the gates.

This is because he IS a gate (John 10).

Sabbatical

Here I am, with months of Sundays and not a sermon in sight. Is this a waste of a gifting? Of a life portion? Of a vocation?

Bishop Alfred Quayle, American Methodist Bishop (1860-1925) "Preaching is the art of making a sermon and delivering it. Why no, that is not preaching. Preaching is the art of making a preacher, and delivering that. Preaching is the outrush of soul in speech. Therefore, the elemental business in preaching is not with the preaching but with the preacher. It is no trouble to preach, but a vast trouble to construct a preacher. What then, in the light of this is the task of a preacher? (or of anyone sharing his or her faith). Mainly this, the amassing of a great soul so as to have something worthwhile to give. The sermon is the preacher up to date."

Manchester's Tears

Words like appalling, barbaric, evil are once again everywhere after last night's attack on an audience of families and notably young females in Manchester.  Just when we think the worst has happened another worst comes along.  Sometimes it is hard to be human.  For that reason, we pray for those who mourn without ourselves being able to enter the darkness they are suddenly inhabiting.

Manchester will rally round, as any great northern community would.  Even the Football Clubs have offered early sympathy.  In despair we need companionship and sympathy but ultimately we need blessing.  Are we only to travel through this world from tragedy to tragedy for it all to end in meaninglessness?  Is there any help from outside this vexed journeying?

As Manchester grew in Victorian England, with people dying like flies in the industrialised, overcrowded squallor so well captured in Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South, William Gadsby preached.  Although he was born in Warwickshire, he became deeply embedded in the affections of the poor in Manchester.  This is the more remarkable because he is known today, in as far as he is known, for his strict adherence to the doctrine of election; that only God can save.  This did not stop him addressing all manner of social issues that involved the (apparently) unelect, and nor did it stop the unelect wanting to hear him or being converted under his ministry.  

The mystery of his attraction has eluded most preachers and churches who stick closely to the Biblical evidence that if you're going to get to heaven God will have to do it, not you.  Yet his appeal came because from this providential view he was able to offer even the most desperate person a possibility of sovereign blessing that nature and circumstances and Manchester appeared to have crushed from their lives.  If only God comes in.  And today, using some of Gadsby's words, we pray that to hearts torn rawly by grief and hurt, to whom this world has become a happy home no longer, God may indeed come in;

Blessed are those who mourn. The dear Lord of the house does not merely say they may, or shall be, blessed; but they absolutely are blessed; now blessed, though they may not be able to enjoy the blessings which belong to them . . . Poor, sin-burdened, Satan-hunted, broken-hearted mourners! All things are yours; for ye are Christ's and Christ is God's. Your life is hid with Christ in God, and because he lives ye shall live also. ...In his own time he will, by the power of his Spirit, discover unto them the beauty of his own Person and righteousness; and then they shall see the King in his beauty, (Isa. 33:17) as the Lord their righteousness and strength. Jesus, in his Person, blood, and obedience; in his glorious offices, characters, relationship, names, honours, fullness, love, and loveliness, shall be revealed unto them, by the glorious power and under the divine anointing of God the Holy Ghost; and this shall produce .. a joy unspeakable and full of glory. Then shall their sorrow be turned into joy

Tales of a Christian Aid Collector

Sunday: deliver envelopes.

Monday (raining):
Ring doorbells to collect envelopes before too many get lost.

Second House on Monday:
"Good Evening, I've come to collect the Christian Aid envelope"
"Sorry, don't think we got one" [Thinks - I pushed it through your door less than a day ago]

Third House:
"Good Evening, I've come to collect the Christian Aid envelope I delivered yesterday"
"Sorry, it must have been taken by the people downstairs and they're not in".

Following House:
"Good Evening, I've come to collect the Christian Aid envelope I delivered yesterday"
"Ah yes.  I think I've seen it.  Hold on."  Door closes.
Pause.
15 seconds
30 seconds
45 seconds. 

Figure seen returning through door window. 

Smiles a friendly smile.

Returns empty envelope.

A Sheepish Perpective on Elections.

For Christians western-style national elections raise huge issues for they are dominated by Party Politics and not the issues themselves.

Political parties are a construct that brings good as well as bad. Whether or not you think well of her, if Theresa May were the same person with the same ideals but an Independent she would not get an ounce of weight in a General Election campaign.

Yet if there are no political parties that does not make all things well.  One ward in the recent local elections had fielded an independent councillor for several years but when she stepped down nobody took her place - so there is now no councillor at all.

Human beings, on the whole, are part of constructs of many kinds.  If the UK (a construct) has a hard Brexit from the EU (a construct) it might have to trade with the EU under WTO (a construct) trading rules.

Something in many a human spirit longs to be free.  In London we have people who live rough deliberately to be outside the borders of society - no National Insurance number, no tax office, no address, no vote, no debt letters, no loyalty cards, no PPI . . .

And many a soul regards church in a similar way.  From the outset it has had expressions of party spirit and it is perhaps no coincidence that UK party politics owes something of a debt to the voluntary structures of churches a couple of hundred years ago.

Yet for all the elements of human construct it has contained, the church of Jesus is primarily a construct of his.  The person who wearily wants to go it alone spiritually is not so much striking a blow at the institutions of religion as at the plan of God.  Which is not such a wise blow to strike.

When, after all, did you last see an independent sheep?

St George's Cross

Just a week after the celebration of Easter we come, this year, to St George's Day (OK, it's liturgically tomorrow because of Easter but hey . . .).  St George, of course, is legendary for winning his battle against the dragon.  He was not entirely successful as, just next door to England is Wales and it turns out that the dragon just went over the border and looks in fine shape.

Wales, given its Revival History might be expected to have a more Christian flag but it turns out that England has it.  Yet this is not necessarily something to gloat about.  Its origins likely lie in the Crusades when the European princes wielded their power, largely unsuccessfully, in military support of the Christian Mediterranean against the Mohammedans.  The main intention of it was to identify the wearers as being on the same military side.

This dodgy history of this cross continues into its contemporary favoured contexts such as nationalist groups and sports fans.  If you concentrate really hard when looking at the English flag you can almost smell the beer and almost hear a bloke shouting obscenities.  He probably doesn't give too much thought to the Graeco-Roman origin of St George (the real martyr behind the legend) or the Italian adoption of the red cross on white to mark his honour on several of its flags and emblems.

Though the cross of St George has become associated with, first, military, then political, then sporting victory it is deeply ironic that St George actually represents that most enigmatic of victories to the unbelieving nation - the victory of martyrdom when following a crucified, risen Saviour.  

On reflection it would have better suited the spirit in which this flag has been used militarily, politically and in sports teams to have had instead the dragon: a show of might which has no ultimate meaning or reality.

Death, the Olympics and Easter Day

About the time of the Olympics last year (2016) an alarming thought crossed some people's minds.  It was that the previous London 2012 Olympics had been cursed.

The trigger for this alarming thought was the death of Australian rower Sarah Tait from cervical cancer.  On its own Sarah's death was an ordinary (but genuine) sadness - but she was latest in the line of very many others.  British consciousness had been heightened by the deaths of sailor Andrew Simpson in a 2013 sailing accident and our tennis player Elena Baltacha who died of cancer the next year.  A French swimmer, boxer and triathlete had all died, but so had 12 others from around the world.  It seemed crazy that by the next Olympics 18 of the previous Olympians were dead and gone.

There turned out to be good news and bad news when it was researched.

The good news was that, in simple terms, over four years about 32 in a 1000 people die. There were over 10,000 participants at the 2012 Olympics so hundreds, statistically, should have died before the next Olympiad.  Except that Olympians are young and fit.

Some whizzy research yielded the expected death rate for the average age to be 25-30 over four years.  So if the 18 were the full number (though some athletes from obscure regions [e.g. North Korea] might not be known about)  it would a below-average death rate.

And this means what, exactly? Well that is the bad news.

I think it shows how unrealistic the living are about death.  Of course we know that death and taxes are the only certainties - but we live as though we will never die.  One reason why not enough people are excited enough about Easter morning is because they do not acknowledge the scale of the problem, the general curse, from which this day and its Lord potentially sets them free.

It is a mistake of Olympian proportions.

History or Testimony?

Ponty's Week

Few historical figures have been attributed as little to commend them as Pontius Pilate.  This seems unfair in the whole scheme of Roman Empirical life.  He was not a nice man, but you might choose him any day over Caligula, Nero or Domitian, let alone any number of unnamed lesser officials.

We approach the week which makes him famous though he could hardly have known so at the time or even on his final earthly day.  Even 2000 years later in lands unknown to his Empire people speak of 'washing their hands' of a person or a situation in a tribute of sorts to the week that secured Ponty's fame.

And that's not all.  Every day and all over the world people in their acts of divine worship repeat his name . . . .

he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered, died, and was buried.

 

Ponty's inclusion in the Christian creeds, in the words of Robert Runcie, "binds the eternal realms to the stumbling, messy chronology of earthly time and place". Perhaps.  It also makes Ponty as well known as almost any Roman in the long history of that Empire.

 

He is also genuinely famous Biblically.  His name appears more times in the Bible than Matthew or Mark or Luke or John (the apostle).  We meet his wife (which we rarely do with Bible characters) and we know where and when he lived and what his job was.

 

Ponty rose to all this prominence by a simple decision that he made.  One day God stood in front of him.  It doesn't happen often, so you have to have a little sympathy for the poor chap.  But uniquely he got his moment in the spotlight as the judge of the Judge of all the Earth.  Wow!   

 

And Ponty's decision was?

 

His decision was not to make a decision. "It's your responsibility" he wailed as he wiped his hands on his empirical towellette. 

 

It is one thing to be pilloried for ever for making an evil or a ill-judged decision.  It is soooo regretable to get one's fame from not making any decision at all.  As I come to Passion Week I must remember the lesson of all this - either to get my hellish reputation by crucifying the Son of God afresh, or a heavenly one by taking up my cross and following Him.  But nothing could be more embarrassing or humiliating than to attract the angst of eternity for dithering and diplomacy while heaven and hell clash in front of me.