World Cup Churches 10. Saudi Arabia

 Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Saudi Arabia, on the face of it, is uniquely unchristian among the nations qualifying for this World Cup in neighbouring Qatar.  If you are a Saudi Arabian and convert to Christianity you receive the death penalty.  This makes public profession of Christianity non-existent - or very short.  

Long before Islam - and longer still before anyone in the Americas had heard about Jesus - there were Christian monastic communities in the Arabian desert.  Encounters with these shapes some of the responses to Christianity in the Koran.  But these are long past, and only ruins remain, the latest discovery being made by a dune buggy hitting something hard in the sand.

For the past ten years or so there have been serious noises, however, about the Saudi's allowing a Church building or two for the Christians who do live and work in the nation - as has happened in Qatar.  It will help to make Saudi Arabia look more internationally acceptable of course.  But nothing has happened so far - despite a visit by the Pope.

Yet these Christian workers constitute a significant part of the population.  Remarkably, this means that the Christian population of Saudi Arabia is proportionately larger (in some cases far larger) than in several other World Cup qualifying nations - Morocco, Iran, Senegal, Japan and Tunisia. (Perhaps more astonishingly and sadly it is larger than the proportion of Christians in Israel.)

So there is a church in Saudi Arabia, but with none of the trappings of gothic architecture, freedom to convert the local populace or freedom to meet at all except domestically.  In some ways more like the church as it was very long ago.

World Cup Churches: 4. Netherlands

 It's World Cup year - taking place in November/December in Qatar instead of the Northern Hemisphere summer as it has always previously done.  Heading round the 32 qualifying countries I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label World Cup Churches.

______________________

We've arrived in the Netherlands and here I come to a country in which I have visited several churches.  The one I've chosen is already perhaps the most famous in the country but I have chosen it because of the amazing setting in which it finds itself.

Amsterdam's 'Old Church' (Oudekerk) is predictably its oldest and in the old city centre surrounded by the canals for which Amsterdam is famous.  Inside it has the characteristics of a Protestant Church, with an austere simplicity (though it was not always like this as it predates the Reformation.

As a port city Amsterdam has rarely been a shining example of humanity at its very best.  That's what I like about the Oude Kerk.  Its whole history is a struggle to bear testimony in the sea of sorrows and sins in which it is located.  The Reformation brought it into cleaner times indoors - previously it had been like a rowdy town square.  Yet today it is situated in the bizarre surrounds of the famed Red Light District where windows are displaying gyrating topless dancers.

I doubt there is any other street on earth where if you look one way you see an old church and turn 180 degrees and see a topless dancer on any and every night.

I have thought, on visiting this church, that it is on the one hand as badly placed as a church can be and yet, in reflecting on the way our Lord mixed in society, possibly located exactly where a church should be.

Our Church Flags 5. Angola

 Continuing reflecting on the flags of people who have come to our church in London

Some flags are boring, some are cheerful, some are weird, but the flag of Angola seems to me to be, well, scary.

It owes its general form to those who fought in its civil war, and to the supporting Soviet Union.  But as Angola reinvents itself as a tourist destination I can't help thinking it is missing a trick or two with the flag.  It looks like some grim European industrialised nation instead of an expansive sunlit African coastal country.  The black stands for Africa, the red (as usual) for blood shed in the fight and the peculiar reinvention of the hammer and sickle representing agriculture and industry.  The latter might have worked for the USSR but Angola is notably poor at both agriculture and industry which makes it a little ironic.

And my mind turns to church and the way we are quite inclined to dress up the good news in ways that are well-intentioned but not very inviting.  

Maybe we and Angola could learn together.

What3words 3. ///actual.roofs.edgy

Not so long ago we had a somewhat alarming experience when some roof metalwork fell off the side of the church building.

It did no harm, providentially, because most of our high roof does not overhang places where people can access.  Nevertheless we had some serious checking to do.  A more dangerous place would have been on the other side of the building which we therefore carefully assessed.  

And now I discover the What3words code for that exact spot is ///actual.roofs.edgy

Mmm.

What3words 2. ///admit.varieties.gossip

What3words location finder has been somewhat unkind to our church's front door -  ///admit.varieties.gossip!

Anyone who's been involved in church life will recognise the strangely apt significance of these three words.  'Let 'em in and gossip about each other.'  I admit it made me laugh.  But I couldn't face adding it as our contact word set!

Proverbs 20:19 - A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid anyone who talks too much.

What Three Words: 1. ///glaze.gown.glory

You may be familiar with the location-finding app what3words.  Splitting the whole planet into small squares it provides a unique guide to a location.  It's obvious advantage is in a field or on a mountain where it is plainly more helpful than 'past the clump of trees' or 'next to the round rock'.

The words themselves are random - or so we suppose.  However, when looking it up to add it to our church directions I confess to becoming alarmed.  Thankfully we have a big building and this offers a wide choice - which as you will see in future blogs - is just as well.

I settled on the box GLAZE GOWN GLORY.  Mainly, I think, drawn by the attraction of the word glory for a Place of Worship.  Perhaps the preacher in me enjoyed the 3 Gs alliteration.

My best theology of it is that one day our eyes will glaze as we gaze, dressed in a gown of white, upon Christ's glory.  See, you can make a sermon out of anything!

It represents a spot somewhere near a vestry.  Why didn't I use the entrance, or the street by the entrance?  That's another blog . . .

Pandemic Parables 6: Whether or not we're indoors . . .

Jesus also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” 

This is perhaps the most encouraging of parables for the church in a pandemic.  The list of what can be done in building relationships for the Kingdom is very much shorter.  The possibilities for the winter ahead are filled with uncertainties, and even next summer is tough to plan towards.  Whilst some expressions of Christianity are more content with a low-key private or contemplative approach, Baptist and Evangelical Christians have always viewed life as seizing opportunities and working for them when they are missing.  More like Jesus' Galilean ministry than his earlier Nazareth days of carpentry.

Another parable I cited was about the sower sowing the seed.  It reflected different kinds of soil productivity.  This little parable from Mark's Gospel is about providence.  The farmer must do something - sow the seed - but then cannot really do anything.  Whether locked down (asleep) or up and busy, the soil produces the grain.

This does not entirely reflect modern agriculture - but it brilliantly reflects 2020 church work.  Thank you, Jesus!

Pandemic Parables 4. Working with what you've got

So we can't sing; we can't have refreshments, we can't stay long in church, we can't sit near each other, greet each other, touch each other, share communion bread, baptise, organise events for invitees, visit people in their homes, serve people indoors at a soup kitchen . . .

“Again, here is what the kingdom of heaven will be like. A man was going on a journey. He sent for his slaves and put them in charge of his money. He gave five bags of gold to one. He gave two bags to another. And he gave one bag to the third. The man gave each slave the amount of money he knew the slave could take care of. Then he went on his journey. The slave who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work. He earned five bags more. The one with the two bags of gold earned two more. But the man who had received one bag went and dug a hole in the ground. He hid his master’s money in it.

“After a long time the master of those slaves returned. He wanted to collect all the money they had earned. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you trusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have earned five more.’

“His master replied, ‘You have done well, good and faithful slave! You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you trusted me with two bags of gold. See, I have earned two more.’

“His master replied, ‘You have done well, good and faithful slave! You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man. You harvest where you have not planted. You gather crops where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid. I went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

“His master replied, ‘You evil, lazy slave! So you knew that I harvest where I have not planted? You knew that I gather crops where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money in the bank. When I returned, I would have received it back with interest.’

“Then his master commanded the other slaves, ‘Take the bag of gold from him. Give it to the one who has ten bags. Everyone who has will be given more. They will have more than enough. And what about anyone who doesn’t have? Even what they have will be taken away from them. Throw that worthless slave outside. There in the darkness, people will weep and grind their teeth.’

Ah.

So the Kingdom of God is not about what we have or haven't got.  It's about what we do with what we have.

How can I keep from singing?

It has been a surreal experience to return to the church building for Sunday morning worship these past two weeks.  Certainly things were feeling pandemically safe, but then again so is the local cemetery (for its residents).  We have some imaginative ideas for worship in the weeks ahead: but singing with our voices seems a distance away.

It is easy to OVERestimate the importance of singing.
The viral rise of the Contemporary Christian Music industry (CCM) has left most of us wondering how we ever found God without five of this year's new songs being sung.  Yet astonishingly we did.  You don't have to be a Quaker to object that God is at work when songs are silent.  Countless believers have spent years or lifetimes imprisoned or isolated in such ways as to render congregational singing a distant dream.  The Bible enjoins and reports praying far more often than singing (especially in the New Testament!).

But it is easy to UNDERestimate the importance of singing.
Most religions have some kind of music and song, but Christianity is full of it.  Whole service forms are based around singing, and whole church traditions defined by its forms (Anglican Evensong, Hillsongs, Gaelic Psalms).  One look at our church building gives the clue that singing is part of it . . .

. . . the organ, the choir stalls, the piano, the drums, the screen (mainly for projecting song words).
Singing, in Christianity, is an expression of the fundamental joy of a saving faith.  It is not a necessary rite; it is more than that.  Christianity is a new song.

Good News in a Pandemic 1. God

There is no shortage of bad news in a pandemic.  As it is over a hundred years since Western societies really had a proper community-battering one we don't know what to think.  Whereas in the busy rush of working, travelling, dealing, chilling, training, coffee-drinking, sport-watching, family visiting and so on there is precious little time to think, we now have time to think.  But think about what?

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Philippians 4:8

Guaranteed to tick all these boxes is . . . God.  Let's think about God.

No, wait, Western societies don't do God any more.  This is a pandemic for the politicians and the scientists.  The odd mention or two for religion - the Pope at Easter, the Jews at Passover and the Muslims now in Ramadan.  But no National Day of Prayer - because collectively we don't believe in God.

And so we miss the good news.  Here's Revelation 21.

5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.”9 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

Why is this significant just now?

Verse 9.

An angel points John to the most amazing vision of the people of God, the bride of (Jesus) the lamb.  But this is one of the angels who also had the bowls of the plagues (described with all-too-graphic power in chapter 16).

Looked at through the lens of God plagues are an ordered and holy thing (chapter 15).  They may intrude upon the churches of earth and our patterns of worship but they ultimately speed the Church's finest hour when this earth is over and glory begun.

The Lord travels with us through earthly agonies as our Saviour and Friend - but do not ever mistake his loving presence for weakness, his sharing of our journey for a lack of sovereignty, his passion and compassion for powerlessness.

No, the world's bad news is part of the divine good news.  The very angels under whose watch humanity is brought low, pull the believer away to a sight where human beings in Christ are brought indescribably high by grace alone. 

In the words of Jesus (Luke 21), 'There will be signs . . . on earth dismay . . . when these things begin to happen look up because your redemption draws near!

World Cup Blogs 6. Costa Rica

Until the time of the last World Cup in 2014 (Costa Rica were in England's group) my knowledge of Costa Rica was limited, to say the least.  Somewhere on the mainland of Central America, probably quite small and revolutionary and possibly something to do with rice.

Though it was the time of the last World Cup, it wasn't the World Cup that changed my view of Costa Rica.  It was that, having moved to London with its international population, I was in a church where one of the members was Costa Rican.  I found myself asking about the country because I had met the person.  I found out about the country and it mattered to me because it was part of someone I now knew.

This is exactly how it often works in things spiritual.  Here is someone who has nothing but a minimal, distant knowledge of the Lord Jesus and the things of heaven.  They will happily die with no such knowledge - or so they believe.  Then they meet someone who belongs to Jesus, who is spiritual but who is also their friend.  And things that once meant nothing to them come to mean very much more.

World Cup Blogs 5. Colombia

Colombia?  Football?

For those of us old enough to remember, it means one thing - the world's most memorable goalkeeper, Rene Higuita.  Unique in so many ways, he was the main reason some of us wanted to watch Colombian games at previous World Cups - what might he do next?

This video doesn't show it but his style of play resulted in some awful moments too but risk = entertainment!  As he has said himself, no goalkeeper today would be allowed the creative and risk space to do what he did.

Somewhere in the heart of the Christian faith is risk.  In our church we are about to look more closely at one of Paul's missionary journeys and to read them is to feel the distance between the vibrant Christianity of the(often imprisoned and even executed) early believers and the 10:30 Sunday morning way the rich-world church does its faith today. 

May God make us interesting!

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.

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?

Good Friday

Koz

Koz sat down at the end of a long, hot day.  The sun had been unusually strong, and the work very hard.  He mopped his brow and prepared himself for dinner, reminding his boys that they should clean their hands too.  Dinner would be taken as the stars began to light the dark Eastern night.  Koz was proud of his boys and expected that his family, though certainly not the one of the greatest, would have a secure and growing future.

5 Ashhur the father of Tekoa had two wives, Helah and Naarah. 

6 Naarah bore him Ahuzzam, Hepher, Temeni and Haahashtari. These were the descendants of Naarah.

7 The sons of Helah: Zereth, Zohar, Ethnan, 

8 and Koz, who was the father of Anub and Hazzobebah and of the clans of Aharhel son of Harum.

9 Jabez was more honourable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, ‘I gave birth to him in pain.’ 

10 Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request.

A few years one American preacher managed to build one of those embarrassing evangelical empires around two verses that shine out amid the names in 1 Chronicles chapter 4 - the prayer of Jabez (you could even buy a Prayer of Jabez key ring or mug).   Jabez is only mentioned here in the Bible but his North American attraction is that he prayed for God to enlarge his territory - and God did.  I'm mildly surprised Mr Trump hasn't referenced this but I think his marriage of convenience with the Bible probably doesn't reach as far as Jabez. 

Near Jabez's little island of meaning in an ocean of genealogical names are of course many other names and with a detailed commentary even some of these names yield fascinating details.  The one that gripped me though did so because his name seemed very 21st century (and certainly easy to pronounce) - Koz. 

He had never, and would never, be a subject of eccentric Bible entrepreneurs.  Only this could be said of him - that in his day he was a significant figure in his growing, but minor, clan and that God has arranged that, unlike any modern preacher, or Shakespeare, Nero, or Alexander the Great, Koz’s name appears in the Word of God.

I like to think that Koz and others are in Scripture precisely because their names are like a church rota.  When the story of a church is written the priests, vicars or pastors (even the naughty ones) are listed, the organist who was pulled stops for 50 years, the woman who began the Girl Guides and the local dignitary who opened the new hall.  The rest?  Well, Jesus may know his sheep by name but they are passed over on earth into congregational historical anonymity.

For all of us threatened with genealogical anonymity there is the encouraging thought that most of the names in Scripture are of people as unknown as Koz.  Yet they and we are all known and all matter to our Lord.

Cor! Um, quorum?

Quorum, noun: The minimum number of members of an assembly or society that must be present at any of its meetings to make the proceedings of that meeting valid.

Bishops and Popes probably have many things to think about.  What they probably never think about is a quorum.  The House of Commons (Parliament in the UK) has a quorum but neatly does not demand that it needs to be in attendance.  Or at least only for a vote.

From time to time as a Baptist Pastor quorums have occupied my thoughts because in our congregational way of running church we have to have them for our 'governing body of the church of Christ on earth' to be in existence.

I could occupy webspace with mildly amusing anecdotes about desperate efforts to cross the line over the years, but fortunately last evening our church achieved an evening so bizarre that I now only have to remember this one anecdote to keep any listener in bemused interest.  (Warning: you are unlikely to understand what follows on first reading [you may never understand it])

The story goes like this:

• 8:00pm  Not at all for the first time in my experience I am chairing a meeting that is not quorate at the start time.  We wait.

• 8:10pm  We're (I'm) getting bored.  We start anyway.  This is not the planned meeting [hereafter the Agenda Meeting] but an Informal Meeting that can still listen and talk but can't do the stuff like minutes and decisions.  We are one person short of a quorum.

• 8:20pm  Lady A arrives! We have a quorum!  We start the Agenda Meeting.

• 8:40pm  Man A has to go home.  We no longer have a quorum.  We start another Informal Meeting because we think there is one more latecomer who has said he will try to be there by 9:00pm.

• 9:00pm  Man B arrives!  We have a quorum again.  We resume the Agenda Meeting.

• 9:20pm  Lady B suddenly announces she needs to leave.  The meeting is no longer quorate, never to be quorate again.  We have a third Informal Meeting to round off the evening.

• 9:35pm We end.  Though something meetingy had ended in me long before . . .

Holiday Pics - No 2 The Old Country

The weather isn't very British; the shrubs aren't very British; but what's that?  Nothing could be more British than a red telephone box!

I saw this one in Malta and there were plenty of others there - here's two . . .

Of course we still see them in Britain.  Occasionally.  They are strategically left for tourists to take pictures of them, or rather of themselves beside them.

Perhaps it is a strange thing that places that in other ways have gladly shed their connections to Britain have kept connections with things that Britain has itself abandoned.  If it isn't the telephone boxes it is a random London red double-decker of a kind almost untraceable in London today.

It illustrates how differently we choose to keep rooted or at least referenced.  In London we don't keep red telephone boxes or open back buses, in former connected countries they don't keep the Queen's head on stamps and currency.

In church worship you are more likely to sing an old evangelical hymn during a High Mass or prior to a liberal Bible-denying sermon in a church that kept the hymnbook but gave up trust in the Bible than you are to sing such a hymn in churches that have kept their simple trust in the Bible but given up the hymnbook.

Just Looking

The story is told of a man on his hands and knees under a street light looking for something.

Along came an Officer of the Law who was concerned with the man's behaviour so late at night.

"Have you lost something, sir?"

"My wallet, officer", drawled the man who was evidently somewhat the worse for drink.

"Do you remember when you last had it?", asked the policeman.

"Yes I think so.  I think I dropped it back there round the corner."

"Then if you don't mind me asking", continued the officer,"why are you looking for it on the pavement here?"

"There's a light here," replied the man. "Back there I couldn't see where I was looking".

It may be a joke, but I feel sure that something like this explains several things.  It explains why apparently normalised people go after messengers of disaster or death - into trafficking, into terrorism and the like.  That seems to them to be the light and they head there looking for something.

It also explains the difficulty the church often faces when it is dark even though it holds the answer.  Sometimes the light goes out because people become as in a private club or family and evangelism loses its meaning for them; sometimes the light goes out because people are too preoccupied with things other than light-giving; sometimes the light is lost in a compromised faith that admits immorality, dissension or unbelief; sometimes the doors of the church building are just mostly shut (and the lights literally out!).

If no light is shone on what needs to be found, it is strangely likely that people will head for any light even if what needs to be found is not there.

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear

(according to 19th century American novelist Herman Melville)  — the city of London and the South Seas.  He might have added - Sundays at Church.

 

In these weeks of being effectively between pastorates I get to experience what happens when you go to church as an outsider.  Of course on one level I am far from an outsider.  I was at a church today where we recited the Nicene Creed and was possibly the only person in the room that knew it off by heart.  I rarely stand up at the wrong time, rarely fail to know who wrote a hymn or song, let alone how to sing it, rarely fail to find the Bible reading quickly and even know where to sit and where not to sit.  Nevertheless, no-one knows that about me when I arrive.  This morning I attended my fifth service during this personal inbetween-time.  My wife and daughter add a couple of extra experiences to this mid 2014 survey of being a newcomer at British Churches of all kinds.  As I have found on Sabbaticals gone by there is a nearly unfailing theme here.  Let's try a picture:

 

I count it the highest privilege to belong the church of Jesus Christ.  I do not deserve it.  My sin properly excludes me from its fellowship but One has paid for my sin.  The cross is the reminder I did not properly belong apart from God's grace.  I do not need the gathering Christians to act out my deserved exclusion. Yet time and again I walk through open doors, receive a wan smile from a busy steward, find my way to a seat or bit of pew, then watch 50, 80, 150 people come in, sit around me and talk to each other with warm welcoming reunions.  The key word there is watch.

I conclude that this is a British Church epidemic of inhospitality.  I am the same person who has people gathering around me when I am the known Pastor or visiting preacher.  I wear just the same aftershave and am indeed far more friendly and relaxed than when I am about to lead a service.  My wife and daughter are the same people that people gather round when they are known.  But become a stranger and at once you are strange.  Where that leaves you if you really are generally strange in some way I dread to think.

 

A very special moment happened in one church where a pleasant older lady eventually engaged me in conversation well after the service had finished.  Her husband moved away and returned with two mugs of tea.  I was very grateful.  He gave one to her and then to my surprise turned away and drank the other one - his!

 

I note that Christ's measure of discipleship is not how we welcome each other (though how we love and forgive each other is another story).  His measure is how we welcome the stranger.  I am embarrassed that the average Estate Agent is (albeit from other motives) more exemplary of Christ's pattern of welcome than his alleged people when they gather to worship.