Holiday Pics 3: Nelson's Request

The sea figures large in the story of Ireland, for the plain reason that it has not been possible to get there or to leave there without using it until the arrival of flying.  

At first this thought seems incompatible with the observation that Ireland is not thought of as an old seafaring nation in the manner of England, Portugal or the Netherlands.  This is explained by the history in which the peak years of seafaring fame were ones in which Ireland was in union with England and Wales.

And so, in an Irish country house by the sea we came across this; a letter from Admiral Nelson in the era when Irish bays were suitable resting places for English fighting ships.

What struck me about the letter - quite exciting to see a real letter from such a person in such a place - was what it is about.  A great battle won perhaps?  A secret disclosure for the King's attention?  A theological observation (he was, after all, the son of a clergyman)?

It is, mundanely, a request for a new sail for his ship.

No matter how great a man or a woman is, they are nothing unless they can catch the winds that blow.  And this is the more true of any Christian, for we all need to be able to be moved for God the Holy Spirit, the wind of heaven.

World Cup Blogs 3: Belgium

Continuing to blog reflections on the 32 nations represented at this summer's World Cup in Russia I come to the first, alphabetically, that I have set foot in - Belgium.  

We are driving to Belgium this summer and it is very striking that it is less miles away than when we drive to Liverpool.  In this year Belgium figures in the great commemoration of a hundred years since the 1918 Armistice Day. Beneath its soil lie thousands of remains that testify to the madness of the 20th century wars.  It is not surprising that Belgium (which also had post-colonial connections to the Congo Crisis in the 1960s and the troubled lands of Burundi and Rwanda) should have a strong official bent toward peace.

Belgium, moreover, is an amalgam - or rather an accommodation - of two very different cultures (Dutch and French) with even a little of Germany added as a result of the First World war settlement.  This duality (plus the German corner) makes for a strangely divided yet relatively historic country - they have a a fine football team at the moment so they might have plenty of reasons for unity as the World Cup begins.

So the more successful they are, the more often we'll hear the Belgian National Anthem.  In its National Day form it has alternate lines in Dutch, German and French.  The last three lines of the verse usually sung is a repeat (Eng. King, Law and Freedom!).  After a very brief look I think you will guess which of the three languages this line was first written in  . .

Voor Vorst, voor Vrijheid en voor Recht!

Gesetz und König und die Freiheit hoch!

Le Roi, la Loi, la Liberté!

Today, on Pentecost Sunday this perfectly illustrates the difficulties of translation, and this is very relevant to the coming of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus promised Him in John chapter 14.  Jesus spoke Aramaic, a form of Hebrew but the New Testament was penned in Greek and the word used was paracletos.

And in English?

Advocate (New International Version)

Comforter (King James Version)

Helper (English Standard Version)

Companion (Common English Bible)

Counsellor (Revised Standard Version)

Paraclete (Douay-Rheims)  [which of course is not English but a transliteration]

If the Belgian National Anthem is a clue that its nation is very varied, then perhaps the attempts to translate paracletos are a sign that the Holy Spirit is God with us in amazing and varied ways, something to be celebrated on this Pentecost Day by people of every language, tribe and tongue.

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.

Holiday Pics - No 3 Thirstless

By inspiration of my wife I offered this chap some water on a hot day in the Grandmaster's Palace in Valetta.  You could hardly have a grander place!  You could hardly have anything more welcoming than some water on what was a very hot day.  But he didn't drink any: there was grandeur,  me, real refreshment but, in his case, no life.

Sometimes when, in the glories of worship we share the life of God in his Word we offer real refreshment in the grandest of spiritual palaces.  But there is not always drinking.

Hearing

Not too much attention is given by Christians to the meaning of hearing.

Even as I write that, I realise I must immediately disown all reference to Church microphones and induction loops that plague the peaceableness of every congregation's relationships.  (It seems clear to me why angels in heaven use trumpets and God a very loud voice life the sound of many waters - nowhere could be free of sin that had electronic sound reproduction!).

The hearing I refer to is that with which the Lord Jesus ends many parables -  he that hath ears to hear let him hear.  Lest we take that turn of phrase to mean that everyone will hear Jesus also indicates rather the opposite, quoting the old prophet - ears have they but they hear not.

Serving God in a vast city where, nonetheless, many do not hear I have been thinking about this.  Clearly we who know Christ have to be out there and the past year has seen our church do that on many occasions (but nowhere near as many as the Jehovah's Witnesses locally, let's admit).  There is a telling to be done.

But there is also hearing.  

The picture above is a quotation from John Wesley.  It stands by one of his great outdoor theatres of preaching where thousands heard.  We envy him.  Then we beat ourselves up for falling so far short.  But we might miss what he says - to declare unto all that are willing to hear.  Wesley was a great evangelist partly because he had a great hearing audience.  A Christian in Saudi Arabia or North Korea has very few hearers (except perhaps by media).  A Christian in parts of Africa or South America may quickly amass many.  Jesus did both, with Galilean audiences of thousands and disgruntled Jerusalem Temple or Nazareth sceptics who wouldn't accept a word he said.  Hence his point.

The willingness to hear is not the work so much of the evangelist as the community.  Or more properly of the Holy Spirit who graciously unplugs ears sometimes.

Heat

There must be many places to be on a 95 degree day, but London certainly isn't one of them. 

 

I feel strangely satisfied sitting in my study before doing an afternoon visit.  I've just been on the phone to someone who, it turned out, was answering their phone from Hampton Court Garden Show.  Far from feeling jealous I felt sorry for my friend.

 

The atmosphere changes everything, doesn't it?  Ordinary places become extraordinary on an unusual weather day.  I find myself paying attention to shaded streets so I can walk comfortably, minimising my time outside, closing my curtains.

 

A song that is a few steps past my current church's style but which I love is the only one I know with the word atmosphere in.  It's a reminder that although we have meetings that try to change things, the only really big change comes when God turns up the heat.  Then nothing is the same.

 

 

My Favourite Christmas Carols - No 2

Many people have tapped into the popularity of Christmas as a singing season and produced skilful or sad purpose-built carols.  John Rutter springs to mind as the most commercially successful, and Cliff Richard has his own commercial take on the genre.  On the whole I am not overly drawn to designer carols as evidenced in my other choices which are really poetry set to music or folk songs from no-one notable.  Nevertheless at No 2 I have just such a carol, written by the once hugely popular Graham Kendrick.

Like a candle flame
Flickering small in our darkness
Uncreated light
Shines through infant eyes

God is with us, alleluia (Men)
God is with us, alleluia (Women)
Come to save us, alleluia (Men)
Come to save us (Women)
Alleluia! (All)

Stars and angels sing
Yet the earth sleeps in shadows
Can this tiny spark
Set a world on fire?

Yet his light shall shine
From our lives, Spirit blazing
As we touch the flame
Of his holy fire

Graham Kendrick
Copyright © 1988 Make Way Music,
www.grahamkendrick.co.uk

It is my second choice because it is, in my opinion, utterly beautiful.  Added to which it is simple and somehow combines the simplicity of the Christ-child with the power of the Holy Spirit, the latter scarcely ever meaningfully referenced in carols which seem to often lead to Easter but never on to Pentecost.



Explainable

I don't want my life to be explainable without the Holy Spirit.

These words leapt out of the page as I was reading one of Francis Chan's books.  My impression of the story of the Christian faith is that it is, in very many respects, explainable only be the Holy Spirit.  From the dramatic transformed boldness of Simon Peter after Pentecost to countless more mundane instances in, say, even my own experience of ministry there are lots of unexplainables that make perfect sense with the Holy Spirit of God factored in.

 

Nevertheless, there is an alarming number of things in British church life that are too easily explainable.  How often the trend away from volunteering in Society is reflected in local churches of all persuasions; how much of the work of Jesus has been cut back like a Government department during the economic times we are in; how the moral outlook of Christians seems to be as umblically attached to the trends of the age as those of the politicians.

 

May God grant us to see the day when we use the word amazing not because it is projected on the screen at the front of the meeting but because the life of the Church in 21st Century England is . . .  amazing.

Leaves

Ah.  The delights of the English Autumn.

Across the Atlantic this is the Fall.  I think they have a point.

We loved living by the seaside which we did for a number of years.  Then, in English terms, we were called far away from the sea (a hundred miles).  Consolation of a locational kind was hard to come by but I tried. 

"At least we won't get salt on the windows in winter gales!"  In this I have been proved right.

"There's all these lovely trees.  'Leafy Bucks.'  You never get all these trees by the seaside."  This is also true.

Another thing you don't get by the seaside is, therefore, a host of 'lovely trees' dispensing most of themselves on your lawn, driveway and car all in two windy nights.  I repeat - this is not Autumn, it is Fall.

But this is the thing.  Although the trees around our house are approximately the same size each year the number of leaves that I have to set to work on is by no means the same.  And this has been a very easy year.

Our driveway has no gate.  Often when the wind blows it does so  (I have always assumed) at the behest of Wycombe District Council.  Leaves that, in deference to my back, have respectfully fallen on the pavement outside have been blown into my drive for me to have extra work to do.  A man in a vehicle that is a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a dustcart purrs merrily by early some morning with no leaves to work on while the leaves that have escaped him wave sneeringly at him from my drive and then sneeringly at me as I wearily chase them around with a humble non-mechanical broom.

This year the north wind blew.  Everyone was complaining.  Temperatures dropped and leaves fell, winter coats hurriedly located, car heaters turned up, extra bedding for the pets, a general sense of winter arriving.  But me?  I was well pleased.

Somehow the north wind (which blows toward my drive) swirls around the leaves and deposits them back north - onto the property of Wycombe District Council Highways Department and the man in his motorised vacuum cleaner thingy.  I went out of the house, swept a few separatist leaves from a corner by the garage, and retreated in the warm to await the family plaudits for all my hard work.

I had a friend who was a Pastor in the East African Revival.  His spiritual experience was like my yard work experience.  His ministry 'work' was to sit in his room with a queue of people outside his door waiting, one by one, to give their lives to Christ.  I am working on ways of persuading the Holy Spirit to blow from the north.

Torch

All was well Sunday evening.

The night was a bit rough afterwards but Monday morning I woke to a virus that (to put it gently) necessitated a bowl and prevented thought about much else than whether it or a small room was in reach (pun kind of intended).

Well, the subtitle of this blog (which I confess is less pretentious than its main title) is about 'thinking aloud'.  What does a Pastor think about in the moments when the bowl can be temporarily ignored?  Yes, God sometimes.  But in recovering mode I've also been thinking about the Olympic Torch Relay.

The Relay promises endless illustrations for years to come - the marvellous variety of wonderful, often extraordinary but non-famous people who have carried it, the idea of taking a message over the whole of the United Kingdom by passing it on, the bringing together of young and old, sick and supremely well, its battle through wind and storm and so on. 

I think the idea of the relay is great.  I think the people carrying the flame are more than great. I look forward to reading through more of their stories.  It is, though, slightly bemusing when the live camera records the journey between towns and police motorcyclists are speeding down roads stopping traffic, lights flashing, as though royalty is passing through.  Given that the same sun that shines in Greece shines in the whole world the question is, why doesn't each relay fresh start simply light its torch from that same sun?

The practical answer may be that in Britain there is not enough sun to light the torch by . . .

Wouldn't it be interesting if every new convert to Christianity had to have a flame that had been lit in Jerusalem?  Ah, but then I suppose we do . . .

Sing Out

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

Why?

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