Great (Hymn) One Liners 5. The Way In

On St Patrick's Day it seems only right to have a one liner from a hymn written in Ireland.  

This line summarises something which passes a great many people by - including almost the entire UK education system.

He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in

From the children's hymn, There is a green hill far away this line expounds so many things in so few words.  You can't just choose to go to heaven (and nor could your dead relatives).  There is a way of getting to heaven - there is only one way though.  The Way is a person, one person.  There was no other good enough.

Cecil Frances Alexander, wife of the sometime Archbishop of Ireland (earlier Bishop of Londonderry), may have been writing catechetical hymns for children, but she also gave us all something important to remember as we approach Easter.

(for more in this series click on the hymnline tag below)

Our Church Flags 2. Montserrat

London rarely fails to amaze.  Having a church member from Montserrat is a statistically unlikely event - but one day a few years back we had a visitor (unconnected) from Montserrat too!  To have two unrelated congregants from Montserrat is vanishingly improbable in any church in the world that doesn't have a direct Montserrat connection, because the island had a small population even before half of it was made uninhabitable by its volcano erupting some decades ago.  Today its population is less than 5000.

More amazing still is its flag:

Public Domain

There on the flag is the familiar sign of the territory's connection to the UK - the Union flag in the corner of the blue ensign.  But who is she?  Why is she white-skinned, and wearing green?  And holding a harp while embracing the cross?

She is white because she is Irish.  She is Erin.  That's why she holds a celtic harp.

This unlikely symbol for a Caribbean island is unlikely only because most of us have no idea that Montserrat was once populated largely by Irish immigrants.

Most special of all, I need no imaginative line of thought to squeeze Christian meaning from this flag.  The reason that Erin embraces the cross is officially explained as symbolising the islanders' love of Christ.

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.

Holiday Pics: 1. In the Cell

St Canice's Cathedral in Kilkenny is interesting in very many ways.

As with all ancient cathedrals in the Republic of Ireland it is Church of Ireland (Anglican, Protestant) not Roman Catholic.  This is an ecclesiastical remnant of British rule when Ireland's ancient foundations departed Catholicism with the English establishment rather than the local majority.

It also contains the remains of an Anchorite Cell.

The nun would enter the cell, thereby dying to secular life.  Dedicated to a life of prayer, the cells of Anchorites were usually by the altar so they could receive the Eucharist.  On entering the cell, the Bishop recited a rite that closely resembled the funeral liturgy: this really was dying to the world.

Protestants eschew such medieval practices.  I was, however, speaking to a Christian lady recently.  She had been baptised many moons before, but no longer attended any church (or Eucharist) on account of being far too busy.

I thought of this when I thought of the Anchorite. 

I'm too Protestant to believe it is a great thing for a young woman to be in a cell by the altar for life.  But I can't help feeling it has its strengths over against a life that has forsaken the altar entirely for a life barely Christian in its expression at all.

Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 8. You Raise Me Up (Westlife)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 8 - You raise me up, popularised by Westlife, covered by half the music industry . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

Norwegian Rolf Lovland originally wrote the music for his own mother's funeral. (Brendan Graham wrote the lyrics).

Why it's bad for a funeral:

It doesn't contain God (unless you supply him by how you mean the words).

Line that's most like a Christian song:

You raise me up to more than I can be

Line that's least like a Christian song:

[Not applicable - as Brendan Graham was for a while a Catholic Seminarian it all has Christian echoes]

A Quote from (writer) Brendan Graham:

'Keep a green bough in your heart and the singing bird will come'.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

It is so much like a hymn I might as well have a real hymn which honours God rather than one that reflects a hopeful ideal.

A better Christian alternative:

.

[There is a Redeemer . . .]

When I stand in Glory

I will see His face

And there I'll serve my King forever

In that Holy Place

Thank you, oh my father

For giving us Your Son

And leaving Your Spirit

'Til the work on Earth is done

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Good and Bad

This has been a challenging week in London with the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack, an attack perpetrated by a man who we now seem to know more about than we do about members of our own family.  A little late though.

It was also the week when Martin McGuiness, former IRA Commander yet peacemaker was laid to rest - a man who died as an awkward kind of hero, a key to the Peace process that he had earlier been a key figure in making necessary.

These two men who died challenge our assessment of human goodness and badness. 

It is clear that those who knew Adey the youngster often (but not always) regarded him as incapable of anything like what he did on Wednesday.   Somewhere he seemed to have gone bad.  Yet even that doesn't quite work as the hotel he stayed in the night before the atrocity found him to be a very pleasant guest.

As a youngish man Martin McGuiness was certainly marked out by many outside his immediate community as a great deal of trouble.  To what extent he was directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism eventually became a subject off limits.  Yet most saw in his championing of the Northern Ireland Peace Process (at considerable personal risk and cost) something heroic or at least laudable.

The easy thing to say is that there is bad and good in all of us.  The harder thing is how we judge it.  The best thing to say is that we really can't and that the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25) will need to be left to do what is right.

Bono

Here's a quote from Dubliner Bono for St Patrick's Day:

Great music is written by people who are either running toward or away from God.

Here, from St Patrick's Breastplate, an example of the former:

Mrs Colville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile in Edinburgh . . .

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

Happy St Patrick's Day!

What could be more Irish than this Old Irish poem-turned-hymn?  This hymn has grown in popularity while many previously better-known hymns have disappeared under the flood of Contemporary Christian Music.  This seems partly because of the growing popularity of Irish culture.

But I, for one, have never heard this hymn in Gaelic.  The words I think of as 'Irish' are owed to a Victorian lady born and deceased in England whose love of Irish literature led her to translate this and countless other Old Irish works.  Next time you hear this song in a worship experience it is worth sparing a thought for a lady of not specially noted spirituality doing her 19th century translations in love of the Old Irish language unwittingly being used by God to create something for worship in the 21st century. 

You never know what God's up to . . .  

March 17th as seen during our morning service . . .