World Cup Churches 20. Japan

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 an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Christianity has made very little headway over the years in Japan.  Comparing it with other Eastern cultures like Korea and China make its resistance to the Gospel more surprising.  It is not as if Japan is entirely unable or unwilling to let the outside world in.  Just not Jesus.

The Church has done better than Jesus in one remarkable way.  Among many examples, I offer you St Bath Church in the Centre of Osaka.

At first glance this looks like an English parish church.  This is not entirely surprising because the stained glass windows are indeed from a disused British church or chapel. But on a second look there doesn't seem much between the happy couple and the windows.

Let's step outside  . . .

It kind of looks the part and doesn't look the part somehow.  And St Bath? Who was he or she?  What denomination is this?

The answer is the commercial denomination; it is a wedding chapel built to resemble a Western Protestant Church, squeezed between the outline of its related hotel.  Or as the blurb puts it:

'Reaching out to your heart the minister, choir, organist and violinist play in harmony.  Surrounded by the 18th century stained glass windows passed on to us from the United Kingdom and antique pews we deliver a unique impression and happiness to the bridal couple and guests.'

The point being this is one of many such chapels throughout Japan, a country where Protestant-style weddings are far more popular than Shinto ones, yet where the Christian Church has never made great inroads with the Gospel.

Perhaps the ultimate expression of the old truth that you don't become a Christian by getting married in church.

World Cup Blogs 15: Japan

Every World Cup is about much more than goals and results.  That Iceland, for example, are there at all I noted in an earlier blog is an amazing achievement.

Then there's Japan.  They have become famous in this tournament not for the players but for their fans.  Not for their fans during the game either.  But because (and difficult to imagine how counter cultural this is to me, and English football supporter) after their first game their fans were filmed cleaning up their litter before they left the stadium.

Bluntly, when English fans go to a tournament we are grateful if all of them have left the seats fixed in place.

If goodness is a powerful cultural weapon in a football tournament, how much more true are the words of the apostle Peter regarding goodness as a powerful weapon for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ:

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Tides

Looking at the wreckage - physical, psychological, economic - from the great tsunami tide in Japan my memory triggered a strangely reminiscent picture that I saw in the Maritime Museum in Liverpool.  It is called 'Waiting for the Tide'

In Hoodless's painting all the big things - the river, the steamer, the famous waterfront buildings - are peripheral to a chugging tug and a pile of stuff that is just lying there, as on docksides things do.  Waiting.

While the tsunami leaves everything washed up and waiting - waiting to be found, waiting to rebuild, waiting to return - other tides are waited for.

This is why, in so much Biblical imagery, the overwhelming wall of water that has so devastated thousands of lives is, rather, a picture of blessing - he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of Yahweh drives along.  The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, declares Yahweh.

There is a flood that rescues as well as a flood that destroys.

Shaking

God is our refuge and strength,

A very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear,

Even though the earth be removed,

And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

Though its waters roar and be troubled,

Though the mountains shake with its swelling.

C H Spurgeon: 'What then? Then will the earth be removed, . . . our mountain will be carried into the midst of the sea! But since God is our refuge and strength we ought not to dread the day.'