Bunched

A disconcerting life-fact is the way that the truth of our thoughts comes out a little more when we are wound-up than when we are calm.  My mother has always sounded more Welsh (occasionally repairing into Welsh words even) when she is more worked up.

Yesterday, in the frenetic atmosphere of Prime Ministers Questions (an atmosphere that he himself has encouraged however) Mr Cameron splurged out his collective noun for migrants trying to reach Britain from their staging post in the Calais area.  A bunch of migrants, he called them.

It was part of an insult thrown at Jeremy Corbyn who is unlikely to be much affected by any more insults.  However, plenty of hearers concluded that it was more of an insult to the people wanting to migrate.  There was added poignancy on Holocaust Memorial Day as no other day of the year more accurately reflects the dehumanising of groups of people than that day.  In Jerusalem great care is taken to record as best as is possible the names of everyone who was killed in the Holocaust precisely because in their death they were simply a bunch of Jews.  Here is the Hall of Names:

I am struck by the story told by the Lord Jesus.  (He, remember, was a Nazarene [i.e. one of the bunch from grotty Nazareth] - oh, and God manifest in the flesh).  There were, his story goes, a bunch of sheep.  Strangely the shepherd - the god-figure - leaves that bunch and goes across hill and valley to find one lost sheep.

So it wasn't the outsider that was God's bunch but those in the fold.  Kind of like Ali (who has a degree in Economics and a masters in Business and who owned a chain of supermarkets in Syria) who is on Calais waiting to join a bunch of Britons, David.

Congratulations?

If there is one point in an Induction when I wince it is when someone (often someone who I feel should know better) congratulates the new Pastor on their appointment.  The Biblical verbal phrase that seems to cover this kind of appointment is being set apart.  The implication - no, it is the explicit meaning - of congratulation is of human achievement, of promotion, of a new job successfully negotiated, of privilege or of some combination of some of those.

Setting apart is not a reason to be congratulated or commiserated.   If the year 4 teacher in one school is promoted to be Deputy Head in another you send a congratulatory message.  If the year 4 teacher is assigned year 2 next year you observe and note the change.  That is setting apart and exactly characterises the New Testament's approach to Christian ministry though of course not the disciples' - which earned them a telling off from Jesus.

 

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.  It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant,  and whoever would be first among you must be your slave,  even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

 

This seems clear enough.

 

Today one of the Gentile rulers, David Cameron, changed his Government cabinet around - in the lordly manner that Gentile rulers do when an election is looming.  Meanwhile, in the Church of England Synod  the decision was made to allow the appointment of female Bishops.   David Cameron thought this was a great idea - most specifically, "a great day for the Church and for equality".

 

It all sounds so plausible.  It is a total denial of the meaning of ministry.  What is this equality?  Seen in the skewed vision of a venerable British establishment Institution and through the eyes of a Gentile ruler women have just broken through a glass ceiling.

 

Seen through the eyes of Jesus and the radical values of the Gospel they have secured a lower place than they had when generically left at home doing the ironing.  No congratulations there then.  Wait a minute: here comes (my italics) Regional Minister (Team Leader) of the East Midlands Baptist Association the Revd Dianne Tidball with the official Baptist line:

 

“Congratulations to our Anglican friends on having the wisdom, courage and grace to open the door to women becoming Bishops.  We are pleased to learn that the vote enabling women to fulfil all roles within the church has been passed.  We are delighted that the wider church will have the opportunity to benefit further from the gifts and experience that women, already in senior roles, will bring."

 

That's it I guess.  If you believe in senior roles, you offer congratulations.  Is there anyone out there who believes Jesus actually meant what he said?  If we are denying ourselves how can we thereby be congratulated or achieve a this-worldly equality?

Days to Remember 6: That 22nd Feeling

I am not privy to what David Cameron feels when he has his regular audience with Her Majesty the Queen.  I imagine he feels somewhat smaller than in many other settings.  Here's one reason - the list of British Prime Ministers who've served under Queen Elizabeth II:

 

Winston Churchill 1951-55
Sir Anthony Eden 1955-57
Harold Macmillan 1957-63
Sir Alec Douglas-Home 1963-64
Harold Wilson 1964-70 and 1974-76
Edward Heath 1970-74
James Callaghan 1976-79
Margaret Thatcher 1979-90
John Major 1990-97
Tony Blair 1997-2007
Gordon Brown 2007-2010
David Cameron 2010-

 

He may be Number One just now, but in another way he's Number 12.

 

It is manifestly unsuitable for a Pastor to compare himself with the hierarchy of politics, though some perhaps do and others do on their behalf. 

 

And yet it evokes a thought remembering one day visiting our oldest Church Member at the time.  My relative longevity and seniority was put into brutal perspective.

 

"It's the Pastor to see you", said the carer down her ear.

 

"Who?"

 

"THE PASTOR"

 

"Oh, I don't know"

 

"YOU DO KNOW HIM.  THE PASTOR FROM UNION BAPTIST CHURCH.  YOUR CHURCH."

 

"The Church?  Who?"

 

"IT'S THE PASTOR - PASTOR JOHN FROM THE CHURCH.  HE'S COME TO SEE YOU"

 

"Oh, I don't know."

 

"YES - YOU KNOW HIM - JOHN ROBERTS -THE PASTOR"

 

"Who?  I don't know, there's been so many of them . . ."

 

Ah yes, you have to have stamina to outlive the elderly ladies of a church.  I may have had the microphone on many Sundays but I was just another in a long, long, line for her!  22nd overall in fact.

 

It reminded me of a pastoral visit I did in the storied First Baptist Church of Dallas where Dr W A Criswell had been the celebrated leader for nearly 40 years at that time.  The elderly lady complained about the new preacher and how she had much preferred his predecessor - who finished in the mid 1940s. 

 

Thank God (albeit perhaps through slightly gritted teeth) for those who remind us we are but parts of chapters in a Greater Story.

Whatever it takes

Several times in the past week, as the River Thames extended into Chertsey, the Somerset Levels became a new Lakeland and the beach at Dawlish incorporated the former railway the Prime Minister has stood and declared that he/the Government will do . . .

WHATEVER IT TAKES

 

I admit that in first hearing this I felt a little stirred and comforted (though not directly of course, living a few hundred feet above a river).  That may have been its intended effect. 

But then he's kept on saying it and now I'm becoming more analytical.  Because it's nonsense, isn't it?

 

King Canute, despite his supposed error of sitting enthroned on a beach as the tide came in as if he could prevent it, wisely actually said "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless and there is no King worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven and earth and sea obey eternal laws," (Historia Anglorum, ed D E Greenway).  It seems likely he deliberately set out to show he could NOT do 'whatever it takes'.

The problem, of course, is that in the face of powers too vast for politicians to control the simple, obvious thing for human beings to do is to turn to God in repentence and prayer.

But when Mr Cameron says the Government will do whatever it takes he does not in fact mean what he says if, as I suspect, what it takes is repenting or prayer . . .

Dave and Nick

Vote for change, we're always told.

But you don't have to vote for change because change happens whether we like it or not.  Now into the shoes (or perhaps mules or spats) previously worn by First Lords of the Treasury and/or Prime Ministers named His Grace the 1st Duke of Newcastle, His Grace William Cavendish-Bentinck, Henry Temple The Viscount Palmerston and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman arrive Dave and Nick.

It reminds me of the Church Membership List with which I was confronted on leaving training college on which not a single first name appeared.  If someone said that she was Elsie I simply had to best guess which of the Mrs or Miss Es she was, a process vexed with potential disaster.  Mr D. Cameron, Mr N. Clegg.

Now I have bizarre discussions about Ann, Ben, Carol or Darren before finding out later that the other party was talking about a different Darren, Carol, Ben or Ann.  Things have changed completely, yet in that peculiarly human way that sees the Garden of Eden replicated by people's Internet behaviour, nothing has changed at all.  The first name issue has become the last name issue! 

Dave and Nick, take note.