Great (Hymn) One Liners 13. The wine of the world

For me, one of the greatest English language hymns that I have never sung (in a congregation) is Lift up your voice and sing. 

It is a reflection on freedom in the context of slavery and oppression in America, and framed in the language of the Exodus.  Although it could apply in many situations it has never resonated outside Black America and those who are its allies.  It has been sung at the SuperBowl, and especially in the context of George Floyd's death - but certainly not at Wembley or Westminster Abbey  This is why I have never got to sing it, having only once preached in a Black American church.

It deserves far better and although much of it is movingly written, the line I have chosen is in the last verse which applies the spiritual warning for the freedom ahead - a verse sometimes left out perhaps exactly because it is so spiritual:

[Keep us forever in the path, we pray . . .] Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Freedom is painful to achieve, wonderful if it is gained, potentially intoxicating when it is known.  The devil loves oppression, division and hatred, but he is clever enough to do well in freedom too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Every_Voice_and_Sing

World Cup Churches: 30.Ghana

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.

Ghana, it must be said, is not short of Christian churches.  In fact, even if Ghana started last year where Saudi Arabia is - with no Christian churches - it would still not be short of churches given the exponential growth it has.  New churches appear every Sunday.  It is an example of why, despite the miserable decline in many European countries, the Christian Church across the world continues to grow.

Spoilt for choice (or more accurately overwhelmed and bewildered by choice) I am going for Action Chapel International for this World Cup Churches blog. This probably has more to do with the founder-pastor Nicholas Duncan-Williams (or perhaps rather his current wife) than with the church itself, which is 'just another' vast Ghanaian church (with a Communion table that might trump the ones in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican).

Speaking of Trump - here he is on the front row in the rather more humble (at least in size) St John's Episcopal Church, Washington, prior to his Inauguration, with Melanie at his side.

There on the platform is the Archbishop, Patriarch, Founder-Pastor and General Factotum of Action Chapel International, headquartered in Accra, Ghana, leading prayers.  Those of us that have not heard of Nicholas before are probably revealing more about ourselves than about him by not knowing him.  

How does he end up in St John's on that auspicious day?  I am not privy to that, but it has something to do, I feel sure, with his wife.  Rosa Whitaker is American, but not just any American (with apologies to the others).  The CEO (and founder of course) of TWG (The Whitaker Group) a US based African Investment enterprise she has served different Presidents, represented the US in Trade negotiations and agreements across Africa yet also worked in various Christian enterprises including Mercy Ships International and Pan African TV.

Or to put it another way, to step into the vast auditorium of ACI is possibly to fail to grasp the reach of this and some other African churches across the world where Western churches have often lost their voice.

Whether Nicholas prayed for the right things - and whether his prayer was answered - I leave to the wisdom of Almighty God.

World Cup Churches 7. United States of America

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' below.

Well, this is the biggie.  A vast country, a huge population and hundreds of thousands of churches.  Can we possibly find one that epitomises something American?  As with England I found selecting one church surprisingly easy.

Christ Cathedral is the Cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in California.  As such it is a reminder of the hugeness of the Catholic Church in America (including of course the current President), not least in California (reference Sister Act) and its burgeoning Hispanic population.

For all that it is very glitzy in Californian-American style - and that is for a reason. Until not so long ago it was called the Crystal Cathedral and the home of Reverend Robert Schuller's Positive Thinking TV empire.  Technically a Presbyterian Church it was more accurately a Television Church and its Hour of Power, birthed out of a 1960s Drive-Thru church, was vastly popular across the English-speaking world and beyond.  You can't get much more American than all that.  I thought that one day as I walked through the glass building alongside the fountains gently spurting out water in the middle of the aisles as the sun beamed in.

'If you can dream it, you can do it.'

'Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.'

'Problems are never real problems unless they cause you to take your eye off your goals.'

It's not necessarily straightforward to derive these maxims from the carpenter of Nazareth and his disciples, followers, martyrs, prisoners, missionaries and attendant Holy Spirit- inspired operatives.  But in sunny California they made a whole lot of sense.

Until they didn't.

Because for all the positivity stamped on the side of free pens, glasses, eagle ornaments and handkerchiefs - and written in an endless stream of best selling books - some of the problems WERE real problems, whether you thought about your goals beyond them or not.

This whole caboodle cost an awful lot of dollars - orchestras, high-level staffing and prime-time level programming don't come cheap.  And in a long story played out in court and public the ministry filed for bankruptcy.

Unfortunately there was a marked lack of positive thinking in the family.  Firings and hirings, Schuller himself suing the ministry he had founded and energetic divisiveness from an angry, diminishing, and now online congregation.  In many ways among the most negative decades in any church's story in America from a church that had steadfastly refused to countenance sin in the interests of thinking positively. That is one great irony.

Another irony is that a building christened a cathedral simply to make itself sound important (a Presbyterian Church remember) has now actually become a Cathedral - the seat of a Bishop - in the Roman Catholic Church.

It happened in America.

Psalms in Lent: Psalm 30 Joe Biden's verse?

 It was a great day for our annual Church Motto Text when, in its first month, it was the (lone) Scripture quoted in the new American President's inaugural address.

He chose it for much the same reason, I imagine, as we chose it: looking ahead from within the reality of weeping to a future joy.

As we continue reflecting on the Psalms in Lent it is worth noticing a correction I made when (on my sole preaching Sunday of 2021 so far) in the opening service in January I indicated that this is part of a two part verse.

What (for brevity) we chose not to put on our card - and which for secular purposes Joe Biden probably never considered quoting - is the other, qualifying part of the poetic stanza:

For his anger lasts only a moment,

    but his favour lasts a lifetime;

weeping may stay for the night,

    but joy comes in the morning.

Ah, there is God after all.

It is not some anti-gravitational life force that pulls human hope up out of weeping.  It is the grace, the favour of God.  

Nor, it should be added, is weeping an unforeseen problem foisted on a victim God and his human creation.  It is a consequence perhaps of judgment, perhaps of withdrawn favour (which is similar but not quite the same).

Put another way, our Motto Text is not a lot of use unless we also see God there.  And so we pray . . .

Trump Street

The end of the Trump presidency is at hand.  As typically happens in the current age there is Trump flight going on, building's names being questioned, big tech suddenly finding censorship tools that had magically not existed when it was financially inconvenient to use them, golf tournaments suddenly moving contra-Trumpwards and politicians and pastor-politicians who lauded him, leaving him.

But in one little corner of London . . .

Disappointingly for Donald J. this street was not named for him but for those who made the likes of trumpets and horns, a naming that predates the United States.

For those who remember Donald Trump's election in 2016 and its aftermath of allegations of Russian interference it is worth noting that Trump Street is now only half a street - the other half of it is called Russian Row . . .

Thanksgiving Wisdom: 4. Flattery

The culture of the United States accepts, far more willingly than that of the UK, the idea of talking people up.  As someone who worked in the US I went through strange reactions to this.

At first I hated it, wanting my old British realism.

Then I started to love it.  How much more motivating to be told how great you are!  I started to see why many Americans I knew exhibited far more confidence than we did in the UK.

Then, later, I started to revert to type.  Flattery can only take you so far, and sincerity seemed a more beautifying companion.   Donald, are you reading?

Wherever this braggadocio derived from, we can be confident it did not travel over on the Mayflower from members of John Robinson's congregation in Leiden.  For he said of flattery:

Flattery is in all cases and persons a base sin . . . but in ministers of God's holy Word is most pernicious.  How few are there so hating their vices as may not rather seek friends that cover their faults than cure them by faithful reproofs.  A man needs no other flatterer than his own partial heart to infatuate him. 

Thanksgiving Wisdom 3. God's Love

As tens of millions have travelled in the United States to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, it is a reminder of how much love there is in families.  Isn't it?

Maybe, maybe not.  

The public health officials travelling to gather in mixed ages from different States may just be the most dangerous thing a group can do towards each other mid-pandemic.  Endangering each other is not love.  And here lies an example of the problem with love. 

We define our own love.  And we will not be told what love really is by anyone else.  Including God.

John Robinson, the Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, was wise enough to see that self-defining love is true of just one being - God.  He wrote:

God loveth himself first and most as the chiefest good

Jesus made the same point in the prayer to His Father in John chapter 17.  

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.  

God lived, love lived, before any human love.  And any human love is to be defined by God, not human beings.  And this offends us very much, but that doesn't change its truth.

Love in the creature ever presupposeth some good, true or apparent, in the thing loved, by which that affection of union is drawn.

Our love is a victim of our unreliable attraction to things and people, sometimes worthy, sometimes pleasant, sometimes dodgy, sometimes criminal. But our love reaches out to what attracts us.  But God?

But the love of God, to the contrary, causeth all good to be produced in the creature.

His love gives the goodness rather than seeking it out.  Jesus came to seek the lost, the sick, the unlovely, the dead, the criminal, the leper.

Like all Western Countries - but bigger and better of course - the United States has a culture of self-defining love. Holywood has helped it along fabulously.  Yet 400 years ago those pilgrims were fed by their Pastor a view of love which would draw out holiness rather than Holywood.  And may that wisdom not disappear from either side of the Atlantic completely.

Thanksgiving Wisdom: 1. Not Back to Normal

In this week of Thanksgiving in America, I'd like to look back to the Pilgrims from whom the festival derives.  They have become lost in the current ferment of the United States, a later political creation, but 400 years ago a body of people set sail on the Mayflower (well, they actually set sail on another ship first) to join other settlers on the shores of the New World.

Many were from a church in Holland that had been formed from Christians fleeing England, and they have become known as the Pilgrim Fathers. The majority of the Church in Leiden, Holland stayed back, as did their Pastor.  It was the younger, more adventurous who set sail, yet the harsh conditions took many of their lives in the opening years of settlement.   Thanksgiving was born out of gratitude for their first Harvest.  

John Robinson, their Pastor, never did the journey from Holland (though he had previously fled England of course).  Yet his wisdom and determination played a large part in the Mayflower story and I want to look at a few things he said or wrote:  first this, from a letter to a sympathetic English nobleman who had supported them throughout:

It is not with us as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again . . . we hope not to recover our present helps, neither look ever to attain the like in any other place in our lives . . .

This quotation reminds us of wisely adopting a pilgrim spirit in this world.  Covid-19 has left everyone wanting to recover normality - these pilgrims understood they were giving up a lot in order to go forward.

As the disciples might have done when they left their nets by Galilee to follow Jesus. With Jesus most of the good things are in front, not behind.

Shai Linne: George Floyd and me

To my mind, Shai Linne's piece is required reading:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/george-floyd-and-me/

In case you don't get to it's end (or the link disappears) - this is how it ends:

For me, “life as usual” means recognizing some people perceive me as a threat based solely on the color of my skin. For me, “life as usual” means preparing my sons for the coming time when they’re no longer perceived as cute little boys, but teenage “thugs.” Long after George Floyd disappears from the headlines, I will still be a black man in America.

And you know what? I thank God for that! He knew exactly what he was doing when he made me the way he did. Despite the real and exhausting challenges that come with my outward packaging, I know that I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. And I wouldn’t want to be anything other than what I am: a follower of Jesus Christ who has been saved by grace and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb—who also has brown skin and dreadlocks and does hip-hop.

George H W Bush

A peculiarity of  being a Pastor is that, although most days reinforce a sense of how inconsequential you are seen to be by the world, you do get to meet a disproportionate number of important, famous people.

One such for me, and whose memorial is happening today, was George H W Bush, the 41st President of the United States of America.  The occasion of meeting him - or more strictly of him meeting me - was when he visited the Church in America where I was on the staff.  He came to speak a greeting at one of the morning worship services and he was brought to meet those of us with whom he would be sharing the platform.

It was naturally a brief encounter, but it was long enough to feel the warmth of personality that has been eulogised today and which contrasts with what is sometimes experienced from lesser women and men.

But back to the meeting.  Did I meet him or did he meet me?

Well, I was at work; I was in a room that I frequented dozens of times in the course of that work and George Bush, I imagine, had never been into that room before.  He may never have been to the church premises before.  It seems to me that he met me.  I was where I would usually be and he wasn't.

Which neatly brings us toward Christmas.  For is it not one of the greatest and most wonderful things about Christmas that we do not go to glory to meet God until, first, he has come to our place - in truth somewhat beneath our place - to meet us?  We meet him because he first meets us.

World Cup Blogs 16: Mexico

During this World Cup Mexico is the star of North America.  Canada has only appeared once (1986) and this time the USA miserably failed to qualify.

Nor is this stardom anything new.  Mexico has appeared in the Tournament more often than almost any nation, including England and has hosted it twice.  The 2026 World Cup, now to be co-hosted by the three North American nations is not hosting match of equals.

Not of equals.

When I visited Cuidad Juarez many years ago across the border with Texas, USA the experience in the photograph was true then also.  On the left is the (clear) highway from the USA into Mexico.  On the right the highway from Mexico to the USA.  Getting to Mexico was not a problem, getting (in my case back) to the USA certainly was.  Donald Trump is simply an unpleasantly boisterous and arrogant version of an old truth.

The migrants in the Mediterranean represent the same stark inequalities, but the Mexican-USA border is the land-link which most illustrates the way of the world.  It was once the British Empire, of course (before I begin to sound self-justifying).  After the Windrush celebration this weekend I am very mindful of that. 

Again - keeping the World Cup in perspective - were Mexico to win the competition there would be wild celebrations yet the situation on this border would not change on the Monday morning afterwards.  America First.

They are not, however, the blindspots of heaven - a border that no Mexican, Briton, American or Somalian has any right to expect to cross - ever.  But by grace . . .

After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

A Baptist President

Being attached to a label over which you have no control is an occupational hazard in many walks of life, including ministry.  Ask a Muslim, or a worker at Trump International, for example.

'Baptist' is a term that a vast range of churches can adopt so there are plenty of reasons to be wary of over-indulging it as a label.

Donald Trump is not a Baptist.  There have been Baptist presidents of the USA: four in all - which is four more than the number of Baptist Prime Ministers of the UK.  Given the new arrival in the White House I imagine the two that are alive - Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter (though he's no longer a Baptist) - are not feeling very happy just now.

But the one that arrests my attention is the one before them - Harry S Truman.  He was certainly not a Donald Trump.  In listings of US Presidents by wealth he occupies a very lowly position.  He grew up on a Midwestern farm and his parents could not afford to send him to College. But for the intervention of World War 2, may have stayed there but that war brought out leadership qualities in him that led to the Senate and at last to the Vice-Presidency.

And then, 82 days into a fourth term of office in 1945, the near-legendary President Franklin D Roosevelt suddenly died.  FDR had led the USA through the War following Pearl Harbor but also through the post-Depression 1930s.  His death was not on the radar.  And Vice-President Harry S Truman became President.

On his inauguration day he turned to the reporters and said, "Well boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now".  Within a few weeks he had to decide whether or not to drop nuclear bombs on Japanese cities with the intention of bringing the war to an earlier close.  It was a decision to take tens of thousands of lives in order to save more tens of thousands of lives.  The only person who has ever authorised the use of nuclear weapons was a Baptist.

There is amazing incongruity in that.  Baptists are often somewhat pacifist, sometimes committedly so, and rarely devotedly pro-military by comparison to many other people.  It is a reminder that whatever our stories in Sunday School the world thrusts difficult - perhaps cataclysmically difficult - decisions upon us.

We will all have a critical opinion on the decision that will forever mark his name.  But perhaps the lesson to learn is that we must pray for our leaders - whether they know we must or whether they don't.  Some of them have thought they are God, but none of them are.

Backflips

Our church has a limited platform area.

There are two reasons why I have never done back flips as part of a service.  The first is that there is not enough room.  The second - let the reader judge whether this should be the first - is that I can't.

 

Undeterred by my poor advertisement for such an activity we had a back flip or two on Sunday evening with the third visit to our Church of the African Children's Choir (more specifically the 39th African Children's Choir).

 

What a fantastic evening we had! It is one of those evenings that makes me prouder of my faith than my country.  I should be this anyway I know.  I just cannot see how the primary school pseudo-nativity or the Cathedral School Evensong training can hope to produce the dynamic spiritual life that these choirs always display.

 

What I loved was the way that they made US feel special.  This was quite an achievement on their part.  I notice that among other things the Choir, as part of a long, long tour has sung the National Anthem at an Atlanta Braves home game which must make Sunday Evening at Union Baptist Church feel, well, intimate.

 

They have spent a lot of their recent weeks on tour in Florida.  Which must make High Wycombe feel, well, grey.





And as if that wasn't humbling enough, they leave us (and our 168th Church Anniversary weekend) to go to Malmesbury Abbey which was founded before England and over 1300 years ago.

 

 

So, what made last night special was certainly nothing that we brought to the party.  We'll have to put the specialness and the origin of back flips down to God and Africa.

Off-Road

Some years ago I visited Rhode Island and saw this historic Church - the first Baptist Church building in America.

Yesterday we had an awayday for our leadership at this Baptist Chapel:

It's not very big, and its not as old as the one in Providence, Rhode Island.  More pointedly it is situated behind a Post Office and a Public House.  Is this typical of the Brits, we ask?  Americans (even early ones) give themselves a prominent landmark, we put ourselves out of the way in, effectively, someones back garden.

History tells a rather different story.  Chapels were built off road because in their founding day their founders were lucky if they were allowed to build at all.  Indeed, there were times when, in England, a body of believers outside the establishment could only meet - as would today be true in some other lands - in private houses.

It isn't getting any easier to witness publicly for Christ in 21st Century Britain.  But it's immeasurably easier than it's been for many of our forebears and many of our brothers and sisters through the world. 

Gone

History will not easily forget Osama Bin Laden.  Any attempt to describe the first decade of this century will almost certainly feature his name and in his death he has comfortably dislodged the Royal Wedding from the front pages.  

His infamy hasn't stopped the American government acting to try to make his name and reputation disappear as soon as possible following his killing by a Special Forces raid in Pakistan.  They opted to remove his body and dump it (I suppose the official version is bury it) in the Arabian Gulf.

In one way this reminds me of the Roman authority's Easter Guard, positioned in front of the tomb to make sure that the dead died.  It is a curiously fearful thing to do, a superpower vs. one man.

On a more heartening note it reminds me of God.  The prophet Micah describes God dealing with his people's sin; You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:19)  Sin is God's enemy and he doesn't want it coming back to haunt us.