Good Friday - Christina Rossetti

 

AM I a stone and not a sheep   That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,   To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep?   Not so those women loved            Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;   Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly; Not so the thief was moved;   Not so the Sun and Moon   Which hid their faces in a starless sky,          A horror of great darkness at broad noon—   I, only I.   Yet give not o’er,   But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock; Greater than Moses, turn and look once more            And smite a rock

Our Church Flags 6. Costa Rica

 

The flag of Costa Rica has two forms.

Other than the Government, a citizen or entity can show only the striped flag and not the coat of arms.  And frankly, like many other red, white and blue flags there is not much to be said - yes, the red is martyrs' blood again.

What makes the Costa Rican flag interesting is its official form, complete with the Coat of Arms.  Not here the heraldic lions rampant or crowns or laurels of a European institution or family; instead a really nice picture that kind of says, "Come and visit us here!".

It has the sun, (the stars to represent 7 provinces), the lush green land between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, two sailing ships that do seem a little, um, outdated (but would we really want two cruise liners?).  There are even some golden coffee beans down the sides.

We all want to go there.  

Although . . .

There are three great mountains too, representing three ranges.  Until just a few years ago the coat of arms was just that.  And then, for reasons my internet searches have not yet discovered, to each mountain was added a puff of smoke.  Now each of these mountains represents a volcano in each of the ranges, so presumably the smoke is there to emphasise this.  It does have quite a deterrent effect on the attraction of visiting though!

And maybe when we present the message of Christianity we are tempted to leave out the reality that is central to it: the cross, human sin, final judgment.  There is a wonderful faith to discover but it is not a tame faith.

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.

God in the Garden 1. Life from the Cross

Like Church leaders of all kinds, I spent significant lockdown time broadcasting from the garden.  I'm very blessed, especially in London, to have a garden.

Maundy Thursday - what a long time ago that feels - our family was in lockdown with Covid in the house.  For our online Maundy Communion (watch here) we needed a cross.  As it happened, my wife had made her own from two old garden twigs because she had done her school's online Easter talk.  We used that very stark-looking cross.

When summer came, we sat in the garden in happier circumstances - and one day looked at that cross:

Out of the apparently dead wood was growing a flower.  It is a fantastic picture of the hope that God offers during a dead year, and that he always offers through the cross to the soul who turns his way.

An April Evening

The first genuinely spring day (as against day in Spring) moves toward its close.  The sun looks like it has forgotten to go down - or at least is staying up late - perhaps to make up for its relative disappearance over several weeks.

It brings to mind something that can only be associated with such an April evening:

Maybe it's down to my male council estate barbarism but this bit of Victorian-Edwardian sacred choral doggerel did nasty things to me.  This has evoked guilt over the years when elderly people have expressed their devotion to it - one wanted me to play it on the organ so they could sing it and some imagination was required to avoid this.

This April I've decided to try to understand myself on this issue.

My initial excuse to myself was the paucity of the performance of a Sunday evening Free Church choir in the 1960s when its finest days would have been its former days.  But listening to this chorally excellent rendition on YouTube convinces me that the problem lies elsewhere.

I like sheep and lambs.  I like the countryside and especially the hills.  I have given my life to the Lamb of God who sacrificed his life for me. So the themes in the song can hardly be the problem.

I have concluded that the problem with Tynan's poem, a problem reinforced by Robertson's mood music, is that it evokes pity for the crucified Christ.  And this is not at all what should happen.

Yes, lambs are pitiful, but the Lamb of God who died was not to be pitied.  Did he not quell the women of Jerusalem's tears and tell them to weep for themselves and their children?  The pity in the Passion is all ours, his is the pain, the sacrifice, the slaughter.  

And the salvation.  It is not of any note that He died between two crosses on a hill: he died between two condemned sinners who were on crosses.  In the end the song takes away the power of the cross and replaces it with pity.  Perhaps that is what I find, pitiful lamb that I am, so pitiful about it.

St George's Cross

Just a week after the celebration of Easter we come, this year, to St George's Day (OK, it's liturgically tomorrow because of Easter but hey . . .).  St George, of course, is legendary for winning his battle against the dragon.  He was not entirely successful as, just next door to England is Wales and it turns out that the dragon just went over the border and looks in fine shape.

Wales, given its Revival History might be expected to have a more Christian flag but it turns out that England has it.  Yet this is not necessarily something to gloat about.  Its origins likely lie in the Crusades when the European princes wielded their power, largely unsuccessfully, in military support of the Christian Mediterranean against the Mohammedans.  The main intention of it was to identify the wearers as being on the same military side.

This dodgy history of this cross continues into its contemporary favoured contexts such as nationalist groups and sports fans.  If you concentrate really hard when looking at the English flag you can almost smell the beer and almost hear a bloke shouting obscenities.  He probably doesn't give too much thought to the Graeco-Roman origin of St George (the real martyr behind the legend) or the Italian adoption of the red cross on white to mark his honour on several of its flags and emblems.

Though the cross of St George has become associated with, first, military, then political, then sporting victory it is deeply ironic that St George actually represents that most enigmatic of victories to the unbelieving nation - the victory of martyrdom when following a crucified, risen Saviour.  

On reflection it would have better suited the spirit in which this flag has been used militarily, politically and in sports teams to have had instead the dragon: a show of might which has no ultimate meaning or reality.

Good Friday

Losing

The deliberate losing by some of the Olympic 'competitors' today is interesting. It was a blatant version of something that is surprisingly common. Nobody was making these remarks of tragedy and woe when in the Cycling Road Race team members were 'disrupting' the following pack to enable their leading cyclist to prosper. That was called tactics (even though it was deliberately doing less than their best). When in the heats a swimmer or rower or runner saves themselves for a later heat or the final that too is tactics. The idea that everyone in every sporting encounter is doing their very best is very far from the truth. Football fans experience this in pre-season friendlies where fitness is far more the goal than the goal is

.

In a nutshell, the word is 'ultimate'.  Those badminton players were thinking ahead, not of the money that the crowd paid to watch them but of the gold medal.  They frustrated officials who wanted to not only award a medal but control a method.

This brings me to the wonderful Christian chestnut question.  What Would Jesus Do?

I think he'd lose.  Sure, the crowd jeered.  But for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  I suppose this is not a truth about Jesus that made it into many English Public School assemblies over the years but it is a reminder that the route to victory is not the route of popularity and that popularity is not victory.

Looking for Less

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' " In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him. [Matthew 27:39-40]

The onlookers were looking for a lesser salvation.

There is deep irony in the way the gospel writers record these insults. Many of the phrases are accidentally right, in the manner of Caiaphas the High Priest: it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish. [John 11:50]

In the end the salvation they looked for - Jesus saving himself - was both possible and impossible. Such a salvation would have been an onlooker's salvation, what was required was a sacrifice. Jesus' love is greater than they can imagine.

The onlookers were looking for a lesser miracle.

A deeper irony still is that the miracle of leaving the cross would have been as nothing compared to the miracle of Christ's resurrection. Jesus' power is greater than they can imagine.

The onlookers were looking for a lesser king.

There is a crowd around the cross. He may be regarded as King of Israel if he comes down. But by his dying on the cross he establishes a very much greater kingdom that reaches across every boundary. (Revelation 7:9-17 - a crowd that no-one could count) Jesus' kingship is wider than they can imagine.

Lent

Sooty Red

Last summer we visited the (reproduced) iron age house at the Chilterns Open Air Museum.  Unseen in the photo is the hole in the roof for the smoke to go out.  And the little thingies (demons, faeries, and the like) to come in as was universally believed.

Chimneys were a great invention.  We've dispensed with them in the centrally-heated-now but at the beginning they were a miracle cure for a very nasty problem.  But along with the chimney continued folklore about hearth-gods and chimney spirits.

What better place, then, for the magical Santa to come in by than the spirit channel of the chimney?  OK, so it messes up his red coat somewhat making the red a sooty red.  But he is a power for good after bogeymen of various kinds spooked the chimney.

At least in this respect Santa says something useful about Christmas.  I guess one way of retranslating the angel's instruction

you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins is

he'll go through a dark place for you but get very dirty in the process. 

Not so much sooty red as blood red.

Synod

Rarely does the Supreme Governor of the Church of England stray into deeply theological territory.  I suppose that in the week after one of her junior bishops called her son Big Ears it is unsurprising that she is looking a little beyond her Church for virtue!

The Queen addressed her Church's General Synod thus,

"It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none."

Wow.  I wonder if she realised what she said?

This is profoundly true and far too little understood.  There is no difference in the duties and opportunities of virtue for the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Believer, the Nominalist, the Buddhist, the Muslim or the whatever.  This is explained by the apostle Paul:

For we must all of us appear before Christ's judgement-seat in our true characters, in order that each may then receive an award for his actions in this life, in accordance with what he has done, whether it be good or whether it be worthless. [Weymouth's translation] 

Virtue will indeed be expected all round.  Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Queen Elizabeth, Kim Jong-il, Barack Obama, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict and every one of the rest of us.  Does faith help virtue?  I think this is possible.  Indeed, our Lord said that his followers would be light and salt in a dark and rotten world.

 

But at the heart of the Christian message is no virtue.  Just the opposite in fact.  A cross.   Condemnation, not complements.   Death not life.  Savagery not elegance.  Blood not beauty. Bad not good.  Shame, not virtue.

 

What the Synodic observation lacks are two further observations:

 

1.  That people of faith and people without faith - all of whom have the same possibility and responsibility for virtue - ALL FALL SHORT.

 

2.  There is forgiveness through a crucified Saviour who calls us to him.

 

To put it another way - the call to virtue is universal, the remedy for our failing it is unique.  Thank you Jesus!  

Not me

Calvin (2)

What might happen if Calvin's theology was wedded to the Holy Spirit's work in Britain today?

It looks something like this . . .