Christianity from the 43 bus: 3. Dress Smart

Continuing a Christian journey on London's no 43 bus! (for others in the series click on the 43 bus tab)

Into Muswell Hill the 43 bus passes the Church which I work in, but we'll ignore that and look at the next church building it passes.

For sure it looks like a church building, albeit one whose flint-clad walls might more appropriately belong in a Scottish seaside town.  This is, however, not entirely fanciful as it was built to be Muswell Hill Presbyterian Church, representing Scotland's major ecclesiastical form.

It is a restaurant (and its Sunday School rooms now apartments).  This indignity must be put in the context that apparently, for several earlier years before my time here, it was a Harngey Council storage area.  Or to put it another way, a junk yard.

In between it was a pub-restaurant and for a while we held midweek Bible studies in one corner of it.  This felt like a nice resumption of its original purpose.  I find closed churches a constant irritant so you can imagine how often this one negatively impacts me!

In its current iteration it has a fascinating warning on its entrance:

We kindly ask all our guests to honour a smart casual dress code or dress to impress

Mmm.  In fairness, the Presbyterian door steward of former years likely held a similar view or perhaps more severe.  Nevertheless I have yet to see a church that places such a notice on its doors (well, head coverings for women) - and I hope I never will.  The Gospel is for everyone.

Great (Hymn) One Liners 4. Reaching the Light

Thomas Binney goes against the grain of the first three in this series (tag hymnline below) in that he wrote very few hymns, though he was a prolific writer.  None he wrote are really sung much any more either, but one that should be - perhaps the only one - is Eternal Light.

The whole hymn is amazing poetry, but Binney excels himself and perhaps nearly all other hymnwriters when he describes the answer to the question of how (sinful) human beings can hope to reach, or even live, in God's eternal light  . . .

An offering and a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit's energies, an Advocate with God.

Rarely has anyone captured so succinctly so many of the riches of the Gospel, for which we truly owe God our song.

World Cup Churches 18. Costa Rica

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.

The Church of the Nazarene, Cabecar Indigenous Region lacks the grandeur of the great Spanish colonial-era cathedrals and municipal churches of Costa Rica.

It is a reminder that 'Church' is many things, and in many parts of the world a dynamic ministry among the poorest of people.  The Cabecar, a large people group forced by colonisation into the southern mountains of Costa Rica, are considered to be the nation's people group with the greatest level of poverty - 94% against a national figure of 20%.

Yet among them Christians have sought to work.  Journeys involving hours of jungle and mountain tracks have been made to run missions and provide welfare and education to improve the lives of the Cabecar people.  Churches have been formed to indigenise the work and in this picture of the baptism of a Cabecar believer as part of the 10-year-old Church of the Nazarene we see the Gospel building churches not with stones but living stones.

Good News in a Pandemic: 7. Warning

STAY HOME

STAY ALERT

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

WASH YOUR HANDS

DO NOT TRAVEL

SELF-ISOLATE

The last few months have multiplied the warnings.  Even though they're becoming more complicated these days they keep on coming.

It's not that warnings, including Government warnings, are anything new.  There is a whole industry of them, like packets of peanuts with warnings that the packet contains nuts.  It is just that they are now serious news - and well received by most, however unpalatable they appear to be for our comfort zone.

The renaissance of the warning as good news is itself good news.  Through increasingly complacent times the idea that the Bible warns has been offensive almost, that God warns irritating, that the Holy Spirit warns best avoided and the Jesus warned (he did it a lot) just perplexing.

Given that the Bible begins (in a perfect relationship between God and Man) with a warning, and that its last chapter is replete with warnings, we should better understand warning as a positive thing.

What is a pandemic if it is not a general warning to humanity?  The birds don't care, the moon doesn't mind, no angel has caught Covid-19 and nobody who died before last November had it either.  It is a warning to the people of now - to me, to you - that life is finite, material things are temporary, relationships are precious, and attention must be given to our soul's relationship with its Maker before we are brought face-to-face with Him.  That's where the Good News of a Saviour comes in - it was the most important thing after all . . .

Good News in a Pandemic: 3. Prophecy

Jesus said, "There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places and fearful events and great signs from heaven." (Luke 21:11).

While each of the first three Gospels devotes a chapter's length to Jesus' prophecies of things to come, in the good times that are now past there has been a strong preference to avoid them.  Better by far (it has seemed) to speak and think about the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the healing of the lepers or the welcoming of little children.  The good news is not in those scary prophecies.

However, now we see why Jesus told us about such things.  If our faith is in Jesus we are glad to find that the pestilence which has knocked the 21st century world sideways is perfectly in keeping with our Saviour and our Heavenly Father's plans.

Had Jesus only predicted the good times, then we should lose our faith in Him.  Instead we can learn the lesson of the fig tree.  In his words, "When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves you know that the summer is near.  In the same way, when you see these things, know that [the Master] is near, at the gates." (Matthew 24:33)

World Cup Blogs 9: Egypt

Egypt may not be the World Cup's stand out football nation but for a Christian blogger going through the World Cup nations Egypt is unquestioningly the Biblical centrepiece.   After Israel and (arguably) the predecessors of Iraq, Egypt is the next most mentioned nation in the Scriptures.  One of the Bible's greatest stories - the Exodus - began there; another, the story of Joseph, is almost entirely set there.  Abraham visited there, Jacob retired there, Moses was born there, Kings David and Solomon had dealings there (no, they were not Egyptian as some speculators have suggested) and we could go on.

In the New Testament, Egypt is mentioned only a couple of dozen times and nearly always with reference to the Exodus or quoting Psalms about those days.

Except twice.  On the Day of Pentecost people from Egypt were among those present at the outset of the Christian church's missionary story - long before Croatia that we looked at a blog or two ago.  But the other New Testament occurrence of Egypt is what sets it apart from all other the nations at this World Cup - God walked there.

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’

There are timing issues with this toddlerdom of Jesus.  The truth may be somewhat greater than that God walked in Egypt.  It could be - it is likely to be - that Egypt was where God learned to walk.

Whatever Egypt achieves in this World Cup we may be sure that it is not going to be the most mind-boggling thing to think about when we think about Egypt.

World Cup Blogs 7: Croatia

Every football fan knows one thing about Croatia - the national football team have the most amazing shirt design - a red and white chessboard!

As I work through this year's World Cup nations alphabetically I choose instead to reflect on Croatia being the first country I've come to which is directly mentioned in the Bible.  (By directly I don't mean by name but by the province it was at the time of the New Testament letters).  Here it is, in Romans chapter 15, verse 19 . . .

17 Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. 18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done – 19 by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way round to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. 20 It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. 

Illyricum, which today's coastal Croatia then was, had an early opportunity to hear the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  How did that happen?

It happened because it was Paul's ambition (20) to preach the Gospel where Christ was not known.  The good news of Jesus did not spread around the world by default or by means of a virus.  The change that Jesus brings is enough to drive people to the places and to the people that would otherwise be left to live and die in lives that flourish only in the manner of most nations' transient World Cup dreams.

The Temple of the Heart

Just round the corner near a Cornish fishing harbour is this sign.  It records that John Wesley stayed here and that the Methodists met here.  Too easily we institutionalise the way of Christ but, just as in the Holy Land, the true foundations of Christian faith are no longer present for they were the hearts that were changed, so here is a reminder that although the Church quickly becomes mistaken for buildings, publishing labels and international conferencing it is largely based in people's hearts, and therefore their homes.

A Son's Tribute - Caravans

Although this picture comes from a generation earlier, it depicts the kind of setting in which my Dad began Christian ministry as a Wickliffe Preacher.  Three young men, a caravan plastered with big texts and a drive from village to village and including market towns and occasionally urban centres with missions to teach the children about the Gospel.

Today's children see many more words than these.  Why, as I write this they are busy tweeting them to one another, looking at them on endless websites and generally being bombarded by the messengers of the global village.

 

We smile at the change.

 

The quality of the media is vastly different but the message carried is vastly inferior.  Windows 8 has introduced no new input that improves on THIS IS A FAITHFUL SAYING THAT CHRIST JESUS CAME INTO THE WORLD TO SAVE SINNERS.

 

Sure, we can save documents, blogs, digital images, spreadsheets and the like.  But is there a new, improved way to save sinners?

 

One way to look at this in the 21st century is to say that we no longer interpret behaviours as sin.  That is to miss the point.  Sin is not the human way of looking at human behaviour, it is the revealed divine way.  Like the arrested bloke's, "Get yer 'ands off me. I ain't done nuthin' wrong." this self-described innocence needs some higher corroboration.  The Bible makes it clear enough that we cannot change the way God looks at our sin.  The Gospel declares that God has.  He has sent a saving Messiah - Christ Jesus came to save.

 

Throughout his life my dad lived with people gently observing him as pleasantly quaint and earnestly unnecessary.   It is the evangelist's lot.  But they were wrong.  He was witnessing to the only solution to the only long term problem we humans face.

 

 

 



Lent

Gift

Years ago I stood on the streets of an American city giving out leaflets for a Josh McDowell event.

I was not happy. My borrowed car had needed to be returned and I had been given something of a wreck in its place, complete with straw in the back. Diane had been to the dentist and had a sore mouth. I had Hay Fever big-time. The sun was beating down in a way that the British always think we'd like it to until it does and then we don't like it to.

Just standing there was an effort; standing there looking even faintly interested in what I was doing was a BIG effort. The old Christians used to call it 'adorning the gospel', and in those terms I was in a very unpolished state.

Then the girl came by. She looked the part, an elegant friendly-looking young woman. It made the smile easier than usual but still hard to come by.

Then the refusal. This is what she said,

"I don't take anything given away".

Given away!!!??? Hey, girl, I'm suffering here to give this to you (I felt like saying).

This Sunday I'm beginning a series in the Book of Romans in the Bible. It tells us explicitly that God's salvation is given away. Some people, like that girl, don't like that. Yet although it looks free when the preacher, the writer, the evangelist, the teacher, offers the Good News to us we do well to remember that the free offer comes at quite a price; not heat and hay fever but the life and death of Jesus the Messiah.

Church

If a Sabbatical does anything to a Pastor, it de-Churches him. In a life tied up with a local community of believers it is always possible for him to incrementally mistake the Church for the message or the organisation for the essence of faith. As people, in a sense rightly and in another sense catastrophically wrongly, expect their Leaders to be the guardians of policies, politics and programmes so the normal week becomes occupied by preoccupations.

The Church as people is sacrificially loved by God. The Church as a constituted charitable organisation always stands in danger of becoming not just irrelevant to God but the enemy of His kingdom.

Perhaps the low point of my Sabbatical came when I attended Evening Prayer in the late afternoon at one of Britain's ancient Cathedrals. It was a very pleasant spring Sunday afternoon. The Cathedral had had early and mid-morning Eucharists. This was the third and only other service of the day.

The verger showed me to a seat in the choir - I wasn't expecting many attendees and neither was he. Behind me sat the Canon. A Clergywoman stood at the back togging up. Another member of the Cathedral clergy sat opposite, talking to what I took to be a key member of the Chapter who spoke of resigning over ill health.

The verger took his seat. The Clergywoman walked forward and read through the service. and the other four of us sat, stood or knelt as appropriate.

Concerning which I reflected that the whole voluntary congregation at that service appeared to be Baptist Ministers - or more specifically, me! The other four probably had to be there by rota. Though I might have felt intimidated by being clerically outnumbered I needn't have worried as they gathered afterwards to complain about some upcoming meeting and did not speak to me at all.

Does such an experience make me doubt my faith? Despair of the Church? Absolutely not. It just reminds me that the Church is living stones not ancient stones. Which is somewhat the point of the conversation below;