Manchester's Tears

Words like appalling, barbaric, evil are once again everywhere after last night's attack on an audience of families and notably young females in Manchester.  Just when we think the worst has happened another worst comes along.  Sometimes it is hard to be human.  For that reason, we pray for those who mourn without ourselves being able to enter the darkness they are suddenly inhabiting.

Manchester will rally round, as any great northern community would.  Even the Football Clubs have offered early sympathy.  In despair we need companionship and sympathy but ultimately we need blessing.  Are we only to travel through this world from tragedy to tragedy for it all to end in meaninglessness?  Is there any help from outside this vexed journeying?

As Manchester grew in Victorian England, with people dying like flies in the industrialised, overcrowded squallor so well captured in Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South, William Gadsby preached.  Although he was born in Warwickshire, he became deeply embedded in the affections of the poor in Manchester.  This is the more remarkable because he is known today, in as far as he is known, for his strict adherence to the doctrine of election; that only God can save.  This did not stop him addressing all manner of social issues that involved the (apparently) unelect, and nor did it stop the unelect wanting to hear him or being converted under his ministry.  

The mystery of his attraction has eluded most preachers and churches who stick closely to the Biblical evidence that if you're going to get to heaven God will have to do it, not you.  Yet his appeal came because from this providential view he was able to offer even the most desperate person a possibility of sovereign blessing that nature and circumstances and Manchester appeared to have crushed from their lives.  If only God comes in.  And today, using some of Gadsby's words, we pray that to hearts torn rawly by grief and hurt, to whom this world has become a happy home no longer, God may indeed come in;

Blessed are those who mourn. The dear Lord of the house does not merely say they may, or shall be, blessed; but they absolutely are blessed; now blessed, though they may not be able to enjoy the blessings which belong to them . . . Poor, sin-burdened, Satan-hunted, broken-hearted mourners! All things are yours; for ye are Christ's and Christ is God's. Your life is hid with Christ in God, and because he lives ye shall live also. ...In his own time he will, by the power of his Spirit, discover unto them the beauty of his own Person and righteousness; and then they shall see the King in his beauty, (Isa. 33:17) as the Lord their righteousness and strength. Jesus, in his Person, blood, and obedience; in his glorious offices, characters, relationship, names, honours, fullness, love, and loveliness, shall be revealed unto them, by the glorious power and under the divine anointing of God the Holy Ghost; and this shall produce .. a joy unspeakable and full of glory. Then shall their sorrow be turned into joy

Tales of a Christian Aid Collector

Sunday: deliver envelopes.

Monday (raining):
Ring doorbells to collect envelopes before too many get lost.

Second House on Monday:
"Good Evening, I've come to collect the Christian Aid envelope"
"Sorry, don't think we got one" [Thinks - I pushed it through your door less than a day ago]

Third House:
"Good Evening, I've come to collect the Christian Aid envelope I delivered yesterday"
"Sorry, it must have been taken by the people downstairs and they're not in".

Following House:
"Good Evening, I've come to collect the Christian Aid envelope I delivered yesterday"
"Ah yes.  I think I've seen it.  Hold on."  Door closes.
Pause.
15 seconds
30 seconds
45 seconds. 

Figure seen returning through door window. 

Smiles a friendly smile.

Returns empty envelope.

A Sheepish Perpective on Elections.

For Christians western-style national elections raise huge issues for they are dominated by Party Politics and not the issues themselves.

Political parties are a construct that brings good as well as bad. Whether or not you think well of her, if Theresa May were the same person with the same ideals but an Independent she would not get an ounce of weight in a General Election campaign.

Yet if there are no political parties that does not make all things well.  One ward in the recent local elections had fielded an independent councillor for several years but when she stepped down nobody took her place - so there is now no councillor at all.

Human beings, on the whole, are part of constructs of many kinds.  If the UK (a construct) has a hard Brexit from the EU (a construct) it might have to trade with the EU under WTO (a construct) trading rules.

Something in many a human spirit longs to be free.  In London we have people who live rough deliberately to be outside the borders of society - no National Insurance number, no tax office, no address, no vote, no debt letters, no loyalty cards, no PPI . . .

And many a soul regards church in a similar way.  From the outset it has had expressions of party spirit and it is perhaps no coincidence that UK party politics owes something of a debt to the voluntary structures of churches a couple of hundred years ago.

Yet for all the elements of human construct it has contained, the church of Jesus is primarily a construct of his.  The person who wearily wants to go it alone spiritually is not so much striking a blow at the institutions of religion as at the plan of God.  Which is not such a wise blow to strike.

When, after all, did you last see an independent sheep?

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.