It always amazes me how Jon of ASBO Jesus grabs many of the sentiments that annoy me about Christianity. Today is one of those days when I have been screaming internally … ‘when are Chriatians going to realise it’s all about grace not rules!!!’
Today’s cartoon needs no more words.
Rant alert! If you may wish to avoid this post if you:
(1) agree with the claims of Lord Carey that Christians are being persecuted in the UK
and
(2) want to get Delirious to number 1 in the charts for Easter
… as you are not going to agree with me or like what I say!
These two items in the news and flying around facebook have really niggled me over the last few days.
First Lord Carey whinging that Christians are being persecuted in this country and suggesting that we should stand up for ourselves. This has really annoyed me for two reasons. I believe the comments are incredibly insensitive in light of real persecution of Christians in other countries such as Nigeria or Zimbabwe. Rochester Diocese has strong links with Zimbabwe and we have been hearing horrendous stories of people being beaten and murdered by police for trying to attend church. When a letter from the bishop was read in the cathedral at the midnight service on Christmas Eve people were shocked and moved to tears. You can red more here. To suggest we are persecuted in Britain because some people cannot wear an item of jewelery at work is an insult to those Zimbabwean Christians.
Secondly, Lord Carey and his friends have suggested we should stand up for our rights. I thought that as Christians we are to imitate Jesus in our lives. I am interested how Lord Carey feels this is a demand that Christians can make? During Holy Week I am more conscious than normal that Jesus does not stand up for himself. Jesus does not defend himself during his trial even though he was innocent of any crime. Jesus leaves it to God. Show me anywhere in the Bible where Christians are told to stand up for themselves? We are warned, however, in plenty of places that life will be hard for us – Zimbabwe is experiencing that as I write and you read – and maybe in the UK we will experience something in the future. We are not, however, being persecuted, victimised or even sidelined now!
It’s exciting to see the current Archbishop, whom I admire greatly, speaking out against this inappropriate ‘persecution in the UK’ statement.
My rant continues to Delirious and the campaign to get Christians to unite to get their song to number 1 in the charts for Easter. I just wonder ‘why?’ in exasperation!
The only people to benefit from this will be iTunes and the members of the band.
Getting the song to number achieves …. well what does it achieve. Please, if I am missing something here tell me?!
It’s great that Christians can unite to do something, but please can’t we be more imaginative than getting our own songs to number 1? can’t we unite around something that will make a difference – that, if you like would really make history!
If we put this in a wider perspective – a few days ago we saw Sport Relief on British TV screens. We learned that 3000 children die unnecessarily each day of the year from malaria because they do not have a £5 mosquito net to sleep under each night. 3000 children each day of the year – that’s a 9/11 atrocity every single day of the year! That figure is just from malaria – imagine adding the figures from other diseases and hunger. I feel tears developing as I think. In case you were wondering that amounts to a death toll equalling more than the total population of Birmingham every single year.
Is it any wonder people do not take Christians or our faith seriously in this country? – 3000 children dying daily, brothers and sisters in Christ being massacred in other lands through wanting to worship – and we moan about not being able to wear a silver cross and get very excited about getting a song to number 1.
rant over!
I was challenged in my thinking again this morning after the reading in Giving It Up was reflecting on John 12:1-8.
This is the scene where Jesus visits Mary, Martha and Lazarus and Mary sits at his feet and washes Jesus’ feet in mega expensive perfume. In particular Maggi draws attention to the fact that Jesus does not tell Mary to stop. He did not say anything like ‘that’s enough now, I know you love me so you don’t need to do this!’ Jesus seems to sit back and allow Mary to perform this incredibly extravagant act who was very possibly pouring her entire life savings over his feet.
Maddi suggests that Jesus shows that he has reached a time when he simply needs to be cared for and loved. Too often we see stories of what Jesus did for others – here we see what others did for Jesus.
Jesus allowed himself to be cared for.
Jesus allowed himself to be served.
I guess in my ministry (for sake of a better word) this is what I find most difficult. My role, as I see is to serve others, to be a servant, to help others. When things get tough I persevere because that is what we are supposed to do. But here I think Jesus challenges us all in that martyr type outlook. Jesus seems to suggest that there are times when we need to allow others to care for us. As Maggi writes: ‘If even Jesus needed that, how much do we need it? It’s something worth remembering when we’re tempted to be self-sufficient under stress’.
Today is the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador. You can listen to a good 26 minute program from the BBC here which gives some good background and interviews of people who were with Romero when he was murdered. You can also find loads more info at the website of the Romero Trust.
I became aware of Romero while at SEITE when I was looking at liberation theology as part of a module on mission. Romero believed wholeheartedly, as would many of us, that the gospel should transform the world, particularly society, as well as the soul. Gospel liberation, says Liberation theology, is not just spiritual, it must be social and political as well. As a practical response to his interest and belief in liberation theology, Romero moved out of his palace to live with the people so he could ‘listen their pain’.
In the face of oppression and government led brutality he spoke out, which was a surprise to the Vatican as he was appointed with the view that he was a moderate – and he was until he saw the murdered body of his Jesuit friend. It seems the reality of the real life situation changed his outlook for ever.
I love some of Romero’s words; which when you take them in the context of the horrific and brutal regime of fear he was working under, show them selves to be words of true faith and courage.
Words such as:
‘it would be sad if, in a country where people are being killed so horrifyingly, there weren’t also priests among the victims.’
and
‘my life has been threatened many times. I have to confess that, as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection.’
On the last full day of his life he pleaded with the soldiers to disobey their orders to kill: ‘No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God. In the name of God and in the name of this suffering people, I beg you, I ask you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression’
This appeal was too much for the authorities and the next day Romero was dead, shot while celebrating mass in the chapel.
One thing that amazes me, I guess, it that Romero has not been made a saint by the catholic church. In fact it does seem that other churches recognise Romero far more than the catholic church does. Why is that? I wonder if he is still seen, even after 30 years, as an embarrassment … whatever, I think their, at best oversight and at worse, ignorance of this mans faith is quite shocking. Some say it’s only matter of time, while other wonder if it will ever happen at all as the current pope is known to be a great opponent of liberation theology …. well you would be wouldn’t you if you lived in the Vatican – you wouldn’t want to move out of there!
Now and again you come across an amazingly moving post of God at work in the unexpected.
God catching us by surprise if you like.
Just found such a post over at Moot.
This is a question that has been a matter of a lot of thought and discussion over the last few weeks for myself and others. My thoughts are concerning to me, as during the process of thinking I have decided a lot of my concern comes from what other people may think. I like to think that I do not worry too much about what people think of me. I’m fairly used to being on the edge of things and so feeling outside of the ‘in group’ a lot of the time. So I have been surprised that I am worried what people will think through my asking this question…
How big is God?
God is bigger than the church, I think most can accept that. Church does not contain God, God created the church and lives outside of it; I think that is quite easy for many to grasp and to sit comfortable with.
But … is God bigger than Christianity?
I immediately respond, yes, (because after all God must be!) but then all my past evangelical upbringing reins me back and tells me I am stepping into dangerous ground … possibly even heretical ground because this might imply that there is truth of God elsewhere, outside Christianity, maybe even some truth in other religions and viewpoints? As I think on that it is then I get worried as to what other people think I may be sinking into! It’s madness to think like that.
So … what do you think …. is God bigger than Christianity?
Or … to put it another way … does Christianity hold everything we need to know about God?
this latest add made me smile and wonder …. I have a question for the people who designed the poster … have you met my children?
I am sure I am can not be the only Christian parent who has indoctrination proof children! Have they tried to get a child to do, let alone believe, something they don’t want to do?
Of course they grow up and choose for themselves …. another humanist add which will just get people talking about God again in the same way the Bus ‘There is probably no God’ campaign did last year – which I think is pretty funny
I caught these pics over at Dave ‘wannabe’ Green’s blog the other day and I kept hold of them because they intrigue me; no doubt they can be illustrations to some sermon I preach at some point in the future. I just smile thinking of people puzzled this graffitti during the day … and then totally delighted by it’s cleverness during the night.
I’ve been finding interest in these pictures because I reckon darkness gets a pretty bad press in the Christian world …. and yet I like the dark! For myself, the quiet and secret of the darkness is an environment in which I find it easier to connect with God.
It’s in the secret dark places that seeds give birth to amazing plants and trees. It’s in the darkness of cinema auditoriums where I am amazed at God speaking through Hollywood media.
It’s in the darkness of the womb that the creator and saviour of the universe grew secretly to become the God child.
It’s from the darkness that everything was created.
Sometimes the only place something makes sense is in the dark!
A little while ago I posted about my preparation before going on to the streets and hanging in the coffee bar or pub. The time of prayer was quite Paul-ine in its method and based on the God’s armour passage in Ephesians 6.
I have a new spiritual director and when she heard this, Sister Martha, a Dominican nun in Greenwich, seemed to raise her eyebrows (that may have been my imagination) and made a simple observation of surprise that I was praying for protection and using the armour imagery. It was a brief moment which I should have dwelt on, but I allowed it to pass.
This has been niggling at me for a while but it has not been until quite recently that I have had time to reflect, and I guess it is the approach to Christmas, and in particular the pending onset of Advent that has caused me to wonder what Martha may have been questioning and why I have started to become niggled with what I was doing.
I think it may be summed up in the word vulnerability.
I am questioning whether I have been preparing myself as well as I could or whether I have been concerned too much with my own safety. I wonder whether I should be praying for armour, or asking for sensitivity and eyes and hears to hear what is happening. Armour, it seems, sets up a false human made barrier and does not allow me to be me. If I am wanting to genuinely build relationships for the sake of just building relationships then I can’t really do that through protective armour … can !? If I go wearing God’s armour I don’t go on equal terms, and if I don’t go on equal terms then I can’t build genuine relationship. If I can’t build genuine relationship then I ask what is the point of going at all?
I have been thinking a lot about Advent over the last few weeks as we seek to try and encourage people to take a pause and reflect as they pass through the cathedral during the Christmas Dickens weekend. There is something about the God child that shouts to me of vulnerability!
Here we see the Son of God, with no protection, totally at risk and relying on the protection of his created creatures to ensure his safety. Jesus in the flesh … quite literally and uncompromisingly. Vulnerability in a total sense – all of God’s plan invested totally in the vulnerability of this child. No armour to protect, no hoards of angels to fly in heavily armed to ward off risks … just a 100% human, 100% fallible human God child.
I think as we follow Jesus through the gospels that this vulnerability appears over and over again, culminating in his trial where he refuses to defend himself. He stands silent in face of false accusations. We see again a vulnerable Jesus whose immediate destiny is in the hands of those he created. There is no self protection here at all let alone talk of God’s armour.
I am coming around to thinking that my preparation before venturing out needs to be more an acknowledgment of my vulnerability and the fragility of who I am with prayers concentrating more on helping me see where God wants me to be and who he wants me to be with rather than prayers of concern for my protection.
I have the newsletter for Spirited Exchanges UK emailed to me each month. The lead article’s opening words drew me in:
The Christian faith is not only about beliefs, it is also a way of ‘living and moving and having one’s being’. And to do that it should actually be more about how we nurture our soul and develop our spiritual connection – doing the things that bring life and transformation. In most evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic churches it has traditionally been expected that Christians develop that through Bible reading, prayer and worship. For people who start to move away from conventional beliefs and values, these practices cease to be life-giving and have meaning. One person termed itmthis way: “Faith practices that once had meaning for me, no longer do.”
How does one find pathways that bring life when everything seems to be unraveling, when you are developing a different basis of thinking about these things?
Below are some suggestions that may be more useful. You can read more here or go the the Spirited Exchanges website and ask them to put you on their mailing list.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 