Author: Jonnyfun.E

Now retired, and enjoying making music and writing. Living in Gloucester, historically an important port on the river Severn, and situated with The Forest of Dean and the Brecon Beacons to the west, and the beautiful Cotswolds to the east.
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Meeting

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Today, here in Washington, Barack Obama will meet with Benjamin Netanyahu.  Yesterday, we visited the excellent and moving Holocaust Museum here in Washington.  From the early days of Nazism, through the rise of Hitler all the way through to the post war era, the museum shows in powerful ways what it meant to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.


In some of the ghettoes, Jews were separated from the rest of the population by high walls and barbed wire.  Their movement was restricted, and they had to go through checkpoints and show papers to move around the city.  Does that remind you of anywhere in the world today ?

Later on in the day we visited the museum of the American Indian, where we learnt about the ways of Native Americans, from Peru in the South, to Inuits in the north.  Today, after many years of being oppressed and marginalised, Native Americans are speaking with a more confident voice, rediscovering their roots and ensuring that their culture survives into the future.

Early in the 19th century, European settlers encountered what they saw as an obstacle to their safety and freedom, the existence of Indian communities (who of course had been there for many centuries).  President at the time, Andrew Jackson pursued a policy of moving the Indians westward, so that the settlers could live in safety.


Does that make you think of anything that has happened in the recent past (Think 1948, and Jewish Settlers forcing out Palestinian communities)

We have more in common than we realise!  Whether it is in the Warsaw Ghetto, or the Indian Reservation, or the Palestinian towns separated by the wall, or the segregation experienced by the African Americans in the 20th century, we have this common history, and maybe realising this may help Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu find common ground 


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Tax Collectors and Sinners. Mark 2:13-17

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Mark 2:13-17

Here Jesus asks Levi (a tax collector) to follow him, and he does.  Later, at Levi’s house, there are clearly many other ‘sinners and tax collectors’ who are also following Jesus.  The scribes ask Jesus’ disciples why Jesus will eat with ‘these people’ (my phrase).
There are six references, (direct or indirect) in these 5 verses to the ‘tax collectors and sinners’.  They are people who are attracted to Jesus, so much so that they are desribed as followers.  Reading these verses, my question is this. If Jesus had come today, who would be the equivalent to the ‘tax collectors and sinners’ ?  Would they be mostly people who are in our churches ?
And where would Jesus be ? (a la What Would Jesus Do?!).  Maybe we could have some wristbands made up! WWJB.  
The question for the church is – how can we be a presence in the same way that Jesus was ? Sitting in the same house with ‘tax collectors and sinners’ and ‘scribes of the pharisees’
Washington D.C. is a good place to look because it is THE centre of power in the world, and is at the same time a city of great need. 
Whilst staying here in Washington, we have been about 10 minutes walk from the White House, the centre of executive power of the only global superpower, and at night, we can hear the sirens of the emergency services at regular intervals.  (D.C. has, or at least has had in the recent past, the highest murder rate in the USA).  It’s a city of contrasts.  
 
In 1947, Gordon and Mary Cosby started The Church of the Savior’, an ecumenical Christian community here in DC …
From those early beginnings, others have taken inspiration from the Cosbys, among them Jim Wallis, spokesperson for the Sojourners Community, and leader of the ‘Evangelical Left’ inthe USA.  Today the life of the Church of the Saviour is expressed in 7 separate communities … Along with Sojourners Community and many others, the Church of the Saviour is setting out to do what Jesus did, a to be where Jesus was … both engaging with the powers, and sitting with the powerless.
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Gran Torino

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The film Gran Torino was showing on the plane on the way over.  There’s no sex, a little violence, and some fairly rich language (mostly the F word). If you can cope with that, see the film.

It’s set in mid west America, is about the relationship between Walt Kowalski, a Korean veteran, and the Vietnamese (?) family that are living next door. Right at the beginning of the film Walt’s wife has just died, and the opening scenes show the funeral and the wake.
A teenage boy living next door is under pressure to join his cousin’s gang, but does not want to join.  As the story progresses, there is a triangle of relationships between Walt, the next door neighbours, and the gang, and Walt’s preconceptions about this Asian family are challenged.  But for Walt, the heart of the story is about the burden of guilt that he carries from Korea.  The big question for Walt is – can violence be justified to solve things ?  I won’t say any more on this post … but I may add another post about – don’t read it if you want to see the film.
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We’re Here

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Well, we’ve arrived in Washington D.C.  Matt kindly drove us to Manchester Airport, picking us up at 4.15, bang on time.  Flight was good, all running to time, and arrived at D.C. 4 pm local time.  That’s 9 pm in  English money.

Saw a couple of films on the flight, Gran Torino and the Reader, both great films in different ways.  More about Gran Torino another time, because it fits in well with my earlier post about the myth of redemptive violence.
Long queues at immigration, with fingerprints and photographs taken … to see if we are on any databases of undesirables ?
My previous experience of USA has been largely very positive, and that was reinforced by two very helpful people getting us sorted it out with where/how to get the tickets for the bus from the airport to D.C.  The guy at the hotel where we’re staying was also very helpful … Good Vibrations.
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BFN

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Bye for Now.  I won’t be putting anything here for a few days as tomorrow I’ll be watching the first day of the second test (Cricket), and the next day we fly to Washington.  So I’ll be back in a couple of days

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The Road to Compostela

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Yesterday, I met two women, both Methodist ministers, who have walked the road from St Jean Pied de Port to Compostela.  It’s a pilgrim route, 500 miles long.

They walked it last May, taking everything except a tent with them, and it took them 5 weeks.  They described the hardships of the walk:  blisters, tiredness, the weather (torrential rain), lack of food.  It wasn’t as if there were supermarkets to shop in.  Sometimes they just went without food if there was no shop in the village where they slept. They stayed in hostels, in rickety bunk beds, surrounded by snoring travellers. (Germans and Koreans were the worst offenders).  Hostels sometimes offered food, but you get fed up with steak and chips after a few days.  On one occasion, tired at the end of the day, and with no food, a local family gave them some bread and a bottle of wine.
I get the feeling that walking the pilgrim route in this way would be incredibly challenging.  You cannot book a bed ahead of time at these hostels, so you just have to hope that there is a bed when you get there.  If someone passes you on the route, you ask yourself if they will get the last bed in the hostel, which is an encouragement not to slow down too much.
I said to them ‘After all these hardships, you must have had a great sense of satisfaction when you finally arrived at Compostela’  
They answered that it was not the arriving, but the journey that was important.  The first morning after they arrived at Compostela, they felt like they should be walking again.  Having spent 5 weeks walking day after day, it didn’t seem right not to walk.  They even described a feeling of bereavement having finished the pilgrimage.
Another reflection that they shared with me was this.  For many Christians, faith is about arriving at our final destination (heaven) – We are saved for heaven.  The Christian message is often explained in terms of having sins forgiven so that when we die we can go to heaven.  For them, the pilgrimage made them realise that however important the destination is, it’s the journey that teaches us and shapes us.  Being ‘saved’ is about life and living, here and now.
Thanks  to Sue and Bev
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The Scribes Mark 2:6-12

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Mark 2:6-12


‘The Scribes and the Pharisees’ will appear more and more as Mark’s Gospel continues.  But this is their first appearance, and it’s the first sign of conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders.  We had a hint in an earlier incident, when the people in the synangogue comment that Jesus is not like the scribes (the scribes were the acknowledged experts in the religious law).


In this exchange, the scribes object to Jesus telling a paralysed man that his sins are forgiven.  (Only God can forgive sin)  Jesus responds by healing the man, as if to say – ‘You want to know if I have authority to forgive sin, well yes I do!’


The scribes thought that they knew what religion was all about.  Thier job was to know the scriptures and to interpret them.  But for them it had become a set of rules to follow rather than a relationship to grow in. When religion has become just a set of rules or rituals, rather than a relationship, then we have lost it. 


It happens in all areas of life, not just religion. And some people stick to rules not just for themselves, but so that they can control others. But it is especially dangerous when people use God, or rules about religion, to exercise control over others.

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Wilberforce Way

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During the 2007 celebrations that marked the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Slave Trade Act, a waymarked path was established linking Hull (The birthplace of William Wilberforce) to Pocklington (Where he went to school) and then on to  York.  (Wilberforce was an independent member of parliament for Yorkshire)

The Yorskshire and Humber Faiths Forum organised three days of walks along the Wilberforce way this week, and I’ve just been on day two, a nine mile circular walk around the Market Town of Pocklington, North Yorkshire.
It was an amazing day for me, with so many links to things that are buzzing around in my head.  I’m going to save the detailed posts for another time, but I learned some interesting facts about modern day trafficking, and cities of refuge; met two people who did the Compastela pilgrimage last year, 500 miles in  five weeks; heard about a modern day presentation of the Passion that took place in Malton, North Yorkshire, learned some things about being an army chaplain; chatted with a bishop, and ended the day with a tour of the Buddhist Centre in Pocklington, complete with meditation and soup.
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At home. Mark 2:1-5

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Mark 2:1-5

After Jesus’ tour round Galilee, he comes back home.  (Living with Simon and Andrew’s family ?)  News of his reappearance soon spreads, and the crowds are there again.  Jesus was making a big impact wherever he went.

On this occasion, he is teaching in the house.  (he spoke the word – logos – to them).  Then four people arrive, carrying a paralysed man on a mat.  They can’t get in.  In desperation they go up on to the top of the house, and unroof the roof!

When they lower him down, Jesus saw their faith and said to the paralysed man ‘Your sins are forgiven’

The focus of this part of the encounter is not to do with the man’s presenting need, being paralysed, but to do with a deeper need to know forgiveness.

The old rhyme – ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me’ isn’ true.  And in the same way that words can do deep damage to our soul, they can also bring deep healing.  In our churches, we have often imagined that our first task is to make people realise how sinful they are, so that they then seek God’s forgiveness. If we go on about sin long enough, people will realise how worthless they are and turn to God!?

But the world does a pretty good job already of telling us that we are not worthy.  The visual images that accompany the the advert that tells us ‘You’re worth it’, just tell us the opposite.  Maybe if we have that beautiful hair and waif like figure we are worth it.  But witness the alarming rates of suicide in young men; the illnesses connected to self image; the effects of redundancy; the drug and alcohol culture.  All of these are signs that we don’t feel ‘worth it’

What the church can and must offer, in word and action, is an experience in community of acceptance and forgiveness that can go beyond ideas of self worth to a realisation that we are loved, immeasurably loved.

Love – George Herbert.

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

Triggered by an article in Third Way magazine: Love Trying To happen by Sebastian Moore.

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Wrath

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As someone who plans and leads worship, and as a musician, I have a keen interest in the hymns and songs that we sing in church.  And being brought up in a conservative evangelical tradition, hymns and songs about the cross featured heavily in my experience of worship.  Whilst the Cross of Christ is clearly a central feature of Christianity, it has become in some traditions, the only feature in a landscape that surely contains the life and ministry of Jesus, and the resurrection. (To name two other landmarks).


Songs about the cross usually point in one of two ways … to the great love of God, that inspires us to worship, or to the work of Christ as paying for sin.

A contemporary example of the former would be ‘I will offer up my life’, which has the refrain,  

Jesus what can I give, what I bring, 
to so faithful a friend to so loving a king, 
Saviour what can be said, what can be sung, 
as a praise of your name for the things you have done.  
O my words could not tell, not even in part, 
of the debt of love that is owed by this thankful heart

An example of the latter would be ‘In Christ alone’ in which one verse says: 

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,

Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.


I can remember some years ago, being in a service with other clergy, and looking round as we sang this verse, seeing several people frown and shake their heads at the 6th line of that verse.  I understood their unwillingness to sing that line, because I felt it too, although I think I still joined in and sang it.

In many ways, it’s a great example of a modern hymn, but I now find I can’t sing that line about the wrath of God being satisfied.  Yet in the same hymn, we have the fantastic line ‘Light of the world by darkness slain’.  It was the forces of evil that Jesus challenged, and it was evil and not God that crucified him.  So, do we still sing the hymn ?  Have we the right to leave out that verse, or amend it ?  

It is our sung worship that often shapes the way our congregations think about God and the world. (As much as other parts of our liturgy). If we are to be happy for that to happen, then good theology must also shape our sung worship.