Tribute to John Stott

Phil's Treehouse: The faithful preacher/teacher: "As a Christian teenager in the 1970s there were two writers who had a major influence on my discipleship, C S Lewis and John R W Stott. Over..."

I would add that John Stott's last book, The Radical Disciple, is a wonderful distillation of a life's ministry rooted in scriptures and the love of our Lord and his people.

Quote for the Day

"We must seek, not to speak of God, but rather to be that place where God speaks."
- Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God

Prayer and the Press

Around us swirl accusations and counter-accusations. Empires and governments seem unsafe. Where does power reside? Where is there safety?

True power lies with God, and the person in prayer knows more about power than anyone (albeit it a very special sort of power, true power, not  usurped power.

Eugene Peterson is poignant in his book on Revelation, Reversed Thunder:

'Out of the silence, action developed: an angel came before the altar of God with a censer. He mixed the prayers of the Christians with incense (which cleansed them from impurities) and combined them with fire (God's spirit) from the altar. Then he put it all in the censer and threw it over heaven's ramparts. The censer, plummeting through the air, landed on earth. On impact there were "peals of thunder, voices, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake (Rev 8:5). The prayers, which had ascended, unremarked by the journalists of the day, returned with immmense force - in George Herbert's phrase, as "reversed thunder". Prayer reenters history with incalculable effects. Our earth is shaken daily by it.'

- Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, Ch 7 (a commentary on Revelation, relating to Revelation 8:1-5. I am not quite sure if I would interpret the phrase 'reversed thunder' as  he does. He seems to suggest it is the prayer returning to earth; I think George Herbert in the poem from which the phrase come - see below -  has in mind that prayer is thunder rising from the earth to the heavens cp thunder which comes from 'heaven' to earth. But the  introduction of the image is helpful and it is easy to adapt Peterson appropriately.)

It is worth quoting George Herbert's wonderful poem Prayer (1) which Eugene Peterson refers to in the phrase "reversed thunder":

Prayer (I)

Prayer the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinners’ tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world-transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood
The land of spices; something understood.

Text of Address for today's Civic Service at St Paul's

There were three readings, but I spoke to Deuteronomy 6:1-9.

Building Societies often use an image of children to encourage us to start planning for the – their – future. I have one here: ‘me&my little ones’ Inside it says ‘I’d like to give them a good start in life’.

What are we going to give our children? What inheritance are we giving, for example to the choir who sang so wonderfully today? An important question for us all whether we be Chair of School Governors somewhere, as our Chair of the Council is, a teacher, a parent, as we are here as we seek to strengthen our children’s work – SPYK.

Last week I was in a school and had with me this painting, done by my daughter when she was in about Year 11. I was waiting for something when a child came up to me and said, ‘Wow, that’s wonderful’. We started talking about it. ‘I could never do anything like that’. ‘Well’ I said, ‘my daughter was around 16. You are 9. In a few years, perhaps you could’.

He got to showing me his art workbook. In it was a fabulous cartoon. ‘Did you do this?’ ‘Yes’ and he took me to show me more in his classroom. On the wall was a large cartoon. ‘That’s mine’. ‘Wow’ – and I meant it. It was like a character out of a Hannah Barbera cartoon. But with its own distinctive look and character

In my small way I was giving him an inheritance. I was setting his hopes in the future. Maybe one day he will go on to produce great art or cartoons, because I or much more likely his teachers have encouraged him.

Our words are powerful things. There was an Enid Blyton ‘Famous Five’ book on the table. ‘I’ve probably read this’ I said, ‘I know’ he said. ‘You told us in assembly so we’re reading them’. Oh dear, the educationalists won’t be pleased with me!, I thought.

Our Old Testament reading included these words:

 ⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.^[a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Some of our young children are binding the commands of God on their foreheads. Or better to say, in their foreheads, as they learn our memory verses or other parts of the Bible

Mums and dads are giving their children an inheritance. I see the value of that inheritance when I take funerals. What people have learnt in their childhood stands them in good stead in the crises of life.

When one of our daughters was on a French trip in Boulogne, she and a Hindu friend and a Jewish friend got lost. So they decided to pray and ask for help. Our daughter prayed not because we or she are especially holy. Rather, that is what you do. You ask God’s help at each moment of the day. If you are in difficulty, you pray. And after they had prayed someone said, ‘I know where we are’, and their prayer was answered.

My father passed an inheritance to me.

·        Orphaned

·        Brought up by Barnados

·        Not allowed by his family to take up the job he wanted in the early 1930s

·        D Day and Dunkerque, surviving the war

He then studied and worked hard and sacrificially, and made a home for mum and myself. He was determined that I should have the opportunities he did not have. And he succeeded, and passed onto me all that I am. I am the inheritance my father passed to me.

The biggest inheritance we give to our children is ourselves.

An ancient Jewish saying goes; "With each child, the world begins anew."

We give that new start as we provide as much as possible, like my parents did for me, a stable home where love endures over time because of the faithful constant love of mum and dad. Where both mum and dad’s love is invested in their son or daughter because she or he is their offspring. The old saying ‘Blood is thicker than water’ contains much wisdom.

I remember once for fun playing off mum and dad. I told each that the other wasn’t happy about something, and stepped back to watch what would happen. Well, it stayed at the fun level. But what their love hadn’t been secure? What if I had caused a row, what if that row had broken their marriage, what guilt would I carry now?

This of course is the Christian ideal. And the ideal for many other too, not least Judaism on a day when I will quote the Chief Rabbi. Things go wrong. We must as a society know how to welcome not judge those for whom life is less than best – every one of us here.

But we must also never forget that it is less than best – that there is an ideal for which we all strive even if none of us succeed. It is good that we do not condemn, but there is a difference between condemnation and discernment.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I must begin to close:

It takes faith to have a child. I guess we have all known people without some sort of faith. I recall a woman I knew decades ago for whom life must have gone very wrong. ‘They shouldn’t bring children into this world. It is a wicked world’ – as she pointed out every piece of litter on the pavement.

It takes faith to have a child . It takes faith that there is a future for them in the world. To quote the chief Rabbi:

faith that we are here for a purpose, that we are part of a larger story that began long before we were born and will continue long after we are no longer here, that we have duties to the past and to the future that are not of our making…                                         Times Online May 21 2010

Faith is not something for Sundays, or Saturdays, or any single day come to that. Faith is either to do with every day, every family, everything we do, or it is not faith.

Maybe the biggest deception has it that you can put faith in a compartment, in a box. That is your private affair. That is a matter of opinion. That we, in this context, should not bring up our children in any faith but let them decide when they are older.

An oak tree once decided to have an acorn. But the oak wasn’t convinced whether it should be an acorn or the seed for some other kind of tree. It decided to let the acorn decide for itself.

Thought for the Day - Blessing

 It is remarkable how easy it is to bless others, to speak good things to and about them, to call forth their beauty and truth, when you yourself are in touch with your own blessedness. The blessed one always blesses. And people want to be blessed!

Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved

Silence

'The perfect never say anything of themselves.... They only say what the Spirit suffers them to say.'
- The Monk of Mount Athos, Archimandrite Sophrony (his biography of Father Silouan, quoted by Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, 250.

In occasional better moments, I seek to discern what God's Spirit is doing through the day, seeking to follow Christ's example. But often I wonder where God is at work, or whether I have lost the plot of faith. No doubt I often have, but perhaps sometimes it is because I need to trust to the silence: those moments of waiting for God's words or acts, like Jesus waited when confronted by the woman taken in adultery.

Sometimes perhaps I need simply to wait. "The meaning is in the waiting" - R S Thomas: Kneeling

I sometimes worry how this links to prayer. Despite what I write and read and find in the scriptures, I find within myself a sense that I ought to be asking, or at least, ought to be asking more. I think of verses such as Paul's 'pray all the time' (1 Thessalonians 5:17). I guess there is a balance here, but Stephen Cottrell (our Bishop) is helpful. I quote from CPAS's Church Leadership for Summer 2011: "In that slightly irritating way of hi, St Paul says 'pray all the time'... I don't think he means 'do that activity we call prayer all the time'. I think he means 'make your life a prayer' - arrive at that point where you are so inhabited by the Spirit that your life is translucent of the gospel."

In the Lord's Prayer, we pray 'Your kingdom come'. This is a request, but it is also very general. I must say, I find that God 'answers prayer' much more when somehow I am in that state of being alert, prayerful in myself, to God's kingdom coming. Especially I learnt of this when I was visiting my mother in her final illness in hospital. There would every day be some sort of 'God moment', if I may put it that way' which came out of the blue.

Jesus spoke of 'watching and praying'. This is probably very similar, if not the same. C S Lewis, in Letters to Malcolm,, Ch 14, writes: "We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake" (- emphasis his.)

Between: Big Society mapping event

As churches in Harlow seek to engage with all that is happening in town, this from Jonathan Evens is helpful:

Between: Big Society mapping event: "Today I spoke on the Big Society in Redbridge from a faith perspective at the Big Society Mapping Event which I have been involved in or..."

Thought for the Day

"Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned" - C S Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Ch 13. I visited this chapter prompted by the final pages of Michael Ward's fascinating book 'Planet Narnia'.

Images, the Digital Age and Worship

I love the hymn which I came across this last week from postmodernbible blog, especially these lines:

Where we nurse a fading image

of the Kingdom drawing near,

build upon our silent longing

make your vision crystal-clear.

Let our lives and lips reveal you

in the journey we’ve begun:

so that hope, in being faithful,

loves ‘til death is overrun.

Children and Society

Came across this at postmodernbible blog from the Methodist Conference:

"1 in 3 children grown up in poverty. 13.5 m people in poverty. Sign of times is that increasing. By 2015 by 15m. Inequality increasing - incomes/wealth. If rate of increase continues, 15% will be owned by top 1,000 in country = return to Victorian society. Poverty in UK means that you have 10 years less life than others. Inequality increases as you go through school What is the witness in a community where poor and rich live side by side?"

These are notes taken by the official blog reporter at the Conference so though 3rd hand are likely to be reliable. The relevant paper is here:
Poverty and Equality.
This may be interesting on the Big Society:  Big Society