To some this is rocket science, to others it’s just a stroll in the park: it’s the latter we need to connect with

Nowadays one of the most important elements of almost any act of worship is what is delivered via a church’s audio/visual system. Here at Moortown Baptist Church this can include the setting up of a simple PowerPoint presentation, creating a live link to a Youtube video, projecting the text of a responsive prayer or bible reading, balancing the worship band’s mics and amps of course keeping up with the words to a song or hymn.

Currently, each Sunday morning, a small team of AV volunteers work on a rota basis which inevitably means that the smaller the pool the more times they are called upon.

At present John Duffy and Martyn Gray are the linchpins of that team, and right now they are keen to recruit more people to help deliver this essential service.

If you are interested in joining the team, if you are prepared to give of your time and most importantly if you are willing to learn John and Martyn are prepared to provide full training.

Both John and Martyn are in church most Sundays so please speak with them directly.

Alternatively if for some reason you can’t locate them please send your contact details via an email headed AV TEAM to the MBC office moortown.baptist@btconnect.com and we’ll make sure it’s passed through to them.

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two messages from MRSG (Moortown Romania Support Group) One an appeal from Norman Hiley, the other hard evidence of how our gifts make a very real difference.

On behalf of the church MRSG (Moortown Romania Support Group) are hoping to send financial help to the 4 churches we are now linked with in Romania.  These churches are quite different – i.e. 2 are Baptist Churches in the large city of Cluj; and 2 are small village churches in Transylvania (Northern Romania) which is Hungarian speaking.

These 2 village churches are pastored by Noami at Cerefalva and her daughter Szuszi at Bikafalva. All four churches have one thing in common in that they evangelise widely by the use of Summer Camps for young people who are led to faith in Jesus.

We wish to continue to support this evangelical outreach. At the same time we also give financial help to a Gypsy Church at Floresti and to the support of a Christian Home for abandoned children run by our friends Nicu and his wife Rita.

Any gifts, whether large or small, are welcome as this is the only means MRSG has in raising money to help this essential ministry in Romania.

Contributions can be made through the church and any cheques should indicate that the gift is for Romania. This will also attract a tax repayment of 20% as well. Other gifts should be made to MRSG direct to me and should be made payable to ‘MBC Romania Aid Fund.’

All gifts will be sent before Easter as an encouragement to our Christian friends in Romania.

Thank you.

Norman Hiley – Treasurer MRSG

The pictures on this part of the page were taken at a Sunday evening youth service by Rod Russell on a recent visit to Stegeris ( Cerefalva in Hungarian).

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In addition Rod has just sent this in which not only says a little bit more about where our gifts go but also gives some wonderful examples of exactly how much difference they make.

As well as helping needy families and funding an annual youth camp (this has been happening for 20 years now and in that time four people (two male and two female) from the village have become Pastors) MBC’s financial support also goes into a Bursary Fund which helps poorer students purchase text books for their university studies. This fund is administered by a small committee who we have found to be very reliable. Here are a few messages we have recently received from some of the students we help to support. Rod.

Dear brothers in Christ. We thank you for your prayers and for your financial support that you sent us in 2016. God bless you! Together with your financial participation, thirty two needy families were helped and six young students received scholarships. In the following lines you some thoughts from these young people who were blessed through you. Here are the messages that our students wrote to thank you for the money they received.

Thank you and we pray for your blessing. 2 Corinthians 9:11

Hi. I’m Laura Siminiciuc and i’m studying for a master degree in molecular Biotechnology. I just moved to Cluj Napoca this year and I’m one of the many that received a blessing coming through you. Thank you for being the ones that God can use to help otheres. Thank you for your great example of love and caring for your brothers and sisters around the world. May God bless you and help you in every way.My name is Ilinof Rebeca and I am a student in first year of college in Cluj and I study Marketing at Babes Bolyai University. I am from a little town 350 kilometers from Cluj. I want to thank you for the financial support you have given to me. It is both a blessing and a proof that God takes care of His children in His own wonderful ways. May God bless you and I’m sure He will reward your beautiful gesture of kindness.

I want to thank you that, although you don`t know yet who I am, you wanted to make me part of a blessing. My name is Ramona Pop, and I come from Arad, a city in western Romania, hear Hungary. I learned to play the piano at age of 5, so my parents decided for me to stady at a music school in my town. In high school I also studied the music theory, and in 2013 I decided to come to Cluj-Napocato continue my musical studies on the theoretical part, named Musicology.

So, with God help, today I am in the final year at “Gheorghe Dima” Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca and I will finish this college next year. Also, I am in second year at the Faculty of Economics in Cluj, where I study Accountings by a „distance learning ” program.

One of the greatest blessing that I have recevied here at Cluj was the Church in Manastur. Here I sing in the choir and in a worship group, and sometimes, with the help of brother Ken Tucker I am directing the choir.

I thank you for your love an I want to greet you with Psalm 36, verse 5 and 6: “Your love, Lord, Reaches to the Heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep.  You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.”

 May God bless you and keep you in His love. With gratitude, Ramona Pop.

Hello, my name is David Costea. I have forteen years  and i was born from a family with hear dizability. My parents and my brother and sister are deaf and I am the only from my family who cand hear, and i take this like a blessing because I help my family, I am as a translator for them in different situations related with people who hear and speak. I love my family even they don`t hear, because for me how is family now, is perfect, and they are perfect how they are.

Me and my family are very thankful for your support. I hope these donations will help more people needfull, Thank you very much! Peace!

I really want to thank you for believing  that you could invest in people like me, God bless you! My name is Sebastian Muresan and I am 22 years old. I come from a christian femily here in Cluj and since i was little i was fascinated by music and tehnology, and that`s why I decided to build a career as an engineer and work with the music group from church. I love playng the drums and I had many people suporting me here at Manastur church.

I would like to thank you once more and I hope that everyone appreciates your support. God bless, Muresan Sebastian

From Maria Jantea. I am writing this note, in order to express my gratefulness for your financial support. I pray that Lord God bless you abundantly and reward you. I am a conducting student in the senior year of College. As it can be easily seen, music is my primary passion among reading and foreign languages. I love conducting orchestras, this being my speciality. I also practice choir conducting in church Manastur nr. 1.

I’m very grateful for your kindness. God bless you.

Yours sincerely, Maria Jantea

Family Church, Messy Church, Impact… children, families and all age – some important dates for January/February.

 

Sunday 8th –     KS1 Genesis 1-10         KS2 Prayer

Friday 13th –    Messy Church – New Beginnings looking at Samuel –All age

Sunday 15th –    KS1 Genesis 1-10         KS2 Prayer

Friday 20th –     Impact – Youth Club for children school age from 6-7:30pm with games/crafts/baking and discussion

Sunday 22nd –   All together – Children (3-11’s) meet in the Music Room from 10:20am for activities, worship and teaching

Friday 27th –     Impact

Sunday 29th –   KS1 Genesis 1-10         KS2 Prayer

Family Time. Time for parents, grandparents and carers to meet teachers and one another

Friday 3rd–        Impact

Sunday 5th –     KS1 Noah/Abraham and Isaac            KS2 Psalms

Friday 10th –     Messy Church – Treasure hunting – come along and invite your friends- All age

Sunday 12th –   KS1 Noah/Abraham and Isaac            KS2 Psalms

Friday 17th –     Family Time. Meet at Roundhay Park, Street Lane car park at 10:45am with a packed lunch for a walk around the park and fellowship together (feel free to invite your friends)

Sunday 19th–    KS1 Noah/Abraham and Isaac            KS2 Psalms

Friday 24th –     Impact

Sunday 26th–    All together – Children (3-11’s) meet in the Music Room from 10:20am for activities, worship and teaching

 

 

As Long as You Both shall Live

Tony and Judith had a long, happy, fruitful, Christian marriage. Just short of 50 years, Judith died of cancer and Tony was left alone. The ‘arithmetic of marriage’ changed as the One made out of Two, which is marriage, was torn apart leaving a Half. Besides all his sorrow in such a disorienting loss, the question presented itself to Tony who lived on in good health: What was he to do with the gift of life still entrusted to him? He set about working out the answer to that question. How he did it and what has come of it, in nearly four years, he tells us in this little booklet.

Those of us who are married or live in a committed partnership cannot escape the question which creeps up on us as the years pass – Which one of us will be left and what will he or she do then? Giving an answer, when the time comes, is a task that will fall to roughly 50% of us. How it is answered depends on circumstances which vary enormously. Sometimes people are left with responsibilities which define what they must do next. For example, they may have young children.

But sometimes the path is not so clear. It is easy to be overwhelmed and paralysed, leaving someone unnecessarily to fritter life away, in front of the telly perhaps. What is God’s call to those who still have a valuable life to live, even though they no longer have the energy of youth? God’s call, as Tony testifies, stops us crumbling before the apparent futility of living through the ‘dying of the light’. God’s call is life-giving grace for people all their days. It says, Wake up and Christ will give you light. Do not grow weary in well doing. (Eph 5.14, Gal.6.9). But this is no cheap grace: listening for the call and finding the way requires our engagement and struggle.

That is the message I take from what Tony has written in ‘As Long as You Both shall Live’. It may be helpful to others. If anyone would like a copy, Tony will be glad to let them have one. I will pass on any request.

Haddon Willmer

Leadership – a Baptist way

I was thinking about leadership in two contexts:

I was meeting with other Baptists who were wondering if Baptist Churches have a clear and positive view of leadership, and whether the lack of a view is a reason why Baptist churches so often fail to follow through on growth and strategy?

Secondly, like many others I was reflecting upon the 2016 we have had; the widespread cynicism about institutions and their established leadership is one factor in the political shift which is sweeping the West.

I was musing whether if the first question can be answered it might offer something to help address the second point.

A Baptist View of Leadership

Authoritarian and hierarchical leadership is contrary to Baptist ethos. So, we cannot simply issue orders from the top. However, if we fail to offer another view we deny our history and experience as Baptists who have been served by leaders.

There is a familiar model of leadership which deploys character and charisma to develop and exercise a significant role. Baptist Churches and denominational structures have, and in many ways, continue to benefit from this way of leading. At times that can tip over in nepotism and over-reverence of the leader. In my experience, I have also observed that this form of leadership is very weak when it comes to succession. It often creates a vacuum in which weak and underdeveloped leadership follows an extended period of established leadership. We see this at play in many local churches and in our national denominational structures in recent years. (You can also see this playing out in businesses, football clubs and schools).

Now, I strongly support leadership of character and charisma and would not argue against affirming and supporting such leaders. I believe the weakness is that leaders become divorced from the communities they lead, and they lack a model which shows how strong and creative leaders can function with their communities in a Baptist way.

Here is one such model – a Baptist leader creates space in which the community can flourish. Such a leader offers the scope for people to practise and grow in their faith. The leader is the curator of the space in which we all explore understanding, express what we believe, and reach to those outside our space.

This leadership role is in an integral relationship with the people of the community. People will flourish when they are informed, challenged, cared for and listened to. Also, when they are nurtured, equipped, stretched and restored. A leader who creates space is not the only one who initiates input but is the one who takes responsibility to ensure the health of the space and the vitality of all the care, action, learning and growing that takes place in the space.

I have chosen the motif of the leader curating this space – by that I mean that such a leader will enable voices and creativity from amongst the community and from other contexts to be expressed.

The question for a leader then is not just how competent are you, or what gifts do you have? (Though these are invaluable questions) – but how healthy is the space given for the community in your care? Who is involved?

Now there are a couple of observations about this space which are helpful in defining the emphasis of the leader. I have talked about space. This is not a static space like a house, or a room. Rather it is a dynamic space a bit like a town square – always moving and developing. (I think of Millennium Square in my city of Leeds and the multiple forms and functions it takes in a year – from Christmas market to skating rink; from a viewing space for sporting events to an intimate location for rendezvous.)

Such a space has boundaries which are clear but always open. Such a space works well when it is safe and shared, but fails when it is inaccessible and fearful.

It is the responsibility of a Baptist leader to nurture boundaries of the community space. Without leadership, the boundaries of a Baptist church become too hardened and the church ossifies, or on the other extreme the boundaries disappear and the community loses any distinct identity. This takes wisdom and credibility on behalf of the leader – at times to remove barriers and at other times to retain boundaries, at times to curtail needless controversy and in other moments to open new debate.

It is the responsibility of the leader to encourage exciting and vibrant practices which always keep the community living, on the move and connected with the world around it. In this sense the community space will feel balanced, rooted in its past whilst embracing the present and future.

In looking after boundaries, leaders may foster some debates and discourage others, in encouraging practice the leader will encourage experimentation alongside the practice of old familiar ways. (Just like you see in a city square – annual remembrance alongside new celebrations.)

The question for a Baptist leader is how is the community enjoying clear but open boundaries, how is the community honouring the inherited way whilst embracing the new. How well do people interact? How is the relationship between the familiar and the new? Where you are heading?

So here is a model – a Baptist leader is a space creator, boundary nurturer and participation encourager. A model that is theologically literate, giving a clear role for the leader and thoroughly enmeshed in community.

I believe that this is a very strong and high role for a leader – a role that doesn’t dictate but shapes in crucial ways. We desperately need such leaders. Without these leaders, we will stagnate. This way of leadership demands real character and charisma. The thing is in this model that the leader is continually connected and in interrelationship with the community. In this way, it acknowledges that as Baptists we are gathered as believers in community.

This model of leadership has a strong role within the community but is also connected with the outside.

I think that the familiar motifs of deacons and elders relate well to this model. I believe that Baptists need such leadership. We should confidently encourage this leadership among us. This is not a leader who lacks a mandate and scope to lead – but one who has an exciting and challenging role. Our shared role is to trust and collaborate alongside our leaders so that together we may have direction and grow.

These are the questions I keep in mind as I serve as a minister of Moortown Baptist Church – for I am neither here to maintain an institution, nor fly solo.

This is a way to reflect on leadership in a local Baptist church. It is also a model to offer to those in training and formation as Baptist leaders. It is also a measure of healthy leadership that could be applied by those who lead our Baptist institutions.

Now here is the stretch to the second question – what has this to offer to the crisis of institutions and the politics of wider society? Well, I suggest that institutions and their leaders and gatekeepers have lost credibility in Western societies. At present, there is also such uncertainty about where those who lead in the West are taking us. So, a way of leading that creates space, nurtures boundaries and encourages participation, may be a Baptist contribution for more than just the church.

Graham Brownlee, January 2017

Haddon Willmer shares some “moving and illuminating” prayers that he heard on Radio 3’s Choral Evensong

revd_canonnigelhand-600x399I was driving round town last Wednesday afternoon, when Choral Evensong from Birmingham Cathedral was being broadcast on Radio 3. It was a beautiful service, with excellent music and interesting readings. But most moving and illuminating were the final prayers.

So I wrote to the Dean, Catherine Ogle, many years ago a student of mine, and asked for the text, which Canon Nigel Hand (pictured right) has now kindly sent me.

Here they are:

Living God,
deliver us from a world without justice
and a future without mercy;
in your mercy, establish justice,
and in your justice, remember the mercy
revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, you are the source of all goodness, generosity and love.
We pray for the people of Mosul in Iraq and of Aleppo in Syria
as conflicts rage and innocent lives are put again in the firing line.
We thank you for opening the hearts of many
to those who are fleeing for their lives.
Help us now to open our arms in welcome,
and reach out our hands in support.

That the desperate may find new hope,
and lives torn apart be restored.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord,
who fled persecution at His birth
and at His last triumphed over death.

Amen.

O Saviour Christ,
in whose way of life lies the secret of all life,
and the hopes of all the people,
we pray for quiet courage to meet this hour.
We did not choose to be born
or to live in such an age.

But let its problems challenge us,
its discoveries exhilarate us,
its injustice anger us,
its possibilities inspire us,
and its vigour renew us
for your Kingdom’s sake.

O Christ, the King and Lord of all,
Teach us to know that with you
Nothing is too bad to be cured,
Nothing too good to be hoped for,
Nothing too hard to be attempted:
And nothing so precious that it cannot be surrendered for your sake;
Who lives and reigns
With the Father
In the Unity of the Spirit
For ever and ever.

Amen.

O God, who would fold both heaven and earth in a single peace:
let the design of thy great love
lighten upon the waste of our wraths and sorrows:
and give peace to thy Church,
peace among nations,
peace in our dwellings,
and peace in our hearts:
through thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen.

All these prayers we bring together as we say together the words of the Grace ……..

You can listen to the service in full via the BBC Radio 3 Podcast by flowing this link  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z7dcw   

Nathaniel Darling shares his thoughts following a week spent working with the Child Theology Movement

The week before last saw a consultation on the future of the Child Theology Movement take place at High Leigh conference centre, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. This is a movement Haddon Willmer has been closely involved with from its beginnings in the late 1990s, and I was fortunate to be able to participate in last week’s consultation as a note-taker and administrator.

CTM (3) (300x95)Child Theology is a young term, with no clearly defined subject matter, so a wide range of topics were discussed: the role of human rights’ declarations in guarding the well-being of children, theology and child activism, children and the Bible. We also heard the personal reflections of Frances Young, a Christian theologian whose work has grappled theologically with her experience of caring for her now 49 year-old son with severe learning difficulties.

Throughout all these discussions, however, there were two recurring themes which helped me to understand what Child Theology might be and who it might be for.

Firstly, it became clear that Child Theology is not a separate branch of theology, specifically for children, or for those who work with children. It is not an end in itself; it is not a particular ideology; and it is not competing with other theologies. Rather, it takes a particular starting point – the child – and asks how she might be a clue or a sign towards God as revealed in Jesus Christ. In Matthew 18, when the disciples were having an argument about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of God, Jesus placed a child in their midst. Child Theology asks what difference this child might make for our own theological arguments today.

Secondly, it emerged for me in the consultation that Child Theology makes this challenge to all of us, because we are all theologians. Theology, the consultation showed me, is not primarily an academic field, but a way of speaking that no Christian can do without. It is, after all, talking to, of and with God. The Child Theology Movement talks serious theology with the child in the midst, but it does so with practical people—Christian practitioners, activists and ministers—as well as with academic theologians. So following the clue of the child placed in the midst by Jesus is an invitation to each one of us.

At the end of the consultation, we meditated on the Lord’s Prayer. One person wrote a prayer that I thought others may also appreciate. It is a way of ‘saying the Lord’s prayer from a different perspective’.

Saying the Lord’s Prayer from a different perspective

Deliver us from the evil – of ever giving up praying this prayer

whatever the pressure of temptation.

Deliver us from losing the ‘our’ to make the Father ‘mine’.

Deliver us from claiming the Kingdom now rather than steadily praying for it to Come.

Deliver us from seeking the Father in heaven as though he has abandoned the earth

where there is stomach hunger for missing daily bread

where there is sinning up to seventy times seven

Deliver us from escaping the Father’s house to seek our misfortune in the far country

Rather let us ever and again find our way back to our Father’s welcome feast with all the household

So let his name, Father, be credible, to all in all things for ever

PACE IN SWEDEN AND WESTMINSTER… by Haddon Willmer

Earlier this month Hilary and Haddon Willmer visited Sweden, at the invitation of Sven-Gunnar Liden, a leader in the anti-trafficking movement in Sweden and in the European Baptist Federation. Hilary told large audiences of professionals and parents why parents are crucial frontline agents when children are sexually exploited, and why agencies like police and social services should support and work with parents for the sake of the children.  The picture below shows Hilary with Sven-Gunnar Liden.

Doc6Since then, Hilary and Graham have been to Westminster, launching the latest Pace publication, Parents Speak Out, to Police and Crime Commissioners, politicians and others. The document, the cover of which you can see above, can be downloaded and saved from https://www.moortownbaptistchurch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Parents-Speak-Out-final.pdf

Here is the sermon Haddon preached in Sven-Gunnar Liden’s church.

 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BEGINNING

For 20 years, Hilary and I have been active in the charity known as Pace, Parents against Child Sexual exploitation.

I have heard many parents tell their story about how they act for their children, against sexual exploitation.

When a parent discovers one of their children is being groomed, they are surprised, horrified, distraught, confused, and feel weak in this disaster…

But being committed to their child, they are also resilient, aroused, driven to do anything they can…

They go searching, through the night, in dangerous places, sometimes in faraway towns, looking for their missing child…

When they see the child, they tell her they love her, through everything; they do everything they can think of to win her back from the insidious corrupting pull of the grooming and from the distrust and resistance it builds up in her….

They do anything they can to stop and disempower the exploiters, acting on their own and in cooperation with police and other agencies …

They do this for as long as it takes, often months, sometimes years, even when no end is in sight, and they hold on through one crisis after another….

I am deeply impressed by so many parents who respond in this way, rising to a task they are not prepared for by experience or training – they are not professionals, who deal with CSE every day.

What is so impressive about parents of this sort?   What is their secret?   Can we all share it? Will understanding them help us all to find strength and wisdom for our living?

Besides parents, there are many people who respond with care and competence to young people who are sexually exploited.   Many Police and social workers, medics and politicians, journalists and theoreticians.     They bring resources to bear on the issue which parents do not have.   But parents have something they do not have.   What is that?

Let me explain it this way:

When a young person is in trouble, and sexual exploitation might be the cause, social workers and police get involved with the family, often for the first time.   So their first sight is a teenager in a bad way,   physically harmed, disturbed in mind and spirit, alienated from family and friends, unable to break free of devious controllers.

The parent sees all this, but sees more, much more, and sees it vividly and powerfully.   For what the parent sees is not just this present moment, this teenage aberration, but the whole life of this precious human being from the beginning.   They look with the eyes of the parent who has accompanied the child from birth onwards.   The parent looks at the teenager and sees her for what she is now and responds to it realistically.   But at the same time, the child is like a transparency to the parent: through the teenager the parent sees the baby they remember and the child they have lived with through the years.

So the parent sees what the professional cannot be expected to see or give weight to. And the parent sees all the yesterdays, which the teenager, eager for life today and tomorrow, may be running away from, not seeing any worth in it. The parent holds on to something about the child which the child finds it difficult to appreciate and build on. The child wants to get away from parents and family and home, which has become boring. It is right for children to grow up and away from childhood; but we all need to grow up in a healthy way, not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

We none of us remember our own birth, our own beginning. But parents were there unforgettably.   The living memory of the child, from the beginning and through all the years, is a source of the parents’ commitment, strength, hope, determination, wisdom.   The parents share in making the beginning. They experience the wonder of seeing a new person, a radical novelty, coming into the world. They find themselves committed deeply to an awesome, lifelong responsibility. This happening does something to empower them to love and they find themselves tested and enriched by loving.

Listen to the testimony of Irene Ivison, the woman who founded what is now Pace, back in 1997. Her daughter Fiona was groomed by a notorious pimp, and then murdered by a man buying sex in 1995. Irene wrote a book, Fiona’s Story, and I quote from the Introduction.   She speaks directly to the man who murdered her daughter –

Did you ever love a child, Duffy?

Seventeen years later you murdered this precious infant of mine.

Did you never love a child like that?

You can’t have or you would never have harmed her.

Can you conceive of the suffering you caused me when you unleashed your anger and frustration upon my beautiful girl?

I loved her then and for every minute of her seventeen years, no matter what she did.

She was Fiona, a special child, I had held her close, nurtured and cared for her, and you smashed her in your blind, unthinking, murderous rage.

I will never understand what you did to Fiona and my family. There are no answers.

I only know that when I held Fiona at her birth, I loved her so much that I would have died rather than see her hurt – my precious, beautiful, wonderful child.

Parents share in the making of the new. Thinking that they ‘make the child’ is a mistake to avoid,   they share actively in the making and it leaves a near indelible print.

Parents are there at the beginning.   To be involved in the beginning of anything, like being a founder member of a church,  is a deeply formative experience. It is an experience that lives on, and may grow over time.

Seeing parents as people involved in a significant beginning helps us to see God more clearly.   In a little way, being involved in the beginnings of a child helps us to understand better the witness of the Bible to God the creator of all ‘in the beginning’, the Source and sustainer and redeemer of all things.

Look again at our reading today:   Isaiah 43. 1-7

This passage is the answer to the question of Isaiah 40.27: Why do you say, God does not see, God does not care, God does nothing to help? This is the question of the exiled people, just as it is the question of trafficked and oppressed people, and of parents who wonder whether their child will ever get free of the exploitation and the damage it is doing.   Who cares? Who helps? Sometimes it seems, no one or earth or in heaven notices.   Isaiah offers an answer to this question. It is not an easy one. You may think it is no answer at all to the pressing question. In exile, we want a solution to our problem now. We want release from our oppressors now. The prophet, speaking for God, does not point us directly to the solution happening now.   Instead he asks us to look to the beginning, and to understand our present from ‘the foundations of the earth (40.21). Lift up your eyes and see all things as created by the One who is eternally the Beginning, not in time but outside it (40.26). Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth?  See this, and trust God enough to wait for God in constant undemanding readiness.

So we can read chapter 43 expansively:

Thus says the Lord, He who created you, who formed you

Your beginning is by my choice and free act, my commitment to you is rooted there

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;   I have called you by name, you are mine

You are precious in my eyes and honoured and I love you

So, when you pass through the waters, trafficked, exploited, distraught,

I will be with you.

I will say to the north Give Up and to the south, Do not Withhold Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth Everyone who is called by my name You are precious in my eyes and honoured and I love you I am the Lord who created and formed you, I redeem you, I am committed to you

This text invites us all, whatever the trouble, worry, exile we are in, to lift up our eyes and find anew the strength that is given to those who wait for the Lord.

How do we wait for the Lord?   We watch, we wait actively, we wait engaging in life from day to day – and then we are met by the Lord, the creator, who is not a remote once upon a time starter of the world, but is present, the faithful giver and sustainer of all life and goodness.

When we watch and wait for the Lord in our parenting, we find we are close and active companions of God in the world. We are walking with the Lord who gives life, who calls and loves human beings to be his friends and companions, who struggles with us and gives us a share in his struggle.

To be a parent is not an easy ride, not a fair-weather trip. It demands our life and time, our energy and wisdom, our love and grace, and often more than we seem to have.

To be the creator of the world, committed totally to its Shalom and fulfilment, is not a fair-weather trip.   It is not easy for God.   So we see in the Bible, and most of all in Jesus Christ, that the way God takes in the world is the way of suffering with the sufferers, of holding on in hope, in trying again and again to put things right, and not giving up – this is the everlasting God, the inexhaustible God, the resilient God of resurrection.  Resurrection tells us, God is not dead. God is not giving up. We see in the life, death and raising of Jesus, God, who says an unequivocal, irreversible Yes to his creation, a God who wills good.

We are invited to live our lives with this God and no other, in the Spirit of God.   And if we are parents whose children are at risk of being sexually exploited, the steady resolve of God to see his creation blossom fully, to realise its beauty, can inspire us and challenge us to go on, even through the dark night.

The Spirit we see in God can be our spirit.

I like the way St Athanasius in the 4th century put it in his book, On the Incarnation of the Word (6), an inspiring rational proclamation of the good news of God in Jesus Christ.

It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon human being by the devil.

It was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits.

As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, What then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning?

The question that came to God, as Athanasius pictured it, is the question that comes to parents:  If you see the precious creation being ruined, what are you to do?

What then was God, being Good, to do?   Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them?

The parent cannot walk away. You cannot say, it doesn’t matter, it counts for nothing.   It is precious. So you have to get engaged, and stay engaged, looking actively for ways of doing something effective about the problem.

God does that, says Athanasius, by the incarnation of the Word, by God coming as God into human life, as human being, to redeem and rescue humanity going to ruin, in contradiction to its beginning in God.   God comes as the enlightening Word, so that we see God’s way and can walk with God in it, and not be lost in exile, wandering in darkness and waste.

That is how God answers the Question: What are you, being good, to do when you see what you made in the beginning on the road to ruin?

God’s Question is our question too. And God answers it in a way that we can walk in with God.

Happy Christmas?

By Haddon Willmer.

At the art class I go to each week, we were given Christmas as a theme for our next attempt. I dislike tinsel, though like most people I get entangled in it every year. It comes in many kinds and it seems churlish to do a Scrooge on it, saying ‘Humbug’.

share_2070826246But how to paint a picture doing justice to Christmas as told in the Gospels? This is daunting if one is not a skilled painter; and even more daunting when one is a mere human being, twenty-first century style.

But the choice seemed to me, either to try, even if it turned out a failure, or to keep clear altogether, and paint another summer landscape, where the sunshine in unambiguous.

My try was derived from the drawing on the left which I made years ago for a Christmas card:

But since then, I have written a whole-congregation nativity play based closely on the text of Matthew, leaving nothing out, including the genealogy and, controversially as it turned out, Herod the killer, and even more shockingly, Rachel, the mother who would not be comforted. The shock was rendered powerfully by some mothers in the church. And now, in the era of IS-Daesh and our responses which are too near to being Tit for Tat, it is impossible, it seems to me, to tell the Christmas story and leave out the dark side, the murderous ambiguity of Herod.

The message of the angels, Glory to God and peace on earth, must indeed be sounded in the picture, for it is joy to the world. But the frustration of the message in the world cannot be denied. On the nether side of Herod’s sword, there is death for the little ones, while on the other side, in the light from heaven, there is the Saviour born in a manger, all set for his flight into Egypt and his eventual deathly collision with the powers of the world who had taken over from Herod.

The Christmas story does not take us out of the real world. The picture tries to set up a blunt collision between the grace of God in the coming of Jesus the Saviour and the rule of Herod, the dark and the light.

So this is what I have painted, in my rough way:share_-1044016189Besides this, I wanted to trace the journey of the Wise Men, from their seeing the star, to their meeting with Herod in Jerusalem, their finding the Baby King and giving him what they had to give, and then returning to their own country, ‘by another way’. Tracing the line of the journey helps to give the painting a more interesting structure than a mere dark-light confrontation would achieve. But as I have been doing it, I have thought about the Wise Men. Customarily they are portrayed as wise because they came to Jesus and, from that point, we extrapolate positive outcomes for them. Naturally then, many are mystified by the gloomy downbeat way T.S.Eliot ends his poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi’ (http://allpoetry.com/The-Journey-Of-The-Magi ). I wouldn’t put it quite as he did, perhaps because my thinking is so much in Herod’s shadow. The Wise Men saw what they came to see, and then could do nothing but return to their own country by another way. They could do nothing about Herod. They could not take the good news back to Jerusalem and persuade the scribes to sing ‘Joy to the world’ with them. They fled for their lives. Their trajectory ends in weakness and frustration. Is that a parable for how we are in the world, a parable too uncomfortable to be entertained?

One last thing. The light of the glory from heaven fades out in Herod’s darkness, but all the same it is a dynamic pressure, like rays streaming from the sun, driving on to the last spark. I haven’t shown that well though I have tried it. And Herod’s terrible sword is deliberately drawn so that Rachel is mostly on the dark side – understandably – but not entirely: her back is in the light, the mercy from on high is upon her, although she in her darkness does not, cannot know it.

The Christmas story is full of hard sad challenging mysteries. Why do we celebrate it with such superficial frivolity?

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