Common ground

Today I had the wonderful privilege of speaking at the local school nativity play (Gors Community School). To me nobody brings home the message of Christmas like children. I spoke about Jesus bringing light into the darknes of our world and leading us closer to God. I used a small candle to represent Jesus - small, fragile, yet bright - and encouraged those present to follow Him into the light so that as lights together we can push back the darkness.

Afterwards I met two Moslem women, complete with headscarves, one of whom I recognised and who I later found out works in my local Marks & Spencers where I occasionally shop. The younger woman introduced her mother who is over from Iraq. She unfortunately does not speak much english and relies on her daughter to do all the translating. But she recognised the story and she recognised Jesus - whom they call Isa - and hearing the familiar story felt very much at home. She wanted to thank me and reassure that the talking that was going on while I was speaking was not from them but by some rude couple behind them. She, and her daughter, were very grateful for what I said.

They were as lovely and friendly pair of ladies you could ever wish to meet and were a timely reminder that we should never brand any of the major religions or bad or evil for fear of missing the fact that there are good people there. Unfortunately every religion - including Christianity - has adherents who are hungry for power and try and exploit their religion for their own ends. But at the heart of every religion there are those with heart, people who are genuinely seeking God and it is essential that we don't not tar them with the same brush as the more viscious and cruel extremists who maim, kill or persecute in order to achieve their own personal selfish ends.

God was there today and my prayer is always that I will be able to see Him in some way. Well I did, not only in the children but in the two polite and kindly strangers from another religion who came to speak to me and thank me for my message.

John Harper and the Titanic

Most people would have seen the film The Titanic by now and moved by the stories of heroism of many of those involved. However not all stories are told as the film would have become too long. And not all stories would have sat comfortably with the atheists and secularists. One such story involved a man called John Harper. He was born to a pair of devout Christian parents on May 29th, 1872. When when he was 13 years old he gave his life to Christ and began to preach about four years later at the ripe old age of 17 years old by going down to the streets of his village and pouring out his soul for people to be reconciled to God.

As John Harper's life unfolded, one thing was apparent: he was consumed by the word of God. When asked by various ministers what his doctrine consisted of, all he would reply was , "The Word of God!" Soon, John Harper started his own church in September of 1896. (Now known as the Harper Memorial Church.) This church started with just 25 members, but had grown to over 500 members when he left 13 years later.

Ironically, John Harper almost drowned several times during his life. When he was two and a half years of age, he almost drowned when he fell into a well but was resuscitated by his mother. At the age of 26, he was swept out to sea by a reverse current and barely survived, and at thirty-two he faced death on a leaking ship in the Mediterranean. Perhaps God used these experiences to prepare this servant for what he faced next....

It was the night of April 14, 1912. The RMS Titanic sailed swiftly on the bitterly cold ocean waters heading unknowingly into the pages of history. On board this luxurious ocean liner were many rich and famous people. At the time of the ship's launch, it was the world's largest man-made moveable object. At 11:40 p.m. on that fateful night, an iceberg scraped the ship's starboard side, showering the decks with ice and ripping open six watertight compartments. The sea poured in. On board the ship was John Harper and his much-beloved six-year-old daughter, Nana. According to documented reports, as soon as it was apparent that the ship was going to sink, Harper immediately took his daughter to a lifeboat but instead of climbing in with his daughter he bent down, kissed her and told her that she would see him again someday. He then turned and went back to the people on the ship yelling,

"Women, children and unsaved into the lifeboats!"

It was only minutes later that the Titanic began to rumble deep within. Most people thought it was an explosion; actually the ship was literally breaking in half. At this point, many people jumped off the decks and into the icy, dark waters below. John Harper was one of these people.

That night 1528 people went into the freezing waters. John Harper was seen swimming frantically to people in the water leading them to Jesus before the hypothermia became fatal. Mr. Harper swam up to one young man who had climbed up on a piece of debris. Harper asked him between breaths, "Are you saved?" The young man replied that he was not. Harper then tried to lead him to Christ only to have the young man who was near shock, reply no. John Harper then took off his life jacket and threw it to the man and said "Here then, you need this more than I do..." and swam away to other people. A few minutes later Harper swam back to the young man and succeeded in leading him to salvation. Of the 1528 people that went into the water that night, six were rescued by the lifeboats. One of them was this young man on the debris.

Four years later, at a survivors meeting, this young man stood up and in tears recounted how that after John Harper had led him to Christ, Harper had tried to swim back to help other people, yet because of the intense cold, had grown too weak to swim. His last words before going under in the frigid waters were, "Believe on the Name of the Lord Jesus and you will be saved."

Hollywood does not remember this man but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that this servant of God did what he had to do. While other people were trying to buy their way onto the lifeboats and selfishly trying to save their own lives, John Harper gave up his life so that others could be saved.

Minarets and Muslims

According to a recent news report the Swiss people have voted against the erection of two new minarets in two of its cities. For some this is a 'triumph' over Islam and a halt to what they perceive as an erosion of the Christian faith in Switzerland. At present only four minarets actually exist in Switzerland, in the cities of Geneva and Frankfurt, while there are an estimated 200 mosques and prayer rooms throughout the country with Muslims accounting for about 4.5 per cent of Switzerland’s 7.6 million-large population.

What are we to think of this?
1. First, as with nearly all news reports, there is more here than meets the eye. Although the ban was approved by a 57.5 per cent vote from Swiss citizens it was a very small turn out and those who did turn out were heavily influenced by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party and other conservative groups. Propaganda for the campaign included posters depicting minaret towers as missiles on top of a Swiss flag.

As much as I do not as a Christian agree with some Muslim doctrines, it is fundamentally unfair to portray every Muslim as a terrorist on the basis that a small minority are. Just as I take exception with being lumped together with gun-totting Serbian 'Christians' responsible for the atrocities of the Bosnian War or those at the forefront of the Medieval crusades, so I think it is unfair to tar every Muslim with the Bin-Laden brush.

2. Second, free will is a Christian tenet. God created us with the freedom to chose or reject Him. Jesus offers us life in all its fulness but will not force us to accept it. If people wish to become Muslims and to worship Allah then it is their choice. I may not agree with that choice but I am bound to uphold it on the basis that choice is what God gives us.

3. Lastly, I am the first to express outrage and anger at the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries. I agonize over the unfairness and discrimination my brothers and sisters have to face in Iran, Pakistan and the Middle East and I pray regularly for more religious freedom and an end to that aspect of Sharia Law which decrees the death penalty for any Muslim who wants to convert to another religion. But I have no basis to complain if I then try and restrict Muslims who want to practice their faith in my country. I must be consistent and Christian about this.

So the upshot of all this is that I disagree with the decision of the Swiss people and feel that it may become something they will come to regret in some way. For any decisions that are made on the basis of fear, discrimination or an attempt at giving one religion precedence or power over another, be they democratic or not, are not in the end very good ones.

Being and becoming myself

I was reflecting recently about why some of my children have not, as yet, embraced the faith they were baptized into and brought up within. There are several reasons I can think of:
1. I am a parish priest and have uprooted my family so many times within the course of my ministry, tearing them from schools, peer groups and friends, that they are understandably resentful of this God who has called their father away without considering their needs.
2. It may be because it is a natural part of the growing up process that children rebel against their parents at some stage? If I was an atheist they may have insisted on becoming believers of some sort because, subconsciously perhaps, they did not want to conform.
3. It may be a more straight forward reason like they genuinely don't/can't believe or because I have presented a form of Christian faith that is all about rules. In my behaviour and, lets be honest, transparent hypocrisy I may have presented a less than accurate presentation of a God who is pure love and grace or a faith that is old-fashioned and irrelevant?
4. Or it may just be that because Christianity is not 'cool' and it's always far easier - and more understandable - to conform with the beliefs and practices of your group of friends than be like your parents - the ultimate shame.

Perhaps you can think of other reasons that I may have overlooked? But there is one more reason that until now I had not considered. It may be that the impression is given that if you become a Christian you will in some way lose that sense of individuality which is the fear of every young person today. Ask any youngster and many of them want to be famous and different. Although they wear what is fashionable, listen to much the same music and have much the same role models whom they look up to, they will still tell you that they don't want to be like everyone else. They are individuals in their own right who want to stand out from the crowd. To be a Christian therefore is, for them, a threat to their freedom to be themselves. And I have to agree that there is always that danger. I have seen many a 'normal' person become a Christian and all of a sudden change and become in their dress, behaviour and way of speaking, like so many other believers. They do seem to lose the ability to think for themselves and become either clones of their ministers or priests or the person who led them to faith.

It happened to me, for a while, and it took some effort to break free of this conformity and become myself. In fact you could say that I am still in the process of discovering and becoming who I really am. It's only as I am honest with myself and God that this is happening and although I cannot claim to stand out from the crowd, I know that now, finally, I am becoming me. It needs honesty and acceptance. Honesty, about who I am and acceptance, that with all my flaws and failings God really does love me - the real me. In fact His Son died for that 'me' - the real one - not the actor or the false 'me' I have created in order to be loved. And so the Christian walk is a process of allowing God to tear off the layers of the false 'me' so that I can discover the real 'me' underneath. The one God made and died for.

So if my children are afraid of becoming like me, they needn't fear. For if they do discover God - and I pray every day that they will - they will find that God does not want them to be anything other than who they are. It's the only conformity that really counts.

In the words of St. Irenaeus: "The glory of God is man fully alive." Alive in the sense of being wholly him/herself, wholly human.

Starting as you mean to go on

I was listening to a podcast the other day by Fr Meletios Webber, the new abbot of the Holy Monastery of St. John of San Francisco. His podcast is called "Jottings from a Holy Mountain" and can be found via Ancient Faith Radio at http://ancientfaith.com. In this particular broadcast he talks about the need to start each day with God. He points out the findings of psychologists that we do most of our dreaming in the hours before we wake and, depending on the kind of dreams we have, it can have an effect on our thinking as we wake to a new day. To counter this he suggests that before we get up we should try and find five things to be grateful to God. Five things to thank Him for. One of the reasons for this is that gratitude establishes relationship. Another reason is gratitude is good because it "refuses to share the space with anything else". So for example you can't be grateful and angry or grateful and sad all at the same time. Gratitude "pushes out anything that wants to share space with it".

I find this advice so helpful. It strikes a chord with me as a parish priest because it ensures that whatever may come after I have climbed out of bed, at least I will have started the day right with God. Before the Adversary can steal a march on my day with the Lord, I will have already established that all important contact with God that will help me approach the things that the world throws at me in a better or best frame of mind. "In all things be thankful" says Paul (Ephesians 5:20).

Making sense of the supernatural

Clergymen (and women) are often involved in some weird and unusual things in the course of their day to day ministries. I recall once in a previous parish being contacted by a concerned mother and asked if I could help. She explained that her 3-4 year old daughter had an 'imaginary' friend who she used to talk to in her bedroom. The parents had thought very little of this, putting it down to part of a child's natural development, until one day the child became frightened and told her mother that this 'friend' had tried to bite her. The little girl was so frightened that she would not go back to her berdroom and so the mother, not knowing what to do, contacted the local priest - me- and asked if I could bless the room or something. Not really knowing a great deal about this sort of thing other than a few books I had read on the subject, I went along and said a few prayers of blessing in the room where the incident took place. A day or so later I contacted the woman and asked how things were going. The little girl had gone back to her bedroom and was happy again. This imaginary friend who used to come to play with her had gone now and all was well again.

I remember thinking how unusual this event was but gave it little more thought and reflection at the time. Now however, thinking back, there are a number of questions the whole incident raises which have no easy answer, other than a religious one.

First, who was this imaginary friend? A figment of a child's very active imagination or something more sinister?
Second, was there some kind of psychological reason for this - some kind of low-level mental illness that had only just started to manifest itself and which, perhaps in later years, would become more full-blown schizophrenia or such like.
Three, was there some other scientific or 'natural' explanation that could account for this that I and the parents were/are unaware of?

These, and others like them, are all legitimate and necessary questions to ask and one should not immediately jump to any supernatural explanations for such phenomena. However if the so called 'friend' was a figment of the child's imagination, why did it go after prayers?

The same could be said of any psychological explanations. I did not interview the child, I only spoke to her mother, and as it was the child who had seen/experienced the phenomena, any attempt to assign a psychological cure does not make any sense unless it was the child I had counselled. But even then a three-four year old? You could possibly explain it on the basis that the mother managed to reassure her daughter that the priest had been and "chased the baddies away" but why would this assurance be more viable than the mother's previous attempts at calming her daughter's fears?

As to scientific or 'natural' explanations and having spoken to others who are more of that particular mindset, I have received nothing that would satisfy me as being adequate to the case in question.

Which leaves us with a religious or Christian explanation. For the Christian the categories of natural versus supernatural are not helpful as the former tends to be equated with the notion of 'real' and substantial, while the latter equates to 'unreal/imaginary' or insubstantial. For the Christian all is 'natural' as God made it and to draw any division between the seen and unseen or the world of the spirits (i.e. angelic beings, God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit etc) and the world of 'man' is to muddy rather than clear the waters. There is more going on in the world than what can be seen with the eyes and for the Christian the world of the angels etc is as 'natural' a part of life as the world of trees and eathquakes. The Bible refers to such beings without a hint of doubt or embarassment and although it does not go into great detail, it tells us enough to awaken us to the presence of both good and fallen angels (demons) and calls us to ensure that we know how to both defend ourselves against them or rid ourselves of them.

In Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus he councils them to "put on all the armour God gives you, so that you will be able to stand up against the Devil's evil tricks." He continues, "For we are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities and cosmic powers of this dark age." (Ephesians 6:11-12 Good News Bible). This incident then can only point towards something along these lines and therefore only such weapons that the Church possesses, under the authority of Christ, are in the end effective against them.

I can find no other explanation for such occurences (there have been others) than the Christian one. If that is the case - and I believe it is - then there is a war going on where sides have to be chosen. If it's good versus bad and God is on the good side, then I know where my loyalty is. What about you?

The power of prayer

It's funny how you can live with a truth for many years but not fully comprehend it real meaning until a moment of 'insight' opens it up and you finally understand it in its depths. One recent example I want to share is the power of prayer and how it works.

Before moving to my previous parish I was inspired by an address the incumbent gave once at a conference where he told the story of the parish and how it grew under his ministry. He told of being there 5-6 years but with minimal success until one day, having read a book on prayer (I forget which one) he decided to tithe his time and devote a tenth of each day praying. So for two hours and forty minutes each day he gave himself to prayer. Within a space of time things began to happen and his church grew and blossomed and the congregation size trippled.

Since then I have always looked at prayer as being important but without realizing how. I merely saw it as a tool to bring about renewal and growth - just as it did in my predecessor's ministry - but I went no deeper than that. I have often reflected on this but seemed to progress no further than seeing the connection between prayer and the growth of the congregation in his church. Now, finally, I think I understand how it happened. Through giving himself more to prayer my predecessor got closer and closer to God and as he did HE changed. He developed a greater sensitivity to the voice and promptings of the Holy Spirit. God's thoughts became his thoughts, God's ways became his ways and God's will became his will. There was a coming together of the two - my predecessor and God - to such a degree that they became, sort of, one.

Jesus tells us about this in John's gospel, chapter 15, a passage that has always fascinated me. Here Jesus likens the relationship of the disciple to Him/God as a branch to a vine:

"Remain united to me, and I will remain united to you. A branch cannot bear fruit by itself; ift can do so only if it remains in the vine. In the same way you cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.... If you remain in me and my words remain in you, then you will ask for anything you wish, and you shall have it."
(John 15:4-5,7 GNB)

Here, especially in the last verse, Jesus explains what in fact happened with my friend and colleague. He 'remained' or (NIV) 'abided' in Jesus. This led to him being able to "ask anything" he wished - although it was not in fact 'he' who asked but this new 'he/God' partnership - which led him to see things happen and change. Prayer was not so much the key to changing the parish as it was, first of all, the key to changing him.

The power of prayer is to bring us closer and deeper into God so that God can finally work His will in us, and through us, for His world, starting where we are. Just as the 'light' in Matthew 5:14-16 can only be light if it is connected to the source of all true light i.e. Jesus, and the salt in Matthew 5:13 can only remain 'salty' if it is made salty by the true salt itself i.e. Jesus, so life can only produce life it it is connected to the source of life, God Himself.

Of course we must not, as we often do, turn this into some sort of 'formula' for parish/church renewal. This is not some kind of mechanical device. No. It must always be personal in terms of being real and genuine. But God has so designed us that we need to maintain and develop in our relationship with Him if we are to achieve anything of spiritual and therefore real and lasting, value. So the lesson I have learnt from all of this? Pray as much and as often as you can. And when you do, pray as if your life depended on it, because it does.