Forgiveness in Text and Life

Forgiveness in Text and Life - St Martin-in-the-Fields, together with the Council of Christians and Jews - exploring the nature of forgiveness in Judaism and Christianity with Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE and Revd Dr Sam Wells.

Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE is Senior Rabbi at West London Synagogue. She was the second woman rabbi in the UK, the first to have a congregation of her own worldwide. She is a cross-bench member of the House of Lords. She is an author and broadcaster who is particularly interested in refugees and asylum seekers, mental health, housing and homelessness, and health inequalities.

Revd Dr Sam Wells is Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and a widely-known writer, broadcaster and theologian. He is also Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. He has served as a Church of England parish priest for 20 years and spent 7 years in North Carolina, where he was Dean of Duke University Chapel. He has published 30 books, including a study of reconciliation, Living Without Enemies.

Chaired by Rabbi Helen Freeman, Principal Rabbi, West London Synagogue.

Free and open to all.

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Sweetmouth - Forgiveness.

Exhibition: Foundations of the City

An exhibition of paintings at St Stephen Walbrook - Foundations of the City (8 February – 4 March 2016) by Alan Everett

Three paintings in this exhibition are entitled Rood, reflecting their genesis in the Anglo-Saxon poem, The Dream of the Rood. This poem of great imaginative intensity was written when much of England was in deep forest. The Cross appears to the narrator in a dream vision, telling how as a tree it was cut down to share in the Passion of Christ. The paintings show successive stages of the Crucifixion, as if the tree itself is being crucified (Rood I, III and IV).

Three cross paintings address further aspects of the Crucifixion. Unclean Cross alludes to the pollution of blood; Salvage to the recovery of the Cross from cultural obliteration. Cosmic Cross embraces the energy of creation, also expressed in In Motion.

Three paintings elaborate the unpredictable nature of preservation, with reference to the written word: Text, Code and Fragment.

Another group of three paintings represent – in style and content – processes of layering, with both architectural and literary associations. Bricolage, Palimpsest and Retro resonate with a church such as St Stephen Walbrook, constructed as it is above a Roman city.

The harmonious neo-classical design of St Stephen is of course a selective reading of antiquity. Alcestis and Bacchae offer an alternative perspective, in response to plays by the ever-subversive Euripides.

Finally, two paintings approach the difficult subject of martyrdom – viewed by early Christians as an offering at the very foundations of the City of God. 10.00pm 2 December 1980 El Salvador refers to the rape and murder of a Catholic lay-worker and three nuns on that date; 12-15 February 2015 Libya to the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians.

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The Dream of the Rood.

Plinth installation: John Espin and Tim Harrold

John Espin and Tim Harrold are currently both collaborating on a commission for the Essex Network of Artists' Studios (ENAS).

Eight artists across ENAS have been chosen to make a piece to go on one of four 90x45x45cm plinths. Their inspiration is based on four themes chosen through prayer from a whole pile of phrases based on biblical images. These are:

• Does it roar like the Lion?
• Open your mouth
• A white stone. A new name. What is it?
• Can you count the stars?

Their 45x45cm square is itself divided into four dioramas depicting these themes. See http://timharrold.tumblr.com for photographs of the piece as it develops.

Tim writes that they: 'are both excited by this project and we're a fair way into the process. The piece has to be completed by the end of this month, and will be shown with the other plinths at the Hadleigh Old Fire Station Studios in September. Our idea was chosen, apparently, without hesitation from the panel, which to us is a complete blessing and confirmation that we're on the right road with this. We don't know where it will lead, but are happy to have simply been selected and are of the mind that anything else will be a bonus.'

Tim has a BA (Hons.) Degree in Expressive Arts, Brighton Polytechnic (1982-85). He creates allegorical dramas in boxes and freestanding sculptures, assembling found objects and using multimedia. He takes photos of clouds, buildings, ruins, rust, lichens, leaves, bark, water, signs, lamps, telegraph poles, and people, using a range of cameras and has an interest in illustrative ambient film. He writes found poetry, lyrics and prose, using found words a lot in his visual work. He combines elements of all the above in making contemplative installations - where the conceptual and the metaphysical meet, there is the perceptual.

John works with mixed media and says: "My work exists somewhere between painting and sculpture, despite being wall-mounted and marked with colour. Anything can be a starting point – an object, a word, found printed images or text, a photograph ... The work is often carved, polished and sanded, resulting in highly varied relief surfaces. Areas of the work form visual bridges, allowing tentative connections with other spaces. Layers of colour seem to tease, having been applied and taken away, fighting with materials and form. The layering and peeling back of surfaces: the way in which time acts on the world around us, concealing and unveiling by turns. Areas of paint crack to expose another time: a memory is revealed, a place, a captured moment in life ...'

They will be exhibiting together at the new Wellhouse Gallery (www.wellhousegallery.com) in Horndon on the Hill in November. John has a website at www.john-espin.co.uk and Tim's work can be seen on his photoblog - http://timharrold.tumblr.com - and via Twitter on @HarroldTim. Tim is facilitator of a local networking organ - www.transformationthurrock.com - and currently also works part-time for the My Hope UK initiative.  

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Steve Scott - Sun Poem.

Text for 2014: Making good use of every opportunity

In 2014 the Diocese of Chelmsford will celebrate 100 years of faithful service to Essex and East London. 2014 will be a great time to celebrate the hope which our churches have shared in the living Christ over our first 100 years and to commit to our next 100 years together. Also in 2014, by working in partnership with churches across London, Crossing London hopes to provide, during Autumn 2014, an opportunity for 10,000+ residents in London and the Home Counties to make a faith commitment and then to grow as disciples of Jesus.

Both initiatives encourage us to share our faith with people on the fringe or outside of church. Bishop Stephen has specifically asked that each Parish in the Diocese organise a Mission Weekend during 2014 as part of the Diocesan Centenary Celebrations. A Mission Weekend is a time set aside for specific events that share the gospel with people on the fringe or outside the church. It is set in the context of understanding how people grow and develop in faith, and of how we become a missionary church, renewing our faith as we share it with others.

Evangelism means sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. It is about telling the story of our faith, witnessing to the difference Christian faith makes, and inviting others to know Christ and be part of his church. Its aim is to make disciples of Christ so that God’s kingdom may be established here on earth.

It happens in many different ways. But all of us have a part to play. Some will have a specific gift and calling to share the message of Christ. Others will play their part just by being enabled to talk about their faith with colleagues, friends and neighbours. Some will run groups to help people find out about the Christian faith. Others will play a supportive role, offering hospitality and friendship.

In the diocese of Chelmsford we need a ministry of evangelism to be as normal a part of parish life as worship on Sundays. For without an on-going ministry of evangelism we will fail in our responsibility to answer the call that Jesus gives us at the end of Matthew’s gospel “to make disciples.” And if we are not making and growing disciples all the others things we long to do to make a difference in the world will falter.

Bishop Stephen has set out his recipe for evangelism. The main ingredients are: faith in Jesus Christ; belief that his life, death and resurrection are good news for all the world and for every person; desire to see God’s kingdom come on earth by blessing and serving the local community; and readiness to face the cost of change and growth.

Take one church. Stir vigorously. But make sure the ingredients do not separate. For this you will need leaders who share responsibility and encourage others to use their gifts, and a laity who want to be part of God’s mission. But there will never be any evangelism unless it flows from a lived relationship with God.

Add appropriate, sustainable, evangelistic events. These small scale do it yourself events give people an opportunity to encounter the church and the gospel. They give expression to the church’s task of sharing that gospel with everyone. They act like yeast, activating all the other ministries and processes which make for effective evangelism.

As you cook consider carefully who this recipe is for. What are the tastes, cultures, passions, personalities, issues and interests of the people you are seeking to feed? Adjust your ingredients accordingly. But, remember, this is a meal many will not have come across before and will inevitably taste a little strange at first.

Add the following ingredients with care and precision. These are the things that will carry the evangelism forward: a place of nurture for those who want to explore faith; people to accompany them on the journey; the gentle challenge to respond to the gospel; processes to enable people to grow up in their faith and discover their own share in Christ’s ministry.

Finally, encourage and equip every Christian to be a witness, helping them to articulate and share their own faith. Without this there will not be enough evangelism to go round. And there are lots of hungry people in the world. Place all this in the warm oven of a loving Christian community and gradually turn up the temperature. Pour on lashings of the Holy Spirit. Bring to the table blazing. Serve with love.

Our Text for 2014 also sets out an approach to mission and evangelism when it says:

“Be wise in the way you act toward those who are not believers, making good use of every opportunity you have. Your speech should always be pleasant and interesting, and you should know how to give the right answer to everyone.” (Colossians 4. 5 – 6)

This text says that mission and evangelism is about our actions and about our words. To combine these two as our Text for 2014 suggests we just need to rediscover something of our Lord Jesus. Krish Kandiah from the Evangelical Alliance has written that: “Jesus demonstrated the good news of God in his actions centering on his life, death and resurrection, but also in the way he touched lepers, challenged hypocrisy, fed the hungry and healed the sick.

Jesus’ perfect actions spoke louder than our words ever could. But he didn’t stop there – he explained his actions, finding the right words for the right people and modelling for us the fact that, just as we push back the boundaries of social action, equally we need to be pushing back the boundaries of our conversations.

Sometimes Jesus told a story, sometimes he engaged in discussion, sometimes he reminded people of Old Testament ideas, sometimes preaching, sometimes provoking, sometimes walking away with a punchline. He never used long words, he was never patronising. He was always accessible, always loving, always gracious.

Evangelism doesn’t have to mean arm-twisting our neighbours into attending church meetings, or forcing our colleagues to come to terms with their own mortality in their coffee break. Evangelism doesn’t have to be formulaic, middle class, manipulative or misleading. Evangelism doesn’t have to be a war of words or wills. Evangelism should not be a chore, a challenge – or a choice. Evangelism Jesus-style is for all his disciples as we live authentic, humble lives.” 

None of this is a criticism of what we are currently doing. Bishop Stephen has explicitly said that he wants to thank everyone in Chelmsford Diocese for the astonishing ministry done in our local parishes and communities. He sees this Sunday by Sunday and week by week as he travels around the diocese. All sorts of work undertaken, pastorally and evangelistically, which is demonstrating the love of God in beautiful and tangible ways. He wants to thank us and esteem us for this ministry.

But he also sincerely believes that we need to find new ways of connecting with people and sharing with them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not because we're not doing it already, but because it is laid upon us to 'proclaim the faith afresh in each generation'.

 

May we go into 2014 committed to that mission and open to the opportunities which the Diocesan Centenary and Crossing London provide for our mission and ministry here at St John's and in Seven Kings.

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Gungor - I Am Mountain.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” Matthew 6. 34 (Text for 2013 - St John's Seven Kings)

Simon Small writes in ‘From the Bottom of the Pond’ that: “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

But, he says, “Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is”: “To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.”

This is very much what Jesus seems to be saying to us in our Text for 2013 (Matthew 6. 34) and in his teaching on worry and anxiety found in Matthew 6. 24 -34. 

When we are preoccupied with what might happen in the future, we are not living fully in the present and may well misunderstand or misinterpret what is actually going on. Jesus encourages us to live fully in the present because, as Simon Small says, that is where we encounter God.

When we genuinely encounter God in the here and now we know that his love and forgiveness surround us and that his Spirit fills us. As Jesus prayed in John 17, he is in us and we are in him. When we know this in our hearts in the here and now, we can relax because whatever happens to us we are accepted, forgiven, loved and gifted by the God who created all things and who will bring all things to their rightful end. We are held in the palm of his hands and, as Julian of Norwich put it, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.

Even in the difficult times, we can still know that this is true because, as our Text for 2013 puts it, God will help us deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Jesus is saying that the more we live in the present and the more we encounter God’s love in the here and now, the less we will be anxious or worried. Prayer is able to help us do both things and therefore helps us to reduce our sense of anxiety or worry. Not because we have listed all our worries to God and believe that he will solve them all for us, but instead because, through prayer, we have encountered more of God’s love and, as a result, trust that he will be with us whatever comes our way.   

This is important because so much of our sense of dissatisfaction with our lives and the complaining we do about other people stems from our own worries and anxieties rather than what may or may not have happened or what others may or may not have done. Instead of focusing on other people and what we think they should or should not do or have done, we need to begin with ourselves and our relationship with God by giving our entire attention to what God is doing right now, and not getting worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. Then God is able to help us deal with whatever comes up, whether hard things or blessings, when the time comes.

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The Killers - Be Still.

Many different voices

Sam Norton has written an excellent post on approaches to reading and understanding the Bible. His starting point is that:
"One of the most important things to understand about the Bible is that it is a library of Holy Scripture – that is, there are many different voices within the Bible (even within particular books of the Bible) – and this is of God. That is, it is in recognising both what different books have in common, and where they disagree, that an individual Christian is enabled to come to a mature understanding of the text."

He sets out why the Bible can't be assumed to have one single unequivocal thing to say about a topic and explains historically how the idea that it does appeared within Christianity. With astute illustrations of the issues he raises, this is an excellent post which lays the ground for some examination of particular  texts in future.

See here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here for my take on this in a series of posts entitled Divine dialogues.

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Iona ~ Edge of the World.

Anglican Communion life impeded by insufficient communicators

Improving the way in which the Anglican Communion communicates with the wider world might be thought the least of its problems but an inability to effectively communicate its good news story and stories is an endemic problem for the 21st century Church. Therefore, it is interesting to see recognition of the problem within the Anglican Communion:

Anglican Communion Working Group: “More communicators needed to sustain the vital circulation of information and dialogue”

By ACNS staff

The Anglican Communion faces a shortage of qualified communicators, according to an international Working Group on communications. The group—consisting of communications professionals from five continents—concluded that the Communion life was at risk of being detrimentally affected by some Provinces’ inability to source and share their news and stories widely.

“The narrative of the Body of Christ is very powerful,” said group member Revd Dr Joshva Raja “and currently the Anglican Communion is not properly equipped to share that narrative.”

Dr Raja, originally from the Church of South India, explained that an informal survey had revealed that only a third of Provinces have full-time communications staff.

"In many cases the job of telling the story of the Church is left to busy Provincial Secretaries, unqualified volunteers or, in some cases, the bishop or Primate," he said. "How can the world hear about the best of our church life if we do not hire people with adequate time and/or the skills to source and share the stories of our part in God’s mission?"

During its recent three-day meeting in London, the Anglican Communion Communications Working Group, identified that Strategic Communications—that is, communicating proactively as well as reactively—is now, more than ever, a vital ministry of the church.

“The world has changed massively in the past decade,” said the Anglican Communion’s Director for Communication Jan Butter. “The Internet and mobile phone technology is challenging the way the Anglican Communion can and should engage in God’s mission: sermons now reach global audiences; evangelism is happening via Google’s Search Engine; church notices reach Anglicans in remote areas via text messages.

“Increasing access to Social Media also means there is greater, often instant, dialogue between everyone; church communication is no longer simply ‘top down’. The Anglican Communion needs to do all it can now to seize these new opportunities to work together to share God’s Good News.”

The group—that also included members from the Episcopal Church of Sudan, Hong Kong, Southern Africa, the US, England and Mexico—reflected on the effective communication that is taking place around the Anglican Communion. Examples include communication via text message (SMS), Facebook and Twitter, printed material, websites, video, radio and television.

However, it was clear that there is still a way to go before all Anglican Communion Provinces are equally able to share news and information domestically and intra-Provincially. An imbalance in the availability of resources, technology and training means that only a few Provinces prioritise communications as a life-giving ministry of the Church.

“The group has made several recommendations to strengthen Anglican Communion communications,” said Bishop Anthony Poggo of the Episcopal Church of Sudan.

These include conducting a Communion-wide audit to identify gaps in Province’s communications systems and structures; strengthening the Anglican Communion website and News Service; and providing training in communications for both communicators and clergy.

“A key recommendation, however, is that every Province should have at least one paid, qualified Communications Director,” he said. “We know this will be a challenge for many Provinces, but we are committed to finding ways of making this happen.”

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Athlete - Half Light.