Blog from the Beach - 14th of September

It is good to be taking some time out with Debby here in sometimes sunny Queensland. Everyone needs to draw apart from time to time, to find a quieter place to think, to recuperate, to let all the busy-ness of life settle down around you, and just to be.

Whilst relishing this time of rest and solitude, I am all the more conscious of the precious gift of relationships. One of the most amazing messages of the Bible is that we are made in the image of God. In the Christian understanding of God, that image is not just of a single entity, but of a dancing complexity: the Father, Son and Spirit in vibrant, loving relationship together for all eternity. We are made in this image, of God in relationship in eternity.

Human experience of the world is of damaged relationships. Yet in Christ, we are called to something better, to transforming, life-giving relationships. This is not always easy. It is costly and challenging. It requires vulnerability and strength. It demands hope. Yet as we seek for Christ to be formed in us, renewing us from within, we must seek to encounter Him in each other.

St Mary's is a rich tapestry of relationships: children making friends in Sunday Club, small groups meeting and sharing life's joys and sorrows during the week, fellowship together over a cuppa on Sunday mornings, hopes and prayers shared over the phone, a husband and wife catching up at end of a frantic day, people making new friends and honouring old ones: the body of Christ is held together and expresses itself through our connections with each other. How precious these are! Our relationships are the domain in which the inner life of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - manifests itself among us. Nurturing Christian friends is itself an act of worship of the living God.

As we say, week by week, 'We are the body of Christ'.

Alive and Kicking

Where is the most unsafe place for a human being to exist in the State of Victoria?
The correct answer is: In his or her mother's womb.

Each year, it is estimated that around twenty thousand abortions are performed in Victoria alone. An abortion can in principle take place up to 28 weeks gestation. (After 28 weeks, the 1958 Crimes Act deems the indictable offense of 'child destruction' to have taken place.) Past 20 weeks gestation, public hospitals will normally only do abortions if there are fetal abnormalities. However this could be something as minor as a cleft palate, which is easily corrected by surgery.
Private clinics are a different story.

I just can't comprehend how, in one delivery suite doctors could be delivering a baby which is to be killed during or after delivery, by lethal injection or dismemberment in utero, or simply by being left on a shelf to die, whilst in the delivery suite next door, a premature baby of the same gestation and health is delivered and kept alive to grow up to vital, healthy adulthood.

The Victorian Parliament is contemplating decriminalizing abortion, based on a bill introduced by Candy Broad. (However the ban on 'child destruction' after 28 weeks is not affected by the proposed changes.) To find out more, and consider whether you wish to take action, visit Alive and Kicking and follow instructions about how to contact your local politicians.

Shrek sells his soul for a buck

Everywhere you turn these days the face of Shrek appears: in the supermarkets the shelves are full of Shrek-branded merchandise.

It is a great irony that someone who began his film career just wanting to be left to himself in his own piece of swamp has ended up selling his image to endorse a thousand and one products.

A good example of how show business can undermine your character!

Mission-minded? A message from Africa to the West

Oscar Muriu from Kenya spoke to an Intervarsity meeting in December 2007, in St Loius.
Some of his points:

• There were nine million Christians in Africa in 1900, over 360 million today.
• There are more Anglicans in Nigeria than in all of North America and Europe.
• Kenya has more people with a personal faith in Christ than the whole of Western Europe.
• The largest congregations in Kiev, London and Zürich are led by African pastors.
• African has the fastest church growth in the world.
• For every North American or European Christian who drops out of church (6000 a day), 4 are added in Africa (23,000 a day).

The centre of gravity of Christianity has moved from the ‘north’ to the ‘south’, and it is the Christians of the non-Western world who will increasingly define what it means to be a Christian in the world today. Muriu asks: “If western models of church are not working in the west ... should he church of the two thirds world copy the models of the west or embrace western theologies?”

On the other hand, we still all need each other. Muriu spoke about the absolute importance of building genuine partnerships between Christians across the world. Although Africa is now sending missionaries to the rest of the world, missionaries are still needed in Africa. We all need each other. (1 Corinthians 12:14-27).

Muriu stated: “The mission industry of the last 200 years was hugely successful. ... We who come from Africa will always be eternally grateful to your forefathers who sent out their very best, their own sons and daughters, and resourced them to bring the gospel to us.”
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Well - what do you think?

At the first church I served in as an ordained minister, the whole path of the congregation was turned around by a visit from an African, Bishop Alexis Bilindabagabo. We had invited him to come and lead a mission, then we got cold feet, and disinvited him. He wrote to us and said that if we could not fund his visit, there were African Christians in Kigali who had a mind to support mission, who would send him. And so he came, and we all had a wonderful time enjoying God's grace through Bishop Alexis’ preaching.

I have two thoughts. One is that we in the West should always remember and give thanks for the many missionaries who have been sent out, and who sowed the seeds of faith in Christ into the 2/3rds world, often involving great personal sacrifice. These seeds are now bringing forth sweet and wondrous fruit all over the earth. The students have surpassed their teachers. This should never cease to give us joy.

The other is that we have great cause for confidence. The gospel is going out to the nations. It is being presented by the power of the Spirit of God, as He enables ordinary men and women, boys and girls all over the nations to confess Christ boldly. Let us do the same.

Help us to change

God help us to change.

It is good to be away on leave. Down by the sea, I arrived to find that a storm the night before I arrived had swept away most of the beach. It is a weird feeling to be walking along what is left of a beach, one you have walked hundreds of times before, and to be about 2 metres lower than you should be. Your head is where your feet ought to be. Two metres of sand got swept away in this storm.

So I've been walking on the beach, and going to church. Part of my holiday is to go to church.

Going to church is, in my experience, a risky business. You never quite know what agenda God has for that day, or for you personally. Do you know the feeling? Sunday morning, it’s out of bed and off to church. Normally it's not a big decision to go to church, because I’m the vicar, and things might become a bit grim if I didn’t turn up. In reality it is a delight to worship our great God. Nevertheless, one of the things about going to worship Him, is you never quite know what He'll be up to.

Two things hit me at church this week. One was the readings. There was Jesus’ deliverance of the demoniac who was infested with a legion (thousands) of demons, and another was from the books of Kings about the flight of the prophet Elijah after his show-down with the prophets of Baal.

What took me aback was, at the end of both readings, there is a command is ‘Go back’. I said to the preacher afterwards that it was a bit rough to come on holidays and have not one but two readings tell you to ‘Go back’. I’d only just arrived!?!

Anyway, I could relate to the Prophet Elijah. He flees, exhausted, and spends time eating, drinking and sleeping before God sorts him out on Mount Horeb. Yes, that is something I can relate to at the moment. Elijah didn’t have an eroded beach to walk on out there in the desert, or else I’m sure that would have been in the story too.

The other thing that struck me at church was that the congregation was growing, it was full of life, and it was happy. There was a prayer in the weekly bulletin, which they quaintly called the ‘pew sheet’. (Actually it should have been ‘pew sheets’, because I got three pieces of paper. But that was all. I did feel a bit naked coming in without getting a prayer book and hymn book. The welcomers saw my hand reaching out for a hymn book, and proudly assured me I wouldn’t need one: everything would be on the big screen. And so it was. And it was great.)

Anyway, the pew sheets’ prayer read: Parish Mission and Evangelism Prayer. “God help us to change. To change ourselves and to change our world. To know the need for it. To deal with the pain of it. To feel the joy of it. To undertake the journey without unerstanding the destination. The art of gentle revolution. Amen.”

What a great prayer. Yes, change does bring joy. It does bring pain. It does take courage. You can never anticipate completely in advance where it will take you. It begins with us, and reaches out to others. My only quibble came at the end. I thought: truly blessed are those who can keep on changing God-wards in ‘gentle revolutions.’ My own experience is that there can be so many of those storm-tossed God moments when the whole beach gets swept away.

It was very encouraging to see this small country church coming alive. May all our churches be able to pray such prayers, to the honour and glory of the Name of the Lord.