tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60117225187621759162024-03-06T08:04:54.870+00:00Here goes...Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-52943492512957551382022-09-18T19:47:00.005+01:002022-09-18T19:47:32.467+01:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5RZGOHhcGNL-C8hrwL2Ymm-s1BvErGsNGabzKKWpeMQp1vIxrg5tfmxgBhD8yZyDa8jZFTq2OZqxo1CM3ZVwJnT7y7xkO9H2GGcs0tvJ5GKkPL0Towt_PGw2oVI_cm92Is7dm3zYahrC6x8gcnatxwsbmat7Oy5T-1b4CmP7jG6lbAqTjhSiU3kwY" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1270" data-original-width="2000" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5RZGOHhcGNL-C8hrwL2Ymm-s1BvErGsNGabzKKWpeMQp1vIxrg5tfmxgBhD8yZyDa8jZFTq2OZqxo1CM3ZVwJnT7y7xkO9H2GGcs0tvJ5GKkPL0Towt_PGw2oVI_cm92Is7dm3zYahrC6x8gcnatxwsbmat7Oy5T-1b4CmP7jG6lbAqTjhSiU3kwY" width="320" /></a></div><i>A Sermon in a service of Commemoration for Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for Richmond Borough Council, at St Mary's Twickenham</i><p></p><p>We gather here today at the end of an extraordinary week. So many words have been said, so many pictures taken, so many comments posted, so many hours spent queuing and waiting for a glimpse of the coffin. </p><p>Our reading this evening from the epistle to the Hebrews gives us this advice; “Remember your leaders... Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” I want to take that advice this evening and offer a few brief reflections on the life of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, to discern what we learned from her example as we seek to consider the “outcome of her way of life and imitate her faith.”</p><p>The first thing we might usefully learn from her is her understanding of leadership as service. She held the highest office in the land and yet she understood that calling not primarily to privilege, to wealth, or power over others, but to service. </p><p>We have often heard this week those words that she uttered on her 21st birthday, before she became Queen, when she said, “my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” It was uttered with such a youthful voice, not knowing what that promise would mean, yet it was a promise we now recognise that she kept to the full.</p><p>Perhaps the idea of leadership as service is very familiar to us, but we shouldn't underestimate how radical and distinct this is from what we find in so many other moral and political frameworks. And it is of course a deeply Christian understanding of Leadership. Jesus the Son of God told his followers that “I am among you as one who serves.” At one moment he takes his disciples aside and utters these revolutionary words: “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”</p><p>As a result, this is deeply inscribed in our own political vocabulary. We call the leader of our government the Prime Minister, we call Heads of Government departments Ministers of State, because of course the word ‘minister’ simply means servant – from the Latin word ministrare - "to act as a servant, to serve others.”</p><p>Of course, Roman or Chinese emperors did not see their calling as to serve their people at all - they had the power of life and death over them and they exercised it fairly ruthlessly. They saw themselves not the servants over the people but as rulers over them, somehow distinct from the rules that ordinary people have to follow, above the law that governed ordinary mortals. </p><p>Of course there are many examples of supposedly Christian monarchs who have abused their power but that is their betrayal of their Christianity not an expression of it. There are good Monarchs and not so good Monarchs. We are blessed to have had lived most of our lives under the reign of a good Monarch who understood the nature of leadership as a calling to serve those under her care. </p><p>Perhaps one of the main lessons we take from the life of Her late Majesty is to remind ourselves and to reinforce our sense that, ss someone once said, Leadership is not so much about being in charge, as taking care of those in our charge. If we are called to leadership in politics, in business, in a family or in the Church, leadership is primarily a calling to serve those under our care; it is a calling not so much to rule over them but to care them, to devote ourselves to their good above our own.</p><p>The second thing we might learn from Her Majesty is the value of Duty. Again, this is a word we've heard often this week. The BBC obituary to the Queen started with this sentence: “The long reign of Queen Elizabeth II was marked by her strong sense of duty and her determination to dedicate her life to her throne and to her people.” King Charles, in his speech to parliament, pledged himself to faithfully follow the Queen’s “example of selfless duty.”</p><p>However, in an individualistic age that is often more concerned with rights than responsibilities, the idea of Duty has perhaps become a rather tarnished and dull word for us. Young men or women going off to fight or to work hard at home during the First or Second World wars would often speak of the importance of “doing their duty”. Those brought up in the Scouts movement in the past will know all about this with its call to ‘do my duty to the Queen and other people’. However these days it sounds a bit quaint. We don't tend to think of Duty as a very exciting or important thing. To describe something as ‘dutiful’ conveys the idea of it being boring and predictable. I sometimes go into schools to ask young people what they want to do with their lives. “To do my duty” is not an answer I get very often – although perhaps a century or so ago that might have been different.</p><p>Duty is all about keeping the promises and commitments that we make in life, even when they are personally inconvenient for us. It's about our ability to rely upon each other and to trust our fellow citizens to do what they say they will do. I'm sure there were days when the Queen woke up to face yet another round of civic engagements, papers to sign, Prime Ministers to meet and wished in her heart of hearts that she was just an ordinary citizen like the rest of us. Yet she always spoke of a sense of duty to this calling and even felt it was one of those commitments, like marriage or to family, that is intended to remain in place until death - there was no retirement from being Queen.</p><p>A sense of duty is vital for our common life together. The philosopher David Selbourne has written a great deal about Duty – he describes it as the fundamental principle of the civic order. For a society to function well, we need to have a sense that we have obligations, not just to ourselves but to each other and to our common life. A society where no one feels they have any sense of duty to anyone else, or to fulfil their role within civic life, to play their own part in making a society function well and in a humane way, is likely to be a dysfunctional and fractured society.</p><p>Perhaps her death is a reminder to us of calling to be faithful to the commitments we make as best we can, to our families, our marriages, our workplaces, our communities. Keeping promises is not always easy and of course, relationships, families, jobs don't always work out straightforwardly but a sense of duty and faithfulness can at times help us keep going through those periods of difficulty rather than giving up at the first sign of trouble. The Queen’s example is a powerful sign for us as to the importance and centrality of duty to our common life.</p><p>Perhaps the last thing that the Queen's life points us to is our need for a sense of permanence. For most of us, she is the only Queen we have ever known. She has been a steady regular presence in our lives - always there for Christmas broadcasts, Trooping the Colour, FA Cup Finals, her face on every bank note we’ve spent or stamp we've ever bought. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said early this week, her death has taken away something stable and steady in our lives and so we feel a little less secure than we did before.</p><p>Perhaps underneath much of our behaviour of the past week lies this longing for permanence. A very public death like this reveals our own death, our frailty and mortality. It makes us face the passage of time and makes us long for stability, perhaps even for eternity.</p><p>Even the desire for a photo, the seas of mobile phones stretched out to try to get a photo of the coffin as it went past, is a desire for something permanent – a sure record that ‘I was there’, to capture the experience for ever, so much so that we can hardly experience the moment itself. </p><p>The fast-changing pace of our social and political life, the cultural shifts that make our world seem so different from that of the Queen’s generation have perhaps bred in us a deeply-felt and often unspoken and unrecognised desire for something longer-lasting, something that can be relied on. </p><p>Yet she was of course only a sign or symbol of permanence. She may have lived longer than any other British monarch, yet she would have been the first to admit that she is one of a long line of monarchs – part of an institution that speaks of a much longer permanence. The fact that at the very moment she died, Charles became King, tells of a seamless strand of constitutional monarchy that outlasts any particular individual who occupies the throne. Yet the monarchy itself has always only ever been a sign of an even greater permanence – the faithfulness of God, the one the Psalmist described as “our dwelling place throughout all generations, who brought forth the whole world before the mountains were born - God from everlasting to everlasting.” (Ps 90)</p><p>Our reading reminded us that Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday today and forever.” The Queen’s own personal faith was well known. It was sense of the deep abiding faithfulness of God, the God of Jesus Christ who is Lord of heaven and earth, if time and eternity, that gave her the strength to be faithful to her promises. </p><p>Only when our lives are rooted in something constant and more permanent than the brief life span of a tweet or Instagram post or even the longer, but still in the light of eternity, fleeting span of our own lifetimes, can we find the security and steadiness to remain faithful to our promises, to do our duty to each other and to find peace both now and at the last. </p><p>And so today we give thanks for the life of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth - for all she taught us about leadership as service, about the importance of duty, and our need to be rooted in something, someone eternal - a sense of permanence which we find in faith and trust in the God who made us and loves us – the God that she knew and served. And for that today we can be thankful.</p><p>AMEN </p><div><br /></div>Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-46566183159826491732022-09-18T17:26:00.002+01:002022-09-18T17:26:52.794+01:00<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2VIHc4OKkZFJICRGZFnn9bOuPhd5w-yS3fC3BQdn2TfVxYB0xuGUWKdgeW_NLa9GNsxHkS_23dOTtAY7edP8W22hx9f84YHqMlQgbpT7uFPUAEWSAnbC9A6NqAoOyyYfX6W4RifzrDp3vBjSQyFWBvnzsyqHd13LGRRxTUDfb4OlneOD17VXRPSR/s1410/QG.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1410" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2VIHc4OKkZFJICRGZFnn9bOuPhd5w-yS3fC3BQdn2TfVxYB0xuGUWKdgeW_NLa9GNsxHkS_23dOTtAY7edP8W22hx9f84YHqMlQgbpT7uFPUAEWSAnbC9A6NqAoOyyYfX6W4RifzrDp3vBjSQyFWBvnzsyqHd13LGRRxTUDfb4OlneOD17VXRPSR/s320/QG.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>Smoke was still rising from the ruins of Grenfell Tower. The day after the fire had been tense, full of shock and bewilderment. A great deal of anger was being directed at the local Council who were had overseen the refurbishment of the Tower, and now, they were felt to be absent. That rising tide of anger threatened to spill over in ugly ways, as a march on the offices of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea turned nasty, with angry protesters storming the building and terrified workers locking themselves in their offices inside. <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Various political figures were quick to visit on the day after the fire, but those visits didn't go too well. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Opposition and of course Theresa May, the Prime Minister, all visited. The Prime Minister, in particular, came into came in for criticism, when she visited the day after the fire, and only met the emergency services and officials, avoiding potentially uncomfortable meetings with local residents or survivors from the Tower. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Shortly after her visit I received a phone call from No. 10 Downing Street asking if I could gather a group of local people to meet with the Prime Minister, a sign at least that she wanted to remedy the hurt caused. The meeting was hastily arranged with a mix of local residents, evacuees from the Tower and local housing blocks, volunteers and representatives of local community groups. We met in the nearby St Clements’ Church, sitting in a circle, to enable the Prime Minister to hear and feel the emotions and appeals of local people. Half way through the meeting, one of the security people tapped me on the shoulder to say that a restless crowd was building up outside and the meeting had to be drawn to a close. The Prime Minister left quickly, was bundled into a car, which shot away from the area to the jeers and heckles of an angry crowd, some even banging on the roof as she left.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">It was into this febrile and angry atmosphere that the Queen made her visit to the area on Friday 16<sup>th</sup> June, just two days after the fire. I was in the Westway Sports Centre, a building that had been set aside for coordinating volunteers, providing beds for those who needed them, a depot for receiving gifts and donations that had started flooding into the area. I recall looking up and seeing a fleet of cars stopping and a small figure in a blue dress stepping out with her tall grandson beside her. She walked straight over to a group of residents and volunteers and began to talk with them. She spoke with firefighters, volunteers, residents, and listened carefully to their stories. She spoke to one older volunteer who had lived locally, and who could not forget what she had heard on the night of the fire. She had heard the voices of children crying from the Tower, but it was the silence when the voices stopped that had haunted her ever since. Somehow, the Queen found words to bring comfort, reassuring her that the children’s suffering may not have been as bad as she feared. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I was reminiscing about this visit with some members of the local community recently. Those I spoke to universally felt it was a very significant occasion. One of them told me: “The whole community was shocked at the lack of support coming in from the authorities. Everyone was in shock because it really just felt like we had been left to pick up the pieces and be the emergency relief for this tragic event.” Another reflected on the Queen’s presence: “It brought tears to so many to feel that this horrific, disastrous moment was being acknowledged and that the men, women and children who had lost their lives mattered and that we as a community in mourning mattered to someone in the higher powers. It meant a lot that she had showed her face.” <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">At the time, rightly or wrongly, the community felt abandoned by those in power and yet the visit of the Queen made a difference. She brought reassurance, listened to the heartbreak of that community, expressed genuine sympathy and eased the tension in some very difficult days.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I've often thought since then of the courage it took to make that visit. Reports tell of how Palace insiders were worried about it, concerned about the potential damage to the monarchy if the Queen had been heckled or even attacked in the way that the politicians who had visited the area had been. We can only assume that it was the Queen herself who took the final decision to come. She has spoken of her regret for not visiting earlier the site of the Aberfan disaster in 1966. This time she got it absolutely right. She took the risk, and it was just what was needed. Even though trust still remains low in the North Kensington community with RBKC and even with government, generally speaking, most people in the area speak highly of the royal family, because they stepped in to bring support at their time of need.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The Queen’s strong Christian faith is well known and was increasingly prominent in her Christmas broadcasts towards the end of her life. This was one of those days when she lived out that faith. One local resident put it like this to me: “she could have sent a representative, but she came in person.” There could hardly be a better description of the meaning of Christmas, when God, not a representative, came to us in person. To visit Grenfell took a great deal of courage, and brought healing and comfort. It was the Queen doing what she could do, perhaps one of her finest hours.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> <br /></o:p></p>Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-26471009360390677552022-04-14T07:05:00.002+01:002022-04-14T07:05:15.263+01:00Hope not Optimism<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><br /> </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp1gd5ILkX4ddV5T34Wxw5e0KOEmgh2T5ooyXbsRrCyDzA7TUtBAmp29UvzqJMCnIZQvKfimmOg3vIPrNUSV-bKAINzj01FbDIUJz3VfS_1WGpb04WrRUDm87GXZM1RLoMKOJlDj6sU-6WiFtRIgI9JAyyuRnRVYfm9TW3VPPtE_tQq8-rcdj9qOMl/s462/imrs.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="462" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp1gd5ILkX4ddV5T34Wxw5e0KOEmgh2T5ooyXbsRrCyDzA7TUtBAmp29UvzqJMCnIZQvKfimmOg3vIPrNUSV-bKAINzj01FbDIUJz3VfS_1WGpb04WrRUDm87GXZM1RLoMKOJlDj6sU-6WiFtRIgI9JAyyuRnRVYfm9TW3VPPtE_tQq8-rcdj9qOMl/s320/imrs.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: 13px;">The world feels quite a dark place at the moment. New atrocities are revealed daily in a war at the heart of Europe, something that few of us could have foreseen in recent times. Away from the headlines of Ukraine, the worst drought in a decade in Somalia threatens to kill hundreds of thousands of children in that poverty-stricken land. Meanwhile other wars continue, hardly noticed, such as the violence in the Congo which took another 30 lives this week. Add to that the hardship faced by many families in our own country with the cost of living increasing and it's hard to find much hope for the future. </span><p></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We Christians are not people of optimism but of hope. Optimism is the vague aspiration that things will turn out OK, that we mustn't focus on the darkness, but instead keep our spirits up by positive thinking.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Holy Week is when we are forced to look intently into the darkness. On Friday we will gaze again on Jesus on the cross – the realisation that when our Maker came to us, we killed him. That was our great sin as a human race, of which all our other petty sins are a dim echo. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And yet while this week makes us look at the darkness in the world and in our hearts, it also ends by looking at the light which banishes darkness. Resurrection hope is not whistling in the dark, hoping that things will turn out OK, but a sure, rooted conviction that because Jesus rose from the dead, a new world is coming and there is a sure ground for hope. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">One of Horace’s Odes runs like this: </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> <span> </span>Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> <span> <span> </span></span></span>In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebbed away.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Seize the present; trust tomorrow e'en as little as you may.</p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"> </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>Carpe Diem</i> – seize the day. It is the essence of the Epicurean view of the world, and our world is full of materialist Epicurean sentiment. The film <i>Dead Poets Society</i> claimed the phrase in its hymn to modern expressive individualism. Life is fleeting, it won’t last long, so grab what pleasure you can while you can. If this world is all there is, if death is simply the dissolving of atoms into the earth, if the only hope of afterlife is in some thin idea of the circle of life where our decaying remains provide the manure out of which future plants and flowers grow, then Epicurean ethics – eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die - is really the only option. Hence the desperate search for exhilarating experiences, bucket lists, trading in a marriage partner for a better model if they cease to satisfy, acquiring the resources we need to fulfil our dream because our dreams can only be realised in this world, because this world is all we have. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Yet if Resurrection happened, if Jesus is not a dead poet but the firstfruits of the new heaven and new earth, the first crocus of spring, heralding many more to come, then this world is not all there is, and the frantic urgency to ‘seize the day’ begins to fade away. It becomes possible not to feel the need to grasp everything, but to be content with simple things like friendship, small moments of grace, the gifts of food and clothing (1 Tim 6.8). Fear Of Missing Out is not the worst thing of all. Making the sacrificial choice to open a home to a refugee, giving away valuable resources to support those in need, sticking with difficult situations and difficult people even until the end of life – these all become possible. Babies born with disabilities, adults with mental illness, the elderly with dementia are not lesser forms of life because they are unable to ‘seize the day’ like the young and gifted. Not getting everything you want here and now is fine, because we were never meant to anyway. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Our task this Easter, as it is every year, is to hold out this hope for our congregations, for our communities, for our world. Jesus prays for his disciples (including us) that our faith will not fail. I pray for you and value your prayers for me, that we may be faithful to this calling, and find the words and actions to bear witness to the God who raises the dead. What happens as a result of that witness, whether the church remains a voice crying in the wilderness, or the church is revived and a new form of society emerges that reflects the reality of the Kingdom of God - that is in the hands of God. Our simple task is to keep bearing witness with faithfulness and joy. </p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Much of this taken from <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Generous-Orthodoxy-Graham-Tomlin/dp/0281082855/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=tomlin+graham&qid=1649916268&sprefix=tomlin+%2Caps%2C44&sr=8-3">Navigating a World of Grace: The Promise of Generous Orthodoxy,</a></i> by me, Graham Tomlin (SPCK 2022)</p><div><br /></div>Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-6126040801588314392020-12-20T07:11:00.013+00:002020-12-20T07:15:43.591+00:00Why Christians Celebrate Christmas (especially in a pandemic)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1V6I2-NRuWmb8mDpppkxUkMN-ytmA9jap7riydzrPf-qZ3eUwUKSviepX4Wx88GzbsS7Fx7kaymS_zpkQFrmqLUAPh94MRJgfl4e5l2vmTTFG1p1jpQHwPuejwsKjKRNnjk7VwST1Sw/s660/Xmas+.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="660" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1V6I2-NRuWmb8mDpppkxUkMN-ytmA9jap7riydzrPf-qZ3eUwUKSviepX4Wx88GzbsS7Fx7kaymS_zpkQFrmqLUAPh94MRJgfl4e5l2vmTTFG1p1jpQHwPuejwsKjKRNnjk7VwST1Sw/s320/Xmas+.webp" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This Christmas will feel very different, with masks, social distancing and household bubbles (if you have one) but at its heart, nothing has changed. The angels, stars, mangers and even the YouTube carol services are all traces of the same story that has shaped our civilisation for two thousand years. It’s a story that has inspired some of the most magnificent buildings the human race has ever produced, and framed the lives of countless people across the planet, marking their vital moments of birth, marriage and death, guiding them through disasters and delights, politics and pandemics. Today, Christianity is the world’s largest faith, with 2.3bn people, almost 30 per cent of the world’s population. So, despite the much-talked about decline of the church in the west, what is it about this particular birth, this person, that still haunts us so much?<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">No other books from the ancient world are read every week in every country across the world, studied as avidly, or quoted from so frequently as the gospels that tell the story of Jesus. When you get time (the slow days after Christmas are as good as any) - just read a bit beyond the familiar Christmas stories in one of them. You will find unfolding before your eyes a portrait of someone from whom a mysterious power seemed to flow – a power that the early Christians could only describe with one word: Love. It’s an overused word in our culture, but had little to do with romance or even emotions. It was that the secure, steady, persistent capacity to joyfully surrender his own fortunes, longings and eventually his life, for the sake of others.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This kind of love not only expressed sympathy, as most of us might do; it actually changed things. There was Zacchaeus – the filthy rich tax official, despised by just about everyone as an agent of the occupying Roman power and as a cheat, as many of his fellow revenue collectors were. The equivalent for us would be the reviled loan shark, preying on the poor by charging extortionate interest. On visiting Zacchaeus’s hometown of Jericho – in contrast to everyone else, who refused to speak to him and treated him as a pariah – Jesus made a bee-line for this loathsome man, and invited himself to his home, a place no one else would be seen dead in (this kind of love has little to do with feelings of attraction). The result was dramatic – Zacchaeus resolved to give away fifty per cent of his bank balance, and promised repayment and more to anyone who he might have cheated or demanded extra cash from in the past. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Then there was the woman caught having sex with someone else’s husband and summoned by the religious police to face justice. Just as the (presumably male) crowd begin to pick up stones for the public execution that her crime was thought to deserve, they turn to Jesus for his expected confirmation of the sentence passed on her. Enigmatically, he bends down and starts scratching something in the dust with his finger while they wait for his verdict. ‘OK,’ he says, ‘who is going to be first to stone her? I have an idea – why don’t we find someone who has never had a lustful thought towards a woman like this and let them start . . .?’ Silence. Slowly the stones drop to the ground and the crowd slips away, leaving just the woman and Jesus. ‘I don’t condemn you,’ he says. ‘Just go – make a new start, but mind you don’t get into this mess again.’ <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This power of this love was so strong and creative, it sometimes healed physical sickness, and even, on a couple of occasions, so it was said, brought people back from the dead, such as the time he and his friends bumped into a funeral procession. The young man in the open coffin was the only son of a woman who had already lost her husband some time before. Jesus, it seems, was grieved in his own spirit at the heart-rending sobbing of the mother, now left alone and defenceless in the world. He reaches out his hand and touches the bier, tells him to get up, upon which the boy suddenly sits up and begins to talk. Jesus helps him down, takes him to his mother and the joy that follows is left to our imagination. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Stories like this recur throughout the Gospels. They are even given a name: the ‘kingdom of God’ – the state where things happen the way they were always meant to be in the beginning before everything got twisted. It is what happens when everything gets wrapped up in love. The point of the early Christians’ belief that Jesus, the baby in the manger, was God’s Son, the ‘reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being’, as they put it, is that these things that Jesus did reveal our Creator to us. Forget the angry old man with the white beard shaking his fist and flinging curses on whoever irritates him – that is Thor or Zeus, not the God of the Christians. Forget the impassive despot dispensing good fortune and bad, depending on whatever mood he is in. When Jesus heals a leper, welcomes a loan shark, forgives an adulterer, gives a grieving widow her son back from the clutches of death, that is what God does. It’s not that God doesn’t get angry. He does. But he gets angry at everything that threatens to dismantle and destroy the good things he has made – and that includes the pride, envy and greed that diminishes us, breaks up our friendships and destroys our (or better, his) planet.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Christians celebrate Christmas, and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-50924266" style="color: #954f72;">even suffer</a> for it, because in the face of the man this baby grew up to be, we see the Love that created the world. It is the Big Bang with a face and a name. If you translated God, the Creator of the world, into an ordinary human life, this is what it would look like. It’s what it did look like. This was not one of the regular appearances of divine beings in mortal form, the staple of many Greek myths, but the God behind the gods, the mysterious source of everything that exists, appearing before their very eyes, no longer invisible but the visible ‘image of the invisible God’. You couldn’t tell immediately – there was no obvious halo behind his head, or phosphorescent glow to his flesh (apart from one dramatic occasion when a small group of his closest friends suddenly saw a luminous, brilliant light shining out of him on the top of a mountain). You could shake his hand as with any other human being, but if you had eyes to see it, when you did, you were shaking the hand of God. No wonder strange things happened around him.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Of course, it took the early Christians several centuries to work out the full implications of the mind-bending possibility that God had appeared on earth, like an author suddenly appearing in the middle of his own novel. But the basic outlines of the belief are there from very early days. Christians say that God is love not because they think it would be convenient if he was, and certainly not because the world is a nice place and the creation as we experience it points unambiguously to a good and kind God (this year more than ever, we should know that!). They say it because they believe that God has revealed his hand, or more exactly, showed us his face, in the face of Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This year we have endured things we never thought we would have to experience. We have missed, or even lost loved ones. We have seen the injustice of a world where black lives don’t seem to matter as much as white ones. We have come face to face with our frailty, our fears and with the ugly spectre of death itself. Into that messy, malfunctioning world, Christmas gives us an assurance that, despite everything that spoils it, it was originally born out of love, and will end in love – the love that becomes visible in the compassion turned towards a grieving widow, a despised tax official, a guilty woman – people just like you and me in our worst moments. It invites us to tune and shape our lives not to the forces that want to undo the world - a destructive virus, the disease of racism - but to the ordinary and extraordinary power of this love that comforts the lonely, forgives the repentant, gives time for those who are usually ignored, and enables us to find our true selves in the process.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is a message that we need to hear this year more than ever. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If you want to read more, these thoughts are developed in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Being-Yourself-Idea-Countercultural/dp/0281081794/ref=sr_1_1?crid=P8TP7YAQJDKS&dchild=1&keywords=graham+tomlin&qid=1608447969&sprefix=graham+t%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-1" style="color: #954f72;">Why Being Yourself is a Bad Idea</a><i> (SPCK, 2020)</i></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-29358351296457717112020-10-22T07:16:00.006+01:002020-10-24T09:47:29.384+01:00The Stark Choice that COVID sets before us<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1v1wljTsDxZ33DKDZqHwrp-zIzI1gWxOs9JFhnrlZd-HhKCdveRejKrTyAn7FDLhekDzaH6IDvn4JWHdmhDQyipFbMShykSO1NXve9V_aXnb4OqO_PHXwOS8wsrP5HE546uKQhT1Rhs/s1200/coronaviruspandemicmasks.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="1200" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1v1wljTsDxZ33DKDZqHwrp-zIzI1gWxOs9JFhnrlZd-HhKCdveRejKrTyAn7FDLhekDzaH6IDvn4JWHdmhDQyipFbMShykSO1NXve9V_aXnb4OqO_PHXwOS8wsrP5HE546uKQhT1Rhs/w320-h207/coronaviruspandemicmasks.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>In the old days they would have seen this as a judgment. With a global death toll that has now passed 1 million, this plague would have been interpreted by our forebears as divine punishment or a sign of the end times. Not many people are seeing it that way these days, but maybe our elders had a point. The Greek word for judgment is Krisis – crisis. The great book of judgment in the Bible is called the Apocalypse – the book of Revelation. Judgment was not only seen as punishment, but more as a moment of crisis, a revelation of where we are heading, impressing the stakes of a crucial decision upon us.</span><span><br /></span><span><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>At the start of lockdown, in towns, villages and cities across the country, people of all faiths and none volunteered time and money, neighbours knocked on the door of elderly people to offer to do their shopping, family members arranged Zoom calls to keep up the spirits of isolated relatives. One of the churches in my patch began to think about how to respond to the needs that were quickly becoming obvious - increasing levels of food poverty, financial anxiety and loss of employment. They started delivering some food boxes in their local area, and then started connecting with a network of other churches across the country who wanted to do something similar. They worked out a delivery system to help churches to become grass-roots centres of support for people struggling to put food on the table They eventually applied for and received government funding and to date have delivered over 3 million meals through various partners on the ground - churches, homeless projects, schools, foodbanks and the rest. So far, in this one initiative alone, around 250 churches and 1000 other organisations from various parts of civil society have joined together to provide emergency food, debt advice and employment training through over 50 clusters in cities and towns across England.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>The Clap for Carers and the NHS, the neighbourhood WhatsApp groups, the realisation that we need to act together to get through this, were all part of a surging of civic life that took us by surprise. Now these were things we maybe should have been doing all along, but the virus galvanised us into action and compassion. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>It gave us a brief revelation of what our social life could be. The Prime Minister himself was so struck by this that he asked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/24/create-reserve-army-of-volunteers-to-fight-crises-government-told"><span style="color: #dca10d;">Danny Kruger MP to write up a report</span></a> on how to capture this outpouring of civic virtue. I remember the same sense after the Grenfell Tower fire which happened in one of our parishes, yet it wasn’t long before the desire to do something to help dissipated along with the cooling of the autumn days. Reports are useful, and Danny Kruger’s has some very good ideas, yet perhaps the roots of our civic lethargy go deeper. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>In his magisterial book ‘Sources of the Self’, the philosopher Charles Taylor shows how in the ancient world, people would look outside themselves for moral power or guidance – to God, or to natural law, the Tao or the Platonic Ideas – each of which gave a different, but wider structure within which human life was lived. There was a providential order to the world, that saw nature as a vast interlocking system, which ultimately worked towards the conservation & wellbeing of each of its parts. Since the eighteenth century however, we have turned to look, not outside, but inside ourselves to find moral truth and wisdom - we no longer look towards the heavens but into our hearts. In what Taylor calls ‘the subjective turn’ in modern culture, people in the west began to turn away from the idea of an external moral order, any sense of what Marilynne Robinson has called the sheer <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Givenness-Things-Marilynne-Robinson-ebook/dp/B00WR70K22/ref=sr_1_7?crid=7AIT9SRJARGX&dchild=1&keywords=marilynne+robinson&qid=1601363486&s=books&sprefix=Marilynne+%2Caps%2C178&sr=1-7"><span style="color: #dca10d;">givenness of things</span></a>, from the notion that there was a moral and ontological structure to the world before we ever got here. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>In this historically and geographically particular take on the world, the ultimate moral demand is to be true to yourself, by which we tend to mean an inner nature which can only be self-discerned or defined. The source of moral power we seek is not in the natural order, or the law of God, or even Goodness, as Iris Murdoch thought, but in our own inner selves and identities. The result is a turning inwards, away from sources of life outside ourselves, towards an ever-increasing sense of isolation, alienated not just from the natural world, but also from each other in increasingly secluded bubbles of personal autonomy. All of our moral trajectory over recent centuries has been towards the primacy of the autonomous individual, free from the demands of others to pursue their own path in life, as long as they don’t hurt anyone else. This view ensures personal liberties, but it makes us view each other as at best limitations, or even threats to our own personal freedoms, goals and desires, and gives us no good reason to feel obliged to care for our neighbours. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>Coronavirus has given us a glimpse of the end of this path. It has shrunk our existence. We no longer travel very far, we give strangers a wide berth as we walk along the pavement, fearing them as a potential source of disease. As restrictions increase, we don’t mix with our neighbours, locked down in our own homes and living rooms, watching an endless loop of grim news bulletins, charting the spread of the disease. We cannot even see each others’ faces. The face is that part of us that displays our inner selves and emotions, more than anything else. Our faces make us, at least in part, transparent to each other. Yet as we slip the elastic bands of our masks behind our ears, we are hidden away from our neighbours. We become more of a mystery to each other as we stumble our way through muffled conversations, trying desperately to see what is going on inside each other’s hearts and heads, with only the eyes to give us a clue. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>A friend who lives alone reported that she had not touched another human being in six months, something that had a big impact upon her own mental health and wellbeing. In a world with no parties, no large gatherings of people to enjoy music or sport together, even public gathering for worship closed down for a while, our horizons shrank to our living rooms, our homes, our computer screens, the walk around the block, our immediate households. Lockdown originally had its novelty value, and introverts particularly enjoyed the enforced isolation, the lack of pressure to go out and be sociable, yet even they soon began to long for some human contact. Martin Luther had a phrase to describe the human condition – ‘the heart curved in upon itself’ – and we are seeing a glimpse of what that looks like. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>A crisis like Grenfell or the Coronavirus can galvanise us into action, yet, so often it remains optional. When it becomes inconvenient, we slip back to old ways, behind our four walls and our isolated lives. The problem is that we don’t have a strong enough overarching structure of belief to make it permanent. We are no longer ‘embedded’ as Taylor would put it, in a natural order that makes demands upon us. We no longer have a sense of obligation to love our neighbour because the natural law, the structure of the universe, or the will of God demand it. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>If these past months have given us an alarming glimpse into one future, a future of ever-increasing isolation, our lives shrunk to the scope of four walls, it has also allowed us a glimpse of another way of connectedness - of learning to lose our self-obsession and becoming more interested in our neighbours’ needs and worth rather than our own, living with respect for a world that we did not create. It gives an opportunity to discover a way of life that is ultimately far more satisfying than the self-help mantras and the dogmas of personal wellbeing. After all, the advice to make a priority of loving God and neighbour was never intended as some heteronomous demand to be reluctantly obeyed, but a description of the way in which we flourish best as human beings. But it will need more than an occasional burst of public-spiritedness. It will need a fundamental shift of our moral and spiritual assumptions. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>The problem is that we can’t do this ourselves. We can’t turn our curved-in nature outwards any more than a flower, by sheer self-will, can turn itself upwards. Just as a flower has to be drawn upwards by the sun, the source of life and heat, so too we can only be turned outwards by something more powerful and compelling than the hurts and anxieties that constrict and constrain us. It can’t be delivered by a belief that this world is a blank, faceless impassive place, indifferent to us or to our future. It can only be sustained by believing that this world emerged out of something greater – that it emerged out of Love. This alone enables this flowering of our true selves, not turned inwards in self-obsession, but outwards in love and fascination towards God and our neighbours. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span><span>Perhaps this is a moment of judgment after all. Like in so many other ways, COVID-19 has sharpened the choice that lies before us. We could continue turning inwards to find meaning in our own introspection. Or we could find a lasting sense of connection, a new moral energy, or even find our true selves – paradoxically by losing them, as Jesus taught. This will require a deep personal and cultural conversion. This is the choice, the invitation to lose our crippling self-obsession, and learn to love God and our neighbour - the person we find in the house, street or queue next to us, whoever they are - and to become truly happy in the process.</span></span></div><p></p>Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-48231020551398189972020-09-10T13:31:00.002+01:002020-09-11T11:36:15.413+01:00A Pastoral Letter - September 2020<div class="separator"><div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="760" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc0r_zQPXDIe71ROFNjik3KXVhOaRFCQs4PUQHzczmtAxFngx6ukMdbaha3ujLQc6Ygdvlc3Fw1bbG2HV7TMcw8CdeLHncqZgkekEnVMaCg_tLV-QZxtBsapwPApPaDfXrf3SNXgdzAKg/w320-h180/760x428_Coronavirus_hope_rainbow_drawing.jpg" width="320" /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-indent: 36pt;"> </span></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-indent: 36pt;">When the year started back in January, few of us could have imagined how the coming months would play out. As the su</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-indent: 36pt;">mmer turns to autumn, it appear</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-indent: 36pt;">s that varying forms of the restrictions under which we have been living will continue for some time. As a nation we are heading into difficult times as the economy struggles, jobs are disappearing and we live with the fear of a spike of the virus in the coming months. We are also aware that church life as we have known it will be unlikely to return to ‘normal’ for some time. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">In this context it is critical that we learn to drink deeply from the wells of our Christian faith more than ever. The God who made us and made the world, and who has come to us in Jesus Christ gives us</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><i style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">faith</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">to trust in his care for us,</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><i style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">hope</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">for the future however dark the days may be, and the inspiration to</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><i style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">love</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">our neighbours at a time when COVID-19 might make us view our neighbours as threats to health and wellbeing.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">A part of Scripture that has been on my mind recently is the small letter of Jude. It was written towards the end of the first century at a time when the church was facing challenges of various kinds. A short section towards the end of the letter seems to me to speak very clearly into our needs right now:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><b><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your </span></i></b><b><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And be merciful to those who are anxious or doubting.</span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">That advice, to ‘build yourselves up in your most holy faith’ speaks of the need for each of us to take responsibility to strengthen the faith we have and to draw on the wisdom of the past at this critical time in our national and church life, not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the wider community, so we can bring to others the hope we find in Christ. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">So how do we ‘build ourselves up in our most holy faith’? The letter mentions four things: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">1. <b>Pray in the Holy Spirit</b>: the Holy Spirit prompts us to pray and our first calling as Christians is to do just that - for ourselves, our families, our neighbours and communities. If we are to build ourselves up in faith, we will need to be rooted in disciplined habits of prayer, as far as we are able, turning to God each day for our daily needs in a way that expresses our dependence and trust in him. Now may be a time for a renewal of our life of prayer, individually and corporately. You might contact your local parish to find times of prayer together either online or in person or find new ideas for prayer on sites such as </span><a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/learning-pray" style="color: purple;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/learning-pray</span></a><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> or </span><a href="https://www.24-7prayer.com/helpmepray" style="color: purple;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">https://www.24-7prayer.com/helpmepray</span></a><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">2. <b>Keep yourselves in the love of God: </b>This world emerged out of the love that pulses at the heart of God and the privilege we have as Christians is to learn to live in tune with that love which we see in the face of Jesus Christ. We can be brought back to that love in different ways – through sharing in the Eucharist regularly, daily Bible reading, accessing sermons online, contemplation, enjoying God’s creation, listening to music, reading books or being active in the community. As we deliberately make time for these things, we need to allow this sense of the profound reality of the love of God for his world to seep into the rest of our lives, the way we view ourselves, others and even the ground on which we walk. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">3<b>. Look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life</b>. COVID-19 has brought us face to face with our own vulnerability and mortality. Our Christian faith tells us that sickness and death do not have the last word and tells us of the reality of Resurrection that we proclaim at every funeral, in every bereavement. All of our lives will come to an end one day, and at a time of uncertainty and fear, our Christian faith encourages us to look at death with the hope of eternal life. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">4. <b>Be merciful to those who are anxious or doubting</b>. There are many around us, whether Christian friends, those of other faiths or none, who are anxious and fearful about their employment, their health, or their families. Of course we too share those anxieties, yet our faith is a resource that enables us to find reassurance for ourselves as well as offer it to others. Even if it is not possible to attend church physically as much as we would like, it is important to link in with others online at least, to be able to encourage others as much as to gain support ourselves. If you haven’t already, do contact your parish church to see what ways there are to connect with others, or schemes they have for getting involved in extending care and compassion in the wider community.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">This is a time for the church to hold out the hope we find in Christ, but we can only do that if our own lives are deeply rooted in him. My prayers are daily with you as we go through this time of uncertainty, that we will rise to the challenge of these days as the Christian church across our part of London.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">+Graham<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "minion pro", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></p>Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-58960629201269947962020-06-25T13:51:00.002+01:002020-06-25T13:52:27.617+01:00A Wounded Realist - Guest Blog by Denis Adide<div class="Default" style="border: none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilD9Y0kDffaU194y9R6miyakT7Iw7ffiocib0SXLlBfYz5d0TfJwokl16cQsvKVTBB3TWM6ndEnN5faXuqd1QTKLhHSwBl9xuN_xwGTNsWtfXhyphenhyphenMFEqkVwo8k5GADhjrZPfoh9aXN7ifc/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1012" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilD9Y0kDffaU194y9R6miyakT7Iw7ffiocib0SXLlBfYz5d0TfJwokl16cQsvKVTBB3TWM6ndEnN5faXuqd1QTKLhHSwBl9xuN_xwGTNsWtfXhyphenhyphenMFEqkVwo8k5GADhjrZPfoh9aXN7ifc/s320/Unknown.jpeg" width="202" /></a><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">In recent days we have become aware of the pervasive presence of racism in our own hearts, our church and society. I asked Denis Adide, one of the younger clergy in the Kensington Area to offer a Guest Blog piece reflecting on his experience. </span></i><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps it was the collective awareness of our mortality brought about by the global pandemic. The world was made sensitive to the simplicity of life</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">s light and how easy it is to extinguish. The numbers of those lost to Covid-19 being read out in the daily briefings starkly reminding us all of just how vulnerable we each are. </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps, in addition, the stripping away of all the normal distractions gave some of us - for the first time - a long sight of the mirror. We were forced to confront who we were - apart from the normal </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">what we do for a living</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’ </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">answer. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps, the recently developed culture/habit of long, YouTube and TikTok spirals with videos linked to videos meant that the sight of something </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">viral</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’ </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">was inevitable. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whatever the case, it seems the world was forced to be still for those long eight minutes and forty six seconds. Twisted between the knowledge that this man was losing his life, and the illusory hope that someone - anyone - might intervene. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By all accounts the sight was shocking. A man pleaded for breath, another knelt on his neck - hands firmly in his pockets, as firm as the scowl he presents the watching crowd. A young girl films the scene on her smart phone, a few passers-by intercede for a reprieve while the very ones sworn to save life, take it: they do so in a torturous and lengthy way. It is hard to watch but something inside us compelled us to. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">For many the world presented by this scene was foreign. Like new borns, they awoke and for the first time drew breath and felt the cold. Like the road to Damascus, the dazzling light recalibrating their eyes with the realisation that they couldn</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">t see what was always in plain sight. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">For others, like myself, this was the world we awoke to at birth. This pain - watching a lynching - wasn</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">t new but recurring. We knew the terror of entering rooms which bore the threat of being made to feel like the lesser </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">other</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>. We knew the ears that disregarded our pleas for dignity, utilising the power available - in ways both subtle and obvious - to dismiss our laments. We knew the frustration of having our prophetic utterances - calling out the wickedness we could see and were enduring - dismissed as </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: inherit;">irrational</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’ </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">or </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">angry</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>. We knew the inner shake of watching - as I did - and old black man rising from his seat on the crowded bus so that the middle aged white woman would sit. She took the seat without batting an eye or a second thought, or a thank you. We knew the threat of being stopped and searched for </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="PT" style="font-family: inherit;">resembling</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’ </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">the </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">suspect</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>, or driving a car that was </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">beyond your station</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="LTR" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>, or not possibly living in </span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">that</span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: inherit;"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’ </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">neighbourhood. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I knew the pain of preaching in a prison full of people who look like me; of looking at the statistics and seeing the truth I knew before checking - that there was a clear disparity along ethnicity lines. I knew the indignity of being asked to remove my coat in a shop because the shopkeeper and his wife were convinced I had stolen something. Convinced of my guilt none of the folks in the queue behind me objected or intervened. I had to return to theological college and somehow carry on with my day. I knew the pain of seeing depicted in the news an idea of what it meant to be a black man that was deeply false - seeing the disparity between the representations of black and white men across all media. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">We, I, have been marked out to be the exotic, dangerous, desirable, </span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US">other</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="EN-US"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>. A body to be displayed at times - show casing the ‘white authority figure’s’ philanthropy. An appearance to be freely commented upon; hair to be touched; identity to be questioned. With our sovereignty of flesh, mind, and will constantly suffering violence it’s no surprise that the private divinity of death isn’t afforded us: the black man’s last breath was broadcast. I know the sorrow of watching folk react to the spectacle, claim to desire change, then search for the next spectacle. I know the pain of watching my white colleagues gloss over the killings of unarmed black men, buying ‘necessity’ as a just cause. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">This world isn</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">t new. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The ill treatment of the Windrush generation and their families is still ongoing. I still have monkey noises made at me. I still have to justify my cry for equality, equity, and dignity. I still have to call on twice as much grace to forgive the daily assaults from those that surround me. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">My country doesn</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">t teach it</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">s own history and has a </span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US">special relationship</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’ </span><span lang="EN-US">with the country where a young woman who resembles my own sister was shot and killed in her own home by a police officer: no one has been held to account for this as yet. My country now wishes to leverage aid to the very places for which it bears responsibility for buried bones. In truth, my country’s idea of its own citizen’s face, doesn’t include mine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">My Church… my church. At best, woefully blind, and at worst wilfully complicit has its own hands drenched in the same blood. Binding its course to the rest of the world</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">s instead of heaven</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">s, this bride built her house with the same blue-prints as society, and has etched in all its windows the images that make me that </span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="EN-US">other</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="EN-US"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>: the dragon that George slays. With crucial pages of history stuck together, generations ignored the mirrors that the scriptures held up. In thought, word, and deed; through negligence, weakness, and deliberate choices her face now resembles the world and not its groom.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When we checked, no one had stood up and spoken for us. No one had taken up our case. In its corridors we are happened upon by bandits who with their words and deeds steal our dignity. Though I have had champions along the way, my story is one with those who’ve had to endure discrimination in its many forms in the isles, pews, church offices, assessment rooms and meetings. Her hands are not clean. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6011722518762175916&useLegacyBlogger=true" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I heard from the streets these past weeks - while the church was silent - the prophetic voice that should have been hers. And when she eventually did speak, it was a familiar song. For my life-time, the truth of its institutional racism has been known. In my life-time no substantial change has been made. Confession and penance divorced at the altar, words ever flowed but actions never followed. And the bitterness I feel and I seek God’s face in order to endure, is also echoed in the voices of my contemporaries and forebears. We lament on the margins with no refuge on the earth. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The murder of George Floyd was a painful thing to watch. But the world that made - and still makes - such a thing possible prevails. This death, at the hands of an old and firmly established tyranny, adds one more black body to the vast cloud of witnesses: unwilling martyrs. We who survive do so in a life restrained, unable to fully become for the weight we bare until change happens or the judge takes his seat. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">The freshly opened eyes of the world and its ‘new found’ voice now pose a challenge. Will this new swell of </span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>‘</span><span lang="PT">outrage</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="EN-US"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>,</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span> ‘</span><span lang="EN-US">protest</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="EN-US"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span> and ‘confession’ bring about a change to the world I</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">ve lived in: to the church I’m called to serve in? Can I dare dream that the day will come when my armour and first aid kit won</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">t need repair and replenishing? There have been waves like these, will this be different? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hope is such a hard thing for a wounded realist to hold onto.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">I, for one, will wait. Seeds take a while to germinate. Until I see the shoots of something new, I</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">ll continue to weep for the world my son and daughters are growing up in; I</span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA"><span dir="RTL"></span><span dir="RTL"></span>’</span><span lang="EN-US">ll continue to tell them what I need to to keep them safe. They will know that the many layers of their being are under constant threat. They will know that the tears they’ll shed join their sorrow to the spirit of those who’ve gone before. They will know vigilance, to spot the obvious and subtle assaults. They will know the scars these wounds leave. And when we talk about the many lives lost, and George Floyd, I’ll remind them of the rock on which I’m anchored. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;">They will know of the one who struggled to draw breath for hours on a tree; the same one who was with God in the beginning. They will know that, despite what the world and the church (if no change happens) might say, they are fearfully and wonderfully made - chosen before the foundations of the world. They will know that in the colour of their skin is the inheritance of an un-suppressable human spirit - forged in fire and chains and forever rising. They will know that their place is alongside Christ, proclaiming the wickedness of the times while enduring so that they might reign with him. Hopefully, with no scales in their eyes they might survive, and maybe even thrive in this nightmare.</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-30714934481342390632020-03-16T15:28:00.004+00:002020-10-24T21:21:55.574+01:00Responding to COVID<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the current crisis around Coronavirus, I have been reflecting on St Paul’s trinity of Christian virtues: Faith, Hope and Love, and how they might frame our Christian response to the crisis in our communities:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>FAITH</b>: We are in uncharted territory where there is no clear trajectory for spread of Coronavirus and no obvious cure as yet. Yet our Christian faith tells us that we can trust the God who holds our times in his hands. We do not believe that the world is governed by blind fate or random chance but Providence – the sure and trustworthy hand of the God of Jesus Christ working his purposes out through all the confusing and bewildering swings of history. Fear can be as infectious as the disease, so why don’t we try to counter it with the even more infectious influence of faith? Faith, especially during this time of Lent, urges us to pray with greater urgency, as the church has always done in times like this in the past, for those at the frontline in the NHS, for the most vulnerable and for a turning of the tide of this virus.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>HOPE</b>: one thing that will not be cancelled is Easter Day. We may or may not be able to celebrate it together in person, but it will still happen. We have in our faith the greatest message of hope in the world, and this is the time to hold onto that hope and make it known where we can. When we reach the end of our own resources the risen Christ meets us there, and so to counter despair, try to find ways to practice hopeful action, looking forward to the day when this crisis will pass, and even more, when Resurrection comes. Light a candle in a window. Keep one burning in your home as a sign of hope. Use sermons and social media posts to spread message of hope and not fear. Think of other imaginative signs of hope that remind people of the hope we have in Christ. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>LOVE</b>: perfect love casts out fear, and now is the time more than ever for the church to be known by its Love, worked out in down-to-earth practical ways. So here are a few thoughts on what you might do:</span></div>
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<li class="gmail-m_-2382066176387559732MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Make a plan</b>: Get together with key people (wardens, staff, lay leadership) to work out a proper plan to put in place on how to show the love of Christ to your neighbourhood, as this crisis will most likely last several months. </span></li>
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<li class="gmail-m_-2382066176387559732MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Care for the Vulnerable</b>: With many over-70s being confined to home, why not ask people to look out for elderly neighbours and make a point of checking they are ok, phoning in regularly, offering to shop for them if they need help. Check what is happening in your local area & co-ordinate with others where you can -<a href="https://covidmutualaid.org/local-groups/" target="_blank">https://covidmutualaid.org/local-groups/</a></span></li>
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<li class="gmail-m_-2382066176387559732MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Communicate often: </b>Why not send round a weekly email message of encouragement to people not able to get out, especially if church meetings are curtailed? If you can broadcast your service on Sundays for those self-isolating, it’s relatively easy to do - check out <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/more/church-resources/digital-labs/labs-learning-blog/beginners-guide-going-live-your-service-or" target="_blank">this advice</a>. </span></li>
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<li class="gmail-m_-2382066176387559732MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Meet Virtually</b>: When self-isolating we still need human interaction. Encourage and imagine new ways of keeping in touch, digitally, by phone, or even old-fashioned letters, which don’t involve physical contact. </span></li>
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<li class="gmail-m_-2382066176387559732MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Stay Safe</b>: Remind people often of the value of social distancing, washing hands etc. as acts not so much of self-interest but of compassion for those who are most vulnerable.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You will think of many other ideas to put into your plan. This is a time of testing for all of us perhaps especially the Church. Now is the time to keep the faith, hold out hope and live out the love of Christ in these critical days.</span><br />
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-70096194295305693282020-03-03T22:24:00.003+00:002020-03-04T11:48:28.707+00:00Lent, Jean Vanier and Harvey Weinstein<a href="https://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/08166306.jpg?quality=70&strip=all&w=719" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="An internal report revealed Saturday Feb. 22, 2020, that L’Arche founder Jean Vanier, a respected Canadian religious figure, sexually abused at least six women." border="0" class="c-figure__image" height="164" sizes="
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Or so it seemed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What Jean Vanier did with <i>l’Arche</i> was remarkable, as I tried to explain <a href="https://unherd.com/2019/05/the-perfect-power-of-weakness/" style="color: #954f72;">in an article I wrote in Unherd</a> when he died. To create a set of communities across the world based on the conviction that mental or physical abilities bear no relation to the value and beauty of an individual human being was extraordinary. So the news that over a period of 35 years, he abused at least six different women is devastating, first and foremost to the women who suffered at his hands, who still live with the effects of his behaviour, but in a lesser way for the many who thought of him as someone as near as you might get to a modern saint. The discovery that someone who displayed a level of compassion and love beyond which most of us can manage, was also capable of devious manipulation of women who trusted him is disillusioning and deeply depressing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There seems to be a pattern, maybe particularly strong in religious circles, of placing our trust entirely in those who seem better than us. Maybe it is a sign of our need to find heroes, saints, people we don’t question, who can lift us up to be better than we are. We desperately need to find people who satisfy our need for a Saviour who compensates for our own weakness and compromise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yet it never quite works out that way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The writers of the Bible seem at pains never to let us believe the hype about the ‘heroes of faith’. Moses murdered a man and tried to hide the body. Abraham lied repeatedly about his wife out of fear for his own skin. Jacob cheated his own brother out of his inheritance. Samson ended up a proto-suicide bomber, killing his enemies as he died. King David, the ‘man after God’s own heart’, arranged a contract killing of one of his own loyal soldiers to cover up getting his wife pregnant. Even St Peter swore blind that he had never even heard of Jesus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wayne Lapierre, Chairman of the National Rifle Association in the USA once famously said “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” If only it were that simple. The world is not neatly divided between the good and the bad, saints and sinners, with or without guns. We are all a bit of both (that’s why guns are dangerous whoever wields them). Some, granted, are more one than the other, but all of us share in that odd mixture of compassion and neglect, truth and lies, bravery and cowardice. We are divided selves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Czech writer and politician Vaclav Havel, reflecting on his experience as a dissident under Stalinist eastern Europe once wrote that “the line between good and evil did not run clearly between them and us, but through each person. No-one was simply a victim. Everyone was in some measure co-responsible.” There are no irredeemably bad people. There are bad actions that deserve punishment, but no purely evil people. There may be some that have turned so far away from goodness and life that it’s hard to imagine them ever being turned back toward the light, but if, as Christian faith says, all that God has created is good, then however much a person may have turned away from the light towards the darkness, while they are still alive there is something good in there – if only the continued existence of life itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At the same time there are no totally good people either. Some while ago, a Labour politician was doing a question and answer slot for a political website. He was asked a series of questions that demanded quickfire answers. One of them was ‘Winston Churchill – hero or villain?’. He thought for a brief moment and instinctively replied ‘Tonypandy - Villain’, referring to Churchill’s decision to send in troops to control striking coalminers in South Wales in 1910. Predictably he came in for a barrage of criticism for this slur on one of Britain’s favourite and most revered Prime Ministers. Yet the problem was not really the answer, it was the question. It was the instinct, so common in our polarised, Twitter-mediated world, to place people entirely on one side or the other of a moral ledger. Was Churchill a hero or a villain? Was Jean Vanier a saint or a sinner? The reality is that at times they were one, at other times they were the other. Like the rest of us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jean Vanier was capable of real compassion. He was also, it turns out, capable of devious wickedness. None of us in leadership positions, however holy and wise we think we become, are immune from the abuse of power, from the possibility of self-deception, from giving in to the seductive temptations of harmful desire. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jean Vanier was capable of greater goodness yet also darker sins than most of us. The revelation of the terrible harm he did to the women he abused, despite his great achievements, brings us back to the realisation that there is only one true Saviour. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The gospels remind us that there is only One who can save us. Only One who is truly good.</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-58350545549756418372019-05-05T08:01:00.002+01:002020-03-06T17:03:10.805+00:00St Mellitus - a Story of Redemption<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfPTTIYQU-0inD98g3OG7RfKCnErczVB5cMLF0mUzIdU3wU8EWJQP4GEqDYGYlaqOU5hLMC2iYp34oLnLG6Qh7YeMhC02eKhZvppXCXeKD8ovduHn8VvBR7dahzDbSUEdd8JhRRtfEKxU/s1600/St+P.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfPTTIYQU-0inD98g3OG7RfKCnErczVB5cMLF0mUzIdU3wU8EWJQP4GEqDYGYlaqOU5hLMC2iYp34oLnLG6Qh7YeMhC02eKhZvppXCXeKD8ovduHn8VvBR7dahzDbSUEdd8JhRRtfEKxU/s1600/St+P.jpg" /></a><i style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px;">This is the text of a sermon preached at St Paul's Cathedral on Thursday 2nd May 2019, when </i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue";"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><i>the</i></span></span><i style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px;"> Cathedral was celebrating St Mellitus' Day</i></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>If it wasn’t for St Mellitus we would not be here. Let me explain. Christianity came to these islands in the 2nd century, and apparently there were bishops around this area near the Thames from that time onwards, but the records and the dates of those early leaders of the church in Britain are very uncertain. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is the Venerable Bede who tells the famous story of Pope Gregory going to the market in Rome and seeing some young slaves with “fair complexion, handsome faces and lovely hair.” He asked where they came from, and was told they came from the island of Britain. He asked were the British Christians, and was told (inaccurately as it happens) that the country was still pagan. He then asked what was the name of their race, and was told they were Angli. His well-known reply was: “Good – they have the face of angels and such men should be fellow-heirs of the angels in heaven.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Partly as a result of this encounter, and maybe some more prosaic factors, Gregory launched his mission to the English in 595 AD. He chose Augustine, Abbot of the Monastery he had founded in Rome, dedicated to St Andrew, to lead the mission. Augustine arrived on the shores of Kent two years later, settled in Canterbury as a base for their activities, and started to evangelise the locals. They were helped by the fact that the local king’s wife, Bertha, was a Christian – and the king, Aethelbert, was himself baptised soon after. Augustine’s mission was hard work though, and it wasn’t long before he was asking Pope Gregory for reinforcements. And this is where Mellitus comes onto the scene. He was a well-born Italian, had been appointed as Augustine’s successor in the monastery of St Andrew, and was now asked to help Augustine by travelling to England to support his mission – a request he could hardly refuse!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGyizY31KzTH8278h5-KEQ58yGQcighEZJVad9IA9dV3xaJrX8RRhAOZzbE62FoeANgxWCeywQKuzu89FHIQFf5Y-yJChIyd_lPSPDMQS7eN4QqGHBuNVl43ve6PSbOXIp-jUyAKUYPpE/s1600/St+M.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGyizY31KzTH8278h5-KEQ58yGQcighEZJVad9IA9dV3xaJrX8RRhAOZzbE62FoeANgxWCeywQKuzu89FHIQFf5Y-yJChIyd_lPSPDMQS7eN4QqGHBuNVl43ve6PSbOXIp-jUyAKUYPpE/s1600/St+M.jpg" /></a>He arrived in 601 and three years later was appointed the first Saxon Bishop of London. He was to be bishop of the East Saxons – the territory north of the Thames (south of the Thames was considered Kent, which is why to this day the diocese of London only contains the land north of the Thames.) Bede then says this “after this race had accepted the word of truth through the preaching of Mellitus, King Aethelbert built the church of the apostle St Paul in the city of London in which Mellitus and his successors were to have their episcopal seat.” It was of course on this very site, what later became known as Ludgate Hill, that the original St Paul’s church, presumably a small wooden structure, was built for Mellitus and his mission. I always like to imagine Mellitus preaching right here on this spot, doing his best to convert pagan London around him. <o:p></o:p></div>
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About 13 years ago, the 132nd successor to Mellitus as Bishop of London, Richard Chartres and John Gladwin the Bishop of Chelmsford, wanted to reimagine theological training in their dioceses. Holy Trinity Brompton and its vicar Nicky Gumbel also had innovative ideas on developing new forms of theological training, as a vital partner in those discussions and a new theological college emerged out of the conversations. The combined territory of the two dioceses covered the old land of the East Saxons, so it was decided to name the college after St Mellitus. I was privileged to be asked to be the first Principal of the college, and remain its President today, so have had good reason to think about the ministry of Mellitus over the past few years, and I have come to think that his story is all about redemption. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our Bible readings tonight highlight two aspects of his story. The first reading from 1 Corinthians 3.10-17 highlights the way which St Paul saw his ministry as laying a foundation which others built on. In the same way, Mellitus built on the foundations that Augustine had laid before him in sharing the good news of Christ with the people of England. By all accounts, Mellitus was a pretty good missionary. Many people embraced the Christian faith through his preaching, and the fact that he was made the first Saxon Bishop of London may suggest that he played a major role in the initial conversion of a good many in this city to Christianity. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So why did his mission meet with some success? Bede cites a letter written by Pope Gregory to Mellitus, which maybe gives us a hint as to why his mission worked. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember that Mellitus was preaching to a pagan society, one where people were not atheists, but regular worshippers of the pagan gods in the temples and sacred groves that were scattered across the Roman Empire of the time – and the Christians viewed these gods as essentially demonic powers. The instinct for someone like Mellitus might have been, once people were converted to Christianity, to destroy their previous pagan buildings and replace them with newly built churches. In his letter, Gregory recommends something different – he suggests that the Christians use these pagan temples for their worship. Only the statues of the gods should be taken out, to be replaced with Christian altars and relics of the saints. The idea is that these former pagans will be more likely come to worship in places they are more familiar with, and be able to transition to Christian faith more easily. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As they were used to sacrificing animals in worship, Gregory also suggests that they continue to kill animals, but only for food, not for worship. In other words, he wants to make it as easy as possible for a person to leave paganism and embrace the Christian faith. This is not an aggressive, imperialist approach to evangelism, but one that looks for what can be redeemed within the existing culture and can be enriched and find its fulfilment in Christ. It is grounded in a strong doctrine of creation, which sees God at work in different aspects of human culture. It sees any particular human culture as a mix of createdness and fallenness, good and bad, neither denying the goodness that can be found any human society, yet not being naïvely uncritical about that culture. It sees Christianity as enriching and fulfilling the best aspirations of human culture, not destroying them. What strikes you is the confidence that a culture can be redeemed, transformed, enhanced, re-directed by the coming of the gospel. </div>
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<o:p> </o:p><span style="font-size: 11pt;">At a time where our own culture seems at a crossroads, not knowing quite where to go after (or if) Brexit happens, haunted by fear of knife crime or modern slavery, with growing anxiety over climate change, Gregory and Mellitus’ confidence that a similarly directionless Britain in their own time can be changed is remarkable and an inspiration for us, their successors in C21st London. Just as those pagan temples were re-used, re-directed to the worship of the true God, so human lives and cultures, baptised into the gospel are not destroyed but re-directed, re-focussed to their true end, the God revealed in Jesus Christ.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></div>
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Yet Mellitus’ story does not just speak of the redemption of culture but also of people. The gospel reading for this evening (John 10. 11-16) speaks of the good Shepherd, and the ‘hired hand’ who runs away at the first sign of trouble because he does not care for the sheep. This would have been an uncomfortable story for Mellitus. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After he had been made Bishop of London, Mellitus had an argument with the still pagan sons of a later King – King Saeberht - who insisted that he give them the special Communion bread which they thought had magic powers, despite the fact that they had not been baptised as Christians. Mellitus refused, at which point the king’s sons expelled him from the city. Mellitus went to confer with his fellow bishops Laurence and Justus, and it seems they were so fed up with these pesky, obstinate Saxons that they decided to give up on them, planning to return home to Italy to live a quieter life. However in a dream, St Peter appeared to one of them – Bishop Laurence – who rebuked him for deserting his post. He quickly persuaded Mellitus to return, which he did. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This must have been a distressing episode for Mellitus. Banished from his Cathedral church here on this site, his mission, despite its initial success, seemed to have failed, London remaining stubbornly pagan. Faced with a little difficulty, he had run away, just like Peter had done in denying Christ. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yet, as it had been for Peter, failure was not the end. Mellitus did return. Even though the people of London did not accept him back, he ended up succeeding Augustine as the third Archbishop of Canterbury. The last we hear of him is it as a sick old man, suffering from gout, yet still full of faith. There is a story of him as an elderly man being carried out from his rooms to face a fire which was ravaging Canterbury, and threatening the church in a fashion that reminds us of the recent fire in Notre Dame in Paris. This time however, Mellitus’ prayers were answered, the wind turned, and the disaster was averted. As Bede puts it “so brightly did the man of God burn with the fire of divine love, so often had he repelled the stormy powers of the air from harming him and his people by his prayers and exhortations, that it was right for him to be able to prevail over earthly winds and flames so that they should not injure him and his people.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Failure did not define him – but faith did. His story is one of redemption. That in Jesus Christ, culture can been redeemed and enriched. But even more, people can be. Even you and I can be. Failure, rather than the end of the story ,can be the beginning. It can be the gateway to humility, true self-knowledge and wisdom. At this Easter time, the story of St Mellitus can point us back to the truth that through the cross and resurrection of Christ, we and the whole world can be redeemed, forgiven, restored.<o:p></o:p></div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-38380470743111889682018-12-21T14:15:00.003+00:002018-12-21T14:16:58.504+00:00Christmas Message 2018 - God's Glory in human life<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr67E7I4lvU5H5uQZmtxO1l9Vi9YyHhm1zRiebQ042PWBkCXQH25MOC2YrXrXF8UzbEmHZuY4AARdGbZ0QwSEt-xEtOHa3s2MDEyibF4dptm18GT_fePKFpZISwXqEUgzmLuKR8j68-s8/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr67E7I4lvU5H5uQZmtxO1l9Vi9YyHhm1zRiebQ042PWBkCXQH25MOC2YrXrXF8UzbEmHZuY4AARdGbZ0QwSEt-xEtOHa3s2MDEyibF4dptm18GT_fePKFpZISwXqEUgzmLuKR8j68-s8/s400/Unknown.jpeg" /></a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">During Advent we have been reminded of the tension between waiting patiently for the coming of Christ, and the urgency of knowing that ‘the times are short’. We are all aware of the anxieties in our national life over recent weeks, and the sense that we are living in a time that could set directions for many decades to come. It leads us to hold our nation in prayer this Christmas and to extend the invitation to know the peace of Christ in a time when there is precious little peace around. It also teaches us to base our hope not in the prospect of Brexit or the European Union or in any other human construct, but in Christ and his kingdom that is not of this world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The great mystery of the Incarnation is that in Christ, God’s glory shines, not despite his humanity, but precisely through his humanity. And that means that ordinary human flesh like yours and mine, when it is conformed to the image of Christ, is capable of displaying the glory of God – through simple gestures of love and words of encouragement offered in the name of Christ. St Basil the Great has a way of putting it – that each human being is made in the image of God, but has to grow into the likeness of God by learning to walk the way of Christ and growing in the fruit of the Spirit. Origen, who got some things wrong, but many things right, put it like this: “For Christians see that with Jesus, human and divine nature began to be woven together, so that by fellowship with divinity, human nature might become divine, not only in Jesus, but in all those who believe and go on to undertake the life which Jesus taught, the life which leads everyone who lives according to Jesus' commandments, to friendship with God and fellowship with Jesus.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">May this Christmas be a time when we open our hearts and minds again to this wonderful gift of Christ, so that, as St Paul puts it, “the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.” (2 Cor 4.11). My prayer is that through the life and witness of our churches, God’s glory will shine and at this time of uncertainty our great city of London will know the peace that passes all understanding.</span></div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-79878107289416617842018-09-07T12:20:00.000+01:002018-09-07T12:20:38.989+01:00Freedom in Five Minutes<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiobkZL69nvLF3nrjLNJMDwU_1EXoEk9Ka7ijUyM9O2aOm9dDtZSB-lCoZ60Yqn3iSWF7cyF2reqbDIxN2oaVShSDfOcUbsKDfWcouyoegCxdzwdapsK56K_IgbQpcnvnm0VN8kS-ICWF4/s1600/BTBF+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="321" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiobkZL69nvLF3nrjLNJMDwU_1EXoEk9Ka7ijUyM9O2aOm9dDtZSB-lCoZ60Yqn3iSWF7cyF2reqbDIxN2oaVShSDfOcUbsKDfWcouyoegCxdzwdapsK56K_IgbQpcnvnm0VN8kS-ICWF4/s200/BTBF+Cover.jpg" width="128" /></a>For many years I struggled to understand what we Christians mean by freedom. We talk about how Jesus sets you free, that faith brings freedom and yet we also talk about obedience to God’s law, or submission to his will which doesn’t sound much like freedom. At the same time I was aware of how much our culture values freedom, yet its ideas of personal freedom often clash with a longing for our societies to be a bit more cohesive and integrated, which would presumably require a certain limiting of personal freedom.<br />
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I suspected I wasn't alone in thinking about all this, and so a few years ago decided to think more deeply about the theme. What I discovered was that the Christian idea of freedom is so much richer, positive, and constructive than secular ideas of freedom, even though they sound superficially more attractive and liberating. The result was a book - <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bound-be-Free-Graham-Tomlin/dp/1472939506/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1536127832&sr=8-2&keywords=graham+tomlin" target="_blank">Bound to be Free: The Paradox of Freedom</a>, which was published by Bloomsbury last year.</div>
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A little while ago I gave a summary of the book in lecture form at a conference. Someone came up to me afterwards and said it would be a great idea to summarise the main ideas in a very short video as a bit of a taster for the full document. So that’s exactly what I’ve done. <a href="https://vimeo.com/279075004" target="_blank">You’ll find the video here</a>. It lasts only around five minutes, and hopefully gives you an idea of the basics of the argument and why Christian ideas of freedom work so much better than secular ones. Hope you enjoy it. </div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-47430266602768295712018-07-05T17:27:00.002+01:002018-07-08T17:18:50.686+01:00Christian Healing and the NHS<div style="color: #2f5496; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">July 5, 1948 was a great day in British history. It was the day on which Areurin Bevan, the Health Secretary announced the creation of the National Health Service. The NHS was one of the great triumphs of post-war British life. It is remarkable that out of the trauma of the Second World War, such a vision could emerge of universal health care, free at the point of delivery. At the same time it is perhaps an illustration of the fact that out of suffering and trouble, great ideas and visions can be born.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It was perhaps another surprise to all of us when the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, Danny Boyle chose the NHS, as one of the key factors of British life to be celebrated at that moment when 1 billion people around the world was watching. It was an inspired choice, and one that in the UK at least received enthusiastic approval. Americans of course found it much more perplexing. It has been one of the points of real cultural difference - we can never quite understand their preference for the system of health insurance, and they can never quite get our love for the NHS. It remains a remarkable achievement. It employs more than 1.5 million people, putting it in the top five of the world’s largest workforces, together with the US Department of Defence, McDonalds, Walmart and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The NHS was of course one of the pillars of the welfare state that emerged after the Second World War, inspired not least by the vision of William Temple who in 1941 published a book </span><span style="font-style: italic;">“Citizen and Churchman” </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">in which he contrasted the ‘welfare-state’ with the fascist ‘power-state’ and defined its role in supporting the vulnerable. A year later, In 1942, now as Archbishop of Canterbury, he addressed the Industrial Christian Fellowship at the Royal Albert Hall, where 10,000 people turned up to support demands for post-war central planning of employment, housing and social security. Temple himself believed this was a full expression of Christian ethics in public and political life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The NHS emerged out of many different strands, one of which was a Christian commitment, articulated by William Temple and others, to health care. In particular, the Christian belief that each human being is a creation of the one true God, an object of his love, and for whom Christ died, is a solid grounding for the worth and value of each individual, and therefore for the principle that no matter what your background, wealth or income, health is something fundamental to human life, and therefore needs to be available indiscriminately across society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The welfare state in general, and the NHS in particular, was widely welcomed by the church at the time, and remains valued by the church today. And the church continues to play a vital role in the NHS, especially through the excellent work of hospital Chaplains, who play a vital role in caring for the whole person. Yet at the same time, there is a sense that when the NHS was created, the state effectively took over many of the functions that the church used to perform in society. Charity to the poor was replaced by the benefit system, education became the preserve of the state, and health care - long understood as a Christian imperative, with the long history of Christian hospitals provision going back to the very earliest days of the church, was taken over by the NHS. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It has left the church with a bit of a problem - what is the church to do, when many of its traditional functions been taken over by the state? Does it just revert to more ‘spiritual’ activities such as worship, evangelism or Bible study? Or should it give its attention to the gaps in the social welfare provision, aiming to provide what the state cannot? This was perhaps part of the idea behind David Cameron’s Big Society, but it was also the source of the critique of that idea. The suspicion was that the Big Society was simply a means of cutting public services, while relying on local bodies such as churches to fill the gap. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The NHS, like much of the welfare state, faces significant challenges right now. We all know that the NHS is expensive. When it was launched in 1948, it had a budget of £437m (roughly £15 billion at today's value). For 2015/16, the overall NHS budget was around £116.4 billion, funding which comes directly from taxation. The NHS is struggling with issues created by underfunding, so perhaps it might turn back to the church to fill the gaps? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">A recent brief analysis of the relationship between the church and the future of welfare, by Sam Wells, Russell Rook and David Barclay, pointed out that William Beveridge’s original vision began with deficits not assets. He wanted to address the five evils of Want, Idleness, Ignorance, Disease and Squalor. The difficulty of this approach is that it focuses upon what human beings lack, rather than what they are. People are not just recipients of charity, or assistance from the state, but are persons made in the image of God. in other words the role of the church is to focus not so much on what people lack, but what contributes to enabling people to live a fully and satisfyingly human life, flourishing in every way. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">They argue that the goal of the church should be to aim at people’s flourishing, not just the relief of Want; fulfilment rather than just abolishing Idleness; inspiration not just abolishing Ignorance, being a blessing rather than just abolishing disease, and offering hope rather than merely abolishing squalor. True, the church does have the responsibility of holding the state to account for addressing these five great evils, but it is to go beyond simply being a critic of the state, and recognise that even when these five evils have been addressed, there is still something more to being human than filling these deficits. As a result the church is to ‘work actively and tirelessly to model and cultivate the goods.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is a helpful analysis, because it takes the church beyond nostalgia for the days when it was the main provider of things such as healthcare, but also points to complimentary and positive future relationship between the church and the NHS, something I want to explore in the remainder of this lecture. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The Christian church has always understood human nature as multifaceted. When asked about the greatest commandment Jesus replied: “‘</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">.” (Mark 12.29-31). Implicit in this statement is a very basic anthropology - while it may be hard to identify each of these terms with our modern understanding of human life, it embraces emotional, psychological, intellectual and physical dimensions. It also suggests that true human flourishing means not just the absence of disease or sickness, but positive relations of love towards God and towards other people. It is an essentially social vision of human life flourishing in ongoing and deepening relationship with our Creator, and in profound self-giving mutual love towards those placed around us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">This fully rounded vision of human life for St Augustine was grounded in the Trinitarian life of God. As he analysed the internal life of humans, he saw the complex interplay of memory, understanding and will, or, when thinking about vision, he reflected on the thing we look at, our perception of that thing in our eyes, and the mental attention required to focus upon it. He saw in all of these </span><span style="font-style: italic;">vestigia trinitatis - </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> traces of the Trinitarian life of God. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This offers a vision of human life that requires more than just physical health. This complexity in human life corresponds to the rich inner life of God himself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">All this is to suggest that we are not just bodies to be healed. We are certainly not less than this - and any Christian understanding of healing must include the physical, but it also has to go beyond this to a sense of what it means for human beings to flourish, which involves not just physical health, but also restored relationships to God and to other people in community. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It also points us in a direction for the place of Christian healing in the age of the NHS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Christian church has long had a concern for bodily and not just spiritual health, from the early care that the church gave to victims of plague and disease in its early years to the long tradition of hospital care in missionary contexts across the world. There are three theological foundations for a Christian commitment to healthcare – the foundational doctrines of Creation, Incarnation and bodily Resurrection, which all point to a concern for the material, the physical dimension of reality. For Christians this physical Creation is not an unfortunate accident, but was declared GOOD right from its very inception. That creation was reaffirmed in the Incarnation, when God took on human flesh – bones, sinews, brain, hands feet – entering the world in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Resureection removes any doubt that Christianity is committed to creation and its ultimate renewal – the Resurrection appearances involved a body – a renewed one as we shall, see but a body nonetheless, as a sign of the renewal, not the rejection or surpassing of the physical Creation. Christianity is in many ways not a very spiritual religion. It does take the life of the spirit, the inner life of people very seriously but refuses to divorce that from bodily wellbeing and is very well aware of the links between the two. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Christians have always had a commitment to traditional methods of healthcare, and a recognition that medical treatment through doctors and those who studied human anatomy and disease were part of the divine economy of care for the world. In the year 260 A.D., when one of the great epidemics was devastating the Roman world, a time in which it is estimated 5000 people a day were dying in the city of Rome itself, Christians were known for their efforts of care and nursing the sick. The Christian Bishop of Alexandria, Dionysius, wrote: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Medical knowledge did not extend to understandings of germs and bacteria, and so this was a world incapable of dealing with communicable diseases. Nonetheless, Christians seemed to do what they could, offering food and water for instance, to enhance the possibilities of survival, even if it meant increasing the likelihood of catching the disease. The Christian response was so markedly different from that of the surrounding society, that a century later, stung by the attraction and power of this witness that was drawing people to Christian faith, the apostate Emperor Julian launched a campaign to try to start pagan charities, that would match the Christians’ efforts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Such heroic devotion to the sick won many admirers, and quite a number of early Christian conversion stories testify to the attraction and power of such a witness. At the same time however, alongside this practical assistance and care for the sick, Christians also prayed for more direct forms of healing. In the early Christian centuries, stories abound of miraculous supernatural healing, unexplained and unaided by normal medical processes. Throughout Christian history, testimonies and stories proliferate, not just in less sophisticated societies, but even in our own, of Christian healing in answer to prayer. Of course such stories are contested, but however far we might be committed to a thoroughgoing materialism, it is hard to argue against the sheer volume of such stories, and at least the possibility that on occasion, seemingly in answer to prayer, medical healing is accelerated, disease is removed, and a measure of at least temporary healing takes place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I want at this point to turn to a historical and theological account of a Christian understanding of miracles. On the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus conducted most of his public ministry, there stood the Roman city of Tiberias. It is one mysterious aspect of the Gospels that this, the largest city on the lake, is never mentioned within the Gospels. It seems that Jesus never went there, perhaps because of its association with Roman imperial power. Tiberias was well-known for its healing springs, which drew people from miles around, coming in search of healing. It is an intriguing suggestion that the reason why so many sick people were drawn to Jesus was that they had come to Tiberias, had not found healing in its healing springs, and therefore came to this charismatic preacher to see if he could help. And Jesus did heal many. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">It is remarkable that out of all the great religious leaders of the world, Jesus seems to have been the only one whose primary mode of action during his public life was healing the sick. While there are miracle stories associated with Muhammad, such as his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back, they are very limited, and do not extend to healing miracles, perhaps out of a desire not to overshadow the primary miracle in Islam, which is of course the giving of the Qu’ran itself. Gautama the Buddha is said to have possessed various superhuman powers and abilities, notably various kinds of telepathy, divine vision and so on, but he refused to perform miracles, including miracles of healing, saying instead </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"...I dislike, reject and despise them.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Reading the gospels however, it is remarkable how much of them is taken up with an account of Jesus’ miraculous behaviour, particularly his miracles of healing. Of course he does teach and offer wisdom, he instructs his disciples and the crowds, but rather than the miracles being illustrations of his teaching, it actually seems to be the other way round. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ opponents accuse him of carrying out exorcisms through evil powers. Jesus replies that this doesn’t make any sense - if evil is fighting against evil, then it is divided kingdom and must soon fall. He then goes on to point out what he really thinks is happening: </span><span style="font-style: italic;">“If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> (Luke 11.20).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The message seems to be this: the kingdom of God is coming. You can see the signs of it all around you. In the space around Jesus, you can see the sick healed, the dead raised, the poor dignified. That is the good news - the ‘good news of the kingdom’, to use the phrase that Jesus himself often seem to use. It is not that Jesus came primarily to teach some new ideas, to offer a new philosophy to explain the way the world is, but instead he came to bring in the kingdom of God. His miracles are not an illustration and addendum to his teaching – it is the other way round. His teachings are in fact a commentary on what is happening in his actions. The teaching explains the significance of what is taking place as he heals the sick, raises the dead, walks on water, predicts the downfall of the Temple and goes to his death. These were the signs that the Kingdom of God was drawing near, that God’s rule had been set up on earth again, and was set to spread. Jesus’ teaching draws out the significance of these actions and helps those who have ears to hear to realize their significance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">However, while much of Jesus is public ministry is taken up with miraculous healing, he did not heal everyone in Palestine in the first century. There is a scene towards the end of Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Temptation of Christ,</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> where the sick of Judaea pelt Jesus with their bandages and crutches as he carries the cross towards Golgotha, because he has failed to heal them all. Moreover Jesus’ healing miracles were only ever temporary miracles. All those whom he healed presumably got sick again one day and died. Even Lazarus, whom he was said to have raised from the dead, presumably died again one day, and was not resuscitated a second time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This relates to a theological problem often encountered with the idea of miraculous healing. If God heals in response to prayer, why don’t we do it all the time? Why doesn’t the Church organise healing prayer teams to wander around the wards of NHS hospitals, seeking to empty the beds - surely that might be a good way to address the problems of NHS funding, and to fill the churches in one fell swoop?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">There is a reason however why Jesus did not heal all of those in Palestine, and why miracles are of necessity rare events.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">At the risk of simplification, Christians believe three things about God:</span></div>
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<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">That he made the world with a certain order, and structure of cause and effect, with a moral regularity to it, where actions carry consequences, and responsibilities.</span></span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">That this world has now been damaged as a result of a turning away at least part of that creation from its creator, allowing the virus of evil to enter the world, seeking to destroy all that he has created.</span></span></li>
<li style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">That God still loves the world, and is at work to redeem it, and to rescue it, primarily through the sending of his Son to live, and die and rise again within that world, and the promise that he will one day restore it.</span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Given all this, what would we expect in terms of God’s interaction with the world?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">In one of Douglas Coupland’s novels (Hey, Nostadamus!), one of the characters, Lloyd Anway ponders a Christian group that expects frequent miracles: “</span><span style="font-style: italic;">they talk about miracles all the time, and this, too, baffles me. They’re always asking for miracles, and finding them everywhere. In as much as I am a spiritual man, I do believe in God - I think that he created an order for the world; I believe that, in constantly bombarding him with requests for miracles, we are also asking that he unravel the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles would be a cartoon, not a world</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">He has a point. A world of continuous miracles would be a very unpredictable and unreliable world, one where you could never tell the results of certain actions, and in which any kind of moral structure or regularity was absent. A world in which God intervened every time something bad was about to happen, would be a world in which we never learnt the habits and virtues that lead to good and healthy human life, because you can never predict what the results of any particular action would be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">However at the same time, a world without any miracles at all would be a world which God had appeared to abandon to its own devices. It would be the world of Deism - a God who winds up the world like a watch, and allows it then to run its own course. It would naturally lead to the conclusion that whichever God had made this world did not really care about it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I would suggest that this pattern, of miracles (for example miracles of healing, that cannot be explained by normal medical processes) which are by definition rare, occasional but real, is precisely what we should expect given the Christian understanding of God and creation - by God who creates a world with regular physical and moral order, a world which has become damaged through the fall, and yet a world that God loves, and promises to redeem. This view of miracles preserves the sense of the order of the world, and yet retains the freedom of God to interrupt that order from time to time for a particular purpose.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">In John’s gospel, miracles are described as </span><span style="font-style: italic;">semeia</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> - signs. In other words, their significance does not inhere in themselves, but in what they point to. When a person is healed through prayer, it is of course good for that person, and perhaps an encouragement to the person who offers the prayer, but the significance of the miracle is something much greater. It is a sign, pointing to either the power of God which lies behind this remarkable occurrence, or perhaps more fully, a sign of the day when all sickness will be banished, the dead will be raised. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The point is that Jesus’ miracles of healing always point away from themselves towards something else, defined here as the kingdom of God. This of course, is shorthand for the place, or state, where God’s will is done, on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, not just as an empty philosophical idea, but as a practical reality. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This kingdom however is more than just physical healing of disease. It is a much bigger idea - a vision of human society not just healed of its problems. It offers a vision of exactly that flourishing, fulfillment, inspiration, blessing and hope that we mentioned earlier. Christians pray for healing, not just to supplement the work of doctors, and certainly not to prove that somehow clergy are more powerful than consultants (!), but as a sign of a much bigger picture of human flourishing - a positive vision of what human life and society is meant to be like. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The greatest miracle of all, of course, is the Resurrection, the overcoming of all the powers of darkness, of sin and death and Satan. It is, in Christian understanding, not just another miracle among many others, but is the one miracle towards which everything else points. The Resurrection indicates a momentous interruption to the normal processes of death and decay. The body of Jesus has been broken, torn, ripped apart by violent beating and crucifixion. The dead body is taken from the cross, and placed in the tomb, ready for burial. Yet at that point something else disrupts the normal course of physical death and decay. Out of the decomposing body, new life emerges. When Mary and the other disciples encounter the risen Jesus, whether in the garden, on the road to Emmaus, or by the lakeside in Galilee, they see a body which is both continuous and discontinuous from the pre-Resurrection body of Christ. Some disciples. Like Mary in the garden, or the couple walking the road to Emmaus, don’t recognise him when they first see him. This body appears to be able to pass through closed doors, not because it is ghostly and insubstantial, but because the walls themselves are not strong or substantial enough to stop him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Even at the earliest preaching of this staggering claim, it was countered by the assertion that this kind of thing simply does not happen. St Paul addresses exactly this concern in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, when he takes on someone who asks “how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” He replies with a powerful image:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body…. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Cor. 15.36-44)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">When a gardener plants a bulb in the ground, the bulb begins to decompose. And yet somehow within that decaying bulb, new life germinates, a green shoot appears, and before long, a stem, and then a flower appears above the surface. At first glance, the flower seems to bear no physical resemblance at all to the bulb that was planted, and yet we know that the two are related: one has come from the other. Out of the dying bulb, a new kind of life has emerged. This is an image of what happens in Resurrection – both the Resurrection of Jesus and the future Resurrection of those who are bound to him by faith.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Resurrection therefore points to the greatest miracle of all – the healing of all creation that will one day come about. The healing miracles of Jesus therefore, and in addition the healing miracles that come about through the church’s prayer, are smaller signs of this great miracle which is yet to come. They too are brief, occasional momentary interruptions to the natural course of things, not to display the power of God, much less the supernatural or psychic powers of the healer, but pointing to the kingdom of God, the kingdom that we pray in the Lord’s Prayer will come one day ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. They are, if you like, divine nudges, reminders that God has not given up on his world, that he has not forgotten us, and that one day all of creation will be healed, just as this person has experienced temporary and momentary healing in the present. They are a sign of a much bigger healing – the healing of all things that Christians believe will one day take place. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">So let me draw these reflections to a conclusion. From this discussion of the nature of miracles, and their relation to the natural, created order of the world, I would suggest there are three things that the church does in its healing ministry, especially in a country where healthcare is well-developed, and offered generously and freely as it is through the NHS in Britain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">First, the church should celebrate and seek to defend the NHS. It does so on the basis of two fundamental Christian convictions. The first is the conviction that each individual is of equal value before God, that health is one of the most precious of God’s gifts, and therefore healthcare should be available to all, regardless of ability to pay. This may from time to time mean the church calling government to account to support and defend the NHS.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms";">S</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;">econd is our belief in Resurrection, telling us that death is not the worst thing that could happen to us, and is the potential gateway to a greater and more substantial life than the one that we experience now. Christians do believe in the possibility of a good death, and therefore can set limits on the offering of care, believing that there does come a point when it is no longer wise or caring to prolong life. Death has been overcome, and therefore is not ultimately to be feared.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;">Decisions of how much treatment to offer and for whom are of course complex, </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">and difficult to resolve. Because Christians can look death in the eye as a defeated enemy, they do not regard the sustaining of life at any cost as being the ultimate</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> goal, and this perspective provides grounds for limits to the offer of health-care, while seeking to continue to offer the ideal of care available to all regardless of need.</span></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> There have been a number of high profile recent cases involving children where doctors have taken the view that nothing more can be realistically be done to prolong life and therefore decided to withdraw ongoing attempts to sustain life at all costs – and that is very difficult for parents and carers. Christian faith in Resurrection, and the belief that this life is not the last word, can and does give people – both doctors and carers - strength and a framework for thinking to enable them to make such difficult decisions. Letting go of those who are dying is very difficult, and a belief in a life beyond this one can help people do this.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Third, alongside its commitment to the medical profession, to the NHS and the ideals it embodies, the church also pr</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;">ays for healing. It does so not as a rival, or even a gap filling exercise for the NHS, seeking to heal what doctors can’t. It does so, recognising that every miraculous healing is significant not just for itself, or for the person healed, but as a sign of the kingdom of God, a sign of the resurrection of all things that will one day take place - a sign not just of a healed creation, but a restored and healthy social order.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;">Christian approaches to healing should not be described as ‘alternative therapy’, as on the one hand Christians see a vital and important place for the more regular natural medical processes of healing, and on the other hand, prayer for miraculous healing is not seen as an alternative, or a rival to such medical care, but an adjunct, or perhaps better an extra dimension to the overall healing which God brings. Both medical healing and prayer for healing are incomplete, but significant signs of the day when all creation shall be healed, and to that end, we should give thanks for both the NHS, and ministries like the Christian Healing Mission, and encourage continued conversation and cooperation between them. They are both gifts of God, given for different purposes, equally of value as signs of God’s care for his world.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;">Ministries like the Christian Healing Mission, therefore have a vital place in the life of the church and in the life of wider society, because they point to a bigger picture, a grander healing which does not simply include the physical, but also the social, the spiritual, the mental and the emotional.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;">To end with one more final point: The one thing that neither the NHS nor the Christian healing ministry can provide is certainty. Doctors and nurses do their best, but bodies don’t always heal, and patients die. Christians pray, and sometimes people are healed, but, as we have seen already in this lecture, many times they are not, prayers go unanswered, and healing does not take place. In neither case can certainty be offered. Yet Christian faith does offer something sure and dependable. In the promise of Resurrection, it offers hope. This hope goes beyond physical healing, beyond even death itself, to the trustworthiness of a God who both sustains the world in being from moment to moment, preserving the order and structure of that world, and yet who overcomes all that seeks to destroy that creation, through the power of resurrection. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 12pt;">Christian healing does not stop with prayer for healing, and the expectation that on occasion, God will respond to that prayer with visible and tangible physical change. It goes beyond that to offer something that neither medical practice nor miracle can provide: the certainty that lies with the faithfulness of the God of creation and redemption. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">In the marvellous film, the Shawshank Redemption, the main character, played by Morgan Freeman closes the film with the memorable line: “</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best things.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> Sickness brings with it uncertainty and fear. While neither the NHS nor the church can offer the absolute certainty of physical healing, the hope that comes from a trust in the God from whom we came and to whom we will return, is perhaps the greatest healing of all.</span></span></div>
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-58479552806477493722018-06-12T07:10:00.001+01:002018-06-12T07:10:51.589+01:00The Tree of Life - Thoughts of Hope after Grenfell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">This is the text of a sermon preached at St Clement's church North Kensington on the occasion of the blessing of a garden for Peace, Healing and Justice on the 10th June 2018, </i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>the</i></span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> week of </i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>the</i></span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> one-year anniversary of </i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i>the</i></span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> Grenfell Tower fire.</i></div>
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In the Bible there are three important trees, one at the beginning, one at the end, one in the middle. The first was mentioned in our reading from the book of Genesis - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a tree that represents the choice placed before us - the choice to turn towards God, towards life and all that is good, or to turn away from him towards the darkness. As the story unfolds, it relates that fateful choice, repeated so many times since, to turn away from God, and love, and goodness, and instead to those destructive patterns of behaviour which lead to so much misery in our world. This tree therefore becomes a symbol of the tragedy at the heart of human life, our tendency to ignore and hurt one another, to damage ourselves, our neighbours and our planet, the entry of evil into our world. It is a symbol of the deep wound of creation, the suffering of the world that we are very conscious of here as we approach this coming week. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Like the tree of good and evil in the Genesis story, Grenfell Tower today stands as a symbol of tragedy, of pain and our failure to care for one another. Somehow that building was allowed to get to the stage where a small fire could so quickly get out of hand, with the resulting trauma that this community has experienced over the last year and the 72 precious lives that were lost as a result. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yet there is another tree - the tree at the end of the story, the one mentioned in the book of Revelation – <i>“the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”</i>It is a symbol of energy, prosperity, creation restored - the Christian hope that one day, evil will be banished, God will make all things right, that peace, justice and joy will reign. It is a symbol of life, just like the garden that we will dedicate at the end of this service. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yet how do we get from one to the other? How do we move from a symbol of tragedy and despair, to a picture of life and fruitfulness? That is where the third tree comes in. It is the tree that was cut down, and reshaped into a crude wooden cross, on which Jesus Christ, the Son of God was crucified, an event we recall every time we break bread & pour out wine, as we do today, to recall the broken body and spilt blood of Jesus. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Christian faith tells us that when we grieve and sorrow, God does not stand far off watching, but comes to be with us right in the middle of that grief and sorrow. This week will be a painful and difficult one for many in this community. It will bring back harsh memories and vivid reminders of loved ones whom we have lost; the confusion, grief, anger of those days last summer and many since. Yet in the middle of that pain, we have this pledge that God meets us in it, and stands alongside us. According to this story, God is a Father who knows exactly what it is to watch a Son suffer and die, a God to whom we can therefore come with our sorrows. A small sign of that is this building, which, over the past year, has been a place at the heart of this community, where people have brought their tears, prayers, grief, longings - as we read in our gospel reading – like a shrub, where “<i>the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches</i>.” As this building stands in the heart of this community so God is present with us in our pain and confusion, offering us his presence and his comfort.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And yet there is more. The Christian story also tells us that God enters into our human experience of pain not just to be with us in it, but to redeem and transform it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When something goes wrong, we have a deep and sure instinct that it can only be healed if justice is done. When something happens that breaks the harmony of God’s creation, when we damage and destroy each other, it cannot simply be ignored, glossed over and life carry on as normal - justice is vital if restoration and healing are to emerge. To put it differently, atonement has to be made. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This world is out of joint with the purposes of its creator, and yet is healed by love - by the self-sacrificial love of God, in his Son Jesus Christ, who in that great act of love, takes on himself the consequences of our sins, mistakes and the harm we do each other, and atones for them on that cross, so that justice is done, and we and the whole world can be healed. In a mysterious way, that can take a lifetime to fathom, healing is brought about as God himself enters into our experience of pain and grief and loss, to redeem it and transform it from within. Healing comes through love – the love of God which enters right into our human struggles to transform them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The transition from desolation to joy can only come through justice. We hope, trust and pray that justice will be done through the Inquiry and the Police investigation. But God has already been present here this year, silently working to bring healing in every act of love, of kindness, of listening, people being brought together to urge for change, the courage we saw in the bereaved families as they told their stories at the Inquiry, the slow path to truth that the Inquiry is seeking to find, the lives that are slowly beginning to heal. There is a long way to go, but life is stronger than death, and there are signs of life if we have eyes to see them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As we gaze upon that second tree, the tree on which the Son of God was killed, we are assured that this same God that created us and gave us life, enters with his love into the very heart of our human experience of pain and grief to redeem it and transform it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And that is why we can have hope. After the death of Jesus came the Resurrection of Jesus. Suffering and pain are never the last word, but can be transformed by the love of God into healing and wholeness. It does not make the suffering and pain right, or take it away immediately, but it does offer the promise of transformation and hope. After a difficult year, it is that hope that we hold onto today, and that we need to hold onto. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The third tree, the ‘tree of life’ stands for a new world, one that we all long for. A world where ‘<i>the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.’ </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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The garden we will dedicate later is a symbol of all this. This area, even Grenfell Tower itself has long been one where people from all over world live side by side, a place where the nations come together, so especially here it is fitting to remember this promise of the healing of the nations, wherever we come from. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We long for Grenfell itself to change from a symbol of pain and suffering to one of healing and restoration. Imagine in 20 years time, looking back on Grenfell Tower as a the trigger for a sea-change in the way we looked after one another in our cities, a time we decided once and for all to provide good quality, safe social and affordable housing, when we learnt to look out for one another, even to love one another as good neighbours, not just in times of disaster but as a regular way of life, whatever our differences of ethnicity or faith? <o:p></o:p></div>
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The road ahead, even the next few days ahead will not be easy. That is why we need to fix our eyes on hope. Hope is sometimes hard to find when everything around seems hopeless. That’s why we need <i>things</i>to hold onto, to touch to feel, to represent that hope. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Today is a day that offers us symbols of hope: in this buildingwe have a sign of God’s presence with us to offer us comfort, shelter and a home, especially for those still waiting for theirs. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the bread and wine we are brought back to Jesus, the God who stands with us in our pain and redeems the suffering of the world, through his act of self-sacrificial love. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And in the garden of healing and peace, we have a symbol of life, of hope, a new world where “<i>God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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I pray and trust that the garden that we bless today will be a sign of that tree of life, of the coming healing of the nations, a reminder of the hope of a new world, one where we have learnt to love the God who gave us life and the neighbour who is given to us to love. Whenever you walk past it, let it be a sign of the world that we long and pray for – a sign of God’s presence with us in the darkest of times, a sign that the world is healed through love, a sign that life is stronger than death. </div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-21859928092724735912018-04-01T19:32:00.004+01:002018-04-01T19:32:53.614+01:00Aussie Cricket, Labour anti-Semitism & Chichester Diocese - How the Unacceptable becomes ConceivableThe Australian ball-tampering scandal, the Labour party’s
troubles over anti-Semitism and the shameful story of what happened in the
diocese of Chichester revealed in the inquiry into child sexual abuse - all of
them have something in common - the ease with which organisational culture can
slip to a point where the unacceptable becomes conceivable.<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The Aussie cricket team has been pushing the boundaries of
fairness in what it takes to win for years. Hostile comments before series
begin, sledging the opposition during games, aggressive behaviour towards opponents
– they have been ‘butting heads’ with opponents for years. Small decisions,
pushing the boundaries over time probably made the option of using some
sandpaper to rough up the ball to win a small advantage in a series that was
going against them seem just one more thing. It was nothing special, something
they could get away with like they had got away with so many other questionable
practices for years. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The Labour party’s traditional sympathy for the Palestinian
cause has allowed the cancer of anti-semitism to grow undetected, moving
imperceptibly from a critique of Israeli government policies in particular to a
hostility to Jews in general. Again, snide remarks, offensive tweets went
unchallenged, all leading to a point where it became acceptable to habitually
criticise Jews, defend anyone who did, or make whistle-blowers feel ostracised.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the diocese of Chichester, the problem began with trusting
clergy too much, assuming they could not be at fault, turning a blind eye to rumours
of clerical misbehaviour. That then gradually turned into a whole culture of
covering up abuse, siding with the perpetrators not the victims, doing anything
to preserve the reputation of the church over against the needs of survivors. A
culture of secrecy allowed the virus of exploitation to spread, and the victims
were those who should have been protected all along. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In all three cases, I’m sure those who took those initial small,
seemingly innocuous decisions never felt they were doing anything heinous. It’s
only in retrospect that we can see the slow but sure slide to cheating,
vilification and abuse. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Those of us who have the responsibility for overseeing
organisations of any kind need to watch our organisational culture like a hawk.
Taking moral shortcuts, the easy way out, allowing lies or even half-truths to
spread – it all leads only in one direction. St Paul once called for “purity,
knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful
speech, and the power of God’ (2 Cor 6.6-7). All this points out the importance
of keeping habitual standards high, holding to honesty, moral vision and courage
at all times - before it’s too late. <o:p></o:p></div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-67722509838841627782017-12-17T11:19:00.001+00:002017-12-17T11:19:46.978+00:00The Grenfell Tower Memorial Service - A Reflection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL6hEKWUwCYtOW5jpOohv-8InOj-0w1fvoLzGxCw6AqaiX2PRL5BWZXs3b4uVQKTLNeTrAgDyoJBfimhBjkxCAbnDvyEbP9h87q6XtzasTeULcR4CeKFHhCY6o9t_-0Tv7FdFg5q82id0/s1600/IMG_1620.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL6hEKWUwCYtOW5jpOohv-8InOj-0w1fvoLzGxCw6AqaiX2PRL5BWZXs3b4uVQKTLNeTrAgDyoJBfimhBjkxCAbnDvyEbP9h87q6XtzasTeULcR4CeKFHhCY6o9t_-0Tv7FdFg5q82id0/s320/IMG_1620.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="Heading">
The
evening of June 13<sup>th</sup> was an evening like any other in London – it
had been a hot day, and the sun went down on a calm, gentle, night. That
evening people went out for a meal, went to bed, stayed up talking, doing what
people do in London on a warm summer’s evening. Yet that night was to change
the lives of so many here in this Cathedral today.</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Since
then, it has been a long six months. Many here grieve for loved ones, precious
people who perished on that dreadful night. Mothers, fathers, sisters,
brothers, aunts & uncles, cousins, sons and daughters. Today would have
been the first birthday of one of the youngest victims of the fire. Many still
struggle with their memories. There are still far too many living in hotels, in
a kind of limbo, not sure of what the future holds. There are so many
unresolved issues and questions, and it’s hard to live with uncertainty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Yet
in the following days, in the middle of that unimaginable tragedy, we saw
something extraordinary. People started coming from all over London, all over
the UK & even beyond, bringing offers of help - water, toys, nappies, blankets,
food. Churches, mosques, community centres opened their doors as people came with
suitcases of clothes they had collected from their homes and driven across the
country to deliver. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The
emergency services worked tirelessly – ambulance crews, firefighters who
entered the Tower again and again, the police - often going far beyond what was
required of them to rescue and to comfort. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">We
saw acts of simple, but remarkable generosity. On the Sunday morning following
the fire, I was standing in one of the streets near the Tower, when a man came
up to me with his 6-year old son. He said that Alfie had collected together all
his pocket money, and rather than spending it on toys for himself, he wanted to
give it to one of the families who had lost their home. Alfie handed me a tin –
a dented, well-loved Marvel Avengers tin – with about £60 in it – it was all
the money he had. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The
fire took place during Ramadan and in the summer there are fewer hours of
darkness. Many Muslim volunteers had to work long hours in the heat with no
food because of the fast, and did so with great </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">willingness </span><span lang="EN-US">and dedication. They worked alongside people of all faiths and none to
do what they could to bring help and hope. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">I
remember standing outside one of our churches the day after the fire, helping
the Christian community there organize the help coming in – a crowd of people
had turned up to help. What struck me was the variety. Every ethnicity, background,
age – for a moment we all lost our fear of each other, we lost our obsession
with ourselves and we reached out across the city in love for our
neighbour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">It
was a glimpse of what our society could be like - a place where we were for a
brief moment more concerned about our neighbour’s wellbeing than we were about
our own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Jesus
said that the two greatest commandments were to love God and to love our neighbour.
As we come to the end of this difficult year, as we celebrate Christmas, as we
move into a new year, nothing can remove the memory of that night – nor do we
want to forget those dearly loved people who were lost. Yet my hope and prayer
is that this new year can bring new hope of a future, a vision of a city where
we lose our self-obsession and listen and learn from places and people that we
wouldn’t normally think of reaching out to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">There
is something about a Cathedral – it is a place where we are aware we are in the
presence of something - someone - bigger than ourselves. As we cross the
threshold into this building, it doesn’t matter whether we are politicians,
religious leaders, volunteers, survivors, bereaved, residents – we are all
equal in the eyes of God. Love makes no distinctions. We are all neighbours to
each other and we are called to love our neighbours. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Today
we remember with sorrow, grief, tears. And we pledge that those we have lost
will not be forgotten. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Today
we ask why warnings were not heeded, why a community was left feeling
neglected, uncared for, not listened to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">Today
we hold out hope that the Public Inquiry will get to the truth of all that led
up to the fire at Grenfell Tower, that it will listen to the hopes, fears and
questions of those most directly affected by it. And we trust that the truth
will bring justice, and that justice will enable true reconciliation – the eventual
healing of the divides in our life together that this tragedy has revealed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">As
we come this to special time of year; as we enter a new year, we also look
forward. We long for a society where we have learnt not just to tolerate our
neighbours but to love them. Which means to </span><span lang="FR">listen</span><span lang="EN-US"> to them. Not
just our friends, those who are like us, but our neighbours – those we do not
choose, yet who are placed alongside us precisely so we can learn to love them.
And to do that we need to see our neighbours differently. Not as those to be
feared, despised, neglected. But as a gift to be cherished, valued, loved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">The
message of this season, the message that we celebrate this Christmas is found in
that ancient word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Immanuel</i> - God with
us – that God understands, listens and hears the cries of those who feel
forgotten and abandoned. And we trust that this service today is an assurance that
the families most deeply affected by this tragedy are also not forgotten by our
nation, by those who watch and listen around the country today. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span lang="EN-US">My
hope, my prayer is that today we will pledge ourselves to change - from a city
where we didn’t listen, where we didn’t hear the cries of our neighbours
because we were too wrapped up in our own interests and prosperity, to create a
new type of life together, where we are turned not inwards to ourselves, but
outwards towards each other: a society known for listening, compassion and
love. In years to come, our hope is that the name of ‘Grenfell’ will not just
be known as a symbol of sorrow, grief or injustice, but a symbol of the time we
learnt a new and better way - to listen and to love. <span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-2161226686472508222017-09-20T18:24:00.001+01:002017-09-20T18:24:40.796+01:00Why Freedom is not what you think it is<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYaUoaoDHy9AjbxD2HXyIJW-wUNWQYfy3DJ52_yvCi8bagU4d2odPCel65XPZ0ZIopXvCwwSleF6YOKWTmnmO5J4GCBPFiB0BzIxf44D_KKyVICntOwuf_c5d9AhibDzH6qbrj_xc9zts/s1600/BTBF+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="321" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYaUoaoDHy9AjbxD2HXyIJW-wUNWQYfy3DJ52_yvCi8bagU4d2odPCel65XPZ0ZIopXvCwwSleF6YOKWTmnmO5J4GCBPFiB0BzIxf44D_KKyVICntOwuf_c5d9AhibDzH6qbrj_xc9zts/s320/BTBF+Cover.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I have always struggled to
understand what Christians mean by freedom. There is quite a lot in the Old </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Testament</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> about </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Israel</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> as free people, in </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">the</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> New Testament about how Christ sets us free, Christians talk a lot about freedom, and yet
Christianity has always seemed to demand things like obedience, submission to
God's will, adopting a moral code where certain things are right and certain
things are off-limits, none of which really seems like freedom.</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">For a number of years now I've been
pondering this question, and the result is a book which has just been
published, entitled <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bound-be-Free-Paradox-Freedom-ebook/dp/B06X9HMJVC/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505927498&sr=1-2&keywords=bound+to+be+free">“Bound
to be Free: the Paradox of Freedom”</a>, published by Bloomsbury. At the risk of sounding a little
arrogant I think I may have worked it out - at least to my own satisfaction!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The problem is not so much a
Christian understanding of freedom, but the secular way of thinking about the
concept which most of us imbibe without even thinking about it. The book traces
the roots of secular notions of Freedom in the libertarian tradition
exemplified by thinkers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John
Stuart Mill. The basic idea here is that freedom is individual freedom. It is
the ability to do what I choose with my own goods, talents, time and
opportunities, without any hindrance from wider bodies like the state or
government. J.S. Mill extends this into the idea that such freedom is necessary
from all kinds of social restriction and expectation, and that individuals
should be free to do as they choose, as long as they do not harm other people,
and do not infringe upon the rights of others to exercise their own freedom
within their own personal space.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">If that's the way we understand
freedom, then it's not surprising that Christians struggle to fit biblical
notions of freedom into that framework. However, there is I think a problem
with this secular way of thinking about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Societies need to somehow square the
circle of allowing and enabling personal flourishing, while at the same time
enabling social cohesion. The secular libertarian view allows a certain level
of personal liberty, but doesn't do very well when it comes to social cohesion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Basically the problem is this. On
this view of freedom, the Other, whether understood as my neighbour, my wife,
my children, my friends, or the state, is understood as essentially a limitation
or even a threat to the exercise of my freedom. The exercise of freedom is
possible within my own personal space, as long as I don't tread on the toes of
anyone else, but this sets up the other person as someone whose boundaries
I need to tread very carefully, and needs to be resisted in case they tread on
mine, precisely because the Other is a potential threat, and therefore someone
essentially to be feared.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The Christian idea freedom is very
different. It is not freedom to do as I want, because what I want is so often
the problem. The Christian doctrine of sin tells us that our desires are not
always very healthy, in fact very often we desire what will ultimately destroy
us, our relationships and even our planet. Instead Christian freedom is the
freedom from anything that would hold us back from becoming the people that we
were meant to be - people capable of love for God and for our neighbour, as
Jesus taught we were to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">It is therefore freedom from that
obsession with ourselves, our image, wealth looks and prospects, and freedom to
be properly self-forgetful in love for our neighbour. It is not so much freedom
for myself as freedom from myself. It is freedom from habits we wish we </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">could</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> kick, political </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">systems</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> that stop us caring for one another</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">, an economy that sucks us into </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">personal</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> self-centred </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">consumption. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The key to that, says Christianity, is
learning first of all a love for God - a recognition that I am not the centre
of the universe, and that I need to learn to re-boot my life to fit the way the
world is, where God lies at </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">the</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> centre not me, as </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">I</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">develop</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> a relationship with my Creator. I then learn to love those he has
given to me – my neighbour for starters. Freedom is therefore a gift and not a
right, and the Other becomes not a threat nor limitation, but a gift - a gift
to enable me to exercise this crucial virtue of love, and to grow in my ability
to love my neighbour.</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: 11pt;"> The other is now not a
threat but a gift, and so the Christian account of freedom squares the circle
of personal flourishing and social cohesion much better than the secular one
does.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footer"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of figures"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope return"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="line number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
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<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Of course there's a lot more to the
book than this, but it begins to give you a sense of the argument.<span class="apple-converted-space"> If you want to get your copy – <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bound-be-Free-Paradox-Freedom-ebook/dp/B06X9HMJVC/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505927498&sr=1-2&keywords=bound+to+be+free">click
here</a>. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-69835696639680557862017-06-16T22:30:00.002+01:002017-06-17T03:51:56.871+01:00Thoughts on Hope in Grenfell<div style="color: #454545; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglEaSVaAAO4gduuwVxDYcin7i3FHat1yCQMLbw6mEjRKz0ibAtvuz2m2m3LkY9filTVqP6uFyF6RXRI9Mi09KqAP3h0BQIe0rxYmyKeRoJJlnEb5Rbg75sZukiVrKxX6gA1fWy1eHS7tk/s1600/IMG_1615.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglEaSVaAAO4gduuwVxDYcin7i3FHat1yCQMLbw6mEjRKz0ibAtvuz2m2m3LkY9filTVqP6uFyF6RXRI9Mi09KqAP3h0BQIe0rxYmyKeRoJJlnEb5Rbg75sZukiVrKxX6gA1fWy1eHS7tk/s320/IMG_1615.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
In our community over the past few days we have been through a range of emotions that we rarely experience so close together. Even now as we meet and pray, there are people here in this church, in the surrounding streets wondering how to make sense of this. </div>
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How do you put into words what people here have experienced, the story of the past few days?</div>
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First there was Shock. As we woke up on Wednesday morning, there was that numb feeling, incredulity that something like this could happen in our modern, C21st sophisticated city. Looking up at the Tower and imagining what the people in there was going through was almost unbearable and so hard to even imagine how awful that must be.</div>
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Then there was Compassion. Alongside the tragedy, one of the remarkable things has been to see the amazing outpouring of compassion in this community over the past couple of days. It is as if that deep, God-given humanity in all of us has suddenly arisen to the surface and displayed itself in all its wonder and glory. Despite how diverse this community is, it has been remarkable to see that sense that underneath our differences of language, faith, colour, beliefs, there is this deep human instinct of compassion that we all share - wouldn't it be something if London was like this all the time? </div>
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Then there has been Grief. Yesterday I spent time with a family whose five-year-old son was missing and then heard the cries of grief as they heard the news that he would not be returning to them. This deep sadness and sorrow will be felt by many families over the coming weeks and months. We grieve with them and need to do all we can to support such families over the coming times strengthened by the knowledge that God does not stand apart, but grieves with them; that he is no stranger to sorrow and that as Jesus weeps with those who weep, so God our Creator grieves with those who are full of heartbreaking sorrow today. </div>
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There has also been Pride. I have been privileged to spend time with some of the emergency services over the past few days, listening to the stories of firefighters going in and out of the building with no thought of their own safety to witness the astonishing bravery and courage of those who had to take on this dreadful task. We should rightly be proud we have such people in our midst, and do all we can to thank them for the selfless and heroic way in which they do this work on our behalf. They carry a burden of the memories of the things they have done and seen, so they should be in our prayers too as they come to terms with these past few days. </div>
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Then there is Anger. Many people over the last couple of days have expressed a deep anger that anything like this could have happened. There are serious questions to be asked about housing in this area and how we care for and provide for those who are the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. It is too early to allocate blame and to point fingers, but these questions need answers and we need to channel that anger into a patient determination to support those who are seeking to discover the cause of this tragedy, and to ensure it never happens again. Today we cry out for justice and real lasting change. </div>
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But now we need Hope. While we go through all these emotions, we also need a new sense of hope there is a future, that lives can be rebuilt, that this community can be restored, a hope for a better future where everyone, regardless of ethnicity, religion, income and background is able to live in safety and security - they deserve no less than this. Hope is what we deal in as Christians. It is perhaps one thing we can offer, because we know that beyond the cross there is Resurrection. </div>
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In the past couple of days I have often been asked what can you say to those who have lost everything, who have lost dearly loved ones. My answer? There is very little you can say. There are times when all you can do is pray - and I and many of my clergy colleagues have done that with many over these past days. Prayer reminds us there is God who weeps with those who weep, who hears the cries of the poor and disadvantaged, and while there are many things that happen in God’s world that are not part of his will, in the end, his purposes will one day be fulfilled. We believe in the God of Resurrection, the God of hope. And today this is what we need - Hope that does not eliminate our shock, our compassion, our pride, our anger, but transcends it, lifts it and makes a future possible.</div>
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Our thoughts, our prayers, hearts today are with those who have lost everything, with those who are grieving, those wondering where they will be living in the next few weeks. As we watch this compassion break out around us, as we experience it arising in our own hearts, we need to hold onto this hope that will make this compassion not just a fleeting reaction that fades as the media focus moves onto something else, but a settled, long-term characteristic of our great city. </div>
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Now as we face the future, we need, faith and hope that will make our love for each other grow stronger. To rebuild not just tower block, but hearts and minds towards a city that truly cares for each other and where all can find a welcome, a future and a hope. </div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-2897128116601981912017-04-14T07:51:00.000+01:002017-04-14T07:51:28.696+01:00A day with the homeless<div class="MsoNormal">
The other day, as part of my Holy Week spending time with
those who experience the things Jesus experienced during his final week, I
spent the day with homeless people. When you hear the ‘homeless’ what do you
imagine? Probably fairly ragged, unkempt people with plastic bags, straggly
beards and dirty clothes, people with little employment capacity, who had spent
a good deal of their lives unemployed? Well there’s a fair bit of that but I
found my preconceptions beginning to erode quite quickly. I’m ashamed to say I
tweeted early that day that I was going to spend the day with ‘a bunch of
homeless people’ to which one person replied that they were a bit uncomfortable
with that description. And they were exactly right. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Talking to several people over the day, I began to realise
that ‘homeless’ is a fairly blunt category. This homeless drop-in centre in a
church in central London had around 60 or so regulars but they were all there
for different reasons. I spoke with one elderly woman who was not homeless, in
fact she had a very nice flat, but was desperately lonely, since her husband
died, and came along to find some people to talk to. Another had walked out of
an old people’s home because he had kept getting drunk and fell out with those
in charge. Other were sleeping on friends’ floors, others had recently arrived
from other countries. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I met an architect with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the
dates of London City churches, a teacher of English as a Second Language, and a
retired research chemist. All the world was here. The one thing in common was
some back story, some thing that had gone wrong in their lives. I heard one
story of a man who had come to the centre who had been CEO of a large
international airline. His child had died in an accident, the stress led to the
break-up of his marriage, he then started drinking which led to him losing his
job, and soon he had lost family, home, income, job everything and was now on
the streets. Whether it was a bereavement, losing a job, a marriage breakdown, mental
health issues, a physical accident, a bad temper, something had led them to
this point. Usually alcohol or drugs were involved in some way, a short-term
comfort, but ultimately making the problem worse. And what strikes you is how
easily it could happen to anyone – even you or me. There are no such thing as
homeless people, just people with different problems, who find it difficult to handle
life when it gets really hard.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
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And then there are the volunteers, people who give time and
energy to serve them, wash their feet, give legal or housing advice, cook
breakfast, listen to their stories. And each of us doing that have our own
problems and issues as well. None of us are self-sufficient and were never
meant to be. We are all in need of a Saviour, someone who understands our
weakness, and stands with us in our sufferings, which is what we find on Good
Friday, yet also one who transcends and can overcome our weaknesses and
sufferings, which is what we find on Easter Sunday. And that Saviour ministers
to us through each other, through the words of life, encouragement, gospel we
offer one another, and through the gestures of love – a hand offered, a meal
given, a new set of clothes given, a dirty hand shaken. Each word or act of
love becomes and word or act done to Christ and for Christ, as we work out our
salvation with fear and trembling. <o:p></o:p></div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-28022782627651741662017-04-12T14:32:00.002+01:002017-04-12T14:32:31.133+01:00Seeking Refuge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I spent a day this week with a young asylum seeker from the Democratic
Republic of the Congo and his friends. Jonathan is a gentle, unassuming and
quiet 22-year-old, with a broad smile, who loves football, never really knew
his father, and was brought up by a friend of his parents in Kinshasa. When he
was a student, despite the fact that he and his friends were paying fees, the
government defaulted on paying his university lecturers, and so lessons
stopped. Jonathan joined a series of political demonstrations against the
government, was caught taking a picture of the police and was duly arrested. He
was bundled into a car, taken to an isolated spot, tied up and beaten. He still
has nightmares recalling his torture at the hands of government agents. To cut
a long story short, he eventually managed to get a visa to leave to the UK, as
he had relatives here, hoping that things would die down a little before he
would return home in due course.<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Phone calls with friends back in the DRC warned him not to
come home, or he would almost certainly be arrested and killed. And so, he
began the process of applying for asylum. Three years later, after several
stays in detention centres, which effectively felt like prisons, being
repeatedly threatened with repatriation, which he is convinced would mean
further torture and probably execution, he is still waiting for a definitive
answer to his case. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The life of an asylum seeker is pretty grim. While applying
for asylum, they are unable to work, so drift from drop-in centres to free
English lessons run by charities, trying to spend time but not money. They are
caught in a cycle where they have little to do, not much to spend and
accommodation is always precarious. They are caught between wanting to apply
for asylum with the prize of getting leave to remain, and yet the risk of
appearing before the courts and the decision going against them, and then having
to be deported to the dangers of their home countries. So, they often lie low,
perhaps tempted to take poorly paid jobs, all the while knowing it is illegal.
One woman I met from Burkino Faso had taken such a job, and when she was found
out to be an illegal immigrant, was sent to Holloway Prison. The other
difficulty is the presumption of guilt. In interviews by the officials, they
report a constant feeling of not being believed or trusted, with the assumption
that they are telling lies to gain entry to the country, a level of suspicion
that adds to their feelings of despair. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For people often fleeing failed states, poverty-stricken
nations, or war-ravaged countries, the UK seems at first like a haven of peace
and security. Yet sadly this is not the experience of many of those who seek
asylum here. Of course, the courts have to do their job and do due diligence on
refugees, but surely we can do better at making our default pose a welcome
rather than a rejection for those who have already experienced so much
rejection already? There are some exceptions. When I asked the group ‘what has
helped you most since coming here?” they all said ‘The church”. I saw some
remarkable examples of saintly people giving time and energy to welcome the stranger,
and in doing so, firmly believed they were welcoming Jesus. As Jesus himself once
said “<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I was hungry and you
gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a
stranger and you welcomed me,</span><b><sup><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span></sup></b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I
was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was
in prison and you visited me.’</span> To welcome the stranger is to do something
close to the heart of God who welcomes us into his presence through Christ. It is
a profoundly Christian act.<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-82506733584041770502017-04-11T22:08:00.000+01:002017-04-11T22:08:24.165+01:00Redeeming Prison<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcbk2zg86j-PYXzdVnZ64sT6AWGRZK0b0bbgeqWz9jU8diWJ9dz35-xKLq-Vdy55z0f7J9b5aHeXHhiHQWfNHHQyPH3Jfi1GvmKmaeSOtAXrBMj-LSetxW5CvnkqSCmUdXtcMSN-eNhvk/s1600/IMG_1380.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcbk2zg86j-PYXzdVnZ64sT6AWGRZK0b0bbgeqWz9jU8diWJ9dz35-xKLq-Vdy55z0f7J9b5aHeXHhiHQWfNHHQyPH3Jfi1GvmKmaeSOtAXrBMj-LSetxW5CvnkqSCmUdXtcMSN-eNhvk/s320/IMG_1380.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
On Monday I sat in on a senior meeting of the staff of a London prison, as they recounted the various incidents that had happened over the
weekend. It was like listening to a tidal wave of pain. Half a dozen episodes
of self-harm, several men found with ligatures around their necks threatening
suicide, a number of fires set off in cells, rooms vandalised, a prison officer
stabbed in the face by an out of control prisoner wielding a sharpened plastic
knife. Visiting the segregation unit was sobering. The tiny rectangular cells, twelve
feet by six, with a dirty window opening on a prison yard, were bare, stark,
pitiless. The more extreme cases, like the man who stabbed the officer, had
been placed in ‘special accommodation’, as a last resort to cool down – a
dark, cold box room, with no light, not even a bed – nothing. It is hard to
imagine a more desolate and desperate place.<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On rounds with one of the admirable Anglican Chaplains, I
met a prisoner who, high on the unpredictable drug Spice, had believed his arm
was bendable and broke the bones in his own forearm. Another thought he had two
grandchildren but as he was estranged from his family, had never met them. Many
others were on their third or fourth term inside, unable to manage life outside
the closely managed environment of the prison where most decisions are taken
away and your life is monitored, controlled at every point. There’s no getting
away from it: prison is a brutal and brutalising place. It demeans people, takes
away their freedom, their decision-making powers, and so often their dignity.
In a way, that is partly the point – it is not meant to be a holiday. Most prison
staff, especially Chaplains, do a remarkable job at mitigating this, making the
prison as humane as it can be, treating prisoners with care, respect and skill,
making the most of the opportunities there are for rehabilitation, despite the
chronic lack of resources, staff levels that are far too low, and buildings
unsuited for the task. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the last week of his life here, Jesus was imprisoned, most likely in a small,
underground cell with no light, much like a segregation unit.
He entered the darkest, most desolate place, though even worse – the only
prospect of release was to a cruel, public, painful death. Yet by entering the
lowest place, he did so to redeem it, to break its power. He ‘became a curse
for us, so that God’s blessing might come to us’ (Gal. 3.13-14). He entered
prison, so that whatever imprisons us might not overcome us. That prison cell,
the place of Jesus’ confinement, became a place through which redemption and
freedom comes to the human race. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Prison will always be harsh, uncomfortable, brutal. Yet part
of that redemption must mean giving prison staff and Governors the resources to
make them also places of redemption, rather than just keeping the lid on the
vast amount of frustration and aggression so often to be found in our jails. Our
society needs a new vision for prisons, not just as a place of punishment, or
somewhere to dump the people we would rather not think about and need to be
protected from, but a place where lives can be restored, a place where
prisoners can be given education, faith and hope, the skills they need to
reintegrate into society on their release, and the resources to turn their
lives around, spiritually, personally and socially. Prison can be redeemed and
redeeming. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-56345771618707399272017-03-30T08:29:00.000+01:002017-04-06T20:37:00.697+01:00A different Holy Week<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Despite the claims of Christmas, Holy Week and Easter have always been the central moments of the Christian year. It's the week we come back again to the moment when the Creator of the world, in the person of Jesus Christ, entered the heart of the darkness of that world to rescue and redeem it - the ultimate snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat. It's also the time we remember what it means to be followers of this man. At one point Jesus used a particularly stark image to say what that means. He said we were to 'take up our cross' and follow him. For centuries, Christians have puzzled over what that involves, but at the time, it was a dramatic picture. Urban dwellers in Roman provinces were used to the sight of condemned criminals carrying the means of their own looming deaths on their backs before undergoing the ultimate punishment.<br />
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I have been thinking of how I 'take up my cross and follow Jesus' during Holy Week this year. During that dramatic final week of his life here Jerusalem, Jesus was homeless, imprisoned, an unwanted presence in a strange city, before his friends and his mother had to watch him die a slow painful death.<br />
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So how do I follow Jesus during Holy Week? Many people experience these very things as part and parcel of their lives. So this Holy Week I am planning to spend the time with those experiencing much of what Jesus did. On Monday I'm spending the day in one of our London prisons, visiting those in segregation, those with physical or mental health problems, or those newly arrived in prison, and listening to how prison officers handle life in such a fraught environment. I'll be spending Tuesday with a young asylum-seeking refugee from the Congo, newly arrived in Britain, seeing what his day is like and the challenges he faces, learning English, finding shelter and a job as a stranger in a new land. Wednesday will be spent in a centre for the homeless, serving food, talking to those who come and finding out their stories, and how they ended on the streets. On Thursday I'll spend time in a children's hospice with families whose children are very ill. And Good Friday will mean walking with fellow Christians carrying the Cross through the streets of Twickenham.<br />
<br />
These are all issues our society is struggling to deal with. Our prison system is repeatedly said to be near breaking point, with overcrowded wings, and levels of drug use, mental health issues and violence at record highs. Homelessness continues to be a scandal - while we erect more and more luxury flats and house prices creep upwards again, the fact that more than a quarter of a million people in the UK do not have a home to go each night suggests we have somehow not got this right. Immigration still continues to be a political hot potato, and despite the Brexit vote, will not go away anytime soon. And while we debate the politics of it, there are real people wandering our streets, looking to find jobs, learn a strange language, struggling to get a foothold in a competitive society, all the time wondering if they will find a welcome or a cold shoulder when they come here with their dream of a better life.<br />
<br />
I don't know what the week will be like, or what I will learn. I'm not doing it because I think I can solve their problems, bring any great assistance in such a short time or even offer them great pearls of wisdom. I'm hoping to understand a bit more of what people at the tough end of our society have to face, how they cope with it and what they need to survive and thrive. I want to see first hand the sacrifices and hard work of those who do care such for such people day in and day out.<br />
<br />
Jesus once said that "whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me." I have a hunch that I might find Jesus in these places too. </div>
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-18209464753502961002016-12-21T13:27:00.000+00:002016-12-21T13:27:33.165+00:00Incarnation and Anthropology<div class="MsoNormal">
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As Christmas draws near, we begin to think again of the significance of what CS Lewis called “<i>The Grand Miracle</i>”. It has been said that the early Christian debates were all about Christology, the Reformation debates concerned Soteriology and modern debates are all about Anthropology: what it means to be a human person. In our modern (or postmodern) world, we are all struggling to work out what true humanity looks like, especially when faced with the man-made destruction we see in Yemen, Aleppo and the rest of Syria. And it is at this time of year that we focus on the Christian answer to that question. </div>
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Athanasius, in his great work <i>De Incarnatione</i>, describes human nature as so damaged that it is barely recognisable from what it was originally meant to be. He offers the wonderful image of a portrait that has become so defaced by stains and dirt that the artist needs to sit down and re-paint the image in all its original glory. This is what God does in the Incarnation: <i>“He, the image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that he might renew mankind made in his likeness.” </i></div>
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CS Lewis uses a different image of the descent of the Word into human flesh – that of ‘<i>a diver, stripping off garment after garment, making himself naked, then flashing for a moment in the air, and then down through the green, and warm, and sunlit water into the pitch black, cold freezing water, down into the mud and slime, then up again, his lungs almost bursting, back again to the green and warm and sunlit water, and then at last out into the sunshine, holding in his hand the dripping thing he went down to get. This thing is human nature, but associated with it, all nature, the new universe.</i>”</div>
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In Jesus Christ we see not only the face of God the Creator, we also see our own faces as they were meant to be and as they one day will be. We see human nature restored, redeemed and refreshed - re-booted as we would say now - with the invitation to be radically re-made in the image of the one born in Bethlehem. As John Chrysostom put it: “<i>For this He assumed my body, that I may become capable of His Word; taking my flesh, He gives me His Spirit; and so he bestowing and I receiving, He prepares for me the treasure of Life.”</i> The invitation for us this Christmas is to celebrate the rescue of humanity, to hold out the hope of human life made glorious again, to look again into the face of Jesus, the one complete human – one who touches lepers, sits with the mourning, forgives sinners, weeps for those who have lost their way, confronts the powerful and raises the dead – so that we, in our own unique ways, might be redeemed and come to resemble him. </div>
Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-18242466393066747922016-06-22T06:33:00.000+01:002016-06-22T06:33:06.725+01:00Why I am voting to remain<div class="Body">
The past few months have been a bruising one for
our country. The debate over our continued membership of the EU has divided opinions
significantly, just as it did in Scotland over the independence debate. The
tone of the debate has been unpleasant, and will leave a damaged government, a fractious nation, and contribute to a dangerous trend of a more polarized
world. While the USA flirts with a version of politics that threatens global stability,
the last thing we need here is an angry Britain, with hurts that may take years
to heal.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The main lines of the debate have been gone over
many times. Each side has its own stronger points – the economic arguments seem
to lean towards the Remain campaign, with most financial analysts and
commentators arguing for the merits of staying in. Immigration however remains
a significant concern for many people, especially perhaps those whose wages
might be undercut by immigrants from other European countries who are willing
to work for a lower wage. I fully respect the views and integrity of many good
friends who will be voting to leave, but I will be voting to remain, for three
main reasons:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">1. If we pull out, a great deal of government
time and energy over the next few years will have to be out into re-negotiating
trade deals with European countries and beyond, and establishing new policies
in a wide range of areas. This is at a time when we are facing some massive
global issues which need our full attention - the migrant crisis which will not
disappear quickly, religious terrorism and the threat of IS, not just in the
Middle East but with the potential of attacks happening nearer to home, and the
ever-present problem of climate change, perhaps the biggest threat to our world
over the coming years. While the rest of the world will be trying to tackle
these major issues, we will be wrapped up in the lengthy task of re-organising
our relationships with the rest of the world, with little energy left to look
outwards. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">2. The EU is far from perfect. As I argued in an
<a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eu-would-be-better-if-it-returned-to-its-christian-roots-7srbkscgp" target="_blank">article in the Times on Saturday</a>, it has lost its original expansive Christian vision,
has become excessively bureaucratic, focuses too much on the single market and
needs reform. However, it has been extraordinarily successful in one major area
- it has helped prevent a European war for the past 60 years where the previous
40 years had seen two devastating conflicts that had left millions dead. Our
neighbours on the continent are nervous that if we leave, it could lead to the
unravelling of the whole EU project, and who knows where that might end up?
Countries who trade and talk regularly and whose economies are interdependent
are much less likely to go to war. That reason alone is worth voting Remain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">3. Much of the Leave case has been based around
the right of Britain to govern itself. It is worth remembering that the nation
state itself is a relatively recent creation, and from a Christian point of
view, easily becomes an idol. We are called to love our neighbour, not our
nation. That means our individual neighbours who live near us but also our
national neighbours. The big issues that face us globally – terrorism, climate
change, global poverty - are ones that cross borders and boundaries. They can
no longer be confined to the nation state, nor dealt with on that basis. A
Christian’s first loyalty is not to his or her nation, but to the Kingdom of
God, which transcends borders, and to a holy church that is truly
international. The Christian vision is that we live best when we are
interdependent not independent. Leaving the EU feels like a withdrawal from
partnership and interdependence, reneging on an earlier solemn commitment to contribute
to and make a difference within Europe. It feels like a rejection of our
neighbour, not a love for our neighbour. It says we are better on our own,
without you. And that does not seem the way of love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6011722518762175916.post-886216512241724622016-06-11T17:42:00.000+01:002016-06-11T17:42:54.533+01:00The Future of Theology<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLY_PyrK-q8FmVrj62WBl8Atoh3HDE3reE27h1jHc9pbZmaPnzpwvKoT2Zhx40QoLuX1jS1QWMwVQn2taQ-4eFsgjviN7WDkiInKUhJUkVtFLjc-1YmK8XIdARcd_bMgQqRJmXkjx4_2s/s1600/IMG_0354.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLY_PyrK-q8FmVrj62WBl8Atoh3HDE3reE27h1jHc9pbZmaPnzpwvKoT2Zhx40QoLuX1jS1QWMwVQn2taQ-4eFsgjviN7WDkiInKUhJUkVtFLjc-1YmK8XIdARcd_bMgQqRJmXkjx4_2s/s200/IMG_0354.JPG" width="200" /></a>I have just been in on a series of fascinating discussions
on the future of theology in Yale Divinity School in the USA. The premise we
were there to discuss was that theology needs to re-think itself as the
‘secular’ world no longer listened to theologians (they don’t produce anything
useful, scientifically verifiable or economically profitable) and church didn’t
much either (churches being more interested in pragmatic leadership training
and no longer read theological books). As a result, theology has tended to
drift into the descriptive mode of ‘religious studies’ and lost interest in
God. The suggestion was that theology should ultimately be about ‘articulating
visions of human flourishing’.</div>
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It was a fascinating 24 hours. Broadly speaking the thesis held
up. Guilty as charged, the theological guild does often come over as talking to
itself in ever-smaller circles about ever more abstruse subjects, and did need
a new vision of itself and its purpose. The idea that we live in a secular
world, however, was roundly challenged. We are no longer so much a secular
world but a plural one, where religion is reviving around the world, with the
odd exception of Europe, but even there & in the west generally, the real
divide is not between secular and religious views of the world but between
transcendental ones (including but not uniquely religious) and ‘closed systems’
which saw the world in reductionist mechanistic terms.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My own observations were firstly to suggest that the
proposal needed a broader horizon than just human flourishing. Our fortunes
depend on the fortunes of the whole natural order, so theology needs to concern
itself with the flourishing, not just of humanity, but of the whole creation, not
least because without clean air, a healthy environment and food to eat, well,
we just die. Perhaps more importantly, we are integrally linked to the creation
- according to Genesis 2.15, our central calling is to nurture and care for the
rest of the natural world, so that any account of human flourishing must
involve the flourishing of the whole created order as well. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Secondly it was to suggest that the thesis needed a stronger
account of sin. There is something in us that perversely resists the flourishing
of others, the flourishing of creation, and even, in cases of self-harm, of
ourselves. Any account of theology that paints a picture of the good life has
to take into account our propensity to destroy life and resist goodness.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The most interesting question concerned whether the goal of the
theological enterprise was God <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se </i>or
the Kingdom of God – what life looks life when God is king. I found myself
increasingly drawn to the latter suggestion. Jesus says: “Seek first (not God,
but) the Kingdom of God. The end result of all our journeying will not just be
the beatific vision, being enraptured with the vision of God, with the
implication that creation falls out of view. It is not in some Platonic sense
finally to escape the body and physicality to embrace a spiritual contemplation
of the divine, but instead we hope for a new heavens and a new earth. The
pictures the Bible gives us of the end are very material – a feast, a new city
descending from the heavens, a resurrected body – they indicate a new order of
being, a new set of social relations. It is created life finally reaching
maturity, healed of sin, bathed in the love of God, saturated with grace, a
renewed creation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So perhaps the vocation of theology is not just to
describe God – although it is that – and certainly not just to describe human
experience of God - but to describe God as he relates to us, and us as we
relate to God (or more strictly, creation as it relates to God). I found myself
returning to the theological genius that is John Calvin: “<i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">What is God? Men who pose this question are
merely toying with idle speculations. It is more important for us to know of
what sort he is, and what is consistent with his nature. What good is it to
profess with Epicurus some sort of God who has cast aside the care of the world
only to amuse himself in idleness? What help is it, in short, to know a God
with whom we have nothing to do?</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">For Calvin theology is not reflection on human experience, nor
speculation on the inner being of God, but knowing God as he relates to us, as
he has revealed himself to be in Creation and in Christ. Theology necessarily
involves a vision of well-lived human life, or as he puts it a little later in
that first section of the Institutes: “<i>God is not known where there is no
religion or piety.</i>” Theology leads to piety, or to put it in more
contemporary language: flourishing. In fact you can’t have theology without
flourishing in the realities of this life, both now and in the eschaton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">There is a kind of theology which is conceptual clarification, a
philosophical clearing of the ground, but constructive theology proper, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">theologia</i>, involves the whole person in
the quest. It does not just have God in view, but God as he relates to us – how
life is to be lived under the rule of God. It requires the exercise of
spiritual, theological imagination, in the light of God’s self-revelation in
Christ, to envision what life in the Kingdom, life at the wedding feast of the
lamb, life in the new Jerusalem is and will be like. Theology describes a life
lived in healthy, nurturing relation to others and under the dominion,
protection and care of God: a flourishing life.</span></div>
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Graham Tomlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17122843483424739088noreply@blogger.com1