Proclaiming the Faith

On January 6th, Twelfth night, Epiphany, we were driving on the motorway system around Madrid. We couldn’t understand why, although there were up to six lanes available, ours was the only vehicle on the road for quite long periods of time. A quick check in our trusty handbook gave the answer to our lack of understanding. It was a national holiday – it was the day on which Spanish children were given their Christmas presents.

Over the years we have spent several holidays at the time of religious festivals in Spain and other Catholic countries and we never cease to be amazed how involved the whole community becomes in their celebration. We have seen the most amazing statues carried on the shoulders of numerous men, each statue or tableau showing the important features of the festival. People seem to live their faith more openly at these times.

More years ago than I will admit our Chapel used to have three Sundays before our Anniversary when we used to parade around the village singing hymns and advertising this important time. On the third Sunday we often had a silver band to accompany us as we finished our parade. People in the village had no doubt about the commitment of the couple of dozen people who took part each year or of the strength of faith of our congregation.

On anniversary Sunday the chapel would be packed afternoon and evening as villagers joined us in our celebration of faith. Sadly, like many old traditions it no longer happens.

Perhaps we have become too self conscious about proclaiming our faith or perhaps we are too politically correct and prefer not to cause apparent offence to those of other faiths or to non believers.

Yet, if either is true, how are we going to grow God’s Kingdom? We, as a Church, need to think carefully how we can involve ourselves more in proclaiming our faith in the wider community. I have no answers – I wish I did. Perhaps we could use the weeks leading up to the Church’s greatest festival to think about how to proclaim the Risen Lord.
God bless
John

Slaughter of the innocents

Each New Year is a time of hope: particularly so in 2009, as we look forward to a new and very different President in the USA. Billions of people look to Barack Obama to uphold the highest aspirations of the American people, rather than serving their basest economic greeds, as his predecessor has sometimes done.

Like all human beings, he is doomed to fail, of course.

But I believe he will achieve a lot for all of us. America has a written constitution, unlike the UK, and this sets out ideals like religious freedom, peace, justice and welfare. These have often been ignored both hat home and abroad, and if Obama can re-establish the USA as the great and good power it aspires to be, he will have fulfilled all we can reasonably hope.

Justice. This means a lot in Palestine and Israel today. It means that it is wrong to launch missiles against civilian targets – and also that it is wrong for a powerful government to cut off supplies of fuel, food, and water to a neighbour, as the Israeli government ahs done.

Of the two, perhaps the greater wrong is that perpetrated by the Israeli government: after all, the greatest wrong of the Twentieth Century is probably the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis. How can a nation that includes so many who remember (and even survived) the Holocaust allow its own government to strike against a nation mainly comprising the poor and innocent?

British experience in Ireland shows that it is only the costly forgiveness that Jesus preached that brings peace. Demanding an eye for an eye makes everyone blind.

We are all sinners: we acknowledge this weekly. One of the things we do not often do is examine the acts of our government – and other governments – and ask them to live up to our ideals.

2009 is the year to do this, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.