St Stephen’s Church – South Dulwich

 

18 December 2011

Mary encounters God and she survives. And not only does she survive but inside her this encounter has changed her very core. The story of the annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) is read at every carol service and it is often read in the liturgy on this fourth Sunday in advent. Almost every word is familiar. And, interestingly enough, this story would have been familiar even to its first hearers and readers. It contains all the traditional and formal elements of previous mystical encounters between God or his angels and humans: the simplicity of Mary’s response: ‘Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord’, the important introductory words by the angel: ‘Do not be afraid’, the customary response of reluctance and doubt (‘how can this be since I am a virgin’) and the formulaic recounting of God’s faithfulness and power in the past. All this familiarity, tradition and formality give the reader re-assurance, much like the ancient liturgy of the church, practised to this day, in its repetitiveness. The enormity of what is happening, God’s spirit touching his humanity, can sometimes only be endured in the context of the familiar. In our tradition formlessness might derail into pagan meaninglessness. Through Mary we meet God who does not wish to destroy or burn out, but encounters us in familiar and traditional form, awakening trust in us. Otherwise ‘God with us’ would not be bearable.

 

Bernhard Schünemann

11 December 2011

On the altar of our side chapel you will find an icon of John the Baptist. He is one of the more unsettling characters that we meet as we approach Christmas and we will hear about him in our Gospel reading this morning.

He ate locusts and wild honey, wore a camel’s hair cloak and lived in the desert. In short, he is the kind of person you might cross the street to avoid. When people did go to see him, many went away with a flea in their ear. He told them to repent, to change their ways and not to mistake him for the one who is coming.

‘Preparing for the one who is coming’ is what Advent is all about and preparing for Christmas seems to be what December is all about. Earlier this week I popped into Sainsbury’s only to find that the ubiquitous Christmas music was already being played and that mixed nuts, dates and Clementines were all on special offer. To me, it all seems a bit early and I prefer to wait a while- if only for the nice juicy Satsumas to also be available on two for one!

Amidst our proper preparations for Christmas, however, John the Baptist stops us in our tracks and presents us with some tough messages. To those who came to see him and to us he says that if you really want to meet Jesus you need to be prepared to go on a journey, if you believe what he says your world will be turned upside down and if you choose to follow him your your life will never be the same again.

Nick Davies

4 December 2011

Waiting is not a very popular attitude. Waiting is not something that people think about with great sympathy. In fact, most people consider waiting a waste of time.

In our particular historical situation, waiting is even more difficult because we are so fearful. One of the most pervasive emotions in the atmosphere around us is fear. People are afraid—afraid of inner feelings, afraid of other people, and also afraid of the future. Fearful people have a hard time waiting, because when we are afraid we want to get away from where we are. But if we cannot flee, we may fight instead. Many of our destructive acts come from the fear that something harmful will be done to us. It impresses me, therefore, that all the figures who appear on the first pages of Luke’s Gospel are waiting. Zechariah and Elizabeth are waiting. Mary is waiting. Simeon and Anna, who were there at the temple when Jesus was brought in, are waiting. The whole opening scene of the good news is filled with waiting people. And right at the beginning all those people in some way or another hear the words, “Do not be afraid. I have something good to say to you.” These words set the tone and the context. Now Zechariah and Mary, Simeon and Anna are waiting for something new and good to happen to them. Waiting, as we see it in the people on the first pages of the Gospel, is waiting with a sense of promise. “Zechariah,…your wife Elizabeth is to bear you a son.” “Mary,…Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son” (Luke 1:13, 31, JB). People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God moulds us according to God’s love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.

An extract from a sermon on waiting by Henri Nouwen. full version: www.waitersunion.org/homily

27 November 2011

Today is Advent Sunday, the Church’s new year, when we begin to prepare ourselves for Christmas. But don’t worry, you do not need to rush home to update the Christmas card list or book the turkey delivery quite yet.

Instead, what we are encouraged to do during this period is to prepare ourselves spiritually. Indeed Advent is to Christmas, what Lent is to Easter. It is a time of reflection, repentance and preparation for the coming of Christ. Over these next few weeks our readings will tell us of those who longed for the Messiah and we will pray and sing of our desire that ‘the heavens may drop down from above and the skies pour down righteousness’.

Another of our Advent traditions here at St Stephen’s is to support the homelessness appeal of Churches Together in Dulwich. Last year this raised over £6,000 for projects across the Borough and this year many of them are reporting more and more clients coming through their doors.

You can read more about their excellent work in the enclosed yellow leaflet. This year we will have a special collection at our Carol service but you can also place a donation in an envelope marked Advent Appeal on any of the coming Sundays and put it in the collection plate.

There could be few better ways to prepare ourselves to greet a child who was born in a manger and who grew-up to be an adult who had nowhere to lay his head.

Rev. Nick Davies – Curate

20 November 2011

 Today we have reached the end of the Christian    year, next Sunday we celebrate the beginning of a  new year with the first Sunday in Advent. This last  Sunday of the year is also sometimes called the feast  of Christ the King. At a time when there is so much  cynicism about leadership in our own region of  Europe and so much unsettledness about rulers in  the Arab world it is worth considering what sort of King Christ can be and what the quality of his Kingdom is for us. “O rex gloriae Christe, venin obis cum pace” (Christ glorious King, come to us with peace) is the most common inscription on old bells lifted high and ringing in church spires, and even though Jesus says of his own kingdom that it is not ‘of this world’ it is certainly ‘in the world’. In the protestant tradition Christ’s kingdom is present in the individual believing Christian and in the catholic tradition it is present in the church; as good Anglicans we are allowed to believe both! In his discussion with the worldly ruler Pilate (John 18-33-37) Jesus tells Pilate a few home-truths about his kingship: when Pilate asks him ‘what is truth’ Jesus implies that there is no answer to this because the question should have been ’who is truth’, truth emerges by following the person of Christ our King. At the time of Jesus only Kings were truly free, everybody else was somehow enslaved or bonded. In that sense his kingship sets us free, free from sin, from the fear of death and from the devil, and in that sense we inhabit with him a space of freedom, from within which we can begin to change the world.

Bernhard Schünemann

13 November 2011

When one is in battle you know that you have a job to do and any feeling of terror is absent – you are aware of the danger but you suppress it – your task is to achieve the objective you have been ordered to do and unless you are wounded you thrive on pure adrenaline hype. But when the battle is over and you are on your own and night falls the anxious moments are more to the fore. It affects soldiers in different ways – most are able to shrug off those moments, however many are seriously affected. The soldiers of today are fighting a difficult ‘will of the wisp’ campaign with an often invisible enemy. An enemy who resorts to devices that merely maim or kill – these diabolical devices do not achieve any material objective, their sole objective is to destroy the lives and terrorise soldiers. Of course they must incur a feeling of constant danger as these devices are difficult to detect and are often set off by remote control, allowing some men to pass before detonating it and destroying the following men or vehicle. So there must be a constant feeling of danger and anxiety. Those whose nerves are strong can overcome this feeling and adopt a fatalist attitude that what is to be will be but there are many who cannot put it to the back of their minds and they live in a constant feeling of apprehension and anxiety. Which is why I think that today as we pray for the fallen we should remember too those that still live but have lives that have been wrecked by this terrible feeling of terror – the memories will never fade and their lives are wrecked – those with failed marriages and who resort to drink and even drop into criminality and fall foul of the law – let us pray for them, they need our prayers.

George Key (veteran WW2, member of St Stephen’s)

6 November 2011

The glowing red of the Kingdom Season

The Church is trying to get away from calling this time of the year ‘Sundays before Christmas’, because it gives into the general feeling that the tinsely aspects of Christmas are starting already around October or even in November. During this time we are invited to contemplate the Kingdom of God and how kingdom values affect our lives. This season is full of anticipation and commemoration. The season moves from the feast of All Saints (last Sunday and Tuesday) through the commemoration of All Souls tide to Remembrance Sunday and finally we will arrive at the Festival of Christ the King (this year 20th November), when we will hope to have Bishop Jacob Ayeebo from Northern Ghana (Diocese of Tamale) visiting us to preach.

All Saints, which starts the season off on 1st November, provides an opportunity to consider the full range of the meaning of this season. Sanctity is – in spite of everything – accessible to us, not as a nice idea but as a reality pumped into the blood-stream of the human race by God’s action in the lives of his saints. The dark side of that confident rejoicing in our fellowship with the saints is the Church mourning her departed and commending them in faith and trust to God (All Souls). This commemoration as well as the remembrance next Sunday is a proper corrective to the rather forced jollity which is sometimes substituted for a sober confidence in the power of God alone to bring life out of death, light in our darkness. While we rejoice in the heroic example of the saints, we feel the loss of those we know and love and this is part of the range of the experience of anticipating the Kingdom of God.

Bernhard Schünemann

30 October 2011

This week we mark the Commemoration of the faithful departed; All Souls’ day. An annual opportunity to remember and give thanks for those whom we have loved and see no more.

At St Stephen’s this year, we will have two opportunities to do this. The main one will be our Choral service of All Souls at 6pm on 6 November (see notice inside). We will also, however, be marking the actual day of All Souls’ at our midweek Eucharist 9.45 Wednesday 2nd. November.

This memorial is an important opportunity to remind ourselves of our Easter faith which proclaims that Christ has conquered death and opened to all the way to eternal life. This paradox and good news was captured well by my favourite poet John Donne in his tenth Holy Sonnet.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Rev. Nick Davies

23 October 2011

Now, that the autumn is in full swing and October is fast drawing to its close, we will soon be turning our clocks back and we will be in receipt of that welcome additional hour at the end of October. This Sunday at the end of October is sometimes also called ‘Bible Sunday’ to remind us of the central importance of Holy Scripture in our lives. Clearly it is not enough to hear the Bible read in small portions on Sundays in church. The Bible needs to be a witness to the living word of God. We need to find time to read in it and live with it in such a way that God’s word becomes the fountain from which our lives are refreshed.
Reading and studying the Bible is a form of communion with God through which we are fed. St Paul makes the distinction between treating the Bible as a written code, full of wooden and dead words and – on the other hand – letting the words come alive through the Holy Spirit in our lives (2 Corinthians 3,6). Whether we read the Bible in groups or alone, we must not remain at the dry surface meaning of individual words and sentences but we must enter ourselves into the story and meet God as we do so. Chiara Lubich, the founder of the ‘Focolari Movement’ and winner of the Templeton prize for fresh approaches to religion, said once that if all Bibles were lost or burnt one day, people ought to be able to re-write it simply by observing the lives of Christians! This is the ancient prayer for this Sunday as written for the Book of Common Prayer:
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever.

Bernhard Schünemann

16 October 2011

On Wednesday this week the Church will remember Henry Martyn, translator of the Scriptures and missionary in India and Persia .
Martyn was born in Truro in 1781 and studied at Cambridge . He was planning to go into Law but at University had undergone a conversion experience and instead was ordained as a Priest.
Martyn had an impressive gift for languages and a desire to serve in the mission fields of the growing British Empire . At the time, however, the British East India Company discouraged mission work for fear of offending Hindu sensibilities. Nevertheless, Martyn eventually got a post as Chaplain to the Company and sailed for Calcutta in 1805. When he arrived, he spent much time debating matters of faith with Muslims and Hindus. He also put his language skills to use and in just six years he translated the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer into Urdu and Persian. Sadly by 1809, he was suffering from tuberculosis and eventually died on 16 October 1812.
When I was studying in Cambridge , I often used a library now dedicated to his memory and had time to reflect on issues of Christian mission and dialogue between faiths. I find it interesting to note that then as now, it is often states and businesses that worry more about the possible offence of religion than the religious themselves.
In our ever more globalised society where faith and cultures meet every day it strikes me that we need more dialogue rather than less. But, as Martyn discovered, for such dialogue to be worthwhile we may well need to travel well beyond our comfort zone and to immerse ourselves in the culture of others.

Nick Davies

9 October 2011

Dudley, the tax-collector at the College Road Toll gate retired this week. On my bicycle I never had to pay the toll, but I did sometimes stop to chat with Dudley, because his experience of human-kind was so very different from mine. As a rule people did not thank him often for being allowed to pay their toll gate due and that is to put it mildly. Quite the reverse in fact, Dudley has had to put up with a great deal of abuse over the years, in fact hardly a day went by without him being the target of some angry driver who hadn’t been expecting to pay. I have witnessed myself how people have got out of their cars and hurled racial and other abuse at Dudley. In his time he has also been attacked physically, damaging the sight of one of his eyes. Dudley spent his working life being on the sharp end of the Dulwich Estate’s revenue collection, revenue which is then spent charitably. As a parish priest I have always felt touched and moved to have a tax collector sitting in a toll booth in my parish, because it reminded me of the time of Jesus, who highlighted tax-collectors as some of the less popular of his contemporaries, as those most worthy to receive the message of his good news. Perhaps he had sympathy for them, because they, like him, suffered abuse on behalf of others: in Dudley’s case on behalf of the Dulwich Estates and in the case of Jesus on behalf of the whole of humanity. Aged 75 Dudley can now finally retire and live with his wife Jean, a retired midwife and priest in Upper Norwood in our Diocese.

Bernhard Schünemann

2 October 2011

Most of us don’t plough the fields and scatter any more. And yet this Harvest Festival seems to be one of the most important observances in our annual church calendar. It feels as fixed and as important as Christmas and Easter. In the Church of England it has only been a church event for about 130 years. It goes back to an eccentric Cornish Vicar by the name of Hawker, who took the liturgical year into his own hands and introduced a Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday for his rural congregation in Morwenstow in Cornwall.

And yet religion itself, let alone our Christian Faith, has its roots in people’s desire to give thanks for the apparent miracle of a good harvest. The fruits of fertility, the mysterious way in which nature propagates itself so abundantly, have always been regarded as a sign of God’s goodness. The Old Testament is full of praise and descriptions of such thanksgiving festivals.

We still sing the hymns, we still bring the miraculous produce, we still want to thank God, but most of us are far removed from the processes which are between the ploughed field and the full plate on our tables. We might even possibly be shocked to learn the details of industrial food production which goes into making up what we finally eat. The DVVS (Dulwich Vegan and Veggie Society www.dvvs.vegangroup.co.uk) is now gaining an increasing amount of support from local churches for their campaign for a meat- free day in November. Participating would not only be good for our health but also begin to have a positive impact on the ecology of food-production and ultimately the promotion of peace, justice and fairness.

Harvest thanksgiving is about giving thanks to God for all our productivity, which supports or sustains our lives. But it is also a new commitment on our behalf that we want to live up to the vocation of being good stewards of God’s fertile resources, rather than destroyers of the same.

Bernhard Schünemann

25 September 2011

A recent Toyota advert showed cars driving around a city with guardian angels sitting on the roofs. They were there keeping the drivers safe from harm.
As the cars drive by, another angel sits on a roof-top seeing if there is someone for him to guard. He is excited when he looks down to see a car without an angel and flies down to investigate. He is, however, disappointed to discover that the car is a Toyota and concludes that this driver has no need of a guardian angel!
The Bible has little to say about Toyota but it does have quite a bit to say about angels. In the Old Testament we read that they are intermediary beings between God and humanity forming a heavenly court praising God. The Greek for angels ‘angelos’ literally means messenger and as we have seen in countless works of art they announce Jesus’ incarnation to Mary and his birth to the shepherds. They also serve him in the wilderness and Jesus says that they will protect him and accompany him when he comes again.
On Thursday we celebrate the Feast of St Michael and All Angels and as we do so it is worth reminding ourselves of the biblical teaching about angels and their role in protecting the faithful. One way we can do this is by saying this prayer before going to sleep.
Visit this house, O Lord, we pray, drive far from it all the snares of the enemy; may your Holy angels dwell with us and guard us in peace, and may your blessing be always upon us. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

18 September 2011

This week Wednesday, 21st September, is St Matthew’s Day. It so happens, of course, that it is his gospel that we are reading during our Sunday Services this year. One of the great blessings of our faith is that we have four gospels: four little biographies of Jesus, each adding substantially to our understanding and knowledge of the life and person of Jesus. Sometimes the memories of the gospel writers vary a little, each one remembering the same aspect of Jesus’ life from his own personal perspective, and re-telling it with a particular congregation and mission in mind. The truth of Jesus could not possibly have been contained in just one gospel; the truth of Jesus is so alive that it can be glimpsed in between the four gospels, the truth about Jesus is simple and complex at the same time. Matthew remembers Jesus as a teacher, a new Moses: Jesus’s teaching is contained in five great sermons, like the five books of Moses, the Torah. Matthew gives lots of practical advice about how, as Christians, we should live our lives, but when you look at this advice it turns out to be hugely challenging (for example look at the teaching in Jesus’ sermon on the mount in Chapter 5). Matthew reminds us that Jesus promised to be present (really present) when we gather together for prayer or study and – most encouragingly – when we love those whom we might find it difficult to love (chapter 25,34ff). It seems that Matthew has a question in the back of his mind: how does a good Jewish boy like Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth set out to become the Teacher of Israel, yet he ends up founding a universal church, making salvation available for all who turn to God through him?

Bernhard Schünemann

11 September 2011

Today is the tenth anniversary of the worst ever terrorist attack referred to in history as 9/11. In our gospel reading for today (Matthew 18,21-35) Jesus puts the challenge of forgiveness before us. This theme of Christian forgiveness is a most difficult one to contemplate in the face of this memory. Much Christian reflection on forgiveness presupposes repentance, and in relation to the events of 9/11 there do not appear to have been any expressions of contrition from the perpetrators and their supporters. How then can what happened be forgiven? This raises very difficult issues between faiths since the models of forgiveness are very different. Jews and Muslims, for instance, may very clearly wish to assert than only the ‘victims’ may forgive the perpetrators and, furthermore, that since restitution needs to be made by the perpetrators to the ‘victims’ – and since this is not possible since so many of the latter (and some of the former) died, forgiveness within religious categories is not possible. The Christian tradition similarly emphasises the need for repentance – and, at times, for restitution (witness the call to Zacchaeus to pay back fourfold what he took in taxes). But as this passage emphasises – and as the parable of the Prodigal Son extends further – there is also unequivocal teaching on that free, unmerited forgiveness which is, if you like, pre-emptive. It does not presume repentance or restitution. It recognises that a situation of immense complexity and dysfunction may perhaps only be addressed by what appears to be a ‘super-human’ attempt to forgive in the sense of beginning anew. This is not easy territory. Believers mustn’t be made to feel that there is a compulsion to forgive when they have not reached the point in their journey where they are able to forgive. But the challenge to walk a pathway to forgiveness ‘from the heart’ remains – Father, forgive them for they know not what they do; forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Bernhard Schünemann.Inspired by awarenesssunday.com

4 September 2011

One of the striking features of the towns and villages in Transylvania in the heart of Romania, where we have just spent our summer family holiday, are the many ‘fortified churches’. These are ancient beautiful pre-reformation church buildings in the middle or at the edge of a town surrounded by a small garden and then around it all a strong and very high defensive wall. In the past the citizens could find refuge there in times of external threats such as invading armies from the east or lawless marauding hordes of robber-knights. Today these churches are still havens of peace and tranquillity, often lovingly tended and kept up by elderly members of their congregations. These churches reminded me of an ancient Judeo-Christian tradition of regarding God himself as a safe stronghold. This is reflected in the Psalms (especially Psalms 71 and 31). “In you O Lord do I seek refuge; let me never be put to shame… Be for me a stronghold to which I may ever resort; send out to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress”. In the presence of God we find refuge especially in times of trouble and persecution, hence the meaning of the word ‘sanctuary’ with all its connotations. At times this has become a metaphor for the nature of faith itself, such as the mysterious New Testament confession ‘Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief’ (Mark 9,24), where faith itself is being regarded as a safe place from which to reflect and in which to seek depth of faith. At other times and in other situations this ‘safe refuge and rock’ tradition has given rise to churches and church communities becoming a sanctuary and even a place of asylum for those fleeing from persecution, to give them time and space to reflect and consider their situation without the relentless pressure of having to flee. ‘A safe stronghold our God still is’ is the first line of a rather badly translated hymn (in our hymn books 366) where Martin Luther reflects this tradition.

Bernhard Schünemann

21 and 28 August

This month the Church remembers John Bunyan, author of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. A book which once was the most popular in the English language after the Bible. Whilst you may not have read it you will probably have some familiarity with it through the hymn,‘To be a pilgrim’ which begins, “He who would valiant be…”
Bunyan was born in 1628 near Bedford. He lived through the turbulent civil war years and came to faith after years of struggling to reform his life by his own efforts. He joined an independent congregation and became a popular preacher. After the restoration of Charles II in 1606, the authorities feared that radical preaching by unlicensed ministers might threaten the peace of the realm. When Bunyan refused to stop preaching, he was sentenced to spend twelve years in Bedford prison and it was here that he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress.
The Book is prose allegory of the progress of the soul from the city of the destruction to the heavenly city. Our hero ‘Christian’ is accompanied by ‘Faithful’ and ‘Hopeful’ and faces many challenges along the way. One such is when imprisoned in ‘Doubting Castle’ by the ‘Giant Despair’. A situation that Bunyan would have known all too well…
“Now a little before it was day, good Christian, as one half amazed, brake out in this passionate speech, ‘What a fool,’ quoth he, ‘Am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty. I have a key in my bosom, called promise that will (I am persuaded) open any lock in Doubting Castle’…and Christian began to try at the dungeon door, the lock was damnable hard but the key did open it and they made their escape with speed and came to the King’s Highway again.”

Rev. Nick Davies

7 and 14 August

The other day I went to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Like the other seven, it is a lot of fun with dragons, goblins, snakes and adventures aplenty as Harry, Ron and Hermione battle against ‘you-know-who’.Over the last thirteen years, I have enjoyed Harry Potter, taking the books on summer holidays and then enjoying the films. Whilst some Christian groups have suggested that the exploration of wizardry and magic is dangerous, it strikes me as a fairly harmless yarn exploring good and evil.In the last book, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ the battle focuses on Harry’s need to find and destroy ‘Horcruxes’. These are valuable objects in which his nemesis, Voldemort, has hidden parts of his soul in an attempt to live forever. Now I don’t want to ruin the story but three characters die, two of them willingly laying down their lives for a greater good. One of them, however, comes back to life- thanks to the Resurrection stone.Now these books are not aiming to tell a Christian story and Harry Potter is no Jesus Christ but the books do deal with many Christian themes including the need to name that which is evil, the power of self-sacrifice and the nature of eternal life. As Jesus approached his own death he explained to the disciples, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?”In the world of Harry Potter this is a truth that Harry begins to comprehend but it is one that Voldemort, to his cost, never understood.

Rev. Nick Davies

31 July 2011

This Sunday we are having a retiring collection for the joint Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) East Africa appeal.

The UN recently declared this crisis as ‘famine’ and estimate that 10 million people across Somalia , Kenya and Ethiopia are at risk of starvation. Many of those are pastoralists and nomads whose animals have died because of the drought and who now are reliant on aid.

The region is poor and unstable with civil war in Somalia turning drought into famine. The UN is currently trying to negotiate safe passage for aid workers to get to those worst affected. Having learnt from past emergencies in the 70’s and 80’s aid agencies now operate a famine early warning system and it is this that is worrying them about the deepening of this crisis over coming months.

The DEC has expertise in emergency relief, bringing together many of the UK agencies including Christian Aid and Save the Children. In 1995 I was working for Christian Aid and was seconded for nine months to work in a Rwandan refugee camp in Central Africa . The camp was home to 140,000 people living in tents made of plastic sheeting.

Each day lorries arrived from Mombasa port with supplies of maize flour, cooking oil and high protein biscuits. Each day heads of households came to collect supplies for the week. Meanwhile, British government water tankers filled huge reservoirs and OXFAM pipelines sent the water around the camp. This is what our donations can do on the ground and how they keep people alive when all else has failed.

An ancient Communion prayer over the bread and wine declares, “Blessed be God, who feeds the hungry, who raises the poor, who fills our praise.” Amen.

Revd. Nick Davies – Curate

24 July 2011

There are two reasons why I like using the psalms in my prayers. One is that they appear to have been the prayer book of Jesus, I feel close to Jesus when I read them. They other is that they somehow transform complaining and fear into praising and thanksgiving. Read most of the psalms and you will find it starts by declaring how awful everything (and everybody!) is and by the end the psalmist praises and thanks God. Exactly how and why this happens is partly the mystery of what God does with us when we pray.This week I came across a piece of writing claiming that ‘thankful people are contented people and here is what it suggested (a modern, secular psalm):

“I am thankful for the taxes I pay, because it means I have work and income;
for my trousers that are a bit tight, because it means I have enough to eat
for the chaos and mess after a party that I have to clear up, because it means that I have people around me who love me and value my friendship;
for all the household and garden chores, because it means I have a home;
for the whinging about everything in the media, because it means we have a free press;
for the woman in church behind me in the pews who sings loudly but appears to be tone deaf, because it means that I have musical ears;
for the washing that needs sorting and ironing, because it means I have enough clothes;
for the alarm that wakes me up in the morning, because it means I have a meaningful and necessary task to get up for.”

Bernhard Schünemann

17 July 2011

Gracious and holy Father,
please give me:intellect to understand you;
reason to discern you;
diligence to seek you;
wisdom to find you;
a spirit to know you;
a heart to meditate upon you;ears to hear you;
eyes to see you;
a tongue to proclaim you;
a way of life pleasing to you;patience to wait for you;
and perseverance to look for you.

Grant me:a perfect end,|your holy presence,a blessed resurrection,and life everlasting.

Ascribed to St Benedict – submitted by Martin Wheatley

10 July 2011

On Monday this week (11th July) we commemorate St Benedict. It might not be an exaggeration to say that Christianity and civilisation in general in Europe would look very different were it not for this great saint, mostly depicted in a plain black habit and a raven at his feet. Benedict is generally credited with being the father of western monasticism (being monks and nuns). He ordered the life of monks and nuns by writing his famous ‘rule’. In today’s terms his rule may read as being rather strict and inflexible but he actually wrote it to give monks and nuns an easier time, to make them less obsessively self-denying and more responsive to the needs of their community. The emphasis – for the first time – was on cultivating a proper sense of ‘community’ and the role of community in discovering more about God. He put forward a balanced life consisting of work and prayer (ora et labora) and clearly he was steeped in the Bible, since his rule is full of references to it and constant reference is made to the life of Jesus. Every chapter reminds the reader of the centrality of following Christ. The monasteries with his rule largely shaped European civilisation; Benedictine monks, wherever they founded monasteries, brought with them their Christian faith, their unique lifestyle and agricultural innovation and – what is still a major vocation of Benedictines today – they founded schools and provided education. Benedictinism has given Europe a sense of common heritage. Benedict is therefore a good choice to be Patron Saint of ‘Europe’. For me he represents an ideal of efficiency and busyness combined with being still and centred, a sense of getting things done but never losing sight of why we are doing them, praying and working and giving due attention to both.

Bernhard Schünemann

3 July 2011

Neil McGregor is one of the most outstanding museum curators of our present time. He has headed up and treasured some of our greatest national collections for many years now. For some years he was Director of the National Gallery and now he is Director of the British Museum. One of his skills is that he can draw the public’s attention to individual items in a collection, and talk about them so engagingly that one comes away enriched by the past. He demonstrated this recently in his 100 mini radio talks ‘The history of the world in a hundred objects’. Neil is also a practising Anglican, and when he was at the National Gallery he curated the hugely courageous and stunningly successful exhibition ‘Seeing Salvation’ in which he assembled images of Christ from 15 hundred years. Now he has done it again! Three years into his time at the British Museum he is now putting on an exhibition entitled ‘Treasures of Heaven’. Assembled in this exhibition are religious artefacts, mainly medieval and mainly Christian, taken out of the dusty and academic context of glass cases and dispassion in a museum, and here exhibited in a context that is much closer to their original purpose namely to direct our sight up high even perhaps to draw us into a relationship with God. Most of European art until quite recently took its inspiration from the Bible and the Christian story, artists and craftsmen knew that in it one can find the whole spectrum of human emotion and experience. Neil McGregor has made waves in the media with his new exhibition and what is more he is giving the wider (church-going and non-church-going) public the opportunity to explore the spiritual significance of holy art.

Bernhard Schünemann

26 June 2011

What we can learn from ‘Acts’ and the growth of the early church is that talking and preaching in lofty and elevated terms is not enough to spread the truth of Christianity. What matters as least as much is the ‘serving of food’. Good words have to be accompanied by good deeds, indeed ‘looking after the needy and disadvantaged’ soon became the hallmark of the Christian church and it went hand in hand with living a Christian life. Therefore one of the first things the apostles did was to appoint and ordain specialist social workers whom they called ‘deacons’ (servants) to keep an eye on behalf of the church on the needy (orphans and widows get a prominent mention here). Our patron saint, St Stephen, was the first of these new breed of appointees. It was the success and effectiveness of this kind of mission, of giving real meaning to the insight that ‘God is love’ that gave rise to the fact that the church for the first time came to the notice of the authorities as a real threat to the established order and their corrupt rule. And therefore Stephen was not only the first ‘deacon’ but also the first Christian martyr, killed for his faith and his witness. All over the world there are thousands of churches which are dedicated to his memory and claiming his patronage and together with them we share an enthusiasm to be of service to our community as part of our worship of God in Christ.

Bernhard Schünemann

19 June 2011

Earlier this week the Archbishop of Canterbury drew attention to the worsening plight of Christians in the near east. Whilst the Arab Spring has brought the first glimmers of human rights to a number of regimes, it has also brought instability and violence towards Christian minorities. In Egypt two Churches have been burned and twelve people killed, meanwhile Churches have been bombed in Syria .
We often forget Christian communities living in the Arab world but there are over five million Coptic Christians in Egypt , as well as sizeable populations in the Holy Land, Lebanon and Syria . Indeed, many of these communities are far older than our own and have bequeathed to us some of our greatest saints; from the desert mothers and fathers of Egypt we inherit monasticism, from Augustine of Africa we have teaching on the Trinity and let’s not forget St Nicholas of Turkey and St George of Palestine!
The challenges faced by Arab Christians today have deep historical roots which include the rise of Islam, the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire, the violence of the Crusades and the rise of medieval Europe . All of this served to move the gravity of Christianity westward to Rome . Despite these geo-political developments, eastern Christianity and Islam have lived peaceably together for much of their history with Christians free to practise their religion and priests and nuns protected in the teaching of the Quran.
So, as we gather today to celebrate another great feast of the church, Trinity Sunday, we should take a moment to give thanks for the Eastern saints without whom we would not be here. As we do so let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem , Cairo , Tripoli and Damascus and for all their people.
Revd Nick Davies

12 June 2011

We all know about how the age-old Jewish festival of Passover celebrates the liberation of the ancient people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. God perfected that liberation in Jesus, when at the time of the Passover, Jesus started his journey of the passion which led him to die on the cross. And on the third day God raised him as our saviour pulling us out of the grave with him. The liberation of the Passover has become for us the liberation of Easter, the liberation from fear and selfishness.
On the festival of Pentecost – fifty days after the Passover – the people of Jesus’ day commemorated the giving of the commandments in the desert, the ‘new deal’ that God was striking for his people – the covenant of love sealed on tablets of stone (“Thou shalt love your God…”). Our Jewish brothers and sisters still celebrate this as Shavu’ot, the ‘Festival of Weeks’.It is no coincidence, therefore, that the earliest followers of Christ experienced Pentecost as the day when God struck a new deal with them. But this time not in a desert but in the middle of the city. This time not on tablets of stone but in tongues of fierce fire resting on their heads and as a gentle breeze of wind blowing where it wills. As the old prophets had foretold, ‘I will remove your hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh’. Not letters scratched into stone but living words of love whispered in all languages into the ears of all that wanted to hear. God has invested us with his Holy Spirit, today at Pentecost let us pray for his spirit to be set free in us and the love story can begin.

Bernhard Schünemann

5 June 2011