Roger Ryan

BEWARE OF JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR: ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUE!

2012-02-06T02:48:00.001-08:00

Christian people and church members will be presented with a television dilemma during 2012.
Will they watch and be taken in by Andrew Lloyd-Webber's nationwide search 'for the next musical superstar' to play the title role in Jesus Christ Superstar?

The Jesus of the rock opera is not the historical Jesus of the Bible.

He may look like the real thing, but the real thing he is not!

Superstar Jesus is another Jesus, a counterfeit, a one dimensional human Jesus.

The show contains no inspiring sermons.

No quaint parables.

No wonderful miracles.

Superstar Jesus wants to pack up, be someone else and go somewhere else.

There is nothing very 'super' about Andrew Lloyd Webber's fictional character.

Christians are to be cautioned: don't be taken in and deceived by the glitz, glam and haunting music.

Accept no substitute.

For example, consider the lyrics.

Superstar Jesus sings: I have changed, I'm not as sure as when we started, then I was inspired, now I'm sad and tired... Why should I die? What will be my reward?... Can you show me now I would not be killed in vain?... Bleed me beat me kill me take me now - before I change my mind.

This does not sound at all like the Jesus of the gospels who submitted himself to his Father's will and gave himself as a ransom for many.

Superstar Jesus screams at a crowd: There are too many of you - don't push me! There's too little of me - don't crowd me! Heal yourselves!

Really? Is this the Jesus of the gospels who welcomed the sick and blind and lame and healed them all and about whom the crowds were amazed?

Mary Magdalene in Superstar sings: He's just a man, he's just a man, and I've had so many men before. In very many ways he's just one more.

I have heard of brides who have considered this song for their wedding service/ceremony. Hardly appropriate for such an occasion. Nice music, shame about the lyrics.

Jesus Christ Superstar concludes with a piece of music called John Nineteen Forty-one which refers to a Bible text, Jesus is dead and buried. No resurrection. No ascension. Curtains.

We could go a little further and consider some answers for Judas who sings: I don't understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand.
The life and passion of Jesus was carefully planned, happened at the right time and in the right way. 'When the fullness of time had come, God sent his son' (Galatians 4.4).

Judas sings, Jesus Christ, who are you?
Jesus was God and his whole life was living proof he was God. Jesus said, 'The Father and I are one' (John 10.30) and 'Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me' (John 12.44).

Judas also sings, Did you mean to die like that?
Jesus said, 'I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the father' (John 14.31).

Judas asks, Was that a mistake or did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?

Matthew in his gospel writes: 'From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised' (Matthew 16.21).

The life and death of Jesus was no mistake and Jesus was well aware what was to happen to him.

The fictional Jesus invented by Lloyd-Webber is no more than a jaded faded mandarin.

Believe in the historical Jesus who is foretold in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), the historical Jesus of the gospels and the historical Jesus of the New Testament letters.
A wonderful saviour.

Be impressed.

Be inspired.

Accept no substitute.

Where is God in all this?

2012-01-28T02:31:00.000-08:00

While I was away for three months on Sabbatical (May-July 2010) I felt safe and secure as I travelled to Germany, France and Washington DC by plane and as I drove my car to Devon, North Wales, to the University of Sussex and to the University of Sheffield. I missed the General Election and the World Cup (it appears I did not miss much), however, in June I was horrified to read about the shootings in Cumbria.

   At an open air service in Whitehaven on the afternoon of the following Sunday, 6th June to remember the twelve victims, the Bishop of Carlisle, James Newcombe—who I met many years ago when he was a curate in North Watford—used this very title for his sermon.
   This is a question that I have had in mind for a long time and it was also the subject for some of my sabbatical reading and reflection.
   The Bishop was up front and courageous when applying the question to the shootings, where was God in all this? This was the beginning of his pastoral response

On Wednesday, God was in the touch of those who cradled the wounded and dying victims in their arms, he was in the skills and professional care of paramedics, nurses and doctors, and he was in the sensitivity of police officers who had to take difficult news to relatives.[1]

Now it is not my purpose to criticise Bishop James who is one of the finest bishops we have in the Church of England. What he said on this occasion was sensitive, pastoral, and warm. On a similar occasion I may have said much the same. But we need to take a step back, to think carefully and theologically about what he said.

If God was with the support services looking after the victims, as I and the Bishop believe he was—then God was late. God was needed earlier in the day at the time of the shootings, to step in, to intervene, to prevent the murders in the first place. God arrived late in Cumbria!

We need to go further. Does the Bishop’s pastoral response to the question ‘where was God?’ imply that God was absent when the shootings took place? In my view, yes it does. My provisional conclusion is this: it appears that God is hidden or even absent on many occasions when dreadful things happen.

We may go a little further. I believe with all my heart that God is good and loving, gracious and merciful. These characteristics are what we call God’s attributes.[2] But looking at our world of so much suffering and terror and dread, it appears to me that

God is good, but not always;

God is loving, but not always;

God is merciful, but not always.

What are we to say that is positive, helpful and hopeful that will enable us to live our Christian lives with credibility in this unpredictable harsh world as we find it?

   I have spent the past fourteen years or so thinking very deeply about this subject.
   I began with a long-term study project and research on the Old Testament which I submitted to the University of Oxford on the Book of Judges.[3] This, in my judgement, introduces the pastoral problem about suffering and terror and dread about which clergy and Christians must be honest: where is God in all of this?
   More recently I have focused on the Holocaust as the most iconic event of evil in modern times because if we can talk honestly and with integrity about God and the Holocaust, then we can talk about God, and anything else that happens, with credibility however grim it might be.

What I propose to do here is this:

1. To remind you about the Holocaust, its history, and the victims.

2. To consider some theological responses to the Holocaust and to our question, where was God while millions were shot and gassed in the 1940s?

3. To suggest ways that the Christian faith and church worship might be reformed in order to be credible to hurting and questioning people.

1 THE HOLOCAUST

The Holocaust[4] has its roots in antisemiticism which is opposition to and hatred of Jews. Jews were hated in Europe and Russia because they were accused of murdering Christ; their religion was different, their appearance was different as was their Yiddish language.[5] They lived in their own communities, sometimes in villages or shatels and ghettos. They were the ‘other’ who were blamed for plagues and for anything that went wrong such as Germany’s defeat in the Great War (1914-18) and for the country’s economic collapse that followed.
   When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Jews were said by the Germans to be ‘our problem’ and ‘our misfortune’.
   The solution was to make life so uncomfortable for Jews that they would leave the country. The problem here was that many German Jews were not religious but secular and were assimilated into German culture.
   Moreover, other countries would only take small quotas of Jewish refugees. Britain took about 20,000 German-Jewish children.
   In 1935 the Nazi Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of their German citizenship, of their rights of employment and of their human rights. Jews were beaten in the street, arrested and put into concentration camps.
   The Nazis developed their own myth about themselves: they were the superior Aryan master race; they did not want to be contaminated by foreign or alien blood. Nazis claimed to be clean, well dressed, cultured and disciplined; Jews were vermin as were homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and gypsies. Now you can see where this is heading…
   When the Nazis invaded Poland and Russia they entered countries with about two million Jews.
   Many Jews in the East were religious and poor trades’ people. Jews were rounded up, the young men were selected for work camps, the women, children, those unwell and the elderly were taken into the woods and shot into pits.
   Nazi leaders visited these shooting sites in Poland and were distressed by what they saw—not the shooting of Jewish families—but the emotional effect the shootings were having on German shooters!
   Orders were made for ‘cleaner’ methods to be investigated for 'disposing' of Jews. Sealed lorries were made with the exhaust pipe returning inside the lorry in order to gas Jews packed inside which was efficient, but slow. In an experiment, some Russian prisoners of war were gassed in a room using a pesticide called Zyclon B which gave 'satisfactory' results.
   Soon Jews were taken by force in cattle trucks to especially built death camps at Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec and Auschwitz. Between 1942 and 1945 the Nazis killed about six million Jews including one and a half million children by gas and shooting.
   These murders were referred to as "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question".
   Hostilities came to an end in the summer of 1945, but for Jews and for many others the questions began to tumble over themselves.
   Where was God in all this?
   Why did he not intervene?
   Germany was a civilized country of music, art and culture; how could mass murder on an industrial scale have happened?
   Europe was composed of religious countries, some were protestant, most were Catholic. Germans were an educated people; Nazis were among those who were baptized as Christians. The Jews of Eastern Europe were religious; they read the Hebrew Bible and brought up their children in their ancient religious traditions.
   Had God abandoned them?
   Where was he?
   Where was God in all this?
   Many survivors gave up their religion; there was no point in religious belief or in praying. They prayed for God’s help in the camps but he did not intervene; heaven was silent.
   They were not the only people who gave up their faith; many of our own servicemen could no longer believe in God because of what they saw.

2
SOME THEOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO THE HOLOCAUST[6]
1.    The Jews must have sinned, they deserved to be punished. Still today you may hear that Jews were punished because they did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. Really? One and a half million children, gassed, and beaten to death? What had Jewish children done to deserve such a punishment? What an outrageous suggestion!
2. Others suggest that just as Nebuchadrezzar destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 686BC and the Romans did the same—as prophesized by Jesus—in 70AD and both catastrophes were considered by Jewish leaders of the time to be 'rods of God’s anger', that Hitler and the Nazis were God’s servants and rod to punish the Jews. Really? Hitler, God’s servant? Another outrageous suggestion!
3. Others said God was dead, not that there was no God but that the God who created the world and participated in history, this God was no more. This is similar to what in the 1960s used to be locally called ‘South Bank Religion’ at the time of the then Bishop of Woolwich and his book Honest to God. God was to be redefined as the ‘ground’ or ‘focus’ of our being; Sunday worship was the community coming together to hear and answer their own prayers.[7] Many saw the absurdity and decided not to bother. Some fine church buildings were unwanted in the 1960s and 70s and were demolished.
4. Some protested and complained at God; survivors raged at God for the murder of their families and communities and for what they themselves endured.
5. Others thought that in the Holocaust God inexplicitly hid his face from his people and abandoned them to their fate. The future could not be any worse.
   Since the 1970s the Holocaust has become what some call a ‘big business’ and a thriving ‘industry’.
   Books are written, survivors give testimonies, one or two Holocaust feature films have appeared each year since Shindler’s List. The film for families to look out for on tv is The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas.[8] There are exhibitions and museums in most countries. In June, I spent a week in the archives at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. I recommend that you visit the Holocaust exhibition at the local Imperial War Museum.
   This very expensive investment in Holocaust history and memory has three effects:
   First, the Holocaust is subtly used by Israelis and Zionists to reinforce their claim to the land and the State of Israel in the Middle East and to suppress the counter-claims of Palestinians. As I was told by a young representative of the Golan Heights Residence Committee when I visited Israel in 2000, ‘we have a right to the land because we suffered so much in the Holocaust’.
   Second, I notice a growing weariness among Jews and others about the Holocaust; too much has been said; leave it in the past, move on.
   And third, we are well aware of so much more terror and dread since 1945, in fact I/we become overwhelmed by the volume of accidents, genocide, murder, floods, earthquakes, illness, famine, and much more. Consider the succession of daily reports about suicide bombings from Iraq during 2007, consider 9/11 in New York and locally, 7/7 in London, and so much else.

To sum up so far, I have drawn your attention to the Holocaust and to the attempted genocide of Jews as the most extreme example of suffering and murder on an industrial scale as one group of people claimed superiority over another group of people and attempted to wipe them and their memory off the face of the earth. We are asking the question, where is God in all this?
   We have done some history. We have considered some answers. But the question remains.
   Allow me to give an up front, no-nonsense, unequivocal, positive and constructive answer for Christian people who love the Lord and who want to follow Christ in this cruel and harsh world.

3
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH REQUIRES SOME REFORMATION IN THE WAY IT
IS PRESENTED AND EXPLAINED
We often hear that the church needs to get up to date, to move with the times. For example: conduct gay marriages, clergy should swear and cuss to show they are human; women should not only be ordained but concentrated bishops. All this is taken up in media as flimflam and frippery.
   In my view we are to be nothing of the sort. We are to be biblical, to believe in Christ, to preach Christ, and proclaim the gospel. Moreover, we may still talk about God with credibility, this is how:
   First, it seems to me that there are occasions—too many occasions—when we are on our own; God appears to be absent.
   Many have found they are so very alone among the shadows of the valley of death feeling anxious and lost: a victim of catastrophe, an accident victim in hospital, the victim of terrorism, flood or earthquake, or caught up in war. Others discover that no ‘good’ comes out of meaningless suffering (Romans 8); you may ask ‘why?’, but no answer is forthcoming, you just have to get on with it.
   Meaningless suffering and suffering without redemption makes some of us angry and confused.
   Where is God?
   Is he hiding?
   We may look for him, but there is no evidence of his presence; we can be left with awful situations that lack any meaning even though we are grateful, as Bishop James says, for the support and the caring professionalism of others.
It is in times like these that God appears to be absent; we are alone. We in the church need to wake up to these realities. On occasion, this is how it is. Isaiah warned people long ago that God creates both good and evil (Isaiah 45.7). We need to hear the rage and anger of victims.
   Part of our modern problem is that theology is generally taught, discussed, preached and written about by those who live and work in comfortable situations. We need also to consider the appropriateness of our God-talk in a cancer ward, on a tesunami beach and at Auschwitz.
   Second, in response to all this, we may protest and complain at God about his absence and inactivity if and when it is felt necessary. When God fails to intervene in response to your prayers, ask him: where are you? What have you been doing that is more important than helping the victims of earthquake and flood? Be abrupt. Call God to account, ‘Come on God, rouse yourself! Do something!’
   Such protest is neither crude, rude nor inappropriate; it is right and proper and biblical. Consider for example Psalm 44 and Psalm 22 which Jesus screamed in the face of God as he died. Follow this response closely because to robustly engage with God is a deeply religious and biblical response.
   To complain at God says that you still believe in him; you are holding on. But to take it all with indifference is not a faith response. Indifference is smug apathy. To complain at God is a precious, religious, and creative reaction.[9] Atheists are unable to talk like this, they have no god to complain to.
   From time to time, when necessary, we need to modify the way we talk to God. Our prayers—are too polite. Our liturgy—is too cautious. Our hymns—are too triumphal. From time to time, when necessary, we would be wise to adopt the language of victims.
   Third, be generous in the way you think of Jews, not necessarily because of the Holocaust and the international complications over the State of Israel, but because modern Jews seem to have become a people without hope. They have been hated through the centuries, their grandparents and great-grandparents were murdered by the Nazis, they do not accept Christ as the Messiah, and have almost given up that there will ever be a Messiah. Israel is a secular country where only 20% of Israelis are religious.
   There is also a constant fear in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world of further terrorist attack from suicide bombers and others. Security is tight.
   Be kind in the way you think of Jews; they are still God’s chosen people; pray for their conversion to Christ, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
   Fourth, should something dreadful happen to you or to others, do not give up your Christian faith. Hold on in the teeth of pain and anxiety. Hold on even though you stand and tremble on the edge of an abyss. For example, these words were written in a synagogue in Cologne
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I don’t feel it.
I believe in God even when He is silent.[10]

4
IN SUMMARY
I have asked the question ‘where is God in all this?’ when we look at the vast quantity of human suffering and pain in our harsh unpredictable world.
   I have reminded you about the example of the Holocaust, its history, and its victims.
   We have considered some theological responses to our question, where was God while millions were shot and gassed in the 1940s?
   And I have suggested ways the Christian faith and church worship might be reformed in order to be credible to hurting and questioning people.
   That was then.
   This is now.
   Little has changed.
   Hold on. This is our God who at times is present and at other times appears to be absent for reasons known only to him.
   Come to him.
   Believe in him.
   Follow him.
Live and walk with Christ in faith and hope in our troubled world.

FOOTNOTES
[1] BBC News 24 (Sunday, 6 June 2010).
[2] I am thinking here of the English Puritan writer Stephen Charnock, ‘The Existence and Attributes of God’ in The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock (vols. 1 & 2; Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1864).
[3] Roger Ryan, Judges: Readings, a New Biblical Commentary (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007).
[4] For a short history of the Holocaust see, Doris L. Bergen, War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). For the effects of the Holocaust on Jewish women and their families, see Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For an account of Nazi death camps, see Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). For a detailed scholarly history of the Holocaust and its origins, see Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). For harrowing eyewitness accounts of the shooting of Jews in Poland, see Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Riess, 'Those were the Days': The Holocaust as seen through the Eyes of the Perpetrators and Bystanders (trans. Deborah Burnstone; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991). For a DVD film made for television that presents an accurate portrayal of events, see Escape from Sobibor (Jack Gold, 1987).
[5] See, Martin Luther, ‘On the Jews and their Lies’ in Franklin Sherman (ed.), Luther’s Works: The Christian in Society IV, vol. 47 (trans. Martin H. Bertram; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1971).
[6] For extensive scholarly discussions about Jewish and Christian responses to the Holocaust, see Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Legacy of the Holocaust (London: SCM, 1987); cf. Dan Cohn-Sherbok (ed.), Holocaust Theology: A Reader (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005); Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman and Gershon Greenberg (eds.), Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Marvin A. Sweeney, Reading the Hebrew Bible After the Shoah: Engaging Holocaust Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008).
[7] John A.T. Robinson, Honest to God (London: SCM, 1963).
[8] Also the novel by John Boyne, The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas (Oxford: David Fickling Books, 2006).
[9] For scholarly expositions of the theme of protest and complaint against God in lament psalms, see Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984); Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (ed. Patrick D. Miller; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), and Walter Brueggemann, ‘Israel’s Countertestimony’ in Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press, 1997), 325-403. For a Jewish reading of Psalm 44 as a ‘Holocaust rage psalm’, see David R. Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).
[10] Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC: United States Memorial Museum, 2006), xxi.

What would Jesus do?

2011-12-25T07:12:00.000-08:00

This question is not the recent invention of Wall Street protesters in New York or of others who are now camped outside St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London.

In mid-November I visited the tented protest site for myself at St Paul's. My aim was just to visit, to look and to listen. I met a lady in a colourful hat who said she was a nun. I was asked to bless her and the visitors to her tent, which I did. I listened to on a lecture and discussion in another tent about London, the banks and finance in which mention was made of Mr Richard Branson and cash flow. I also talked to others.

The question originates from an American novel, In His Steps: What would Jesus do? written in 1897 by Charles Monroe Sheldon and is still in print. The full text may also be read online.

Sheldon's book is a fictional story about the Reverend Henry Maxwell who one day was busy preparing his sermon based on 1 Peter 2.21, 'For hereunto were ye called; because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow in his steps' (AV). The doorbell was rung and there on the minister's doorstep stood a tramp who asked for assistance to find work. The Reverend Maxwell said he was too busy and the visitor was sent on his way.

The following Sunday morning, at the close of the service, there was a 'remarkable interruption' by the same tramp who told his story to the Reverend Maxwell and his congregation when he politely asked the question, 'What do you Christians mean by following in the steps of Jesus?'

The tramp wanted to know why people who attended church had houses and money to spend on luxuries while he and so many others were destitute. The tramp then collapsed and he died a few days later.

The tramp and his story made a powerful impression on the minister and his church members. The Reverend Maxwell took what he said as a challenge to Christianity and proposed a plan that members would pledge themselves, for a year, not to do anything without first asking themselves the question, 'What would Jesus do?' and then to follow no matter what the consequences may be.

When I visited the St Paul's tented protest in November, I also met a resident protester who said his name was Jamie (I have forgotten his real name). According to Jamie the St Paul's protest was 'wonderful' and all about 'love'. He pointed to the big banner bearing the words, 'What would Jesus do?'

In our conversation Jamie told me he had a consultency job which meant he was well paid and did not have to work every day (nice work if you can get it). He owned a high-tech Blackbery mobile phone that rang during our conversation. He also said he owned a house in West London. I wondered what sort of protester against capitolism Jamie was!

Clergy recieve a salary that is not far off the so-called minimum wage. I work almost every day and I own neither a Blackberry nor a property for my retirement.

The question, 'What would Jesus do? is unhelpful in my judgement and an excuse for doing nothing. It is a question too far that encourages neither action nor activity; its a question that paralyses action.

For example, what would Jesus do/say about the invasion of Iraq? The arguments are complex and the Chilcot enquiry is to present a report in 2012.

What would Jesus do/say about capitol punishment? This could occupy you and others long into the night.

What would Jesus do about the August rioters in London and Croydon? Would he take away rioter's benefits and their council property? Everyone has an opinion, especially those whose homes and businesses were trashed and fired.

What would Jesus do/say about immigration and the 13% of offenders from overseas held in our prisons at taxpayer's (your) expense?

In my judgement, it would be better to change the question to this, 'What would you do?' In other words, what would you and I, who love the Lord Jesus, do in certain circumstances and when faced with the complicated issues that are sure to come our way during 2012? Changing the question creates the opportunity that leads to sensible discussion and action.

My answer to the questions I pose above would go something like this: the invasion of Iraq was wrong, therefore, join the march, protest and send a message to Mr Blair the warmonger that a peaceful solution was required.

No to capitol punishment. The courts and that judiciary in this country cannot be trusted.

Be robust with rioters but to take away benefits and council housing invites the necessity of further crime for survival.

Offenders from abroad who have abused our country's hospitality: send them home in cuffs to serve their time at their own country's expense.

I could go on, but I won't.

As our Prime Minister recently said in Oxford, 'Moral neutrality and passive tolerance isn't going to cut it any more. Shying away from speaking the truth about behaviour, about morality, has actually helped to cause some of the social problems that lie at the heart of the lawlessness we saw with the riots...'

Then Mr Cameron addressed us, the Church of England, when he said, 'The values we draw from the Bible go to the heart of what it means to belong to this country and you, the Church of England, can help ensure that it stays that way'.

So, which question do you consider to be suitable for yourself, 'What would Jesus do?' or 'What would you do?'

Just suppose that one Sunday you are sitting down at home to your roast dinner: beef, pork or fowl, sprouts and roast potatoes with a pudding and a snooze to follow. There is a knock at your door and when you open, there stands a man who says he is destitute, no food, no money, no job. You have no idea who he is or where he has come from. He is untidy, dirty and he could do with a wash. Is he violent? Is he a thief? Is he lying and may his visit be a scam? Is he a danger to children?

What would Jesus do?

I will tell you, Jesus would invite him in, wash his feet, share his food and find him a job.

But what would you do?

The Gospel at St Mary's Summerstown

2011-12-16T02:47:00.000-08:00

A comment below asks if there was more to my sermon on Remembrance Sunday (2011) than stories about animals in war and if Jesus and the gospel was mentioned.

Yes, my post is the substance of my sermon for Remembrance Sunday.

The gospel is presented in almost every Sunday service at St Mary's Summerstown; for example, on 27th November my title was: Advent, welcome to the Wonderful Season of Light and Expectation, on 4th December Bible Sunday - How to Read and Understand this Wonderful Book of Hope, 11th December What do you think of Sermons and Preaching? John the Baptist on the Third Sunday of Advent, an example for Preachers.

I am preparing two sermons for 25th December and 1st January, one for Christmas and another for the New Year both entitled, What would Jesus do? They may appear on this blog in due course.

Our systematic, doctrinal and expository preaching needs, from time to time, to be topical and to speak, from the word, into the secular and materialistic times in which we live.

My sermon for Remembrance Sunday was motivated by hearing about many who have sadly left church attendance due to clergy indifference about animal suffering.

I also attended an Animal Aid remembrance ceremony at the Animal War Memorial in Park Lane and, even though I am not a member, they kindly mention my name on their website.

Be assured, the gospel is presented during services at St Mary's Summerstown.

Anyone is welcome to attend on Sundays at 10.30am and to hear the wonderful name of Jesus.

It is not unknown for the ears of members of St Mary's congregation to tingle at the sound of gospel persuasion!

A Sermon in Church for Remembrance Sunday 2011 (Joshua 11.6-9)

2011-11-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

This is one of the difficult passages in the Old Testament; hard reading for animal lovers.
Israelites have escaped Egyptian slavery and are making their way in the land. The Israelite army have to do battle with the combined armies of five kings who are equipped with modern fearsome sophisticated weaponry: chariots. The Israelites are on foot and disadvantaged.

God tells Joshua to hamstring the charioteer’s horses (cut the leg tendons) which he does either the night before the battle or somehow in the confusion of battle; we are not told how or when. Enemy horses are disabled and crippled. Chariots are burnt and Joshua has a victory on his hands.

On this Remembrance Sunday my purpose is to remind you of some animals that had no choice and were taken abroad to support servicemen and women in recent wars. Animals were also heroic and so many were killed and maimed and experienced the trauma of war.

My aim is to present three accounts of animals in war: horses, a cat and a dog.

I
HORSES IN WAR

Look about you at the materials from which this church is built.

St Mary’s was built in 1904/5 of brick, stone, slate and wood. All the materials are heavy and were brought to Summerstown from various parts of the country in horse drawn carts.

In a few minutes we will stand to face the church war memorial with the names of local men who were robbed of their lives in the 1914/18 war. Some, perhaps many, will have been among the local labour that built our church. Within ten years they and the horses that had brought the building materials were in France and Belgium.

Men were volunteers. Horses had no choice; some were requisitioned, others purchased. 8 million horses were killed during the war; among them were 256,000 British horses. Many were hurt and nursed back to health by the Army Veterinary Corps.

People at home were outraged by animal suffering and on Wednesday, 12 June 1918 the PDSA held Butterfly Day to raise funds for the support of horses traumatized by war and for the work of the Army Veterinary Corps.

Next year, 2012, will be the year of horses in war with Stephen Spielberg’s film War Horse based on Michael Morpurgo’s book and the play at the New London Theatre. This will remind us again that horses supported men and women in war; they too, like servicemen, suffered and died in appalling conditions.

A CAT CALLED SIMON

Able sea cat Simon was a member of the crew of HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze Incident in 1949.

Simon was found in the Hong Kong docks by Ordinary Seaman George Hickinbottom age 17 who smuggled him on board. The cat was undernourished and unwell. He was nursed back to health and adopted as the ship’s cat.

When, a year later, Amethyst was blockaded on the Yangtze River, Simon was injured by gunfire. Following surgery and nursing, Simon went to work catching and killing rats that were stealing the sailor’s food and his attention to duty raised the morale of sailors during the blockade. Simon sadly died of his wounds when Amethyst returned to England.

Simon was posthumously awarded the Dickin Medal that honours devotion to duty and conspicuous gallantry of animals in war. He became something of a celebrity as his story was told and retold in the 1950s.

Simon was buried with full naval honours in Ilford animal cemetery where you may view his gravestone bearing the inscription, ‘his behaviour was of the highest order’.

We are considering the stories of animals in war and how they died and suffered while supporting service men and women.

III

A DOG CALLED THEO

On the afternoon of Tuesday, 10 March earlier this year yet another Hercules transport aircraft landed at RAF Lyneham. A hearse was then driven through a crowded Wootton Bassett bearing the union flag draped coffin of Corporeal Liam Tasker age 26. However, Liam was not alone; he was accompanied by the ashes of his sniffer search dog Theo, a springer spaniel.

Liam and Theo were an inseparable pair who had found fourteen improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. There was a close bond between them. The day after Liam was shot dead in Helmand Province, Theo died of a heart attack, of stress and a broken heart.

Lt Col David Thorpe of the Military Dog’s Regiment said, ‘Liam and Theo came as a matched pair, they died as a matched pair and we will remember them as a matched pair’.

On Wednesday, 1 June, Theo was the posthumous recipient of the Dog’s Trust Honours Award.

You and I are here in church today to remember the millions of men and women who—from the Somme to Helmand—had their lives taken from them in war. Since we met here in church at this time last year, 44 members of the British armed forces have lost their lives and so many others cope with life changing injuries. They are honoured; they are not forgotten.

Animals also served; they also became victims of war.

Consider the horses that were hamstrung in Israel’s ancient wars.

Consider the horses that brought materials to build this church and soon accompanied the local craftsmen and labourers—who built the church—to France and Belgium.

Consider the story of the one styled ‘able sea cat’ who protected sailor’s food and raised their morale while blockaded on the Yangtze.

Consider Theo, a springer spaniel search dog who died of a broken heart in Afghanistan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Articles in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph (March 2011).
Butler, Simon, The War Horses: The tragic fate of a million horses sacrificed in the First World War (Wellington, Somerset: Highgrove, 2011).
Morpurgo, Michael, War Horse (London: Egmont, 1982).
Spielberg, Stephen, trailer for War Horse (October 2011).
War Horse, New London Theatre (2010).
Wikipedia on line.