eChurch Blog

Meditation

First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out – because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Pastor Niemoeller, in prison and concentration camp for eight and a half years

Prayers

Let us pray for God’s ancient people, the Jews, the first to hear his word – for greater understanding between Christian and Jew for the removal of our blindness and bitterness of heart that God will grant us grace to be faithful to his covenant and to grow in the love of his name.

Let us surround our worship and our community with stillness, stillness to remember all those who died in the Holocaust; those before or since whose lives were brought to an end by genocide, and those still suffering or dying. Amen

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

CIFwatch – Was Moses a colonizer? The Guardian’s Nicholas Lezard uncovers why us Jews are kleptomaniacs

pmphillips’s posterous – The Way of Death is paved with…

Left Foot Forward – 2012 – the year the world must wake up to Christian persecution

NewScientist – The hard way: Our odd desire to do it ourselves

Trinitarian Dance – Dealing with personal sin is like extracting an ingrown toenail.

USAToday – The God effect: ambition drops with temptation

Linen on the Hedgerow – Be Gay friendly – or go to jail!

Science and Religion Today – How Can You Tell How Humble Someone Is?

Cranmer – The quest for the elusive ‘Conservative Particle’ in the Coalition Collider

Christian medical Comment – Lessons from Stephen Hawking and Kathryn Higham about assisted suicide

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

Accepting Abundance – On Dissent – Proud to be right?

Vatican Insider – Jews alarmed by Messianic movement boom

Cranmer – Alcohol price-fixing will not solve binge-drinking

iBenedictines – Holy Innocents

Ugley Vicar – Our Christmas Carol Sermon

Outside the Assylum – Who cares about religious apathy?

Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion – Nick Broomfield and Sarah Palin’s Religion

To be honest with you, I tussled over posting this. Anti-Semitism is a grave accusation indeed and that is exactly what Rev Nick Howard accuses Rev Stephen Sizer of today over on Harry’s Place.

Although it goes without saying that Sizer is an anti-Zionist, I don’t believe I have seen the open accusation of anti-Semitism before.

I’m blogging this because it’s no trifling matter. The Rev Nick Howard is a well known Anglican cleric, being the son of former Conservative leader Michael Howard and the platform used to make these allegations is an internationally prominent political blog.

In view of the seriousness of the accusations, I’m simply offering the link for your information, with no comment on my part:

Harry’s Place – Rev Nick Howard: The Church of England must take action against Rev Stephen Sizer

It would seem that the Christmas homilies of both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Catholic Archbishop have been used as an opportunity for political attack and this has not been well received.

Firstly the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams caught some flak for this comment:

The most pressing question we now face, we might well say, is who and where we are as a society. Bonds have been broken, trust abused and lost. Whether it is an urban rioter mindlessly burning down a small shop that serves his community, or a speculator turning his back on the question of who bears the ultimate cost for his acquisitive adventures in the virtual reality of today’s financial world, the picture is of atoms spinning apart in the dark.

This was condemned for attacking bankers and equating them with the rioters. The sentiment this aroused is probably best encapsulated by Tory MP Gary Streeter:

“He would be wise to leave the politics to the politicians and focus on giving much needed spiritual leadership.”

More disturbing however was Archbishop Nichols’ address, in which he attacked Israel:

That shadow falls particularly heavily on the town of Bethlehem tonight. At this moment the people of the parish of Beit Jala prepare for their legal battle to protect their land and homes from further expropriation by Israel. Over 50 families face losing their land and their homes as action is taken to complete the separation/security wall across the territory of the district of Bethlehem. We pray for them tonight.

CIFWatch responded:

As we typically see in the rabidly anti-Israeli Guardian, the Archbishop used Christmas and Bethlehem to direct an attack on Israel. Do we even know if there are 50 families, or do they exist only on the anti-Israeli websites? Do they need the Archbishop’s prayers when appealing to one of the world’s most respected judiciaries which has repeatedly ruled in favor of Palestinians on land issues?

After all, anyone with any real knowledge of the issues on the West Bank knows how complicated they can be, and how simplistic reports by interested parties can hide the complexity of what really happens there. For example, this report from Agence France-Press in August 2010 – “In gesture of peace progress, Israel demolishes massive concrete barrier” - tells a very different story and includes some context that explains why the security barrier was needed near Beit Jala:

Israeli troops on Sunday began demolishing a huge concrete wall erected nine years ago to prevent shooting attacks towards Gilo, a Jewish neighbourhood in occupied east Jerusalem

[....]

But more startling in this context, if he wishes to turn his attention to world affairs, was Nichols’ avoidance of any mention of the repeated attacks carried out against Christians almost throughout the Islamic world.

As Robin Shepherd commented more generally:

Every atrocity perpetrated against Christians in the name of Islam, by contrast, seems all too quickly to be brushed under the carpet.

While lamenting the pending “legal battle”, Nichols is oblivious to the way Christians have been forced out of Gaza and Bethlehem by Islamists, without any “legal battle”.

If the “50 families” do exist, is the prospect of waging a “legal battle” which they will win if their claim is justified in any way a greater matter than Christians being blown up in Nigeria, Pakistan and Iraq, beaten and burnt to death in Egypt, thrown out of Gaza, or having their lands stolen by Moslems in the West Bank?

When the Islamists force the Christians out, it is with stones, guns, and bombs, not “legal battles”, but Nichols cannot bring himself, as Shepherd says of the BBC, to say the “I word”.

But all is not lost.

I found a lovely Christmas homily by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin – Yes the very same Archbishop who recently urged ‘lapsed Catholics’ to hop it.

Here’s some of his homily, but I feel it’s all worth a read and certainly the best of the pretty woeful Christmas bunch:

Jesus appears in that concretely verifiable world but his birth cannot be identified with that world.  The census reminds us of the desire of the emperor to dominate and exploit; the design of God appears in a totally different and surprising manner.  God chose to reveal his plan of salvation not through the structures of geopolitical power and influence, but within the reality of a simple, lonely, anxious and disadvantaged family: Mary and Joseph. They travel alone to reach Bethlehem. Mary is expecting her child.  They are isolated, exposed and vulnerable.  They seek to understand. They have no armies or large business enterprises to protect them.  They have no place of outward human security.   Joseph provides the only shelter he can, that of his love and protective concern. 

The birth of Jesus takes place yes within the politics of human history; but the real truth of that birth can be understood only when we identify with the simple love and trust of Mary and Joseph.  Their extraordinary sense of responsibility to protect what is their precious gift lies far away from any sense of power or self-interest or the protection of possessions. Jesus who is the Lord of creation with his birth appears into our history in a manner in which our history is incapable of understanding, except by those whose faith was based on the simple humility which had marked the faithful believers who lived in expectation of the fulfilment of the promise, about which we heard in the first reading.

The loving kindness of God appeared in Jesus, but it was not understood and accepted.   In the Gospel reading of tomorrow morning’s Mass we will recall the words of Saint John:  Jesus was among his own yet he was rejected by those who were his very own.  When we reflect on the situation of the Church and the difficulties that the men and women of our generation encounter in believing, it is very easy to point the finger and say that it is all due to society or to culture or to secularization and even to hostility against faith and against the Church. We have always to remember that the first rejection that Jesus encountered was rejection by his very own.  Renewal in the Church must first come from conversion within the Church.  Conversion is not about fleeing from the realities of the world and society and culture and secularization, it is about understanding them in a different light.  Jesus is the light that enlightens but also the light that enables us to discern the realities of our life in a different way.

The loving kindness of God appears not in palaces, not in luxury hotels not even in the simplest village hostel, but in what was for the powerful an insignificant space.  Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn.  This was not an accident of over-booking.  It is not because accidentally there was no room; Jesus chooses to be born precisely into that space which belongs to those, at any time in history, for whom there is no room, those who are excluded from normal hospitality, those who live without security.  But it would be wrong to interpret that by saying that Jesus was born on the margins.  Jesus is born – and that is what we celebrate tonight – not on the margins of real life, but to parents who pilgrim looking for that space in which the love of God is truly at home.  That is the message of the birth of Jesus.  Our calling too is to journey discerning those spaces in our world, in our lives and in our hearts in which the love of God will be truly at home.

However, as I pointed out in a previous post, the ONLY place in the Middle East where the Christian population has grown since the end of WWII is Israel, and the flight of Christians from Palestinian controlled areas, such as Bethlehem, is primarily the result of persecution by the majority Muslim population.

SOURCE

A few links I personally found interesting for one reason or another:

Society for Christian Psychology: Mediation: Moving from Unforgiveness to Forgiveness

Naming His Grace: Critiquing the theologies and connections of some pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel leaders: a series # 2

Melanie Phillips: From Red Toryism to Blue Labour, social renewal depends on Christian principles

Countercultural Father: Mindfulness…

Get Religion: Evolution and Islam

Vatican Insider: Year 2011: Less atheists, more believers

Assyrian International News Agency: Thousands of Muslims Attack Christians in Egypt, 2 Killed, Homes and Stores Torched

Significant Truths: When we walk in darkness – I’ve had plenty of opportunities to be depressed – I just haven’t taken them!

This post allows me to accomplish two purposes.

The first is to highlight a very thought provoking blog post on the historically fraught interaction between Christianity and Judaism, written by Doug Chaplin.

The second is to let you know that after a very short excursion into the world of Blogger, Doug has moved back to WordPress and his new address is:

http://dougchaplin.wordpress.com/

If you’re not following Doug; you should.

OK, here is the final promised reminder.

Tonight: 9 – 10:30pm (GMT – Weds 9th Nov) is the much anticipated showdown between Dr Calvin Smith – the leading Christian Zionist scholar in the UK – and Revd Stephen Sizer – the foremost Christian anti-Zionist in the UK.

For links from this blog giving you some background information on Stephen Sizer: click here, and for a blog post written by Calvin Smith addressing Sizer, that I featured on this blog back in February 2010: click here.

The debate can be viewed live on Revelation TV and will be held in front of a studio audience in London – wish I were attending!

Sky Channel 581

Freesat Channel 692

Viewers in USA with a ROKU BOX can watch Revelation TV

Online Internet streaming can be found on this link.

This is gonna be fascinating folks and represents an enormously significant and important debate relating to Christian Zionism.

I will say that I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with Dr Calvin Smith in the past, in terms of blogging, and on the telephone, and he has a brain the size of a small planet and a MASSIVE heart for our Lord and the Jewish peoples. I’ll lay my cards on the table and say that I hope suspect Dr Calvin will firmly debunk Sizer. I know some of you don’t like this sort of combative talk, but many of us have been following the antics of Sizer for many years and have been left deeply disturbed by his polemics against Israel, and his associations with some less than reputable folk.

I’d urge anyone even remotely interested in the issue of Christian Zionism; both for and against, to watch this debate, as you will simply not again see these two foremost figures in close combat.

I suspect this will be educational and informative for us all.

In other words, it doesn’t get better than this.

The following is a cross-post written by Dr Calvin Smith of King’s Evangelical Divinity School:

I’ve previously posted on some of the issues contributing to diverse expressions of Messianic Judaism (MJ, also Messianic Jews), for example MJ self-identity as both Jewish and Christian, the movement’s relationship with (and role within) the wider Church, and Torah observance. I’m particularly concerned at how vociferous anti-Israel sentiment within segments of Evangelicalism further complicate Messianic Jewish self-identity as believers in Jesus, together with their relationship with the Church. It can’t be very easy to identify oneself as both a Jew and a believer in Jesus while some in the Church openly and systematically demonise Israel (flatly refusing to see both sides of the story). Furthermore, it makes it so much harder for a Messianic believer to share his or her faith with another Jew if what is being offered is inclusion within a body which is critical and polemically one-sided in the current Middle East conflict. That the Church has a long history of anti-Semitism only compounds that point.

Thus Messianic believers are increasingly alarmed by some of the extreme rhetoric emanating from within parts of the Church. There is considerable disquiet at the harm it is causing MJ-Gentile Christian relations, together with MJ efforts to evangelise the Jewish people. There is growing criticism, too, of how some MJs are dialoguing with anti-Israel Christians, for example through the forthcoming Christ at the Checkpoint. An open letter posted yesterday to Messianic leaders and congregations raises this very point. It provides some insight into how the movement is feels under siege and seeks to respond to the current anti-Israel rhetoric and activism evident within Evangelicalism.