Christianity Today published an article recently. As one would expect, the recession we are in is hurting the already limping Christian music industry. A number of years ago, I would have reacted very different to this. Right now, I am a bit mixed.
My first reaction to this, honestly, was “what would we lose?” I can still think of many Christian artists that I really like, but the majority of the really popular ones I do not listen to. I have heard rumors from many of peers that much of GWM (“Generic Worship Music” my name for Christian Contemporary) might be performed by Christian, but not necessarily written by Christians. This would explain why many worship songs sound like a disjunctive, strung together, list of Evangelicalese cliché.
The general consumerism of GWM bothers me too. I recently went to a bible study which opened with a time of worship. They put on a sing-along DVD -complete with helicopter shots of Hawaii, the Grand Canyon, a beach etc- and people sat around singing softly. This was done while there was a piano in the room and at least two capable musicians who could have led others in song. This whole DVD felt so coldly impersonal that it made me shudder. (Glory be to God the plasma screen, DVD, and 5.1 surround sound!) Are we Christians really so bound to our culture that we can’t even play songs for each other anymore?
Yet still, I think of all the artists –the sincere ones- who are trying to combine their love for music, performance, people and God. Certainly, they did not expect to make career (or maybe they did), but such individuals deserve our support. I have always thought that it is sad how the Christian artists I think are the best are the least heard and the least well treated. Furthermore, I still remember the fun of camping out at Christian music festivals when I was 19-20ish a number of years ago. Those concerts were good times. As weird as Evangelicalism can be, it was nice to be an environment that was “safe” by comparison to secular concerts.
Nonetheless, I am not exactly sure what could happen to save the ailing niche market. The difficulties of being a successful artist seem compounded by the internet, the economy, and business in general. Becoming one of those successful celebrity type Christian Musicians seems damn unlikely.
But maybe God doesn’t need musicians to become ‘rock stars’ anyway.
Trinity Sunday and it's been pouring... so the barbecue could become a swimming party!
Herewith a version of what I will preach this morning... came together a bit at the last minute - thanks be to God! Anyway you be the judge...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This last week, a mother who said her son was kidnapped by his Hungarian father more than a quarter of a century ago was reunited with him after he was located on Facebook.
Avril Grube claimed that in 1982, when her son Gavin Paros was aged three, his father took him to Hungary for what should have been a weekend away. Her marriage had broken down and, after her son failed to return, Grube contacted the authorities and made repeated attempts to locate Gavin.
But her younger sister, Beryl Wilson, never gave up hope and continued to search for him. One day she searched for his name on Google and discovered his Facebook page on which he had written his mother's name. It transpired that he had been using the website to try and find his English family following the death of his father four years ago. He only replied to his aunt's Facebook message several weeks after she posted it, explaining he rarely checked the website.
This led to eleation for the family and eventually a reuinion of mother and son. Avril Grube’s sister later said said, "It was the happiest day of her life when she met her son. She said there were no words to describe it...”
I can only begin to imagine the sheer, overwhelming, life-affirming joy of that mother and son. All of us know how precious relationships are whether friendships or blood ties as they get stretched by work or lack of it, time and distance, the pressure of modern living. People move around much more than they ever used to - it is quite unusual to find parents, grandparents, and other close family living in the same locality. Yet only a couple of generations ago, it was the norm. On the other hand, through media and the internet, we know more about what is happening every second of every day in the once unknown other side of the world. We have never been more close as global citizens, aware of each other’s activity, and yet we have never been further emotionally removed from each other, and craving understand of who we are, where we come from and what makes us the people we are.
This longing for rootedness, for identity, for self-discovery, feels like a very modern predicament in our all too fractured world. Yet St Augustine understood our longing to find our place in the world and within God’s grand scheme of things when he famously said, ‘...Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you...’ The ‘you’ to which he refers is of course God, and today - Trinity Sunday - reminds us the answers to our individual quests for meaning, lie in the duet sung between God and humanity.
At the heart of what we celebrate this Trinity Sunday is the idea that it is love that defines us and makes us what and who we are. Without the questing love of a mother, Avril Grube and Gavin Paros would not have been reunited as mother and son. WIthout the careful shaping love and encouragement of my parents and wider family I would not be the man I am today. Nicodemus recognised the love of God at work in Jesus and came to discover more for himself.
You cannot fully know the love of God, Jesus says to Nicodemus, without being born again, for experiencing God for yourself is like starting life all over again and being born anew. If you want to know your place with God, in life and in God’s presence and plan - in his kingdom, then this must be. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a religious teacher of his day, a learned man, splutters ‘How can this be?’ Nicodemus seems caught up on the biology of the image Jesus uses and on the idea that this is something that you might voluntarily choose. And yet the starting again in response to God’s love, that Jesus refers to, is as involuntary as the birth of a baby - we do not choose to be loved by God - he just loves us - unendingly, unconditionally, undeservedly, unreservedly.
At the heart of our world’s fractured relationships is a longing to be loved, to be understood, to be accepted for who we are, and to know that that is ok. At the heart of what we hear with Nicodemus today is God loves in a sweeping, expansive way, He loves all things and all people - He always has and always will - but that sweeping and expansive love comes personally and intimately to me - and that love will transform my life so that I may be born of he spirit, be born anew and to find myself rooted, a life with an identity and purpose, as St Paul reminds us this morning, as a child of God himself, a brother or sister of Jesus, with God as our Abba, our daddy.
I often wonder why our Church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. I like to speculate that our founders had in mind that the church should be somewhere that brick maker, tile maker, farmer, and their families alike to meet together. Today that aspiration is no different - we gather as retired, professional, manager and labourer just as they did. Then as now, we gather, not as some sort of social experiment, but because we are called into friendship with each other because we are each loved by God.
The love of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit that we recall this Trinity Sunday is not some sort of test tube love - tried out on Christians first to see if the formula is right and at the correct transforming strength. God’s love is a spontaneous reaction - not a planned campaign. God cannot help himself. It is a love that is utterly transforming, that births us anew by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is a love that defines us, that makes us the people that we and our Father long for us to be - not the glossy media bodies - although I could do with one of those please! - but the sort of people that they long to be in the revealing exclusives - at peace, forgiven, free from guilt and knowing that we are loved. Amen
Herewith a version of what I will preach this morning... came together a bit at the last minute - thanks be to God! Anyway you be the judge...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This last week, a mother who said her son was kidnapped by his Hungarian father more than a quarter of a century ago was reunited with him after he was located on Facebook.
Avril Grube claimed that in 1982, when her son Gavin Paros was aged three, his father took him to Hungary for what should have been a weekend away. Her marriage had broken down and, after her son failed to return, Grube contacted the authorities and made repeated attempts to locate Gavin.
But her younger sister, Beryl Wilson, never gave up hope and continued to search for him. One day she searched for his name on Google and discovered his Facebook page on which he had written his mother's name. It transpired that he had been using the website to try and find his English family following the death of his father four years ago. He only replied to his aunt's Facebook message several weeks after she posted it, explaining he rarely checked the website.
This led to eleation for the family and eventually a reuinion of mother and son. Avril Grube’s sister later said said, "It was the happiest day of her life when she met her son. She said there were no words to describe it...”
I can only begin to imagine the sheer, overwhelming, life-affirming joy of that mother and son. All of us know how precious relationships are whether friendships or blood ties as they get stretched by work or lack of it, time and distance, the pressure of modern living. People move around much more than they ever used to - it is quite unusual to find parents, grandparents, and other close family living in the same locality. Yet only a couple of generations ago, it was the norm. On the other hand, through media and the internet, we know more about what is happening every second of every day in the once unknown other side of the world. We have never been more close as global citizens, aware of each other’s activity, and yet we have never been further emotionally removed from each other, and craving understand of who we are, where we come from and what makes us the people we are.
This longing for rootedness, for identity, for self-discovery, feels like a very modern predicament in our all too fractured world. Yet St Augustine understood our longing to find our place in the world and within God’s grand scheme of things when he famously said, ‘...Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you...’ The ‘you’ to which he refers is of course God, and today - Trinity Sunday - reminds us the answers to our individual quests for meaning, lie in the duet sung between God and humanity.
At the heart of what we celebrate this Trinity Sunday is the idea that it is love that defines us and makes us what and who we are. Without the questing love of a mother, Avril Grube and Gavin Paros would not have been reunited as mother and son. WIthout the careful shaping love and encouragement of my parents and wider family I would not be the man I am today. Nicodemus recognised the love of God at work in Jesus and came to discover more for himself.
You cannot fully know the love of God, Jesus says to Nicodemus, without being born again, for experiencing God for yourself is like starting life all over again and being born anew. If you want to know your place with God, in life and in God’s presence and plan - in his kingdom, then this must be. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a religious teacher of his day, a learned man, splutters ‘How can this be?’ Nicodemus seems caught up on the biology of the image Jesus uses and on the idea that this is something that you might voluntarily choose. And yet the starting again in response to God’s love, that Jesus refers to, is as involuntary as the birth of a baby - we do not choose to be loved by God - he just loves us - unendingly, unconditionally, undeservedly, unreservedly.
At the heart of our world’s fractured relationships is a longing to be loved, to be understood, to be accepted for who we are, and to know that that is ok. At the heart of what we hear with Nicodemus today is God loves in a sweeping, expansive way, He loves all things and all people - He always has and always will - but that sweeping and expansive love comes personally and intimately to me - and that love will transform my life so that I may be born of he spirit, be born anew and to find myself rooted, a life with an identity and purpose, as St Paul reminds us this morning, as a child of God himself, a brother or sister of Jesus, with God as our Abba, our daddy.
I often wonder why our Church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. I like to speculate that our founders had in mind that the church should be somewhere that brick maker, tile maker, farmer, and their families alike to meet together. Today that aspiration is no different - we gather as retired, professional, manager and labourer just as they did. Then as now, we gather, not as some sort of social experiment, but because we are called into friendship with each other because we are each loved by God.
The love of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit that we recall this Trinity Sunday is not some sort of test tube love - tried out on Christians first to see if the formula is right and at the correct transforming strength. God’s love is a spontaneous reaction - not a planned campaign. God cannot help himself. It is a love that is utterly transforming, that births us anew by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is a love that defines us, that makes us the people that we and our Father long for us to be - not the glossy media bodies - although I could do with one of those please! - but the sort of people that they long to be in the revealing exclusives - at peace, forgiven, free from guilt and knowing that we are loved. Amen
It has officially been one of those days... Been busy but feel like I could have achieved more, so I write this feeling frustrated. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.
Tomorrow so far has the Eucharist in the morning, and a meeting with some parishioners in the evening. In the afternoon there is more of the sermon to write... one thing I hadn't clocked (thnks John for the heads up) is that Sunday is also World Environment Day...
Pray now, act now
The Archbishop of Canterbury is urging churches to use Environment Sunday (June 7) to pray for the planet and campaign for climate change in the run up to the important UN talks later this year in Copenhagen.
Dr Williams said it was vital for Christians and people of all faiths to take a lead in praying and campaigning for action. A new deal at the UN summit could directly improve the lives of the world’s poor whose living conditions are affected by climate change. (see full text below)
World Environment Day marks the third anniversary of the Church of England’s environmental campaign Shrinking the Footprint which is being marked by a national event at Lambeth Palace on June 11 where new toolkits and other resources will be unveiled to help churches, cathedrals and other buildings reduce their energy footprint. The next phase of the campaign focusing on water and biodiversity will also be unveiled.
Nearly all dioceses now have an environment officer with many promoting their own green policies to cut the carbon in every parish. The Archbishop will be in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocese this Friday (June 5) to officially launch its new environment policy. A range of green projects are already supported by local churches across the Suffolk area from a bicycle and rickshaw scheme to solar panels on a medieval church building.
The Bishop of London the Rt Revd Richard Chartres Chair of Shrinking the Footprint said: "Climate change is a global challenge, the impact of which is being felt first by some of the most vulnerable communities on our planet. Loving our neighbour in the 21st Century demands that we should be involved in the effort to mitigate climate change and to help our neighbours to adapt.
“Environment Sunday is a time for us to reflect on the challenges ahead and to look forward to the Shrinking the Footprint event on the 11th June 2009. This will both provide an opportunity to deepen our own commitment and to engage with our politicians".
Prayer for creation (taken from Common Worship: Seasons and Festivals of the Agricultural Year )
God said, ‘Let the waters be gathered together,
and let dry land appear.’
We thank you for the beauty of the earth,
for the diversity of land and sea,
for the resources of the earth.
Give us the will to cherish this planet
and to use its riches for the good and welfare of all.
God of life:
hear our prayer.
Full text of Archbishop’s statement
“This year the theme of the United Nation’s World Environment Day is 'Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change'. Whilst it will be for governments meeting in Copenhagen in December to agree a successor to the Kyoto regime for global reductions in carbon emissions - and we all want those to be both ambitious and deliverable - we have a part to play. Governments need to know that people want them to be ambitious. They need a mandate. So what can we do? I think there are two things we can do. We can, and we should, pray. Climate change is not only an environmental issue - probably the most important we face; it is also an issue of justice. As usual the poorest are likely to suffer the most though the richest have contributed most to pollute the atmosphere and accelerate global warming. So we can pray that a proper sense of responsibility (not least to the generations who will follow us) and of justice guides the hearts and the minds of the politicians who will meet in Copenhagen.
This Sunday - Environment Sunday - is an obvious opportunity for us to focus our own hearts and minds on this issue.
The second thing we can do is get involved in the preparations for Copenhagen. Between now and December there will be activity, lobbying and hard thinking going on in civil society as well as government in preparation for the Climate Summit. Many faith groups and civil society organizations, (and that includes the Church of England), will be organising events to heighten awareness of the issues and the opportunities which the summit brings. I shall be going to Copenhagen to support those and to emphasise the strength of the concern that people of faith have for the future well-being of our planet. Please include in your prayers this Environment Sunday all whose efforts in the months to come could make a real difference for the sustainability of our planet and we who live in it - it is God's creation that we are striving to care for and as God's children that we pray and act.”
Some of that might well feature in some form - or at least the idea that God is a perfect community of love, how do we live that out as individuals in the wider community, and as a church to the whole of the created order...
I also have more admin to do to get things up to speed before the Archdeacon's Inspection.
Much to do... Family Guy now and then bed...
Tomorrow so far has the Eucharist in the morning, and a meeting with some parishioners in the evening. In the afternoon there is more of the sermon to write... one thing I hadn't clocked (thnks John for the heads up) is that Sunday is also World Environment Day...
Pray now, act now
The Archbishop of Canterbury is urging churches to use Environment Sunday (June 7) to pray for the planet and campaign for climate change in the run up to the important UN talks later this year in Copenhagen.
Dr Williams said it was vital for Christians and people of all faiths to take a lead in praying and campaigning for action. A new deal at the UN summit could directly improve the lives of the world’s poor whose living conditions are affected by climate change. (see full text below)
World Environment Day marks the third anniversary of the Church of England’s environmental campaign Shrinking the Footprint which is being marked by a national event at Lambeth Palace on June 11 where new toolkits and other resources will be unveiled to help churches, cathedrals and other buildings reduce their energy footprint. The next phase of the campaign focusing on water and biodiversity will also be unveiled.
Nearly all dioceses now have an environment officer with many promoting their own green policies to cut the carbon in every parish. The Archbishop will be in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocese this Friday (June 5) to officially launch its new environment policy. A range of green projects are already supported by local churches across the Suffolk area from a bicycle and rickshaw scheme to solar panels on a medieval church building.
The Bishop of London the Rt Revd Richard Chartres Chair of Shrinking the Footprint said: "Climate change is a global challenge, the impact of which is being felt first by some of the most vulnerable communities on our planet. Loving our neighbour in the 21st Century demands that we should be involved in the effort to mitigate climate change and to help our neighbours to adapt.
“Environment Sunday is a time for us to reflect on the challenges ahead and to look forward to the Shrinking the Footprint event on the 11th June 2009. This will both provide an opportunity to deepen our own commitment and to engage with our politicians".
Prayer for creation (taken from Common Worship: Seasons and Festivals of the Agricultural Year )
God said, ‘Let the waters be gathered together,
and let dry land appear.’
We thank you for the beauty of the earth,
for the diversity of land and sea,
for the resources of the earth.
Give us the will to cherish this planet
and to use its riches for the good and welfare of all.
God of life:
hear our prayer.
Full text of Archbishop’s statement
“This year the theme of the United Nation’s World Environment Day is 'Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change'. Whilst it will be for governments meeting in Copenhagen in December to agree a successor to the Kyoto regime for global reductions in carbon emissions - and we all want those to be both ambitious and deliverable - we have a part to play. Governments need to know that people want them to be ambitious. They need a mandate. So what can we do? I think there are two things we can do. We can, and we should, pray. Climate change is not only an environmental issue - probably the most important we face; it is also an issue of justice. As usual the poorest are likely to suffer the most though the richest have contributed most to pollute the atmosphere and accelerate global warming. So we can pray that a proper sense of responsibility (not least to the generations who will follow us) and of justice guides the hearts and the minds of the politicians who will meet in Copenhagen.
This Sunday - Environment Sunday - is an obvious opportunity for us to focus our own hearts and minds on this issue.
The second thing we can do is get involved in the preparations for Copenhagen. Between now and December there will be activity, lobbying and hard thinking going on in civil society as well as government in preparation for the Climate Summit. Many faith groups and civil society organizations, (and that includes the Church of England), will be organising events to heighten awareness of the issues and the opportunities which the summit brings. I shall be going to Copenhagen to support those and to emphasise the strength of the concern that people of faith have for the future well-being of our planet. Please include in your prayers this Environment Sunday all whose efforts in the months to come could make a real difference for the sustainability of our planet and we who live in it - it is God's creation that we are striving to care for and as God's children that we pray and act.”
Some of that might well feature in some form - or at least the idea that God is a perfect community of love, how do we live that out as individuals in the wider community, and as a church to the whole of the created order...
I also have more admin to do to get things up to speed before the Archdeacon's Inspection.
Much to do... Family Guy now and then bed...
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