A Message from the Vicar ...
The Revd Philip Martin, BA
Dear Friends,
They say that youth is wasted on the young…
So I had no idea how fortunate I was to attend a university where some of the greatest minds were at work. Each day at the large University Library back then in the late 1970s one could see a severely disabled man in a wheelchair. A friend explained that he was in fact an accomplished physicist. He was, of course, Professor Stephen Hawking who later became famous as the author of ‘A Brief History of Time' (that least-read of best-sellers…) and a scientist who feels there is no place for talk of God when discussing the origin, or meaning, of the universe.
One of my own tutors was Professor Keith Ward. He was and is (with one exception) the brightest and brainiest person I have ever met. He is a philosopher and theologian but is also very knowledgeable about science. He is a witty and formidable proponent of the reasonableness of Christian faith. In particular, he maintains that science and faith, far from being adversaries, are in fact friends. Modern science is the result of the belief that the world around us reflects and illustrates the God described in the Christian Bible. Modern science, in turn, highlights the probability of a rational, supernatural and loving creator as the source and sustainer of everything that exists. Of course, belief in God (still less, belief in Jesus Christ) cannot be proved and will always entail an act of faith. Faith, however, is not ‘blind'; it can cite arguments in its favour that make it consistent with the best scientific understanding of our world.
Why, then, are science and religion so often thought to be opposed? Some scientists object to religion for all kinds of reasons (Professor Hawking is one, and so also is Professor Dawkins, famous from recent appearances on TV) but, interestingly, increasing numbers of leading scientists are supportive of a ‘spiritual factor' for scientific as much as for other reasons. Equally, there are some Christians who oppose much mainstream science on Biblical grounds. The views of such Christians deserve respect. They are often impressive people whose lives are testimony to their Christian faith. But their views can only be upheld if one takes a severely literalist (or ‘fundamentalist') approach to the contents of the Bible. Most reasonable Christians see no incompatibility between the Bible and science. The creation stories in the book of Genesis, for example, convey the truth that all matter, and all life, is dependent upon God, but do so using images and stories that need not be understood as literal or historical. Jesus used parables, made-up stories that pack a truthful punch. Parts of Genesis may be understood in a similar way. To quote the Bible against evolution is to misunderstand both.
Keith Ward, now in retirement, is busier than ever, bringing insight to difficult questions. He gave a series of lectures in Salisbury this spring and was giving heart to crowds of young people at this year's Greenbelt Christian Festival. The world needs his brand of common sense.
Ah, but I said he was the brightest chap I'd met, bar one … Well, at the same time, back then, there was a young, tousle-haired and bearded tutor at Cambridge whose razor-sharp intelligence was equalled by his kindness and generosity. He combined teaching and scholarship with ministering on a nearby housing estate. Little did we imagine, while he made coffee for tiresome students like us, that the priest treating our essays with such patient respect would one day be our Archbishop.
With love, Vicar Philip
September
A few of life's recent snapshots…
Dear Friends,
The Open Door Festival was fun! The rain held off, the wind removed only the one gazebo and the sun even shone a little. The Giant's procession, assisted by the Monday Club and local police, briefly reclaimed the main road as a public place for parents and children, pushchairs and fancy dress. There was something for everyone, and one visitor told me he just wanted to sit there and for it not to end. All the work and worrying seemed well rewarded. God is good and blesses us in ways we don't expect or control. The Church building's ‘Open Door' was but a parable for it all – but, oh boy, such a parable as opens doors indeed.
My own conversations, however, were dominated by the need to explain my bloodied appearance. Well (I can hear my dear mum, rest her soul, exclaiming) if you will run like a daft thing, and across that Churchyard of all places… All, however, were so kind, helpful and skilful: the people attending a meeting in my kitchen whose cups of tea were suddenly placed to one side as I staggered in, bleeding rather a lot…the local doctor and surgery… the splendid plastic surgeon at the hospital whose needlework put me together again… and Fr David and others who stood in to give me a day of recovery and rest. I reflected that during my ministry I have sometimes encountered drunk or disturbed individuals who have thrown a punch, but when did you last hear of a vicar who was beaten up by some dead parishioners ? OK, mum…I'll try to remember next time: slow down…
Earlier in the month we received a visit from Bishop Peter Munde, one of the Sudanese representatives at the Lambeth Conference for Anglican bishops from all around the world. We all know that ‘In Christ there is no black or white, no rich or poor, but all are one…' But from that big, black, smiling and faithful pastor it somehow struck home, and all the children at school and the adults at Church were in awe. He was an intelligent man and knew that his Church and African culture have their own, different shortcomings – but in that brief encounter Alderholt and Yambio met and were indeed one.
Marianne completed her 500 mile walk to Santiago de Compostela, the believed burial place of St James, and laid down her stick and pack by the altar. Though enriched beyond words by the experience she told us that she and others had been reminded that the real pilgrimage is inside ourselves: the real pilgrimage is the journey you make today in Christ's company…
Then, on St James' Day itself, a Friday, we gave thanks for the apostle who is so strongly associated with pilgrims by walking the 9 or so miles by path to St James' Church in Holt. One of us, however, had a bad fall going across Cranborne Common, and a fellow pilgrim helped her back to a car. The rest of us duly arrived, safe but weary, to be greeted with tea and cakes, a heavenly Communion Service – and that food of the gods to a tired pilgrim, fish and chips. Next day, I took to Joan, her leg now in plaster, her certificate for having completed the pilgrimage in heart and soul. Yes, the real pilgrimage is not just a walk completed, it is a life lived…
Just a few of life's recent snapshots for a vicar who is no-one in the world, yet everything in the eyes of him who truly knows each one of us. Yes, life is surprising, difficult, wonderful. And its basic component is not atoms or electricity: it is love.
With love,
Vicar Philip
July Letter
Air and angels:
when the Lord comes to visit
Dear Friends,
My letter this month is based on a recent sermon I preached at St James'. You can read the enthralling account for yourself in Genesis, chapters 15 – 18, but I bet if you turn to it you'll find yourself reading the sections before and after as well!
Here's a story of air and angels, of cruel laughter and dysfunctional family life. It comes from that combination of ‘Big Brother', ‘The South Bank Show' and ‘Friends' – along with ‘The X Factor' that is the indescribable echoes of grace and glory and God through it all – that we call ‘the Bible'. And it is amazing!
Today's instalment I'll describe by the address, an address as particular as Brookside or Albert Square . The address is The Oaks of Mamre, and it's where Abraham lives with his wife Sarah. They're getting on (in that they're rather past it) but at the same time they're not getting on, I mean, they weren't getting on too well together…
Sarah was childless. She was bitter about it, desperate about it. Eventually she persuaded Abraham to take their maid, Hagar, to bed. She became pregnant with Ishmael. But then the relationship between Sarah and the maid, Hagar, nosedives. Maybe Hagar becomes contemptuous, maybe Sarah becomes jealous. Abraham is caught in the middle and his weakness is exposed. This is the same man who would soon afterwards pass his wife off as his sister and didn't even put it straight when the local king, Abimelech was trying to coax her into marrying him. What a family! To think it was to this family that God promised descendants for ever, and from whom would be born the world's saviour (but that episode comes in the second series…)
Now into this tense and uncomfortable household, in the blazing heat of early afternoon, three strange men appear and the Bible is definite that these betoken the Lord himself. The Lord knows Abraham's address and calls round uninvited. I reckon he knows yours too, by the way, and each of you is on his calling list.
Abraham goes into that splendid Middle Eastern hospitality package, offers water to wash their feet, then offers bread – and (the essential ingredient for hospitality in most cultures) gets his wife and servants to do the work. They scuttle off to organise cakes and a quickly slaughtered calf.
So they chew the fat together, those three angels and Abraham - and Sarah listens behind the door! They tell him that Sarah will have a child. She's old, she's realistic, and she's just a little bit bitter and twisted, and she laughs: that cynical, bitter laugh that most of us utter quite often: ‘I wish…!'
But the Lord (they) hears her and her bluff is called. ‘Is anything too hard, or too wonderful , for God' they ask. This wonderful thing, they say, will happen by the time they call by again, in the spring. And so it happened, and so it happens – and so it will happen for everyone who reads this. Spring will come again. Your own spring will come and will not be late. It may not happen between March and May next year. But your spring will come at just the right time for you, and will not delay. Sarah denies that she laughed at all (oh dear, this family…) and they fix her with a wry look and say, No?…But you did laugh…
Well, there was good news. Isaac (it means ‘laughter': a great name!) was born. But nothing in life is simple, and nothing in this story of our salvation is straightforward. Isaac's birth means not laughter but tears for Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah wants rid of them now. Abraham in his unmanly way tries to appease each of them, and fails. Hagar and her child are cruelly cast out, into the burning desert. This man! Hagar is desperate and the child is dying. She walks away because she can't bear to watch. She doesn't laugh a bitter laugh. She cries out with a mother's grief. But the name Ishmael means ‘God hears' and, yes, God does hear. Another angel comes to her, and their, aid. God knows their ‘of-no-fixed-abode ness' just as he knows Abraham's address also. He comes to them, shows them a spring of water - and their itinerant, nomadic life begins. From them most Muslims today still trace their ancestry to Abraham as Jews do through Isaac and as Christians do through both, all be it in a symbolical way.
The Lord knows your bitter laughter ( No?…But you did laugh… ) and the Lord knows your heartfelt cries from the desert in which you sometimes find yourself.
Those angels still know your address, or your no-fixed-abode-ness.
Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? The same question is asked of us, as we despair of ourselves, or others, or of our Church or of our world. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Well, now you mention it, Lord, what about this matter of the war in Iraq that we got into without stopping long to think where it would lead? And what about our worldwide Church in which Christians demonstrate their love for each other by refusing to meet to discuss their disagreements…? And what about this me, this same old me, in which the same problems reappear like genes and dad's face when I look in the mirror, and nothing seems really to change..?
Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? He will come this way again in the springtime, in your springtime, and then his promises will come to pass. And it all begins by The Oaks of Mamre with a ritual washing, and a meal of cakes and wine and a slaughtered piece of meat. Just as our hope all stems from a ritual cleansing in water that we call baptism, and in a meal of bread and wine that we call Holy Communion, with at its centre a slaughtered Lamb of God.
Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? He will bring it to pass. We shall see, when he comes to us again in the springtime of our life.
With love,
Vicar Philip
June Letter
Dear Friends,
I just bought a new Bible… Not that I haven't got a few already, mind. Probably still my favourite is an old, battered King James' (Authorized) version. It's been with me a long time and is filled to twice its width with notes and scribbles and prayers. I love the way its language is beautiful, and yet – wham! – packs a punch with direct simplicity: For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword…and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
So what has this new Bible got that's new? It doesn't add anything, but the publishers have highlighted all the verses that refer to poverty and justice .* From beginning to end – Genesis to Revelation – there are 2000 verses that emphasise God's concern for the poor and for justice. The message is overwhelming: The Lord always does right and wants justice done. Everyone who does right will see his face. Almost every page in the Gospels (the 4 books that tell us most about Jesus) is sprinkled with such verses, and Jesus, at the start of his ministry, refers to himself by quoting the Old Testament: The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, to say, ‘This is the year of the Lord.'
As you hold this book you realise that it is explosive, not with the hopeless and destructive chemicals of a terrorist's bomb, but with something much more powerful in the long run: the clear and unchangeable will of God who sustains the universe by love and will bring all to completeness through love and yearns for us to be part of the solution…
Yet, tragically, this explosive force for peace and justice in the world is negated. To so many it is a closed book, while Christians who do read it often argue over inessentials. They even refuse to share communion together because of disagreements over an issue like homosexuality (about which there is a handful of disputed texts and about which Jesus says…precisely nothing.)
Whichever Bible you turn to, let its words challenge, comfort, encourage, trouble – and change – you. Turn to other books and commentaries too, of course. Listen to sermons. Discuss it with others. Be wary of those who quote isolated texts, especially when their message is used to condemn others. Most of all, let your chief guide to reading the Bible be the compassion and truth and justice of Jesus himself.
We love because God loved us first. But if we say we love God and don't love each other, we are liars. We cannot see God. So how can we love God, if we don't love the people we can see? The commandment that God has given us is ‘Love God and love each other.'
Yours, in Christ,
Vicar Philip
* The Poverty and Justice Bible, published by Bible Society: making the Bible heard
ISBN 978 0 564 09453 0 Cost £9.99
May Letter
Dear Friends,
Another Christian festival, another early morning : our custom at St James' Church is to celebrate the Ascension (40 days after Easter and therefore always a Thursday) with a Communion service at 6.30 in the morning. One perfect spring morning we climbed up Kingbarrow - the distinctive heathland summit close to Cripplestyle - with a picnic-table altar. We remembered our Lord amid the music of tree pipits and skylarks. On other Ascension mornings, we have worshipped God in the Church grounds, our prayers embraced by the drooping branches and unfurling leaves of copper beech. And on each occasion the short, glorious service has been followed by a grand and honest-to-goodness (and cooked) breakfast. Food, indeed, for body and soul, and as we ‘return from the mountain' to work or home or school, it is with a renewed vision of God's presence, and glory, pervading all things and demanding our all.
What is the Ascension and why does it matter? Those four short books in the Bible that tell the unending story of Jesus, the Gospels, refer only briefly to things about which we would prefer more detail: if Jesus rose from the dead then what eventually happened to his body? Only Luke and Mark refer to Jesus, after blessing the disciples, ‘withdrawing' from them and being lifted up into heaven. As so often, we are told all that faith requires but less than our curiosity craves. The Gospels do not pretend to give a documentary account. They do far more than that: they enable us, along with those first disciples, to encounter the mystery of Christ .
I think the Ascension matters for at least these two reasons :
First , it reminds us that our human, bodily existence has its home in heaven. Where Jesus is gone before, we too, though unworthy, can claim our ‘permanent address'. Old pictures sometimes show the disciples looking up to a cloud from which just two feet still protrude. It is a charmingly literal interpretation. But because our feet are literally down to earth, sometimes painful and sometimes don't smell too fresh, then that picture reminds us that all of what it means to be human is intended for heaven.
Secondly , the Ascension reminds us to balance worship and work. The disciples look up to heaven, but are then told by two angelic figures to stop gazing and get on back to Jerusalem where they gather in the upper room along with Mary and the other women. The Christian Church had begun. We too need time for ‘looking up': for prayer, for silence, for worship. That should inspire us to get on with what needs to be done for others, which in turn leads us back to God in prayer, thanksgiving and supplication. Prayer and positive living: not opposites but the two components of an upward cycle.
And of course anyone's welcome! Ascension Day, Thursday, 1 st May, 6.30am …
With love, Vicar Philip
April Letter
Dear Friends,
It is before dawn on Easter Day. A full moon reflects a pale light across our parish. A keen and searching northern air will attend our first ceremonies for Easter a little later at sunrise, as we, with Christians around the world, enter the still dark Church proclaiming ‘The light of Christ.' After this curtailed night with its interrupted sleep we - humans, mortal, so limited in understanding – will proclaim with angels and all the company of heaven, that
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed, alleluia!
During the season of Lent that provides Christians with the opportunity to prepare for this astonishing day, we ran a series of films that in some way focused on Jesus. They ranged from the sublime (‘Jesus of Montreal') to the absurd (but still very funny for most of us,' Life of Brian'). ‘The Passion of the Christ' was, of course, powerful and a corrective to any too anodyne or sentimental a view of what Jesus suffered for us. A fourth film, ‘Mary', has been acclaimed internationally but is yet to be released in this country. It cleverly reflects on Mel Gibson's ‘The Passion…' but suggests that what is even more important is how the story of Jesus continues to impact and change ordinary people's lives.
During the Holy Week that precedes Easter the BBC has run its own series of dramas on the passion of Christ. So far it seems to me, at least, an impressive and interesting interpretation. Most impressive of all, to my mind, is that these films have appeared at all, and at prime time, after several years during which mainstream coverage of Christianity on TV has been so marginalized. Perhaps there is recognition that amid the inevitable multicultural sensitivities of our age it is all the more important that we explore the foundational events of Christianity. If our nation be a meeting place of cultures and peoples, then it were as well that we should be informed about the religious teacher who urges us to recognise God present in our neighbour and in the stranger – and even, despite our sins, in ourselves.
It is a sobering, but reassuring, thought, as I prepare to stumble in the dark and cold to our humble but holy little Church, that the story of Jesus is not confined to this or to any Church building or community. Christians around the world, in each other's homes or in glorious cathedral or a million other places, will gather this day to pray and to offer thanks. That Christ is risen will never be fully comprehended or controlled. He walks abroad and reaches everywhere. His spirit lives and will always go before us. The Church, and bleary-eyed clergy like me, can only hope to name him, point to him, receive him – but never control him.
The story of Jesus will forever be told. Even the BBC will be drawn to do so. But it is a story that has only just begun. Its next chapter is to be read in your, and my, and each one of our lives.
With love, Vicar Philip
