Last Sunday (26/06/2011), while on an ashcloud enforced stopover in Brisbane, I went to an inner city church. It was an 11 a.m. service (there had earlier been a 9.30 a.m. service, which may have been the main service). I arrived there at about 5 minutes before the service was due to begin. There were not many people there at that point: the woman minister, one or two people on the door, and two or three others in the pews. There was also a young couple there, with a new baby, and a couple of young boys. They were there for the baptism of their baby boy. Another young woman stood nearby: it transpired that she was the godparent, and, if I recall correctly, was a sister of the baby's mother. In the next few minutes other members of the baptismal family arrived: perhaps about eight or nine adults, and three children (ranging in age from about six to nine). One set, a couple with the three children - two boys and a girl - sat in the pew in front of me. The adults were in their early to mid-thirties.
As the service began, the man got out an electronic gadget and began fiddling with it. He brought up a game and passed the device to one of the boys. Meanwhile the service got under way with a "Call to Worship", followed by a hymn. The minister led off valiantly, and we sang along, though the father of the boys made no attempt to sing, nor even to stand. It soon became obvious that, whatever the commitment of the parents bringing their baby for baptism (and they'd had their two older boys baptised as well), their friends and family had little connection with the church.
(As we were singing the hymn, I became aware of a woman's voice, with an American accent, singing strongly. I discovered at the end of the service, that a number of people had joined the congregation (and had been sitting in the pews behind me) swelling the numbers to perhaps about 25-30 persons, including the children).
The minister had a nice easy style, and did a very good job in the lead up to the baptism. There was a slot for a talk to the children, and she explained the meaning of baptism. The main message was that it stood for the fact of God's love for us. The baptism was conducted in a relaxed manner: and the father of the baby, at least, spoke out the promises reasonably strongly. A member of the congregation was called up to present the family with a baptismal candle, the certificate, a card (which members of the baptismal party were invited to sign and write comments for the child to read as it grew up), and a children's book of Bible stories.
The children went off to a transcept to one side of the sanctuary with an older woman in the congregation to engage in various "craft-type" activities, while we adults listened to the reading. There were, in fact, two printed in the order of service (Romans 6:12-23 and Matt. 10:40-42), but the minister, perhaps wisely, decided to read only the reading from Matthew. This was followed by a "Reflection" on the reading in which the minister spoke of what we receive in "welcoming a child" (the example of humility, for one). It was at this point that a woman (perhaps in her late thirties) got up from the pew two in front of me, and came to sit next to the mother of the children sitting in the pew in front of me. They proceeded to carry on a conversation (reasonably discreetly: I was intent on listening to the "reflection", so I don't know whether I could have followed the conversation had I concentrated on that instead). Meanwhile, a man who was sharing the pew with the woman who had moved (perhaps her husband/partner?) was sitting slant-wise in the pew reading the Bible. I do not know whether the minister noticed the semi-disrespectful inattention of a portion of her congregation, but if she did, she did not show it.
Once the "reflection" finished (and after an offering) we had some prayers during which the women continued their conversation...At some point during the service (perhaps during the sermon?; after the prayers?) an older man, who several times looked around towards the back of the church, got up and walked to the back. In a few moments, he returned carrying a child (perhaps a grandchild?).
As I left the service, I commended the minister on having taken the service very nicely. But I also left with a sense of having been reminded of the challenges of ministry today, especially to those with little connection with the church. Whatever the motivations of the couple who brought their child to be baptised, it seemed obvious to me that their friends were there not entirely willingly. They came out of a desire to support their friends perhaps, but they had little interest in the service and were enduring it.
Currently, I am a bit removed from the "frontline" of ministry. My experience last Sunday was a salutary reminder that we need in the church to be alive and open to the situation of many in society today who know little of church culture, let alone the message of the gospel. I don't doubt that the scenario I encountered last Sunday could well be replicated, in one form or another, on this side of the Tasman. I don't mean to be judgmental of the non-churched participants in that service (leaving aside, perhaps, a certain expectation of an attempt at common courtesy, and some attempt to adapt to the situation). I write this as a reminder that ministry today must be carried out with grace, imagination, and a lively sense of how to connect with people whereever they are coming from, and whatever their understanding of "church". All things considered, I thought that that church (its minister and the few "regulars" who assisted her) did well in that respect.
Showing posts with label Religious comment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religious comment. Show all posts
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
About "That Billboard"
Recently, an inner-city Anglican church in Auckland put up a billboard depicting Mary and Joseph in bed together, and the slogan: "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow". Needless to say, it attracted the attention of the media, and much comment -both for and against - in the public arena. Below is a piece I wrote, which was subsequently published in The New Zealand Herald, 23/12/09, A13. The version below is what was submitted: it was edited by The Herald. Before posting it here, I have added references to the relevant Herald articles, and biblical references (and an addition to the piece submitted appears in square brackets).
The original meaning of Christmas
Last week St. Matthew’s-in-the-City posted an ill-considered and, to many, insensitive billboard. The intention, so Archdeacon Glynn Cardy is reported to have said, was to spark debate about the true origins of Christmas (The New Zealand Herald, 17/12/09, A3). The problem was the matter for debate was wholly ambiguous.
Like others, I found the billboard objectionable. This was not because it depicted Joseph and Mary in bed together. This was portrayed modestly enough, anyway. Nor was it the suggestion that they had just had sex. Despite what Lyndsay Freer [a spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Auckland] said about Christian tradition maintaining that Mary remains a virgin (Herald, same article) this is difficult to substantiate on the evidence of the New Testament.
Matthew’s Gospel merely states that Joseph abstained from sexual relations with Mary until after Jesus was born. All the gospels report that Jesus had brothers (Mark and Matthew add sisters as well). [See Matt. 13:54-58 ; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 8: 18-21; John 2:12; 7: 3;5] The contexts of these references suggest that they were natural brothers. Later church tradition has suggested that they were cousins, or half-siblings. The tradition of Mary’s perpetual virginity dates from the middle of the second century. The idea is first found in a book called The Protevangelium of James, which the church did not consider authoritative.
My difficulty with the billboard lay in the slogan that “God was a hard act to follow”. What was this supposed to imply? Was it meant to suggest that, after the honour of supernaturally conceiving Jesus, the Son of God, any subsequent natural conception was bound to be a let-down? Knowing Archdeacon Cardy to be an intelligent and well-read Christian, it was hard to believe that he intended the words to convey the theologically unsophisticated and crass idea that God and Mary had sex in order to conceive Jesus.
Indeed, he did not. However, it appears that he intended the slogan to satirize the view of “a male god sending sperm down to impregnate Mary” (NZ Herald, 19/12/09, A4). This was apparently to counter the idea of a “literal virgin birth”. The problem with this is that, as an argument, it sets up the proverbial straw man. (Perhaps the stuff of the stable is there after all!).
Christians who take seriously the idea of a virgin birth do not believe that any more than Archdeacon Cardy. The gospels of Matthew and Luke say that the conception of Jesus was due to the work and power of the Holy Spirit [Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:35]. The same Spirit depicted at work in Genesis creating the conditions of life itself [Gen. 1:2]. John’s Gospel, in the soaring poetry of its opening verses, states that “the Word” which was the same as God became human and lived among us [John 1: 1, 2, 14]. It is difficult to know what St. Paul thought about “the virgin birth” as he simply notes that Jesus was “born of a woman” [Gal. 4:4]. But there is no doubt that he understood that Jesus was God, and that by an initiative of God, “the Son” became human.
This is really what the virgin birth is conveying. It signifies the understanding that in Jesus God became a human being. And this happened in a real and historically situated way. It is not simply a metaphor, or a fiction. God’s hands got dirty, as it were, in the real and everyday stuff of human existence.
This astounding reality is what Christians celebrate at Christmas: that God has shared our human life. And it was not a nice, comfortable middle-class life, such as I enjoy. I am constantly amazed, and moved, how in a few brief sentences the gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, capture so much of the joys and the trials, the terrors even, of human existence.
Think of it: the scandal of a pregnancy “out of wedlock”, a birth in transient circumstances, the family of Jesus refugees from a paranoid ruler quite happy to unleash “state terrorism” on unsuspecting villagers. Luke says that the news of the birth was told first to shepherds, often considered to be thieves, and not religiously upright or observant. Matthew says that early visitors were foreign astrologers bearing symbolic gifts. Early on in Jesus’ life his mother Mary was told that a “sword” (of sorrow) would pierce her heart.
God became human in Jesus in order to engage in a mission of reconciliation to overcome the alienation that had come through human waywardness. John’s Gospel speaks of the coming of the Word in order to bring life and give people “the right to be children of God” [John 1:12, 13].
This was to come about on account of the death of Christ. This is why many Christians will celebrate Christmas by remembering, in the Eucharist or Holy Communion service, the death of Jesus. Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter are all part of a big story of God’s saving acts on behalf of humanity.
Unfortunately, as an exercise in getting a genuine conversation about the original meaning of Christmas going, the St. Matthew’s billboard seems to have generated more heat than light. Such is the way with provocative acts like that. Perhaps a billboard such as this might do the trick. A conventional (or contemporary, if you like) stable scene, with the words: “What on earth is God doing here?”
The original meaning of Christmas
Last week St. Matthew’s-in-the-City posted an ill-considered and, to many, insensitive billboard. The intention, so Archdeacon Glynn Cardy is reported to have said, was to spark debate about the true origins of Christmas (The New Zealand Herald, 17/12/09, A3). The problem was the matter for debate was wholly ambiguous.
Like others, I found the billboard objectionable. This was not because it depicted Joseph and Mary in bed together. This was portrayed modestly enough, anyway. Nor was it the suggestion that they had just had sex. Despite what Lyndsay Freer [a spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Auckland] said about Christian tradition maintaining that Mary remains a virgin (Herald, same article) this is difficult to substantiate on the evidence of the New Testament.
Matthew’s Gospel merely states that Joseph abstained from sexual relations with Mary until after Jesus was born. All the gospels report that Jesus had brothers (Mark and Matthew add sisters as well). [See Matt. 13:54-58 ; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 8: 18-21; John 2:12; 7: 3;5] The contexts of these references suggest that they were natural brothers. Later church tradition has suggested that they were cousins, or half-siblings. The tradition of Mary’s perpetual virginity dates from the middle of the second century. The idea is first found in a book called The Protevangelium of James, which the church did not consider authoritative.
My difficulty with the billboard lay in the slogan that “God was a hard act to follow”. What was this supposed to imply? Was it meant to suggest that, after the honour of supernaturally conceiving Jesus, the Son of God, any subsequent natural conception was bound to be a let-down? Knowing Archdeacon Cardy to be an intelligent and well-read Christian, it was hard to believe that he intended the words to convey the theologically unsophisticated and crass idea that God and Mary had sex in order to conceive Jesus.
Indeed, he did not. However, it appears that he intended the slogan to satirize the view of “a male god sending sperm down to impregnate Mary” (NZ Herald, 19/12/09, A4). This was apparently to counter the idea of a “literal virgin birth”. The problem with this is that, as an argument, it sets up the proverbial straw man. (Perhaps the stuff of the stable is there after all!).
Christians who take seriously the idea of a virgin birth do not believe that any more than Archdeacon Cardy. The gospels of Matthew and Luke say that the conception of Jesus was due to the work and power of the Holy Spirit [Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:35]. The same Spirit depicted at work in Genesis creating the conditions of life itself [Gen. 1:2]. John’s Gospel, in the soaring poetry of its opening verses, states that “the Word” which was the same as God became human and lived among us [John 1: 1, 2, 14]. It is difficult to know what St. Paul thought about “the virgin birth” as he simply notes that Jesus was “born of a woman” [Gal. 4:4]. But there is no doubt that he understood that Jesus was God, and that by an initiative of God, “the Son” became human.
This is really what the virgin birth is conveying. It signifies the understanding that in Jesus God became a human being. And this happened in a real and historically situated way. It is not simply a metaphor, or a fiction. God’s hands got dirty, as it were, in the real and everyday stuff of human existence.
This astounding reality is what Christians celebrate at Christmas: that God has shared our human life. And it was not a nice, comfortable middle-class life, such as I enjoy. I am constantly amazed, and moved, how in a few brief sentences the gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, capture so much of the joys and the trials, the terrors even, of human existence.
Think of it: the scandal of a pregnancy “out of wedlock”, a birth in transient circumstances, the family of Jesus refugees from a paranoid ruler quite happy to unleash “state terrorism” on unsuspecting villagers. Luke says that the news of the birth was told first to shepherds, often considered to be thieves, and not religiously upright or observant. Matthew says that early visitors were foreign astrologers bearing symbolic gifts. Early on in Jesus’ life his mother Mary was told that a “sword” (of sorrow) would pierce her heart.
God became human in Jesus in order to engage in a mission of reconciliation to overcome the alienation that had come through human waywardness. John’s Gospel speaks of the coming of the Word in order to bring life and give people “the right to be children of God” [John 1:12, 13].
This was to come about on account of the death of Christ. This is why many Christians will celebrate Christmas by remembering, in the Eucharist or Holy Communion service, the death of Jesus. Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter are all part of a big story of God’s saving acts on behalf of humanity.
Unfortunately, as an exercise in getting a genuine conversation about the original meaning of Christmas going, the St. Matthew’s billboard seems to have generated more heat than light. Such is the way with provocative acts like that. Perhaps a billboard such as this might do the trick. A conventional (or contemporary, if you like) stable scene, with the words: “What on earth is God doing here?”
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