The Cellists of Sarajevo
Friends,
We become what we worship, so it says in the Psalms:
The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
they have eyes, but they do not see;
they have ears, but they do not hear,
and there is no breath in their mouths.
Those who make them and all who trust them
shall become like them. [Psalm 135:15-18]
Therefore, all the more reason for us to be deliberately conscious of who/what we worship. The tricky part is that there can obviously be a difference between who/what we say we worship and who/what we actually worship. As Jesus said: “Not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord…” Jesus also said that we have a tendency to worship both God and money and that this is practically impossible. It is either one or the other, says Jesus.
In other words, attending “Church” is not necessarily “proof” of the focus of our worship. Perhaps a more accurate measure is what we spend our money and time on. That said, to the extent that our weekly practice of worship is authentic, is to the extent that we will be transformed into the likeness of the One we worship. Last week we were reminded that God is a lover of the poor and a lover of justice and therefore one measure of the authenticity of our weekly worship is whether our love for the poor is deepening and our love for justice is strengthening. May this be so.
In grace,
Alan
—
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
– WB Yeats
—
Bread and Roses
Dedicated to the belief that the world and its abundance belongs to all of us — not only to a privileged few:
Bread and Roses was a poem and song that emerged during the women’s millworker strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. Women were fighting for fair wages, child labour laws, overtime pay, fair working conditions. Part of their strike proclamation read:
We, the 20,000 textile workers of Lawrence, are out on strike for the right to live free from slavery and starvation; free from overwork and underpay; free from a state of affairs that had become so unbearable and beyond our control, that we were compelled to march out of the slave pens of Lawrence in united resistance against the wrongs and injustice of years and years of wage slavery.”
This song came to mind recently because of the workers who are fighting for jobs, and for their union bargaining rights — fighting against the rich and powerful who seem to be trying to make workers and labour unions the enemy. My heart goes out to all who struggle for bread and roses.
As we go marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: “Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”
As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead,
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread,
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew,
Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too!
As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race,
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!
– John Oppenheim
There is a hidden treasure right on our doorstep and yet many do not know of it. This treasure is as inspiring as it is challenging. I am referring to the exhibition entitled: Truth to Power by the 
The exhibition is divided into six themes which chart Tutu’s life within the context of the painful history of South Africa under Apartheid, where the Archbishop remains the gold thread of hope, outspokenness, faith and healing. It includes his ongoing activism in the democratic South Africa and sets the challenge to all of us to take on his baton of courageous leadership and unwavering values.”
effectively tagging all protesters present (as well spraying the Central Methodist Mission on 2 September 1989). This gave rise to the ingenious graffiti “The Purple Shall Govern”.
Remembering that to give to God is not to be equated to giving to Church, we must therefore not reduce “Give all you can” – to what we contribute to the Sunday offertory. Rather, to give to God is to give in such a way that the poor will hear good news. This means the focus of all our generosity is to bend the structures of society towards justice while at the same time mercifully caring for those wounded and marginalised within society. There are many avenues that invite our contributions to do justice and love mercifully within society at large. I believe one of the most Godly avenues of ‘give all you can’ is education – starting with pre-school education all the way through to university. Education gives life! Education really is a gift that keeps on giving – for generations! Here is a prayer we can pray: “Jesus, give me opportunities to give towards a person’s education. Amen.”
Unlike much of what passes as “Christianity” today, Dan resisted the temptation to dilute Jesus’ message of ‘justice and mercy for all’ to make it more palatable for our individualistically indoctrinated lives and consumer driven society (and church) to swallow. Dan truly trusted that the so-called “hard sayings of Jesus” – the one’s we usually wish-to-God Jesus never said – about loving money too much and loving enemies too little – was not only good news but also the only way of living life that would save Life on planet earth.
ALONE – A LUTHERAN LOOKS AT THE BOMB in 1983, exposing the clear contradiction between the gospel and the “system called the arms race” and in which Dan humbly invites the reader: “As an American, I am part of a people who have been seduced into idolatry – we believe in the power of violence … and that is our darkness. Lord have mercy.”
I don’t think Jesus is too concerned about the religion, if any, that we subscribe to. I say this because for most of us the random geography of our birth overwhelmingly influenced our choice. Besides, I can’t find it anywhere in the gospels where Jesus enquires about someone’s religion. Jesus certainly doesn’t line up all the blind and lame and say – okay all those who believe in me as your personal Lord and Saviour be healed – and to the rest – sorry for you.
This is where the second diagram of “evangelism” comes in. Instead of trying to get people of other religions or of no religion to believe in ‘our’ religion (diagram 1), we are to work towards a different kind of conversion within the world. This conversion is from the ways of death to the ways of life. The ways of death include: injustice, vengeance, pride, inequality, violence and greed.
P.S. Today Ruth Leverton is attempting to run her 20th Comrades Marathon.