Minister’s Message – Page 8 – Christchurch United Church

Minister’s Message – March 19, 2023

March 20, 2023

There are many characters in the Bible who just make a brief “cameo” appearance: they enter a story, do their “thing”, and are never heard of again. So, for instance, we have the boy who brought the loaves and fishes to Jesus at the feeding of the 5000 – we know nothing about him but there wouldn’t have been a miracle if he hadn’t come forward! Almost at the other end of the Bible we have the mysterious Melchizedek who blesses Abram with bread and wine after a victory.

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Minister’s Message – February 26, 2023

February 28, 2023

On the evening of February 5^th 2020 the cruise liner “Diamond Princess” dropped anchor outside the port of Yokohama in Japan. There were 3,700 passengers and crew aboard the ship but no-one was allowed to leave. That was because of one elderly Chinese passenger: he had joined the cruise on January 25^th and left at Hong Kong with a cough. Now news came back that the gentleman had tested positive for the Covid-Sars-19 virus. The Japanese authorities were worried and, following World Health Organisation protocols, placed the ship under quarantine for 14 days. But in the intervening period the ship had docked in a number of places and the usual onboard social life had continued without restrictions.

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Minister’s Message – February 19, 2023

February 21, 2023

The moment in “The Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy steps out of her cabin into Oz must be one of the most memorable sequences in movie history – and it must have been very difficult to achieve with the technical resources available at the time. What, of course, really “makes” it is the transition from the dreary sepia of Kansas to the glorious Technicolor of Oz – no wonder Dorothy was filled with wonder and amazement. I’m sure that audiences were, too!

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Minister’s Message – February 12, 2023

February 15, 2023

I wonder if you’ve ever come across the word “thoughtcrime”? If you haven’t, let me tell you that it was coined by George Orwell for his famous book “1984”, a suggestion of what a repressive regime like Stalin’s in Russia might look like if it came to Britain. “Thoughtcrime” was one of many words that were part of “newspeak” – a heavily edited and highly political form of English which sounded rather like the old-fashioned language used in telegrams. In “newspeak” complicated ideas were reduced to short statements which sounded clear but in fact deliberately concealed truth and misled their hearers.

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Minister’s Message – February 5, 2023

February 7, 2023

Jesus often got into trouble for law-breaking. No, he wasn’t caught breaking into someone’s house, he didn’t ‘innocently’ (ahem) avoid paying his income tax, he wasn’t pulled over for driving a chariot at 60 mph in a 30 mph zone, he didn’t get into a drunken brawl outside the Nazareth pub at closing time … in fact we might suppose that he was a model citizen. But he was still a law-breaker because he made a point of mingling and eating with folk who society thought were beyond the pale, unashamedly touching sick people who were deemed to be unclean, and repeatedly doing (and, even worse, encouraging his disciples) to do acts which were classified as “work” on the Sabbath day of rest. He even tried to rewrite the legal traditions that had evolved over the centuries, with his words, “You have heard it said … but I say to you”. Clearly Jesus was a dangerous radical hellbent on ditching the rules and regulations which governed everyday life. As far as the lawyers were concerned, his teaching would leave ordinary people confused or even rebellious and simply couldn’t be tolerated.

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Minister’s Message – January 15, 2023

January 16, 2023

Emperor Joseph II, who came to the throne in 1765, is regarded as one of the greatest rulers of Austria. Following the principles of the Enlightenment, he reformed the education system and sought the best scholars and scientists for the universities. He introduced a universal Code of Civil Law, abolished serfdom, and tried to alleviate rural poverty. He improved the public health service, reorganised the army, balanced the monarchy’s finances, permitted all religions to be practised freely and granted freedom to the Press. His emancipation of the Jews gave new vitality to cultural life and he transferred theatre management to the actors. Although Joseph’s foreign policy was less successful, this was very much a “golden age” for his country. Yet this is the epitaph he ordered to be placed on his grave: “Here lies a prince who, despite the best of intentions, was unable to carry out his plans”. A man who achieved so much ultimately felt that he’d been a failure.

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Minister’s Message – January 8, 2023

January 16, 2023

They weren’t kings. We don’t know their names. There may or may have been three of them. It’s possible that they rode on – or led – camels. But what we do know is this: they weren’t Jews, they came from the East, they brought valuable gifts, and – eventually – they were able to present them and pay the homage befitting a new crown prince. And then, having, we are told, “returned home by a different route”, the Magi vanish from the pages of the Bible, never to be heard of again. So what have I forgotten? Oh yes: they followed a star.

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Minister’s Message – Christmas Day

December 28, 2022

I wonder how many of us watch the TV show “Who do you think you are?” If you’ve never seen it, let me tell you that it’s an ‘ancestry; programme in which celebrities examine their family histories. Not every episode is interesting but some are absolutely fascinating; I particularly remember one about Stephen Fry; he may appear to be a quintessential English gentleman but his maternal grandparents were Slovakian Jews who in 1927 were ‘head-hunted’ to come to Britain and run the new sugar factory in Bury St Edmunds. That saved their lives as many of their relatives later perished in the Nazi death camps. I wonder how many of us have traced back our own family histories and, if so, how far we’ve managed to get: a century, two centuries, or even more?

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Minister’s Message – Christmas Eve

December 28, 2022

Over the last few years the “Songs of Praise” TV programme, the BBC Classical Music Magazine and the Classic FM radio station have all run opinion polls, trying to find out which Christmas carol is Britain’s favourite. I suspect that the outcome of these surveys has a lot to do with who’s being asked, but the results are surprisingly consistent. One carol that is always at, or near, the top of the list is “In the bleak midwinter”. And many of you will agree with one enthusiastic writer who asked, “Does any other carol get to the very heart of Christmas as understatedly but effectively as this?” and went on to declare that “Christina Rossetti’s poem is nigh-on perfect as a carol text”.

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Minister’s Message – December 18, 2022

December 20, 2022

The news has been filled recently by what we might call small-scale tragedies. Among other sad happenings there were the fishermen who drowned when their boat collided with a ferry off the coast of Jersey and the would-be migrants who died when their dinghy capsized in the English Channel. The island of Jersey itself saw the devastating gas explosion which demolished a block of flats in the early hours of one morning and killed nine people. We heard about that house fire in Pembrokeshire where a husband and wife perished, of the two small boys apparently murdered in east London, and the revellers killed and injured in the concert crush in Brixton. And, of course, we were all shocked by the deaths of the children who fell through the ice on the lake in Solihull – an appalling story, albeit tinged with heroism.

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