Medieval Multimedia

Last night we went to dinner with some really good friends (hi Diane and Martin if you are visiting the blog for the first time!) They fed us simnel cake which was new to me. Its a symbolic medieval Easter cake that was a treat at the end of the lent fast, with decorations representing the 11 disciples (less Judas).

Now I am not much of a one for symbols (I'm too much of a fan of Zwingli) but the cake set me thinking about them for the second time this week. The first was at the BibleFresh day on Tuesday where there were magnificent stained glass windows.

Before the Bible was available and readable by every Christian there were clearly some folk thinking very hard indeed about how to illustrate the gospel in every way they could. They wanted gospel stories to be something you could see, something that you thought about when you tasted nice cake, something that was illustrated by the way the whole calendar of your day and your year worked. Even, in the case of incense, something you learned about by smell! Stained glass window makers would have got Powerpoint and digital photo frames, and I bet would have given a whole lot more thought to how to use them brilliantly for teaching the gospel than most of us ever do.

Of course the trouble was that people stopped using the symbols as illustrations and reminders of the gospel, and started to consider them a core part of the gospel. In the worst case, the mass ceased to be the reminder of the death of Jesus to save us and was thought to be, in itself, a salvific event that you have to attend to make your salvation secure. When that happens those who control the symbols become a priesthood in a terrible and most unbiblical way. The illustration no longer helps you by telling you about the gospel, but controls you by claiming to be the gospel.

But that doesn't alter the point that a previous age were masterly at trying to get people to think about God by use of everything they had to hand and via every sense. The gospel was intimately attached to every day life. It was visceral - touchable, seeable, tasteable. Which was pretty much how Jesus did it with illustrations and incidents about farming, fishing, flowers, sheep, perfume, money and taxes, bread and wine, employment and commerce, feasts and losing things, seeds and yeast and lamps and trees that don't produce fruit. God entering into the whole of our life-experience and making it all talk about him.

I reckon I need to work harder at illustrations. Simnel cake makes you think - in a very tasty way.

Wisdom from Gandhi

Came across this list of "world blunders" from Gandhi. 

1. Wealth without work

2. Pleasure without conscience

3. Knowledge without character

4. Commerce without morality

5. Science without humanity

6. Worship without sacrifice

7. Politics without principle

While differing from Gandhi in most matters of belief I reckon he was pretty good at the category of wisdom. He and Solomon would have got on

Suburbia is a Time Sink

Just a musing this morning.

I am struggling to know how to encourage discipleship-oriented church life in outer London suburbia. People live such fast lives, have such long commutes, so little ability to claw back time to dwell on the things of God or to consider what next steps they would like to take with him. Many people in my church attend a home group, but it is a real sacrifice of time for them in a world that absorbs time and doesn't let you have it back. For many it is about all they can realistically manage in their frantic schedules. There is so little time for reflection, contemplation, working together on projects that fulfil God's purposes for our area or building community of depth. 

Our home group is making some progress. We seem to be getting to the point where we can have safe discussion of depth about personal and spiritual things, but it has taken a lot of effort (and skill on the part of the group leaders) to make a start. And we are only at the start. To go much further our mindset needs to shift so that the church as a whole - everyone in it - hankers after depth, significant spiritual growth and grace-filled community.

The paradigms and life-rhythms of suburbia work against all these things. For the same reasons it works against evangelism too. Non-Christians live fast lives. They are materially wealthy, not asking big questions of life and faith and unlikely to cross the threshold of a church building.

What will attract them is the quality and depth of the loving community that they see or hear about. Jesus did say "by this all people will know you are my disciples - that you love each other." But it is difficult to build love without a commitment to depth with each other, and difficult to get a commitment to depth without time, and difficult to find time because this is suburbia. 

Suburbia is a time-sink.