January/February 2025, news views and muse

Dear Friends

Lent begins late this year, with Ash Wednesday on March 5th. This means that we have an extended season of Epiphany. We now have all of February to be surprised by God’s presence in unexpected people and places, and to find new ways in which God makes love known.

February may seem a strange time to think in this way, with cold temperatures, dark mornings and early sunsets. But perhaps divine light is more vivid against a grey and snowy sky.
I have seen this light so clearly within this community of Tong and I thank God for all of you. I’m grateful for the compassion and kind wishes when people are sick and dying.
The warmth of our congregation is palpable and precious. I give thanks for all that is offered by so many people who provide for our mission, maintain our buildings, prepare for our worship, and for the help and support that you have given to me and Jess during this time as we await a new Priest in charge.

This congregation responds to need readily and sacrificially, and often in hidden ways. 

As we walk forward, I am grateful for this extended season of Epiphany. I am grateful for this reminder and opportunity to discover where God’s light shines. Blessings to all of you as we continue this journey together.

Rev’d Mike

Arab and Jew, Ishmael and Isaac

I have loved the stories of the Old Testament since a dedicated and faithful teacher at school enthused about them and their significance and as I watch the “highlights” of the terrible conflict between Israeli and Arab I ruminate on the separation of Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

If you are unfamiliar with the story, as told in Genesis Chapter 12 and onwards, the ageing Abraham decides to leave his homeland and then travels to Canaan with his wife Sarah and his livestock. They have no children although Abraham believes God has promised him an heir – but they are old and no heir appears, so he and Sarah decide to take matters into their own hands as God isn’t delivering, so Sarah gives her husband Hagar, her Egyptian maid, to do the business. The resultant child is named Ishmael and although he is not the promised son, nonetheless he is still blessed by God and becomes the ancestor of the Arab peoples.

Further waiting ensues not to mention disbelieving laughter when Sarah hears that she is going to become a mother at last, but as Mary heard centuries later, “nothing is impossible with God” and in due course the long promised heir is born, Isaac. Isaac in turn was the father of the twins, Esau and Jacob and it was the latter who was renamed Israel – so you see where this thread is leading.

When Sarah’s status as a mother was established, she regretted that she had preempted God’s plan by promoting Hagar and there is tension in the kitchen, so there is a sad parting when Abraham sends Hagar and his son away, though Ishmael is cared for and although he drops out of the narrative, his future is assured and the prophet Mohammed is said to be his descendant. It doesn’t do to tell God how to run His affairs.

So the great Patriarchal story common to Judaism, Islam and Christianity has tensions within it from the beginning. Isaac was promised the land and Ishmael was to be the founder of a great nation. Israel fiercely defends its territorial rights, though in Christianity we see Jesus as the fulfilment of God’s promises where Jews and Gentiles ( including Arabs) can live together in peace. However the complex historical, social and political factors that have developed over the centuries despite the common heritage, make that day still seem a long way off.

Pippa

December 2024 news, views and muse

National Characteristics

An English friend who has lived in Switzerland for 20 years or so came to visit us recently. She was telling us that all young Swiss men have to do military service and that they are issued not only with Swiss Army knives but also with firearms, which when their time of national service comes to an end, they are allowed to keep. The result is that there are more guns in the hands of civilians in Switzerland than there are in the whole of America. She asked her friends in her adopted country why there were no mass shootings in Switzerland and they looked at her quite perplexed and said “because it is against the law”. That is how we think of that nation as being law-abiding, industrious, and rather serious, the fatherland of Zwingli and Calvin who were dedicated Protestant reformers in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, at the time of Martin Luther in nearby Germany and of John Knox who brought the austere reformed tradition to Scotland. Five hundred years later it seems the Swiss have remained in the same mould.

And yet the Pilgrim Fathers who landed in Massachusetts about fifty years after John Calvin’s death were also Puritans of his ilk, but there have been so many other influences in America from the native peoples already there to the countless waves of settlers who looked for a better life in the Brave New World, to the continuing stream of migrants from Mexico, South America and the Caribbean, a real hotchpotch of peoples, some of whom have unbridled mental issues, scores to settle and guns that they can buy and use without the military training of the Swiss gun owners.

Switzerland has always guarded its borders and demanded conformity to its national standards over the centuries so that it has maintained its moral disciplines. It is the home of the UN – where our friend works – of precision engineered watches, of a railway system that works to the minute and a lot else besides. I cannot pigeonhole the Swiss any more than I can say why the Americans voted in Donald Trump, a convicted criminal, as their President, but it occurs to me that the seemingly duller countrymen and women landlocked in their neutral territory in the middle of Europe might be less exciting but a good deal safer than the unpredicatable ‘special relationship’ we are bemused by on the other side of the Atlantic.

Pippa

October news, views and muse 2024

I do find it distasteful however, that an MP, should rent out flats with black mould and ant infestations and then admit finally that his flats do not have the correct property licences required under a scheme that he introduced as a Council leader. Hypocrisy and lying (about the property licences initially) and profiteering, not to mention intimidation, since many of the tenants were afraid if their identities were revealed they would be evicted, are particularly unbecoming for an MP, and Jas Athwal has recently been elected to the Labour benches – though interestingly, according to the BBC, he is the biggest landlord in the House of Commons. He happens to be a Sikh which won’t impress any would-be rioters who are not now in prison for rioting against “foreigners”, but nor does it impress me, because he is not upholding the tenets of his religion which like all the main faiths advocates social justice and service to humanity, honesty, humility and generosity alongside spiritual devotion and reverence for God. I would not argue over any of those ideals as a Christian.

Following the in-depth report running to seven volumes of the Grenfell Tower fire and the whole catalogue of failures at every level in the same week, I fear passing the buck at every opportunity, we have become corrupt as a nation at almost every level, unwilling to be accountable and often irresponsible. It has, however, been impressive how the former residents of the tower who survived the appalling fire have stuck together as a community. But what a catalogue of mismanagement, turning a blind eye to what should be done to make life safe for their fellow human beings. And Mr. Atwal’s flats allegedly had fire alarms hanging loose, dirty communal areas with dumped white goods in them with no lights on the stairs. Yet he committed to writing: “Rogue landlords, we are coming for you.” He is a disappointment to other Sikhs though we cannot tar them all with his brush. He is a disappointment to the human race, to his God and ours. And he’s an MP.

Pippa

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