Anglican Down Under: Mary, Malaria, MacDonald, Migrants, Sacred and Spiritual Links

Monday, August 10, 2015

Mary, Malaria, MacDonald, Migrants, Sacred and Spiritual Links - Monday 10th August 2015

A superbly thoughtful Protestant reflection on Mary in the context of Coptic Orthodoxy is here. Spoiler Alert: your prayer life might never be the same again after reading this!

Tessa and Nick in Uganda alert us to the continuing terribleness of virulent malaria.

George MacDonald is a name not much heard of these days, but you can read up on him here. He had a profound (and anti-Calvinist) understanding of the love of God.

Migrants are all the news, especially in Britain where a recent Songs of Praise spot from the tent church in Calais has been controversial. But what does the Vatican say about migrants? Here.

The following links have been supplied by a UK colleague:

#1 and #2 Vaughan Roberts has been preaching on challenges to ministry at Moore College; #3 more talks are available from Clayton TV and the Keswick Ministries site; #4 and #5 Peter Carrell and Stephen Trott give their thoughts on the Sunday Scripture readings; #6 and #7 transfiguration bells and music from the North and the South; #10 Thankfully the South Sudanese pastors have been released after a more minor conviction but it what looks like a pattern from prior cases, they are now being prevented from leaving the country. Please pray for their safety and freedom along with other persecuted Christians.

Prayers for you for the coming week.

SERMONS AND TALKS
1. Paul and Silas at Philippi [Acts 16:6-34] - Vaughan Roberts - Moore Theological College Chapel Audio
http://tinyurl.com/p3tr7d9

2. Interview and Q&A with Vaughan Roberts about coming to faith and ministry at Moore on Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/135638912

3. More Talks from the Keswick Convention 2015 - Clayton TV [see listing on left for the Keswick Lectures from Ian Randall, Mark Greene and Michael Ramsden]
http://tinyurl.com/pqa7db5
and there are more talks from the 2015 convention to download here
http://tinyurl.com/nwlqzk5

Commentary
4. Preaching Ideas and Commentary - Rev Peter Carrell
http://preachingdownunder.blogspot.co.nz/

5. The Sunday Readings - Rev Stephen Trott
https://laworgospel.wordpress.com/

WORSHIP
6. The bells of the monastery of the Transfiguration, on the Solovki Islands in Northern Russia - BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064x4x0

7. Choral Evensong from Southern Cathedrals Festival in Salisbury Cathedral and sung by the choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester Cathedrals - BBC Radio 3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0640ltc

8. Sunday Hour - BBC Radio 2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063rb0y

9. Archived Choral services over the Summer from the chapels of King's College Cambridge
http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/choir/webcasts.html
and St John's College, Cambridge
http://www.sjcchoir.co.uk/webcasts
and Trinity College, Cambridge
http://trinitycollegechoir.com//webcasts/listen-again/
and New College, Oxford
http://www.newcollegechoir.com/webcasts.html

PRAYER
Please pray for Rev Yat Michael and Rev Peter Reith released from threat of death in Sudan at a hearing on 5th August but being stopped from travelling, much as happened in the case of Meriam Ibrahim; for the persecuted church in Syria and Iraq, in China; and for the Diocese of South Carolina.

10. Topical Prayers - Church of England
http://tinyurl.com/6wnk2pk
Syria: Dozens of Assyrian Christians Kidnapped or Detained By ISIS - Christianity Today
http://tinyurl.com/pfwjj4v
Sudan: 'I'm Born Again': Sudan Frees Pastors Facing Death Penalty - Christianity Today
http://tinyurl.com/qyssqbp
Khartoum bans South Sudanese pastors from leaving - Sudan Tribune
http://tinyurl.com/nqxa2nt
All Souls Langham Place has some suggestions
http://tinyurl.com/pvzvwdr
China: China Sees Red: Christian Protest Puts Hundreds of Crosses Back in Public - Christianity Today
http://tinyurl.com/o2h6bxl
South Carolina:Prayers from Lent and Beyond
http://tinyurl.com/kssn33y

CURRENT AFFAIRS
11. Sunday Programme with Edward Stourton - BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064x6w2

Food for thought
12. Suez Canal New Project …A New Hope for Egypt - Bishop Mouneer Anis
http://tinyurl.com/q433ml2
Gates to Goliath's city discovered - Christian Today
http://tinyurl.com/oyshffd
Religion and law round-up – 9th August - Frank Cranmer
http://tinyurl.com/pnsp8gk
They Didn't Think It Through No 19, Sunday Trading - David Keen
http://tinyurl.com/puwvlgm
Church spires in danger from corrosion, rotten timber and … woodpeckers - Guardian
http://tinyurl.com/o7o83la

FINALLY
13. Evangelism - Mark Ritchie - Soul Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO4KD3r33Zo

14. The Transfiguration - Sufjan Stevens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JsaE2yZ1Rs

3 comments:

Father Ron Smith said...: Thanks, Peter, for posting this protestant's view of the Orthodox Liturgy and its reference to Mary, the mother of Christ. Here is an interesting comment made by the writer:

"That is: In times of need, I am very eager to ask my friends to pray for me. If I believe that the prayers of a living Christian can make a difference with God, why should I not also seek the prayers of still-living Christians in heaven?"

This is all part and parcel of the Catholic/Orthodox understand of the co-inherence of the Communion of Saints - both here and in heaven. What's to criticise about seeking the intercession of those closer in proximity to Christ that we are at this point in time? Of course, if you have a problem with the Community of Saints; then I guess this would be a problem.

We, at St. Michael and All Angels, Christchurch, will be honouring Our Lady, Mother of Christ, in the Liturgy on Sunday - in common with all catholic Christians.; August 10, 2015 at 10:51 AM
phlegon said...: Interested in your note on George MacDonald - I found his works very helpful - children fiction e.g. At the Back of the North Wind (equally they could be regarded as adult fiction); fantasies (Phantastes, Lilith); and "ordinary" fiction, very capably edited versions by Michael Phillips. If you want to read unedited ones (apart from the children fiction) be prepared for a super-Dickens style. The theme of the grace and goodness of God in ordinary and difficult circumstances seems to shine through, and whether one isn't or is Calvinist, there's a richness there. I think C S Lewis said something like his imagination was baptised by reading MacDonald. Jonathan Wood; August 11, 2015 at 7:51 PM
Father Ron Smith said...: I looked afresh today (in the midst of a bout of bronchitis) on the article discussing George McDonald's book on the Love of God. Quoted here in the article is a phrase I found most affecting and delectable:

' “I don’t want God to love me, if he does not love everybody.” MacDonald would eventually come to reject Calvinism and embrace the universal love of an infinitely loving Father. His writings, both fiction and non-fiction, are penetrated by this love'

This sounds so Christ-like, I cannot but endorse the theological insight of the writer. We need more Christocentric writers like George McDonald. Then the world may become more like its Creator intended.; August 11, 2015 at 10:36 PM

Anglican Down Under

Welcome to this blog on Anglican, theological, biblical and other matters, mostly missional or liturgical (but I reserve the right to write about cricket and politics). It is grounded in some islands at the bottom of the world which, together with a large island to our west, constitute fabulous Down Under.

I have two related blogs which I post on less frequently:

Hermeneutics and Human Dignity

Resourcing Preaching and Worship Down Under

I am Bishop of the Diocese of Christchurch in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia (ACANZP). I am trying to write in ways which contribute to the flourishing of the church of God - a church represented in the Anglican Communion, in the Anglican churches of these islands and, of course, in my Diocese. You will judge whether I am succeeding or not!

Pearls

Show us anything clearly set forth in Holy Scripture that we do not teach and we will teach it. Show us anything in our teaching or practice is clearly contrary to Holy Scripture, and we will abandon it.

Stephen Neill

For the glory of God is a human being fully alive, and the glory of humanity is the vision of God.

St Irenaeus

Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society.

Masure

We have returned to the Apostles and the old Catholic Fathers. We have planted no new religion, but only preserved the old that was undoubtedly founded and used by the Apostles of Christ and other holy Fathers of the Primitive Church.

Bishop Jewel

Preachers shall behave themselves modestly and soberly in every department of their life. But especially shall they see to it that they teach nothing in the way of a sermon, which they would have religiously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this selfsame doctrine.

Canon 6 from the 1571 Bishop’s Convocation

Kent: "See better, Lear, and let me still remain."

William Shakespeare

For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.

Wittgenstein

Justice is eternal, and doesn't depend at all on human conventions.

Montesquieu

The real challenge of Islam to Western intellectual discourse is for us to ask ourselves whether our unprecedented modern experiment of conducting political life with no transcendent values is really working out as well as we once hoped.

Harvey Cox

The long-term happiness of a society depends on how individuals behave towards each other, how families hold together, and how leaders keep the trust of people.

William Hague

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.

John Neuhaus

To be an evangelical is not, first and foremost, about doctrinal correctness, but about a passion for the gospel of salvation from sin through Christ for eternity.

John Richardson

Neither may we ... lightly esteem what hath been allowed as fit in the judgement of antiquity, and by the long continued practice of the whole church; from which unnecessarily to swerve, experience hath never as yet found it safe.

Richard Hooker (Lawes, V.7.1)

The function of the Christian canon was to separate the apostolic witness from the ongoing tradition of the church, whose truth was continually in need of being tested by the apostolic faith.

Brevard S. Childs

Every word of God proves true. (Proverbs 30:5)

If the people of this religion are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.

Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi

Change comes through ordinary working people organising themselves to struggle for a better world day in, day out.

Morning Star newspaper editorial Tuesday 5 May 2015

"In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl."

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Monday, August 10, 2015

Mary, Malaria, MacDonald, Migrants, Sacred and Spiritual Links - Monday 10th August 2015

3 comments: