According to legend when they beheaded St Edmund
for not renouncing Christ they threw his head into the forest. It was found
later on by friends who followed the cries of a wolf calling, 'Hic, hic, hic'
which Latinists here will know says 'Here, here, here'.
It's a good story, and a parable as well, for there are many issues around I'd like supernatural help to address and hear a 'eureka' - to switch my Classical languages - let alone a 'Hic, hic, hic'.
Take the dreadful Typhoon which afflicted 13 million people in the Philippines. I know quite a few Philipinos around Haywards Heath, indeed without them our residential homes would be much the poorer. Last week I had issues with God when I thought of the extraordinary damage done to their homeland.
Earlier in the week the preacher on Remembrance Sunday had mentioned a friend's father who served in the First World War and never went to church again afterwards being convinced any loving God wouldn't allow the carnage he had seen firsthand.
Or, to make a threesome, what about the people I come across all too regularly who's minds are decaying so they no longer know who they are, where they belong or any purpose they have in life.
Where's my hic, hic, hic - here, here, here's the answer?
Issues of natural catastrophe, human cruelty and mind decay are no mere hiccups - excuse the pun! They're seriously real, don't go away and make an invisible loving God look metaphysical in a bad sense.
It's a good story, and a parable as well, for there are many issues around I'd like supernatural help to address and hear a 'eureka' - to switch my Classical languages - let alone a 'Hic, hic, hic'.
Take the dreadful Typhoon which afflicted 13 million people in the Philippines. I know quite a few Philipinos around Haywards Heath, indeed without them our residential homes would be much the poorer. Last week I had issues with God when I thought of the extraordinary damage done to their homeland.
Earlier in the week the preacher on Remembrance Sunday had mentioned a friend's father who served in the First World War and never went to church again afterwards being convinced any loving God wouldn't allow the carnage he had seen firsthand.
Or, to make a threesome, what about the people I come across all too regularly who's minds are decaying so they no longer know who they are, where they belong or any purpose they have in life.
Where's my hic, hic, hic - here, here, here's the answer?
Issues of natural catastrophe, human cruelty and mind decay are no mere hiccups - excuse the pun! They're seriously real, don't go away and make an invisible loving God look metaphysical in a bad sense.
You know, like the way the
former Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell dismissed duff ideas as 'so much theology'.
Now as a priest I'm much engaged with people on the sharp end including victims of accident, abuse of their fellows or Alzheimer’s. I engage but I don't often give theology. There's nothing more insulting that to explain someone's hardship to them without lifting a finger to alleviate it. My main task is to anoint, bring Holy Communion or say a prayer. People don't like to be preached at but, on the whole, they rather like being prayed for.
I remember visiting a brilliant novelist with a brain tumour in Princess Royal. As we got talking he said early on I should watch my step as he wasn't a believer. It happened I'd just read Mother Teresa's Autobiography which gave extensive cover to her doubts. (Yes - you can be a great believer and still have doubts). Anyway I mentioned he wasn't alone - even the holy nun had doubts - and as we talked a doctor walking by and stopped in his tracks. 'Mother Teresa', he said. 'I knew her personally. I trained with her medical team in Calcutta'. Then, to our amazement he unbuttoned his shirt and showed us a holy medal she'd given him. We both touched it.
As the doctor passed on I asked my friend if he wanted me to say a prayer for him and, atheist that he was, he readily agreed!
It was a 'Hic, hic, hic' moment. Pure serendipity, the mention of Mother Teresa bringing us a doctor's advice that led us to pray together! I never met him again but sense that three way meeting of the doctor, he and I went to four just as the three men in the fiery furnace were seen to be four outside because Christ came by them.
Why does a good God allow devastating typhoons, trench warfare or the decay of people's minds?
In his book 'The Reason for God' the American Christian writer Timothy Keller has these wise words: 'If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world... you have... a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know... you can't have it both ways'.
I like it. A God you set up in your mind and then shoot down because he falls short in terms of what can be measured, mapped or scientifically explained. How literally small-minded! Greater the mind with the humility to know its place, that’s got a sense of the intersection of time with eternity so bad things that happen are seen in a larger context.
The trouble with the materialism of our age is it denies that larger context. The confidence it's given us in terms control of the material world makes us think we can control the metaphysical realm as well and put God in his place.
Whatever dark truth lurks round the typhoon the lightest shade is something along the lines 'God is God and he always will be God'.
Now as a priest I'm much engaged with people on the sharp end including victims of accident, abuse of their fellows or Alzheimer’s. I engage but I don't often give theology. There's nothing more insulting that to explain someone's hardship to them without lifting a finger to alleviate it. My main task is to anoint, bring Holy Communion or say a prayer. People don't like to be preached at but, on the whole, they rather like being prayed for.
I remember visiting a brilliant novelist with a brain tumour in Princess Royal. As we got talking he said early on I should watch my step as he wasn't a believer. It happened I'd just read Mother Teresa's Autobiography which gave extensive cover to her doubts. (Yes - you can be a great believer and still have doubts). Anyway I mentioned he wasn't alone - even the holy nun had doubts - and as we talked a doctor walking by and stopped in his tracks. 'Mother Teresa', he said. 'I knew her personally. I trained with her medical team in Calcutta'. Then, to our amazement he unbuttoned his shirt and showed us a holy medal she'd given him. We both touched it.
As the doctor passed on I asked my friend if he wanted me to say a prayer for him and, atheist that he was, he readily agreed!
It was a 'Hic, hic, hic' moment. Pure serendipity, the mention of Mother Teresa bringing us a doctor's advice that led us to pray together! I never met him again but sense that three way meeting of the doctor, he and I went to four just as the three men in the fiery furnace were seen to be four outside because Christ came by them.
Why does a good God allow devastating typhoons, trench warfare or the decay of people's minds?
In his book 'The Reason for God' the American Christian writer Timothy Keller has these wise words: 'If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world... you have... a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know... you can't have it both ways'.
I like it. A God you set up in your mind and then shoot down because he falls short in terms of what can be measured, mapped or scientifically explained. How literally small-minded! Greater the mind with the humility to know its place, that’s got a sense of the intersection of time with eternity so bad things that happen are seen in a larger context.
The trouble with the materialism of our age is it denies that larger context. The confidence it's given us in terms control of the material world makes us think we can control the metaphysical realm as well and put God in his place.
Whatever dark truth lurks round the typhoon the lightest shade is something along the lines 'God is God and he always will be God'.
Being the Philippines they're putting Crosses up besides their fallen churches to do what we're doing this evening. That’s saying in a way that our God expects nothing of us he hasn't been through himself in a particularly cruel death.
In tragic circumstances, be they
natural or manmade, God's worthiness for worship is inevitably questioned but
the questions seem louder to me when I see the blind submission required by
Islam, or the smiling detachment of the Buddha, than when I behold God in the
broken body and shed blood of Christ.
Hic, hic, hic - Edmund's head was found!
Hic, hic, hic - here, here, here in the Cross is my answer!
Or rather, not the answer, but the Answerer.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb!
Hic, hic, hic - Edmund's head was found!
Hic, hic, hic - here, here, here in the Cross is my answer!
Or rather, not the answer, but the Answerer.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb!
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