Category Archives: Religion

Christianity, Religion, Society

God’s love is unchanging

Failure is an opportunity to serve

John 18:15-27; 21:1-19

THE deflating knowledge that we’ve blown it can paralyse any further action. If it involved letting others down, we can’t face seeing them again. We feel awful. Peter must have shared that experience after he denied Jesus.

Jesus’ treatment of him is deeply encouraging. He doesn’t simply offer forgiveness (it is implicit) but does something far better. First, he comes to Peter in a familiar way: on the lake, where Peter is. What had first convinced Peter of Jesus’ divinity? A miraculous catch of fish (Luke 5:1-11). So, Jesus says, in effect, ‘Peter, I’m still the same, and I’m still with you.’

And then Jesus re-commissions him, the triple charge surely being a deliberate reference to Peter’s threefold denial: the restitution was complete, the slate was wiped clean. He was forgiven, he could begin again, and he had a ministry to fulfil.

Having failed himself, he could ‘feed the lambs’ – the new believers who would join the church – with greater sensitivity. Peter, who comes over as quite hard, thoughtless and insensitive, wouldn’t be quite the same again after this; he would be more compassionate.

Christians fail like Peter because they are human. Jesus’ example shows that we cannot hold their confessed sins against them. Compassion, forgiveness and restoration are to be complete, not partial. We are to have short memories for failings and long memories for achievements – not the other way round.

God’s love is unchanging, so we can be reassured that failure in serving Christ does not mean the end of our service for Christ.

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Arts, History, Religion, Society, Spain

La Sagrada Familia

ANTONI GAUDI

I WONDER if you know the story of Antoni Gaudi, who became known as “God’s architect”. It is one of courage, patience and faith in adversity.

Antoni was born in Catalonia in 1852 and trained as an architect in Barcelona. Inspired by Catalan, Christian and Moorish culture, he developed his own individual style using patterned brick, stone, bright ceramic tiles and distinctive metal work.

From 1882 Gaudi began to devote almost all his time to the design and building of his monumental church in Barcelona dedicated to the Holy Family, La Sagrada Familia.

His last years were dogged by personal sorrows and lack of money to continue the building of La Sagrada Familia, which he saw as “the last great sanctuary of Christendom”, but “God’s architect” did not give up. He held fast, and struggled on with his great endeavour to create “a place of fraternity for all”. He died in June 1926, after being knocked down by a tram and was buried in his unfinished masterpiece.

Today many thousands visit La Sagrada Familia where work continues, funded from sources which share its creator’s vision. It is hoped that the great church will be completed to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

 

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Christianity, Religion, Society

Christianity and its perpetual state of fear…

EASTER 2015

CHRISTIANS of whatever persuasion come to Easter in a spirit of renewal and joy – the holiest period in the Christian calendar. Despite the march of secularism throughout society, faith in the resurrection of Christ still sustains millions of people across the world.

It is worth noting, contrary to the received wisdom, that some Anglican dioceses have recently seen attendances rising – and not simply as a result of immigration, which is often used as being the key factor in preventing the Church in Britain from collapse.

But as we come to the celebration of Easter the elation has undoubtedly been overshadowed by the knowledge that Christians around the world face persecution for their beliefs. They are not alone in that, of course. The brutal and bloody conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims across Syria and Iraq is driven by fundamentalist religious ideology; Hindu minority groups ranging from Pakistan to Yemen face harassment for reasons of religion too. Anti-Semitism is also on the rise.

Nevertheless, recent atrocities have thrown the threat to Christians into sharp relief. The appalling slaughter of Christian students on a campus in north-eastern Kenya by the Islamist al-Shabaab militia is the latest outrage by that group, which was also responsible for the slaughter of dozens of people in the Nairobi shopping centre massacre of 2013.

In Nigeria, brutal savagery by the extremist group Boko Haram left Christians in the country’s north afraid to worship in public. The recent beheading of a group of Coptic Christians by Islamic State on a Libyan beach brought these heinous acts to Europe’s doorstep. Last month, churches in Lahore were bombed. Mosul, a place of Christian worship for some 1,600 years, is one of several cities in Iraq from which entire communities have been driven out.

‘Turning the other cheek’ is not easy in the face of such brutal adversity. Religious hate all too often begets more persecution in return. But people of all faiths and none must ultimately live and co-exist on a single planet. Is it not better to do so peaceably than in a state of perpetual conflict?

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