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ST MARY'S NEWSLETTER
THE PROPOSAL FOR A PAINTING OF A VISION OF PEACE
FOR THE CHURCH WAR MEMORIAL CEILING
You may have noticed a small vacant area of church ceiling which requires creative artistic attention. The ceiling over the war memorial was repaired about twelve years ago and an opportunity has arisen to consider an art project in association with the children of Smallwood School, local artist Brian Barnes MBE, church architect Keith Garner and paid for by the Peabody Trust.
Our proposal is to paint a ceiling picture representing world peace and harmony in order to complement the war memorial beneath where those from the local area who had their lives taken from them in two world wars and in more recent conflicts are remembered. Some of those named are remembered by local families. The memorial, which we keep clean and tidy, receives our full attention at the ‘Traditional Service for Remembrance Sunday’.
Our proposal is for a ceiling painting which is based on a vision of peace in the Bible. A prophet called Isaiah has an optimistic creative vision for the future (see below and Isaiah 11.6-9, page 696 in the church Bible [NIV]). The prophet says that God will overcome all that is wrong in the world. Our world will be cleaned up, put right and rehabilitated. Isaiah’s vision is for world peace to be restored by a king-Messiah, a practitioner of peace, and a descendent of Jesse the father of David (the first king of Israel) who is none other than Jesus himself:
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together;
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child shall put his
hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the
knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah’s world vision is of a future with no war, no violence, no conflict of interests, no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no fraud, no scams. A peaceful future is symbolized by the cessation of hostility between humans and animals. Animals—which no longer prey upon one other—are shepherded by a child who is unharmed, safe and at ease. Wonderful!
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ST MARY'S NEWSLETTER
My Year Gone by, I Miss it so!
Roger Ryan
2007 was the most violent year I have ever experienced! Its not that I or my family were threatened or attacked or that anyone I know was brutalized. I am referring to what I have read and thought about during the year—in a word, violence. I have a question on my mind: where is God in all this?
My first task in 2007 was to send the manuscript of my commentary on the violent Book of Judges to the publishers. Then I read Niall Fergusson’s book War of the World which is subtitled ‘history’s age of hatred’ and is the author’s presentation of the hundred years after 1900 as the most violent century of modern times. Fergusson says, ‘there was not a single year before, between or after the world wars that did not see large-scale organized violence in one part of the world or another’.
In April I accepted an invitation from The Council of Christians and Jews to attend a ten-day seminar at The International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. I joined twenty other clergy for lectures and presentations and joined in discussions about the mass slaughter of Jews in Germany and Poland by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. This was no holiday!
In September I applied for a two year part-time MA course in Holocaust Studies in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. I am about to begin the second term and very grim it is too.
In November, on my 60th birthday, my commentary on Judges was published.
Why read, study and write about violence? Surely a church minister should be a person of peace who reassures the congregation and parishioners at the beginning of a new year! There is too much bad news and violence in the world. Well that is just the point. My reading and studies begun during last year are continuing in 2008 because we find ourselves living in a violent and uncertain world. We are only too aware of the twenty six young people who were stabbed or shot to death in London last year, there are two yellow and blue police boards displayed in our parish requesting information about local stabbing and shooting incidents, and overseas in Kenya, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, where members of our congregation have family, the future looks bleak and uncertain.
The reasons for my thinking about the harsh biblical stories in Judges and that story in the Gospel of Matthew about Herod wanting to rid his kingdom of the new born Jesus—which we looked at in the last service of 2007—including violence in our modern world, is in order to consider the big question: where is God in all this?
Some may protest and consider that what I write here is too brutal a statement with which to begin the New Year. I would like it to be otherwise. I want to live in a world where people like or even love one another, where everyone matters to everyone else. I would like to live in a fair, just and peaceful world.
Even though life is not as it should be, Christian people have the opportunity to take on the task of locally making it so as far as it depends on them. Have a happy and a peaceful New Year!
Prayers for the New Year
Hello God
Happy New Year
Thank you for your goodness in the year that is past
-for keeping me safe
-for forgiving me
-for loving me
Here I am at the beginning of a new year
-please look after me in the year that lies ahead
-keep me safe and secure
-keep me free from worry
-keep me free from debt
-keep me free from anxiety
-look after our children
-help them to make their way in the world
For others
-bring peace to our world
-peace for the people of Kenya
-peace for the people of Pakistan
-peace for the people of Iraq
-peace for the people of Zimbabwe
For our church
-enable us as a congregation to grow in numbers
-to become a crowd
-to grow in love
-to demonstrate that everyone matters
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