Virtual Methodist

Prompted by some of what I've been writing over the past few days here is an adaptation for two voices of part of Godfrey Rust's "Herod's Last Request": HUSBAND:  When Herod came to dinner we locked up the silver cutlery- though king of God’s own chosen nation he had a certain reputation. One thing we were grateful for - his guards remained outside the door. They said they didn’t mind it snowing and whiled away the time by throwing javelins at next door’s cat the neighbour’s curtains twitched at that. The wife set an extra place or two for the Ethiopian eunuchs who he brought along to taste his food. I said “His timing’s very good, dropping by on Christmas Day; we were entertaining anyway. Herod chewed the turkey fat and chatted about this and that- the cost of temple services the relative advantages of burnt offerings and frankincense - HUSBAND:  We seemed to have his confidence and ...

I suggested yesterday that American society and the church within it, needs to look at itself very, very seriously in the wake of the Newtown massacre, and other such events... But I say that from a society that also needs to look at itself very seriously... another society that, whilst claiming to be democratic, thinks that violence or the threat of violence, is a way to achieve its own ends... And that applies to those on both sides of the constitutional divide, whatever flag they may choose to drape themselves in and dishonour. My own analysis of the recent spat about the Union flag flying over Belfast City Hall, is that it has less to do with honouring the fact that Northern Ireland is part of the UK (which it is), and more to do with both Sinn Fein and the Unionists trying to assert their particular credentials over and against Republican dissidents on one side and the "Lundyite" Alliance Party in the middle... We've been here many times before, with the Unionist ...

As I said yesterday I've stayed broadly silent for the past fortnight on the events in Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown Connecticut, first because I'm an outsider and second I don't believe that engaging in polemic in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy is helpful to anyone... But, as you may imagine, I am not devoid of opinions... So, let me put my cards on the table... Whilst I am commenting from a distance, I do live in a land which has known more than its fair share of gun related deaths, but have also witnessed the work of police and street-workers seeking to address gun-crime in gang-ridden Providence, RI , the adjacent state to Newtown. As such I cannot, for the life of me, understand why intelligent politicians cannot find a way of respecting the historic aims of the second amendment to the US Constitution (because God forbid you would want to change such a holy document), whilst protecting society at large, including children, from people having easy acce...

Today is the first of 3 days commemorating "The Massacre of the Innocents" (Matthew 2: 13-18) - today  the Syrian Church marks it, tomorrow the western church, and then on the 29th the Eastern orthodox churches do... and over the next few days there will doubtless be much blogging on the recent massacre in Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown Connecticut... I've stayed broadly silent on this subject on this blog over the past fortnight, largely because I believed that it would have been somewhat self-indulgent and crass to be commenting on a situation thousands of miles away, during a period of mourning and I remember my annoyance at American commentators pontificating from across the pond about our little local difficulties. But the parallels between the Biblical account of what happened to the children of Bethlehem and what happened in that smalltown school  are painfully obvious for all to see, right down to the fact that most estimates of the number of chil...

Herod the Great is a fascinating character… he was the part I always wanted to play in the church Nativity play when I was a child… Others wanted to be shepherds or wise men… But I wanted to be the villain of the piece… And what a villain… We don’t read a great deal about him in scripture, but what we read is pretty unpleasant… There is actually no record outside the Bible of a massacre of children ordered by Herod, but it is certainly in keeping with what we do know of him: an insecure and ruthless King who murdered most of his own family and many other rivals for the throne. But his end was particularly unpleasant… For fear that those of a delicate disposition might be reading I don't want to go into details, but it did involve worms and maggots where no man would want them to be… Many saw the extreme unpleasantness of his demise as a sign of God’s judgement, but there are many equally ruthless people who have never experienced earthly punishment… Indeed it sometimes seems that ...

Today is for most people in Britain the Boxing Day public holiday, deferred from the day after Christmas by the intervening weekend, but on the churches calendar it is the so called “feast of the Holy Innocents.” The massacre of the infant boys of Bethlehem on the orders of Herod the Great may seem an inappropriate cause for feasting… but it reflects the ancient teaching that, in effect, those children were, unwittingly, the first Christian martyrs… But it is a part of the story of Christmas that is quickly glossed over today. There are few carols that refer to it, and it rarely gets a dramatic re-enactment in the nativity play… if it did then we would have to put an over 18 certificate on it (actually there is a very funny scene depicting this episode in the recent movie "Nativity" that I wrote about last week... but I hope I never see the same in our local Primary School). But meanwhile, as we continue to feast on the leftovers from Friday, the massacre of the innocents go...