'What clothes does Christianity wear?' - Weekly Reflection 20th October 2025

What clothes does Christianity wear?

On Sunday 12^th October Jane and I wandered into Rugby Town following our morning worship at St Oswald’s. The Town was buzzing with Diwali Celebrations. A large car park had numerous stalls and venders, there was music and dancing and costumes. It was very vibrant and very full on making a very clear statement about this Hindu Festival of Light.

Looking around at this vast array of activity I somewhat sarcastically said to Jane, “and we might sing a few carols at Christmass.”

Later I began to ponder on this coupled with some of the animosity and violence shown towards both the Jewish Community and the Muslim Community.

What is interesting is how easy people appear to be able to link what is happening in Gaza or what happened on October 7^th in Israel with everyone who embraces the faith of either Muslim or Jew.

A Jew sneezes in Israel and therefore all Jews everywhere have colds!

Further reflection led me to thinking what would a Christian Christmass Celebration look like.

Ponder on that for a moment and see what answer you might come up with.

Then consider this, would the Christian Christmass Celebration in Rugby look any different in China, or Mozambique, or Mexico, Russia or even America.

Christianity is chameleon like and has a unique ability to adapt to its surrounding culture.

Some few years CMS produced a resource called, ‘The Christ We Share’ * that included pictures of Jesus portrayed in many different cultural contexts.

Historically of course the Christian faith and a particular culture sometimes developed a symbiotic relationship. This was something that happened in the UK and  during the days of the British Empire we sought to export and plant both across the world.  

This ability to adapt, to blend and to merge is both a blessing but also bring a challenge.

Hinduism is very clearly present in the cultural expression of Diwali, it is there in the music, the clothes the food.  You can see easily that it is primarily from the Indian sub-continent.  You couldn’t mistake the dancers on this Sunday for Morris Men!

There is something very special and unique and beautiful about the Christian Faith that sets it above and beyond culture while being rooted and ground in culture, incarnate in the soil in which is it planted and takes root.

At St Oswald’s we have just begun a series look at the First Letter to the Corinthians. This morning, we explored chapters 1-4.  (However, we didn’t read all the chapters, but 1 Corinthians 1:5-18, 1:26-2:5)

This is a Church planted by Paul who stayed there before moving on to Ephesus. Despite Paul having planted and established a Christian community they had wandered away from the Faith as first delivered.   They had overly embraced the local culture and allowed that culture to infect and affect their life together as the People of God.  The very proud Greek tradition of the sophist and philosophers, the ‘pop idols’ of the day. Factions had arisen and began to gather around Christian ‘celebrities.’ It is possible to look behind the list of the celebrities noted in 1 Cor.112. (Although we shouldn’t deduce that these men looked, fostered or invited such adulation)

Apollos we know as Greek speaking and well-schooled.  

Acts 18:24 “Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures.”  Alexandria was a major centre of education and learning in Egypt. Being from there, Apollos had access to strong Jewish and Greek teachings, making him well-educated.

Cephas (Peter) could he have brought a certain traditional Jewish slant to those who sought to follow him.  And then Paul, what was the peculiarity he brought to the table?

And some saying, ‘I belong to Christ.’  That was probably a bit of ‘close down the conversation’ group, can you really top saying you follow Christ. However, reading this in context this group also seemed to have certain quarrels with others.

Paul takes them all to task and goes over once again the basics of the Gospel of Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews who look for signs and foolish to Greeks who seek wisdom. 1 Corinthians 1.23

What clothes does Christianity wear, what songs does it sing, what food does it eat?

Christianity wears a cross and a mantle of servanthood with a belt of humility.

Christianity sings out the Gospel of salvation, that in Jesus, the God of the universe, who called things into being, entered the world in the particularity of the human person we know as Jesus.

Christianity eats the bread of heaven, symbolised in the Eucharistic Feast.

How Christianity dresses, how it sings the Gospel and serves and even how it celebrates the Eucharistic Feast will vary across the world.

And currently the Church of England is struggling to ‘maintain the bond of peace in the spirit of unity’ (Ephesians 4.3-6).  Perhaps we would do well to heed the words of Richard Baxter (1615-1691). Puritan pastor Richard Baxter took an old Latin phrase and popularized it in his day, in English. It is simple, but profound: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

One further question to ponder on during this week. If you were to find yourself in a court accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? In other words, how do you wear your Christianity?

* https://youtu.be/BPOb-IM-UNY?si=3Am4-8a-1uJuacsw

'Seeds of the past sown for the future' - Reflection 13th October 2025

Today at St Oswald’s Rugby we had a very fulsome Service with Bishop Sophie. She was with us to dedicate the refurbished Church which included prayers for various ‘items,’ the Holy Table, the Lectern and a War Memorial made from a repurposed pew.  We also had six people of various ages Confirmed along with four children Admitted to First Communion.

Historically St Oswald’s, built in 1864, was Anglo-Catholic and its style and the furnishing and fabric reflected this. .

We were reminded today that in 2020 the PCC began to consider the condition in which the Church building had fallen. The first step was to recognise the failings in looking after the legacy of previous generations. From there it was time to move forward with bold ambitious plans for a total refurbishment. Since the move of St Matthews, a thriving Evangelical Church, to St Oswald’s in 2011 it has moved more towards the Evangelical tradition.  

For me, it was a delight to see the care, love and attention given to ensure nothing of the ‘ornaments’ of it Anglo-Catholic legacy where not simply discarded. Everything from the Rood Screen and a huge Cross and many other items found a good home.  The ‘Stations of the Cross’ have been replaced on one wall but not disposed.  A pew has become a lovely board with brass plaques as a War Memorial.  Other pews have been used to build a gorgeous sound desk. The transition is truly breathtaking. And now there is a functional and comfortable building that is available to be used not only for the purpose of worship but also for a wide range of purposes for the wider community.

And all of this has been done with a mind to becoming carbon neutral with items such as heat pumps and later solar panel are going to be installed. These undertakings amongst other things have led us to be awarded the Arocha Gold Award. (A Rocha UK – Caring for creation) This was given to Malcolm Wright by Bishop Sophie as part of the celebrations.  Malcolm  heads up our Church Eco Group.

                                                      St Oswald's have regular Litter Picks.

It can truly be said that in building for the future great care was taken to respect the past.

And in her sermon Bishop Sophie said, ‘that the future is built on the seeds of the past.’

On Thursday last I helped with the Harvest Services from two of our local Primary Schools, St Matthew’s and St Oswald’s. Again, it was a delight to see everyone seated and comfortable on the chairs, everything could be heard and seen clearly thanks to the new audio and visual equipment. And as part of the refurbishment the former vestry has been turned into a separate room with a window so that you can see into the Church and the sound is relayed. This has been called The Nest and is kitted out to accommodate those with special needs. It was wonderful to see this being used by one of the children with his assistant.
My part in the Service is as a puppeteer with a puppet called ‘Grandad’ who helps his grandson James who always seems to be getting things wrong or misunderstanding what he has been told. Grandad gently helps James navigate through various things he is trying to understand.

One of the ‘items’ spoken about during the Service was a loaf of bread. The children were invited to consider how a loaf of bread came to be on our Supermarket shelves with the help of PowerPoint slides. 

Tracing this all the way back to Gensis 1.29, ‘Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with its seed in it. They will be yours for food.”  (No meat at this stage!)

The result of these ‘seeds’ I have been reflecting on have brought joy and hope but what about other types of seeds. What about the seeds such as those being sown in Gaza or Ukraine or in many other places across the world. What about the seeds sown by poverty, by bad parenting and damage done to children. That ‘damage’ sometimes resulting in people finding themselves in prison as those seeds bear fruit.  

Some people view such ‘miscreants’ as utterly beyond redemption, the seeds sown earlier have brought their own type of fruit, fruit we do not want or care to have living in the community and much better to see it locked away.  And yet it is worth reminding ourselves that John Newton was a former slave trader and yet went on to write ‘Amazing Grace.’

And this month we begin to see a new Restorative Justice programme being trialled, birthed out of the seeds of the Sycamore Tree Course.

‘The future is built on the seeds of the past.’ 

Therefore, as much as it lies within us, let us ensure we plant good seeds, seeds of forgiveness, generosity, love and kindness, to name but a few. 

Galatians 5.22-23 ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.’

That is the kind of fruit we so desperately need to see everywhere, in our lives, amongst our family and friends and across the nation and the wider world.  Such ‘fruit’ would make prisons unnecessary.  Now that is something to dream about, pray for and work towards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Give us today our daily bread' - Weekly Reflection 5th October 2025

Do you like buffet’s, you know, the ones where there is a wide array of choice of food.  (By the way, let me drop in here a great idea to help different ‘diets.’  All veggie food on a green napkin, fish on blue, meat on red and special diets on yellow, as a veggie I can’t tell you how helpful this to make sure I don’t mistake fish paste for hummus!)

I have a bit of uncertainty to buffet’s, they are great if you want to have food available over a longer period, a running buffet, and they are great at introducing themed food, say from a certain country or region.

However, I am sure I am not alone in thinking, O, I would like one of those, and some of those, plus a few of them, and, and, and….

And then, the end, the ‘leftovers’ – that moment when you try and divvy out all the food or the host will be eating soggy sandwiches  and quiche for the next month!

There is a stagering amount of food waste in the UK alone.  Approximately 9.52 million tonnes of food waste annually is produced in the UK, enough to feed 30 million people!

This needs to be a recognised factor when we ‘Celebrate’ our Harvest Festivals as we did this morning at St Oswald’s, Rugby.

Added to this is the colossal amount of packaging, with a lot of it still going into landfill.

All of this was very much our focus this morning. Our collection along with many others from around Rugby will go to supply Rugby Food Bank. We also had a ‘hunger lunch’ –soup and a bread roll and then invited to put what we normally spend on lunch into a basket that would also go towards the food bank.

I remember some years ago one Church taking this a step further. Everyone was given a ticket for their lunch and then sat down together. Then, based on the ticket some people received a full roast dinner while others had a bowl of rice or a slice of bread.

And as wonderful as food banks are, I still think we are real danger of them becoming normalised. I am reminded of this quote from Hélder Câmara, * “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

We need to keep asking the question, ‘why do we need food banks?’

Today we were given a Scriptural quote to take home with us from Philippians 4.11-12,

^“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

On the 4^th October we were invited to remember St Francis, who is one of the best known and most loved of all the saints both within and without the Church. Back in 1972 Franco Zefferli produced a film called ‘Brother Son, Sister Moon’.  It’s a tad dated now, and it has the Zeffirelli feel about it, with Franics viewed almost as a 13^th century hippy type of drop out.  Partly this is because it has a wonderful soundtrack by Donavan, very much of that era.

I watched the film yesterday (on the 4^th October) and yes, I must admit that tears welled up as I watched the film again. (It’s become a bit of an annual thing)

I first saw this film before I became a Christian and remember thinking at the time, if only I could find the Jesus of St Francis, now that would be somebody worth following. In some ways, I think the film does a good job of portraying Francis’s childlike naivete as he steps naked into a new trust in Father God.

We are currently 81 days away from Christmass. Is it time for your family and friends to begin to have an honest conversation, about gifts and food? I have known of some families who have put a price limit on the gift, say £10.00 maximum. If people then want to give more there are plenty of Charities, including Prison Fellowship and Angel Tree, to whom you can donate anything ‘extra’ you may have spent.

Angel Tree - Prison Fellowship

Now retired we find that we don’t really need any more stuff but love experiences, a night out for a meal, or theatre or cinema.

Before the Christmass juggernaut begins rolling inexorable towards the day let us have those conversations now.

Our consumer society is predicated on creating dissatisfaction. It is powerful and can be all consuming and very hard to stand against, like the buffet table, O I would like one of those, and one of those, and I simply must get the latest phone, or, or, or….

Do we really need it – or do we want it, and there is nothing wrong in wanting things, as long as we recognise the difference between need and wants.

Somebody once said richness is either the amount of your possessions or the fewness of your wants. And at the end of the day, as Scriptures reminds us, no matter who has the biggest toys (or barns) everyone still dies and must hand over everything! 

(See Luke 12.16-21)

May we learn to live more simply so that others can simply live.

 *Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife, Brazil. A Roman Catholic priest Helder Camara was a champion of Brazil's poor and a pioneer of Latin America's liberation theology movement, who died in 1999.

 

 And for a bit of fun and yet making a serious point here is a song about Bigger Barns.

https://youtu.be/A0PqnSyI6Lg?si=EBj3aBy1lLuCv0-I