Maybe it’s because I am the age I am … if
the troubles started in 1969 and lasted until the Good Friday Settlement they
occupied most of my adult life.
Maybe it’s because I have a particular
fondness for the symbolism.
Maybe it’s because it’s because it’s been
in the football news recently – a ritual in a football game that goes without
notice until one player refuses to do it with an another …and it becomes such
news.
It is so familiar, I find myself doing it
all the time. I take it so much for
granted. It somehow made me sit up and
listen to discover it could be so much to the fore in the news this week.
When the Queen shook hands with Martin
McGuiness I found it remarkably moving.
So much remains to be done in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland Northern
Ireland
So much remains to be done to seal a
fragile peace.
And yet, and yet … it was so moving to see
that handshake.
There is something very special about a
handshake. In our churches we use a
handshake as we welcome people into membership of the church, we use a
handshake often when we appoint people to office in the church. And it always riles me when people regard it
as ‘just a handshake’. There’s much more
in what we do.
The handshake has a very special place in
the Bible and in the New Testament.
What is described there is a very
particular handshake – and a very particular symbolism.; It is one I think we could all take to heart
and take into our selves.
Saul of Tarsus had been very much involved
in the persecution of the followers of Jesus in the very early days of the
church. So much so that he was the one
to look after everyone’s belongings as they were involved in stoning to death
the first so-called martyr of the church, Stephen. It is that determination to do away with the
followers of Jesus that sends Saul in pursuit towards the Syrian city of Damascus
Then it is that he encounters Christ for
himself. And it is a life-transforming
experience for Paul.
He spends time with the believers in Damascus
What happens to Paul next is not very
clear. At some point very early on is a
long period when he takes time to reflect.
In one of the first letters he came to
write as he set about the task of travelling the Mediterranean world spreading
the Gospel of Christ particularly in the Gentile, Roman world, he reflectee on
that period and how it came to an end.
It was for fourteen long years that he had
time to himself, time to reflect, time to take stock. And then he went up to Jerusalem
Clearly there was a lot of dispute and ill
feeling – a great difference of opinion that emerges. He describes the tensions there are as he
meets with those acknowledged to be leaders.
And then there comes that wonderful moment when those who were
acknowledged to be the pillars of the church recognise something special in Paul.
The moment of recognition, the moment of commissioning is sealed by a handshake.
when James and Cephas and John, who were
acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave
to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to
the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which
was actually what I was eager to do.
It’s the model we use in welcoming people
into church membership as we extend the right hand of fellowship to them.
We get to know people. Then we recognise the grace of God at work
within them, then we welcome them by giving the right hand of fellowship – then
there is a task to do and a challenge to remember the poor.
It is a wonderful framework.
The handshake that binds us together is a
handshake that has something very special about it.
It is linked with the recognition of the
grace that had been given them, and is described as the right hand of
‘fellowship’.
Both grace and fellowship are favourite
words of Paul’s. Indeed the word
‘fellowship’ occurs mostly in Paul’s letters.
With one other word they go to the very
heart of our faith.
All three of those words are brought
together by Paul in a prayer he includes at the very end of the 2nd
letter to the Corinthians. That’s the
prayer that we use at almost every service in the words of blessing we say
together at the very end.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is special about Christ is the grace
he has which reaches out to people before ever they have done anything to
deserve it, with a love that is free and all-forgiving.
What does it mean to have such grace in our
hearts.
Maybe it was not without coincidence that
the Queen’s visit to Northern
Ireland
It is twenty-five years ago that Gordon
Wilson ‘held his daughter’s hand as they lay trapped beneath a mountain of
rubble’. Marie, a nurse, died. He later said it was something he had
struggled to live up to, struggled to live out, it was simply something that
came to him and he blurted out in an interview.
But what he said registered with so many, with my generation.
I
have lost my daughter, and we shall miss her.
But I bear no ill will. I bear no
grudge …. That will not bring her back …. Don’t ask me, please, for a purpose….
I don’t have an answer. But I know there
has to be a plan. If I didn’t think
that, I would commit suicide. It’s part
of a greater plan … and we shall meet again.
[Source:
Johann christoph Arnold
We say it glibly at so many of our
services.
But maybe it is as we repeatedly say it, as
we come back to it time and time again, that slowly it takes root in our heart
… and if this ‘grace’ of our Lord Jesus Christ seeps more deeply inside us,
maybe, just maybe it will come out in a graciousness we can extend to others.
Five letters, one word
A name, a trait, a gift
Grace
The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ
Transforms and renews
Beyond all our imagining.
If we are religious … and I
guess that’s something that brings us together, then the way we think of God
will shape our view of the world, our attitude towards others and the very people we are.
For me, more and more, I want
to come to God not by arguing from first principles some philosophical notion
of God. I wasn’t to start with Jesus –
with his teaching, the things he did – his whole life. As I grapple with the grace of the one who I
regard as Lord, this Jesus Christ, then that begins to give God a shape. And it is a wonderful shape.
Three words, each so short
And yet so filled with
meaning.
God is love
That is a remarkable
claim. And it shapes my understanding of
God and my readiness to seek to rebuilt, to renew, to re-order things.
Those were troubled times in
the 80’s.
Within the year the Lockerbie
disaster happened. The moderator of the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was asked to preach at a memorial
service. What he had to say was
forthright … in some ways prophetic.
Very powerful and it went to the heart of the Christian faith. It was doubly powerful, because he himself
had been through tragedy in the six months before with the tragic loss of his
wife and a time of bereavement he had struggled with – in fact this was his
first public appearance.
He was forthright in what he
said as he allowed those little words to resonate deep within him …
“Justice, yes; retaliation,
no.
“For, if we move in the way of
retaliation we move right outside of the fellowship of the Christ’s suffering,
ousdie of the Divine consolation. There is nothing that way but bitterness and
the destruction of our own humanity.”
The genuineness of what he had
to say struck home, so much that when the Dunblane killings of children took
place seven years later, he was the one the families invited to speak at that
memorial service. [source: Guardian
Obituary by Brian Wilson, June 2005.
Maybe we need to say it over
and over again, so that when we need it those words have become part of us …
The love of God
cleanses and heals Deep down
within.
The Grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ
The Love of God
And the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit
Fellowship is that close
sharing that binds us together.
I think Paul knew how big a
thing that is.
It’s massive.
I loved the phrase he coined –
the right hand of fellowship.
But read on in the way he uses
that word in his letters and you get the feeling that he knew it was not
something possible to achieve just in your own strength. It’s something that calls on a strength and
a power from beyond ourselves.
That’s what we draw on when in
our Christian faith we realise that we cannot get by without that strength that
is deep within, that stregnth that is from far beyond, that strength that is
none other than the Holy Spirit of God.
Ten letters, one word
A simple handshake
Fellowship - not just among
friends but
The fellowship of the Holy
Spirit
That
binds us together and together with God.
The
Good Friday of the Good Friday agreement is one of those occasions that sticks
in my mind. Would they, wouldn’t they
sign. We were on tenterhooks. We shared our Good Friday service in the town
centre. Our free churches joining
together.
I
then joined the community at Prinknash for their Good Friday service. And coming out I tuned into the radio – and
then it was that the news started to come through. The peace agreement had been signed.
There
is still a long way to go. As too many
of the interviews suggested, there is still too much cynicism around.
But I
for one was deeply moved to find so much significance vested in such a powerful
symbol. I want to capture the spirit of
that in the living of my life …
Five letters, one word
A name, a trait, a gift
Grace
The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ
Transforms and renews
Beyond all our imagining.
Three words, each so short
And yet so filled with
meaning.
God is love
The love of God
cleanses and heals
Deep down within.
Ten letters, one word
A simple handshake
Fellowship - not just among
friends but
The fellowship of the Holy
Spirit
That
binds us together and together with God.
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