SOUL SURMISE

WHY THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO... CHRISTY MOORE

 

(as a Fitzroy collective of musicians perform The Gospel According To... Christy Moore twice this week, in St Oliver Plunkett's, Lenadoon March 15th and Fitzroy 18th, Stocki stops to ask why a group of Jesus followers would do such a thing!)

I will be totally honest and confess that the The Gospel According to... Christy Moore started as a gimmick but over the course of six months turned into a serious spiritual project. Initially I was asking myself how we Fitzroy Presbyterian Church could encourage some of the thousands of students who live around our building into the Church for an event. One of the gentle ways we have been using to encourage people to re-engage with Church and Christian faith has been a series of Gospel According To... events where the Fitzroy collective of musicians play cover version of a particular artist and I draw some spiritual meaning from the songs. We have done U2, Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison. The vast majority of our local residents are students and the vast majority come from the nationalist community where Christy Moore is a hero. If we did a Gospel According To... Christy Moore I thought, they’d maybe come along. 

A change came when I made a hasty decision on an evening event at Fitzroy. An American group from Fuller University were with us and one of their staff said he had been singing Irish songs to the students and I asked him up to sing one. When he started into The Fields Of Athenry I was sitting beside him wondering if this song had any right to be sung in Church. It was then that I had an epiphany. The Fields Of Athenry and some of the other Irish songs that Christy Moore sings are songs of oppression with an Old Testament ring to them and a hope for the liberation from oppression (e.g. Amos 5) that Jesus declared right at the outset of his ministry (Luke 4: 18-19).

This revelation took me to a place of social discomfort. I was born and raised in the Protestant Unionist British side of the tragedy of Irish divide. As a result the oppression that Christy Moore sings about through hundreds of years of Irish history has been caused by those of us intending to sing the songs and commentate upon them. The youth of today would cry “Awkward.” Last year in Fitzroy though we had author Nicholas Wolterstorff who has said, “In taking side of the exploited, Christians find themselves in opposition to some of those who confess the same Lord.”

It is more of this discomfort that the Irish people need if we are going to be honest and authentic with our former enemies, ourselves and our God. In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God promised them people, “¹⁴ if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” This is one of those ways when we humble ourselves and admit to having and turn from our wicked part of the tragedy. That we should be doing this event in a Catholic Church in Lenadoon makes it even more poignant.

This has been part of our DNA in Fitzroy for thirty years. Winners of the Pax Christi Peace Prize, Fitzroy’s relationship with Clonard Monastery on the Falls Road is of worldwide renown. I was called to be minister in a Church filled with very brave people who met with a great deal of criticism and all kinds of vicious lies about their faith from their own community and also put their very lives in vulnerable places to make a significant contribution to the peace process in N. Ireland. This event is a very gentle follow up to that tradition.

Christy Moore sings a lot about his dissatisfaction with the Church. On Gospel According To... evening we look for hymns and prayers in the artists we choose and then we seek to unpack any of their work that caresses with the Christian faith. It took a little bit longer with Christy but hymns and prayers we found. The beautiful Listen has a call to be aware of God feel that is a lovely opening prayer/hymn. Jimmy MacCarthy’s Bright Blue Rose is a deeply holy hymn and I shared a very spiritual communal sing of it at Christy Moore’s recent gig in Belfast. The Least We Can Do is a commitment calling closing prayer/hymn. In between we will look at how Moore sings about oppression in Ireland and beyond and find a few clues as to a better Ireland and a better world. This is no longer a gimmick but a religious mission!

FAIR TRADE PRAYER

(This is a prayer I wrote to recognise Fair Trade Fortnight in Fitzroy)

Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken. (Micah 4:4)

Jesus thy Kingdom come/Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10)

God in heaven no one goes without food

God in heaven no one has less than anyone else

God in heaven no one children does without

God in heaven everyone is free

God in heaven no one is being treated unfair

God in heaven everyone has their own vine to sit underneath

God in heaven no is living in fear

So God we pray as Jesus taught us to pray

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

So God help us to live on earth in a way that helps to answer Jesus prayer

May what we choose to buy this week bring your Kingdom instead of the Devil’s Kingdom

On earth as it is in heaven.

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT - LOLA; A WOMAN TRANSFORMED

(for those who missed this morning's Stocki Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2, here's the original script!)

Let me take you on a journey to meet an inspirational woman. Not far from Cape Town, between Stellenbosch and Paarl, on the lush vineyards of western Cape we will walk into one of hundreds of Vineyards and the first person we will meet is Lola. She is on reception, the face and first voice of Sonop Farm. Her smile, when it appears from behind her shyness, will light up your day. It wasn’t always this way.

If you get the opportunity Lola will take you on another journey, the journey of her life and as you travel with her you will come to terms with how remarkable a woman she is. I came late to her story but had the privilege of watching some of it unfold. When I first met Lola she was telling me about the Fair Trade village where she lived and what the benefits of Fair Trade had given her. She told us how the Vineyard workers were the lowest of all South Africans, with no rights of any sort. She was an alcoholic and lay about the fields drunk and doing very little. A new owner’s revolution to Fair Trade literally lifted her out of the field, gave her land, a house and trained her into this job. Her son was now at High School and her smile was widest as she tells you how well he is doing. As Lola tells you her story you begin to understand what spiritual transformation looks like. Over the years, as I kept returning, I watched a woman broken by politics and race and economics redeemed by justice and her fortitude to grab that justice and make it happen.

Today I think of millions of women caught up in human trafficking and enslaved into bonded labour, sexual servitude, or involuntary servitude and Lola gives me hope. Redemption is happening. Let us make it happen more.

MEETING GOD IN A WOMAN DYING OF AIDS

 

It was a very strange, near mysterious experience. Six weeks in Cape Town, working fourteen hour days to transport students around in mini buses with something significant to experience at the end of each journey, had me at the point of exhaustion. A Sunday night text home was sharing the excitement that it would soon be over. On Monday morning everything changed.

We were at JL Zwane Memorial Church to learn more about their HIV/AIDS ministry. There was a new challenge. We were to visit women suffering from AIDS in their own homes. We needed convinced that this was not a voyeuristic exercise. We were assured that culturally the Xhosa people saw visiting their homes in situations like these was an honour. So off we went. I decided to go with our second group to visit Cindy. The first group had appeared tearful and emotional but part of that had been to do with the sense of hope they had been able to share particularly when one of our students, Ashling, had sung to their patient.

Cindy was a very different case. It was a pretty hopeless scenario. She had been suffering from the virus for six years and had developed to a late stage of the disease. Her mind was not always able to focus and she was at time incoherent but a recurring theme was how bored she was with the drugs. What needs to be understood is that anti-retroviral drugs need to be taken on a particular schedule with a particular diet. When, like Cindy, you had been on this regime for a lengthy time and didn’t feel much of the benefit, frustration can is understandable. We left her home, nodding to her mother in some kind of speechless way that dared to give out whatever hope we could muster along with an abundance of deeply felt love. Yet, we felt useless, unable to help, in a place where death seemed to be loitering with grave intent.

The mystery for me was that on leaving Cindy I felt invigorated again. I didn’t want to go home anymore. I wanted to keep driving that bus. I got a new sense of energy to keep on keeping on. As I looked back over the visit I was a little confused as to where this change of perspective could have been birthed. Could it be that as I reached out to touch Cindy’s fingers, too weak to grip mine there was something mystical that happened.

The next day as I sat in the office of Dr. Spiwo Xapile the pastor at JL Zwane, he thanked me for what our team had done the day before. He told me not to underestimate the gesture we had made. He then made a staggering statement, “You know when they tell their neighbours they will not say that white people came to their house, they will say that God visited them.” We felt nothing like God and such a view would seem way overestimated to us but it made me think again about my own mystical experience in Cindy’s room.

Could it be that I met God in the eyes of the least of one of these as Jesus told me I would when I visit the sick. And could it be that as that Matthew 25 parable of Jesus is worked out we find that God lives particularly in that place where the one who serves touches the one who is served. That as Cindy experienced God in me, I experienced God in her. That this is what Jesus was encouraging us to in that parable.

After I got home someone told me that they had been reading the Christian psychologist Larry Crabb who said we didn’t fix ourselves when we concentrated on making ourselves better. That seemed a contradiction to my friend but in the light of my moments with Cindy it made perfect sense. In attempting even in vain to help someone else I had found God meeting with me, to help me. The selflessness of the Gospel of Christ is going to redeem our fallen beings far more than all the egocentric self helps of our selfish world.

A REFLECTION FOR WORLD AIDS DAY - Miriam meets Mavis...

For this year’s World AIDS Day I want to bring you the first guest writer on my Soul Surmise Blog. Miriam Todd is currently Assistant Chaplin at Queens University and was on two teams to Cape Town when I was Chaplain back in the noughties. When she read her diary awhile back it moved me deeply. I too remember Mavis and the woman I visited the same day Sindy with fondness and believe they touched my life... May it help World AIDS Day open your eyes to the plight of millions and millions just like Mavis.

“Monday 24^th July 2006

Today was such an emotional day, we bought the rest of our hamper goodies and went to JL Zwane the church in Gugulethu. We were given a chat about the community and the issue of aids in the township area, we then had tea and a tour around the church. We then went in groups into homes to visit people with aids. We visited a 32 years old Mum, with two kids living with her mother and sister. Her name is Mavis and she has Aids and pneumonia, it was really sad, her home was so warm as she had a heater right beside her, she snuggled into layers of blanket and she was so tired and weak. Her mother welcomed us and we gave them the duvets and hampers. Out of everything we brought she was most excited about the shoes and oranges. We started talking to her about her medicine and life with aids, she began to weep. Gordon took her by her hand and told her that we would be praying for her continually and that her beautiful face would be etched in our minds forever. She said thank you. It was so sad we all cried, she wept and explained that she experiences pain in her side and neck. She says she is bored of the medication and that it has to be taken very strictly and regularly. It causes her to feel dizzy and queasy. It was terrible to see her in so much pain and naturally worrying for her children. What was evident were her children’s own fears for their future if Mavis is to leave them. Her children are 14 and 6, the experience was overwhelming. To actually see someone who is dying of aids and the faith and hope that Mavis has in God was so humbling. When I left the house I cried really hard and I felt bad for crying. I started to think of the health care which is available back home, care which is successful, but Mavis may not get the treatment which she will need to get her through this time in her life. She won’t get the care and support that a person carrying aids or HIV will get back home. I felt for her children, her mother and the heavy burden on their shoulders as Mavis’ carers and also the burdens Mavis feels because of this. I cannot put into words how today has affected me, I was stunned, shocked, I felt beaten into the real world. I felt finally thrashed into a world were lack of food is so likely to kill you, I was confronted by the fact that at home we have the nutrients to rebuild our bodies to strength but here Mavis at times lives on one slice of bread per day. When we came out of her home I was asked how I felt, I couldn’t speak.

A letter written to Mavis in May 2008.

Dear Mavis,

Thank you for opening your home to us two years ago, and for opening your heart to us. When I look back to your face on my photo of us in your house I realise your strength. As a woman you were strong in every sense of the word, as a mother, a sister and as a daughter. I only met you once yet you made me feel happy, sad, content, discontent, at peace and anxious, all at the same time. That in itself is a powerful thing and I say thank you.

It is two years later since I met you and I pray you have reached your 34^th year. Your children will be 16 and 8 now and no doubt they have encountered trials and struggles that I can only ever imagine. But you, your children, your mum and your sister have had so much joy in these trials and patience in God’s grace. I’m so sorry for not doing more for you since I’ve returned, you blessed me so much when I met you and I have returned little thanks. I am sorry, but know that I pray for you often and I pray that I will to dance with you and your family in the pews of JL Zwane this summer. I am sorry that my richness causes you pain, illness and fear. But Mavis blessed are you for your humility and hospitality. For Blessed are the poor. I have read in your church ‘Love is greater than time and place, and even greater than death...’

Thank you for the love that you gave to me.

Miriam

 

A letter written for World Aids day 2010.

Dear Mavis

What can I say in honour of a woman that inspired me to try to change the world one piece at a time! This challenge is difficult and most of the time I get side tracked. Mavis since I met you so much has happened, things have changed and things have remained still. I know that you have left this world and you are at peace in heaven. I know that the world is still undivided. I know that God is present in the townships in Cape Town. There have been shifts in politics, but the end result is still the same. Money is power, and power is with the rich. Mavis I sit on my laptop writing this and I have a photo of you on my desk. This photo has sat on many desks in all the rooms I have moved into and out of over the past 4 years. At times I admit that the photo resonates as just a distant memory of the day I brought a hamper to you. But today when reading back on my experience with you and how you inspired me I am driven to readjust my focus and look closer. Today I see you and me smiling, you are wrapped up in layers and I remember wearing clothes which I felt unconfident and insecure in. I was having a bad image day. Your story thrashed me into reality of the things which mattered, things which meant life or death. Family, medication, food, water, heat, sanitation, money and most importantly faith. Mavis today I pray that your mum, sister and children are well and happy. This World AIDS Day I realise that this day is not only about the patients of aids but it is also about the families and friends who have lost their best friend, their soul mate, their rock and their role model.

Mavis thank you for being a female role model for me. I can look to you on my desk when I need to put things into perspective and when I need inspiration.

Praying for your family and giving thanks for your life this world aids day. 

All our love,

Miriam  on behalf of South Africa Team 2006.

STOCKI SURMISES THE OCCUPY LONDON PROTEST AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL

This Occupy London protest, against capitalist misbehaviour, at St. Paul’s has caught the nation’s attention, and far more intriguingly, drawn Jesus into the discussion. It seems amusing to me that a country that has been attempting to dismiss Jesus from the ethical and moral discussions pushed protesters onto Cathedral ground which, again seemingly by accident, brought Jesus into the heart of the conversation. I have watched with interest as Jesus was back on the front page headlines of newspapers and been bemused by political talk shows asking politicians what they think Jesus would do about the situation. Even some of the answers have been prophetically articulate! My colleague in ministry at Fitzroy, Jonathan Abernethy- Barkley, spent some time with the protesters in London recently and he was struck by how often Jesus was on the lips of the camped out community.

It is of course very appropriate as the Bible has an amazing amount to say about the dangers of money to the soul. When Jesus himself said that you can’t serve God and money he was not only talking about the individual – in Jesus culture he rarely was – but about society. He never actually said that having a substantial amount of money was a sin but his warnings about its deceitfulness, temptation and obstacle to human fulfilment was very clear. The Old Testament too has much to say on banking, business and the consequent condition of those who are affected by it. There is a lot about debt forgiveness in the books of the Law and there is a constant judgement coming down from the prophets on those who get rich at the cost of others wealth depravity.

So, for me, they might have stumbled or been pushed onto Cathedral property but it is an appropriate place to for the protesters to be. Indeed, in hindsight, should the Cathedral not have been the instigators of the protest. It is an obscenity of our society that anarchic capitalism should see the wealthy pump out multi million pound bonuses at the same time as the world struggles through a recession that those millionaires helped cause. Jesus and the prophets would have raged against what is happening just now. I have heard it said that that there is a fault line where the St. Paul’s and the financial heart of London meets; the tension of God and mammon. Perhaps a better way to arrange the scene would be to have the Cathedral as a sieve through which our financial behaviour is drained by the Biblical ethics of business. Then we wouldn’t be asking what Jesus would do because we would actually be doing what Jesus suggested we did all along.

Reflection on 9/11 and the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis

 

Fitzroy's Reflections on 9/11 found a companion walking alongside when a Presbyterian minister opened the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis. These now became two poignant events where nations had to look into the eye of their painful pasts and seek some direction for the way ahead. Jesus is all about redeeming the past, not living in it. He is about taking the sin and evil that has been and making the future a place that is better. The Good News of the Gospel is a message that speaks into the bad news with hope of transformation. Moments like the 10th anniversary of 9/11 or the contentious events of the first Ard Fheis in Belfast confront us with whether we will remain in the past or with an interuption of God's grace can change the future.

In their reflections on Sunday morning Fitzroy's minister Steve Stockman wrestles with what to do with an invite to that Ard Fheis and Fitzroy's assistant minister Jonathan Abernethy- Barkley struggles with a fellow minister in his denomination visiting the Ard Fheis on the very week that he remembered the anniversary of his father's murder at the hands of those whom minister was praying for.

Stocki and Jonathan's Reflection on 9/11 and Ard Fheis

 

BIKO by Peter Gabriel - A Song That Changed My Life

(a year or two back I was invited to Belfast's Oh Yeah music centre to share my favourite protest song... I chose Peter Gabriel's Biko for very subjective reasons... yesterday's anniversary of his death reminded me and here is a shortened version of why I shared Biko that evening...)

 

I am suspicious of the modern rock band that suggests or even pontificates that music cannot or should not be a transformational force. Noel Gallagher, the seemingly more intellectual of the Oasis brothers (!!!!!), has said that he can only change things every five years in Britain, when he votes. Asked why he didn’t write political songs Alex Kapronos from Franz Ferdinand spoke of going to gigs by political bands who told him what to think, “And really early on I got sick of it. And I said to myself I might as well be going to a Christian rock gig here, with someone telling me what to think. So when I was still a teenager I decided I didn’t want to tell other people what to think from a stage; it’s not my place.” So what does art do Mr Kapranos? When you were at Glasgow school of art you didn’t think that your art had a message?

Personally I am very glad that Peter Gabriel didn’t fall for the flakey, vacuous approach to art that Oasis and Franz Ferdinand espouse. Though, it was far from a Damascus Road conversion, and I was very slow to realise it, Gabriel’s song Biko profoundly changed my life and the lives of many that I have had the privilege of engaging with. Released in 1980 and written about South African Black Conscience leader Stephen Biko, Gabriel tells the story of Biko’s inhumane treatment by the racist apartheid government’s police force and how he died in a Port Elizabeth prison in 1977.  Though it failed to set the pop charts on fire, this haunting song has over thirty years become a slow burn of an anthem for justice not just in South Africa but all over the world. In 1988 Gabriel took it around the world in an Amnesty International concert that also featured U2, The Police and Bruce Springsteen. He also performed it at the Mandela Day concert in London that was a major force of pressure on the South African government to release Nelson Mandela. My favourite version of the song is the performance at the 46664 Concert in Cape Town in 2003 when in an Aids Awareness gig Gabriel got to play it on the redeemed ground of South Africa, where Biko’s death was now celebrated as a sacrifice that brought a brand new rainbow nation.

I cannot remember the first time I heard the song. However, it is my earliest memory of developing an anti-apartheid awareness. In July 2002 in a Church on the Guguletu township on the Cape Flats of Western Cape I was asked without warning to explain to the congregation why I had brought 25 white Irish students to worship. In the few seconds I had to make my way to the pulpit I had to think very quickly what had brought me here on my journey in order that I would think it a good idea to a gang of young people along with me. The answer opened up a profound truth to me. I wasn’t there because I had heard about the injustice of apartheid from the pulpits of my Presbyterian Churches. I told the congregation that I was there because rock musicians like Peter Gabriel had sparked a Biblical passion for justice in general and their people in particular and that these rock prophets had profoundly changed my life. I went on to tell them that though many of the musicians were not Christians they forced me back to the Old Testament prophets and I was there with my students because we wanted to bring God’s Kingdom to Cape Town as it was in heaven.

It changed my life in that it fuelled with many other God induced serendipities to become involved in the transformation of South Africa. I became part of Habitat For Humanity’s house building programme in the Western Cape which has been one of the most privileged and moving episodes of my life. Along with my students we raised funds and physically helped to build 40 houses for former shack dwellers. When you hand people the key to their first brick house it is an amazing feeling. As well as Habitat For Humanity my student teams got to engage in Peace projects, AIDS visitation, school projects and a Fair Trade initiative. It did not change the entire world in an instant but it did change the world a little, bit at a time.

As well as all of that, my students came home transformed and many changed their vocations or became campaigners, changed the way they looked at the world and led other such teams themselves. I can think of three who have spent time in Africa this year as part of their work, one of whom Justin Zoradi having set up the charity These Numbers Have Faces that helps township youth to get to college. So I am thankful that Peter Gabriel did not have the defeatist attitude of Noel Gallagher or Alex Kapronos and think protest songs were useless and couldn’t change the world. Biko and many other songs have proven life changing to me and many others.

Lyric For The Day 12.9.11 - Biko Drum (written by Wally Page) by Christy Moore

 

“From the ghetto in Capetown to dig the gold
Little boy blue can't be sold
Under tin roof and a plastic wall
Thinkin' someday soon we're goin' to leave it all

And the renegades sing all the renegade songs
And the ones who know hope they're doin' wrong
The blacks and the coloreds play the Biko Drum
Listen to the Biko Drum”

-      From Biko Drum by Wally Page (sung by Christy Moore)

 My friend Brent Van Der Linde reminded me that this is the anniversary of Steve Biko’s unjust and violent death in police custody in Pretoria in 1977. I thought this was, therefore, an appropriate Lyric Of the Day. Biko was a fresh thinker, ahead of his time which every great leader should be; oh how he would have been a great South African President now! He had thought through the politics and not ignored the theology as he led his “renegade” people against the brutal Apartheid regime that proved their injustice in his killing. Thus, this is a kingdom song. It is a song from the oppressed and marginalised against those that God damned in most Old Testament prophecies. That Biko drum of freedom still beats in so many places across the world and with it God heart beats too.

 I share Biko’s name and I do so proudly. It has started so many conversations in the townships around Cape Town. I always introduced myself, “Steve as in Biko!” I love so much of his thought and am constantly challenged when he asked us not to see the stealing of the bike by the township youth as the crime and ignore the social circumstances that led him to steal the bike; echoes of Walter Rauschenbusch who challenged the individualist pietistic non engagement of evangelical Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century. Rauschenbusch might have gotten the some of his theology askew but his diagnosis is Biblically acute. He was a man who heard the Biko Drum!

"Seek First His Kingdom and Righteouness" Reshaped

 

I love it when the Bible speaks to me, especially when I’m not reading it! I have written before about how we have flattened the Bible’s dimensions and limited it to a book to be read rather than a book to be lived and a book that surrounds and infuses every thought we make. It is a book that was never meant to be confined to words on a page. It is the potent word, always alive to possibility, lifting off the page to hover and haunt and have its way.  

So, there is this one verse that has been doing a work on me. It began a few months ago when a friend who had been blown off his feet by the winds of life’s rough justice asked me what it meant to “...seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” We were looking at the verse as it had come to us, almost in mantra form, over thirty or forty years of our lives. My friend had been seeking God in prayer and striving to live a holy life. Yet, as he did he seemed to be struggling in the things that he felt should be added. My original suggestion was that the things being added were his serenity, patience and his ability and indeed new desire to make do with less in material terms. I think that made some sense...

...and then... I was reading a book about Bob Dylan, Tangled Up In The Bible, and the writer Michael J Gilmour, a Professor in New Testament in his day job, wrote of The Kingdom of God and “a clear sense of the priority the quest must take in the disciple’s life.” My Biblical antenna immediately shot up and I wondered where were we given the Kingdom of God as priority. The answer was one of those eureka moments in Bible reading - “But seek first his kingdom...” Now I’d never read it like that. Like so much of Scripture, when it is handed down and becomes too familiar, I had not read it as it was written but as how it had been fed to me. Like my friend the forty years of mantra had caused me to misinterpret such a key text. It wasn’t the Kingdom Of God, his will on earth as it is in heaven, that I thought we were to seek. I had focused on personal piety and missed the social missional priority of my life.

Less than twenty four hours later, the sword was pushed deeper and twisted; probably not the correct image! Anyway, Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff was preaching in Fitzroy and he was leading us expositionally through the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Now, I had read this in his book Justice; Rights and Wrongs, but he hammered it home in this preaching context that the word we translate righteousness in the English translations of the Bible are actually translated justice in most other languages. I have since consulted my New Testament Greek adviser and indeed Wolterstorff’s case is more than erudite and indeed our translation of righteousness needs bolstered too! Hence, my forty year old mantra gets another bashing out of one shape into another, “But seek first his kingdom and his justice, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Oh my word... or oh God’s Word actually!

I could never understand how this verse concluded what Jesus had to say about not worrying about food and clothes. There seemed something too passive about our lack of worry and what about my African brothers and sisters who have a life or death right to really worry about them. In the forty year old pietist mantra of the passage I was left uneasy but not anymore. Now, as with the rest of the Sermon On The Mount this becomes an active passage; if we seek God’s Kingdom and justice then that justice will mean that everyone will have their daily bread and clothing needs. If we bring God’s will on earth we will have nothing more to worry about.

This is God opening up the Word. It is exciting how the Spirit can cut through. It is frightening how we can have got it so wrong or maybe not so completely wrong as one dimensional for so long. This new shape will cause us to reassess, to reapply, to seek forgiveness for our sins of omission in mission and to radically turn around how we do discipleship.