Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30. 16 “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,17 ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; 19 the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” 25 At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”No one can overestimate the influence of a good teacher. Even if we cannot remember a thing they actually taught us, good teachers will be remembered with fondness long after their words have been forgotten. This is because people are more important than words. Qualities like kindness and generosity are always more enduring than principles or rules, and integrity is more infectious than dogma.In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers himself as a teacher: ‘learn from me’ he says. At this point in his ministry Jesus has had to face up to being rejected by the religious hierarchy and ‘wise’ people of his time. His message found no place in their hearts. Becoming experts in the Law had prevented them from recognising the coming of God’s Messiah, the coming of god’s KingdomInstead, Jesus found a ready audience among the people considered outcasts. The tax collectors and sinners, those unable to keep the Law in all it’s rigor, all welcomed Christ’s message and the hope it brought. Unfortunately, the experts were so preoccupied with keeping the externals of the Law that they had largely lost sight of it’s purpose, to lead people to god. They were no longer open to hearing the word of god, because they did not need it. They placed the Law above every other consideration, even above people. The Law became an end in itself.Jesus offered a different ‘yoke’, a simpler one. We do not have to worry about hundreds of laws, or keeping the minutiae of rules and regulations. Jesus simply offers himself as the model to follow. He alone is the way to god. Follow him and we will find God.Like a good teacher, the lasting impression he makes more in who he is, than anything he says. He asks us to be like him, to be gentle and to acknowledge our need for God. It is only when, like the tax collectors and sinners, we are open to the words of God, only when we admit our dependence on God, that we are able to receive God’s mercy. And, like them, we experience God’s love and mercy, not by mindless obedience, but by meeting a person: Jesus, God’s own Son, face to face.Jesus says that his burden id light. We can be burdened with all kinds of things, we have burdens from our consumerist society, the burdens of other’s unreasonable expectations and demands, the list is endless, we can become overwhelmed by burdens.Jesus’s yoke is easy. It is well fitting, tailor made to the individual. Because the task he sets is simple – be yourself! Be the person God wants you to be, using Jesus as your teacher. Be gentle, with yourself and others. Be humble, acknowledge your need for God, don’t assume you have to do it all by yourself. Resit becoming overburdened by any unreasonable demands. Simply get to know Jesus, the person. Learn from him and you will find rest.Pauline
Commemorating the life of Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-1929)Sundar was raised a member of the Sikh religion and born to wealthy parents. While only fourteen years old, his mother died, and Sundar underwent a crisis of faith. His mother was a loving saintly woman and they were very close. In his anger, Sundar burned a copy the New Testament Bible in public."Although I believed that I had done a very good deed by burning the Bible, I felt unhappy," he said. Within three days Sundar Singh could bear his misery no longer. Late one night in December 1903, he rose from bed and prayed that God reveal himself to him if he really existed. Otherwise -- "I planned to throw myself in front of the train which passed by our house." For seven hours Sundar Singh prayed. "O God, if there is a God, reveal yourself to me tonight." The next train was due at five o'clock in the morning. The hours passed.Suddenly the room filled with a glow. A man appeared before him. Sundar Singh heard a voice say, "How long will you deny me? I died for you; I have given my life for you." He saw the man's hands, pierced by nails.Jesus was the last person Sundar was looking for. After all, Jesus was the 'foreign God' of the Christian teachers at his school… Amazed that his vision had taken the unexpected form of Jesus, Sundar was convinced in his heart that Jesus was the true Saviour, and that He was alive. Sundar fell on his knees before Him and experienced an astonishing peacefulness which he had never felt before. The vision disappeared, but peace and joy lingered within him.To meet Christ was only the beginning for Sundar Singh. He was a Sikh. Sikhs had endured terrible persecutions in their early history. As a consequence, they were fiercely loyal to their faith and to each other. Conversion to Christianity was considered treachery. Now every effort was made to woo or coerce Sundar Singh back to his ancestral faith.Despite his family's please, bribes, and threats, Sundar wanted to be baptized in the Christian faith. After his father spoke words of official rejection over him, Sundar became an outcast from his people. He cut off the hair he had worn long like every Sikh man. Against great opposition, he was baptized on his 16th birthday in 1905, in an English church in Simla.Conventional Indian churches were willing to grant him a pulpit, but their rules were foreign to his spirit. Indeed, he felt that a key reason the gospel was not accepted in India was because it came in a language foreign to Indians. He decided to become a sadhu (monk), so that he could dedicate himself to the Lord Jesus. He was convinced that this was the best way to introduce the Gospel to his people since it was the only way which his people were accustomed to. As a sadhu (monk), he wore a yellow robe, lived on the charity of others, abandoned all possession and maintained celibacy. In this lifestyle, he was free to devote himself to the Lord. Dressed in his thin yellow robe, Sundar Singh took to the road and began a life of spreading the simple message of love and peace and rebirth through Jesus. He carried no money or other possessions, only a New Testament."I am not worthy to follow in the footsteps of my Lord," he said, "but like Him, I want no home, no possessions. Like Him I will belong to the road, sharing the suffering of my people, eating with those who will give me shelter, and telling all people of the love of God."Sundar journeyed much. He travelled all over India and Ceylon. Between 1918-1919, he visited Malaysia, Japan and China. Between 1920-1922 he went to Western Europe, Australia and Israel. He preached in many cities; Jerusalem, Lima, Berlin and Amsterdam among others. Despite his growing fame, Sundar retained a modest nature, desiring only to follow Jesus' example: to repay evil with kindness and to win over his enemies by love. This attitude caused even his father to become a Christian later in life, and to support Sundar in ministry."He travelled India and Tibet, as well as the rest of the world, with the message that the modern interpretation of Jesus was sadly watered down. Sundar visited Tibet every summer. He even made a visit to Tibet, where he persisted in strenuous work, despite ill health. He went missing there, presumed murdered, and so we commemorate his death on this day in April 1929.
Bernard Mizeki was born in Mozambique in about 1861. When he was twelve or a little older, he left his home and went to Cape Town, South Africa, where for the next ten years he worked as a labourer, living in the slums of Cape Town but, unlike many migrant workers, rising above the squalor of his surroundings. After his day’s work, he attended night classes at an Anglican school run by the Cowley Fathers. So he became a Christian and was baptized in 1886. Besides the fundamentals of European schooling, he showed a rare aptitude for language study, mastering at least ten languages. In time these skills would be a valuable asset in the work of translating the Scriptures and prayer books and hymn books into African languages.After graduating from the school, he accompanied Bishop Knight-Bruce to Mashonaland, in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to work as a lay catechist. In 1891 he was sent to Nhowe, and there he built a mission complex. He grew crops, studied the local language, observed the daily office and cultivated friendships with the villagers. In due course he opened a school for the children, which further endeared him to the local people.Eventually he moved the mission complex on to a nearby plateau, next to a grove of trees sacred to the ancestral spirits of the Mashona. Although he had first obtained the chief’s permission, he angered the local religious leaders when he cut some of the trees down and carved crosses into others. But this clear assertion of the authority of Christ did not hinder the mission’s work and over the next five years (1891–6), the mission at Nhowe experienced many conversions.In 1896 there was a native uprising against the rule of Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, which administered Southern Rhodesia. Missionaries, regarded as agents of the colonial power, were especially vulnerable. Bernard was advised to flee but refused to desert his converts or his post. On 18 June 1896, he was speared to death outside his hut. His wife and a mission worker went for help and, when some distance away, claimed to have seen a blinding light on the hillside where Bernard had been lying, and heard a rushing sound, as though of many wings. Certainly, when they returned there was no sign of the body. The site of Bernard’s martyrdom has since become a popular place of pilgrimage.
Thoughts for Today From the real world, sublime and challenging A place for more certain times – Punta del Este.In uncertain times we are allowed to have those moments and times of wobble when we cannot see over the horizon of situations. What is over the other side?To avoid the next wobble the diplomatic theory was that you do not cruise directly to the Falkland Islands from Argentina. So, we sailed back to Uraguay and Punte del Este. It was Brexit Day, Friday the 31st January, and a strange day in so many ways. We didn’t quite know what lay ahead. If you want unusual, then go to Punta del Este. The name means Eastern tip. It was smaller than expected, with a resident population of 130,000 which expands enormously during high-peak holiday times. The resort (with a heritage of a whaling industry going back one hundred and fifty years) is an hour and a half drive from Montivideo. Today it is famous for 20 miles of great beaches, restaurants, extravagant night life and even has its own Trump Tower Hotel. One side of the eastern tip is on the Atlantic coast where the surfing is particularly challenging. It is famous for the first naval battle of the Second World War – that of the River Plate and the eventual disabling of the Graf Spee at Montivideo harbour in December 1939.Our arrival at the eastern Brava Beach revealed the concrete sculpture of a large hand emerging from the sands. Designed by the Chilean Sculptor Mario Irrarrazabel and completed in just a couple of weeks in1982 as part of a national competition. There are two theories about its meaning. One is that it is a drowning hand to warn surfers of the dangers of surfing on that side of the peninsula, and the other being the ‘Helping Hand’ of humanity. Whatever, like all prevailing sculptures it makes us think.Here in the second picture we have the wobbly bridges of the Punta. Why? Good question. The first one built in 1965 for its novelty and for road safety to hopefully make people slow down on this busy river crossing. It became so busy a second one was built in 1998. Many come just to see the novelty bridges, originally designed not by a structural engineer, but by a builder! We returned to the ship via the Casa Pueblo, a white house folly of the artist and architect Carlos Vilaro. His son Carlos Paez Rodriguez, at the age of 18, as a member of the Old Christians Rugby Football club team was part of an ill-fated flight in 1972 to Chile for a match. He is famous for surviving 72 days along with 15 others in the Andes, recorded in the film ‘Alive’ 1993. It is story of the extreme lengths that human beings can go to in order to survive. Saturday was a Sea Day. The Captain of the Balmoral always gave us a 12 mid-day update about our position, projected weather, mileage and the depth of the sea. On this occasion he informed us that our Monday next destination, at West Point Island of the Falklands, would not be visited. This was because of the adverse weather conditions for a small boat transfer. He was hopeful of our landing at Port Stanley the following day… This may account why we had over 150 passengers attend the main service on the Sunday morning all praying for a safe landing at Port Stanley! It was a wobbly moment - would the weather be a helping hand? With blessings,Edward and JaneNext scheduled destination – Port Stanley, Falkland Islands
