Everest and Easter

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Everest and Easter – a mountain top experience

Last weekend I had a mountain top experience.

But first some context. I was in Kathmandu for two week’s teaching and preaching. Saturday is church day and so I went to church and preached an Easter sermon.

So, my Sunday was different to normal. Instead of being in pew or pulpit, I was on a scenic flight (thank you Buddha Air). Bright and early we soared aloft from Kathmandu airport and headed for Mnt Everest. My host had suggested that I take the trip and I was resolved not to spend the rest of my life with the regret of missing the opportunity.

The Nepalese mountains are stunning and Everest is prince among them. For minute after minute, we passed the grandeur of snow-clad peaks, ridges and valleys around which light and shadow played. All too soon it was down to earth and the city of man.

Stunning though my Easter Everest was, it was not the real mountain top experience this Easter. That experience was on the Saturday. There we were – a group of people who differed in ethnicity, gender, age, education and all the rest. What united us was the risen, reigning and returning Christ. He was present in the praise singing, the preaching of his word, the Lord’s Supper and in the fellowship. As we participated in him by faith we were united to one another in faith, hope and love.

Everest is stunning. Better still is Mount Zion, the mountain of the house of God where God’s people gather week by week in the new temple that is Jesus.

When the Copts cop it – why theology still matters but is not everything

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When the Copts cop it – why theology still matters but is not everything

On April 9 2017 the Palm Sunday liturgy at two Egyptian Coptic churches left 45 dead and over 100 people injured (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39555897). It’s not the first attack on Copts in Egypt (Google “attacks on Egyptian Copts” for more details as recently as December 2016) and, sadly, it’s unlikely to be the last. Besides, death and injury, the Copts have suffered other forms of persecution over the years.

As an evangelical Christian I find much to disagree with when it comes to the Copts. If leisure afforded space for a conversation I’d love to open the Bible and talk. I’d like to talk about the way that the Coptic church and its rituals seem to have crowded Jesus out and to stand in his place. I’d like to talk about how their view of the sacraments puts attention on the sacraments to receive grace and not on Jesus in whom the riches of God’s mercy are found. And I’d like space to talk about their synergistic view of salvation. And somewhere in all that I’d like to go back to the Bible and discuss their rejection of the creed of the 451 Council of Chalcedon and their profession of a “one nature” Monophysite view of Jesus. These are big points of disagreement, for they go to the heart of the gospel which is  .. concerning his Son .. (Rom 1:3).

But that’s not the point right now, for there is no leisure for such conversation. The Copts are copping a beating and this is a time to identify with brothers and sisters who profess Christ. It’s time to remember those who are persecuted, to pray with them, and to seek to publicise their cause in the hope of some relief. When the Copts suffer, every Christian suffers (1 Cor 12:26). When one is in prison, we are all in prison (Heb 13:5).

And that’s why this evangelical Christian wants to pause the theological conversation, identify with the Copts and say that their suffering is my suffering and their persecutors are my persecutors. I’ll pray for the “kings and governors” of Egypt that my brothers and sisters there may be able to live a peaceful and quiet life and that there is space to tell of God’s salvation on behalf of God who desires that all people should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:1-2).

And if that prayer is answered we can sit down and discuss the big questions about Jesus that Coptic beliefs and practices raise. However, that is not the need of this present hour.

Perhaps the title of this post should be changed: When the Copts cop it – when theology still matters but is not everything.

Slice of life ... the book

The book

There was rain. Lots of it. Enough to breach the levee by the river. Roads were blocked, bridges made impassable, crops ruined, stock drowned and many thousands evacuated.

He was caught. He’d gone to the farm for a day trip but was now flooded in. The farm was on a safe and dry ridge, but the low lying wooden bridge over the creek was flooded well and truly.

And so he stayed. Plans were disrupted and he had nothing much besides a phone with a dwindling battery.

But he had a book. A big, fat and mostly unread copy of The Count of Monte Christo. When asked if he was okay he smiled and waved the book. It made him happy.