ADVENT FOUR PART SERIES: 1. Wonderful Counsellor Howard Webber (1/4)

'AND HE SHALL BE CALLED...'

1. Wonderful Counsellor

Within the bible well over one hundred names and titles are accorded to Jesus. As we enter advent we will look at the four that Isaiah gives when he announces, 'For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,' (9:6).

Each of these four names are made up of two elements, one human and the other divine. Consciously or unconsciously the prophet revealed the unified human and divine natures in the person of Jesus, who entered this world, 'truly and properly God and truly and properly man,' (SA Doctrine 4).

Wonderful

The Hebrew word here translated as 'wonderful' is only found in one other place in the bible. In Judges 13 God appeared to Manoah's wife in the form of an angel. She was childless and sterile, but he promised her that she would conceive and have a son, (v3). When later her husband met the angel he asked him what his name was, to which the angel replied, 'Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding,'(v18). The word translated as 'beyond understanding' is the same word that is translated as 'wonderful' in Isaiah 9:6. John Wesley translated it as, 'Secret - hidden from mortal man,' or  'wonderful, such as thou canst not comprehend.' To many scholars this would indicate the man of God or angel portrayed in the chapter, to be more than a man, more than an angel, but God the Son in human form, a theophany, (see also Genesis 18 and Judges 6:11-21)

Names today tend to be labels that parents like the sound of or that have associations with other people. Names back in bible times were descriptive of the person. Thus to reveal one's name to someone was to reveal something of one's character, one's identity. The reason that God could not respond to Manoah's request was that the essence and nature of God is far too incomprehensible to be expressed in words. We remember how Moses asked God his name, and he replied, 'I am who I am.' In 2 Corinthians 9:15 St Paul describes Jesus as God's indescribable gift. Consequently, that rare bible word, here translated 'wonderful,' is a description of the divine; he who is beyond human understanding, human comprehension.

Counsellor

Have you ever needed counselling of any kind? Counselling is far more common today, providing a safe, supportive and confidential space to help an individual look at their problems in a non-judgemental way. The client is the sole focus of the counsellor who seeks to come alongside and empathise with their client, building trust, revealing compassion, and encouraging them to be honest as they seek to discover the underlying cause of their problem or difficulty. Initially, the client can have two opposing responses to the experience. The blissful relief at receiving such much needed, undivided attention, is often accompanied by anxiety and fear that what might come out might be too shameful to warrant the counsellor's continued attention.

Counsellor Par Excellence

Counsellor is a human word. Counselling describes a human activity. Jesus was referring to himself as a counsellor, (Greek = paraclete, literally one who comes alongside), when he spoke of his Father sending another, (John 14:15). As Jesus walked the earth, the disciples had that counsellor physically with them, but he promised that when he departed into heaven, they would have another within them, (v17).

Jesus humbly descended from his glory in heaven to come alongside us. Like the good counsellor he is, he didn't come to judge us, 'I did not come to judge the world, but to save it,' (John 12:17). We needn't fear that what we might share might be so shameful as to have him turn from us. He knew everything about us before he reached out to us. He is filled with compassion at sight of our plight, (Matthew 9:36). He empathises with us in a way that no  human counsellor can. He entered our world and shared our lot and knows our experience from the inside, 'For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are....'(Hebrews 4:15). Whilst many who come to him might feel worthless and useless, in Jesus they find One who made himself nothing, (Philippians 2:7), and who is able to empathise.

Listening to the troubles, trials and tribulations of another can leave a counsellor exhausted, emotionally burdened, but the client's problems are still not the counsellor's problems. By contrast, Jesus is a Counsellor par excellence. No detached professionalism with him. This Wonderful Counsellor does not merely help us find the answer for ourselves, but offers to take our burdens upon himself and be our answer!

Howard Webber
Major, The Salvation Army(retired) Bournemouth, UK

THANKSGIVING DAY USA - I Worship The King

(RELIGION IN CHINA PART TWO WILL BE POSTED ON NOV. 29th)

Thursday 26^th November 2014

 The abundance in the land will not be remembered, because the famine that follows it will be so severe.' Genesis 41:31

In one dream we have seven really healthy cows and in the other seven really healthy ears of corn. One would expect the healthy cows to consume the sickly ones and the healthy grain to consume the weak, thin ones. But the fact is, as Joseph mentions in verses 30, 31, as abundant, (maybe unbelievably abundant), as those first seven years' harvests would be, the seven years that follow would be so terrible as to wipe away all memory of the amazing harvests that went before.

God can bless us more abundantly than we ever dreamed. We may have extraordinary experiences of his goodness, mercy, provision, and protection, and wonder why he has blessed us so? But when famine comes; when there is little sign of his blessing and everything is going wrong and it seems unending, and we wonder what awaits us in the future and where God is in it all, it is so easy to forget the extraordinary things God did in the past. That is why, frequently in the bible, God calls us to remember what he has done, what we have seen and heard and experienced. He would not do that if it wasn't that he knows our natural inclination to so quickly forget.

'Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them,' Deuteronomy 4:9

'Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,' Deuteronomy 5:15.

'You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt,' Deuteronomy 7:17,18

' Dear Lord, when winter comes and darkness abounds and we have no sense of you, help us to remember the wonders of your grace in the past, and not to forget what we experienced of your love. Help us to put our trust in you, knowing that however long we may have to wait, be it seven years or seventy, you will bring us through the darkness into the light again. Amen.'

God bless you all

Howard Webber
SA Officer, retired

Bournemouth, England

RELIGION IN CHINA Part One (1/2)

Cracks in the atheist edifice The rapid spread of Christianity is forcing an official rethink on religion RELIGION IN CHINA NOV 01 2014 | ECN THE coastal city of Wenzhou is sometimes called China’s Jerusalem. Ringed by mountains and far from the capital, Beijing, it has long been a haven for a religion that China’s Communist leaders view with deep unease: Christianity. Most cities of its size, with about 9m people, have no more than a dozen or so visibly Christian buildings. Until recently, in Wenzhou, hundreds of crosses decorated church roofs. This year, however, more than 230 have been classed as “illegal structures” and removed. Videos posted on the internet show crowds of parishioners trying to form a human shield around their churches. Dozens have been injured. Other films show weeping believers defiantly singing hymns as huge red crosses are hoisted off the buildings. In April one of Wenzhou’s largest churches was completely demolished. Officials are untroubled by the clash between the city’s famously freewheeling capitalism and the Communist Party’s ideology, yet still see religion and its symbols as affronts to the party’s atheism. Christians in China have long suffered persecutiont. Under Mao Zedong, freedom of belief was enshrined in the new Communist constitution (largely to accommodate Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in the west of the country). Yet perhaps as many as half a million Christians were harried to death, and tens of thousands more were sent to labour camps. Since the death of Mao in 1976, the party has slowly allowed more religious freedom. Most of the churches in Wenzhou are so-called “Three Self” churches, of which there are about 57,000 round the country. These, in the official jargon, are self-supporting, self-governed and self-propagating (therefore closed to foreign influence). They profess loyalty to China, and are registered with the government. But many of those in Wenzhou had obviously incurred official displeasure all the same; and most of the Christians who survived Maoist persecution, along with many new believers, refuse to join such churches anyway, continuing to meet in unregistered “house churches”, which the party for a long time tried to suppress. Christianity is hard to control in China, and getting harder all the time. It is spreading rapidly, and infiltrating the party’s own ranks. The line is blurring between house churches and official ones, and Christians are starting to emerge from hiding to play a more active part in society. The Communist Party has to find a new way to deal with all this. There is even talk that the party, the world’s largest explicitly atheist organisation, might follow its sister parties in Vietnam and Cuba and allow members to embrace a dogma other than—even higher than—that of Marx. Any shift in official thinking on religion could have big ramifications for the way China handles a host of domestic challenges, from separatist unrest among Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs in the country’s west to the growth of NGOs and “civil society”—grassroots organisations, often with a religious colouring, which the party treats with suspicion, but which are also spreading fast. Safety in numbers The upsurge in religion in China, especially among the ethnic Han who make up more than 90% of the population, is a general one. From the bullet trains that sweep across the Chinese countryside, passengers can see new churches and temples springing up everywhere. Buddhism, much longer established in China than Christianity, is surging too, as is folk religion; many more Han are making pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines in search of spiritual comfort. All this worries many officials, for whom religion is not only Marx’s “opium of the people” but also, they believe, a dangerous perverter of loyalty away from the party and the state. Christianity, in particular, is associated with 19th-century Western imperial encroachment; and thus the party’s treatment of Christians offers a sharp insight into the way its attitudes are changing. It is hard even to guess at the number of Christians in China. Official surveys seek to play down the figures, ignoring the large number who worship in house churches. By contrast, overseas Christian groups often inflate them. There were perhaps 3m Catholics and 1m Protestants when the party came to power in 1949. Officials now say there are between 23m and 40m, all told. In 2010 the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organisation, estimated there were 58m Protestants and 9m Catholics. Many experts, foreign and Chinese, now accept that there are probably more Christians than there are members of the 87m-strong Communist Party. Most are evangelical Protestants. Predicting Christianity’s growth is even harder. Yang Fenggang of Purdue University, in Indiana, says the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980. He reckons that on current trends there will be 250m Christians by around 2030, making China’s Christian population the largest in the world. Mr Yang says this speed of growth is similar to that seen in fourth-century Rome just before the conversion of Constantine, which paved the way for Christianity to become the religion of his empire. In the 1980s the faith grew most quickly in the countryside, stimulated by the collapse of local health care and a belief that Christianity could heal instead. In recent years it has been burgeoning in cities. A new breed of educated, urban Christians has emerged. Gerda Wielander of the University of Westminster, in her book “Christian Values in Communist China”, says that many Chinese are attracted to Christianity because, now that belief in Marxism is declining, it offers a complete moral system with a transcendental source. People find such certainties appealing, she adds, in an age of convulsive change. Some Chinese also discern in Christianity the roots of Western strength. They see it as the force behind the development of social justice, civil society and rule of law, all things they hope to see in China. Many new NGOs are run by Christians or Buddhists. There are growing numbers of Christian doctors and academics. More than 2,000 Christian schools are also dotted around China, many of them small and all, as yet, illegal. One civil-rights activist says that, of the 50 most-senior civil-rights lawyers in China, probably half are Christians. Some of them have set up the Association of Human Rights Attorneys for Chinese Christians. Groups of well-paid urban Christian lawyers join together to defend Christians—and others—in court. Missionaries have begun to go out from China to the developing world. End Part One   (1/2)

THANKSGIVING (2013 FSAOF blog)

Some years back the Unitarian Universalist annual denominational General Assembly took place in Portland, Oregon. After it ended Jan & I took a rental car and drove north through Seattle across the border to Vancouver, then on a ferry west to Vancouver Island and Victoria, back down on another ferry to the US and a revisit to Seattle before finally flying home.

Among the vivid images of that trip maybe the most vivid was when we were in Vancouver. We’d found their Chinatown and were wandering through the shops; apparently there’s some common source for tourist gewgaws, as the shops had much of what you’ll find in San Francisco’s or even Boston’s Chinatown stores. But we kept our eyes open for something a bit different.

  

And we ended up in a kitchenware shop. We were looking at this and that when I saw a lovely wooden kitchen spoon. Now, I’d wanted a wooden spoon for a while, but just had never gotten around to purchasing it. The spoons were displayed in a large vase like container, maybe nine or ten sticking out like wooden roses in a pot. I peered closely at them and saw one in particular had a bit of discoloration along the grain in the handle. I pulled it out and held it for heft, tried the stirring motion and declared to all who were present, well, Jan, “This is the one!”

  

“The one what?” asked Jan. “Why the wooden spoon I’ve been seeking for so long,” I replied feeling as if I’d found Excalibur. I gave my spoon, it was now my spoon, a sword like twirl in the air. “Oh,” said Jan.

 Apparently nothing else caught either of our imaginations. So we got on line. In front of us were what looked to be a family, two older people and two younger somewhere between the end of High School or a bit beyond. What caused them to stick in my memory was that they all appeared to be speed freaks. That is they all; every blessed one of them appeared to be out of their minds high on some sort of speed drug.

They visibly twitched. They spoke rapidly and disjointedly, and not like I do, I mean really, really over the top. When they got to the register there was of course considerable confusion, not just of language, but also of what they were trying to purchase, its price, and how to close the deal.

 In the snap of a finger my mood switched from ecstasy to a deep sadness.

 Now, some years later, I still have that spoon. I don’t give it the sword twirl anymore. Well, hardly ever. But when I picked it up to stir some oatmeal yesterday, I had a small flash of memories from our trip, of how much I love Jan, of how sad life can be for some people, and with that and the smell of the oatmeal I found myself drawn back to this moment, the one right now, realizing all those things layered as part of the moment.

 And I felt a sense of thanksgiving.

 Now, this is the season within our culture when we’re called to remember each other and life itself and how precious it is.

And of course, how fragile.

It is time for gratitude, but open-eyed gratitude. Our American holiday is shadowed by the fact the Native peoples who welcomed the Pilgrims but would soon discover it was a mistake, sadness as well as joy. But this is something important. That bittersweet quality is in my opinion what is so powerful about this season.

This is a Harvest festival we’re about. It is about getting enough food in, hopefully, to withstand the harsh winter ahead. There are versions around the globe somewhere roughly at this time, or its southern hemisphere equivalent six months out. Think of the western Earth centered Lammas. Or those festivals rooted in these ancient traditions such as the German Octoberfest or the Transylvanian Harvest festivals.

And this is very much a kitchen festival, a time for food, a time for friendship, a time to cherish all that which we are fortunate enough to have.

That wooden spoon is sitting with other utensils in a pot in the kitchen. Today it’ll be getting a bit of a workout. And I know as I grab it, and if no one is around, perhaps swirl it in the air just once before getting to work, I’ll think, briefly, just in a heartbeat, of these things.

And I’m pretty sure it’ll be hard not to be grateful.


Jim Ford

(post gratefully received from an unknown Unitarian blog follower)