Author Archives: Stephen Sizer

Faith Groups Under Attack: Hilary Wise

The Israeli government and a variety of Zionist organisations have long been pouring huge resources into “hasbara,” meaning “advocacy” or “propaganda” in Hebrew. This involves both promoting a positive image of Israel and hounding and intimidating those they say are guilty of the “new anti-Semitism,” which amounts in practice to any criticism of Israeli policies and actions.

The bodies involved in this hasbara campaign range from the immensely powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to internet-based organisations such as Honest Reporting, BBC Watch and the Jewish Internet Defence Force, and poisonous personal blogs.

Christian churches, having by definition a special interest in the Holy Land and what is happening there, are increasingly coming under fire from such sources for noting and deploring Israel’s policies of oppression and dispossession, which affect Christians and Muslims alike.

Methodists in the US and the UK have for years been outspoken in their concern over the plight of the Palestinian people. The report Justice for Palestine and Israel, presented to the 2010 Methodist conference, was harshly criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Chief Rabbi and the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ).

Continue reading →

Abraham, Melchizedek and Jesus

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERADo you remember life before email? Before junk mail? Before Gmail? Before instant messaging? Before the internet? Before mobile phones even? As a child the highlight of my day was the sound of letters plopping through the letter box on to the door mat, especially around birthdays or Christmas. The more plops the better. And a day without letters was a sad day. Most of all, I longed to receive letters addressed to me. I remember even posting a letter to myself with Green Shield stamps on it. I addressed it to Master Stephen Robert Sizer, 117 Beccles Road, Oulton Board, Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. And I still have it…  My identity – my self esteem – was in some sense, bound up with something as simple as receiving an occasional letter. Now we are rather more sophisticated, but we all crave recognition, we hunger for affirmation, we long for recognition.  Because these feed our need for meaning and purpose.

In our series “What Abraham Discovered” we are focussing on the discoveries Abraham made about God and his purposes for Abraham and his offspring. As the children of Abraham we are discovering more of God’s purposes for our own lives too. Please turn with me to Genesis 14. Here we read about two kings – two very different kings – Bera was the king of Sodom and Melchizadek was the king of Salem. The contrast is stark. Between Sodom’s decadence and Salem’s decency. Between King Bera’s opulence and Melchizadek’s holiness. Abraham encounters these two kings following a regional conflict involving numerous tribal alliances and battles for control of the area around the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea. Having discovered that his nephew Lot and his relatives had been taken captive when Sodom was defeated and plundered, Abraham took 318 of his own men, hunted down the enemy and rescued his family. We pick the story up in verses 17.

“After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine.” (Genesis 14:17-18)

Abraham, Melchizedek and Jesus from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

Continue reading →

Abraham: Lessons in the Call of God

February 28, 1944, started out like many other days in Corrie’s family watch shop in Nazi-occupied Haarlem, in Holland. Corrie, the first woman watch-maker in Europe, was helping her father, Casper, repair watches, and her sister Betsie, was doing housework in their home attached to the back of the watch shop. Corrie wasn’t surprised when a stranger, under the pretence of showing her a broken watch, whispered that his family was also hiding Jews. His wife had just been arrested. Could she help? Believing that God called her to resist the evil embodied in the Third Reich, Corrie led a clandestine network of rescuers hiding Jews in Haalem. By 1944, Jews still alive in Nazi-occupied countries had a simple choice: hide or die. Corrie agreed to help the stranger.

During the night of 1st March 1944, sleep in the ten Boom house was shattered by a Gestapo raid. That night Corrie, Betsie, Casper, and thirty-nine other rescuers in their network were arrested, beaten and charged with hiding Jews. But in spite of a two day search, the Gestapo never found the six people hidden behind the bookcase in a secret room. Casper ten Boom, Corrie’s father, died in prison ten days after his arrest. Corrie and Betsie were transferred to the Ravensbruk death camp, where Betsie later died on Christmas Day. The Jews hidden behind Corrie’s family bookcase were freed, hidden again, and eventually survived the Holocaust. Corrie Ten Boom had a God-given purpose, that kept her focussed and faithful to her calling during severe trial.

We don’t know what will happen in 2014. But how we respond to the challenges ahead will be determined by our convictions, by our character and above all, shaped by understanding our calling from God. Do you know God’s purpose for your life because you are not here by accident.  Rick Warren says, “Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance…” The greatest tragedy is not death. The greatest tragedy is to live without a purpose.”

Continue reading →

Richard Bewes Joins Christ Church Team

Richard_Pam_BewesWe are delighted to announce that Richard Bewes OBE, the former Rector of All Souls, Langham Place, will be joining the preaching team at Christ Church. Richard and his wife Pam, moved to Virginia Water in December and have joined Christ Church family.

Following the fruitful ministry of John Stott and Michael Baughen, as leader of All Souls, the international nature of the congregation (embracing some 70 nationalities) continued to develop with some 2,500 attending every Sunday. During Richard’s time, the facility to listen to sermons online was achieved, and a ‘virtual weekly global internet congregation’ stands as one of the many legacies of his time in post.

He chaired the Church of England Evangelical Council throughout the 1990s. Stepping down from All Souls in November 2004, Richard was awarded the OBE by the Queen in the New Year of 2005.

Richard has been strongly involved with the evangelistic and humanitarian work of African Enterprise, and is also on the British Board of The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and its sister work of Samaritan’s Purse.

Visit Richard’s website here and sermon website here

Thank God for the Iranians

Slide4On 22nd January, the UN is sponsoring the Geneva 2 conference to try and resolve the conflict in Syria. An Iranian delegation has not been invited. That is ironic since everyone, from the Royal Family and the Prime Minister, and even the US President and politicians of both main parties, are celebrating the visit of an Iranian delegation to Palestine this week. They were carrying funds for an opposition leader the Israeli authorities wanted dead. They met covertly with his family, then created a diplomatic incident by leaving the country without notifying the authorities. The historic visit of the Magi has a contemporary ring to it. Without Iran and Iranian involvement in the Nativity story, we would not have exchanged gifts on Christmas Day!

This morning, let us note how the Christmas story is a study in contrasts. The contrast between religious hypocrisy and spiritual integrity. Between the religious hyprocrisy of Herod and the Priests, and the spiritual integrity of the Shepherds and Magi. How are we to distinguish one from the other?

Thank God for the Iranians from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

Continue reading →

Becoming like Children Again

Why do we smile when we see a baby, even when we are having a bad hair day? Have you ever wondered what it is about babies that melts our hearts? Why are we instinctively drawn toward babies? Is it because a new person has come into the world? The thought that this person is unique? Is it the sight of their tiny hands and feet so perfectly formed?  Is it their vulnerability? Their big blue or brown eyes?

Nobel-Prize-winning zoologist Konrad Lorenz first suggested that the structure of the infant face, a relatively large head in proportion to the body, with large eyes and bulging cheeks, elicit these responses.

Morten Kringelbach and Alan Stein from the University of Oxford have also observed that a region of the human brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex is highly active when we see the face of an infant. The medial orbitofrontal cortex is located in the front of the brain, just over the eyeballs. It is a key region for our emotions. What Kringelbach and Stein observed in their sensory experiments was that the brain reacts within a seventh of a second to seeking an infant face but not to an adult face. These responses are too fast to be consciously controlled and are therefore probably instinctive. It may therefore provide the necessary emotional tagging of infant faces that predisposes us to treat babies as special and ensure a protective bond.

Becoming like Children Again from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

Continue reading →

The Magnificat: The Song of Mary

 

What is going to be the biggest musical hit this Christmas? Apparently the all-time, best selling Christmas song is Band Aid’s “Do they know it’s Christmas?” closely followed by Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” and Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. But beating them all is Mary’s Song. Known as the “Magnificat anima mea Dominum”, it is one of the earliest Christian hymns, sung in hundreds of thousands of churches of all denominations, every week for at least 1,500 years.

And today we are going to see why. As we saw last week, Mary had some serious liabilities – she was pregnant, she was young, she was poor, she was unmarried, she was from a dubious neighbourhood. And that was just the start of her problems. Besides all that, she faced divorce by Joseph, rejection by her family and death by stoning. Good reasons why, when the angel left her,

“Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.” (Luke 1:39-40)

Luke 1 wonderfully records the providential work of God in providing Mary with a friend who would understand. The narrative of not one, but two, miraculous conceptions woven together in parallel, as the mothers support and encourage each other.

  1. Both begin with an introduction of the child’s parents.
  2. Both mention specific obstacles to childbearing—Elizabeth’s barrenness and Mary’s virginity.
  3. The angel Gabriel made both announcements, each time to someone living in a small, out-of-the-way location..
  4. In both there was a fearful first reaction to Gabriel’s words and a statement of reassurance from him.
  5. Then there is a description of the coming son and,
  6. In each case, an objection raised—by Zacharias, unbelief; by Joseph, lack of understanding.
  7. Last, Gabriel’s promises confirmation that his announcement will come to pass.

Continue reading →

Light Force: Brother Andrew

Reading this book may seriously put some at risk – at risk of facing latent prejudices and stereotypes caused by selective reading or biased reporting on the Middle East. I am delighted that Hodder has had the courage to publish Brother Andrew’s book Light Force in Britain, because it could not have been an easy decision. There will be many who will wish this book does not receive the wide readership it justly deserves. Elizabeth Elliott, for example, lost many ‘friends’ when she wrote her similarly controversial book, Furnace of the Lord (published in 1969 also incidentally by Hodder & Stoughton), in which she describes her empathy for the suffering of the Palestinians and her overriding concern for people rather than so called ‘prophecy’.

In his first book, God’s Smuggler, Brother Andrew describes how the Lord provided an open door through the Iron Curtain enabling Western Christians to sustain and equip the suffering Church in Eastern Europe to withstand the onslaught of atheistic Communism. Eventually, however, he became too well known, a marked man. Brother Andrew was therefore led to focus his ministry on supporting another persecuted Church, this time in the Middle East, caught between Jewish Zionism and Islamic fundamentalism.

While many have succumbed to the temptation to make an all too brief visit and write yet another superficial account of their impressions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Brother Andrew has waited 35 years to publish his diary, revealing with great candour, his many unpublicized visits to strengthen the suffering Church.

Continue reading →