These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

George Brown & John Thomas, Christian pioneers

George Brown

The Rev Cecil Gribble, a former General Secretary of Methodist Overseas Missions wrote this about George Brown:

In the long history of Methodist Missions in the Pacific there is no figure more striking nor personality more colourful than that of the pioneer missionary and administrator, Dr George Brown.

 George Brown (1835-1917) was born in Barnard Castle in County Durham in north east England. His mother died when he was only five. When his father remarried young George did not get on well with his stepmother so as a teenager he left home and his father arranged an apprenticeship for him at the seaport of Sunderland. George left this work without his father or employer’s permission and ran away to sea travelling in the Mediterranean to Canada and then on to New Zealand. There he went to the home of his aunt and uncle, Rev. Thomas and Mrs Sarah Buddle. They were Methodist missionaries working amongst the Maori people. As George Brown shared in the life of the Buddle family (with their nine children) and attended Church he experienced the grace of God and became a follower of Jesus Christ. He applied to the Auckland gathering of Methodist ministers to become a minister and to serve as a missionary. Brown was accepted though not unanimously. It was necessary then for him to find a wife. He had met Sarah Lydia Wallis whose parents were also Methodist missionaries in New Zealand. George asked Lydia to marry him and enter a life of missionary service with him. She agreed.

George and Lydia went to serve in Samoa at a time of tribal fighting and much lawlessness. There was also tension between the two churches – the Congregational Church established by the London Missionary Society and the Methodist Church established by the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Both organisations had been active in Tonga and Samoa. A decision was taken in the Mission Headquarters in London that the Wesleyans would work in Tonga and the LMS in Samoa. The only problem was the Samoan Methodists refused to be directed by London. So the Wesleyans felt that they had no option but to go and nurture those who refused to forsake Methodism. Whilst George Brown had good personal relationships with the LMS missionaries in the field, the Congregationalists made complaints about him and his work to the Methodist Mission Board in Australia. So Brown not only had to deal with the violence and heathen practices he was encountering amongst the Samoan people, he had to write lengthy reports defending himself and his work to the home Board.

The Browns left Samoa after fifteen years of faithful work. That pioneering ministry which developed leaders and was involved in peacemaking is still recognised in Samoa today with one of the Church Schools being named the George Brown Junior High School. Well before he left Samoa George Brown had a dream of what he called the ‘new mission’. The islands of New Britain and New Ireland in New Guinea had received no missionary. George Brown pleaded with the Mission Board to let him lead a party to take the Good News to these dangerous cannibalistic people. The Board agreed and George Brown set about raising money for the venture. He had been impressed by the way the LMS had used converts from established areas to take the Good News to new fields. Tahitians went to the Cook Islands, Cook Islanders went to Samoa and so on. So George Brown recruited some Samoans. He decided to recruit also from Fiji to complete his team. The story of Brown’s visit to Fiji has often been told but it should be repeated for each new generation.

George Brown went to Fiji to recruit workers for the ‘New Mission’ when a quarter of the population had been decimated in a measles epidemic. He went to the Training Institution and spoke to the assembled students about the dangers, the illness and the possibility of dying away from home. Brown was about to call for volunteers when the Principal, the Rev. Joseph Waterhouse, suggested that they go to their homes, talk with loved ones and pray about the possibility of a call from God. ‘Then’, he said, ‘we can meet again in the morning to take your answer then’. When the students met again in the morning the whole 83 expressed their willingness to go. It was an amazing sight and a testimony to the power of the Gospel in Fiji. Six of the married students and three single men were selected to go. That, however, was not the end of the matter! George Brown and the volunteers were summoned to Government House where the Administrator reminded the group that they were now British subjects and no missionary had any right to compel them to go to any place where they did not wish to go. He also outlined the dangerous nature of the task that was being undertaken. Then one of the Fijians, Aminio Baledrokadroka, spoke up for the group. He thanked His Honour for his advice but assured him that Mr Brown had told them of all the dangers and the Rev. Waterhouse had told them clearly that they were free to go or free to remain. Aminio then concluded with these stirring words:

But sir, we have fully considered this matter in our hearts; no one has pressed us in any way; we have given ourselves up to do God’s work, and our mind today, sir, is to go with Mr Brown  If we die, we die; if we live we live.

Many of them died!

George Brown and his party established their base in the Duke of York Islands off the coast of New Britain. When the mission ship returned to Australia George Brown knew that he had to stay with his Pacific island friends who had come with him on this New Mission. They had arrived on 15 August 1875and gradually built the trust of the people. Some of the chiefs agreed to have teachers. Little by little the people came to learn of the God of love who wanted them to live at peace with their neighbours. In 1878 on New Ireland some of the people said that before the lotu (the Gospel) came to them they were always at war but now they were almost forgetting how to fight. Any sense of satisfaction in the progress of the mission was shattered when on 6 April 1878 four of the Fijian workers – a minister, a young man helping him and two teachers were murdered, then the bodies dismembered, distributed and eaten. Their widows and children were terrified. The Chief involved sent the word that others in the party, traders in the area and George Brown himself would be next.

George Brown had to face the most difficult decision in his life. The traders were determined to mount a punitive expedition. The Fijian and Samoan teachers were determined to avenge the murder of their colleagues. George Brown was uncertain if his participation would put the new mission at risk or if non-participation would put the lives of the staff and his own family at risk. In the end he decided to join the punitive expedition when people were shot, houses were burned, coconut trees were cut down and gardens were destroyed. Of course there was no police force, no army. New Britain was a frontier community without the rule of law. The decision to participate would haunt Brown for years. He sent a full report to the Mission Board where his actions were hotly debated. In subsequent years he would have to face the Board in an attempt to explain his course of action.

The Blanche Bay Affair as it was known, was reported and discussed in the press in Sydney and well beyond. George Brown’s actions would also be debated in the New South Wales Conference and later in the General Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australasia. What concerned Brown so much was that people spoke out of the comfort of their situation without comprehending the dangers that Brown and others had faced. Brown also went to Fiji to the colonial headquarters of the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific. Even though the Chief Justice was keen to try Brown and even gaol him, the High Commission indicated that ‘yours is not such a case as ought to be prosecuted’. So Brown was free to go.

Despite all the heated debates and arguments it was clear that George Brown still had the confidence of the Church. Some years after he and Lydia had returned to Australia he was elected General Secretary for Missions in 1887. In 1891 he was elected President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in New South Wales and Queensland. In 1913 he was elected President General of the Methodist Church in Australasia.

During his years as General Secretary for Missions he was deeply involved in the preparation for, and then went with the original party to establish a mission in the islands at the eastern end of Papua New Guinea. That group led by Dr W. Bromilow and those who succeeded them, established a Church which today is known as the Papuan Islands Region of the United Church in Papua New Guinea. George Brown was similarly involved in 1902 in commencing the work in the Western Solomon Islands led by the Rev. John Goldie and which today forms the Bougainville Region of the UCPNG and the United Church in the Solomon Islands. Under his leadership, Miss Hannah Dudley went to Fiji to commence work among the families of the Indian labourers who had come to work in the cane fields of Fiji. Today it is the Indian Division of the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma. George Brown not only kept pushing the boundaries of mission work geographically. He attempted, over several years to reconcile the divided Church in Tonga but was unsuccessful. He was a strong advocate for single women to serve as missionaries and to give leadership in the Church. He also promoted the establishment of a trained indigenous ministry and the involvement of indigenous lay people in the meetings and running of the Church. In Australia he advocated for the Union of the three branches of Methodism and for the wider Union of Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational Churches.

Even with all he did within the life of the Church it would be a mistake to think that his interests were confined to that. He was a linguist, speaking several Pacific Island languages. He was an amateur anthropologist collecting a vast number of artefacts. His wish was that his collection should remain intact. After several locations in England it is today in the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka in Japan. George Brown recognised the value of photography and a collection of his photos is in the Australian Museum. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Divinity by McGill University in Canada.

A wonderful book, Pacific Missionary George Brown 1835-1917 Wesleyan Methodist Church by Margaret Reeson tells much more about this remarkable man and his wife. As it says on the cover of that book, after listing Brown’s many accomplishments, ‘He saw himself, at heart, a missionary’.

 Margaret Reeson

John Thomas

 The Rev. John Thomas (1797 – 1881) and his wife Sarah were sent by the Methodist Missionary Society in Great Britain to serve in Tonga. They were there from 1826 until 1850 and from 1856 until 1859. Even though John Thomas was not the first missionary to arrive in Tonga he is regarded by the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga as the Father of the Church.

John Thomas, the son of a blacksmith and a blacksmith himself, was very aware of his academic limitations. He wrote of himself in his personal journal,

my own rough and knotty mind . . . what a raw, weak and uncultivated wretch was I when I left our England.

 This self-deprecation appears quite frequently in his personal writing. Limited education he may have had, but he was an outstanding observer of life. He may not have had a sparkling personality, but he had great plodding persistence. Those qualities enabled him to write an amazing chronicle of the history of Tonga which covers a period prior to the arrival of European influences. He also records the establishment and growth of the Church.

He provides the genealogies of significant people, records the arrivals and departures of ships and geographical information about the Island group. It is evident that John Thomas had the confidence of the people for they shared their stories and beliefs with him.

While John and Sarah Thomas were in Sydney preparing to go to Tonga there was a lot of pressure put on him to remain in Sydney, to serve in one of the circuits there. He was, however, very clear in his own mind that the Mission Committee had appointed him to Tonga and to Tonga he would go. John and Sarah Thomas had tragedy in their lives when Mrs Thomas had a number of miscarriages. At last a son was born and named John. Nine years later tragedy struck again when the child died. Later when they returned to England, Mrs Thomas also died. When John remarried his new wife had a son but sadly that child too died when he was nine years of age. John Thomas lamented there was no one to pass his written material to. He thought he might destroy it. Fortunately, he did not and his History of Tonga is a goldmine of information for Tongan people and for students of Tongan history.

John Thomas was a very spiritual man and a number of stories have grown up around his life.  A Tongan preacher told the story of John Thomas landing on an island to share the gospel of Jesus. He knelt on the beach to pray. Even though the water lapped around him his trousers were not wet.

Some people would be critical of John Thomas because he was pivotal in many people forsaking their traditional gods and becoming followers of Jesus Christ. The value of that was indicated by a story written by John Thomas. A King was gravely ill and one of his sons was strangled to appease the gods and to facilitate his father’s recovery. Even though John Thomas worked relentlessly to bring change in Tonga and to have the people follow a new way, the way of Jesus, no one did more to record the beliefs and history and genealogy of the Tongan people. He believed that there would come a time when people would want to know their history and about their culture. When they did, John Thomas has recorded it for them.

He was truly the Father of the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga.

by Rev John Mavor

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

20 – Liyapidiny Marika O.A.M., Christian pioneer

The Rev. Liyapidiny Marika was the first Yolngu woman (Aboriginal woman from the North East Arnhem region of Northern Territory) to be ordained as a Minister of the Word in the Uniting Church in Australia.

She was born in 1945 at Yirrkala, then a Methodist Mission, into the Gumana family. There she grew up, married into the Marika family and raised three children. In 1970, she became a full time Health Worker among her own people. She devoted herself to this work and was awarded an O.A.M. in 1981 in recognition of her service. During these years, she was daily involved in the physical, mental and spiritual suffering of her people and her concern for their future welfare deepened.

At the same time, she was an Elder of the Yirrkala congregation and experienced God moving by the Holy Spirit in the lives of her people. This led her to resign her position as Health Worker in 1986 and begin training for the ordained ministry at Nungalinya College in Darwin. In September 1991 she was ordained as a Minister of the Word and took up placement in the Yirrkala Parish. As the first ordained Aboriginal woman, her ministry was not always accepted but she would say, “God called me, even though I am a woman, to do His Ministry.”

In her placement at Yirrkala, she worked hard, faithfully serving the people and reaching out with the message of God’s love to the whole community, even though at times she found the work difficult. Her gifts were recognised by the wider church and she provided leadership in Bible Studies, seminars and as a lecturer at Nungalinya College. Her insights through her teaching and preaching were well received and she was an inspiration to many people beyond her homeland.

She travelled widely and enjoyed fellowship with women of other cultures, sharing their joys and sorrows. In 1990 in Malaysia, she walked arm in arm with her Asian sisters teaching them her theme song “Bind us together, Lord”. Even though her Asian sisters knew no English, they learnt the song and its meaning as an expression of solidarity with their Yolngu sister. One of her greatest thrills was to travel to the Holy Land and retrace the steps of Jesus.

Throughout her ministry, she never ceased to give leadership and share love. She was a strong supporter of the role of women in leadership and in the ministry of the church, pioneering ordination for women among her own people. She died on 31^st August 1998 having given herself unsparingly in service to her Lord and to her people.

Adapted from Northern Synod Memorial Minute October 1998.

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

31 – John Bunyan, faithful servant

John Bunyan is best remembered for his allegorical novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress, but perhaps he should best be remembered as a fearless preacher.

Bunyan was born in November 1628 in Bedfordshire, England, at a time of religious unrest. Growing up, he had a reputation for enjoying life to the full, but he married a woman with a strong faith, and through her influence joined a local non-conformist church. The change from blasphemer to preacher intrigued the population of Bedford, and his preaching increased in popularity and power.

After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, the meeting-houses of the non-conformists were closed by Act of Parliament, and preaching other than in authorized parish churches was forbidden. Bunyan, however, continued to preach throughout the countryside, and was arrested and gaoled for twelve years. It was while in prison that most of his books and articles were written.

Religious intolerance had meanwhile decreased, and after he was freed, he became a pastor, again spending much time preaching throughout the countryside. His boldness led him to be imprisoned for six months in 1675, and it was during this time that he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress. 

The spirit of God was so strong in Bunyan that he could not stop sharing the gospel no matter what the consequences. His boldness and confidence in God in all situations is reflected in his hymn “Who would true valour see” (TiS 561; AHB 467). John Bunyan’s life and works are remembered on 31^st August.

Contributed by Ruth Slater

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

20 – Augustine of Hippo, Christian thinker

Aurelius Augustinus, arguably perhaps the greatest figure in the Western church, was born at Thagaste in North Africa in 354CE, the son of a devout Christian mother, Monica and a pagan father, Patricius. He lived only five of his 76 years outside of North Africa. Schooled at Madaura and Carthage, his reading of Cicero’s protreptic work Hortensius inspired him at the age of eighteen – the same year when his father died and his own son Adeodatus was born – to pursue Truth. He taught briefly at Thagaste and then at Carthage and then in 383, perhaps to escape the suffocating presence of his mother, he took ship for Rome itself where he accepted an imperial post teaching rhetoric.

In the intervening years, in his quest for truth, he had read the Bible but without real interest and engaged as a hearer with the Manichaean sect. While in the end he ended his association with this group, their influence, positively or negatively, continued to inform his theological development for the rest of his life. After a short stay in Rome he accepted the imperial post of Professor of Rhetoric at Milan and his move there in 384 began for him a journey from Platonism to Christianity, from Milan to Cassiciacum to Ostia to Thagaste and thence to Hippo in North Africa.

In Milan he met the formidable bishop Ambrose who introduced him to (Neo) platonism and to Greek Fathers like Basil. In the garden of his residence at Milan he experienced his famous conversion, went on retreat to Cassiciacum where he wrote his Soliloquies, and thence to Ostia where he experienced his famous vision.

Following Monica’s death, he returned to North Africa and Thagaste via Rome and there determined to set up a retreat of sorts for like-minded men. A side-trip to Hippo – and the untimely death of his son – saw a life-changing experience where he was ordained, effectively by force, by the church there, made co-bishop and then, on the death of the bishop in 395, elected in his place.

As bishop he wrote much. Between 397 and 401 he wrote his magisterial Confessions in which he explored the personal life in the context of his own journey to faith. This work is widely regarded as not only a major text in the Christian canon but also in the Western literary canon itself. Over a twenty-year period – from 399 to 419 – he wrote the De Trinitate which has so influenced the development of this central doctrine in the Western church. From 411 onwards he began a series of anti-Donatist writings in which he developed his ecclesiological thought. Between 413 and 425 he authored the De Civitate Dei – perhaps it should have been titled A Tale of Two Cities! – in which he presented a way in which human history might be understood as a process in which people either turn towards God or away from God and into themselves. The content is somewhat drawn-out perhaps but the idea is magnificent. From 413 he began his writing against the teaching of the British Pelagius – whom he never actually met in person – and the so-called Pelagians, including the extremist Julian, bishop of Eclanum. His authoritative De natura et gratia in which he outlined his concerns with Pelagius’ own writings – though Augustine managed here to play the ball and not the man, for he clearly regarded him with great respect – and with presenting his notion of original sin [or guilt], that idea with which Augustine is clearly, rightly or not, so identified. The next few years saw other like writings, including the contra Julianum (in six books) and On Grace and Freewill. In his later years he developed and published his Retractationes in which he amended, modified and even dismissed some of his earlier views on a wide range of matters.

In 430, as the Arian Vandals besieged the city of Hippo the great bishop and Doctor of the Church died. When the Vandals finally entered and burned the city all that they left untouched were Augustine’s cathedral and his library.

 by Rev Dr David Mackay-Rankin

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

20 – William & Catherine Booth, reformers of the Church

William Booth, founder and first general of The Salvation Army, was born in relative poverty in Nottingham, England in 1829. By the age of 14 he was supporting his family by working as a pawnbroker’s apprentice which exposed him further to the reality of the lives of the poor.

Early spiritual influences came from the Broad Street Wesleyan Chapel and from contact with the preaching and methodology of American revivalist James Caughey. As an adolescent he led lay evangelistic efforts to Nottingham’s poor before moving to London in 1849 where he was involved in various groups within the Methodist Church. In 1861, aged 32, he left the Methodist New Connection to become an itinerant evangelist, commencing The Christian Mission in 1865, later re-named The Salvation Army.

Booth had an intense love for God. As a man, he was a risk taker with a strong commitment to continuous improvement. He was a person of ceaseless industry and innovation, with a passion to make the gospel accessible to the poor. This synthesised with a radical social conscience. He didn’t want to just bring the poor to faith in God (to get them ready for heaven) but he wanted them to experience redemption in the broader social and political environment. Furthermore, this vision of salvation was for the whole world, not just the slums of East London.

Booth’s commitment to social campaigns, such as the Purity Crusade of 1885 (a far-reaching campaign against teenage prostitution) was indicative of a growing activism around social issues. This was progressed further by the publication of In Darkest England and the Way Out, an ambitious plan to rescue 19th century England from her most pressing social woes.

In all this William was influenced and shaped by his relationship to Catherine Mumford, who he met in his early twenties. Catherine had grown up in a very protective Christian home where she had some long bouts of confinement due to ill health. In this environment she proved to be an assiduous reader and self- directed student, not only of the Bible (which she studied extensively) but also of a broader sweep of literature, including general and church history, spirituality and theology.

This immersion in text prepared her well for a future in which she took the step of preaching and speaking publicly based on her own conviction that this was something God required of her and being convinced herself that women had an equal right to speak. In this respect, Catherine made an important contribution to the ongoing expansion of the boundaries of women’s ministries in the broader church.

Like William, her gifts and capacities were recognised outside of The Salvation Army as well as inside it. A pre-eminent evangelist of the Victorian era, she was widely regarded as a deeply spiritual woman whose teaching was sound, convincing and enlightening.

There is no doubt that she exerted a huge influence in the shaping of the theology and practice of The Salvation Army, even though her death in 1890 came very early in the history of this fledgling movement. Writing fifty years after Catherine’s death, one Salvationist leader noted, “So much of the foundations of our Movement were built upon the character of this great woman, and so much of her beliefs, methods and teaching was woven into its early super-structure…”

William’s death in 1912, some 22 years after Catherine’s, was marked by a remarkable outpouring of public support and honour for the man who had risen from a life of poverty to create a worldwide movement that concerned itself with the salvation of the poor.

Written by by Major Christine Faragher

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Mary, mother of Jesus, witness to Jesus

Mary first appears in narratives woven around Christ’s nativity. Mary, a vulnerable young woman faces God’s surprising, frightening action with humility, receptiveness, and joy, embodied in her great canticle of praise, the Magnificat: ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my Spirit doth rejoice in God my saviour’. She is the humble and meek one exalted by God; as the genealogies of Christ make transparent, she is the one in whom God remembers his servant Israel, as he promised in the words of the prophets.

Mary’s openness to God’s Word is imagined in medieval depictions of the annunciation found in the prayer books of the late middle ages. Gabriel comes to Mary as she reads in a domestic interior – her open volume lies on a prayer desk. As her hands spread wide in surprise, she hears the angel’s ‘Hail’. The heavens open, and on beams of divine radiance, the Holy Spirit (or a naked Christ-child) wings its flight towards the Virgin. Often the Spirit flies not towards her womb, but towards her ear. In her faithful listening she conceives, her body full of grace.

In Latin, Gabriel’s ‘Hail’ is Ave: put this up to the spotless mirror of Mary, and you see the word Eva – Eve. To sing Ave Maria is to celebrate God’s entry into the world of human nakedness, to see Adam and Eve’s embarrassed veiling of the flesh after their first disobedience reversed in the nakedness of a little child, the nakedness of a man born to die upon the tree.

According to the Gospels, Mary’s heart was pierced with sorrow at the foot of the cross. Mary’s closeness to her son in his suffering is powerfully imagined in Rogier van der Weyden’s famous Deposition, now in the Prado in Madrid. There, Mary faints in the arms of John and Mary Magdalene, her pallid body mirroring the form of Christ’s limp corpse.

Mary’s agony is the birth-pangs of the church. For at the foot of the cross, Mary is given a new son, John, and John a new mother, Mary, even as the water and blood of baptism and the eucharist flow from Christ’s wounded side. Here, in the midst of death, new life is given in the word spoken from the cross, a word that gives birth to a new family of adoption, the infant church.

In another Van der Weyden altarpiece – the Miraflores altar, now in Berlin – after the terrifying events of Good Friday, Mary sits, trying, perhaps, to seek solace again in the words she had once trusted to be true. The book is now closed. But in the end there is the beginning – the wounded Word, the alpha and the omega, surprises the faithful servant again, and Mary turns to see what she and the whole creation have always longed to see: her son, face to face.

Links to images:

Annunciation from the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut: 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Heures_de_Boucicaut_-_f53v_%28Annonciation%29.jpg

Rogier van der Weyden, Descent from the Cross:
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection

Rogier van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece:
http://www.smb-digital.de/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultLightboxView/result.t1.collection_lightbox.$TspTitleImageLink.link&sp=10&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=0&sp=3&sp=Slightbox_3x4&sp=12&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=17

Matthew Champion

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Florence Nightingale & Edith Cavell, renewers of society

Florence Nightingale

At seventy, Florence Nightingale wrote, “When many years ago, I planned a future, my one idea was not organizing a hospital but organizing a religion”. History remembered the woman who cared for wounded British soldiers in the Crimean War and is credited with founding modern nursing, but few know of her fifty years of amazing accomplishments after Crimea.

Florence was born in 1820 into a wealthy Unitarian family and raised Church of England. Her father educated her ‘like a son’ he didn’t have – in history, science, languages and philosophy. Brilliant and religiously absorbed, Florence was frustrated with her privileged life in Victorian England, with its divinely ordained class system of rich and poor, rulers and workers. She spent much of her childhood helping poor villagers around her family’s estates.

At seventeen, she received an audible call to serve God, but her family thwarted any attempt to follow this call. In 1849, she visited a Deaconess training center in Germany and discovered her dream – women training to serve the poor. Florence finally left home at thirty-three to become volunteer superintendent of a home for destitute governesses in London and left for the Crimea from there. When she returned twenty-two months later, she avoided public acclaim and retreated from public life. A grateful nation had established the Nightingale Fund in her honor, but she did not start the proposed nursing school. Haunted by dead soldiers, reforming army medical services was a more pressing task. When the Nightingale Training School for Nurses opened in 1860, Florence submitted proposals for its administration, but her focus was army reform.

Over the next fifty years, Florence was involved in reforming colonial policy and sanitation in India, work house reform, hospital design and location, preventative medicine and village health education. She developed hospital record forms to analyze patient information, introduced trained nurses to poorhouses, advised on indigenous health in British colonies and drafted the British delegation’s recommendations to the Geneva Convention. She helped change laws that restricted women’s rights to their children, property and divorce, and worked for paid employment for women, accomplishing all this through politicians who came to her home for advice and guided the reforms through Parliament.

Florence can only be fully understood by taking seriously her divine calls as the inspiration for her life and work. She once thought of founding a religious order and visited a Paris convent to learn the disciplines she followed through her life. Her secluded, disciplined lifestyle after Crimea created her own monastic structure. Florence wrote an eight hundred-page manuscript offering a new religion for the poor, challenging the belief that poverty was God’s will. The Divine Spirit is in each of us, she said, guiding us, with the help of “saviours”, beyond any predetermined destiny – she saw herself as a “saviour” for her time. Her theological ideas reflected the later disciplines of liberation theology, process theology, feminist theology and contextual theology, exploring topics like the concept of God, universal law, God’s will, sin and evil, family life, spiritual life and life after death. Her conclusions were in dialogue with the Church of England Broad Church movement whose Essays and Reviews challenged the church in the 1860’s. Florence’s writings are one of the British Library’s largest collections. She died in 1910.

Reference: Val Webb, Florence Nightingale: the making of a radical theologian (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2002.

Val Webb

 Edith Cavell – Nurse, Humanitarian and Spy

Edith Cavell was born in Swardeston, near Norwich. Her father was a priest in the Anglican church. The religious faith that she was brought up with, was to provide an important influence on her life. In 1900, she trained to be a nurse at the London hospital. In 1907, she was recruited to be the matron of a new nursing school in Brussels. This was a period of growth in the prestige and importance of nursing; a period which began with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War.

In 1910, Miss Cavell began one of the first nursing journals, L’infirmiere, which documented good nursing practices and basic standards. She became a teacher of nurses in different hospitals throughout Belgium and sought to improve standards of nursing.

In the Nursing Mirror, Edith Cavell writes:

“The probationers wear blue dresses with white aprons and white collars. The contrast which they present to the nuns, in their heavy stiff robes, and to the lay nurses, in their grimy apparel, is the contrast of the unhygienic past with the enlightened present.”

In 1914, the First World War broke out. At the time, Miss Cavell was in England, but she moved back to Belgium to her hospital which was later taken over by the Red Cross. As part of the German Schlieffen plan, the Germans invaded Belgium and in late 1914, Brussels was under a very strict German military occupation.

Many British soldiers had been left behind in the withdrawal of the Allied forces and were stuck in Brussels. Miss Cavell decided to aid the British servicemen, hiding them in the hospital and safe houses around Belgium. From these safe houses, some 200 British servicemen were able to escape to neutral Holland. At the same time, she continued to act as nurse and treated wounded soldiers from both the German and Allied side. The occupying German army threatened strict punishments for anyone who was found to be ‘aiding and abetting the enemy’. Yet, despite the military rule, Miss Cavell continued to help. Edith wrote: “Nothing but physical impossibility, lack of space and money would make me close my doors to Allied refugees.”

In mid-1915, nurse Edith Cavell came under suspicion for helping allied servicemen to escape; this was not helped by her outspoken views on her perceived injustice of the occupation. In August 1915, she was arrested and held in St Gilles prison. After her arrest, she did not try to defend herself but only said in her defence that she felt compelled to help the people in need.

After a short trial, the German military tribunal found her guilty of treason and sentenced her to execution. This surprised many observers as it seemed harsh given her honesty and the fact she had saved many lives both Allied and German.

For two weeks prior to her execution, Miss Cavell, was kept in solitary confinement, except for a few brief visits. On the night before her execution, she was visited by the Reverend Stirling Gahan, an Anglican chaplain. He recorded her final conversation. He records that Miss Cavell said: “Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone.” She is also recorded as having said: “I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.”

On her last night, she wrote to her fellow nurses, saying: “I have told you that devotion will give you real happiness, and the thought that you have done, before God and yourselves, your whole duty and with a good heart will be your greatest support in the hard moments of life and in the face of death.”

Though diplomats from the neutral governments of the United States and Spain fought to commute her sentence, their efforts were ultimately in vain. After her execution, the fate of Edith Cavell was widely publicised in the British and American media. It was shown as more evidence of German brutality and injustice. Edith Cavell was portrayed as a heroic and innocent figure who remained steadfast in her Christian faith and willingness to die for her country.

Tejvan Pettinger

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

John the Baptist, witness to Jesus

Prior to Christ’s ministry we meet John, called the Baptist. John, whose name means “God has shown favour”, is found in all four Gospels. He is described as being from God, sent to bear witness to the light, the Messiah, who is on his way. He is not the light but rather is to prepare the way for the light. Matthew and Luke start their Gospels with an introduction before introducing John and starting their account of the ministry of the Messiah who was to come. Mark starts his Gospel with the Baptist and John’s gospel weaves the Baptist into the coming of the light into the world.

It was customary to begin historical narratives by dating them according to the years of rulers and officials. Luke, the historian, therefore shows that John began preaching somewhere during ad 27 or ad 28. This therefore is when Jesus started his ministry also. \

In the Christian Calendar he is remembered during Advent. He exemplifies the Advent message when we look back to what has gone before and look forward to what is to come.

John’s father, Zechariah, was a priest at the Temple, but John did not continue the family calling. He grew up in the desert and was said to have lived on locusts and wild honey. He dressed in a camelhair coat with a leather belt. This was the clothes of a prophet in the OT. The word of God came to John – the words used throughout the OT to denote a prophet.

As prophesied in the Old Testament, John is the one who is crying in the wilderness.

John had a new message to tell and a new rite to introduce. He preached a baptism of radical repentance for the forgiveness of sin. Repentance in the Judaism of the time meant a total change in direction. A person was not saved by outward reformation, changing only what other people could see.

What was needed was an inner transformation. His baptism was new in that he was asking the Jews themselves to be baptized as a sign of repentance.

The message that John gives is ‘By God’s grace, remove every obstacle that is stopping the Lord’s entrance into your hearts and lives’. He taught that God could turn stones into children of Abraham, what was required was repentance. It was not being one of the elect or being born an ethnic Jew that mattered.

For baptism, John needed water, so he remained in the region around the Jordan River.

John’s message was not about looking back but forward to the new age. God’s doing a new thing here. Part of his message is that the end has started. Someone was coming – John was getting the people ready. It is not clear if John understood who was coming but what John did with water, the coming one would do with the Holy Spirit.

We are told that Herod Antipas had John arrested and put to death due to John preaching about Herod’s sexual immorality.

Rev Peter Welsh

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Ignatius Loyola, person of prayer

Ignatius Loyola was born in 1491 in the Basque region of northern Spain. He lived in a time that was characterised by both the violent and bewildered imagery of the medieval age and the bright and enthusiastic expectations of the Renaissance. He grew up in a society that was structured around the principles of knightly chivalry, and served as a courtier to the Duke of Najera. In this service he was seriously wounded during the defense of Pamplona in 1521. Until his early years, he was a practicing Catholic though with little intensity in his spirituality. While he was convalescing, however, he yearned to read books of chivalric romance, but the only books available were a Life of Christ and a book of the Lives of the Saints. The more he read of these books, the more there developed in him a desire to reflect on that reading. This reflection led to him making a commitment to serve Christ as his only Captain.

For a time, Ignatius supposed that he would live out this service though pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he could live in the footsteps of Christ and serve the poor. When this course was closed to him, and because of a sanction from the Inquisition, Ignatius became a student at a number of educational institutions, including the University of Paris. It was during this time that Ignatius began to formalise his own experiences into a program he called The Spiritual Exercises. At the same time, there gathered around Ignatius a group of people who recognised his spiritual leadership, and together they formed the Society of Jesus. The Spiritual Exercises continue to be a source of blessing for many people, being offered as a means by which the will of God may be discerned, and Christ’s presence better experienced.

Divided into 4 “weeks” of reflection, the Exercises provide opportunity for reflection on our relationship with God, on our experience of the presence and power of Jesus, with an invitation to use imagination to enter into the experiences of the Gospels, and on different ways of prayer through which we can wait more patiently, listen more effectively, and respond more fully to the Word God speaks to us.

Ignatius rightly holds a place in the Calendar of Commemorations as a person of prayer, both from the example of his own life and from the legacy by which he continues to provide guidance to people as we seek to discern the Spirit of Christ in our own living.

A prayer of Ignatius is given us in the “Treasury of Prayers” in Uniting in Worship 2:

Teach us, good Lord,
to serve you as you deserve:
to give, and not to count the cost;
to fight, and not to heed the wounds;
to toil, and not to seek for rest;
to labour, and not to ask for any reward,
except that of knowing that we do your holy will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Contributed by Graham Vawser

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Benedict of Nursia, person of prayer

Benedict of Nursia was born around the year 480CE in Umbria, Italy. Four years before his birth the Roman Empire had fallen, and the world into which Benedict was born was one of violence, turmoil, uncertainty and insecurity. Around the age of 19-20 he travelled to Rome to study the liberal arts. However, he found life in the city dissolute and immoral, not to his liking at all. So around the year 500CE he abandoned his studies and went to live in an isolated place near Effide (modern Affile). After living here for about two years he sought deeper solitude. He took up residence in a cave at Subiaco. Romanus, a monk who lived nearby, encouraged him to live the hermit life, supplied him with a habit and on occasions brought him food. Over time he gradually became known for his piety.

When the abbot of a nearby monastery died the monks asked Benedict, even though he was only about 25 years old, to come and be their abbot. Knowing of their way of life, and being unimpressed by it, Benedict was reluctant to go. Eventually he went and unfortunately found his misgivings were confirmed. Their way of life was very different from Benedict’s and they were in no mood to be reformed by him. After two attempts to poison him failed, Benedict returned to his solitude. But he was by now well known and people would come to him for spiritual guidance. It was at this point he began the monastic life that would later flourish. In the valley of Subiaco he established 12 small monasteries each with 12 monks and a superior. This success was not received well by the nearby priest who tried to undermine Benedict’s efforts. Eventually this opposition got the better of him and he moved the monks to the famous Monte Cassino, which became and has remained the central home of the Benedictine family. It was here he wrote his famous rule and it was where he died on March 21^st 543. Benedict’s feast day is July 11^th.

Benedict is known mostly for the rule of monastic life that he wrote and which has been the most influential document on Western monasticism. It is very short, about 9000 words, but renowned for its moderation, balance and gentleness, containing as Benedict said, ‘nothing harsh, nothing burdensome’. His aim in writing the Rule was that it should be a guide to living the Gospels. Thus it is saturated with Biblical references and images. The best known parts of the Rule are Chapter 7 on humility and Chapter 53 on welcoming guests to the monastery as Christ.

In our world, which perhaps reflects something of Benedict’s with the violence and uncertainty, the voice of this monk is speaking in a fresh way in our time. He calls us to a balance of prayer and work, of seeking to be aware of God’s presence everywhere and seeing in all others the presence of Christ. In a world where we can feel life is out of balance, where our environment is in a perilous state and where human divisions abound, perhaps it’s a good time to learn the wisdom of Benedict again.

Contributed by Gary Stuckey