A small summer, bank holiday tribute to Mock the Week:

“Things you’d never hear in church”. Contestants to the performance area, please…

• Bless you, Vicar. You’re the one with the training. You decide.
• I think as a PCC we just don’t pray enough.
• No, our generation has had its own way for long enough. It’s time for you young people to show us how it’s done.
• He’s a hard working man with his heart in the right place. He needs our support.
• I’m sure we can find another £500 a year to pay for that project.
• Let’s do something spontaneous, generous and anonymous for the vicar’s family.
• I love the way children behave in church.
• Thank you for pointing out my children’s inconsiderate behaviour. I’ll have a quiet word with them.
• The diocese think we’ve paid too much quota this month.
• Are you sure you’ve taken all your annual leave this year, Rector?
• Surely we could give more to support the work of the diocese?
• No, no, we don’t need you to be at this meeting, Vicar. We can manage without you.
• Do we really need to set up another committee to decide that?
• I know she never came to church, so I suppose she wasn’t really a Christian.
• We don’t want to use this christening as just an excuse for a party. We want the service to be the important bit.
• I’d really love to learn some new hymns.
• I’m going to go home and really think about what you said in your sermon, Vicar.
• I realise now that my Sunday School faith isn’t enough.

And, finally…

• Yes. Let’s give that a go.

In 1935 Dietrich Bonhoeffer set up an illegal seminary in Finkenwalde, in opposition to the Nazi dominated structures of the National Church:

The programme for the day began and ended with two long services. In the morning the service was followed by half an hour’s meditation, an exercise that was not interrupted by the circumstances of the removal, though packing cases and youth hostel bunks were the only furniture. The services did not take place in church but round the ordinary dinner-table. They invariably began with a Psalm and a hymn specially chosen for the day. There followed a lesson from the Old Testament, a set verse from a hymn (sung daily for several weeks), a New Testament lesson, a period of extempore prayer and the recital of the Lord’s Prayer. Each service concluded with another set verse from a hymn. Readings from the Psalms and the Scripture took the form of a lectio continua, for preference without any omissions. In structure this very much resembled Anglican evensong. Bonhoeffer believed that this sequence of readings and prayers was the most natural and suitable form of service for theologians.¹

Quite.

1. From Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: theologian, Christian, contemporary. ed. Edwin Robertson, tran. Eric Mosbacher (London: Collins, 1970). [↩]

Choirs and Articles

The changing rooms of Durham Choir School at the end of a school term is a bit like the Church of England : full of Thirty-Nine articles, which nobody very much wants.

Attributed to John Grove, in a talk by Canon Martin Warner, Rochester Cathedral, 16 September 2002

Huge Tragedy
John Ibbitson, of the Globe and Mail, on 14 September 2002 referred to an alleged conspiracy to murder an OPP police officer in Brockville in December 1999.

…the police and the local Crown attorney became convinced that they had prevented a tragedy of CNN proportions…

(… a tragedy of CNN proportions … Can a tragedy get any bigger?)

Smile!

…the great value of wearing a SMILE badge is that it leaves your face free to scowl.

Malcolm Bradbury, ‘Havernization’ , The New York Times, 29 September, 1977

Dorothy Sayers’ Ethic

Do this, do that, love your friends and like your neighbours, be just, be extravagantly generous, be honest, be tolerant, have courage, have compassion, use your wits and your imagination, understand the world you live in and be on terms with it, don’t dramatise and dream of escape. Anyhow, that seems to me to be the pattern, so far as we can make it out here.
So come in again with your eyes open, when you feel you can.

Dorothy Sayers, quoted in Anglicansonline.org 1 September 2002

Practical Eating

“If it’s slower than me, stupider than me, and tastes better than me, then I’m eating it.”

Anthony Bourdain, guest chef on Steve Wright in the Afternoon, Radio 2, 24 January 2002

Jacob the Chandler
“What do you understand about St. John’s Apocalypse?” the friar asked the chandler. “At what university did you study? At the loom, I suppose? For I understand that you were nothing but a poor weaver and chandler before you went around preaching and rebaptizing. . . . I have attended the university of Louvain, and for long studied divinity, and yet I do not understand anything at all about St John’s Apocalypse. This is a fact.” To which Jacob answered: “Therefore Christ thanked his heavenly Father that he had revealed and made it known to babes and hid it from the wise of this world, as it is written in Matt. 11:25.” “Exactly!” the friar replied, “God has revealed it to the weavers at the loom, to the cobblers on the bench, and to bellow-menders, lantern tinkers, scissors grinders, brass makers, thatchers and all sorts of riff-raff, and poor, filthy and lousy beggars. And to us ecclesiastics who have studied from our youth, night and day, God has concealed it.”

Disputation between Jacob de Keersgieter and Mgr. Friar Cornelis, a Franciscan monk; in the presence of Mhr. Jan van Damme, Recorder, and Mhr. Michiel Houwaert, Clerk of the Criminal Court, on the 9th of May, AD 1569, quoted in Thieleman J. van Braght The Martyrs’ Mirror (1660)

God and Christmas Round Robins
God gets plenty of credit. One family, emigrants to the US, reminds us of “God’s amazing and ever-available peace and love”, which sadly was not available enough to prevent Dottie from getting “polymyalgia overlying fibromyalgia”. He was, however, able to help a young Yorkshirewoman with anorexia. As a last resort, she was advised to visit a church in Bridlington where the vicar prayed for her. “There was no immediate feeling of change, but as she drove home again she felt very hungry and stopped in a filling station for an Eccles cake.” Truly are His ways mysterious.

Others take a more robust attitude: “The new Archbishop of Canterbury has carefully cultivated an unkempt and dishevelled appearance, which is frightening to behold, and in defiance of the law of Leviticus.”

Simon Hoggart in ‘Despite the castration, it’s been a good year’ The Guardian, Saturday January 3, 2004

Rogue Bibles

• The Wicked Bible 1631 Thou shalt commit adultery [Exodus 20:14]
• The Fool’s Bible 1634? The fool hath said in his heart there is a God [Psalm 14:1]
• The Unrighteous Bible 1653 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God? (Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?) [I Corinthians 6:9] Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin. (Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto) [Romans 6:13]
• The Judas Bible 1614 Then cometh Judas with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. [Matthew 26:36]
• The Sinners’ Bible 1716 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin on more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. [John 5:14]
• The Vinegar Bible 1717 The Parable of the Vinegar [chapter heading for Luke 13:6-9]
• The Forgotten Sins Bible 1638 Her sins, which are many, are forgotten [Luke 7:47]
• The Bishops’ Bible Third edition 1572 The incipits were elaborate decorations, left over from a printing of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The beginning of Hebrews was illustrated with the seduction of Leda Zeus disguised as a swan.
• The Camel’s Bible 1823 And Rebekah arose, and her camels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man [Genesis 24:61 damsels]
• The Standing Fishes Bible 1806 And it shall come to pass that the fishes shall stand upon it. [Ezekiel 47:10 'fishers']
• The Placemaker’s Bible (Geneva Bible, second edition) 1562 Blessed are the placemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. [Matthew 5:9]
• The Bug Bibles 1535 (Miles Coverdale) and 1537 (Thomas Matthews) Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night [Psalm 91:5]
• The Printer’s Bible 1702 Printers have persecuted me without a cause (Psalm 119:161)
• The Breeches Bible (Geneva Bible) 1560 they sewed fig tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches [Genesis 3:7]