Dear Justice Mail Friends
This Blog will shortly be closed. To find the Justice Mail action visit the Justice Mail Website at
http://www.justicemail.org.uk and see the New Justice Mail Blog.
Cheers
Mike Cross
All Saints Kings Heath.
Friday, 15 February 2013
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Justice Mail Request 29 Jan 2013
Dear Justice Mail Friends
There
is plenty of food in the world and yet one in eight people are hungry and
approximately 2 million young children die every year from malnutrition. On 23
January in Somerset House, London, more than 100 British organisations joined
together to launch a new campaign entitled “Enough Food for Everyone – IF”.
David Cameron is chair of the G8, which meets in June in Northern Ireland. This
is the year when we need a massive campaign to demand an end to the causes of
world hunger, including action to prevent tax dodging by corporations, which is
estimated to deprive developing countries of $160 billion every year.
Many
of you will already have received invitations to join the campaign. Christian
Aid, Oxfam, UNICEF, Save the Children and many others are sponsoring it. I have
decided to ask you to join the campaign through CAFOD, the overseas development
organisation of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, simply because we
have not yet supported a CAFOD campaign, and I think we should!
When
you follow the link below you will be taken to the CAFOD website. All you have
to do is provide your name and postcode and send it. You will then receive an
email giving you more information about the campaign and what you can do. We
need to persuade hundreds of thousands of church members to join and abolish
global hunger.
John Hull
Queens Foundation
Saturday, 26 January 2013
All Saints Church and Justice Mail
Changing the Church
and saving the world
In 2004 the All Saints Social Justice Act ion
Group, which is a sub-committee of the Parish Council, began to build up a list
of email addresses of members of the congregation who were interested in taking
actions on some of the great social justice issues of our day. Gradually the
list grew until it had more than thirty email addresses. Members of the SJAG
then combed through the websites of organisations like Christian
Aid and Oxfam, selected one of the campaigns currently being
advocated, and sent the link to people on the list. Members of the list would receive the message
and enter the link, which would take them to a message which could be sent to
their Member of Parliament, a business corporation or some other responsible
person with the power to bring about change.
About that time we discovered that an Anglican church in Leicester had hit upon the same idea. Representatives of
the two churches, All Saints in Kings Heath and the Church of the Martyrs in Leicester , got together and agreed to form a sort of
alliance. We called it “Justice Mail”. We decided to help busy people who
wanted to change the world but did not have the time to work out what to do. As
the work became better known, both churches received requests from other parts
of the country to join the lists.
A new Church movement
is born
Gradually new lists were formed in new congregations. A list
was started for ministerial students in the Queen’s Foundation in Edgbaston. A
constitution for Justice Mail was drawn up and adopted in 2010. By now, Justice
Mail was being used by several hundreds of people, and an impact was being made
both upon the culture of those local congregations and upon the campaign issue.
Now Justice Mail has its own website. If you go to www.justicemail.org.uk you will find
it. The St Peter’s Saltley Trust in Birmingham Act ion on
Poverty, the Refugee Council and the Jubilee Debt Campaign. There is a full
list of them on the website.
Would you like to
join us?
Justice Mail is free. There are no charges. The list
managers give their time and skill without charge. If you join Justice Mail you
will become familiar with many of the great issues of social justice in Britain Kingdom of God Michael Cross , who
manages the All Saints list. His address is cross_xmacx@yahoo.co.uk And don’t forget to recommend the Justice
Mail website to your friends.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
The Birth of Jesus and the power of the Empire
When we hear Matthew’s story of the Nativity, our natural
response is to ask what it means to us today. But let us try to listen in the
way that Christians in the 1st century might have listened. How
would it have sounded to them?
The gospel of Matthew, written perhaps about 80 AD, probably
came from the ancient city of Antioch Mediterranean . Antioch province
of Syria Jerusalem Antioch Act s
11:19 -26; 13:1-3). The
terrible bloodshed of the Jewish war 66-70 AD and the destruction of the temple
would still be fresh in people’s minds.
Matthew and Isaiah
Isaiah was the favourite scripture of the early church. It
was believed that all the major events of the life and death of Jesus were
described in this prophetic book. It is not surprising then that when Matthew
wanted to present the early traditions about the birth of Jesus Christ he asked
his listeners to hear his account against the background of Isaiah. The section
of Isaiah that is selected for this purpose was also very significant. Matthew
drew his material from Isaiah chapters 7-9, using quotations from Isaiah 7:14
and Isaiah 9:1-2 as the bookends of his account. You can find his quotations in
Matthew 1:22-23 and 4:14 -16.
I call these “bookends” because the earlier part of Matthew 1 is basically the
family tree of Jesus and Chapter 4:17 introduces the public ministry of Jesus.
These chapters describe the dangerous expansion of the
Assyrian empire in the late 8th century BC. An alliance of two small
states just to the north of Judah Assyria and
threatening to take over Judah kingdom of Judah
Once again, in the first century AD, the land of Palestine Judah Antioch 4:16 ). The “Galilee
of the Gentiles” (verse 15), ie the sacred lands now trodden by pagans, would
be restored.
This is why the child of promise was called Joshua. “Jesus”
is simply the Greek form of the name. This is why the empire represented by the
puppet king Herod in Matthew 2 tried to destroy the baby, why in Chapter 4 vv 8
and 9 Matthew describes the world empires as being under the power of the
devil, why another Roman puppet king arrested John the Baptist (4:12) and why
at last the empire succeeded in destroying Jesus (Matthew 27). But the empire
did not have the last word.
Millions of hungry people today still live under the power
of an empire based upon Western military might and money. We live on the inside
of the empire. Does Matthew still have a message for us today?
John M. Hull
Justice Mail Action 15 Jan 2013
Dear Justice Mail Friends
Justice Mail now has a
website http://www.justicemail.org.uk .
Among other items the website has information about the five current Justice
Mail Groups and also links to all the organisations whose campaigns that we
support. It also explains how new groups can be set up. We hope that the
website will be a means greatly expanding Justice Mail. I hope you enjoy
looking at the site.
ACTION
Since 2006 at
least 500 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in factory fires while sewing
clothing for giant fashion companies, like Gap and H&M.
Six months ago
Gap publicly promised it would sign on to a worker safety program that would
include independent inspections, mandatory repairs and renovations of safety
hazards, a central role for workers and unions, transparency and binding
commitments to protect workers.
Labour Behind the
Label ask us to join Bangladeshi and international unions and labour groups
that are calling on Gap to implement this fire safety program that will save
the lives of Bangladeshi garment workers. Use the link below to email such a
request to Gap.
Cheers
Mike CrossAll Saints Kings Heath
Friday, 4 January 2013
Justice Mail 4th January 2013
Dear Justice Mail Friends
CAFOD Writes:
We produce enough food to feed the world – but one in eight
people don’t have enough to eat.
The way that food is grown, sold and shared out is not working
for the world’s poorest people. But we have the power to change this injustice
and to tackle global hunger.
If you believe no one should go hungry, please join our campaign
and take action using the link below.
Speak out with us to help poor families get enough to eat –
today, tomorrow, and in the long term.
Are you hungry for change?
Cheers
Mike CrossAll Saints Kings Heath
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Test yourself against the Five Marks of Mission
Christian mission has changed. It used to be thought of as
churches in Britain
Today, mission is from everywhere to everywhere. The
missionary agencies have either changed their role or even ceased to function.
Instead of thinking of missionaries as special agents, we now think of the
church as a whole as being called to mission, and of every Christian as sharing
in that call. Moreover, the mission thinking of the worldwide church is now
that the church does not even have a mission. It does not have a mission; it is a
mission. The mission is the mission of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit engaged
in a huge project to love and redeem the whole of creation.
In seeking to understand what the mission of God might mean,
in 1984 the Anglican communion worldwide recommended five marks of mission as a
sort of checklist - http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ministry/mission/fivemarks.cfm.
In 1996 the general synod of the Church of England adopted these, which are now
known as “the five marks of mission”. Would you like to test your own Christian
life against the expectations of these marks? If that seems a bit too personal,
then perhaps you would like to assess the life of our own church in Kings Heath
as a mission church. Here we go!
The first mark of mission is to proclaim the Kingdom of God.
This expression is taken from the teaching of Jesus himself, who saw the Kingdom of God Kingdom
of God
The second mark is to call people into discipleship to Jesus
Christ and to nurture them in faith. The Holy Spirit does that through us
whenever a child is baptised or people are prepared for confirmation. How else
do we do it?
The third mark of mission is to extend loving care to the
community. This is where we really score! Surely the medical centre, the
services to young people and senior citizens, to say nothing of the village
square are all extending care to the Kings Heath community.
The fourth mark of mission is a tricky one. It is to
transform the unjust structures of society. What is an unjust structure? Can
sincerely good people find themselves working in unjust structures? Who
benefits from the unjust structures, and how can these be identified,
challenged and changed? Clearly, these are important questions for our society
and for the world: about the growing gulf between rich and poor, and about the
worldwide situation of hunger, sickness and war. How does our church measure up
to this mark of mission?
The fifth mark of mission is to strive to protect creation
and to restore the face of the earth. Here again, as with the third mark,
perhaps we are doing rather well in All Saints. After all, we are an eco
congregation and are about to have solar panels installed on at least one of
our buildings.
How do you respond to the five marks? Should every Christian
be involved to some degree in all five? Is it right for a particular
congregation to specialise in one or two of these? What steps can we take to
ensure that through our lives, our worship and our witness the whole mission of
God is being expressed?
John M. Hull
The Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education
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