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An Ordinary Hero - Alonso Rodriguez

Alonso Rodriguez [1532-1617] is a shining example of ‘blooming where you’re planted’. He didn’t found churches, win crowds to Jesus or conquer heresy. He was one of God’s ‘unknowns’, who won hidden victories: over failure, sickness, loss and heartbreak.

He was a wool merchant with a wife and three children, but by the time he was 40, they had all died and his business had collapsed. His life in ruins, he asked to join the Society of Jesus, at that time a newly-formed mission movement in the Catholic church. They said no: he was uneducated. So Alonso tried to study – and failed. In desperation he begged the Provincial of the order for a chance, who finally said he could be a servant at their mission in Majorca.

At this point a confusion arises: there was another Alonso Rodriguez, born only 2 years apart, who was also in the Society of Jesus at the same point, and who is credited (though some dispute his authorship) with a 3- volume devotional tome, 'The Practice of Christian Perfection'. The two have been widely confused by commentators since.

Our Alonso spent the rest of his life on the island as a porter. While other members took the gospel around the world, Alonso ran errands, delivered messages, received guests and carried bags – for 46 years! This is how he is represented in the painting above: door keys at his side, but behind all his actions an angel of God, and the full approbation of heaven.

He had a nervous twitch and was often sick, but everyone could see he knew God. Students came to him for wisdom and prayer. One, Peter Claver (1581-1654), set out as a missionary to slaves in Colombia because of a prophecy from Alonso. Claver is remembered in the Roman Catholic Church as patron saint of foreign missions.

When Alonso was old, his superiors asked him to write down his experiences. After his death, these papers were found to contain the fruits of much meditation, faithfulness and service to Jesus, whom he loved passionately. Here is an example:

I put myself in spirit before our crucified Lord, bearing great sufferings for me. I consi-der how much I owe Him and what He has done for me. As love is paid for in love, I must imitate Him. Thus, amid hardship and trial, I stimulate my heart and encourage myself to endure, for love of the Lord who is before me, until I make what is bitter sweet.

Perhaps this is what attracted the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to devote a poem in 1918 to God's servant, Alonso Rodriguez:

HONOUR is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alonso watched the door.

RADICAL OUTREACH - THE 'HALLELUJAH LASSES'

The great question in most churches which are at all earnest in their work, is how to reach the masses. This isn't some present-day church growth report; it comes from an English newspaper, the Northern Daily Express, of 4th March 1879, and concerns events in Gateshead.

The journalist comments that the section of the community that lies outside the usual compass of religious life comprised most of the audience. More unusual still, the work which experienced ministers and the ordinary agencies of churches had failed in, has been attempted by a few young women. These were the “Hallelujah Lasses”, the stormtroopers of the early Salvation Army.

Some six or eight weeks ago, about half-a-dozen young women made a raid under the banner of a Gospel mission among the lowest classes in the town, and they have succeeded in the most remarkable manner... They have got such a hold upon the masses as to tame some of the worst of the characters. A thorough transformation has been effected in the lives of some of the most thoughtless, depraved and criminal.

These women, most in their twenties, hired music-halls for their meetings. Despite the sneers from all sides, within a short time these places were filled to overflowing for three hours, and hundreds are unable to gain admission. The journalist gives a detailed account of two meetings, which you can read here.

What can have enabled these Salvation Army girls to achieve such breakthroughs? Much comes down to the 'first love' fire of a new movement in the flower of its vigour. But we must see in action here the twin elements of BLOOD and FIRE that were to become the Army's motto. A total conviction of the power of Jesus' redeeming blood to save even the worst, together with the freshness of the Holy Spirit's filling (for which Salvationists spent whole nights of prayer) kept them pressing into territory where other feared to go, and expecting results.

They also used the power of personal testimony. The journalist tells of the roughest and most criminal of people glorifying God for their soul's salvation. And the Army used the passion of youth: One youth, who is evidently not more than fourteen, is quite a phenomenon, and certainly has a marvellous utterance for one so young and inexperienced. On Saturday night, we were told, he spoke for twenty minutes, and carried the audience so fully away with him, that in the midst of his address three or four persons went up to the penitent form [benches placed at the front of the hall, where people could come and kneel, pray, repent and receive personal prayer].

The journalist concludes, perceptively, that what is needed in the work now is consolidation - some agency to carry the converts beyond the few simple truths they have got hold of, and to give them an interest in the work when the excitement of the change and the effort has passed away.

The Pain and Colour of the Cross

With Easter fast approaching, here's an idea you may not have thought of.

Reading up on Oscar Romero recently, I came across something profound and beautiful that was completely new to me: the Salvadoran Cross.

Its origins lies in the 1960s and 70s, when people fled the brutal persecutions in El Salvador and lived in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. Here they tried to reconcile their pain and horror with their deeply-held Christian faith. What they came up with was very practical: to think of all the things that brought hope and meaning to their lives (children, a sunrise, bible stories, their village, etc) and to paint them in vivid colours on to wooden crosses.

The results are not only strikingly beautiful, they are also a moving expression of the message of Easter: pain, sorrow, hope, devotion and worship meet in the cross of Jesus Christ.

The link above gives some examples and even a template which you can use to design your own Salvadoran Cross. Now there's a different kind of Easter meditation!

Aidan and Alopen, Two 7th Century Apostles

In God's great timetable, the year AD 635 must have been a bit special. For in that year, two men were sent out on apostolic missions and, in the face of great dangers, broke through with the gospel in unreached lands.

Aidan was a fiery Irishman, Alopen a refined Persian. Both were monks, both gifted communicators. Entirely independently, both were commissioned and sent to start churches: one at the North-West frontier of civilisation, the other in the far East. Aidan became the Apostle of northern England, Alopen the Apostle to China. Despite their extraordinary linked destiny, they never met or even knew of each other.


AIDAN: APOSTLE OF THE NORTH

Britain at the turn of the 600s was a battleground of warring tribal kingdoms, most of them pagan. A Christian prince named Oswald was sent to the Celtic monastery on the Scottish island of Iona for his own safety. In 634 he felt ready to deliver his kingdom, Northumbria, in the north of England. He defeated the invaders and was crowned king.

One of his first acts was to ask Iona to send someone to convert his pagan subjects. An envoy was sent but returned saying that the Northumbrians were obstinate barbarians, beyond redemption! At this, an Irish monk named Aidan spoke up: it was foolish to expect pagans to accept the strict rules of a Celtic monastery - they must be met on their own level, with grace and humility. For this, Aidan himself was appointed for the apostolic mission to re-evangelise the north of England. It was AD 635.

He established his base on Lindisfarne, an island off the east coast, which became known as Holy Island. From here teams went out with the gospel, planting churches and establishing centres at Melrose, Jarrow and Whitby. By the time he died in 651, Northumbria was almost wholly evangelised.

Aidan succeeded by developing key relationships with those who helped to expand the work and by wise and creative planning. He didn't do all the work himself - at first, he couldn't even speak the language but needed interpreters. He appointed and trusted many workers. Other noted Celtic saints, Hilda, Chad and Cuthbert, built up important ministries under his covering.

But Aidan was a communicator. He could empathise. Any gifts he received from the wealthy, he gave to the poor. This included a fine stallion given to him by the king. The king was furious, but Aidan replied: "Is the son of a mare more important to you than a son of God?" The humbled king knelt and asked forgiveness.

Aidan's primary witness was through the genuineness of his life. He refused personal gain, showed no partiality (rebuking kings when they needed it), and practised rigorous self-denial. If the king came to Lindisfarne, he had to eat the same food as the monks and beggars. Aidan's approach was "Do as I do", not "Do as I say", and because his life was open to all, people gladly followed and the Church was built.


ALOPEN: APOSTLE OF THE EAST

In ancient times, China was better known in the West than one might suppose. For centuries a trade route called the Silk Road had linked China with Persia and the West. Arab and Persian merchants settled in China, and Chinese envoys reached ancient Rome. But by the 5th and 6th centuries, tribal wars had shut the Silk Road and made China a closed empire.

The arrival of the T'ang Dynasty (AD 618-877) changed all this. The Chinese army crushed the rebels and a golden age of Chinese culture began. The capital, Chang-an (modern Xi-an), was the largest walled city ever built, with two million inhabitants. The reopening of the Silk Road in 632 brought a new cosmopolitan flavour. The Emperor, T'ai Tsung, tolerated all religions and encouraged the discussion of foreign ideas.

The Church saw its opportunity and took it. In 635, the Assyrian archbishop Yeshuyab sent an apostolic team, led by a learned and wise monk named Alopen. They accompanied a traders' camel train and arrived at Chang-an.

Alopen had done his homework. He knew the very formal Chinese culture and the need to avoid open war with the Buddhists. So for three years, he and Chinese converts worked on the first Christian book in the Chinese language: The Sutra of Jesus Messiah. A sutra was the way Buddhists presented their teachings, as a series of discourses. Alopen was playing them at their own game.

Much reads strangely to Western ears: Jesus is "the Heaven-Honoured One", the "Master of the Victorious Law", who has sent "the Pure Breeze" (the Holy Spirit) from "our Three-One". But the Emperor was pleased with what he read and in 638 made a decree: Alopen's religion was "wonderful, spontaneous, producing perception and establishing essentials for the salvation of creatures and the benefit of man". The Emperor commanded that a Christian religious centre be built from public funds in the Western merchants' quarter of the city.

From this base, with a core of just 21 Christians, the gospel spread out into the land. Four regional centres were built and by the time of the next Emperor, Kuo Tsung, there were churches in ten provinces. Alopen was made bishop (or in the quaint Chinese, "Spiritual Lord, Protector of the Empire") and the Church was able to put down firm roots in China - which it would need when persecution was unleashed by Empress Wu in 690.


The New Testament says that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets - Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:19-20). By their labours, endurance, anointing and above all love, they become fathers to the churches, as Paul, Peter and the others did in the Early Church. It may still be debated whether there are apostles today of the calibe and stamp of Jesus' Twelve, but the apostolic heart should be something we long to see outpoured more and more, if the Church is regain (and retain) her radicality.

The Incredible Faithfulness of Lena Tikhuie

In 1737, the Moravian Church sent a team to start a mission and community settlement in South Africa. They chose some land east of Cape Town and called it Genadendal (Grace Valley). You can see images of the subsequent settlement here.

The local tribe, the Khoi, were impoverished and dispersed but the Moravians reached out to them and began a school for their children. One of the first Khoi to be baptised was a woman called Tikhuie, whom the missionaries named Magdalena. Her husband, a skilled hunter, kept the community supplied with meat.

Some of the missionaries died of disease, however, and the leader grew lonely and, in 1744, was recalled to Germany. Everyone thought the community was finished. They reckoned without 'Lena’ Tikhuie! Having learnt to read at the mission school, she gathered the people daily under a tree and taught them the scriptures.

Years passed. Travellers returning to Europe brought tales of an African woman leading a church at Grace Valley. Finally, in 1792, nearly fifty years after the withdrawal, the Moravians sent a fresh team to re-found Genadendal. On their arrival, they found the ruins of the original houses, but to their astonishment there was Lena Tikhuie, frail and almost blind, still holding the ground and ministering to the little congregation, daily, under the tree. Her well-worn bible was still with her, wrapped in sheepskin.

The missionaries were told, “Every evening we all, men, women and children, would go to old Lena. She would fall on her knees and pray. When her eyes would let her, she read from the New Testament.” As families grew, parents taught their children to pray. When Lena couldn’t read, a younger woman did it for her.

Lena became a living legend in the area. People came to see her. One, the wife of a high official in the British government, wrote: “It was like creeping back seventeen hundred years to hear from the coarse but inspired lips of evangelists the simple, sacred words of wisdom and purity.”

Lena never knew when she was born, but she lived a long life, always thanking God for His great grace. When she died in 1800, her faithful perseverance had become legendary throughout South Africa. She was one of the first indigenous church leaders in South Africa, certainly the first woman, and she had led the congregation at Genadendal for fifty years.

The Country Boy Who Fathered a Nation - Conclusion

Hauge spent his last years on a farm near Christiania (modern Oslo), bought for him by his friends. Years of imprisonment had weakened his body but not his spirit. His home became a centre for Christian life, visited by many. He welcomed both spiritual and secular leaders who came to him for advice.
He wrote a number of books and articles, mainly spiritual but some economic. Two years before his early death, he gave this testimony to God's faithfulness and dealings.

I am 52 years old and have tasted Christianity's joy and strength, which had enabled me to leave my father's house and to offer up my body's peace and my worldly goods. I have put my life in danger of death many times, wandered alone through and over many wild woods and fells. I have seen many loathsome forms of sin. But in all this, nothing has been able to disturb the peace and the divine joy I have through the teaching of Christ. My consciousness is at one with it, and I only want to live according to its command.
In the darkest of prisons, where I have sat for my testimony's sake, I have had spiritual joys that exceed all the world's glory and joy. In a miraculous way, power is granted to all those who receive it in their inner being, such that their souls become sanctified by His reconciling grace. From this flows that purity and that friendship that far exceeds all other morals and friendships in the worlds. Let it happen!

At the end, Hauge was bedridden - but still preached. His last exhortation was: "Follow Jesus!" He died, his face radiant with joy, exclaiming, "Oh, You eternal, loving God!"

That was by no means the end of the story! Some of his followers held important positions. Three of them took part in the first Norwegian Parliament in 1814, when Norway became independent from Denmark after 400 years of Danish rule. The whole nation felt the effects of Hauge’s influence - spiritually, politically and financially. It can truly be said that he fathered the new nation.
Hauge's pioneering work in economic justice and ethical business continue to inspire today. Journalist Sigbjorn Ravnasen has written a book (very hard to find, even on Google) on Hans Nielsen Hauge's Ethical Framework for Business and Management . Ravnasen writes:

"When Norway became an independent nation in 1814, these kingdom values were integrated into the rhythm of daily life and were institutionalized into laws, school curricula and business practices in Norway. Economic conditions improved and led to the eradication of poverty in the land. Today, Norway continues to be the best country in the world in human development for the seventh year in a row. Norwegians have imbibed this spirit of volunteerism and have stretched their sense of responsibility from involvement in their local community beyond to the global community of nations. So Norway has the highest ratio of missionaries per capita, and (most unusually) in holistic and transformational servant-leadership roles."

In 2005 the Hauge Institute was founded. Its aim is to raise awareness about the person Hans Nielsen Hauge, his ethical thinking and topicality; to bring inspiration to the business community, to leaders, research, education and society. Based on the thinking and practice of Hans Nielsen Hauge, the Hauge Institute will focus on the ethical dimension in three main areas: Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Trade and the Environment.