I thought I might start posting thoughts for some short talks (such as at the weekly midweek communion), as a way of my getting my head around what I am going to say, but also for anyone interested in digging deeper than the talks themselves might allow.
Matthew 16:13-20
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’
They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’
‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’
Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’
Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter [Peter, in Greek, means rock], and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Jesus has become well known in Galilee. Everywhere he goes, crowds follow, and everyone has an opinion about him. From time to time, we see Jesus take his disciples out of the glare of the spotlight, off to some quiet place beyond the circles where they were known, so they could get their heads around all that was going on.
Caesarea Philippi was beyond the boundary of Galilee, but this wasn’t one of those getting-away-from-it-all times. Caesarea Philippi was the sort of place where today celebrities would go to be seen partying hard, not to recover. It was the sort of place every good Jewish mother warned her sons about, and worried they might go to. It was the sort of place no good Jewish boy would go to (except in their imagination). And the disciples must have figured out before they got there where Jesus was taking them. Can you imagine the hushed conversations going on behind his back as they followed him on the road? If news got out, people would be scandalised.
Caesarea Philippi was a shrine to the Roman emperor, who was worshipped as a living deity, saviour of the peoples of the empire, the son of the gods in human form. My view is that Jesus already knew that his Father had revealed his true identity to Simon, and that he deliberately took his disciples to this place, where the same claim was made of someone else, to underline what Simon had understood in big, thick marker pen.
Caesarea Philippi was pretty new, the latest thing, built to make the statement, ‘We’re all good citizens of the empire round here.’ But it was built right next door to the site of a much older shrine, to the Greek party-animal god Pan. At Pan’s shrine, everything and anything went – the wilder and more debauched the better. At the heart of the shrine complex was a large cave, known as the Gate of Hades – not the front entrance, you understand – that was somewhere in Greece – but the back door...And here, at the very gate of hell, Jesus declares that the gates of death will not stand against his church.
Jesus isn’t pussy-footing around. This is – quietly, deliberately, without making a scene – very confrontational. In a place where God’s followers wouldn’t go, he makes a stand.
So, where are the places we are told we ought not to go to, by sincere respectable people who fear that we will be corrupted by the sort of people to be found there?
Where are the places where people are idolised – the idols of sport, or entertainment, or intellect? Where are the places of extreme excess? What are the statements made in our society that we are supposed to sign up to – and be seen to sign up to, in order to enjoy good favour? Where are the places we are disapproving of, perhaps secretly curious about, but too afraid to step foot inside?
Where are the no-go areas? Because they are the very place where the church is supposed to be...
Warning: this post is deeply theological and may be of limited interest to most people! This coming Sunday, I shall be ordained a deacon in the Church of England; and, God willing, a year later I shall be ordained a priest.
Within Anglicanism, there exists a range of views as to what happens when you are ordained. At the more Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum, there is the belief that you undergo an Ontological Change: that is, that your fundamental being is changed, from one kind of being to another. At the more Evangelical end of the spectrum, many (most?) reject the idea of Ontological Change, whether they see ordination as a particular calling within the people (‘laos’) of God (i.e. the clergy are a distinct subset within the laity, but not separate from it; a different nature of doing but not a different nature of being) or as a purely pragmatic designation.
The Principal of the theological college where I studied (and, to be fair to the college, I use ‘study’ in a fairly loose sense to describe what I did: they should not be held liable) is of the opinion that there is an Ontological Change, but that it takes place not at ordination but at baptism. This view recognises that all who are ‘in Christ’ – baptism is the sign of being in Covenant relationship with God through Jesus – are now a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).
My own view is that we undergo, or at least are meant to undergo, a continual series of ontological changes. Consider the following:
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)
“And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Yes, we are already a new creation; in a fundamental sense we have undergone an ontological change, have gone from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. But that change is not the final ontological change we will experience (1 John 3:2). Nor is this change of nature merely a two-step event, but an ongoing process (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is the ongoing process of being changed from what we are into what we were intended to be; a restoration of the original unbroken unity-in-diversity between God and humans, and between human and human.
The latter is witnessed to by another ontological change that some people experience: the change that takes place when two people marry, when two distinct human beings become ‘one flesh’ - or, one ‘earth creature,’ for, in the Genesis 2 account, the gender-neutral earthling was split in half to form two human beings, male and female (much of this is lost in English translations). That does not imply that those who are married are any more fully human; but that the nature of their being, and therefore how they relate to the other, is different from that of those who are not married. Not more fully human, but differently human.
So, just as I underwent an ontological change when I married, so I believe that I will undergo an ontological change (though not an Ontological Change) on Sunday, when a Bishop will lay his hands on my head in the cavernous Liverpool Cathedral. It is a step of faith, and an encountering God, that will leave me changed. I am aware that I do not know in what way I will be changed, and that, while I need to take responsibility for my actions – that as I grow into my changed and changing being, I act in ways consistent with the one who is changing me – I have no control over the changes God chooses to work in me. And I am also aware that none of this will make much sense to many of my friends, including many who are ordained. C’est la vie. While I want to make Jesus known more clearly, I care very little whether I as a person am understood...
James Hudson Taylor came to the decision that CIM missionaries ought to wear their hair shaved on top and in a long pony tail at the back, and dress in silk jackets and trousers, in accordance to local Chinese custom. This was in contrast to missionary convention, which had maintained western dress.
This is an ongoing missional question: when entering a new context, to what extent do we embrace local norms in regard to universals (such as what people eat, wear, the language they speak; this approach is often called ‘incarnational’) and to what extent to we acknowledge our difference?
There are no hard and fast rights and wrongs. The outsider who comes into a culture is different from the locals, and will remain different in many ways however long they stay and however much they immerse themselves in the host culture. Difference is not only unavoidable; it has a positive side: to choose to live somewhere, not because you were born there or grew up there but because you chose to move there, is to pay a real complement to a community. But difference has a negative side, too: if the incomer believes that their values in relation to universals are better than, rather than simply different to, local values. Diversity is good; colonialism bad.
One of the first things I have noticed here is that most (though not all) men have their hair cropped short, in a crew cut. I’m also noting what they wear. Hence Hudson Taylor: ought I to have my hair cut short? Is that necessary, or at least helpful, if I want to be able to build relationships here? And if so, when should I get my hair cut? To do so too quickly is, perhaps, attempting to be seen as an insider before I have been accepted as (not an insider but) a welcome incomer. And that might have as negative an impact as getting my hair cut short at the right time could have a positive impact.
I am not going to go out and get a Liverpool makeover: that would be false. You can’t wear another man’s shoes until you have some understanding of the streets he has walked on. But, I suspect that what I wear, what I eat, how I speak, and even how I cut my hair, will change over time to reflect this new context: for, conversely, you can’t understand a man until you have walked in his shoes. And the incremental changes will chart my journey into this community...
One of the reasons why moving to a totally new city is so tiring is that everything matters.
At both a conscious and unconscious level, you are constantly taking in everything – because you don’t know which pieces of information are significant and which aren’t. So, to give a trivial example, you note a post-box as important information, but if you discover another one closer to your house, you downgrade the importance of the first post-box: it becomes filed in your background memory, as opposed to your working memory.
Everything matters, until you are in a position to determine which things don’t matter. That means you don’t take anything for granted. And that comes with a real positive: with fresh, outsiders eyes, you see things that the indigenous population don’t see any more, things that will fade into the background until you don’t see them either. Such people ask questions that might be significant, that might lead to constructive change – and at the very least, lead to a greater understanding of the new-to-them context. But the downside is that it takes so much mental and emotional energy that it leaves you feeling physically tired – whether you find new environments mentally stimulating or draining.
I thought I'd play around with the banner at the top of my blog. I've never included a photo before, but taking photographs is so significant for me, and I thought it might be a way of marking this new chapter.
The image is of St Andrew's, the church where I will be curate as of 5 July. It was built in the late 1920s, in brick, but in the style of a (scaled-down) cathedral, with rose windows, flying buttresses, and a high ceiling. The reinterpretation of that particular tradition in a new material (brick, not stone) is interesting - and incongruous. A lot of the local churches, Anglican and Roman Catholic, appear to be built on an equally grand scale. And I think Liverpool is unique in England in that both the Roman Catholic and Anglican cathedrals are themselves twentieth-century buildings. We've not made it into the city centre yet, but I'm looking forward to it...
It is seven days since we arrived, and we are beginning to discover our new world. Where you can get milk, or post letters. Where the bank is, and the bigger shops. The nearest supermarkets. (Once upon a time the collective intelligence of thousands-strong swarms of starlings traced ever-changing screen-savers in the sky all across England. In recent years, they have vanished: I can't remember when I last saw one. It turns out they have all relocated to the car-park of Tesco in Old Swan, where signs plead with the patrons "Please do not feed the birds"...)
Inside the house, one trip's worth of IKEA flat-pack furniture has been assembled; a second trip's worth has been bought and will (hopefully) be assembled tomorrow. Outside the house, the frame has gone up on the walls of the conservatory that will be my study. Tomorrow the glazing should go in. (Once it is finished, inside and out, there will be another trip to IKEA.)
We've started to explore the neighbourhood. Yesterday, I took the kids to the local park, just around the corner. There is a lake in the middle, and in the lake, running most of the way around it, is what looks like the remains of a fishing jetty: there are structural pylons, but no walkway. It makes for striking images, and a story to find out...
Well, we have moved to Liverpool. Today S & N started at their new school. (Yes, that is a palm tree at the bottom of our garden.)
Our house is lovely, and lots of people from the church have been involved in getting it ready for our arrival. But it will be some time before we have unpacked all the boxes...
