when the wind blows

 

June is a strange month, the tension building in the air as sulking heatwaves give way to grumbling thunderstorms and sudden, petulant outbursts of rain.

It reminds me of these words of Jesus, at the end of the ‘sermon’ on the mount:

‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-and great was its fall!’

Matthew 7.24-27

It is a taut illustration, sparing in words, making the most of repetition and of rhythm like fingertips against a drum. The downpour broke, releasing the deluge (potamos, from which we get hippopotamus, or river horse), and blew, the wind.

And yet, Jesus plays with the words he chooses. In our English translation, the wind beats both houses; but in the Greek, the word describing the actions of the wind is not identical. When it reaches the household built up on exposed bedrock, the wind ‘prosepesan,’ which can be translated, ‘prostrated itself,’ as one might prostrate oneself in worship of a god or a king. But when it reaches the household built on sand, the wind ‘prosekopsan,’ or ‘struck’ it, as you might strike down an intruder.

That is both a small difference — pesan or kopsan — and a huge difference.

Blew, the wind...and when it reached the household of the wise, it recognised wisdom, acknowledged wisdom, submitted to wisdom.

The rain and the deluge, or torrent, and the wind that blows, test the quality of work — of what has been built up — the house being metaphor for the household, for a wife and children and slaves (in the Greco-Roman world, only a freeman could form a household, could be, by law, a husband and father and owner of slaves) whose character has been built up, made strong; or else perhaps undermined or disregarded.

You can’t stop the rains, the flood, the gale. You can only invest in solid foundations, for yourself and for any other human you have responsibility for, or duty towards, at any given point in their lives. Indeed, the storms reveal the quality of your work, which is an out-working of your character. Whether you are wise or dull of mind. Whether you have been sharpened by time spent with others whose lives evidence their wisdom or dulled by time spent with those who know the shortcuts to success.

The wisest of all is Jesus, who is both the word to the wise and their bedrock.

 

setting out to share communion

 

I walked across the city,
keeping to the running veins;
towering above as
caterpillars crossed my paths,
while, as far again above
my earthbound frame, a
kestrel surfed upon the wind.

I crossed the river as it
snaked beneath my feet — castle,
far down the other
shore — and climbed the hill to reach
my goal; my back, so slick with
sweat, so drenched, I might
as well have run, not walked here.

I am both river running
to the Sea, and earth that rises
up to greet the Way.
I am both worm that dreams of
flight, and kestrel on its soar-
ing wing. I am the
air blown by the wind; come, rain.

I am the grain that Christ will
mill to make the bread that he
will turn into His
Very Self — he, not I — for
all are one in him alone.
I blessed his people +
and I make my journey home.

 

deep breaths

 

Yesterday evening, while we were running, a friend asked me about what parts of a funeral or marriage service are ‘set’ and what parts are tailored. I spoke of the parts that are set, or given, as offering a framework to hold all the emotions, and words to turn to when our own words elude us.

This afternoon I am covering a Communion service for a friend who buried her husband yesterday. The Old Testament reading is from Isaiah 40, which begins:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

The root of the Hebrew word translated comfort — and repeated, to underline the point — means to breathe, strongly or deeply. The implication is that to comfort someone is to lend them something of your vital breath, when they are breathless, winded by circumstances.

This injunction is given in the context of an exploration of breath. A voice crys out; but the voice is a bleating, it lacks full articulation. The poet — Isaiah — must interpret its longing, give it words. But the poet himself cries out, in response, what could I possibly utter? Human life is as frail and fleeting as a flower, even though it is animated by the breath of God. The poet wrestles with despair.

And yet part of the very answer given is: offer your own breath, to comfort my people. Offer them the breath that I, your God, have breathed into your lungs. Breath that you cannot hold onto — that you must release, trusting that I will give you another — so you might as well gift it to those who gasp for air.

The poet gives away their breath, in deep gasps as he climbs a high mountain from which vantage-point to proclaim, ‘God is on the way to you! God comes, to gather you and carry you.’

Yes, life is fleeting; but it is beautiful in its time. And though we pass from this world, though our breath at the last returns to the One who gave it us in the first place, yet all is not lost. The giver of life will breath life in us again. In this world, and the next.

Isaiah 40.1-11

40 Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord ’s hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord ,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’
6 A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand for ever.
9 Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah,
‘Here is your God!’
10 See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.

manumission

In a circular letter to house churches across Galatia, Paul writes:

‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

'By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is lovely, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.’

Galatians 5.1, 22-23

For freedom Christ has set us free. Somewhere between 10% and a third of the population of the Roman empire were slaves. As such, they lacked legal personhood. They had no kinship, neither ancestors nor descendants. They were not permitted to marry — in each of the house churches Paul wrote to, there would have been only one man who was legally a husband and a father, only one woman who was legally a wife and a mother — though with their master’s permission slaves could enter into contubernium: a co-habitation with certain, limited, legal recognition. They could not enter into contracts, or own property — though their master could give them a peculium: land that, while remaining the legal property of the master, a slave could hold and manage for themselves. This mechanism allowed a slave to earn the money to buy his freedom — to be manumitted, their master letting go of their hand, becoming instead their patron. A slave who had been freed could translate their contubernium into a legal marriage; own property; and enter many, but not all, professions.

For freedom Christ has set us free. The image here is of manumission. An image that would have spoken deeply to the people — mostly slaves; a few masters who held legal power over them — to whom he wrote.

Paul goes on to say that the crop, or harvest, of the Spirit is affection, cheerfulness, wholeness or wellbeing, longsuffering (that is, being slow to anger) or patience, gentleness, goodness, assurance, inner strength, self control.

And then he says that there is no law — or, parcelling-out — against — or about, or according to — such things. Which might be translated, there is no peculium that allots this land as something the master retains legal rights over but which we might be permitted to benefit from so that we might buy our freedom.

That is to say, we can’t earn liberty by virtue: liberty is a gift.

But also to say that virtue is not something we do not, ultimately, possess ourselves: it is ours, fully, because we have been given our freedom. It might be the harvest of the Spirit, but we are not slaves, we are land — the human, or creature taken from the soil of the earth — we are Spirit-animated land, land from which the Spirit brings forth a fruitful life.

  

we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come

 

I attended the funeral of a friend today. Of a friend and fellow priest. I don’t often attend a funeral these days, sit in the pews with nothing to do except bear witness to a life well lived, a good death, and the hope of the resurrection that is ours in Jesus. I had forgotten how exhausting attending a funeral is — it is different when you have a job to do — and I am grateful for the wisdom of my wife, who knows, and told me to rearrange the appointment that had been in my diary later in the day.

There are times, when you are called to be a priest, when your colleagues huddle around you. Laying hands on you when you are made a deacon — as I shall lay hands on the curate I shall be tasked with training just next weekend — and again when you are made a priest, and, for some, again when you are made a bishop. Today the church was full of priests. Today we — priests and the whole people of God — huddled around our brother one final time, and around his family — his widow (also a priest, as it happens), their children — as, in the Antarctic, penguins gather around the young, turning their backs against the blizzard: the warmth of the huddle was the affection God has for each one of us. God who does not save us from the blizzard, but who saves us through it. Today, we were penguins (ironically, unusually at a funeral, I was not dressed like a penguin, in black and white).

After the church, I stood at my friend’s graveside and threw dirt on the coffin, making my ‘thank you’ for a sea of small and gentle kindnesses; a small and gentle kindness in return, made also on behalf of all our colleagues.

And after the after, I went for a run. I ran a kilometre to meet with other friends, carrying a heavy burden, heavy enough almost to drive me to my knees, forcing me to turn back home. But this was a burden that I knew I must run off, the turning over of my limbs a prayer, loosening the knot that it might slip from me. And after a kilometre, I ran with others, and we bore one another — one whose legs were heavy, me whose heart was heavy — because carrying one another is what we do. I have no idea what my legs were doing over those nine further kilometres we ran, but my spirit was doing the work of receiving grace, of letting go, being made lighter.

I am telling this story from the first-person perspective, because I can tell it from no other. But it is not about me. It is a story about the loving-kindness of Jesus, and the affection of God the Father, and the companionship of the Holy Spirit, experienced in flesh and blood and in the invisible connections between us. And I am grateful to be able to tell this tale.

 

harbour

 

I did not preach on current affairs this morning. There is a time and a place to speak out against the inhumanity of empires, and that time and place may sometimes even be in sermons, not least in a week when the UK Parliament has voted, by a very small majority, to press ahead with an Assisted Dying Bill that even many of those who support it in principle say is not fit for purpose, and on a morning when 47 crowed about bombing Iran. But there is also a time to pass judgement on the folly of empires with silence.

Instead, I spoke of stories, of how stories carry us, carry out deepest longings and our deepest learning. Of the Odyssey and the Gospel According to Luke. Of homecoming — through many dangers, toils and snares — and of hospitality held out to strangers to heal weary bones and restore their dignity.

And then we shared Communion together. These who journey through this world on their way home to God, with Jesus their captain; who arrived at a table on the coast of a remote island off the western edge of the world, some with tales to warm the heart but most battered and bruised by whatever they have passed through since they were last here, gathered around this table. Battered, and tested, and yet kept by divine grace; carried to this harbour by the Spirit, restored by the Spirit. Welcomed by and with and in Jesus, who is host and guest and food, all three.

I wove stories — their lives woven into something greater; some visiting the church of their childhood for the first time in a long time; some receiving Communion for the first time — and then gave them bread and wine, and anointed as many as asked with oil for healing and wholeness. It is all I have. It is enough. It is what was needed this day, and on many days.

Thanks be to God.

 

homecoming and hospitality

 

Eight hundred years before Luke compiled stories of Jesus and his followers into the Gospel According to Luke and its sequel The Acts of the Apostles, Homer had compiled stories of the Bronze Age siege of Troy and subsequent return home of the Greek hero Odysseus in two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odessey.

In chapter 10 of the Odessey, we hear of Odysseus, his fleet of twelve ships by now already reduced to only one, welcomed as the guest of the mortal king Aeolus, whom Zeus himself had made captain of the winds. To aid Odysseus on his journey home to Ithaca, Aeolus ties up all of the winds, save for the fair west wind, in a bag, which he gives to Odysseus. For nine days and nights the west wind carries them, until they are within sight of home. At this point, Odysseus, who has kept awake throughout, is overcome by sleep. His men then debate what is really in the bag, deciding that it is some treasure their captain is keeping for himself. They open the bag and unleash a storm that carries them all the way back to Aeolus, who concludes that the gods are set against Odysseus and refuses to assist him a second time.

They sail on, arriving at the island of Aiaia, home of Circe, the daughter of Helios, the sun, exiled there for using her strange powers as a pharmika, a witch, to transform a rival sea nymph into a man-eating monster. From time to time, pirates have landed on her shore, have sought to plunder her body and her possessions. But she has always piled them with drugged wine and transformed them into pigs, keeping them in her styes. Occasionally one would escape, and throw itself off a cliff into oblivion. When an advance party of Odysseus’ men arrive at her door, she does what she has done before. But Odysseus, coming after them and forewarned and protected by Hermes, the trickster god and messenger, disarms Circe, persuading her to restore his men. Circe rubs an ointment on their snouts, transforming them back, then clothing them all in shirts and cloaks that she had woven on a loom gifted to her by the master inventor Daedalus.

Luke is a Greek writer writing for a Greek audience, and he models himself on Homer. Anyone hearing his account (Luke 8 ) of Jesus and his disciples caught in a storm on the Lake, Jesus asleep and the disciples at a loss, and afterwards arriving on a strange shore where they are met by a man whose life — his body, his home — has been taken possession of by a legion of demons, whom Jesus will in effect transform into pigs, while restoring the man to dignity, would know exactly what kind of a story they were listening to.

This is a story of the long journey home, undertaken by Jesus returning to his Father in the heavens, a journey that will necessitate that he first descends into the land of the dead and back again. An epic journey of facing and overcoming many challenges. As the sea captain and slave trader John Newton would later put it, ‘through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ’tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and Grace will lead me home.’

And this is a story of hospitality given to or withheld from the stranger — hospitality being a key measure of morality in their world. When the citizens of this strange, gentile region see the man restored, they beg Jesus to depart. Others will show kindness. Still others will try to kill him. Some will succeed.

But unlike the stories told by Homer, set in a distant past, these stories were set in the present. They had been born too late to sail with Odysseus; but Mary, the mother of Jesus, and John, the disciple, were still alive; Peter, and Paul, only recently put to death by order of the Emperor in Rome. Moreover, it was claimed that this Jesus had returned from the dead, and had returned home to his Father’s palace.

One could yet journey home through this life with Jesus as your captain. One could yet be welcomed at his table, or with him at a table in many strange corners of the world.

In Jesus, the great searchings and longings of the Greco-Roman world might find their deepest fulfilment. And not only theirs, but the searchings and longings of humanity — we still read Homer, we still read Luke.

Today, you are called to journey with Jesus as your captain. Today you are welcomed to a table to find refreshment on your travels, healing for your weary bones. To be restored to your truest and most noble self, which is to be found alongside him.

 

true story

 

Every story is a true story.

Even fiction.

Especially fiction.

Even the delusional rantings of 47 — every lie that proceeds from his mouth proclaims, in disguise, the truth about him.

But some stories are truer than others.

And the stories of Jesus are the truest stories of all.

In him, every story is searched out, found, rescued, and brought home.

 

Odyssey

 

Very long: on the Odyssey, and the Gospel; Odysseus, Jesus — and you.

Eight hundred years before the time of Jesus, a Greek author (or authors?) known as Homer compiled oral stories into two epic poems: the Iliad, which recounts the decade-long Trojan War; and its sequel, the Odyssey, which recounts the decade-long attempt of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, to return home after the War — a journey on which he is hindered by the god Poseidon and helped by the goddess Athena. Homer’s two volumes were hugely popular — hence their survival — and remain popular with audiences to this day.

Luke, the Greek follower of Jesus and author of the two-volume Gospel According to Luke and Acts of the Apostles, clearly modelled himself on Homer in his storytelling. (Long after the event, editors divided ‘Luke’ into 24 chapters — the same number of chapters as both the Iliad and the Odyssey — but then spoiled it by dividing ‘Acts’ into 28 chapters.)

In Acts chapter 8, Jesus crosses the Lake in a storm and arrives at the country of independent Greek colony-cities to the south-east of Galilee. There he is met by a monster, a man who possesses the strength of many men.

In the Odyssey chapter X, Odysseus is recounting parts of his voyage. The chapter opens with his arrival on the island home of Aeolus, a mortal king whom Zeus had appointed captain of the winds. Aeolus entertained Odysseus and his men for a month, and then, to aid them on their journey home, made a bag from the hide of an ox and contained within it, bound tight by a silver thread, all of the winds except for the fair west wind.

For nine days and nights they sailed and on the tenth day they saw home — Ithaca — on the horizon. But at this point, Odysseus was overcome by sleep. While he slept, his men debated the contents of the bag he had kept close, and, believing it to contain treasure that Odysseus planned not to share with them, they opened the bag, releasing a storm that drove them all the way back to Aeolus.

Aeolus was surprised to see them again. When Odysseus explained the betrayal of his men, Aeolus concluded that the gods were set against Odysseus and refused to help him a second time. And so, their epic journey continued.

After further misadventure, they arrived at the island of the goddess and enchantress Circe. There, Odysseus spied smoke, assumed habitation, and encouraged his men to investigate. But on the previous island — and not for the first time — many of the men had been eaten; and so they were understandably hesitant. Nonetheless, half the party were dispatched to explore, and came across the home of Circe, who invited them in. Only Eurylocus, the captain, being suspicious, remained outside. The other men entered and dined on cheese and wine, which had been drugged, such that they forgot their home. Then, Circe transformed them into pigs and shut them in her pig styes.

Eurylocus ran back to Odysseus to inform him what had befallen the men, but on his way to rescue them, Odysseus was intercepted by the god Hermes, sent to him by Athena, to counsel him how to approach Circe safely, also giving him a herb that would protect him from her spell.

On discerning his identity, Circe asked Odysseus to go to bed with her, that they might become friends and learn to trust one another; but he asked how he could trust her and made her swear an oath not to harm him. Agreeing, Circe washed Odysseus in a bath, anointed him with oil, dressed him in a fine cloak and shirt, and seated him on an ornate chair. She then sets a banquet before him, but he refused to eat while his men were still held captive as pigs. So, Circe gave them a second drug, restoring them to human form, and repenting of her actions.

While Odysseus returned to the ship to fetch the rest of his men, the men who had been pigs were washed, anointed with olive oil, clothed in woollen cloaks and shirts, and fed. They remained there for twelve months being strengthened for their journey. Then, they sought to continue on their journey home, but Circe informed Odysseus that first they must journey to the house of Hades and consult the ghost of the blind Theban prophet Teiresias.

In Luke 8.22-25 Jesus and his disciples are crossing the Lake. Jesus is asleep in the boat. A storm arises; the men debate among themselves. So far, so the Odyssey. But unlike Odysseus, Jesus is not betrayed by their actions. Instead, here is an opportunity for them to discover (not for the first time) that Jesus is divinely appointed, as he takes captaincy over the wind.

Luke tells us that they sailed down to the country of the Gadarenes (our English translation says that ‘they arrived at,’ but the more accurate ‘they sailed down to’ sounds more epic), perhaps blown off course by the winds. There, a man of the Greek city meets them. We are told that he has been naked for some time and is living not within a household but among the tombs, in the house of the dead.

This man is demonised. The text implies both that he has taken hold of demons and that the demons have taken hold of him. This is a codependent relationship, where the demons make his life a misery and yet he cannot imagine living without them.

The demons fear that Jesus will send them back into the abyss. They plead to be allowed to leave the man and to enter a herd of pigs. When they do, the terrified pigs rush over a precipice into the lake and are drowned. The swineherds run off to the city to inform the citizens, who come out and discover the man whom they have often bound in chains to restrain him from self-harm and harming others, sitting clothed and in his right mind.

In Greek culture, pigs were seen as both noble and ignoble, and as a symbol of human behaviour, which could be noble or ignoble — falling away from the human ideal into base animalistic behaviour.

In the Odyssey X, men are transformed into pigs, and back again, symbolising their greed and how quickly they will fall away from sensibility (only Eurylocus resisted the temptations of Circe). In Luke 8, the demonised man is freed as the demons enter into the pigs instead.

In the Odyssey X, the restored men are washed and clothed — in the Homeric tradition, clothing is significant, not simply the contrast to animal nakedness but in a play of concealment (disguises) and revealing, falsehood is made to speak truth, and character is purified. In Luke 8, the man is sitting clothed and in his right mind.

The pigs — and the demons — are also washed, plunged into the lake. This will be picked up in the Baptismal prayer over the water, where the liturgy declares: ‘drown sin in the waters of judgement, anoint your children with power from on high, and make them one with Christ in the freedom of your kingdom.’

In the Odyssey X, Odysseus cannot return home before first journeying to the house of Hades. In Luke 8, the man desires to leave home behind and accompany Jesus on his journey — which will ultimately be to Hades, and back, before returning home to his Father — but is instead told to return to his own household and declare to them what God has done for him. (In so doing, the man conflates God and Jesus.)

There is a clear play between the story of Odysseus, familiar to Luke’s audience, and the new story they are hearing concerning the adventures of Jesus. But these adventures are not set in the distant past, lost in the midst of time, but in their near-present.

A man who has been kept captive by the powers of death and hell is set free; clothed with Christ, taking on his own true identity within the — grounding, framing — person of Jesus; and restored to relationship with his own family, from whom he has been long-separated due to the capricious nature of the gods.

The demonised man — not Jesus — is now the new Odysseus. And Jesus is, to him, help along the way — Aeolus, and even Circe — truth hidden in various disguises, waiting to be revealed.

Likewise, our true identity is hidden within Jesus, who comes to us in various guises: in men and women whose actions help us on our long journey home to God the Father, through many challenges.

Every story is an epic tale, including yours.

 

Trinity Sunday

 

Recently I went for a walk in the park. There, I passed a mother and daughter, sitting by the duckpond. The daughter was sitting on a bench; the mother, in a motorised wheelchair. The daughter was feeding her mother puréed food from a plastic spoon.

If I stepped into a TARDIS and travelled back in time half a century and more, I might meet the same mother and daughter in the same place. The mother sitting on the bench; the daughter in a stroller. The mother feeding her daughter puréed food from a plastic spoon.

In the present, love has come full circle.

My eyes and the daughter’s met, a moment of recognition: one human being bearing witness to the love of another human being for another human being.

Chances are, you believe in God. That even if you consider yourself to be an agnostic or an atheist (and certainly if you consider yourself to be a bad Christian) you will have an image of the God you are unsure of or reject. And I wonder how that image compares to how Paul describes God to the church in Rome. (Romans 5.1-5)

Paul claims that God is the source of wellbeing (peace) and dignity (glory) and affection (love).

Every time we find ourselves seated in wellbeing and dignity and affection, we find ourselves close to God — whether we realise it or not. And whenever we fall away from wellbeing or dignity or affection, we fall away from nearness to God.

To live in wellbeing and dignity and affection requires connection to others. We cannot fully bear ourselves with dignity without extending dignity to others, even if they do not reciprocate. The Church is called to be the community described by wellbeing, dignity, and affection. And the truth is that we fall away from this time and time again, which is why we acknowledge and face up to this whenever we gather together.

A couple of weeks ago, I baptised Hudson, whose family are part of our local church community. At every Baptism, I remind us all that “We all wander far from God and lose our way. In Christ, God comes to find us and bring us home.” This is the reality: not that we do not fall away from wellbeing, dignity, and affection, but that Christ comes to find us — again and again — and brings us home.

Paul describes this as assurance (faith) of the living-kindness (grace) that is Jesus, the reality that grounds us: the One who finds us and brings us home. This is the loving-kindness of God, that searches us out when we are lost far from wellbeing, dignity, and affection, and makes a Way back to these, our home.

(Faith is assurance: I have faith that on the morning after I die, the sun will rise, even though I won’t be here to see it.)

Paul goes on to speak of anticipation (hope) of dignity and affection. To anticipate something is not simply to expect that it will happen at some future point, but to participate in a future reality in the present. Today I published Glenn and Heather’s banns of marriage for the third and final time of asking. They are anticipating their wedding day, and all the days that will lie beyond it. That anticipation is something they experience now. Likewise, to anticipate (hope in) the dignity of God is to experience that dignity now.

Paul goes on to say something deeply shocking to our society. He speaks of rejoicing (boasting) in our constraints (sufferings) because constraints produce endurance, which in turn evidences proof of character, which in turn renews anticipation.

We live in a society that rails against any form of constraint. The very thought of a woman held in a motorised wheelchair, being fed puréed food from a plastic spoon appals us. We might concede that it happens, but we don’t want to see it in the park. We don’t want to be confronted by it: there is nothing but tragedy in constraints, and all we can do is thank God it isn’t us. But the park is exactly where daughters should feed their mothers, free from any shame, attending to — participating in — wellbeing, dignity, and affection.

We are finite, born with certain constraints and having to take on additional constraints as we get older. Paul says that God does not shield us from constraints but uses them to strengthen — to make perfect — our participation in affection: the deepest form of love, that remains between parent and child long after the child was dependent on the parent, between husband and wife long after romance has worn thin.

Paul describes this renewable participation in affection as evidence of God’s Holy Spirit constantly poured out on our lives.

This, then, is how Paul speaks of God. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, source of the wellbeing, dignity, and affection we can know. Jesus, the loving-kindness of God that grounds us, bringing us back again and again. The Holy Spirit, the affection we participate in.

This is the God in whom we are invited to have assurance, in whose life we are invited to participate, as our lives are lifted into union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is a faith and hope fit for the world we find ourselves in. This is our faith.

 

speaking of God

 

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday, when, perennially, those who preach in Christian churches feel pressure to explain how God can be both three and one.

I think this pressure should be resisted. It is not the job of the preacher to provide simple (or in this case simplistic) answers to questions, but to lead people deeper into mystery, believing that we have a spiritual need for mystery, for that which is greater than we can contain by way of reason.

The various authors of the various volumes that make up the library we know as the Bible makes no such attempt to explain God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They simply write about the experience of encountering God in combinations of these terms.

One of the texts we will hear read on Sunday is Romans 5.1-5. Here, Paul describes God—the god Jesus calls our Father in the heavens—as the source of wellbeing (peace), dignity (glory), and affection (love)—all of which, we can be assured, God shares with us.

Expanding on wellbeing, Paul describes Jesus, the one who unifies divinity and humanity in his person, as the ground of loving-kindness in which our lives are located.

Expanding on affection, Paul describes the Holy Spirit as the one through whom God’s being and your and my personal humanity are joined, in a connection of continual and constant affection.

But it is dignity that is at the heart of Paul’s reflections here. The shared dignity made possible by the wellbeing that experiencing loving-kindness creates and constant affection.

It is dignity—which elsewhere Paul describes as something we experience in increasing degrees—that is the focus of anticipation (hope). Created in the likeness of a God who possesses dignity, the human is made for dignity, and our spirit knows this even if it is not our daily experience, even if dignity is withheld from us, because of our age, or gender, or different abilities, or ethnicity, or sexuality, or religious tradition, or, or.

And here Paul introduces the idea of being constrained. This is not an abstract idea. It is something we experience in our bodies. In particular, as we grow older, our body takes on—willingly or unwillingly—more and more constraints. We are finite creatures, with limitations. But Paul rejoices in these: perceiving that it is our constraints that bring about endurance; and endurance that reveals proof of character; and character that produces anticipation—that is, sustains the secure knowledge of our God-given dignity—guaranteed to us by the affection of which God is source.

What is more, because Jesus is the human god, God who has taken constraint upon himself, this reveals endurance, or the constancy of God; reveals proof of God’s character, as loving; and reveals God’s anticipation, of our sharing in that affection, that wellbeing, that dignity.

Professor John Swinton, writing about memory and dementia, notes that the Latin root of the English word to remember means to pass time through the mind, in a sequential ordering; whereas the root meaning of the Spanish word to remember—recordar—is to pass time through the heart.

This is true also of theology, or the love of God. We can say something about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit with our minds—the Creeds do this, as well as is needed—but we experience God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the assurance of wellbeing, grounded in loving-kindness; in the anticipation of dignity; in the mysterious ways by which constraints bring about endurance, and endurance proof of character, and proof of character anticipation; testified to by affection.

This is what we (the Church) have to proclaim about God. Chances are, you believe in god; that even if you would describe yourself as an agnostic or an atheist, you can describe the god you cannot be sure exists or are convinced does not exist. But this is what we (the Church) proclaim (and must proclaim to ourselves as much as to anyone else).

This is the God to trust our lives to, or to not yet be sure of, or to reject.

 

approval : part 2

 

Our childhood experiences, whether the approval of our parents was something we had to earn through acceptable behaviour or could easily lose by unacceptable behaviour, or whether we knew their approval unconditionally, has a lasting impact on our adult responses to the idea of God.

Consider the following verses, Matthew 5.20-26:

[Jesus said] ‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.’

If our childhood experience was one where parental approval had to be earned, and was easily lost, we will likely hear Jesus this way: that, however high the religious experts set the bar for approval, God sets it higher still. That while, in the past, God was willing to set the bar at a lower level — holding murderers to account — now Jesus raises the bar such that if you criticise someone else you risk being thrown into hell; for God is an exacting judge.

This message is proclaimed from many pulpits, with the “good news” that though we are judged guilty, Jesus takes the punishment in our place, appeasing God.

If, on the other hand, our childhood experience was one of unconditional parental approval, enabling us to flourish within secure attachment, then we might hear Jesus this way: that God’s approval goes far beyond the approval — or disapproval — we hold out to ourselves and one another. That, while God sought a society that held murderers to account, we have gone far beyond, such that if someone is angry with us we judge them harshly and if someone insults us we tell them to ‘Go to hell!’ Yet, Jesus calls on us to be the one who breaks this cycle, to be ministers of reconciliation towards one another.

There is all the difference in the world between these two perspectives, the one from a place of insecure attachment, the other from a place of secure attachment that allows us to admit to our shortcomings, knowing that whereas the enemy of our souls — the Father of Lies; the Satan, or Accuser — demands in the heavenly places that we be imprisoned, in Christ our Father in the heavens declares us to be innocent, and — though we have been put to death with him by the insecure actions of humans towards humans — raises us with him.

 

approval : part 1

 

‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

Jesus, Matthew 5.20

What is ‘righteousness’? For a certain kind of person, often drawn to religious frameworks, righteousness has to do with how we act in the world: with performance, that meets with God’s approval.

In fact, righteousness simply means divine approval. It has, in the first instance, nothing to do with what we do (this is not to say that what we do does not matter; simply that if we act with integrity and compassion this flows from righteousness already imputed to us) and everything to do with what God — the god Jesus reveals to the world, the god Jesus calls our Father in the heavens — is like.

‘For I tell you, if the approval you enjoy from God does not far exceed that which you enjoy (or not) from religious people, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

The good news being, that divine approval is given. God approves of you. God bestows righteousness on you.

Sometimes we struggle to approve of ourselves. And, viewing ourselves harshly, we become quick to view — to judge — others with the same harsh measure.

When we know that our Father in the heavens approves of us, we are released from the prison of performance; and set free to release others from the prison cells we have thrown them into (where, ironically, we found ourselves sharing the cell).

 

ten years a runner

 

This weekend will mark ten years since I have been — sometimes to my own surprise — a runner.

In that time, I have run a parkrun 229 times (230 on Saturday) and volunteered at parkrun in 141 separate roles over 117 separate occasions, including 50 times as Run Director.

It is worth noting that it took two years of regular, personal invitation before I finally turned up to my first parkrun; and another year before I fully committed myself.

If we are away over a weekend, we’ll take our running things with us so we can turn up at the nearest parkrun — or not, but we have the option — but if we are at home, we are at Silksworth, week by week.

Two years in, and again by personal invitation, I joined a local running club. Jo, who had followed me to parkrun after a year (which helped me commit to it) joined on the same day.

Our running club, Sunderland Strollers, knows a thing or two.

Knows that if you want to run, you really need to run on a regular basis.

Knows that it is easier to keep running with other people than on your own.

Knows that it helps to run with people of similar stamina and pace, to be able to run with those who are a little faster to bring you on, or a little slower when you are coming back from injury or just not feeling it.

Knows that not everybody can make the same day or time.

Knows that different people are looking for different things: do you want to run an ultra-marathon on mountain trails, a road marathon, or shorter distances, 10 kms? Are you training for an event, or are you more of a social runner? A beginner, or a seasoned veteran?

So, members of the club organise runs throughout the week. There are evening runs on Monday (trail; a social road run), Tuesday (track), Wednesday (main club night, a programme of different sessions run in five ability-graded packs; a steady pace 5 mile alternative), and Fridays (road); fitness training on Thursdays (Pilates; strength and conditioning); and morning runs on Sundays (one gentle and accessible for beginners; one longer).

I prioritise the Wednesday night sessions over other commitments (Ash Wednesday aside), and, currently, aim to get to the Monday and Friday night runs as often as I can.

Over the past eight years, I have run with C pack, stepped up to hang off the back of B pack, been a regular leader of D pack, and run with D without leading. My fitness levels have gone up and down. Injuries, just needing to step back at times, and other life circumstances all have their impact. I’m working to get back to running with C and leading D.

It is a community I love.

Sometimes people ask, why do runners feel the need to talk about their running all the time? And the answer is in what I wrote above: that it took two years of regular encouragement before I took the plunge. I know for a fact that my running and volunteering has encouraged other people to take up running and/or volunteering. Several of them have gone on to do things I have never done (marathons, for example) which delights me.

This weekend also marks fifteen years since I became an Anglican priest. Perhaps if we invited more people, more often, to join our churches, they might come, eventually, when they are ready, when they feel they can’t hold out any longer. Perhaps if we made sure they were accompanied in their ‘running the race,’ as saint Paul described life, they might commit.