pebbles

 

There’s a man in a white house who seeks to manipulate everything to his personal gain, whose behaviour has made the world a more dangerous place. And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I don’t even possess one single, solitary say in the land where he lives.

What I can do, what I did do this morning, is take shelter from the storm in God. To hide until the storm is past—one day, the waves the man is making in the world will have ceased; but the storm within me can be calmed much sooner. A child in their safe and secret place.

And so, this morning, I sat with God—in God—in silence; in prayer, which is a state of paying attention, of becoming more aware. We sat, together, God and I. And, like an autistic child with his pebbles, I took out whoever came to my mind and held them there, on my palm, to show God, ‘Look, look how utterly wonderful this one is!’ And in the silence shared between us, God simply said, ‘I know, I KNOW.’ Not, ‘I made them’—no need to take credit, though in fact God did make them; no need to take anything away from my wonder. And then, like an autistic child with her pebbles, God held out whoever came to God’s mind—and to be fair, they would not have come to my mind had God not shown them, for God’s collection of (unlikely) treasures is far greater than my own. But there is a level of trust there, between two persons, safe enough to show the other what matters most to them, which is usually beyond words.

And in the world beyond, I could not tell you what, if anything, had changed. But a storm had blown itself out. And that is why I need to return to this place on a daily basis in this stormy season.

Peace be with you

and also with you.

 

glory

 

Church was glorious this morning. Not slick—we don’t do slick—but real, and, glorious.

At Communion, in this Eastertide, we are using Eucharistic Prayer G, which includes the following words:

‘How wonderful the works of your hands,

O Lord.

As a mother tenderly gathers her children,

you embraced a people as your own.

When they turned away and rebelled

your love remained steadfast.’

It was precisely as I was saying these words that the youngest member of the congregation today, held in her mother’s arms, decided that she had a lot to say, and say with conviction. Glorious. I almost lost it in giggles at the perfect timing of this illustration, of what it means to say these words about God. Of who we are:

children in arms, sometimes wrestling against the love and security we need;

needing—and free—to express ourselves;

loved.

Glorious.

This is Church. The life of faith, from birth to death, embodied, enacted, given voice.

After that service we had a time of baptism preparation with two families, for a girl born in lockdown and the little sister of a big brother who had been born in lockdown. We role-played our way through baptism, its significance, and the connections between the symbols of oil, water, and a little candle, and everyday life.

This, too, was glorious.

And now, the sun is shining, and I am on annual leave.

Glorious.

 

un/aware

 

I wonder when you first became aware of the presence of Jesus?

Perhaps you were a child. If you are old enough now, perhaps it was kneeling by your bed saying your prayers before bed, though I suspect this generation has all but passed. Though if you are a Boomer or Gen X, and grew up in the UK, your mental image of Jesus was probably shaped by pictures like the one shared below, which hangs near the front at St Nicholas’ Church. Scandinavian Jesus, with flowing blonde hair and beard and blue eyes. Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon.

I wonder when you first lost awareness of Jesus?

It may have been in the wake of a bereavement, the death of someone you loved. Or in the suffering they endured before dying. It may have simply been that life, in all its busyness, got in the way. Or that the more you learnt about the world, whether its injustices or the wonders described by science, that the stories you heard told in church became implausible. For too many, it may have been a growing awareness of the gulf between what the Church proclaimed and how the Church acted, or between what the Church proclaimed and what Jesus proclaimed; and if this is your story, I am truly sorry. For others, who remained in church, it may have been that church itself changed, and something that had been deeply important to you was left behind (this, too, is bereavement).

I wonder when you became aware of Jesus’ presence again?

And, how that awareness grew. Often, as something intangible, a sense inside the body, that might be described as a burning—warming—of the heart, long before the understanding catches up. An integration of the life lost within the life we have now.

This repeated process, of becoming aware of the presence of Jesus, losing that awareness, and later becoming aware again, is the process by which we move from a naïve faith to a more mature faith; from rules (that train us) to freedom to love well; and from a dependency on certainty of knowledge, to peace with not needing to have all the answers. The disciples on the road to Emmaus move from not recognising Jesus, to seeing him, to not seeing him but now having a faith deeper than sight.

This is the process by which we leave behind that which has served us well (enough) in the past (even Scandi Jesus) but will not (cannot) serve us now. And how we differentiate between Jesus, and all the trappings.

This is the Way. And as we walk on it, we are accompanied by Jesus, whether we recognise his presence (at times) or not.

 

on playfulness

 

Playfulness can unlock things that other approaches cannot.

The Gospel set for this Sunday, Luke 24.13-35, is playful. The story takes place on the third day after Jesus’ death by crucifixion. Two of his apprentices are walking together, and as they do so they are ‘talking with each other about all these things that had happened.’ These things that had happened can mean these things that coincided or walked alongside each other. This is playful language. The hopes and dreams of the Palm Sunday crowd, the repeated confrontations with the authorities over the following days, the rumour mills operating on overtime throughout the city, the sad awkwardness of the Last Supper, the terror of Gethsemane, the numbing disorientation of Calvary, the death of their Messiah, the emptiness of the Sabbath, and the incomprehensible insistence of the women; all these things have walked alongside each other over these days. And as the two apprentices walk alongside each other, throwing all these things that have walked alongside each other back and forth between them, Jesus came near, coincided, and walked alongside them.

Moreover, they will tell him about the apprentices who did not see Jesus. These two apprentices who do not see Jesus, walking right alongside them. Their friend and teacher, and the one at the very epicentre of the events they are discussing, is, in their eyes, a stranger; and, even among strangers, uniquely uninformed and unaware.

It’s playful.

Playfulness involves both the imagination and the body. The way the storyteller, Luke, describes the two apprentices discussing all these things that had happened draws on the imagery of tossing a ball back and forth between them. ‘The press of the crowds. Catch!’ ‘The Temple tension. Catch!’ ‘The taste of roast lamb and bitter herbs. Catch!’ ‘Um...Grief. catch!’ ‘Er...Total incomprehension. Catch!’ Luke doesn’t say that they were actually throwing a ball, but when we are wrestling with too many things—and too many emotions—at once, doing so might help.

They arrive at Emmaus towards the end of the day, as the day is bent and bowed, with age. They press upon the stranger to stay the night, and put together supper. And Jesus does something physical: reclines at the table, takes hold of the bread, acknowledges, with gratitude, its God-given goodness, tears it so it can be shared, offers it to his host companions (companion: literally, one with whom we share bread). Unhurried. And this is the moment their eyes are opened. The moment of recognition. Not in his exposition on the road—though that certainly did something—but in simple, and repeated, actions. Again, when we wrestle with disappointment and confusion, receiving bread and wine in Communion is an anchor, enabling us to see Jesus in circumstances where we are kept from seeing him.

It is at this point, too, that they realise that their hearts had burned within them as he spoke on the road. That something deep inside was reaching out to Jesus, even when they were unable to recognise him. The body does what the conscious, controlling, mind could not. Bypasses the intellect, which follows slowly behind like a dullard. Playfulness, again.

I wonder when you have been disappointed, in your faith? When you have lost someone you loved, or something that felt central to what you believed was taken away from you? Or when you found yourself simply and utterly confused by it all?

I wonder what stories you can tell of encountering Jesus in just these times? Or what stories you might one day tell? And I wonder what place playfulness had, or might have, in the process?

 

on metaphor

 

It is often said that autistic people can’t recognise metaphors. But that isn’t true. Some autistic people struggle to grasp metaphor, just as some allistic people (that is, people who aren’t autistic) struggle to grasp metaphor. Moreover, autistic struggle to grasp metaphor might be quite different from allistic difficulty.

An example. I am perfectly aware that, when the scientific community speaks of the cloud creating a platform that enables researchers located in different parts of the world to collaborate, ‘cloud' and ‘platform’ are metaphors.

But the reason we turn to metaphors is, surely, that they convey a superfluity of meaning. And whereas other people might be able to recognise the metaphor and filter out most of the meaning, as an autistic person I need to acknowledge all the possible meanings.

Cloud coverage varies dramatically from day to day. When we speak of ‘the cloud,’ do we mean that some days the information available to us is overwhelming, or that sometimes access is unreliable? Probably not—though both these things are true, and so, if this is not what we consciously intend by the metaphor then it is an unintended benefit. Or are we drawing on a biblical image, ‘the great cloud of witnesses,’ to convey the idea that the cloud connects us to the experience of generations who have gone before us, on whose work our work builds (a platform, if you will)? Again, this might be unlikely (biblical literacy is not as high as I would like) but it fits. Or perhaps we mean that digital information surrounds us, but is invisible. This would be an imprecise metaphor, as clouds are not invisible. And yet I suspect that this self-evidently imprecise use might come closer to the choice of metaphor. Here, each piece of data might be considered a water droplet, which coalesces with others; but if so, the clouds would make more sense than the cloud.

As an autistic person, metaphor doesn’t work, for me, as a shorthand; it works as a door (metaphor alert) into a bigger world, a world I have to stop to explore, each time I come across it. The issue isn’t that I can’t recognise a metaphor, but that I can’t skim read. As it is, when I read, my brain uses measurable time and energy recalling the meaning of each and every word (to use a metaphor, I don’t have a mental dictionary that stores words in alphabetical order [itself something that escapes me] and with their meaning; let alone a ‘frequently-used words’ filing cabinet at the front of my brain) and metaphor slows things down even further. Because I love language, and precision that ‘literal’ language cannot always get to without the help of ‘poetic’ language, I am perfectly happy to move slowly and appreciate the scenery (metaphor alert).

But, no, metaphor does not elude me.

What about you?

 

against Christian Nationalism

 

I want to offer some reflections on the Gospel reading set for Holy Communion today, John 3.31-36, in the light of serious misuse of biblical texts by political figures in recent days.

In this passage (which you can read in full below) Jesus makes several claims about the nature of God:

God is true;

he gives the Spirit without measure;

The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands; and

whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.

God is true:

God is the ultimate reality, and measure of what is inherently good—in marked contrast to the provisionality of any human culture or empire, which reflects goodness partially and imperfectly. This reaching-beyond what we can see and touch around us—beyond what we can grasp—in search of deeper truth is inherently human, across cultures. It calls for fidelity to something that is more weighty, more permanent, than our brief moment. The belief that we possess—that we are—the pinnacle of truth and beauty, the measure against which all others are to be judged (and found wanting) is hubris.

he gives the Spirit without measure:

The Spirit is the Life of God, shared, sent out into the world, to animate everything that is, to draw it back into the Life of God, as breath is exhaled and inhaled again and again. Genesis describes human beings as the humus of the earth, animated by the breath of God. And God gives this Spirit—this Life—without measure. In contrast, Capitalism measures everything, assigning a value, and seeking to control, to hoard. As if it is possible to hoard breath, to breathe in and in and in without ever breathing out. A scarcity model, in which we must compete with one another for the necessary goods of life. Yet we are all alive, on this Earth we share; not one of us asked for this. The idea that we must earn the shelter and food needed to sustain life is the antithesis of divine love. God gives without measure, to all, not asking who is worthy, who is deserving, who has or has not earned the right. Those who have seen and heard, who testify that God is true, reject the idea that we must hoard what is needful for ourselves.

The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands:

God loves—is Love—and whatever lacks love is not of God. This love is all encompassing: Jesus calls us to love our neighbour and to love our enemy—for only love can transform enmity into friendship. Love is relational: hence, the Father and the Son. The Son is Jesus. Son language—Son of God, Son of David, Son of Mary, Son of Jospeh—reveals that God loves human beings so much that he resolved, from the beginning, to become one of us. One with us. God has a human ancestors, a human mother, a human kinsman redeemer. God, who is true, trusts humanness. This is stunning. And, in love, the Father has placed all things into Jesus’ hands. There is nothing that God has not entrusted to Jesus. To believe this is to not need to attempt to take anything into our own hands; and attempting to take control demonstrates the gulf between what we confess with our lips and believe in our heart.

whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath:

‘Earthly’ things are at odds with ‘heavenly’ things. Both are located within the heart. Earthly wrath looks like unbridled anger, raining fire on our enemies. But the wrath of God simply refers to God’s settled opposition to injustice. There is no violence in this resolute opposition, but a non-violent standing with all who suffer injustice. Jesus does not call down angel armies to destroy the Romans, but takes into himself our earthly wrath—our injustice; for the earthly, here, is the inverse of the heavenly—and neutralises it. Jesus reveals God to be non-violent. When we read of violence attributed to God in the Bible, we are not witness to the nature of God but we are witness to the reality that even those who know God can misunderstand, misheard, misrepresent God. These passages give us reason to doubt ourselves, not God’s goodness. Yet, we are addicted to violence. It cannot save us, cannot give life; but, rather, keeps us from the life God longs for us. We cannot know peace through killing our global neighbours, but inflict pain on ourselves as well as them. If we refuse to see this, God’s wrath—settled opposition to injustice—does not abandon us to our own self-destruction, but ensures. Indeed, Jesus claims, it abides with us: makes itself at home, testifying to our choosing death, testifying to the life God longs for us to choose instead. Truth that is deeper than the surface reality we see around us. Trusting that we can only endure this guest for so long before we are won round. Before we repent, turn around—see from a heavenly, not earthly, perspective—and give our lives to making amends.

Christian Nationalism has nothing to do with Jesus. Cannot see or hear him. Yet, Jesus remains. And in him, I hope.

John 3.31-36

“The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.”

 

on peace

 

‘When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’’

John 20.19

‘Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’’ John 20.21

‘A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’’ John 20.26

Twice, just three days after he was tortured and executed, and again seven days later, Jesus says to his apprentices, ‘Peace be with you.’

This would appear to be important, the heart of his message. The word ‘peace’ means wholeness, to be at one with (within) yourself. How can someone so recently and so thoroughly broken apart proclaim wholeness?

It has been said that trauma is not what happens to us, but what happens within us in the absence of empathetic witnesses. (This is why doctors’ bedside manner matters so much in emergency care.)

Jesus went through unimaginable pain, but—contrary to popular belief—was not alone. We know that several of his female apprentices and at least one of the men were at the foot of the cross. The others stood at a distance, looking on, as much as they could bear. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus will lower Jesus’ body from the cross, wash it and anoint it with spices, and lay it in a tomb. Several of the women saw where they laid him. When the women later return and find the tomb empty, Peter and another apprentice—traditionally identified as John but perhaps Lazarus, who himself had walked out of a tomb and would have a particular interest in witnessing that again—ran to the tomb to see for themselves. That they were not taken there by the women, but ran straight there, implies that they, too, had been participating witnesses in Jesus’ burial.

Most of all, it has been claimed that on the cross, God—the Father—could not bear to look. Songwriters have penned words, describing the Father turning his face away. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the text. When Jesus cries out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ he is not describing his experience but praying a psalm, Psalm 22, exploring the appearance of abandonment, precisely to reach out and hold fast to the God who is, in fact, there with us and for us. As he hangs from the executioners’ scaffold, the sky turns black. When God descends, as on mount Sinai, he cloaks himself in thick darkness, so that the people do not die of fright. The sky turns black because the Father has come to hold his Son’s outstretched hand and look upon his beautiful face.

Jesus does not suffer and die alone, but surrounded by empathetic witnesses. And he returns, showing his wounds, not simply to prove that it is he and not some other, but, in a safe space, to take his apprentices back to their own place of unbearable suffering, where each one of them felt abandoned and without empathic witness, and therefore experienced trauma.

Jesus takes them back, right into that place, so close, so real, that they can reach out and touch his wounds. And in revisiting that place, not alone but with the one who has died and been raised to life again, they, too, are empowered to let go. To lower the defences they have thrown up to protect themselves. To experience healing. To be brought back to a place of wholeness.

This is what Jesus does for them.

This is what Jesus wants to do for us, too.

To stand alongside us in the place of our deepest hurt, and speak the word we most need to hear, ‘Peace be with you.’

This is a process, not a one-off event. It is the process that Jesus’ apprentices, the Church, are called to participate in. To be a community that is becoming whole, moving from trauma to peace, as we see one another’s wounds—and his—with love.

 

John 20.19-31

‘When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

‘But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’

 

on the raising of the dead

 

If we accept, even hypothetically, that God can raise the dead, a question arises about timing. Why is Lazarus raised on the fourth day, and Jesus on the third day, after their respective deaths?

In the epic poem that opens the book of Genesis (and, therefore, the library we know as the Bible) the fourth day is the day on which God calls the sun, moon, and stars, conferring on them a vocation to mark night from day, and season from season. (To ask how there could be days before there was sun or moon is to miss the point: this is not creation, but vocation. A day is a day, and a night is a night, even when the sun, moon, and stars are totally obscured by cloud cover.) In his account of the good news of Jesus, or Gospel, John makes much of the symbolism of deeds done during the day and deeds done at night; between the things Jesus does to bring freedom to others, and the things his enemies plot to take him prisoner. In this, Lazarus is the moon to Jesus’ sun, marking the arrival of Jesus’ ‘Passion,’ of the time (night) where he is ‘done to’ (paschō) rather than ‘doing’ (poiō).

The third day is the day on which God draws land—the soil from which God will draw out the human being—from the flood of sea, which, in the poetic imagination of the Bible represents chaos and death. This is also the day on which God calls forth the first vegetation—the first fruits of the fruit-bearing plants. Jesus’ resurrection is presented as the return of human beings from death, not as a never-to-be-repeated event but as the first fruit of something that will, at some future point, become universal.

So not only raising from the dead, but also the specific timing of these events, is significant; makes a statement concerning the story in which we find ourselves.