I
am paying attention to the wind, tugging seeds from a thistle growing in the
wild corner of our garden, and lifting them high into the air. Patient.
Persistent. Mesmerising. I resist the urge to give a helping hand, to sweep my
fingers across the thistle heads and free the seeds. There is no excuse for
inaction, but sometimes, often, the best course of action is simply to be
attentive, to get out of the way and bear witness to what the
wind/spirit/breath is doing.
Most
Fridays I go for a 10K run with friends, although, post- having Covid, it will
take me a while to get back to that level of fitness. And there is a clear
ritual to the process. Each week, a map of the proposed route is posted on
Facebook. At some point in the course of every run, Brian says, When I said
that [previous hill] was the last hill, I had forgotten about this one
... and I always respond, To be fair, the route is always flat on the map
...
Maps
are incredibly helpful but limited. A road atlas doesn’t show the topography,
or let you know where there are roadworks or traffic jams. Maps need additional
information, and interpretation.
We
can think of exams as maps. They tell us something, and they certainly aren’t a
waste of everyone’s time, but there is plenty they don’t tell us. A pupil’s
exam results don’t tell us the road they travelled to get there, the additional
challenges they faced and had to overcome. We can locate where someone is on
the map, but it is possible that one child got there climbing a steep ascent,
while another child got to the same location, from another starting point, by
way of a flat route or even a free-wheeling downhill section. Exam results can
never be truly comparative. But, taken with other information, they can be
helpful in making decisions about where to go from here.
The
past few years have been incredibly challenging for our youngest son, Elijah,
not primarily to do with the pandemic. But he has achieved an amazing set of
GCSE results, and we are proud of and delighted for him.
In
the days immediately before his death, Matthew records, Jesus spoke extensively
about the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Within this discourse, he told a
parable about what faithfulness looks like (Matthew 24:45-51).
Jesus
compares the faithful and wise slave whose master charges him with providing
the other house-slaves with their food in season, with the wicked slave who
abuses his fellow slaves and indulges in reckless living. The former is
entrusted with all that his master has; the latter is cut to pieces in the
place of weeping.
At
one level, this is a parable of perspective. From one perspective, the priests
are the faithful servant, administering the daily sacrifices at the Temple; and
Jesus is the glutton and drunkard who will be executed outside the city walls.
From another perspective, Jesus is the faithful servant, feeding the people in
the wilderness; and the priests are those who will be cut down in the city
rubbish dump when the Temple is destroyed along with most of Jerusalem. What do
you see?
At
another level, this is a description of the idolatry that has led to this
inevitable outcome. On close reading, there is only one servant, who starts out
faithful and becomes wicked. The priests did not set out with the intention of
being wicked. But somewhere along the line, the servant takes his eyes off the
master, and allows the house-slaves he was appointed to minister to, to become
an idol.
Whenever
this happens, whenever the thing we love, the vocation entrusted to us by God,
becomes an idol to us, we flip. Conservatives become destructives.
Bible-believing Christians become biblically illiterate fundamentalists.
Liberals become deeply illiberal. Catholics become schismatics.
The
corrective against this is to keep our eyes on the master we serve, and to
understand the season we are in, in relation to the thing entrusted to us.
There is a time for every matter under heaven, a season for bearing fruit and
for refraining from fruitfulness, for working and resting.
Learn
to know the season your calling is in, and to notice the rhythmic changes from
one season to the next. And how it relates to the vocations of others, also
needed, in their season, for the good of the whole.
The
Season of Creation, which runs from 1 September to 4 October each year, is that
part of the church calendar dedicated to God as Creator and Sustainer of life. The
great poem of Genesis chapter 1 is a text of many layers, enabling us to
discover something new each time we go there; but as we approach Creation
Season, I am reflecting on it as a curriculum of habitat, the study of God
preparing a home for all life.
First,
the vocation of light (day) and dark (night). Of habitats for diurnal and
nocturnal animals (and diurnal plants that unfold their petals with the
unfolding light, and twist to track the sun through the course of the day,
before folding their petals again for sleep). Day and night, of course, are not
binary, and this first work of creation also creates habitats for crepuscular
animals, both matutinal (active at dawn) and vespertine (active at dusk).
Second,
the vocation of the water cycle. Of (ice and) fresh water, saline water,
atmospheric water. Of evaporation, condensation, precipitation. The processes of
producing and sustaining the 1% accessible freshwater life depends on, as well
as directly shaping the lifecycle of some animals, such as frogs that spend
most of their life sleeping buried in mud, waiting the rains and the release of
tadpoles that will grow into frogs by the time their pool evaporates.
Third,
the vocation of land (and plants) and seas. Again, these are not binary, but
meet and flow into one another. Forests and grasslands and semi-arid zones and
deserts and icesheets. Marshes and estuaries and intertidal zones and reefs.
Fourth,
the vocation of sun, moon and stars as markers and guardians of the seasons. Of
aestivation (animals that sleep through the summer months) and hibernation.
Fifth,
the vocation of marine biodiversity and birds. Of krill, and great migratory
whales; migratory swallows; and category-defying penguins and ostriches.
Sixth,
the vocation of land animals and, last to appear on the scene, people. Of
migratory butterflies and zebra; migratory domesticated cattle, and their
migratory nomadic herders. Of human ethnic diversity, and the many ways we have
made our home in different habitats.
Seventh,
the vocation of rest. God moves from care for creation—a home for every living
thing—to enjoying, delighting in, creation. And God draws humans to first delight
in creation, that we might care for creation.
The
purpose of mythology is to help us navigate our own time. Key to Thor: Love
and Thunder is an exploration of rebuilding life after your world comes to
an end. The ways you can do so unhealthily, or healthily.
Following
the destruction of Asgard, the surviving Asgardians founded New Asgard on earth.
But it has become almost a parody of itself, its story told as a theme park for
tourists rather than to provide their children with roots that go deep. Asgard
no longer exists, at least in a physical sense; yet New Asgard, which does, is
not as real. It lacks any thickness, lacks substance. What will it take to
transform this, to reawaken a community?
Thor
is lost to himself; his former girlfriend Dr Jane Forster is lost to herself;
each is lost to the other. What must they let go off, in order to remain true?
What fears must they overcome? What fears must they surrender to?
Thor’s
magical hammer, Mjolnir, has also been destroyed, and lies dormant, a
curiosity, a tourist attraction; but Mjolnir reassembles itself—its broken
parts held together, visibly scarred—by the power of love. Not even love can
heal a history that remains subject to denial; and the future we are yet to
discover bears the marks of the past we did not entirely choose, though had
some degree of agency within.
Heimdall’s
daughter wishes to be known as Heimdall’s son. Thor is deeply uncomfortable
with this. Does that make him transphobic? Or does he understand that there is
a deep vocation to being the daughter of Heimdall, that should not be lightly
laid aside, even for an alternative expression? Or is it enough to be able to
say, I am uncomfortable with this; I have questions, and concerns, about where
the limits of individualism lie; but, nonetheless, I will treat you with
dignity, I will support you with love? In the complexities of life, we do well
to extend honour, and not judgement, towards one another.
The
purpose of a movie is to entertain. But, under the cover of escapism, sitting
in the dark, questions are posed, explored, left unresolved, taken away with
us. How has my world gone through these things? Or what might happen next?
Questions always tied to our own personal histories, the ways in which our
lives have been destroyed and reconstructed, securely, or insecurely. And to
all our possible futures.
The
New Testament reading this Sunday, from the Letter to the Hebrews, speaks of
everything that can be shaken, being shaken, so that, in the end, only what
cannot be shaken remains. Of inheriting a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and
therefore of the possibility—truth even—of experiencing joy, in the midst of
our world being shaken violently, to the core. Not entertainment, but
sustainment. Not a settling for a shadow of the past, but the awakened hope of
a more substantial future, calling us.
Our
world is being shaken. How will we respond?
We
went to see Thor: Love and Thunder, which is loosely based on, but far
less bleak than, the comic book Gor: the God-butcher.
When
the gods do not answer Gor’s prayers that his dying child live, he sets out to
kill all gods, inevitably becoming corrupted, and, at least in the comic book,
ironically becoming the very thing he despises. (In this, Gor represents the
human condition, for we have killed our gods and found not promised freedom but
terror.) In this way the story explores the origins, perpetuation, and nature
of suffering. Are gods to blame, or be rejected on account of suffering? And
does anything good come from suffering; or, to put it another way, is there
anything we gain from suffering that we would otherwise fail to embrace?
In Thor:
Love and Thunder exploration of these deep questions is mostly reworked
through the lenses of self-preserving distance, stage 4 cancer, and childhood
nightmares, to explore our longing for love, and our need for courage. With a
generous side-helping of humour, high-octane soundtrack, and dodgy costumes.
Which is exactly what a 12A movie should do. Though, arguably, the best bit was
the trailer for Wakanda Forever, coming this November, before the film
started.
The
Gospel set for Holy Communion today is Matthew 22:1-14. Jesus says, the
kingdom of heaven has been made this way: and goes on to tell a story.
Jesus
tells the story of a king who wishes to secure his dynastic line of succession.
He throws a banquet for his son and invites the great and the good. But these
despise the king and refuse to come—some even revolt—and the king, enraged, has
them all killed. He then sends his soldiers into the streets to press-gang
whoever they find to attend, that he and his son might look popular and
beloved. Think North Korea, Putin’s Russia, or any other dictatorship. One man
stages a dignified protest. He is there, under duress, but he refuses to wear
wedding clothes. When interrogated by the king, he refuses to speak. And so, he
is bound, and taken beyond the walls, to where there is weeping and gnashing of
teeth.
The
man is Jesus, who will be first dressed in a purple robe by soldiers in mock
homage and then have that robe removed; who will be silent before Pilate,
refusing to respond to his accusers; who will be bound, and led outside the
city walls to the place of execution, and executed, along with others, while
their women weep.
When
Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven has been made like this, he is not saying
that the kingdom of heaven has been made to be the same as the kingdoms of the
earth, where those in power will kill to remain in power; but, rather, that the
kingdom of heaven has been made to be a subversive, non-violent alternative in
the very midst of such kingdoms.
This
matters, enormously; because the ‘conventional’ way of reading this parable,
where a king must always refer to God, and the son therefore to Jesus, leads
not only to a defence of eternal conscious torment but also, and always, to the
‘Christian nationalism’ co-opted by Trump and Orbán. Whenever the Church seeks
to hitch itself to earthly power, it results in a bastardisation of the faith,
a perverse ‘righting’ of the upside-down kingdom where the weakness of God is true
strength and the foolishness of God is true wisdom; a false witness that
profanes the reputation of God among the nations (Ezekiel 36:23-28, the
Old Testament reading paired with Matthew 22:1-14 at Holy Communion
today).
Jesus
ends by saying that those who have been invited into the kingdom of heaven are
beyond number, but that those who respond to the call are few. A call to refuse
to play by the rules of the world, even though the world may very well kill you
(metaphorically or literally) is hardly popularism. And yet, it is through
these few, who have said yes to God wholeheartedly, that the world may be
transformed.
The
Old Testament reading set for Morning Prayer today is 1 Samuel 20:18-42,
the continuation of the account of David and Jonathan.
This
passage contains at least three parallels with the Passion narrative concerning
Jesus, the Son of David. These are:
David
is hidden from sight by a large stone until the morning of the third day //
Jesus lies in the tomb, sealed by a large stone, until the early morning of the
third day.
When
Saul demands that David be put to death, Jonathan responds, ‘Why should he be
put to death? What has he done?’ // When the chief priests demand of Pilate
that Jesus be put to death, Pilate responds, ‘Why? What has he done, deserving
of death?’
The
intimate one-to-one meeting between David and Jonathan, where Jonathan must let
David go, to fulfil his calling to become king // The intimate one-to-one
meeting between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, where Mary must let Jesus go, to
fulfil his calling to become king.
And,
arguably, an additional parallel in that the vow made between David and
Jonathan throughout all generations forever finds a parallel in the covenant
between Jesus and the Church.
These
parallels are playful and fun, but they also serve to identify Jesus as the Son
of David and to prompt us to ask, what kind of a king is this king
Jesus? And this matters, in the light of what follows his resurrection, that
this is not the moment when an immortal Jesus will take back Jerusalem from the
Roman legions.
In
short, what follows on from this moment in the story of David and Jonathan is
that David, who was already anointed as king some years earlier, goes into
hiding, eventually in a cave, for thirteen years, during which all those who
were dispossessed by Saul’s rule gathered to him and were transformed into a
purposeful family, before David is eventually publicly recognised as king.
This
is the pattern for Jesus’ kingship: anointed since his baptism; in his
resurrection and ascension, hidden from sight; drawing to himself the
dispossessed; awaiting the day when he will be revealed as king before all
nations.
David
// the Son of David.
‘But
truly, as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, there is but a step between
me and death.’
The
Old Testament reading set for Morning Prayer today is 1 Samuel 20:1-17
and records a conversation between David and his dear friend Jonathan. David is
(rightly) convinced that Jonathan’s father, Saul, intends to kill him. Jonathan
is sure that if that were the case, his father would have confided in him.
David responds that Saul is keeping his intention from Jonathan, because he
knows that it will grieve him. And David reasserts that ‘there is but a step
between me and death.’
As
far as I am aware, no one is out to murder me. Yet though the particulars
differ, David reveals a universal truth: there is but a step between me and
death. People die, every day, people we know and love, and people known and
loved by others, and for the most part we do not know the hour of our death.
Such knowledge is hidden from us, and for good reason. Nonetheless, we are all
but a step away from death, though for as long as our steps run in parallel, we
live.
This
morning, the lines came close for me. As I stood waiting for the lights to
change, to cross a three-lane road, an approaching car in the far lane slowed
down and stopped. Assuming the light had gone red for traffic, and was about to
turn green for pedestrians, I cautiously stepped into the road. A taxi pulled
out from behind the waiting driver into the middle lane and blasted me with its
horn. I have no idea why the other driver would stop for a pedestrian when it
was not safe, for them or the pedestrian, to do so. But in any case, my steps
and death did not converge. One day, perhaps even later this day, they will.
Life
is a gift, from God. Death brings that gift to an end, even though I believe
God has gifts for us beyond this life. There are times when that gift seems
strange or unwelcome, too much or too little to bear. It is perfectly valid to
ask the Giver, ‘What is this for?’ or, ‘Is it meant to be like this? Has it
somehow been broken, and can it be repaired?’ Such questions are good, even
when we do not receive an answer, immediately or at all, or the answer we were
hoping for. The kind of gift that life is, is a mystery, too deep to be
understood, too vast to be contained in our understanding. To receive it at all
calls on our heart and mind and strength and soul, and even combined we cannot
fathom its depths.
All
that said, this day, receive the gift held out. This day, choose life. And when
the time comes to step in time with death, know that Life has chosen you, to
rest in peace and rise again in glory.
Today
(15 August) the Church honours the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. The
Gospel passage set for Morning Prayer is Luke 11:27-28,
While
he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed
is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” But he said, “Blessed
rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!”
Jesus’
response mirrors that of the woman, and goes deeper: blessed (happy) are those
who hear and comprehend the word spoken by God so that faith is birthed within
them (the idea here is conception, not full-term birth) and who guard, protect
or watch-over it (the idea here is pregnancy, of the foetus developing in the
womb, and the mother cherishing this miracle of new life within and with her).
In other words, Mary, who said yes to God and in whose womb the Word of God
took on flesh, and who treasured these things in her heart (the word rightly
translated womb in Luke 11:27 can refer to any internal organ and the
inner being) is the model for all.
But
there is more to this brief exchange on the birthing and nurture of God’s word
in our lives. In the Greek, verse 27 begins, ‘It came into being, or, to birth,
by Jesus saying this, that a woman in the crowd lifted up her voice and said to
him...’ By Jesus saying what, exactly? In Luke 11:14-23, Jesus casts
out a demon who has prevented its ‘host’ from speaking, and the crowd is
divided in its opinion: some argue that it is by the authority of the ruler of
the demons that Jesus casts demons out. Jesus responds, how can a kingdom
divided against itself stand? Rather, I do this on the authority of God, and as
a sign of God’s kingdom among you. Jesus continues (Luke 11:24-26, the saying
that births a response in the woman), explaining that when an unclean spirit is
cast out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions in search of a place
to rest and be refreshed, and, finding none, determines to return to the person
whom it had made its home (‘my house from which I came’) and, finding ‘the
house’ in order, brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and together
they take possession of the person’s life, such that their state is now worse
than before.
Jesus
is speaking about our lives as a resting place, either for the Holy Spirit (of
whom Jesus speaks in Luke 11:9-13) or for unclean spirits. Even if spirits
who afflict a person’s life are driven out, unless the life-giving Holy Spirit is
received, the relief from affliction may be short-lived. We don’t like to admit
that we aren’t fully in charge of our own lives, but if we are honest, we know
it to be true (even as I was writing this, I nipped out to buy milk; the woman
in the queue ahead of me confessed to the cashier that she had fallen off the
wagon over the weekend, and the cashier replied, oh well, it can’t be helped). And
the woman in the crowd hears and comprehends that Jesus is the fruit of another
woman who had welcomed the Holy Spirit and made first her very body and then
her home, both building and family, a resting place for the liberating word of
God, breath given voice.
May
we be as the unnamed woman in the crowd, who was, in turn, a woman in the
pattern of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
