hiding in plain sight

 

Here is the text of a paper I gave today at the Neurodiversity and the Role of Language in Church conference. It expands on thoughts I have shared at earlier times on social media and/or my blog.

 

Hiding in plain sight: neurodivergent insights in encountering the Word beyond words
Revd Dr Andrew C Dowsett

Abstract

Ancient Hebrew has a far more limited vocabulary than twenty-first century English, with many instances of words that have more than one meaning (semantic range). Typical translation asks, ‘Which of the possible meanings makes the most sense in this context?’ excluding other possibilities and concealing more meaning than it reveals. As a neurodivergent preacher, I find this typical approach to have an impoverished appreciation of the Story. Instead, I seek to hold divergent readings together, making visible the shimmering presence that lies beyond the ‘normal’ range of perception. In this paper, I will consider two stories of encountering God at Sinai/Horeb (Exodus 19.18 and 1 Kings 19.4-8) the mountain where God simultaneously reveals/conceals himself. Furthermore, it is typically assumed that autistic people cannot understand metaphor. The reality is far more complex. I propose that autistic use of metaphor plays a role in navigating between masking and unmasking in our congregations.

 

I am a Church of England vicar, and in this capacity have offered reflections on passages from the Bible, for a congregation, at least two or three times a week for the past seventeen years. But I have lived with—and within—these sacred texts for over fifty years. I am also autistic—probably AuDHD—with cooccurring dyslexia and dyspraxia. Dyspraxia in particular affects how I read, needing to expend measurable time and energy recalling the meaning of every word, rather than scanning sentences for meaning.

Ancient Hebrew has a far more limited vocabulary than twenty-first century English, and (at least proportionally) more instances of words that have more than one meaning (semantic range). Dominant, neurotypical translation asks, “which of the possible meanings of this word makes the most sense in this context?” ruling out other possibilities.

But this results in both a ‘revealed’ meaning and a ‘concealed’ meaning or hidden meanings. And I am drawn to what is concealed. Indeed, I find the ‘Select one’ approach an impoverished reading or appreciation of the Story. Instead, I seek to hold divergent readings together, making visible the shimmering presence that lies beyond the ‘normal’ range of perception. Language conveys our understanding of the world, and I would contend that ancient Hebrew works at both a literal/material and metaphorical/spiritual level. In my experience—perhaps ironically—neurotypical readers tend to read ‘literally’ (“the plain thing is the main thing”) and fail to appreciate the metaphorical.

In Exodus 19.18 Yahweh descends on Mount Sinai. The NRSVA offers us:

‘Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently.’

Here we have a theophany, which is simultaneously a revealing and concealing of God, and a masking which we might be encouraged to understand as an accommodation of human frailty in the presence of the divine.

But the Hebrew word ‘ashan’ can mean ‘smoke’ or also ‘anger.’ At least, it is translated as smoking anger elsewhere (Deuteronomy 29.20; Psalm 74.1; Psalm 80.4). So, when we come across it in relation to Mount Sinai, we might read:

‘Now Mount Sinai was altogether angry, because the god Yahweh had descended upon it like fire; it’s anger like the smoke rising from a kiln, the whole mountain so angry it shook.’

Clearly, a mountain cannot be angry in a material sense, and so ‘wrapped in smoke’ is the most obvious or revealed telling. But from a poetic perspective, mountains can be angry. Or, in a non-Western worldview that understands natural or human-made objects and places to be by some manner (whether inherent or conferred) ‘animated,’ spiritually, it makes sense.

So, this gives us a concealed meaning, one that invites us to wonder why a mountain should respond to God’s arrival with anger?

Much is made in the surrounding context of ‘the third day,’ which echoes the third day of creation, when God separated dry land from the sea and called forth vegetation of all kinds and in particular fruit bearing, seed carrying plants;

but the mountain is barren, has in a sense chosen to reject the liberty God had in mind for it—

or has not been able to flourish as we would assume flourishing might look like, if we employ too-narrow a definition—

all of which makes it an interesting choice of venue to present a newly liberated people with Ten Words, the seeds for fruitful living.

This concealed reading—an angry mountain; or an overwhelmed mountain having an autistic meltdown, perhaps—also invites us to ponder when God might have turned up in our lives and we have responded with anger, or meltdown? And, why we—or perhaps someone we know and love; perhaps a member of our family, or congregation—were angry, or overwhelmed?

But if the mountain is angry—violently angry—perhaps Yahweh masks himself in fire for self-preservation? Or if the mountain is overwhelmed and having a meltdown, perhaps Yahweh wraps it in a weighted blanket and sits with it until it is brought back to a place of emotional regulation?

This example of a pattern of linguistic simultaneous revealing and concealing also invites us to reflect on how we—who are made in the likeness of God—approach others, unsure of whether we will be received or rejected.

There is much talk in neurodivergent circles of autistic masking and unmasking. Is autistic masking—usually understood as the attempt to pass as neurotypical—a necessary survival mechanism; or ongoing violence against the self; or both of these things: in Jungian terms a ‘false self,’ constructed in youth to conceal the ‘shadow self’ we do not wish the world to see, because we are ashamed or because we are uncertain; which served us until we are ready to throw it off, revealing our ‘true self,’ created and given by God? And is autistic masking the only form of mask autistic people employ?

The use of masks—perhaps various masks—to both present something of who we are and hold something of who we are back is a human impulse that, arguably, reflects a divine impulse. Choosing when we unmask is also an act that, arguably, reflects a divine process.

Masks do not in themselves deny our true selves. They can help to broker relationships, while setting wise boundaries of un/availability to others. They can help us explore aspects of our identity we have previously failed to explore. They can make the most sense in a given context, or cause confusion; they can create dissonance that opens up possibility. They can be playful, as God is playful; protect us, as God is vulnerable; or protect the other, as God is careful.

What will I choose to reveal, and to conceal, about myself today?

Long after Moses, the prophet Elijah will find himself on the same ‘angry’ or perhaps autistic mountain. That this is where, yet again, Yahweh chooses to meet with mortals, created in his image, embracing a fullness of neurodiversity. That this is where Yahweh feels most at home.

The NRSVA renders 1 Kings 19.4-8 this way:

‘But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.’

Let’s break that down, reading each word for meaning, for semantic range.

Elijah ‘went a day’s journey into the wilderness.’

The word for ‘wilderness’ or ‘desert’ (‘midbar’) is, at root, also the word for ‘mouth’ or ‘speech.’ This is both fascinating and unsurprising, as the wilderness is the place where God speaks, or, more accurately, where humans speak with God.

The word for ‘journey’ (‘derek’) is also the word for ‘Way,’ as in a way of life, which is worked out through conversation—which is also the same word.

The word for ‘day’ (‘yom’) is also the word for ‘daily.’

So, at a literal/material level, Elijah ‘went a day’s journey into the wilderness.’ And at a metaphorical/spiritual level, it is Elijah’s practice to be in daily conversation with God.

We would call that prayer.

Now, some would argue that we work out which of the possible meanings a word should be given by the context. But I would argue that where a word can be understood in more than one way, it should be understood in more than one way. Because the context for the spiritual is always material, and the material is always spiritual. They belong together.

So, I would take it at face value that Elijah, whose practice it was to be in daily conversation with God, took a walk into the wilderness.

And there he sat down under a broom tree.

Now, the broom tree also appears in Job chapter 30 and Psalm 120. For Job it is a symbol of those expelled by society, which Job applies to himself to say he feels rejected by God. Psalm 120 links the wood of the broom tree, which was prized for how well it burned, with a peacemaker dwelling amongst those who hate peace.

This is where Elijah chooses to sit down, to stop walking on the way, to end his conversation. He has had enough.

Autistic people certainly identify with feeling expelled by society; and some may feel rejected by God. We can also identify with a deep awareness of injustice and of the call to be a peacemaker, and of experiencing burnout. We don’t need to claim Elijah as one of our own, having an autistic shutdown, to claim the broom tree as autistic metaphor.

God sends a messenger, an ambassador, who comes to Elijah as he sleeps, breaks off some branches from the broom tree, heats some flat stones on them, and bakes flat bread on the stones. (I love cake, but it is a misleading translation.) That is to say, God answers Elijah (who was not asking a question or seeking a continuation of their conversation) with food and drink. Again, I would take this at both a material and a spiritual level. Sustenance for body and soul.

Elijah awoke, ate and drank, and lay down again to sleep. Later, the ambassador returns, wakes him again, provides him with more food and water, and tells him that he needs to eat and drink if he is to have the strength that he needs to undergo the journey ahead of him. The word ‘strength’ (‘koach’) also means ‘chameleon.’ Weird, huh?

That journey takes him to Horeb, the mountain of the Lord. ‘Horeb’ means ‘desolate.’ God waits for us in the place of our desolation. In the place where nothing else can console us. God waits for us, and, moreover, sustains us on the conversation that will bring us to that place, to confront ourselves, stripped of all the many outer layers with which we have tried to blend in, to mask ourselves. Chameleon.

But that masking has served a purpose; is strength to us. In the verses that follow, Yahweh employs wind so strong that it splits mountains and breaks rocks; earthquake; and fire as masks; before finally revealing himself most personally in sheer silence. In an entirely voluntary mutism, after unmasking layer upon layer, and before Yahweh invites Elijah into verbal conversation. Is Yahweh making sure that Elijah is a safe person to open up to? Or is this the shadow self, embraced, integrated; wholeness, modelled?

In the past it was assumed that autistic people struggle with metaphor, indeed that this was a classic hallmark of autism. And, of course, some autistic people do. But others are comfortable with metaphor—and if, like me, you have swum in these sacred stories for a lifetime, that may be even more likely. I want to suggest, as more recent research is also verifying, that many of us are highly skilled in creating, or pattern-recognising, our own metaphors. Metaphor is not simply a stylistic choice, but a linguistic way of ordering the world we encounter. And if we encounter the world differently, we need different metaphors—metaphors which add to the richness of a neurodiversity of interpretation.

Of course we understand that God is our Rock (and that he isn’t, literally, one of the rocks in my rock collection on my bookshelf). But we also offer the neurodivergent mountain. We offer—using pattern recognition—the broom tree as metaphor for autistic experience, not simply literal/material detail providing shade and fuel. We offer wind, earthquake, and fire as metaphors for masking, and unmasking—which may help us to navigate our own choices to mask and unmask before others, when we preside as autistic priests, or come to public worship as neurodivergent persons. We offer the brilliant and adaptable chameleon of strength—what neurotypical mind would ever coin ‘the strength of a chameleon’ over the unimaginative ‘courage of a lion’?

In my own experience, neurotypical readers are at least as likely as neurodivergent readers to view our sacred texts through a literal lens—to veer towards fundamentalist interpretations: to view Genesis chapter 1 as literal science and history; rather than literally, as poetry and theology. I believe that neurodivergent readings can open up space for those who have felt excluded to find room. Moreover, I believe that neurodivergent readings can help us all, revealing that which has been overlooked because it is hiding in plain sight; making visible the shimmering presence that lies beyond the ‘normal’ range of perception; reclaiming a world that is, in fact, more substantial than the superficial illusion daily presented to us. Our insights are a gift from God, to be shared with others.

 

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.

 

Wake Up Dead Man

 

Jo and I watched ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ last night. It is excellent (and very long: we took a tea break part way through) and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The attention to liturgical detail is exceptional for Hollywood.

Some thoughts, hopefully not much by way of spoilers.

[1] The Whodunnit and How are pretty obvious to anyone with eyes in their head and a familiarity with misdirection. This is not a plot weakness. The Who and the How are always fairly banal in a good detective fiction. The real interest lies in motive, or motivation.

[2] While presented in the style of a cosy murder mystery, the story is more than a little inspired by JRR Tolkien’s majestic fantasy, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (don’t let this put you off if you aren’t a fan of fantasy).

Monsignor Wick is a Saruman, a man who is — inevitably — corrupted by the burden of institutional authority, amplified by the ways in which questioning voices that might hold him accountable are silenced by such hierarchical structures. A man who has come to believe that the only way to defeat evil in the world is to play by its own rules.

Father Jud is a Gandalf, a man who possesses no structural authority and who is shielded from its corrupting influence by the repeated humiliations of needing to persuade unwilling others of his insight into the times they find themselves in. A man whose experience tells him to love the little people. A man who is, ultimately, powerless to save himself; who loses his priestly vocation only to have it restored to him by a ‘eucatastrophe,’ (Tolkien’s word for) the unrepeatable intervention of grace.

Dr Nat is a Frodo, a fundamentally decent man weakened by the pain of great loss; a ring wearer who, in the final instance, and despite having a greater insight into the corrupting power of the cursed talisman than other characters, succumbs to the temptation that in his hands it can be welded to restore the world that has been lost. A man who is only spared that fate by another eucatastrophe.

Benoit Blanc is a Tom Bombadil, a clown character, who has no interest in taking power (and so is free) but only in the beauty of truth. A man who sees the goodness in others (in stark contrast to the cynicism of many fictional detectives, and an even greater proportion of real detectives) and who strengthens them to do what is right.

[3] I have seen some reviews that suggest that the film is anti-Christian — or, at least, anti the Church — but pro-Jesus. This is not the case. It is pro-Jesus and pro-Christian, pro-Church. A thoughtful exploration of grace, that avoids simplistic or sentimental understandings of how grace works, does not spare us the wounds that remain.

What we are also given is a thoughtful exploration of the Church as institution and as community. The Church is full of complex characters. People who come in search of hope, of inspiration, of re-birth, of healing, of a place to belong, of community, of acceptance, of identity and purpose, of certainty in an uncertain world that has left them disappointed, of somewhere to find significance through service, in search of God. So many motivations, all compromised, some considerably less healthy than others.

And the Church welcomes all. Welcomes all; but hopes for their transformation. Hopes for their transformation; but cannot make it happen. (When we attempt to, tragedy is at hand.)

Transformation involves ‘poio’ — choices we make — and ‘pascho’ — that which is done for us that we cannot do for ourselves, only submit to being done to us, or resist. And it is that capacity to resist — both the choices we know we must take, and the grace we must welcome — a resistance that is a deep survival mechanism — that leaves the Church a deeply flawed community.

This is its greatest weakness, and, in the end, its saving grace.

 

The End Of The World

 

Mark 13.1-8 and Hebrews 10.11-25

TL:DR The world as we know it ends catastrophically all the time. Therefore, it is all the more important that Christians should focus on Jesus, embrace the discomfort of different views held with conviction, and seek to draw out the best rather than the worst in fellow human co-creators of the world to come.

The biographer Mark records Jesus making several visits to the temple in Jerusalem in the days leading up to his arrest and execution. Of all four Gospel writers, Mark is the least invested in the temple; he neither records Jesus visiting nor even mentioning the temple prior to this late point. This temple, expanded by the Roman client king Herod in ways that introduced segregation for women, the disabled, and foreigners, no longer exercises the role of Holy Place where heaven touches earth: this has now been taken on by Jesus himself.

Nonetheless, Mark records that one of rabbi Jesus’ apprentices draw his attention to the grandeur of the building, only for Jesus to respond that not one of the impressive stones would be left standing on another. The world, as they knew it, would come to a dramatic and violent end.

This would come to pass during the First Jewish-Roman War, 66-74 CE, at the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, when Roman legionaries tore the temple down. But if not then, it would have happened eventually.

Mark recounts this exchange between the rabbi and his apprentice for an audience who are living through that very war. Most scholars believe he wrote from Rome, where a small number of Jews who followed rabbi Jesus watched events unfold from a distance, subject to reports and rumours and a lack of news of family back home. A minority report suggests Mark might have written from Galilee, closer to the frontline. Either way, he writes for those living through the End of the World that Jesus foretold and traumatised by it.

At the same time Mark was writing his Gospel, an unknown writer wrote what is now known as the Letter to the Hebrews to scattered followers of Jesus living through the war. Many scholars attribute the letter to the travelling church-planter Paul. Three of his fellow church planters, Luke, Apollos, and Prisca/Priscilla also have their champions. The fact that this community worked and wrote in overlapping combinations both strengthens the case for the letter coming out of that community and makes it harder to identify any given individuals with certainty.

This writer, too, is writing to a community whose world, as they have known it, is ending in flames. But they explicitly point out what Mark implies, that the world as they knew it had already come to an end. That the temple had already been replaced by Jesus as the means of achieving the ritual purity that was necessary for human beings to come into the presence of a holy God. Rather than being secured by priests going about their business day after day in the temple—a business about to be cut short—this has now been done, for them, once and for all, by Jesus, in his body.

In the light of this, the writer argues, the community of faith made up of apprentices to Jesus can have confidence even as everything they have known is lost. Specifically, they have freedom to speak openly and without fear before God, to bring their uncertainty and provisionality, their failures, shame, grief, anger, and the fear that is yet to be cast out by love.

And in such a time as this, when the world around us is burning, is being dismantled stone by stone thrown down until there is only a valley filled with rocks, the writer to the Hebrews offers three suggestions as to how to conduct ourselves, how to go about our daily lives.

Firstly, ‘let us approach.’ We can come before God, in whatever state we find ourselves, for ‘our hearts [are] sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.’ The loss of familiar structures and practices does not equate to loss of access to the presence of divine mercy. The temporal loss of the Church, as we have known it, is not the end of the life of faith.

Secondly, ‘let us hold fast.’ Be steadfast, not lightly surrendering our faith, not allowing the apocalypse around us to cause us to give up. The writer makes use of a principle from philosophical debate, not intransigent dogmatism but a willingness to wrestle with questions, to grapple with contrasting ideas and understandings, without abandoning the ring. Co-creating our response to the present crisis, and so, perhaps, in time fashioning a new world. The deconstruction and reconstruction of faith is necessary, again and again, but impossible alone.

Thirdly, ‘let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.’ Careful observation and contemplation, seeking to discern—in and for any given co-creator—how to stir up love, practical acts of justice and mercy, commitment to others, courage in the face of evil: in the active face of despair, self-interest, stone cold injustice, hatred.

You cannot stop the world from ending. The world, as we know it, ends over and over again. For individuals, families, communities, nations. The question is, how ought we to live in such a world?

This is a question the Church has been wrestling with from the outset and will be wrestling with [for we spring from the family of Israel, the Wrestler, the wrestling people] until the end.

 

God is not the king

The evangelical tradition – of which I am part – is vulnerable to narcissists because of the way in which we habitually misread Jesus’ parables.

Despite the fact that God tells Samuel that kings represent a rejection of God’s invitation to relationship with him;

despite the fact that kings are repeatedly recorded as rejecting God's ways and leading their people away from knowing him;

so that even the very few kings considered good are corrupted, to the extent that a direct parallel is drawn between David killing Uriah to take his wife and Ahab killing Naboth to take his vineyard;

despite Pharaoh;

despite the consistent testimony against kings of the nations by the prophets;

despite the fact that kings have John the baptizer, Jesus, and several of Jesus’ disciples put to death;

despite all this, whenever a king appears in a parable Jesus tells, evangelicals assume that the king represents God, and that the behaviour and actions of the king reveal God’s character.

They don’t. And for as long as we teach that they do – for as long as we perpetuate lazy and dangerous readings – we will be vulnerable to narcissists.

Jesus employs parables about kings in the context of his impending death at the hands of the authorities. These include a parable of a king who throws a banquet for his son, a stinging critique of the high priestly family of Annas and Caiaphas, in which Jesus prepares his disciples for his trial, complete with enlisted crowd, and execution outside the city wall. But this parable is routinely co-opted by evangelicals to show that God will punish those who do not show him deference with hell.

Jesus employs parables about kings to judge the kingdoms of the world. In one he presents a man of wealth who seeks the title king from an external source, in the face of a counter-delegation by those who know him; who distributes resources to ten servants (seven of whom we do not hear of again) rewarding success and punishing failure to accumulate for him dishonest gain. This accurately describes the way in which Herod the Great had come to power as a client-king of Rome, sought to secure succession for three sons, one of whom would have his land annexed by direct Roman rule. Or the way Tiberius, emperor at the time of Jesus’ public ministry and death, negotiated power, rewarded Germanicus with a full triumph for quelling rebellion, delegated rule in Rome to Sejanus while Tiberius removed himself to Capri to live a life of debauched indulgence, before having Sejanus executed for planning a coup. Or the way narcissists operate today. The parable is a warning against getting drawn into such ways – this is not the way of Jesus – and yet it is routinely co-opted by evangelicals to show that God will punish those who do not use the talents he gives them to his glory.

Jesus employs parables of kings to contrast the way of the world with the divine way. Asked by Peter how often we must forgive others, Jesus effectively says, there is no limit. He then goes on to tell a parable in which there is a limit - to highlight the contrast. A king who has been reckless with his fortune seeks to take back what he has given out. One of his slaves, who has done very well for himself by keeping close, is unable to repay him. The king makes a show of writing off the debt. However, the slave then goes out and demands repayment of a far smaller debt owed him by a fellow slave, and shows no mercy when it is not forthcoming. This causes such a scandal that it reflects badly on the king who had written off that slave’s debt. In effect, he asks, ‘This is how you repay me? Making me look foolish in public?’ The king has the servant cast out to rot in prison. This is classic narcissistic behaviour. It could be straight out of the Trump playbook – or the way in which narcissistic church leaders make people feel special before ghosting them or threatening to prevent their future prospects. And yet this parable is routinely co-opted by evangelicals to show that God will treat people this way – which justifies narcissistic behaviour.

I could go on. Teaching on persistence in the face of injustice, Jesus tells a parable of a widow who keeps coming to a judge. The judge has no regard for God or his neighbour – is the embodied antithesis of the commandments to love God and love your neighbour. Despite this, and despite the fact that it is the woman – who has no power except commitment to justice – who demonstrates persistence, evangelicals are more likely to see God as the judge (male, position of power) than the widow. But God is not found in the places we want to find God.

We need to do better. For a tradition that claims to honour the Bible, we need to go back to the texts. But the cognitive dissonance will be enormous.

  

Falling and rising

 

I love the passage from the New Testament set for Morning Prayer today, Acts 20:1-16.

Paul has been travelling by land from Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) through Macedonia (the north of modern-day Greece) and down into Greece, and from there intends to travel by ship to Syria, when a plot against him is discovered. Presumably this is a plot to have him thrown overboard, lost at sea, for Paul revises his plans to take the longer route back by land.

The first thing he does is gather to himself a company who will attend to him on the journey: Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Beroea; Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica; Gaius from Derbe, and Timothy, as well as Tychicus and Trophimus from Asia—while more again travelled in a second (possibly decoy) group, with Luke. These are not merely individuals from different places of origin, but representatives of churches Paul has planted. We know that as Paul planted churches, he sometimes took someone from the newly established church with him, to learn from him as, together, they planted other churches. We know that sometimes churches planted by Paul sent representatives to him, after he had moved on, carrying letters back and forth, continuing to engage in the dialogue by which the new believers in Jesus as Lord and Saviour got to know Jesus, and the nature of his reign and salvation, better. We know that Paul sometimes wrote to churches, asking them to send named persons to him, for a given purpose, as an expression of their partnership in the gospel that was both symbolic/representational and deeply practical. In these ways, Paul faces the challenges of his circumstances drawing on a broad and tightly connected network of fellow believers.

This company meet up with other believers to break bread, shorthand for to gather together to tell the story of Jesus, to spend time in adoration, back-and-forth story telling where Paul speaks and another takes the story up, through great looping detours and backtracks that connect Jesus with all the history of the people of Israel before him and now also the gentiles, these companions from among the surrounding peoples, a joyous conversation over food, that arrives, at some holy moment, not predetermined, of remembering the Passion, his giving himself for us all.

This is such a precious thing, in response to overwhelming circumstances over which we have so little control, that the people gathered in that room remain all night. No one wants to leave. There is nowhere else, nowhere, they would rather be. The room is warm on account of their bodies in close proximity, the air is thick with the smoke of oil lamps. A young slave boy sits at the open window, reaching for any breeze. He has worked all day, but the night is his, and he does not want to miss a moment. Sleep can wait until he is dead. No one notices him slump sideways until it is too late, and Eutychus—his name means ‘good fortune’ and he was clearly a valued slave, one his master believed himself fortunate to possess—falls from the third story of this urban apartment block, and lands on the street below, dead. Paul, however, will not let him lie, but restores him to life, in keeping with the story of Jesus, the miracles that point to something greater to come. And then, they keep going, telling, celebrating, that story. Food is served, including that moment when bread is broken as Jesus had broken bread with his disciples on the night he was arrested, looking backward to the time God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt and forward to the time, days from now, when God would deliver his Son from the realm of the dead. Before Eutychus is raised, the conversation is described (twice; though the second time is somewhat lost in translation, the English suggesting more of a monologue) as dialegomai, getting to know one another. After Eutychus is raised from the dead, the conversation is described as homileó, the communing of companions. This moment, then, this falling and rising, this dying and being raised to life, marks a deepening in relationship.

So yes, I love this passage. While I am not, personally, the target of any plot, I serve two congregations that are facing challenges far greater than the resources we possess. The temptation is to be caught up in constant firefighting or give in to despair. Under such circumstances, Paul would encourage us to network with other churches and to focus our eyes on Jesus.

 

Pilgrim people

 

Yesterday, I baptised Oscar, a baby boy. Baptism marks the beginning of a lifelong journey of faith, that ends with our funeral—at which point, a new journey begins. This is why, in some traditions within the Church, the coffin is sprinkled with water from the baptismal font as it enters the church. Between these two points, our baptism and our funeral, we speak of the Christian life as a pilgrimage we undertake with others. At the heart of the baptismal rite, I declare:

‘N, I baptize you

in the name of the Father,

and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

‘May God, who has received you by baptism into his Church,

pour upon you the riches of his grace,

that within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people

you may daily be renewed by his anointing Spirit,

and come to the inheritance of the saints in glory.

Amen.’

Over recent days, we have witnessed The Queue, a long procession of people, from all over the world, who have made a journey to the Queen, lying-in-state. For the final stages of their journey, they have walked alongside others, strangers to them, in a shared, and ordered, experience. People of surprisingly diverse backgrounds. Their reasons for making the journey are many and various—selfless and self-centred; we do not get to choose those we queue with—and, for some at least, hard to put into words. As they have walked, strangers have become friends, perhaps even family. As they have reached their desired destination, we have seen people bow, or salute, or make the sign of the cross, or keep their cap on until the last moment so as to doff it. And afterwards, just moments later, they are spilled out, into the city, perhaps into the night. What then? Some have rejoined The Queue, others have returned home. All will carry this experience for the rest of their lives. Will it make a difference? For some, undoubtedly.

Without any doubt, this has been a pilgrimage. And those who don’t ‘get’ that are unable to appreciate what has taken place, and why. Why so many have needed to make this journey, to pay their respects, to give thanks for a life lived in the service of others. They can only dismiss it as folly, scandal even. Which, for me, is yet another evidence that this is a pilgrimage.

The catafalque in Westminster Hall has been a resting place, not only for the Queen’s coffin, but for every pilgrim who has made the journey to stand before it. May they all be renewed for their onward journey. May they all come, at last, to their final destination, the inheritance of the saints in glory.

 

Reading from the ashes

 

Reading Genesis 1 in a post-Brexit pandemic.

While drawing on a centuries-long oral tradition, the book of Genesis is an exilic and even post-exilic text, a work of making meaning in a context of enormous upheaval.

If Eden (chapters 2 & 3) is Babylon, Genesis 1 is centred on Jerusalem. This is not the creation of the world, but in a world that has become formless and for whom God acts to bring order out of chaos, Genesis 1 plants us firmly in the ashes of Jerusalem besieged and plundered by Nebuchadnezzar II.

Chronologically, it follows on from Jeremiah’s Lamentations over Jerusalem. In the unfolding vision of a sun and moon and stars, and the reestablishment of a flourishing plant and animal kingdom, the text actively engages with texts such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai, in which God raises up governors and high priests to give light to the people, and the restoration passages in texts such as Isaiah, Joel and Amos, which paint pictures of a new world centred on a restored Jerusalem.

What bearing might this have on how we read Genesis 1 in a UK ruled by disaster capitalists on the make, or a world where leaders make promises on tackling climate crisis they have no intention of keeping?

 

Faithful improvisation

 

In these Last Days at the tail end of the Church calendar, we are sitting with Daniel at Holy Communion. The book of Daniel concerns the experience of the civil service of Jerusalem after they were deported into exile in Babylon. It is full of big, bold, colourful episodes, such as The Writing On The Wall and Daniel in the Lions’ Den.

To help make sense of what had happened to them, and to keep hope alive for what might happen, the exiles engaged in what we might call faithful improvisation. Drawing on ancient resources to sustain their present and imagine their future into being, they wrote down stories.

So the neo-Babylonian empire is depicted as Adam, and the Medes, with whom they had made a marriage alliance and who would eventually betray them, become Eve. Babylon with its fabled gardens and mighty rivers becomes Eden. The presence of Yahweh, the god of the exiles, in their midst becomes the Tree of Life; and the presence of his people, represented by civil servants of unparalleled, godlike, insight becomes the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Their hosts are prohibited from devouring the fruit of that tree, on pain of judgement; nonetheless, they do attempt to consume the fruit, in fiery furnace or lions’ enclosure. The talking dragon sidekick of the god of Babylon even makes a cameo appearance.

In this faithful improvisation, the story of Adam and Eve is reimagined as a pre-history not of humankind but of the return from exile, after the judgement of these superpowers.

How might we engage in faithful improvisation, reimagining this story from within the context of being a church community in the northeast of England who have welcomed into our midst a significant number of Christian asylum seekers from across the Middle East, largely of Persian background?

Adam stands for the regime in Iran, ruling over the ancient Persian empire.

Eve stands for the British government, for in their financing, and selling of arms, and occasional sabre-rattling, the Mother Of All Parliaments is both a support and a liability for the Iranian regime.

Eden is the beautiful land of Iran.

The Tree of Life represents God’s faithful presence to bless the Persian people through the centuries. (Did you know that the Magi who visited the infant Jesus were Persian ambassadors?)

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil represents the Persian church, rapidly growing in the face of strong persecution.

Through this faithful improvisation, the story of Adam and Eve is reimagined, within my context, as a pre-history of the future time when my Persian sisters and brothers can return home, to live their lives openly and without fear of imprisonment, torture, or death.

Of course, this is not the only way to reimagine the Genesis pre-history. But it is the only way to read the Genesis pre-history, asking, how does this text live for us and give us life?

 

Blessed are the peacemakers

 

It is said that at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, the sound of shelling fell silent at the End of the War to End All Wars. I think we can safely say by now that recalling that moment is not, in itself, adequate. We must commit ourselves to the ongoing—every hour of every day of every month—work of re-membering our common but divided humanity. Our future—our children’s and grandchildren’s future—depends on it. Our world—their world—depends on it.

I spent yesterday with friends from the Nordkirche, the Church of the North, Germany. Every two years, we meet together, from Durham Diocese and the Nordkirche. In 2017, I was part of the Durham delegation at the consultation in Hamburg; in 2019, I venue-hosted the consultation at Sunderland Minster; and in 2021, we met online. It is always humbling, because the German participants conduct the entire proceedings in English. Not because “we won the War!” but as sheer grace, a gift, freely given, born of love.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

How will you actively strengthen peace, today?

 

A drenching

 

Yesterday, I travelled to attend a gathering of clergy colleagues from across Durham Diocese, seeking to encourage one another in how we might share the good news of Jesus Christ with some of the 99.2% of the population of our region who are not part of any church. As my train approached the station, it began to rain. As I stepped onto the station platform, the heavens opened. With nowhere to shelter, I had no option but to head to the church where we were meeting, four minutes’ walk away. By the time I arrived, I was soaked to the skin. I could not have been wetter had I stood under my bathroom shower, fully clothed. It was a miserable start to the day, but one that made me utterly dependent on the hospitality of others, and in that there was greater blessing.

This coming Sunday, one of the churches I serve is marking Harvest. In previous years, this has been a major celebration. Every windowsill has been dressed in floral glory. The cubs and scouts, brownies and guides, have attended, parading flags. The food donations of a community have been brought forward, gathered together, for distribution to those in need. This year, while we shall be supporting two local organisations we partner with, harvest will be on a far smaller scale, something that is a cause of sadness. Deeper than that, it is a cause of shame.

The Old Testament reading set for harvest this year is taken from the prophet Joel. The context is one of successive failure of the harvest, due to invasions of locusts. This is the context in which Joel is called to share good news, a word of encouragement that is good news for the soil, for the land and for the human, the creature made of soil. God’s loving-kindness drives out fear, and in its place, joy follows.

Joel helps the community to see God’s goodness towards them in the failure of the harvest, and in the bounty of the harvest. This is a key insight for us to grasp. Harvests are vulnerable, expose our vulnerability. The bringing-in of a full harvest is, indeed, a cause for celebration. But the failure of a harvest to materialise, due to flooding or drought or disease, invites us to identity with those whose survival is tenuous, with those more closely tied to a local harvest that is more greatly impacted upon by a global environmental crisis. The inconvenience of bare shelves at the supermarket invites us to reconsider the idol we have made of convenience, and all we have sacrificed to that god. A more sparse collection to carry to the food bank invites us to consider afresh the systemic injustice that necessitates their existence. And all of this gives us cause to recognise our own frailty, our dependency on others.

God is in the harvest devoured by locusts, as well as in the harvest that fills the barns. Lament and repentance and hope and praise and celebration are all part of the experience of faith, of walking through life with God, of becoming progressively aware of God with us in all circumstances.

The passage from Joel concludes with the declaration, repeated for emphasis, that God will deal with his children’s shame. The experience of shame is that profound sense of being ‘not enough,’ and God’s response to shame is to cleanse us of it. Hence the imagery of abundant rain, poured down (and my recounting being soaked to the skin). Apart from God, we are not enough; but God obliterates our self-sufficiency in a gracious flood that renews the earth, the creature made from the soil.

99.2% of the population of the northeast are missing from our churches. For those who remain—for the most part the remnant of a generation who were brought up going to church and who met their spouses through church youth and social groups—this abandonment is a cause of shame. But they were beautiful in their time, and something new will be beautiful in its time. This community flourished as a church plant, in response to changing times, eighty years ago; and some new form will flourish again.

The best thing I can do for this people is to speak peace to their fear; to remind them of God’s goodness, loving-kindness over the years, both lean and full; to declare cleansing for shame; and hope for a future, that extends beyond what will see us out; to point to the signs of God in our midst, however small or strange those signs might be.

And no, it does not cause me worry that our Harvest will be small this year. God will yet deal wondrously.

 

Joel 2:21-27

‘Do not fear, O soil;

be glad and rejoice,

for the Lord has done great things!

Do not fear, you animals of the field,

for the pastures of the wilderness are green;

the tree bears its fruit,

the fig tree and vine give their full yield.

 

‘O children of Zion, be glad

and rejoice in the Lord your God;

for he has given the early rain for your vindication,

he has poured down for you abundant rain,

the early and the later rain, as before.

The threshing-floors shall be full of grain,

the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.

 

‘I will repay you for the years

that the swarming locust has eaten,

the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,

my great army, which I sent against you.

 

‘You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,

and praise the name of the Lord your God,

who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.

You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,

and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.

And my people shall never again

be put to shame.’

 

Scandals in the Church

 

Having been chastised for posting sermon notes after-the-event, I thought I’d take a march on this coming weekend. The Gospel set for Holy Communion next Sunday is Mark 9:38-50.

I’m not sure where the rendering ‘stumbling-block’ comes from. The Greek is skandalizó, to cause to stumble—from which we get our word scandal—and is repeated several times over. It is relevant due to the monotonous regularity with which overseers of the church are found to be guilty of some scandal: of abuse, in one form or another, of members of their congregation.

When Jesus speaks of throwing that person into the sea with a millstone hung around their neck, he seems to be playing on the little (micron) status of believers and the small size of the seed, a favourite symbol of Jesus for transformative faith. That is to say, the scandal that causes people of faith to stumble in their faith is the scandal of those who have power and authority devouring others for the satisfaction of their own personal appetite. Again and again, this has led people to walk away from the Church, often wounded, angry, and with a sense of shame or bewilderment.

Jesus is not speaking of literal mutilation, nor of a place of eternal post-mortem punishment. Rather, he is speaking of the seriousness with which the scandal of abuse, in all its forms, must be taken. It is not only better to enter-into the lived experience of God’s rule, maimed; arguably, it is only possible to enter at all as a disabled community. I know of no attempt to sustain a scandal-less community—whether in the Church or any other society—that has ever succeeded. The alternative scenario is a body thrown on the municipal rubbish tip, where fire consumes waste and worms break down whatever remains. The end goal of these processes is to minimise the spread of disease, and to return whatever is salvageable to a humus from which life can spring again. It is, in fact, a form of redemption, but one that comes at a cost Jesus would spare us of, if we would only listen.

The tragedy is that, over and over again, the Church chooses to control its reputation over confronting scandal. To play the game of determining who is on the inside, in the in crowd, and who we attempt to silence, to ostracise. It is a repeated scandal.

And yet, it is in being brought face to face with the internal inconsistency between the gospel we proclaim and the way we behave, that we might be refined by the refiner.

 

Hospice

 

One of the churches I serve marks its eighty-second birthday this weekend. St Nicholas’ was dedicated as a place of Christian worship in the early days of the Second World War. One member of our present congregation was there, as a choir boy, on that first day.

The congregation is struggling with the challenges of aging. In fact, of dying. Across the West, the Church is dying. Here in the north-east of England, 1% of the population belong to a church congregation, of any denomination. Very locally to us, the Methodists have just closed three of their churches, for ever.

I was asked, earlier this week, if I take this reality personally, if I feel that it is due to my failure. No. My ego is not that insecure. That the church is dying is not due to my failure, any more than, if the church were strong, it would be due to my success.

It is a reality of the natural order that every living entity dies. Trees grow over many decades, die, and can remain standing, dead, for a long time, before the wind topples them. Due to environmental factors, a whole forest can die at the same time. Cities, too, grow and die, often over centuries, with periods of accelerated growth and decline.

The same is true of the supernatural order. Jesus said, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains but one seed; but if it dies, it bears a harvest. He also said, anyone who would follow me must take up their cross and die. The Church proclaims that God leads us not from life to death, but from death to life, through death into life. Our Scriptures chart the history of many communities, across centuries, who experience the end of the world as they have known it, only to return, renewed.

The Church across North Africa and the Middle East has been dead for centuries; and is now bursting into new life. The Church in much of Asia is in its infancy; in much of Africa, a confident adolescence; in much of Latin America, a maturity; and in the West, approaching death. I have no doubt that the Church in parts of the world where it is currently at other stages will get there in time; and that the Church in the West will be reborn. But not without passing through death.

Is that sad? Well, yes, just as the death of any person is sad, for those who knew them. Does it distress me? No. It is the Way. Would I rather be living out my calling in some other time or place? No. This is what God has prepared in advance for me to do.

If the church were simply a gathering of individuals, we might expect to see every stage present at every moment in time. But the Church is not a collection of individuals, it is a living entity, within an environment. Not every congregation is in exactly the same place, but, nonetheless, the Church moves through the stages of life on a larger scale than the microscopic.

I am committed to proclaiming the gospel, in finding ways to help people to connect, with greater confidence, with the God who is already present in their lives. In fact, this is my everyday experience. But I do not expect that to result in the growth of my congregation, or to the rescue of the Church.

Why not? Because our congregations are hospices for the dying. In many cases, for those living with Parkinson’s or dementia or cancer. And it takes an extraordinary person to choose to join a hospice community, to be a doctor or nurse or cleaner or groundskeeper, or to be a palliative care nurse in the community. Of course, their work is valued, and people will take part in sponsored activities to raise funds for just such charities. But, to join them takes more. My sister was a hospice doctor. I have sat beside hospice beds, and I know that I could not work in such an environment. It takes someone quite extraordinary. By which, of course, I do not mean that the rest of us are bad people; just that most of us cannot bear to be faced by death so imminent, or life so raw and, in a paradoxical sort of a way, so very alive.

I am committed to proclaiming the gospel. But the death of the church does not scare me. Resurrection lies beyond. I resist the temptation of the death-avoidant culture around me, to desperately attempt to push death away. The Church, in the West, is a hospice. There is no cure. But there can be dignity, and a good end. And, outside of the Church as we have known it, there is still faith, hope, and love...

 

Hear

 

Tomorrow, the Church reflects on the Transfiguration of our Lord. It is an astonishing story, profoundly pastoral and deeply political. In a light-diffusing cloud on a hilltop, Jesus makes conference with Moses and Elijah, two great figures of his people’s past, concerning his imminent exodus (or departure, as the English renders it).

Moses, of course, led his people out from slavery in Egypt. The gods of the Egyptians had stopped their ears against the cries of a shepherding people living in the north of their kingdom, conscripted into city-building. Yahweh, the god of the Hebrews, the god who hears, heard their cry. In a series of plagues, Yahweh permitted the gods of Egypt to experience pain; restoring equilibrium whenever their spokesperson, the Pharaoh, cried out. Yet time after time, they rose up again, hardening their hearts. Eventually, Yahweh, descending in a pillar of cloud, led out his people, through the parted waters of the Sea, and to a mountain in the Sinai peninsula, on which the cloud of Yahweh’s presence settled. Moses, alone, was permitted to approach within the cloud, granted audience.

Some eight hundred years later, the people of Israel were reeling under the totalitarian rule of their queen, Jezebel. Promoting the uprising of the Canaanite gods, under the lordship of the sky-and-lightning god Baal, she had countless worshippers of Yahweh put to death. Elijah had already been evading the authorities and performing miracles for several years by the time of his confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Again, the matter at hand is over who hears the cry of their people. Baal is deaf to the cries of his prophets; Yahweh hears and responds to Elijah’s voice.

But in the immediate aftermath of Yahweh’s victory, and the breaking of a three-year drought—equilibrium restored, in the heavenly realms and so on earth—Elijah, fearing for his life, runs all the way to Sinai, and the mountain on which Moses had met with God. There, Yahweh meets with him, opening Elijah’s ears to the cry of thousands of other faithful worshippers in hiding, initiating the events that will lead to the overthrow of an oppressive political regime, and identifying a successor for Elijah, who will be taken up into heaven, no longer to be found on earth, as Moses before him.

Some eight hundred years on again, and it is Jesus on the hilltop. His people live under the occupying rule of Rome, before whose sky-and-lightning god Jupiter all must bow or be crushed. Once more, a confrontation is coming, between an unmoving god and a god who is moved by what he hears. A god whose greatest word through Moses was, ‘Hear, O Israel ...’ and a god who declares to Jesus’ disciples, ‘... listen to him.’

So Jesus and Moses and Elijah are in conference concerning Jesus’ exodus, which will take place in Jerusalem. His going outside the city, to suffer and die, familiar words from the psalms on his lips, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me?’ Words, heard, by Yahweh who moves, restoring life, raising Jesus from death on the third day, followed forty days later by his ascension, his returning to the Father, taken up in a cloud.

Luke’s first audience would have heard this story in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the levelling of the temple at the hands of the Roman army. The victory of Jupiter over this minor people. And yet, the Transfiguration. The promise of things to come. Of another exodus, a saving out from the hands of the gods, the Roman pantheon that would bow before the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ as the Church brought reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles, women and men, slaves and freeborn, children and fathers. As the cries of the oppressed were heard and responded to. Not a reversal of fortunes, but a return to harmonious peace.

In many parts of the world today, our sisters and brothers are experiencing persecution on account of their faith, in the name of other gods, other ideologies. Their cries are not unheard, and neither are the silent cries of their oppressors, who perpetrate violence against themselves. Tomorrow, the Church reflects on the Transfiguration of our Lord. It is an astonishing story, profoundly pastoral and deeply political.