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.

 

Torn

Today, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London have joined other faith community senior leaders in calling on the Prime Minister to make a U-turn and allow public worship to continue in the second, coming lockdown.

I am utterly torn by this, as to be fair I am sure they are too.

On the one hand, I agree with them that faith is not a private matter; that our places of worship are ‘Covid secure,’ with no scientific evidence that the virus is being spread through public worship [though, we have no means of collecting such evidence]; that there is research-based evidence supporting the positive benefits to mental and emotional health; and that our corporate worship is significant in sustaining our service to the wider community at this time, through for example, food banks, or any of the £12bn worth of social value contributed by the Church not counting the support offered by other faiths.

On the other hand, these things are not exclusively true of faith communities; special pleading undermines solidarity, in deeply damaging ways; and I do not believe that public worship is essential to what constitutes and sustains us. If that were so, one could not speak of the Church in China, or Iran.

Christian faith, like Judaism, is grounded in love of God and neighbour, with special attention to justice and mercy. Both traditions stand on prayer and service of our fellow human beings in the mending of a torn world, and these things can be done in the temporary absence of public worship. And from a specifically Christian perspective, it is the person of Christ, through the Holy Spirit, who constitutes and sustains us, not our ability to gather together.

Islam is also rooted in prayer and a concern for one’s neighbour, and while corporate payer is foundational, it too recognises that circumstances may exempt believers from certain practices. Indeed, all faiths have had to adapt to circumstances, throughout history. And we are living in a pandemic that is uncontained.

I am torn, also, because it is exhausting to have to form and hold parallel plans: for gathering in one physical space; and for gathering in time held in common but across various spaces. This week is exhausting.

None of this is to criticise the senior Church leaders listed above, nor in search of pity for a poor vicar, but, rather, a recognition that life is often and for many a torn reality. To give just one other example, this will be true of many voting in the USA this November.

How, then, ought we to live? Firstly, by acknowledging that this is so, including creating safe spaces to express the pain of it all, to lament.

Then, by seeking to be gentler, with ourselves and towards others. Recognising that those days when we can operate at fresh-out-of-the-box full capacity are not the default days against which we should measure expectations, but gifts to be enjoyed when we do experience them.

Finally, to recognise that different people will hold different views and reach different conclusions; that this will always be the case, and it does not make them—or us—villains; but it does add to the complexity of life—which, in turn, brings us back to lament and gentleness.

 

Crisis, and beyond

Sunday morning, and I am thinking about the parable of the wheat and the darnel (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43).

Matthew’s whole presentation of the gospel—the good news of Jesus—emphasises the contrast between those who receive Jesus and those who reject him. And this is a parable of what the Church will look like. In contrast to the expectation that God would soon vindicate the Jews (as a whole) and judge the Gentiles (as a whole, and in particular the Roman Empire), Jesus points to a crisis—the end of the ‘Second Temple’ Age in 70 CE—in which God would judge the nations, beginning with his own people, and establish a new humanity made up of both those Jews and those Gentiles who found reconciliation in the community formed in and through and around Jesus.

This is a parable that profoundly undermines our culture wars.

In our own present crisis, God is again judging the Church and the world, in order to bring about a renewed humanity. The wheat and the darnel are both uprooted.

In what ways will the Church look different beyond this moment in history?

The truth is, we don’t know—because it hasn’t happened yet. But this is the story that is unfolding. And so, attentive to how it may unfold, we hold on to being a community shaped in and through and around Jesus, as we rehearse our creedal confession and participate in sharing in communion.

Gift

One of the greatest gifts that the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England gave to the wider C of E in the twentieth century—that is to say, that the Anglo-Catholics offered it, and the other traditions that together make up the Church of England, such as Evangelicals, chose to receive it; or, also, that the Holy Spirit gave it through the Anglo-Catholics, and the wider Church discerned the Holy Spirit to be the Giver—was the parish communion.

Prior to this, the principle expression of the gathered church was a church at Morning and Evening prayer. While holy communion was to be celebrated every Sunday, the requirement to attend was on three occasions a year. For those who attended habitually, before or staying on after the ‘main’ act of worship, it was very much an act of private devotion. The parish communion movement changed that. In time, the weekly celebration of holy communion became the focal point of ecclesiology: a community being shaped as they gathered together around the Lord’s table on the Lord’s day. This was, now, a communal drama, undertaken together. There was music, with some members of the body bringing rehearsed voices or instruments, and all joining in. There was seasonal colour. There was the procession of the Gospel into the middle of the congregation, standing and turning to face it, read aloud beneath the cross of Christ and flanked by candles symbolising illumination. At the churches I serve, the processional cross and candle stands might be carried by teenagers, or asylum seekers, or a man who has Down Syndrome; or by pensioners, retired from employment but still deployed in and through the church. There was the bringing forward of the gifts of the people, their financial offerings, and the bread and the wine to be consecrated. There was the movement to the communion rail, and back again, the (more) steady on their feet providing an arm for the more infirm.

Of course, being Anglican, provision was made for those for whom this went beyond the pale. And so, in many churches up and down the land, those for whom communion remained an essentially private matter came at 8.00 a.m. to a quiet, reflective, spoken service; while those for whom communion had been rediscovered as a collective remembering and re-membering, came to a noisier more joyful celebration at 10.30 or 11.00 a.m.

Meanwhile, Morning and Evening Prayer retreated from the public to the private sphere. The recent mini renaissance of attendance at Choral Evensong is part of the mindfulness response to stressed lives, self-care rather than giving even more.

In these present days, the church is unable to gather together in our buildings. Anglo-Catholic priests are celebrating communion from their homes and inviting parishioners, watching online, to receive ‘spiritual communion’, the benefit of the sacrament without the outward substance of bread on the teeth and wine on the tongue. Some Evangelicals are leading their congregations in communion via video conferencing, each household providing its own bread and wine. Most Centrists are abstaining from communion, until such time as we can share together person to person again. For all, however we are responding, there is a real sense of loss. But there is also potential for gain, including the discovery or rediscovery of things marginalised by previous practices.

For me, the key question is, what is the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church of England in this season; and, through whom will it be given?

Right now, it is too soon to be able to answer that question, and for this reason I, for one, am in no rush to return to the church building.

But if I were to risk a guess, it might, at least in part, have something to do with a reimagining of the public/private divide into being the church expressed as intimate space (2-4 people, in vulnerability), personal space (5-12 people, in accountability), social space (20-50 people, in availability), and public space (70+ people, in visibility; and, these days, all taking in virtual as well as physical space—such as the wonderful UK Blessing) [to draw on (developments to) Edward Hall’s theory of proxemics]; and given through the experience of the body of Christ, as a whole, in time of pandemic.

Easter in time of Covid-19

Easter Sunday in time of Covid-19 lockdown. We gathered for worship online, each household with its own candle to welcome the light of Christ, and water with which to renew our baptismal vows. Professing the faith of the Church with ‘latency’, that lag between our speaking and hearing the voices, between the reality of our action and its manifestation.

While it is disconcerting—takes some becoming accustomed to—latency is a powerful symbol for Easter; for the gap between Jesus rising from the dead and his followers catching up; for the gap between the world being changed for ever and the visible impact in our lives. Now and not yet.

One of our congregation died yesterday. His wife of 61 years was in our midst this morning. Through the limits of technology, we could hear each other, and she could see us, but we couldn’t see her. Yet we were together, in a profound and comforting way, in continuity and discontinuity, Jesus and the Church. And all together in a sense that is already secured but yet to be made manifest.

This photograph is taken through the glass of my front door. A garden, as blurred as one seen through Mary’s tears, yet as real, as solid, as the one in which Jesus, real and solid, spoke to her. Another way of thinking about Easter, which invites us to know that the world is not as we see it, but as it is—spoken by the Alpha and Omega Word—and as we will therefore experience it.

Liturgy and trauma

While we aren’t simply sitting in front of the tv in these days, we are continuing to work our way through season three of This Is Us. It is, in my opinion, the finest tv show of all, and an incredible study in trauma. Trauma is much more common than is acknowledged, and will be the lasting collective impact of the C-19 crisis.

In the most recent episode we have got to, an older man looks back over his life, disrupted by Vietnam, and says, “First [as a young child] I wanted to be a writer. Then [as a teenager] I wanted to be a doctor, or a scientist. Then [after Vietnam] I didn’t want to be anything.”

When we get through the present suspension of public worship, Church will look very different, and that is a good thing. But I hope that it won’t look completely different, because we have learnt a thing or two about living life to the full—as fully as is possible—with the reality of trauma. And much of this is carried in our liturgy, our habitual words taken up together over and over again, by which our lives are shaped and remade, new every morning.

First, there is the recognition that lives ‘in recovery’ need the structure of regular meeting—at least weekly and sometimes more often than that—with people who go from strangers to family, through commitment to one another and to relentless forgiveness when we, inevitably, let ourselves and one another down. The AA and sister organisations understand this too.

Then, there is the Prayer of Preparation, a beautiful prayer that speaks of God as the one ‘to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden…’ This holds our deepest selves, our God-given longings, including those that have not been fulfilled and might not ever be fulfilled, due to the circumstances of our lives. Nonetheless, we are known and loved and held by this God.

Then, there is the regular practice of Confession and Absolution. Of receiving forgiveness for our guilt and cleansing for our shame, over and over again—for that is what the one who has gone through trauma needs, whether, objectively, their guilt or shame is justified or not.

Known. Loved. Held. Forgiven. Cleansed. Again and again, one day at a time. In how we re-imagine Church for these disorienting times, we must not lose sight of these.

Those who suggest that all we need is Jesus are naïve. Jesus himself, having cleansed ten lepers, sent them off to take part in the liturgical response of the faith community, not simply to verify their cleansing to others but also to reiterate it to themselves. Yes, thankfulness was also needed, but we also need one another, and a communal wisdom.