on playfulness

 

Playfulness can unlock things that other approaches cannot.

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

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

It’s playful.

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

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

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

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

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

 

if Jesus were me

 

Tabitha (Acts 9.36-43) was probably:

a widow, who knew the grief of losing a spouse;

a refugee (internally displaced), who knew the grief of losing her home city through the experience of persecution;

bi-lingual, knowing the tensions of living alongside close neighbours who had different cultural values.

The one thing we know for certain about Tabitha is that she was a disciple, someone who had apprenticed her life to the life of Jesus.

The American philosopher Dallas Willard (1935-2013) said:

‘Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.’

Jesus was a builder, that is, a stone mason and carpenter; and a rabbi (a teacher of how to do life well) and healer. (Rabbis came from many different backgrounds, and would usually continue to ply their trade as a bi-vocational way of life.)

Jesus-as-Tabitha was a seamstress, a maker of both undergarments and outer garments. A maker of items that were both practical and beautiful, created as a tangible manifestation of compassion.

The same Life, expressed in different ways. Diversity in unity.

What does Jesus-as-you do?

And where?

What has Jesus-in-you lost, and found?

 

Blessings

 

Twice, this evening, I have been called upon to give a blessing.

Having walked with Jo to the running club, from where she was boarding a minibus to take part in a women-only race, I was asked whether I had turned up to give the team a blessing. In fact, by the time the question was posed, I had already given my blessing, in the form of strawberry, galia and watermelon skewers I’d made for the picnic after the race.

On the way home, I passed my friend and neighbour Mario, mowing his lawn, and crossed over the road to say hello. Gardening is not his favourite thing. As we talked, and he took a break from pulling up weeds, another friend passed by, and stopped, and joined in the conversation. Mario jokingly claimed I had come by to bless his weeds. I jokingly responded that he should ask me to curse them instead. As we talked, Mario’s wife came out of the house, and the joke was repeated. After she drove off and we continued to chat, three men, one standing on the garden terrace above us, one leaning on the garden wall, one (me) sitting on the wall, several other friends from the running club came running along the pavement towards us. I stretched out my hand to high five them as they passed.

On reflection, and joking aside, Mario was right, and I was wrong. For it was a blessing that the weeds in his garden needed, and not a curse. And it was a blessing that they received.

To bless is to see something for what it is, for what it is in its own right and not its utility towards us; to suspend judgement on whether it is a good thing or a bad thing; and to become open to receiving its blessing in return: not necessarily the blessing we think we want (it would be nice not to have to do the gardening so often) but the blessing it has, to bestow on us.

Blessed are you,

rosebay willow herb growing in Mario’s garden,

for you gave occasion for our paths to meet this day,
and invitation to stop and talk a while,
with other friends and neighbours,
and will do so again.

Blessed are you, oh grass,
for you turn sun and soil and water into life,
and by the sweat of our brow
that did not bring you forth
but enables you to flourish within bounds,
we discover again that we are also alive,
gift of the same God,
and flourish, within the bounds of birth and death
and where we have been planted
and with whom.

Blessed are you, Mario’s garden,

for, despite his protestations,
and despite my own,
you bring us together.

 

More tea, and best biscuits

 

It is a standing joke that vicars drink a lot of tea, so much so that the question “More tea, vicar?” is a recognised standard phrase or saying in the English language. The practice of clergy, and indeed lay members of a local congregation, to pay home visits to their parishioners derives, at least in part, from Jesus’ instruction to some of his earliest followers, sent out ahead of him, to enter a house and eat and drink whatever is set before them. In my case, almost always, chocolate biscuits washed down with tea.

‘After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”’ (Luke 10:1-9)

‘Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to his house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.’ This is Jesus the Jew, upholding the Jewish welcome: ‘Shalom aleichem’ ‘Aleichem shalom,’ ‘Peace unto you’ ‘Unto you, peace,’ a blessing mirrored by the Islamic ‘Salaam alaykum’ ‘Alaykum salaam’ and, in a weaker construction, the Christian ‘Peace be with you’ ‘And also with you’. The person who speaks expresses their readiness to make unity between themselves and the other. The one who responds does not merely acknowledge that desire, but affirms that they, too, want this peace. And in their agreement, that unity, which is of God and found in heaven, is brought into the physical world. Or, as Jesus expresses it, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

This nearness is to be found when people sit down together over food and drink, take time to be together, to get to know one another. And with this, Jesus says, ‘kai therapeuete tous en autē astheneis,’ ‘and cure the sick who are there.’ The word ‘therapeuó,’ the root of our English word ‘therapy,’ means ‘I care for, attend, serve, treat, especially of a physician; hence, I heal’ while ‘astheneis’ refers to those who are ‘without strength, weak, infirm, sick’. Jesus is instructing those he sends to care for the housebound infirm, which in my context would include both those who are permanently housebound on account of age or physical frailty, and those who are temporarily without strength due to the devastating impact of bereavement. When I sit and listen to a family tell the life-story of their loved one who has died, or an elderly parishioner tell me stories of their childhood, I am curing the sick, one cup of tea at a time. (Indeed, I share in the ‘cure [care] of souls,’ which is both my bishop’s and mine.)

But Jesus also sends out his followers in vulnerability, ‘like lambs into the midst of wolves,’ without means or resource, dependent on welcome and the hospitality of strangers. In other words, there is a mutuality to this. The guest enables the cure of the host as the host cares for, cures, the guest. We do not bring peace, wholeness, to a household. We bring our desire to be at peace, to live in wholeness, with our neighbour; and peace is made manifest between us when they agree, and together we sit under the blessing of peace.

We do not bring the kingdom of God to our neighbours; we discover its nearness in their welcome.

There is nothing trivial about sitting with our neighbours over food and drink. In fact, there is almost nothing more important, which is why the lupine world will throw everything it can at you to ensure you are simply too busy to do so. But your visiting, of even just one home (it is the commitment to relationship that matters, not more relentless superficial socialising), is making a torn-apart world whole again.

 

Let go, keep watch : part 2

 

At the request of our fifteen-year-old son, whose classical education has holes in it on account of having been born too recently, we are currently working our way through every episode of The West Wing. On evenings when I do not have any meetings, we might get in two or even three episodes, and last night we reached the end of the second series and my favourite episode, ‘Two Cathedrals.’

President Bartlet stays behind after the funeral of his longstanding secretary at the National Cathedral, and lets rip at God. He accuses God of cruel indifference, the injustice that nothing he has done, none of the good his administration has achieved, counts for anything. As a Catholic who believes that salvation is by faith and good works, his good works have not changed the mind of God in favour of salvation.

Returning to the Oval Office, the President has a final conversation with the ghost of his secretary, who sets him straight about God (stop projecting your father onto Our Father) and speaks into his life as only she can for one last time before he is able to let go (stop projecting me).

God, of course, can withstand the storm of our wrath while it blows over. Jed Bartlet stands firmly in the scriptural tradition of Job. But, like Job, he needs to hear God speak. And what God says, through a beloved woman, resonates with the exchange between Jesus and his friend Mary in John 12:1-8.

Until you are able to let go, of God and of our neighbour, whom we are called to love as much as ourselves; until we are able to free God and our neighbour of obligation, of any debt owed to us; we are a liability.

For as long as we need to be the protagonist, the hero, we are doomed to force the hand of history with a helping hand, as Judas tries to do; or to create the hubris that humiliates us, as Peter does. We are condemned to the existential crisis that leads Judas to take his own life, and Peter to run away before he is eventually restored to community.

But when we let go of the demand that God repay us, we are freed to watch over whatever it is that God is doing. We are trusted to be a witness, to testify in defence of a loving, self-giving God who is roundly accused of perpetrating a great deceit. We get to point beyond ourselves to something greater than we could ever imagine.

Let go.

Keep watch.

 

Let go, keep watch : part 1

 

The Gospel set for today is John 12:1-8. We hear how a friend of Jesus called Mary prepared his body for burial, before he had died. And how a disciple of Jesus called Judas took offence at her actions. And how Jesus rebuked his disciple (this is not the first time Jesus has had to rebuke one or more of his disciples) and affirmed his friend.

Jesus responds, ‘Leave her alone, so that she might watch over [what remained of the ointment] for the day of my burial.’ Leave her alone. His choice of words might be used in other contexts of freeing a slave or of writing a certificate of divorce so freeing a woman from a marriage. The point being made is that Mary owes Judas no explanation to justify her actions. She is under no obligation towards him.

But I am also struck by this: that, days earlier, Mary had not been able to leave her brother Lazarus alone. To release him to sleep with his ancestors, having died. I am not saying that she was wrong in this, simply noting it. Why note it? Because, as consequence of what Jesus said and did then, Mary shows, by her actions now, that she is able to leave Jesus alone, to release him from any obligation towards her, to allow him to die. Certainly, his disciples have not arrived at this place yet. So, what is a rebuke towards Judas is simultaneously an affirmation towards Mary.

Yet it comes with further instruction, or rather, with revelation. The friend who has given Jesus permission to depart in peace is the friend who can be trusted to keep watch over what will unfold. Why? Because they will not try to intervene, to be the protagonist, the hero who saves the day. As Judas will intervene. Instead, they will keep watch. Not abandoning Jesus, as the rest of the disciples do. But bearing witness. Testifying to what God is doing in the world, in entrusting Godself into less loving hands.

Where are you in the story?

Who, or what, do you need to let go?

What are you keeping watch over?

 

Neighbour

 

Once, Jesus was asked, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ That is to say, how far does the moral duty to extend care towards, and uphold justice for, another person reach? To my blood relatives? Those who live in my city? As far as the borders of my own nation? Where does it end? At what point can we wash our hands of an affair, with a clear conscience?

In response, Jesus told a story, of a man who was attacked and left for dead; and of two men who each found reasons to justify not getting involved; and of another man who accepted personal inconvenience and cost in order to help.

And then Jesus turned the question on its head, asking, ‘Who was a neighbour to the man in need?’ Neighbour not as the one shown mercy, but the one who shows mercy. Not, how far does my duty extend; but, how far am I willing to extend love?

When the dust settles, as dust always does, it will be a matter of public record, who was a loving neighbour to Ukraine, and who sought to justify their refusal to love their neighbour as themselves.

 

Third Day

 

From the Gospel set for Holy Communion today:

‘Then he [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”’

(Mark 8:31-33)

Today in the Church calendar we remember Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Bogo-Zaire, murdered on or around this day in 1977 on the orders of Idi Amin. May he rest in power and rise in glory.

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus is teaching his disciples that he will be killed, and on the third day rise again. What is it that God did on the third day? On the first day, God said Let there be light! and there was light. But on the third day, God drew the earth out from the waters, and then vegetation from the earth, fruit-bearing trees, seed-bearing fruit.

On the third day, God will draw the Son of Man — the creature made from the earth and given life by the breath of God — out from the waters of death that have overwhelmed him. God will cause this life to be fruitful, bringing joy and sustenance to many. And God will cause this fruitful tree of life to bear seed, that is, to reproduce itself.

The fruitful life of Christ, who suffers at the hands of violent men and is killed, and who rises up on the third day, is the life that is reproduced in his followers. We do not seek martyrdom, but we proclaim that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

Janani Luwum was a true follower of Jesus the Christ. His life was fruitful, and the manner of his death gave glory to God and renewed life to the Church.

May we not set our minds on human things, but on the things of God, and of the Christ in and through whom all things are being reconciled to God. Amen.

 

Under pressure

 

I’m not a fan of F1—and I’m not interested in getting into a debate with those who are—but I heard a brilliant analysis of yesterday’s controversial end to this year’s championship, by David Croft, lead commentator for Sky. His view was that, under incredible pressure—not simply the pressure of the title race, but the burden of having kept the show on the road all season under pandemic conditions—race director Michael Masi made the wrong call. But, rather than vilify him, we should recognise that the burden is unacceptable; that this must not happen again, for Masi’s sake as well as for the sport; that the owners of F1, who make a lot of money from it, should provide Masi with a deputy to work alongside him. Croft also noted that Verstappen is a worthy champion, but that he should not have won in the way that he did—that was unfair on him as well as on Hamilton—and that the gracious magnanimity of Hamilton in congratulating Verstappen should silence his own critics—he, too, is a worthy champion of champions.

As I say, I am not a fan of F1. But I found Croft’s analysis incredibly important. Everyone who is working is working under a massive additional burden, under pressure to deliver business as usual in circumstances that are far from usual. At every level and in every sector, we are stretched to the very limit—sitting ducks on worn tyres, if you will—and under such conditions, extended over time, errors of judgement are inevitable. Some of which will have greater consequences than others.

We need to extend grace towards one another. Far more than we do. And the grumpier we all get, living with the pandemic, the more we need this.

We need to consider scaling down what we expect, at present—what we can deliver, and what we demand from others. We aren’t past this, or anywhere near past this.

And we need to have serious conversations about investment. In a society where the only value is money—where what is ‘good’ is profit (and wealth indicates virtue) and what is ‘evil’ is any constraint on profit (and not possessing more money than you can ever spend is seen as vice) and where all other values have been hollowed-out—we need to reconsider wellbeing in terms of the common good. What does it profit us if we grasp material riches, but forfeit our soul?

 

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?

 

Discipleship matters

 

The letters written or often co-written by the apostle Paul are not abstract theology but contextual discipleship, addressing concrete issues in local congregations. They are correspondence, and they require careful interpretation, because we have lost the letters written to Paul and because the Greek in which they were written lacks the punctuation or structure we would use today to, say, indicate where we are citing part of a letter we were responding to.

Paul ministered alongside the church at Ephesus for two years, and when he moved on, appointed his disciple Timothy as an overseer of the church. This was not a unilateral position; what we might call leadership was exercised collaboratively at both a local and regional level. Timothy is one of the leaders in Ephesus, also in communication with Paul. The apostle John was also based in Ephesus, exercising a travelling ministry across Asia Minor from there, and Mary the mother of Jesus was the surrogate grandmother of his household. Mary was known in the church at Ephesus. Her story was known.

In correspondence we have between Paul and Timothy, the older man helps the younger man wrestle with discipleship questions. Paul addresses men behaving badly, disputing with angry argument; and women behaving inappropriately, competing against one another in dress codes lifted straight from the pagan temple. He then turns to deal with a married couple, where the wife is abusing the equal authority she has within their relationship to withhold sexual intimacy.

Paul reminds them that women, whose voice is given to teach, must also be willing to learn, and insists that a wife must not abuse authority against her husband.

Paul goes on to remind them that in the Genesis account, the woman is made to be the one who delivers her man from adversity, not fights against him; and that it was the asserting of an independence that resulted in Eve’s great loss; yet, Paul insists, this Ephesian woman will be spared the resulting increased pain in childbirth if as a couple they stand together united in faith, love and holiness, with propriety.

Or perhaps the reference to Adam and Eve is the woman’s reasoning for withholding sex—that her husband ought to accept the wife God has given him, and accept her fear of a consequence that men do not suffer—to which Paul counters, if you will work through this impasse together, God will deliver you from the pain you fear.

What is interesting is that Mary is known in the church in Ephesus. At a later date, and to address other theological questions that are abstract rather than pertaining to discipleship, the Church claimed for Mary a perpetual virginity. But had this been her life story, it would have given precedent for permanent sexual abstinence within marriage. The case of the couple in Ephesus would not have been a cause of controversy. Or, if it were, addressing it would have involved demonstrating why Mary was not a role-model in this regard, but an exceptional case. As it is, permanent sexual abstinence in marriage is strongly discouraged in the early church, but rises to a place of prominence later on, hand-in-hand with the growth of the idea of Marian perpetual virginity.

In short, beware addressing abstract theological ideas, and focus on discipleship, on the practical outworking of following Jesus as we live out our daily lives and work out our relationships.

 

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?

 

First dance

 

Today is my birthday. It has been a good day, so far. I took a funeral.

Douglas had served as Area Secretary of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers and as Director of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association NE.

At his funeral, we reflected on how much he had in common with Jesus, who was, from his teenage years and for most of his adult life, a builder. We read a passage from John’s Gospel where Jesus speaks of his heavenly Father’s home having many dwelling places, and of Jesus preparing a dwelling place for us and promising to return for us. In Jesus’ culture, a prospective groom and his parents would go to the home of a prospective bride. The groom’s parents would present the matter, that their son wished to marry this other couple’s daughter and they would understandably want to know the young man’s prospects. They would set out the family credentials: we imagined the conversation when Douglas spoke to his future father-in-law, a shy young man entering a large and gregarious family; of how he loved Ray’s daughter Maureen, and was a hard worker, a good worker, and would do right be her. As he did.

If the match was accepted, a betrothal party was thrown, a celebration of a life that had now come to an end. Then the groom went home with his parents. Most people lived in one-room dwellings, but often a multi-generation extended family might live in such rooms around a shared central courtyard. The groom would build a new dwelling on the courtyard, in which to begin a new life with his bride, and then return to take her to her new home. Their marriage was celebrated with a second party, the wedding banquet.

This is the imagery Jesus employs, to speak of his relationship with us, his bride, the Church.

We noted that today, this celebration of Douglas’ life up till now, and of the life we had shared with him, was the first party, the betrothal party. We celebrated that life with thankful hearts, as already begun in the cards sent to Maureen that cover the dining table, and to be continued in earnest at the wake.

We look forward to the second party, the wedding banquet, when we shall be together again—though I did say that I hoped that it would be many years before Maureen was reunited with Douglas, because there is nothing spoiling in heaven. But when we are reunited with all our loved ones, past and present, it will be glorious.

And we noted that after today’s party, from tomorrow, we wait. And prepare ourselves for that day. And there will be good days ahead, I promise; but also days when, like Thomas in our Gospel reading, we have a wobble. And so we party today, and we remind ourselves and one another that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We remind ourselves of his promises.

And then we went on to the crematorium. We entered to Louis Armstrong singing We Have All The Time In TheWorld, which is 3 minutes and 20 seconds of perfection; and I stood at the podium and danced and sang along, as if it were the first dance at the engagement party. Which is exactly what it was.

Rest in peace, Douglas, and rise in glory.

And thank you, Louis, for singing so beautifully for my birthday.

John 14:1-6

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

 

Update:

Today I took a funeral on my birthday.

I spoke about the person whose life we were giving thanks to God for. And I spoke about Jesus, to whom we might entrust our lives, now and always. I spoke about how their two lives connected, and about how our stories connect to theirs.

After the funeral, it was reported back to me that, on the strength of what they had heard, someone (I don’t know who, and that is probably for the best) who had stopped attending church several years ago was thinking they might give church another go.

If you were to ask me what I would like as a birthday present, it would have been hard to top that.

 

Price tag

 

If you want to do something very well, there are two prices you must be willing to pay.

The first is being prepared to do that thing over and over and over again, eventually making at best marginal gains. There is simply no substitute for thousands of hours of practise, and practice.

The second is being prepared to accept that you will not do exceptional things. For the very things that enable the very good—finding your groove and sticking with it—mitigate against the exceptional, which is both stumbled upon and irreproducible.

If, on the other hand, you desire to do exceptional things—and why should you not?—there are also two prices you must be willing to pay.

The first is being prepared to settle for producing work that is ‘good enough,’ far more of the time; to stop far short of very good.

The second is being prepared to let a novice do what you are a master in—to begin to find their own way of doing it—and to be humble enough to learn from them, new ways to approach what you already know. (This is also the key to securing a future for what you do, a future that includes good enough, very good, and exceptional work.)

Of course, it is by definition not possible to produce exceptional work all of the time. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with aspiring to produce very good work. The secret is learning when to stick, and when to twist.

 

The apprentice

 

Today is All Souls’ Day, or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, the day on which we are encouraged to remember before God those women and men we have known personally, who, by their lives, their example, and their investment in us, trained us in the faith for holy living.

And on this All Souls’ Day, I have been thinking about how we speak to God.

When Jesus’ first disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he taught them to come before God as Father. I note how many Charismatic Christians will call God Father over and over in prayer. But when Jesus calls God Father, I think he has something particular in mind, and that is the role of the father, in his cultural context, as the one to whom you were apprenticed.

Jesus had been apprenticed to his father, Joseph, as a builder of homes. (Before you offer me any pious nonsense about Joseph not being Jesus’ father, please don’t; instead, reflect on any brilliant adoptive or stepfathers you might know. And then, repent.) After Joseph’s death (as well as that of his cousin John) Jesus experiences God calling him into something new and apprenticing him: I only do what I see the Father doing. Jesus even explicitly refers to this Father God as the builder...

Likewise, Jesus calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, who have been apprenticed by their fathers Jonah and Zebedee to be fishermen, to become ‘fishers of people.’

It is in this sense, I think, primarily, that God is both the father of Jesus and of those who follow him. Not only the one who gives life—in that sense, God is parent of all—but the one to whom we are apprenticed (and this also applies, to some degree, to all humanity).

As I think of all the images Jesus takes up to describe what God is like, I wonder why we so rarely think to pray to God the widow, to pester us out of our hard-hearted indifference to injustice; or to housewife God, to search out and find what we have lost, of our dignity, or discarded of our resources...

But I also wonder what it would look like if we saw God less as daddy to a helpless infant, and more as master builder, from whom we are called to learn?

Which brings me back to All Souls’ Day, and the hope that one day, after am I gone, future generations might remember me before God, with thanksgiving.

 

Awkward

 

This morning I realised that I didn’t have my keys to hand. There aren’t many places where they could be. They sit on a shelf next to my desk, the keys to St Nicholas’ (missing) and to the Minster (there, as expected). I checked my bag—not there, either—and my coat, which has five pockets, where I eventually found the keys in the third pocket I tried.

In the Gospel reading set for Holy Communion today, Luke 11:47-54, Jesus says:

‘Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.’

In this context, ‘lawyers’ means experts in the Law and the Prophets and the Writings that make up the Hebrew Bible. That is, people like me.

It is good to be stopped in one’s tracks and made to confront the awkward self-examination questions, with necessary honesty.

 

Maturity

 

Some thoughts on the Gospel reading set for Harvest:

Matthew 6:25-33

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’

 

[1] ‘And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?’ The word lifespan, hēlikian, contains within the scope of its meaning ‘maturity,’ and ‘stature’. The observation here, then, is that anxiety does not produce maturity. That anxiety, as seed, does not produce maturity as harvest. A harvest, a culmination, of maturity requires a different seed.

 

[2] God is not anxious, does not sow seeds of anxiety.

 

[3] Jesus points to God’s reliable activity in relation to the birds of the air and the flowers of the earth. From this, the human, the creature made of and for the earth and the air—soil humus fashioned by God, and animated by the breath of God—is to extrapolate meaning. (That is, the choice of birds and flowers as examples is not random.)

 

[4] God is not anxious. Yes, I know I have said this already. See also [7]

 

[5] God provides food for the birds and clothes for the flowers. This addresses two very specific anxieties. In Jesus’ culture, in marriage vows husbands committed themselves to provide their wife with food and wool/yarn/cloth, and wives committed themselves to turn these into meals and clothes—we might share the labour of love differently, but the principle of partnership remains—and each committed sexual and emotional faithfulness to the other. We know that of Jesus’ disciples at least one, Peter, was married, and called away from the family business, the most obvious means of fulfilling his marriage vows. As the progenitor of birds and flowers and humans, God is our Father—and Mother—in heaven; but as provider of food for the birds and clothes for the flowers and whatever is to be extrapolated for the humans, God is our spouse, husband—and wife—to creation. The primary thing we do not need to worry about is God’s faithfulness, God’s covenant commitment to us. To be non-anxious, which is to display true maturity or stature, flows from knowing this.

 

[6] The life God calls out of us—and the life God calls us out from—is held in covenant love. The soil and the breath, and the creature formed of the two, the mystery of life, and the interdependence between all life—when this flourishes, it is called ‘righteousness’—these things are all cherished. This is the seed that produces maturity.

 

[7] God is a (the) non-anxious presence in our lives. What God has spoken will not return void, what God has planted will bear fruit, what God has sown will produce harvest. All in rhythms and cycles, as God has created the world.

 

[8] ‘But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness [or, for the kingdom and its righteousness], and all these things will be given to you as well.’ This righteousness is the alignment of ‘cosmos’—the world as we experience it—and ‘ethos’—the world as it ought to be. Sometimes the ‘cosmos’ pulls away from God’s ‘ethos,’ resulting in injustice, in an inequitable distribution of resources. Sometimes our ‘ethos’ pulls away from God’s ‘cosmos,’ as when we seek to secure harvests that, through our ingenuity and ‘work-ethic,’ violate the cycles of nature, exhausting the earth. Where we learn to see and commit to the nearer-alignment of our ‘cosmos’ and ‘ethos’ with God’s, there life flourishes.

 

[9] How might we ‘strive’ [search for, desire, demand] for such alignment, in a non-anxious way? Perhaps through paying attention to small things, as signs of the First thing, or thing from which the kind of life in which all life flourishes, flows. In this way, we might keep First things first.

 

Friendship

 

I’ve been thinking about friendship, what it does, why we need it, why we find it so hard to make and sustain such relationships—especially, perhaps, as we get older.

And, on Sunday evenings, we’ve been watching Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone fishing (series 4, BBC2) in which comedians Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse travel around the UK, going fishing, and having gentle conversations about life and growing older. Paul obviously knows more about fishing than Bob, but you don’t need to know—or even care much—about fishing to appreciate this study in sustaining friendship.

Robert Alter translates Genesis 2:18 in this way:

And the LORD God said, “It is not good for the human to be alone, I shall make him a sustainer beside him.”

adding the Commentary:

sustainer beside him. The Hebrew ‘ezer kenegdo (King James Version “help meet”) is notoriously difficult to translate. The second term means “alongside him,” “opposite him,” “a counterpart to him.” “Help” is too weak because it suggests a merely auxiliary function, whereas ‘ezer elsewhere connotes active intervention on behalf of someone, especially in military contexts, as often in Psalms.

It is not good for the human to be alone, so God provides another. At this stage in the story, there is not yet gender differentiation: though we will come to a man and a woman—which will then be further related to marriage—even more fundamentally than that, here is the intended relationship between people. Any people.

I shall make him a sustainer beside him. The word beside can also express opposite, counterpart. It can refer to the two corresponding banks of a river. Hence the image of Mortimer and Whitehouse, standing alongside one another on one bank of a river flowing past them, casting a line towards the other side. And the wider the banks are apart, the greater the body of water they hold between them. As it matures, the capacity of such a relationship—whether a marriage or any friendship—to hold blessing for others grows. It carves out space to the benefit not only of the friends themselves but for life in its wider sense. Friendship shapes, and helps sustain, the world in which it is found.

So Bob and Paul mess about on the river bank, or on a boat on a lake, or on the sea shore, fishing. And in the evenings, they ask questions of one another, about life, their childhoods, their experience of growing older, where they still find wonder in the world, what gives them joy. They relate to one another in a way that is sustaining, they intervene for one another. In their conversation, casting out a line, a float bobbing on the apparently inconsequential surface, only to be pulled into the deep and moving, out of nowhere, if you have the patience; then reeled in, perhaps too rushed, an insight getting away before it can be examined closely, others held in the hand, enjoyed for its beauty, released back into the wild, carried off by the stream.

If you want to understand friendship, you could do a lot worse than watch Mortimer & Whitehouse.

 

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...