I can see Uranus

 

Stories matter. They give meaning to our lives. But how we tell them, and how we receive them, matters too. At the start of COP26, the New Testament reading set for today is Revelation 21:1-6, which has abused by fundamentalists who see our world as dispensable: God is going to replace it anyway. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand what we are looking at.

The Book of Revelation is not a foretelling of the end of the world, at least not in the sense that is usually understood today. It is apocalyptic literature, that is, a revealing what is going on right now—at the time of its writing—beneath the surface. John is writing to a minority community experiencing persecution at the hands of a global super-power, and he writes in coded form to give them hope.

The first heaven and earth have departed; a world of new possibility has taken their place; the sea is no more.

That is: Ouranus and Gaia, the sky and the earth, parents of the Titans who are, in turn, parents of the Olympians, have gone; and so has Thalassa, primal sea goddess, who created Aphrodite—whom the Romans fashioned Venus, their principal patron goddess—from sea foam and the castrated genitals of Ouranus, after Gaia took revenge on his hatred of their children by persuading their youngest son, the titan Chronos, to castrate his father...

That is: the Greco-Roman world, and in particular the cruel-hearted Rome, are about to be re-purposed, for a new story, full of new potential. A story in which the principal deity, the god of the Jewish people, is not distant but now makes his home among human beings, wiping away their present tears.

This vision is primarily fulfilled through the conversion of the Roman empire, and the establishment of the Church in Rome. It is a clash of stories, of mythologies, of meaning-making. It led to a world-ending and world-birthing transformation of the world as those who heard the Revelation knew it.

And it is in our past, in a world—and a Church—in need of regular re-imagining. Indeed, Revelation 21:1-6 is a re-telling of the Jewish text Isaiah 65:17-66:2, for this is a new beginning for Jews as well as for Gentiles. (Appropriately enough, today is also Reformation Day, as in, a recognition that the Church is always in need of reforming.)

So as we face up to catastrophic climate change and injustice, needing stories to help us imagine and birth a new world for future generations, we must return to Revelation 21, among other stories. But we must do so in a responsible manner. Unworthy gods are passing away, including the ones we have made in our own image.

 

Those who live in houses of clay

At Morning Prayer at present, we are reading in the book of Job, a masterful piece of theatre exploring the tragi-comedy of existence. In the play’s prelude we witness the assembly of the council of the gods, before the sovereign Lord of the universe. The Lord engages one of the lesser, created, gods in conversation, the shadowy Satan (or, Accuser), a restless god who walks back and forth on the earth in agitation. They debate the righteous human, Job, and enter into a wager. Satan will test the limits of job’s righteousness; while the Lord will question the far corners of Satan’s agitation, for, we shall see, that the Lord is present and attentive to the pain of all creation.

The drama then shifts to Job and his friends. In his suffering, they are, at first, magnificent in their empathy, sitting with him in silence for seven full days. Then Job speaks (chapter 3), a heart-felt soliloquy giving voice to his pain, and the dam breaks. In turn, his friends offer their insight, conventional but deeply flawed wisdom. First to speak is Eliphaz (chapter 4), who recounts a vision he has had by night, in his fitful sleep as he keeps watch with his hurting friend. Eliphaz mistakes the spirit who appears before him for the Lord, when, in truth, it is the sly, sweet-talking Satan, insinuating seeds of doubt, of both human and divine nature: neither are to be trusted.

He does, however, come out with one of the most incredible descriptions of the human being ever spoken: ‘those who live in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust,’—speaking not of domestic architecture, but of the body, crafted from the clay of the earth, to which it shall return, and animated by the breath of God. For, contrary to Satan’s accusation, the Lord does not only put trust in human beings, but entrusts his very breath.

What impact does it have, what questions does it raise, for us to be those who live in houses of clay?

 

‘Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:

‘If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?
But who can keep from speaking?
See, you have instructed many;
you have strengthened the weak hands.
Your words have supported those who were stumbling,
and you have made firm the feeble knees.
But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;
it touches you, and you are dismayed.
Is not your fear of God your confidence,
and the integrity of your ways your hope?

‘Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?
Or where were the upright cut off?
As I have seen, those who plough iniquity
and sow trouble reap the same.
By the breath of God they perish,
and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.
The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion,
and the teeth of the young lions are broken.
The strong lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.

‘Now a word came stealing to me,
my ear received the whisper of it.
Amid thoughts from visions of the night,
when deep sleep falls on mortals,
dread came upon me, and trembling,
which made all my bones shake.
A spirit glided past my face;
the hair of my flesh bristled.
It stood still,
but I could not discern its appearance.
A form was before my eyes;
there was silence, then I heard a voice:
“Can mortals be righteous before God?
Can human beings be pure before their Maker?
Even in his servants he puts no trust,
and his angels he charges with error;
how much more those who live in houses of clay,
whose foundation is in the dust,
who are crushed like a moth.
Between morning and evening they are destroyed;
they perish for ever without any regarding it.
Their tent-cord is plucked up within them,
and they die devoid of wisdom.”

 

On divine judgement in history, part 2

There is a wonderful book in the Old Testament named for its central character, Job. It is set in the ancient near east, at a time when our ancestors had domesticated livestock, established settlements, and formed alliances with neighbouring settlements. A world of networks and interdependency, in which life was no longer terrifying, nor survival all-consuming, and yet lived experience extended significantly beyond human control. A world in which some, at least, had the luxury of telling stories around the campfire; and in which receiving such stories was, if no-longer a necessity of survival, a prerequisite for flourishing. A world that, while far-removed from many of our lives, is not entirely unfamiliar nor consigned to the past.

Within this world, Job stands out as a man committed to being in rightly ordered relationship with others. This approach has served him well, and he is held in respect, by humans and gods alike.

Within this world, but on another level, we meet the gods, beings who are at once active in the world and, to a significant degree, veiled. Over all else is Yahweh. This God is not distant, but takes an active interest in (his) creation, in the experience and wellbeing of every creature. Yahweh exercises this concern both directly and, befitting one who delights in relationship and engaging others, through the gods who proceed from him. As the story unfolds, we are drawn into conversation between Yahweh and the satan, a restless god who is out of sorts. Like Yahweh himself, the satan explores the earth; but, in contrast, seems to find nothing in which to delight. Yahweh invites him to consider Job, in whom Yahweh delights; Job is known to the satan, who remains unimpressed. They enter into something of an experiment, in which Job is an unwitting player, but not, I would suggest, a plaything. At all times, Job retains agency.

As Job’s world collapses around him, his friends gather. And the first thing that they do is brilliant. For seven days, they simply sit with Job, in silence, in solidarity with him in the experience of which he cannot make sense, in solidarity with his suffering. These are the very best of friends. But after seven days, they break; entering, tentatively at first and with increasing boldness, into speculative problem-solving—in which they are further wrong-footed by the counsel of the satan by night. Meanwhile, Yahweh alone, present but in the shadows, keeps silence.

Eventually, when everyone else comes to an end of words, Yahweh rouses himself to speak; an act that stirs up a whirlwind, in whose wake job and his friends receive revelation. Yahweh’s speech is primarily a list of the wonder of creation, and his particular delight in and concern for all that he has made. Again, this is not a distant God who already knows all that can be known, but a person who seeks personal knowledge, shared experience, relationship. And who longs for creation, even rebellious gods, to enter into peace and joy.

Within his list of examples, Yahweh cites two famously untameable beasts, the Behemoth and the Leviathan. Some have sought to explain these as the hippopotamus and crocodile, but these are beings of cosmic mythic proportions, not simply zoological ones. They cannot be stilled with nets and spears, but only by one who is willing to hear their pain, their suffering, their turmoil, until it is spent and calm returns. Such is the wisdom and the love of this God.

In the end, and to the dis-satisfaction of many who read but do not listen, Yahweh restores Job’s lost fortune; and also calls on him to intercede on behalf of his tone-deaf friends, who were not attuned to pain.

What relevance might this have to the current novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, to God’s loving attention to his creation, and the exercising of divine judgement?

Firstly, this outbreak might be understood, theologically, as the cry of creation, against humanity, in the face of broken-down relationship. The creatures charged with exercising delegated divine rule, to bring the natural environment back into harmonious balance whenever its equilibrium is threatened by too much chaos, have not acted in good faith. Moreover, their technology will not prevail in subduing this cry, but only loving attention and patient listening. Viruses, like humans, have their place and part to play in the created order. But beneath the shrill notes of the novel coronavirus, we are called to hear the deeper parts of earth and sea and skies.

Secondly, then, we might speak of God’s judgement as being, ‘I will listen; I will hear your petition, and decide justly.’ This includes upholding the cause of the wider creation as a whole, but also the individual personal laments of humanity caught up in the bigger picture of suffering. That the earth has a legitimate plea in regard to exploitation at the hands of humans does not rule out the possibility that, satan-like or even satanically provoked, a virus should not overstep its bounds. All pain, including all human pain, matters to this God, who alone is capable of the eternal listening, active, attentive, that can draw all things into reconciliation.

If, then, the world is more mysterious, and more interconnected, than we imagine, might this present moment be a summons to appear in court, to come face-to-face with a merciful and breathtakingly daring judge?

And if so, might that have a baring on the restoration that will follow?

On divine judgement in history, part 1

Throughout both the Old and the New Testament, disruptive disasters, both ‘natural’ and of human origin, are understood as the means by which Yahweh exercises judgement, in history, in response to gross and persistent injustice. This is both foundational, and structurally key as the story told of this God continues to unfold.

The cradle of humanity is judged in both the flooding of the fertile crescent—an act that may hide within itself a struggle between the gods as to the extent of judgement, and through which Yahweh saves a family and secures a future—and the linguistic confusion of Babel(on), the pinnacle of human engineering.

Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by fire from heaven—perhaps by lightening striking tar pits; but ‘from heaven’ does not merely reference an originating direction, but, rather, an authorial intention—because they are merciless, because instead of offering hospitality to strangers they employ gang rape as a weapon of power. And in this episode, we see Abraham, the father of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims, intercede on behalf of the people of the Cities of the Plain, albeit to no avail.

Yahweh brings a series of increasingly devastating plagues against Egypt, relenting each time that Pharaoh repents, but returning each time Pharaoh subsequently hardens his heart. This sequence, ultimately resulting in the liberation of the people of Israel, is presented as a clash not only between a god and a mortal, but between a particular God, Yahweh, and a pantheon of gods who exert influence for oppression.

Later, once the tribes of Israel enter and settle the land promised to Abraham’s descendants, defeat at the hand of neighbouring tribes in the time of the judges, and extended periods of drought in the time of the divided kingdoms, are alike seen as divine judgement on his own people, for their unfaithfulness to a covenant of just relationship.

Joel proclaims Yahweh’s judgement on his people in waves of locusts stripping the early and later harvests; but even within that devastation, holds out the possibility that blessing may be known.

Jonah is sent to the merciless imperial power of Nineveh, to notify the Assyrians—enemy of his own people—that unless they repent, their great capital will be overthrown in forty days. The king of Nineveh leads his people in public repentance, and—much to Jonah’s disgust—Yahweh relents from punishment. There is, however, no historical record of a lasting change of heart, and soon enough, Nineveh will be overthrown.

The defeat of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians, and, later, of the southern kingdom Judah to the Babylonians, with the royal court of Jerusalem being carried off into exile, are likewise understood to be acts of divine judgement. Nehemiah teaches the community that the appropriate immediate response is lament, for all that was good that has been—arguably unnecessarily, had the people only repented when they had the chance—lost.

In the Gospels, Jesus is clear that, the people having rejected his persistent call to turn back to God, Jerusalem would fall (again) and the Temple be desecrated (again) and thrown down. While he healed physical sicknesses and drove out literal demons, these were at the same time symbolic of a communal social and spiritual disease, and the possibility to receive, or reject, cure. His response to the refusal of the leaders of the nation to receive him was to weep over Jerusalem; his response at the grave of Lazarus, whose death was grievous in and of itself but also symbolised a wider dying, was, likewise, to weep.

Later in the New Testament, famine is seen as divine judgement on the Greco-Roman world, within which a made-new humanity ensured that no one within their community would go without their needs being provided for. Ultimately, a succession of plague, famine, and warfare—imagined as apocalyptic horsemen—would bring down the grossly unjust Roman empire.

There is, then, no progression of understanding from a God who engages in history in such a manner to a God who does not, who is no longer directly concerned with injustice or active in history. There is, however, throughout all this, and pre-eminently revealed in the person of Jesus, a God who fully identifies with his people in particular and humanity in general in their suffering—Pharaoh will lose his firstborn son, but so will Yahweh—even if it is brought upon themselves by their rejection of God’s loving wisdom.

Theologically, it is right that we should speak of novel coronavirus COVID-19 as an outpouring of divine judgement—one that was repeatedly forewarned by voices we chose to ignore. But how we speak of it matters, too. This pandemic is an outpouring of judgement on and for the whole world. On our common humanity—and, emphatically, not some group we can ‘other’ in order to socially distance ourselves from them—for the liberation of the non-human world we have argued over but refused to release from exploitation. In this present disruptive moment, the planet itself gets to breathe, to exhale the pain of subjugation as a prayer of longing, and inhale hope and a foretaste of the world made new, sharing in a glorious liberty.

Theologically, it is also right that we should intercede on behalf of our neighbours; prophetically call the nations to repentance; hold out the possibility even in judgement to experience blessing; lament the good things that have, for now and perhaps forever, been lost, and the poverty that comes in the wake of disaster, including upon those who were poor to begin with; model a new way of being that ensures that every member of the community has what they need; extend compassion, and not seek to shield ourselves from suffering.

Moreover, it is right to note that this is a recurring pattern, on a long trajectory of liberation. We must speak out, prophetically, resisting the siren song to return, as quickly as possible, to how the world was: for ‘how the world was’ was, in need of divine judgement. Instead, we must foster an imagination for justice, for the earth we share, and for all her inhabitants, including (but not limited to) all people regardless of where they come from. Economics concerns the ordered running of the household, for the wellbeing of society, and is a good servant but a poor master. If this moment in history is something that those of us with the most resources come out of least scathed, unrepentant and glorying in our ego, it will be merely a stay of execution.

In this present disruptive moment, the planet itself gets to breathe. But it also holds its breath, watching to see how we will respond.

Trees

Whenever you read a story about a tree in the Bible, you’re reading a story about the people of God.

There’s the story about the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—of being a life-giving presence, and teaching how to recognise what is right from wrong—and the bigger story-arc in which humanity are separated from these trees, and how, eventually, they are reunited.

There’s the story of God turning up in a bush that is not consumed by the fire of pure holiness, pure ontological otherness, that points to God living in the midst of the people, in their journey through the wilderness.

There’s the story about how the trees of the field demanded a king, and found a fickle one in the bramble.

There’s the strange account, in time of civil war among God’s people, of a battle in which the trees of the forest killed more warriors than the sword (guns don’t kill people, people; people with guns kill people).

There’s the song that opens the songbook of Israel, about a tree whose roots anchor it deeply in the ground, from where it draws life-giving water even in seasons of drought (the land standing for the promises of God).

And the song of the trees of the field clapping their hands at the coming of the Lord’s anointed one.

There’s the story of the tree that is plucked and carried away by an eagle; of the tree cut down to a stump—a remnant—from which a new shoot will emerge. Of empire, and exile, and a new hope.

There’s the fig tree, that speaks of peace. And the vine, that speaks of fruitfulness, and of the wine of judgement and of celebration.

There’s the story of the olive tree, branches raised in worship, whose oil makes for light shining in the darkness. A rebuilt temple in turbulent times.

There’s the story of the mustard tree, in whose branches the birds of the air find shelter. And of the medicinal mulberry tree, uprooted and planted in the sea, bringing healing to chaos. Stories Jesus told his disciples.

There’s the story of a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, in the kingdom of heaven made manifest on earth through the Church.

Whenever you read a story about a tree in the Bible, you’re reading a story about the people of God.

Trees are brilliant. They suck in carbon dioxide, and breath out oxygen. They filter out toxin, and pump out life. They prevent soil erosion. Prevent the loss of knowledge of the promises of God, and the benefits of that knowledge. They provide nutrition and shelter. They have adapted to a huge variety of environments, albeit under intense pressure in many today.

Trees are brilliant. And topical. If we are to stop, and then turn around, the rising temperature of our atmosphere, which is on course to create chaos beyond our ability to engage, we must do two things, we are told. Firstly, we must stop burning fossil fuels. And secondly, we must plant more trees.

We must stop consuming God’s blessings with an unjust and insatiable greed. And we must restore the God-given solution to the challenge we face.

Plant a tree, yes. But, more than that, be a tree.

Better still, be part of a forest.

Ragnarok

Last night, we watched Thor: Ragnarok with Elijah, who is working his way (and ours) through the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is easily the most humorous of the films in the MCU so far. In any case, the Norse myths are hugely entertaining, and lend themselves well to retelling—we loved New Zealand’s contemporary tv adaptation, The Almighty Johnsons.

At one point, Thor, god of thunder, is thrown into a cosmic rubbish dump, and must escape from a nightmarish dystopia where enslaved champions are forced to fight one another, in order to return home to Asgard and defeat his sister, Hela, goddess of death.

When Thor finally confronts Hela, she gouges out one of his eyes. Near death, he sees his father, the one-eyed Odin, in a vision. Odin remarks that Thor never really saw very well when he had two eyes. (This would make more sense if Marvel had stuck with the traditional back-story of Odin sacrificing an eye in exchange for wisdom, and from then on seeing more clearly with one eye than he had done with two; rather than account for it as a battle-wound.)

In the Gospel reading set for Morning Prayer today, Mark 9:38-50, Jesus says that it is better to cut off your hand or foot or tear out your eye and to enter life in the kingdom of God maimed, than, with both hands, feet, and eyes, to be thrown onto the hellish rubbish dump.

The context is one of infighting between the disciples (Mark 9:33-37) and John’s attempt to win approval by informing Jesus that they had come across an outsider casting out demons in Jesus’ name and had told him to stop, because he wasn’t one of them.

Jesus’ response is uncompromising. You’re better off thrown into the sea with a millstone tied to your neck than you are preventing other people from ushering-in life in greater fullness.

The self-mutilation is hyperbole. And the hell is not some post-mortem punishment, but rooted in this life. Gehenna was Jerusalem’s rubbish dump, where refuse was burned, and where, when Jerusalem had fallen to armies in the past, the corpses of her fallen citizens were burned (this would happen again, at the hands of the Roman army, in AD70).

Essentially, Jesus’ teaching here is that we must live in peace with one another, and ruthlessly cut off at source any temptation to believe ourselves to be superior to others, or else we will find ourselves presiding over a wasteland. Better to compromise your vision than to have it intact, but be kings of the trash-heap.

This speaks to our political situation here in the UK, where we see competing ideologies fight to the death to rule over a nation reduced to rubble by their fighting. Better to compromise in order to work together.

And it speaks to our global environmental crisis, where westerners are unprepared to sacrifice their unprecedented collective privilege, prefering to be kings and queens of a wasted planet than work together for our shared home.

Thank God for those who seek to build common platforms, and imagine a new world. May God strengthen the resolve of the UN, in the face of many distractions.

On time

There are two kinds of time.

There is chronos, or chronological time, we measure in hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, millennia, ages...

and there is kairos time, we experience as having the time of our life, or as going through a particularly tough time.

The Church year is divided into Seasonal time and Ordinary time.

The Seasonal half—itself separated into the Christmas Cycle (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany) and the Easter Cycle (Lent, Eastertide, Pentecost)—relates to kairos.

The rest of the year—a small interlude between the Christmas and Easter Cycles, and the long weeks between the Easter and Christmas Cycles—relates to chronos. That is why we call it Ordinary, as in ordinal numbers: the first, second, third, fourth, fifth etc. etc. weeks.

We’ve just gone back into Ordinary time. Which isn’t to say that we don’t experience kairos joy and sorrow, but, rather, that we learn to pay attention to time passing.

Elijah gave me a little book of Greta Thunberg’s speeches for Fathers Day yesterday. Which is a great way to begin Ordinary time.

Wake up! We are running out of time to fundamentally change the way we collectively live...

Generations, Side By Side

One of the things I observe in our community is the role of grandparents as carers for their grandchildren. In part, this is necessary – and affordable - childcare where a single-parent is working, or where both parents are working at the same time to pay the mortgage and bills.


This is not so much a new phenomenon as a traditional phenomenon of the extended family that had been eroded by increased mobility - combined with a period of some generations, now gone, when a mortgage could be taken out on a single income - and is perhaps experiencing a renaissance due to economic necessity.

One of the things I observe in our churches is the segregation of different age groups.

One of the things I reflect may be both a missional opportunity and a healthy thing in its own right – in fact, these are one-and-the-same thing, because the mission of God is to see the restorative, life-in-its-fullness affirming kingdom of God break in to our communities – is the possibility of children and senior citizens working together.

My gut-feeling is that this would work best where the two very different generations share common concerns; and where, within those areas, the older generation has skills they can pass on.

Over many years, my dad has created a lovely garden at my parents’ home in Glasgow. On a visit to us in Liverpool in the autumn, dad and Elijah (3yrs) planted bulbs in troughs in our garden – bulbs that are now shoots.

That is a small act. But it has me thinking about what might grow - from that; from watching a grandfather and grandson work side-by-side in the school wildlife garden last weekend; from the rise in green issues on both children’s and mainstream television; from an under-used church allotment, that might not be in the best location...

I wonder what it might take to create a community garden, in which both flowers and vegetables were grown, and in which different generations worked side-by-side? And I wonder what, other than flowers and vegetables, might blossom in such a space...?

Place, Made New

New Testament Scripture hope of resurrection of the body would appear to point to continuity with the present: that it is us who are made new, and that – though we will have been changed – we will be recognisable. Perhaps we won’t look like we did at 8, or 20, or 65, but we will recognise ourselves and be recognisable by others. There will be a continuity of memory, albeit a memory that is healed of the hurts we attach to events in our lives.

But we have tended to assume that our bodies will not experience continuity of place: that they will exist somewhere other than we do here and now. Heaven. Or, perhaps, a new earth.

New Testament Scripture ends with a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The Greek word for ‘new’ should not be read as ‘wholly new, not seen before’ but as ‘made new.’

In other words, it is not just people who will be transformed – restored to wholeness, to full life-given potential - but also place. Which suggests to me that the cities of this world are eternal places: that the place where I live will be made new, recognisably this place but with all the consequences of separation from God – the boarded-up shops, the litter, the vandalism – transformed into something beautiful...

Such a reading implies that God is not simply concerned with extracting souls from a location that is destined to be scrapped, but that God is concerned with the place where we live, and with the transformation that his kingdom brings to that place. It is a transformation that will not be complete in this age, but which does begin in the present.

If Liverpool – or wherever you live – is in fact an eternal destiny, a place where people will live in eternity, what implications might that have for missional living?

Everything Matters

One of the reasons why moving to a totally new city is so tiring is that everything matters.

At both a conscious and unconscious level, you are constantly taking in everything – because you don’t know which pieces of information are significant and which aren’t. So, to give a trivial example, you note a post-box as important information, but if you discover another one closer to your house, you downgrade the importance of the first post-box: it becomes filed in your background memory, as opposed to your working memory.

Everything matters, until you are in a position to determine which things don’t matter. That means you don’t take anything for granted. And that comes with a real positive: with fresh, outsiders eyes, you see things that the indigenous population don’t see any more, things that will fade into the background until you don’t see them either. Such people ask questions that might be significant, that might lead to constructive change – and at the very least, lead to a greater understanding of the new-to-them context. But the downside is that it takes so much mental and emotional energy that it leaves you feeling physically tired – whether you find new environments mentally stimulating or draining.