Today (10 October) is World Mental Health Day.
According to the World Health Organisation:
‘World Mental Health Day raises public awareness about mental health issues. The day promotes open discussion of mental disorders, and investments in prevention, promotion and treatment services. This year the theme for the day is “Depression: A Global Crisis”.
‘Depression affects more than 350 million people of all ages, in all communities, and is a significant contributor to the global burden of disease. Although there are known effective treatments for depression, access to treatment is a problem in most countries and in some countries fewer than 10% of those who need it receive such treatment.’
I suffered from depression throughout my teens. In my first year at high school, I was relatively popular, equally so among boys and girls. On the eve of my twelfth birthday (first term of second year), I experienced an almost overwhelming sadness and had to physically fight against suicidal thoughts. I struggled with cycles of depression for years, which were particularly focused on the same time of year (my birthday is in November). I withdrew from friends – and was given the nickname Edd (Ever-Depressed Dowsett) – and lost confidence. And I spoke to nobody about what I was going through. Sometime around my seventeenth birthday, staying in a house in a forest with a group of friends (I did have some!), I had a suicidal breakdown. They listened, and took me back to Glasgow, not home but to the home of a psychiatrist we knew, who helped me to talk to my parents. Things hidden in darkness brought into the light can be addressed. My GP helped establish a platform on which I could find enough stability to stand – a platform that could in time be dismantled, and indeed that needed to be temporarily rebuilt at a much later date. There is no shame in taking appropriate medication for depression, any more than there is in taking appropriate medication to fight cancer.
Two years later, in my first term at university, I discovered something of how common it was for people to live with depression: I was not alone. But the help I had received enabled me to hold out hope and point to help for others.
On one occasion, I was sat on my bed. I was aware of myself – somehow outside of my body, or perhaps inside my body – curled in a foetal ball in a pitch dark room only just big enough to contain me. At some point I must have become ‘conscious’ that the walls had retreated – though I was still in darkness – and also become aware of the presence of Jesus sat next to me, in silence. After some time, he got up, held out his hand to me, and said, “Come on. Let’s walk away from here.” And we did. That, too, was a significant event in the process of healing. (And my name is not Edd: it is Andrew Christopher, the man who follows Christ...)
I was free of depression for many years. When I was put forward for selection for ordination, my mental health history came under scrutiny. I suggested that, as 80% of the population will personally experience some form of mental health issue (and 100% of the population will be touched by mental health issues), my experience – both of depression, and of the hope of life after depression – was a positive thing: indeed, God had already used it over and over to help others. Nonetheless, I was sent to The Priory in London for psychiatric assessment, where my fitness was endorsed in the strongest of terms. Ironically, this despite having to tell the psychiatrist that I was, at that time, back on anti-depressants to help deal with the fairly appalling manner in which representatives of the Church were treating me.
As it happens, I have not needed to be on medication since: though I may need to in the future; and while I have certainly continued to struggle with ‘low mood’ on a fairly regular basis (the appalling ways in which people in the Church treat other people at times is a large part of this; the lack of sunshine certainly doesn’t help; and I know that my own brokenness contributes). Other members of my family have needed to be on medication for depression and other mental health issues, for a variety of reasons.
Anyway, all this to say that I am grateful for all the ways through which God has moved to liberate me from depression (friendship, trained counsel, medication) and from any sense of shame or failure or disappointment with myself or judgement by others; and for the ways in which he has worked through me to bring a similar liberation to others. Depression is a word that intimidates us Not To Speak Its Name. There is a greater name – the name of Jesus. Depression will play its part in our death, whether directly or indirectly. But neither it nor death itself will have the final word.
For now, depression is indeed a global crisis. We don’t have to settle for that. We can stand up and be counted. We can speak out for those who cannot speak out for themselves. In so doing, we bring light to the darkness; and in so doing, others may be encouraged – literally, given the courage they need – to step into the light.
I’ve been sitting with Mark 10:17-31.
Jesus’ invitation/challenge to Peter mirrors God’s invitation/challenge to Abram (Genesis 12) to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household –
those things in which have given him a story;
a story that has given him an identity;
an identity that has given him security;
security that has given him confidence to become a wealthy in possessions and ownership of others and livestock –
and to step-into the story of God; there to receive an identity, identity that will give him security, security that will give him confidence to trust God for a new land, a new nation, a new name, that through him God would bless all the peoples of the earth.
Jesus’ invitation/challenge to Peter is to leave wealth, and home, and family, and fields, in order to step-into the story of God; so to receive them back in a new way, through which – Peter would come to understand – all peoples would be blessed as we enter-into the work of all things being reconciled by and in and through Jesus, the one killed by men and exalted by God.
What, then, is Jesus’ invitation/challenge to us, in relation to these things?
Wealth
Kevin Lewis writes well on the political discourse of the ‘hardworking’ here. Some will want to agree that we cannot simply divide between ‘hardworking’ and ‘lazy,’ but the underlying assumptions run so deep that we feel the need to differentiate between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor (less readily between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ rich).
Jesus’ invitation/challenge: no-one in need.
Home
We believe in the ‘property ladder’ – the need to buy a house, in order to buy a bigger house – as the most desirable aspiration, while recognising that the ladder is, at this moment in time, somewhat congested. We believe that “An Englishman’s home is his castle.” We have found something new to believe: that it is better for adult children that they do not leave home; that as parents we never lose a duty to protect our children from the world. This is justified by the perceived financial cost of leaving (ignoring the hidden financial costs of staying). We have a generation of parents who are afraid to discover who they are post the parenting stage of life, and who have kept their children as children in adult bodies; and a generation of young adults who are afraid to discover who they are post the parented stage of life, and who prolong their adolescence in an unprecedented way. This is a most frightening co-dependency. I am quite sure that this will sound harsh to some, but I’d ask you, take a long, honest look around you.
Jesus’ invitation/challenge: home as rest on the journey, Sabbath celebration, place to extend hospitality.
Family
We have moved from the extended family as primary unit (not just biological; those in domestic service functioned as extended family. Note that extended family is stronger than other forms, but no less dysfunctional: I’m not advocating it) through the nuclear family as primary unit (probably 1950s-1980s) to the atomic family. Of course we still see both extended and nuclear family structures, but the primary unit is now the individual, making temporary combinations, with commitment to self taking priority over commitment to others.
Jesus’ invitation/challenge: to be part of God’s family, the gift of a large family, recognising one another.
Fields
We believe in food production, a term that has undertones of the factory; that demands maximum efficiency; that denies food as God’s provision. We demand that the field be a place of exploitation, where the supermarkets extort food from farmers at below-cost because we do not want to pay a fair price. This year – drought in the spring, floods in the summer – our fields in this country have become places of devastation, with unusual if not unprecedented crop failure. We fight against the warnings that present climate change is to a significant degree the consequence of our own pursuit of power (in more than one sense) and convenience.
Jesus’ invitation/challenge: fields are a reminder to us of our connectedness to everything else; of God’s provision; and of his setting limits on the consequences of our sin (yes, there are consequences) (Genesis 3:17-19). All things are being reconciled by and in and through Jesus. How might we take responsibility for fields without owning the land?
How might we help one another leave false constructions of wealth, home, family, and fields, and receive – by participating in – a new construction of these things, which is in both quantity and quality ‘a hundred times’ greater?
[Two pitfalls to avoid: understanding the 100x to relate to our existing false constructions, and so reinforcing them by acquisition; and spiritualising ‘wealth, home, family, and fields,’ so failing to follow Jesus in his reconstruction of these embodied things.]
One of the questions I get asked a lot is, why would someone who considers themselves to be a missionary in a post-Christendom context choose to be an Anglican priest? Isn’t the Established Church a Constantinian corruption? Why I embarked on the whole selection process that leads to ordination was simply in obedience to what I – and others – believed God was saying, and I think Scripture shows us that he is not answerable to us. That said, what is my self-understanding of my calling? It has a lot to do with my understanding of exile and empire.
I am an exile, both in terms of kin – my father’s people are all Southerners, spread north-south from East-Anglia to Kent and east-west from London to Bristol; but I grew up in Scotland, and have lived my whole adult life in the North or Midlands of England – and in terms of faith - as a follower of Jesus in a post-Christian, post-Secular pluralist society.
At various times in the history of God’s people, they found themselves living as exiles within Empires. Through the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 29), God instructs his people in Babylon to settle, to build a life, to seek the peace and prosperity of the place to which he has sent them, to seek to bless their host nation and leave their own being blessed to God. This principle articulates what we see supremely in three different stories set in different Empires at different times: that of Joseph/Zaphenath-Paneah, in Egypt; Daniel/Belteshazzar, Hananiah/Shadrach, Mishael/Meshach, and Azariah/Abednego in Babylon; and Esther/Hadassah and Mordecai in Persia. Each is thoroughly embedded in the Establishment of the Empires to which God had sent them. (Except Mordecai) Each is known by a name that speaks of that culture and its gods, as well as by names that speak of the Hebrew culture and god. Joseph’s father-in-law is a priest within a religion of Empire, and Joseph himself observes cultic practices that are alien to the practices of his own people. Daniel’s friends are civil servants and he is a senior political figure, and while they refuse to observe certain cultic practices, they nonetheless embed themselves within the politico-religious dynamic. Esther is called to live within the harem of a Xerxes, a king who has as many gods as he has wives and concubines, while Mordecai is elevated to second in rank to Xerxes.
Two other stories are pertinent here. One is the story of the prophet Elisha and the Syrian general Naaman. When Naaman informs Elisha that he wishes to worship, Yahweh, the god of Elisha’s people, within the cultic observances of Rimmon-worship, Elisha does not tell him he cannot, but sends him on his way with peace – right relationship with God and neighbour. The other is the story of the first two churches planted in Europe: the mission-focus of one being providing purple clothing for Roman senators, the mission-focus of the other being detaining prisoners of the Roman Empire.
There is a sense in which the Church of England is part of the one true Church, no less or more so than any other tradition within the Church. Whenever men have set out from the corrupt church to establish a pure church it has failed, sooner or later. This is God’s judgement on our folly. Jesus said “I will build my church” – and he will not allow us to build it. Whenever we seek to build the church, rather than to do what we were told to do – to go and make disciples – it is doomed to failure (in this sense, there would be nothing to be gained by my stepping outside of the Church of England). Every member of the Church is both chosen/elect (‘clergy’) and the people of God (‘laity’): not two different groups, but two different ways of describing a trans-national people set apart as priests to mediate between God and the nations.
But there is also a sense in which the Anglican Church – the Anglican Communion – is the religion of the British Empire. This is so, even though both the British Empire and the Church of England no longer enjoy their former place of privilege and power: and in this sense, it is as false as the religions of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires. It is, I would suggest, within this sense that we have public worship services, as opposed to the underground gatherings of Christians in ancient Rome or today’s China. And it is within this sense that I understand my Anglican priesthood: that I serve God within the cultic practices of a particular people group; that I seek the peace and prosperity of that nation, not least in blessing the people at significant rite-of-passage moments (but also through my promise to serve the monarch in all things lawful, God being my helper); and habitually doing so, am there when they seek help to deal with processing their response to the abduction of a young girl, the murders of police officers, the events that shake their world to the foundations. My personal name is ‘Andrew Christopher,’ which means ‘the man who follows Christ’ but in the Empire I am conferred the name ‘Reverend Doctor,’ or, Belteshazzar, or...
That I see the Church of England as both part of the one true Church and a false religion of Empire is neither schizophrenia nor pragmatism, but paradox – both/and which we are invited to live with without either/or resolution.
Some people hold the view that all God’s people are priests – mediators between God and people – to the surrounding culture, and the ‘clergy’ are priests to the priests. My own view is that all God’s people are priests in that they are sent to mediate between God and people, and that the ‘clergy’ (that is, those who are clergy in the way that we practice ordination in my context) do so specifically within the cultic structures of the Empire. The congregation I serve do not need me as a priest (they need a High Priest, and that is Jesus). In a time where they have all but lost the Story of which they are part, they need me as a story-teller.
Why would I dare to see myself as in any way comparable to Joseph or Esther or Daniel, rather than the nameless Israelites? In large part because of where God has sent me: first to a top independent school, a Scottish school that produced two Westminster Prime Ministers (I know some Christians who believe that Christians should not be in such school contexts, but God sends where God sends), then to university education as far as PhD level. From childhood, I have been trained to serve the Establishment of the land God has set me in; all the while knowing that God will not allow it to last forever, and that, living in its decline, there is even the possibility that I might outlive its fall.
Is this risky? Undoubtedly. But God is the most breath-taking of risk-takers. It is only possible to make what Michael Frost calls ‘dangerous promises’ to the Empire (we will bless you, however greatly you sin against us) without losing our own identity if we also tell ‘dangerous stories’ (the scandalous Story of Scripture, which has been all but lost to my own community), engage in ‘dangerous practices’ (I’d argue that Sabbath rest in a 24/7 society is even more politically subversive than Communion; and that the Command to observe Sabbath is the command most broken by most priests within the religion of this post-Judeo-Christian empire), and sing ‘dangerous songs’ (edgy, raw Psalms, not sentimental mush).
I am aware that this will be for many of my brothers and sisters a thoroughly unsatisfactory answer to the question, why on earth am I a priest within the Church of England? But satisfactory or not, I hope it can be respected.
I’m reflecting on the encounter between Jesus and the rich young man, Mark 10:17-31. Essentially, Jesus says “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” is the wrong question - the right question is, am I prepared to follow him in his creating a new humanity? How did we come to make the wrong question THE question, and the right question at best an optional extra?
The good news we are to proclaim is not personal salvation. The good news is this: that God has made Jesus, who was crucified, both Lord and Christ (as Peter proclaims in Acts 2:36; or, the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, as Stephen puts it in Acts 7:56; or the man God has appointed to judge the world with justice, having raised him from the dead, as Paul puts it in Acts 17:31; or the one through whom the Gentiles will be rescued from the power of Satan, receive forgiveness of sins, and be given a place among those set apart, as Paul puts it in Acts 26:18). This is good news because Jesus has broken the power of death, of physical decay, of accusation, of sin, of division...good news made manifest contextually through those who mourn being comforted, the sick being healed, the oppressed experiencing deliverance, the hungry fed, the widow and orphan finding family, and all this (opposed at every turn) as a foretaste of what is yet to be (yet to be resolved).
And it asks of us, will you follow? Not, here is how you can cheat death, but, here is something, someone, worth dying for.
The personal salvation question puts me at the centre. The Jesus made Lord and Christ question puts the vision of all things that have been made being reconciled – to one another as created beings and to our Creator – by and in and through Jesus at the centre.
The personal salvation question sets me on a quest to save my life; a quest whose end, according to Jesus, is that we lose our life. The Jesus made Lord and Christ question invites me to follow him on a journey where I will lose my life, and having lost it, will receive it back again a hundred-fold.
In fact, pursuing the personal salvation question ironically results in my removing God entirely – as Jesus’ silence on the first four commandments weightily implies that the rich young man has done, most likely quite unintentionally.
Whatever personal salvation means (and I don’t think there is much in the story of Scripture to support the average western understanding, whether of those who attend church faithfully or those who would never think to do so), it is to be found in participating in a community that re-imagines and embodies a new way of constructing wealth (neither capitalism nor communism but meeting one another’s needs) and home (rest on the way, Sabbath in the week) and family (wider than, and at times in conflict with, kinship) and place (not local v global, but glo-cal), by dying to the false image of these good gifts (and embracing persecution for doing so). That is costly, and in the short-term and even the medium-term it is hardly worth embarking on - which is perhaps why so many become discouraged and walk away, while so many more settle for something so much less. But this, too, is good news, for those who have been shut-out from our god- and neighbour-forsaking cultural constructions of wealth and home and family and place, which are being shaken by God and found wanting, quite inadequate in their foundations. Take, for example, Generation Y. Generation X (my generation) watched their parents’ generation’s marriages (not necessarily their own parents’ marriage) collapse like viewing the Twin Towers implode over and over in slow-mo, and vowed they would not go there, substituting family for friends and commitment for passing relationships. Generation Y, while recognising the importance of friends, sees through the hurt-reflex of rejecting family, the inadequacy of my generation’s refugee camp, and are seeking to rebuild permanent structures, in human-scale community.
Such a vision requires all that we bring we are and all that we have, holding nothing back. In the church, it confronts both the poverty spirit that entices us to believe that we have not enough and must at all costs hold on to what we still have, and the prosperity spirit that entices us to believe that we are rich and have all we need (these two apparently contradictory spirits tend to co-habit quite happily). At the margin of the church, it disturbs the belief that observing Christendom rituals benefits us in any way. Outside the church, it exposes the emptiness of being spiritual-but-not-religious, and the poverty of any New Atheist vision for humanity...
With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.
Who is welcome in our community? Who is not welcome? Who is welcome conditionally, on the basis that they first change, or are making certain changes? Whose presence in our midst makes us feel uncomfortable, concerned that we might in some way be contaminated by sharing bread and wine with them at Jesus’ table (despite Jesus clearly stating that it is not what goes into a person [certain foods] that makes them unclean but what comes out of them [certain speech, the outworking of certain attitudes]; despite Jesus’ own practice of eating with Pharisees and sinners)? The Church is invited to believe that everything that has been made is being reconciled – to one another as created beings and to our Creator – by and in and through Jesus...and challenged to live into this new reality. And yet, the Church is fraught with division and worry over who we can or should not embrace...those we disapprove of, and those we disapprove of because of who they disapprove of whom we affirm...
One of the most precious gifts God gave me last week was the opportunity to listen to Deb Hirsch (Los Angeles), and Sean Gladding (Lexington), each share their radical Christ-centred compassion.
Here are some observations/reflections/discussions that resonated with my spirit:
We are all sinners. There is no hierarchy of sin (though there are sins that harm the body as well as the soul); to break one part of the Law is to break it all.
We come to Jesus because it is him alone who can transform us, can cleanse us of our stains and heal us of our brokenness. We come on level ground, invited to the same table, and who are we to demand that we be welcome while demanding that someone else be turned away?
Our job is to point people towards Jesus – whether they are far away from him or very close, for the journey to him starts a long way off and the journey away from him can start as close as his first disciples, indeed as close as our own heart – and to leave the rest to him.
Moving towards Jesus is a journey. Can we really only affirm movement towards Jesus when it gets to a certain point? And can we really only affirm movement towards Jesus when it gets to a certain point, while adding barriers to getting to that point?! For example, an orthodox Christian view of sexual behaviour advocates marriage for heterosexuals and celibacy for homosexuals: while this is not the only view held by Christians, can those who hold it affirm the move from promiscuity to monogamy – from A to B, but not yet to C – as movement towards Jesus? Who are we to judge against those we believe to be moving away from Jesus, when we also wilfully or unwittingly turn our backs on him; when what is lost is to be sought and found and brought back and celebrated? And who are we to judge whether another person is ‘genuinely’ seeking to follow Jesus?
This is how sanctification works: when the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin in our lives, we cannot help but repent - Isaiah says “Woe is me!” and Simon Peter says “Get away from me, Lord!” – and believe, not because repentance and belief are coerced but because conviction is compelling. So if someone does not feel convicted that some part of their life we believe to be sinful (and it may be) is sin, rather than telling them that they are wrong and that they need to address this sin in their life before we can go any further, we do better to ask them, “Where in your life do you feel convicted of sin?” and to offer, to the best of our own provisional understanding and ongoing experience, to help a fellow child of God repent and believe and so enter into the experience of the kingdom of heaven. (Thanks, Sean Gladding, for sharing this profound observation.)
Who are we to say in what order God should address the brokenness in another person’s life? We might want him to start with the thing we feel most uncomfortable about; but God might want, or need – and he knows better than me – to start somewhere else or proceed in a different order to my agenda.
Every one of us is broken, in more ways than we are aware, and through a tangled mess of the consequences of those things we have done that we ought not to have done, those things we ought to have done that we have not done, wilfully or unwittingly, those things others have done to us that they ought not to have done, those things others have not done to us that they ought to have done, wilfully or unwittingly, and indeed the wider consequences of these things having been played out throughout history...The careful experience of being healed has begun for us, but every one of us will enter eternity broken and only be fully alive, fully free, fully comforted, fully healed when Jesus makes all things new. So who are we to decide what aspect of another’s brokenness must be made whole this side of then, or before any other?
If our theology prevents us from the embrace of another (sinner); from sitting down at table with another and breaking bread with them to remind ourselves that God comes to set his people free and to offer ourselves to live as those who have been freed; if our theology causes us to keep anyone from coming to Jesus (as the disciples tried to keep mothers from bringing their children to Jesus); then our theology is wrong and we bear false witness to the One we claim to love.
Perfect love drives out fear; and fear flourishes where we shut out perfect love. By whom am I afraid to be embraced? Where do I need to welcome Love? Where do I need to welcome Jesus, in the face of the person excluded for being gay/Muslim/alcoholic/racist/Reformed/autistic/[insert] – someone who bears the imago dei and who, with me, may be transformed into the imago Christi as we gaze together on his face, not least in each other’s eyes?
For me, personally, one of the hardest choices is to choose to welcome those who create a theological hierarchy of men over women. On this, I profoundly disagree with them, and am deeply saddened by their behaviour, by the impact of their behaviour not only on women but also on men who look to such leaders for their lead. I know where I stand – and it is important to know where we stand, while knowing that we have not arrived. But I also need to know that welcome is not the same as condoning their actions, any more than God welcoming any sinner condones any sin. If I will not love what is not lovely, I can have no part in Jesus. Sometimes, that is a very hard thing to do. But whoever thought that the great vision of reconciling all things – the state of glory, which Jesus chooses to share with us – was a small matter?
In a Church that seems intent on devouring one another in front of a world that looks on with bewilderment and curses Christ’s name, the wisdom, grace, and courage I have witnessed these past days strengthens my hope for what we do not yet see, and invites and challenges me to go and do likewise. For this, I am deeply thankful.
This morning I sat in a quiet house overlooking a wooded creek, reading, praying, drinking coffee, and thinking about covenant.
Covenant is never only about personal relationship with God, or another person, but about creating a community (absolute minimum of two persons) that is robust enough to live beyond judgement. It moves from the particular (personal) starting point to bless and embrace others.
Future judgement and future blessing both break-into the present. So we can speak of the crises facing the Church and the wider society to whom we are sent as just judgement on God's people and the world for failing to love God and our neighbour. In this context, covenant creates community robust enough to live after the cultural earthquake.
This is how covenant is depicted biblically, whether after the Great Flood; or when Joshua renews the covenant between the people and God after he has brought them out of Egypt (judgement), dealt with them in the wilderness (judgement), and displaced other nations to give them the Land (judgement); or when Jesus initiates a remnant community that will survive the fall of Jerusalem (judgement on God's people) and the fall of Rome (judgement on the world) - a remnant that will embrace both Jews and Gentiles.
Therefore our covenant relationships - whether marriage covenant, or other forms - provide us with the means to live in a world that has been violently shaken, as would be an accurate description of our society in double recession and great upheaval, albeit the positive celebrations of this summer (celebrations which express covenant between a monarch and get subjects, and the youth of the world, as it happens).
It does so by (as the marriage service vows articulate it) the sharing of all that we are and all that we have, within the love of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The offering of who we are today, each day, as we change/grow; given to another so that they might grow more fully into the person they were created to be; in order that others are blessed beyond and outside of the covenant relationship in question. The sharing of resources. All held within the height and depth and width and length of God's love that goes beyond all we could ask or imagine. So, my marriage should not only bless my wife, but also our children, and as many others as we come into contact with.
And likewise my church community.
Is that how we understand ourselves, our calling in the world? Or are we overwhelmed by the earthquake?
I'm in America to attend the Sentralized Conference, and with a rest day between travelling and the conference beginning, I'm thinking about some of the differences between US and UK culture and what that means for church culture. My point is not that either culture should become more like the other, but that stepping outside of our own culture often helps us to critique it better.
A friend of mine who has lived in both countries recently told me that Americans invest in land, while the British invest in property. You can see this in our respective houses. As I walk around here, the houses are temporary structures. Every element will only last so long, but they are easily and inexpensively replaced. This allows for extending or remodelling or even building/re-building. Home is important, and when you enter an American home, the way it is decorated will tell you the values of the family that lives there (in a much less self-conscious manner than back home). But the structure is far less important. Family is the principle, and the house adapts to meet the changing needs of the family.
In contrast, in the UK we buy houses that are built to last, but come with high maintenance costs and are expensive to adapt. The family almost always adapts to fit the constraints of the house (with perhaps one big last-a-lifetime extension/conversion project).
If you have seen the period drama Downtown Abbey, you might be forgiven for assuming that Americans are more pragmatic, while the British are more principled. In fact, we operate according to different (often unspoken and certainly usually unchallenged) principles, each requiring their own different pragmatisms (US adapt, UK conserve).
This has an impact on our churches. Here I am concerned with my own British context. Rather than starting with the church family as it is now and as we perceive it is most likely to develop next, and asking what shape our structures need to be to hold this, we start with our structures and ask, how can our present family inhabit these existing structures? Who will take responsibility for this room or that room?
This takes us back to Downtown Abbey, and the challenge of running a Pre-WWI house after the cultural crisis (not to mention population loss) of that world-changing event. It can't continue as it was. This is the challenge facing us in our own different moment of equally rapid and discontinuous change.
It isn't sustainable.
The Americans invest in land, not property. Funnily enough, Anglicans also invest in land, at least in theory: long-term commitment to the parish. The problem arises where we see our role as preserving a building and/or set of practices.
My own interest is in asking, who are we? Recognising a continuity with the past and a responsibility to pass on what has been entrusted to us, yes: but not seeing that in inflexible terms. If anything, our preoccupation with the structures (the physical building and the institutional roles) prevents us from engaging in being family on mission to bless the world as it is now (in need of a family who will bless others) not how it was.
The American church faces its own challenges. In the UK church, we need to invest in more provisional and adaptable structures, seeing the family not as guardians of a way of life but as those who are alive, whose God-given life guarantees life.
Lately I have been pondering the difficult business of apologies.
One of the controversies of the recent London Paralympics involved the South African double below-knee amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius. Pistorius had fought for the right to compete against able-bodied athletes, against claims that his blades gave him an advantage over them; and this summer he competed in both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But in the Paralympic T44 200m he finished in second, behind Alan Oliveira – a shock result. Interviewed immediately after the race, he claimed that Oliveira’s blades gave the Brazilian sprinter the unfair advantage of a longer stride, dismissing the achievement of another athlete who had always looked up to him, and being dismissive of the International Paralympic Committee. In fact, Pistorius didn’t have a leg to stand on: not only did he run the 200m in fewer strides than Oliveira, suggesting that Pistorius had the longer stride (and anyway, blades are scaled to the athlete wearing them, and no-one claims that Usain Bolt should be penalised for having a longer stride than his competitors) but Pistorius ran faster in his semi-final than either athlete ran in the final. The following day Pistorius apologised for the timing of his comments. Not for the comments themselves; for the timing. So, when is an apology not an apology?
Then, and with the Paralympic Games as back-drop, the German-based company responsible for the morning-sickness drug Thalidomide issued an apology – for the first time, fifty years after the drug was withdrawn – along with an appeal for understanding and forgiveness: an apology deemed insincere and insulting by some campaigners but welcomed conditionally by others, who have extended the invitation to further progress towards reconciliation.
Yesterday, the Hillsborough Independent Panel published its Report into the Hillsborough Disaster and its aftermath. Yesterday and today have seen a flurry of apologies made by politicians, senior police officers, journalists. Some have been welcomed, others rejected as too little too late.
Of course, there are almost daily examples I could draw on. When it comes to apologies, it would seem that you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
So here are some thoughts:
Saying sorry is perhaps the hardest thing we ever do.
We generally demand a swifter and fuller apology of others than we are willing to give to others...
The more we trust the person or people to whom we owe an apology to have our best interests at heart and to be looking for the win-win of reconciliation rather than the win-over-you of vindication, the fuller the apology we will be able to give.
Likewise, the less we trust the person or people to whom we owe an apology, the more guarded and limited our apology is likely to be.
Offer the apology that you are able to offer.
Be as clear as you can as to the apology you are making.
Be as honest as you can about the apology that you owe but are not (yet) able to make. This opens the door for a degree of reconciliation, which opens the door to the fuller completion of the apology.
Be as generous as you can in accepting another person’s apology. Is it really too little too late, or has it taken great courage to get this far while needing something in return in order to go further?
An apology that is not freely given is empty, so ask for an apology by all means, but don’t dictate what it should contain: if you do, you rob yourself of the apology you are looking for, and the other person of the apology that they might otherwise be able to move towards in time.
Only the person making an apology can truly know whether they are being sincere or not. Passing judgement on their sincerity makes you less human than you were created to be, because it builds a barrier between us. Accepting an insincere apology does not reveal you to be gullible; it reveals you to be the more fully whole person (at least in this instance), by denying the opportunity to build a barrier and, instead, moving for reconciliation.
Our unwillingness or inability to accept an apology reveals the extent to which we harbour brokenness – and, therefore, the extent to which we need to accept the apology being held out to us.
Don’t retract an apology – and don’t retract the acceptance of an apology.
Don’t apologise more than once (unless you need to apologise to more than one person or group and can’t do that on one occasion), unless you are able to extend your apology beyond what you have apologised for. An apology – whether accepted or rejected – is an end to the matter (though it may need to be followed by taking consequences, and/or by attempting to make amends). To keep apologising for the same thing is to believe that we are unworthy of forgiveness or acceptance. Likewise, to demand that someone apologises repeatedly is to demonstrate that we do not believe that they are worthy of forgiveness or acceptance (and if that is so, that is our problem, not theirs).
Accepting an apology is perhaps the hardest thing we ever do.
[I have lived within sight and sound of both Hillsborough and Anfield; was sent forward for ordination by Sheffield Diocese and received by Liverpool Diocese, ordained in Liverpool Cathedral.]
Today the Hillsborough Independent Panel, chaired by the Bishop of Liverpool, has published its Report. Today is a significant moment for the families of the 96 who died, for the cities of Liverpool and Sheffield, and for the whole nation. Things have been brought into the light, which have been hidden for twenty-three years.
Jesus said, “If you hold on to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31, 32)
Today we have a greater access to significant relevant information concerning the Hillsborough Disaster. Today we are able to point to deliberate attempts to cover information with misinformation, long suspected but until now not established. Today we can identify failure on the part of individuals and organisations, and shared degrees of culpability. Today we know something, which we need to know in order to experience freedom. But none of this is, in itself, the truth that will set us free.
If we are to experience freedom, we need to see ourselves in the eyes of our enemies; we need to forgive them; we need to love them. We need to discover that – though justice must be done – mercy must triumph over judgement.
Liverpool supporters have been vindicated. They were not responsible for what happened, and, indeed, they worked to alleviate suffering and were vilified for it. They were not responsible for what happened, but they could have been: not because Scousers are scum who can’t be trusted, but because the impulse to exonerate ourselves by shifting the blame for our short-falling – whether the short-falling is wilful or unintended, doing what we ought not to do or failing to do what we ought to have done – is a universal human impulse as old as conscious thought. I do it, and often – and I hate myself for it. We fall short of our responsibility towards our neighbour; hide, driven by shame; and create a web of lies to cover our tracks.
When we look at the list of individuals and organisations that are rightfully indicted by this Report, we need the honesty to say, It could have been me in their shoes. In this regard – as is invariably the case in tragedy that causes outrage – the families of those who died have shown a dignity that has not been shared by everyone who has called for justice for the 96, by those who have called for vengeance that goes beyond justice...and so violates the very possibility of justice, by ruling witness statements calling for mercy to be inadmissible evidence.
For while there are legal consequences (such as prison sentences) and public consequences (such as the redesigning of football stadia and the rethinking of policing), as well as psychological consequences (such as having people’s deaths on your hands), that need to be borne, we also need to forgive. Unless we can forgive, we remain pinned under the weight of a barrier that crushes the life out of us. Yes, this is easier said than done – but done it must be.
Today is an opportunity to move through justice (as yet, incomplete) towards reconciliation (as yet, a long way off). Perhaps we can learn lessons from South Africa in this regard. Only when we can love our enemies – when, from the heart, we can wish them no evil, only good; when we bless them, asking God to bring life out of the ashes of their lives, rather than curse them, asking God to cut their potential and their future short – can we live freely: free from the shame of our own short-comings, and the fear that they too will be publically exposed; free from the hatred that posses as pre-emptive defensive strike; free from the pain of our scars, which we will always bear but which we do not have to bear raw. Only then will the memory of the 96 be able to rest in peace; only then will the people of Liverpool, and Sheffield, and wider, be able to rest in peace.
When Jesus told his disciples that they must love their enemies (Matthew 5:43-48), and forgive those who were in their debt by renouncing any claim to what they could not repay anyway (Matthew 6:12), he knew these three things: that they absolutely needed to, for the alternative is too costly to live with; that it is possible; and that they wouldn’t be able to do so alone. Jesus gave, and continues to give, himself so that we are not left alone, so that we don’t have to fall back on our finite resources. In the words over the gate at Anfield, and on the replica gate in the Memorial Garden in Hillsborough Park, You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Jesus revealed a kingdom-of-heaven principle to his disciples, one they struggled to understand: that the way to multiply what you have is to give it up – for only when we reach the end of our resources can we receive from God his unlimited resources. It works like this: choose to forgive who you are only just able to forgive, choose to love who you are only just able to love, and if you are open God will increase your capacity to forgive and to love those you cannot, at this moment in time, imagine being able to forgive and to love. If you want to know where you are in that process, listen to the imaginary conversation in your head with the key players. The process is costly, and laborious, and messy, and through it heaven breaks into our world as untouchable outcasts are embraced within community, to the mutual restoration of both.
Today is a momentous day. But it is not the End. It is, if we will receive it, a new Beginning. Lord, have mercy on us all.
I love the turning of seasons, that moment, ripe with potential, when one thing gives way to another. In particular, I like the turning-point from summer into late summer, bursting with fruitfulness. Today our children went back to school. For the boys, a return; for Susannah, the first day at high school. Here she is; and also a photo of all three with my parents, taken in our garden last week.
I did not get to see the opening ceremony of the London Olympics – we were on holiday at the time – but a common theme to the accounts I have heard was how the religious dimension was so unashamedly included in the celebration of British culture, with hymns that went beyond the tradition of singing at Cup tie matches and a moving remembrance of those who died in the London bombings the day after the Games were awarded to the capital city.
We watched the opening ceremony of the London Paralympics last night, and were struck by how very anti-religious the celebration was. The central theme was a Scientific approach to the universe. And while science and religion are not incompatible, the statement was defiantly humanistic and atheistic. Which has me asking, are the disabled as a constituency that can be gathered more irreligious than society as a whole? Or, is this the defiance of those who have been locked-out by those who do believe in God? What – if anything – does this moment tell us?
As someone who believes in God as God is revealed in and through the person of Jesus, disability is a complex issue.
It is unavoidable that Jesus, directly or indirectly, reverses the physical and social impact of disabilities: the blind see, the lame walk. Some see this (consciously or unconsciously) as affirming the able-body not only as normative but as being of a better class. But in his relating to disabled people, Jesus always treats them with dignity. He appears to recognise that the disabled have both had something taken from them – and it is denial to refuse to recognise this – and also have had something given to them, a determination and an ability to see and to respond to God’s active presence in their midst that the able-bodied are blind and lame to. Jesus’ impulse is to move to restore what has been taken and affirm what has been given. Both these moves seem to me to be fully in-line with the Paralympic vision. After all, what else are prosthetic limbs and (physical and emotional) rehabilitation, if not a restoration of what has been lost; coaching and training and promoting and supporting, if not an affirmation of what has been given?
However, as a Jesus-follower I must look not only to what Jesus did – how he responded to others; and how he confronts our marginalisation of the other – but also to who he was. In particular, his resurrection body, as a foretaste of the fullness of God’s intention for our bodies, has much to teach us about our attitude towards disability.
Firstly, Jesus’ resurrection body is not immediately recognisable. I have disabled friends who believe that they will not be disabled in heaven, and disabled friends who believe that they will be. My best guess is that all of us will be different from how we are now, in ways which we cannot imagine, and yet which are in continuity with who we have already begun to be. No human condition is the final word on being fully human.
Secondly, Jesus’ resurrection body is not subject to the same physical limitations our bodies are bound by. Pushing those limits – as Olympians and Paralympians do – would appear to be recognition that, while we experience constraints that contain us, they do not define us. Again, our present condition – whether able-bodied or differently-able – is not the final word on being fully human.
Thirdly, Jesus’ resurrection body carried the scars inflicted on him by humans. This is, surely, not simply evidence for theological claims concerning Jesus, but for theological claims concerning humanity. Many (not all) Paralympians had their disability inflicted upon them by the actions of others: by improvised explosive device, machete, car crash, terrorist bomb, exposure to drugs (medical or otherwise) in the womb. In Jesus’ body, their scars are affirmed as something that can be transformed from the raw ugliness of wounds into something beautiful; that the disabled human form can be beautiful, though perhaps only for those – both disabled and able-bodied – with eyes to see. At any stage, the human body – our own, that of another – can be rejected as abhorrent or embraced as gift – to ourselves, to others.
I know many Christians who are delighted that these will be the most-watched Paralympic Games yet; who rejoice that attitudes towards disabled people have come a long way, and that – with a long way still to go – the United Kingdom is among those societies taking a lead. Watching the athletes from many nations parade into the stadium last night, it was clear that this is an occasion to celebrate where we have come to, in equality, rather than lament where we have come from or where we have still to go. It would be a shame if the humanistic and atheistic defiance of the artistic direction accurately reflects the general attitude of people with disabilities towards the Church, or the diversity of religious beliefs represented by the competing athletes.
On a national level, perhaps the anti-religious nature of this opening ceremony allows us to retreat from the heart-on-our-sleeve exposure of the Olympic opening ceremony; to move from self-conscious awkwardness after the event to face-saving restoration of business-as-usual. Except that there is no business-as-usual to such moments: carnival is, by definition, a throwing-off of the masks we wear in daily life. Prospero came to the conclusion that relating to others by godless means imprisoned not only them but himself; and pleaded with his audience to set him free by prayer and forgiveness, which move divine mercy. The godless Prospero who was our host last night only painted a vision in which nothing is of account in the face of a vast unknowable universe, where the breaking of our prisons is no more than spectacular illusion and pretty distraction. If that is the best vision we can put our imagination to, then these Games are not about humanity but about the desire to see freak-show gladiators fight for our entertainment.
How then, might we watch the Paralympic Games, as able-bodied and disabled, as people of growing faith in God and growing faith that no God exists? Surely by allowing what we see unfold to call into question the position from which we begin, finding ourselves moving to a different view-point.
I am writing a book, and am looking to collate enough data to help test some intuitive hunches. I’m writing about the dynamics between five human impulses I believe each one of us displays, to greater or lesser degree, in differing order of preference. The technical religious language to describe these impulses, within the Christian tradition, is apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, shepherding and teaching, but they are universal human impulses to:
pioneer beyond what is already familiar in any given field or discipline (e.g. build an online business, rather than a high street business);
imagine and express the challenges we will face if we continue on our present trajectory so those challenges can be prepared for (e.g. Peak Oil, aging population, etc);
carry good news stories (e.g. promoting a new restaurant or latest gadget by word-of-mouth);
care for people (e.g. speaking out for the most vulnerable); and
secure the passing-on of knowledge or skills from one generation or context to another (e.g. teaching children to cook).
Here is how you can help. My friend Alan Hirsch has developed a profiling tool for measuring the relative weighting of each of these preferences (you might have very little preference for pioneering beyond the known – but you will have some!). For $10US you can take the test here. It takes about 10 minutes, and will be recognisable in style to anyone who is familiar with other preference profiling tools such as Myers Briggs. (As with Myers Briggs, we are talking about preferences, not mutually-exclusive boxes. This particular tool is not an alternative to Myers Briggs, or Belbin, etc., but investigates a different set of preferences.)
I would be grateful if some of my friends – that is, people I know well enough to weigh my ‘guess’ against your results – would be willing to take the test and share their results with me. If possible, it would be great if you could also give some indication as to whether you think it is a fairly accurate stable profile, or whether it more reflects your current circumstances (like Myers Briggs, I would say that there might be some ‘seasonal’ variation but that over time a stable preference set would be confirmed).
I would like to hear from friends who work in a variety of contexts: not only those in church leadership but in as wide a variety of fields or disciplines as possible. And because I believe these are human impulses, not religious ones, I’d be especially grateful if any of my friends who would not identify themselves as Christians would be brave enough to set aside the technical religious language of Alan’s profiling tool and take the test.
If you are willing to help me out in this way, please email me your completed profile. My email address is andrew[at]dowsetts[dot]net
Thank you!
(or, watching Batman with Richard Rohr, Mike Breen, and Mark Stibbe.)
Life is a game played in two halves, not necessarily of equal length, with many people sitting out the second half – and even much of the first – on the bench. The primary goal of the first half is to discover who we are; the primary goal of the second half is to give ourselves back – to God, to our neighbour – in such a way that extends the reach of life: for only our true self is a worthy offering. It would appear that experiencing both love and success is key to discovering who we are (Scripture is full of such stories). But such love and success need to be released from our grip if we are even to start the second half of life, and this is so scary to us that only failure can open us to the purpose of knowing ourselves, to give ourselves back. This is what the Bible describes as dying to self, by which the Christian tradition does not mean obliteration of the self but the transformation of the self by the power that rose Jesus from the dead; that will one day rise us from death; and of which it is possible to experience that future breaking into our present, but only by moving from the end of the first half and into the second. The delight of resurrection life, which can only be known on the other side of death, is that the love and success we dared let go of have not deserted us.
The Dark Knight Rises, the final part in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, is a film concerned with the transition from the first half of life to the second.
It is eight years since Bruce Wayne moth-balled the Batman project, having chosen for Batman to take responsibility for the murders committed by Harvey Dent rather than allow the population of Gotham to lose the hope they had placed in their crusading District Attorney before Dent’s tragic turning. Moreover, Wayne has moth-balled a nuclear-fusion project for creating clean renewable energy, into which he had invested half his fortune, having discovered that it could be turned into a nuclear bomb. At the start of the film, Wayne has been living for some years as a recluse, shut off from the world. Having successfully invested his physical, intellectual and financial (and to a lesser degree relational and spiritual) capital into his identity – and I would suggest that Bruce Wayne/Batman is one identity, albeit that this is hidden – his resources are now spent or spurned.
Alongside the Wayne/Batman story, we meet Selina Kyle/Catwoman. Kyle has established herself as a successful cat-burglar, but is now looking for a shot at redemption. To this end she attempts to use her ability in exchange for a clean slate, stealing information in return for the promise of all records tracing back to her identity being wiped from any computer database.
When mercenary terrorist Bane turns up in Gotham, holding the city to nuclear blackmail, Wayne decides to bring back the Batman. He will seek to address the present crisis using the strategies and methods that served him well in the first half of life. His faithful butler, Alfred Pennyworth, who became his surrogate father following the murder of his parents, cautions him against this. Alfred’s dream has always been to see Wayne embark on the second half of life – and to this end, the wise older man is prepared even to lose their relationship. Wayne, however, confronts Bane, who breaks his back – witnessed by Catwoman who, at Batman’s request, had led him to Bane – and transports him to the Pit, a prison designed to break the spirit through feeding despair by holding hope just beyond reach. But while Bane is right in recognising that despair is fed by the tantalising proximity of hope, he fails to realise that hope is fed by touching the pit of despair.
Wayne eventually escapes the Pit, not by relying on the methods that have served him well in the past, but by letting go of security, of the cord that ties us to what we know that we are capable of and what is beyond our reach. Returning to Gotham, he searches out Catwoman and offers her the clean slate she longs for, not as reward for her track-record but as opportunity to give herself to others regardless of what they might do with that gift: the very thing Wayne has had modelled to him by Alfred and now models to Selina Kyle. Kyle is now faced with the dilemma: having discovered her true self, through success that encounters failure, will she hold on to that self for herself, or offer it to and for others?
It is a risk with no guarantee – in their final confrontation we discover that Bane had laid his life down for another, only for them to be unable to respond in the same way; a loss too painful for Bane, who took up the broken pieces of his life to turn them against the world. This, of course, is the same temptation that faced Bruce Wayne – albeit that he had only gone as far as turning away from the world, and not yet against it – the key difference in their lives being the self-sacrificial faithfulness of Wayne’s adopted father, Alfred, and the sacrificing unfaithfulness of Bane’s father-figure (and Wayne’s erstwhile mentor) Ra’s al Ghul. If we are to dare to move beyond the first half of life, we will need not only the downward push of failure but also the faithfulness of a father who is prepared to send us out until we are ready, and actively wait to see us return – as the father does in one of Jesus’ most famous parables, and Alfred does in the cafe in Florence.
The trilogy concludes with Bruce and Selina leaving the first half of their lives behind – the Wayne/Batman and Kyle/Catwoman half – in order to live the second half. What has been learned, as Batman reveals to Commissioner Gordon before ‘dying,’ is that anyone can be a hero – even the person (Sergeant Gordon) who puts a coat around the shoulders of a young boy who has lost his parents, to reassure him that this is not the end. The mistake of the first half of life is to believe that hope depends on the image of a hero that did not fall. The lesson that sends us into the second half of life is that true hope depends on ordinary people discovering themselves and offering up all of who they are – flawed, failing, even our best intentions having unforeseen consequences that will grieve us – fully, in every situation, to extend the reach of life, to give the gift of life. ‘Life’ is gifted on, to the orphan boys of Gotham City, to detective Blake, to Lucius Fox, Commissioner Gordon, Alfred...modelled and entrusted, in hope that they will do the same.
Bruce Wayne is dead. Long live Bruce Wayne...
In Ephesians 4:1, Paul urges the believers in Asia Minor to live a life worthy of the calling they have received. What is that calling? Certainly, he speaks of unity and of maturity, but that is not our primary calling: rather, Paul goes on to speak in terms of specific calling – to be an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd or a teacher – a calling which is to be expressed in unity with the specific calling of other believers, for the purpose of attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Paul knew his calling – to be an apostle – and urged others to discern their calling too. How can we live a life worthy of the calling we have received if, unlike Paul, we don’t know what our calling is?
Here, at least in England, we run into a particular difficulty: a pious obsession that our gifts, strengths, and areas of competence are at worst a trap, causing us to operate without God; and at best irrelevant, because God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. After all, didn’t Jesus say this very thing to Paul himself?
No, he did not, and this pious obsession is a gross distortion of the passage it cites (2 Corinthians 12).
The weakness Jesus refers to in addressing Paul is a position of weakness that is caused by external opposition. Writing to a church he established and where, in his absence, others have come in who oppose him, Paul recognises that this has been a recurring pattern in his ministry. Indeed, he had broached the subject with Jesus no less than three times, making use of a scriptural phrase - ‘barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides’ (Numbers 33:55, 56) – referring to people who, unless driven out, will lead God’s people away from him and into trouble. In the past, Paul had followed the instruction of Numbers 33:55, 56, in persecuting the dangerous followers of the Way. Such action is no longer open to him; instead he pleads with Jesus to intervene on his behalf. Jesus responds (on the third occasion? repeated three times?), “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” That the weakness he refers to is external is clear in Paul’s response, to “delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.”
Commentators have tended to ignore the plainest meaning of Paul’s case, engaging in speculation as to the possible nature of a bodily condition that afflicts him (an eye complaint? malaria?). While such suggestions are still distinguished from personality preference, they are sufficiently internalised as to facilitate the interpretation of ‘weakness’ as being ‘those things we are not gifted in’ and the case is therefore presented that God is more able to work through our incompetence. If I had a Pound Sterling for every time I have heard such an argument, I’d be a rich man.
This may well tie in with a very English unease with competence (though if we are ever going to address that, the summer of our best ever Olympic performance – not to mention, delivering a spectacular Games – is as good a time as any).
Throughout history, God has looked for people to partner with him. The idea that he would make you as a person with particular gifts and then prefer to ignore what he had made is ludicrous.
God will invite you to step outside of your comfort-zone, the sphere of your present competence, for a number of reasons including these:
because discovering what you are not gifted for is one of the ways in which we discover what we are gifted for;
because experiencing those things we are not gifted at is one of the ways in which we grow to appreciate the different gifts of others;
because persevering for a season in what is not our best preference adds depth and roundedness to our strengths;
because the starting place for all competency is incompetency.
However, Jesus’ intention for you is neither naive incompetence nor omni-competence. It is that you discover your calling and grow into it, so that you can live a life worthy of that calling. It is that each member of the body of Christ should fundamentally be the particular gift they were created to be, learning to work together as opposed to trying to be and to do what someone else was given to be and to do.
Too often we ask people to operate in what is not their calling, because that seems easier than identifying the person whose call is best suited (and, after all, Jesus’ power is made perfect in weakness). It never seems to work in the long-term, but if we just do a better job of explaining why we need them perhaps we can keep them in that role longer...
When Paul wrote to the church in Asia Minor, he was experiencing the particular weakness of another external constraint: he was in prison. This, however, did not equate to an undermining of his internal strength, his calling to be an apostle. It simply meant that how that calling was worked-out looked different from when he was free – writing rather than travelling.
Right now, your external circumstances might be such as to put you in a position of weakness. If so, know that Jesus’ grace is sufficient for you.
But that is not the same thing as having no regard for strength, for the gift Jesus has given you to be.
Play to your strengths. Invest in them. Allow the Lord to train you in them. Let other people seek to constrain you with weakness if they so choose; but don’t give weakness your energy. To paraphrase Jesus, “let it go: you attend to whom I have made you to be, and do it to the fullness of the gifting I have given you.”
This cheeky, life-loving, thoughtful five-year-old...turned six today!
Happy birthday to our beautiful Elijah.
(photos taken last week, on holiday.)
This morning I was talking with Scott Emery, a friend in America with whom I have recently been having some great conversations on Skype for an hour every other week.
One of the things we talked about this morning was an observable shift, several small bands of missional pioneers we are aware of who have recently taken or are seriously exploring the decision to be folded into larger and more structurally established church communities.
Up to this point, I don’t think we’ve seen this happen in quite this way. Some have struck out and fallen back, taken a shot at a different way of being church and couldn’t make it work; but that is, I think, something different.
Alan Hirsch, drawing on the anthropological work of Victor Turner, has written on liminality – between spaces - and communitas - the close bond that forms between a group of people when they venture beyond the stable circle of community into such spaces. Many groups exploring missional discipleship have stepped outside of church as they have known it, and indeed this has been a necessary step. And yet the purpose of liminality and communitas is found in a return to the stable community, in such a way that the life of that community is perpetuated rather than slowly dying. The boys Turner observed did not disappear over the horizon abandoning their village, but returned to the village from their adventures as men.
What I would suggest we are seeing is a returning. And what is encouraging is the evidence that this is not an arrival with an ulterior motive to change churches, but an invited and welcome development.
Jesus spoke of yeast that is worked through dough. I would suggest that these little bands are yeast – but they lack dough. And that the churches they are being folded into are dough, in need of yeast.
(If we fear that the larger group is yeast that will somehow contaminate our dough - ‘the yeast of the Pharisees’ - perhaps we have misunderstood our purpose, struck out merely in line with the schismatic individualism of Protestantism/Modernism; or perhaps, and more positively, it indicates that it is not yet time for us to return.)
Or to offer another image, as I shared our conversation with my wife afterwards, Jo made a connection with Jesus taking his disciples across the lake in their boat. The time in the boat is deeply significant, but they are heading for a shore where there are other people. Perhaps we mistake the shore we are heading to for a wholly different way of organising ourselves, rather than an opportunity to re-enter community in ways that bring transformation?
I would contend that this observable shift represents not failure – evidence that another fad is passing, as people grow beyond the ego of youth and return home – but the coming-of-age of these particular communities. Others, in their turn, will step out into the unknown. The next season for those returning is to step up to the task of blessing, bringing hope to those who are older and a future to those who are younger...
Yesterday I got to witness and take part in a strange phenomenon. The London Olympics closed on Sunday night, and on Monday it seemed that the nation stumbled about in a daze of mourning its loss.
Why strange? Because, despite the participation of thousands of Games Makers and hundreds of thousands of spectators who travelled to the arenas, despite the millions of hours invested in preparing the sites, the overwhelming majority of the population contributed no more than sitting in front of the television or listening along on the radio.
What right, then, did we have to mourn?
I think we do have a right to mourn. Indeed, I think it reveals our humanity. I would suggest that our mourning is not merely self-indulgent – who will entertain me now? – but that we have been moved by (fleeting glimpses of) beauty and by the subsequent removal (loss) of beauty. Not simply the particular beauty of finely-honed young bodies – a beauty our own culture places a high premium on – but also the beauty of the smiles on the faces of those who achieved their dream (contrast Tom Daley’s joy at winning bronze with the disappointment of others who wanted gold), and the beauty of spectacular venues (the velodrome, the transformation of Greenwich Park) and backdrops and joyful celebrations.
I am reminded of a story told about a man called Jonah, who mourned the loss of a vine God had provided to give him shelter, and subsequently took away again. What was it that caused Jonah’s despair and resignation? Surely it wasn’t the loss of shade, for he had already provided shade for himself by making an effective shelter. In providing shelter where there was already shelter, God’s action would appear to be extravagant and perhaps even redundant. And beautiful. Not just a shelter, but a vine, that elicited a psychologically positive response.
God asked him, do you have any right to be angry? and Jonah replied, I do. God, interestingly, does not inform Jonah that he is wrong, that he has no right to be angry. In fact, he affirms Jonah’s response: his emotional investment in something both short-lived and towards which Jonah had contributed nothing. And then he takes Jonah a step further: God sees beauty in a multitude of people who have mastered nothing, who cannot tell right from wrong, who are overlooked, on a par with cattle...and invites Jonah to see as he sees, and to channel his emotional response in the ways of grace and compassion – giving what is not earned, being moved to action by the plight of others – in ways marked by anger that is under control and love that knows no bounds at all.
These Olympic Games will inspire a new generation of Olympic athletes. More, they will inspire a new generation of coaches who will invest in the potential of others. A new generation of designers who will extend the frontiers of human creativity in ways that reflect the Author of Creative Life. But in the talk of legacy, perhaps the greatest legacy will be if these Games inspire prophets to live in harmony with those whose culture and values and actions in the world are alien to us and ours; and inspire people to invest in the multitude of children who will otherwise never have another opportunity.
It begins when we see beauty in a particular moment, and choose to be people who recognise that the whole world is beautiful; who choose to affirm the beauty in others rather than confirm the ugliness that contends for every heart, including our own.
It is right and proper that we should feel at a loss in the post-Olympic shadow. The choice before us is to turn in on ourselves, or to turn out to others.
