More Parables

In Matthew 24, Jesus is engaged in a conversation concerning the coming of the Son of Man. He concludes with a parable, in which a master goes away leaving a servant in charge of his household. Two scenarios unfold: one in which the servant is faithful to his master, and is rewarded; another in which the servant is ‘wicked,’ mistreating his fellow slaves, and associating with drunkards. The master returns at an unexpected hour, and has the servant punished by being cut into pieces and assigned a place with the hypocrites, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

When we read parables such as this one, we tend to assume that the principle character – often a king or wealthy master – is God, and that the parables tell us something about what God is like. Here, God will reward good behaviour and punish wicked behaviour. But it is not the characters in Jesus’ stories that more-fully reveal what God is like to us: it is Jesus himself who reveals to us what God is like. God, Jesus himself, and others might turn up in Jesus’ stories, in a variety of roles in different parables.

Jesus was repeatedly accused of being wicked, of misleading the people, of hostility towards the righteous. And at the coming of the Son of Man – no-one knows the hour, but it is approaching, and will come in darkness – Jesus will be cut in pieces (in fulfilment of prophecy), and assigned a grave with the wicked (in fulfilment of prophecy); sent to the realm of the dead, while his friends are left to weep in despair.

This is not a parable to show us what God is like, but to show us how the world works – its system of reward and punishment – and what it will do to Jesus. It is a story about the coming of the Son of Man, not as angry master but as (one who knows that he will soon be the) victim of violence.

In the following chapter, Jesus tells three more parables. In the first, five wise bridesmaids refuse to enter-into a relationship defined by the debt-system with five foolish bridesmaids. This is a parable that contrasts choices that result in ‘life’ or in ‘death.’ Choosing to place yourself in debt to another – or, indeed, placing others in debt to you – results in being shut out from life. Here we need to remind ourselves of the context in which Jesus is telling these parables: the coming of the Son of Man, which will not only be at an unexpected hour, but also in an unexpected way. If the bridegroom in this parable – like the wicked servant in the previous parable – is a veiled reference to himself, then his coming will be his coming death. But Jesus approaches that moment neither indebted to anyone not holding anyone in debt, and therefore even death will no shut him out from life, despite its best efforts, despite delaying him. And he urges his listeners to do likewise.

In the second, Jesus again tells of a powerful man who goes away, entrusting money to three servants. As the story unfolds, we discover that the man is a harsh man, who takes for himself what belongs to others. Two of his servants act in accordance with the master’s values, and are rewarded. One tries to distance himself from his master, and is punished. The point of the parable is not to show us what God is truly like – unjust, prone to rage – but to point out to us how the world works. To those who have, more keeps being added. Those who already have little, even what they have is taken from them. Kings reward their servants and citizens for reflecting the values of the king. If a ruler whose empire is built on the exploitation of others rewards actions consistent with the empire he is building, what sort of behaviour will a righteous king reward? When we look at Jesus himself, we have to conclude that the investment and reward of the kingdom of heaven is the investment and reward of forgiveness.

(This parable is even more striking in the account of Luke 19, where the powerful man, who has had himself declared king, has those who refuse to recognise him slaughtered in his presence. In the following verse, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem, where he will be slaughtered.)

In the third parable, Jesus contrasts ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’ – those who live counter-culturally to a dent-system, self-giving with no hope of reward; and those who live in accordance with a debt-system, giving nothing where there is no hope of a return. The sheep are rewarded – the rewards of forgiveness, the benefits of the cancellation of every debt. The goats are punished. Surely here is evidence of God adopting a retributive or punitive justice? Yet the question remains: is this a punishment determined by God, or a punishment determined by another, a punishment chosen by the refusal to reject the divine plea to reject the debt-system? Giving us free choice limits God’s own freedom; and yet God uses his freedom relentlessly to call us.

These, then, are not simply parables about the kingdom of heaven, but parables that point to the stark contrast between two kingdoms, as we move inevitably towards the crucifixion.

Justice

I have suggested that we ought to differentiate between divine justice, which I propose is always restorative in nature, seeking the reconciliation of enemies into friends; and satanic justice, which is retributive or punitive in nature, demanding the imposition of a penalty.

This fits with the claim of Jesus – the one in whom God is perfectly revealed to us, showing us what God is like – that he has come that we might have life in the fullest sense; whereas the thief comes to kill and steal and destroy.

One of the great questions that has been pushed back at me is, how does the account of God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah fit with my claim?

First, we ought to remember that this is a story. By that, I am not dismissing the historicity of events, but pointing out, for example, that the account is not a full transcript of the conversation. (We know this, though we sometimes forget. In shaping their narrative, the Gospel writers, for example, spend as much time recounting one week of Jesus’ life as they do the previous three years.)

Second, we ought to remind ourselves of the principle characters in the story. ‘The Lord’ has come to visit his friend, Abraham. It is three people who come, and it is not clear exactly who these characters are. At least two are angelic visitors, and while traditional Jewish interpretation has all three to be angels, an alternative interpretation suggests that the plainest sense of the narrative is God accompanied by two angels. Christian tradition interprets the three as a ‘type’ for the Trinity – just as Moses is seen as a ‘type’ for Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel – or even as the Trinity. But if the two ‘men’ who go on to Sodom, while the Lord continues conversing with Abraham, are ‘angels,’ this opens up another alternative: that, having been brought a report against the city, the Lord sends an angel to compile the case for the defence and an angel to compile the case for the prosecution, evidence the Lord will weigh as judge before passing verdict.

Third, to help us understand this story we might draw on another story in the Bible, set in a similar world but of an even older time, the account of Job. Here we learn that among the court of heaven, there is one known as the satan – the accuser – who has been wandering the earth, with the intention, it would seem, of bringing unfavourable reports before God. God turns their conversation to Job, a man God believes lives a righteous life. Satan insists that this is motivated by self-interest and indeed fear, not offered freely. God then allows satan to exercise his own freedom against Job, but sets clear limits on how far satan can go.

Let us, then, return to the story at hand. As Abraham’s three guests prepare to go on their way, it would appear that they have been discussing the nearby Cities of the Plain, though we are not party to their conversation. The Lord decides to share his intention with his friend, Abraham. The intention that he reveals is that, having heard an outcry against the cities – a charge, a complaint brought to him – he intends to go and see for himself. There is no mention of what he will do, how he will rule on the matter.

Abraham’s response suggests that a proposal has been presented – by whom? – that the cities be destroyed; but is eloquent in its rejection of a punitive justice that is unworthy of God, that would not reflect God’s intention. Abraham himself is able to imagine a scenario where punitive justice is not pursued, pushing his own limits from a scenario where fifty righteous people can be found right down to where five righteous people can be found.

At this point, Abraham steps back from pushing his imagination any further – to conceiving a point where no righteous people can be found, and yet restorative justice might be pursued – at least attempted – between people all of whom were in some way guilty of living in impaired relationship. And the Lord, who has chosen to involve his friend in determining how he himself will rule in this situation, accepts the limits of Abraham’s imagination.

(This raises another question, regarding the omnipotence of the Creator and the free will of the creature. If God knows a totally fixed future, he already knows that Abraham has not gone far enough. If God knows all possible futures, and how to respond within each possibility to bring out the best outcome, perhaps God hopes that five righteous people might be found.)

The people of Sodom demonstrate that the outcry against them is legitimate, by seeking to exercise dominance over the angelic visitors through gang rape – a tactic still used today. By taking people’s dignity, we enslave them in a debt to us they cannot repay. Abraham’s nephew Lot demonstrates his own complicity within this sin/debt system by trying to broker sexual violence against his daughters in exchange for sexual violence against his guests. In the city, five righteous people cannot be found. But it is Abraham who has sealed the fate of the city – not the Lord, who demonstrates his own will for sinners by attempting to have Lot’s family rescued.

In such a reading, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah does not return the world closer to God’s will, but is, rather, a defeat for God, a set-back in his purposes. Not something that will permanently frustrate his will, but something that genuinely frustrates it nonetheless.

Of course, this raises the question, why would a God who is both truly good and truly powerful (powerful enough to create worlds) allow god-self to bow before the will of creatures who are neither as good nor as powerful?

And this, too, brings us back to God’s being wholly committed to the restorative justice of reconciliation between agents who act in free will – the freedom each has, constraining the freedom of every other agent. To an utter commitment to our coming together, by degrees; facing up to the consequences of our actions – the costly consequence of righteous Abraham’s decisions, as well as the decisions of the unrighteous citizens of Sodom – and to forgiving one another and asking for forgiveness from one another. To the cancellation of debt; the setting-free from sin.

Sin, Sinners, And Jesus

What comes to mind when you hear the words ‘sin’ or ‘sinners’?

It might conjure to mind the image of a hypocrite passing judgement and pronouncing a sentence of disapproval over other people. It might conjure to mind a libertine, revelling in the very behaviours that would draw the disapproval of the hypocrites. It might conjure to mind the image of an allowance of certain treats within a dieting plan. It might not conjure to mind any image at all.

In the Gospels, one of the essential differences between Jesus and his critics is their views on how to respond to sin and sinners. Jesus’ view is extremely positive.

First, we need to note that within the understanding of both Jesus and his critics, sin is primarily concerned with being in debt; sinners, therefore, being those who are in debt. The old term ‘publicans and tax-collectors’ refers to public contractors, to speculators who invested in supplying the needs of the occupying Roman army or in the Roman ‘tax farming’ scheme. (Tax farming is a means by which governments can turn future and uncertain revenue into fixed rents over a certain period, by auctioning the rights to collect tax within a particular area. The money paid for those rights is seen as a loan to the government, which might be paid back with interest depending on the uncertain future going well. In addition, any tax collected in addition to the original bid for rights is counted as pure profit. In this system, the speculator carries almost all of the risk.)

The ‘sinners’ in the Gospels are those who are in debt. They are in social debt, traitors to the community, ritually defiled by their daily contact with Gentiles. They are likely in financial debt, having made a speculative outlay in the hope of a future return. They are in moral debt, resorting to extortion and other forms of corrupt practice in order to maximise their return on their investment. Prostitutes are also considered among the ‘sinners’, and they too are steeped in a debt system, sex slaves.

It seems to me that an understanding of sin and sinners describing a social system built on and sustained by speculative debt and holding one another in debt is absolutely current as a description of the society I live in and am bound-up in. But why would I state that Jesus’ view is extremely positive?

Jesus consistently associates with ‘sinners’. When he is challenged on this, by those who believe that it is God’s will that ‘sinners’ be punished and who punish them by ostracising them, Jesus’ response is that it is the sinners he has come to call. It is as if Jesus befriends those who have felt that they have no option but to go to a loan shark … but also befriends the loan sharks, who are just as caught up in the system … and the bankers – we, too, might want to challenge him on this!

In contrast to his critics, Jesus’ view of ‘sin’ is that it is something to be forgiven – that debts are to be written off, cancelled – that ‘sinners’ are to be shown mercy, not punishment (Matthew 9//Mark 2//Luke 5). Forgiveness breaks down the entire system – which is what makes Jesus so dangerous.

Where Jesus speaks ‘hard words’ about sin, he does so:

to convey the need to do whatever you can to not get into debt (if your eye or your hand causes you to sin – is leading you into debt – cut it out of your body, Matthew 5:29, 30);

to promise that one day God will remove all causes of debt (Matthew 13:41);

to starkly contrast the system of speculating for profit with an approach of giving where there is no hope of return (Luke 6);

to spell out that if the people will not listen to him they will die in their sins, enslaved by systemic debt, destroying themselves (John 8).

Jesus’ message in relation to sin is entirely one of setting sinners free. Nowhere does Jesus claim that sin is something for which God demands a punishment to be paid.

Nowhere? What about his parables? What about the parable of the king who writes off the ridiculously unpayable debt of a servant but then throws that servant in prison for refusing to write-off the small debt of another servant? Or the parable of the king who has a guest thrown out of the wedding banquet he is throwing for his son, because they are inappropriately dressed?

These are stories, and must be understood in the context of their telling. They are both stories of throwing the king’s generosity back in his face, in the one case by insisting on the restoration of a debt-system the king has just acted to dismantle, and in the other making an explicit political statement against the king (‘you cannot buy me with an invitation to your table!’) through deliberately dressing in a disrespectful and utterly inappropriate manner. These are stories that highlight the distance between God’s approach and ours. These are stories to encourage the hearer to respond to God’s mercy by stepping out of the system of indebtedness, of any outstanding debt other than a debt of love towards one another. I would suggest that the point of the stories is not to tell us that God will respond in the way that the king in the stories responds at the end; but, rather, to pose the question of us: ‘Would you rather that God respond in this way? Really?’

This is why Jesus is relentless in calling for forgiveness. If someone wrongs me, I place them in debt to me. By refusing to forgive them, I raise a compound interest that guarantees they will never get out of debt to me. By choosing to forgive, I dismiss any claim to repayment, but also any claim to hold them in debt (which is what the debt system really relies on).

There is one place where Jesus links his death with ‘sin’ and that is in offering his blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28).

This leads some to believe that God requires a punishment to be paid for sin – and, in Jesus, takes that punishment upon himself (Jesus being in very nature God). My problem with this view is that it is fundamentally opposed to anything Jesus has to say about sin or God’s intention towards sinners or how sin must be dealt with. Forgiveness does not require punishment. God certainly disciplines us, but that is not the same as punishment: when I require of my children that they keep their room tidy, it is not a punishment. Jesus certainly says, repent, change, go and sin no more; but that is not a punishment.

Some argue that the injustice of sin in all its forms calls for justice – and I agree: love and justice are certainly not opposed. However, there is more than one kind of justice. There is retributive or punitive justice, that imposes a penalty; and there is restorative justice, that brings enemies together, confronting them with the consequences of their actions, with the intention of making friends. I would suggest that satan, the accuser, always calls for retributive or punitive justice; and that Jesus, the one in whom God is perfectly revealed and in and through whom God is reconciling all things, always calls for restorative justice – as embodied in the response of the tax-collector Zacchaeus to make right what he had extorted.

Here is how debt works: it extends the promise of life, only to deliver death. It entices us in, only to demand a cost we cannot repay. Borrow more to consume more, and never be satisfied. And we are all caught up in the system of debt: every last one of us.

Through his death, Jesus fatally wounds the whole system of indentured slavery. He becomes, to all appearances, a ‘publican’ – a sinner – by taking on the liability for our debts, offered by the Prince of this World. Except that the debt-system knows it will never deliver … and Jesus knows that too: this is not speculation in the hope of profit, but a self-giving with no hope or expectation of return. This is not telling people not to gamble and then putting every penny on a horse because you are feeling lucky, or have some inside knowledge. Nor is it simply transferring our indebtedness from a satanic creditor to a divine one, leaving us still in debt. This is giving of yourself, because self-giving is the antithesis of the debt-system.

The ‘problem’ for the debt-system is this: forgiveness cancels debt, sets both the one who is forgiven and the one who forgives free from the debt-system. Life freely given for the forgiveness of sins – Life that refuses to hold anyone in its debt – puts an end to sin and death, and opens the door for life.

The parables still stand. I can conclude that God is merely attempting to buy me (in which case, integrity would demand that I rebel, by any and every means). I can insist on rebuilding a system that continues to hurt everyone. Or I can claim that I am a sinner who has been forgiven, and instructed to do the same for others.

I can recognise the extent to which I am complicit, can seek forgiveness, can extend forgiveness, and call on others to do likewise. And in so doing, I participate in the ongoing restorative justice executed at the cross …

Two Films About Living And Dying

In the person of Jesus Christ, the God who created and sustains the universe has become fully human. Under-stated, largely unnoticed, Monday just gone was the pivot-point between Christmas, where God submits God-self to our birth; and Easter, where God submits God-self to our death. Known to some as Candlemas, it is the day on which church candles are blessed – the pliable substance of the wax; the fragile wick – and we are reminded of the call of flesh-and-blood, in our fragility, to be trimmed in the course of every-day life in order that we might be, together, lights in the sometime darkness of our world.

For several converging pastoral reasons, I’ve been attending to – seeking to notice – life and death recently. As part of learning to do that better, I’ve watched two films: Of Gods and Men, and Calvary. Both are exceptional examples of cinematic storytelling (though, health-warning: both are harrowing viewing, 15 Certificate).

Of Gods and Men (dialogue in French and Arabic, with English sub-titles) is inspired by the true events concerning a group of Trappist Cistercian monks living in Algeria in the 1990s. They farm their land, selling produce at the local market, contributing to the local economy. One of their number is a doctor, providing primary healthcare for the villagers. They celebrate, lament, puzzle over, and wrestle with life – and, inevitably, death – with their Muslim neighbours. (Apart from anything else, this is a beautiful example of shared life and deep affection between Muslims and Christians; a story that needs to be both told and modelled.) Their nights and days are punctuated with communal prayer. As terrorist activity threatens the community, they wrestle with the decision whether to return to France or stay with their neighbours. Choosing to remain eventually costs seven of their number their lives.

In one scene, set in the chapel, the monks chant:

‘Because he is with us in this time of violence | Let us not dream that he is everywhere | Other than where we die | Let us make haste | Let us draw patience from him | Let us turn to the Man of Sorrows | Who beckons us from the cross …’

This is a slow, deliberate, and touching film – because only by living slowly and deliberately enough can we see God hiding in plain view, can we see Christ in the face of our neighbour. Only by daring to enter into life – knowing that it will cost us everything because it will open us up to death – and only by daring to enter into death in the footsteps of the Man of Sorrows, can we meet the God who submitted God-self to our birth and our death, that in our living and our dying we might be held fast in Love. This is mystery.

Calvary is a work of fiction, a ‘dark comedy,’ full of both cynical and ironic humour but also insightful in its observation of people and profound in its humanity. It opens in the confessional, where Father James Lavelle is given notice that he will be murdered in a week’s time – time sympathetically, apologetically, given to put his affairs in order. A young boy was sexually abused by another since-dead Catholic priest; now, as an adult, he will kill a ‘good priest,’ an innocent man, as carefully considered response to this moral outrage that cannot be put right – a response so shocking that it might just purge that which no one is willing or able to face.

On the face of it, Father James walks through his final days no different from those that would have come before: walking slowly and deliberately through his parish, alongside his parishioners, with tenderness and sadness, puzzlement and wonder – deliberating when to listen, when to speak out, when to walk away in such a way that opens a way back for others if they will take it, even if he does not have all the time in the world; for his choice not to abandon his community is, paradoxically, a choice to leave them – as himself – in God’s hands. He makes peace with his daughter, who had felt that she had lost her father to the priesthood having already lost her mother to cancer; makes peace with himself (something that is neither easy, nor linear), and encourages others to do likewise (at times, through confrontation he has previously avoided).

In their last and most honest conversation, he tells his daughter: ‘I think there’s too much talk about sins and not enough about virtues.’ Fiona Lavelle: ‘What would be your number one?’ Father James: ‘I think forgiveness has been highly underrated.’ There lies the key to making peace with oneself, to pursuing peace with others (and most of the characters wrestle with one or the other, or both).

In one scene, Father James sits in the hospital chapel with the French widow of a tourist killed in a car crash which left her physically unscathed; the tone of their conversation is thoughtful and compassionate, lacking any cynicism or malice:

Father James: ‘Everybody knows it’s coming …

… It is never easy. More understandable [when the elderly die], let’s say. Less unfair … Situations like this one, people are shocked, the randomness of it. They curse God, curse their fellow man; they lose their faith in some cases.’

Theresa: ‘They lose their faith … It must not have been much of a faith to begin with, if it is so easy for them to lose it.’

Father James: ‘Yes. But what is faith? For most people, it is the fear of death, nothing more than that. If that is all it is, it’s very easy to lose.

‘He was a good man, your husband?’

Theresa: ‘Yes. He was a good man. We had a very good life together. We loved each other very much. And now, he has gone. And that is not unfair. That is just what happened. But many people don’t live good lives; they don’t feel love. That is what is unfair … I feel sorry for them.’

Their response is to pray together, with shared words that remind those who pray them that our living and our dying is bound-together with the God who submits God-self to the same. Again, this is mystery. And again, like the rhythm of communal prayer in the monastery Notre-Dame de l’Atlas, Tibhirine, what is rehearsed in the light hours of the inherent, God-gifted goodness of life – rehearsed, through disciplines of prayer, of thankfulness, of giving of ourselves and beholding others with delight – keeps the wax and wick of our lives trimmed ready for the inevitable dark hours.

I am not a Roman Catholic. But, in needing to learn to slow down, in needing to attend to what I so easily fail to notice – in needing not only to attend to life and death, but in needing to attend life and death, to participate – in needing to respond to the invitation to become more fully human, I am nonetheless gratefully indebted to that tradition of the Church, both lived and given expression through fiction.

Money For Nothing

On my birthday each year, I receive money, or possessions having monetary value, from others. I have done nothing to earn this money; it is given to me as a result of something as random and as fundamental as my birth.

I receive money for nothing from others not as reward for being a good son (etc.) but because of a sense of social obligation. By that I don’t mean the cultural pressure to reciprocate or keep up with expectations – things that drive people into debt. Rather, I mean the recognition that we belong to one another.

One of the mantras we hear in our society is that ‘some people seem to want money [or those things money can buy] for nothing.’ As a mantra, it is used to pass negative judgement on people. But a society in which I receive nothing that I have not earned by my own effort is one in which we are truly the poorer. And conversely, a society in which I give nothing that has not been earned is one in which we are truly the poorer.

The ability to receive certain things for nothing is as important to human flourishing as is the ability to provide certain things for ourselves and others by the work of our hands.

But here is a problem: I am wealthy enough that if I need or even want something, I can buy it myself – whether with money to hand, or after saving, or by taking on debt that I will hopefully be able to manage. And this makes it far harder for other people to give me something as a gift. Each year as my birthday approaches, enquiries are made as to what I might like, and I increasingly struggle to make any suggestion. The consequence is that I am harder to be obligated to – I am harder to belong to (not that belonging is about material things, primarily; but it is about the acts of giving and receiving). My material wealth can leave me poorer in more fundamental ways.

Money is a gift which can be used to build up that sense of social obligation that enables us to see other people – not just our own family – as those with whom we share a common belonging. But it can be misused to break down that sense of social obligation and deceive ourselves that we are obligated to ourselves alone.

We need to rethink – and continuously reflect on – what money is for.

Who Do You think You Are?

The Bishop of Durham and Footprints Theatre Company are presenting the Gap at Sunderland Minster this week: an interactive lunch hour or evening with theatre, live music, and an open forum to ask Bishop Paul the hard questions about real life. Each day looks at a different topic: food, image, money, life and death, relationships.

This evening saw a fascinating and thought-provoking discussion of image, responding to questions including sexuality and transgender. What follows are my own thoughts, relating to these and other image issues.

We find ourselves living in a time when the old certainties are breaking down. While this causes distress for many people – including those who declare that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket – this is broadly speaking a good thing. Many of the old certainties were over-simplifications, misleading headlines. Where we establish ourselves in our certainties, God shakes them until nothing we have built stands and we are exposed as creature not Creator.

At the same time – and an obvious consequence of such shaking – we live in a time when as a society we are profoundly disoriented and confused about identity, including the entire spectrum of sexuality and of gender. This in itself is broadly speaking a bad thing – and compounded by our refusal to admit to our confusion. But something significant is revealed in it. In times of such confusion, the Good Shepherd goes searching for lost sheep (and Isaiah reminds a shaken people that we are all like lost sheep); good shepherds have compassion for lost sheep; and wicked shepherds look to their own interests. It is not so much that under such conditions ‘people’ are shown to be false of heart – this has already been revealed, with conclusive evidence – but that ‘I’ am shown to be false of heart in how I judge others.

It is precisely in our certainties that we have no need of or interest in God, other than a god made in our image and serving our interests.

It is precisely in our disorientation, our confusion, our daily experiences of death, our wrestling with doubts, that we are searched out and brought home by the God who entered into death with and for us, that new life might be birthed.

12

The City

In Isaiah chapter 60, there is a vision of a city which includes representatives of the nations coming on camels bearing gold and frankincense (for this reason it is read during the Season of Epiphany, when we remember the bringing of gifts to the infant Jesus).

It is a city made beautiful by the immigration of many different people groups, bringing their resources, their skill, their particular traditions and solutions.

Indeed, it is a city rebuilt by a multicultural international community, after it has been deeply damaged and its population displaced as a result of international conflict.

It is a city free from security worries, because former enemies have become friends, and those who refuse to share in this vision of friendship and partnership have perished – not ‘are destroyed by the city’ but self-destruct, fail to reproduce, die out, their own vision of nationhood left abandoned.

It is a city at the heart of a nation surrounded by ally nations.

It is a city built on humbly receiving what others offer – recognising its dependence on others, as dependent as a breast-fed baby – not on arrogantly taking what belongs to others from them.

It is a city of divine light and glory.

It is not any existing city, but a city that could be. Isaiah imagines what Jerusalem, in ruins, could become, rising from the ashes. But it could equally be Paris, or London, or New York, or the cities of northern Nigeria, or northern England.

At the heart of the vision, God says that he will appoint Peace as their overseer and Righteousness as their taskmaster.

Allegorically, the city can refer to Christ (the one to whom representatives of the nations came, bearing gold and frankincense), to the one appointed by God to establish peace and righteousness. He is the Peaceful overseer and Righteous taskmaster, not imposed but given – not imposed but nonetheless appointed – to Jerusalem, and Paris and London and New York and the cities of northern Nigeria and northern England, for he has been revealed to all the peoples.

Living in peace doesn’t just happen, it needs to be worked on, needs to be built, painstakingly, with strong foundations, and quality material. Righteousness – living in right relationship with others – doesn’t just happen, but is hard work for which we need direction, and at times arbitration.

For peace and righteousness to flourish, I need to make my contribution, and so must you; and we must learn to value one another’s contribution. For peace and righteousness to flourish, my contribution must also be directed, and so must yours.

This isn’t a vision about imposing anything on anyone, but a vision of submitting ourselves, our gifts, how they might be deployed and who we might labour alongside, to the God-supported work of establishing and maintaining and expanding and sharing peace and righteousness.

And although it may sound naïve, it is a vision that has been fulfilled, albeit incompletely and temporarily, many times over, where people of different peoples have come together...

Non

To every action there is an opposing reaction, though not necessarily an equal one. After ‘Je suis Charlie,’ ‘nous sommes Charlie,’ and ‘Paris est Charlie,’ we have now seen a queue of people stating why they are not Charlie – and why, in their opinion, those who have said Je suis Charlie are misguided and un-thinking.

When I write ‘Je suis Charlie,’ I am not condoning everything about the publication Charlie Hebdo, much of which may be vile. But I have no right to call myself a follower of Jesus if I am unwilling to identify myself with the unlovely, with the offensive. However much they offend me. However much they - and I – need to change. Moreover, if by saying, ‘Je suis Charlie,’ I am saying, my attitudes include ugly attitudes, my words include hurtful words, then that is far more honest than if I were to claim not to be ‘Charlie.’

When presented with a woman whose actions were so offensive that her accusers believed her to be worthy of death, he ruled in favour of the verdict on the condition that whoever was without offence should carry out her execution. When no one was found to condemn her on those terms, Jesus identified himself both with the woman and with her accusers, condemning neither and condoning neither, but challenging all to live differently.

When I write ‘Je suis Charlie,’ I am not claiming that my experience of these events is in any way that of those who have lost loved ones. That would, indeed, be deeply insensitive; but it simply isn’t necessary. As a priest, I stand in solidarity with people (some of whom are not likeable or commendable) who must bury their parents, their spouse, their children, even though I have never experienced that loss myself. That does not make me a fake. If we can only identify with those with whom we have common experience, then we are in very deep trouble indeed.

When I write ‘Je suis Charlie,’ I am not deceiving myself that this act in itself is enough, that in itself it changes the world. It is a token gesture; but that does not make it meaningless, and does not necessarily inoculate us from taking other small acts of reaching out to our neighbour. Big changes come through the accumulation of small gestures, whether multitudes giving pennies to cancer research, or people standing with a city. And yes, it might have unforeseen negative impact as well as positive impact; and yes, we might need to identify with other places and people and causes, too. But these qualifying things do not negate the thing – though they can easily become an excuse to do nothing.

When I write ‘Je suis Charlie,’ I am not condoning Islamophobia or attacks on mosques. Multiplying wrongs never undoes wrong. Both in our multi-cultural communities and in our multi-cultural world, those who attack mosques harm the safety of their own tribe as much as those who attack others in the name of Islam. The signifier ‘Charlie’ has shifted from Charlie Hebdo to Paris, France, beyond, to a multi-cultural city, nation, continent, world; and anyone who harms Parisian Muslims harms ‘Charlie’ and is not ‘Charlie.’ And yes, that calls Charlie Hebdo itself to account [see Jesus, and identification with others without either condemning or condoning, but instead extending the challenge to live differently, above].

Yes, I recognise that it is possible to condemn the murders without identifying with those murdered; but it is also possible to identify with people without pretending that they are innocent. The reality that we do not live in a black-and-white world works both ways.

When I write ‘Je suis Charlie,’ I am choosing to express solidarity with the people of Paris – Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, and more besides – as they are faced with the difficult challenge of living alongside one another.

I am choosing to express some humanity.

I hope that in all our great wisdom, we do not lose sight of that. However we choose to respond.

I am, still, despite all the arguments against it, Charlie.

All Things

Either nothing is ‘sacred,’ because everything has been made sacred; or nothing is sacred at all.

There is no place in the universe where I can stand and pronounce that

I am a true believer, but you are a blasphemer,

my activity is devotional, but yours is profane,

‘this’ is holy, and ‘that’ is secular.

If such a universe ever existed, it imploded at the Epiphany: the revelation of Jesus – in and through whom God is reconciling all things to himself – to the nations.

And any action to separate what God has joined together is sacrilege.

Je suis Charlie.

Je Suis Charlie

The Incarnation – depicting the King of the Universe as an incomprehensible incontinent, sating himself at a young girl’s breast – is the ultimate work of satire.

In Christian theology, God is the ultimate satirist. And therefore to be Christian is to be a satirist. Indeed, to be human – made in the likeness of God – to be truly human is to be a satirist; to poke fun at those things (religious or otherwise) we hold sacred – we place above questioning – in an attempt, conscious or otherwise, to exist in a position of privilege.

If we are not free to satirise, and free to take satire directed at ourselves, we choose to be less than fully human, we settle for being less than ourselves.

Je suis Charlie.

The Gifts

We are in the Season of Epiphany, when we recall to mind the Magi who followed a star to bring gifts, in whom the nations symbolically responded to the revelation of Jesus’ coming into the world.

To be community is to reflect God’s love-motivated activity, however imperfectly, and whether we are aware that this is what we are doing or not. That activity is apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral, and instructive (love is expressed through word and action) and community is (certainly never less than) the sum of such interactions.

To be a faith community is to intentionally seek to offer that activity back to God, for the good of others.

Consider the Magi. We do not know how and where they came together, but we do know that they form, or are formed into, community:

they are apostolic, sent out representatives, going out from their familiar place on a journey that has a clear purpose but an unknown goal – sometimes described as walking by faith and not by sight;

they are prophetic, humbling themselves to an alternative future – and in so doing discovering a previously-unknown freedom, and with it the impossibility of going back by the same route (represented by Herod);

they are evangelistic, bearing good news – even if not everyone welcomes their news, even if the news that God has moved to gather-in a people from among the peoples is rejected by Herod (who, being half-Jew half-Gentile, is perfectly positioned to respond to this purpose but chooses not to);

they are pastoral, bearing practical gifts that meet material need (gold), nurture the hope-full agency of intercession in a dark world (incense), and provide for the painful reality of death in our experience of life (myrrh);

and they are instructive, firstly because they are lifelong learners themselves, studying both spoken creation and written revelation, but also in their example, treasured in Mary’s heart and surely recounted to her son on many occasions through his childhood.

The Cable

The most striking image from our holiday was looking down from a chair-lift at a piste-basher working on a precipitous slope. Piste-bashers are enormous vehicles that compress and then comb the snow so that pistes are firm and smooth to ski on. It must take some nerve to drive one down the mountain.

We noticed that this piste-basher was attached to a long cable, which seemed to run the length of the mountain. Following it back, and back, and back, we traced it to a red pole at the edge of the piste. Clearly the pole could not anchor such a heavy machine, but marked the location of an anchor-point secured in the rock of the mountain itself. And in deep snow, or thickly falling snow, such a marker is essential.

It struck me that much of what I do – the round of services some might see as church-ianity – is concerned with maintaining the red pole, as a crucial reference-point especially though not only when circumstances disorientate.

The more I see of people’s lives, of the circumstances they have to deal with, the less life looks like the adventure of running down a slope on skis where, even if you crash out from time to time, you are unlikely to get badly hurt; and the more it looks like the far scarier prospect of being responsible for a piste-basher going over the edge.

God is the rock, the anchor, and the cable that holds us. A Trinitarian image: for as the Spirit points us to Jesus, and Jesus points us to the Father, so the cable connects us to the anchor and the anchor connects us to the rock.

I’m struck by those who return, again and again, to the ‘red poles’ of the mid-week Communion services, or of a still-but-open building to pray, to stand in silent worship, to find sanctuary. To come back to Jesus before heading out over the edge again.

My tradition sometimes entertains the temptation to see such actions as at worst empty superstition, at best not enough. On their part, or on ours. But I have looked over the precipice. For some, this is not only enough, it is a life-line.

The Local Maximum

Recently back from a wonderful skiing holiday with Jo’s extended family (eight adults, seven children), I am reminded of the principle of the local maximum. In a mountain range, the local maximum is the highest point in its immediate surroundings, and once one has climbed to the local maximum one must descend before it is possible to climb any higher.

Ski lifts connect local maximums. From the village where we were staying, a button lift pulls skiers to a ridge at the top of the nursery slope. It is still at the bottom of the mountain, but from here you can generate enough momentum to peel off to the right and keep going along the flat-or-even-up-hill track to the next village along the valley. From here, there is a four-person chair-lift that carries you up the mountain. Sometimes, because mountains are irregular in shape, it is not possible to be carried to the very top and you must ski down in order to pick up another lift. By going up and down, up and down, it is possible to ski several connected mountains in a row.

It helps to have a guide, and well-maintained markers, to make the connections; and travelling companions to share the experience.

Skiing down the mountain can feel effortless, enjoyable, exhilarating. It can surf the cusp of being in- and being out- of control, swept along on an adventure. Or, balanced at the top of a steep drop, it can feel terrifying, overwhelming: too far outside of our experience, our ability, our capacity to face the challenge, it can be confidence-destroying.

Moving up the mountain can be painstakingly slow hard work, if you are side-stepping under your own steam. It can be largely effortless, carried on the work of others who built and maintain chair-lifts, funicular railways or gondolas. Or it can require trust – that the cable will hold, that no-one will slip under the restraining bar – and test us emotionally if not physically.

On the mountain, you are aware of others: jockeying for the chair-lift, sweeping past you or holding you up on the piste, taking a tumble, catching their breath and admiring the view. Each moment a snap-shot, for we do not see from where they have come or where they will go from here, other than in broad or immediate senses.

Each New Year brings its own ups and downs, its share of joys and sorrows, bad times and good. Risings and fallings, and risings and fallings again. Tipping-points and turning-points. Effort and learning and measures of good- and ill-fortune to boot. Sometimes we think we have ‘arrived,’ only to discover that we have only just set out. That is all part of life. Whatever 2015 holds for you, may you know the Rock beneath, and find camaraderie with those around you.