Interior Landscapes : Part 1

Recently we have been on two family evenings out: first to the theatre, to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; and, a week later, to the cinema to see Inside Out. Both are intense depictions of interior landscapes, taking the audience inside the heads of the protagonists. Both were excellent.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a stunning stage adaptation of the novel of the same name, which has become something of a ‘recent classic’ largely because the narrator is a teenage boy with (what the stage notes helpfully remind us is never named in the book but is nonetheless universally assumed to be) Asperger’s Syndrome.

The set is a work of genius. Rather than depicting the outer world through which the narrator moves – the world as ‘we’ know it – that world is represented from the perspective of Christopher’s interior world, so that the audience experiences (a particular representation of) what it is like to have an Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

This is a dangerous conceit, in that it flatters us into believing that we understand Christopher better than his father or mother or teachers do, people who have struggled and failed to live with the reality of his human condition. But mis/perception is at the heart of the piece. Christopher believes that he cannot lie. His mother told him once that this is because he is good, but he knows that it is not because he is good but because he is not able to lie. And certainly, he lacks the emotional intelligence to tell certain kinds of lie. But Christopher does lie. He has the logical intelligence to knowingly break the spirit of the law without breaking the letter of the law; and his very lack of emotional intelligence results in arriving at conclusions that misrepresent others, or paint a lie. Christopher lives a lie, just as his father lives a lie, and his mother lives another lie: they just go about their self-deception in different ways.

Nonetheless, by the end we are left in no doubt that people are people: all wonder-ful (‘fearfully and wonderfully made’, the ancient Psalmist put it) and all quite impossible at the same time.

The choreography is incredible. Again, this is a work of genius, depicting Christopher’s extreme aversion to physical touch – even the possibility of touch – and to encounters with strangers through the medium of the most demanding physicality. If the set turns our world on its head, the choreography turns Christopher’s world inside-out – and caught in these unfamiliar dimensions, we meet.

The ensemble is cleverly done. Most of the cast play a number of roles, playing on how hard it can be to tell one stranger from another, on how tiring it is to deal with information overload when every detail carries the same weight and yet faces and tone of voice are hard to read.

The language is disturbing. The actor playing Christopher convincingly conveys the monotone voice that is quite common with those with Asperger’s – without ‘normal’ access to emotion, there is less tonal quality to communication. And yet our prejudices are challenged by Christopher’s passion, and humour – which is not entirely unknowing, despite his belief that he cannot tell jokes. We are, rightly, disturbed.

I found the language disturbing in another way. This play – like the book – is full of ‘strong language’. And I mean full. I am not a prude, and I appreciate that people talk like this, and especially when frustrated or angry or unpleasantly surprised. Nonetheless, I found it sad to hear the names ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ used as expressions of deep frustration, because I believe that this quite fundamentally misrepresents God, who is love. In this sense, I believe that when those who don’t give God much time of day cry out his name at the point of orgasm, in that window onto longing and desire they remember God – and themselves before God – far more accurately, albeit unconsciously.

(Interestingly, we think that one of the cast never swore, in any of their personas, perhaps suggesting that the actor asked and was granted permission to change their lines.)

God is absent from Christopher’s understanding of the world; and, indeed, he sees himself to be superior in intellect to the vicar who helps at his school, where all the other pupils are idiots. I suspect that the vicar sees something in them that Christopher cannot. Again, this is a play about perception, and far from being absent, occupying some other and imaginary plane, God is overwhelmingly present: pulsing through the space, illuminating it; in the lyrical cadences of the dialogue; in the exuberance of the choreography; in the overcoming of fear; in every simple act of kindness shown to Christopher, regardless of his ability to receive it; in the tenderness of tentatively putting back together broken relationships; in the beauty of mathematics.

If God is misrepresented as frustration, God is also at work revealing himself, to those with eyes to see. Christopher sets out to solve a mystery – who killed his neighbour’s dog? Yet in the end the mystery is not solved by deduction, it is resolved by revelation. Puzzles are to be solved. Mathematical questions are to be proven. Mystery is to be experienced.

We went, in part, because we love being a ten-minute walk away from a theatre that has the west End shows on tour; and, in part, because our teenage daughter has Asperger’s. We had all read the book, but didn’t know how it had been adapted for the stage. Ironically, the immersion into autistic disorientation resulted in emotional overload for her. As she put it, just because I can identify with what is going on in his head doesn’t mean I want to see it projected onto the stage! That said, and harrowing though it was, the rest of us really enjoyed the play, and would all thoroughly recommend it.

Next time, I’ll write about Inside Out.

Nine

Wisdom

I have come to the conclusion that the very best piece of advice I was given during my curacy (though I didn't realise it at the time) was when one of my older parishioners called after me “Slow down, young man!” as I rushed by.

Indeed, I think that I am coming to the conclusion that this is in fact the single best piece of advice anyone has ever given me in my whole life. Or could give to most of us. Slow down.

The Parable Of The Whole Samaritan

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One. And therefore you are to be at one: your heart and your mind and your strength and your soul – your whole personhood, made whole - all gazing upon God in love, and as a consequence seeing your neighbour as God sees them, and seeing yourself as God sees you.

If I am honest, my heart and mind and strength and soul are not always at one. Often, they pull in different directions.

Jesus told a story exploring what it looks like when your heart (choices) and mind (thoughts and feelings) and strength (actions) and soul (your life; composed of these other parts, and indeed more than the sum of the parts) are one. Or not, as the case may be.

In his story, a man is travelling the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is a notorious road, known as the Red Road, so much blood was shed by bandits preying on pilgrims and other travellers. The man is alone, and pays the price. He is beaten, stripped, robbed, and left for dead. Which implies that he looked dead.

Into his story, Jesus introduces a priest travelling along the road. Priests had a particular role, helping the people to encounter God’s presence. Most priests did not spend all of the time at the temple, or even live in Jerusalem, but farmed small parcels of land given to them to live off, and went up to Jerusalem to serve at the temple for blocks of time on a rota basis. (The church rota is an ancient and noble tradition.) So, here is a priest on his way to serve his turn at the temple.

Despite every pictorial representation I have ever seen, we would be mistaken to think of the priest as travelling alone. You simply wouldn’t run the Red Road alone unless you had no other option, for reasons that the story has already made graphically clear. This is not a Sunday Afternoon Drive scenic route. Jesus’ listeners would understand that the priest would be travelling with others, on their way to Jerusalem, on their way to present themselves before God at the temple.

So the response of the priest towards the dead-or-dying man is not just the response of an individual towards an individual: it is the response of a person embedded in community, a person who by virtue of his position exercises weighted influence over the response of other persons embedded in community, towards another person who found himself – for reasons, and a duration, unknown to us, but this is why he was alone – not at-one with his neighbours.

From the moment that the body is brought to the priest’s attention, the priest is torn. We might reasonably assume that he is not without feeling for the man, but he is literally in two minds – his feelings go out towards the man, but his thoughts pull him back. He must choose between the conflicting responses, and gives way to his thoughts. He acts, moving physically as far from the body as he possibly can – and with him, those with him, justified by the argument that if they were to touch a dead body they would be ritually defiled, and therefore unable to enter the temple, and therefore their pilgrimage to present themselves before God would be over before it began.

There is often a strong undercurrent of irony to the stories Jesus told.

The crowd passes by. The man continues to bleed out. The flies ...

Jesus continues painting the scene. Another party of pilgrims is coming along the road, and in their midst is a scribe, someone whose role it was to help the people understand and follow God’s law, God’s principles for how to live in community. Again, whatever the scribe does will determine what the group does: for the community is faced with a problem that is both ethical and practical, and – how fortunate for them – here in their midst is one who can give expert opinion.

The details of the inner conflict might differ, but like the priest, the heart and mind and strength and soul of the scribe are not at-one, not aligned together, focused on God and following God’s gaze towards their neighbour. So another crowd passes by, and the man in the road continues to bleed out.

At length, Jesus introduces a third character, a Samaritan. Again, we should not picture a man travelling alone – not least a man of means, an obvious target for bandits. Like the priest and the scribe before him, this man is part of a larger group. If that group comprised mostly of Jews, he would not be made especially welcome, though he seems at ease with his neighbour, one who would turn away wrath with a gentle reply. And that would be striking. That might make him worth watching. If he were to tend to the victim, it might even make him worthy of influence, however unlikely that would have appeared when they set out.

Here is a man whose heart and mind and strength and soul are at one.

The Samaritan makes a choice (heart), not only to stop but to set aside whatever business he was going about, to put his plans on hold.

His thoughts and feelings (mind) are undivided, concern for a fellow human being in need working in harmony with identifying resources to hand and using them to administer ‘first aid’.

He acts (strength) in a way that is fully consistent with his heart and mind, even if that might make himself a target.

Each component of his life is harmoniously involved (the fruit of a healthy soul), and continues to work together as he evaluates the longer-term need and comes to further decisions to implement it: getting the man to an inn (a place of hospitality – a hospital, if you will), paying a deposit up front, and arranging the means to cover the full (as yet, unknown) expense.

Jesus never calls him the Good Samaritan. As far as Jesus is concerned, God alone is good. But the description ‘the whole Samaritan’ – the Samaritan who is at one with himself and with his neighbour because (despite being a Samaritan, whose theology was considered suspect at best) he was at one with God – seems fitting.

Implied in Jesus’ story is the suggestion that the wholeness of the Samaritan leads to the healing of the man left for dead. Not only his physical healing, but his return into community. To being more at one with his neighbours. Conversely, the story implies that the dis-integration of the priest and the scribe leads to a greater experience of dis-integration – of an erosion of integrity – for those who travelled onward with them.

Jesus draws out of his audience the admission that it is (ironically) the Samaritan who lives out the Shema: ‘Hear, O Israel ...’ And then he ends: Go, then, and do likewise.

Imprisoned

[This summer, I’ve been reading John Ortberg’s tribute to the late Dallas Willard, Soul Keeping, along with some of Willard’s own works, and this is reflected in my observations on Matthew 18:21-35, the Gospel reading set for Holy Communion today.]

On one occasion when Jesus was teaching on the need to deal with the reality that we sin against one another, Peter asked him, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ [ESV]

In other words, How often should I expect to be wronged by, hurt by, disappointed by, let down by (specifically) another member of the church – that is, the ekklesia, the called-out community representatives who make decisions on behalf of and for the good of the wider community – and still forgive them? How long does this process take? How many times will I forgive that person before they change, before forgiveness does its work?

Jesus’ initial reply, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times’ reveals, figuratively, that forgiveness is a lifelong ongoing process. Moreover, Jesus goes on to tell a parable revealing that forgiving may have no effect on the person who is forgiven; but that forgiving, or withholding forgiveness, certainly has an effect on the un/forgiver. And as Willard would put it, who you become is far more important than what you achieve.

So to the story. God’s rule on earth, to be exercised through men and women – and so most certainly through the ekklesia, or representatives – may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. According to the Law, after serving for seven years servants had to be offered their freedom, along with the financial means to take it. The king summons those servants who have served seven years, and who wished to be set free, in order to settle accounts – to give them the financial package of their freedom, minus any debts incurred to their master. As he go through this process, it comes to a servant who owes him an unimaginably large sum. Since the servant is unable to pay, the king orders that the servant, along with his wife and children, be sold in order to pay off the debt.

This is not a change of condition – from freeman to servant – but of circumstance, a (proposed) transfer of ownership – the man, and his family, already belong to another, the king. We are not masters of our own destiny. We all belong to God. Moreover, it implies that the king considers the servant to be worth the unimaginably large sum he has first lent the servant and is now prepared to demand for the servant.

The servant fears this circumstance, perhaps recognising that the king is a good master and certainly recognising that another master may not be so good towards him. In the midst of anxiety, he makes a choice, an act of the will: he falls on his knees and implores patience, asking for more time to pay off the debt. Though he desires freedom, he offers a further seven years’ service. The response of the king is not to agree to the servants requested terms, but rather, ‘out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.’ Not only does he write-off the debt, he sets the slave free, which included giving the slave the necessary capital to start over as a freedman.

The king’s heart (the seat of the will) and mind (the seat of both thoughts and emotions) and strength (the body, with which we act) are aligned: he makes a choice, consistent with the emotion of pity and the thought-through response to address the underlying circumstances, and acts on it accordingly.

As it happens, the servant chooses to remain in the king’s service: in the light of what has taken place, now believing it to be a better situation not only to another master but also to being his own master. His anxiety has been replaced with security.

However, the servant goes out from the king’s presence and almost immediately runs into a fellow servant who owed him a small amount of money. He makes a choice, to demand what he is owed; and he acts on that choice with his body, choking the other man. His heart and his strength are no longer aligned with the revealed – the now known – values of the king. The servant is at odds with God, at odds with his neighbour – and at odds with himself: his mind contorting itself to justify himself as being better than his fellow servant, or neighbour; and perhaps better than the king, or God. He has the other servant thrown into jail until the debt be paid off. This is a change of condition – imprisonment - and a far harsher decision than that made by the king towards him.

His actions also cause great distress to the other servants, who report all that had taken place to their master. The consequence is that the master has the wicked servant ‘delivered to the jailers’ – judged according to his own measure – ‘until he should pay all his debt.’

Here is the thing: his debt has already been paid off. He has no debt. He is free – as far as the king is concerned – to leave his prison cell at any moment. He is held there only by ‘the jailers’ – by his own heart (choices) and mind (thoughts and emotions) and strength (body). As long as he chooses to remain bound, believes himself to be punished by God, or capable of earning his way out, as long as his actions reflect a belief that he is not free, or is capable of achieving freedom by effort, the jailers have power over him. He is imprisoned until he is able to return in heart and mind and strength, until he is able to love with all his heart and mind and strength – and with his soul, our true life which, when healthy, when made whole, integrates our constituent parts. A neglected soul cannot hold those parts together so that all the doors are opened.

Jesus concludes, God our heavenly Father will turn us over to the jailers if we do not choose to forgive one another from the heart. If we are not aligned with God and neighbour, we will experience inner imprisonment until we become so.

The servant inherently understood this when he first fell on his knees. And so there is hope that he will find himself in that place again. And hope for me, too.

To return to Peter’s question, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?’ Again and again, and again and again. This reality will always be with us. I am not better than my brother, or sister, but, like them, in constant need of the forgiveness that is already ours.

However, the more we grow to love and trust the king, the more we grow to see our fellow servants as he does, the less time we might need to spend in the hands of the jailers before they unlock the doors.

Where am I trying to justify my choices, habitual thoughts or responses to emotions, or actions?

Whom do I need to forgive?

What If

Harper Lee wrote Go Set A Watchman (published tomorrow) before To Kill A Mockingbird. But her editor advised her that Watchman would not be received well at the time, and urged her to write, instead, the ‘back-story’ of the childhood of her central character.

What if your greatest gift to the world was not the story you wanted to tell, but the prequel that the world was ready to hear?

Would that devalue the gift, or make it even more precious?

Conflict : Part 3

In my previous post, I suggested that conflict is both an inevitable and a necessary part of the world we live in. I also suggested that the experience of conflict has to do with our being made in the likeness of a good God.

The earliest human experiences, as told in the Bible, are experiences of conflict and of learning to engage with conflict in ways that bring forth life. There is the conflict of resting from work when there is so much work to be done. There is the navigating of the conflicts of tending a garden: not enough water, and plants cannot grow; too much water, and plants cannot grow: water must be channelled; plants, too, must be cultivated, not left to overrun, to encroach on others. There is the conflict resulting from being different from the other animals and needing to find a corresponding companion. In engaging conflict, the human beings are participating in the life of all creation, and in the life of God.

A new character finds voice in this unfolding story, a character who calls into question something God has (not) said. What follows is often considered to be the root cause of conflict, between male and female, between humanity and the planet. But we might read it as another opportunity to engage with conflict (conflict = difference + tension), and one that reveals to us our ability (perhaps, propensity) to engage with conflict badly, with negative consequences.

The serpent brings a bad report, calls God’s character into disrepute, suggesting that God has acted in a particular way out of selfish and unloving motives, perhaps out of fear. God is not present to be asked and to offer clarification, in order that a greater understanding be reached. Initially, Eve challenges the serpent’s report (she adds to God’s words to the man, and much has been speculated as to why and whether it matters or not), but ultimately a series of related conflicts –

abundance / perceived lack

perceived food / perceived wastage

delighting in / consuming

wisdom / knowledge –

are resolved badly. Compounding the situation, attempted physical withdrawal from the situation, defensive and aggressive survival strategies are all employed, drawing relationship apart.

Complex consequences are set in motion – complex not least because each response to every conflict has the potential to draw us further apart and the potential to draw us closer together; complex also because conflict is inevitable, and is the (very) raw material for a good end, which will be brought to fruition through hard work and perseverance.

From here on in, throughout the Bible, we see this conflict - reconciliation played out: on the micro-level of the relationship between brothers; to the macro-level of relationships between nations; to the meta-level of the relationship between all creation and God. The goal is not a return to a fresh start in an unspoiled garden, but something altogether greater. It is also ongoing.

Our conflicts are not a distraction from entering-into the life, the love, of God. They are the very places of transformation where it becomes possible to do so. They are the places of our passing from death into life. The labour pains of something new, something longed-for but as-yet unknown, un-named. Every conflict is a kairos moment, where the kingdom of heaven has come near, if we are willing to repent (to change our perspective) and believe (to live out a different way of being).

How, then, can the abundance of conflicting hopes and dreams and needs and visions and desires and preferred futures and painful pasts and frustrated ‘now’s be engaged with graciously, lovingly, for the transformation of us all?

That is what we are called to, as human beings. That is what we are called to live out, as the Church.

Conflict : Part 2

Conflict has been described in this way: conflict = difference + tension

Elijah wants to lie on his bed and quietly read a book, Noah wants to play his electric guitar: difference. The boys share a room: tension. The resulting conflict could be handled well, bringing them closer together, or badly, driving them further apart.

To put it another way, conflict is an inevitable consequence of diversity in a universe experienced in time as well as space.

According to the opening verses of the Bible, conflict provides the raw material with which God works to form the world, and indeed universe, we live in. That is, God does not create out of nothing, but out of the experience of conflict. Light and darkness; sky and land and sea; different seasons; different possible forms of life, needing different environments: each part is calling out to be recognised, to not be overlooked.

While our response in the face of conflict is often to go on the defensive, or to go on the attack, or to withdraw emotionally or physically, God moves towards conflict with the intention of drawing-out something good – and not only good for the parties in immediate conflict, but good for the bigger picture, the wider creation.

God identifies god-self in particular ways – for example, as creator, redeemer, sustainer – and invites others to do the same: the sun to know his own identity, and the moon hers; creatures that fly, or swim, or crawl. Underlying concerns are drawn out; common ground brought to light; interdependence encouraged, participation enabled. And God creates human beings, to be like God, to share in God’s experience of and activity in the world.

What does it mean to be made and found in the likeness of a God who looks on conflict and sees in that conflict the necessary raw material for creating something unimaginably wonderful? What does it mean to be made and found in the likeness of a God who moves towards conflict, with a particular intention and hope?

Surely it means that we experience conflict not as a result of something that has gone wrong, in us and for us, but rather as something more fundamental and more positive?

Conflict : Part 1

I have just been on a week-long training course on ‘Transforming Church Conflict’ run by Bridge Builders. It was the best training course I have ever been on. The content, and delivery, were excellent; the team facilitating the course, first-class. But what made it so significant and so helpful was this: so much of what I am encouraged to focus on as a church leader (mission, growth, discipleship) can seem esoteric to others, passions specific to my role and my vocation, hard to relate to; but everyone can relate to the experience of conflict, in family life, between partners, at work, on soap operas, on the streets, in the news...

The Bible is full of conflict. In fact, you can see conflict, in some form or other, in every story, on every page. To some, that is clear evidence that religion is a root of conflict, that religious texts promote and perpetuate conflict. To others, it is deeply embarrassing, especially in the light of so much conflict between followers of Jesus today; more than that, I know many Christians who believe that our internal conflicts within the Church detract from our mission to share the love of God.

I would suggest that conflict is inherent to life, and that the Bible is full of conflict because it is fully concerned with life. I would also suggest that the accounts of conflict found in the Bible are very much concerned with how conflict might be transformed so that something good is brought forth, something it was not previously possible to imagine into being, even (especially) where there is no quick fix.

As such, the Bible is a great resource concerning how we might respond to conflict; and the Church has both great opportunity and no little experience to offer the world an ongoing ministry of reconciliation.

The following posts do not cover the content of the course I have been on, but are my own reflections on conflict in the Bible and our attitude towards it, having been on the course. In my next post, I want to begin to reflect on the opening chapters of the Bible, from this particular perspective.

The Old And The Young

At the moment, we are reading through Ezra in Morning Prayer. The back story is this: Solomon had built a great temple to the Lord in Jerusalem, which was one of the wonders of the world; the Babylonian Empire arose, and defeated Solomon’s descendants, taking the people into exile, in waves, and eventually destroying the temple; the Persian Empire arose, defeating the Babylonians and freeing all captives to return home, in order to rebuild economically productive vassal states; the Jews returned to Jerusalem, in waves, the first wave building a new temple (under Zerubbabel), the second wave being a mass return of people (under Ezra), and the third wave rebuilding the city walls (under Nehemiah).

This morning we read Ezra chapter 3, which ends:

‘And all the people responded with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away.’ [emphasis mine]

It is easy to read this as offering a choice that has to be made: between joy and sorrow; between lamenting the past and welcoming the future; between nostalgia that blinds us to what God is doing today and eyes of faith that can see God at work even in the smallest of beginnings. Even as the people rejoice, there are naysayers, who will not join in.

That would certainly be the way to read this text through the cultural lens of an obsession with youth.

But life is more complex than that.

The past is not uniformly better than the present. Nor is the present uniformly better than the past.

The young rejoice that they have, at last, for the first time in their lives, a home of their own. They rejoice that they have, at last, a place to worship in a way that is fitting to them.

The old rejoice that they have lived to see God bringing his people back home, out of exile. That God had not forgotten them, or abandoned them, even if he had humbled them. They rejoice that the young will have a future in a place of their own, and because they see a desire among the next generation to worship God.

But they also weep for what has been lost, and will not be again; even as they rejoice at what has been done and will be. The two responses are simultaneous. They co-exist. They cannot be distinguished.

It is not a matter of choosing between joy and sorrow; between lamenting the past and welcoming the future; between recognising what was, and is, and is to come. It is a matter of choosing to embrace – and choosing to allow ourselves to be embraced by – both joy and sorrow; both lamenting and welcoming; both loss and gain.

It is the difference between judging one another across the generations, and honouring one another across the generations. There is a wisdom to these ‘old people’ (which is not true of all old people) – a wisdom they can invite ‘young people’ into, because even though the young have not shared the exact history, that history is their heritage, their (old and young) shared story.

The verses immediately before the ones I cite above record a time of worship in which the people ‘sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord,

‘For he is good,

for his steadfast love endures for ever towards Israel.’

Perhaps only those whose faith allows joy and sorrow, lamenting and welcoming, loss and gain, can sing these words from the heart.

Growth

Earlier this week, I gathered the representatives of our congregation and asked them to be ready to share three things:

how they had come to be at the Minster;

their experience of coming into the Minster on any given Sunday;

and what had most helped them grow in their faith over Lent and Easter-tide.

It was a privilege to listen to one another. And it was an incredibly helpful exercise for me, to listen and to learn.

Of the thirteen people in the room, a few were able to talk in terms of their faith having grown over the last few months. Interestingly, the most common thing that they had found helpful was walking the journey of suffering with friends or family members living with irreversible physical deterioration or terminal illness. This, of course, was also deeply challenging, stretching faith in a most uncomfortable way. But most of those present were not able to perceive any growth in their faith over that timescale.

These were people of mature faith, seeking to live faithful lives rooted in God and God’s people. And I have been thinking about this ever since.

I have been thinking about a healthy tree. The growth from seed, through shoot and sapling, to growing to maturity is both incredible and at times imperceptible. In the early stages, we can see growth on a weekly basis; later, a thin ring is laid down in the trunk year on year.

But a mature tree does not continue to grow in the same way. It continues to live, an incredible array of processes going on as it utilises water, light, and nutrients. It responds to the seasons, at times leafy and at times dormant. But it is, for the overwhelming majority of its life, a stable system. And even its slow dying is used to bring life to other organisms...

The answers to the first question - how they had come to be at the Minster – spoke of having healthy roots. The answers to the second question - their experience of coming into the Minster on any given Sunday – spoke of those roots reaching water, whatever the season.

Perhaps questions of growth are concerned with the early stages of faith.

Perhaps the sign of maturity is that we no longer need to concern ourselves with growth, but can simply be; and in being, provide shelter for others.

If so, the questions of growth that we need to address with those in the early stages are those communal practices which will nurture them for a lifetime.

Ascension Day

Once there was a father who had two sons. The first-born son was dutiful, took the burden of responsibility that he felt upon his shoulders most seriously. As is so often the way with eldest children, he was not much given to celebrating life, and, truth-be-told, struggled with those who did. Working alongside him, his father would from time to time speak words of affirmation; but they felt more like a wound, because he could never live up to his own expectations. At the end of the day, his father would encourage him in to the circle sat around the fire, telling stories in the darkness; but he preferred his own company, or told himself as much.

The younger son was wild and free. From childhood, he had filled the estate with laughter and the slap of running feet. Both sons, in different ways, felt constrained by the boundary wall that marked their home – and they were meant to. Home is where we start out from, and return to; it is not the wideness of the world. But while the older brother conformed himself to that constraint, the younger son kicked against the walls until they broke and he burst free. Out, out he went, having secured his share of their father’s fortune, seed-money to seek a fortune of his own. He travelled to a far country, where he fell in with a crowd of other run-aways, and there he squandered his father’s wealth with revellers and gamblers, with prostitutes and conspirators. What his older brother would say, if he could see him now! And what would knowing do to his dear father?

The money – as I’m sure you can imagine – soon ran out, as money has a want to do; and with it, most of his new-found friends ran out on him too, except those so lost they had nowhere else to run. And then, of course, he took an inevitable beating, from those who prey over the weak, who refused to believe that there was nothing else to take from him, if he was who he claimed to be.

Then he set out for home. There was quite literally nowhere else to go. The journey took him forty days. Along the way, he had several adventures. He met several old friends who no longer even recognised him, at least not a first. With each encounter, each revelation, he came to himself – not the young man who had left home, but the man prepared to come home, his true self exposed.

At last, he arrived – his father running beyond the boundary to meet him. His brother, on the other hand, refused to recognise him at all. He could not, for he had never really recognised his own surroundings – his father, his home, his own self.

Why did the father embrace his lost son, I ask? Because he loved him, you reply. Yes, he did; but that is not the reason: after all, he loved his elder son just as much. No, the father embraced his younger son because he himself had gone on a similar journey long before. He had descended from heaven onto Mount Sinai, to befriend a broken rabble of outcasts; had descended even further, to tabernacle in their rebellious midst; and had then ascended Mount Zion, from where he established a wounded-but-healed people to bless all the surrounding wounded peoples from one horizon to the other, to the ends of the earth. The way home is down, down, up. Earth, hell, heaven.

The ascension is Jesus’ homecoming. It marks the end of a first journey, which takes us away from home in order to return home recognising home for the first time. Seeing home as we were never able to see it before. Those who have never left home can never see home in this way. And it is the beginning of a second journey – still unfolding – which sees Jesus widen the family to include all of humanity.

This is a journey we are called to walk too, as we follow after Jesus, as he does what the Father has done. We are called to return home; having first travelled far from home. That is why Adam and Eve always had to leave the Garden (and they had to be tricked into it, because few of us want to leave the security and comfort and provision of home – though in this we see another deep truth: that God transforms what was done with evil intent for good, includes the fall from grace in the triumph of grace). That is why scientists tell us that all matter is expanding outwards from a moment, to which all matter will eventually contract back: for all things come from God and will return to God.

I experienced something of this Eastertide, when we went up to Scotland to see my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, nephew and niece, and my brother. I left Scotland twenty-four years ago, and have never missed it. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but that is not quite the same thing. This visit, it felt like coming home. Not that I want, or need, to move to live in Scotland – I know that we are called to England – but that I had come home. That I am free to leave again, because it will always be there, in a way I had never known it before. A twenty-four year journey.

Our home is in God. This is where we start out from, and where we return to. Ascension-tide – from now until Pentecost – is a gift, an annual opportunity, to practice coming home. To learn how to return home, together. A time to tell stories of home, to awaken dreams, to stir up hope. A time to stumble towards love, and a time to be transformed more fully into our true selves as we live in the tension between Jesus’ departing and his return.

Cloudy, With Reign

Today is Ascension Day. Today we remember the day when Jesus’ disciples saw him for the last time, when, having blessed them, he turned and walked into the cloud. Anyone who has walked in the mountains may be familiar with such a phenomenon. While Christians affirm that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, from where he will return, ‘how?’ questions – which cannot be answered – are a distraction from the more important question, ‘so?’

This event is so important to the understanding of the early Church that it is recounted in the last chapter of the first volume of (the Gospel according to) Luke-Acts (of the Apostles) and again in the first chapter of the second volume: Luke 24:44-53 and Acts 1:1-11. It is, in other words, a hinge-point in history. Why?

Some six hundred years before Jesus, the nobility of Jerusalem was living in exile, having been deposed and carried away in humiliation by the Babylonian Empire. Some of this ruling class had been re-trained and appointed to administrative posts within the Babylonian Empire; one such man being Daniel. On one occasion, Daniel had a dream (recorded in Daniel 7:1-28) of a succession of ‘beasts’ coming out of the ‘sea’ – the ‘sea’ symbolising chaos, and the fantastical ‘beasts’ symbolising empires (think the lion and unicorn symbolising the British Empire). The dream relates to a series of empires rising up and ruling over the people of Judah. But the dream continues, with a ‘son of man’ – that is, human being – presented before God in the clouds, to whom God gives dominion over all empires, for all time. After suffering, God’s people will be restored, and return under a king who will establish them for ever.

Jesus’ departure, then, is presented as the fulfilment of Daniel’s dream: Jesus is the human being presented before God on the clouds, and made king to reign over all the peoples as the king of God’s chosen people – God’s chosen people not being the Jewish nation by natural descent, but, now, the faithful community of the Church, soon to expand to include the Gentiles.

But we haven’t yet addressed the ‘so?’ question.

In the first account of the ascension, Luke records Jesus ‘opening their minds to understand the scriptures’, that understanding culminating ‘that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his [Jesus, the king in the clouds] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’ [emphasis mine]

In other words, the judgement that the exalted human passes on all human empire-building is this:

‘Come home; all is forgiven.’

That is staggering. Not least because the ruling Empire of the day had put this human being to death in a display of their power, just forty-two days before.

Today is Ascension Day.

So?

What is the implication of this day for those who look to Jesus in a highly politicised world of empire-building?

What are the implications for us when we see our government make decisions that – intentionally or otherwise - oppress the weakest people in our society?

To declare to power, ‘Come home; all is forgiven’ does not equate to saying, what you are doing doesn’t matter; does not equate to saying that empire is good and not evil. To embrace and forgive is not the same as to condone.

But it is far harder than to shake the fist.

Harder, and perhaps, ultimately, more transformative.

Whether we see such transformation or not, Ascension Day is the Church’s political model.