Third Sunday of Advent 2022

 

The theme for the Third Sunday of advent is joy. In many of our churches, the third candle in the Advent wreath is rose, the mixing of the three purple candles (purple bring the colour of Advent, and Lent) and the white Christmas candle.

The biblical metaphor for joy par excellence is the desert bursting into bloom after the rains have come. Where, for forty-nine weeks of the year, you must look closely to see the many small, hidden, signs of life, for three weeks the ground is a canopy of flowers, of the most intense colours. Where a desert is found close to an urban centre, such as Perth in Western Australia, people will come out into the wilderness just to see the spectacle. But the window is a brief one, and then the desert returns to its muted, sun-bleached palette—until the next rains.

This is what joy is like, an intense emotion that surprises and delights us, and gives us the feeling that we are deeply connected to God, nature, the universe, everything. It is not something that you can manufacture—unlike the less intense happiness: you can do things that make you happy, such as plan a family gathering, or eat an ice-cream cone on a summer’s day—but it is something you can learn to rely on, and appreciate, through the discipline of gratitude. Isaiah pairs his vision of the desert bursting out with joy in response to the rains with a vision of building a road on which people can travel to come before the Lord with joy. Every paving stone, an expression of gratitude.

 

Advent 2022 Day 14

 

Jesus is quoted as saying, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’ (Matthew 5:9) It can sound like a platitude, an inspirational meme to keep scrolling past. But the word translated ‘blessed’ might better be translated ‘happy,’ happy for what from the outside—if you aren’t a peacemaker—seems like no good reason. How can you be happy, in a conflict zone? And yet, children can be, at least some of the time.

Don’t get me wrong. Children witness terrible things, endure things beyond words, and such things can leave them damaged, to grow in malformed ways. Nonetheless, children possess a certain resilience, can take adults by the hand, and lead them where they need to go, stepping into the life they must live, when everything in the adults wants to give up living. Children have an ability to see good, however small, however fragile, an innate ability to know happiness in the ordinary. Children of God, yet to grow old.

If a community ripped apart by violence is going to forge itself into something else, something practical and constructive—if they are to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks—then it is their children who are going to inspire them. Those who will enjoy the fruit of the ploughshare, the pruning-hook, will be the very ones for whom we pick up our hammers. Might even be the ones to fetch our hammer and say, ‘Are you just going to sit there? Here, take this. Start hammering out peace.’

The young are not simply the future, waiting their time, but have a share in our present. Our imperfect, ordinary, wonderful present. If we can learn from them, we might just be peacemakers. In time, we might become known as children ourselves, children of God, where once we only saw divided children of men.

 

Advent 2022 : Day 13

 

There comes a day in our childhood when we pick up a stick. It helps us to feel just a little braver. But, like any gateway drug, the effect has diminishing returns, and we progress to sharper, harder, more sophisticated weapons. Words. Behaviours. Until everyone is on edge, and it only takes a spark to set off a powder keg.

Peace asks us to decommission our arsenal. To return words to their healing, life-giving potency. To beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks. To let fallen sticks lie, in peace.

This, too, is learned behaviour. Takes time. Change, by degree.

The best way to begin to deactivate our weapons is to stay curious. The simple principle of imagining, what could this sword be repurposed as? Hmm, might it become a ploughshare? Or, in concrete practice, the discipline of asking, when someone says something that raises our early-warning systems, ‘Oh? What makes you say that?’ and, ‘Oh. What makes me respond to you this way?’ The former question helps us understand where the other is coming from, map terrain together, perhaps find common ground. The latter question—which perhaps should be the first?—helps us understand our inner geography, those thick layers of neighbourhood we cherish, the helpful and harmful histories that live within us.

‘Peace be with you.’ ‘And also with you.’

 

Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary : part 2

 

Today, 8 December, the Church is invited to reflect on the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Though there are alternative lectionary readings set for this lesser festival, I chose to use the main readings for the day, Isaiah 41:13-20 and Matthew 11:11-15, along with an icon of Jesus in the womb of Mary in the womb of her mother, St Anne.

The Isaiah reading includes this vision: ‘I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.’ (vv 19-20)

In the Bible, where we come across trees, they stand for people, sometimes an individual, sometimes a community. So here we have a vision of God transforming barrenness into an ecosystem, the descendants beyond measure of childless Abraham and Sarah.

The reading from Matthew says this:

“Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” (vv 11-12)

Interestingly, while the standard text for the Church of England is the NRSVA (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised) translation, the person who read the Gospel did so from the REB (Revised English Bible), which translates these verses as:

‘Truly I tell you: among all who have ever been born, no one has been greater than John the Baptist, and yet the least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.

‘Since the time of John the Baptist the kingdom of Heaven has been subjected to violence and violent men are taking it by force.’

This translation removes women from where they are; and inserts men, where they were not. The Greek explicitly says ‘among those born of women,’ en gennētois gynaikōn; while ‘the violent,’ though the noun is in the masculine, biastēs from biazó, is not qualified by ‘men’. It is assumed that all who have ever been born are born of women, and it is assumed that the violent are men; but both assumptions obscure the point. Jesus is comparing physical birth and spiritual birth. Just as we are born from our mother’s womb through the violent contractions of labour—or the violence of Caesarean section—so spiritual rebirth is a Kairos moment of crisis and opportunity, of violent energy, risk, and all being well, subsequent joy.

Today we reflect on Mary’s conception, within the ‘salvation history’ prepared by God before the creation of the world, before there ever was history, carrying us away from and back to God in time’s ebb and flow. Mary’s place, not only within Anne, but within Abraham, within Adam. The work of God to transform the wilderness of time and space, devoid of anything other than the three-person God, into cedar, acacia, myrtle, olive; cypress, plane, and pine; all rooted in this life-sharing God.

Today we give thanks for the gift of labour in place of barrenness, and of particularity in place of mere potential—what is, in all its contingency; all that I am, free of might-have-beens or if-onlys. For, like Mary, you and I are chosen, and loved, from before the worlds.

 

Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary : part 1

 

Today the Church is invited to reflect on the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The icon below (thank you to my friend, Cameron Abernethy, for sharing it on facebook) is of Jesus in the womb of Mary in the womb of her mother, St Anne. Looking a little like Russian dolls, it is a beautiful depiction of the scriptural truth that future generations exist within their forebears. When the Lord speaks with his childless friend Abram/Abraham, and promises that his descendants shall be as far beyond counting as the stars of the heavens or the grains of sand on the seashore, we are to understand that those future generations beyond number are present, to God, (with)in the person of his friend Abraham.

We may tend to thinking that God chooses Mary to be the one through whom the Son will be born into the world on account of her disposition, that she is particularly devout, or feisty, or whatever it is that God might be looking for. And, certainly, how we fashion the life we are given matters to God. But this is less than the whole truth. It may be closer to suggest that Mary is the young woman whom she is because God chose her before she was conceived in her mother’s womb, indeed before the creation of the world. And that you are also chosen, and loved, within the divine purpose to reconcile all things, within ourselves and between us and our neighbour and us and Godself.

As you gaze on the human face of God through the window of this icon, can you dare to imagine it carrying on so as to include Anne, Mary, Jesus ... you?

 

Advent 2022 Day 12

 

‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: … a time for war, and a time for peace.’ Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8

‘Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weakling say, ‘I am a warrior.’’ Joel 3:10

‘He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’ Isaiah 2:4

‘He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;’ Micah 4:3

In the turbulent days of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the prophetic imagination picked up an image from an earlier, turbulent time, the days of the tribal Judges. Then, an oppressing neighbour had sought to control God’s people by removing the skill of the smith from among them: now, they would have to go cap-in-hand to their enemy to have their agricultural tools repaired. In this way, the enemy both ensured the harvest they would plunder, and that there would be no armed uprising against them. So, some centuries on, Joel imagines those agricultural tools being repurposed for a just war; and Isaiah and Micah imagine a day when those makeshift weapons will be returned to their peaceable original intention.

Like ploughshares and pruning-hooks, we are ore of the earth, taken, and fashioned to break the earth for fruitful grain and prune the vine for fruitful wine—a communion, if you will. And yet, time and chance and circumstance push us to heat and bend and beat ourselves into a new shape, a weapon, against our neighbour, with whom we believe we must compete for scant resources. But when the Lord arbitrates between us, then we shall cooperate, labouring at the forge, refashioning our lives for peace. Come, Lord Jesus.

 

Advent 2022 Day 11

 

We have an urgent need for peace, and yet, peace cannot be imposed upon us, nor can we fit it with a leash or harness and domesticate it to walk at our heel. We can only know peace when we surrender the illusion of being in control of our lives, self-creating master of our own destiny. Peace is found in recognizing the sovereignty of Jesus, the Christ, the firstborn of all creation, who lies sleeping attended to by a court composed of smallholder goats and starlight.

This is unspeakably hard for the English, who are obsessed with the illusion of their own sovereignty. There is so much illusion to let go.

One evening a week through Advent, I open the church doors and invite people in, to sit in the dark, beneath a net of ‘star’ lights, Advent songs washing over us, a cup of coffee or hot chocolate in hand, and just to simply be. Breathing space, for those in danger of being overwhelmed, in these dark days. A simple gift of love. It is not about the numbers, but about the souls who come, seeking the face of the Christ-child. Last night their number included a man living with dementia, a woman who has just learned that the breast cancer has returned. And others, carrying burdens of self-doubt, or questions that are simply unanswerable. Sitting with God. Communing in wordless conversation. Surrendering the illusion that we are in control. And leaving with a weight lifted from their shoulders.

These are counted among the most wonderful hours of the week.

 

Advent 2022 Day 10

 

Peace is at the heart of the Christian story, that story we rehearse week by week when we come together, so that we are better able to live it when we are sent out again to our homes and neighbourhoods, workplaces, and thousand apparently random encounters before we gather again. At the heart of the Eucharist, having come together to hear and respond to Jesus revealed in the written Word, and about to meet him in the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation and carry his presence out into the world, we share The Peace, that recognition that it is Christ, the Prince of Peace, who has reconciled us to God and one another, in whom we are reconciled within ourselves. We look around, at the ragtag band who have come to the same place at the same time, to the same Person as us, and we lay down our weapons. ‘The Peace of the Lord be always with you.’ ‘And also with you.’ Truth be told, this is the second hardest thing we will do today; the hardest thing will be to not take them up again. Peace is the central revelation of Christ in the middle of his family, not (just) as sacrament of Story, not (just) as sacrament of Symbol, but as Prince of Peace. Peace is the central moment, and the Completion, when, at the end, we are sent out to ‘Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.’ ‘In the name of Christ. Amen.’

 

Advent 2022 Day 9

 

Hope holds on. Peace lets go.

Hope leads us, again and again, to that humble home in Bethlehem, David’s City, to kneel before the Prince of Peace. Peace has us lay down our decommissioned armaments of gold, incense, and myrrh in homage. The gold that insulates our hearts against our neighbours; the strength of our arm, and the burden of anxiety that weighs down on us in times of financial crisis. The incense of negotiation with our god, traditional deities or luck, the Universe, striking a deal that they might look down on us with favour. The myrrh of magical thinking, or denial, by which we seek to embalm the dead, preserve ourselves against our loss. Every weapon in our arsenal laid down, left behind, as we go home by a different route, the Way of Peace.

All hell breaks loose against the peacemakers. Yet, they are blessed. For they shall be called the children of God.

 

Second Sunday of Advent 2022

 

On the Second Sunday of Advent, Hope passes the baton on to Peace.

As his people are surrounded by land-grabbing empires, and make desperate, futile attempts to secure their peaceful future, the prophet Isaiah proclaims that a day will come when God sends someone who will establish true equity. Then, there will be peace between the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the young goat, the calf and the lion, the cow and the bear. Then, young children will play safely over the adder’s nest (Isaiah 11:6-10).

He isn’t talking about animals, but of the nations, who take to themselves the symbols of aggressive animals. As the men’s football World Cup is taking place, think the three lions (leopards, actually) of England, or the dragon of Wales; the lions of the Netherlands, Senegal, and South Korea. Think the Russian bear attacking the nightingale that represents Ukraine; or the eagle of the USA, or ancient Rome with its eagle flying above the Pax Romana. Isaiah dares to proclaim, a day is coming when there will be true peace.

John the forerunner comes to prepare the way for Jesus, soaked in the words of Isaiah. When he sees many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to be baptized, he calls them a brood of vipers. The adder’s nest. Not a random insult, but a marker in time: the time when the innocent child will play in safety over the viper’s brood has come near. There is a development here, from the animals who represent surrounding nations to the snakes that represent internal interest groups, the Pharisees who tried to secure a peaceful future by keeping the rules, and the Sadducees who tried to secure a peaceful future by cozying up to power. But the point is made: a new day is dawning.

How might we know peace? By surrendering the illusion of control, and submitting ourselves to the sovereignty of the Christ, the King of Israel.

 

Advent 2022 Day 7

 

In the first week of Advent, we think about hope, and death, and the patriarchs and matriarchs. Hope endures—indeed, hope emerges and unfurls—only when false hope is gone. Abraham and Sarah desperately try to bring about the hope of an heir; and, in the end, they drive their hope away into the wilderness to die. God intervenes, of course, and even this false hope has a redeemed resurrection. But Hagar and Ismael will make their own journey to the nativity of God, on different paths to those of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. Hope gathers all of time and place to the Bethlehem manger, that all may be reconciled to God and neighbour.

Our false hopes, our hope in ourselves, must die; and yet we lay them down in true hope that even these missteps will be guided by some natal star, to the one who will judge the living (Hope) and the dead (hopes) in righteousness, with perfect justice and mercy.

What must die today, that hope may emerge?

 

Advent 2022 Day 6

 

Hope is resilient. And this year, I have noticed it being much shared on social media that hope is a street fighter. But hope is not a lone vigilante. Hope goes from place to place in the resolute company of faith and love. When hope is battered and bruised, faith and love raise her head. When faith is on her knees, love and hope lift her up. When love lies bleeding, hope and faith carry her to a place where she can heal. Hope is not faith is not love, yet these three are one, and in the end they will endure.

 

Advent 2022 Day 5

 

Hope is the conviction that in the end all shall be well.

Hope, then, requires that all that makes for not-yet-well, not abstractly ‘out there’ in the world, but in you, in me, must be consumed.

Moses first encounters God in the wilderness, calling to him from a burning bush. Trees in the semi-arid wilderness have a high oil content in their leaves, and can get hot enough to spontaneously combust, burning out over a long time. But this tree is not harmed.

Whenever we come across a tree in the Scriptures, it stands for a person or people. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil planted by God in the Garden of Eden stands for God’s people; the Tree of Life, for God (I proposed, last Advent, that we should understand this story as concerning God’s people planted in exile in Babylon, and God there with them). The roots of these two trees, planted side-by-side, entwine, such that they cannot be pulled apart: for, in Jesus, God has come into the world, fully-God and fully-human.

Moses encounters God as he stands before a tree in the wilderness, a tree that stands for the people of God, a people taken by God for his own possession, to be his home, as a dove might roost in the branches of an olive tree. Within this tree, in its growth rings laid down year on year, in the sap that rises each spring, is the totality of the people of God, those who come before Moses and those who will come after, in chronological time, all represented in this Kairos moment.

As we stand before our God, lying in a cattle trough in a Bethlehem home, gazing upon his face, upon his glory, we catch alight, and burn, unharmed. And by this fire, all that is found in us that contributes to the not-yet-well of the world is consumed, until it is utterly consumed. A fire that will not go out until all the oil that fuels it is spent. And yet these halos of our sanctification do not burn a single hair of our heads: though you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned (Isaiah 43). We blaze, to the glory of God, and as lights in the darkness, as promise to the world that their darkness will be consumed until only light remains.

 

Advent 2022 Day 4

 

There’s a cumulative moment, towards the end of Paul’s letter to the deeply divided church in Rome, where he exhorts them to ‘Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God’ (Romans 15:7). By and with and in Jesus, the Gentiles had been included within God’s expanding people; but the house churches of Rome were divided along ethnic and cultural lines, Christians of Jewish and of Greco-Roman heritage. And Paul writes, Welcome one another. Receive one another. Take one another in to yourselves. Just as Christ welcomed you. Received you. Has taken you into himself.

Mary gives birth to her firstborn son in the room shared by her husband’s family, because there is not enough room for her to give birth, attended by the women of the house, in the guest room where the newly-weds were sleeping. In the main room, shared at night by humans and their livestock, there was room. Room for Jesus to be born, to be welcomed…but first and foremost, room for Jesus to welcome us. To welcome you.

In this expanding welcome, all my ancestors are welcomed in me, just as I shall be welcomed in my descendants. All those whose choices, and restricted choices, have benefited and impaired me. All those who will be benefited or impaired by my choices. In this welcome, constraints run to the third or fourth generation, and blessing unto thousands.

Hope is the conviction that in the end all shall be well. More, that we shall all be witnesses on that Day, when the Sun of Righteousness dawned for those living in darkness and the shadow of death.

 

Advent 2022 Day 3

 

We experience hopelessness when we feel we have no effective agency, when our agency, to transform a situation we consider unjust, is overwhelmed by the collective agency of others who hold a vested interest in the status quo. So, hope has something to do with agency. And the paradox of agency is that it is not self-determined, but conferred upon us, by those who came before us, and, ultimately, by God, who confers on us a kingdom, co-heirs with Christ.

If hope is the conviction that in the end all shall be well, then our agency is first and foremost expressed in bearing witness to God-with-us, the God who has such love not only for the lovely but for the unlovable. With us, in every situation and circumstance, however yet-to-be-well.

David will become a lauded general and king, but we first meet him as a shepherd boy, overlooked by his father and looked down upon by his brothers. Even Joseph, whose brothers hated him so much that they conspired to kill him, had one brother who looked out for him, and one he loved; but David is alone in the fields with his father’s sheep. One day in the future, he will have a son, Solomon, who will send envoys to all the royal courts of the ancient world, and receive envoys in return, upholding a worldwide web of knowledge and of wisdom. And at the coming of God into the world as the infant Jesus, Bethlehem shepherds and an angel army, and magi from distant courts, converge on the descendant of David and Solomon. That is to say, the agency of David and Solomon and the agency of those shepherds, perhaps even those hosts of heaven, and of those wise men some thousand years later is as one. In those agents of the nativity, David and Solomon bear witness to the newborn king.

And that, in turn, is to say that our agency may be to witness, more nearly in a temporal sense, what our ancestors hoped for, or to hope for what our descendants will witness more nearly than us. But our ancestors look through our eyes, as we shall look through the eyes of our descendants, and what matters most is not whose eyes but the grace to see, God-with-us in our otherwise hopeless state. Hope lives, because Christ is born, and we have seen his glory.

 

Advent 2022 Day 2

 

Hope is the conviction that in the end all shall be well.

Hope is far more robust than optimism. Optimism tends to imagine that things will improve, in the direction we wish for, soon. Optimism tends towards magical thinking, that if we can only stay positive in our thinking, that will bend events as we wish them to bend. Optimists must deal with a great deal of disappointment, and gradually compromise their definition of good to accommodate those disappointments.

Hope is the conviction that in the end all shall be well. Not all shall conform to my desires, but shall somehow, beyond the limitations of my imagination, nurture room for the deepest, truest, made-holiest desire of all creation. And this hope is grounded not on our best efforts, but in the One who came into the world in vulnerability as a baby boy some two thousand years ago, and who ‘will come again to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom has no end.’ This hope is grounded in God being with and for us.

I have been listening to some of the Ukrainians who came to the northeast of England in the spring of this year, full of optimism that they would be going home soon, that six months’ welcome into the homes of strangers would be more than enough; and whose optimism has more recently run out on them. Optimism is an illusion (as is pessimism) and when our illusions are stripped away—when we are disillusioned—then hope gets to her feet, bloodied but undefeated.

All is not well, and so we know that the end has not yet come.

 

Follow the Star

 

This year, the Church of England’s theme for Advent and Christmas is Follow the Star. I have been cutting out hundreds of card stars, and everyone who comes to any events at St Nicholas’ over the coming month will be given one. The star has five points: one for hope, one for peace, one for joy, one for love, and one for Jesus. At every opportunity I will be inviting people to ask God for whatever they need most right now, HOPE or PEACE or JOY or LOVE, and to write that word as a one-word prayer on the back of the star, before folding it horizontally along the centre of each of the five points, to made a 3D decoration, and place it somewhere they will see it again and again as a reminder of what they have prayed to know more of or more deeply in their lives.

 

Advent Sunday 2022

 

Over the four Sundays of Advent, we light accumulative candles in our churches. These remind us of various things, as we prepare ourselves to celebrate Christ’s (second) coming in the light of his first coming into the world. Looking back the candles remind us of the patriarchs & matriarchs; the prophets; John the forerunner, or Baptist; and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Looking forward the candles remind us of the Four Last Things: death, judgement, heaven, and hell. Looking around us in the present the candles remind us of hope, peace, joy, and love, and of the call upon us to be a hopeful, peaceable, joyful, and loving people.

These symbolisms entwine more fully than we might at first realise. Death might seem antithetical to Hope, but hope is the conviction that in the end all shall be well, and that entails the knowledge that whatever is not well with the world will not endure for ever but pass from the world as an ever-fading memory. Love and Hell might seem a less obvious pairing than Joy and Heaven, but love comes to us in our hell and harrows its gates. But there is more, much more, to dwell on in the days ahead.

On this first Sunday of Advent, our theme is hope.

What do you hope for?

Where have you lost hope?

What does it look like to be hopeful?

Lord Jesus, renew my hope in you. Amen.

 

Singularity

 

Club football has paused early for the World Cup, but Arsene Wenger is quoted to have said “Christmas is important, but Easter is decisive.” That might be true of football, but, for me at least, Wenger gets it the wrong way round.

The birth of Jesus is not merely a mark by which we measure time, whether BC:AD or BCE:CE. All time (and space) folds back to the singularity, known as ‘the fullness of time,’ that is the incarnation: the Creator one-with creation; God-with-us in the person of Jesus.

A caravan of astrologer-astronomers were among the first to grasp towards this. Also shepherds, carrying the past in the footsteps of king David; and an angel army choir. The crucifixion, several decades later, demanded by humans and permitted by God, was an early and unsuccessful attempt to prevent it. But the gravitational pull of God entering the world is too great. Easter is important, it really is; but it is Christmas that is decisive.

John described the singularity as irresistible light shining in a dark field. It is the opposite of a black hole. And far from destroying everything drawn into itself, this singularity hallows every other point in time and space, welcoming, sustaining, and transforming them with its own Life. One day, all will be folded in; and then, all shall be well.

Christmas is not the prelude to something greater. It is the biggest thing imaginable, and far bigger than that.

 

Weeping

 

And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’ Revelation 5:4, 5

As [Jesus] came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.’ Luke 19.41-44

The lectionary text for Holy Communion today, Revelation 5:1-10 and Luke 19:41-44, are linked by weeping.

When we weep, the tears we are unable to hold back affect our vision. At an earthly level, we are unable to see clearly, our sight is blurred, and what is before us is obscured. But at a heavenly level, our weeping enables us to see what before we could not, God come to us. It is when John begins to weep that he is given a vision of Jesus, as he truly is, Lion and Lamb, Root and Branch, Victim and Victor.

Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, a city of people who do not weep and so do not recognise their visitation from God. Through her tears, on the coming Resurrection morning, Mary will identify Jesus as the gardener. From an earthly perspective, this is a case of mistaken identity: he is not the gardener, the keeper of that garden. But from a heavenly perspective, he is the Gardener, who has won back what Adam lost, and Mary sees him as he truly is.

Our tears are prayers that rise before God when our mouths and our minds are unable to work together, just as the blood of murdered Abel cried out to God when his mouth and mind were no longer able to do so. The tears of the saints are precious to God. They are not wasted, but gathered up, by God, in a bowl. And our weeping intercessions change earth and heaven, for by them we are given revelation of God-with-us. We weep precisely because all is not yet reconciled, all is not well; yet our weeping points to that day when, all things reconciled and made well, God will dry every tear, and—heaven and earth fully reconciled—we shall see God face to face without distortion nor the need for corrective. More than holding fast to that future, through our weeping, that promise draws nearer.

Often, when I am talking with someone who has been bereaved, as if out of nowhere they start to weep, and, invariably, apologise. I always respond in the same way: don’t you dare apologise for your tears; there is nothing to apologise for. The tears of the saints are precious in God’s sight. Those who would see Jesus do so through drenched eyes.

 

Fifty, setting out on new adventures

 

Learning

 

I had a brilliant time this afternoon with 20 pupils and their teachers from the autism specialism school around the corner. We are building a close relationship, and either I go into the school or groups come to me, one or two afternoons a week (the parish gets half of my time, and the school gets half of that time, because they have asked for my involvement).

Today we learnt about baptism and holy communion. Baptism is how we welcome people into the church, not as visitors—I did not baptise anyone today—but as new members of the Christian community within the neighbourhood. I love to pour the water we will use for a baptism into the silver bowl we use as a font, starting just above the bowl and drawing back so there is a waterfall. It makes the most amazing sound. They loved that. One pupil said that it was very moving, profound. Another said it sounded like doing a wee. They’re both right. They asked if it was holy water, and I explained that it was tap water (not wee) but that holy water was what we called it when we had asked God to use it for a special purpose.

When we moved on to thinking about communion, I invited them all to gather around the altar with me, some in front, some behind it standing beside me, a part of the church building few people get to be in. They helped set out the (empty) vessels of wine and water, and enjoyed the loud snap when I broke the big wafer I hold up that you can see from the back of the room. Of course, some of them wanted to know what the wafers taste like. I’d discussed this with the teachers beforehand, and, as none of the children had any allergies, they were allowed to eat a wafer if they wanted to. These were not consecrated wafers—I would not give a child communion without the consent of their parents/guardians, and only after preparation classes—so it was just a ‘learning about’ experience, just as role playing a wedding with children is not the same as conducting an under-age marriage. 12 of the children chose to eat a wafer (all did so respectfully) and 8 decided that they didn’t want to, which was absolutely fine. One said it tasted like an ice-cream cone; another, that it tasted like paper; another that it tasted of nothing much at all. And, as with the water, they were all right. Then I showed them the tiny patten and chalice and glass bottle and pyx we use to take communion to those who are sick or housebound and cannot come to us, and the aumbry (“what’s behind that tiny door?”) where we keep the consecrated wafers until we are able to take them out to those people.

We also had good conversation about the church year (and associated colours, as a tool for learning and a means of participation), and reasons people gather together here, such as to pray as well as for various special occasions. We talked about Jesus, a lot, about his eating habits (he ate with all kinds of different people) and the meal he ate with his friends the night before he died, we talked about his birth and death and resurrection. Children ask great questions. Teachers do too. They are learning more and more about Christian faith, and I am learning more and more about communicating what we believe.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the term, including a Christingle service at their forest school nearer to Christmas.

 

On being dead or alive, part 2

 

I have no conscious recollection of being dead, I was too young, and now, though I will inevitably experience dying, I shall never know what it is like to be dead. But, theologically speaking, dead was what I was, from my birth in November 1972 until my baptism, when my missionary parents were home on furlough, in September 1973.

At birth, I was severed from my mother, and from God. Not that I was in any way unacceptable to God, any more so than the umbilical cord was cut on account of my being unacceptable to my mother. Birth is a necessary separation, from God and neighbour, or state of being dead. But just as I was placed on my mother's breast, so we might get to know and trust one another, so also was I placed on God's breast. As she watched over me, so too did God.

At my baptism, at St Mary’s Broadwater, I crossed, with Jesus, from death to life. And ever since, I have been learning from him what it looks and sounds and smells and tastes and feels like to be alive. And that will take eternity, and it so happens that we have the time.

 

On being dead or alive, part 1

 

I think most people would say that you are born, you are alive, perhaps for three-score-years-and-ten, you die, and then you are dead. This is not the Christian view. Fundamental to Christian faith is the belief that we are (made) alive in Jesus Christ. There are those who are alive in Jesus who have yet to die, and those who are alive in Jesus who have died, but these latter ones are not dead. Rather, the dead are those who are unable or unwilling to recognise, with thanksgiving and devotion, the life that is given in Jesus. Just as those who are alive in Christ include those who have yet to die and those who have died, so also, those who are dead include some yet to die and some who have died. That is to say, from a Christian view, there are plenty of people living among us, breathing and walking around, who are dead; who are yet to come alive.

The Christian pattern, then, is that you are born, you are dead, and then you are alive, and alive forever. Indeed, baptism is a burial, with Jesus, and a passing through death to life, with Jesus.

Life and death are entirely transformed for the Christian. It is not that they are spiritual categories rather than physical or material ones, but, rather, that our material bodies cannot be separated from a greater reality that catches them up within it.

Today is the Feast of All Souls or the Faithful Departed. They are not dead, but alive in Christ, as we are alive in Christ. We are one, in Jesus. They are not in another room, near by; we are held together in the person of Jesus. And Jesus spreads a table where we can sit together, Jesus, and all the alive, seen and unseen. Breaking bread together. Conversing. What a feast!

 

From values to virtues

 

At the start of the week, I heard a radio DJ enthuse about a couple of guests coming on his show as being people who ‘have values.’ I think he meant that they were people for whom certain things that were important to him were also important. But values are intensely personal, entirely subjective. Even when two or more people uphold ‘family values,’ for example, what each understands by that will differ.

Last night Jo and I went to see the British New Wave band Squeeze in concert. In my opinion, music doesn’t get any better than New Wave, combining the energy of punk with intelligence and musicality. That is a value statement, and it is subjective. Even if there were a thousand other people in the room who shared that value, to a greater or lesser degree, it is only the temporary gathering of a thousand individual values. We had no reciprocal obligation to one another. We had all paid good money to attend a seated venue, and though there came a point in the evening when we were all on our feet, our shared value did not prevent the inconsiderate actions of the few who stood early, blocking the view of the people behind them, nor the resentment towards them.

Values are important. They add colour to life (I value Impressionism over other styles of painting; I value blues and oranges over reds and greens). But they are morally neutral and lack the capacity to establish a common foundation on which we might agree on matters of judgement. So, we now observe the fabric of ‘liberal values’ or ‘British values’ being torn apart (democracy, the rule of law, individual freedom, and mutual respect and tolerance—the British values, though it is hard to see what is distinctively ‘British’ about any of these—are all being rejected by the Left and the Right).

While talk of values is ubiquitous, of late I have been thinking about virtues: stable character traits, that have an outcome (a generous person will be dependably generous in a wide range of circumstances and regardless of how they feel, that is, not dependant on an emotive response). Virtues are not subjective. They aren’t objective, or universal exactly, but they are reciprocal in a moral obligation to others. While there are many virtues, such as wisdom, or courage, I have been thinking most of all about the spiritual virtues of hope, faith, and charity or loving-kindness.

What does it look like to be a hopeful person, in a rising tide of fear and anxiety? What attributes can we recognise, whether we share them or not? What practices—such as long-term investment in others—might we note?

What does it look like to be a faithful friend? Or to be a congregation of people who are faithful to and within the wider community to which they belong? And to be faithful to a heritage, receiving something from those who came before us and handing it on to the next generation as a treasure? What does it look like to be faithful with the planet we share?

What does it look like to act, consistently, dependably, with loving-kindness, not only towards our closest family members, or driven by emotional attraction, or fluctuating according to mood, but in ways that reach out to embrace and bless the lives of strangers?

Are these things we can widely recognise, and that we have mistakenly labelled values? Or things that have been displaced by values?

Where values are overstated, and so lose their value, how might we reframe the conversation, pointing to an older tradition—virtue—that has waited, patiently, with self-control, for such a time as this to return?

 

All Saints and All Souls

 

Half of my time is parish-based (the other half is city-centre/civic based) and half of that time is currently invested in one of the local schools, at their invitation. This afternoon, we talked all things Halloween/All Saints’ Day/All Souls Day and from All Saints to St Nicholas (for whom the parish church is named)/Sinterklaas/Santa Claus and from there to Advent and Christmas and evidence for God and back again to death and ghosts and evidence for what they called afterlife and how Christians celebrate our communion with those who have died, held together, as we are, by and in Jesus. A sprawling conversation, with a lot of tangents along the way.

 

Evidence

 

The best evidence for the bodily resurrection of the dead is the persistent hope of the bodily resurrection of the dead, and the lives of billions of women and men oriented, in the here and now, to that hope.

For a narrow scientism, this is no evidence at all. But the failure is one of scientism, not of evidence. In all the known universe, there is not a shred of empirical evidence that love exists. We can measure short-term and long-term physiological changes attributed to love, but evolutionary biologists can and do offer alternative explanations. There is no standardised, universally accepted scale (Hk, hugsnkisses) by which we can measure the love we have for one parent, sibling, or child in comparison with the love we have for another; nor by which we can track the rise and fall of love for a spouse over time. And for scientism (as opposed to scientific enquiry) what cannot be measured cannot exist. Yet deny the existence of love, and you will rightly be pitied.

The apostle Paul said that if there is no resurrection, then Christians are to be pitied above all people. Not commended, as good people who seek to serve their neighbours. Not condemned, as hypocrites who think they are better than others. But pitied.

On the other hand, if our hope is not in vain, we are the most hopeful of all people, for death has no hold over us, now, keeping life at arm’s length from us, or when it comes for us.

Don’t discount evidence simply because it doesn’t look like we were told it should. Evidence for the bodily resurrection of the dead is all around.

 

For all the saints

 

The Apostles’ Creed, the baptismal confession of all Christians, says of the Church:

‘I believe in…the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.’

The Nicene Creed expands:

‘We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.’

It is perhaps a commitment to the forgiveness of sins that is the most culture-critical aspect of this confession in my twenty-first century British context (and while the Nicene Creed emphasises baptism as a sacrament of forgiveness, the Apostles’ Creed makes forgiveness of sins, without qualification, a creedal sign of the baptised). But today, we ought to reflect on the communion of saints, on resurrection and life.

Today is the Feast of All Saints, the day Christians are called to give thanks for and rejoice with all those who have gone before us, who have died ‘in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our frail bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, who died was buried, and rose again for us’ (taken from the Committal, Common Worship Funeral Service).

Tomorrow is the Feast of All Souls, the day Christians are invited to give thanks for and rejoice with those we have known personally, who have died in this same hope.

One of the local churches I serve has been a confessing community since 930AD. There are many more Saints to rejoice with than Souls. The other has been a confessing community since 1939. There is among our number one man, in his nineties, who was there on Day One. Here, in contrast, the Souls outnumber the Saints.

One of the things I note in Sunderland, among both those who would locate themselves at the heart of the confessing community and those who slip in and out of our buildings to remember their dead before God, is a crisis in confidence in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, and therefore in our ability to look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Every day of the year functions as a truncated All Souls, in which my loss is cut off from the community, becoming individual (that is, atomised) rather than personal (that is, embedded in relationships and an institution that provides meaning). People leave written prayers for the dead, imploring God to take care of their relatives. Every Sunday becomes a day to read aloud the names of those whose anniversary of death has come around, yet again, that week. There is no letting go, and therefore no meeting up again (as with, say, the Mexican day of the Dead celebrations; as All Souls ought to be). There is no receiving the grace to expand around our grief, such that we ourselves are signs of resurrection and participate now in the future breaking-into the present. These things are more peculiar to Sunderland than they are to any of the other cities I have lived in, Glasgow and Sheffield and Liverpool. This is not to say that grief does not break in uninvited, nor that it should be pushed away: rather, that when it comes, we can be confident in the promises that are ours in Jesus Christ and encourage a collective confidence in place of a collective anxiety.

The resurrected person of Jesus Christ bridges the divide between this life and the life of the world to come and holds together those we see and those we see no more. Through him, we are one. Through him, we can engage in conversation, using both shared words (liturgy) and the personal imaginative gift of prayer (our own words, shaped in part by the community). The rhythms of the year, these Feast days of Saints and Souls, are a gift that is both a duty and a joy. They ought rightly to be attended to, in their time. May these days be filled with light and celebration.

 

God in the midst of us

 

There are many ways God is described in the Bible. Some are anthropomorphic, such as, God is a mighty warrior. This makes sense, if you accept that humans are created in the likeness of God; and all the more so if you consider the story that God saw it was not good for the animated humus to be alone, anaesthetised them and cleaved them in two, that male and female might be warriors alongside one another, given to deliver one another from the powers of evil that set themselves against God. But God is also described in other ways, such as a mother eagle, or the wind.

The prophet Jeremiah offers us two of the most startling descriptions of God: God as a stranger, knowing and known by no one in the land, passing through, one whom even should we offer them bed and breakfast will only set out again on their way; and God as an elder, a once-mighty warrior, now physically spent, their mind also defeated by the advance of dementia, no longer able to construct a meaningful story from a shared history.

‘Oh hope of Israel, its saviour in time of trouble, why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveller turning aside for the night? Why should you be like someone confused, like a mighty warrior who cannot give help? Yet you, O Lord, are in the midst of us, and we are called by your name; do not forsake us!’ (Jeremiah 14:8, 9)

Jeremiah’s lament is stunning. It is also offered to us as faithful eyewitness testimony. God does not name it as false, nor move to redress the divine reputation, but is ‘in the midst of us’ as such a one as this.

What does it mean, to describe God, and our experience of God, in such ways? And how do these images help us inhabit what it means to be human, bearing the likeness of such a god, in the world?

Surely we encounter God, together, and for Christians through and with and in the spirit of Jesus in us, as we extend the hospitality of listening to one another’s story—of the intent and the goal of our journeying, our wanderings, our pilgrimage in the company of others, as we understand it—and in the holding of one another within a shared story that provides us with meaning as well as with a mutual, interdependent, agency and dependency?

 

heart, shaped

 

Walking home from town, I passed by two horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) trees. Three small boys were searching the grass below for conkers, accompanied by two women. One of the boys ran up to me, squealing with delight, “There’s so many conkers! They’re everywhere!” Watched over by trustworthy grown-ups, he (rightly) had no fear of a total stranger. Acknowledging the women with friendly greeting, I joined in with his delight—“I know! They’re amazing, aren’t they?”—picking up three conkers and offering them to him, before choosing one to hold on to. Its white scar, from where the seed is connected to its protective casing, was heart-shaped.

There is beauty everywhere.

 

Covenant

 

The Greek philosophers held that above the quarrelsome pantheon of popular gods there was an ultimate creator being who possessed all the omni-s. In contrast, the accounts found in the Bible resolutely insist that God is recognisable: walking and eating with his friend, Abraham; bearing his mighty right arm in battle; coming among us as Jesus. This should not be surprising—and nor is it an accommodation for our sake—given that human beings are created in the likeness of God. Christians believe that in every moment, Jesus is fully God—not half-God, nor one third of God, nor half one third of God, but fully God—and fully human. Thus, whatever can be said of Jesus can be said of God. Thus, the wonder that the God who created the first humans has human ancestors: this mystery alone should cause us to worship.

Jesus told a story to describe, from the inside, what it is like for God and humans to be in covenant relationship (Luke 11:5-13). In the story, set at night, one friend is asleep in bed with his household, when his friend knocks on the door: another friend has just now arrived at his own door, perhaps delayed, perhaps unexpected, and he has no bread to set before the weary traveller: friend, would you lend me some bread?

This story tells us something of what God, our covenant partner, is like. And it should be read in both directions.

God sleeps, with his children. God sleeps, for in sleep, even God is renewed. Jesus sleeps in the boat, not simply because he is fully human but because he is also fully God. And yes, Psalm 121 speaks of a context in which the psalmist can trust that Yahweh will not be drowsy; but, just as the disciples are perfectly safe in the boat in the middle of a storm while Jesus sleeps, so God’s children are safe in God’s presence even when God lies down to sleep in safety and peace. Even so, the God who sleeps will rise to respond to the plea of his covenant friend.

God has needs, and turns to us, as covenant partners, to supply them. For just as God is the friend who sleeps, God is also the friend who knocks on the door. God is not self-sufficient. God is the infant suckling at Mary’s breast. God is the hungry man in the wilderness who rejects the temptation to turn stones into bread. God comes to covenant partners to meet needs: would you lend me some bread?

God sleeps, and God rises from sleep. God approaches, and God requests. We can say, God fully enters the experience of creation; that God’s reign is in sustaining the order God has created, without violating the dignity and responsibility of creation and not least the humans God has appointed to govern the earth. And because God is like this, so we can sleep in safety and in readiness to arise and respond; so, also, we can approach and request, at any time of the day or the night.

A community formed in response to such a God should be non-anxious and generous presence in the world.

 

Falling and rising

 

I love the passage from the New Testament set for Morning Prayer today, Acts 20:1-16.

Paul has been travelling by land from Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) through Macedonia (the north of modern-day Greece) and down into Greece, and from there intends to travel by ship to Syria, when a plot against him is discovered. Presumably this is a plot to have him thrown overboard, lost at sea, for Paul revises his plans to take the longer route back by land.

The first thing he does is gather to himself a company who will attend to him on the journey: Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Beroea; Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica; Gaius from Derbe, and Timothy, as well as Tychicus and Trophimus from Asia—while more again travelled in a second (possibly decoy) group, with Luke. These are not merely individuals from different places of origin, but representatives of churches Paul has planted. We know that as Paul planted churches, he sometimes took someone from the newly established church with him, to learn from him as, together, they planted other churches. We know that sometimes churches planted by Paul sent representatives to him, after he had moved on, carrying letters back and forth, continuing to engage in the dialogue by which the new believers in Jesus as Lord and Saviour got to know Jesus, and the nature of his reign and salvation, better. We know that Paul sometimes wrote to churches, asking them to send named persons to him, for a given purpose, as an expression of their partnership in the gospel that was both symbolic/representational and deeply practical. In these ways, Paul faces the challenges of his circumstances drawing on a broad and tightly connected network of fellow believers.

This company meet up with other believers to break bread, shorthand for to gather together to tell the story of Jesus, to spend time in adoration, back-and-forth story telling where Paul speaks and another takes the story up, through great looping detours and backtracks that connect Jesus with all the history of the people of Israel before him and now also the gentiles, these companions from among the surrounding peoples, a joyous conversation over food, that arrives, at some holy moment, not predetermined, of remembering the Passion, his giving himself for us all.

This is such a precious thing, in response to overwhelming circumstances over which we have so little control, that the people gathered in that room remain all night. No one wants to leave. There is nowhere else, nowhere, they would rather be. The room is warm on account of their bodies in close proximity, the air is thick with the smoke of oil lamps. A young slave boy sits at the open window, reaching for any breeze. He has worked all day, but the night is his, and he does not want to miss a moment. Sleep can wait until he is dead. No one notices him slump sideways until it is too late, and Eutychus—his name means ‘good fortune’ and he was clearly a valued slave, one his master believed himself fortunate to possess—falls from the third story of this urban apartment block, and lands on the street below, dead. Paul, however, will not let him lie, but restores him to life, in keeping with the story of Jesus, the miracles that point to something greater to come. And then, they keep going, telling, celebrating, that story. Food is served, including that moment when bread is broken as Jesus had broken bread with his disciples on the night he was arrested, looking backward to the time God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt and forward to the time, days from now, when God would deliver his Son from the realm of the dead. Before Eutychus is raised, the conversation is described (twice; though the second time is somewhat lost in translation, the English suggesting more of a monologue) as dialegomai, getting to know one another. After Eutychus is raised from the dead, the conversation is described as homileó, the communing of companions. This moment, then, this falling and rising, this dying and being raised to life, marks a deepening in relationship.

So yes, I love this passage. While I am not, personally, the target of any plot, I serve two congregations that are facing challenges far greater than the resources we possess. The temptation is to be caught up in constant firefighting or give in to despair. Under such circumstances, Paul would encourage us to network with other churches and to focus our eyes on Jesus.

 

Jesus and the sinner

 

I do not need Jesus because I am a sinner. That would be to reduce the glorious Prince of heaven to the solution to an inconvenient problem.

Rather, I need Jesus as the sun needs the sky, because he is my ground of being. And because I recognise that I am a sinner, I am able to welcome his mercy and grace.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

 

On death and ecology

 

Death is the precursor to life. I exist, because my father’s DNA and my mother’s DNA tore themselves apart, disembowelled from top to bottom, and instead cleaved to the other. John’s account of Jesus coming into the world notes, ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ (John 1:5) Darkness first, then, ‘Let there be light.’ Darkness, not overcoming light, but from whence light shines. Death does not bring Life to an end, but ushers life in.

There was a time when the whole earth was barren, save for a garden, planted by God. There, the rain fell, dying and being laid to rest in the ground; to be drawn up by the roots and trunks of trees. There, the leaves fell, decaying into the soil, making it ever more fertile. Death is the precursor to life. (I have proposed, elsewhere, that the Garden is a metaphor for the Babylonian exile, and the barren earth for the abandoned territory of Judah. This theme carries through exile, through invasion, through siege and destruction, through the re-emergence of remnant communities over again.)

When Adam and Eve are driven out from the garden, this is not an ontological change in human nature—we have always had the capacity for good or evil; and always had the gift of death and life, neither of which can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus—but an ecological change for the wider creation. Our experience of death—our experience of death; death already existed, as fossil records and coal seams testify—and therefore also our experience of life—is no longer cradled in the garden, but spreads through the whole world: first, death; then life, as promised. Our creaturely labour enables all creation to die, and die well—including dying to self, and to sin, which is to put ourselves first and against our neighbour—in order that it may be taken up into the grace of perpetually renewing life, ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 6:23)

He is the light that shines in the darkness. He is the branch, because he is the root, the one who, having been lifted-up in death, lifts us up with him in life. He is the tree of life, and the tree from which his own cross is hewn (hence Nordic mythology, written down in the thirteenth century, and which paganises Christianity, depicts Odin hanging himself from the sacred tree Yggdrasil to gain wisdom and power). He is the seed buried in the soil, dying to produce fruit a hundred-fold. We die, not because we have fallen from grace, but because we are created to represent the One who from eternity has laid their life down, that life might flow to others. We rise again, only in and with and by him. The whole earth is filled with his suffering and his glory. The made-new earth will not banish the death that births life, only Death as a foreboding cipher for estrangement from God and neighbour.

What might this mean for the mission of God on which we are sent out among our neighbours?

What does the reign of God in this suffering, glorious Christ Jesus look like in our neighbourhood?

What are the implications for creation care—one of the marks of mission—that does not empty the earth of her natural resources with insatiable hunger, but does enable that quality of dying that will usher in new life?