on love

 

If you live long enough, you will eventually become dependent on the care of another, perhaps to come into your home and help you get up — that is, to rise — washed and dressed, to make sure that you are eating, and taking your medication.

When this happens at scale, across the population, it looks like this: since ‘taking back control’ of our borders, we have given an unprecedented number of visas to workers from overseas who work on our hospital wards, in our residential care homes, and in our own homes — and still we have a shortfall in numbers. Or like this: our parliamentary representatives are debating whether the Assisted Dying Bill is an angel of mercy, or the very devil himself disguised as an angel of light.

Not many members of my congregation are quite at the stage of needing this kind of care, yet; but as a congregation, we have been, for a while now. We are unable to do certain things for ourselves, which in the past were a matter of course. We are not able to provide a treasurer from among ourselves, and are dependent on the help of someone from a neighbouring congregation. We do not have succession in place for church wardens or a Parish Safeguarding Officer (PSO). We are by no means unique in this regard, across the Church, across the nation.

I want to say, and to say quite strongly, that this is not failure — though it undoubtedly feels that way, and I wrestle with such feelings often — but a natural season of life. Congregations (and other communities), like individuals, experience life cycles: birth, growth, vitality, maturity, aging, decline, death — and resurrection.

On the night that he was arrested, hours before his state execution, Jesus told his apprentices that the glory of God is revealed in the world by the way we love one another. This can certainly involve how we serve one another — Jesus had just washed their feet — but at this moment none of them can do anything to serve him, or one another. Jesus did not say, the glory of God is revealed in what you are able to do, the tasks you are able to take on.

The question for my congregation at this time is, what does it look like to love one another in this season of life?

What does it look like to love one another in a Christ-like way when we are dependent on others to do simple as well as complex tasks for us?

What does it look like to love one another in this way, without turning in on ourselves defensively — such that we are unable to welcome the care of others (whose lives will almost certainly look quite different to our own) and to recognise the new thing that God is doing? Because, alongside this, God is doing a new thing.

The invitation is to discover the answer to this question, not only for our own sake but for the good of the wider society whom we are also called to love. If we are able to do so, we will have deep wisdom to share. Our lives will be a beacon of glory in a dark world, and people will be drawn to the light. If not, we will have only bitterness and regret, a share in the darkness.

May the Spirit of God, who makes Christ known in the world, draw us to him and empower us to love one another.

 

on being present

 

Humans are not omnipresent, but learning how to be in two or three places at the same time is an essential part of being human. Today has been my weekly day away from work, and I have spent much of the day in Québec with Armand Gamache. Because I did not leave my reading chair, I was able to take an-hour-and-a-quarter out earlier this evening to go for a run with a few more-local friends.

Theologically, a Christian is in at least two places at once: wherever they happen to be on earth, and seated with Christ in the heavenly places. But we also occupy more than one place, simultaneously, when we recall the past — our own; or some other period of history, such as reading the Gospels — or call to mind friends who are physically distant. Those who live with dementia are present in two (or more) places at the same time, and while this is undoubtedly draining for those around them, it should not be seen in an entirely negative light. They are being human, not losing their human nature and identity. They are, arguably, showing us something crucial to being human that we have forgotten or failed to recognise.

Fiction helps us develop the skills of bi-presence, or multiple presence. The problem with social media is not so much that we are not fully present where we are, physically — in this sense, it is no different to being ‘lost’ (or, found) in a good book — but that we are never present anywhere long enough. It is like being on a bus: no sooner have you noted where you are, than you have moved on again. There is a place for bus journeys, and for scrolling Facebook, but at some point it is time to step off again. To take note.

As someone who, for neurodivergent reasons, struggles with processing sensory information such as sound, bi-present noticing can be tricky. If I am reading something and someone speaks to me, I won't hear what they are saying, to begin with. This isn't rudeness on my part (or on theirs, for gatecrashing) but neither is it a problem with being in two places at once: it is simply a feature of this human reality, and demonstrates why we need to practice these skills. And though today is my weekly day away from work, it is part of my work to help people live well in two or more spaces simultaneously, as an essential part of being fully human.

And with that, I am heading back to Québec/my vicarage in northeast England.

 

you are what you eat

 

Summary: over-identified tribalism blinds us to the grace of God at work in and through people who do not look like us.

It has been said, ‘You are what you eat.’ Everyone eats, but what you eat, and how you eat, is inseparable from cultural and religious identity. Just across the street from my vicarage, I can eat Chinese or Indian food, sometimes pizza (this takeaway is more often ‘between owners’ than it is a going concern), fish and chips — our national dish, originating with Jewish immigrants — or a traditional ‘British’ carvery. We are a nation of immigrants, and we are all shaped by all of the other immigrants. Some are pushing us to be ‘a nation of strangers,’ but that would be a violation of who we are. The table has always been the God-given mechanism for transforming strangers into friends.

There is a significant moment in the story of the Church that is recounted (in fact, this story is recounted more than once) in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter is praying on the flat rooftop — the space for hospitality, for entertaining guests — when he has a vision. He sees a vessel, like a sheet, lowered from heaven. It contains many animals and birds that, as a Jew, he was prohibited from eating. He hears a voice instructing him to rise (as from the dead), sacrifice what had previously been an unacceptable sacrifice, and eat. This he refused to do, for he was an observant Jew. But the voice from heaven told him that God had now redesignated these creatures as permissible food. Three times, Peter is instructed to eat. Three times, he refuses. Then the vessel is withdrawn up to heaven. Immediately after this, a delegation arrives searching for Peter, asking that he comes with them to the home of a Roman centurion, and Peter understands that the vision was a form of preparation for this moment.

The Law of Moses gave instructions concerning what the Jews could eat, and how it was to be prepared, and also what they were prohibited from eating. These serve as a cultural marker. To live in the world as part of this people, of all the peoples of the earth, is to embrace certain parameters. You are what you eat.

This does not mean that other people, who eat according to different scripts, are inferior in any way, including morally. It is simply a way of being distinguishable, as a person embedded within a community.

Labels are helpful. They can also become unhelpful. I am autistic. This helps me to recognise that I am not a law unto myself, but part of something bigger; and that that thing in itself is part of something bigger still, the whole neurodiversity of human experience. But if I allow myself to conclude that being autistic makes me better than allistic people, I have missed the point. The same applies to any label or marker that might describe me, in part, shaping who I am.

As a consequence of entering the home of a Roman as their guest, Peter faces excommunication by a group of hard-line believers whose identity is overly bound-up in the cultural markers of circumcision (in my English translation, they describe the Gentiles as uncircumcised, which sounds purely descriptive; but in fact they are using a slur) and dietary rules. In their eyes, he is no longer one of them.

These men have already made a distinction between themselves and the wider group of believers of whom they are a part. They are the ones, in their own eyes, who are really serious, really committed, true believers. But their over-identification has caused them to be agitated in spirit — not only agitated against others, but agitated within themselves. Peter meets their hostility with grace, and this grace moves them from agitation to a state of quietened spirit, of being at rest within themselves, of being at peace — within themselves as well as with their neighbour. This is the work of the Holy Spirit — whom, Peter affirms, has been given to the Gentile believers just as to the Jewish believers. Their spirits quietened, his erstwhile accusers are able to recognise that God can bring about life-embracing change in others, without their needing to become like them. Healthy assimilation looks like embracing diversity, not uniformity. Is it possible that they recognised the same gift of repentance — the ability to change, to embrace life in its fullness — at work in themselves?

The Church has never managed to grow beyond hard-liners, those who labour in missing the point — who, as Jesus put it, refuse the grace of God for themselves and prevent others from accessing it too. In neurodivergent language, those who require those who are different to them to mask in order to be accepted (tolerated).

But neither has the Church ever managed to grow beyond the grace of God, who gives the Holy Spirit, empowering change, enabling us to embrace a vision that extends beyond our own cultural and religious markers.

‘You are what you eat.’ ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’

 

on glory

 

Summary: we should be slow to excommunicate others, as the glory of God is revealed through them in ways we have (as yet) failed to comprehend.

Fifth Sunday of Easter: Acts 11.1-18 and John 13.31-35.

If there is a theme connecting these two readings, it is recognising God’s glory. The reading from Acts ends with a group of men glorifying (to ascribe value) God (somewhat lost in the NRSVA translation, ‘they praised God’). The reading from John’s Gospel starts with Jesus saying, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.’

The context for recognising God’s glory in the passage from Acts is that the men who recognised God’s glory had planned to excommunicate Peter (to separate themselves from him, to judge him as no longer one of them; again, somewhat lost in the translation ‘criticized’) but their troubled spirits were quietened/brought to rest/at peace, by Peter’s step-by-step explanation of why he had eaten with Gentiles, whom his hard-line critics referred to by a racial slur. God’s glory is seen not in purity of observance — neither orthodoxy nor orthopraxy — but in divine initiative expanding who is included in the life God gives: who may participate in the risen life of the risen Jesus, that quality of life that triumphs over death. (This is the instruction Peter hears from heaven, first to get up — rise, with Christ — and then to offer a previously unacceptable sacrifice that has been redesignated acceptable to God, by God.) The validity of transformation in the Gentiles was not determined by conformity to the expectations and demands of Peter’s accusers (though the new Gentile believers would be asked to embrace minimal accommodations to the sensibilities of their Jewish brothers).

The context for recognising God’s glory in the passage from John is the highly ambiguous preceding verses, in which Jesus reveals that one of his apprentices will betray/entrust him into the hands of another; Jesus shares bread with Judas; Satan — the Accuser — enters into Judas after the bread; Jesus instructs Judas?/Satan? to do what he must do, quickly; having taken hold of the bread, as an act of volition, Judas/Satan escapes/goes out. God is glorified, and glorifies Jesus, through the ambiguous actions of those who oppose him — who, intending to betray Jesus into the hands of those seeking to kill him, in fact entrust him into the hands of the Father — and the equally mysterious actions of Jesus towards Judas/Satan, who does not depart before, in essence, receiving communion. Jesus then reinforces his actions, mandating that his apprentices should wish one another well/take pleasure in/esteem one another in the same way that he — who had just shared bread with Judas — had done. This enemy-love will be — above all else — the revelation to the watching world that they are his apprentices.

When Peter eats with Roman soldiers, and accepts them as brothers and fellow heirs of the life God gives, he is participating in the life of the risen Jesus.

Whenever we claim that a group of people are outside the scope of transformation God has wrought in Jesus, unless they conform to our understanding of that life, we side with those who moved to excommunicate Peter. In the grace of God, they received the gift of being able to change. May that be our story too.

 

mend

 

The world and all that is in it, created, redeemed, and sustained by the triune God, is good. But it is easily and often torn. This is because the fabric of the world is meant to be soft, not hard like armour. The Son of God himself was torn.

We are called to mend the torn fabric of the world, according to our calling to be in the world in a particular way, or as a particular participation in the life of that creating, redeeming, sustaining God. Through carefully considered words, and caring actions.

It is said that a stitch, in time, saves nine. But one stitch is not very secure, and if it is not in keeping with the fabric, it spoils rather than enhances. Ten stitches are more likely to hold, and can be a thing of beauty in themselves. A daisy or a teapot; a leaf or a sun.

Do not ignore any tear you find in the fabric of the world (in a spouse, or a child, or a friend; in yourself, or your worst enemy; in the earth or sea or air; whether self-inflicted, or inflicted by another, or caused by your own clumsy handling) for it will only get larger.

But do not rush to mend it. Especially, do not rush to mend a person (including yourself). To do so will neither hold nor enhance. And do not trust anyone who claims to be able to fix any torn thing quickly; they will only cause more tears. Instead, observe the tear in the fabric, the way it runs. And forgive the fabric for tearing, for not being able to hold, for not bearing your weight day after day indefinitely. Forgive yourself, where necessary; and ask the fabric to forgive you, where appropriate. But do not rush to mend.

A stitch, in time, saves nine; but ten, in time, may better mend the fabric.

 

rise

 

Lectionary texts set for today: Acts 9.36-43 and John 10.22-30.

The Gospel passage set for today opens with John informing us that this account took place in winter. This might feel like an incidental detail, but there are no incidental details in his writing: every word is carefully chosen. The literal meaning of the word that means winter is tempest-driven. That makes sense, though in England these days the storm season lasts from October to October. But I think we can all relate to times in our lives when we are battered by storms.

In this context, Jesus says, to those who follow me, who apprentice their lives to me, I give that quality of life that triumphs over death, and they shall never be separated from that life which flows from God.

The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost are the Season of Resurrection or Season of Life, the annual practice of learning again what it means to live lives that participate in the life of the risen Lord Jesus.

In the reading from Acts, we meet Tabitha. Her life is an example of this. She has been battered by many storms. She is likely a widow and an internally displaced person, who has lost both her husband and her city, and made a new home in Joppa. Here she rises to serve others, mending the torn fabric of the world by making clothes (probably in a street-facing work room) and hosting the church in her upper room.

When Tabitha dies, her friends send for Peter. We read that he got up from where he was receiving hospitality and went to Tabitha; that he told her corpse to get up; and that when she responded, he helped her up. For all these risings, the author, Luke, uses the same word that is used to describe the resurrection or rising from the dead. These, then, are examples of participating in the life of the risen Jesus.

This morning, I was awake at quarter to two. I confess before the company of heaven and before you, my sisters and brothers, that I did not think: Alleluia, Christ is risen. Let me rise with him, kneel by my bed, and pray for the congregation. I did not. I lay there for several minutes wishing I was still asleep (this never works) then got up and walked down the corridor to have a wee, and went back to bed, to sleep fitfully. When I did get up, I washed and dressed and went downstairs. I sat at my desk, and slipped my clerical collar into my shirt, because sometimes I forget. A few minutes later, I remembered to slip my clerical collar in, fished one out of the desk drawer, and in attempting to insert it, discovered to my surprise that I had already done it. So, off to a good start today...

But every time that we rise can be a response to the voice of Jesus calling us to follow him. And every time we rise, we may bring life to others. I have never raised someone from physical death, but I have raised the dead, unknowingly at the time, and perhaps you have too. I have said just the right thing at just the right moment that has caused someone in deep despair, someone who was existing but not alive, to return to life. I know this only because more than one person has told me this, long after the event. Some of you might read this.

And I have been on the other side of that experience too: I have known deep despair and been called back to life by the words and actions of others, who, like Tabitha, mended a torn world through compassionate care. Some of you might read this.

Today, may you rise, made strong by the risen life of the risen Jesus.

 

if Jesus were me

 

Tabitha (Acts 9.36-43) was probably:

a widow, who knew the grief of losing a spouse;

a refugee (internally displaced), who knew the grief of losing her home city through the experience of persecution;

bi-lingual, knowing the tensions of living alongside close neighbours who had different cultural values.

The one thing we know for certain about Tabitha is that she was a disciple, someone who had apprenticed her life to the life of Jesus.

The American philosopher Dallas Willard (1935-2013) said:

‘Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.’

Jesus was a builder, that is, a stone mason and carpenter; and a rabbi (a teacher of how to do life well) and healer. (Rabbis came from many different backgrounds, and would usually continue to ply their trade as a bi-vocational way of life.)

Jesus-as-Tabitha was a seamstress, a maker of both undergarments and outer garments. A maker of items that were both practical and beautiful, created as a tangible manifestation of compassion.

The same Life, expressed in different ways. Diversity in unity.

What does Jesus-as-you do?

And where?

What has Jesus-in-you lost, and found?

 

learning to rise

 

The seven weeks between Easter Sunday and Pentecost are a Season of the Resurrection, a season in which the Church is invited once again to learn how to live our lives in the light of Jesus’ resurrection and as a participation in Jesus’ resurrection.

Throughout this annual season, the Church reads and meditates on the Acts of the Apostles.

The Gospel passage set for Holy Communion today begins like this: Jesus said, ‘No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up [άναστήσω, ‘will raise up’: from άνίστημι, to raise, to rise, to stand up, to resurrect, to rise from among the dead] on the last day’ (John 6.44) and it is paired with an extract from Acts that begins ‘Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up [Άνάστηθι, ‘rise up’: from άνίστημι] and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.)’ (Acts 8.26).

The reading from Acts set for this coming Sunday, Acts 9.36-43, tells us that at the request of two messengers, ‘Peter got up [Άναστάς, ‘having risen up’: from άνίστημι] and went with them’ (Acts 9.39) … ‘He turned to the body [of Tabitha, who had died] and said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’ [άνάστηθι, ‘arise!’: from άνίστημι] Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up [άνέστησεν, ‘he raised up’: from άνίστημι].’ (Acts 9.40b-41a).

That is to say, there is a repeated theme – here illustrated by Philip, Peter, and Tabitha – of participating in the risen life of Jesus.

The point is not that this life is a rehearsal for the life to come, but that the life to come has already begun.

Here is the thing: I rose up this morning, and so (unless you are reading this in bed, having not yet got up) did you. Whether rising willingly or unwillingly, gladly or reluctantly, I rose up yesterday and today and God-willing I shall rise up tomorrow. And each opportunity to rise is an invitation to participate in the risen life of Jesus. Each rising is a response to that invitation. I am alive today – as opposed to merely existing – because he lives: because I live ‘through him, and with him, and in him’ and he in me.

And if I rise this day, it is to bring life to others. To raise up those who need hope, need purpose, need that quality of life that triumphs over sin and death, over all that separates us from God and our neighbour, and even our very selves. To know this life at work in my own life and to give it away knowing that it will never run out.

This way of living is what we are called to discover and rediscover in this season. The Season of the Resurrection.

 

shearing

 

There is a fascinating account in the Acts of the Apostles of the faith journey of a gender-Queer Black African (Acts 8.26-40).

Philip is divinely directed to seek this person out and befriend them. They are reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah (they will ask Philip about the meaning of Isaiah 53.7-8) and they see something of their own life story reflected back at them there. Philip does not reject them but helps them to see that Jesus identified with them, and they can identify with Jesus (this they decide to do, as evidenced in their request to be baptised). They will become the parent-in-the-faith of all who follow Jesus in Africa, the rich tapestry of Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Pentecostals.

The verses that spoke to them from Isaiah are significant, not only at a personal level for this individual but in relation to how we ought to relate to anyone, and especially if we call Jesus our Lord. Here, the person denied justice is described as being like an ewe before her shearer. A shearer is not supposed to injure the sheep, let alone kill them. Shearers are supposed to remove the fleece, for the good of the sheep and for the benefit of people who can be clothed with garments made from the wool. This is a matter of animal husbandry, an annual event, familiar to the sheep. But the ewe is betrayed by her shearers, who instead butcher her.

In a similar way, Jesus is betrayed by the religious leaders of his people, by those who ought to have attended to his welfare and, through him, the good of others. Yet God will vindicate him.

The call of the family of God is to be a shepherd people, who attend to the welfare of humanity and who enable the gifts of every person to contribute to the good of all, meeting physical needs and paying attention to dignity.

When we fail to respond to anyone in this way, we are guilty of iniquity.

And yet Jesus the ewe has taken upon herself the iniquity of us all, so that we might be unburdened of its weight. Jesus the true ewe becomes Jesus the true shearer.

May we submit to his shearing, and receive all, as God (not only) receives (but also seeks) them.

 

mapping my brain

 

Map-making. A personal neurodivergent perspective.

Neurodiversity is a way of mapping the differences in how human brains deal with sensory processing, motor abilities, social comfort, cognition, and attention or focus. It embraces everyone. Those who fall within the average range of experience (the norm: which therefore becomes established as the default normal in behaviour and assumptions) can be described as neurotypical. Those who lie outside of that range can be described as neurodivergent. Because neurobiology and neurocognition are complex, neuro divergence can present in many ways; but those who are neurotypical and those who are neurodivergent are all equally human, all fall within the diversity of expressions of what it is to be human. However, those who are neurodivergent may experience particular challenges, in part because of their own neurobiology, and in significant disabling (and, potentially, enabling) ways due to neurotypical assumptions and structures.

One of the ways I like to think of this is as a map of England. (It is a myth/lie that autistic people cannot handle non-literal concepts. If anything, it is neurotypicals who struggle with literal concepts, such that they need to reinforce their sentences by stating ‘literally’ this or that when they describe literal accounts.) Everyone who lives in England lives somewhere on the map. The majority, the typical person, live in urban settings. Society is largely designed to serve this population, not least because numbers present needs. But those who live in small towns, villages or hamlets can feel left behind, inadequately supported by public infrastructure.

In this analogy, neurotypicals live in cities. They have easy access to transport links between different places (smooth connections between different pieces of information, or experiences). There are motorways and inter-city train links, as well as ring roads and dual carriageways. Of course, in a city there are also many side streets and back lanes, but many people who live in cities fall into habitual patterns of only using the most direct routes. They can become entirely unfamiliar with streets just a block away from their preferred regular routes. Should that route be blocked, forcing them to adjust, they may discover things they had previously been unaware of.

There are many different neuro divergences, such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, or Tourettes (involuntary physical and vocal tics).

Autistics have a particular set of sensory processing and social comfort challenges. They have far more neural connections than neurotypicals, but these are also significantly weaker. (Neurotypicals have fewer, stronger connections.) In this map analogy, autistic live in rural areas. Here there is a vast network of small roads, lanes, single tracks, footpaths and bridle paths, but none of them can handle much volume. If a farmer is driving sheep along the lane, you are going to be stuck behind them for some time.

Some autistic people are hypersensitive to stimuli, while others are hyposensitive. This can be as true of emotions as of external sensory issues. Our emotions can be like mountains: very big, and majestic, but with few (and sometimes eroded) footpaths to navigate them.

Neurotypicals sometimes differentiate between high-functioning and low-functioning autism, but this is unhelpful. The demands of being an autistic person in a neurotypical landscape are untypically draining, even if some of us can navigate visits to a major city, sometimes, if not all of the time. The distinction that high/low functioning attempts to draw is between autistic people who do not have additional learning disabilities, and those who do (or whose autism is misunderstood in this way, such as selective mutism being mistaken for cognitive impairment rather than coping mechanism). Other learning disabilities can co-exist with autism, just as they can be found among the neurotypical population.

Those that are not autistic are allistic. Allistic people can be neurotypicals, or neurodivergent in ways other than autism. So, someone with ADHD is allistic, but someone with AuDHD (where autism and ADHD meet and overlap) is not.

ADHD relates to specific challenges in the areas of attention or focus, (sometimes) hyperactivity, and impulsivity. People with ADHD have more (weaker) neural connections than neurotypicals but not as many as autistic people. On our map, they live on the suburban fringe between the city and the countryside, with access to some of the larger mainstream transport (connection) routes, but arguably with choice paralysis. Those with AuDHD occupy the space between the suburb/villages and the most rural/remote communities. At times, the autistic challenges and ADHD challenges conflict, causing internal turmoil.

 

acts

 

As many of you know, I run, with others, as a matter of habit. As a discipline, it reminds me that I am a whole made of parts – heart and soul and mind and physical strength. It also helps me to attend to these things. If you know this about me, you will also know that this past winter I have struggled with the discipline to run, even though I desired to do so, and that my absence had a negative impact on me. Now that the days are lighter, I am returning.

It is the discipline of the Church to read through selected extracts from the Acts of the Apostles throughout the Season of Easter. These bring us back to the first women and men who wrestled with what it looked like to live in the light of the resurrection. Since last year – and perhaps much longer ago than that – we may have struggled or even fallen away; but each year we can begin again.

This coming Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, we will hear Acts 9.36-43 alongside John 10.22-30 where Jesus says, of those who follow him – that is, who apprentice their lives to his – that ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.’ ‘Eternal’ life relates to a quality of life, experienced in the present, as a good and enduring gift from God: a fully alive life.

In Joppa (Jaffa, Yafo, today part of Tel Aviv-Yafo) we meet a disciple whose Hebrew name is Tabitha (‘gazelle,’ from a Chaldean root – the language of the people Abraham grew up among – meaning ‘beauty,’ ‘glory,’ ‘graceful,’ ‘elegant’) but who is also known by the Greek variant Dorcas (‘gazelle,’ from a root meaning ‘to see clearly,’ gazelles having large eyes and being alert to their surroundings).

Backstory: in the early Church in Jerusalem, there were many widows. Some were from the Hellenistic community, those who, while holding onto their Jewish faith traditions, had in other regards embraced Greek culture – and language – over the generations of Greek expansion around the eastern Mediterranean. Some were from the traditionalist community, who distanced themselves from anything Greek. The Church was drawn from both communities. The Church also sought to provide for at least the most destitute of the widows among their number. But the Hellenistic widows complained that they were being overlooked in the distribution of support. So, the apostles – those who had been apprenticed to Jesus and now sent out by him to gather apprentices of their own – decided to appoint administrators. Significantly, they did not seek balanced representation: they appointed only from the Hellenistic community, from the group who had been overlooked, trusting that they would not seek revenge but guarantee equity. One of those was Stephen. When false allegations were made against him, he became the first person to bear witness to (to be a ‘martyr’) the long salvation history that ran through Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, and now Jesus ‘the Righteous One,’ in the face of public execution (hence ‘martyrdom’). This sparked a greater persecution that scattered the church across Judea and Samaria. Some made it to the historic coastal port of Joppa (a port somewhat superseded by this time by Caesarea Maritima to its north). The account of Tabitha/Dorcas suggests that both Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) and traditionalist (Hebrew-speaking) widows lived there harmoniously.

Tabitha lived a life that was evident to all as abounding in accomplishing good, in acts of compassion. In particular, she had taken to heart the words of Jesus, ‘I was naked and you gave me clothing,’ (Matthew 25.36) and was a maker of both undergarments and outer garments. And we hear that she became ill and died – that is, perished. Cut off from the life she had known, and for which she was known. The thing that Jesus had said would not happen. And so, having heard that Peter, who was travelling around the scattered communities encouraging them, was only ten miles away, they sent for him to come quickly.

We read that Peter got up: the word can mean to rise, but it is the same word used, in other contexts, to rise from the dead. Peter’s commonplace rising hints at what is to come. After prayer, Peter will tell the dead Tabitha to get up (same word) and when she responds by opening her eyes (remember the root of Dorcas?) and seeing Peter, she sat up and he gave her his hand and helped her up (same word).

Then Peter called the saints and widows back into the upper room (another element of this story that resonates with the events surrounding the resurrection) and showed her to be alive: to be experiencing God’s gift of life, the life Jesus gives that restores what death would attempt to take away.

Of course, Dorcas would eventually go on to die again, and this time she would not be raised with a perishable body, condemned to taste death over and over again. The point is not that we don’t die, but that our dying is not the same as perishing: we are not cut off. Not cut off from Jesus, who is Lord of the living and the dead; and not cut off from the Church, for Tabitha’s story is told to this day and reveals a principle of belonging beyond physical separation.

Some questions to reflect on:

For what would you want to be remembered by the community among whom you live?

How might a practical activity such as knitting or sewing with others stitch people from different backgrounds and worldviews together as one whole?

Does loss (of a spouse, of the place you knew as home, or the fortunes of that place) necessarily mean a diminished life, or is life in its many seasons a gift that endures?

Is it possible not only to survive the end of the world, as you have known it, but to thrive?

How can simple acts such as rising from our bed or chair become a participation in the resurrection?

John 10.22-25 tells us that ‘it was winter’ (‘storm season,’ ‘tempest-driven’) and that the Judeans ‘gathered around Jesus,’ or ‘encircled’ or ‘besieged’ him, asking ‘how long will you keep us in suspense?’ – or ‘withhold our vital breath from us?’ In times when we are collectively battered by the storms of life, and others besiege us with their overwhelming sense of need, where do we find shelter, and what do we draw on?

 

many dwellings

 

Jesus said, ‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’

These words are often read at funerals, but I do not think they are concerned with what happens to us when we die. I believe Jesus was speaking about what would happen for his apprentices after his death, mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension.

‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places’ may be understood in this way: ‘In my Father’s household, there are many dwelling-places’ or ‘In God’s family, there are many places where God is found at home.’

Jesus said, ‘the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.’ That is, when Jesus was walking around Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, he was the dwelling place of God on earth, the place where God resided. He was at home in God, and God was at home in him.

But now, Jesus was returning to the Father (to God) to prepare for the sending of the Holy Spirit so that all God’s children would be at home in God, and God in them.

I do not think this is a partisan thing. I believe that everyone you meet is, at least potentially, someone on and with whom God rests. I do believe that it is possible to choose, in ways that become habitual, to live your life in such a way that God departs; but even then, I believe God longs to be able to return home.

But I also believe that many of the people we meet, including many Christians, live their lives unaware of the reality that they are a place where God dwells.

Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’ That is, his life both reveals that a human life can be God’s home and also teaches or (better) trains us how to live such a life.

Where does God reside? With you, in your life. And also with me.

In a world where many have lost a sense of significance or worth, or are anxious about what the day might hold, we can wake every morning saying, ‘I am at home in God, and God in me. I am at rest in God, and God in me.’ And because of this, we can extend hospitality towards others.

The point is not that there is a place for you in heaven when you die, but that there is a place for God in you (and you in God) while you live.

 

John 14.1-14

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.’

 

these

 

John Chapter 20 ends like this:

‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’

John 20.30, 31

That would be an enigmatic end. Except that John carries on immediately:

‘After these things Jesus showed himself again to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way...’

John 21.1

And as the story unfolds:

‘When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love [agapas] me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love [philō] you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”’

John 21.15

[A note: agapas has to do with choice, with choosing to accept that which is best for the other, whether it is our preference or not; philō has to do with emotion, and we do not choose our emotional reactions, though we do have some degree of choice over how we will behave in response and we can train our responses.]

But these are written...After these things...do you love me more than these?

Jesus asks Peter if he will choose, again and again, to love Jesus more than the adventures they have shared together. And to live out that love in serving others, after Jesus returns to the Father.

And John asks his reader to do the same. To choose to love and so to trust in Jesus, beyond the stories recorded about him. Because the stories that are written down must come to an end, but there is more, so much more. Jesus is still performing signs that reveal the glory of God in the world today. John wants us to participate in that life, life to the full.

I love the stories of Jesus. But if you were to ask me which was my favourite, I might just have to reply: I am not sure it has happened yet.

The actual end of John gives us the enigmatic conclusion hinted at a Chapter earlier:

‘But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.’

John 21.25

 

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

 

‘Alleluia. Christ is risen.’
‘He is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.’

The Church professes that ‘For our sake he [Jesus] was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures’ (extract, the Nicene Creed). This I believe.

Sometime before dawn on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead, bringing to an end the old order of sin and death and ushering in the new order of love and life.

But I am moved by the gracious wisdom of the Church that says, ‘Do not attempt to take this truth in, in just a day: this truth must be met, again and again, over fifty days.’ The Season of Easter is ten days longer than Lent, ten days longer than Christmas and Epiphany combined, roughly twice as long as Advent. Fifty days.

In the gracious wisdom of the Church, Jesus does not even appear in person in the Gospel reading set for today, Luke 24.1-12. The women who return to the tomb to do the job of embalming Jesus’ corpse properly must trust in the evidence of the stone rolled away, the absence of a body, the testimony of two men (angels?) in dazzling clothes, and the words Jesus had said to prepare them for this day. And I love this, because is this not where we are, invited to trust on this evidence? Like the male apprentices, we must trust the witness of the women—or else reject their testimony as an idle tale.

Too often, the testimony of women is dismissed, their story silenced, by men and indeed by other women. Yet (and perhaps for this very reason) it is to women—to the very large group of his female apprentices—that God entrusts the good news of the mighty resurrection of his Son. For the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of the world, and the weakness of God is more powerful than the world’s idea of strength.

If you find the resurrection disturbing, you are not alone. Indeed, it is disturbing, disrupting. But this is our hope: that the one who, in his body, is fully God and fully human has taken upon himself our life and our death that we might be joined to him in his death and his life, and that through him and with him and in him all things shall be made new.

‘Alleluia. Christ is risen.’
‘He is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.’

 

God is dead

 

Holy Saturday.

To be dead is not to no longer exist. It is not even to no longer be conscious. To be dead is to dwell in the realm of the dead, a separate but connected dimension to the one we are familiar with. The Jews called this realm Sheol, the Greeks and Romans called it Hades. Every culture has its own name. Those who sincerely believe that death is the end of existence are a vanishingly small minority, even in the post-secular West.

God is dead.

How can God be dead!? God is dead because God wills it so. Because God is willing to experience being dead.

How can God return from the dead? Again, because God wills it so, and death cannot hold God against the divine free will.

Why is God dead? On one level, God is dead because human inhumanity put God to death. That is, we banished God, not into nonexistence but into exile into the realm of the dead, where we are not (yet) and so do not have to deal with God (for now).

But we were only able to kill God because God was willing to die. So, again, why is God dead?

Everything that exists, seen and unseen, exists because God created it. Willed it into being and saw that it was good. God is beyond creation, not so much that God is outside of the universe as that the universe exists within God, within the love of God. This is what is meant by the transcendence of God.

But that which exists within the love of God has freedom and has not always used that freedom to love as it is loved. And so God entered into creation, in Jesus, the full expression of God and of humanity. This is what is meant by the imminence of God. Jesus showed us what it is to love; but more than that, everywhere he went is transformed by his presence, by Love incarnate: is set free from unloving. Anywhere he did not go could not be so redeemed. And so, in Jesus, God descends to pass through the world, the realm of the living; and descends further still to pass through the realm of the dead; and ascends again to pass through the heavens, the realm of the gods.

God is dead so that Jesus may be the Lord of the living and the dead, the redeemer of every realm.

 

contemplation

 

Good Friday.

We spent an hour contemplating the wounds of Christ and placed our own drop of blood (red glass beads) on, or near, the cross in symbolic recognition that our wounds (the wounds we have inflicted and the wounds we have suffered and endured) are taken up in his, and transformed by Love.

 

there is a green hill

 

Good Friday.

There are two hills in my parish on which a large cross is processed and erected every Good Friday.

The hills are formed of (what is locally known as) Magnesian Limestone. They date from the Permian Period, some 275 million years ago, a period that saw three or four massive extinctions concluding with the one known as the Great Dying. Of course, the continents and seas were different then, to how our world looks now.

I understand this cognitively; but when I climb the Tunstall Hills today I do not understand myself to have any part in their distant past, or distant future, only in their present.

Between 3.00 p.m. on Good Friday and sometime before dawn on the following Sunday, we who confess dependence in God proclaim that, in Jesus, God is dead.

Not that God has experienced death and so is able to identify with our experience of death. We confess that God is dead.

God will not stay dead, for death simply is not strong enough to hold God captive. Nonetheless we proclaim not that God died once upon a time, some two thousand years ago, but that God is dead.

We confess this because faith is not a cognitive belief, such as my understanding of the hill from where I can stand at the foot of a cross and look down on St Nicholas church; faith is experiential. As we walk through the Triduum of the evening of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the early hours of Easter Sunday, we are drawn into those events.

And, being drawn into them, they shape us in particular ways, in union with God, in and with and through Jesus.

Do not rush through these hours. Do not rush to proclaim, He is risen!

Do not push away the God who would draw us into his death, for there is no other way to be drawn into his Life.

 

Good Friday

 

Good Friday.

The ground behind the vicarage rises steeply, such that I can stand at my kitchen window and look out on the hedge that demarcates the boundary between our family home and the church above and beyond. The hedge is made of many things, but mostly Pyracantha shot through with bramble, sharp as hell, an encircling crown of thorns. The longer I am willing to stand and watch, the more I see. Robins, wrens, sparrows, blue tits, blackbirds, all in their turn darting in and out. The crown of thorns is a haven, protection from marauding local cats, a nesting place to nurture young, a living thing of beauty.

The wounds of Christ are the place where power is made perfect in weakness. For there is no greater weakness than a man tortured and subjected to public execution. And there is no greater power than the ability of Love to draw to those wounds every wound that has ever been inflicted, every wound that has ever been suffered, and to cleanse them such that what is inflicted is forgiven and what is endured is beautified.

Such is the mercy of God, to endure the worst that we inflict and to be one with us in what we suffer, that we might be one with God in the glory of Life.

The more we can bear to watch, to hold our gaze and not turn away, the more we will notice. Such wonder! What mystery!

 

the company of Christ's pilgrim people

 

Jesus said, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

John 13.34, 35

It should not come as a surprise to hear that I have an interest in films that explore the life of faith. One of my favourites is The Way (2010), written, directed and produced by Emilio Estevez and starring his real-life father, Martin Sheen.

Sheen plays Tom Avery, who, despite a successful career as an ophthalmologist, does not see eye-to-eye with his son Daniel (played by Estevez). Daniel travels to Europe to walk the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St James, much to his father’s disapproval. Tragically, Daniel is caught in a storm crossing the Pyrenees on his first day walking and is later found dead. Tom flies to the south of France, to bring his son’s body home. But something causes him to change his mind. Instead, he has Daniel cremated and sets out to walk the Camino carrying his son, scattering his ashes along the way.

Along the way, Tom falls in with other pilgrims, each one walking the Camino for their own personal reasons. Joost, from the Netherlands, is hoping that his wife will fall in love with him again. Sarah, from Canada, is trying to escape an abusive husband. Jack is a writer from Ireland, who has writer’s block. At first, Tom resents their intrusions into his deeply personal endeavour. But over time, a transformation takes place. Through a series of misadventures, they become unlikely friends.

When you were baptised (if you have been baptized) you passed through the parted sea with the Israelites, over three thousand years before you were born. If, like me, you were baptised as a baby, you were carried over in your mother’s arms.

When you were baptised, you died with Christ and rose again with him; participating in events two thousand years before you were born. When you were baptised, you became a member of the company of Christ’s pilgrim people. You may have wandered very far from Christ in the intervening years. I have baptised forty children at St Nicholas’ and few of the parents have continued to bring them up in the faith; but Christ is faithful, even when our parents are not, even when we are not.

The invitation is deeply personal, but it is not private. In baptism, we begin a lifelong pilgrimage in the company of others. Some, we will journey many miles together, over many years; others, we will come across from time to time; still others, we won’t meet, but they, like us, have walked or will walk the Way.

We walk the Way with others, and they are, at times, and often to begin with, deeply annoying. As are we to them. For we all carry our own pain. We are all broken. Joost. Sarah. Jack. Tom. You. Me. But the mandate we have been given (the mandate that gives Maundy Thursday its name) is to love one another. To love one another, even those parts that are unlovely.

For this to happen requires no more or less than that we walk the Way. That we follow the example of Jesus, who showed us what love looks like. But walking the Way is more than imitation, essential though that is. Through the act of walking in the Way, we are empowered to love by the Holy Spirit. This is not a matter of what we do, but of what is done to us as we respond. Over time, we become more like Jesus.

And this is key: it takes time; indeed, it takes a lifetime. If we are not there yet (and we are not) it is because we are not there, yet. But we are on the Way.