Formulas v Formulaic

“Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12

I want to note a difference between formulas and a formulaic approach to life. The Bible is full of formulas. Proverbs chapters 10-29, for a start. And the verse from the 10 Commandments, above. A formula is a concise way of way of conveying truth. But a formulaic approach – a mechanistic application of a formula – is a way of mis-interpreting that truth.

A formulaic approach to Exodus 20:12 might run, “If I honour my father and my mother, I will live a long life.” But we know that this is not always true. In fact, we see the very opposite happening. We see children who do not honour their father and mother fatally stabbing children that do. Or, at least, we see children we assume do not honour their father and mother (and perhaps we are right, but it is nonetheless an assumption) fatally stabbing children who we are told (by grieving parents, who naturally and rightly choose to focus on the things about our children that make us proud to be their parents and not the things that drive us mad: we’d be shocked if at the press conference they came out with “He was a little **** and he had it coming.”) honoured their father and mother.

And so the formulaic approach is proved false; but that does not negate the truth conveyed in the formula. If I mix all the ingredients together correctly (factors I need to take responsibility for), but the heat is not distributed evenly by the oven (a factor which is out of my control), the cake will fail to rise, or will burn too quickly; but if I want a certain type of cake I need to follow the recipe.

When I try to think theologically by using a triangle to consider any aspect of life in terms of relationship with God, with my community, and with other communities living alongside me; or when I think in terms of indirect effort; I am seeking and advocating formulas, not a formulaic approach to life.

I do not want to be simplistic: life is too complex for such an approach. But I do want to be simple: life is complicated enough as it is, without my adding to that.

Two Triangles

I’m thinking about how I raise my children, and how that compares to how I want to raise my children. I live in a society that has chosen to ignore its children, and is now surprised when they turn out ‘bad’: gangs; Anti-Social Behaviour Orders; murdering each other with knives…And, shaped in part by my society as I am, I find myself habitually not giving my children my full attention when they look for it from me…

What do I want to pass on to my children? The unpacking of two big ideas: covenant, and kingdom.

Within the Covenant, we experience God as FATHER. This Father God gives us a new IDENTITY, as his children; which in turn enables us to OBEY his call to bring blessing to those living alongside us.

Within the Kingdom, we experience Jesus as KING. The King gives his followers AUTHORITY to be ambassadors of his kingdom; authority which is validated by POWER to bring blessing to those living alongside us.

As my friend and Senior Guardian of The Order of Mission, Mike Breen, points out, there is a correlation between Covenant and Kingdom. Employing the triangle model, we might articulate it by placing one on top of the other, so that AUTHORITY correlates with IDENTITY, and POWER correlates with OBEY.

The more you grow in your identity as a child of the Father, the greater the spiritual authority you are able to exercise. And as you grow in exercising spiritual authority, the more you grow into your identity as a child of God.

The more we grow in obedience to the Father, the less resistance there is in us to his power at work in and through us, and thus the greater the spiritual power we are able to exercise. And as we grow in exercising spiritual power, the more we grow into obedience.

This correlation means that we grow through indirect effort. If you want to complete a marathon, you don’t just start running and try to get further each day: you attend to your diet, do weights at the gym…that’s indirect effort. If you want to be happy, you don’t achieve it by trying to capture happiness: you find that you are happy in the midst of choosing to love other people…and that’s indirect effort too.

So, if you want to grow in authority, spend time discovering identity; if you want to grow in power, work on the discipline of obedience.

Likewise, if God pours out his power in your life, and you don’t want it to dissipate, don’t focus on the power: pay attention to obeying the covenant call to bring blessing to those living alongside us. If God pours out his power on your community, pay attention to nurturing the community identity, so that together you can obey: don’t just play with the power…

If identity isn’t the key battle ground for the children of our nation, then I don’t know what is. If they aren’t interested in exercising authority and power, I don’t know what the ‘bad news’ stories are about. I don’t just want to pass on to my children what I need to know about covenant and kingdom because I’m some sort of religious obsessive. I want to pass it on because I believe it will address things God has put in our collective children’s hearts, more fully than they will find these things fulfilled anywhere else…

Triangle

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hand all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 22:34-40

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbour as oneself,’ — this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
Mark 12:28-34

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
Luke 10:25-28

Three things. Attend to your relationship with God. Attend to your relationship with your community. Attend to your relationship with those other communities that live alongside your community.

Three things. God’s blueprint, Jesus’ priority-list, for living life well.

We can visualise these three connected relationships by drawing an equilateral triangle: the top representing God (UP), the left corner representing us (IN), and the right corner representing our neighbour (OUT). This gives us a framework to consider: are we attending to all three areas, or are we neglecting one, or more?

We might start with a very simple articulation of these three relationships – e.g. worship, fellowship, mission – and flesh-out what we understand these things to mean.

In fact we can lay this triangular framework on each of these initial articulations, to help flesh them out. Let’s take worship as our example:

UP: do we just talk (sing, etc.) to God, or take time to listen to God too?

IN: does our corporate worship include and involve the different gifts God has given to each one of us, or only those of a few? does our practice of worship build each other up, or are we seeking to exalt ourselves over each other?

OUT: does our practice of worship include bringing before God the needs of our neighbour? does our experience of worship result in our attitude towards our neighbour (including our enemy) becoming more like Christ’s; and send us out to love and serve and show mercy to our neighbour?

But we can lay this framework over any aspect of life, both individual and communal, as a blueprint for living well: how might it apply, in practice, to running a household; establishing a business; being an employee?

Freedom

I’m supposed to be writing an essay on God’s freedom. But I don’t believe that God is free. How can the Lover be free as long as their Beloved is captive? God is the source, the means, and the guarantee of the Beloved’s longed-for freedom. Then, and only then, will God be free; then, and only then, will God’s freedom be worth having.

Now all I have to do is pad that out to 3,000 words...

Easter

Happy Easter!

Lent is over, but Easter is only just getting going. Yes, Easter Sunday was almost a week ago (we were away), but we’re still in Easter Week (just), and there are seven Sundays in all in the Season of Easter, which lasts from Easter Sunday until the eve of Pentecost Sunday…

Why is that important? Well, for one thing, when we focus exclusively on one day (Christmas; Easter) we have already all-but-lost its significance. It is easy to dismiss a day; harder to dismiss a season. So when the Church dismisses the season, is it any wonder that the host culture so easily re-defines the day?

We were on holiday in the Lake District, and walked to church in the snow on Easter Sunday. Something the preacher said struck us: that Lent is a season for the discipline of embracing death, of laying something down, denying self…and that Easter is a season for the discipline of embracing life, of taking something up that makes life qualitatively more full/fulfilling. That is, not just taking back what was laid aside for Lent – that is nothing more than a denial of death, a clinging to the old life – but replacing old life with new life, by living more fully. We observed that this is what some have made Lent – instead of laying something ‘negative’ down, taking something ‘positive’ up – and that this fairly recent development stems from a loss of the meaning of Easter as a season…

I don’t yet know what I will take up, but, the invitation is extended to me.

On one day of our holiday, we went for a walk, and in a field beyond a barn full of cows, we came across a new-born calf with its mother. The calf was slick with the wetness of birth, tottering on new legs, and shivering in the cold wind. The mother was herself still recovering from having given birth, had not yet delivered the placenta; had not yet licked her calf clean…we’d only just arrived too late to watch the moment of birth itself. Not being a farmer, my inclination was, this calf needs to be washed down, and dried, not left out here exposed to the elements. But I presume the farmer knew best, and that exposure to the elements was precisely the best thing.

And that is my image of Easter: an event, yes, and an incredibly significant one at that…but an event that leaves us at the beginning of new life; vulnerable, not certain; exposed, not sheltered; messy, not presentable; possessing certain knowledge intrinsically, and yet needing to learn how to live in a whole new reality…

Ash Wednesday

Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Collect for Ash Wednesday

Liturgy from Common Worship, Morning Prayer in Lent

Dust | Breath

Stepping Into Lent

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

At chapel in the morning, I shall receive communion followed by the imposition of ashes, the marking of the cross, in ash mixed with oil, on my forehead, with words that remind me that From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

Ash Wednesday confronts us with our own mortality, and holds out the hope of resurrection life beyond death.

But Lent is not an individual exercise. Lent is a season in the Church calendar. Lent is a communal experience…

The college community of which I am part goes through its own, annual as it happens, cycle of death and resurrection. In the summer, some of my friends will die to the experience of being an ordinand, and rise to the experience of being a deacon; die to life in college, and rise to new life in a parish. Over the summer, others will die to the life they are currently living, elsewhere, and rise to the experience of being an ordinand, here. From year to year, there is overlap, there is continuity; but the community dies and rises again in a familiar-and-yet-not-the-same way.

Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only one seed. It is next to useless. But if it is sown, it produces a harvest; a multiplied return on the original investment.

Lord, teach us how
to lay down ourselves,
our perceived adequacy
and our perceived inadequacy;
and let us instead be
found to be beyond in/adequacy
in you.

Epiphany Of Embracing

I am loving being at college. It is a daily joy to me.
I don’t particularly like the lectures;
or the assignments;
or hospital chaplaincy placement;
or my fellowship group [the group dynamic, that is; not the individuals].
I don’t necessarily find these things
either interesting or enjoyable.
But I can genuinely, wholeheartedly and unreservedly say that I love being at college.

I observe that not a few of my fellow students are not loving being at college.
I observe that several of them find
the lectures, the assignments, the placements and the groups
much more interesting or enjoyable
than I do.
But their experience of college is nonetheless not a particularly happy one.

My reflection is this:
That I have consciously chosen to
embrace the experience of being at college
and to
be embraced by the college community;
and others have chosen –
consciously or unconsciously –
not to do so.

I do not think that makes me better than them.
But it undoubtedly results in a greater experience of ‘at-one-ment’ with God and my self and my neighbour; it both enables and evinces a measure of healing in these three fractured dimensions of relationship.

The whole is not the sum of the constituent parts.
Rather, our experience of the whole is determined
by our perspective on the whole.

The parts are bricks and doors and windows and roof-tiles and so on.
But it is the imagination of the architect that determines how they combine.
And it is the spaces between the parts that light and air and people flow through…

Epiphany Of Friendship

I find myself, this Epiphany-tide,
on a journey of discovery
in company with others,
shaken out from the routine
by pilgrim light:
in which we share
gold of our common knowing,
incense of entwined remembering,
myrrh of self-denying loving…

I find myself, this Epiphany-tide,
on a journey of discovery
in company with others,
growing dissatisfied
with offering my companions
9 or 18 carat thoughts
and words and acts; willing, instead,
to be known and know
in 24 carat confidences.

I find myself, this Epiphany-tide,
on a journey of discovery
in company with others,
writing new stories,
weaving lives together before God;
not simply telling what has been
and is, but building-up
in readiness of that to come,
as yet unwritten-able.

I find myself, this Epiphany-tide,
on a journey of discovery
in company with others;
a journey of the heart
laid down;
transformed by love
laid down and taken up again,
to love, and so to
be transforming.

Epiphany Of Loving

There is more than one way of loving.

There is to be in love with someone,
to respond with joy and wonder at the person God has already formed,
enjoying the gift of their presence;
and there is to love someone,
to commit to helping them become the person God is yet to form,
without seeking to control that process in any way. [1]

(I reflected on these ideas last summer, in one of my favourite posts of last year – go read, if you are interested.)

To be in love with my son is to celebrate the stage in life he is in at present, not wishing he were beyond it (this is not always easy!); while to love him is to accompany him on his journey through subsequent stages – in which I shall be in love with him…
If I were only in love with my children, however good my intentions, they would be stifled and grow up too slowly to reach healthy maturity. If I only loved my children, however good my intentions, they would be pushed ahead of themselves and grow up too quickly to reach healthy maturity. I and they need the dynamic tension between these two ways of loving.

God is both in love with us – sees us, just as we are, in Christ, as perfect – and loves us – desiring, fostering, but not forcing, growth.

Earlier this week I was listening to someone speak of friendship. Of how to be a friend historically was a passionate relationship (i.e. an ‘in love’ relationship) that always sought the good of the friend (i.e. a ‘love’ relationship). Of how we have debased passion by restricting it to sexualised passion; and debased friendship by restricting it to shared experienced (so, and in stark contrast to the moral and life-enhancing concern of friendship in times past, ‘friends’ go out binge drinking – mutually endorsing self-destructive behaviour – in our society).

It struck me because I already felt that God had been speaking to me, in the week since college started back after Christmas, about passion being the defining word for how I am to live this somewhat strange season…

[1] There is a wonderful scene in the film Love, Actually where one of the characters (played by Andrew Lincoln), who is in love with the newly-wed bride (played by Keira Knightley) of his best friend, turns up at her door and in silence holds up a series of placards on which he declares his undying love “without hope or agenda,” and then walks away, saying to himself, “Enough, now.”

I love this scene for so many reasons, including that it shows that it is possible to be in love with someone without wanting to possess them for yourself, and that it is possible to love another enough to lay down your own hope or agenda in deference to theirs…

Epiphany Of Remembering

There is more than one way of remembering.

I love the Eucharist, bread broken, wine shared.
It is us remember-ing Jesus’ broken body;
and Christ re-membering his broken body, the Church
(a community broken by the distances between us –
both physical and inter-personal,
by geography and by the falling short in our relationships –
made whole, made one again).
The interplay between his once-and-for-all act
and his ongoing repeated-over-and-over action.

There is more than one way of remembering.

We can remember relationships in a way that keeps our focus on the past,
a past that we cast as being better than our present,
and in so doing keep our present (increasingly) broken.
Or we can remember relationships in a way that draws on the past
in order to resource the present,
and in so doing find (increasing) healing for our present brokenness.

I have lived long enough, and moved often enough,
to know what it is to invest in another,
to be invested in by another,
to have dear friends,
and then to be separated.
I have chosen to remember in ways that have kept me broken;
and I have chosen to remember in ways through which God has restored wellbeing to me
(which is not to say that the separations get any less painful…).
And I hope that I am learning to do the latter more and the former less.

Now we are in Nottingham (for two years, before we move again…), and Jo and I are making friends who are dear to us, and whose friendship will carry on beyond this time and place.
But our daughter is just at the start of this journey
into the life of friendship
(our sons, too young to have begun at all, really),
and she is finding leaving old friends
and making new friends
much harder…

God's Epiphany

There is more than one way of knowing.
There is knowing about something or someone, and there is knowing with something or someone;
objective knowledge, and subjective knowledge;
propositional knowledge, and relational knowledge.
God knows everything there is to know about everything (that’s what it means to be omniscient). But God is more interested in knowing with creation. God wants to know us – to know you, to know me. And though you can find out about another person in many ways – Google them; read about them in the gossip press – you can only get to know them by coming alongside and, well, getting to know them…

Tomorrow is the Feast of Epiphany.
What might God learn with us, from the gifts we bring?

gold?
god knows, i am
a physical being;
in hunger,
i am in need
of bread.

incense?
god knows, i am
a spiritual being;
oppressed,
i am in need
of deliverance.

myrrh?
god knows, i am
an emotional being;
in grief,
i am in need
of resurrection life.

god receives;
and in receiving
god knows…

Christmas Day

May the babe born in Bethlehem
gift you with wonder;
the carpenter apprenticed in Nazareth
gift you with purpose;
the miracle-worker of Capernaum
gift you with wholeness;
the sacrifice on Golgotha
gift you with forgiveness;
and the prince of Heaven
gift you with hope eternal.
Amen.

Happy Christmas!


Advent , Christmas

Advent 23 | Christmas Eve

This baby
will not stay wrapped in cloth and
lying in a borrowed manger:
for there is a life story
to grow into…

This man
will not stay wrapped in cloth and
lying in a borrowed tomb:
for there is a life story
to grow into…


Advent

Advent 22

When Jesus is born,
the amniotic sac is torn:
the thin veil between
anticipation of this world
and intimate knowing of it.

But, uniquely, this is a virgin birth;
and so, uniquely, the hymen is also torn:
the thin veil between
anticipation of the bridegroom
and intimate knowing of the bride.

When Jesus dies,
the curtain in the temple is torn:
the thin veil between
anticipation of God’s presence
and intimate knowing of his glory.

And when he comes again?
The heavens shall be torn:
the thin veil between
anticipation of God’s reign
and intimate knowing of it.


Advent

Advent 21

When I am with my newly-met college friends, who I am growing to love, I feel the absence of my wife.

And when I am at home with my wife, who, still after all these years, I am growing to love, I feel the absence of my college friends.

It is not that when I am with my friends I wish I were with my wife instead; or that when I am with my wife I wish I was with my friends instead; as if I were perpetually unable to live in the moment.

It is that being in the presence of one you love is a weightless experience [1] [2]. Whereas being in the absence of one you love is a weighty experience.

To bear the
wait
is to choose
to bear the
weight.

Come, Lord Jesus!


[1] we understand this most clearly in relation to romantic love, where we even speak of the sensation of “walking on air”
[2] as opposed to being in the presence of one you fear, which is a heavy burden


Advent

Advent 20

The next day [John the baptiser] saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’
…
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’
John 1:29; 35, 36

What is the nature of John’s testimony?
It is not to describe what he has seen: Jesus is a man, not a sheep.
It is not even to ascribe a theological interpretation to what he has seen – as we might say if a witness to Jesus’ crucifixion were to say, ‘Behold the Lamb of God!’
No, John’s testimony is a perceiving of
how something that has yet to happen
impacts upon the here-and-now.

Seeing is nothing.
Perceiving is everything.


Advent

Advent 19

Through incarnation, God’s creative
Word
Was and is reconciled to the created
World,
In order that the created
World
Is and will be reconciled to God’s creative
Word.


Advent

Advent 18

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend||comprehend it.
John 1:5


Advent