Money For Nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Do You think You Are?

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

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

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

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

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

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

12

The City

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is a city of divine light and glory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am choosing to express some humanity.

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

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

All Things

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

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

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

my activity is devotional, but yours is profane,

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

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

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

Je suis Charlie.

Je Suis Charlie

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

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

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

Je suis Charlie.

The Gifts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Local Maximum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advent 25 : Making Room Whatever The Cost

Christmas Eve

Light is rushing in on darkness.  And it will bring to light great darkness.  We are about to step  into Christmastide, a bloody twelve days in which the Calendar observes Stephen, the first martyr of the Church (December 26); the Holy Innocents, those boys of two years and under murdered by Herod’s soldiers in Bethlehem (December 28); and Thomas Becket, murdered Archbishop of Canterbury (December 29).

Christ’s coming is Good News; but it is not always, and never only, good news.  And if we are to make room for his coming into our world, we shall need to count the cost...

Advent: making room for Jesus – whatever the cost

Advent 24 : Making Room In The wrapping Of Gifts

I like choosing gifts to give to my wife at Christmas.  There is the ritual of choosing the gifts themselves - what to choose?  so many gifts that I would like to give: and to choose this, and that, is to have to let go of the possibility of giving these other things – and the ritual of wrapping them – I’m not a natural wrapper; it is a small labour of love.

And then there is the wondering: will she like what I have chosen? would she have preferred the thing I passed by?

God made his choice of gift, long ago, and hid it in the present-drawer of heaven.  And when the time came to give the gift, he wrapped it once in flesh and blood, then wrapped it again in flesh and blood, and gave it...and wondered: how will they receive what I have given?

Some received the gift with wonder; others reluctantly, at first, but growing to understand its true worth; still others didn’t even notice it; and some rejected it, forcefully, ungratefully.

The final Advent antiphon is ‘O Emmanuel’ or ‘God-with-us.’  The greatest gift of all, both longed-for and needed, and yet not obviously either of those things.

As we wrap our gifts, we might make room for Jesus by praying for the loved-one we wrap for...

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our King and our lawgiver,

the hope of the nations and their Saviour:

Come and save us, O Lord our God.

Advent: making room for Jesus – in the wrapping of gifts.

O Emmanuel

O Rex Gentium

O Oriens

O Clavis David

O Radix Jesse

O Adonai

O Sapientia

Advent is about looking backwards, in order to look forward.  The Advent Antiphons are not accidental worship, but crafted, looking backwards in order to look forwards.  Taking the first letter of each Antiphon, and reading backwards, we spell out ERO CRAS, or ‘Tomorrow, I come...’

As we make room for Jesus throughout Advent, Jesus prepares to come to us, to inhabit our lives, to live in the room we have made for him.  Tomorrow, he comes.

Advent 23 : Making Room In The Craft Box

This time of preparation to celebrate Christmas is a time of making decorations and gifts.  That is how it was, traditionally, and that is what some are encouraging us to rediscover again.  Certainly, I appreciate receiving hand-made, home-made Christmas cards – the thought and work that went into designing and making something.  And certain Christmas works of art made by my children will be treasured for years to come.

The sixth and penultimate Advent Antiphon is ‘O Rex Gentium’ or ‘O King of the nations.’  It speaks of Jesus as the one who fashioned the human race from clay, and hints of the creative impulse of those made in the likeness of a Creator, a creative impulse that is shaped both by the condition of living divided from God and neighbour and by the salvation Christ brings with his coming.

I have set this prayer at the craft box.  You might get out coloured pencils and write it out – or even clay and inscribe it – or simply meditate on it while making a gift or decoration.

O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

Advent: making room for Jesus – in the craft box.

Advent 22 : Making Room Under The Light

Today is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, and it is surely no coincidence that, being composed in that hemisphere, the Advent Antiphon on 21 December is ‘O Oriens,’ literally ‘the East’ but meaning the Morning Star.  The Morning Star is the name given to the planet Venus at the stage of its orbit when it is visible in the night sky before dawn (that is, in the eastern sky – it is known as the Evening Star at the stage of its orbit when it is visible in the night sky after dusk; whether Morning or Evening, it is an exceptionally bright celestial body).

It is also a title given in Scripture to both the fallen angel who is thrown down on to the earth from heaven, and Jesus who also comes down to earth from heaven.  As such, it is first attributed to the one who attempted to take God’s throne, who rejected light and set themselves to establish darkness and the shadow of death; and then given to the one who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on human frame in order to serve humanity, coming as light that the darkness could not extinguish, but against whom death exhausted itself.

The Morning Star reminds us both that we live in a dark world, and that the dawn is coming.  The Morning Star is visible long before the dawn itself arrives; but guarantees that it is on its way.  It is a thing of beauty, and of hope.

Domestic lights are a poor substitute, but nonetheless sitting in near darkness lit only by Christmas lights, candles, or a lamp engages our senses, heightens our awareness of the dark around us and the gift of light by which we can see.  And so I have chosen to set the fifth Advent Antiphon under the light.  (This one happens to be in a conservatory, hanging from the snow-covered glass ceiling.)

O Oriens

O Morning Star,

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:

 Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness

and the shadow of death.

Advent: making room for Jesus – under the light.

Advent 21 : Making Room At The Key Hook

Keys have both practical and symbolic significance.  At a practical level, keys represent freedom to come and go.  At a symbolic level, keys represent an additional authority conferred upon the key-holder.

There came a time when I was allowed to take a set of house-keys if I was going out on my own.  (This marks a progression of freedom, as previously I had been allowed to go out on my own, but was dependent on someone being at home to let me back in.)  But there came a later time when I was given a set of keys of my own.  Then I was free to come and go as I chose.  Of course, if I was out late this did not stop my parents from staying up until I got in.

The fourth Advent Antiphon is ‘O Clavis David’ or ‘O Key of David.’  Advent is not only about preparing to celebrate Jesus’ coming as a baby, but – and primarily – about preparing ourselves for his return.  Jesus is an adult, a key-holder; and though we are not his parents, like my parents when I was younger we wait for his return, not knowing when it will be, but knowing that he will come like a thief in the night.

Jesus uses his authority to secure our freedom.  And – like a thief in the night – he will set us free by entering where we have constructed our own defence mechanisms; where we are imprisoned not least by our own attempts to save ourselves from the darkness beyond.

But more than this: Jesus has given his keys to – has conferred his authority upon – his Church, in order that we might exercise his authority to release prisoners from the prison house.

This Advent, make room for Jesus at the key hook by being surprised by his coming, by pondering the wonder of his presence with us, and by asking whose prison we might unlock – in practical acts of loving service, in invitation to welcome the King, in proclaiming that the dawn of the Sun of Righteousness draws near.

O Clavis David

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;

you open and no one can shut;

you shut and no one can open:

Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,

those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Advent: making room for Jesus – at the key hook.

Advent 20 : Making Room In The Closet

We have an expression in English that every family has its own ‘skeletons in the closet’ – dark secrets that you wouldn’t want anyone else to find out about.  Matthew’s Gospel starts with Jesus’ genealogy, in which every skeleton in the cupboard is brought out and paraded in full view.

There is Tamar: who sets out to entrap her father-in-law, disguising herself as a prostitute to take advantage of the recent death of his wife, with the deliberate intention of becoming pregnant, in payment for his mistreatment of her, his refusal to fulfil his responsibility towards her as her guardian after she is widowed twice-over.

There is Rahab: who, dedicated to (named after) a mighty chaos demon by her parents, grew up to become a prostitute, offering shelter and comfort to travellers, and who betrayed her own people by harbouring spies who came with the intent of overthrowing Jericho.

There is Ruth: who was from Moab, a neighbouring people descended from the elder of Lot’s daughters, who both got their father drunk in order to become pregnant by him after his wife and their husbands had died in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and who herself, when widowed, took advantage of her relative-by-marriage in his drunkenness, in order to secure him as a husband.

There is Bathsheba: whose story is such an embarrassment that she isn’t even named, but identified as having been the wife of Uriah, one of David’s closest allies and military heroes; David, who when pregnancy threatened to reveal his adultery first tried to trick his friend in to believing he was the father and then had him set up to be killed in battle; Bathsheba who later had a surviving son by David, and involved herself in intrigue to ensure that her son, rather than any other son by David’s other wives, succeeded his father on the throne.

There is Mary: a girl waiting to enter into an arranged marriage as soon as she becomes a woman (i.e. has her first period), but whose very first egg is impregnated by the Holy Spirit (i.e. Jesus will spend three semesters in an unused or virgin womb, and three days in an unused tomb); a girl found pregnant by someone else, bringing disgrace on her family and the family of her betrothed.

This Jesus is not ashamed to own the skeletons in his family history; but, rather, comes to fully redeem dark secrets God has been redeeming over and over again.

The third Antiphon is ‘O Radix Jesse’ or ‘O Root of Jesse,’ a title which highlights both Jesus’ ancestry – descended from Jesse – and God’s work of redeeming our past – the root or stump from which a chopped-down tree grows back, straighter than before.  I have chosen to set it at the closet, wardrobe, or chest-of-drawers.

O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

Advent: making room for Jesus – in the closet.

Righteous Resolving

In the Gospel reading for Holy Communion today, I am struck by two words relating to Joseph. The first is the description of him as a righteous man. The second is that he resolved to do something.

To be ‘righteous’ means to seek to live in right relationship with one’s neighbours. It is about the working-out of what that looks like, from day-to-day and from context to context. The Law found in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) is case law, a record of the working out of right relationship in different contexts. It exists to be referred back to in working out what to do in the contexts we might find ourselves in.

The word ‘resolved’ here carries the weight of strong emotion, of anger at a violation of righteousness and of a wrestling with how to respond rightly, having been wronged by another.

Within the collection of case law, there is recorded the case of a woman, engaged to be married, who has or who might have been raped (Deuteronomy 22:23-27). In weighing probability, the law states that if she cries out and is heard, whoever hears her is under obligation to run to her defence, and the community is under obligation to defend her honour by putting the rapist to death.

If this takes place in the countryside, the woman must be given the benefit of the doubt, that she cried out and there was no-one to hear her. On the word of her testimony – a woman, without witnesses – her accused attacker should be put to death.

If this takes place in the town – and by town, we should understand a smaller but also far denser population than in our towns, where there is bound to be someone close by – and she does not call out for help to defend her honour, then the woman is dishonourable, must be assumed to have consensually disregarded her family and her husband-to-be. In this circumstance, both the man and the woman involved must be punished by stoning to death at the gate to the city, where the elders sat to deliberate cases.

It is worth reminding ourselves that this collection of case law is concerned with righteousness, with living in right relationships with our neighbours. This law exists first-and-foremost to set out a society where it is unacceptable to rape a woman, and where it is unacceptable to treat people with contempt – to sin against a woman, and her family (what loving parent or sibling would not be devastated by such pain?), and the man to whom she is engaged. Understood in this light, the motivation is not that a daughter is property to be transacted, at the maximum price.

Within the collection of case law, there is also recorded the case of a husband who discovers something ‘objectionable’ about the woman whom he has entered into marriage with (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). He may write her a certificate of divorce, releasing her from their contract, so that she is free to marry another man. Should that subsequent marriage end, whether by divorce or death, her first husband is disqualified from re-marrying her – though she is not disqualified from marrying a third husband.

What’s at stake here? Well, it is a ruling that protects a husband from being bound to a wife who refuses to take on the particular constraints of being married, and that gives a woman a get-out clause from a marriage she does not choose.

It is also a ruling that protects a wife from being divorced lightly – a husband cannot send his wife away on a pretext in order to marry a younger, prettier woman, only to claim back his first wife should his selfishness not work out as well as he had hoped…

Again, this is case law working-out how to live righteously – and in particular, how to respond righteously when someone acts unrighteously towards us.

(An aside: in Jesus’ time, there was considerable debate over what something objectionable might cover, and how that could be abused to fulfil the letter of the law while doing the very opposite of the spirit of the law.)

Joseph hears news that Mary is pregnant. He is devastated. He feels angry, because the evidence before him points to his having been betrayed by her. Because, as someone who lived a life characterised by seeking to be in right relationship, he is deeply saddened when others choose a different way of living. This is clearly not the result of rape.

Joseph wrestles. He wrestles with how to respond, rightly – the best possible response in a far from ideal circumstance. He wrestles with case law. This is no black-and-white ‘the Bible says x’. The law provides precedents, and drawing on these a decision must be made in this new case.

Precedent would allow Joseph – or anyone else, for that matter – to drag Mary before the elders, submitting her to public disgrace. The ruling might well acquit her – the law calls for the death of the man, or the man and the woman; but the circumstance of a woman brought to trial without a corresponding man lies outside of the precedent. But even acquitted, her reputation would be destroyed, her life – in this town, at least – over.

But another precedent would allow Joseph to dismiss Mary quietly, to set her free to marry her lover, to walk away from any claim to her. This precedent would also allow Joseph to overrule – or at least to speak against – any other call for her public trial.

Joseph the righteous wrestles to reach a righteous resolution to his anger, as opposed to giving that anger free reign. And when he is resolved, what he resolves is to choose mercy.

Being righteous does not mean being resigned. It does not mean that we don’t get angry at the way in which other people treat us or others or themselves. But it means wrestling with how to respond rightly, how to channel and express our anger in a way that is liberating and not destructive. Even if it costs us. Even if it costs us everything.

Only once Joseph has reached his righteous resolution does God step in and give him the fuller picture. Being righteous does not mean being in possession of all the facts. It does not give us insight into other people’s lives, insight that they themselves do not possess.

All the more reason why the righteous are deliberate in seeking resolve.

What, in the world around you, makes you angry, perhaps rightly angry?

How will you resolve what to do in response?