The trace of God

What does it mean to be human?

If you had to come up with an interesting discussion topic for a church to offer to the community, what would you chose? 

A pretty good one might be: 'What does it mean to be human?' which just happens to be the title of a new series which began today on Radio 2, with the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, as first speaker being interviewed by Jeremy Vine in the lunchtime slot. It's a captivating topic and straight away we were pitched into a dichotomy between theocentric and anthropocentric views of humanity.

Jonathan Sacks, of course, maintained a theocentric view of what it means to be human. For him, reflecting on the Holocaust, when humans attempt to be more than human (mini gods, with the power of life and death), they end up being less than human. It's Genesis 1 all over again. However, the Judeo-Christian ethic held out the possibility of repentance and forgiveness, even to the worst offender. For him, the ultimate test of being human was asking 'can we see the trace of God in the face of the other?' He was asked did he think that when people succumb to their worst side, they just bring out the evil within? He rejected that, saying that humans were intrinsically good; 'evil' being the sum of their bad choices, which sometimes lead to the unimaginable suffering of others. He distanced himself from original sin in this, not that he mentioned Augustine, but I imagine that what what was on his mind.

Whether we think that people are by definition capable of evil, or whether evil is the result of bad choices, the Chief Rabbi's view was firmly that the divine spark was at the centre of our humanity - we are made in the image of God. Jeremy Vine gently suggested that in saying this he immediately alienated a large number of listeners who would have the human race at the centre of their own universe. But God is not an idea, if you're a practising Jew; He is the source and end of all being.

It's not often you hear God brought into the 'secular' debate on existence; not often you hear someone with such deep yet gentle conviction. God was not a soapbox to get up onto, nor a struggling being who needs constant defending, but instead, it seemed, a deep and steady knowledge of being loved and held, even through the valley of the shadow of death, quoting the 23rd Psalm as Lord Sacks did.

Which is why what it means to be human will always bring up the clash of worldviews. Either we find our full humanity in the Godhead or we are the masters of our own destiny, mini Renaissance men and women who have done away with 'the idea of God' and who will sort out our own mess, if we don't consume ourselves first. I wouldn't hold out much hope for the latter position, despite knowing some of the nicest atheists...

Deep Water

Easter 3, Year C. 

John 21:1-19

'Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ They answered him, ‘No.’ He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake'.

In 2010 the artist Si Smith was commissioned to paint a series of stories about the resurrected Jesus, called Stations of the Resurrection, not set in 1^st Century Palestine but in 21^st Century Leeds, his home town.

The images are haunting and surprising, painted in greys and blacks and situated in streets; outside shops; by the side of roads; by an Undertakers; in a football ground; on a bus: anywhere where ordinary people are going about their business.

The disciples in our story were going about their business again. Jesus had been raised – it was amazing and true – but he could not be pinned down at all.

Let’s hear the story from Simon Peter himself.

Sometimes he just appears, like when we were in the upper room. It scared us witless! Thomas wasn’t present then - he got such a shock when Jesus came back and said ‘Put your hand in my side – stop doubting and believe!’

But other days it was just hum drum again – back to fishing on the Lake – it’s all we ever knew.

We had begun with this. Nothing special. We were always fishermen. He came to the shore that first time and said ‘I will make you fishers of men’.

So back in the boat. Nothing doing though. Fished all night long. I don’t know about fishers of men – we can’t even catch fish!

Just after daybreak a figure appears on the shore. Didn’t know who it was at first.

‘Children, you have no fish have you?’ he calls.

Correct! Then he suggests we put the nets down on the other side. We’ve nothing to lose so we do.

It’s like the apocalypse!! Suddenly so many fish we can hardly haul the nets in.

John, always quick off the mark, shouts ‘It is the Lord!’ He’s right of course. How could we not see that?

I’m out into that deep water, quick as a flash. I just have to get to him. The others drag the boat in, fish and all, nets straining but not breaking.

He’s got a fire going. Grilled fish in the sunshine. Best breakfast I’ve ever had. Breaking bread with the Master. 153 fish!! Best catch ever. And it’s all because of him…

I didn’t expect the conversation though. He is so insistent when he puts his mind to it. Three times he asks me ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’

He knows I love him – why keep asking? In my heart I know the answer but don’t want to admit it.

Anyway, three times: Simon, son of John – feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.

And the bit about the belt and being taken somewhere I wouldn’t want to go. Didn’t like the sound of that.

I didn’t want to follow him to the cross the first time. But I will do next time…

Si Smith’s contemporary paintings of resurrection accounts number 19 separate depictions of post resurrection events.

We’re told that this appearance on the lake of Galilee is the third appearance of Jesus to his disciples.

But Si Smith marks the following:

·        The earthquake

·        Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty

·        The disciples run to the empty tomb

·        The angel appears to the women

·        Jesus meets the women

·        The road to Emmaus

·        Jesus in the upper room

·        Jesus breathes the Spirit on the disciples

·        Jesus appears to Thomas

·        Jesus promises the Spirit will come

·        Jesus commissions the disciples

·        Jesus appears at the lakeside

·        Jesus confronts Peter

·        Jesus and the beloved disciple

·        Jesus appears to more than 500 at once

·        Jesus commissions the disciples on the mountain

·        The ascension

·        Pentecost

·        Jesus appears to Saul

(I have the Church Times reprinting of them here if you would like to see it afterwards).

His point is to remind us of the reality of the resurrection and it power within lives in the here and now.

Whatever we take from the story of Jesus on the shore of the lake and his conversation with Peter about feeding his sheep, it would seem that there is always deep water between us and Jesus.

For the disciples, the deep water represented their natural environment for daily work – the daily work of fishing.

Nothing glorious or miraculous in it – until a resurrected man appears on the shore asking them to fish from the other side, and the catch is clearly miraculous AND reminds them that they will be catching people from now on…

For Peter the deep water represents a call to deeper discipleship. He’s denied his Lord before; now there will just be obedience – obedience to death on a cross.

What is the deep water between us and Jesus?

To follow Jesus has always been the call of disciples, whether in the 1^st or 21^st Century.

Deep water is not for the faint hearted. Bu definition we will be out of our depth.

Some of us felt that on our Lent Course. To begin to share our faith with other people is deep water. What if they don’t want to listen? What if they don’t care about Jesus? Yet what if it’s just what they need to hear?!

Here is a challenge for us from this gospel today: what is the deep water that Jesus is asking you to step into as you follow him in this Easter season 2013?

Perhaps it’s the deep water of the challenge of ageing. John Pridmore in his commentary on this story of Peter’s challenge writes this:

‘When you are old someone else will take you where you do not wish to go’. The primary reference is to Peter’s martyrdom….but Peter died a long time ago. If we allow the text to speak to our own time, it may have other things to say. Many of us, in the wealthy world at least, will grow extremely old. That will be our cross. In our final infirmities others will take us where we do not wish to go. If we’re lucky and can afford a good nursing home, they’ll no doubt look us after us very nicely. But our frail and failing flesh will be in their charge, not ours. Someone else will ‘fasten my belt’. I won’t even be able to do up my own trousers.’ (p. 139, The Word is Very Near You)

Or maybe your deep water is actually someone else’s and you are having to go through it with them – a sibling who’s in trouble; an elderly relative; a son or daughter or grandchild or neighbour. To follow Jesus for you is to accompany this person through some very deep, dark water.

Or maybe to follow him means to branch out into a new area where there is no compass save trusting in his guidance. When my colleague Angela Butler knew she was dying, she said to the rest of the Team that this facing up to death was the last part of her ministry. It was her deep water. She crossed it boldly with Jesus.

Whatever your deep water is at this time, don’t let the depth and the seeming danger of it put you off following Him. He’s still calling you: ‘You haven’t got any fish have you? Cast your nets on the other side. Bring some of the fish that you have caught. Take and eat this bread. Follow me.’

Lent for Extroverts 40: 'Holy' confusing Saturday

The Mourning of Jesus, Giotto di Bondone

I am on a steep liturgical learning curve. A wacky but, I suspect, deeply committed Christian friend of mine from a different culture had a 'word from God' that the Almighty was presently calling people into the Anglican church from different denominational backgrounds (to stir it up? I'm not sure..) Well I fit the bill. As far as I can remember we never attached any liturgical significance to the day in between Good Friday and Easter Day as I was growing up in a non conformist church. But there are those, and I suppose I'm nearly one of them, who call the day in between 'Holy Saturday'.

I slightly fear the sacralising of the every day. Doesn't it go against the spirit of the Incarnation? I resist the extremes of a trend which I worry could lead to the 'holy dusters' of the very blessed dusted vestry being the focus of a special church service each year, or the holy tea lights being lit on 'holy tea light day'. But I'm being facetious.

I think I can be content with 'Holy Saturday', and in my present liturgical incarnation, there is no liturgy offered, no midnight service of watching and waiting, no bonfire to light the paschal candle while we wait for the Easter sunrise. I did witness all that stuff once and my first impression was a) why are the priests dressed like the Klu Klux Klan? and b) wasn't it just like the scene I imagine in the courtyard when Peter sits by the fire the night Jesus is tormented by the Roman Guard, and the girl says 'Surely you are a Galilean also?' and Peter denies it. In other words, bonfires on Easter Eve can be liturgically very confusing for the uninitiated. 

Then there's the theological conundrum. What was Jesus doing all that time? The 'Harrowing of Hell' is one theory - that Christ descended into Hell and brought out the imprisoned spirits there. There's a contested couple of verses in 1 Peter 3 about it. But does that mean they shouldn't have gone there in the first place? Or were they paying off their sin Purgatory-style and were now ready? Is The Harrowing of Hell a bit too Universalist? Just because someone painted it in the Middle Ages it doesn't make it biblical. Or did he only go to the righteous, to proclaim what they already knew? Or was he just reposing quietly in the tomb, waiting for his moment? We assume that if the women went before dawn then Jesus must have risen before that, which makes it very early indeed Sunday morning.

I do like the idea that the church has a quiet day every year; a day to recover from the intensity of Good Friday and prepare for the joy of Ester Day. I worry that it could become an excuse for a day off though, when I could be drinking deeply from some liturgical well somewhere.

No doubt my liturgical pot will simmer away gently over the next few years. God is a patient cook. I'll do my best to recover from the Klu Klux Klan bonfire experience and ponder the theology of the credal assertion 'He descended into Hell'. Maybe I'll conclude that as the New Testament is pretty silent on the matter, we are not to know what Jesus got up to between the Friday and the Sunday. And maybe one day I'll 'get' Holy Saturday.

Meanwhile, Lent is almost over and this blog series has come to an end. Happy (nearly) Easter.

Lent for Extroverts 39: Between a Friday and a Sunday

In the year 2000 Good Friday fell on 21st April. I know that because I had a baby that day. I was booked in to be induced at 37 weeks because I had suffered a still birth the year before, and pregnancy had become a very stressful condition that I wanted to bring to completion as soon as possible. But when we arrived early at the hospital it was pandemonium on the maternity ward and they told us to come back at tea time. 

A Good Friday service was taking place in our church, in fact in the Church Centre, as the church building was being re-ordered, so after wandering the town for a while we took our plastic seats at the back just in time for the worship to begin. It was Holy Communion. I can safely say it's the only church service I've ever sat through during which I entered into the early stages of labour.

By evening we were back in hospital and the atmosphere was calmer. No induction was needed after all; delivery was natural, the body doing its own work. The long awaited baby came whilst the final of Robot Wars raged in the TV room down the corridor. After the major effort of being born, our little boy slept peacefully in the cradle of the quiet evening with no fuss at all whilst everyone around him went mad with relief and jubilation. We went home the next day. The very first morning he awoke in his new home was Easter (resurrection) morning.

It's quite a thing to undergo a crucifixion and a resurrection in childbirth. It had also been a Friday when we found out our other little son was going to be stillborn. He was delivered early on a Sunday morning. The vicar came to bless him before going back to our church to lead the morning service. It was still resurrection morning - every Sunday is - but sometimes, often, resurrection is delayed. Between a Friday and a Sunday a lot can happen. Or nothing happens. 

It's quiet in the garden of the tomb, apart from the weeping, which has just begun.

Lent for Extroverts 38: Recommended: Church

I'm not in the habit of going to church on a Thursday evening; a couple of times on Sundays is normally enough for me. Unless of course it's Maundy Thursday.

But I do like church. Whether I was bored or not in church as a child, I don't recall. I do recall singing hymns, which I honestly think forms the faith in you from an early age. 

There was a Welsh gentleman, Cadwaladr, in our church, who sang as all male Welsh hymn singers should: loudly and lustily. In those days we had 'Amen' at the end of the last verse, and he would end in a flourish of harmony. It would be a plagal cadence (also know as the 'Amen Cadence') - the fourth to the home note, but sometimes our organist would push the boat out and take the fourth chord into a minor key briefly, before returning to the home note, and Cadwaladr would oblige with a majestic semi tonal sixth, to the note below, and down to the fifth, where he would linger for a second longer than anyone else, beefing out the chord with all his passionate Welshness. It was my equivalent of a spiritual high, standing in front of that voice. It's one of the wonderful things about church; everyone singing together. It reminds us of what we hold dear, even before you count the known physiological and psychological benefits.

And I like 'The Peace', that bit in an Anglican Eucharist where you go around shaking people's hands. Nowadays as a priest I don't go in for kissing - that's best left to those lay people who want to wade into the difficult waters of 'to kiss or not to kiss'; generally it's much safer not to I find. But by eye contact, and hand contact we remember we are one body. The vertical relationship with God is never enough - he's given us other people too. Much harder. I led a service in a different church recently where I'd been told they 'don't do' The Peace. I remembered just in time.

You hear a lot these days about people going off religion but liking 'the spiritual'. People forget that 'religio' is to bind back. We're too separated from each other. We're separated from the God who made us. Did Jesus, on contemplating the Last Supper, say to himself, 'I think I'll stay in and do some meditation instead'? He earnestly desired to observe Passover with his friends, to break bread, share the cup, pray and sing a hymn with them. That was religion. But it was also a radical reshaping of something known into something new. A King washed his disciples' feet. He took bread and wine and poured his whole broken self into it.

Whilst I'm all for loving God, I also love the church. Of course the church is people, but I love the places too. You can't spend as much time as I have in them, drawing near to God and others; being caught up in the rhythm of prayer; singing hymns; hearing the Word and breaking bread, and not love the church.

The funny head-nodding, small-bowing, paper rustling, draughty, lofty, stained glass, ancient, candle smelling, clapping, smiling, silent, symbolic, seasonal, gently dysfunctional, forgiving, singing, praying church.

Lent for Extroverts 37: The crux of the matter

There comes a time when in order to focus on Holy Week you have to go to the hardware shop. We have a proper one in our town with a lot of different sized nails, sold by weight. I bought four of the longest in the shop and some garden wire fasteners. I was rather wondering (dreading) the assistant might ask me what they were for. I had my answer ready: 'for making a crown of thorns and explaining the crucifixion to small children.' He didn't ask in the end.

I found the ideal gloves for cutting lengths of thorns from our garden bush, but they were no good for the weaving, which is a fiddly procedure. The twigs don't want to bend; they are unyielding until you break them in various places, initially, to start the circle going. Then each length of thorn twig goes in and out quite nicely, though not without a few pricks on the fingers. Weaving a basket must be a similar process, but at least that has some purpose at the end. It will hold something. A wreath of thorns is just for pain.

I have to admit it's much easier to make a cross than understand the cross. I know the cross operates on a number of levels; theological, historical, allegorical, poetic, visual, linguistic. I like the linguistic angle: it's a 'crux', Latin for cross; a focal point of primary significance. A crisis point. A decision. A sifting of true and false motives. I like the idea that something evil is redeemed, made into an icon of forgiveness, life, healing and reconciliation. It has a human shape; both a gruesome and an inspired thought. It's made from a living tree - it is the tree of life. You can make up stories about trees to explain it all to kids. And Jesus probably worked in a carpenters as a child: perfect. Someone can do a clever painting juxtaposing the child Jesus with his destiny. It also looks great in gold and hangs round necks for fashion or for exercising one's 'right' to wear it at work.

But I grapple with the theology, especially the penal substitutionary atonement argument. Try to simplify it right down for an 'answer' and it just works very badly. To the question 'Why did Jesus die?' there is the political and religious answer: a set of linked cause and effects boiling up in first century Palestine, centred on a man who was perceived to be the ultimate religious trouble maker. But you can't escape the fact that Jesus saw his death as purposeful theologically. So to the question 'Why did Jesus die?' the 'answer' is, apparently, 'for our sins/to reconcile us to God.' 

And then I'm in danger of falling into the 'two gods' trap. Jesus (nice) saves us from God (nasty/ angry). 'Jesus died for my sins'; 'He died in my place' are so difficult to unpack theologically. It all comes down to a transaction in the end, which seems very mechanistic. If I can't intellectually reconcile myself to the crux of the matter, how am I going to proclaim it?

Funilly enough I get the 'living it' bit. Things which lead me away from God towards my own selfish ends are to be 'put to death', crucifixion style. It always brings life and peace, after a struggle. And the struggle is ongoing! Death and resurrection are woven into the very heart of all suffering. I really get that bit. Perhaps I should just leave off the intellectual understanding of the cross as a bad job. And yet it's getting harder, not easier, to do so.

Lent for Extroverts 36: The Importance of unimportance

It's important not to feel important in this job. Or to make sure your feeling of importance is legitimate. 

Because once you start to let others make you feel important you will fall into one of two equal traps: you will enjoy feeling important because of others' projections onto you as a church leader; then you will feel lost when you do catch a glimpse of your actual unimportance as an Anglican Minister in the big secular world out there (where recently only 19% of people in the street could name the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury).

Because it's a funny mixture of things in the 'National Church'. People outside the church are interested looking in, up to a point. They see through what can look like the self importance of the church's pomp and ceremony, but at the same time they might be attracted to it because at its best the pomp and ceremony, which we do quite well, reflects the otherness, beauty and holiness of God. 

Pomp and ceremony of the 
enthronement of the new
Archbishop last week

The dog collar gives you a certain recognition in the neighbourhood and some people will look to you to solve the problems of the church, to a larger and larger degree depending on your status. That is why successive Archbishops have spoken of the huge 'burden' of expectation. One might almost say that to the extent that the church is floundering, that's the extent to which everyone is desperate that the leader will quickly sort it all out. Did the first century Christians who were fearlessly proclaiming Christ in the midst of persecution and martyrdom go around saying 'What we need is strong leadership'? I doubt it; they were too busy getting on with being the priesthood of all believers.

Various factions looked to Jesus to be a certain leader: political; miracle-working; conquering Jewish King. None of these was on Jesus' agenda. His sense of importance was found in God alone. It's really no more welcome to be feted than to be criticised, as I've been reminded when tempted to feel a sense of clerical importance, for example when tourists in Oxford appear to enjoy taking photos of large groups of clergy as they process out of an Oxford College in their robes during Holy Week. 

Just another 'famous for a few weeks' singer that
everyone loved. Then forgot.

A sense of false importance is the double bind of celebrity culture too. You're led to thinking fame is desirous, but when you achieve it, it must be endlessly propped up by constant exposure to fans and the fickle critique of the media who fall in and out of love with your latest song, film or TV appearance. I just couldn't watch the X factor any more because of this blatant ignoring of the real facts of fame, and the assumption that mere exposure will guarantee a better life. And sadly it's also true that Christian leaders can be flavour of the month. Or not. Look at the crowds during Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and then again on Good Friday.

There's nothing wrong with feeling proud to belong; having dreaded the onset of vestments in my life, I now feel proud to wear them, even sporting the collar on the tube; but any sense of importance emanates only through the grace of knowing I'm loved and called by God, like anyone else.