"The bible says..."

The Archbishops argued, but they also washed each other's feet
and prayed for each other in their diversity.

Anglican Archbishops from all over the world met recently to discuss, among other things, disagreements over human sexuality. Since then, Christians on social media have responded either with sadness or with satisfaction at the outcome, using a variety of ways of appealing to the bible to support their view. If you are going to appeal to a source of authority for your standpoint, it is often helpful to know not just that you are using that source, but how you are using it, and what other factors might be influential too.

Everyone has sources of authority, be they values we imbibed as children, influential books, political positions, or philosophies. The person who tells you they make up their mind entirely free of any influence, doesn't know themself. From time to time, unpicking your sources of authority can be unsettling, especially if you have held a position on a subject and then find that as you look at how you have got to your position, you can honestly say that your position is weakening. We can see this if we reflect on how attitudes towards marriage have altered from one generation to another.

So, for example, it's widely accepted today, at least in the UK, that a couple who come to the Church of England with a marriage request, will normally have lived together already. Not many C of E priests I know even think of this as in any way strange. We go right ahead and welcome them, of course; me included. But 200 years ago, social mores were very different. Imagine how society (let alone the church) would have reacted then to an unmarried woman living intimately with an unmarried man. And yet the bible hasn't changed. It says various things; it doesn't mention others; and all sorts of people appeal to it for various positions. We who take moral stances and say 'the bible says.....' have sometimes forgotten that morality has its own fashions.

To realise you are a child of your generation is to realise that the things you find morally 'normal' are different from what your parents thought of as 'normal' and (more challenging) will be different from what your children will think of as 'normal'. What is actually going on? Is it that as time goes by, things are genuinely going downhill morally, OR, are things actually improving morally? Your answer to this depends a lot on your perspective. Or perhaps it's neither of the above; it's just that culture alters, and sometimes these alterations appear to be in line with God's good purposes for humankind, and sometimes they don't. 

The tricky thing (and, surprise, surprise, exactly what the Archbishops found) is that not everyone agrees on how to read the intersection between faith and culture.

This is why, on the subject of human sexuality, we need to be gentle with the consciences of those with whom we disagree. It is not a good idea to ride roughshod over someone else's conscience, because though you might be 'unshackled' yourself on a particular topic, one day you might wish that your conscience be given some leeway on another. St Paul, counselling the church over a change in attitude towards religious practice and food, asked that those with a 'stronger conscience' defer to those with a weaker one, so as not to 'lose' them, as it were (1 Corinthians 10:28-9).

When someone says 'the bible says x, y, or z', they're probably referring to a text, or group of texts, which say certain things about the situation for which they were written, and which might have a much wider application too. So there are many texts about marriage. All of them are about heterosexual marriage, and that has been taken to mean entirely opposite things: that marriage between persons of the same gender is wrong; or that since the bible doesn't mention them, gay unions can't be that wrong. Different people read 'the argument from silence' completely different ways. So it's complex. The challenge for believers (and for all people with sacred books) is always how to interpret the texts...

(See this from the archive, for instance) http://www.parttimepriest.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/religion

And we don't interpret them alone. We interpret them with each other and (especially) alongside those with whom we don't agree. Whatever the Archbishops did or did not achieve, at least they sat down with each other to talk. 

Anglicans value Scripture highly, but reason and tradition are also important tools in interpretation, something the great Anglican Doctor of the church, Richard Hooker explored in his 16th Century work The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

Hooker inaugurated the Anglican 'via media', the middle way between the Roman Catholic and the Puritan answer to doctrinal matters. The middle way appeals to me as a concept - I like to think it's reasonable and respectful - but is seen by some as a hopeless liberal fudge. 


Hooker's Scripture, Reason and Tradition can be seen as a three legged stool in all matters theological and ecclesiastical. No believer is outside a tradition - we all develop our beliefs and faith practices within one - and we may as well recognise the nature of our particular one, whether Conservative Evangelical, Catholic, Pentecostal, Methodist, Charismatic, Liberal, or whatever. 

A three legged stool of Scripture, Reason and Tradition is stable - a chord of three strands cannot be broken. Three is good. Fast forward a few centuries and Wesley also stressed experience, going one better and giving us the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral': Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience'. When Christians make decisions about what God thinks on a particular topic, they could do worse than consider these four in conversation with each other.

For example, for centuries, until 1994 in fact, the Church of England officially interpreted scriptures concerning female leadership in the church as prohibitive, not even imagining that women could be priests. Many bible texts taken at face value appeared to point in this direction. Scripture and Tradition held that female ordination was absolutely no-go. And for years, that was the norm. But reasonable voices began to question it. If society was changing to embrace women in all levels of public life, and if women themselves were saying they thought God was calling them to ordination (voicing their experience) shouldn't the church think again about women's leadership? 

And that is what the Church of England did. Other Christian denominations got there faster, some have yet to arrive. It took a long time but eventually we embraced the idea, even though the bible had not changed. Yet how it was interpreted changed. In addition, the C of E, along with many other denominations, also redefined marriage to include those who might re-marry after divorce, something our Anglican forebears would have baulked at. Because society was accepting that although marriage is ideally for life, sometimes things go wrong and people want a fresh start.

Some Christians get nervous at the mention of 'society' and the re-interpretation of biblical texts. They think the church is capitulating to social pressure, being moulded by the times, etc. etc. without realising that 'society' and 'church' are a lot less separate than we imagine. If we believe that God is active throughout the world, surely it's not just through believers that good change can be brought about. (But what is good change?!)

So next time you cite a bible verse in support of an argument, ask yourself, why have I chosen this verse and not another; how has my Tradition interpreted this subject in the past; how does reason handle texts which say different things about the same topic, or nothing about the topic; and whose voices (with different experiences from mine) should be brought to this topic?

And whatever you do, avoid pointless and hurtful arguments on social media. Some people genuinely want to engage and some only want to win the argument.

On the Road

Sermon for Easter 3.

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 

‘Lord as we gather around your Word now and meditate on the story of the Emmaus journey, may you draw alongside us today as you did then, and open our hearts and minds to you afresh. Amen.’

Today in our Gospel reading, we are ‘on the road’.

I’m bound to think of Jack Kerouac’s novel of the same name in which free spirited friends from 1950s America travel across the States in a car, in search of freedom and self identity, fuelled by poetry, jazz and not a little drug experimentation.

Or the even more gritty novel by Cormac McCarthy, ‘The Road’, about a father and child who trudge the road in an apocalyptic scene set some time after most of the world has destroyed itself and only those who roam and scavenge can survive.

In both novels the main characters are on the road. They travel from A to B. The road is the only way ahead and it must be walked.

On that evening of the first day of resurrection, we find two disciples on the road. We assume they were disciples because it says ‘two of them’. One is called Cleopas and the other is un-named.

We don’t know why they were journeying to Emmaus, a small village about seven miles from Jerusalem, but we might imagine that in the light of all that has happened, they are still digesting all their conflicting emotions and disappointments. They are trudging.

They talk while they trudge. They talk of all the things that have happened – how their hopes have been dashed and how sad they are it has all come to this. How the hoped for Messiah did not win against the powers of evil.

And then Jesus comes alongside.

He walks with them, he gives them an incredible bible study and, once they reach the village, he is known in the breaking of bread.

I wonder what it is you find on the Emmaus Road?

It would seem that in accompanying them, opening the Word of God to them and making himself known in the breaking of bread, Jesus gave all the sustenance we could ever possibly need for the journey.

So how’s your journey going?

I don’t know how often you are able to consider how your life’s journey is going, or if you have anyone with whom you can reflect on this question…it is perhaps a sign of the paucity of our spiritual relationships that we find it difficult to find anyone with whom we could ask some searching spiritual questions, such as: how have I grown nearer to God in the last year? How has my prayer life grown?

In their book Sleeping with Bread, Jesuits Dennis and Sheila Linn, and their son, Matthew, write of how they meet annually with trusted friends to spiritually review their lives under God. It sometimes means driving a distance to find such friends, friends who aren’t afraid to ask searching questions and who don’t mind you asking these of them either. Friends who understand that life is a spiritual journey; that if we gain the whole world bur forfeit our soul, we are truly to be pitied.

Dennis writes: ‘for about twenty years, Matt and I met with a group of six Jesuits each summer at a lake. Each person took half a day to share his year and hear the others’ reactions. We did this because we wanted to be known by one another so well that we could help each other discern new directions’ (p. 38).

He talks about new directions though he is well past middle age – but this is a sign of walking the road and keeping close to Jesus.

Staying still in the Christian life is not an option. We are all journeying, but how do we discern the presence of Jesus in that journey? One thing to think about might be to find someone with whom you could review your journey on a regular basis, someone who can discern the presence of Christ in you, and what new directions Christ may be calling you into.

Secondly, that bible study. We heard in the reading how the disciples reflected that their hearts burned within them as Jesus revealed all about the Messiah in their Scriptures; about what had to happen to the Messiah as he lay down his life for the world.

And Jesus chides them gently.

I love that phrase ‘slow of heart’ that Jesus uses to describe how they have been a bit dense when it came to interpreting the Scriptures. Not slow of mind, note: slow of heart. We can read the Scriptures for all we’re worth, but if we’re not finding ourselves in Christ within those pages, it might as well be just an academic exercise.

When was the last time you read something from the Bible and it sank slowly in, sounding fresh and making an actual difference to your inner being? When was the last time you (or I) chewed over a word or phrase at some leisure, not assuming we know what it means, but being open to a new relevance?

Have you been reading the same bible notes for decades with nothing new to challenge you? Why not try a different writer, from a different Christian tradition? Jesus’ admonishment to his disciples reminds us that the Word of God is alive and active; in it we meet the Living Word. If this doesn’t happen, we need to have a fresh bible study with Jesus.

And finally, the breaking of bread.

As if company on the road and bible study were not sufficient, Jesus makes himself known in the breaking of bread.

It’s very simple. He took it, blessed it, broke it and gave it. It’s the exact same pattern used in all services of Holy Communion since.

And it was in this taking, breaking, blessing and giving that he was finally recognized. Their eyes were opened and he vanished from their sight.

He feeds us still every time we break bread together.

The service of Holy Communion can become so familiar too that we forget that it is here that we are supremely fed, and fed together, which is significant.

I wonder what you find on the road to Emmaus?

Is the companionship of Jesus on the journey that feeds you?

Is it the bible study that warms your heart?

Is it the taking, breaking, blessing and giving of bread?

Jesus is so generous he gives himself to us in all of these, and more.

We take a moment’s silence to meditate on these 3 things we find on the Emmaus Road: the companion, the living Word and the broken bread. Please use the illustrations to engage afresh with the risen Christ and pray we might meet him again today.

Sensing Lent 31: The view from here

I've spent a lot of the day on European motorways. Lots of slow traffic but I was happy anyway - entirely because it's very different from what I normally get up to. A change is as good as a rest, they say, and I'm having both. It must be to do with perspective - everything expends and normal concerns are enveloped by something much bigger.

Post modern philosophy maintains that there's no view from nowhere; everyone has, literally a 'point of view' from which they see things, and no one can be neutral. This idea sits pretty comfortably with me but there are those for whom this has troubling implications for biblical interpretation. If there's no neutrality, do we all see a 'different truth' therein?

An interesting anecdote I heard was of a lady who went to a bible study on the book of Ruth. She was confidently told by the other members (all seasoned bible readers) that this book of the bible was about 'the Kinsman Redeemer'. This is true, objectively - Boaz, who married Ruth, was a 'type' of the Christ, who is human like us (kinsman) and our divine redeemer. But this lady was struggling with things at the time, struggling but pushing on through. She read Ruth and said 'I thought it was about a woman who overcame obstacles and eventually triumphed in her life.' Well, exactly.

We all have a view point. Even if it's from a traffic jam, it's bound to be illuminating.

Sensing Lent 27: Journal

I don't know why I started writing a journal, but when I look back on all the things I felt the need to chronicle, circa 1981, it seems it was mainly to do with the price of food in the Sixth Form College cafe ('sausage roll, 50p; cookie, 35p' etc.) and whether I could make my lunch allowance stretch to the end of the week. It does not make for inspiring reading.

Thankfully more interesting subjects for journalling arose, chief of which was a newly invigorated Christian faith, which needed exploring via prayer topics and reflections on the bible and on events. And so prayer, bible reading and writing became inextricably linked, and I've been going about 30 years now. Hence the large towers of spiral bound notebooks piling up in various cupboards.

I also kept a journal of the first year of each of the children's lives, which they will no doubt find either vastly amusing or deeply embarrassing when I'm gone ('was up feeding four times in the night, three dirty nappies, ran out of clean babygros, feeling tired and fed up'. That kind of thing).

One major benefit of a spiritual journal is the re-reading. Without it I think I'd simply forget the things God was trying to teach me. You get a sense that somehow there's a progression to the spiritual life, even if it's a regression followed by something important learnt. There's something about the physical writing of it that slows your thoughts down and helps you reflect - or to notice patterns to events or feelings, to give thanks for stuff and/or to give you permission to be sad.

I suppose if the writers of the 66 Old and New Testament documents hadn't recorded the happenings of God's people down the centuries, we wouldn't have a bible at all and wouldn't even know anything about Jesus, so you could argue that the discipline of writing is foundational in Christianity. We're a people of the Book. 

And, for better or worse, I'm a person of the spiral bound notebook.

Lent for Extroverts 25: I have a hunch...

I have always been uncomfortable with the declaration, made by some that 'God told me to do such and such', but looking through the bible, it would appear that this is how many individuals did actually hear God's voice. In fact it's quite the norm for whole conversations of great detail to be recorded between believers and God, in which God is either listing the measurements of a new Tabernacle in minute detail (Exodus 25); itemising purity laws that run to greater length than an entire NHS manual (Leviticus 11), or sending someone to a specific address where a certain man will be for whom they must perform some service (Acts 9: Ananias going to heal Saul's blindness).

Opinion seems divided on whether it gets harder or easier to hear God's voice as you go through the Christian life. I understand the viewpoint that part of the maturing process is to experience the apparent silence of God, as it makes you more reliant on seeking God for God alone, and not for what He might be able to do for you. But it would appear to be unfortunate timing that just as you might be mature enough to take on leadership of some sort, you begin to find it more and more difficult to discern God's actual voice.

The more I read Old and New Testament accounts of how God spoke with individuals, the more detached they appear to be from my actual experience. I have never heard a long message from God which itemises everything in such detail as per bible accounts. It's been much more an impression, a hunch, a 'feeling' (oh, but you can't trust your feelings....) that maybe, it's just possible, that I might just think about considering doing such and such. As an option amongst other possible options, of course. 

You can imagine the chaos if this impressionistic, hunch-like feeling were all that the bible heroes had to go on: 

Moses: I've got this sort of hunch that maybe we should build a kind of building thing for God to be worshipped in...
Aaron: Could you be more specific?
Moses: Well, I think maybe we ought to use some, maybe, building materials...?
Aaron: Yesss.........what did you have in mind?
Moses: Well, I had a vague impression that maybe something that will last a bit longer than tents....?
Aaron (to himself: this is going to be painful...)

Or Ananias:
Ananias: I had a very small feeling this morning that maybe there's someone who needs my help out there...
Mrs Ananias: Yes? Anyone in particular?
Ananias: To be honest I can't really be sure - someone who's possibly quite nearby?
Mrs Ananias: Well, the maidservant's been very glum recently...
Ananias: Not, not her....Oh, I dunno, I'll ponder it for a few weeks and see if I get any clarity...
Mrs Ananias: Probably best; we are awfully busy these days...

Or for that matter: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King: 'I have a hunch....'

But maybe there's more to be said for the hunch than first meets the eye. I had one a few days ago. I thought it was probably just me, but I pondered my hunch and sent an email, in which I chose some words carefully, on a hunch. Which led to an impression that I should pray for someone. Which led to a conversation around a decision that needed God's guidance. Guidance that in His great kindness, He apparently wanted me to be involved in.

So today I am giving thanks for the hunch. It may not quite be divine lightning falling from the heavens; it may not lead to a huge new Cathedral being built round here, or someone being miraculously healed of blindness; but it may just be the still small voice that, especially this Lent, I need to hear and act upon.

Images of maleness

The other day I found myself reflecting on three images of maleness which presented themselves on a day trip to London.

In the first I listened to a well known Christian speaker tell of his journey from a restrictive to an 'open' position on women in church leadership. He pleaded a background in single sex boarding schools and conservative evangelical Christianity, The latter had at least given him a love of the bible and a desire to share his faith with others. But it had brought with it a default position of believing that the New Testament prohibited women from teaching or leading in the church ('I permit not a woman to teach or usurp authority').

A spell of attending to his own experience (of women guiding and teaching him things personally) and a long hard re-look at the context of the New Testament had led him to embrace women's ministry at all levels. He thought male single sex education coupled with a stiff upper lip approach to English life may have contributed to his initial inability to relate to women and imagine collaborative ministry alongside them. How many other men were still dressing up the psychological in the guise of the theological, he wondered. The image from Romans 16, of Paul working alongside his female colleagues in equal ministry, was normative for him now. Ultimately it was a vision of God and of God's Church that lifted us above predominately male images to something truly liberating and empowering for all people. And, lo and behold, it turns out that its first champion was Jesus Christ.

Buoyed up by this vision I headed back to catch my train home and found myself sitting on a crowded commuter train with three business men of a certain age, suits and smart macs, who were reminiscing about their school days at Marlborough; the 'beaks', the Masters, the cricket and the rugby.They recalled a hapless House-master sacked for 'playing' with boys. Such a waste of a career, poor chap. I had my dog collar on. They eyed me suspiciously. 

Sitting quietly behind the garrulous sixty-somethings was a young Franciscan in full brown habit, wearing open toed sandals on a cold January day. He looked steadily out of the window for the length of the journey and I took comfort from his stillness.

Three images of maleness: the egalitarian; the Old School and the man married to Christ. Perhaps it was a good reminder that despite our non-contextual hermeneutics, gendered language and Church's vexed history regarding women, God 'himself' is not a man.

(Thanks to Chris Alcock for the title of this post).

Preaching pains

When I started out after Ordination

I didn't think preaching on a weekly basis would affect me in the ways that it has.

I'd probably preached around seven or eight times before my Curacy began and they were isolated sermons; one here, one there, so I'd never got into any rhythm. They were one off occasions and whist I enjoyed them nothing prepared me for  the pressure of having to come up with something spiritually coherent week in week out and the effect it would have on me.

It's like a kind of overshadowing. It starts on Tuesday after I've had a day off Monday.

Monday I don't think about preaching at all. I don't even think about the fact that I'm not thinking about it.

Tuesday I look at the lectionary readings and think 'Oh no.'

Wednesday I get round to printing them out on a sheet entitled 'Sermon for...' in the hope that in 3 years time I might have built up an archive which can be reused.

Thursday. This is the day I start to feel the weight of the reading. How can I possibly presume to preach on this subject?

Money, wealth and possessions. I am guilty of avarice.

Wisdom and taming the tongue. I still say things I wish I hadn't.

Gratitude for the Harvest. Give me supermarkets. I have nothing to do with farm life: I don't even like cows. 

Thursday night. I feel uninspired generally. And unholy. Because what makes a great preacher, according to Phillip Brookes (1835-1893) is not skill, but character.

This is the nub. I thought it would be about knowledge, experience, rhetoric, funny anecdotes.

These things figure, but nothing replaces what a preacher can bring through what he or she is becoming in Christ.

Friday. Sermon writing day. I think about it over breakfast. I have maybe gathered a few bits to feed into it by now. I mull it over and try and make connections with life. Meetings, admin and parish stuff comes and goes through the day. The phone rings. The emails pop in and out. I sit at the desk. I'd like to say that hours later I have a well crafted, scholarly and spiritually insightful offering that I'm delighted with and proud to offer.

But mostly it's just a lesson in how far I fall short, how little time I have for drafting and redrafting something of beauty and how tired I am on Saturday when I finally sit down to finish it off and print it out ready for Sunday.

But in the process I have been obliged to be disciplined whether I felt like engaging with the bible or not. I have sat under it, metaphorically speaking. I have encountered something living. I am not unchanged. I have had to remember that before I can offer it I have to struggle with it; that by grace, week after week, it isn't really just me doing the talking. I'm not crafting it. It's crafting me.

39. Priscilla - preach it, sister!

Is it different hearing a woman give a sermon, than a man?

For most of the first thirty five years of my churchgoing life I didn't really know the answer to this question as I had hardly ever heard a woman preach.

I spent some formative years in a world where conservatives were only happy about this new women's ordination thing if ordained women were going to be 'under the authority' of a man when they taught the bible in church. So as a female Curate, you would have to have a male Incumbent training you. Ultimately there would be a Bishop's authority (male) over you so that would be fine.

Even when the logical fallacy of this position became unavoidable (it wouldn't be too long before you were going to have a male Curate 'under the authority' of a female Incumbent, and pretty soon you are going to have female bishops...)

The whole ridiculous conservative problem hinges on the apparent refusal of St Paul to let a woman 'have authority over' a man in a teaching situation, and on a literalistic approach to the biblical text (though a selectively literalistic approach; e.g. slavery is not encouraged but women's submission is. Sorry, I meant the 'complementary role' of women...)

All this is of course tied up with the type of sermons which conservative evangelicals hold up as 'gold standard' - mostly intellectual exegesis with a personal challenge thrown in at the end; about 25 minutes long and takes half a week to write. 

From this narrow one gender dominated view of preaching I finally went in search of other models and began the long journey of finding my own woman's preaching voice. The journey is ongoing.

Which is why I love Priscilla. She and her husband, Aquila, were missionaries and church leaders who worked alongside Paul. On one occasion they listened to a keen convert, Appollos,  who had 'a thorough knowledge of the scriptures', and who 'taught about Jesus accurately' though he seemed ignorant of Christian baptism. They graciously invited him back to their house where together (though her name is consistently and unusually mentioned first) they 'explained to him the way of God more accurately' (Acts 18: 24-26).

Now I did start to read a conservative article saying that in fact the verb 'explained' here is not the same as the verb 'to teach', so Priscilla is clearly not teaching a man after all; it is therefore not BIBLE TEACHING as such.......but half way through I felt I was losing the will to live.

That learning from the Living Word can be tied up with gender restrictions feels increasingly like a long winded explanation that the earth is indeed flat.

Preach it, Priscilla!