I'm reading 'Conversations with Barth on Preaching' by William H.Willimon. At the beginning of chapter two he quotes from Barth's 'Homiletics':
Preachers must not be boring. To a large extent the pastor and boredom are synonomous concepts. Listeners often think that they have already heard what is being said in the pulpit. They have long since known it themselves. The fault certainly does not lie with them alone. Against boredom the only defence is again being biblical. If a sermon is biblical, it will not be boring. Holy Scripture is in fact so interesting and has so much that is new and exciting to tell us that listeners cannot even think about dropping off to sleep.
That's me told, then! The urge to 'have something to say' rather than to 'say what should be said' is powerful. A big motivation for me to become a minister is the experience of listening to boring or inadequate sermons and thinking I can do better, but now that I'm actually taking services and posting sermons on the internet each week I have to admit it isn't easy.
Reflecting on sermons I've delivered in person I think Barth is dead right. Mostly I've been disappointed with my 'performance' but the brief moments when I've really felt that those listening were truly engaged with what was being said was when I've basically been repeating the red meat of the Gospel. All you need to do is stand up and tell people about the Gospel and it will be attractive, engaging, shocking and challenging. The gospel is all these things, I'm not!
I think learning to preach might be more about learning what not to do. When I was a drama student one director used to shout at us 'stop acting!' Good actors make you think 'what a good story' not 'what a good actor'. Good preaching should be invisible, the congregation should be thinking 'isn't the Gospel strange/beautiful/terrifying etc.' not 'didn't he speak well?'
I've got a lot to learn!
Wednesday 28 November 2007
Tuesday 27 November 2007
A Teddy named Mohammed
From BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7114439.stm
Bid to free teddy insult teacher
British officials are trying to secure the release of a British schoolteacher arrested in Sudan for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Gillian Gibbons, of Liverpool, may face blasphemy charges for insulting Islam's Prophet. A conviction could mean six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine.
Her colleagues said she had made an "innocent mistake" by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name.
Bid to free teddy insult teacher
British officials are trying to secure the release of a British schoolteacher arrested in Sudan for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Gillian Gibbons, of Liverpool, may face blasphemy charges for insulting Islam's Prophet. A conviction could mean six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine.
Her colleagues said she had made an "innocent mistake" by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name.
Lots of countries develop this sort of insanity at various stages in their development, this is exactly the sort of thing that happened for many centuries in the UK, the US and througout the developed Christian world.
There's a great line in the film 'The Killing Fields' "maybe what we underestimated was the kind of insanity seven million dollars worth of bombing could produce" - Sydney Schanberg making the link between the brutalising of Cambodia and the emergence of the Khmer Rouge.
Countries like Sudan and Afghanistan have failed to develop, have been ravaged by war and civil war and have become pretty crazy places as a result. We passed this way ourselves and resorted to burning, drownings and stonings of witches as well as the wrong sort of Christians.
That's not to say we should accept the situation, but lets keep in in proportion (one bizarre incident in a very messed up country) and in context (a phase that all societies, including our own, pass through).
Evil, power and stupidity use all available means including religion. Lets hope she's freed as soon as possible.
Sunday 25 November 2007
The View from Monsal Head (What's the Bible about?)
Anyone who has started to read a Bible will know that Christianity is not simple. If you knew nothing about it you might suppose that the Bible would start with an introduction, a summing up of the main points and a guide to how they unfold in the rest of the book. If we were making up a religion we might write something that is set out in such an easy way, but Christianity is not made up and we have no choice but to try to understand it in the places that God has revealed it to us.
The Bible spans thousands of years, many different literary forms, different languages, different locations and sometimes it seems different ideas. Is it possible to look at the Bible and say ‘this is what it’s about’?
This question occurred to me again when I thought about the view from Monsal Head over Monsal Dale in the Peak District. It’s perhaps the most beautiful landscape that I have ever seen. As you stand at the top looking down over the Dale you will see a mixture of glades, trees, a field with sheep in it by a river, a farm house and a bridge to another field with Cows in it. The path down from Monsal head thick with trees and bracken giving way to smooth plush grass at the bottom. There’s a disused railway with beautiful big arches which emphasize the sheer depth of the view. And to your right there’s the muscular hillside with a severe, frightening angle bearing over the dale. All these things combine to make something truly breathtaking.
As I think of it now I see the view so clearly in my mind – but I haven’t yet taken a photograph that lives up to the impression I get when I stand it the car park at Monsal Head and look down on it all. Why is this? I’ve taken some fairly good photos when I’ve just concentrated on one bit of the view, the disused railway-bridge or the sheep in the field next to the river. But I look at the picture of the sheep and the river and it’s no good because it’s not got the bridge in it, or I focus on the path down and realise I’m missing out the hillside. They make some pretty pictures but none of them could be called Monsal Dale because that’s one big whole thing with nothing missing, the view I get from Monsal Head, that’s Monsal Dale. I want the whole picture.
So I don’t want my photograph to miss anything out, I want to get it all in the one photo. So I stand at Monsal Head, I look through my camera and step back until I’ve got a view that captures it all. Except it doesn’t. It looks lousy.
Everything’s in there, I’ve made sure of that. You can see the bridge, the field with the sheep, the river, the farmhouse, the path down, the hillside, it’s all there. But the photo looks lousy. No one looking at that photo would understand why I’ve been waxing lyrical about this place, it would seem completely average to them.
The challenge to the photographer here is considerable. How can you capture the majesty, the wonder of the whole view without leaving any of it out?
The answer is, as I understand it, all to do with focus. You must find your focus, find the spot, the area in the picture that is the focal point. If you get the focal point right you don’t need to leave anything out. The focal point somehow arranges and makes sense of everything else. The eye is drawn to the focal point and from there it takes in the whole scene, arranged in such a way as to deliver all its detail but as part of one whole view.
I’m sure you realise where this is going. What the metaphor is. Of course I’m talking about the Bible. How is it possible to get a proper view on something so vast, so intricate and varied without it looking dull, confusing, uninspiring?
Lets be clear, I don’t know my Bible even half as well as I should do. But some people know it inside out, without really knowing what it’s about. They can recite whole chapters from memory, they can tell you what the Hebrew or the Greek translation is; they can give you any number of historical facts about minor prophets or the type of wood used in Paul’s ship. Their knowledge is absolutely thorough – but it isn’t complete. They don’t have the whole picture.
Biblical scholarship is a wonderful thing, but it can sometimes be something that takes us far, far away from Jesus. It’s no good extending or deepening our knowledge of the parts if we don’t see the whole. A lifetime isn’t enough to discuss all the ins and outs, the intricacies and complexities of the Bible, but we ought to be to say what it’s about in a matter of seconds. That’s a challenge we dare not duck.
Advertisers, publishers, people in business, in all walks of life people realise that all their work is in vain if they can’t sum it up in one or two sentences. So we must ask ourselves: in one sentence, what is the Bible about? In one sentence what is Christianity about? What do we really believe? If we’re not able to say simply and easily what it is that we believe, might not people start to wonder if we really believe it ourselves?
To continue the metaphor of the photograph we can see that there is another danger. We can focus on one area in such a way that everything else gets lost. The nice photo of the bridge that absolutely isn’t a photograph of Monsal Dale. The wonderful saying of Jesus, that absolutely isn’t Christianity all on its own.
We need a point of focus in our Bible. Something that is simple and to the point, yet doesn’t do away with the full range of ideas and experiences that make up the Bible, that make up Christianity.
The obvious starting to point is to say Jesus. Jesus is the focal point of the Bible. No one’s going to argue with you about that. It gets us started in making sense of the whole. We then look at Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve and all the time we ask ourselves how does this relate to Jesus? How does this line of Old Testament scripture – maybe a saying of Zephannia, or a line in a particular Psalm – how does this relate to the bigger picture, which is Jesus?
At times the answer seems to be not at all. Or barely at all. Perhaps there are lots of bits of the Bible that we could do without. Of course it sounds heretical to suggest this, but we all know that there are parts of the Bible that are read all the time and others that we hardly look at if at all.
In the first few hundred years of the church this idea became quite popular, a man called Marcion put forward the view that the new testament meant that we had no need of the old testament. He compared the beauty of the Sermon on the Mount with the old laws about executing someone for the careless handling of an ox – I kid you not – and concluded that the Old Testament was crude, unsophisticated and sometimes savage, and that Christians should have nothing to do with it. If we’re honest I think we’ll admit that we still feel a bit like this sometimes. Our Bible falls open somewhere in the Old Testament and we don’t even try to convince ourselves that this is part of the whole picture.
But go back to the photographer, looking for the focal point. The right focal point brings the whole picture to life. Yes, some of it inevitably has to be in the background but nothing is ever lost. We need to be able to say simply what the Bible is about, but we mustn’t do it by leaving vast portions of it out.
What is critical for the photographer is, I think, critical for us. The focal point has to be right –
and it has to be exact. Saying it’s all about Jesus isn’t good enough – it isn’t clear enough. It doesn’t properly explain to those outside the church what we’re all about.
We are not a Jesus appreciation society. Many children in secondary schools think of Jesus as being a bit like Princess Diana – a bloke who cared and wore his heart on his sleeve. Others think of him like Nelson Mandela – a man who set a great example by standing up for what he believed in even when it cost him dearly. Others see that he was a holy man but they don’t really see how he is different from holy men – prophets or religiously inspired campaigners like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi. Does our way of speaking about Jesus make it clear to others that he is much much more than this, that he is absolutely different from anyone else that has ever lived? Is this reality clear to ourselves? We do no justice to the whole picture of Christianity if we simply say that Jesus is our focal point. It’s too vague, it allows too many misunderstandings, and it can even take us away from the true heart of our faith.
Where is the heart of our faith? Where is the centre, the focal point? What is the one point that sums up, arranges and illumines the whole picture of Christianity?
Let me first say where I don’t think it is. Each generation has in common that it focuses in the wrong part of our religion. I think we can look at each age and see how it has taken its own particular preoccupations and looked in the Bible for something to address those issues in a way it approves of. Then it presents a version of Christianity centred on those very issues.
If we go back a few decades Christianity was presented too often as being about rules of sexual morality, submission to husbands, kings and governments. About personal conduct, specific duties. Passages outlawing homosexuality, sex outside marriage, these were the plain truth of scripture. Whereas those passages advocating freedom in love and non-violence tended to get an awful lot of qualification and interpretation lest we took them too seriously. The morality of the time took those bits of the Bible that it liked and held them up continuously for all to see. It thought that the parts it was most comfortable with were the most important parts. And that obscured the whole picture.
We do exactly the same thing now but with a different morality. Now Christianity is presented in utterly vague terms except when it talks about prejudice. This summer I marked about five hundred GCSE Religious Studies papers, and you’d think that Christianity was a religion obsessed with opposing racism and promoting the rights of animals. Once again Christianity is being used. People with their own agenda are taking the bits of the bible that fits in with what concerns them most, and then they are distorting our religion to the world. Yes all Christians should, of course, oppose racism, but the Bible isn’t a book about racial tolerance, nor is it a book about animal rights or whatever else we are currently occupied with. Once again one age has taken what concerns it most, looked for the bible passages to back it up, and held them up above all others. Now the passages to do with sexual morality get very carefully interpreted and explained away, and those passages that fit the liberal agenda that is public morality nowadays are held aloft uncritically. Biblical statements that oppose prejudice are undoubtedly important but they are not the centre of our faith. Once again we’re missing the big picture.
So where do I think the centre is? What’s the focal point that makes the whole picture possible? In one word? Forgiveness. Or put another way in one word, Grace. The heart of our religion, its focal point is, I’m quite certain, forgiveness. Not the forgiveness that we might practice to one another, though that’s part of it. But the forgiveness that lies at the centre of the universe, at the centre of all reality, at the centre of the Bible and at the centre of our faith. The forgiveness that is revealed from God through Jesus Christ.
It’s not enough to say that Jesus is the focal point – because what are we really saying then? It’s not enough to say that Jesus is the most important thing because people won’t ask us why he is so important, they’ll just walk away confused. And lets be clear, Jesus said some very wise things and did some very brave things but that is not why he is so important. Jesus is what he is to us because he announces our forgiveness, because he enables our forgiveness, because he is our forgiveness and because of Him, and through Him we are in turn able to forgive.
The forgiveness of sins is a wonderful but incomprehensible fact. It means that in spite of our sinful nature God loves us and wants us. Because our sins are forgiven this world of death and disease will be transformed into eternal life and glory. In our world where God is so absent we are told that He is making Himself present to us in love. It’s a chain reaction, ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’
Why is it so hard for us to put forgiveness in its rightful place in the centre of our faith? One reason is that it confuses governments. In this world of armies, police, judges, prisons, terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, in a world like this no one’s too comfortable with talk of forgiveness. Better that Christians concentrate on those creditable and fine beliefs which happen to fit with the government’s aims.
But more than that, each one of us finds it so impossible to practice forgiveness. I know I do.
Whenever a terrible murder is committed the question is asked of the grieving parents – can you ever forgive the person responsible? Occasionally they do and we all applaud this, but when they say no they will never forgive we find this quite understandable. I certainly don’t want to judge someone for it when I find it so hard myself, but the Bible is clear on this. We must forgive, we have no choice, it goes hand in hand with God’s forgiveness of ourselves. Every generation has managed to qualify, to interpret, to explain away the Biblical teaching on forgiveness. Each one of us struggles to forgive. But if there’s one thing we should be fundementalist about it’s forgiveness. If there’s one thing where we should accept no compromise, where we should insist that this is the plain sense of scripture it’s forgiveness. It’s there in the Lord’s prayer. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Does the Lord’s prayer mean that we forgive others in return for God’s forgiveness of our own sins? As if we are able to strike any sort of deal with God. Is it saying that God will forgive those who forgive others? I don’t think so. God forgives us first, then we forgive others.
The gospel tells us that John was preaching the forgiveness of sins – before he ever meets Jesus. That’s crucially important. Isaiah anticipates the forgiveness of sins, John preaches that our sins are being forgiven, Jesus announces and pronounces the forgiveness of sins. Paul hammers home the message that through God’s grace, or forgiveness if you will, we are made whole in Christ. Do you see what is happening here? A thread is forming, a thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation, a thread that unites the old and the new testaments. A thread whose starting and ending point, its alpha and omega is Jesus Christ.
The Bible spans thousands of years, many different literary forms, different languages, different locations and sometimes it seems different ideas. Is it possible to look at the Bible and say ‘this is what it’s about’?
This question occurred to me again when I thought about the view from Monsal Head over Monsal Dale in the Peak District. It’s perhaps the most beautiful landscape that I have ever seen. As you stand at the top looking down over the Dale you will see a mixture of glades, trees, a field with sheep in it by a river, a farm house and a bridge to another field with Cows in it. The path down from Monsal head thick with trees and bracken giving way to smooth plush grass at the bottom. There’s a disused railway with beautiful big arches which emphasize the sheer depth of the view. And to your right there’s the muscular hillside with a severe, frightening angle bearing over the dale. All these things combine to make something truly breathtaking.
As I think of it now I see the view so clearly in my mind – but I haven’t yet taken a photograph that lives up to the impression I get when I stand it the car park at Monsal Head and look down on it all. Why is this? I’ve taken some fairly good photos when I’ve just concentrated on one bit of the view, the disused railway-bridge or the sheep in the field next to the river. But I look at the picture of the sheep and the river and it’s no good because it’s not got the bridge in it, or I focus on the path down and realise I’m missing out the hillside. They make some pretty pictures but none of them could be called Monsal Dale because that’s one big whole thing with nothing missing, the view I get from Monsal Head, that’s Monsal Dale. I want the whole picture.
So I don’t want my photograph to miss anything out, I want to get it all in the one photo. So I stand at Monsal Head, I look through my camera and step back until I’ve got a view that captures it all. Except it doesn’t. It looks lousy.
Everything’s in there, I’ve made sure of that. You can see the bridge, the field with the sheep, the river, the farmhouse, the path down, the hillside, it’s all there. But the photo looks lousy. No one looking at that photo would understand why I’ve been waxing lyrical about this place, it would seem completely average to them.
The challenge to the photographer here is considerable. How can you capture the majesty, the wonder of the whole view without leaving any of it out?
The answer is, as I understand it, all to do with focus. You must find your focus, find the spot, the area in the picture that is the focal point. If you get the focal point right you don’t need to leave anything out. The focal point somehow arranges and makes sense of everything else. The eye is drawn to the focal point and from there it takes in the whole scene, arranged in such a way as to deliver all its detail but as part of one whole view.
I’m sure you realise where this is going. What the metaphor is. Of course I’m talking about the Bible. How is it possible to get a proper view on something so vast, so intricate and varied without it looking dull, confusing, uninspiring?
Lets be clear, I don’t know my Bible even half as well as I should do. But some people know it inside out, without really knowing what it’s about. They can recite whole chapters from memory, they can tell you what the Hebrew or the Greek translation is; they can give you any number of historical facts about minor prophets or the type of wood used in Paul’s ship. Their knowledge is absolutely thorough – but it isn’t complete. They don’t have the whole picture.
Biblical scholarship is a wonderful thing, but it can sometimes be something that takes us far, far away from Jesus. It’s no good extending or deepening our knowledge of the parts if we don’t see the whole. A lifetime isn’t enough to discuss all the ins and outs, the intricacies and complexities of the Bible, but we ought to be to say what it’s about in a matter of seconds. That’s a challenge we dare not duck.
Advertisers, publishers, people in business, in all walks of life people realise that all their work is in vain if they can’t sum it up in one or two sentences. So we must ask ourselves: in one sentence, what is the Bible about? In one sentence what is Christianity about? What do we really believe? If we’re not able to say simply and easily what it is that we believe, might not people start to wonder if we really believe it ourselves?
To continue the metaphor of the photograph we can see that there is another danger. We can focus on one area in such a way that everything else gets lost. The nice photo of the bridge that absolutely isn’t a photograph of Monsal Dale. The wonderful saying of Jesus, that absolutely isn’t Christianity all on its own.
We need a point of focus in our Bible. Something that is simple and to the point, yet doesn’t do away with the full range of ideas and experiences that make up the Bible, that make up Christianity.
The obvious starting to point is to say Jesus. Jesus is the focal point of the Bible. No one’s going to argue with you about that. It gets us started in making sense of the whole. We then look at Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve and all the time we ask ourselves how does this relate to Jesus? How does this line of Old Testament scripture – maybe a saying of Zephannia, or a line in a particular Psalm – how does this relate to the bigger picture, which is Jesus?
At times the answer seems to be not at all. Or barely at all. Perhaps there are lots of bits of the Bible that we could do without. Of course it sounds heretical to suggest this, but we all know that there are parts of the Bible that are read all the time and others that we hardly look at if at all.
In the first few hundred years of the church this idea became quite popular, a man called Marcion put forward the view that the new testament meant that we had no need of the old testament. He compared the beauty of the Sermon on the Mount with the old laws about executing someone for the careless handling of an ox – I kid you not – and concluded that the Old Testament was crude, unsophisticated and sometimes savage, and that Christians should have nothing to do with it. If we’re honest I think we’ll admit that we still feel a bit like this sometimes. Our Bible falls open somewhere in the Old Testament and we don’t even try to convince ourselves that this is part of the whole picture.
But go back to the photographer, looking for the focal point. The right focal point brings the whole picture to life. Yes, some of it inevitably has to be in the background but nothing is ever lost. We need to be able to say simply what the Bible is about, but we mustn’t do it by leaving vast portions of it out.
What is critical for the photographer is, I think, critical for us. The focal point has to be right –
and it has to be exact. Saying it’s all about Jesus isn’t good enough – it isn’t clear enough. It doesn’t properly explain to those outside the church what we’re all about.
We are not a Jesus appreciation society. Many children in secondary schools think of Jesus as being a bit like Princess Diana – a bloke who cared and wore his heart on his sleeve. Others think of him like Nelson Mandela – a man who set a great example by standing up for what he believed in even when it cost him dearly. Others see that he was a holy man but they don’t really see how he is different from holy men – prophets or religiously inspired campaigners like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi. Does our way of speaking about Jesus make it clear to others that he is much much more than this, that he is absolutely different from anyone else that has ever lived? Is this reality clear to ourselves? We do no justice to the whole picture of Christianity if we simply say that Jesus is our focal point. It’s too vague, it allows too many misunderstandings, and it can even take us away from the true heart of our faith.
Where is the heart of our faith? Where is the centre, the focal point? What is the one point that sums up, arranges and illumines the whole picture of Christianity?
Let me first say where I don’t think it is. Each generation has in common that it focuses in the wrong part of our religion. I think we can look at each age and see how it has taken its own particular preoccupations and looked in the Bible for something to address those issues in a way it approves of. Then it presents a version of Christianity centred on those very issues.
If we go back a few decades Christianity was presented too often as being about rules of sexual morality, submission to husbands, kings and governments. About personal conduct, specific duties. Passages outlawing homosexuality, sex outside marriage, these were the plain truth of scripture. Whereas those passages advocating freedom in love and non-violence tended to get an awful lot of qualification and interpretation lest we took them too seriously. The morality of the time took those bits of the Bible that it liked and held them up continuously for all to see. It thought that the parts it was most comfortable with were the most important parts. And that obscured the whole picture.
We do exactly the same thing now but with a different morality. Now Christianity is presented in utterly vague terms except when it talks about prejudice. This summer I marked about five hundred GCSE Religious Studies papers, and you’d think that Christianity was a religion obsessed with opposing racism and promoting the rights of animals. Once again Christianity is being used. People with their own agenda are taking the bits of the bible that fits in with what concerns them most, and then they are distorting our religion to the world. Yes all Christians should, of course, oppose racism, but the Bible isn’t a book about racial tolerance, nor is it a book about animal rights or whatever else we are currently occupied with. Once again one age has taken what concerns it most, looked for the bible passages to back it up, and held them up above all others. Now the passages to do with sexual morality get very carefully interpreted and explained away, and those passages that fit the liberal agenda that is public morality nowadays are held aloft uncritically. Biblical statements that oppose prejudice are undoubtedly important but they are not the centre of our faith. Once again we’re missing the big picture.
So where do I think the centre is? What’s the focal point that makes the whole picture possible? In one word? Forgiveness. Or put another way in one word, Grace. The heart of our religion, its focal point is, I’m quite certain, forgiveness. Not the forgiveness that we might practice to one another, though that’s part of it. But the forgiveness that lies at the centre of the universe, at the centre of all reality, at the centre of the Bible and at the centre of our faith. The forgiveness that is revealed from God through Jesus Christ.
It’s not enough to say that Jesus is the focal point – because what are we really saying then? It’s not enough to say that Jesus is the most important thing because people won’t ask us why he is so important, they’ll just walk away confused. And lets be clear, Jesus said some very wise things and did some very brave things but that is not why he is so important. Jesus is what he is to us because he announces our forgiveness, because he enables our forgiveness, because he is our forgiveness and because of Him, and through Him we are in turn able to forgive.
The forgiveness of sins is a wonderful but incomprehensible fact. It means that in spite of our sinful nature God loves us and wants us. Because our sins are forgiven this world of death and disease will be transformed into eternal life and glory. In our world where God is so absent we are told that He is making Himself present to us in love. It’s a chain reaction, ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’
Why is it so hard for us to put forgiveness in its rightful place in the centre of our faith? One reason is that it confuses governments. In this world of armies, police, judges, prisons, terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, in a world like this no one’s too comfortable with talk of forgiveness. Better that Christians concentrate on those creditable and fine beliefs which happen to fit with the government’s aims.
But more than that, each one of us finds it so impossible to practice forgiveness. I know I do.
Whenever a terrible murder is committed the question is asked of the grieving parents – can you ever forgive the person responsible? Occasionally they do and we all applaud this, but when they say no they will never forgive we find this quite understandable. I certainly don’t want to judge someone for it when I find it so hard myself, but the Bible is clear on this. We must forgive, we have no choice, it goes hand in hand with God’s forgiveness of ourselves. Every generation has managed to qualify, to interpret, to explain away the Biblical teaching on forgiveness. Each one of us struggles to forgive. But if there’s one thing we should be fundementalist about it’s forgiveness. If there’s one thing where we should accept no compromise, where we should insist that this is the plain sense of scripture it’s forgiveness. It’s there in the Lord’s prayer. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Does the Lord’s prayer mean that we forgive others in return for God’s forgiveness of our own sins? As if we are able to strike any sort of deal with God. Is it saying that God will forgive those who forgive others? I don’t think so. God forgives us first, then we forgive others.
The gospel tells us that John was preaching the forgiveness of sins – before he ever meets Jesus. That’s crucially important. Isaiah anticipates the forgiveness of sins, John preaches that our sins are being forgiven, Jesus announces and pronounces the forgiveness of sins. Paul hammers home the message that through God’s grace, or forgiveness if you will, we are made whole in Christ. Do you see what is happening here? A thread is forming, a thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation, a thread that unites the old and the new testaments. A thread whose starting and ending point, its alpha and omega is Jesus Christ.
Thursday 22 November 2007
Do we really need green theology?
Isn't the need to save the planet a rather obvious moral imperative? I mean, we don't have a specific theology saying that we should brake to avoid a child running into the road, so why do we need to be persuaded that actually the Bible is telling us to be good environmentalists? It gives the impression that we're robots who can't do the right thing unless someone shows us a verse from the Bible to tell us to do it (or not to do it!) Jesus gave us Himself and the Holy Spirit - a living faith that guides us and empowers us to do the right thing!
Yes it's possible to read parts of Genesis in a green way, but apart from the above point that we shouldn't need to, it also leads to a theology that is not Christ centred. Jesus didn't tell us to look after the environment, he told us to be ethical grown-ups and to work out what to do based on a few simple but awesome commandments: love your neigbour as yourself, do unto others, love your enemies and so on. It should take NO THOUGHT AT ALL to realise that doing your bit for the environment (at the very least) is covered by these.
Where we do chime with the green movement is in regard to materialism and consumerism. There is an argument, which we should be part of, about our whole way of living and working and the values these are based upon. But the green movement is, not surprisingly, focusing everything on global warming with the straightforward message that we need to change our way of living to survive.
When the green movement says that we need to change regardless of global warming we can develop a close relationship. When the discussion is about saving the planet we're in the same boat as everyone else (excuse the Noah's ark analogy) and we just have to do our obvious and human duty.
And lets face it, we Christians have poured over scripture for two thousand years without discovering a message about the environment. The suspicion people will have is that green theology is just Christians jumping on the bandwagon, and rebranding Christianity.
We should never see Christianity as a means to an end, as a way of delivering some 'higher and purer' ideal such as social justice or even climate change survival.
Yes it's possible to read parts of Genesis in a green way, but apart from the above point that we shouldn't need to, it also leads to a theology that is not Christ centred. Jesus didn't tell us to look after the environment, he told us to be ethical grown-ups and to work out what to do based on a few simple but awesome commandments: love your neigbour as yourself, do unto others, love your enemies and so on. It should take NO THOUGHT AT ALL to realise that doing your bit for the environment (at the very least) is covered by these.
Where we do chime with the green movement is in regard to materialism and consumerism. There is an argument, which we should be part of, about our whole way of living and working and the values these are based upon. But the green movement is, not surprisingly, focusing everything on global warming with the straightforward message that we need to change our way of living to survive.
When the green movement says that we need to change regardless of global warming we can develop a close relationship. When the discussion is about saving the planet we're in the same boat as everyone else (excuse the Noah's ark analogy) and we just have to do our obvious and human duty.
And lets face it, we Christians have poured over scripture for two thousand years without discovering a message about the environment. The suspicion people will have is that green theology is just Christians jumping on the bandwagon, and rebranding Christianity.
We should never see Christianity as a means to an end, as a way of delivering some 'higher and purer' ideal such as social justice or even climate change survival.
Wednesday 21 November 2007
Christian feminist blogs
I think that feminism and Christianity are completely compatible, indeed Christians should be feminists. But I've been looking through the blogosphere at Christian feminist blogs and haven't found anyone writing about why feminists should become Christians.
Most Christian blogs come from the USA where many more people have an explicitly Christian background. A common theme of the Christian feminist blogs I've seen is that it is possible for a feminist to stay within the church or to remain a Christian. Here in the UK the situation is very different, most feminists don't come from a Christian background so how and why does a feminist become a Christian?
Most Christian blogs come from the USA where many more people have an explicitly Christian background. A common theme of the Christian feminist blogs I've seen is that it is possible for a feminist to stay within the church or to remain a Christian. Here in the UK the situation is very different, most feminists don't come from a Christian background so how and why does a feminist become a Christian?
Tuesday 20 November 2007
Fallen Humanity
From BBC News..
Man jailed for urinating on woman
A man who urinated on a woman as she lay dying and shouted "this is YouTube material" has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Anthony Anderson also covered Christine Lakinski with shaving foamafter she collapsed in a Hartlepool street.
We'd like to think that it was a uniquely evil person who did this - but the uncomfortable fact is that a crowd of people watched and laughed as it happened. The Bible is right, there is something rotten in humanity. I'm profoundly relieved that I believe in a religion which recognises evil AND redeems it.
Man jailed for urinating on woman
A man who urinated on a woman as she lay dying and shouted "this is YouTube material" has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Anthony Anderson also covered Christine Lakinski with shaving foamafter she collapsed in a Hartlepool street.
We'd like to think that it was a uniquely evil person who did this - but the uncomfortable fact is that a crowd of people watched and laughed as it happened. The Bible is right, there is something rotten in humanity. I'm profoundly relieved that I believe in a religion which recognises evil AND redeems it.
Persecuted Christians
At church the other week we had a talk from two representatives of 'Open Doors' an organisation which supports persecuted Christians around the world. There's no denying that there is horrific persecution of Christians, often in Islamic countries and these two really walk the walk in doing something about it. However I was aghast when one of them said 'There is no love in Islam, Christianity is the only religion with love in it.' I was so annoyed I audibly exclaimed 'rubbish!'
I spoke to him afterwards and took issue with his statement. At first he was adamant and trotted out alot of ignorant cliches and stereotypes about Muslims but after a few minutes he agreed to 'refine' his statement to a theological point about the nature of the relationship between the individual and the deity. I ended up agreeing with him on this and congratulating him on his work.
There's little point speaking up for Christian religious liberty by slagging off other religions. Christianity has its own shameful history of persecution and its surely counterproductive not to acknowledge this.
I did a bit of internet research on 'Open Doors' and found that it's actually quite narrow in its theology. There are other organisations such as 'Release International' and 'Christian Solidarity Worldwide' who do the same work but without such a narrow theological outlook and they promote the concept of religious liberty for all.
Anyway the two speakers had an effect. They made me think about what I can do to support persecuted Christians, but it will probably be by joining another organisation. I'm going to see if the church will support me applying to be a church representative for CSW (Christian Solidarity Worldwide)
See for yourself at these sites/links
www.releaseinternational.org/
www.csw.org.uk/
www.od.org/
I spoke to him afterwards and took issue with his statement. At first he was adamant and trotted out alot of ignorant cliches and stereotypes about Muslims but after a few minutes he agreed to 'refine' his statement to a theological point about the nature of the relationship between the individual and the deity. I ended up agreeing with him on this and congratulating him on his work.
There's little point speaking up for Christian religious liberty by slagging off other religions. Christianity has its own shameful history of persecution and its surely counterproductive not to acknowledge this.
I did a bit of internet research on 'Open Doors' and found that it's actually quite narrow in its theology. There are other organisations such as 'Release International' and 'Christian Solidarity Worldwide' who do the same work but without such a narrow theological outlook and they promote the concept of religious liberty for all.
Anyway the two speakers had an effect. They made me think about what I can do to support persecuted Christians, but it will probably be by joining another organisation. I'm going to see if the church will support me applying to be a church representative for CSW (Christian Solidarity Worldwide)
See for yourself at these sites/links
www.releaseinternational.org/
www.csw.org.uk/
www.od.org/
Sunday 18 November 2007
Defeating Disease - Parables of the Kingdom
Jesus tells us to love our neighbour as much and in the same way that we love ourselves. Well how do I love myself? Whenever I come into contact with disease my love for myself is spelt out in capital letters. I expect, and nearly always get the best treatment available. I don’t accept having to wait longer than anyone else for treatment; I want to be comfortable when I’m recuperating and I want sympathy and understanding.
I hope that I’m as zealous about my wife’s health as my own. I hope that I’m just interested my family’s well being as I am in my own, but even this is a struggle if I’m honest. Then if I extend the idea to my friends and my wider family, to my church, well it’s a pretty tall order, a pretty high ideal to love my neighbours as I love myself.
And the parable of the good Samaritan leaves us in no doubt, your neighbour, that you should be loving as you love yourself, is not limited to those around you, to your own kind, your own kin. It includes people a long way a way from you, people that you don’t approve of, and even people who seem may strange or unpleasant.
So I thank God for the Tear Fund who are walking the walk on this commandment to love your neighbour as you love yourself. We thank and praise God for them, they really do show us the way and it’s easy and a privilege for us to support them.
Clearly then as Christians we are expected to respond to disease. But as people of faith, as people with a world-view there’s something else we have to do. People expect us not only to respond to disease but somehow to account for it, to explain it. How can we be aware of the cruel realities of Cancer or HIV and Aids and still say that this universe is the creation of loving and mighty God?
If you’re an atheist or a humanist you have no such burden. In fact the presence of disease in the world may be the reason why you don’t believe that there is a God.
Disease disrupts everyone’s world-view. Some atheists suddenly find that they’re angry with God. Imagine that, feeling anger towards someone whose existence you deny. Or they transfer their feelings on to the nearest Christian. ‘How dare you say there’s a God! How dare you say that Jesus loves me, can’t you see what’s happening?’
It’s as though deep down they have a spiritual belief, or sort of belief but it’s conflicting with the situation they’re in and with what they’re rational mind is telling them. So it all comes out in an angry torrent.
And conversely many Christians when confronted with serious illness will question their faith, they suddenly get the feeling that they’ve just been mouthing the words all these years, now that they’re facing a serious diagnosis they find themselves asking ‘what do I really believe, in my heart of hearts?
So what does the Bible tell us about disease? In the book of Leviticus God lays down the laws by which the Israelites are to live, among them he gives them instruction on ritual bathing and purity, so that the spread of disease is inhibited. It’s as though He’s saying that disease is out there, it’s just a natural part of the world and you’ve got to look out for it. But in the same book he says that he will send diseases upon the Israelites as punishment for not following his commands. So which is it?
The most famous example of God sending disease is in Exodus. Perhaps this is the first recorded instance of collateral damage, the first-born of the Egyptians all die in one night because of their leader’s refusal to free the Israelites from captivity. Disease in Exodus is a sign of God taking sides on behalf of his people, and the absence of disease shows that you are one of God’s preferred people.
What a temptation this book was to Christians in the early 1980s when we first became aware of AIDS. ‘God’s plague!’ was what the cry, ‘it only kills the ungodly!’ Thankfully very few Christians still see it that way, but perhaps even those of us who were appalled by the homophobic and deeply unchristian claims that this was God’s ever so Biblical revenge upon partakers in deeply promiscous cultures and subcultures, at the time secretly wondered, ‘could it be?’ Thankfully we’ve all grown up in one way or another since those dark times.
So disease is in the world, naturally, but God also causes it from time to time – whether to punish or as a sign of his wrath or to aid his people as in when The Philistines are afflicted with tumours.
In the book of Job disease comes instead from Satan, but God allows him to do this in order to test a man’s faith to the brink of destruction.
King Hezekiah is set to die of illness but Isaiah intercedes for him and God extends his life for another fifteen years. King Asa is ‘diseased of the feet’ and inquires of physicians but not of God, so he dies.
Yet it does seem to be generally accepted that illness is part of the world and needs to be treated by doctors. After all Luke has the honour of narrating the Gospel and Acts and none of the Apostles rebuke him for his profession.
Jesus performs many miraculous healings but while he cures the leper he leaves leprosy in tact. He refers to his healing as a sign of his Messianic status, but is it just a means to an end?
The healing that takes place throughout the Gospels and which the Apostles continue in Acts never seems to happen simply for its own sake. Disease features heavily throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, but you never get the feeling that disease itself, the phenomenon of disease is being explained.
Buddhism on the other hand is very clear about disease. In fact you could say that the whole religion began because of this question – why is there disease in the world?
The story goes that Prince Siddhartha was born into a life of luxury, seeing as he was the King’s son, but his upbringing was very strange. His mother had died in childbirth and because his father, the King, couldn’t handle his grief he decreed that his child should never be aware of anything imperfect or decaying or diseased. So he had a very strange childhood, if every one of the servants became ill they were got rid of. If anyone who worked at the palace started to show signs of aging they were removed so that the young prince grew up with this illusion that no one gets ill, no one gets old, no one has to die.
So when, one day he escaped for the day and saw a man who was old, and a man who was diseased and dying it absolutely blew his mind to pieces. Immediately he became depressed and anxious and he resolved that he would never be content until he had satisfactorily understood why there was all this disease in the world.
So this became his quest that took him away from the palace and all his possessions until one day, while meditating under a lotus tree he found what he’d been looking for – enlightenment. And that’s what the Buddha means, it means the enlightened one.
So he became the Buddha, the enlightened one, and his followers used to ask him questions on all the mysteries of life and he’d give them answers.
When asked whether there was a God or not the Buddha said that there was no point asking the question. Since God is by definition infinite and we are finite it would be impossible for us to comprehend God, even if he existed. So Buddhists aren’t atheists, they’re non-theists.
At the heart of the Buddha’s teaching is the idea of Annica which means that everything changes. Every physical structure or organism living or not is always changing even if we can’t see it, our cells are always being replaced so we don’t stay the same nor does any one or anything else. Our thoughts and feelings, too are always changing. In fact the only thing that doesn’t change is the fact that nothing changes.
And this leads us onto another of the three universal truths, dukkha. This states that life is unsatisfactory, everything is changing and mostly decaying. The Buddha says that we are all living under an illusion, we think that things are static and they don’t change, we don’t see how everything is dying, is decaying, we want to live under an illusion.
So as far as disease is concerned the Buddha would say that it’s just the way of the world. Everything is decaying and passing out of its current existence, the only difference with disease is that we can actually see it happening.
Happiness, according to the Buddha, can only come when we take ourselves out of the illusion. Unhappiness is the result of trying to live as though everything wasn’t dying, of trying to hold on to things that are by their very nature impermanent. If we accept the ‘reality’ of impermanence then we will let go, and we will be happy.
Buddhists are good people, to the extent that they live up to the teaching of their religion.
Because of the law of karma there’s no actions without consequences so they try to be peaceful and compassionate in all situations.
There’s a great deal that’s very impressive about Buddhism and about Buddhists. If you really believe you cannot and never will be able to believe in God then Buddhism offers you a great deal.
And yet I think that the Buddhist picture of the world is wrong and I think that the Buddhist picture of disease is wrong.
I came to realise this when I was a theology student in Canterbury ten years ago. At the time I was very interested in all religions and to be honest while I was a very religious person, I wasn’t convinced that Christianity was in any way superior to other faiths. Then one day an eminent Biblical and theological scholar whom I in my ignorance had never heard of came to speak and answer questions at the university. He was called Father Raymond Brown and although I’d not heard of him you could tell that he was important because my tutor was wearing a suit and tie.
At the time I was, like many people, most concerned with the similarities between the faiths and liked to play down their differences.
I’d just been reading a book called ‘The Gospel of Buddha’ which made the curious and some would say outrageous claim that Jesus was, in fact a Buddhist. According to this book when Jesus said that to gain eternal life you had to be born again he meant it literally, you have to be born again, in another life and so on. Not born in the spirit, but really born again, suggesting that Jesus taught his followers to believe in rebirth or reincarnation (Buddhists believe in rebirth, Hindus believe in re-incarnation. The difference is interesting but not particularly relevant here)
Anyway, when Father Ray Brown asked if there were any questions I put my hand up and was surprised and a little alarmed when mine was the only hand in the air. I tried to backtrack saying it was a stupid question and perhaps not the most appropriate but he said, ‘no, I won’t laugh at you…’ So I asked him: ‘what do you think of the idea that Jesus was in fact a Buddhist’
I could see my tutor’s heart sinking. He obviously wanted someone to question the great theologian about the content of one of his books and here was this ignorant and rather odd question. But Father Brown’s answer was solid gold for me,
He answered it by telling the story of a two monks, one a Buddhist and one a Christian. The Christian monk is trying to persuade the Buddhist to become a Christian so he lends him a copy of John’s Gospel. The Buddhist monk thanks him for it and promises to read it carefully. A month later they meet again and the Christian monk asks the Buddhist monk ‘how did you get on with John’s gospel?’ and the Buddhist monk replied ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t get past the first three words’
It’s not really a laugh out loud story, more of a laugh to show that you understand it story. What was it that the Buddhist monk found so incomprehensible? The first three words: In…the…beginning
Christianity and Buddhism are fundamentally different in respect of time. For Buddhists there is an endless cycle of births and deaths. The ever-changing condition of the world is something permanent. Time has no beginning and no end. The misery and suffering of the world, the decay and the death, is the way it is and the way it will always be.
Christianity is totally different. There is a beginning and a middle and an end. The universe has a beginning, what’s more it has a good beginning. We’re living in the middle times, or should I say somewhere between the middle and the end times.
There was no disease in the garden of Eden just as there was no death. Now that we live in separation from God, in this fallen condition and this fallen world, we are indeed surrounded by death and decay and disease, it’s the consequence of being apart from God. But it won’t always be like this. Disease is a permanent feature of this world, but it will have no place in the Kingdom of God.
Imagine we are in a three part drama. Act One is Creation, Act Two is the Fall and Act Three is Redemption. Beginning, middle, end. Eden. Earth. The Kingdom of God.
So where Buddhism sees a grim reality of decay, stretching out into infinity we say ‘No! The way it is now is not the way it is meant to be and it is not the way it is going to be’
The Buddha says that everything changes. We say, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever. Stop describing only the bit you can see, there’s more, there’s going to be so much more! Yes this world is transitory but it is being invaded, replaced, infiltrated by something eternal.
And this means that when we see disease we can never accept it as an inevitable part of the world. We defy disease, we even defy death.
As Paul puts it in I Corinthians 15 54-55
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?
I owe Ray Brown so much because with that one silly little story, told in response to an even sillier question he taught me to look beyond the stories within stories of the Bible to see the grand narrative of the whole thing. Christianity is a story of a world gone bad that’s going to get good again. He showed me the total picture of Christianity, the grandest of grand narratives that is capable of absorbing everything that I encounter. Including disease.
It means that despair at the state of the world is not allowed. We see everything that the Buddha sees, a world of impermanence and change but we see it being taken over in the twinkling of an eye by something incorruptible and everlasting.
There is however a need for a note of caution. In the last few hundred years humans have begun to believe that they are rather clever. There have been breakthroughs in science and technology that create a certain mindset that believes we are getting cleverer and cleverer and in the process solving all our problems.
There was a time, perhaps in the nineteenth and early twentieth century when we thought that we were abolishing misery. Our advanced civilizations would make war a thing of the past, our scientists were eradicating disease from the face of the earth, and our technology was getting rid of food shortages as well.
It’s perhaps understandable that in the midst of these dizzying breakthroughs many Christians started to think that they were literally building the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. But was with the tower of Babel they were undone.
The carnage and horror of world war one destroyed the idea that we were becoming ever more civilized. And even then we managed another world war twenty years later. This surely taught us that there is something in human nature that we cannot change.
We’ve devised the means to feed the world’s population many times over, but famine isn’t going away.
And yes, we’ve made huge progress in fighting disease, in defying its very existence. But then AIDS happened. There’s outstanding progress being made in the treatment of cancer, but we’re also devising new ways to get cancer with mobile phone masts, radiation, additives, chemicals in our food and so on.
We must not think that the kingdom of God is brought into being by human achievements, by human intelligence or human actions. Karl Barth described the things of this world that delighted him, such as the music of Mozart, as parables of the kingdom.
That phrase, I think, describes perfectly our human attempts to defeat disease. When scientists achieve breakthroughs they are parables of the Kingdom. When a married couple facing cancer or alzheimers remain in love with each other that is a miraculous sign, a symbol of the kingdom to come. When a child with cistic fibrosis manages to lead an ordinary life at secondary school that is a miraculous sign to accompany the kingdom, a parable of the kingdom, but it is not the kingdom itself.
Just like Jesus. He healed as a sign of the Kingdom. Lazarus still died a natural death. But he had experienced a wonderful parable, a wonderful signpost to the resurrection body that he would one day put on for eternity.
So I finish where I began, with praise and gratitude for Tear Fund. For putting their shoulder to the wheel in the battle to defeat disease; for going where we fear to tread and defying disease. And for refusing to accept that this fallen world of decay and death is the reality that God wills. It isn’t, the Buddha was wrong. Disease will be no more.
I hope that I’m as zealous about my wife’s health as my own. I hope that I’m just interested my family’s well being as I am in my own, but even this is a struggle if I’m honest. Then if I extend the idea to my friends and my wider family, to my church, well it’s a pretty tall order, a pretty high ideal to love my neighbours as I love myself.
And the parable of the good Samaritan leaves us in no doubt, your neighbour, that you should be loving as you love yourself, is not limited to those around you, to your own kind, your own kin. It includes people a long way a way from you, people that you don’t approve of, and even people who seem may strange or unpleasant.
So I thank God for the Tear Fund who are walking the walk on this commandment to love your neighbour as you love yourself. We thank and praise God for them, they really do show us the way and it’s easy and a privilege for us to support them.
Clearly then as Christians we are expected to respond to disease. But as people of faith, as people with a world-view there’s something else we have to do. People expect us not only to respond to disease but somehow to account for it, to explain it. How can we be aware of the cruel realities of Cancer or HIV and Aids and still say that this universe is the creation of loving and mighty God?
If you’re an atheist or a humanist you have no such burden. In fact the presence of disease in the world may be the reason why you don’t believe that there is a God.
Disease disrupts everyone’s world-view. Some atheists suddenly find that they’re angry with God. Imagine that, feeling anger towards someone whose existence you deny. Or they transfer their feelings on to the nearest Christian. ‘How dare you say there’s a God! How dare you say that Jesus loves me, can’t you see what’s happening?’
It’s as though deep down they have a spiritual belief, or sort of belief but it’s conflicting with the situation they’re in and with what they’re rational mind is telling them. So it all comes out in an angry torrent.
And conversely many Christians when confronted with serious illness will question their faith, they suddenly get the feeling that they’ve just been mouthing the words all these years, now that they’re facing a serious diagnosis they find themselves asking ‘what do I really believe, in my heart of hearts?
So what does the Bible tell us about disease? In the book of Leviticus God lays down the laws by which the Israelites are to live, among them he gives them instruction on ritual bathing and purity, so that the spread of disease is inhibited. It’s as though He’s saying that disease is out there, it’s just a natural part of the world and you’ve got to look out for it. But in the same book he says that he will send diseases upon the Israelites as punishment for not following his commands. So which is it?
The most famous example of God sending disease is in Exodus. Perhaps this is the first recorded instance of collateral damage, the first-born of the Egyptians all die in one night because of their leader’s refusal to free the Israelites from captivity. Disease in Exodus is a sign of God taking sides on behalf of his people, and the absence of disease shows that you are one of God’s preferred people.
What a temptation this book was to Christians in the early 1980s when we first became aware of AIDS. ‘God’s plague!’ was what the cry, ‘it only kills the ungodly!’ Thankfully very few Christians still see it that way, but perhaps even those of us who were appalled by the homophobic and deeply unchristian claims that this was God’s ever so Biblical revenge upon partakers in deeply promiscous cultures and subcultures, at the time secretly wondered, ‘could it be?’ Thankfully we’ve all grown up in one way or another since those dark times.
So disease is in the world, naturally, but God also causes it from time to time – whether to punish or as a sign of his wrath or to aid his people as in when The Philistines are afflicted with tumours.
In the book of Job disease comes instead from Satan, but God allows him to do this in order to test a man’s faith to the brink of destruction.
King Hezekiah is set to die of illness but Isaiah intercedes for him and God extends his life for another fifteen years. King Asa is ‘diseased of the feet’ and inquires of physicians but not of God, so he dies.
Yet it does seem to be generally accepted that illness is part of the world and needs to be treated by doctors. After all Luke has the honour of narrating the Gospel and Acts and none of the Apostles rebuke him for his profession.
Jesus performs many miraculous healings but while he cures the leper he leaves leprosy in tact. He refers to his healing as a sign of his Messianic status, but is it just a means to an end?
The healing that takes place throughout the Gospels and which the Apostles continue in Acts never seems to happen simply for its own sake. Disease features heavily throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, but you never get the feeling that disease itself, the phenomenon of disease is being explained.
Buddhism on the other hand is very clear about disease. In fact you could say that the whole religion began because of this question – why is there disease in the world?
The story goes that Prince Siddhartha was born into a life of luxury, seeing as he was the King’s son, but his upbringing was very strange. His mother had died in childbirth and because his father, the King, couldn’t handle his grief he decreed that his child should never be aware of anything imperfect or decaying or diseased. So he had a very strange childhood, if every one of the servants became ill they were got rid of. If anyone who worked at the palace started to show signs of aging they were removed so that the young prince grew up with this illusion that no one gets ill, no one gets old, no one has to die.
So when, one day he escaped for the day and saw a man who was old, and a man who was diseased and dying it absolutely blew his mind to pieces. Immediately he became depressed and anxious and he resolved that he would never be content until he had satisfactorily understood why there was all this disease in the world.
So this became his quest that took him away from the palace and all his possessions until one day, while meditating under a lotus tree he found what he’d been looking for – enlightenment. And that’s what the Buddha means, it means the enlightened one.
So he became the Buddha, the enlightened one, and his followers used to ask him questions on all the mysteries of life and he’d give them answers.
When asked whether there was a God or not the Buddha said that there was no point asking the question. Since God is by definition infinite and we are finite it would be impossible for us to comprehend God, even if he existed. So Buddhists aren’t atheists, they’re non-theists.
At the heart of the Buddha’s teaching is the idea of Annica which means that everything changes. Every physical structure or organism living or not is always changing even if we can’t see it, our cells are always being replaced so we don’t stay the same nor does any one or anything else. Our thoughts and feelings, too are always changing. In fact the only thing that doesn’t change is the fact that nothing changes.
And this leads us onto another of the three universal truths, dukkha. This states that life is unsatisfactory, everything is changing and mostly decaying. The Buddha says that we are all living under an illusion, we think that things are static and they don’t change, we don’t see how everything is dying, is decaying, we want to live under an illusion.
So as far as disease is concerned the Buddha would say that it’s just the way of the world. Everything is decaying and passing out of its current existence, the only difference with disease is that we can actually see it happening.
Happiness, according to the Buddha, can only come when we take ourselves out of the illusion. Unhappiness is the result of trying to live as though everything wasn’t dying, of trying to hold on to things that are by their very nature impermanent. If we accept the ‘reality’ of impermanence then we will let go, and we will be happy.
Buddhists are good people, to the extent that they live up to the teaching of their religion.
Because of the law of karma there’s no actions without consequences so they try to be peaceful and compassionate in all situations.
There’s a great deal that’s very impressive about Buddhism and about Buddhists. If you really believe you cannot and never will be able to believe in God then Buddhism offers you a great deal.
And yet I think that the Buddhist picture of the world is wrong and I think that the Buddhist picture of disease is wrong.
I came to realise this when I was a theology student in Canterbury ten years ago. At the time I was very interested in all religions and to be honest while I was a very religious person, I wasn’t convinced that Christianity was in any way superior to other faiths. Then one day an eminent Biblical and theological scholar whom I in my ignorance had never heard of came to speak and answer questions at the university. He was called Father Raymond Brown and although I’d not heard of him you could tell that he was important because my tutor was wearing a suit and tie.
At the time I was, like many people, most concerned with the similarities between the faiths and liked to play down their differences.
I’d just been reading a book called ‘The Gospel of Buddha’ which made the curious and some would say outrageous claim that Jesus was, in fact a Buddhist. According to this book when Jesus said that to gain eternal life you had to be born again he meant it literally, you have to be born again, in another life and so on. Not born in the spirit, but really born again, suggesting that Jesus taught his followers to believe in rebirth or reincarnation (Buddhists believe in rebirth, Hindus believe in re-incarnation. The difference is interesting but not particularly relevant here)
Anyway, when Father Ray Brown asked if there were any questions I put my hand up and was surprised and a little alarmed when mine was the only hand in the air. I tried to backtrack saying it was a stupid question and perhaps not the most appropriate but he said, ‘no, I won’t laugh at you…’ So I asked him: ‘what do you think of the idea that Jesus was in fact a Buddhist’
I could see my tutor’s heart sinking. He obviously wanted someone to question the great theologian about the content of one of his books and here was this ignorant and rather odd question. But Father Brown’s answer was solid gold for me,
He answered it by telling the story of a two monks, one a Buddhist and one a Christian. The Christian monk is trying to persuade the Buddhist to become a Christian so he lends him a copy of John’s Gospel. The Buddhist monk thanks him for it and promises to read it carefully. A month later they meet again and the Christian monk asks the Buddhist monk ‘how did you get on with John’s gospel?’ and the Buddhist monk replied ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t get past the first three words’
It’s not really a laugh out loud story, more of a laugh to show that you understand it story. What was it that the Buddhist monk found so incomprehensible? The first three words: In…the…beginning
Christianity and Buddhism are fundamentally different in respect of time. For Buddhists there is an endless cycle of births and deaths. The ever-changing condition of the world is something permanent. Time has no beginning and no end. The misery and suffering of the world, the decay and the death, is the way it is and the way it will always be.
Christianity is totally different. There is a beginning and a middle and an end. The universe has a beginning, what’s more it has a good beginning. We’re living in the middle times, or should I say somewhere between the middle and the end times.
There was no disease in the garden of Eden just as there was no death. Now that we live in separation from God, in this fallen condition and this fallen world, we are indeed surrounded by death and decay and disease, it’s the consequence of being apart from God. But it won’t always be like this. Disease is a permanent feature of this world, but it will have no place in the Kingdom of God.
Imagine we are in a three part drama. Act One is Creation, Act Two is the Fall and Act Three is Redemption. Beginning, middle, end. Eden. Earth. The Kingdom of God.
So where Buddhism sees a grim reality of decay, stretching out into infinity we say ‘No! The way it is now is not the way it is meant to be and it is not the way it is going to be’
The Buddha says that everything changes. We say, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever. Stop describing only the bit you can see, there’s more, there’s going to be so much more! Yes this world is transitory but it is being invaded, replaced, infiltrated by something eternal.
And this means that when we see disease we can never accept it as an inevitable part of the world. We defy disease, we even defy death.
As Paul puts it in I Corinthians 15 54-55
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?
I owe Ray Brown so much because with that one silly little story, told in response to an even sillier question he taught me to look beyond the stories within stories of the Bible to see the grand narrative of the whole thing. Christianity is a story of a world gone bad that’s going to get good again. He showed me the total picture of Christianity, the grandest of grand narratives that is capable of absorbing everything that I encounter. Including disease.
It means that despair at the state of the world is not allowed. We see everything that the Buddha sees, a world of impermanence and change but we see it being taken over in the twinkling of an eye by something incorruptible and everlasting.
There is however a need for a note of caution. In the last few hundred years humans have begun to believe that they are rather clever. There have been breakthroughs in science and technology that create a certain mindset that believes we are getting cleverer and cleverer and in the process solving all our problems.
There was a time, perhaps in the nineteenth and early twentieth century when we thought that we were abolishing misery. Our advanced civilizations would make war a thing of the past, our scientists were eradicating disease from the face of the earth, and our technology was getting rid of food shortages as well.
It’s perhaps understandable that in the midst of these dizzying breakthroughs many Christians started to think that they were literally building the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. But was with the tower of Babel they were undone.
The carnage and horror of world war one destroyed the idea that we were becoming ever more civilized. And even then we managed another world war twenty years later. This surely taught us that there is something in human nature that we cannot change.
We’ve devised the means to feed the world’s population many times over, but famine isn’t going away.
And yes, we’ve made huge progress in fighting disease, in defying its very existence. But then AIDS happened. There’s outstanding progress being made in the treatment of cancer, but we’re also devising new ways to get cancer with mobile phone masts, radiation, additives, chemicals in our food and so on.
We must not think that the kingdom of God is brought into being by human achievements, by human intelligence or human actions. Karl Barth described the things of this world that delighted him, such as the music of Mozart, as parables of the kingdom.
That phrase, I think, describes perfectly our human attempts to defeat disease. When scientists achieve breakthroughs they are parables of the Kingdom. When a married couple facing cancer or alzheimers remain in love with each other that is a miraculous sign, a symbol of the kingdom to come. When a child with cistic fibrosis manages to lead an ordinary life at secondary school that is a miraculous sign to accompany the kingdom, a parable of the kingdom, but it is not the kingdom itself.
Just like Jesus. He healed as a sign of the Kingdom. Lazarus still died a natural death. But he had experienced a wonderful parable, a wonderful signpost to the resurrection body that he would one day put on for eternity.
So I finish where I began, with praise and gratitude for Tear Fund. For putting their shoulder to the wheel in the battle to defeat disease; for going where we fear to tread and defying disease. And for refusing to accept that this fallen world of decay and death is the reality that God wills. It isn’t, the Buddha was wrong. Disease will be no more.
Saturday 10 November 2007
Remembrance Sunday - 11th November
This remembrance Sunday there will be few congregations, families, or streets where the worship will be led or shared by men and women who were on active service during world war 2, or any other war. What must it have been like in the 1950s when so many people had such a personal connection with the war? In schools, children were frequently taught by men who had known battle and had seen death and destruction at first hand. Places of work and business were populated by de-mobbed soldiers. Young men doing national service, would, no doubt, find themselves in the company of soldiers who had known war first-hand.
Life is very different now and remembrance Sunday is moving from the real to the abstract. This morning most of us are not remembering people that we actually knew who have died in wartime, but we wish to honour the generations who died nevertheless. Talking and reflecting today as I am on something that has not touched me in this personal way I’m mindful that I don’t really know , I mean really know what I’m talking about this morning.
But even though I have no personal memories of world war 2, it is massively present to me and always has been. It shaped my parents’ generation, and so in a way shaped mine too.
If you live in the UK you could leave your house right now and travel to a monument with a list of names on it of young men and women from your community who lost their lives in the two world wars. It’s heartbreaking to read in graveyards and cemeteries the ages of soldiers who died in the wars, the number who died is grievous to us, but the age at which their lives ended makes the horror more intense still. Can we imagine something like that happening now? Can we conceive of all the young men in our locality, in our college, at our place of work, all the men that we see everyday on buses and trains, walking down the street, in pubs and clubs, all being sent off to war?
It’s often said that the men who went to war and never came back ‘laid down their lives’ for their country, for their freedom. But that’s not what happened. The reality is that they answered the call to fight, that they did their duty, but they did not, for the great majority, volunteer to fight – they were subscripted to do so. The decision was taken for them than that they had to fight. There was no alternative in as much as they were ordered to join up, and they would very likely face prison and public shaming for refusing.
I can imagine young men receiving their call-up, full of dread talking to their parents about it,
confiding in them their fear of what they were to go through. I can imagine many young men saying to their parents ‘I don’t want to go, I’m scared’ and their parents hearing their distress, knowing that the danger was real but responding that there was no alternative, they had to go.
Our nation sent its young men into battle, government gave the order and ordinary men and women made the order effective with their assent. In a very real sense the parents of the nation sent their children into battle, knowing that many of them would be sacrificed as a result.
And that’s why the Old Testament reading today is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Of how God tested Abraham’s faith to its very limits by demanding that he sacrifice his precious child’s life: with no explanation of why; and holding out no prospect of making this terrible thing worthwhile or compensated for in some way.
Every parent I know fears more for the safety of their children than they do for themselves. What, I wonder, did the parents of the young men who fought in the two world wars make of this story? They would, I think, have recognised Abraham’s agony. ‘Take me, Lord, take my life, hurt me, maim me, kill me but leave my child alone!’ Isn’t that what we would all say? And parents today will equally be aghast at the notion of choosing death for your offspring in any situation, whether it’s in their cruelest nightmares, the darkest news items or even a story from the Bible.
What are we to make of this story? Can any one of us read even in the Bible about a man who is prepared to kill his child because of a message from God, and find him praiseworthy? Or even sane? Isn’t the kindest thing we can say about Abraham that he was highly delusional – that he was out of his mind?
The Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard became obsessed with the story of Abraham and Isaac – it challenged his faith at the deepest level. He could find no intellectual, spiritual or ethical support for Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son. What, he wanted to know, was this story telling him about Christianity? It makes no sense! And that, he decided, was the point of it. According to Kierkegaard the story of Abraham and Isaac made it clear that faith in God meant going beyond what seems sensible, rational or even good. The moral of the story, Kierkegaard, said was that faith must transcend the absurd. The story of Abraham and Isaac takes us to the very limits of faith, to explain the full measure, the full Biblical proportion of faith.
Philosophically and theologically speaking I like what Kierkegaard does with the story and where it leads him. Throughout his writings he emphasizes the ‘infinite qualitative distinction between God and man’ which is only right and proper and his philosophy forms a platform used to magnificent effect by the great theologian Karl Barth.
But I think there’s a much more obvious and less intellectual angle to take on the story that is very appropriate on this day as we remember all the young who died in two world wars.
After Abraham has shown himself to be willing to sacrifice his son God lists the blessings which will be his:
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time
and said, I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,
I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,
and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.
Are these blessings a one-off reward for a unique and outstanding demonstration of faith in God? Or are they a statement of principle, of the blessings that will naturally occur to one who is prepared to make such a sacrifice?
Now I’m not talking here about rewarding a grotesque murder now or at any time. I’m imagining these words of scripture being read by the early Israelites, a people living in dangerous times in which war was never far away. Didn’t they need to make the collective decision, that in some circumstances, for some principles or aims they would be prepared to do what was ghastly and horrific to them, namely to send their beloved children into battle.
I’m talking about the consequences of a society being prepared, or not prepared to sacrifice their children under any circumstances.
The hard nosed calculation is that if your enemies see that you have been prepared to sacrifice your children in this way then they will assume that you will be prepared to do it again – and so you will, hopefully, not have to actually do so. It’s the paradox, to make peace you must prepare for war.
That’s what happens to Abraham. Because he is prepared to sacrifice his son he doesn’t need to. And the list of blessings that will flow to Abraham and his people, the wealth, security and bounty that will be theirs, isn’t this story a way of persuading the Israelites, and now us, that peace and prosperity, security and well-being, will belong to nations who are prepared to make such a terrible sacrifice?
There are some things that matter so much that we should be prepared to sacrifice our lives for them. And there are things that are so precious, so sacrosanct that we must even sacrifice our children to defend them.
And today, we in the UK live in a free and prosperous society, in no small part, thanks to the sacrifice that was made in the war. Could not this story speak to us now in reminding us that the service men and women who lost their lives played the part of Isaac – willing and courageous, but the part of Abraham was played out too, by the older generations who sat in government and in their own families sent their children off to war.
We look back at the horrors of Nazism, of the Holocaust, and say that there was in those times something present in the world so evil, so repellent and so deadly that the sacrifice was necessary - that previous generations were right to take the part of Abraham.
But there have been wars where the story of Abraham and Isaac have been played out for no good reason. How terrible to play the part of Abraham, and how much more terrible to demand the sacrifice needlessly.
Today we remember primarily the men and women who were like Isaac, answering the call of their country, trusting that the sacrifice would not be asked for unless it was necessary.
And we remember too all those people who have sent young people into war and we pray for them. And we pray for those who will take part in the story of Abraham and Isaac this coming year, sending and being sent into battle, into danger and sacrifice.
All those who find themselves in situations where sacrifice is demanded we commend to God. It’s a situation, a prospect, a memory that is so intense that they feel isolated, separated from the rest of us who have never been there. We pray for them this morning and remind them that there is one from whom they can never be separated or isolated, who has known all that they know and who will lead them on into light. That’s the second reading, and I think it’s appropriate to finish by re-reading the words from John 14 in which Jesus comforts his disciple. May these words be powerfully true to all who are affected by sadness today:
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.
In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
You know the way to the place where I am going.
Life is very different now and remembrance Sunday is moving from the real to the abstract. This morning most of us are not remembering people that we actually knew who have died in wartime, but we wish to honour the generations who died nevertheless. Talking and reflecting today as I am on something that has not touched me in this personal way I’m mindful that I don’t really know , I mean really know what I’m talking about this morning.
But even though I have no personal memories of world war 2, it is massively present to me and always has been. It shaped my parents’ generation, and so in a way shaped mine too.
If you live in the UK you could leave your house right now and travel to a monument with a list of names on it of young men and women from your community who lost their lives in the two world wars. It’s heartbreaking to read in graveyards and cemeteries the ages of soldiers who died in the wars, the number who died is grievous to us, but the age at which their lives ended makes the horror more intense still. Can we imagine something like that happening now? Can we conceive of all the young men in our locality, in our college, at our place of work, all the men that we see everyday on buses and trains, walking down the street, in pubs and clubs, all being sent off to war?
It’s often said that the men who went to war and never came back ‘laid down their lives’ for their country, for their freedom. But that’s not what happened. The reality is that they answered the call to fight, that they did their duty, but they did not, for the great majority, volunteer to fight – they were subscripted to do so. The decision was taken for them than that they had to fight. There was no alternative in as much as they were ordered to join up, and they would very likely face prison and public shaming for refusing.
I can imagine young men receiving their call-up, full of dread talking to their parents about it,
confiding in them their fear of what they were to go through. I can imagine many young men saying to their parents ‘I don’t want to go, I’m scared’ and their parents hearing their distress, knowing that the danger was real but responding that there was no alternative, they had to go.
Our nation sent its young men into battle, government gave the order and ordinary men and women made the order effective with their assent. In a very real sense the parents of the nation sent their children into battle, knowing that many of them would be sacrificed as a result.
And that’s why the Old Testament reading today is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Of how God tested Abraham’s faith to its very limits by demanding that he sacrifice his precious child’s life: with no explanation of why; and holding out no prospect of making this terrible thing worthwhile or compensated for in some way.
Every parent I know fears more for the safety of their children than they do for themselves. What, I wonder, did the parents of the young men who fought in the two world wars make of this story? They would, I think, have recognised Abraham’s agony. ‘Take me, Lord, take my life, hurt me, maim me, kill me but leave my child alone!’ Isn’t that what we would all say? And parents today will equally be aghast at the notion of choosing death for your offspring in any situation, whether it’s in their cruelest nightmares, the darkest news items or even a story from the Bible.
What are we to make of this story? Can any one of us read even in the Bible about a man who is prepared to kill his child because of a message from God, and find him praiseworthy? Or even sane? Isn’t the kindest thing we can say about Abraham that he was highly delusional – that he was out of his mind?
The Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard became obsessed with the story of Abraham and Isaac – it challenged his faith at the deepest level. He could find no intellectual, spiritual or ethical support for Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son. What, he wanted to know, was this story telling him about Christianity? It makes no sense! And that, he decided, was the point of it. According to Kierkegaard the story of Abraham and Isaac made it clear that faith in God meant going beyond what seems sensible, rational or even good. The moral of the story, Kierkegaard, said was that faith must transcend the absurd. The story of Abraham and Isaac takes us to the very limits of faith, to explain the full measure, the full Biblical proportion of faith.
Philosophically and theologically speaking I like what Kierkegaard does with the story and where it leads him. Throughout his writings he emphasizes the ‘infinite qualitative distinction between God and man’ which is only right and proper and his philosophy forms a platform used to magnificent effect by the great theologian Karl Barth.
But I think there’s a much more obvious and less intellectual angle to take on the story that is very appropriate on this day as we remember all the young who died in two world wars.
After Abraham has shown himself to be willing to sacrifice his son God lists the blessings which will be his:
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time
and said, I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,
I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,
and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.
Are these blessings a one-off reward for a unique and outstanding demonstration of faith in God? Or are they a statement of principle, of the blessings that will naturally occur to one who is prepared to make such a sacrifice?
Now I’m not talking here about rewarding a grotesque murder now or at any time. I’m imagining these words of scripture being read by the early Israelites, a people living in dangerous times in which war was never far away. Didn’t they need to make the collective decision, that in some circumstances, for some principles or aims they would be prepared to do what was ghastly and horrific to them, namely to send their beloved children into battle.
I’m talking about the consequences of a society being prepared, or not prepared to sacrifice their children under any circumstances.
The hard nosed calculation is that if your enemies see that you have been prepared to sacrifice your children in this way then they will assume that you will be prepared to do it again – and so you will, hopefully, not have to actually do so. It’s the paradox, to make peace you must prepare for war.
That’s what happens to Abraham. Because he is prepared to sacrifice his son he doesn’t need to. And the list of blessings that will flow to Abraham and his people, the wealth, security and bounty that will be theirs, isn’t this story a way of persuading the Israelites, and now us, that peace and prosperity, security and well-being, will belong to nations who are prepared to make such a terrible sacrifice?
There are some things that matter so much that we should be prepared to sacrifice our lives for them. And there are things that are so precious, so sacrosanct that we must even sacrifice our children to defend them.
And today, we in the UK live in a free and prosperous society, in no small part, thanks to the sacrifice that was made in the war. Could not this story speak to us now in reminding us that the service men and women who lost their lives played the part of Isaac – willing and courageous, but the part of Abraham was played out too, by the older generations who sat in government and in their own families sent their children off to war.
We look back at the horrors of Nazism, of the Holocaust, and say that there was in those times something present in the world so evil, so repellent and so deadly that the sacrifice was necessary - that previous generations were right to take the part of Abraham.
But there have been wars where the story of Abraham and Isaac have been played out for no good reason. How terrible to play the part of Abraham, and how much more terrible to demand the sacrifice needlessly.
Today we remember primarily the men and women who were like Isaac, answering the call of their country, trusting that the sacrifice would not be asked for unless it was necessary.
And we remember too all those people who have sent young people into war and we pray for them. And we pray for those who will take part in the story of Abraham and Isaac this coming year, sending and being sent into battle, into danger and sacrifice.
All those who find themselves in situations where sacrifice is demanded we commend to God. It’s a situation, a prospect, a memory that is so intense that they feel isolated, separated from the rest of us who have never been there. We pray for them this morning and remind them that there is one from whom they can never be separated or isolated, who has known all that they know and who will lead them on into light. That’s the second reading, and I think it’s appropriate to finish by re-reading the words from John 14 in which Jesus comforts his disciple. May these words be powerfully true to all who are affected by sadness today:
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.
In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
You know the way to the place where I am going.
Sunday 4 November 2007
Rock or Sand?
The story about building your house on rock not sand is one of the earliest Christian memories that I have. I can’t remember if I first heard it in a school assembly or from my parents, but however I came by it I lodged it deep in my memory. It’s only recently that I’ve realised that I missed the point of the story completely.
Or rather the point was missed for me. I had a middle class upbringing and this story could be described as a parable about being or becoming middle class. Just as slaves dwelled on the story of the exodus, reading into it their own yearning for liberation, so the middle classes have for years been pondering the difference between rock and sand.
The point of the story, as it was always told to me, was that we should be like the man who built his house on rock. We should think about the long-term, build solid foundations, stay on at school, go to university, save for tomorrow. It became a parable about prudence and deferred gratification. For that’s the great discovery that the middle classes have made, that if we are prepared to defer our quest for gratification, if we are willing to invest or save rather than spend, then tomorrow will get brighter and brighter – just as long as we can keep the habit.
So the story of the wise and foolish builders is used to inculcate in Christian youngsters all those wise and sensible habits which will make them successful and happy in life. And the wise builder is not a bad role model at all (although it has to be an analogy since the middle classes tend not to produce actual builders)
But Jesus told the story for a completely different reason. He spoke to people who already knew about wise and foolish builders, who knew that in life taking a bit more trouble over things, thinking carefully of the future when acting in the present brings rewards.
Throughout their history the people of Israel had been reminded by scripture that following God’s laws would bring material rewards in this life. The Old Testament is packed with sensible and practical advice, some of which has to be seen in the context of a tribal agricultural people in the desert and some of which is still good advice today.
Our old testament reading, Psalm number 1, makes the point clearly that following God’s teachings – as individuals and as a society – will bring security. The man or woman who follows and meditates upon God’s law is ‘like a tree planted in a streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.’
Godly people tend to do well in life, materially. One of the difficulties we have in the non-conformist traditions in the UK is that our churches, which came into being as part of the revival of the nineteenth century, started in working class communities but transformed their members into fully fledged members of the middle classes within one or two generations. It means that churches located in working class areas, with working class roots can become alienated from their communities as their members prosper and move away.
So for Jesus, who comes preaching a gospel that, although strange to the ear is nevertheless routed in the old scriptures, it should be quite unexceptional when he says that following his words will make us like the wise builder. We already know this, the scriptures have told us over and over that following God’s laws leads to increased and sustained prosperity – The first Psalm is just one example – it’s a message that is hammered home again and again in the old testament – build your house on rock not sand.
But here’s the problem. Jesus says that all this security is going to come not from carrying on with all the sensible and prudent ways of the old testament, Jesus comes onto the scene giving us advice that could be seen, practically speaking, as reckless even suicidal.
He tells us that we must pray for our enemies, love our enemies, forgive our enemies and if they strike us we must turn the other cheek.
He tells us that we should be prepared, in some circumstances should expect, to be persecuted, to be hated, to be mocked, to abandon all comfort or well-being.
He tells us that we will gain our life by losing it, that he brings the sword, not peace and that families will be divided. And having said all this he behaves so recklessly towards the authorities that he is arrested, humiliated, tortured and executed.
And that is why the parable of the wise and foolish builders is actually very, very radical.
How can it be that following his words will give us security when it seems that the opposite is true? What about the martyrs in Rome, who sang hymns as they were mauled and eaten by lions, hadn’t they followed the most reckless, the most dangerous path possible?
If we were to walk away from our worship today and truly follow Christ’s commands what could we expect? If we went back to our families, to our communities and places of work and NEVER lied again wouldn’t life get pretty scary pretty quickly? Surely we would feel like our life was balancing precariously on some pretty shaky foundations.
And yet he says it is not so. He says that our life, on earth and in heaven will be built on a secure foundation if we follow his words, many of which are dangerous and difficult to obey. Could it be that in this life we are meant to prepare a foundation on which we will stand in a very different sort of life?
How else could it be so that to do what seems too frightening, too difficult, too radical for this world is actually a sound investment? If the Kingdom of God is not a reality that will come to pass then Jesus’ words cannot possibly lead to a solid foundation, but if the Kingdom is real then that is the only foundation that counts.
So are we wrong to aim to be like the builder, building his house on rock? Are we wrong to cultivate middle class habits of thrift? No, there’s nothing wrong with sane, sensible, prudent, middle class habits that promote security and well-being for ourselves and those around us.
But Jesus tells us in the story of the wise and foolish builders that there is more, much more to life. He tells us about mighty foundations, about a rock so much more solid, so much more dependable and everlasting than any savings account, or college fund, or career plan. He says that there is a security and well-being that surpasses any diet or exercise regime.
It’s as though people who’ve only ever heard a penny whistle are told about an orchestra. As though a sit com is suddenly compared with Shakespeare. Jesus doesn’t dismiss or insult the prosperity and security we strive for in this life, but he introduces us to something much, much better.
But let us be honest at this point. Many of us, valued members of our congregations struggle with belief in a real kingdom to come. All of us for some of the time, and some of us for all of the time, are only able to see the gospel as relating to earthly realities. What then can we possibly make of Jesus’ comparing his radical and disturbing message to the image of a wise builder, building his house on rock?
There is, as far as I can see, only one way in which we might be able to value these words of Jesus if the Kingdom of God is not a real, supernatural and spiritual kingdom that will come to pass. That way is to acknowledge that for any individual to follow Jesus’ teachings properly will indeed lead to sacrifice and suffering for that individual disciple, but the rest of us, collectively will gain over time from the heroic, sacrificial lives of certain, exceptional Christians – disciples.
We might then say that a society that is able to inspire individuals to bravely follow Jesus’ teachings will be building itself solid foundations, though the poor disciple will not enjoy any of the security or well-being this produces.
If that’s the only way you can see it then so be it. Your life and the life of your family and community will be enriched beyond what would be possible if you had no belief at all. And yet consider that you might be missing something, you might be selling Jesus short, grievously so.
The riches and security, the longevity and happiness which we value on earth, and which we pursue logically, prudently and with impeccably middle class precision is relativized by Jesus’ statement that real prosperity comes ONLY from following his difficult and dangerous gospel.
The goals that my middle class family and teachers had in mind when they told me to be like the man who built his house on rock are announced as nothing compared to the Kingdom.
And when we find it hard to believe in the realities of heaven, of the kingdom, of the Christ that is risen and the spirit that is poured out, we console ourselves with practical matters and social action. We tell ourselves that what really matters is not the fine detail of what we believe but the practical, action that we take. The ‘Gospel means nothing if we don’t see it in action’ we say and we’re right.
But ask yourself this. Aren’t we more likely to take this action if we really do believe in a Kingdom, a real Kingdom which makes us prize the foundation that can be built there above any security we might have in this life? Who goes into the most difficult and deprived communities in the world – are they evangelical or are they liberal in their beliefs? When the martyrs went to the lions they had a real kingdom in mind and when Jesus Himself went willingly to his death he was doing more than setting a good example.
And today, very often it’s the evangelicals, those whom we may mock for having narrow or unsophisticated beliefs, who are prepared to live and serve where the rest of us fear to tread. If our faith is limited so too will be our action. I find it hard to believe that exceptional works spring from anything other than exceptional faith.
So I think we ought to believe, fully, that there is a reality beyond what we know here on earth. I think that Jesus is referring to this reality in the story of the wise and the foolish builders. He’s telling us about a new life to come: the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven; the Kingdom that will come,
And if this Kingdom really is on its way then it stands to reason, it is indeed sound, practical advice to follow his words no matter how difficult or frightening this might be.
Or rather the point was missed for me. I had a middle class upbringing and this story could be described as a parable about being or becoming middle class. Just as slaves dwelled on the story of the exodus, reading into it their own yearning for liberation, so the middle classes have for years been pondering the difference between rock and sand.
The point of the story, as it was always told to me, was that we should be like the man who built his house on rock. We should think about the long-term, build solid foundations, stay on at school, go to university, save for tomorrow. It became a parable about prudence and deferred gratification. For that’s the great discovery that the middle classes have made, that if we are prepared to defer our quest for gratification, if we are willing to invest or save rather than spend, then tomorrow will get brighter and brighter – just as long as we can keep the habit.
So the story of the wise and foolish builders is used to inculcate in Christian youngsters all those wise and sensible habits which will make them successful and happy in life. And the wise builder is not a bad role model at all (although it has to be an analogy since the middle classes tend not to produce actual builders)
But Jesus told the story for a completely different reason. He spoke to people who already knew about wise and foolish builders, who knew that in life taking a bit more trouble over things, thinking carefully of the future when acting in the present brings rewards.
Throughout their history the people of Israel had been reminded by scripture that following God’s laws would bring material rewards in this life. The Old Testament is packed with sensible and practical advice, some of which has to be seen in the context of a tribal agricultural people in the desert and some of which is still good advice today.
Our old testament reading, Psalm number 1, makes the point clearly that following God’s teachings – as individuals and as a society – will bring security. The man or woman who follows and meditates upon God’s law is ‘like a tree planted in a streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.’
Godly people tend to do well in life, materially. One of the difficulties we have in the non-conformist traditions in the UK is that our churches, which came into being as part of the revival of the nineteenth century, started in working class communities but transformed their members into fully fledged members of the middle classes within one or two generations. It means that churches located in working class areas, with working class roots can become alienated from their communities as their members prosper and move away.
So for Jesus, who comes preaching a gospel that, although strange to the ear is nevertheless routed in the old scriptures, it should be quite unexceptional when he says that following his words will make us like the wise builder. We already know this, the scriptures have told us over and over that following God’s laws leads to increased and sustained prosperity – The first Psalm is just one example – it’s a message that is hammered home again and again in the old testament – build your house on rock not sand.
But here’s the problem. Jesus says that all this security is going to come not from carrying on with all the sensible and prudent ways of the old testament, Jesus comes onto the scene giving us advice that could be seen, practically speaking, as reckless even suicidal.
He tells us that we must pray for our enemies, love our enemies, forgive our enemies and if they strike us we must turn the other cheek.
He tells us that we should be prepared, in some circumstances should expect, to be persecuted, to be hated, to be mocked, to abandon all comfort or well-being.
He tells us that we will gain our life by losing it, that he brings the sword, not peace and that families will be divided. And having said all this he behaves so recklessly towards the authorities that he is arrested, humiliated, tortured and executed.
And that is why the parable of the wise and foolish builders is actually very, very radical.
How can it be that following his words will give us security when it seems that the opposite is true? What about the martyrs in Rome, who sang hymns as they were mauled and eaten by lions, hadn’t they followed the most reckless, the most dangerous path possible?
If we were to walk away from our worship today and truly follow Christ’s commands what could we expect? If we went back to our families, to our communities and places of work and NEVER lied again wouldn’t life get pretty scary pretty quickly? Surely we would feel like our life was balancing precariously on some pretty shaky foundations.
And yet he says it is not so. He says that our life, on earth and in heaven will be built on a secure foundation if we follow his words, many of which are dangerous and difficult to obey. Could it be that in this life we are meant to prepare a foundation on which we will stand in a very different sort of life?
How else could it be so that to do what seems too frightening, too difficult, too radical for this world is actually a sound investment? If the Kingdom of God is not a reality that will come to pass then Jesus’ words cannot possibly lead to a solid foundation, but if the Kingdom is real then that is the only foundation that counts.
So are we wrong to aim to be like the builder, building his house on rock? Are we wrong to cultivate middle class habits of thrift? No, there’s nothing wrong with sane, sensible, prudent, middle class habits that promote security and well-being for ourselves and those around us.
But Jesus tells us in the story of the wise and foolish builders that there is more, much more to life. He tells us about mighty foundations, about a rock so much more solid, so much more dependable and everlasting than any savings account, or college fund, or career plan. He says that there is a security and well-being that surpasses any diet or exercise regime.
It’s as though people who’ve only ever heard a penny whistle are told about an orchestra. As though a sit com is suddenly compared with Shakespeare. Jesus doesn’t dismiss or insult the prosperity and security we strive for in this life, but he introduces us to something much, much better.
But let us be honest at this point. Many of us, valued members of our congregations struggle with belief in a real kingdom to come. All of us for some of the time, and some of us for all of the time, are only able to see the gospel as relating to earthly realities. What then can we possibly make of Jesus’ comparing his radical and disturbing message to the image of a wise builder, building his house on rock?
There is, as far as I can see, only one way in which we might be able to value these words of Jesus if the Kingdom of God is not a real, supernatural and spiritual kingdom that will come to pass. That way is to acknowledge that for any individual to follow Jesus’ teachings properly will indeed lead to sacrifice and suffering for that individual disciple, but the rest of us, collectively will gain over time from the heroic, sacrificial lives of certain, exceptional Christians – disciples.
We might then say that a society that is able to inspire individuals to bravely follow Jesus’ teachings will be building itself solid foundations, though the poor disciple will not enjoy any of the security or well-being this produces.
If that’s the only way you can see it then so be it. Your life and the life of your family and community will be enriched beyond what would be possible if you had no belief at all. And yet consider that you might be missing something, you might be selling Jesus short, grievously so.
The riches and security, the longevity and happiness which we value on earth, and which we pursue logically, prudently and with impeccably middle class precision is relativized by Jesus’ statement that real prosperity comes ONLY from following his difficult and dangerous gospel.
The goals that my middle class family and teachers had in mind when they told me to be like the man who built his house on rock are announced as nothing compared to the Kingdom.
And when we find it hard to believe in the realities of heaven, of the kingdom, of the Christ that is risen and the spirit that is poured out, we console ourselves with practical matters and social action. We tell ourselves that what really matters is not the fine detail of what we believe but the practical, action that we take. The ‘Gospel means nothing if we don’t see it in action’ we say and we’re right.
But ask yourself this. Aren’t we more likely to take this action if we really do believe in a Kingdom, a real Kingdom which makes us prize the foundation that can be built there above any security we might have in this life? Who goes into the most difficult and deprived communities in the world – are they evangelical or are they liberal in their beliefs? When the martyrs went to the lions they had a real kingdom in mind and when Jesus Himself went willingly to his death he was doing more than setting a good example.
And today, very often it’s the evangelicals, those whom we may mock for having narrow or unsophisticated beliefs, who are prepared to live and serve where the rest of us fear to tread. If our faith is limited so too will be our action. I find it hard to believe that exceptional works spring from anything other than exceptional faith.
So I think we ought to believe, fully, that there is a reality beyond what we know here on earth. I think that Jesus is referring to this reality in the story of the wise and the foolish builders. He’s telling us about a new life to come: the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven; the Kingdom that will come,
And if this Kingdom really is on its way then it stands to reason, it is indeed sound, practical advice to follow his words no matter how difficult or frightening this might be.
Thursday 1 November 2007
Alan Johnston and prayer
Alan Johnston, BBC correspondent in Gaza who was held as a hostage was interviewed on radio 5 live the other day. Simon Mayo asked him if he prayed at all during his ordeal, he replied that it didn't seem right to do so because he had never prayed before. It wasn't just that he didn't want to be a hypocrite - he had already witnessed so much suffering of innocent people that he had come to the firm conclusion that God does not control our individual lives in the way that religious belief suggests.
This sums up succinctly a major reaction to the claims of Christianity - we are told to accept the will of God, but also to pray for God to act in our lives in particular ways and this is hard for people to buy. I'd like to think that this is a creative tension in a truth that we can't understand fully, it's hard to think that God responds to our prayer in the way described so often in the Bible, yet we are told to pray not just with acquiesence and confession but with petitions. So how can we hold these two seemingly contradictory ideas together?
If God answered prayers in any way that was so regular and reliable as to be observable the meaning of faith would be destroyed - it would be simple self-interest to pray in order to get what you want.
Not only would it be illogical, then for God to answer every prayer, it is also pretty clear that it just doesn't happen. It could be answered that maybe God only answers prayers that are worthy and pure - but even then most of us would agree that there is plenty of evidence that this doesn't happen either.
Yet we are told to pray to God and to make requests of Him, what can be the purpose or benefit of this? Doesn't it just lead to disappointment and loss of faith when our prayers aren't answered?
For me the answer goes back to Augustine. He claimed that it is our will that is fallen, and that it is our will which needs divine assistance. When we pray we are training our will, trying to bring our will into harmony with the divine will. If we pray properly then we don't just ask God for things - Christian prayer should include ALL of the following:
We acknowledge the true nature of the relationship between ourselves and the God that we are praying to - one in which we can make no demands or claims.
Indeed if we really grasp the differences between ourselves and God we are moved to profess awe and adoration of His being and creation.
This should lead to an awareness of our own shortcomings and we should confess these freely.
It is only at this point that we are invited/ordered to make our prayers of intercession (things that we want God to do). Hopefully our prayers of adoration, thanksgiving and confession will have filtered out any requests for things that are stupid or egotistical. Ideally we will now be praying for things that we are told ARE the will of God - such as an end to war or justice and reconciliation around the world. We know what would make earth more like heaven and we should pray for it to happen.Hopefuly we are sufficiently humble that our requests focus on the needs of others - and we are told that they should even include our enemies. And in amongst all this we are told that we may pray, too, for ourselves.
Implicit in our 'wish prayers' is the full understanding that we have no right to expect our prayer to be answered in the way we want and yet we are permitted - even encouraged to make this request. By making this prayer we will be enriched in ways that we can't fully understand: our wishes will be purified and grounded. Our thoughts and desires will be uplifted and put in their proper place. The desires, wants and needs that prayer deals with are there whether we pray or not. Prayer teaches us to deal with them, prayerfully.
This sums up succinctly a major reaction to the claims of Christianity - we are told to accept the will of God, but also to pray for God to act in our lives in particular ways and this is hard for people to buy. I'd like to think that this is a creative tension in a truth that we can't understand fully, it's hard to think that God responds to our prayer in the way described so often in the Bible, yet we are told to pray not just with acquiesence and confession but with petitions. So how can we hold these two seemingly contradictory ideas together?
If God answered prayers in any way that was so regular and reliable as to be observable the meaning of faith would be destroyed - it would be simple self-interest to pray in order to get what you want.
Not only would it be illogical, then for God to answer every prayer, it is also pretty clear that it just doesn't happen. It could be answered that maybe God only answers prayers that are worthy and pure - but even then most of us would agree that there is plenty of evidence that this doesn't happen either.
Yet we are told to pray to God and to make requests of Him, what can be the purpose or benefit of this? Doesn't it just lead to disappointment and loss of faith when our prayers aren't answered?
For me the answer goes back to Augustine. He claimed that it is our will that is fallen, and that it is our will which needs divine assistance. When we pray we are training our will, trying to bring our will into harmony with the divine will. If we pray properly then we don't just ask God for things - Christian prayer should include ALL of the following:
We acknowledge the true nature of the relationship between ourselves and the God that we are praying to - one in which we can make no demands or claims.
Indeed if we really grasp the differences between ourselves and God we are moved to profess awe and adoration of His being and creation.
This should lead to an awareness of our own shortcomings and we should confess these freely.
It is only at this point that we are invited/ordered to make our prayers of intercession (things that we want God to do). Hopefully our prayers of adoration, thanksgiving and confession will have filtered out any requests for things that are stupid or egotistical. Ideally we will now be praying for things that we are told ARE the will of God - such as an end to war or justice and reconciliation around the world. We know what would make earth more like heaven and we should pray for it to happen.Hopefuly we are sufficiently humble that our requests focus on the needs of others - and we are told that they should even include our enemies. And in amongst all this we are told that we may pray, too, for ourselves.
Implicit in our 'wish prayers' is the full understanding that we have no right to expect our prayer to be answered in the way we want and yet we are permitted - even encouraged to make this request. By making this prayer we will be enriched in ways that we can't fully understand: our wishes will be purified and grounded. Our thoughts and desires will be uplifted and put in their proper place. The desires, wants and needs that prayer deals with are there whether we pray or not. Prayer teaches us to deal with them, prayerfully.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
