Walking through walls

Prague is an interesting city. Whether you see it as the "city of 100 spires" or the city of the never-ending stag-night, you can't escape the amazing mix of fantastic old buildings and of people. There is both the very ancient - long before the brave stories of early Reformers burnt at the stake or "defenestrated" (thrown out of windows!) - and the very new, with all the High Street shops you'd expect to see in the UK, and this fascinating wall reminding us that, when people were under Soviet rule, they were attracted to John Lennon, the peace-lover. A game of cat and mouse ensued, as the wall was covered with messages of peace and then whitewashed by the authorities, but now it remains - with Lennon's head coming through to meet us ... Overturning totalitarian governments, or making world peace, is somewhat like walking through walls: it's just not something that happens ... is it? And yet it is. Again I find myself drawn to the distinction between optimism (which can naively pretend the walls don't exist) and pessimism (which gloomily sees only the obstacle) - and to the conviction that Hope is far more radical than mere optimism, because it sees the wall squarely, head-on, for all its utter concreteness (the stubbornness of societal systems, of human attitudes, of violence and division), but still determines to walk through it, whatever the cost. So let's get to it - let's walk through walls.

A Climate for Debate

I'll refer to it as an example - but to do so, I have to spell out the importance of the issue: Climate Change. It's high time we in the churches got serious about science, not so that we simply accept whatever scientists say or do (because there are issues which call for ethical guidance as well as theological frameworks), but certainly so that we at least appreciate the seriousness with which science is undertaken. For it seems that many 'religionists' treat science as though it is 'mere propaganda', a distorted mindset, whereas its strict method and due sense of openness to ongoing discovery mean that it ought to be better described as the exposure of propaganda. The scientific method requires evidence, tested and tested - so when well over 90% of relevant scientists tell us that it is virtually certain that warmer climates are going to suffer more famines, more insect outbreaks, more deaths due to a 2 degree rise in temperature, certainly exacerbated by human activity, then we should listen - and although Britain itself can possibly afford to delay, we should be far more concerned about those who cannot afford to do so. Poorer people will suffer more. What this requires is a "climate of debate", i) with Christian communities daring to give more time to the big issues facing humanity than to the details of church preservation, ii) with us supporting each other to discover ways of tackling the issues in our daily lives - to help us live sustainably, how we might address our own consumerism and wastefulness, and iii) with us learning how to converse with other disciplines and other communities ... but instead, we preoccupy ourselves with churchiness and talk to ourselves, hiding fearfully behind our walls, or no better, behind doctrinal assertions. I suspect God is no respecter of such walls or assertions, when a climate of debate and conversation demands lives which dare to imagine a different future.

Getting the Easter treatment

The Gospel stories of Jesus' resurrection leave us with an intriguing gap: what might have happened between the disciples' retreat and the discovery of the empty tomb? Matthew tells us there are soldiers sleeping, and angels now guarding the tomb ... but what happened in the gap? 'He is risen,' we are told. 'He is not here' or 'Why look for the living among the dead?' or 'Do not fear, for he has gone ahead of you.' All we know is that we are playing catch-up. He has surprised us again. Just when we could legitimately expect to be 'up to speed', he has exploited the mysterious gap between us again, and gone ahead of us. It is like a frustrating game of 'hide and seek', only the one who is hiding seems to remain ahead of the game, even at the very point that we could justifiably be sure that we had beaten him! Not that we were trying to beat him; we just wanted to do the right thing by him - to bring flowers and spices to his grave. But he has gone. The gap remains - we are destined to be caught off guard, at least as much as the soldiers! So what? It means, contrary to much Christian hyperbole about the confidence we can now claim, that our confidence is shattered - and that is the very grounds of our hope! If we are truly to get and embrace 'the Easter treatment' we must accept that the grounds of our faith will always surprise us and shake us. This is what the story of Jesus shows us: Be ready to un-do even what you deemed to be the most secure concept, to dismantle even the most concrete world-view, to shatter even the strongest rock, to have even the heftiest stone rolled away. Even that which is 'prophesied' in some way will continue to shake and disturb us: it will never be in our grasp, but will call us on, again and again, for the sake of freedom, hope and healing. This is the politics of Easter: the gap between hope and reality is vital, to keep us on our toes, questioning each Power, re-evaluating every presumption, for the sake of all enslaved or de-humanised people and communities ... so be ready ... mind the gap, never take it for granted that it is closed ... for the work goes on and resurrection makes it possible and essential.

An Easter Saturday world

The good thing about religious calendars is that they give us discipline and a shape to help frame our lives, to place the events of 'ordinary' life in the context of God's relatedness with us. But the problem with them is: we know what happens next. There is a lack of surprise. In our church, on Good Friday this year, we prayed for the strength to wait patiently, anticipating that hope will be fulfilled, healing will come, but recognising (at least in our words) that we do not know when ... which is why we need to develop the ability to wait patiently but actively. And this is where we are, as a world, every day: between the depths of what has happened and the hope for what could happen. Of course, many people anticipate only that things will get worse, but the Christian calling is to resist that pessimism, but without retreating into a naivety which denies the awfulness of Good Friday. Many Christians prefer not to attend services on Good Friday, because it is too painful - which on the one hand I find disappointing, because there is a journey to be shared together; but on the other hand, may be the fact that they cannot face it suggests that they already recognise its awfulness ... but the thing is to hope for tomorrow, without assuming it will simply drop into our laps. We must go to the grave, bringing our spices and flowers, to witness the things we would rather forget, and our calendar tells us "tomorrow" will be much better ... but in the meantime, we wait, patiently, actively, loving not only those who show us kindness but also those who would do these awful things to others, hoping, hoping ...

Here I am

Also, concerning slavery, the call of Moses is illuminating. The burning bush, from which Moses hides his face, reminds us that the revelations about slavery today continuing to be frightening; but God is present in them, calling us to respond. This God also recalls history, reminding us of the divine presence with the people of the ages - God was there, and connects us all together. So Moses responds, saying, 'Here I am.' This is the God who makes us realise 'where we are at'. We cannot ignore the present moment or place, the lives of others. This is, after all, also the God who hears the cries of the oppressed (see Exodues 3: 1-12). We too must hear ... and respond.

Unbind them, and let them go

It wasn't necessarily the most obvious Bible text for the subject in question. But actually the story of the raising of Lazarus ended up feeling surprisingly pertinent to the theme of slavery. It is, as we ought to know by now, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade - though obviously slavery continues, trafficking is increasing, and there is still a long way to go since that memorable milestone. But what of Lazarus? Jesus was late. Religious leaders are often late to the crime scene. There are always other things to do, other lessons to teach, which seem more important at the time. But Lazarus died. If Jesus had been earlier, Martha and Mary say, he might not have died. But he comes, and he asks to see where the body is laid. Even if we are late, we must nevertheless dare to ask, 'Can we see the things of death? Take us to the heart of the matter. Show us the reality - in all its awfulness. Where is the body?' So it is with slavery. Many would rather consign it to history, as a terrible chapter in an appalling saga. But no, we must dare to face it, to see it, to witness it, past and present, because history lingers, like the stench of Lazarus. And there is weeping ... so we are told 'Jesus began to weep'. We must weep with those who weep, in solidarity with the stories we would rather not hear. It is our duty. Next, he says 'Take away the stone'. There can be no reconciliation if we do not name and confront and remove the stones which stand in the way: every obstacle to justice which persists. Take it away! And then he speaks to Lazarus, the sinister memory and stench, 'Lazarus, come out!' We must name the forgotten nameless; we must call the enslaved to freedom. And finally, Jesus says to the gathered crowd, 'Unbind him and let him go.' It is our responsibility, too, to play our part. To 'unbind' those burdened by the past, those who dare not remember, those who are enslaved, and ourselves, bound up with the systems of slavery. Unbind us all!

People of simultaneous dusk & dawn

I have a photo of the inside of South Africa's Constitutional Court - a relatively new building, partly built out of the bricks from the old prison where Nelson Mandela and others were held prior to their trials. Inside, the designers have incorporated images of traditional African justice - pillars representing trees, since the traditional judges would sit under trees; high-up skylights, slithers of glass, representing transparency (as opposed to the opaque "justice" under apartheid) and the 'light' breaking in; and so on. I have another photo outside the court, taken when I visited Johannesburg as part of a Global Youth Convention, which captures a red sunset. A sunset and a new dawn, together. Which is how we are called to be - we who are people of faith; we who see, for example, in the person and partnerships of Jesus a new dawn ... we are called to point to the dusk of an old world, right here and now, often hard to spot, but present nonetheless, and to point to the dawn of a new world, right here and now, often hard to spot, but present nonetheless. The practice of faith consists of the art of identifying dusk and dawn, how they occur simultaneously: for whenever the old world crumbles, something new is born. We are called to see where the light is breaking in, how it exposes the old world for its hollowness and inhumanity, how it makes possible the subversion of such things, and the building of hope. We are called simultaneously to be people of the dusk, people who know when "the powers of domination" have had their day, and people of the dawn, celebrating the rising of the sun ...

The Best is yet to come?

I try to be a person of hope. But what makes it hard, is not even the hopelessness of the world; it is more often people's refusal to be hopeful. Hope - it seems to me - runs so deep within the Christian tradition, that I cannot understand the resistance to it; and I don't want to put it down simply to my relative youthful naivety! (Are 31-year olds "youthful"?!) After all, the resistance to hope comes in two forms, one naive, the other more understandable. The naive form may look like hope, but it is false hope, which is almost equivalent to no hope; it is that naive insistance that "all will be well", which particularly manifests itself in terms of "pie in the sky when you die", an unwillingness to grapple with the hopelessness of the world because of a greater belief in something more beautiful waiting for us. It is naive, because it overlooks - even suppresses - some of the messiness of the real world. It is hopeless, because it does not allow for the possibility of deep transformation here and now; it only imagines that the current state of things will not have the last word, without urging people to believe they can help transform them. The other form of resistance to hope is more understandable, because it is borne out of struggle and pain; older people speaking to younger people call it "life experience", that which tells us idealism loses its sharpness in the furnace of a harsh world. But to give up on hope because of experience, is to miss the point: hope may well be the smaller, weaker 'presence' within any harsh experience, but its very presence is sufficient to take on the invincible power of slavery, apartheid, racism and sexism. To believe the best is genuinely yet to come, we must therefore dare to root out and transform both that false hope which says good things come about if we just carry on doing what we do - no, hope demands change, now! And we must dare to root out and transform that pessimism infected by doom-and-gloom, or by cheap fears fuelled by cynical media, which says there's no point trying - no, hope demands commitment to new possibilities, lived as though they will have the last word over their resistance.

If roots could talk ...

In chapter 11 of the prophet Isaiah, a passage used in Advent because Jesus is believed to fulfil such prophecies, there is the image of a tree, even a stump, out of which grows a new branch. It is called the stump of Jesse, Jesse being King David's father, and David being viewed by the Jewish people as the greatest of kings, God's 'anointed one'. Jesus, then, is said to fulfil such great kingship, such 'anointed' status, with renewed purpose. But what it also shows us is that every tree has roots, and roots are the hidden part of a tree - and certainly the 'family tree' of Jesus has its fair share of skeletons (to mix some metaphors), including David - with a very mixed and muddled life, not exactly the idealised construction conveyed - just as every tree has things that continue to shape the new branches but which are buried. So it is with faith, with Christmas: the 'shadow' side of religion, the things we struggle to engage with constructively, because it's much easier to whitewash our religion, to boast about the good bits. Not exactly a Christmas message: and yet may be it is, since the nativity narratives have a shadow side, rooted in a vicious Empire, with puppet kings in fear of a new 'anointed' ... so give thanks that, even though our trees have shadowy roots, even so, new life and hope and joy can grow out of them; one who judges by fairness, equity, with concern for the poor, can even grow out of such violent soil; the possibility of renewal is always there - right in the muddiest of places.

Living with spilt milk

I was going to try and be clever. But the words aren't coming. I wanted to link two things: 1) the fact that I've just read on "The Unlikely Evangelist" website (link to be added soon!) about "the end of the world", about how it's not about the destruction of the world, but seeing the world through different eyes amd working for its re-creation now; and 2) a letter I've received angrily criticising me for forgetting to do something. And they are linked - I think. The letter really upset me. It was right - I had forgotten to do something - but its anger was disproportionate, and the attack was personal. So I have to live with that spilt milk, which I did "cry over" briefly, but I felt better after telling one of the most amazing 70-something year-old women who phoned me back and read a prayer over the phone. Of course, this incident is not the end of the world, and yet on the other hand, it is. I must pray for the person who wrote it, if I want to be part of this 'new world', because that begins to break the cycle of bad feeling - but it's bloody hard! In fact, I should want this episode to be the end of the world as we knew it, to be an opportunity (a kairos?!) for something new and braver. Forgetting things is easily done; I'm sure the letter-writer has forgotten a few things too; so "spilt milk" is all around us; but the trick is to live with it in a new way, with new eyes, with a new prayer: God, help me to mop it up.

Another world, another language

It's interesting: like many other Christians, I believe that words like 'Lord', 'king', even 'Messiah' and 'saviour', are still relevant; that they can be attached to Jesus; but that it's always important to point out how disruptively those words are redefined in relation to Jesus. So to call Jesus our 'Lord' is to make a seditious point about worldly 'lordship' being all the wrong way up, with its implication of top-down authority, domination, feudalism, a gulf between the ruler and the ruled; because Jesus instead shows us servant lordship, one who suffers in solidarity with the masses, the disgraced, the powerless. Even 'Messiah' is transformed, despite its Greek version being used as Jesus' "second name" (Christ) - because he did not rule or restore things in the military way generally anticipated. I might add that even 'saviour' is shaken by the way that Jesus subverts so much of our Christian dogma imposing on him our desire for one who sorts it all out. For, like it or not, his method has left us with a lot of work to do ourselves! ... So this is the point: with so much subversion generated by Jesus regarding the words used of him, isn't it better not to use them at all? Or, in the case of "the kingdom", doesn't it make more sense to use the Greek "basileia", simply because it prevents easy translation: something new is required; something new is effected by him; something new is possible ...

The hand that feeds you

I wonder: may be there is a need for ministerial training to include something about systems analysis! After all, if Walter Wink is right, then every 'system' - every power-that-be - is, to use traditional Christian language, 'fallen' and yet capable of being 'redeemed', and this presumably applies to the church as well. We need to see the church, then, as a system in its own right, since if we are called in some sense to 'manage change', then we must understand - we must be able to analyse - the systems at work in the life of the church, the ways in which people behave because they are in thralled by a 'system'. For people cannot individually be blamed for their intransigence, perhaps, or for ignorance, or for manipulativeness, but should be understood as operating within a collective "groupthink" - or in Orwell's terms, by the "doublethink" which allows people to believe contradictory things at the same time unquestioningly. To ask these things, to suggest these criticisms, of course feels a little like biting the hand that feeds you - if 'you' are a minister, as I am - because it seems like disloyalty, hum-bug, to suggest that your employing institution is 'fallen'! Or it implies that I'm simply frustrated that things aren't going my way at the moment - it comes out of a sense of my inability to deal with what's up! And yet, seriously, it is also good news: for I must see myself as much a part of this fallen movement as anyone else; that we are all complicit with the operation of the system; that something is going on which transcends the behaviour of any individual, so no one of us should beat ourselves up about it. But the question is: is it for individuals to 'see the light', to change from within, or should we engage as a corporate body in the analysis of our incapacity? I suggest we need to look at this together, that it should therefore be part of how ministers and church leaders are trained into the role, that direct engagement with the system already starts to transform it.

A Hopeful Reminder: each lonely butterfly

The last few blogs of mine have been a bit gloomy and questioning - how can faith be set free? how can we address the knowledge inequality? how can we address the gender politics of faith and church etc.? So I return to the first posting on this blog, the explanation for the blog's name, where science's "chaos theory" and theology's "kairos" come together; a reminder of the idea of the lonely butterfly causing a hurricane in another part of the world, or perhaps of a lonely butterfly contributing to the downfall of apartheid ... or something else today. I do get anxious about the churches, our struggle to address the big political issues, our difficulty to see the world of faith in terms of strategies for dismantling systems of domination. But I should remind myself to be hopeful. We're not alone. We have anti-racist butterflies on our side!

Renewal / New wineskins

There's a lot of it about. Renewal is in the air. The Government is talking about it - though different people mean different things by it ... does it mean Gordon Brown, does it mean revising policy, does it mean speaking to the anxieties of the day, does it mean generating solutions tio the big questions of the world, does it mean 'anything but Tony'??? Renewal is a great idea, but very slippery. And so it is with the churches, too. Presumably the many people who have been leaving the churches in recent years mean a whole range of things by their voting-with-their-feet - they may mean that renewal should involve 'becoming less wishy-washy', or others (hopefully!) mean that churchy-ness should start to re-engage them in a way that relates to real lives in the real world. When I say 'hopefully', I don't mean "I hope that has been the churches' failure"! I mean, "I hope that is people's analysis, because it happens to fit with mine!" We all have our agendas, don't we! So how should we renew? It can't be avoided that many growing churches, in the 'west' and in the 'south'/developing world, are 'conservative' - i.e. their 'new wine' message is very traditional, and in many ways quite old! (though the wineskins are changing). So for those of us who find ourselves drinking a different wine, we must revitalise this commitment to new wine as that which brings about "genuine" renewal - but what is it? Isn't it very much to do with "where peace is taking root", "where the hungry are fed", "where equality and dignity are upheld", "where justice is done"? But what do they mean? Social democracy? Or something distinct again?

More on "1984" - Staying Sane?

Orwell describes the situation of his hero,Winston, like this: 'He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.' Of course, once again, it is easy to over-play our connection with such a situation - after all, we love to be the hero(ine), don't we (or do I speak for myself only?)?!! But speaking in terms of Christian discipleship, there seems to be something poignant in this idea: for the radical critiques of the Powers made possible by Jesus, and the radical ways of transformation energised by his example, certainly seem to be silent or silenced in the face of the sheer weight and inertia of the status quo - whether it is a totalitarian regime, or a reactionary society, or we are enthralled by the politics of fear. All we can do, in the face of it all, is quietly utter our truths, such that we "stay sane". This obviously isn't about resisting mental illness, because as others have observed, who is to say whether mentally ill people aren't more open to "the truth" than the silent majority doing what we do? Instead, the kind of sanity he celebrates is simply that commitment to reality - especially in the face of the pressures to ignore it. In terms of discipleship within our churches, this can often feel counter-cultural, since there is often something "unreal" about the corporate practice of religion - and yet the possibility remains ... and sanity demands that I see my own fears, insanities and logs in my eyes.

A Solidarity of Others?

I am fascinated by the ideas in a book by Anselm Min, a Korean American, called "The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World: A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism". He argues that the church as 'the Body of Christ' is called to be a solidarity of 'others', in the sense that we are all 'other' to one another, we are all 'different' from each other. It is a great vision of the church, but more than that, a great model which is offered - in humility - to the world. For we set out this vision, admittedly imperfectly, trusting that the world may witness it as good news: that very different people can nevertheless live together peaceably and justly. But it doesn't seem to work quite as we would hope! We need to be better at promoting a couple of things: first, the diversity of people already in the church, which is often overlooked or directly suppressed (because diversity is messy); and second, the idea of solidarity, a mature way of handling differences, which ain't easy! If we don't work at those things, it'll be difficult to offer it as a model for (other) others ...

Christi-anarchy! (I've borrowed it)

Having just checked out an article on the ekklesia website, I'm reminded of the closeness between Christianity and anarchism, which Dave Andrews captured in the brilliantly titled "Christi-Anarchy: a radical spirituality of compassion." The closeness is because Jesus was a prophet against the powers - religious, social and political - just as anarchy means 'without rulers', so urging us to subvert and overcome the status quo. Again, it's radical, it's revolutionary, and even more surprising: it's biblical! After all, the Old Testament has different strands, monarchical and anti-monarchic, priestly and prophetic, and the New Testament too shows different tendencies, though Jesus seems surely to place himself in the anti-domination stream of the prophets - even Paul, often deemed 'conservative', is actually better understood as a critic of Empire. So, again, this begs questions of the church: how well do we practise this kind of faithfulness and discipleship, critiquing 'the Powers', walking the way of humility, empowerment, peace and compassion? Mmm ... the potential is always there ...