spirituality

RISING to LIFE an Easter sermon

ALL CHANGE moving on in Mission etc.

NOTHING FIXED NOR FINAL the holiness of the Bible

ARCHBISHOP ROWAN and SEXUALITY

EXPLORING WORSHIP a group study guide

AN EASTER SERMON

Rising to Life

Jesus was killed on a cross. Judas, on the other hand, consumed with guilt, hanged himself from a tree. For a moment, juxtapose the twin images of Jesus and Judas hanging on trees, one pinned to it with nails, the other dangling on a belt: so similar in appearance and yet so very different in meaning.

What makes for that difference in meaning? Obviously, the life that went before, and the spirit in which they each faced death. One took his own life; the other had his life taken from him. Judas was defeated by death. Death was defeated by Jesus. How can this possibly be? Because, when Judas died all that he represented died with him. When Jesus died all that he stood for survived and was even enhanced and given greater meaning by his death.

We can assert, with varying degrees of conviction, that death is not the end, but with absolute certainty only that we all will die. What we can learn from Jesus’ death is that we do not have to be afraid of it. Fear of death takes the sap out of life. If we do not fear death then death is defeated. The recent example of Keith Walker is an excellent one to illustrate my point.

Six weeks ago Keith and Lianne came to see me about wedding arrangements - and funeral arrangements. For Keith had cancer of the kidney and the prognosis was poor. The wedding took place at the beginning of February and the funeral four weeks later. Now the spirit of many people would be subdued by the certainty of imminent death. But not Keith’s. He visited friends, wrote them letters of appreciation, went on excursions, played his guitar and lived life to the full. He was one of the few people I know who tried to live the life of the Sermon on the Mount. He was a man of faith, and death held no fear.

If Crucifixion reveals the meaning of Jesus’ life, then Resurrection reveals the meaning of his death. At Easter we celebrate the fact that all that Jesus stood for lived on. The symbol for this is his resurrected body. We don’t know what kind of body the resurrection body is, but it is not like the body we have now. That is why, in the stories of those who meet Jesus after his death, they never recognize him from his physical appearance. In a certain sense, in so far as those who follow him live out his teaching, they - we - are his resurrected body.

I suggest that the overriding myth of the New Testament is ‘Resurrection’. Schweitzer held that for the early church the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ was the dominant myth, which they expected Christ would soon return to inaugurate. When this did not come about, they then focused on the Resurrection as a way of making sense of their experiences. I want to say two things about this. Firstly, these do not have to be either/ors, either the Resurrection or the Kingdom. Secondly, these are not future states but present experiences.

Repentance

Let us now consider a crisis point in the lives of the disciples Judas and Peter. There is a moment, perhaps the briefest of seconds, when Judas is hit by the realisation that it is all going pear-shaped. Matthew says he is filled with remorse. He has made a big mistake. His stomach is turning somersaults. He becomes flushed. ‘My God, what have I done?’ he cries. In that split second his whole future is decided. Overwhelmed by guilt, he returns to the priests and asks them to take back the money, to halt the proceedings that are by now well under way. “I was wrong - I have betrayed an innocent man to death.” (Mt.27.3-4)

At his previous meeting with the priests they were friendly and grateful. Now they do not want to know. As far as they are concerned, his guilt is his problem. He flings down the thirty pieces of silver. Cold-bloodedly the priests discuss how it should be spent; it cannot go back into the Temple coffers because it is blood-money. Judas, desperate and driven by guilt, underwritten, perhaps, by the attitude of those to whom he had sold Jesus, kills himself. Such is the destructive, the fiercely corrosive, power of guilt.Let us now put the spotlight on Peter. He also watches the trials and sees the inevitability of death for Jesus. The situation could mean death for him, too, but he cannot accept that and from cowardice denies that he is a follower of the prisoner.

But he also sees the spirit in which Jesus faces this terrible outcome. As, from a distance, he watches Jesus on the cross it dawns on him how deeply Jesus has drunk from a cup that he himself has hardly sipped. At this point, with a catalogue of failures behind him, he might have given in to utter despair about himself. Not Peter. Jesus has shown him the heights to which the human spirit may rise and Peter, who has fallen short so many times before, accepts the challenge: his life is transformed.

Now the suicide of Judas is, as it were, contained in the point of change. When the lightning hits, the house is not immediately destroyed by that enormous charge of electricity. But the fire which engulfs the house is contained within the charge. So, with Peter and Judas, we need to recognize that all else follows from the point of decision, the point at which all internal energies, positive and negative, come to a peak. We all experience these crisis points but we do not always realise how much may follow from one decision. This is true, whichever direction we are going in. ‘The longest journey begins with the first step’: within that step the whole journey is contained. Without it there can be no journey. ‘Resist the beginnings’: it is also true that the first small compromise with ourselves leads on to other and greater compromises. We have to choose when we have only the haziest notion of the consequences of our action. And we have to choose bravely, in the understanding that all things are possible.

Imagine two teenage guitarists listening to Jimmy Hendrix. One says, ‘I could never play like that’, and signs up for a course in accountancy. The other is excited by the possibilities that are revealed and is challenged to go off and practice so as to become as good a guitarist. Both are brought to a point of decision by the experience of listening to Hendrix. The one who responds positively does not know whether or not he will become as good a performer as Hendrix. He puts in the practice with no promise of success. He travels in faith. There is, also, of course the third youngster whom I forgot to mention. He sits in his bedroom, plays his guitar like an accountant and imagines he sounds like Hendrix!

What Jesus on the cross shows Peter, as Hendrix showed the second guitarist, is his potential. Realising his potential he repents his own shortcomings and his life changes. That is what true repentance means. It does not mean writhing, guilt-ridden, in the dirt. It means seeing greater possibilities for oneself and wanting them with all one’s being.

Both Peter and Judas are free to respond positively or negatively to the events that confront them.

They both responded positively at another crisis point in their lives, when Jesus called them to follow him. But now, at this new crossroads, Judas takes a dark, descending path and Peter an open, but uphill, highway. The one we may call a pessimist, the other an optimist. But are these words ‘pessimist’ and ‘optimist’ descriptions of their respective natures? Might it not have been possible for Judas to accept that he had betrayed Jesus and vow to make up for it somehow? The answer, of course, is Yes and No.

Judas must have had a positive side to him, otherwise he would not have accepted Jesus’ invitation to follow him, and Jesus, we can be fairly sure, would not have taken him on had he had no potential other than that of being a skeleton at the feast. Perhaps Judas was careful, which is why he was put in charge of the purse, and had a smiggott of puritanism, as we discover in the reprimand he gave to Mary for wasting her precious perfume on Jesus when it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Perhaps he was lacking in imagination; perhaps he was no risk taker. Whatever it was, he either did not understand, or did not accept, Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness.

When we look at other people’s lives we can usually see an inevitability about them. We can also see, with a minority, a point at which an unpredictable change has taken place. And, of course, Jesus’ preaching is rooted in that possibility. We can all change. Paul, the persecutor of Christians, became their champion; Francis kissed the leper and it set him free; Schweitzer, inspired by the statue of a Negro, abandoned an academic career for the jungle; Van Gogh gave up preaching for painting… These were not career moves but total reorientations.

Because we all have the capacity for change it is impossible to say who we really are. The subject of Tolstoy’s story The Death of Ivan Ilyitch changes on his death bed. Had he been struck down by lightning a year before, a different man would have died. If Peter hadn’t been prepared to bet on Jesus he, too, might have ended up swinging from a tree.

Judas’ fault was not that he sold his master but that he did not accept the possibility of change. He denied the life, the creativity, the potential within himself. He saw death as final, as extinction, and he need not have done. Like the rich young man told to sell his goods and give to the poor, he had a choice. But he could not see beyond himself, he did not understand that there is nothing that cannot be forgiven except sin against the spirit. In his inability to accept that the spirit could work in him he did indeed sin against it.

Despair and Hope

As he contemplates the cross is not Peter at a point in his life similar to that of the Prodigal Son as he contemplates the pig swill? Neither repents because someone comes along and tells them how awful they are. They know how awful they are but they are driven, not by guilt, but by hope. It is not when we are riding high that we need, and are shown, the light but when we are in the pits. What good, after all, is a candle to someone flying near the sun? It is the person who is in darkness who prays for light. It is when we are in the depths that we discover in ourselves either hope or despair. The difference between Peter and Judas is that, even in his darkest moments, Peter sees a ray of light; Judas sees nothing but darkness.

When we give up on the belief that all things are possible; when we forget that our failures can teach us more than our successes; then we give up on life. Then we follow the Judas path and not the Peter path. George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, known as Quakers, describes his own experience.

When I myself was in the deep, shut up under all, I could not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows and my temptations were so great that I thought many times I should have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how He was tempted by the same devil, and overcame him and bruised his head, and that through Him and His power, light, grace, and Spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in Him; so He it was that opened to me when I was shut up and had no hope nor faith. Christ, who had enlightened me, gave me His light to believe in; He gave me hope, which He Himself revealed in me, and He gave me His spirit and grace, which I found sufficient in the deeps and in weakness.

(George Fox, An Autobiography, p. 83.)

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Do you ever have the feeling that nothing of much significance is going on in your life? You don’t? Well you would if you were sitting in front of this computer screen trying to think of something with which to entertain the punters.

I am focussing on the present because I have just celebrated the fortieth anniversary of my ordination and have had enough reminiscing to last a lifetime. According to my guru we are supposed to live in the present. That present is a computer screen and a deadline. I would like to substitute ‘for’ for ‘in’, but like Laurie Lee in ‘Cider with Rosie’, I sit here for the present and no one brings it.

On Thursday last the Archdeacon gathered together the clergy, churchwardens and treasurers of all the churches in the Deanery and extolled the virtues of change. We have to find new ways of being the church. And despite his declaration that it was not all about money, the speaker who followed him went on and on about the need to convert small change into five pound notes.

Every ten years for the past forty there has been a diocesan report on the need to change - nothing happened. In most institutions, nothing does happen until there is a financial crisis. We all know that. But if that is really the case, then we have sold out to materialism. To promote change because we are strapped for cash is to genuflect to Mammon. One of our bishops has gone so far as to coin the sound-bite, ‘money is the sacrament of seriousness’ which, when chewed over, has to be spat out and leaves a rather nasty taste.. What we do not seem to be looking at, and should be exploring with great seriousness and commitment, is how to be a poor church. We need to revisit Francis of Assisi.

The diocese is very proud of the fact that it is the first one to undertake a zero-budgeting exercise. That is, ‘a fresh evaluation of how the primary purpose of the organization can be met’. This is all spin. The exercise has not resulted in fundamental change, just ‘a little bit more of this and a little bit less of that’.

The week-after-next the clergy of the diocese (Exeter) get together for a four-day conference on the theme ‘Transformations’, to which is appended a quote from Cardinal Newman, ‘To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often’. I am tempted to set against it Alphonse Karr’s, ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’   (The more things change, the more they stay the same) and, like Oscar Wilde, I cannot resist.

What this ‘change’ is about is this: there will be fewer paid clergy; they will have to be shared by more parishes; as a result, the clergy cannot undertake all of their traditional functions; the laity are going to have to take some of these on; the role of the clergy has thus changed and we have to adapt to that. This is a mere rearranging of the deckchairs on the Titanic.

And all this is incredibly depressing. I have always acted in the belief that, if you do the right thing, the resources will come. And in those forty years that I mentioned earlier I have been involved in many an exciting and challenging venture for which the resources have come. In recent years I have run workshops for people wanting to start small schools. I had to tell them not to expect the money to arrive until the school started, because people won’t give for an idea, they give to an act of faith as an act of faith. I was not wrong. Those who wanted funding certainty before they started never got their projects off the ground.

So, bishops, archdeacons, deans and clergy of the Exeter diocese, lay aside your plans, open yourselves to the Spirit, and go forward in faith. If you really are establishing the Kingdom of God on this earth you won’t have to worry about the money.

October 2004

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Nothing Fixed Nor Final

Every weekday three of us say Morning Prayer in the Church Room. It is a mishmash of canticles, psalms, readings and prayers. As we entered the verdant season of Trinity the Old Testament readings were from the book Ecclesiastes. In the King James translation, after a verse declaring authorship, it begins with the oft quoted: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’ Before we fix in our mind a picture of dressing table mirrors, paints and patches, which is what the word ‘vanity’ conjures up, it would be as well to look at a contemporary translation:
‘Sheer futility, Qoheleth says. Sheer futility: everything is futile!’ (The New Jerusalem Bible) Well, that won’t draw in the crowds! Qoheleth, whoever he might have been, and he wasn’t Solomon, does not let up:
     ‘What was, will be again,
      what has been done, will be done again,
      and there is nothing new under the sun.’
- not a nugget to please those who imagine that humanity has come through Dark Ages into an Era of Light -
and the first chapter concludes,
     ‘Much wisdom, much grief;
     the more knowledge; the more sorrow.

Well, there’s a text for the Teacher! But I am not going to pursue that line of thought. I’ve written enough about education for Resurgence in my time. No, my mind wandered down a different track.

If you examine the contents page of the New Jerusalem Bible you will find that the Old Testament has more books in it than there are in Protestant Bibles, where some that are in the main body of the former are cordoned off into the Apocrypha in the latter. This is because the Roman Catholic Church opted for the Greek Septuagint. Protestant reformers followed Jerome, whose Latin Vulgate excluded books that were not in the Hebrew Canon (itself a muddy field!).

Those known as the ‘Wisdom Books’ are a problem area. ‘Ecclesiastes’ is in the Old Testament sections of both Catholic and Protestant Bibles; the latter has ‘Ecclesiasticus’ in the Apocrypha. The ‘Song of Solomon’ is in both OTs, the ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ is relegated to the Protestant Apocrypha. Why?
Some wisdom is Hebrew, some is Greek and the Prots are not so keen on the Greek. However, the book ‘Proverbs’, included in both OTs, has a section that draws on the Egyptian Wisdom of Amen-em-opet. ‘Every part of the book bears the marks of foreign influences.’

In general Wisdom literature makes no mention of historical events such as the exodus from Egypt, so important in the rest of the OT, nor of cultic practices such as animal sacrifice and, in sharp contrast to nearly all the rest of the OT, is anthropocentric. So, whereas the prophet looks at life through God’s eyes, the eyes of the wise are human, and questioning.

‘”Since the fool’s fate”, I thought to myself, “will be my fate too, what is the point of my having been wise?” I realised that this, too, is futile. For there is no lasting memory for the wise or the fool, and in the days to come both will be forgotten; the wise, no less than the fool, must die.’ (Ecclesiastes 2.15-16. NJB)

This questioning attitude, and the fact that Wisdom is feminine, can be a turn-off for those on the trail of certainty. But how can we be ‘certain’ when we understand the dodgy way in which the Bible evolved? For instance, we find Origen in the 3rd century complaining about divergences between manuscripts, some due to scribal error, but others to additions and omissions of ‘whatever seems right’ to the revisers? The Bible is the work of human hands. A knowledge of the history of the evolution of the Bible ought to be a shake-up call for fundamentalists who believe the scriptures to have been dictated by God.

It would be well for us if we regarded the canon as not cast but fluid. So let us keep the process moving. Alongside readings from the Old Testament let us put Christian writings from later times, as well as the holy books of other faiths. In fact, the other Sunday I replaced the OT reading with one from the Koran and members of the congregation commented on how apposite it was. (It was a criticism of Christians for not following the teaching of Jesus.)

And this is where you, dear reader, enter the frame. What texts would you wish to see included in a new canon? Would you support my move to shift Leviticus and Numbers, for example, onto the B list? Or is the Bible as you know it untouchable?

In the church vestry are several old and worn copies of the Good Book. Nobody has thrown them away because they are ‘holy’. However, the time has arrived when they may mysteriously transfer to a new level of energy. Who knows? If it happens, that will be a sign of new times. Even if, in a survey of the centuries, we discover there is nothing new under the sun, this will be a novelty to those whose span is a mere seventy odd years.

Of the scriptures let us say, Nothing fixed nor final! I invite you to drink to that.

June 2004

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Archbishop Rowan & sexuality

Did you breathe a sigh of relief when Rowan Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury? I certainly did. The C of E needs a man (or woman) of his intellectual stature, human warmth and spiritual depth to steer it through the early years of the new millennium. And on a personal level I celebrate the triumph of the beard, in a most luxurious manifestation that sets new standards for hirsute Hartlanders such as me and, on and off, Satish.

The beard has come of new age and is obviously the badge of a religious club of global multi-faith proportions, including as it does Orthodox Jews, Sikhs, Iranian mullahs and, of course, Osama bin Laden. But who would want to be linked to the latter?

Well, if you listen to some evangelicals, Osama and Rowan are on a parallel mission, Al Qaeda’s leader determined to destroy the West from the outside with bombs and blasts, the Archbishop to undermine it on the inside by listening to the concerns of gays and perhaps even allowing that they have a place amongst clergy and bishops.

As the former head of the Anglican Church in Wales Archbishop Rowan knows that disestablishment works and is good for you. All the talk of reform of the second chamber is hot air and piffle if he doesn’t lead his mitred flock out of the House of Lords. The first step towards democracy within the C of E must be for it to choose its own leaders rather than have them appointed by the prime Minister in the name of the Queen.

Archbishop Peter Jensen, an outspoken conservative, said Thursday the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams had seriously underestimated the offence taken by Anglicans worldwide over homosexuality in the church.
Jensen's comments in the British religious magazine New Directions were prompted by the election of gay bishop Gene Robinson in the United States in August and a Canadian diocese's recognition of same-sex marriages.
He said Anglicans, particularly in Africa and Asia, found the stance unacceptable and could be driven away from the church if Williams did nothing or recognised the North Amercians' position.
He said expelling the North Americans was the riskiest and bravest option because it would send a powerful moral and spiritual message.
"Strong word expel, but in effect yes, I suppose, to ask them to leave the club while they get themselves sorted out," Jensen told ABC radio.
He claimed Anglicans in Asia and Africa could convert to Islam because they were so distressed at the church's admission of homosexuals.
"They're under great presure from Muslims, for example, and ordinary people who say 'how can you be Christians and still be connected to these people in the US who have come to this terrible view?'," he told Sky News.
Jensen acknowledged expulsion could split the church but said there was little option.
He believed Anglican leaders would insist that Williams act when he meets them to discuss the homosexual issue in London later this month.
"His moral authority is on the line," Jensen said

The two-page letter sent to all 38 primates attacks Peter Akinola, the Archbishop of Nigeria and leader of the church in Africa, for his "astonishing" attacks on gays, and accuses him of being out of date in scientific and theological knowledge.
Archbishop Akinola has called homosexuality an "aberration unknown even in animal relationships".
The letter says: "There is certainly a danger of schism in the Anglican communion at this time. But the danger is from those who wish to force an outmoded method of biblical interpretation which takes no notice of scientific development and a totalitarian model of authority, both of which are deeply un-Anglican."
It points out that Archbishop Akinola and others have failed to adhere to the Lambeth conference declaration of 1998. Anti-gay members of the church insist that the document, which opposes homosexuality, is the benchmark for policy; yet, the letter says, the document also says homosexual people's experiences should be listened to.
But in a stern counterblast in the religious journal New Directions, the leading evangelical Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, insisted that the time for listening was over.
His article counters the message of last week's meeting of British evangelicals in Blackpool, attended by Archbishop Jensen, that they should engage with homosexuals and try to understand them.
Attacking Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Jensen wrote: "In my judgment he has misjudged the present situation and his peaceable approach has run out of time ... although we may want to regard issues of human sexuality as of the second order, they are in fact so prominent in the Bible and the moral tradition is so clear, that the time for listening beloved of liberal thinkers is not available.
"It is going to be difficult for the archbishop not to act. His moral authority is on the line ... it will be expected that he can see that faithful Anglicans have been disenfranchised for no other sin than holding on the majority traditional view."
An indication of Lambeth Palace's desperation to end the debate emerged yesterday in an internal memo, written earlier in the summer by Archbishop Williams's chief of staff, Jeremy Harris, which suggested that media attention should be "displaced" by means of "attractive alternative stories", such as persuading the archbishop to give a poetry reading. The advice was apparently ignored.

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Mowbrays commissioned this study guide from me and published it in 1980 as a 'Popular Christian Paperback'. As more churches are training the laity to lead worship it seemed a good time to make it available again. I have therefore updated it. though most of the material is just as relevant now as it was twety-six years ago. There are 72 pages to be downloaded as a PDF file.

Exploring Worship PDF download

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