SCM Studyguide: Christian Spirituality
Ross Thompson with Gareth Williams
SCM, 2008, £16.99
ISBN 978-0-334-04093-4
In many ways this is my sort of book: classifying, diagrams, spreadsheets, all you need to know about a mystic in 2 paragraphs. I can already see my PowerPoint presentation emerging. I suspect the book will annoy others for whom its schematizing and over-simplification is anathema. They might argue that it uses the very methods that are so antithetical to spiritual understanding to explore that same spiritual understanding. But then you have to remember Thompson's audience.
It is a very readable introduction for any thoughtful person, although it is obviously aimed at the undergraduate market and written to give a broad overview in just 250 pages. Also it is written with students who have no faith backgrounds in mind, sometimes stating the obvious for those of us who have grown up in confessional Christianity. The large type and classroom format help draw you through the schema of the book. The style is like a very long Grove booklet, but with a much more liberal groundswell.
Part One is a selective history of spirituality, running from the Old to the New Testament, through Patristics, the 'Dark Ages' and Medieval period, to Reformation and the post Enlightenment. It is inevitably patchy, and your particular gurus may not be selected. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64), for instance, gets a bigger mention than Pentecostalism. It attempts an almost impossible task which Thompson admits emerges as something of a 'fireworks display', designed to introduce some of the main concepts and to give a sense of the shifting understanding of spirituality over the last three thousand years.
Part Two is more substantial and looks thematically at the intersection of spirituality with Experience, Science, Theology, the Body, the Psyche, Ethics and Difference (Postmodernity and Pluralism). This is more intellectually demanding and the language and quotations will sometimes be a challenge to readers. It is very much a teaching text, which in the hands of a good teacher will open up the subject. The bibliography is extensive and some more restricted suggestions for further reading and a feel for some of the key texts would have been useful. For the target audience a shorter, annotated bibliography would have avoided intimidation.
Thompson acknowledges that the book approaches the subject in a 'middle way' (which is well suited to Anglicans): 'self-implicating rather than confessional or detached'. In this sense it is a contemporary approach to spirituality, although there are times when the author's 'self-implication' inevitably skews the content. A look at his website (holydust.org) explains something of the direction permeating much of the work. However, this is a book I will keep and browse, and recommend to those wanting to learn more of Christian Spirituality.
Church Times
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 October 2008
Sunday, 29 June 2008
A New Name - Baptism - Ss Peter & Paul
" To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it...." (Revelation 2.17)
Baptism of Charlotte Amelia Hillier on the Feast of Ss Peter & Paul, 29th June 2008
I’m glad I’ve never had to go through the agony of choosing a baby’s names. My most recent great nephew lingered nameless for a fortnight before he became James.
Charlotte can be grateful that she was not born to Puritan parents in the 17th Century. She might have that delightful American name: Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-kingdom-of-heaven – the girl wrote that her friends called her Tribby.
Amongst English Puritans, one of the most famous was Praise-God Barbon, the fanatic whose name is associated with the Barebones Parliament of 1653. His brother is said to have been baptized If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned. He was of course known to his opponents as Damned Barbon.
There’s nothing much we can do about the names we are given at birth and most people stick with them all through their life.
But in different cultures and certainly in the Ancient Near East during the centuries our Scriptures were written, name changing was more common.
In the Old Testament we can think of Abram who became Abraham; his wife Sarai whom God renamed Sarah; and Jacob who became Israel.
In the New Testament we have Saul, who we are grateful was renamed Paul – St Saul’s Knightsbridge would never have worked, would it?
And then on this Feast of Peter and Paul, we remember Simon bar-Jonah whom Jesus renames “Peter’ – the Rock.
But what’s the point of these name changes?
In ancient cultures there was something sacred, even mystical about a person’s name. It was as if the name somehow contained their destiny.
[You’re fairly safe with Charlotte – petite, feminine; and Amelia – invincible or industrious.]
And this brings us back to my curious text taken from the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St John.
In his mysterious and symbolic way of writing, John says that at the last, we will all receive “a white stone in which a new name is written which none knows save the one who receives it.”
George MacDonald, that great Scottish writer of the nineteenth century wrote about this text: “The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it.”
It is, if you like, another way of saying that in heaven we shall at last be the person whom God intended us to be. Here in our present life, we pick up all kinds of baggage which can slow us down and divert us from our full potential.
And part of the purpose of our spiritual journey is to discover that name which God has written on the white stone; to catch a vision of all that we can be in God and to pursue that dream.
That’s the pattern of life you see in the saints. It’s that same Christian understanding of society and of himself, that drove Nelson Mandela.
Sometimes, as with Peter and Paul, there’s an important moment of revelation. For Paul it was on the Damascus road when he has a blinding vision of Christ; for Peter it was the realisation as we have just read, that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
So Jesus renames him ‘the rock’ – the cornerstone of the church that is to come into being.
God’s name for someone, says MacDonald, is God’s own idea of “that being whom he had in his thought when he began to make the child”. In the mind of God, Peter was always meant to be what only Peter could be, and meant to do what only Peter could do.
On this feast of Peter and Paul, when we remember two men renamed to reflect their destiny in Jesus Christ; when we name a baby before God, with all the hopes and expectations we have for her…
It is also a time to reflect on our own spiritual journey.
Are we simply letting events round about us carry us along; shaped by the society and culture around us?
Or is there a spiritual dimension to our lives, which helps us to reflect on our own destiny; on the men and women we are becoming?
For Christians, gathering here around the Table week by week, taking the bread and wine for the journey of life is a way discovering the new name that God has for us. It helps to reflect on who we are and to remind us of who we want to be.
Of course it’s not easy to follow a spiritual path in a society that gently mocks Christianity to death. But if we conquer the temptation to live simply as secular animals and if we look for the hidden manna, the spiritual food which God provides us with, then we will know with St John the Divine and with Peter and Paul:
" To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it...." (Revelation 2.17)
(With acknowledgement for original idea to John Pridmore of the Church Times.)
Baptism of Charlotte Amelia Hillier on the Feast of Ss Peter & Paul, 29th June 2008
I’m glad I’ve never had to go through the agony of choosing a baby’s names. My most recent great nephew lingered nameless for a fortnight before he became James.
Charlotte can be grateful that she was not born to Puritan parents in the 17th Century. She might have that delightful American name: Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-kingdom-of-heaven – the girl wrote that her friends called her Tribby.
Amongst English Puritans, one of the most famous was Praise-God Barbon, the fanatic whose name is associated with the Barebones Parliament of 1653. His brother is said to have been baptized If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned. He was of course known to his opponents as Damned Barbon.
There’s nothing much we can do about the names we are given at birth and most people stick with them all through their life.
But in different cultures and certainly in the Ancient Near East during the centuries our Scriptures were written, name changing was more common.
In the Old Testament we can think of Abram who became Abraham; his wife Sarai whom God renamed Sarah; and Jacob who became Israel.
In the New Testament we have Saul, who we are grateful was renamed Paul – St Saul’s Knightsbridge would never have worked, would it?
And then on this Feast of Peter and Paul, we remember Simon bar-Jonah whom Jesus renames “Peter’ – the Rock.
But what’s the point of these name changes?
In ancient cultures there was something sacred, even mystical about a person’s name. It was as if the name somehow contained their destiny.
[You’re fairly safe with Charlotte – petite, feminine; and Amelia – invincible or industrious.]
And this brings us back to my curious text taken from the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St John.
In his mysterious and symbolic way of writing, John says that at the last, we will all receive “a white stone in which a new name is written which none knows save the one who receives it.”
George MacDonald, that great Scottish writer of the nineteenth century wrote about this text: “The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it.”
It is, if you like, another way of saying that in heaven we shall at last be the person whom God intended us to be. Here in our present life, we pick up all kinds of baggage which can slow us down and divert us from our full potential.
And part of the purpose of our spiritual journey is to discover that name which God has written on the white stone; to catch a vision of all that we can be in God and to pursue that dream.
That’s the pattern of life you see in the saints. It’s that same Christian understanding of society and of himself, that drove Nelson Mandela.
Sometimes, as with Peter and Paul, there’s an important moment of revelation. For Paul it was on the Damascus road when he has a blinding vision of Christ; for Peter it was the realisation as we have just read, that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
So Jesus renames him ‘the rock’ – the cornerstone of the church that is to come into being.
God’s name for someone, says MacDonald, is God’s own idea of “that being whom he had in his thought when he began to make the child”. In the mind of God, Peter was always meant to be what only Peter could be, and meant to do what only Peter could do.
On this feast of Peter and Paul, when we remember two men renamed to reflect their destiny in Jesus Christ; when we name a baby before God, with all the hopes and expectations we have for her…
It is also a time to reflect on our own spiritual journey.
Are we simply letting events round about us carry us along; shaped by the society and culture around us?
Or is there a spiritual dimension to our lives, which helps us to reflect on our own destiny; on the men and women we are becoming?
For Christians, gathering here around the Table week by week, taking the bread and wine for the journey of life is a way discovering the new name that God has for us. It helps to reflect on who we are and to remind us of who we want to be.
Of course it’s not easy to follow a spiritual path in a society that gently mocks Christianity to death. But if we conquer the temptation to live simply as secular animals and if we look for the hidden manna, the spiritual food which God provides us with, then we will know with St John the Divine and with Peter and Paul:
" To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it...." (Revelation 2.17)
(With acknowledgement for original idea to John Pridmore of the Church Times.)
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Review - Christian Spirituality
Christian Spirituality
Karen E Smith
SCM, 2007, £19.99
ISBN 978-0-334-04042-2
Who would have thought in the 1960s that spirituality would become a buzzword of 21st century western culture? From school Ofsteds to dieting regimes, among celebrities, cabinet ministers and terrorists, spirituality is a sine qua non. Of course its context is usually set within another characteristic of our age and culture: individualism. Even in the church, spirituality is often pursued alongside personal fulfilment.
So what is most refreshing about Karen Smith’s treatment of the subject in this SCM Core Text is that the setting is the community. And not just the community as a place to develop my own spirituality, my own ministry; but a renewed community, a new humanity, a kingdom come. Individual spirituality is only truly Christian when it works towards a transformation of society in the light of the Gospel. Her last chapter encourages us to dream of God’s new order and to wait patiently and work fervently towards it.
The Introduction takes the form of a parable that highlights the difficulties confronting the spiritual searcher: there are so many, often competing, approaches to the subject. Smith maintains that these are characterised by the tension between interpreting spirituality through either doctrine or experience. The following six chapters are about the dialogue between these two.
This is not a ‘teach yourself how’ book (such as Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines) but rather it tries to follow threads in Christian spirituality: belief systems, searching, relationships, storytelling, pilgrimage, and of course, suffering. It is a deeply reflected and Christocentric study which is likely to be more resonant with those of us who have been around a while rather than teenagers. Some of the particular people Smith uses as examples (Dag Hammarskjöld for instance) raise interesting issues concerning the breadth of ‘Christian’ spirituality, and so-called, anonymous Christians.
It’s a comparatively short and expensive book and although aimed at second and third year undergraduate students of spirituality, it would prove a helpful workbook for leading a course exploring spiritualities in church. Each chapter ends with an invitation to reflect on various questions and a very good selection ‘for further reading’. There is a rather eclectic glossary of Christian writers, and subject and Scriptural indices are welcome. Preachers will be grateful for Smith’s many illustrative vignettes and quotations which can be plundered.
Church Times
Karen E Smith
SCM, 2007, £19.99
ISBN 978-0-334-04042-2
Who would have thought in the 1960s that spirituality would become a buzzword of 21st century western culture? From school Ofsteds to dieting regimes, among celebrities, cabinet ministers and terrorists, spirituality is a sine qua non. Of course its context is usually set within another characteristic of our age and culture: individualism. Even in the church, spirituality is often pursued alongside personal fulfilment.
So what is most refreshing about Karen Smith’s treatment of the subject in this SCM Core Text is that the setting is the community. And not just the community as a place to develop my own spirituality, my own ministry; but a renewed community, a new humanity, a kingdom come. Individual spirituality is only truly Christian when it works towards a transformation of society in the light of the Gospel. Her last chapter encourages us to dream of God’s new order and to wait patiently and work fervently towards it.
The Introduction takes the form of a parable that highlights the difficulties confronting the spiritual searcher: there are so many, often competing, approaches to the subject. Smith maintains that these are characterised by the tension between interpreting spirituality through either doctrine or experience. The following six chapters are about the dialogue between these two.
This is not a ‘teach yourself how’ book (such as Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines) but rather it tries to follow threads in Christian spirituality: belief systems, searching, relationships, storytelling, pilgrimage, and of course, suffering. It is a deeply reflected and Christocentric study which is likely to be more resonant with those of us who have been around a while rather than teenagers. Some of the particular people Smith uses as examples (Dag Hammarskjöld for instance) raise interesting issues concerning the breadth of ‘Christian’ spirituality, and so-called, anonymous Christians.
It’s a comparatively short and expensive book and although aimed at second and third year undergraduate students of spirituality, it would prove a helpful workbook for leading a course exploring spiritualities in church. Each chapter ends with an invitation to reflect on various questions and a very good selection ‘for further reading’. There is a rather eclectic glossary of Christian writers, and subject and Scriptural indices are welcome. Preachers will be grateful for Smith’s many illustrative vignettes and quotations which can be plundered.
Church Times
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Prayer in the City
Prayer in the Concrete Jungle
St George's Hanover Square, Lent 3
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.” Psalm 40.6
Two priests decide to get away from the concrete jungle. They’re determined to make this a real holiday by not wearing anything that would identify them as clergy. As soon as the plane lands, they buy some outrageous shorts, shirts, sandals & sunglasses.
The next morning sitting on the beach, enjoying a drink, a gorgeous blond in an imaginative bikini walks by. She smiles at them and says, "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."
They were both stunned. How in the world could she have known?
The next day, they bought even more outrageous outfits - so loud, you could hear them before you saw them. They even got rid of their Oxfords and black socks in favour of flip-flops. Well after a while, the same gorgeous blonde walks along the beach, turning heads as she passes.
As she approaches the two of them she nods and says "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."
Astonished one of the priests shouts out “How do you know we’re priests?”
The blonde turns with a puzzled look and says, "Father, it's me, Sister Monica!"
This is the third in the series of sermons looking at The Spiritual Life and Prayer. You have already reflected on With God in the Garden; and With God in the Wilderness; and now, With God in the Concrete Jungle.
And like those two priests, one way of nurturing our spiritual lives in the City, is to get out of it; to retreat to our country houses to recharge our spiritual batteries; or at the very least to find a quiet park or a quiet city church.
But that’s evading the issue. Is it possible to be nurtured in our spiritual life with God, while spending much of our life in the hurly burly of London surrounded on every side by the concrete, granite and glass jungle?
The Bible always has a slightly ambiguous attitude towards cities. They were seen as places where evil would thrive – what in the Epistle today Paul calls ‘the unfruitful works of darkness.’
Babel, where men built a tower up to reach up to heaven, is the archetype of assertive, thrusting, independent humanity, usurping for itself, the place of God. And so Babylon, both at the beginning and the end of the Bible, becomes the symbolic City of Satan.
Yet there is also in Scripture a love for Jerusalem, the City of God.
And the last book of the Bible, Revelation, looks forward to peace and light in the heavenly City, the New Jerusalem.
This morning I want us to think for a few moments about our attitude to prayer and our spiritual lives in general, because that is the key to our being with God in the concrete jungle.
So let us go back to our text.
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.” Psalm 40.6
The Hebrew word at the end of this text is rather difficult to translate. When I had my mid-life crisis, rather precociously at the age of 38, I started sporting a couple of earrings.
I was teaching theology at that time, and one of my students wrote our text on the board when I arrived to deliver my next lecture, but he translated it literally from the Hebrew:
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but my ear you have pierced.” Some translations use the more earthy image, ‘my ear you have dug’.
Most of the commentators agree that it carries the sense: ‘you have made me obedient’.
The word ‘obedience’ has a rather bad contemporary press. It smacks of subservience and blindly following rules and regulations.
The origins of the Latin word are to ‘listen towards’ or better, ‘to listen deeply’.
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear – you have allowed me to listen deeply.”
One of the chief disciplines of Lent, is listening deeply. Many of the other spiritual disciplines are designed to facilitate this.
As the weeks go by, and the services become more meditative with more silences and longer readings, we should be opening our ears to God. This is more valuable than any amount of self-sacrifice or lent offerings – good as they are.
For as we listen to God, through worship and study and listening deeply to each other; then true obedience follows – the ability to live a life pleasing to God and a life which releases our true potential in Christ.
But how is this affected by our daily context: the busy and noisy city in which we live? Is it possible to listen deeply without being in a still, quiet and beautiful place?
Well, you know the answer as soon as we have posed the question. Of course it is possible, but it requires a different way of listening deeply.
In 2000, Wilkie Au wrote a book called The Enduring Heart: spirituality for the Long Haul. And in it he talks of 'crabgrass contemplation'. He’s a fascinating Roman Catholic writer and draws on the works of William Callahan, a former Jesuit, who describes this kind of contemplation as “noisy contemplation”.
It is a way of building habits of contemplative prayer that can flourish in the ordinary surroundings of our day, including situations of tension and conflict.
"Noisy contemplation is prayer that resembles crabgrass, which ordinary people can grow in the noisy lowlands and hard-scrabble soil of their experiences. In our concrete jungle of urban streets, crabgrass springs up wherever a pavement crack offers the tiniest space.
And so in the same way, crabgrass contemplation is sustainable because it can take place anywhere there is the tiniest space along our daily path.
Being contemplative in the City is standing in wonder and awe at the routine miracles that keep our universe and our bodies functioning harmoniously.
Being contemplative in the City involves a constant willingness to be taken by surprise; it is not being jaded and cynical.
Being contemplative in the City requires being wide awake and fresh in our perceptions of people and things; it is not being distracted and filled with preoccupations and prejudices.
Being contemplative in the City is facing life in a genuinely undefended and open-eyed way.
Being contemplative in the City is being vulnerable, letting events and people impact us with their full resonance; it is not being controlling and manipulative."
With this attitude, and a conscious sense of God’s presence with us, we can listen deeply to God in the noisiest places.
I used to go clubbing a lot, and some of my most spiritual moments were when I was surrounded by hundreds of people with industrial techno ringing in my ears.
Even in the clamour and sometimes oppressiveness of the concrete jungle, God is with us, and when we learn to listen deeply and live openly, we can hear his still, small voice.
In a few minutes the choir will sing Psalm 42: “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrook, so longeth my soul after thee, O God.”
Where there is a desire for God, and a vulnerable openness in contemplating the City in which we live, then we will hear the voice of God, even in the concrete jungle.
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.” Psalm 40.6
St George's Hanover Square, Lent 3
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.” Psalm 40.6
Two priests decide to get away from the concrete jungle. They’re determined to make this a real holiday by not wearing anything that would identify them as clergy. As soon as the plane lands, they buy some outrageous shorts, shirts, sandals & sunglasses.
The next morning sitting on the beach, enjoying a drink, a gorgeous blond in an imaginative bikini walks by. She smiles at them and says, "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."
They were both stunned. How in the world could she have known?
The next day, they bought even more outrageous outfits - so loud, you could hear them before you saw them. They even got rid of their Oxfords and black socks in favour of flip-flops. Well after a while, the same gorgeous blonde walks along the beach, turning heads as she passes.
As she approaches the two of them she nods and says "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."
Astonished one of the priests shouts out “How do you know we’re priests?”
The blonde turns with a puzzled look and says, "Father, it's me, Sister Monica!"
This is the third in the series of sermons looking at The Spiritual Life and Prayer. You have already reflected on With God in the Garden; and With God in the Wilderness; and now, With God in the Concrete Jungle.
And like those two priests, one way of nurturing our spiritual lives in the City, is to get out of it; to retreat to our country houses to recharge our spiritual batteries; or at the very least to find a quiet park or a quiet city church.
But that’s evading the issue. Is it possible to be nurtured in our spiritual life with God, while spending much of our life in the hurly burly of London surrounded on every side by the concrete, granite and glass jungle?
The Bible always has a slightly ambiguous attitude towards cities. They were seen as places where evil would thrive – what in the Epistle today Paul calls ‘the unfruitful works of darkness.’
Babel, where men built a tower up to reach up to heaven, is the archetype of assertive, thrusting, independent humanity, usurping for itself, the place of God. And so Babylon, both at the beginning and the end of the Bible, becomes the symbolic City of Satan.
Yet there is also in Scripture a love for Jerusalem, the City of God.
And the last book of the Bible, Revelation, looks forward to peace and light in the heavenly City, the New Jerusalem.
This morning I want us to think for a few moments about our attitude to prayer and our spiritual lives in general, because that is the key to our being with God in the concrete jungle.
So let us go back to our text.
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.” Psalm 40.6
The Hebrew word at the end of this text is rather difficult to translate. When I had my mid-life crisis, rather precociously at the age of 38, I started sporting a couple of earrings.
I was teaching theology at that time, and one of my students wrote our text on the board when I arrived to deliver my next lecture, but he translated it literally from the Hebrew:
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but my ear you have pierced.” Some translations use the more earthy image, ‘my ear you have dug’.
Most of the commentators agree that it carries the sense: ‘you have made me obedient’.
The word ‘obedience’ has a rather bad contemporary press. It smacks of subservience and blindly following rules and regulations.
The origins of the Latin word are to ‘listen towards’ or better, ‘to listen deeply’.
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear – you have allowed me to listen deeply.”
One of the chief disciplines of Lent, is listening deeply. Many of the other spiritual disciplines are designed to facilitate this.
As the weeks go by, and the services become more meditative with more silences and longer readings, we should be opening our ears to God. This is more valuable than any amount of self-sacrifice or lent offerings – good as they are.
For as we listen to God, through worship and study and listening deeply to each other; then true obedience follows – the ability to live a life pleasing to God and a life which releases our true potential in Christ.
But how is this affected by our daily context: the busy and noisy city in which we live? Is it possible to listen deeply without being in a still, quiet and beautiful place?
Well, you know the answer as soon as we have posed the question. Of course it is possible, but it requires a different way of listening deeply.
In 2000, Wilkie Au wrote a book called The Enduring Heart: spirituality for the Long Haul. And in it he talks of 'crabgrass contemplation'. He’s a fascinating Roman Catholic writer and draws on the works of William Callahan, a former Jesuit, who describes this kind of contemplation as “noisy contemplation”.
It is a way of building habits of contemplative prayer that can flourish in the ordinary surroundings of our day, including situations of tension and conflict.
"Noisy contemplation is prayer that resembles crabgrass, which ordinary people can grow in the noisy lowlands and hard-scrabble soil of their experiences. In our concrete jungle of urban streets, crabgrass springs up wherever a pavement crack offers the tiniest space.
And so in the same way, crabgrass contemplation is sustainable because it can take place anywhere there is the tiniest space along our daily path.
Being contemplative in the City is standing in wonder and awe at the routine miracles that keep our universe and our bodies functioning harmoniously.
Being contemplative in the City involves a constant willingness to be taken by surprise; it is not being jaded and cynical.
Being contemplative in the City requires being wide awake and fresh in our perceptions of people and things; it is not being distracted and filled with preoccupations and prejudices.
Being contemplative in the City is facing life in a genuinely undefended and open-eyed way.
Being contemplative in the City is being vulnerable, letting events and people impact us with their full resonance; it is not being controlling and manipulative."
With this attitude, and a conscious sense of God’s presence with us, we can listen deeply to God in the noisiest places.
I used to go clubbing a lot, and some of my most spiritual moments were when I was surrounded by hundreds of people with industrial techno ringing in my ears.
Even in the clamour and sometimes oppressiveness of the concrete jungle, God is with us, and when we learn to listen deeply and live openly, we can hear his still, small voice.
In a few minutes the choir will sing Psalm 42: “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrook, so longeth my soul after thee, O God.”
Where there is a desire for God, and a vulnerable openness in contemplating the City in which we live, then we will hear the voice of God, even in the concrete jungle.
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.” Psalm 40.6
Sunday, 21 October 2007
Wrestling with God
Wrestling with God
Baptism of Rex William Snow Armstrong
“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Genesis 32.26
I thought I could do no better today than to start with those opening lines of that wonderful Alan Bennett sermon from Beyond the Fringe. It let’s me get the rugby done with and an introduction to Jacob and Esau all in one go. (I’ll try and use his mocking, parsonic voice.)
First verse of the fourteenth chapter of the Second Book of Kings: 'And he said, "But my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man."' Perhaps I might say the same thing in a different way by quoting you the words of that grand old English poet, W.E. Henley, who said:
This is a wonderful and mysterious story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel. His name, Jacob, means ‘hold the heel’ and came to mean twister, or cheat. (Although in those name-your-baby books, they generously say it means Conqueror.)When that One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name;
It matters not who won or lost,
But how you played the game.
He followed his twin brother, Esau, out of the womb, grasping his heel, and eventually cheated him out of his birthright as the firstborn.
Jacob’s parents, Isaac and Rebekah, and his grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, represented two generations of dysfunctional family life. Hollyoaks and Eastenders are tame in comparison.
Now 20 years after the grand swindle, Jacob’s returning to face his brother Esau. He’s become very wealthy by more cheating and lying and at the expense of his cheating and lying uncle, Laban.
Life with his two cheating and lying wives is not surprisingly complicated. Rachel stole the household gods when they ran away from uncle Laban’s boys; hid them in the saddle bags of her camel, sat on them and said she couldn’t get up to be searched because it was the wrong time of the month. (Gen 31.33ff.)
But now Jacob is afraid as he hears that his brother Esau is heading towards him with 400 armed men. It’s not looking like a kiss and make up party.
Jacob is a bad man; but strangely devoted to God. So he calls out to God, remembering the vision he had 20 years before at Bethel, when God showed him a glimpse of heaven and promised him the earth:
Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mothers with their children. And thou saidst, I will surely prosper thee, and make thy descendents as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. (vv 11,12)He waits for an answer to his prayer, for another vision, for a voice from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
And there is nothing.
So he uses his brains, charm and cunning. He sends plenty of bribes on ahead of him, and eventually, the women and children.
Finally he is on his own in the night, by the ford over the river Jabbok. He’s probably contemplating doing a runner at this point, but he knows he’d miss the money, the servants and the women.
And then, there is the Curious Incident of the Man in the Night-Time. It reads as if it’s the most natural thing in the world: “So Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.” (v.25)
They are evenly matched and it’s looking like a draw, when the stranger cheats, and hits him below the belt. (Probably the meaning of this rather strange business about the hip or the thigh.)
Lets now go to the Tate Britain and take up the story. For there is the magnificent alabaster sculpture by Sir Jacob Epstein, Jacob and the Angel, created in the middle of the Second World War.
The two great seven foot, endomorphic, naked men, who look as if they have walked out of a Beryl Cook painting, are in an ambiguous embrace. We can clearly see that the Angel is holding Jacob up, and yet Jacob might suppose that he is clinging to the Angel.
The man wants to be off before the dawn reveals his identity. But Jacob is persistent. Like the woman with the unjust judge in today’s Gospel parable, he will not let God go until he blesses him. For by now he is realising that this wrestling match is the continuation of his apparently unanswered prayer to God.
Jacob is a cheat and a twister and now God has won by fighting foul. He has always wanted to bless Jacob, but Jacob would not let him. He would not become naked and vulnerable. He wanted to stay proud and independent.
The embrace of struggle is the embrace of love. It is a life-changing encounter that leaves Jacob both wounded and blessed.
And to remind him forever after of this, he is given a new name, Israel: Yisra’el, the one who sarahs — the one who strives — with El — with God himself.
Christianity has never been easy-believism. An encounter with the living God, now as then, leaves us both wounded and blessed.
Jesus makes this crystal clear in his teaching. We are to take up our cross and follow him.
For young Rex we hope a long, happy and contented life. But we know that that, however much we try to protect him, there will be the childhood scrapes and bruises.
And as he grows into a man, he will also gather emotional and spiritual bruises, which as he learns to handle them, will add to the richness of his life.
Our ability to grow mature emotionally and spiritually is determined by the degree of woundedness in our lives. And more than that; the degree to which we have processed and wrestled with those wounds.
Here at this Table we come to celebrate the wounds of the one who loves us and who was wounded for us.
I hope you read stories to Rex. And that sometime you might read him Oscar Wilde’s lovely story, The Selfish Giant. The Giant too has been searching for God, and like Jacob asks: ‘Who are you?’
Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?"“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Genesis 32.26
For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.
"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant; "tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him."
"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."
"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."
Sunday, 8 October 2006
Glory, Last before Lent
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory.” Heb 1.3
It’s a funny word ‘glory’. We use it a lot in church. Especially on this last Sunday before Lent. You’ll see it in the collect, the canticles, the anthem the hymns...
As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.
When I spoke at her funeral a few years ago, I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ The response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.
Isaac Newton, the great 17th century scientist and friend of Christopher Wren who designed this building, was fascinated by the word ‘glory’, especially in the stories about Moses. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures.
The word for glory in Hebrew, ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the Bible.
He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge.
This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…
The Old Testament in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from the idea of ‘an eminent man’ who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas.
When the Old Testament was translated into Greek between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, (the Septuagint) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant:
There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale. In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire, or the burning bush of our Old Testament lesson - the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Or in the New Testament it is the rumbling, thunderous voice of God from heaven revealing Christ, the Light of the World – ‘the radiance of God’s glory’.
Years later, when Moses was doubting whether God had ever actually called him to service, we read these words in the book of Exodus:
So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.
As Christians, we are summoned to follow Christ, the King of Glory, so that as we feed on him, we too begin to reflect the glory of God – as humans we are ‘crowned with glory and honour’. We become heavier, more substantial, more solid as people.
It is a great mystery of the Christian life, testified to by all the saints, that as we grow in faith, spiritual realities become, not more certain - we are often plagued by doubt - but somehow, more solid, almost tangible. As John Newton’s great hymn of glory ‘Glorious things’ puts it: “Solid joys and lasting treasures, none but Zion’s children know.”
In CS Lewis’s allegory about heaven and hell, The Great Divorce, and in the Narnia Stories - everything is more solid in heaven. The present life on earth becomes ‘thin’ and insubstantial, wraithlike in comparison. We live in the shadowlands.
Now our society talks much of ‘spirituality’ - the buzzword of school Ofsted inspections. It’s fashionable to be spiritual.
But there is little focus to that spirituality; and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’; the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.
Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.
We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.
Tesco ergo sum. I shop therefore I am.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of surface and image occasionally. A little of retail therapy is just the thing when we’re consumed by metaphysical angst. It’s amazing what a new mobile phone can do!
But if image is all there is, then we are empty, and simply manipulated by the fashions of the age.
Friedrich Nietzsche reflected on this in the 19th century. He wrote: “When there is the ‘death of God’ in a culture, it becomes increasingly hollowed out, ‘weightless’”.
I was watching a film the other night in which there was a character named Ichabod… - the glory has departed.
It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.
In fact it’s a rather tragic story which the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end.
Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. Enjoy an occasional spiritual experience, but don’t get too involved.
It is a simple truth of the Christian faith that we must not neglect the spiritual because of the ever pressing needs of the secular.
To neglect nurturing our relationship with Christ is to increase our superficiality and weightlessness. It is an ultimate vanity that leaves us to consume our own images.
The glory of our music, our architecture, our liturgy, is all supposed to draw us into the weightier glory of God. The senses lend support to our mind, for Christ, the transcendent King of glory cannot be grasped by reason alone.
...so may this weight of glory make us people of substance, able to serve Christ the King of glory; able to offer solid joys to others as we proclaim that Jesus
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory.” Heb 1.3
It’s a funny word ‘glory’. We use it a lot in church. Especially on this last Sunday before Lent. You’ll see it in the collect, the canticles, the anthem the hymns...
As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.
When I spoke at her funeral a few years ago, I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ The response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.
Isaac Newton, the great 17th century scientist and friend of Christopher Wren who designed this building, was fascinated by the word ‘glory’, especially in the stories about Moses. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures.
The word for glory in Hebrew, ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the Bible.
He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge.
This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…
The Old Testament in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from the idea of ‘an eminent man’ who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas.
When the Old Testament was translated into Greek between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, (the Septuagint) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant:
reputation (what others think of us) and;And this is obviously to do with fame, honour and praise.
opinion (what we ourselves think).
There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale. In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire, or the burning bush of our Old Testament lesson - the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Or in the New Testament it is the rumbling, thunderous voice of God from heaven revealing Christ, the Light of the World – ‘the radiance of God’s glory’.
Years later, when Moses was doubting whether God had ever actually called him to service, we read these words in the book of Exodus:
Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But, you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live." (Ex 33.18-23)Moses is told that God’s glory is unbearable, and all God would show was the shadow of his glory - his goodness - his moral perfection and beauty.
So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.
As Christians, we are summoned to follow Christ, the King of Glory, so that as we feed on him, we too begin to reflect the glory of God – as humans we are ‘crowned with glory and honour’. We become heavier, more substantial, more solid as people.
It is a great mystery of the Christian life, testified to by all the saints, that as we grow in faith, spiritual realities become, not more certain - we are often plagued by doubt - but somehow, more solid, almost tangible. As John Newton’s great hymn of glory ‘Glorious things’ puts it: “Solid joys and lasting treasures, none but Zion’s children know.”
In CS Lewis’s allegory about heaven and hell, The Great Divorce, and in the Narnia Stories - everything is more solid in heaven. The present life on earth becomes ‘thin’ and insubstantial, wraithlike in comparison. We live in the shadowlands.
Now our society talks much of ‘spirituality’ - the buzzword of school Ofsted inspections. It’s fashionable to be spiritual.
But there is little focus to that spirituality; and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’; the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.
Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.
We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.
Tesco ergo sum. I shop therefore I am.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of surface and image occasionally. A little of retail therapy is just the thing when we’re consumed by metaphysical angst. It’s amazing what a new mobile phone can do!
But if image is all there is, then we are empty, and simply manipulated by the fashions of the age.
Friedrich Nietzsche reflected on this in the 19th century. He wrote: “When there is the ‘death of God’ in a culture, it becomes increasingly hollowed out, ‘weightless’”.
I was watching a film the other night in which there was a character named Ichabod… - the glory has departed.
It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.
In fact it’s a rather tragic story which the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end.
"And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy." (I Sam 4)So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, 'the glory has departed' - the Ark of the Covenant has been carried off. But it could mean, the heavy one has departed - the fat man has died.
Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. Enjoy an occasional spiritual experience, but don’t get too involved.
It is a simple truth of the Christian faith that we must not neglect the spiritual because of the ever pressing needs of the secular.
To neglect nurturing our relationship with Christ is to increase our superficiality and weightlessness. It is an ultimate vanity that leaves us to consume our own images.
The glory of our music, our architecture, our liturgy, is all supposed to draw us into the weightier glory of God. The senses lend support to our mind, for Christ, the transcendent King of glory cannot be grasped by reason alone.
...so may this weight of glory make us people of substance, able to serve Christ the King of glory; able to offer solid joys to others as we proclaim that Jesus
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory.” Heb 1.3
Sunday, 12 March 2006
Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration
Glory, Postmodernity & Transfiguration
“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32
It’s a funny word ‘glory’. We use it a lot in church. Especially on this last Sunday before Lent. You’ll see it in the collect, the canticles, the anthem the hymns...
As a boy, my theological development was greatly hindered because I had an Aunty Glory, and thought that all references were to her.
When I spoke at her funeral a few years ago, I discovered she was named glory because my grandmother had given birth to 7 boys and when the midwife said ‘it’s a girl!’ The response came back - ‘glory be!’ And so she was.
Isaac Newton, the great 17th century scientist and friend of Christopher Wren who designed this building, was fascinated by the word ‘glory’, especially in the stories about Moses. He taught himself Hebrew and Greek so he could better understand the Scriptures.
The word for glory in Hebrew, ‘kabod’, means heaviness or weight, and Newton became convinced that Moses had hidden the inverse square law of gravitational attraction in the text of the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the Bible.
He had hidden it so that common people would not discover it and abuse the knowledge.
This prisca sapientia, ancient wisdom, was there for the true theological scholar to discover - God would reveal it to him. So Newton spent years sifting through the Hebrew text with various mathematical cyphers. Newton needed to get out more…
The Old Testament in fact develops the idea, not from the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, but from the idea of ‘an eminent man’ who had heavy possessions; heavy bags of money; heavy responsibilities - and even many heavy wives. A heavy man displayed gravitas.
When the Old Testament was translated into Greek between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, (the Septuagint) the word ‘doxa’ was used to translate ‘glory’. It comes from the root word meaning ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’ and in classical Greek meant:
reputation (what others think of us) and;And this is obviously to do with fame, honour and praise.
opinion (what we ourselves think).
There’s one more little element left in this etymological tale. In Scripture, whenever God displayed his crushing heaviness of being, his glory, there was light - lightening, or blinding light, or a shining cloud, or a pillar of fire, or the burning bush of our Old Testament lesson - the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Or in the New Testament it is the rumbling, thunderous voice of God from heaven revealing Christ, the Light of the World – ‘the radiance of God’s glory’.
Years later, when Moses was doubting whether God had ever actually called him to service, we read these words in the book of Exodus:
Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But, you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live." (Ex 33.18-23)Moses is told that God’s glory is unbearable, and all God would show was the shadow of his glory - his goodness - his moral perfection and beauty.
So the glory of God is full of light. He dwells in unapproachable light. Christ, the King of Glory, is the effulgence - the shining radiance - of God’s glory. And in that light of Christ we see ultimate moral beauty.
And this is seen in the Transfiguration
• They saw Moses the lawgiver and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law.
• They saw Elijah the chief of prophets and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed.
• They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.
• And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.
And they saw all this because they stayed awake, despite the lateness, after a long day and a climb up the hill.
There’s a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun. Blink and you miss it.
We saw that the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ was the word for weight, heaviness. Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory.
One of my fellow students at theological college was good at everything. And he knew it. So nobody liked him very much. There was much schadenfreude when he was rusticated for a term for driving a mini car through the front doors of the college - I think substances were also involved.
Someone pinned a large notice above his door with the single word in Hebrew: Ichabod - the glory has departed.
It was the name given to Eli’s grandson Ichabod, who was born just after a particularly crushing defeat by the Philistines who also stole the Ark of the Covenant which represented the glory of God.
[In fact it’s a rather tragic story that the Jewish writer turns into a little joke at the end.
“And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy.” (I Sam 4)
So the grandson, born at the same time is called Ichabod, the glory has departed - the Ark of the Covenant has been carried off. But it could mean, the heavy one has departed - the fat man has died.]
Ichabod might be a suitable epitaph for the last 20 years: postmodernity as we are coming to call this period of history.
There’s much spiritual interest but little spiritual depth or weight. Believe but don’t belong. (70% of people claim to be Church of England – they believe, but they don’t belong to our congregations in any meaningful sense.)
Postmodernity describes, not so much a movement, as a mood in contemporary society. It is image with attitude; inner emptiness covered up by all the good things money can buy. Tesco ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am. Retail therapy doesn’t give meaning, but it makes me feel better!
The loneliness and ennui is eased by friendships and music, sex, alcohol and other drugs; and lots of idle humour. Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I stuck around. Try and think of an advert that doesn’t use humour.
And one of the characteristics of postmodernity, is that it denies transcendence. So there is little focus to all that spirituality around, and indeed often a denial that there is any objective ‘other’ - the transcendent God of Glory. Spirituality is seen as something purely internal, subjective and personal.
Because of this absent substantiator in postmodern society; an absence of the One who gives weight to human existence, there is a lack of solidness in society, of glory, of weight.
We are in danger of becoming all surface and image.
Let’s go back to our Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus.
As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory.
We celebrate this Mass to the Glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.
And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope he has given us.
It is hard to celebrate the glory of God when we are suffering, in body mind or spirit; or watching those whom we love suffer. Yet as we look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.
The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”
Secular drowsiness, the stupor and busyness of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation.
And here at the mass, as Christ is again transfigured in this bread and wine; here is weight and depth in an increasingly light and shallow culture. Let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God.
“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32
Sunday, 31 July 2005
Spiritual Satisfaction
“This is the Bread from heaven.” (John 6.58)
A Scotsman moved into the area and started drinking at his local pub. He ordered 3 double whiskies and then spent an hour sipping a little from each of them until they were gone, then he ordered three more. The landlord looked puzzled until the Scotsman explained that he always used to drink with his brothers and now they’ve emigrated to America. So he always has the three glasses of whisky to remind him of the good old times. He became quite an institution in the pub.
Then one day he just ordered two whiskies. There was a hush that fell over the pub and the Landlord, sensing the mood, offered his condolences to the Scotsman for his deceased brother.
The Scotsman smiled and said; “ Och no. My brothers are fine. But it’s Lent, and myself, I've given up drink.”
Part of the discipline of self-denial in lent is to remind ourselves that there is more to life than food and drink. And in an inverse sort of way, that is one aspect of today’s Gospel - the Feeding of the 5000.
This is a strange story, set in the relative wilderness to the east of the sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights. It is the only story, apart from our Lord’s Passion, that is recounted in all four Gospels.
It was obviously an important part of early Christian tradition, and although there have been various attempts to ‘explain away’ the miraculous heart of the story, most Christians have always accepted it, as I do, as one of the miracles of our Lord.
The disciples had just returned from a successful preaching tour - thousands won to the Catholic faith - and were in need of a rest. So Jesus takes them away to a quiet place. But as usual, the grapevine soon spreads the news to the local populace and this crowd of 5,000 men, and presumably at least that number again of women and children, gather expectantly.
It is late in the day. And then the young boy’s picnic lunch (a typical eye-witness account mentioned only in John’s Gospel) – the 5 loaves and 2 small fishes become the stuff of history.
The thoughtful Mother who wrapped them up and thrust them into her son’s hands, no doubt with the instruction that he was to wear a vest as it got chilly on the Golan Heights, could never have imagined that 2000 years later billions of people would be spiritually fed by her simple act of motherly love.
But why did Jesus perform this miracle? The people were not about to die. They would make it to their homes.
The Jesus of the four Gospels does not do tricks to try and persuade the crowd that he is the Messiah. Indeed, at the end of this story when the crowd want to hail him as the new Prophet, he flees into hiding.
In most miracles, Jesus responds to need, and occasionally, as in the water in to wine, this story and the following sign (in John’s Gospel), walking on the water, he shows his mastery over nature and also provides teaching through such an ‘enacted parable’.
In other words, the primary function of the miracle is to illustrate a concept he is trying to teach, usually to his immediate disciples.
And so it is here, that our Lord is making a simple point and, as it turns out later, another very complex point, to his disciples.
The simple point may be expressed in this way: Jesus is not nearly as discouraged as we are, by the little we have to offer. In fact, one of the prerequisites of true worship is the recognition of our inadequacy.
We are to bring what we have in the recognition that only the Lord can multiply it to meet the needs that are there.
So in our worship: we bring our music, our liturgy, our preaching, our vestments, our art and culture; with the recognition that it is inadequate, but it is the best we can offer. Only Christ can transform it to worship in Spirit and in Truth which is acceptable to the Father and which truly prepares us for heaven.
And in our daily lives, our prayer must always be that God will take what we offer, the little we are able to do, and by his power give our acts of service significance and influence far beyond their meagreness.
But John’s Gospel also points to deeper truths in his account of this incident.
There is a little phrase (in v.4): “and the Passover was nigh”. (Mark’s account makes the same point by another eye-witness touch - they sat down on the green grass. Any of you who have been to the Holy Land will know that about the only time there is any green grass on the Golan Heights is before Passover.
The Passover. Here is John’s axis of interpretation.
If you read on in John’s version, there is a clear movement from miracle to theological discourse, from Jesus to Moses, from bread to flesh.
Our Lord is preparing to show them that hard teaching that will make many leave him: he is the Bread come down from heaven; the panis angelicus; the bread that satisfies the human heart and feeds the soul.
Soon the Passover lamb must be slain and eaten, as a reminder that the Angel of death passed over the Israelites as they were being released from slavery in Egypt.
And soon the Lamb of God must be slain and give his flesh and blood for the salvation of the world.
This story is not just about feeding hungry people. It is about a Saviour who alone can satisfy the spiritual hunger that is everywhere evident in the world.
And there is yet deeper truth here. For even when we have received, as we will in a moment, the Bread of Life, we are still not satisfied and as part of our human condition we will long for more. As CS Lewis says:
When we have had a satisfying meal, when we linger over the port, is it not then that we most clearly realise that there is more to life than good food and drink.
And when we have truly enjoyed a spiritual meal at mass in the bread and wine, or in some private moment of spiritual revelation, do we not then most clearly realise that we are spiritual pilgrims who have as yet only just set off along the path.
In Epstein’s wonderful representation of Jacob wrestling with the angel (which you can visit in Tate Britain) you can see another metaphor for this giving and yet holding back of God. The Angel, while injuring Jacob, is yet supporting him, solidly holding him up, blessing and renaming Jacob for the next stage in the journey.
The 5000 were fed and we are fed. Like them, we bring the little that we have and that we are, and offer it to Jesus. We will do this symbolically in a moment in the offertory.
But like them we will only truly find sustenance for our journey when we realise that although our needs are met, there is a divine dis-satisfaction in us which always beckons us on.
Because this is miraculous bread.
“This is the Bread from heaven.” (John 6.58)
A Scotsman moved into the area and started drinking at his local pub. He ordered 3 double whiskies and then spent an hour sipping a little from each of them until they were gone, then he ordered three more. The landlord looked puzzled until the Scotsman explained that he always used to drink with his brothers and now they’ve emigrated to America. So he always has the three glasses of whisky to remind him of the good old times. He became quite an institution in the pub.
Then one day he just ordered two whiskies. There was a hush that fell over the pub and the Landlord, sensing the mood, offered his condolences to the Scotsman for his deceased brother.
The Scotsman smiled and said; “ Och no. My brothers are fine. But it’s Lent, and myself, I've given up drink.”
Part of the discipline of self-denial in lent is to remind ourselves that there is more to life than food and drink. And in an inverse sort of way, that is one aspect of today’s Gospel - the Feeding of the 5000.
This is a strange story, set in the relative wilderness to the east of the sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights. It is the only story, apart from our Lord’s Passion, that is recounted in all four Gospels.
It was obviously an important part of early Christian tradition, and although there have been various attempts to ‘explain away’ the miraculous heart of the story, most Christians have always accepted it, as I do, as one of the miracles of our Lord.
The disciples had just returned from a successful preaching tour - thousands won to the Catholic faith - and were in need of a rest. So Jesus takes them away to a quiet place. But as usual, the grapevine soon spreads the news to the local populace and this crowd of 5,000 men, and presumably at least that number again of women and children, gather expectantly.
It is late in the day. And then the young boy’s picnic lunch (a typical eye-witness account mentioned only in John’s Gospel) – the 5 loaves and 2 small fishes become the stuff of history.
The thoughtful Mother who wrapped them up and thrust them into her son’s hands, no doubt with the instruction that he was to wear a vest as it got chilly on the Golan Heights, could never have imagined that 2000 years later billions of people would be spiritually fed by her simple act of motherly love.
But why did Jesus perform this miracle? The people were not about to die. They would make it to their homes.
The Jesus of the four Gospels does not do tricks to try and persuade the crowd that he is the Messiah. Indeed, at the end of this story when the crowd want to hail him as the new Prophet, he flees into hiding.
In most miracles, Jesus responds to need, and occasionally, as in the water in to wine, this story and the following sign (in John’s Gospel), walking on the water, he shows his mastery over nature and also provides teaching through such an ‘enacted parable’.
In other words, the primary function of the miracle is to illustrate a concept he is trying to teach, usually to his immediate disciples.
And so it is here, that our Lord is making a simple point and, as it turns out later, another very complex point, to his disciples.
The simple point may be expressed in this way: Jesus is not nearly as discouraged as we are, by the little we have to offer. In fact, one of the prerequisites of true worship is the recognition of our inadequacy.
“What can I bring him, poor as I am.”For Philip it was hopeless - ‘how can we feed them?’ For Andrew it was a little better - he found the little that there was - and this was enough for the Lord.
We are to bring what we have in the recognition that only the Lord can multiply it to meet the needs that are there.
So in our worship: we bring our music, our liturgy, our preaching, our vestments, our art and culture; with the recognition that it is inadequate, but it is the best we can offer. Only Christ can transform it to worship in Spirit and in Truth which is acceptable to the Father and which truly prepares us for heaven.
And in our daily lives, our prayer must always be that God will take what we offer, the little we are able to do, and by his power give our acts of service significance and influence far beyond their meagreness.
But John’s Gospel also points to deeper truths in his account of this incident.
There is a little phrase (in v.4): “and the Passover was nigh”. (Mark’s account makes the same point by another eye-witness touch - they sat down on the green grass. Any of you who have been to the Holy Land will know that about the only time there is any green grass on the Golan Heights is before Passover.
The Passover. Here is John’s axis of interpretation.
If you read on in John’s version, there is a clear movement from miracle to theological discourse, from Jesus to Moses, from bread to flesh.
Our Lord is preparing to show them that hard teaching that will make many leave him: he is the Bread come down from heaven; the panis angelicus; the bread that satisfies the human heart and feeds the soul.
Soon the Passover lamb must be slain and eaten, as a reminder that the Angel of death passed over the Israelites as they were being released from slavery in Egypt.
And soon the Lamb of God must be slain and give his flesh and blood for the salvation of the world.
This story is not just about feeding hungry people. It is about a Saviour who alone can satisfy the spiritual hunger that is everywhere evident in the world.
And there is yet deeper truth here. For even when we have received, as we will in a moment, the Bread of Life, we are still not satisfied and as part of our human condition we will long for more. As CS Lewis says:
“All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status, always reminds, beckons, awakens desires. Our best havings are wantings.”Our best havings are wantings.
When we have had a satisfying meal, when we linger over the port, is it not then that we most clearly realise that there is more to life than good food and drink.
And when we have truly enjoyed a spiritual meal at mass in the bread and wine, or in some private moment of spiritual revelation, do we not then most clearly realise that we are spiritual pilgrims who have as yet only just set off along the path.
In Epstein’s wonderful representation of Jacob wrestling with the angel (which you can visit in Tate Britain) you can see another metaphor for this giving and yet holding back of God. The Angel, while injuring Jacob, is yet supporting him, solidly holding him up, blessing and renaming Jacob for the next stage in the journey.
The 5000 were fed and we are fed. Like them, we bring the little that we have and that we are, and offer it to Jesus. We will do this symbolically in a moment in the offertory.
But like them we will only truly find sustenance for our journey when we realise that although our needs are met, there is a divine dis-satisfaction in us which always beckons us on.
Because this is miraculous bread.
“This is the Bread from heaven.” (John 6.58)
Wednesday, 9 February 2005
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday
"You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." Isaiah 58.11
What is the purpose of Ash Wednesday; or for that matter for Lent?
The symbolism is obvious. The ash reminds us of the dust from which we were made and to which we will return. However we exalt ourselves, we are but mere mortals.
And it associates us with those who weep over their sins in sackcloth and ashes.
But much more than this, it has become in the annual life of millions of Christians down through the centuries, the beginning of seven weeks when we can take stock of our spiritual life. When we can tune up our walk with God. When we can help to restore that delicate balance between our oh-so-demanding flesh, and our weak but willing spirits.
So rather than preach a traditional sermon on this first day of lent, I want to remind you of the spiritual disciplines which can become the exercises that tighten our flabby spiritual muscles.
Lent can of course, be like joining a gym. We pay our dues, get the membership card and special offers pack; even buy new trainers and a designer track suit. And then feel proud to be part of that great gym membership which is not troubled by actually attending gym, and certainly not by doing any exercise!
The spiritual disciplines are the exercises – the machines in the gym if you like.
So here are a selection of the spiritual disciplines with a few comments on them.
First the disciplines of Abstinence:
Traditionally, the fathers and mothers of the church have seen the disciplines of abstinence as controlling the normal desires: food, sleep, bodily activity, companionship, curiosity, sex; and also the subtler desires: convenience, comfort, material security, reputation, fame and variety.
These disciplines of the Via Negativa are usually:
Solitude Silence Fasting
Frugality Chastity Secrecy
Sacrifice Vigil (Suffering) Rest
Then there are the more positive Disciplines of Engagement; the Via Positiva:
Study Worship Celebration
Service Prayer Fellowship
Confession Writing Work
A balanced diet of these disciplines over the Lenten period, and beyond, will make us healthier spiritually and prepare us for a joyful Easter.
And more than this, the disciplines will nourish our inner life and give us inner resources. Then we will find God’s promise to Isaiah becomes increasingly true in our growth in godliness.
"You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." Isaiah 58.11
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
"You will disturb your development in a most violent manner if you expect answers from outside to questions which only the most secret feelings of your calmest hours can solve. I beg you to be patient with all the unsolved problems of your heart and to care for the questions themselves. Do not search for the answers to be given you; if given, they would be of no use, for you could not live them. For the present live in the questions and little by little and almost unconsciously you will enter the answers and live them also.”
Sunday, 1 September 2002
Flesh & Spirit
Flesh & Spirit
“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Gal 5:16
A prominent element of the religious culture in which I grew up in the 60s and 70s was the ‘testimony’: people telling us how they had been ‘saved’; how they had come to faith.
They were amazingly varied and many of them very moving, and some quite remarkable: Peter in front of his TV in Australia; Mary in her wheelchair in the orphanage chapel; Kevin in a memorable restaurant called Fudpuckers.
But there was a genre, usually recounted by burnt out looking thirty-somethings (I see a number of you here this morning), which ran along the lines: “There was no sin and debauchery to which I had not sunk (sometimes they went on to add “and then at the age of five...”).
Yet others would give you a tantalising glimpse of the sins and broad hints of the debauchery of their misspent youth. And I would often sit and complain to God that I’d become a Christian far to early to get a good crack at debauchery.
Today’s epistle from Paul’s difficult letter to the Galatians, contains this list, which even as a child you would mentally tick off as we ran the gamut of the sins of the flesh. [I was never sure what ‘lasciviousness’ was, but by the very sound of it, I’d committed it...]
Paul’s teaching on ‘the flesh’, or rather a misinterpretation of it, gave rise to a number of heresies in the early church.
These heresies were both to do with the person of Christ, and also to do with our attitude to the human body and to sex in particular: docetism, modal monarchianism, ascetic gnosticism, antinomianism - the names remain in the minds of all theological students long after the contents of the heresies have been forgotten.
The Scriptures, and Paul himself, use the word ‘flesh’ to convey a variety of meanings. Here’s half a dozen of them:
1 - Meat - Ps 78:27 “He rained flesh also upon them as dust...”Or if you don’t like the biblical imagery of the fall in the garden of Eden, then you can follow Richard Dawkins and his ‘Selfish Gene’: we’re born that way - we’re part of nature, red in tooth and claw.
2 -The Body - the usually meaning of the Greek word ‘sarx’ (sarcasm - the rending of the flesh) - and of the equivalent Hebrew word for flesh.
3 - A Person - Gen 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
4 - People - human race - Isa 40:5 “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together...”
5 - Frail human nature contrasted with God’s power - Mark 14:38 “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (You remember how the Russian translator struggled with this idiom and translated “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” by “The vodka is OK but the meat is terrible.”)
6 - Fallen and perverse human nature - “the lust of the flesh”.
Or indeed if you look into your own soul, you know that it is easier to be selfish and self-centred than to be generous and altruistic - that takes effort.
This 6th meaning is what Paul has in mind in here in Galatians and he goes on to amplify it.
His hit list of fallen human nature covers three dominant areas of our lives: sexuality, spirituality and society.
1 Sexuality - fornication, impurity, licentiousness
- the pursuit of sex as an end in itself, regardless of the feelings, responsibilities and respect we owe to each other - and to society. And to society - Christianity is essentially a communal faith where individual freedoms are moderated by social responsibility.
This is very difficult to work out in our divided society where there are very varied sexual mores. And of course some would argue that what we do in the bedroom is nothing to do with wider society. This was the late Abp Runcie’s view expressed in his candid biography.
In our understanding of human relationships, intimacy and sexuality, we must certainly hear scripture; and we must certainly pay heed to the tradition of the Church; but we must also listen to wider human society - and I don’t just mean its liberalising clamour, nor its sometimes reactionary response to embarrassed confusion.
We have to recognise that in the last four thousand years, guided by God, much has changed in this area, and much, inevitably, has yet to change. It is only the underlying principles of Christian behaviour which remain constant.
2 Spirituality - on Paul’s list, idolatry & sorcery
- the need for human kind to worship and the danger of worshipping ‘other gods’ of our own making. For example:
- the cult of self - the body beautiful and self-gratification - fuelled by theEach of us has our own personal idols which claim our devotion, may sap our energy and ultimately lead to disintegration and enslavement.
- the cult of money - the love of which is the root of all evil
- consumerism - shopping mall temples - Tesco ergo sum - retail therapy
- the cult of ‘my church’ - pride, intolerance and lack of Christian charity
- the cult of others - worshipping the lover, the spouse, the children
3 Society - enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing
- the ills which fragment community life and lead to distrust, social isolation, pain and anguish.
So Paul’s ‘lust of the flesh’ is not to be confused simply with desire and the enjoyment of our bodily appetites. It is not primarily to do with what the President of the US did with a young assistant; or with what King David did with a beautiful married woman.
It is about why they did it; whether they abused their charisma to achieve it; and what they did subsequently - privately and publicly. These are the lusts of the flesh.
So what is the Apostle’s solution to this civil war within us - the backcloth of so much human history, literature and art; the backcloth of our war-riven century; the backcloth of our own experience of the messiness of life.
It is to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit; to be what you are in Christ.
It is to have that attitude which was in Christ Jesus. Paul lists the fruit of this Spirit of Christ in relation to God, Others and Self.
God - love, joy, peace - these should be our characteristics.
Others - patience, kindness, generosity. I come across too many people in our churches who think a balanced personality means you have a chip on both shoulders.
Self - faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
We crucify the flesh: we make those moment by moment decisions to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit rather than to follow our demanding animal self - the lust of the flesh - the selfish gene. And we need not only the help of God’s Spirit, but of his Word and Sacraments, and of his people, and of the best of his world.
At it’s very simplest level, it is like the young boy standing by the apple barrel outside the grocer’s: “Are you trying to steal one of my apples?” “No sir, I’m trying not to.”
Paul uses two verbs in this passage to describe the process: being led by the Spirit and walking in the Spirit. The one is primarily passive. The other is active.
To be led by the Spirit is to follow our inner desire for holiness: to pursue the good and the beautiful.
St Mary’s is rightly known for the beauty of its music and liturgy. But this is can become idolatrous unless it is also known as a place of worship and prayer. The Spirit leads us to God.
Then Paul talks of actively walking in the Spirit - ‘keeping in step’ with the Spirit - running with the Spirit.
Two men are running away from a grizzly bear that is gaining on them. One man stops and starts putting on running shoes. The other one says “it’s no use, we’ll never outrun the bear.” “As he finishes tying the laces he says “I know. But I’ve only got to outrun you...”
Paul uses the competitive metaphor of the runner to talk of the disciplines of the spiritual life. These have been the mainstay of authentic Christianity down through the centuries, and they have nurtured the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - in the lives those who like us, try to follow Christ.
So we must put ourselves in places where we can be led by the Spirit, and not by our selfish desires. And as we do that we will continue to train ourselves through the spiritual disciplines so that we can walk in the Spirit. Then we will know increasing growth in holiness and re-orietning of our desires and attitudes.
“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Gal 5:16
Tuesday, 1 April 1997
Article - An autobiographical sketch
Living Intimately with Strangers
- a Postevangelical Pilgrimage?
(Published in The Postevangelical Debate, SPCK, 1997)
- a Postevangelical Pilgrimage?
(Published in The Postevangelical Debate, SPCK, 1997)
Northwest Spain was a revelation to me. As the plane circled round to land in Santiago de Compostela, I could see rolling green hills below and a landscape more reminiscent of my native Sussex than the arid desert regions of Spain, where I had stayed before in Zaragoza. The Cathedral, built over the bones of St James (‘Santiago’) the Apostle dominates the old city. It has been a great place of Christian pilgrimage for a thousand years and there were many travellers there when I visited the shrine a few days later. Most of the pilgrims had walked for many miles over many days to reach their destination. They simmered on that hot August day with all the joys and weariness that a long pilgrimage brings; savouring the new friendships and shared stories; the heightened faith and sense of belonging to the Church both militant and triumphant; at best, a greater devotion to Christ for whom they had undertaken the discipline of the walk. Pilgrimage has a long and noble tradition within the church, much neglected by Protestants because often abused by Catholics.
Some of the visitors, like me, had only flown in a few days before. They came from that part of the Christian family that does not understand pilgrimage. To them all this smacked of mumbo jumbo and salvation by works. They decided to sing some choruses in the nave and to pray ‘out’ the spirit of superstition that obviously pervaded a place where people genuflected, lit candles and kissed relics. An usher approached them and politely asked that they should stop singing and causing a disturbance. Vergers in Westminster Abbey would probably have done the same. Later that evening, back at the campsite, I heard some of these singers asking us to pray for the godless and misguided pilgrims. What further proof was needed of their unregenerate state, they said, than that the authorities had forbidden chorus singing in the cathedral.
Incidents like this have provoked in me an indefinable mental discomfort and pause for thought since I was a small, precocious boy in the Christian church. In recent years I have come to understand more about myself and the Christians who have nurtured me. I have reflected on the obvious sincerity and zeal of people who seem certain that they not only have the truth, but that their way of doing the truth is superior to all others. And these people have been my friends who loved me and cared for me. Yet somehow there was often a disjunction between what we were doing and the ordinary life of my unchurched family and wider circle of friends.
I sat on the hillside overlooking Compostela, at the foot of a huge cross, and remembered some of my early attempts at evangelism as a boy of 10 or 11. On Sunday afternoons in the summer, my church held open air services down on Shoreham beach. We would wade through the pebbles on what we judged to be the most densely populated part of the beach - always better at high tide when the masses could not spread themselves out so much - and set up a little peddle harmonium, a couple of outdoor PA speakers, and an old valve amplifier powered by a car battery that one of the stronger men lugged from the road. Then we would sing songs from ‘100 Favourite Hymns’, read from the Authorized Version, share testimonies and invite the oiled and bikinied multitudes to church that evening. My task was to go round, sweltering in my Sunday Best collar and tie, offering people hymn sheets in the vain hope that they might like to join in. I tried to ‘act natural’ when I came across a cluster of my school friends or neighbours. But it wasn’t natural. It was a cultural oddity, justified on theological grounds as ‘preaching the Gospel’.
Ten years later at university in the early 70s, Monty Python’s Flying Bible Study had at least been an ‘encultured’ attempt to share the Gospel, although I realised looking back that it still worked on an Us-versus-Them model of evangelism. But it was better than the prevailing method of thrusting Chic tracts up people’s noses, because, apparently, once a man had been converted by having a Chic tract nasally applied, and he had gone on to be a famous evangelist.
Another ten years later in the 80s, I was a Baptist minister, sitting in a boat moored off Torquay seafront on a Saturday evening. There was the familiar PA system, now transistorized, but with the same old car battery - this one with a dodgy connection which gave a surreal effect to the voice as it ebbed and flowed on the prevailing winds: “Welcome to the Boat Open… on these Satur… then do take one… … joy it!” There was an accordion, a choir, testimonies and solos, and two surly boatmen who sat like Gog and Magog at bow and stern with mugs of tea and fags hanging out of their mouths. One Saturday I remember the elderly speaker started off by shouting up to the promenade: “You may wonder what we are doing here?” I exchanged knowing smiles with many of the youngsters sitting around me. What were we doing there?
In 1996, as an Anglo-Catholic priest, I led a pilgrimage from my parish to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. I helped sprinkle at the well, anointed with oil at the Healing Mass, and sang all 37 verses of the hymn telling the Walsingham story as we processed round the garden behind the statue of Our Lady. It was a strange experience and I don’t think I will ever get into the Mary thing in a big way. I had been at Spring Harvest a few weeks earlier and there were marked cultural similarities although major theological differences; and of course a lot more gin and lace in evidence - at Walsingham, that is.
These and many more are the gallimaufry of religious experiences which have shaped my life and ministry over the last 40 years and I count myself lucky to have so many Christian friends who have shared with me the strengths and the weaknesses of their own traditions. I have never minded the walls of denominationalism, but I have always objected to broken glass on top of the walls. And I am but one of a growing number of Christians who have not only looked over the garden walls of very different denominations, but have walked through the gate. In a postmodern society where choice is of the essence of life, the church is in a strong position, with 57 varieties to suit most tastes and temperaments, all with one central, Christological and Trinitarian message. If only we could celebrate that diversity and love one another.
For me and many of my contemporaries, a dominant theme during these recent decades of social fragmentation and religious uncertainty has been integration - my life, my personality, my faith, my theology, my career, my spiritual life… And even integration of the wider church, allowing for individual choice with conviction, yet resisting the temptation to rubbish all other positions in order to make me feel more secure in my own. This has been the growing problem of the sect-like nature of some evangelicalism and some Anglo-Catholicism. We have seen others go along a road called Faithful to the Tradition and realised that for us it has become a cul-de-sac called The Myth of Certainty. There are no more certainties; only reasonable grounds for confidence. This must give us a degree of humility in our walk with others of differing theological positions, and in our dealings with those struggling with faith and practice.
Good friends often see the changes we are undergoing before we notice them ourselves. I can remember the day when walking through a little Oxfordshire village in the late 80s, a former colleague, David Coffey, asked me if I thought I would become an Anglican, or even a Roman Catholic. I was taken aback by the seriousness of the enquiry. It had never really occurred to me to change denominations, but David obviously thought I might. Later, he explained my denominational move to others who were perplexed by what appeared so rapid a change of allegiance, in a way that helped to clarify matters for myself. He said that my theological, spiritual and career paths had converged. Let me retrace my steps along those three paths, albeit rather sketchily and sadly leaving out a number of significant people and events.
The Emotional Blackmail of a Sound Theology
As soon as I could walk, I joined my neighbours’ kids at the local Baptist Sunday School. I had three, then four, then five, then six brothers and sisters and so Sunday School got you out of a crowded 3-bedroomed house, both morning and afternoon in the 50s. I liked Sunday School: lots of friends; a colour-in book with beautiful gummed pictures to stick in each week; Sunday School anniversaries with presentation books for good attendance over the year. And many godly older men and women who loved me and gave time to me. As I grew older I joined the choir and the youth group and the Christian Endeavour and the Boys’ Brigade and went to church pretty well all day on Sunday. I began to learn theology and to hear tales of liberals who dwelt beyond the Bible Belt which was the Sussex coast. Then there were the great Missionary Conventions at Holland Road, Hove, and charts of Dispensations and End Times, together with detailed models of the Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple. By my teens I was reading Scripture Union notes, and IVP books and at 14 I started lay-preaching around the Tin Tabernacles of Sussex villages.
Church had given me the impetus to pass my 11-plus and go with my friends to High School in Worthing. It was there that I grew to love mathematics, physics and self-conscious evangelicalism under the aegis of charismatic mentors, mostly from the Brethren. Jim Gravett taught us Latin by speaking nothing but Latin when we were in class. He threw blackboard rubbers at us, kept chickens and ferrets outside his classroom and led Bible studies in the lunch hour. Taffy Evans was the headmaster who was at once fearsome and playful and who taught us Religious Instruction and muscular Christianity. Beaky Martin was a polymath who inspired me to learn about everything and who somehow taught more philosophy and theology in a Maths lesson on differential calculus than I had heard in many a sermon.
The Joy of Science was only matched by the Joy of Sound Theology. (There was no Joy of Sex of course…) I was introduced to the Banner of Truth, to Reformation Today and to the writings of Francis Schaeffer. I bought Berkhof’s Systematic Theology and formed sound opinions on everything from women in ministry (OK as long as they weren’t presiding elders) to the Established Church (some evangelicals were alright - I had been to the bastions of Broadwater, Worthing and Bishop Hannington, Hove). Once I had got the theology of the charismatic movement sorted - admittedly a trickier problem in the 60s - I was ready for CICCU: the Cambridge Inter Collegiate Christian Union.
Cambridge was to be the finishing school of my conservative evangelical credentials, although I hung around a lot with charismatics and sang in the Selwyn Chapel choir, and this lost me serious brownie points. To be really ‘sound’ you sided with John Stott rather than Martyn Lloyd-Jones; and you prayed in your college CU prayer meeting for Chapel and those who went there. You didn’t attend yourself. You went to the Round Church, or to one of the Brethren halls, or joined me at Eden Strict Baptist Chapel. While studying science and the history and philosophy of science I also became a Young Earth Creationist, a position I held and championed for over ten years.
Being convinced of sound theology meant that you treated all others who claimed to be Christians but who held loose to evangelicalism as slightly suspect. Students who left CICCU to join more liberal churches and chapels were backsliders. Those who couldn’t hold to the strict moral codes of evangelicalism were beyond the pale and you prayed for them with tears in your eyes. This was genuine compassion, but it was fuelled by a sectarian theology that saw all other theologies as deficient discipleship. Like all sectarian thinking, it held a powerful emotional hold on you. The intimacy of fellowship would be broken if you forsook the evangelical way. You would wander off into the relativity of liberalism if you departed in any matter from ‘biblical’ Christianity.
This is a hard mind set to break free of. Although I can no longer call myself a conservative evangelical, I still feel an inner pain every time I move a marker post. In 1984 I became the Laing Scholar at London Bible College (now the London School of Theology) and spent two years full time, studying Genesis Chapter One. At the end of that exercise I had all but forsaken Young Earth Creationism. Eventually I realised it was only an emotional attachment and a fear of disappointing my creationist friends that made me in my dissertation allow for the creationist position as a possible reading of Scripture. In the course of my research I had in fact become angry at the way that Creationists (like me) manipulated the Bible and church history to make their case. It is hardly surprising that some people find it less painful to ‘give up’ on Christianity altogether (although they usually haven’t) rather than move away from evangelicalism to… postevangelicalism? In my church in Torquay we had a number of families who had been badly hurt by the Exclusive Brethren. They rarely came into church membership, because it had so many unhappy connotations, and some had a constant niggling feeling that they were bound for hell, and had forsaken the true path; the narrow way that so few enter. I understand their feelings now in a way that I could not at the time.
It is hard for exclusive theologies, and conservative evangelicalism was such in the 60s and 70s, to allow for a mind really open to other possibilities and points of view. Departing from the prescribed truth is too costly both in terms of inner turmoil and uneasy relationships. I know when I visit them, that some of my friends are praying that I will return to the truth and become an ‘effective’ evangelical again. How else could they pray?
A Subversive Spirituality
I was born at 2am one snowy Sunday, on Christmas Day, 1949. I was almost called Noel, but my parents plumped for the good Bishop of Myra, Nicholas instead. (One of my congregation in Torquay was born exactly 50 years before me and was called Yule, which made me grateful that I had not been called Holly, or even Turkey.) In a strange way, being a Christmas baby always made me feel special, and close to Jesus, the boy who shared my birthday. I never remember a time when he was not a part of my inner reality. I always spoke to Jesus and resisted any attempts to get me to ‘make a decision for Christ’ or to ‘let Jesus into my heart’ in adolescence. I was never converted. My metaphor of faith from infancy appears to have been that of evolution rather than sudden change; gradualism rather than catastrophism. Evangelicalism has been very prone to benchmark faith - conversion, baptism, backsliding, repentance, renewal, baptism in the Spirit, rededication… For some people this works well when set against a backcloth of progressive growth in grace. But for some who are ‘forced’ into this model of spiritual growth it begins to wear thin, and disillusion can set in, usually against a backcloth of increasing guilt.
There were three key elements in my early spiritual development. I grew up between the South Downs and the Channel on the banks of the river Adur. The 1950s were full of fun on beaches and in chalk pits; messing about in boats on the river; exploring among the tank blocks and the old air-raid shelters over at the airport. Shoreham-by-Sea was a wonderful playground. Secondly, my father is a radio ham, so the house was always full of electrical components, tools and mechanical wonders for managing masts. I could solder soon after I could walk and blame the recent degeneration of my brain on the many electrical shocks I received in my boyhood. A third element was the beauty of music. I had a strong singing voice and very early learnt the pleasure of making music with others in choirs and orchestras. My treble voice turned tenor by the time I was 12. By 18 I realised that male alto carried more kudos and was more marketable than an indifferent tenor. This was a decision that, somewhat surprisingly, altered the course of my life more than I could have imagined at the time.
These worlds of nature, science and music developed in me a strong sense of the power and mystery of God. Natural theology informed and gave stability to my spiritual growth, and from my 20s onwards began subtly to confuse my Christian life. My evangelical faith looked fine on paper and in the cut and thrust of student debate, but it didn’t ‘feel’ right, or make sense of the culture in which I lived. Now I knew, of course, that I must not follow my ‘feelings’, those unreliable doorways to sin. I must follow my mind, that ennobled arbiter of Christian living. But even then, my reformed training reminded me of my ‘total depravity’ and that my reasoning too was faulty. This began to throw me back on God in a way I did not really understand at the time. I felt like John Donne:
Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, youIt was all this poetry and music and liturgy and art so closely woven into Christianity that began to produce in me a sort of spiritual dualism. The focus of the culture which was confusing me at this time was Selwyn College Chapel. I had auditioned for the choir and joined the other three male altos, who were all much better than me, but the organ scholar desperately needed a fourth to balance the all male choir of about 20 voices. This introduced me to a régime of daily Eucharists and evensongs which was at once both utterly foreign to me and utterly compelling. Furthermore, although I knew that none of the clerics who still littered Selwyn in the 70s, were evangelicals, I realised two important things about them: they were not lacking in the brain department and could give good reasons for their ‘middle of the road’ (a pejorative term from my background) theological positions; and they were godly, and displayed a gentleness of spirit and devotion to God which did not fit the stereotypical picture that countless ‘sound’ sermons had painted of liberals. Even Bishop John Robinson, of the infamous Honest to God debates of the 60s, when I met him over dinner at Selwyn was a bubbling and charming Christian man - in favour of believers’ baptism as I recall!
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely’I love you,’and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,’untie, or break that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee. (Sonnet xiv)
My chaplain, Bob Hardy (now Bishop of Lincoln) lived next door to me on D staircase and there we had many group discussions with the older chaplain, John Sweet, a prayerful, caring academic with a dry sense of humour; and with the Master of Selwyn, Owen Chadwick. He was a powerful personality and a silent mentor for me. I would often serve for him at the early morning Eucharist where he murmured the prayers by the light of the altar candles and often thrust the Gospel book towards me if the reader had not turned up - his eyesight was not up to the candlelight. I read the lesson for him at Great St Mary’s, the University Church, when he was installed as Vice-Chancellor, and he took a kindly interest in my ‘free church’ progress after I left Selwyn.
After a difficult first term in 1969, feeling I was compromising my faith by being so involved with Chapel, I received a helpful letter from my old Worthing High School guru, Charles (Beaky) Martin. I had written to him of my concerns and he had wisely urged me to identify with ‘the household of faith’ in the college, even if I had some theological reservations. For the next four years, I worshipped daily in College Chapel and pedalled off after the Sung Eucharist on Sunday morning to get to Eden Strict Baptist Chapel for 45 minutes of David Smith’s great Bible exposition. Then after a very formal Sunday Evensong in Selwyn, I joined the 500 plus from CICCU at the Evangelistic Sermon in Holy Trinity. I was becoming a closet Anglo-Catholic.
My tutor at Selwyn, an engineer with a quiet devotion to Christ, always in Chapel (and now Master of Selwyn, Sir David Harrison), arranged for me to go and do my teaching practice during my fourth year at Lancing College, up the hill from my home in Shoreham. He was a governor at the school and knew that the head of physics was coming to be Schoolmaster Fellow for Easter term. It was a fantastic term, and as the Baptist Ministerial Recognition Committee for Kent and Sussex had just turned me down for training as a Baptist minister, I stayed on for two more years at Lancing. The school chapel is bigger than many cathedrals and was built as the central minster of the Woodward Foundation, an Anglo-Catholic educational trust. I was back in the choir again, deeply involved in chapel life, as well as attending my home church, Shoreham Baptist, down the hill. The ‘dualism’ continued and I thrived on the mystery and awe of a Sung Solemn Mass and on the intimacy and immediacy of happy clappy Bappy services.
During the late 60s and early 70s, I had also been deeply affected by the charismatic movement. I was at school with Stuart McAlpine and Michael Clark, and their fathers, Campbell and Dennis, and the wider circle of their friends which included Arthur Wallis, Cecil Cousen and Gean Darnall, had all made a deep impression on me. Despite the loony fringes of the movement, there was an authenticity and transparency about these men and women which again pointed me beyond the formulaic doctrines of conservative evangelicalism to the mystery of the interaction between the divine and the human - the working of the Holy Spirit. Capel Prayer and Bible weeks and the Intercessors for Britain weeks at Ashburnham Place gave me insights into prayer which I was not to come across again until I started reading some of the Fathers & Mothers of the church: Chrysostom, Francis, Hildegaard, John of the Cross, Julian, Merton…
I began to admit to myself, and others by my 30s, that I was theologically a Baptist, but aesthetically an Anglo-Catholic. This subversive spirituality eventually had an effect on my theology. The focus of my faith was subtly moving from ‘head’ to ‘heart’. When I was 20, I was very secure in what I knew, but very insecure in who I was. By 40 I was very secure in who I was, but quite insecure in what I knew. There were many fuzzy edges in my faith, and the old certainties seemed naive and unworkable. I remember standing around with half a dozen lecturers at London Bible College one afternoon discussing some particularly fundamentalist student. We had all been at Cambridge together in the 70s. I remember commenting: “You know, we’ve all become those woolly forty year olds that we despised when we were twenty!”
It was a great relief to me when I first realised that trying to get back to the fervent faith of my teens was an enormous guilt-inducing mistake. Pilgrimage requires change and if we cannot change our minds, then we cannot really change anything. I was struck by Carl Jung writing on preparing people for retirement:
“We take this step with the false presupposition that our truth and ideals will serve us henceforth. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning - for what was great in the morning will be little at evening… I have given psychological treatment to too many people of advancing years, and have looked too often into the secret chambers of their souls not to be moved by this fundamental truth.” (Modern Man in Search of a Soul)At the same time as all this change was going on in my spirituality/theology, my ecclesiology was also consequently undergoing a transformation. During my 11 years at LBC I realised that interpreting the Bible was a much more slippery enterprise than I had hitherto thought. And I saw that the church played a much more determinative role in biblical hermeneutics than I had supposed. I only had to look at the way that evangelicalism had viewed the issues of divorce and the role of women, during my lifetime, to see this demonstrated. The creeds were important, for they mapped the interpretive debates of the church. The Roman Catholic and Reformed Catholic (as some would call Anglo-Catholicism) church had maintained credal Christianity for nearly two millennia.
I led a pilgrimage to Assisi in the late 70s and was fascinated by all I learned of Francis. I had already met Anglican Franciscans at Lancing and at Cambridge. Then I began to read Brother Ramon’s books and eventually started meeting with him. He had been a Welsh Baptist, a charismatic, and now he was a Franciscan priest - presently a solitary up at the Prayer House in Glasshampton. While still a Baptist minister I became a Third Order Franciscan. This helped to discipline my spiritual life, gave greater focus to my pilgrimage and fuelled the Spirituality courses I was teaching at LBC.
Calling or Career?
Mathematics and the Baptist Ministry were the competing vocations of my teens. By the time I was 17 and in the Science Sixth Form I had decided to pursue both. My teachers suggested I applied for Selwyn because it was full of ordinands and clerics who would understand someone reading Mechanical Sciences in preparation for the ministry. Cambridge has a long tradition of science and mathematics as a limbering up exercise for the Queen of Sciences, Theology. I have never regretted the decision, although I must admit that I did a bare minimum of detailed Science while being involved in music and sport, the Christian Union and Chapel, politics and lectures by interesting people in other disciplines. These were the days of the Garden House riots, the English Faculty sit-ins, the formation of the Cambridge Students’ Union (as opposed to The Union - the expensive debating society), the first mixed colleges (women were not admitted to Selwyn till 1976), charismatic splits and decimal coinage.
After 2 years of teaching at Lancing, I entered Spurgeon’s College in 1975 to train for the ministry - an appeal had persuaded the Ministerial Recognition Committee to (reluctantly) change it’s mind about my suitability. Supply teaching in Steyning Grammar School (a 2,300 pupil comprehensive school) helped me to survive financially during my 4 formative years at Spurgeon’s. Ray Brown was the Principal. He was a church historian who also taught spirituality, both by his life and in class. He helped me to begin the integrative process between my baptist theology and my catholic spirituality and also made me realise that although I wanted to be a pastor, I also wanted to be a teacher and trainer.
I left to be Assistant Minister at Upton Vale Baptist Church in Torquay, where Ray had been the minister and here I experienced ‘high church’, pietistic, baptist worship. We had a robed choir and worked hard to give our services liturgical coherence. There was a strong brethren influence and a significant charismatic group in the church, which both served to undermine, in different ways, liturgical development - although they added much else in other areas. I had a basically Lutheran view of communion (the ‘real presence’ of Christ in the elements) but was aware that my congregation were essentially Zwinglians who saw the Eucharist as a memorial only (caricatured as the ‘real absence’).
Peter Barber was my boss for my first year. He was a protestant Scot whom I remember saying to me as we stared at a glorious triptych behind the high altar in some cathedral, “Doesn’t it make your protestant blood boil?” Well no it didn’t. I had been used to gentle Cambridge Catholics and Peter’s experience of Catholicism had been in Glasgow. I began to realise that temperament and formative experiences shaped your theology as much as the Bible. I could not imagine anyone who would be as good a mentor and teacher as Peter, but when he left to become General Secretary of the Scottish Baptist Union, he was followed by David Coffey who proved to be his equal as a gracious teacher and, like Peter, a man who gave me space to develop my own spirituality.
I wanted to work with students and after nearly five years at Upton Vale left to pursue research at LBC, which I knew to be a necessary preliminary for theological teaching. I began to examine my ‘calling’ and to sift the comments that I used to get in Torquay: “You’ll soon want your own church I suppose…” I didn’t. I enjoyed having fingers in many pies, being a gatekeeper in so many evangelical networks, having the freedom to travel, write, teach. Furthermore, I began to understand myself as a political animal, always wanting to influence the decision makers, always scared that I might manipulate committees rather than let decisions emerge.
When the time came for me to move on from LBC and to think about the next twenty years of my working life, I was at a loss to know what to do. I wanted to be a chaplain in an academic environment, but as a Baptist minister, such opportunities were few and far between. If only I were an Anglican, I thought… And then everything came together in my mind and I felt sure that this unthinkable step was indeed the next one. It was a sudden decision which I knew I must test carefully. Ramon sent me a long letter in which he showed, like David Coffey, that he knew my direction better than I did. “It was really not ‘whether’ but ‘when’ you would make the change” he wrote, and speaking of his own denominational change he said, “I also recall that although there was a long period of inward thought and debate within my own mind and heart, yet there was a ‘moment’ which seemed to turn the tide.”
But I was afraid that this change might be seen as a ‘career move’, and indeed I questioned deeply my own motivation. Was it primarily my career? Or aesthetics? Or theology? Or life style? However, my two close friends David Coffey and Steve Gaukroger both encouraged me to make the move and reassured me, and my Bishop, Graham Dow, gave wise advice and direction that facilitated a smooth transition.
For many, change is often seen as weakness - Major and Blair viewed by Thatcherism and Old Labour. But “change is the angel of a changeless God” (Archbishop Temple) The change has been a change in emphasis akin to moving from one focus of an ellipse to the other. I am more at home with the transcendent than the imminent; with mystery than explanation; with priests as the focus of the priesthood of all believers, and as a channel for transcendence, rather than ministers who equip; with paradox and uncertainty rather than closure and assurance. My earlier theology stressed beginnings - conversion; and action - busyness and behaviour, achievement and fervour. My new position embraces endings - heaven; and process - life and being, openness and reflection.
As ever, Jack Clemo puts it well
Broad AutumnI have a long way to travel but I have good travelling companions. Relationships have been my lifeblood along the way, even when sometimes those I have intimately lived and worked with have been strangers to many areas of my interior life, as I have been to theirs. The Church is undergoing a transition that may well turn out to be a paradigm shift. Working out how we can remain faithful to the tradition and each other, while genuinely open to the Spirit’s working through the Church and the Culture, takes a lifetime - and then some.
True faith matures without discarding:
All I unearthed, each sky-sign crudely mapped
On the white rasped hills of youth,
Warms me still by rowan-tapped crags
Far up the autumnal mountain,
Incredibly remote in climate, texture, weathering
Of bare stones, from my first insights:
I left no wreckage on those low rasped cones.
There is no snarl of tools
Where broad wisdom calls across the cordial heather,
But the hacked glints my young heart stored
Still tone the subtle comforts and the sharp
Fearful shifts of shade as the blood cools
To admit, and clarify, the expanding mental range.
No pestilence of proud ripeness,
Urbane, agnostic, cankers the wide braes
Which my spirit, eagle-keen now, calls native
In the pale sun’s gloss. The spikes of raw praise,
Sparse once on the white hills,
Glow ruddier here against the thinned
Thieving of the schooled foreign crows.
I have not changed my country;
I have grown and explored
In my faith’s undivided world.
I discard no primal certainty, no rasped
Sky-sign of the Cross;
But now in broad autumn, feeling a new peace
And the old poise of defence,
I accept the pure trysting lochs,
The full antlers in the glens.
Harrow, Holy Week 97
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