CARM.org on Open Theism Part II ("Over the Top"?)

Here’s part II.

Slick has read many books on Open Theism, which is fine. But one wonders, why he does not respond to some of its most important points: the claim secular Greek philosophy deeply influenced the classical view. Instead of responding thoughtfully, what one receives is a dismissive wave of the hand followed by verse-spamming.

Open Theism argues, and correctly that much of classical theology has been influenced by secular “pagan” thought. What Open Theists try to do is be aware of this habituated way of looking at God and scripture, eschew it, and then read the Bible again and see how our ideas about God might be a little different. Anyone who wants to defend the traditional, classical view, should be willing to deal with the tenants of the traditional classical view. This is especially important because detractors of Open Theism might be influenced by the old Greek ideas and not even know it.

Slick, however, does not seem aware of it. In responding to the claim that much of the classical view was influenced by “pagan” thought, Slick writes:

It is this presupposition of open theism that has led to such comments as this:

"While some (including myself) argue that the development of the classical view of God was decisively influenced by pagan philosophy, classical theologians have always maintained that it is deeply rooted in Scripture."1

This is overkill, "decisively influenced by pagan philosophy"? Perhaps it is open theism that is influenced by pagan philosophy, since it teaches that God can make mistakes, doesn't know all things, and changes His mind. Which is more majestic and sovereign: the God of open theism, or the God of classical theism which says that God is absolutely sovereign, in control, knows all things, and makes no mistakes?

This is not substance. This is well-posioning, ad hominem, and an implicit questioning of an Open Theist’s piety. Slick might as well have written, “Pagan philosophy does not influence the classical view, because Open Theism is wrong and has a wimpy God.”

If there is any doubt that the classical view of God was influenced by secular thought, I hope I can offer a few suggestions. The traditional/classical view of God came down from folks like Augustine, and Aquinas. Augustine was deeply influenced by neo-platonism, which included the idea that what was most perfect was that which did not change. Aquinas was explicit about his interaction with Greek philosophy. He is considered one of the most important commentators on Aristotle, who also believed that something is not perfect unless it is timeless. Both of these ideas where not necessarily rejected by Protestantism – a point that Open Theists like Pinnock have raised again and again.

Space does not allow me to expound on this point. I cannot even argue that the pagan tradition is wrong here. What I am saying is that it is naive and irresponsible to assume that this long standing tradition does not influence one’s reading of scripture. Even if one tries to assert Sola Scriptura, it is still avoiding the issue.

CARM does not address a very important, and very critical, thesis of Open Theism. It needs to.

The Wordled Word

Next Sunday's Gospel reading through the eyes of Wordle... It's interesting to see which words are used most often in the passage as they come out the largest. It's an interesting way of seeing a way into what the text might be saying to us... Enjoy!

Shalom, Michael Jackson, Shalom...

Herewith a draft of this morning's sermon. It was tough to get to a point where I had something meaningful. Worth the wait though I though...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The king of pop is dead. Long live the king...There cannot be a person left unaware of the death of Michael Jackson in recent days. As someone never moved by his music, I have been left a little bemused by the outpourings from the media about the man, his life, his music and his legacy. The thing that has struck me has been the way that the press have not been circling looking for prey in this story so far. Instead, aside from the ongoing pictorial and musical tributes, we are left looking at 50 years of a very private individual, living in the limelight, and yet not knowing very much about this apparently very troubled man. A man who apparently longed for a childhood, a ‘normal’ relationship with anyone, and healing from things that clearly caused him enough emotional pain to seek relief in the form of prescription medication.

The media, life in public, more money than you can shake a stick at did not seem to provide the hope, stability, love and healing that he and indeed all of us crave for deep down. This morning, the encounters Jesus has with two groups of people go right to the heart our deepest longings.

Jesus crosses the lake with his disciples and they encounter a great crowd. Jairus comes by, he sees Jesus, falls at his feet and begs repeatedly for Jesus to come and heal his daughter. Now just hold the action there a second - it is all too easy to miss the scandal of what is going on here. All too often it is the leadership of the synagogues and their priests that give Jesus a hard time, and yet here, Jairus part of that leadership comes to Jesus. He is clearly a desperate man - so desperate that he will reach out across religious boundaries seeking healing that he has been unable to obtain through other channels for his daughter.

Whilst heading off with Jairus, his story is interupted by another one, that of the haemoraging woman. She has endured much physically, medically and financially over the years. She, like Jairus, was desperate - so desperate that she will reach out across the religious and social boundaries seeking healing that she has been unable to obtain through other channels. But...

Jairus came to Jesus as an equal - as a man. This woman approaches knowing that according to the religious and social rules of her day she could not even speak let alone touch another man. Jairus was first, this woman was most definately last.

The woman who touches Jesus has been bleeding for twelve years. Jairus’ daughter is twelve years of age. Although this is inserted in brackets in the text, it is no afterthought, but an absolutely deliberate dramatic irony. Here are two women – one whose life as a woman has apparently finished, and another whose life as a women is just starting. The woman has been bleeding for the lifetime of Jairus’ daughter. All the time the girl has been growing, the woman has had her life ebbing away. Two lives that should never meet. The woman is one of “the crowd” – one of the poor and socially outcast. She is doubly ostracised because of her menstrual bleeding. She has become one of the “untouchables”. Jairus’ daughter, by contrast, comes from wealth and privilege. Yet they are destined to meet in Jesus. Here is a sign of the new community: the barriers between rich and poor, between those at the social centre and those on the periphery, are removed in Christ. Ironically, the woman is restored to life at the very moment at which the girl dies. Do you see how socially loaded this story is? For one woman, the social ostracism of the past twelve years is ending; for the other, the wealth, privilege of the past twelve years is also ending.

Two powerful stories. But take another look at the small details of the stories as they have as much to teach us as the main events themselves.

In both cases there was a crowd - people clearly expected Jesus to demonstrate the power of God in word or action. In both cases, both Jairus and the woman had an urgency about them, they know that Jesus could do want they wanted, needed, longed for. In both cases, touch was seen as central to the act of healing - lay your hand on her - touch the hem or edge of his robe - there is something quite physical going on here.

One thing we could learn fro this story is that healing is to be expected with the power of God at work in Jesus. We should expect it, even if it doesn’t seem to work out the way that we thought or hoped. The danger is we live in an instant world and expect instant results and when one desperate prayer is not answered we shake our fist at God and walk off. And yet physical healing falls into place as a small piece of God’s healing plan for Jairus, this woman, Michael Jackson and us.

In these two encounters, Jesus begins to heal the social and religious rifts of his day and offers healing through the creation of a new social order where no one dies and no one is excluded. Here is a sign of the new community: the barriers between rich and poor, between those at the social centre and those on the periphery, are removed in Christ. And if you think that sounds pie in the sky, look at what Jesus says to the haemoraging woman - your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed of your disease.

A really strange way of saying - be healed but there is something more to what Jesus offerers that woman, Jairus and his daughter, Michael Jackson and you and me. Jesus assures that woman that it is her faith that has healed her from her disease. There is another whole sermon on what that might mean, it is the words - go in peace that sit staring us in the face this morning.

Peace - shalom - is the presence of the good ness of God, of wholeness, completedness. To go in peace is to have the blessing of God on all of her, not just her physical body - but God’s presence on and in her whole being.

Peace and salvation - restoration with God and living in harmony with him and each other.

What did Jairus and the woman really want from Jesus? What did Michael Jackson crave? And us, what do we really want? Quick fix answers from an instant god in an instant world?

~~~~~~~~~~

This is where my notes peter out and the Holy Spirit took over. Make of it what you will...

CARM.org on Open Theism Part I (Equivocation)

There are things that Open Theism is and there are things that it is not. Some time ago, I visited CARM’s take on Open Theism. While I understand that CARM’s goal is to be concise, it still does not seem to me that the presentation of what Open Theism is, its basic arguments, and the issues it deals with was fair. What better place to talk about it then here?

As a disclaimer, I liked CARM when I was about twenty or something. It was one of the first places that I started looking into apologetics. However, I can’t say that I support it too much now. Apologetics –and evangelicalism- cannot be so simply tied down to a series of flow charts. I guess I am saying this so that readers can have some idea of my view of CARM and Matt Slick’s approach to things in general.

CARM seems to misrepresent and/or misunderstand Open Theism. The first big mistake, and one that Open Theists (including this one) are tired of hearing, is the claim about “the future.” Slick places it under Basic Tenants of Open Theism. Here it is:

God does not know the future.
1. This is either because God cannot know the future because it does not exist, or...
2. It is because God chooses to not know the future even though it can be known.

No. No. No. A thousand times No. There is a serious sense of equivocation in the word “know” here, as I hope to explain. Open Theism says that God does know the future. The difference is there is a disagreement about what the future is. Open Theism says that the future can only be known as a set of possibilities. It cannot be known like the past or like the present. It might be correct to say “God does not know (exactly) what you will do tomorrow” but this does not mean, as one might be led to believe by the above statement, that God is simply cosmically ignorant about future events.

It is better to say that “God knows what you might do tomorrow, and every other possibility.” It is the nature of the future to be possibilities, so there is no more threat to omniscience here than if I said something like “God does not know square circles.” It is the nature of squares to not be circles. It is the nature of the future to be possibilities only.

Slick seems to want to use the term “know” in a univocal way. So that unless God knows something exhaustively it is not knowing. It is correct, to Open Theists, to say that God can know the present exhaustively, because everything is there to be known. However, if God knows the future exhaustively/exactly, then the one must also assume that future is something different. It must exist in some way. It must be in some sense actual so that God can “know” it, but this assumes certain ideas about time that are not addressed in scripture. That idea of time is a hidden assumption that Open Theists do not share.

In short, what I am trying to explain is that a statement like “Open Theism teaches that God does not know the future” is a misunderstanding at best and underhanded over-simplification at worst. Open Theists of course do not think that God knows the future in the same sense that classical theists do. Otherwise, there would be no disagreement at all. The disagreement not that God is ignorant but rather whether something like “the future” can logically be known in the same way that the present or past is.

And in general, if you want to know the basic tenants of Open Theism, it would be smarter to go to a site run by an Open Theist.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for part II

The Word through Wordle

Here's tomorrow's Gospel reading through the wonder of Wordle. Notice that the commonest words come out the biggest - therefore meaning that 'crowd', 'Jesus and 'came' feature very often. Closely following that are the words 'touched', 'synagogue', 'immediately', 'made' and 'daughter.'

Doing this exercise has made me wonder about the stories from the point of view of the crowd watching what happened. Notice also that the stories happened somewhere else, Jesus went to them so to speak. It is also worth noting the physical nature of what took place - not just physical healing, but Jesus touched and healed. The outcome was immediate - no mention of in God's timing.

The passage makes us ask hard questions about healing today - outside that of conventional medicine. Also, to continue to ask - who is this man?

Who is this man?

Evening folks,

Just thought that I'd give you a heads up... One of the readings on Sunday is from Mark 5:21-43 and it deals with two amazing events in Jesus' early ministry.

Firstly a woman who has suffered from severe haemorrhages for many many years came to Jesus to seek healing - healing that the doctors of the day could not provide. And she was healed.

Secondly, the story of the rasing to life of Jairus' daughter, who had died.

Both passages speak powerfully of who Jesus is. He is not just another Rabbi, not just another religious teach, not just some other messianic nut job. The power of God that brought all things into being at the first moment of creation, is clearly at work in the man Jesus of Nazareth.

The question the crowds are left asking is - who is this man? *Really*, who is he?

It's the same question that we will be exploring in our services on Sunday. At 10am, as we are talking of healing, the opportunity to receive prayer for yourself or others as you ask the same question, or to receive the ministry of laying on of hands and annointing with holy oil for healing will be on offer for you or others known to you.

It should be a special time. Come and join us. Come expecting to meet with God. Come with your hopes and fears, your doubts and yearnings and come with open hands and an open heart to meet with each other and with the same God who was at work in Jesus.

See you Sunday!

Simon

Age of Stupid

I have been to the first of 2 upcoming Indie screenings of the arresting 'The Age of Stupid' tonight. The next one is in Bennetts End on 16th July.

Even though I saw the film first on it's world premiere on March 15th I was still moved by the central message of the film and the data that unfolds as part of the central story. If anythings, having seen it again tonight I feel more convinced that it is my vocation to act on making people more aware of the reality of peak oil and climate change...

I believe it is my human vocation, but I believe that it is also my vocation as a Christian. Much damage has been done in the name of '...And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth...' (Genesis 1:28.)

Having dominion over... Wikipedia tells us, '...In English common law, the dominions of the Crown referred to all the realms and territories under the sovereignty of the Crown, e.g. the Order-in-Council annexing Cyprus in 1914 provided that "... the said Island shall be annexed to and form part of His Majesty's Dominions and the said Island is annexed accordingly...' Dominion implies being a subject of the Empire.

When God tells human beings to have dominion over the fish and so on, are human beings not being asked to treat everything that lives as being under the authority of the King - namely God? It is therefore not our dominion that we are being asked to exercise - but God's.

Therefore, we need to ask, how does God view the whole created order? How does He treat it? In short we need to turn to words of Jesus to guide us. Jesus said, '... For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life...' (John 3:16.)

God loves the world. All that is. Not just Christians. Not even all people. God says He loves every thing indeed in Genesis 1, He is described as seeing all that He has made as good. God loves everything, and therefore, as as we are made in His image, we must act as He would. We are called love all that there is as God does. This implies are respect and a reverence as everything has the fingerprints of the Creator on it.

It is our God given vocation to treat everything that is with respect God gives it - both now and for the future. It is our God given vocation to act to reduce the impact of our modern ways of life on the world so that less and less do we see our footprints stamped everywhere, but so that we too still see the fingerprints of the Creator.

Go and see the film. Change your life. Fly less. Reduce your emissions. Drive less. Cycle more. Check out the website. It is your vocation to act

At the end of the day...

... I am tired. Sounds like a silly thing to say, but I am. Too many late nights. It's late now and yet I still have some domestic things I was hoping to achieve...

... I am excited. I have spent this evening with a group of lay people from the church community beginning to get a sense of the bigger picture that God is revealing of His purposes amongst us. It allows the group to get s sense of the diversity of new work that we are focusing on together. We also looked to the future together too. It was a hugely rewarding evening and one that begins to build friendship and trust between the members of the group too for mutual support and prayer, but also allows us to see the pattern of God's work and how each of the new Key groups can work together with each other and with God to bring that about.

... I am encouraged at all that God is doing amongst us. I am well aware of what lies ahead though too. This includes of course all the preparations for the inauguration of the new benefice, and all that goes with that. How are we church together? How do we continue to seek the purposes of God? How and where and when do we provide opportunities for people to gather for worship with resources that we have.

... I am hopeful. Hopeful that all will be well. I don't mean, basically a grasping at straws, but 'a sure an certain hope' that God will sort it all out. We need to be listening and watching and waiting and following.

... I am a child of God and loved by him through it all.

At the end of the day... I don't think it get's much better than this...

The Sky is Falling, Our Money is Worthless, and the Baby Boomers have Enslaved us All

I recently watched the informative, yet scary, documentary I.O.U.S.A.. I don’t like sounding like I am appealing to fear, but this documentary bothered me quite a bit. Looks like I get to add one more reason to live abroad a few years: this country is going broke.

The film, which was based on a book entitled Empire of Debt, argues four basic points. The United States government does not balance a budget –ever; Americans as individuals do not save money, we consume more trade goods than we export, and our leadership does not do a whole lot about it. The documentary gets into details such as the difference between “monetary” and “fiscal” policy, the looting of social security, “financial warfare,” and the looming economic oblivion. Surprisingly, the movie does not thump stereo-typical “reaganomics” or other Republican planks.

It also had many relevant personalities in the movie. Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffet and many others had their own time. They even interviewed a Chinese businessman.

The thing that struck me most about the movie was the economic prospects of my generation. While hindsight is 20/20, many politicians back in 60s and 70s arguing that the policies enacted in their time would force the next generation to pay for it. Now, we’re starting to deal with some of those predictions coming true. There will be no social security for our generation, yet we will still be expected to pay for the boomers as they retire.

Our grandparent’s generation worked their knuckles dry to make the American dream for their children. Our parent’s generation decided to borrow from our piggy banks. (Thanks a lot, hippies. Get a job.) Many of the people in the documentary asserted again and again that is immoral.

Another thing that bothered me is that there were a few interviewees in the documentary who had to resign (or were fired from) government positions because of differences of opinion with the administrations. Such might be evident of the “leadership deficient” described in the movie. Many of friends feel like “political atheists” in the sense that we do not have faith in our political system. Maybe we are over the top, but I think more than a few twenty-somethings do not feel that they are represented.

Who is John Galt?

But watch the documentary. Those of you with Netflix have no excuse. It will either motivate you to work very, very hard, and/or emigrate. Either way, people will start thinking long term again.

Action Stations

Great weekend... including a trip into London to catch Charlie Hayden play, supported by the irepressable 'The Bad Plus.' TBP came on at 7.30 pm sharp and played for 30 mins - 4 songs!!! Outrageous! That said, it was made up for by a signing session in the interval - I am now the proud owner of a signed copy of 'Prog.' Either way, a great evening with my dad...

Herewith a version of what Is aid at 8am... Karen, our Curate, prached at 10am and did a fantastic job with the Prodigal Son and Fathers Day...

~~~~~~~~~~


Your actions say a lot about you... I was listening to the radio as I prepared to come to church this morning and heard a report on the radio about an Orthodox Jewish couple, who are suing their neighbours because they are effectively housebound for 25 hours once a week, as the automatic lights that come on when they open the door to their apartment, infringe Sabbath laws. Surely this is the sort of simple dispute that could and should be rectified through talking... Like I said, your actions say a lot about you.

What did the actions in the boat of Jesus say about who he is? What did the actions of the disciples say about who they are?

How Jesus can sleep through a storm is beyond me! I have reasonable sea legs, but sleeping a in what would have been a smallish fishing vessel seems a little unlikely. We also need to remember that amongst the dispels were some experienced fishermen so they would have handled all sorts of weather out on the lake before - they were concerned for their safety and that of the boat so it must have been very rough. They wake Jesus and instead of helping steer the boat, or maybe even bail it out, instead he commands the winds and the waves to stop and they obey - this sort of mastery of the elements is something that only a god could do - who is this man? Prior to this event, the disciples had been experiencing the profoundest mystery - Jesus the teacher, Jesus the healer, Jesus the miracle worker - whilst a man, Jesus also clearly possesses something of the creator God about him. It strikes me that the disciples had every right to be frightened whether Jesus was awake or asleep!

The disciples needed Jesus when faced with danger and the limits of their mortality. They, like so many people cry out to God in Jesus, when in danger. They recognised that the only person or thing that could save them was God. Once awake and all is calm, Jesus asks the disciples - where is your faith? Did they really think that God would let them and Jesus die like this? Did they really think that this was it? Even though God was with them, agreed asleep, in fear of their lives they forgot that he was there and they assumed that they were alone.

Your actions define who you are. Jesus’ actions and words reveal him to be the friend of fishermen, but also creator of the universe with power to control the physical world for good and the will of God. The disciples’ actions and words reveal their lack of understanding of the great love story of God and humanity running from the moment of creation and reaching it’s high point in Jesus. Their actions and words also reveal a very real understanding that the only person who can help them when confronted with danger, uncertainty and ultimately death is God himself in Jesus.

Your actions define who you are. This is true of us. We say and pray and sing that we are following Jesus, listening to him teach, and trying to live it out, and yet all too often we leave all of that however good intentioned, at the church door. As we re-emerge from church into the storm of Monday to Saturday we assume that Jesus is still sleeping on the cushion in the boat. We like those disciples forget all too easily that here we have spent quality time with a friend of fishermen but also with creator of the universe with power to control the physical world for good and the will of God. All too easily we forget that from Monday to Saturday we live no differently to anyone else - only calling on God is crisis situations. We all too easily forget Jesus words, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you’, ‘I am with you always till the end of time’ and ‘the kingdom of God is among you...’

Your actions define who you are. Mark says the disciples took Jesus out in the the boat just as he was. I guess that means they took Jesus out onto the lake in the boat where he had spent most of the day teaching. But, it’s a strange phrase ‘just as he was.’ Yet Jesus teaches in parables from this boat just as he was, telling stories about birds, seeds and trees and most people went home scratching their heads wondering when they would see a miracle
The disciples took this man who is God just as he was into the storm and their actions defined who they were in terms of their faith, and his actions revealed that there was more to him that met the eye. But they took him out just as he was nonetheless. Our continued challenge is to do one better than those disciples - to look at this man and nevertheless see God on Sunday and take him out ‘just as he was’ with into a world filled with storms. We need to trust that he is with us always and his kingdom is among us, so when we are faced with crisis we let our actions as disciples define who we are. Amen.

The image above is the sermon as a Wordle - interesting to see which words are used the most and helpful perhaps to see the text as a visual... Enjoy!

God and Jazz

Yay! The sun is still out. I am sitting in the study listening to albums by The Bad Plus courtesy of Spotify. This is in part to try to understand what my dear old Dad sees in them, but also trying to prepare myself to see them play live on the Soth Bank on Saturday night. It will be 2nd time I have caught them live.

So far they seem to me to be the sort of band that break all the musical rules and yet in another way they very much play by them. On the one hand they break all the rules - in the sense that they transgress the confines of what might be considered 'jazz' and break into other musical genres - classical through to alternative and everything in between. And yet, they maintain that great jazz tradition of steppig outside the box and taking influences from all sorts of musical styles. They also conform to the rules in the sense that as a live outfit they do something and go somewhere else, yet recorded - they come across a bit clinical and angular...

I am finding that I am turning into my Dad in so many ways, and musically we seem to be meeting in the middle more and more. I am finally 'getting' jazz in a big way. I have been exposed to it all my life so it was innevitable I suppose! For me (he says that!!!), I find the free form nature of the music a spiritul thing.

John Coltrane understood the link between jazz and God. His 'A Love Supreme' is offered, as indicated by the liner notes, which Coltrane penned, is spiritually informed, a prayer offered to God. Similarly so, with the late great Erroll Garner.

Jazz reminds me of God is some ways. It can be hard to understand. Hard to fathom, with the main players often doing different and yet complementary things in a song. And yet, when you step back and experience the music as a whole... I find it so easy to get caught up in the moment and emotion of what is happening. It's almost organic.

It's like that with God. Sometimes hard to fathom, with the church and the Holy Spirit sometimes seemingly pulling in different directions (women bishops anyone?), and yet when we step back and experience God for ourselves, let our gaurd down and stop trying to make sense of Him, we can get caught up in the duet that God longs to sing and play with us. It is organic. Just the way he intended.

Hi,

Spotted this on a friend's blog and traced it back to the Third Way website... Contraversial and interesting in a multi-faith world...

The Jesus Mosque

A new mosque in the town of Madaba in Jordan has been dedicated to one of the more controversial prophets of Islam, Jesus.

The dedication is an attempt by local Muslims to encourage dialogue with Christians, according to the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi. ‘Calling Madaba’s new mosque after the son of the Virgin Mary’ says the local Muslim worshipper Osama Abu al-Walid, ‘is an important initiative to improve dialogue in our town, whose Christian and Muslim population coexists.’

The Christian community of Madaba dates back to the early centuries, and the town’s great tourist attraction is its Christian mosaics, especially a map of the Holy Land in the floor of St George’s.The Jesus mosque, which neighbours a church, is decorated with relevant texts from the Qu’ran, such as: ‘God would have you think of Jesus as you think of Adam, created by God from the dust, saying to him “Be”, and into being he came’.

The local imam Jamal Safarati explains, ‘In this way, we want to emphasise that Jesus is also our prophet and is loved by all Muslims’.

In a converse phenomenon, the US Center for World Mission among others has reported the existence of ‘Jesus mosques’, where Christian converts in Islamic countries worship Christ under the guise of traditional Islamic worship.

Some, says the Center, are old mosques taken over by Christian communities. Others have been started by missionaries, such as Alejandro and Bertha Ortiz in Benin. ‘They leave their shoes at the door, and ritually wash their hands, feet and heads. They kneel on mats in unison and bow their heads to the ground,’ reports the Center.

‘They worship the God of the Bible [and] believe Jesus is the Messiah and only source of salvation.’

The Parable of the Wild Westminster Mustard

Morning! One service down... 3 to go and a birthday party too. I am exhausted just thinking about it all... Anyway, beautiful day - sun out, relationships restored. God is indeed good.


Here is a draft of today's offering... I have some thoughts about the nature of community in today's world. I'll post those later...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In recent weeks the corridors and committee rooms of the Palace of Westminster, I suspect, have been filled with hushed whispers - who’s next? There seems, quite rightly, a real watching over ones political shoulder. Even amongst those who hold power on our behalf, there has been a realisation, following the expenses scandal, that whether we believe it or not, even in politics, the electorate still have the power. Despite the agricultural imagery, i was shocked to discover my friends, that these parables have more in common with creeping political dissent than growing potatoes with my children in our garden.

Jesus is the past master of using images from the world around him to make his point. In a post-industrial age, these parables can seem rather quaint and whimsical, but they used the language and images of a local and agricultural world. Jesus says that the Kingdom is like a man scattering seed. Now I don't know whether I am reading the passage wrongly, but in my mind at least there is definitely a difference between scattering and sowing. Sowing to me implies a careful, deliberate, placing of a seed or seeds in soil that has been prepared. It is about maximising the potential yield of an expensive commodity - the seed.

Jesus here though tells us that the man scatters the seed on the ground. He goes to bed and wakes up in the morning to find the seed sprouting. The man is clearly astonished. He does not understand the biology of what has gone on - he doesn't understand how these seeds have grown.

Then we seems to get a bit of a gardening textbook, '...The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come...’ The man scattering seed may not understand how the seed grows but he does know when to harvest - only when the grain is ripe and full.

What is Jesus trying to say? Jesus talks of God's Kingdom - God had been worshiped as king by Jews for millennia. Talk of a coming Kingdom would normally carry with it images of political and military power. Yet Jesus seems to say that God's kingdom comes with no pomp or power. Rather it appears, almost surprisingly, as if from nothing - something as insignificant as some seeds scattered randomly on the ground. The when the kingdom starts to grow - the outcome, the results are visible and tangible for all to see.

Jesus goes on... the kingdom is like a mustard seed - the smallest of seeds which grows into a bush big enough for the birds to nest in. Mustard seeds are not the smallest seed nor do they grow to be the biggest trees. Jesus isn’t being literal here, but he is trying to make a point, the question is what?

The parable is probably loaded with symbolic imagery - the birds nesting in the tree might symbolise a powerful nation gathering other people under it's sway - as in Daniel 4:10-12.
Upon my bed this is what I saw;
there was a tree at the centre of the earth,
and its height was great.
11The tree grew great and strong,
its top reached to heaven,
and it was visible to the ends of the whole earth.
12Its foliage was beautiful,
its fruit abundant,
and it provided food for all.
The animals of the field found shade under it,
the birds of the air nested in its branches,
and from it all living beings were fed.

There will come a time when the nations will gather under the wing of a renewed Israel.

Alternatively, there is the ‘traditional’ interpretation which says something like - Jesus' ministry doesn't seem to amount to much at this stage, but looking at his ministry with a God’s eye view of history, there will be a time when it will have a huge universal following.

Another alternative - Jesus could be referring to what we would call wild mustard. This is a persistent weed that is almost impossible to eradicate once it has infested a field. It is not a tree, but at it’s most dynamic, it is a small shrub. The parable takes on a new meaning because all of a sudden Jesus is talking about politics.

Fields were generally owned by the wealthy and the poor worked on them for the benefit of the wealthy. It was hot, hard, demanding and poorly paid. The workers did not benefit from the fruit of their labours. If wild mustard stated to grown in your field you would need to get rid of it as it is a persistent weed and will take over if left unchecked. It will threaten the livelihood of the wealthy landowner who only make their money from the poorly paid field hand.

The Kingdom of God is like persistent wild mustard. It is so virulent that it will grown to become something that in reality it cannot be - a huge tree offering shelter.

The kingdom of God is powerfully coming, but almost as if from nothing. As it does so, it will turn on it's head the usual enconomy of power in the world. It will work against the wealthy and powerful to the benefit of the poor - it will do the seemingly impossible. It will begin small, but will ultimately draw all people in.

How does this impact us here, today? These parables have more in common with the creeping, quiet dissent in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster right now than gardening. It's almost like, whatever we do, almost perhaps in spite of and our faith, God will bring His kingdom to fruition where He wills it - not just in suburban Apseley or leafy Leverstock Green. As He does, he will actively work against those abusing power and liberate those oppressed by ‘the system.’ Or perhaps put another way, we in the church so often try to control God - we say things like ‘we don't do 'that' we're Anglican/traditonal/Broad church/ whatever...’ In the parables this morning, Jesus reminds us that God will quietly and powerfully work amongst us, growing the Kingdom by the power of His Spirit. This morning Jesus reminds us that God will bring the kingdom and it will grow where we do not want it - like a weed - transforming lives outside the church community, challenge structures and authorities and power in society. Not very seemly at all... The question is, who are we in these stories? Are we the landowner with an infested field - dismayed to see God at work in ways and in places that He shouldn’t be, or are we the liberated farm hands waiting for the harvest, longing for freedom and change?

Distractions...

As I write up my sermon (morning it's bright and early!), I got distracted on to looking for some interesting articles and found this one from the Guardian website... do try to read "Utopian Dreams' by Tobias Jones - have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it...

Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.

In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain's innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence. Trying not to give offence was, despite the excesses, a noble courtesy.

But the fundamentalists saw an opening. Because we live in a multiconfessional society, they fostered the falsehood that wearing a crucifix or a veil or a turban was deeply offensive to other faiths. They pretended to be protecting religious sensibilities as a pretext to strip us of all religious expressions. In 2006 Jack Straw and BA fell into the fundamentalists' trap.

But Britons are actually laissez-faire about such things. And so the fundamentalists deployed an opposite tactic. Instead of pretending to protect religious sensibilities, they went on the offensive and sought to give offence. The subsequent reactions to the play Behzti in Birmingham, to Jerry Springer the Opera and to the Danish cartoons were wheeled out as examples of why religious groups are unable to live with our cherished freedom and tolerance.

In recent years the nastier side of this totalitarianism has become blatantly apparent. It emerged with the hijab issue in France. With the hijab ban in French schools, a state was banishing religion not only from its corridors, but also from its citizens.

It was an assertion that after centuries of the naked public square (denuded of religion referents) the public now too had to go naked. The former had been true tolerance, something exceptional and laudable. It allowed everyone to bring their own cosmic testimony to the square. But this new form of "tolerance" changed things. From everyone being welcome, it had become everyone but.

There's a background to all this. Since 2001, lazy intellectuals have been allowed to get away with repeating the nonsense that terrorism and war are the consequences of belief in God. Believers are ridiculed for being, in contrast to the stupendously brainy atheists, very dim. Listen to Richard Dawkins' comment on Nadia Eweida (the BA employee who refused to take off her cross): "she had one of the most stupid faces I've ever seen." Nice.

There's also the fact that we live in a cultural milieu dominated by postmodernism. Broadly speaking, it attempts to deconstruct power and its narratives. It tries to rescue the marginalised. A noble intent, but because it doesn't believe in truth, anything goes. The tyranny of orthodoxy has been replaced by the tyranny of relativism. You're supposed to believe in nothing, and hence nihilists and atheists are suddenly rather chic. Postmodernism has taken tolerance to the extremes, where extremists thrive. It's a dangerous form of appeasement.

The greatest appeasers, however, have been the believers. Until recently many hid their religion in the closet. They conceded that it was something private. Until a few years ago religion was similar to soft drugs: a blind eye was turned to private use but woe betide you if you were caught dealing. Only recently have believers realised that religion is certainly personal, but it can never be private.

The reasons for that "outing" of believers are complex. But what is certain is that wise agnostics pleaded with believers to take a public lead again, because the point about believers is that they are obeying (and disobeying) all sorts of commandments that the state doesn't see or understand. Because they are able to differentiate sin from crime, they have a moral register more nuanced than most. Even a wise atheist (and I've met a few of them in church, as they desperately try to get their kids into the local C of E school) knows that believers can deal with social anarchy much better than the state ever can.

That is why these fundamentalists are so in evidence. They're not only needled by their own hypocrisy; they are also furious that believers have broken the old pact to stay out of public debate. Witness, for example, Mary Riddell's astonishing sentence in the Observer last month (try replacing "religion" with "homosexuality" to get the point): "secularists do not wish to harm religion or deny its great cultural influence. They simply want it to know its place." In other words: get back in the closet.

Christians feel particularly aggrieved because we believe that Jesus invented secularism. Jesus's teachings desacralised the state: no authority, not even Caesar's, was comparable to God's. As Nick Spencer writes in Doing God, "the secular was Christianity's gift to the world, denoting a public space in which authorities should be respected, but could be legitimately challenged and could never accord to themselves absolute or ultimate significance". Christianity, far from creating an absolutist state, initiated dissent from state absolutism.

And so for centuries a combination of British agnosticism and pragmatism meant that believers were judged not by the causes of their belief, but by its consequences. Everyone could taste the fruits, even those who couldn't believe in a sustaining, invisible root. These new militants, however, believe themselves to be the only arbiters of taste; they want to eradicate the root and cause. They will dictate what you can wear and what you can say. That, after all, is what totalitarians do.

Tobias Jones

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Community living - to be in change together...

Hello! I have just had a brilliant day... and a great weekend preceding it...

On Saturday afternoon I was at our church school for the Summer Fair. The weather was brilliant! I even caught the sun! I spent a wonderful hour on the gate with the deputy head and I hae really valued spending the time getting to know her better. What was wonderful was that between us we spoke to everyone who came into the fair today - fab. Lots of people, lots of fun, building community.

Today has made me think more about what community is. Wikipedia tells me '...Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix com- (which means "together") and the word munis probably originally derived from the Etruscan word munis- (meaning "to have the charge of...'

Community must be about bringing people together. It must be about shared hopes, values, and ideals. But how often do we think of our communities being in charge of anything?

That said any community we may well be part of must be about a shared perspective or ideal, but they must also be about a group of people being in charge of at least their destiny. Despite another low turn out, that is one brilliant thing about elections - communities in charge of their own destinies!

Some time ago now I read, enjoyed and empathised with, 'Utopian Dreams' by Tobias Jones. He searches for a 'perfect community.' He starts his search in Damanhar, a village 30 miles north of Turin, where a messianic figure called Falcon has founded a New Age community based on what he experienced when he travelled 6,000 years back in time. They have their own currency, their own flag, their own shops and factories, and each of the residents is given their own silly name (Goat, Crab, Vulture). They believe in alchemy. At the annual sports day, there's a telepathy competition.

From there, he soon flees south to Tuscany and then Sicily, before leaping back to England. He visits Quaker bungalows, Catholic foster parents and farms built on confiscated Mafia land where recovering drug addicts press premium olive oil.

Everywhere, he finds elements to admire or condemn, but he doesn't feel passionately about any particular place until he reaches Pilsdon in Dorset, a Christian community which welcomes "wayfarers" - tramps and drifters - alongside anyone trying to put their life back together and overcome addiction or trauma.

Bells ring throughout the day, announcing meals and services. Priests and nuns form the backbone of the staff. There's no need to be a believer, although an atmosphere of "undercover Christianity" fills the place. Here, he finds a community that he admires, even loves, and where he can be happy.

Contentment does come at a price: he also discovers the real cost of living with others. "At the beginning of this trip I thought living in community would be tough because you're living cheek by jowl with people you might have little in common with, people who you wouldn't necessarily choose as friends ... But the true difficulty of living here is that there's nowhere to hide. The place holds a mirror up to yourself and shows you what you're really like."

When he offers his own definition of a perfect community, he describes a place which sounds pretty much like Pilsdon. It will be a group of between 15 and 25 people. They will be self-sufficient and often silent. They'll have to have "a full-size snooker table, a chess set, a library, a football pitch and a piano". Most importantly, they will share a common belief, a shared purpose, one faith - "something for which one is prepared to give one's heart".

Hmmm a common purpose and belief, something for which one will be able to give one's heart... A place that hold's a mirror up to oneself so that we can see what we're really like...

I wonder if those are words that we could use to describe the church? There is certainly a common belief but would members of any our churches say that they would be prepared to give (or had given) their heart for Christ and His church?

There's a lot of "heart imagery" in the Bible. One example, '...That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved...' (Romans 10:8-9).

Belief in our hearts. The seat of the emotions. The place where the world engages with us in love and pain. And yet this is what the church is and how that community is as Tobias Jones suggests, a mirror in which we see ourselves. For the church is a disparate group of people gathered to engage with each other, with God and with the love and pain of the world.

By the end of the book, Jones has finally decided what he's been looking for. It's not a house, a plot of land or a group of people. It's just a place where he can express his faith and live according to his beliefs. He and his wife decide to stop travelling - "rather a daft decision for a travel writer" - and settle in Bristol. On a map, they draw a circle with a radius of one mile, the bullseye being their own red front door. "We were, in some way, responsible for everything inside that tiny community."

Community - together, to have charge of. If only we took the Jones model and saw our parish like that. That somehow, with each other and with God engaging with us, we are responsible, in charge of things within that imagined boundary. It becomes a place to where we can express our faith in God and actively live out those beliefs.

I am reading Rob Bell's 'Velvet Elvis' at the moment. He talks about actively living out what Jesus teaches. He reminds us that Christianity was orignally known as the Way. It was about living a certain way, the way that Jesus teaches us. He writes:

"... [T] kind of way that Jesus taught is possible. And I think that the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.

This isn't irrational or primitive or 'blind faith.' It is merely being honest that we are all living 'a way.'

I'm convinced being generous is a better way to live.

I'm convinced forgiving people and not carrying around bitterness is a better way to live.

I'm convinced having compassion is a better way to live.

I'm convinced pursuing peace in every situation is a better way to live.

I'm convinced listening to the wisdom of others is a better way to live.

I'm convinced being honest with people is a better way to live...'

This is Jesus' way to live and it is as challenging and enthralling as it always was. It is as compelling and community-building as it always was. If only we opted to actively live it...

Star Trek V and the Atheist’s Strawman

I recently watched Star Trek V: The Final Frontier for the first time. There has been plenty of ink spilled over the philosophy of Star Trek (especially, no doubt, in blogs). I’d like to do a different take on it. I think that this particular Star Trek movie showed clearly the god of popular atheism. What I mean is it showed the god that many atheists reject. It is not though, the God Christians actually believe in.

The plot of Star Trek V is fairly straight forward (I apologize for spoilers). A Vulcan mystic named Sybok has had a vision from god. God wants him to come to him beyond the great barrier at the center of the galaxy where no ship or probe has ever returned from. This place is known has Eden to us terrans and a bunch of different names depending on whatever alien species you happen to be talking to. Sybok, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy eventually land on the planet where they meet god. The emotion and tone is one of great discovery, reverence, and general profoundness of the situation.

God has a small request. He needs a starship. Sybok is ready to give it him. Kirk, on the other hand, asks a question: “What does God need with a starship?” God gets a little upset. Sybok explains that Kirk is not totally on board with the mysticism. Finally, god starts smiting Kirk et al for doubting him. God never answers the question.



Whether it was intended or not, this image of man encountering god is something that is told by “atheist folklore.” It would not be hard to put Christopher Hitchens or Dawkins in Kirk’s place (or maybe they wouldn’t have come for the ride. Who knows?), or any atheist who might describe god as a “cosmic ego maniac” or something similar. God, so presented, can be found on just about any atheist website or in the stinkpile of non-theist vs theist forums on the internet. The belief is that if you question god, he will kick your ass. So theists worship him because they’re either too dumb to ask questions or so scared that they’re groveling all the time.

The problem is that this simply isn’t the God Christians believe in. I can’t think of any Christian thinker (at least no credible one) that has taught that if you ask God questions, or doubt him, God will smite you. In fact, anyone familiar with Abraham’s, or even Moses’ dialogues with YHWH we can get a clear idea that God doesn’t smite people for “doubting” him.

Now, it is true, that God isn’t obligated explain himself. This is something else that atheists may not seem to get about the Christian God. We can ask God all we want, but we may not always get an answer. If God does not answer, then this is no fault of him. This is the important point that Abraham seemed to understand when he questioned God. He did not ask presumptuously or as if he had authority to take God to court. Yet even if people shake their fists at the God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that he is not likely to smite them as the big scary blue god did in Star Trek V.

Next time I run into an atheist who denies the existence of god, maybe I should ask what “god” he rejects in the first place. I think that might clear up a lot arguments. By clear up, I of course mean “avoid.”

Thanks for reading.

Webcomics I like

This is one of the more random blog entries I’ve ever done. But I thought that I’d post this. I love webcomics. They’re fun. I don’t even read regular newspaper comics anymore. I haven’t in years in fact. Here’s a list of comics that I like.

Manatheater - Don’t bother looking for it. This comic is dead. The web site that formally housed it isn’t even up anymore. Nonetheless, clever flash comics based on Secret of Mana was very successful in its prime. It is a shame it never finished. Yet, I do understand that authors, and thus their webcomics, move on in life!

Real Life - I have read this one since about 2001 when I was working at internet tech support job. This comic helped inspire my own. The flux of this comic reflects the flux of the real life of its author. I don’t read it regularly anymore, but it is still amusing when I do.

Sharper - this is another dead comic. I first found out about it a few years ago. It is a creative film noir type comic. The first story was good, unexpected, and sad. I miss seeing it update, but I suppose its author has a life to attend to as well.

Goblins: life through their eyes - What happens when a long time dungeon master transcends nerdom and becomes a good storyteller? You get something like this comic! This comic is full of comedy as well as serious drama. The idea of the story is what is life like for all the goblins and other “XP fodder” creatures in a RPG world? A few decide to become adventurers. I have been amazed again and again at this comic. It in fact, warrants a full review another time. For now, take a few clickings and check it out.

Nice post here from my friend Keith

Good night!

Pre-sermon prattlings

I remember someone in my theological eduction talking about the need to 'wrestle with the scriptures' to really get under the heart of what they mean. I am really having to work hard to understand really what Jesus is saying.

The passage is from Mark 4:26-34. Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom of God. Jesus says that the Kingdom is like a man scattering seed. Now I don't know whether I am reading the passage wrongly, but in my mind at least there is definately a difference between scattering and sowing. Sowing to me implies a careful, deliberate, placing of a seed or seeds in soil that has been prepared. It is about maximising the potential yield of an expensive commodity - the seed.

Jesus here though tells us that the man scatters the seed on the ground. He goes to bed and wakes up in the morning to find the seed sprouting. The man is clearly astonished. He does not understand the biology of what has gone on - he doesn't understand how these seeds have grown.

The we seems to get a bit of a gardening textbook, '...The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come...’ The man scattering seed may not understand how the seed grows but he does know when to harvest - only when the grain is ripe and full.

What is Jesus trying to say? Jesus talks of God's Kingdom - God had been worshiped as king by Jews for millennia. Talk of a coming Kingdom would normally carry with it images of political and military power. Yet Jesus seems to say that God's kingdom comes with no pomp or power. Rather it appears, almost surprisingly, as if from nothing - something as insignificant as some seeds scattered randomly on the ground.

The when the kingdom starts to grow - the outcome, the results are visible and tangible for all to see.

Jesus goes on... the kingdom is like a mustard seed - the smallest of seeds which grows into a bush big enough for the birds to nest in. Mustard seeds are not the smallest nor do they grow to be the biggest trees. Although Jesus' ministry doesn't seem to amount to much at this stage, there will be a time when it would have a huge universal following.

The parable might be loaded with symbolic imigary - the birds nesting in the tree might symbolise a powerful nation gathering other people under it's sway - as in Daniel 4:10-12. There will come a time when the nations will gather under the wing of a renewed Israel.

Alternatively, Jesus could be meaning wild mustard - a persistant weed that is impossible to erradicate once it has infested a field - so is the strength of the faith of the persecuted. Similarly, like wild mustard can infest a field and threaten the livlihood of the wealthy who live off the work of the poor cultivators. The weedlike reign of God pose a real challenge to modern living and those who benefit most from them.

The kingdom of God is powerfully coming, but almost as if from nothing. As it does so, it will turn on it's head the usual enconomy of power in the world. It will work against the wealthy and powerful to the benefit of the poor and needy in society. It will begin small, but will ultimately draw all people in.

How does this impact us here, today? it has more in common with the creeping, quiet dissent in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster right now. It's almost like, whatever we do, almost perhaps in spite of and our faith (or lack of it) God will bring His kingdom to fruition where He wills it - not just in Pancake Lane. Or perhaps put another way, we so often try to control God - we don't do 'that' we're Anglican/traditonal/Broad church/ whatever... God will quietly and powerfully work amongst us by the power of His Spirit, unsettling us, challenging us to grow in faith to fruition.

Realistic Orthodoxy

Folks, normal service is resuming, thankfully.... :-)

I had a descreet conversation with someone today about the whole situation and I feel reassured. God is indeed good. I still feel like I am being ignored, but then I have been a bit quiet too. Oh well.

On another note, happier note, I have been having a lot of fun with Spotify in recent days. It has given me the chance to listen a whole bunch of music that I do not own (any more) for free and legally too! I am listening to Soweto Kinch as I write ... another CD in the offing!!!

I thought I'd also include this picture too. ->>>
It comes from a study day that I went on at the Orthodox Centre in Stevenage. The basketball court is part of the complex. The icon is the same one that features behind the altar in church itself. It is sure one way of scaring the opposition!

Other highlights that day were seeing the most beautiful and yet simple Basptistry, and the place where the knuckle of St George is kept and venerated... poor chap!

So what lies ahead? Tomorrow - toddlers, a challenging pastoral meeting at lunchtime. No collective worship tomorrow having led it on Monday. Sermon prep to try to complete in the evening.

So that's me tonight. Feeling more realistic. More chilled. At peace - shalom - knowing that God is in charge.

Book Review: Monk Habits for Everyday People

At long last, I finally purchased and quickly read through Monk Habits for Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality of Protestants A review of the book is overdue. I hope those of you MOSAIC types, as well the folk at Colorado, are reading this right now.

I can’t pretend to be objective in writing this review. Dennis Okholm (the author) was one of my professors at APU. I took a class on monasticism while this book was in the process of being published. That monasticism class was probably the most important theology class I took at APU. Learning how people could get together, withdraw from the so-called real world, and live out the Kingdom of God remain guiding principles in life to this day. Naturally, it is not something that is easily summed up and explained. After all, we went through at least three books for that class.

Monk Habits is a smaller and fruitful introduction to the Christian values of Benedictine monks. It begins with Doc Ok’s personal interest in monasticism. The “good evangelical boy” first began exploring and visiting Benedictine monasteries in the 80s. Because of his background as a Presbyterian minister, Doc Ok is able to explain the habits and customs of monks in ways that Protestants can understand and certainly learn from. This approach challenges many of our habits in Evangelicalism. Instead of finding the newest and latest work on Christian spirituality, Doc Ok points us to an old tradition. We need not re-invent the wheel for every generation.

Many object that monks withdraw to much from the world. It seems that monastic spirituality –even for those outside the cloisters- is irrelevant to the real world where the heavy lifting of evangelism is done. A careful reading of this book will help Christians see that this is not a problem. First, it reminds the reader that serious evangelism –one in which people truly change for the long term- often happens slowly. The habits and the virtues taught in this book help Christians grow closer to God. This likewise makes us better evangelists if we’re veteran Christians, and stick to the faith if we are new.

Secondly, this book gives a hint of what the “real world” is supposed to look like in the first place. The world culture we do evangelism in is the fake world. The way people treat each other and the habits that they do in that world are not what God originally intended. The monastic world, in which people actually forget how to have an argument, is the true world. The work of monks in cloisters inspires Christians outside of it to form alternative cultures to the prevailing one. It challenges us to live such good lives in our churches that those outside will be drawn to those communities.

So get the book now. Monasticism had a profound effect on my life. I’m sure it will for anyone else.

Desert Pearls

Having posted about vulnerability earlier, I am now in a vulnerable state myself.

Unintentionally, I have upset someone, who it seems was already in a fragile state. My activity or inactivity seem to have made them question their faith in me. No matter what I say to them right now, they have drawn conclusions that are at best half true.

Couple that with the feeling that I am being ignored by someone else right now, makes me feel very vulnerable.

~~~~~~~~~~~


I wear round my wrist a prayer bracelet called 'The Pearls of Life.' Created by Martin Lönnebo, Lutheran emeritus bishop in Sweden, writing about what drove him to make the first 'Pearls of Life', he writes'

'...The history is a long one, but the story is short.

While on the Mediterranean, I found myself on a fishing boat, which had been refitted for passenger use. An extremely early fall storm began to play with us and I thought of Paul, as he sailed on the Sea of Galilee. We finally safely got to the shore of an island with 47 souls, the priest of the village included.

As I sat, freezing, in a rented room with a notebook in my hands, I found myself drawing a rosary. I was longing for prayer, meditation and silence without words.

Perhaps it was that "wordlessness" which spoke to me most clearly. I knew that I could get some help obtaining silence by breathing deeply and listening to my own breathing, and I somehow managed to do that. But meditation also includes an inner picture and prayer also includes words. And, as usual, that's where I got some difficulties. I couldn't get help from my heartbeat as the Russian pilgrim had. The "prayer that doesn't cease" was far away--but longing was present.

And so, I found myself sitting, drawing a rosary. Accompanied by the wind whistling around every corner, many pages were filled with my scribbles. I was pondering what is most important for a person when approaching The Creator. What is truly human in a human life? What is most important for a Christian, when approaching The Savior? How does a genuine Christian life look in our global and mistrusting age?

At first the rosary grew very long, and at last I felt it was like a trap full of demands. Then I decided to remove beads, one after another. Finally, there was only one left, and it was no longer a rosary. But the most important was there.

What was left was a large golden bead, an icon of the extreme worth and goal of existence - God. I considered it most important to have an absolute faith in God's existence and that "in him we live and move and have our being." It was no easy task to accomplish such an insight.

Now the rosary began to grow again. It is possible that we - hurt and broken wanderers - are unable to reach awareness of The Wholeness because of our own awareness about ourselves. So often we see ourselves as the opposite of The Wholeness. We are individuals. Each one of us has withdrawn into ourselves--frightened, cold, thirsting for tenderness. When we look in the eyes of our neighbor, we may for a moment, have a feeling of a lonely soul, who like us, thinks: "Don't you see how lonely I am? Do I dare to trust you?"

A lonely one meets a lonely one.

That's why I wanted the smallest bead to describe a poet's view of a soul. The bead along with the golden bead, also needed to be especially beautiful. It was to be a bead of mother-of-pearl, because of the reflections that could be seen in it. I was thinking about a genuine silver-glossed pearl from the depths of the ocean, carrying secrets of the deep up to the light.

In the pearl you can see yourself, the light and the sky. It carries the message that you, a human being, transcend boundaries. You are a mirror of infinite endlessness, and that is why you are enormously precious. Don't undervalue yourself. Look at yourself with love. You are a genuine pearl among others. Treat yourself and others with respect. You have a right to live willingly, bravely, lovingly and responsibly.

The icon of a human being in this rosary is not money (the current symbol of a successful person), nor a DNA molecule (a biological being), nor an onion which has many layers, but no core (a symbol of a postmodern individual), nor a black bead (a symbol of a desperate human being without hope, sin without forgiveness, a fallen human being, who does not believe in reconciliation, because God is dead). The pearl is an icon of a unique and precious image of God.

But we critical, complaining, desperate people, who undervalue human life, need special help to see and claim our dignity. We of little faith and broken hope need a guide in whom we can place our trust. And only the best can do. In our tradition there is nobody else but Christ himself, the persecuted master of life itself. Therefore, the other beads of the rosary carry the mysteries of Christ's life and the foundation of every human life. The rosary relates to each one of us.

The Wreath of Christ is tied to and owned by anyone who is seeking spiritual awareness and answers to the basic questions of human existence. That is why it is called Fralsarkransen (The Wreath of The Savior). It is a ring of wholeness and unity between humans and all things living, temporal and eternal, mortal and everlasting. When using it for personal prayer, Christ's words ... "Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us"... are manifested. So at last a little rosary was created, with eighteen beads that encompass the life of Christ and those who follow Him. The immense can be reflected by the modest. Only one who believes in miracles dares to tie the Wreath of Christ. And only one who is aware of the value of life can use it...'

Tonight I hold the brown pearl - feeling as though I am in a very barren place right now. The brown bead is a sign of the Desert in ones life, difficulties, trials, hard choices. It is hot and unpleasant in the desert. There is nobody whom to ask, nobody to advice what to do, no guide to tell where to go. And in spite of that you have to make decisions. Jesus had temptations too in the desert. He challenged them by trusting in God. Jesus stays with us in the desert of our life.

Post... vulnerability

A great staff meeting this morning. Ended up talking about our vulnerability and humanity in terms of how we respond and engage with others. It made me think of a post on Facebook that I had read this morning written by a friend of mine,

'...Everything is ‘post’ these days. Or it was.

When I was studying theology back in the 90’s things post-modern were all the rage. That was at the same time that post-Evangelical Christians arrived on the scene. Then everyone got in on the act, from post-feminists to post-punks. There is even a post-modern theorist called Neil Postman. New Labour were very ‘post’, but not any more. Post was new. Post was trendy. Post was cool. Just about everybody was ‘post’ something. Because ‘post’ simply means ‘after’ or ‘later than’. And its true, just about everbody is after or later than someone else.

I am feeling a bit ‘post’ right now to be honest. Maybe I have finally got round to becoming a post-Evangelical. I’ve been fighting it for years. I like labels – they make me feel safe. But then ‘post-Evangelical’ is just another label. A label I don’t want. I am certainly post-Christendom, because I don’t like religious empires of any hue or description. ’Post-Christian’ appeals to me because most people I meet outside the Christian community don’t like ‘Christians’ or ‘Christianity’. They don’t like what they see, because what they see is labels and a bunch of people who want to stick a lable (sic) on them.

I like labels. Correction: I used to like labels. The trouble with labels is that they stick. People were constantly trying to stick a label on Jesus, but he was having none of it. You can’t pin Jesus down this way. You can try, but he has this habit of shaking free.

The thing about labels is that once labelled (sic) we can be safely categorised and filed away.

I am no longer post anything. In this sense I am post-post.

I don’t want any more labels.

So lets reclaim the…

Evangel from Evangelical

Charisma from Charismatic

Protest from Protestant

Pentecost from Pentecostal

Baptism from Baptist

Method from Methodist

Congregation from Congregationalist

Unity before United Reformed

Salvation from Salvationist

and Christ from Christianity...'

(With thanks to Keith Hitchman)

What is the fate of Christian Music?

Christianity Today published an article recently. As one would expect, the recession we are in is hurting the already limping Christian music industry. A number of years ago, I would have reacted very different to this. Right now, I am a bit mixed.

My first reaction to this, honestly, was “what would we lose?” I can still think of many Christian artists that I really like, but the majority of the really popular ones I do not listen to. I have heard rumors from many of peers that much of GWM (“Generic Worship Music” my name for Christian Contemporary) might be performed by Christian, but not necessarily written by Christians. This would explain why many worship songs sound like a disjunctive, strung together, list of Evangelicalese cliché.

The general consumerism of GWM bothers me too. I recently went to a bible study which opened with a time of worship. They put on a sing-along DVD -complete with helicopter shots of Hawaii, the Grand Canyon, a beach etc- and people sat around singing softly. This was done while there was a piano in the room and at least two capable musicians who could have led others in song. This whole DVD felt so coldly impersonal that it made me shudder. (Glory be to God the plasma screen, DVD, and 5.1 surround sound!) Are we Christians really so bound to our culture that we can’t even play songs for each other anymore?

Yet still, I think of all the artists –the sincere ones- who are trying to combine their love for music, performance, people and God. Certainly, they did not expect to make career (or maybe they did), but such individuals deserve our support. I have always thought that it is sad how the Christian artists I think are the best are the least heard and the least well treated. Furthermore, I still remember the fun of camping out at Christian music festivals when I was 19-20ish a number of years ago. Those concerts were good times. As weird as Evangelicalism can be, it was nice to be an environment that was “safe” by comparison to secular concerts.

Nonetheless, I am not exactly sure what could happen to save the ailing niche market. The difficulties of being a successful artist seem compounded by the internet, the economy, and business in general. Becoming one of those successful celebrity type Christian Musicians seems damn unlikely.

But maybe God doesn’t need musicians to become ‘rock stars’ anyway.

Trinity Sunday and it's been pouring... so the barbecue could become a swimming party!

Herewith a version of what I will preach this morning... came together a bit at the last minute - thanks be to God! Anyway you be the judge...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This last week, a mother who said her son was kidnapped by his Hungarian father more than a quarter of a century ago was reunited with him after he was located on Facebook.

Avril Grube claimed that in 1982, when her son Gavin Paros was aged three, his father took him to Hungary for what should have been a weekend away. Her marriage had broken down and, after her son failed to return, Grube contacted the authorities and made repeated attempts to locate Gavin.

But her younger sister, Beryl Wilson, never gave up hope and continued to search for him. One day she searched for his name on Google and discovered his Facebook page on which he had written his mother's name. It transpired that he had been using the website to try and find his English family following the death of his father four years ago. He only replied to his aunt's Facebook message several weeks after she posted it, explaining he rarely checked the website.

This led to eleation for the family and eventually a reuinion of mother and son. Avril Grube’s sister later said said, "It was the happiest day of her life when she met her son. She said there were no words to describe it...”

I can only begin to imagine the sheer, overwhelming, life-affirming joy of that mother and son. All of us know how precious relationships are whether friendships or blood ties as they get stretched by work or lack of it, time and distance, the pressure of modern living. People move around much more than they ever used to - it is quite unusual to find parents, grandparents, and other close family living in the same locality. Yet only a couple of generations ago, it was the norm. On the other hand, through media and the internet, we know more about what is happening every second of every day in the once unknown other side of the world. We have never been more close as global citizens, aware of each other’s activity, and yet we have never been further emotionally removed from each other, and craving understand of who we are, where we come from and what makes us the people we are.

This longing for rootedness, for identity, for self-discovery, feels like a very modern predicament in our all too fractured world. Yet St Augustine understood our longing to find our place in the world and within God’s grand scheme of things when he famously said, ‘...Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you...’ The ‘you’ to which he refers is of course God, and today - Trinity Sunday - reminds us the answers to our individual quests for meaning, lie in the duet sung between God and humanity.

At the heart of what we celebrate this Trinity Sunday is the idea that it is love that defines us and makes us what and who we are. Without the questing love of a mother, Avril Grube and Gavin Paros would not have been reunited as mother and son. WIthout the careful shaping love and encouragement of my parents and wider family I would not be the man I am today. Nicodemus recognised the love of God at work in Jesus and came to discover more for himself.

You cannot fully know the love of God, Jesus says to Nicodemus, without being born again, for experiencing God for yourself is like starting life all over again and being born anew. If you want to know your place with God, in life and in God’s presence and plan - in his kingdom, then this must be. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a religious teacher of his day, a learned man, splutters ‘How can this be?’ Nicodemus seems caught up on the biology of the image Jesus uses and on the idea that this is something that you might voluntarily choose. And yet the starting again in response to God’s love, that Jesus refers to, is as involuntary as the birth of a baby - we do not choose to be loved by God - he just loves us - unendingly, unconditionally, undeservedly, unreservedly.

At the heart of our world’s fractured relationships is a longing to be loved, to be understood, to be accepted for who we are, and to know that that is ok. At the heart of what we hear with Nicodemus today is God loves in a sweeping, expansive way, He loves all things and all people - He always has and always will - but that sweeping and expansive love comes personally and intimately to me - and that love will transform my life so that I may be born of he spirit, be born anew and to find myself rooted, a life with an identity and purpose, as St Paul reminds us this morning, as a child of God himself, a brother or sister of Jesus, with God as our Abba, our daddy.

I often wonder why our Church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. I like to speculate that our founders had in mind that the church should be somewhere that brick maker, tile maker, farmer, and their families alike to meet together. Today that aspiration is no different - we gather as retired, professional, manager and labourer just as they did. Then as now, we gather, not as some sort of social experiment, but because we are called into friendship with each other because we are each loved by God.

The love of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit that we recall this Trinity Sunday is not some sort of test tube love - tried out on Christians first to see if the formula is right and at the correct transforming strength. God’s love is a spontaneous reaction - not a planned campaign. God cannot help himself. It is a love that is utterly transforming, that births us anew by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is a love that defines us, that makes us the people that we and our Father long for us to be - not the glossy media bodies - although I could do with one of those please! - but the sort of people that they long to be in the revealing exclusives - at peace, forgiven, free from guilt and knowing that we are loved. Amen

It has officially been one of those days... Been busy but feel like I could have achieved more, so I write this feeling frustrated. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Tomorrow so far has the Eucharist in the morning, and a meeting with some parishioners in the evening. In the afternoon there is more of the sermon to write... one thing I hadn't clocked (thnks John for the heads up) is that Sunday is also World Environment Day...

Pray now, act now

The Archbishop of Canterbury is urging churches to use Environment Sunday (June 7) to pray for the planet and campaign for climate change in the run up to the important UN talks later this year in Copenhagen.

Dr Williams said it was vital for Christians and people of all faiths to take a lead in praying and campaigning for action. A new deal at the UN summit could directly improve the lives of the world’s poor whose living conditions are affected by climate change. (see full text below)

World Environment Day marks the third anniversary of the Church of England’s environmental campaign Shrinking the Footprint which is being marked by a national event at Lambeth Palace on June 11 where new toolkits and other resources will be unveiled to help churches, cathedrals and other buildings reduce their energy footprint. The next phase of the campaign focusing on water and biodiversity will also be unveiled.

Nearly all dioceses now have an environment officer with many promoting their own green policies to cut the carbon in every parish. The Archbishop will be in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocese this Friday (June 5) to officially launch its new environment policy. A range of green projects are already supported by local churches across the Suffolk area from a bicycle and rickshaw scheme to solar panels on a medieval church building.

The Bishop of London the Rt Revd Richard Chartres Chair of Shrinking the Footprint said: "Climate change is a global challenge, the impact of which is being felt first by some of the most vulnerable communities on our planet. Loving our neighbour in the 21st Century demands that we should be involved in the effort to mitigate climate change and to help our neighbours to adapt.

“Environment Sunday is a time for us to reflect on the challenges ahead and to look forward to the Shrinking the Footprint event on the 11th June 2009. This will both provide an opportunity to deepen our own commitment and to engage with our politicians".

Prayer for creation (taken from Common Worship: Seasons and Festivals of the Agricultural Year )
God said, ‘Let the waters be gathered together,
and let dry land appear.’
We thank you for the beauty of the earth,
for the diversity of land and sea,
for the resources of the earth.
Give us the will to cherish this planet
and to use its riches for the good and welfare of all.
God of life:
hear our prayer.

Full text of Archbishop’s statement
“This year the theme of the United Nation’s World Environment Day is 'Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change'. Whilst it will be for governments meeting in Copenhagen in December to agree a successor to the Kyoto regime for global reductions in carbon emissions - and we all want those to be both ambitious and deliverable - we have a part to play. Governments need to know that people want them to be ambitious. They need a mandate. So what can we do? I think there are two things we can do. We can, and we should, pray. Climate change is not only an environmental issue - probably the most important we face; it is also an issue of justice. As usual the poorest are likely to suffer the most though the richest have contributed most to pollute the atmosphere and accelerate global warming. So we can pray that a proper sense of responsibility (not least to the generations who will follow us) and of justice guides the hearts and the minds of the politicians who will meet in Copenhagen.

This Sunday - Environment Sunday - is an obvious opportunity for us to focus our own hearts and minds on this issue.

The second thing we can do is get involved in the preparations for Copenhagen. Between now and December there will be activity, lobbying and hard thinking going on in civil society as well as government in preparation for the Climate Summit. Many faith groups and civil society organizations, (and that includes the Church of England), will be organising events to heighten awareness of the issues and the opportunities which the summit brings. I shall be going to Copenhagen to support those and to emphasise the strength of the concern that people of faith have for the future well-being of our planet. Please include in your prayers this Environment Sunday all whose efforts in the months to come could make a real difference for the sustainability of our planet and we who live in it - it is God's creation that we are striving to care for and as God's children that we pray and act.”

Some of that might well feature in some form - or at least the idea that God is a perfect community of love, how do we live that out as individuals in the wider community, and as a church to the whole of the created order...

I also have more admin to do to get things up to speed before the Archdeacon's Inspection.

Much to do... Family Guy now and then bed...