Month: February 2015

When I think about it, I’ve been carrying stones all my life. 

In the playground, when the ugly boy was being pushed around and pushed away by everyone else, I was always one of the crowd doing the pushing.

At the office, in the crisis which hit when the corporation was revealed to be trading illegally, something we employees already knew but never questioned, I sided with everyone else against the whistle blower, to have her first disciplined and then fired.

At the sports ground, I found myself joining in the crowd’s brutal chants against opposition team players, spitting out words not relating to anything they’d done on the pitch, but fixing on their colour, or the way they looked, or their sexuality.

On the PCC I raised my hand, just as everyone else did, to agree the decision to stop the alcoholic woman coming into our Sunday evening services, for she could be a distraction to us as we worshipped God.

Why am I carrying a stone?

Because I deeply desire to be part of the group, I need more than anything to belong, and when the group’s identity is threatened, when things look like they may be falling apart, I’m as ready as everyone else to gang up against someone we’ve identified who doesn’t fit, who we can punish or expel as the means to make things right again, to strengthen our belonging to each other.

In his essay ‘On the Happy Life’, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: 'Nothing is more important to understand than that we must not, in the manner of sheep, follow the lead of the flock walking ahead of us, going where they go habitually, not where they need to go. Nothing entangles us in greater evils than our propensity to obey public opinion, to regard those things as best that are endorsed by the approval of the majority. Because we are surrounded by the example of many others, we live our lives not according to reason but by imitation.'

– from Why am I (still) carrying a stone?,  my Ash Wednesday talk.

Queen Camel, Ash Wednesday, 18/2/2015 [1]

Isaiah 58.1-12, John 8:1-11 

 

I invite you to take (the stone you’ve been given); to grip it your hand. And while your mind is on this, picture the scene in the gospel story which I’m about to read to you. 

We are approaching Lent – and this Lent is an opportunity for you and I to ask ourselves, why am I carrying a stone? 

Reading: John 8:1-11

¹Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ²Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. ³The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, ⁴they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. ⁵Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ ⁶They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ ⁸And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. ⁹When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. ¹⁰Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ¹¹She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’

Why am I carrying a stone? 

When I think about it, I’ve been carrying stones all my life. 

In the playground, when the ugly boy was being pushed around and pushed away by everyone else, I was always one of the crowd doing the pushing.

At the office, in the crisis which hit when the corporation was revealed to be trading illegally, something we employees already knew but never questioned, I sided with everyone else against the whistle blower, to have her first disciplined and then fired.

At the sports ground, I found myself joining in the crowd’s brutal chants against opposition team players, spitting out words not relating to anything they’d done on the pitch, but fixing on their colour, or the way they looked, or their sexuality.

On the PCC I raised my hand, just as everyone else did, to agree the decision to stop the alcoholic woman coming into our Sunday evening services, for she could be a distraction to us as we worshipped God.

Why am I carrying a stone?

Because I deeply desire to be part of the group, I need more than anything to belong, and when the group’s identity is threatened, when things look like they may be falling apart, I’m as ready as everyone else to gang up against someone we’ve identified who doesn’t fit, who we can punish or expel as the means to make things right again, to strengthen our belonging to each other.

In his essay ‘On the Happy Life’, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote:

‘Nothing is more important to understand than that we must not, in the manner of sheep, follow the lead of the flock walking ahead of us, going where they go habitually, not where they need to go. Nothing entangles us in greater evils than our propensity to obey public opinion, to regard those things as best that are endorsed by the approval of the majority. Because we are surrounded by the example of many others, we live our lives not according to reason but by imitation.’ [2]

We live our lives by imitation. We are driven by our desire to be like others. And when that is expressed in a desire to be right then we imitate the behaviour of our peers at the expense of those we deem to be wrong…

And when that is expressed in a desire to be pure then we imitate the behaviour of our peers at the expense of those we deem to be impure…

And when that is expressed in a desire to be just then we imitate the behaviour of our peers by criminalising others…

Why am I carrying a stone?

Because it’s Election time… And – however much I may protest my impartiality – this is a time when my desires are driven to imitate the social group to which I belong. And note how public discourse – the conversation which influences our voting decisions – so often focusses on identifying the outsider, selecting the scapegoat, against whom opinions form. Note, for example, the recent rise in language which demonises the poor, the prevalence of statements by politicians and commentators – and people having coffee with us in the cafe – about ‘children without fathers’, about the ‘undeserving poor’. ‘This [is] classic demonization, reducing complex social problems to supposed individual failings and behavioural faults’, [3] and the logical extreme of this rhetoric is the current contest between the UK’s main political parties to outdo each other with popular measures to withhold welfare benefits from those deemed not to deserve them. [4] The so-called ‘problematic underclass’ is the scapegoat of the ‘normal’ middle-class majority today.

Why am I carrying a stone?

Because I’m religious. And whilst the desire to be moral is a good one, that desire is so often distorted into a form of judgmentalism focussed on accusations against others. 

It’s no surprise that the issue vexing the mob of angry men who Jesus encountered in the Temple that morning – was sex.

For, as we know, religious people have been hung up on sex from time immemorial. That not one of the men could admit to having no such sin in themselves, when Jesus challenged them, underlines the point. And the woman caught in adultery is one of countless victims of a righteous mob driving out their own demons by demonising another. In a passage based on another great gospel scapegoat story, the story of the Gadarene demoniac Legion [5], before Jesus expels them to possess the pigs at the cliff edge, the demons turn to the reader and say, 

‘We are banished from society but are necessary for its functioning. Some scapegoats are necessary, as fate falls upon the weakest members of the group. But if you deprive these people who exile us of this possibility of projecting their madness upon us, they will all become madmen. We are necessary for their peace. Our impurity reassures them in the conviction of their purity’. [6]

The point is well-made by now, I will labour it no more. But you may still be asking, why am I carrying a stone today? Why have you given me this to hold?

I’ve done it because Lent is a time to acknowledge our failings. Lent is a time to face our demons.

Lent is a time to interrogate our desires, to ask, ‘Who am I imitating and why?’.

The great writer on the ‘Powers that be’, the invisible forces which shape our human behaviour, Walter Wink, says that the satanic within us only has power when it goes unrecognised, unacknowledged, unchallenged. Like Jesus found at the end of his forty days in the wilderness, enlightened resistance works. 

The craving of the addict may never be healed, but the addiction itself can be stopped. Inappropriate sexual desires may never cease, but their expression can be checked. The sense that one is unlovable, unworthy, or inadequate may never fully disappear, but we can refuse to let that drive us to perfectionism, despair, or overwork. Satan sublimated … : transformation comes not through the denial and repression of our evil, but by naming it, owning it, and lifting it up to God. [7]

The key then is to pray that our desires become aligned with God’s desires; that we cease being driven by imitating others in our social group, and learn to imitate God. The contemporary Christian musician Brenda Schulte sings, ‘Give me a heart for Your desire’ [8], which is exactly the prayer I mean. Or you may prefer this, from the Book of Common prayer, which asks for the very same:

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen. [9]

 

 [Followed by a time of reflection with a recording of Brenda Schulte, ‘Give me a heart for Your desire’]

 

Notes

[1] From 2006 onwards I have preached Ash Wednesday / Lent sermons with the title Why am I carrying a stone?, and whilst this version is significantly different from those, the core mimetic message remains the same. Paul Neuchterlein’s girardianlectionary.net has for many years been my key source for (as he puts it) ‘understanding the bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard’ – see his introduction on the home page for starters.

[2] Wikipedia: De Vita Beata. Cited in a Facebook post by George Dunn in the René Girard discussion group, 13 February 2015.

[3] Owen Jones, Why ‘chavs’ were the riots’ scapegoats, Independent, 1 May 2012. See his Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class for a full discussion of the development of this trend.

[4] See for example, Matt Chorley, We should stop the dole after two years to force jobless to take work, says Labour’s Rachel Reeves, Mail Online, 11 February 2015. 

[5] The story of the Gerasene demoniac, Mark 5.1-20, is discussed in detail in Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers (Powers, Vol 2): The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, to which this sermon owes a great deal. 

[6] Franz-J. Leenhardt, ‘An Exegetical Essay: Mark 5:1-20’, from Barthes et al, Structural Analysis and Biblical Exegesis: Interpretational Essays (Pittsburgh Theological Monographs, No 3), quoted in Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, p.46.

[7] Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, p.40.

[8] Brenda Schulte, ‘Heart for Your desire’, from Various Artists, Experiencing God: Music for Knowing and Doing the Will of God, Star Song Music/Emi 1999.

[9] Book of Common Prayer (1928), Holy Communion, Collect for Purity.

… as Christians our understanding of creation comes not primarily through Genesis or a religious reading of physical science; our understanding of creation comes through the resurrection….

– from Reconciling Creation, my talk today, essentially my spin around the thrilling theological adventures of James Alison in Raising Abel.

Colossians 1:15-20, John 1.1-14

Corton Denham, Weston Bampfylde,

Second Sunday before Lent, 8 February 2015

 

One of the great pleasures and privileges of this strange role I have in our community is to be in a position to listen to the stories which people tell about themselves – their lives, what they’ve done, what’s happened to them to make them the people that they are. 

I think it’s true to say that for each and every one of us, there has been an event, at some point in the middle of our lives, which has changed us forever, an event of which we might later say, everything that happened before that was in preparation for it, and everything that happened after it has been lived out in consequence of it. I’m talking about for some people, a marriage ceremony – after which their identity develops as a husband, wife, parent, grandparent; for others, an induction into a new position: after years of preparation and training, after which they hold a title which will always define them. For me, it is ‘Reverend’. And the day I was ordained in Liverpool Cathedral before family, friends, Christian brothers and sisters with whom I’d shared my journey so far, people who had helped to form me for this vocation, that was the pivotal moment from which everything else has grown, and which gives meaning and purpose to the whole of my life, from the beginning to the end. [1]

People who don’t know us well tend to define us by our origins – where we come from, our family background, our schooling. But what completes us as people usually comes later. When a car crash  puts a person in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives they find themselves drawing on, and building on, all the resources of their character they have developed beforehand to be able to continue to live a fulfilled life.

Consider a moment what the defining event, the seminal moment, has been in your life….

Today’s two readings are pieces of intense theology which invite us to see our own life story as part of the life story of creation itself. And to see the life story of creation as an aspect of the life of God in Jesus Christ.

And what I’ve just said about how we understand ourselves, we can equally apply to creation.

How do we understand creation, the story of the world we belong to? Mostly we tend to define creation by its origins – by Genesis chapter one, where God brought the world into being through the words of his command. Or through Genesis chapter two, the story of Adam and Eve, the beginnings of human society. Or by taking a view influenced by physical science, in the ‘big bang theory’ of our origins in which a creator may or may not have been involved.

I want to offer another perspective to you today – that as Christians our understanding of creation comes not primarily through Genesis or a religious reading of physical science; our understanding of creation comes through the resurrection.

The earliest Christians understood creation, their origins, themselves, through the resurrection. For them, this event, above all other events in history, was the pivotal one, the one through which everything else came together. The Resurrection of Jesus, his defeat of death itself, made sense of everything that had so far happened, and shaped everything which was to follow.The letter to the Colossians is one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing we have, written either by Paul himself or his group of disciples, sixty years after the resurrection, prior to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, so it gives us great insight into what the very first believers believed. Let us listen again to how they saw Christ in creation: as ‘the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation’; 

for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. [Colossians 1.15-20]

This is the central point of the first Christians’ belief: that we understand creation starting from and through Jesus.

Now this is a different view of creation and of Jesus from what we have often been taught. 

We are used to speaking about Creation and Salvation as if these were two rather different things. Often the story we hear goes like this: first there was creation, something which happened at the beginning, then there was the ‘fall,’ however that may have taken place, in which we fell into a state from which we needed someone to rescue us; then God sent Jesus to save the situation, and now, even though it seems that in reality nothing has been saved, we know that it has been, and we hope for heaven. 

This seems to be the story that’s in the background of both Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy. In this story the relationship between our present state and heaven is pretty distant; that is to say, it doesn’t look as though Jesus has made much difference, so we sit and wait, getting involved in immensely complicated moral struggles, hoping that finally we’ll be acceptable for heaven.

Now, this story deserves the sort of criticism which it has in fact received, which is that it does nothing to encourage people to take seriously the things they might do to improve this life for themselves and others, except in the most superficial way, treating the symptoms and not the causes by means of works of charity and so on, reinterpreting Christianity as participation in a social progress towards a utopia, whether religious or not. 

The problem with this ‘creation-fall-redemption-heaven’ story is to be found less in the relationship between ‘redemption’ and ‘heaven,’ which is where the fighting has gone on, but in the relationship between creation and redemption. The problem is in our seeing creation and salvation as two different sorts of thing. 

First there was creation, an initial movement on the part of God, then there was salvation, a sort of rescue operation, in reality a very different sort of thing, with only the most tenuous of relationships with what went before. There is a big difference between a factory, where cars are made out of raw matter, and a mechanic’s garage, where they are repaired when they break down. The operations are of a different nature. Well, if Creation and Salvation are two different sorts of thing, it is not at all clear that there is a real relationship between the Creator and the Saviour; or, in other words, it’s not clear what God has to do with Jesus. [2]

So here the writer of Colossians helps us greatly – by reconciling Creation and Salvation in the resurrection of Jesus. 

[This passage of scripture changes our] understanding of God as Creator from someone who once did something, to someone who is doing something through Jesus, who was in on what the Father was doing through him from the beginning. Creation is not finished until Jesus dies (remember his final words on the cross – ‘it is accomplished’). Creation only fully begins, in a completely new way, in the garden on the first day of the week. 

This means, and here is the central point: we understand creation starting from and through Jesus. God’s graciousness which brings what is not into existence from nothing, is exactly the same thing as Jesus’ death-less self-giving out of love which enables him to break the human culture of death, and is a self-giving which is entirely fixed on bringing into being a radiantly living and exuberant culture. 

It is not as though creation were a different act, something which happened alongside the salvation worked by Jesus, but rather that the salvation which Jesus was working was, at the same time, the fulfillment of creation. 

This was the power and the authority in Jesus’ works and words and signs. Through him the Creator was bringing his work to completion. The act of creation was revealed for what it really is: the bringing to existence and the making possible of a human living together which does not know death; and Jesus was in on this from the beginning. Such is our world that God could only be properly perceived as Creator by means of the overcoming of death. [3]

Now you might justifiably say, but where is this overcoming of death? Our world is full of death; creation itself is dying, we are told. Many will sympathise with the diatribe against God which came from Stephen Fry this week, in which he asked, “Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?” [4]. 

Our Colossians reading today tells us that ‘in [Jesus] all things hold together’. It explains that  ‘through [Jesus] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.’ 

As a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Creation is in the process of leaving death behind. As a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Creation is in the process of being reconciled.

Note that we are not changed instantly in those seminal moments which define us – becoming a good parent, a good partner, a good policeman, a good priest, is the slow work of a lifetime. In just the same way, Creation is not changed instantly by the Resurrection. It is a work in progress. So death is in the process of being defeated; the principalities and powers of this world are in the process of being reconciled to God.

When we embrace the meaning of the Cross and accept the power of the Resurrection into our lives, we become part of God’s work of reconciliation of Creation. As we pray each day to play our part in this work we discover ways to live it out. Whether by tending the garden or playing with the grandchildren, whether by holding the hand of the hospitalised or making ethical investments, we are playing our part in the reconciliation of Creation in the light of the Resurrection.

Or as John later put it, we are taking part in the activity of becoming God’s children. The seminal moment which now defines us is the moment we decide to embrace Jesus Christ:

To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. [John 1.13]

 

Notes

[1] John Davies, On Ordination, written for friends, family, parishioners, June 2001.

[2] James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, pp.49-50. Link to the passage from Girardian Lectionary: Creation in Christ. See also Resources on Colossians 1:15-28, Girardian Lectionary, PROPER 11 (July 17-23) – YEAR C / Ordinary Time 16.

[3] James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, pp.55-56.

[4] Watch: Stephen Fry brands God ‘utterly utterly evil’, Telegraph, 31 January 2015

 

… We celebrate the character of faithful old men [like Simeon], for although they are closer than ever to death, their nature is to give life. We give thanks for these hopeful ones who see the potential in a new generation. We give thanks for these wise ones – who share their insights into the limitations of human goodness, those tellers of hard truths. We celebrate those mature men of faith who offer words of comfort, of affirmation, encouragement and guidance to the young. …

– from my talk today, Celebrating the character of faithful old men…