Month: December 2017

… In our complicated world how can we find the gospel truth and live in its light? I suggest that we simply journey on, and at every twist and turn keep searching for Jesus who always goes on ahead of us to meet us. Our journey cycles on: seeking, finding, losing, seeking, finding, losing, seeking, and if we are prayerfully alert to how the gospel message is being received and used then we should know when we come across fertile ground for loving relationships, for we will find Jesus there; and we should know when we find his message being used for divisive, hateful, purposes, and be aware. …

– room for Hallmark Christmas romances, Michael Rosen's Scrooge, the Bishop of Liverpool and the #MeToo movement in my talk today, New Year: seeking out the vigorous Gospel meme.

Galatians 4.1-7, Luke 2.15-21

First Sunday of Christmas, 31 December 2017

Queen Camel (Together at Ten), West Camel Methodist Church

 

Those Christmas films you see on TV – by which I don’t mean Mary Poppins and Singin’ In The Rain, but rather those modern, made-for-TV romantic dramas with titles like Marry Me at Christmas, My Christmas Love, A December Bride and so on. They’re produced by the Hallmark Channel – the same people responsible for those greetings cards with the gushing messages – and like those cards they flood the market at this time of year. [1] 

Have you seen them? The plots of these films vary slightly but the outcome is always the same – the young woman who began in an unhappy relationship or – even worse – unforgivably single, ends up finding Christmas romance. Woe betide if you’re the actor playing the work-addicted boyfriend or the Grinchy husband at the start of the film, for your days are numbered, you’re about to be replaced by someone with the time and the inclination to suck up and celebrate the joy of the season. 

Now these films may be improbably romantic but at their heart is a belief in something substantial – in this season we believe in transformation; transformation through loving relationships.

My favourite present this year was a book by Michael Rosen called Bah! Humbug! It’s a retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, written for teenagers really but with great emotional intelligence, so engaging that I’d finished reading it by Boxing Day morning. Harry Gruber is playing Scrooge in his school production of A Christmas Carol and his Dad Ray, a workaholic, disappoints as he usually does by disappearing from the school theatre part-way through the play to attend to something in the office. The two stories brilliantly weave together until, just like Scrooge, Ray Gruber has an epiphany and, faced with the choice to either return to the office with some essential data from his home computer or to go back to the play to support his son, he uncharacteristically chooses his son. Both Scrooge – the mean-spirit who becomes excessively generous, and Ray Gruber – who re-sets his work-family priorities, find their relationships transformed. [2]

Now this meme, this theme running through our culture, is of no surprise to Christians for whom the key story – at this, and every time of year – is of God coming to earth to transform our relationships with him and others. What may be a more surprising thought is this: that the Hallmark films and Dickens’ and Michael Rosen’s Scrooge stories demonstrate that our culture has got it – it’s got the gospel message, it’s embraced it, it’s absorbed it and integrated it and turned it into these retellings which have different characters but precisely the same spirit. 

What I’m saying is that without the gospel there would be no Scrooge – for his transformation story connects by a holy thread back to pregnant Mary’s song of praise, in which the proud are humbled and the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are filled with good things – just as they are in A Christmas Carol.

Without the gospel there would be no Hallmark romances – for they firmly grasp the gospel truth that only by embracing the spirit of love which yearns to break into our world, can our sadness turn to joy, our darkness turn to light. 

Before we bemoan the decline of Christianity in our culture let us consider this suggestion: that the gospel story has so much filtered through that we can find it everywhere – albeit in different shapes and forms.  

It’s instructive, at this turning of the year – as we face a year of change in our churches, both you and I with my move north in the Spring – it’s instructive to see how Christianity never stands still for long, it constantly evolves. For Christianity is a walk with Jesus. And Jesus never stood still for long: his followers had to keep looking for him – in their homes, on the beach, up a mountain, in the city, around the sharing of bread, fish, wine. After he had risen he continued to reveal himself to them in these ways. “And so their journey cycled on: seeking, finding, losing, seeking, finding, losing, seeking… The journey of the Church has been ever thus.” [3]

Maybe the Hallmark meme and the Scrooge meme are signs of our society having originally found the gospel, embraced it then lost it a little, now starting to look for it again. 

And maybe another prevalent theme of our time demonstrates this too. The focus our culture places on the victim and the victim’s story. The victims’ perspective could almost be said to be the defining perspective of our times. Those victimised for their colour, their sexuality, their gender, their class – all are finding a voice. Most recently, following sexual misconduct allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, women the world over painfully revealed themselves as victims of sexual harassment, and the ‘#MeToo’ hashtag movement went viral. [4]

And this intelligence of the victim goes right back to the heart of the gospel – to the victimisation and execution of Jesus by those who felt challenged by him: those clinging onto the power of their legalised religion, or the authority of their military might. Jesus’ crucifixion revealed something previously hidden to humankind, something which the Pharisees and Romans of today still work hard to conceal: that ‘Human society is a violent place, which makes victims, and the revelation of God is to be found in the midst of that violence, on the side of the victims.’ Christianity is unique among all religions in being essentially a story told from the victim’s perspective – in which the victim ultimately triumphs – through suffering and self-giving love. [5]

The ‘#MeToo’ movement was a revelation of the victim, a succession of stories told from the victims’ perspective. It was generally received sympathetically, opening people’s eyes to some hard truths and producing apologies from some penitent men, and so it could be said that the victims ultimately triumphed – through suffering, through their self-giving desire to save others from that which had harmed them. This suggests a gospel moment in our times. That the actress who triggered the ‘#MeToo’ movement called it “in equal parts heartbreaking and inspiring” surely carries echoes of Calvary to those who have ears to hear. [6] And eyes to see how these women’s  stories, and their reception, have sparked off a transformation in human relationships.

Of course the ‘#MeToo’ movement was not received uncritically. Messages which carry the seeds of the Gospel never are. And the Gospel is easily distorted. The strongest objection is the criticism that “we are all victims now”. “Wherever you look there is someone with a grievance,” said Philip Stephens in the Financial Times. “Political leaders, bankers, corporate bosses and the plutocrats of the hedge fund industry have joined the poor and disadvantaged among the swelling ranks of the oppressed…. For the populists of the far right, victimhood is the beginning and the end of political strategy,” he continues, “Britain is the helpless victim of hard-working incomers from eastern and central Europe. And everyone, of course, is a dupe of the established political elites.” [7] 

In our complicated world how can we find the gospel truth and live in its light? I suggest that we simply journey on, and at every twist and turn keep searching for Jesus who always goes on ahead of us to meet us. Our journey cycles on: seeking, finding, losing, seeking, finding, losing, seeking, and if we are prayerfully alert to how the gospel message is being received and used then we should know when we come across fertile ground for loving relationships, for we will find Jesus there; and we should know when we find his message being used for divisive, hateful, purposes, and be aware.

Remarking on how some evangelical leaders were “uncritically accepting” of things being said by the US president and his allies, [8] Paul Bayes, the Bishop of Liverpool, this week said, “Some of the things that have been said by religious leaders seem to collude with a system that marginalises the poor, a system which builds walls instead of bridges, a system which says people on the margins of society should be excluded, a system which says we’re not welcoming people any more into our country. Whenever people say those kinds of things, they need to be able to justify that they’re saying those things as Christians, and I do not believe it’s justifiable.” [9]

Now before I leave here we will journey through Lent together, and in our Lent Meetings we will be considering the affirmation of Paul in Galatians 3.28, that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” We’ll be asking ourselves the question,

“[Do] we believe in an inclusive church – church which does not discriminate, on any level, on grounds of economic power, gender, mental health, physical ability, race or sexuality. [Do] we believe in Church which welcomes and serves all people in the name of Jesus Christ; which is scripturally faithful; which seeks to proclaim the Gospel afresh for each generation; and which, in the power of the Holy Spirit, allows all people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ.”? [10]

Our journey with Jesus continues; seeking, finding, losing, seeking… Our traditional churches are fragile and fading just now; which puts us on the vulnerable road of remembering that we are not heirs to God’s kingdom by entitlement, but rather, we are his adopted children by his love. And as members of his adopted family let us joyfully recognise that the gospel is still vigorous and active out here in God’s world. Let us learn and re-learn to share our journey with others quite different from ourselves, to being open to being transformed by God through these unforeseen, uninvited, loving relationships.

 

 

Notes

[1] Hallmark Channel: Christmas.

[2] Michael Rosen, Bah! Humbug!: Every Christmas Needs a Little Scrooge.

[3] Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them, Kindle Android version Location 4501.

[4] Wikipedia: Me Too (hashtag).

[5] James Alison in Knowing Jesus, Chapter 2, introduces the concept of ‘the intelligence of the victim’. I have referenced it in previous sermons including Mary’s song of great reversal (Devon, 2012) and The Beatitudes – Christianity with its eyes wide open (Somerset, 2014). See Paul Nuechterlein, James Alison on “The Intelligence of the Victim”, and An Excerpt from James Alison’s “The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes”, from the Girardian Lectionary website, and all James Alison’s work.

[6] Alyssa Milano quoted in Wikipedia: Me Too (hashtag).

[7] Philip Stephens, We are all victims now. Financial Times, 16 February 2015.

[8] Bishop of Liverpool criticises Christian Trump supporters. BBC News, 28 December 2017.

[9] Harriet Sherwood, Evangelical Christians ‘uncritical’ in support for Trump, senior bishop says. Guardian, 28 December 2017.

[10] From the Inclusive Church statement of belief. The Lent 2018 series of meetings will be based on the Inclusive Church Small Group Studies. 

 

Christmas gives us an opportunity to hone our peacemaking skills – around those tables where we are placed, sometimes uncomfortably, alongside people we may only see once a year – and some of whom we’d prefer to see even less often, if we were honest. 

If we’re honest with ourselves, if we admit to ourselves our reluctance to let old wounds heal, or our strategy of avoidance of people we disagree with, or of avoiding topics we’re uncomfortable about, then we are at the start of building peace on earth. For the beginning of making peace from within is to ask ourselves why we act that way, and prayerfully, carefully, begin to work out what we might be able to do to change.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all – the one born in Bethlehem showed us the way, it’s now in our hands to fulfil it.

– from my Christmas Eve (midnight) talk, Peace on earth? Starts within. Happy Christmas, beloved reader.

Titus 2.11-14, Luke 2.1-14(15-20)

Christmas Eve 2017, Sutton Montis

 

A police officer recently told me that tonight, Christmas Eve, is their busiest night of the year, especially for what they call ‘domestics’ – family pressures, intensified by Christmas, set fists and crockery flying.  And yet we keep on talking about ‘peace on earth’.

2017 has been a year when the personal spats of a tweeting President and a Supreme Leader have raised the real prospect of international nuclear conflict whilst undermining diplomacy and bypassing democracy. This year 28,300 people a day were forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution. We watched them go, in fear and ruin: from Syria to Turkey, from Myanmar to Bangladesh, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from South Sudan to Uganda. [2] And yet this seasonal, scriptural message persists: ‘peace on earth, goodwill to all’.

Peace on earth seems an impossible dream. It is the message at the heart of the gospel stories of the birth of the Son of God, but it seems so elusive to us that we treat it with the same levity as we do Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

So why then, after two thousand years and more, does this gospel message persist? ’Peace on earth’. We still want it. Perhaps, just tentatively, we’ve an instinct that it may be possible to achieve.

Though at times it seems an impossible dream we gather here in worship and in understanding that God, in Jesus, provides the resources for us to live together in peace.

Now I’d forgive you if you sneer at that, remembering all the violence done in the name of Christ over the centuries. For it is true; after the Roman Emperor Constantine assimilated the Christian faith early in the Fourth Century the idea emerged that Christ’s “everlasting kingdom of love and peace” could be brought about through conventional power politics. [3] 

From then on a culture of violence fed into the Crusades, justified Christian nations occupying and subduing so-called ‘virgin’ lands, and provoked aggressive forms of missionary activity and the brutal and exploitative forms of Church schooling which have only recently been brought to light and challenged. [4] 

[But:] Jesus never taught ‘just war’ theory. Jesus taught full-on nonviolence. ‘Put away your sword,’ he told Peter. ‘We shall have no more of this.’ And to Pilate at his trial he said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it was, my followers would fight to save me.’ [5]

Significantly, Jesus deliberately avoided ever talking about “the vengeance of God”. His message and his self-giving life announce that there is no place for vengeance in God’s peaceable kingdom. No need for Christians to take history into our own hands to wage war on God’s behalf, for the ultimate battle between good and evil has already been fought and won in the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

Yes, you may say, but in the real world so far, nobody has managed to rid the world of war by non-violence. But neither have they done so using violence. [6]

‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that,’ said the champion of nonviolent conflict resolution Revd Dr Martin Luther King. And who – hawk or dove – could disagree?

But, yes, the real world is complicated and messy. We have to dig deeper behind King’s words to realise his vision. To live peaceably we each have to first recognise the violence we carry in our hearts, and work to overcome it. To build peace substantially so-called pacifists have to collaborate with police and military in peacekeeping roles; hawks and doves must talk to each other and learn together. 

I’m impressed to follow the conversations which take place annually between delegates of the British Army Advanced Command and Staff Course and the peace activist and lecturer Alastair McIntosh. These meetings of very different minds tease out together principled, ethical ways to resolve conflict in the world. McIntosh affirms that “hope for peace in the world resides in pacifists and principled soldiers,” and cites General Sir Richard Dannatt who whilst Head of the British Army spoke of the importance of “an Army entrusted with using lethal force … maintain[ing] high values,” and of the moral and spiritual dimensions to that.

“Neither brute violence nor naïve forms of pacifism on their own can tackle the toughest issues of our times,” said the General. “We must cultivate empathy with something far bigger than ourselves, something bigger and deeper than we can imagine or rationalise for ourselves.” [7]

I’m similarly impressed by a quite different initiative which began in 2004: The Forgiveness Project, which “sets out to tell the real stories of people whose response to being harmed was not a call for revenge but rather a quest for restoration and healing.” 

A touring exhibition called ‘The F Word’, has so far been seen by over 70,000 people in 14 countries worldwide. The stories “reflect the complex, intriguing and deeply personal nature of forgiveness.” They show how peace-building is hard work. Stories of: 

A murderer facing the family of his victim to answer their questions ‘why?’, a PTSD-affected soldier trying to rebuild a life which fell apart on his return to civilian life, a daughter visiting her father in prison for the first time, thirteen years after he began a life sentence for murdering her mother, his wife. [8] 

There are countless other examples of peace-building projects worldwide; each one a reason why we can justifiably keep talking about achieving ‘peace on earth’.

With those words of the angels on the Bethlehem hillside ringing in our ears we’re entitled to ask:  what if we gave the same resources to peace-building as we give to warfare? Compared to the 1.72 trillion dollars spent on the military last year, just half of one per cent of that – 10 billion dollars – was spent on peace-building. [9] 

If we want to play our part in bringing peace to earth then we may involve ourselves in social and political action on these issues, but for each of us to act with integrity, our peace-building will begin at home. 

Note how Jesus modelled this during his ministry – by encouraging his friends and some religious leaders to open their homes to Jesus’ rag-tag band of followers, bringing together people who would never normally share a meal. And the Christian life as described in the Acts of the Apostles, was of small communities offering mutual care and support, eating and worshipping together, the wealthy and the poor.

None of this was achieved without argument – recall the reaction of the others around the religious leaders’ meal-table when Jesus invited in a woman from off the street to rub perfume into his feet with her hair; consider the stories of those in the early church who decided to keep back something for themselves rather than put all their wealth into the common fund. But from these laboratories of peace, full, rich community emerged.

Ultimately, peacemaking begins within. The Northern Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mairead Corrigan Maguire said that

The spirit of nonviolence begins within us and moves out from there. The life of active nonviolence is the fruit of an inner peace and spiritual unity already realised in us, and not the other way around…  As our hearts are disarmed by God of our inner violence, they become God’s instruments for the disarmament of the world. [10]

Christmas gives us an opportunity to hone our peacemaking skills – around those tables where we are placed, sometimes uncomfortably, alongside people we may only see once a year – and some of whom we’d prefer to see even less often, if we were honest. 

If we’re honest with ourselves, if we admit to ourselves our reluctance to let old wounds heal, or our strategy of avoidance of people we disagree with, or of avoiding topics we’re uncomfortable about, then we are at the start of building peace on earth. For the beginning of making peace from within is to ask ourselves why we act that way, and prayerfully, carefully, begin to work out what we might be able to do to change.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all – the one born in Bethlehem showed us the way, it’s now in our hands to fulfil it.

 

 

Notes

[1] This sermon in part references, and complements, my Advent 3 sermon, John’s Revelation Trumps Empire’s Apocalypse, Corton Denham, 17 December 2017.

[2] David Jackson, Trump insults ‘short and fat’ (and nuclear-armed) Kim Jong Un. USA Today, 12 November 2017. UNHCR: Figures at a glance. Accessed 21 December 2017.

[3] Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, p.13, 19ff.

[4] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.119. / Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, p.13.

[5] Alastair McIntosh, Poacher’s Pilgrimage: An Island Journey. p.125.

[6] Alastair McIntosh, ‘A Nonviolent Challenge to Conflict,’ 2010, in David Whetham (ed), Ethics, Law and Military Operations. Offprint of the essay downloadable from Alastair McIntosh’s website [pdf]. p.1.

[7] Alastair McIntosh, A Nonviolent Challenge to Conflict. Dannatt quote p.16.

[8] The Forgiveness Project: Founder. The story of Marina Cantacuzino.

[9] Interview: Sue Claydon, Anglican Pacifist Fellowship chair, Church Times, 21 December 2017.

[10] Alastair McIntosh, A Nonviolent Challenge to Conflict, p.3.

 

In light of the reception, by some Christians, of Trump's recent Jerusalem move as heralding the 'end times'…

Now, we can choose to read the Apocalypse of St John of Patmos as a justification of the power politics of our times. Or we can view it as an indispensable source of the enlightening knowledge that while empires will pass away, the Lamb of God holds the world in love, and invites us to live our days with him, in the forgiving and reconciling activities of the kingdom of God’s peace.

– from my talk today John’s Revelation Trumps Empire’s Apocalypse. Thanks to Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, for the light he brings to the subject of his book; and to Marcus Peter Rempel, whose just-published Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories explores Ivan Illich's theme of "the troubled legacy of Christendom … the terrible perversion that comes of love and truth when these are underwritten by institutional power."

Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-end, John 1.6-8, 19-28 (though read the entire section vv.1-28)

Third Sunday of Advent, 17^th December 2017, Corton Denham

 

John Chapter One Verse Nine, which is missing from today’s gospel reading, describes Jesus as ‘The true light that gives light to everyone.’ John continues with a sobering observation, saying,

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to his own, but his own did not receive him.

There is a note of caution, in that, a word of warning, for us. Do we recognise the real Jesus? The true Jesus who comes to us, who are his own, do we, or do we not, receive him? Or have we instead been taken in by teachings which falsify Jesus and his message?

Last week, president Donald Trump’s controversial decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, was greeted enthusiastically by many of his Christian supporters – specifically because they believe that this move will hasten on the biblical end times. 

Addressing a rally in Pensacola, Florida, Republican state Senator Doug Broxson raised cheers and great applause when he said, “Now, where the King of Kings – where our soon coming King is coming back to Jerusalem, it is because President Trump declared Jerusalem to be capital of Israel.” [1]

Many evangelical Christians believe that Trump is unfolding God’s purpose, that “he is God’s instrument to move us closer to the Rapture, the Judgment, and the End, the beginning of their reward and heavenly bliss. They’ve been waiting for this, praying for this,” says U.S. theologian Dr. Diana Butler Bass. “They want war in the Middle East. The Battle of Armageddon, at which time Jesus Christ will return to the Earth and vanquish all God’s enemies. This … news of Jerusalem, these people [regard as] the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Donald Trump is not only acting on a campaign promise, but enacting a theological one.” [2]

Now, this Jesus – whose kingdom will not come until this world has been destroyed and replaced, as the millenarian believers expect – is this a Jesus you recognise?

This Jesus – whose return can be hastened by the actions of political leaders and military strategists – is this a Jesus you believe?

Or is the Jesus you recognise One whose kingdom has already come – when he arrived as a child and overcame death on a cross and sowed the mustard seeds which have grown and continue to grow in our world throughout all these centuries? [3] Does your understanding of God’s activity in the world arise from what Jesus did and said whilst here on earth, what he passed on as a living legacy for his followers to continue, through his Holy Spirit?

The way we understand Jesus depends on where we go to form our ideas about him. Surely the start and end point has to be the Gospels: for there are the fullest accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus; secondary to those, but important, are the letters of Paul, some of them older  than the Gospels, with his essential teachings about Jesus.

For believers possessed by the End Times the key New Testament book is Revelation, an apocalyptic work which reveals truth about Christ in highly symbolic and imaginative language. Written to be read aloud to congregations in one sitting, The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John is a drama in the form of a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) around 95A.D. These were embattled communities of believers at that time, suffering persecution. John wanted to encourage these churches to continue in their faith through suffering, to be assured of the final victory of God and of the return of Jesus, the Lamb of God, whose death and resurrection and ascension has brought about the victory in the battle between the fallen and sinful powers that rule the world, and the angels and spiritual powers that reign in heaven. [4]

The war of the lamb brings about a peaceable victory. Through the cross and in the resurrection the world has been redeemed, and the kingdom of God is already present in history. Therefore Christians do not need to try to control history’s outcome. Christ is ‘alpha and omega’, the beginning and the end of the world; time stood still on the cross and was redeemed on the third day, and the power of evil and of death itself are overcome in the resurrection. This was the secret that the writer of the Christian Apocalypse revealed to his readers. [5]

It is vital to understand Revelation as having been written for a specific audience addressing the circumstances of their particular time. In part it is influenced by the revenge fantasies of Jewish Christian believers suffering under Rome. Revelation is not a literary text to be dissected for signs of significant social-political activity in our present day. The scenes it enacts are not to be mimicked. 

In July 1944, in response to the millennial claims of  Adolf Hitler in his attempt to implement a thousand-year-reign, the Third Reich,  The Vatican saw fit to issue ‘an official statement that millennial claims could not be safely taught and that the related scriptures in Revelation should be understood spiritually’ – the teaching of the church then as now, is that “St. John gives a spiritual recapitulation of the activity of Satan, and the spiritual reign of the saints with Christ in heaven and in His Church on earth.” [6]

Theologian Michael Northcott has focussed his scholarly attention on American apocalyptic religion and its influence on U.S. politics and foreign policy. He makes the helpful observation that

The Christian apocalypse does not indicate the end of the world in a mighty conflagration called Armageddon, nor the resettling of the land of Israel as Zionists would have it. On the contrary:

Simply stated, “apocalypse” is shorthand for Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, in particular for Paul, all apocalyptic reflection and hope comes to this, that God has acted critically, decisively, and finally for Israel, all the peoples of the earth, and the entire cosmos, in the life, death, resurrection, and coming again of Jesus, in such a way that God’s purposes for Israel, all humanity, and all creation, is critically, decisively, and finally disclosed and effected in the history of Jesus Christ. [7]

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’ [8]

And the kingdom of God is among us now; so Christ does not require us to spend our days gazing anxiously into the skies awaiting the cosmic action of a fiery judgmental God; rather, he invites us to daily share in the joyful liberation of the resurrected life, in the here and now; he wants us to look out for signs of his activity in our lives and the life of the world today, and when we recognise them, to join in.

What are the signs of his kingdom we should look out for? When Jesus stood in his home-town synagogue and recited Isaiah 61, he framed the work of his kingdom in terms of bringing good news to the poor, of binding up the brokenhearted, of freeing the captives and releasing the imprisoned, of proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour, a time when all debts would be erased and the dispossessed would be restored to their lands. These, he was saying, are the signs of God’s kingdom at work in the world. When you see them happening, when you take part in these activities, there you are, working with God. Note the stark contrast between these signs and the methods of presidents and freedom-fighters in their aggressive pursuit of worldly power.

Significantly, Jesus omitted to quote one line of Isaiah’s: the one which described “the day of vengeance of our God”. By this omission, Jesus made it clear – there is no place for vengeance in God’s peaceable kingdom. No need for Christians to take history into our own hands to wage war on God’s behalf, for the ultimate battle between good and evil has already been fought and won in the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. [9]

For three centuries the first Christians embraced this ethic of peace so fully that it was deemed  impossible to be a Christian and in the military. The Christian life was as described in the Acts of the Apostles, a life of small communities offering mutual care and support, vulnerable to the attacks of the authorities who felt threatened by their focus on Jesus as their Lord and guide.

It was only after the Roman Emperor Constantine assimilated the Christian faith early in the Fourth Century that the idea began to emerge that Christ’s “everlasting kingdom of love and peace” could be brought about through conventional power politics. [10]

The idea that human beings could be induced into the kingdom of heaven by force led to the corruption of Christianity by the growth of a culture of violence which provoked the Crusades, led to the Pilgrim Fathers occupying and subduing the so-called ‘virgin’ lands of America and its first inhabitants, and arguably has influenced many aggressive forms of missionary activity and the brutality and exploitation of some Church schooling which has only recently began to be brought to light and challenged. [11]

The word ‘Apocalyptic’ literally means ‘a revealing’. A bringing to light. How much we need the light to show us the path through life today. 

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” reveals the Gospel writer John the disciple, son of Zebedee. John the Baptist revealed Jesus as “the light of all mankind, … so that through him all might believe.” 

Now, we can choose to read the Apocalypse of St John of Patmos as a justification of the power politics of our times. Or we can view it as an indispensable source of the enlightening knowledge that while empires will pass away, the Lamb of God holds the world in love, and invites us to live our days with him, in the forgiving and reconciling activities of the kingdom of God’s peace. [12]

 

 

Notes

[1] Sarak K. Burris, Theological scholar explains horrifying reason Trump’s supporters celebrated Armageddon in Pensacola. RawStory, 8 December 2017.

[2] Sarak K. Burris, Theological scholar explains horrifying reason Trump’s supporters celebrated Armageddon in Pensacola. RawStory, 8 December 2017.

[3] Mark 4.31

[4] Wikipedia: Apocalyptic Literature; The Book of Revelation and Apocalypses in John Bowker, The Complete Bible Handbook: An Illustrated Companion, p.468-71.

[5] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.140.

[6] Wikipedia: Millennialism; Nazism. Citing LeFrois, Bernard J. Eschatological Interpretation of the Apocalypse. The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. XIII, pp. 17–20; Cited in Culleton RG. The Reign of Antichrist, 1951. Reprint TAN Books, Rockford (IL), 1974, p. 9. My italics.

[7] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.127-8, quoting Douglas Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology Beyond Christendom and Modernity, p.68.

[8] Luke 17.20-21.

[9] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.127-8. See also my Advent 3 sermon of 2014, Christmas is Really for the Children? with its use of the writing of Fred Niedner on Jesus’ reworking of Isaiah 61.

[10] Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, p.13, 19ff.

[11] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.119. / Marcus Peter Rempel, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, p.13. Rempel engages with Ivan Illich’s writings on “the troubled legacy of Christendom … the terrible perversion that comes of love and truth when these are underwritten by institutional power.” (p.12)

[12] Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, p.121.