Month: February 2022

Genesis 2.4b-25, Luke 8.22-25

The Second Sunday before Lent, 20 February 2022

Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth

The Creator of all things says: I will calm your storm.

Do you ever find yourself wondering why the world has drifted so far from Eden, where everything was once so peaceful, an idyll for the creatures and the creation living harmoniously, and for man and woman united in this life of mutual care. Adrift from Eden now, it can often feel like we’re on the wild seas, hit by storms.

Although we live in a time and place of comfort and wealth, nevertheless somehow life seems to have got harder for so many, the troubles of life more exacting for both old and young. Whilst Covid may have hastened some of this, it was happening already.

How we long to be travelling through calm waters, how we yearn for a place of peace in our life and in our world.

What unites today’s two bible passages is a sense that the Creator of all things is the source of all calm. 

There’s no going back to Eden but we can take inspiration from the picture in Genesis of a benign world, a beautiful garden full of trees pleasant to the sight and good for food, home to every animal of the field and every bird of the air, from whose soil man and woman were formed and from which sprang the sources of the world’s great rivers. 

The Creator of all things is the source of peace and unity.

And we can’t be on Galilee in a boat with Jesus but we can be moved by the scene which Luke depicts: the vicious gale, the storm-tossed boat, the fearful fishermen and the simple, direct words of Jesus which returned peace to the waters. 

The Creator of all things says: I will calm your storm.

What welcome words these are as our society continues to be tossed by the storm of the pandemic, with the devastating loss of life, the social isolation and the panic and uncertainty over work, money and the future which leaves so many individuals and families suffering. 

We long for calm, and here in the UK the word CALM is an acronym for the Campaign Against Living Miserably, a male suicide prevention charity, whose helpline saw a 36% increase in demand last year with someone contacting them every 62 seconds. During the pandemic CALM created campaigns to help people cope with lockdown and later devised a ‘roadmap’ for people anxious about a return to ‘normal’ life as restrictions eased. [1]

Might it be true that the crisis in our society’s mental environment is as profoundly serious as the crisis in our physical environment? The writer Mark Grief says, ’This is midnight in the century, and mental dysfunction is the new norm for just about every one of us’. [2]

Since before Covid but exacerbated by it, there has been a huge rise in concerns around personal mental health as a result of things like loneliness, unemployment, housing and income stress, domestic abuse and grief and loss. [3]

If it’s true that virtually all of us are affected by mental dysfunction, then maybe it’s not us that’s the problem. Maybe it’s the world we’re in. The psychologist R.D. Laing famously proposed that ‘insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world’, a world in which ‘people are willing to obey social rules, even if the commands are inhumane and irrational.’ [4]

This is why CALM work hard to help young men break away from the social rules of damaging stereotypes about men always having to be strong and laddish, self-reliant and emotionally repressed, and to promote positive depictions of men – ‘men who are good at what they do and good dads and also open, vulnerable and emotional’, and to normalise getting help: for, as CALM’s Assistant Director Rachel Clare says, “Being silent isn’t being strong, and that goes across the board to men and women. To ask for help is an act of bravery, it’s not a sign of weakness.” [5]

And if it’s not us that’s the problem, it’s the world we’re in, its structures and systems, then these can also be challenged and changed. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s classic tale of subsistence farmers forced into destitution in 1930s America, the land agents explained to families that it wasn’t them, but the banks who were forcing their evictions: for the bank was a ‘monster’, they said, a creature which ‘breathes profits’ and ‘eats the interest on money’. ‘It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does,’ the land agents said, ‘and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men… It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.” [6] 

Yet financial systems can be bent towards the common good, as community credit unions and ethical investments attest, and today many are calling corporations to account for their destructive activities. Thanks to the work of legal campaigners governments are starting to recognise ecocide as an international crime: ‘mass damage and destruction of ecosystems – severe harm to nature which is widespread or long-term’. A pioneering barrister, author, and environmental lobbyist Polly Higgins once said, “The rules of our world are laws, and they can be changed. Laws can restrict or they can enable. What matters is what they serve.  Many of the laws in our world serve property – they are based on ownership. But imagine a law that has a higher moral authority… a law that puts people and planet first. Imagine a law that starts from first do no harm, that stops this dangerous game and takes us to a place of safety….” [7]

How we long to be travelling through untroubled waters, how we yearn for a place of peace in our life and in our world. We may need to struggle to reach that point, but reach it we can.

However troubled we may be by the big issues or the small problems of life, we each carry with us the means to overcome them. Our practice of faith helps us to reach that point. The spiritual writer John O’Donohue once beautifully wrote,  ‘Your identity is not equivalent to your biography. There is a place in you where you have never been wounded where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. The intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.’ [8]

‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ … The Creator of all things says: I will calm your storm. [9]

Let us embrace this word which Jesus speaks to young and old alike: I will calm your storm.

 

Notes

[1] CALM Impact Report 2020-21 [PDF].

[2] Mark Grief, Environmental Movement of the Mind. Adbusters #147, Vol. 28 No. 1, January/February 2020.

[3] CALM Impact Report 2020-21 [PDF].

[4] Richard Sennett,  That madness is a sane. The New York Times, 3 October 1971.

[5] Interview: Rachel Clare [Campaign Against Living Miserably]. Soundspheremag.com. Accessed 16 February 2022.

[6] John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Chapter 5.

[7] Polly Higgins quote from the Stop Ecocide International website.

[8] Krista Tippett, John O’Donohue: The Inner Landscape of Beauty. On Being, 28 February 2008, updated 10 February 2022.

[9] ‘I will calm your storm’, inspired by Billy Bragg, ‘I will be your shield’ from The Million Things that Never Happened, 2021. [Official Video on YouTube].

1 Corinthians 15.12-20, Luke 6.17-26

The Third Sunday before Lent, 13 February 2022

Austwick, Keasden

To what shall we compare the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is like a party in full swing, the dance floor full of people moving in tandem in time with the music, and a passer-by outside the window, looking in but unable to hear a sound, so lacking all understanding and appreciation of what is going on. 

Or as old Fred Nietzsche is alleged to have said, “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn’t hear the music.” [1]

And so the pre-eminent expression of Jesus’ teachings, the preface to his Sermon on the Mount, the passage of blessings and woes recorded by Luke which we heard again today and sometimes call The Beatitudes – these can only really be understood by those whose feet move to the music of the kingdom of God. 

For those passing by outside the window cannot comprehend a world where the poor are the blessed ones whilst the wealthy lack what is necessary to flourish; they cannot see how the hungry will be filled in a world dominated by the greedy. Those outside cannot comprehend how tears of grief can turn to laughter or how those who relish being spoken well of, turn out to be uninvited guests to the dance of life. 

The key to understanding the kingdom of God, a kingdom which is active now and to eternity; the earth-shaking moment which forces the window open, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

‘If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain,’ wrote St Paul. But if Christ has been raised, then our proclamation holds true and our faith is wholly justified. And the dance of life which is the kingdom of God we understand, appreciate, and enjoy as we move in tandem in time with its music.

In the kingdom of God the poor can be uplifted now, because of the resurrection. 

Because Christ is raised, all those who say there is a resurrection of the dead, trust that every kind of inequality can be surmounted.

And we have seen how the peoples who lack the most of this world’s goods so often make up for that in fellowship, companionship, mutual support, gratefulness and thanksgiving.

In the kingdom of God the hungry can be filled now, because of the resurrection.

Because Christ is raised, all those who say there is a resurrection of the dead, trust that all varieties of poverty can be annulled. 

And we have seen how people of faith respond to hunger on their doorstep by sharing what little they have with neighbours, by working at foodbanks and collecting for hostels, by joining Jubilee campaigns to release poor nations from debt, by volunteering with relief organisations overseas.

In the kingdom of God those who weep now will soon laugh, because of the resurrection. 

Because Christ is raised, all those who say there is a resurrection of the dead, have faith that every kind of bereavement can lead to life; that rebirth is always possible. 

And we have seen how those whose life has turned upside-down through loss find hope in the ongoing pattern of prayer and in the fellowship of the church; we have seen how those who at their lowest point saw no reason at all to continue to live, through friendship and faith find purpose to embrace new experiences.

In the kingdom of God even those most possessed by wealth may find greater riches in the heart: because Christ is raised, and there is a resurrection of the dead. 

And that is how we understand the motivation of groups like the Patriotic Millionaires, a collective  of the world’s richest people who are calling on government to make them pay more tax to help the world recover from the pandemic. “It’s a wonderful thing to be rich and successful,” says health care executive and practicing Christian John Driscoll. “But … we will be a better and more just society if we can pay our bills as a country and feed the poor.” [2]

In the kingdom of God even those most blessed by the finest food may hunger for others to be well fed: because Christ is raised, and there is a resurrection of the dead.

And that is why many in the wealthier world will donate to the Christian charity Tearfund this winter, to help them supply food to the starving of Afghanistan where ‘half of the population doesn’t have enough to eat.’ [3]

In the kingdom of God those who love to laugh without a care may learn to share the tears of the mourners and weep with those in distress: because Christ is raised, and there is a resurrection of the dead. 

And that is why many who have themselves been bereaved have found their grief, in time, turn to joy through befriending others also going through loss; that is why some people volunteer for helplines, whether for debt advice or mental health, listening to people on the edge and helping them towards a more stable, safer place.

In the kingdom of God those obsessed with being admired, the most liked and followed, may find themselves more fulfilled when they turn to reach out towards others: because Christ is raised, and there is a resurrection of the dead.

And that is why those who deliberately switch off their social media for good, to get away from its isolated and narcissistic activity, report how they’ve discovered a better life of friendship and conversation in the physical, and a world of wonder outdoors in nature. [4]

Because we believe in the Father who causes the green blade to rise from a dead seed going into the ground; because we believe in the Father who renews the earth season on season; because we believe in the Father who has raised his Son Jesus Christ, because we’ve experienced new beginnings, fresh starts in our own lives…. then we believe in the resurrection of the dead, and we can see clearly that the world Jesus depicts in the Beatitudes and develops in his Sermon on the Mount, is not a fantasy, not insanity, but is a truer and fuller world of music and motion in tandem with others than anything outside the window.

 

Notes

[1] Quote investigator: Those Who Dance Are Considered Insane by Those Who Can’t Hear the Music.

[2] Steve Rabey, ‘Tax the Rich!’ Say These “Patriotic Millionaires’. Ministry Watch, 28 December 2021.

[3] Rachael Adams Afghans facing a harsh winter without food. Tearfund, 17 Dec 2021.

[4] Megan Holstein, 10 Great Ways Quitting Social Media Changed My Life for the Better. Medium, 30 August 2021.

Isaiah 6.1-8, Luke 5.1-11

The Fourth Sunday before Lent, 6 February 2022 

According to the Roman statesman-philosopher Cicero, “the most shameful occupations are those which cater to our sensual pleasures: ‘fish-sellers, butchers, cooks, poultry-raisers, and fishermen’.” To me, this makes Cicero sound a bit of a snob; the sort of man with a weekend home in Padstow where at Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant he will enjoy a voguish platter of oysters, langoustines and sashimi, and then repair to the Harbour Inn where he’ll turn up his nose at a group of trawlermen jostling alongside him at the bar, their oilskins dripping fresh from their day’s catch. [1]

Fishermen are the working class men of the seas: forgotten, exploited, unsupported, reviled; fishermen are the peasant farmers of the oceans: eking out their precarious living at the mercy of the elements and the unpredictable ways of the creatures they harvest. Set adrift at the whims of governments; tossed and blown by unremitting market forces.

Many who work in UK waters today are share fishermen: crew-members of fishing boats with no contract of employment whose pay is a share of the profits or gross earnings of the boat. [2] Similar, then, to the families of Simon and Zebedee who typically worked the waters of Galilee together as small-scale collectives or cooperatives (‘partners’, as today’s reading translates it). [3]

Just as today’s fishermen operate in a world of fishing quotas, set by regulators on behalf of governments, which can be bought, sold and leased, so also the clannish cooperatives of Simon and Zebedee were indebted to tax brokers who disbursed fishing leases in their local harbours, whose revenues were in turn handed over to the chief tax collectors for the king. Then, as now, the fishermen’s subsistence living was shared with those who supported and supplied them: woodsmen with boat lumber, weavers with sail linen, farmers with net flax, stonemasons with anchors; and with the government-approved wholesalers and fish processors who they supplied. 

Whilst it was shepherds who took a starring role in the story of his birth, and other aspects of Galilean village life worked their way into his ministry, there’s no doubt that ‘the aphorisms, parables and metaphors, anecdotes, and social network of Jesus are all heavily influenced by the Sea of Galilee and its fish, fishing, fishermen, and fishing-villages.’ [4]

Jesus spent much of his time in fishing towns and villages like Bethsaida, Capernaum, Gennesaret, Magdala and Gerasa. And Capernaum fishing folk formed his closest social network: Peter, Andrew, James, and John, Peter’s mother-in-law and the mother of James and John; and Levi, described as a tax-collector, who may have been a broker. Then there was Mary, from Magdala, and the people of Capernaum and the crowds from Tyre and Sidon who followed him in numbers.

Think of some of Jesus’ finest moments: the calming of the storm, the walking on the water, that wonderful breakfast of broiled fish he cooked post-resurrection; not to mention the feeding of the 4000 and the 5000 with loaves and fishes. Consider how we often find him preaching from a boat, sleeping in a boat, casting off to the other side of the lake. Recall those miraculously wondrous catches of fish he orchestrated, and the day he paid his temple tax with a coin he conjured up from  the mouth of the first fish Peter caught. 

Jesus was a carpenter’s son but it was on and by the water, alongside fishermen and their womenfolk that he worked out his life’s mission, formed and expressed his vision of the kingdom of God. Jesus was a landlubber but it was the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James, and John who he chose to be his first and foremost co-workers in the gospel. It’s clear from the scriptures that when they left their nets to follow him, they only temporarily left them, for it was Jesus’ everyday  involvement with their ongoing fishing life which shaped the gospel as we know it. He trusted these ordinary working men to receive his message in their own way and to take it out into the towns and villages of Galilee, retelling it in their own voice. In so doing he modelled a way of Christian mission which has a precious past and must also have a bright future in the Church.

You can imagine these disciples telling the people of Galilee Jesus’ parable about the kingdom of heaven being like ‘a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.’ [5]

A modern-day fishermens’ story let’s call The Parable of the Tiny Trawler and the Fly-Shooter. To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is like a Newhaven trawler crew who set out to fish. They found their fishing grounds emptied by a massive Fly-Shooter, a factory ship fishing on an industrial scale. ‘One of those ships will catch more fish in an hour than we can catch all year’, one trawler man said, and another agreed, saying, ‘The trawl he tows could probably swallow St Paul’s Cathedral without a problem. There shouldn’t be vessels like this in the Channel because it doesn’t leave anything for the rest of us.’ The trawlermen radioed the Fly-Shooter crew and asked them to move on; but the Fly-Shooter refused to move on. So the trawlermen went to the government and asked them to impose legislation to stop overfishing in Marine Protected Areas; but the government did not do a thing. A sympathetic MP likened these colossal vessels to ‘a bulldozer going into a nature reserve and churning it all up’ and the fishermen, agreeing that industrial fishing had ‘killed’ their livelihoods, gave up their boat and sold it for a leisure craft.

This true story is told in a recent documentary, which reveals an unusual alliance between the UK’s small fishermen and Greenpeace, coming together to campaign for the proper enforcement of Marine Protected Areas. This alliance of working men and environmental activists brought insights and energy to all involved, and inspired one of the fishermen Martin Yorwarth to say, ‘The new world is going to look a little bit more like the old world and we need to learn from the old ways and older civilisations how they lived on this earth, if we are to protect the seas and this earth.’ [6]

This is a moment in history for re-shaping, re-learning. And perhaps for forging some unusual but fruitful alliances. The Anglican Church has too often stayed more comfortably within the social world of the Ciceros than of the fishermen, but the gospels are rooted in the the daily struggles of ordinary working people; I’m saying today that I think Jesus’ very ministry was shaped by them. 

As the numbers of paid clergy in the Church declines, the opportunity grows for us to foreground the calling of each Christian to share the mission of God in everyday life. After all, each baptised person is ‘gifted by the Holy Spirit with spiritual gifts for the work of ministry, in every area of their lives, both within and outside the organised church’. The devitalising model of one person being paid to do the church’s ministry on behalf of the whole community may in time be replaced by the far more vigorous gospel approach modelled by Jesus and his Capernaum fishing friends in which ‘teams of gifted people, ordained and lay, together carry out God’s work.’ [7] 

 

Notes

[1] Cicero, On Duties 1.42, quoted in K. C. Hanson, The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition; Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant, Padstow, Cornwall; The Harbour Inn, Padstow.

[2] Share fisherman: Income Tax and National Insurance contributions. HM Revenue & Customs, 25 September 2014.

[3] K. C. Hanson, The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition provides all the contextual details of Jesus and Galilean fishing life in this sermon.

[4] K. C. Hanson, The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition.

[5] Matthew 13.47-48.

[6] High & Dry: How UK Fishermen Were Sold Out by Brexit. Greenpeace UK, YouTube, 28 Jan 2022.

[7] The Center for Evangelical Mission, What is Total Ministry?