Month: April 2022

Acts 9.1-20, John 21.1-19

The Third Sunday of Easter, 1 May 2022, Eldroth, Clapham

I’ve a friend whose name is Stocki; well, the Reverend Steve Stockman to give him his full title. He’s a Belfast Presbyterian, the Minister of Fitzroy, one of the longest-established Presbyterian churches in that divided sectarian city; and because of that I was astonished to hear from him that last Monday morning he was sat in a library room in the Vatican with The Pope. 

Now even if like me, you only have an inkling of an idea about Northern Irish religious culture you’ll nevertheless grasp the weightiness of that piece of news. Take a moment to consider its significance – a Northern Irish Presbyterian in an audience with the worldwide head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope invited Steve to The Vatican in recognition of his work creating common ground within Belfast’s churches and communities. He was there with his wife Janice and his Roman Catholic friend and colleague Fr Martin Magill, parish priest of St John’s on the Falls Road, in a pilgrimage party from the Catholic Chaplaincy of Queen’s University Belfast, who are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. [1]

Steve knew of course that many of his co-religionists were less than impressed by this turn of events. Before making the trip to Rome Steve wrote saying that he had no doubts that many in his denomination and other Protestants would call him a heretic. But from what he had read and heard about Pope Francis, he said ‘I see him as a fellow follower of Jesus. I am particularly drawn to his humility and efforts to live outside the ostentatious ways of the Vatican; by his seeking of justice, working for peace and reconciliation and protecting the environment. These are all Biblical mandates that I can shake his hand over, even if he is the head of a different denomination.’ [2]

And shake his hand he did, on Monday morning, leaning in to say, ‘I am a Presbyterian’, at which The Pope took Steve’s other arm and kindly welcomed him even more. [3]

Pope Francis, Steve Stockman and Martin Magill all operate in a world where religious aggression and violence are rife, with their eyes wide open to the damage which is done when religious beliefs become entwined with nationalist political ideologies. It’s a world where Protestants and Catholics persecute each other just as the early Christians were persecuted by the Jews and Romans and where the Jews were later persecuted by the Christians; a world where today Russia is fighting what it sees as a holy war, a godly mission to restore Holy Russia, a ‘Russian world’ with a common political centre (Moscow), a common spiritual centre (Kyiv), a common language, a common church: the Russian Orthodox Church under the Patriarch of Moscow, who works in ‘symphony’ with a common leader (Putin) to govern this distinctive Holy Russian world. [4]

There’s a name for this ideology: ethno-phyletism, which is what happens when church and state come together on ethnic grounds, and in pursuing its aims creates ‘a world of collective persecution’. In the words of René Girard it is a ‘religious illusion… when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.’’ [5]

Today we meet a man on the road to Damascus driven by just such a vision of persecution for God’s sake. Saul, breathing threats and murder against Jesus’ disciples, and consorting with the high priest to round them all up. He’s convinced that by ridding Israel of these people he is faithfully serving God. What he doesn’t expect to hear is Jesus himself asking him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ What he doesn’t expect to find is that his clear-eyed vision of ethnic-religious purity is a form of spiritual blindness. What he doesn’t expect to happen next is to receive absolute forgiveness, and a brand new commission: to be ‘an instrument chosen by God to bring the name of Jesus before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel’. [6]

The scales which fell from Saul’s eyes were those illusions created by the false gods of religious and political ideology. His mission was no longer to serve religion, but simply to follow Christ. 

The transformation in the man came from a simple encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road. And I’m struck by the simple, bold message Pope Francis gave his Belfast visitors on Monday: that ‘The Christian faith is fundamentally about an encounter with Jesus Christ.’ 

I encourage you, he said, not only to deepen your understanding and appreciation of the intellectual and spiritual richness of our Catholic tradition, but also, and in a truly evangelical spirit, to cultivate the culture of encounter among yourselves and in the University community. The Christian faith is fundamentally about an encounter with Jesus Christ. If we truly believe in Jesus, we must do what Jesus does: encounter others, encounter our neighbours, in order to share with them the saving truth of the Gospel. As human beings, and especially as Christians, we are so made that we cannot live, develop and find fulfilment except in the pursuit of truth and in the sincere gift of ourselves to others. [7]

Now we know that Christ’s Passion revealed the working and the consequences of ‘the false gods of religion, politics, and ideologies. The murderers remain convinced of the worthiness of their sacrifices,’ René Girard says. ‘They, too, know not what they do and we must forgive them. The time has come for us to forgive one another. If we wait any longer there will not be time enough.’ [8]

The teaching of Jesus is pretty explicit: there’s only one kingdom to which we should hitch ourselves a ride, and that’s the Kingdom of God. 

The teaching of Paul is also clear: that ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’ So that any division of humanity into groups based on race, religion, language, ethnicity, or any other secondary feature is an evil, contrary to the Gospel, where all have equal access to his love and forgiveness, not as members of particular social or ethnic groups, but as persons created and born equally in the image and likeness of God. [9]

Jesus once said, ‘Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’ We are called to not merely pray for peace, but to actively and prophetically stand up and condemn injustice, to make peace even at the cost of our lives. As over 1400 Orthodox Christian theologians together recently declared, ‘there is no place for spiritual ‘quietism’ among the faithful and clergy of the Church, from the highest Patriarch down to most humble layperson. We cannot pray for peace while failing to actively make peace, whether out of fear or lack of faith.’ [10]

The late Henri Nouwen once said, ‘For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved.’ [11]

What we can do, is make every day an encounter with Jesus and others on the Way which leads to peace.

 

Notes

[1] Steve Stockman, Surmising meeting Pope Francis next week, Soul Surmise, 21 April 2022; Lisa Zengarini, Pope Francis encourages Irish students to promote culture of encounter, Vatican News, 25 April 2022.

[2] Steve Stockman, Surmising meeting Pope Francis next week, Soul Surmise, 21 April 2022.

[3] Steve Stockman, Surmising the day I met Pope Francis, Soul Surmise, 25 April 2022.

[4] ‘Russian world’ ideology is destructive, Church Times, 25 March 2022.

[5] ‘Russian world’ ideology is destructive, Church Times, 25 March 2022; Rene Girard, The Scapegoat, pp. 210-212, quoted by Paul Nuechterlein in Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Easter 3C.

[6] Acts 9.4,15.

[7] To Pilgrims from the Catholic Chaplaincy at Queen’s University, Belfast, Activities of the Holy Father Pope Francis, 25 April 2022.

[8] Rene Girard, The Scapegoat, pp. 210-212, quoted by Paul Nuechterlein in Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Easter 3C.

[9] ‘Russian world’ ideology is destructive, Church Times, 25 March 2022, quoting Galatians 3.28.

[10] ‘Russian world’ ideology is destructive, Church Times, 25 March 2022, quoting Matthew 9.13. 

[11] Widely attributed to Henri Nouwen.

John 20.19-31 

 The Second Sunday of Easter, 24 April 2022 , Austwick

Shame and fear in the disciples’ safe house; shame over their betrayal and retreat on the Friday Jesus died; fear for the punishment which seemed likely to come their way from the religious authorities seeking out Jesus’ collaborators. And underlying this, an even greater sense of foreboding that the God who had seen his son mercilessly killed would bring a terrible retribution on them all. Surely this is how any god would behave in such circumstances… 

How unexpected, and how wonderful, then, that when Jesus came and stood among them he didn’t come in vengeful anger, raining down the fire of a wrathful God. No: instead, he came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’. 

‘Peace be with you’ – a peace to release them from the terrible guilt they had been carrying; 

‘Peace be with you’ – a peace to fill and mend their bereaved and broken hearts; 

‘Peace be with you’ – a peace which meant that they could drop any accusations of each other’s culpability: a peace to take their rivalry away; 

‘Peace be with you’ – the peace of God’s unprecedented, incomparable forgiveness: 

‘Peace be with you’ – on the first day of the resurrection, what a wonderful peace Jesus brought. 

How this must have changed their mood. This must have impressed itself on Thomas, who, seeing the change in his fellow-disciples and believing what they’d told him, didn’t doubt the resurrection. No, it was rather that Thomas still doubted the crucifixion. Thomas wanted evidence that Jesus had actually died that cruel death – he wanted to see his body wounds – because he was struggling to believe that the event had actually happened – that Jesus their Lord had been executed; that the one who was supposed to be saving them from the powers which oppressed them, had submitted himself to those very powers; that the Messiah had become a victim of the violence of the world. 

Thomas believed the disciples when they said that they had seen their Lord alive. He’d seen them miraculously transformed from being full of guilt and fear to being full of peace. His question was – could Jesus really have died so violently in the first place, if, on coming back to life, he was so free of vengeance, so lacking retribution, so full of forgiveness, so generous with peace? 

The question for Thomas was, can I conceive of a Messiah who has clearly suffered violence but who now refuses to retaliate? He found it hard to, but, in the end, he did. When the wounded but fully alive Jesus appeared before him in a spirit of peace, Thomas could see that God was doing things differently here. He could see that death was now defeated, vengeful violence overcome; retribution was a thing of the past, forgiveness was full and complete. On Easter evening, Thomas came to believe that an executed Messiah had saved him. And with the rest of the disciples Thomas now knew and felt that Jesus had taken his guilt away, because he had taken away the sin of the world – that universal human trait to create victims onto whom we transfer all our guilt and shame. [2] 

This new knowledge, this transformation in their hearts and minds, was reinforced by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the proceedings of that beautiful, scandalous night. 

‘Peace be with you,’ Jesus said. ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’. 

After the event, the peace he offered was the peace of taking their guilt away. The peace of someone being acquitted from the charge of a death-penalty crime. 

This is because the Holy Spirit who Jesus brought them was the advocate who Jesus refers to in John 14, the one who is called on to tell us the truth about God. The hidden room became like a courtroom, a place of judgement, for there before the disciples on Easter night the Holy Spirit judged that just as Jesus is not guilty of the charges his executors made against him, so those who executed him are no longer guilty either, because of the resurrection. 

The reason for this is simple. There is no longer any evidence of the crime. The tomb is empty, Jesus is not dead. And without a dead body the prosecution cannot proceed in this capital case. Because of what Karl Barth calls ‘The evidence of the raised victim’, the Holy Spirit who judges this resurrection case pronounces the accused not guilty. The resurrection means that the Holy Spirit must close the book on their case, must set the accused free, must release them from guilt entirely. [3] 

That acquittal applied to the disciples, and to everyone who has ever been convicted of their guilt before God. That acquittal applies to anyone who has ever sinned and fallen short, and in any way contributed to the sort of violence which made a scapegoat of Jesus and put him on the cross. The Holy Spirit’s acquittal applies to anyone who has ever let anyone else take the blame and punishment for something they themselves have done, anyone who has stood by and let an innocent victim suffer in their place. 

The Holy Spirit’s acquittal applies to you and me. And as Jesus appears to his disciples and says, ‘Peace be with you’, so he is waiting to appear to us and bring us that same peace, free of all retribution and vengeance, absolutely complete in forgiveness and heavenly grace. 

Like Thomas we may struggle to believe that a crucified God could behave so mercifully. But we may ask the Holy Spirit to help convict us of the wonderful truth that the resurrection releases for us, and for all people. 

‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit’. 

 

Notes 

[1] This is a rewrite of The Resurrection: believe the peace, preached in Devon, 2011.

[2] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Second Sunday of Easter, Year A and Epiphany, Year A (transcription of Gil Bailie on the “Lamb of God”).

[3] This paragraph owes much to S. Mark Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, A Theology of the Cross, p.145-147.

Acts 10.34-43, John 20.1-18

Easter Day, 17 April 2022, Austwick, Clapham, Keasden

A man is brutally executed by soldiers of the occupying forces. Fearing his body would be roughly disposed of and lost, a friend risks his own safety to negotiate with the military – and maybe there is money involved – to take the body himself. He struggles to carry it to a familiar burial ground, leaves it in a new tomb, seals the entrance. But after two nights, at daybreak on the third day, grieving friends find the entrance open, the tomb empty, the body gone. The men run away convinced that enemy soldiers have done this, too fearful of the risk of ambush and arrest to linger there. But like someone who can’t help but keep returning to the scene of a fatal crash with flowers and tributes to the loved one last seen there, a sole woman remains by the tomb, weeping. 

We’ve heard stories like these daily since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on 24th February. A woman who has seen her loved ones murdered before her own eyes and had to bury them at the roadside with her own hands, now keeps vigil there despite the gunfire around her, lost in her trauma, grieving, weeping.

These tragic scenes are each the stuff of contemporary warfare; but the first story comes from scripture, from the evangelist John’s account of the death of Jesus. It’s almost unbearable to realise that events like these are universal, spanning time and place. As Edmund Banyard put it*, 

One Friday in Eternity a man was hung they say,

A man was hung, but why the fuss, it happens every day;

Hung, shot or crucified, who cares, it happens every day.

One Friday in Eternity repeated every day.

If the sole woman remaining by the tomb, weeping, is a universal scene then so must be the next act in the gospel story. A man approaches Mary Magdalene. She turns around and sees Jesus standing there, but she doesn’t recognise him. He says to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she says to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus says, ‘Mary!’ She turns and says to him, ‘Rabbouni! Teacher!’

Of Jesus’ execution Edmund Banyard writes, 

One Friday in Eternity that man was God they say,

If that is true – if God was there – it happens every day;

If God was sharing mortal pain it happens every day.

One Friday in Eternity repeated every day.

If these Friday events are universal then Mary’s encounter on the Sunday must also ‘happen every day’. Mary turns as she learns – from the teacher – that amid her grief she is awakening to an unexpected, radically new beginning. And from this we too may turn from our griefs and learn to find little resurrections happening every day. 

We hear about them sometimes; they may even make the news: as weeping people turn to find comfort in an unexpected friend; as those bereaved by violence resolve to turn their pain into campaigning for peace; as exiles start life over in safe homes in new places; as a person’s brutalising anger melts into forgiveness.

It’s never immature to believe in resurrections; and it’s never premature to anticipate new beginnings, even in the darkest circumstances. For new beginnings start with weeping. This can be our hope in dark times. As we recognise that every day God shares our mortal pain, so every day, even in the deepest grief, we may awaken to new beginnings.

 

Note

*Edmund Banyard, One Friday in Eternity © Copyright 1972 Stainer & Bell Ltd.

 

Luke 19.28-40

Palm Sunday, 10 April 2022

Austwick, Keasden

You know that story of old King Canute who set his throne on the sea shore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. It ends with the tide rising as usual, dashing over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. [1] Two things surprise us about this story: firstly the king’s excessive sense of self-importance, his conceit in assuming that his power extended not only over his people but over the waves themselves; and secondly, it’s surprising that his subjects did not challenge him in any way, that no-one warned him off his potential drowning, as though every single subject in the land somehow failed to see what was surely coming to him. 

In Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale an emperor spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters, and two swindlers offer to supply him with magnificent clothes they say are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. As they set to work, the emperor and his officials visit to check their progress, and see that their looms are empty but – to avoid being thought a fool – each pretends otherwise. Finally, when the emperor’s suit is “finished”, they mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The emperor, his courtiers and all the townsfolk go along with the pretence, none wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that “He hasn’t got anything on.” “Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?” said the child’s apologetic father. But one person whispered to another, “He hasn’t anything on. A child says he hasn’t anything on.” Then the people realised they’d all been fooled, and the whole town cried out at last, “But he hasn’t got anything on!” Although startled, the emperor continued his procession, walking more proudly than ever. [2]

So today on Palm Sunday of all days I invite you to join me in saying, Hosanna! to all who puncture the pomp of kings and rulers, to reveal the hidden truth of their sorry passing powers; Hosanna! to those who illuminate the pitiful deference of their subjects so as to open the people’s eyes to other outlooks.

Today I say Hosanna! to the graffiti artist Banksy who takes his airbrush to the Separation Wall which permits the president and people of Israel to assume superiority and control over their Palestinian neighbours – and Banksy paints holes on the Palestinian side of the wall with scenes of beautiful hillsides and olive groves in the gap he creates on his concrete canvas; he paints people walking up staircases over the top of the wall, and ladders, and in one place a life-size image of an Israeli soldier with the palms of his hands spread against the wall being frisked by a tiny Palestinian girl in a pink dress. [3]

Today I say Hosanna! to Sroja Popovic and his fellow-members of the student movement that brought down the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. Early in their campaigning they realised that Milošević only continued in power because he made people afraid, and that the only thing that could trump fear was laughter. And that ‘humour doesn’t just make you chuckle – it makes you think.’ So their protests included arranging a mass birthday party for the president where the people were invited to leave him birthday cards with messages which turned out to be largely uncomplimentary, and gifts – like a jail uniform and a one way ticket to the International Criminal Court at the Hague. [4]

Today I say Hosanna! to others inspired by Popovic to burst the bubble of pompous presidents; like the Russian protestors avoiding being shot at by instead arranging a line of Lego people, Kinder Surprise toys, model soldiers, soft toys and toy cars on a Siberian city street, holding little banners complaining about government corruption – forcing the authorities to have to ridiculously follow up by outlawing toys from protesting. Or the residents of a Polish town who took their TVs for a walk in wheelbarrows to show that they weren’t at home watching state propaganda on them. Or Syrian trouble-makers who hid tiny speakers playing anti-Assad songs in bins and manure piles, so that his hated police enforcers would have to dig around in them to turn them off. [5]

Today I say Hosanna! to those climate activists who dress as dinosaurs holding banners saying “You’re all about to go extinct… like me”, bursting the bubble of presidents, CEOs and the people’s complacency over the acute climate emergency. [6]

And I say Hosanna! to Marina Ovsyannikova, that Russian TV journalist who last month walked onto the set of a live news broadcast holding a sign saying, “Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” After resigning her post Ovsyannikova later admitted the high risks her protest brought her family, but, “But we need to put an end to this fratricidal war so this madness does not turn into nuclear war,” she said. “I hope when my son is older he will understand why I did this.” [7]

And, this may surprise you, but: today I say Hosanna! to King Canute, whose story is so often misrepresented, in exactly the way I misrepresented it at the start of this talk. For Canute’s real purpose in setting his throne by the sea shore and commanding the incoming tide to stop, was in his words, to show all the people “how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” From the day of this episode Canute hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again “to the honour,” he said, “of God the almighty King”. [8]

This is a heavenly king who set in motion the crazy, wonderful practice of revealing the deficiencies of worldly rulers and the gullibility of their subjects by choosing to ride a donkey into Jerusalem on the same day that the Roman emperor entered the city in the high pomp of a military procession. [9]

The crowds who welcomed Jesus said Hosanna! as he passed their way – for they were in on the great joke he was performing, to reveal the inadequacy of the presumption that worldly power is the greatest power. Preachers like me have often fallen for the trick of believing that the crowd who joined in Jesus’ pantomime donkey act that day were the same people who later that week shouted “Crucify him!” to let the high priests and King Herod get him out of their way. What if they weren’t the same people – what if these palm-wavers never wavered in their appreciation of Jesus’ week-long act of revelation which ended on the cross where it once and for all became clear that worldly power rests on rivalry and bloodshed, which wobbles and falls when it is shown up for the deficient and imbalanced thing it is. It was not the new king of Israel who was resurrected on Easter morning. It was the eternally loving, self-giving, Prince of Peace. 

Palm Sunday: it’s a timely reminder that peace never comes through presidents wielding weapons of war, not even popular ones like Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Peace comes self-sacrificially, with unconditional love for enemies and with overflowing grace. Peace comes cheekily defying the violence of the world’s powers. Not travelling to Jerusalem on a T-64 tank, no: peace comes riding a donkey. [10]

 

Notes

[1] Wikipedia: King Canute and the tide.

[2] Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes (Jean Hersholt, translator).

[3] BanksyExplained.com, The Segregation Wall, Palestine, 2005; Etsy.com, Banksy canvas Israel Frisk Street Art Grafitti.

[4] Srdja Popovic, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Non-violent Techniques to Galvanise Communities, Overthrow Dictators, Or Simply Change the World, p.100; Jeremy Williams, Blueprint for Revolution, by Srdja Popovic. The Earthbound Report, 28 October 2019.

[5] Jeremy Williams, Blueprint for Revolution, by Srdja Popovic. The Earthbound Report, 28 October 2019.

[6] Nicole Cobler, “Y’all bout to go extinct like me.” More signs from Austin’s #ClimateStrike, where dozens of students have walked out of school to protest. Twitter, 20 September 2019.

[7]  Agence France-Presse in Paris, Russian journalist who staged anti-war TV protest quits job, but rejects French asylum offer. Guardian, 18 March 2022.

[8] Wikipedia: King Canute and the tide. Quoting from Henry of Huntingdon (Author), Diana Greenway (Translator), The History of the English People 1000-1154.

[9] See my previous Psalm Sunday talk for more on this: The donkey-king is coming! Jesus’ crowd is a Flash Mob (2019). Drawing on Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, What the Gospels really teach about Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem, p.2-5.

[10] In the midst of the Russian invasion Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is being widely exalted in the Western media as the ‘hero of our times’. The T-64 is the primary tank used by the Ukrainian military.