Category Archives: theology

Cool

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Great (and short) quiz – ‘which church father are you’ – here (via JP). I’m quite pleased with my result!

You’re St. Justin Martyr!

You have a positive and hopeful attitude toward the world. You think that nature, history, and even the pagan philosophers were often guided by God in preparation for the Advent of the Christ. You find “seeds of the Word” in unexpected places. You’re patient and willing to explain the faith to unbelievers.

Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

How often should you forgive your brother?

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How often should you forgive your brother? I wrote, regarding the TEC’s response to Tanzania, that “for me, the issue of out-of-area interference is more crucial, theologically, than the question of homosexuality” – to which Simon responded “I am seriously disturbed that you think church politics is more important than knowing how God wants us to behave and trusting in Him to define what is and what isn’t sin! And how is out-of-area interference important theologically? Where in the Bible is there the slightest hint of this territorialism being endorsed?”

This is a sketch of my response (which would have been longer if I’d been mentally up to it!) Click ‘full post’ for text.

One of Jesus’ most clear and consistent teachings is ‘judge not, lest ye be judged, for the measure that you give will be the measure you receive’ (Mt 7.1-5); not only is it something which he taught, but it is something which he embodied throughout his life and ministry, and for which he was criticised and ultimately sentenced to death by the religious authorities of his time.

Yet he also taught this:

What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray. In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.

If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, (amen,) I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”

I quote this passage at length because the core passage, about possibly expelling the immoral brother from our midst, is set in the midst of extensive teaching about the priority of forgiveness. There are various ways of reading this, but surely the heart of it is a) the humility that is essential for pointing out sin in another, ie being conscious of our own shared sin; as well as b) a recognition that there is such a thing as sin, which is harmful and needs to be overcome.

What Jesus provides here is a framework within which disagreements can be sorted out in order to establish, or re-establish, the living relationship which is the mark of the Christian community. First have a private conversation; then involve a few others; then involve the whole church – only then, at the end of the process, if the sin is denied (ie there is a different framework of values being employed) is it right to – with heavy hearts – move away from the ‘pagan’ understanding.

This is the first charge I’d make against the ‘extra-territorial interferers’ (the ETI) – that by establishing links with churches in the US and UK which run outside the accepted parameters of the churches own structure and discipline, they are ignoring both the detail and the context of Jesus’ command. They have already judged the US church to be apostate, and are acting on that basis. That is not Christian.

OK, a second quotation (Acts 15):

Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question…The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”…We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.”

What we have here is an example of a dispute within local churches being sent up the hierarchical chain so that the apostles can make a decision. That decision – in contrast to their own Scriptures – was to include the gentiles without making them conform to Mosaic law. The key point is: ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’. So far, we have the election of a gay bishop, which meets that criteria in the context of New Hampshire; and the escalation of the dispute up the chain of hierarchy. Trouble is, what the ETI group have done is akin to the Pharisees opting out of the church before it got to James and Peter to make the decision.

What brings out my point most clearly is the refusal to share the receipt of communion with Jefferts Schori, by a handful of Bishops in Tanzania. That seemed to go directly against the teaching of Jesus on all sorts of levels.

This was the context for my comment that the cross-border interference was more theologically significant for me than the specific question of homosexuality. The latter question is a particular issue, to be resolved one way or another by the church; the former issue destroys any possibility of church in the first place. I see it as of a piece with the widespread individualism and lack of charity that characterises much fundamentalist theology – and which is, paradoxically, far more of a construct of US culture than the theology which the ETI seem to so vehemently oppose.

As I say, I wanted to make this a bit more full and clear, but I suppose a half-baked post is better than none!

LUBH 5 – The Wrath of God

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Transcript of session 5 of my talks on Christianity and Peak Oil. This one is exploring the nature of God’s wrath, and how it should be understood. Click on ‘full post’ to read the text – it’s about 5000 words.

Good morning and welcome. It’s nice to be back. One practical thing in terms of dates because of the session that was missed [I was ill], I’m simply shoving all the topics back by one and there will be an extra session on 10 March to make up the balance. If you look on the web site there are now slightly retitled talks to make things a bit clearer, so for example, I’m going to have one session on “The Green Bible, one session called “With you is my contention O priest” which gives you a bit more of an idea of what the topics will be.

But this morning I want to be talking about wrath, and I want to convince you really of two things. This is John the Baptist proclaiming “who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” and then you’ve got Julian of Norwich, “there is no wrath in God”. I want to convince you that both these things are true. That there is wrath, that the phrase the wrath of God refers to something real but also that there is no wrath in God, so that’s my challenge for this morning. Now I do have a hand-out, but I do want to hold it back just for the second, otherwise you might see a surprise too soon.

I want to begin with outlining the pagan understanding of sacrifice, this is Andromeda. Anyone seen “Clash of the Titans”? Remember this bit, basically Andromeda’s mum has offended the gods by saying that Andromeda is so beautiful, and the gods are offended, and disaster descends upon the city, a famine, and in order to work out why it is that there is a famine, they go to the oracle and the oracle says, “It’s because you have offended the gods by describing Andromeda as being so beautiful and therefore what you have to do is sacrifice Andromeda to the gods and then all your troubles will be over.” And this is what happens, you’ve got Andromeda chained to the rock and you’ve got the Kraken coming to gobble her up, but of course if you’ve seen the film, you’ve got Perseus coming along with the head of the Medusa which turns the Kraken to stone. But’s that a separate thing.

But this is the pagan understanding of sacrifice, you have got an angry god who needs to be appeased, the gods have been offended and therefore we have to give up something in order to appease the angry god. OK, this is the pagan concept. Think of Aztec sacrifice for example, or think of King Kong. You know, lots of theology going on here, but the understanding that in order to appease this angry vengeful monster, you have to offer up these beautiful virgins for sacrifice. This is the pagan conception, alright? And at the heart of it is this sense of you’ve got to appease, you’ve got to appease a wrathful god. OK?

Now there are elements of it found in the old testament, if you want to go away and look up this passage, 2 Samuel chapter 21, you have a little account of where the Gibeonites are suffering from a famine and so are the Israelites and so the cause is found to be an offence committed against the Gibeonites; who now want all of Saul’s sons to be offered up in sacrifice. And so they are sacrificed at the beginning at the barley harvest and the famine ends. So, you know, it is not something which is foreign to the Old Testament. It is however, not the Jewish understanding of sacrifice. Which is what I want to explore with you.

This is Solomon’s temple and really what I want to do is talk through the ritual of the Day of Atonement as it happened in the first temple period. Now this could get a bit complicated, but hopefully I will do it gently enough to make it understandable. You recognise the rough shape, here you have got the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, this is the main temple area and here of course, only the High Priest can come, this is the priestly area, the men’s area, the women’s area is out here and so forth, you have got a real hierarchy going up to what’s holy, what’s the most holy bit. OK.

Now the Day of Atonement is when the people get reconciled with God and their sins get wiped away, OK, that’s fairly well understood, and there is a particular ritual which the High Priest goes through on this day which I am going to talk through with you, because this is quite important for understanding the Jewish view of God – and how it is different to the pagan. To begin with the High Priest comes in and he sacrifices an ox as propitiation for his sins. OK? So the High Priest, having made that sacrifice, becomes ritually pure, OK, he’s cleansed. And as a result of that the High Priest then puts on a bright white robe, because in a ritual at that point the High Priest adopts if you like the persona of God, of Yahweh. He becomes Yahweh for a day, he acts in the name of the Lord. And the phrase that we have in our Eucharist “Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” is taken from this liturgy. So the High Priest becomes the one who wears this bright white robe and he becomes Yahweh for the day, he becomes an angelic figure. He is also called the Son of God at points in the liturgy, OK, so this is what is going on.

The High Priest becomes this bright white figure and he then takes two animals, two sheep or two goats normally, and by process of lot, i.e. chance selection, one is chosen to represent basically the demons, Azazael, he becomes, that goat becomes the scapegoat, of which more later, and the other one represents God, so you have got two goats representing like the good and the evil. And what then happens is that the Priest sacrifices the God goat. OK? In the Holy of Holies. So the goat is sacrificed up in the Holy of Holies and the blood in then sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, and this represents the cleansing of creation. Because the Holy of Holies represents God in his essence as it were. Beyond space and time, beyond creation. So there is the sacrifice of the goat there which represents the cleansing, purifying. OK.

Then what happens is that the High Priest comes out from the Holy of Holies and here you have got the curtain, this is where the curtain is, OK, the curtain that gets torn in two. That one. And what happens when the High Priest comes out he gets wrapped in fabric, the same material as the curtain, and this represents God engaging with the creation. So it is not God in pure white linen, pure purity, it’s God engaging with creation. OK, and he then continues to sprinkle the blood of the goat around this area and around the people gathered, OK? And that is the cleansing of their sins, so you have had the cleansing of creation as it were and expanded outwards the one representing God is coming out into creation and acting to cleanse the people OK? And what then happens – and that represents the healing of the world, the wiping out of their sins – and what then happens is that the High Priest and the other Priest lay hands on the scapegoat, which is the second goat and they drive that goat out. Normally you know, there is a crowd to drive the goat off a cliff and kill it, but that represents the sins being driven out from the community and at the end of this ritual, OK, the people are reconciled to God. So that’s the dynamic.

Now did that make sense just going through those steps?

Because there is one key thing going on here, which is why the Jewish understanding is different to the pagan one, and it is obvious what the difference is. The difference is in the pagan understanding the motion is from sinners towards God, that the sinners do something to appease the god. In the Jewish understanding it is God who is active, who moves towards the sinners. So it is God who is taking the responsibility to overcome sin and estrangement in the world. That’s the fundamental difference. Does that make sense?

Is that a surprise to people? People were aware of this… Now this is quite crucial. For if you are going for example in the letter to the Hebrews, this is what Jesus does, I’ll come on and explain that a bit more in a second. So just to summarise what’s going on. This is the High Priest, first temple period, as I say, the High Priest goes through this journey, this ritual enactment of God’s activity in reaching out towards creation, he goes into the Holy of Holies, represents God, and it is God’s initiative that is being carried out OK, that God is benign. God’s not angry. God is the one actively reaching out in love. You know, there is a profound consistency between this and Christianity, if it isn’t obvious. OK. Now as I say this is where our understanding of Christ’s sacrifice begins, OK? Because this is what Jesus is doing, Jesus is the great High Priest who is acting in the stead of God, obviously the doctrine is developed, but He is the one who is acting as the great High Priest, he is doing this work and He’s not sacrificing an ox at the beginning of the process, He is himself the sacrifice. Make sense?

But the question is, there is this notion of sacrifice going on, you still have got a dynamic whereby there is an angry deity present. But the angry deity is not Yahweh. So who is the angry deity? We are. God is acting to try and overcome our wrath. To reveal it to us and to set us free from it. We are the ones being revealed as the pagans who require sacrifice in order to maintain our sense of identity and social processes, we are the angry ones, we are the ones being revealed as that through what happens to Christ, and the revealing of that and in particular the resurrection, which I’ll come on to in a second, is what sets us free from being trapped in this process. Jesus doesn’t refer to the Old Testament directly very often, but there is one bit from Hosea which he quotes twice, and he says, “Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy not sacrifice.” God is consistent in acting from love, OK? This is the really core fundamental point.

So if God is not wrathful in the sense of this pagan angry deity, “Oh no, you’ve called your daughter beautiful therefore I’m upset.” – you know, that is totally not what the Christian God is about! – what is this language of wrath referring to, because it is certainly saturated in the Old Testament and it is not vanished, it is not absent from the New Testament? Paul for example beginning of Romans talking about wrath, there is a theme in Paul’s writings, but there tends in Paul to be “wrath” rather than “the wrath of God“. I think something like twenty to twenty five references to wrath, only two or three are to the wrath of God. Mostly he refers to wrath as the concept.

So what is it? Two senses. One natural and one human. And that’s really what I’m going to try and describe for you. It is not a divine attribute in the sense that it is not something that is within God’s nature. It’s something that we can experience but it is not intrinsic to who God is, you know, the verse from I think it’s 1 John, “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.” God is love and in Him there is no wrath. OK, but this concept this language of wrath describes something essential, very important. So the natural, what’s the natural side. Well, we understand that the world is made through Christ, that the world is consistent, it can be understood, and that’s what we call logos. Of course this fits in very neatly with a lot of Greek philosophy, that the world is made consistently. And that is one of the foundations for the development of science in the Western world, that because you can trust the maker of the world to be consistent, therefore you can actually apply scientific method to discern truth. You know, scientific method depends upon some prior theological assumptions. If you’ve got a situation where you have got a panoply of gods intervening willy nilly there’s nothing reliable on which you can base your science, but at any point something really arbitrary can happen. OK?

So this understanding of natural theology, that the world is consistent and bound by laws that we can see and understand, OK, and of course one of the claims made, particularly in medieval theology is that there were two ways of understanding God, you had got the book of nature and the written word, the Bible. And that you can discern the nature of God from looking at His creation; contemplating the creation can lead you to affirm the Creator. It can’t lead you to affirm Christ, that’s the realm of Revelation, but you can through natural reason come to the conclusion that God exists. OK, and it all flows from this.

But if the world is consistent and bound by laws that means that the transgression of those laws has particular consequences. If you put your hand in the fire you will get burnt. OK, it’s simple. But that I think is one of the main ways in which the language of wrath can be applied. Wrath is when we experience the consequences of our actions, and grace is when we escape the consequences of our actions. I’ve talked before about karma, because this is if you like the equivalent concept to natural law, that the world is consistent, that every action has a necessary consequence and it cannot be escaped. That if you do something wrong that wrong will return to you, if you do something good, that good will return to you. OK. Now grace doesn’t fit into that system, but there is as I say, an analogous understanding to karma in the doctrine of natural law. That the world is consistent and has certain effects, and therefore if we break the bounds, if we break the laws, then we will suffer the consequences, unless grace intervenes. So this is a sense, I think one of the most important senses in which we can talk about wrath, even the wrath of God, that when we breach the laws – remember the thing about the Ten Commandments, it is not the Ten Commandments, often we miss out the first sentence, which is “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.” Again this is this benign God acting for our welfare. And then gives these commandments which set out how to live, and if we observe them we flourish, when we break them we suffer, that’s all part of this process. Make sense?

Another sense in which wrath can be described, coming back to the scapegoat. Human society, if it isn’t rooted in God, in right worship, right relationships with self and neighbour, it will fixate on to something else. Something else will be used to form a society around and that idol, for want of a better word, and that idol will need to be sacrificed to in the pagan sense in order to keep the society together. Perfect example, I know it’s a cliché but 1930’s Germany and the scapegoating of the Jews. A society which is under tremendous stress for all sorts of reasons, seeks to shore up its unity by picking on a scapegoat and therefore you get a unity amongst the majority through denying and expelling a minority. OK? And that this is if you like a fact of human nature. If we are not centred on God then we tend to be centred on something else and that something else becomes an idol.

A little hint, [picture of muslim woman in a veil] some of the ways that our society is trying to shore up its identity because we are also very weak. But essentially it is pointing out the truth about our own unredeemed natures. That we are prone to violence and anger and slaughter and sacrifice, and this is what we need to be redeemed from, and of course what that means in terms of the course of human history is war. And I think this is the second way in which the language of wrath can be used. That wrath is first and foremost about if you break the natural order you will suffer, but it also something about the nature of who we are as a human society when we are fallen, that if we don’t focus our human society on God, on the Living God, we will end up having this process of scapegoating and sacrifice repeating itself, and therefore wrath, in this sense, is something human but it is also very, very real. Can you see the two senses of wrath which I want to hang on to?

Now it comes back as always to Christ, remember that He said He was going to abolish the temple and create it again in three days. The empty tomb now corresponds to the Holy of Holies, you know, God has come out from the place of sacrifice and we are sprinkled clean, instead of the goat, goat’s blood, we have Christ’s blood, which makes us clean and reconciled with God. OK. And there is a feature, the two angels at the empty tomb, correspond to the two cherubim on the Holy of Holies, you know, once you are sort of tuned into this there are all sorts of references being picked up in the New Testament accounts. Of Christ the High Priest who has gone and been sacrificed and who comes out and cleanses us, the letter to the Hebrews is the main one, but there are all sorts of references elsewhere. And this isn’t separable from either the crucifixion or the Last Supper, the three things together, hang together and can’t be separated out. “This is my blood of the New Covenant shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” This is the sacrifice which we are called to share in. OK. We are made clean by the blood of the Lamb.

And the core of it is, it is about aligning ourselves with Christ. Christ is through whom the world was created and in so far as we are aligned with Christ we thereby keep the law. You know, standard Christian sense, standard Christian teaching, but just you know, articulating, linking it in with the process of sacrifice, that when we do this we are aligning with who Christ is and therefore if you like we are keeping the law. And the Eucharist begins, think of our liturgy, the Eucharist itself begins with the exchange of peace. And that is very important because that is what stops the scapegoating, the human wrath, that you are at peace with your neighbour. You are not at peace because you are both righteous, you know, we come to it as sinners, as people in need of forgiveness, we can’t get that forgiveness by our own merit, we are relying on that benign God coming out to us, and therefore because we don’t have any righteousness of our own, we are not expelling anyone else who is unrighteous, because we are none of us righteous. It is a core element of sharing the bread and wine, that we don’t expel beforehand. This is what Jesus is accomplishing. This new Covenant. It begins with the exchange of peace and so we receive the forgiveness and we give thanks for it. That’s what the word Eucharist means. It is giving thanks.

But can you see how this is picking up the themes of what went on in the first temple and is focused on a benign God acting to redeem us, to set us free, can you see the link? Good, good. Right. Swifter than I was expecting!

OK, the wrath that is to come. Jeremiah who I quote a lot and what I have been talking about so far, that we are in a situation where we have been profoundly transgressing the natural laws. And one of the sessions, for example on the green Bible, I will be picking out all the elements in scripture which indicate the natural laws that we have been breaking, and there’s a lot. And because we have been transgressing those laws, breaching the limits, then wrath is going to descend upon us, unless grace intervenes, unless we change our ways radically. But if things carry on the way they are, there will be wrath descending upon us because of these breaches of the natural law. So that’s one aspect of talking about the coming wrath, and the second is, as I say, the human consequences, that this is going to put societies around the world, it already is putting societies around the world under tremendous strain.

Rwanda for example, they have done an analysis of where the slaughter was worse and it was where the population was most dense. They weren’t able to feed themselves and they slaughtered each other and it was actually less to do with Hutus and Tutsis than to do with where the population was most dense. These things have begun. This is wrath. “Come let us return to the Lord for He has torn us and He will heal us.” Another one of my favourite verses. That there is never anything inevitable, that hope is one of the most important Christian virtues to keep us going, and it is a decision, it is not a feeling, hope is always a decision to be made. And we return to the Lord because the Lord is merciful. The Lord is forgiving and compassionate and doesn’t want the death of a sinner but that the sinner should turn from his ways and live. You know this is always what God is calling us towards.

God is not for our punishment, God is merciful. The wonderful passage is Micah, “What shall I do O Lord? He has shown you, O man, what is good, you must do justice and love kindness and walk humbly before your God.” We know what the answers are, the answers haven’t changed, it is that we need to turn back to it. And in particular our imaginations, in particular how we understand God, who we understand God to be, whether we picture in our hearts and minds God as someone angry, seeking to punish and chastise, or whether we see God as someone loving and merciful, seeking to bring us into life. I think this is actually where the real fundamental work needs to be done. Our imaginations need to be renewed in the light of Christ, who He was and how He taught. And that requires us to explore the question of apocalypse, which is next week’s session. Exploring what the language of apocalypse is doing, how Jesus uses it and therefore how we are to use it, because the language is like applying the language of the wrath of God, and therefore how we understand that is quite important. And that was quicker than I was expecting, so a shorter session this morning! Questions, thoughts. Interesting?

What year was Solomon’s temple? About 980 BC, that’s off the top of my head, it might be out by a bit, but that sort of time.

Was it the same as the Ancient Egyptians? Exactly the same? Could well be. I don’t know much about Egyptians, what I find ironic though is that the chapel at my school was also built on that model. It didn’t have a Holy of Holies but it had that sort of structure and shape.

It is quite difficult to explain it now but there is a sort of esoteric significance in the layout of the Holy of Holies which actually corresponds to the temple of the body, the human body... Right. The Holy of Holies is actually the head and the eastern turns of the chapel where the spiritual light comes in and so the curtain actually represents the division between the head area and the rest of the body. I’m not sure that would – in the Old Testament the heart actually does the job which the mind is considered elsewhere, the heart is the seat of judgement, and therefore drives the character, yes but it’s always the heart or sometimes it’s the liver or the guts in the Old Testament which are the seat of decision making. So that’s intriguing but I’m not sure it would actually apply. The Orthodox churches tend to have the screen here which I find problematic. I like lots and lots of things about Orthodox worship but I find the screen which separates off the people from the sacrament doesn’t quite fit with how I understand it.

Can you draw a distinction between personal karma and society’s or world karma? Can grace be selective?

I’m not sure, although I’m using karma as an analogy, I wouldn’t think in terms of karma most of the time, it’s just a useful word for people to hand their understand on. In terms of natural law I’m not sure I would make a distinction between individual and social. Grace, you could understand grace as basically God giving extra lives within the system. That if you like the odds are stacked in favour of mercy, but how it happens to individuals I think that is unfathomable.

Going on from what was said about the Greek Orthodox church and that screen, when Reg and I were in the Greek Orthodox church ourselves, I was not allowed to go behind that screen to see what there was, but Reg was because he was a man. And then I had to admit that when I was in Cyprus I went and visited some of the churches there, out of curiosity I did go into the Holy of Holies and it is absolutely wonderful.

As I understand it in the actual Solomon’s Temple, the real Holy of Holies, there is very little there, in the second temple not the first one, because in the first one the Ark was there, but in the revised temple after the exile when they built it again the Holy of Holies was actually empty, and I think there is something quite useful about that as an image.

I’m a little bit puzzled, I think you mentioned the wrath which is manifested in human life is of human origin.

In terms of human hatred, yes.

So there is only one source of wrath which is human because there is no wrath in God, which baffles me, but what I’m puzzled at is if we talk about the wrath to come, I ask the question, whence?

Well either from natural processes or from human processes but not from divine processes.

So there are in fact two sources of wrath, one of them is a natural consequence and the other is human, in which case that would come together?

Yes oh yes.

They are not God?

I think the heart of it is I think this is really Julian’s insight, that God isn’t concerned about punishment. I think the understanding of God in Christian faith is not pagan, it’s not that we have to appease someone who is angry otherwise we will be punished, that God is supremely love. I mean that Julian of Norwich talks about courteous love. That God is loving to the exclusion of all other attributes. Now this doesn’t mean that what is described as the wrath of God or vengeance or punishment in the Old Testament isn’t describing something real. So it is saying that it has got more to do with how in particular the Old Testament peoples understood it than it has to do with the nature of God as revealed in Christ himself. A wrathful, punishing God wouldn’t get involved in this process of allowing himself to be sacrificed in order to heal.

Why do you think then, that God created wrath in man?

Well is it a creation? I’m not sure it is.

I just wondered.

To describe where it comes from I want to talk about the language of the fall. That before the fall there was no wrath and after the fall there is wrath, because we are estranged from our natural relationship with the environment, we’re kicked out of Eden, and we’ve got angels barring our way back, and our relationships with each other have broken down. And what overcomes that is Christ. So therefore wrath is a result of our sin. Our sin provoked wrath, but it’s not wrath in the sense that ‘you have broken my rules I’m going to punish you’, it’s wrath in the sense ‘this is the nature of the creation we are in’. It’s not that God is angry. God doesn’t take offence. Put it like that. God is always acting with love.

Which would tend to give the impression that at the judgement all will be saved, whereas in fact when we stand before God on judgement day we shall be condemned by our own wrath, because we have disobeyed God’s laws.

Well, God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn the world but to save it and I’m certain that God’s intention is for all to be saved, but I also believe that some people can turn him down. I don’t accept universal salvation as it’s called. So I think there is a hell, to put it in a different way. But I think hell is self-imposed. I think God’s desire is for nobody to be in hell, but some people for whatever reasons, put themselves there. And that applies in this life as much as at the judgement.

Is Christ Divided?

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I’m going to be providing notes to the house groups in Mersea, so that all the different groups, though separated, are working through the same material. We’re going to be working through 1 Corinthians for the next few months. This is the material for week one (click on ‘full post’ to read).


Is Christ Divided?
Notes for the house groups on 1 Corinthians.

Week One, beginning Sunday 15 April: 1 Corinthians 1.1-17

  • Corinth is in central Greece. Sacked and destroyed by Romans in 146BC; rebuilt and repopulated by Julius Caesar in 44BC. Wealthy outpost of Roman civilisation; a seaport; cosmopolitan; an ‘international crossroads’; looked down on surrounding area. What might this tell us about who Paul was talking to? Any parallels/contrasts with Mersea? What might Paul need to be aware of if he was talking to the people of Mersea today, in terms of cultural assumptions and processes?
  • Paul founded the church in Corinth, 50/51 AD (Acts 18.1-7); the letter is written from Ephesus a few years later, before 55 AD.
  • Paul mentions Jesus in almost every verse – what conclusions can be drawn from this?
  • Paul’s principal concern is for unity, and the avoidance of faction. What are the criteria for unity in a church? Consider:
    • verse 2 of this passage (‘all who call on the name of the Lord…’)
    • Romans 10.9
    • Matthew 7.21
  • What is the origin of the factions? Culturally the Corinthians were accustomed to ‘choosing’ amongst different philosophical debaters – a sort of classical ‘pop idol’ contest. What does it say about their understanding of the gospel that it was incorporated within those cultural assumptions? Are there ways in which we do the same today?
  • Who is Apollos for us today? (Or Paul, or Peter, or whomever) Does the success of certain teachers (eg Rick Warren) or certain models of church (“mega churches”) raise any dangers for a church community? What are the divisions within the church on Mersea? Across churches (CTIM itself isn’t comprehensive); by worship style or time of worship – compare 8am congregation to 9:30am; by belief? How can these divisions be minimised or overcome? A useful word: adiaphora: ‘things indifferent’, or ‘this is not worth dividing a church over’; Richard Baxter: “In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity” – adiaphora is that which is not necessary for salvation.
  • What does it mean to be ‘sanctified’ in Christ Jesus (v2)? or ‘called to be holy’? Consider:
    • Matthew 5.13-16
    • the ‘pure church heresy’ (technically called ‘Donatism’), that only the morally pure could be ministers or members of a church
    • how far should Christians be involved in a local community; how far should they (we) be a separate society?
    • many of these questions will recur throughout this letter
  • What does Paul mean (v6) about his testimony being confirmed in the Corinthians? Can the same be said of our church?
  • Whose faith is emphasised? (v9) Does faith achieve salvation (Rom 10 again) or is it the faith of Christ which achieves salvation? (Gal 2:16 in KJV, in Greek ‘pistis Christou’ – a genitive; NB this is a highly debated question. You might like to compare the verse from Galatians as presented in the KJV and NIV)
  • What does Paul mean in saying ‘Christ did not send me to baptise’? Compare with the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel.
  • What does this passage say to the present crisis in the Anglican Communion? Can we use Paul’s analysis helpfully? Again, this issue will recur as we work our way through the Epistle.

What I believe

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Several disparate things have prompted this post, but the trigger was reading these two posts over at ‘the parish’ – which, if you don’t already read it, you should. One of the most real blogs out there.

1. I believe that God is love.
Without exception, without reservation. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. The simplicity of God’s nature is the simplicity of love; all else follows from that. And, for the avoidance of the inevitable romanticising about ‘love’, I should add that love is what Jesus displays, in all his angry blood and gore.

2. I believe that Jesus is the incarnate Word of God.
Jesus shows us who God is. God is Christ-like and in Him is no un-Christ-likeness at all. God speaks, and the world exists; that which God speaks is Jesus; the world is created through him and for him, in him all things hold together. We can only be ourselves when Christ is allowed to be within us.

3. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
Resurrection is the revelation of God’s nature; without it there is no Christianity – it is the horizon of Christian belief and practice. Resurrection is the experience of forgiveness in the first disciples; it is God taking the hit on our behalf, and transforming it into grace; it is the activity and presence of the Spirit redeeming our perpetual mistakes. We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

4. I believe that friendship is the fundamental Christian category.
‘I have called you friends’: not believers, not members. We are called out from our families into a new way of relating with one another. Friends do not judge or condemn; they break bread together. More fundamentally, friendship is formed – can only be formed – when there is a common commitment to that which is greater than the friendship itself; that is what preserves the reality. We are not slaves or servants – there is no hierarchy in the church – that is why judgement and condemnation are anathema, despite what St Paul says.

5. I believe in the church.
The church is the community of friends who share forgiveness; who live out that life, binding up each other’s wounds, keeping each other moving on the way. It is Sam and Frodo sharing the Lammas bread on the way to Mordor. It is not identical with any human institution, but nor is it separable from such institutions (that would be docetism and individualism – the heresies rampant in Modern American Protestantism).

6. I believe that Christian faith is a form of life.
What we do expresses what we believe, what we say does not; or, put differently, we do things with words, and what Jesus is concerned with is what we do, not what we believe. I think this is emphasised beyond doubt by Scripture, both Old and New: not everyone who calls Him Lord enters the Kingdom, but only those who do the will of the Father. The grammar of our faith is necessary because of the way it shapes our lives; doctrine, and the soundness of doctrine, is fundamentally pastoral in character. We are indeed saved by right belief, but not in the sense of being able to say ‘Abracadabra’ to open the pearly gates. We are set free from self-hatred and distortion through discerning the truth about Christ. This is, of course, why Christianity is necessarily sacramental, and why the denial of sacramentality is a denial of the Incarnation.

7. I believe that the world has been saved.
That is, it already has been saved. We do not need to save the world. God is accomplishing His purposes and His Word will not return to Him fruitless. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. And Jesus is with us until he comes – the importance of that statement being it’s open-endedness. Nobody knows the hour. Our task is not achievement, but obedience. For he has shown you, O man, what is good…

I may add to or amend this over time.

The colour of my shirt

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In the last year of my time at Westcott my training incumbent came to visit. In the middle of a good conversation we began to talk about shirt colour, as I was soon to invest in purchasing the clerical necessaries. I asked if it was possible to have a different colour than black – thinking principally of dark blue (which is what I now wear). With his customary grace my incumbent indicated gently that black was the only acceptable option…

The apparel of a bishop, priest, or deacon shall be suitable to his office; and, save for purposes of recreation and other justifiable reasons, shall be such as to be a sign and mark of his holy calling and ministry as well to others as to those committed to his spiritual charge. (Canon C27)

~~~

I attended a boarding school for seven years, from the age of eleven (this one). At one point I acquired a temporary nickname, ‘Jimmy’, due to a distinct facial resemblance to Jimmy Somerville.

This I did not appreciate, for Jimmy was gay, and within a boys boarding school, being gay was anathema.

There was one friend at the time who was a little odd, who didn’t quite fit in with the prevalent macho culture. The boys who were esteemed were the ones who displayed great biological prowess – on the sports field, through dominating a social hierarchy, or sexually. To be a ‘stud’ gave instant social kudos. Reflecting on that now I can see that mimetic rivalry was rampant.

My friend wasn’t very good at any of that, though he did have quite a waspish tongue, which helped. Sometimes. We victimised him in the way that boys do, with cruel ritual humiliations.

~~~

At Lambeth in 1998 the gathered stewards of our great mysteries came together and proclaimed a policy (full text here).

There were two aspects to this policy: first a recommitment to the traditional rejection of homosexuality; second, a commitment to listen to homosexuals. I have taken the second of these quite seriously – indeed, I had taken it seriously for quite some time before that conference. The church I attended in the 1990s (this one) was very gay-friendly (occasionally it was described as a ‘gay ghetto’!); I learned an awful lot there, and got to know a lot of gay people, both lay and clerical.

Every so often in the 1990’s, particularly when I was single, I would spend time wandering in Soho. I used to think of it as my ‘fugue state’. I would just wander around, spend time in the bookshops on Charing Cross Road, occasionally going into the cafes, going to the cinema a lot. It was a place where I could forget who I was for a while.

Soho was (obviously) very ‘gay’ – but not just in the homosexual sense. It was colourful and vibrant. I think the loss of the original meaning of the word ‘gay’ reflects a loss of a certain form of masculinity; and that men have suffered from that loss. There is a strong strand of male nature that is now repressed, for precisely the reasons that were dominant at my boarding school.

The repressed returns in various ways. Look at the way that footballers celebrate when they score.

Our communion has lost its way with regard to sexuality; hence the present crisis. We struggle with the legacies received from previous generations, from previous patterns of value. It is quite possible that this is the prelude to a creative resolution. I hope so.

The church has to be a gay church; otherwise it is failing to be a church.

~~~

Disordered sexuality is not an abstract concept for me; it is something with which I am intimately familiar. Yet God is never absent.

In the mid 1990s I had a painful split with a girlfriend, about whom I was rather serious. In the ensuing months I had a great deal of rage and jealousy running through me which – because I lacked the self-awareness to deal with such things at that time – led me into some very dark places, and some very damaging behaviour.

After one episode – an episode that, had it been recounted at school, would have led to a significant increase in my social standing, and have established me as a ‘real lad’ – God took a hand.

I have never been so terrified in my life.

It was made indisputably clear to me that I was rapidly walking down the path to hell, which was not a metaphor but something concretely real; that my life choices were destructive, both of myself and of others; and yet, in the midst of being convicted of my depravity and sin, God gave me a vision. Of presiding at the altar; of being ordained.

I did not welcome this. I resisted.

What could be less likely work for a ‘real lad’? Priesthood was for poofs.

~~~

One deeply attractive aspect of present day gay culture – and one that is most authentically Christian – is that it is, on the whole, a place of non-judgement, particularly with regard to sexual disorders. I imagine that a community which lives each day with the shout of condemnation from the worldly powers has learnt to be frugal with its own condemnation.

I met up with my school friend at this time. He had recently come out as a gay man, and we went for a drink in a bar just up from Leicester Square tube station.

I said sorry for the things I had done at school. He said he forgave me.

~~~

One of the most memorable sermons I heard at school – we had services every day, sermons twice a week – was by a minister who brought in a stereo, and played the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘It’s a Sin’ to us. He was insistent that Christianity was misunderstood. It wasn’t about being negative, about repressing all of our instincts, and telling us that everything that we enjoyed was bad for us. Christianity was about embracing a fullness of life, that allowed us to be all that we can be.

Allowing us to become who we are.

For we are each loved by God, and we each have a vocation from Him.

~~~

At school – and strongly reinforced by the surrounding culture – boys are taught to ogle. This is the lust of the eyes. Boys in a boarding school have various ways in which to pass on this mimesis, out of the sight of disapproving housemasters. One friend in particular took great delight in his poster of a topless Linda Lusardi hidden on the back of his door, almost never seen by the staff.

I read Playboy for many years after leaving school. And despite your incredulous laughter, I do mean read, not just gaze at bare breasts. Pornography is very damaging; the damage it causes is hugely underrated. The problem is not the nudity, which is (can be) something holy. The problem is in the destruction of genuine intimacy, the abolition of relationship, and the stimulation of an appetite which is then not fed.

Bad love can only be redeemed by good love.

~~~

I resisted my vocation for two days and two sleepless nights. On the third day, at lunchtime, I went to my church, and knelt down, and accepted God’s will for me – but even then I said ‘please don’t make me celibate!’

Although accepting the vocation gave me a great sense of peace, and a significant feeling of slipping my bindings, it takes a long time to grow into a vocation. God is patient; it’s an aspect of his mercy.

I left my job at the Civil Service and worked for a year as a caretaker, in the primary school attached to my church. One of my regular tasks was clearing up after the ‘accidents’ left by the children – either the vomit or the excrement left in unwelcome places.

I got quite good at this. I had a distinct system: plastic bag; paper to mop up the major part of the mess (to be placed in the plastic bag); mop and bucket to clean the floor afterwards; disinfectant. On a good day I could clear up a site in less than five minutes.

I never got angry with the children for this. What was the point? The children were learning how to conduct themselves, and control themselves. Ranting and raving about the messes being created would only have disfigured their souls.

It’s the same now with changing nappies. You don’t get hung up on the present moment – you preserve the end-point in your heart, and never let go of that sense of where your child is growing. That’s what it means to have parental love.

Of course, God is no different in that respect.

~~~

I said that I resisted my vocation; the roots of sexual disorder took longer to deal with. Only two months after this experience I got involved with a girlfriend and, frankly, I was a complete shit. I was in no fit state to embark on a relationship; I made promises I couldn’t keep; I was precisely not strong enough to be her man.

And so, the car crashed.


One lunchtime, I was walking by the Thames, in the park behind the Houses of Parliament. The tide was high, and I watched some leaves float off. It was the one time in my life that I have seriously contemplated suicide.

What prevented me from jumping in was reflecting on a) my vocation, but b) more importantly, the week of silence that I had recently spent in Taize, where I had started to accept my vocation.

I accepted the promise, and the hope, and this was where I really began to believe in a God of grace. We are not saved by our own strength.

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of song
With nothing on my tongue
But Hallelujah

~~~

*Christopher wrote something very interesting the other day, amending Bishop Tutu: “Be nice to the straights, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”

I have found great insight and comfort from listening to the gay community, not least through understanding the Girardian perspective, and reading James Alison. In particular, his ‘Faith Beyond Resentment’ untied many of the knots within which I remained bound. His “The boys in the square” is haunting.

The problem with our communion is a lack of listening, despite Lambeth 1998. For all the criticisms hurled at Rowan, that is something that he has consistently insisted on.

~~~

When I was ordained, +Richard placed his hands on me and said ‘Shine as a light in the world Sam’. We are not to hide away in the darkness. We are meant to be bright lights illuminating the world.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

So far as I can tell, to be gay is to shine.

~~~

The right ordering of our desire is at the heart of Christian faith, for our hearts remain restless until they rest in God. Once our desires are rightly ordered, then we become the people whom God is calling us to be.

At that point the pressures from society can be progressively withstood and then ignored. We shall be free to become who we are.

I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses.
I deal my own cards, sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces.

~~~

After my father died, I inherited some rather colourful shirts. Bring out the peacock!


One day, I will have the nerve to wear one of these as my clerical shirt.

One day, churchmen will no longer be afraid of gay men.

Reordering the sanctuary

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A discussion paper for West Mersea PCC

Issue
The Rector would like the PCC to consider reordering the sanctuary and chancel area within St Peter and St Paul’s church, principally through moving the altar from its present position at the East End, swapping places with the choir.

Theological context
Jesus said “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2.19). The New Covenant inaugurated in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection involved a replacement of the Temple with Jesus’ own body, most especially the celebration of the Eucharist – “This is my blood of the New Covenant”. This has many aspects, but one key element can be thought of as a replacement of a vertical form of worship with a horizontal one.

The temple was built according to very specific instructions, and a plan looks like this:

Temple worship is hierarchical – there is a steady ascension from the world of the profane to the Holy of Holies, and there is a corresponding stripping away of profane people – first the gentiles, then the women, then the non-priests, then finally only the High Priest is able to enter into the most holy place itself. This is what Jesus overturns.

In contrast to Temple worship, with its vertical hierarchy, the Eucharist is a horizontal form of worship, involving a gathering of the equally profane around a common table, to share in a common meal. Whilst there are still ‘priests’, these are not priests in the Temple sense – they are rather ‘presidents’, those whom the church has called out to a specialised rôle in the worshipping life of the community. So an image of horizontal worship, in this sense, might be this:

“There am I in the midst of them.”

Although this is a very basic feature of the New Covenant, it is fair to say that church history records a community which has largely ignored the nature of horizontal worship in favour of the hierarchical model. Hence the prevalence in churches of an altar at the East End. A reaction against this began with the Reformers, who sometimes brought the altar down into the nave itself, but beginning with Vatican II, there is now a substantial ecumenical consensus in favour of a more horizontal understanding of eucharistic worship. This can be seen where cathedrals have re-ordered their own sanctuaries. In St Paul’s Cathedral, for example, celebrations of the eucharist now take place beneath the great dome, in the centre of the cathedral, and the choir are behind the altar. This is what I am looking to establish here in West Mersea.

Logistical issues
As well as this fundamental theological point, there are two practical issues which concern me about our present arrangement, one minor, one major. The minor issue is that the president at the altar cannot see the main part of the lady chapel – and cannot be seen by them. That part of our community is therefore prevented from a full participation in what is happening at the Eucharist (‘Behold the Lamb of God’ doesn’t really work where the beholding is impossible). More crucially – and putting it bluntly – the choir get in the way! (This is not the fault of the choir, of course, it is a purely physical point.) I see two main issues – firstly, when people are at the altar rail to receive communion there is a severe bottle-neck on each side of the church as people have to either wait for a group of people to leave the altar rail, or else walk amongst people’s feet; secondly, people have to negotiate their way past the Director of Music as he conducts the choir from his position at the top of the steps. Each of these aspects I see as significant.

Proposal
I therefore propose that we bring the altar forward from its present position, and move the choir to the rear of the church, to look something like this:
I see the choir being deployed facing directly West. This maximises the available space, and is acoustically the best option. A number of people have expressed a concern about ‘worshipping the choir’, but that is still applying the vertical model of worship to the arrangement. The whole point is that Christ is ‘in the midst’ of us. At the far East End, between the choir stalls, I see the Bishop’s chair being placed, signifying his role as the ‘ordinary’ of the church (ie the one with ultimate responsibility for our eucharistic worship – the Rector and other clergy operate ‘in his stead’).

Issues to consider
There are a number of detailed elements which need to be considered, as well as the major principle itself. Amongst others:
– how to distribute communion under the new arrangement;
– how to cater for those who wish to kneel to receive;
– whether to move the crucifix from its present position to one directly above the altar (which would be a powerful visual symbol of the nature of the eucharist itself);
– where to place the Rector’s and curate’s pews;
– whether the new arrangement would work for all services, thinking especially of funerals.
There are doubtless other aspects and details which PCC members may wish to raise.

Timetable
I propose the following timetable:
– firstly, that in its February meeting the PCC agree that this is a suggestion worth exploring, and that we write to the Archdeacon requesting a temporary faculty covering an initial moving of the altar;
– secondly, that we move the altar as soon as possible, and ‘live with’ the arrangements for a period of three months. There will certainly be unforeseen aspects of the change that only become apparent after a change of use;
– thirdly, that we meet for a study day on a Saturday morning in the summer, with the wider congregation, to discuss our experience and to consider whether this is a path that we wish to pursue further;
– fourthly, if we do wish to pursue the rearrangement, that we then formally engage our architect to work up concrete proposals for the PCC to take forward.

(Being distributed to PCC members and ministers today.)

Does Jesus love porn stars?

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See this (HT: my favourite genius).

So far as I’m aware, Jesus didn’t discuss pornography(1), but he does tell us that prostitutes will get to heaven before the religious leadership (Mt 21.31b). I’ve always liked the CS Lewis line from The Four Loves: “I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness”. I think our spiritual path is precisely the right ordering of our loves (our desires) – the seven deadly sins are categorised, I believe, according to being an excess or a deficiency of love in certain areas, which makes lust the “least worst”. Something for the Anglican church to ponder, I think, when we get so worked up about the right ordering of sexual desires and neglect the much weightier matters of justice and pride.

(1) The NT discusses ‘the lust of the eyes’ of course – see 1 John 2.16.