“Salvation cannot be found in a garage pasty”. I’ll repeat that. “Salvation” the advertising hoardings proclaim “cannot be found in a garage pasty”. And most of us would concur.
“Good food” the hoardings continue “deserves Lurpak”.
It’s a clever campaign. A garage pasty may give a moment’s satisfaction, a mouthful of high-carb, artificially favoured, winter-warming bliss, but the moment will not last. Real enjoyment comes from real cooking, from the time-consuming collation of ingredients and from the careful transformation of those ingredients into the good food that is greater than the sum of its parts. Think about tomorrow, not today, Lurpak is urging. Think about your next meal, not about your next snack. Don’t respond to today’s craving for junk-food; set your mind on tomorrow’s banquet.
The Gospels are silent as to whether Jesus ever ate a garage pasty, and I don’t want to claim him as a mouthpiece for Ginsters. But his teaching, in the passage from the Sermon on the Mount that we have heard, challenges the ethos that Lurpak is trying to press on us. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own” he says. “Today’s trouble is enough for today”. Or, don’t let your Stilton ripen, don’t wait for your Claret mature and don’t put your chicken in to a marinade. No. Eat garage pasties.
Well, as I’ve already said, for once most of us would concur with the advertiser, and not just in matters nutritional. We try to educate our children away from short-termism in their diets. We dread them attempting to survive on Pot Noodle and frozen pizza. And we similarly try to think long-term for ourselves, managing our futures as we might manage an orgy of gastronomy. Our mortgages mean that one day we will be property-owners; our pension plans mean that one day we will not have to work; our insurance policies mean that one day when the spectre of ill-health looms large it will not intimidate us. So we worry about tomorrow. In fact most of us could worry for England. So what might it mean to live differently, to live as Jesus teaches – to live on, if not garage pasties (after all this is SW1) then perhaps a diet of quickly-prepared omelettes.
There is possibly a worked example within our reach, in the streets of Tripoli and Ben Ghazi. There the hoardings do not proclaim salvation in the shape of butter, but salvation through the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi. His image still stares out across the land he has tyrannized for forty years, but it has been defaced and disfigured by protestors. There is a sense abroad that, after the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, his hour too has come. And possibly his hour would have come a great deal sooner, as would have the hour of Mubarak and the hour of Ben Ali if only the world had worried a little less about tomorrow and a little more about today. For to varying degrees we have been prepared to tolerate their regimes on the basis that our strategic and petropolitical interests have been served by the stability that they have afforded. We have ignored the internal repression that has characterized their rule; we have been deaf to their people’s clamour for reform; and we have swallowed our distaste for a form of governance that we would not be prepared to live under ourselves. We have worried about tomorrow, and as long as the troubles of today have not been our troubles of today, then they have not troubled us.
The teaching of Jesus is at odds with the realpolitik of hugging dictators. Why? Why does Jesus not encourage us to think of the promises of tomorrow and to overlook the inconveniences of today? Because today, he says, we are to “strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness”. Not tomorrow and not the day after, but today. Today we can choose God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. Today we can remember those to whom God’s kingdom belongs: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted. Today we can remember the righteousness of God, the righteousness that consists not in following God’s rules but in following God’s Son. Not tomorrow. Today is our opportunity. Today.
This is a dangerous sermon to have preached. I am not suggesting that you rip up your wills, drink your cellars and cash in all your endowments. But I am suggesting that the teaching of Jesus is that we all learn a little more recklessness and a little less caution; that we all live with a little more trust and a little less fear; that comfort and convenience can wait and that mercy, justice and peace cannot.
I am suggesting that now and then – God forbid – salvation may indeed lie in a garage pasty. Amen.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Monday, 17 January 2011
Sunday 16 January 2011, Second of Epiphany
I belong to only the third generation of my family to bear my surname. My great-grandfather was called Michael Hadjipappas. He was a priest of the Orthodox Church, whose village was Neo Khorio, in south-western Cyprus. My grandfather, Savvas, took the name Papadopulos, because it means ‘son of a priest’. I used to remind my own son of this meaning whenever he complained about having a long name. At least, I would say, his describes who he is. That’s probably more than can be said for most of the Stevensons and Clarksons he comes across.
This coherence between nomenclature and identity is rare. Had I never been ordained the name Papadopulos would have said as little about my son as it does about me. I am the son of an engineer (and that, translated into Greek, would probably be still longer and even more unpronounceable). In Great Britain in 2011 we do not expect our names to interpret us to the world. We still expect them to identify us (I am Nicholas Papadopulos, not Mark Lowther). But we no longer inhabit the brightly coloured world of Happy Families, buying our bread from Mr Bun the Baker and asking the time of Mr Constable the Policeman, and our names are not revelatory in the way they once were.
It is true that a certain revelatory quality is sometimes discovered accidentally and applied retrospectively, and when it is it is of immeasurable value to classroom jokers and to tabloid satirists. After the Barclays boss Bob Diamond gave evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee this week the sketch writers were delighted that he had lived up to his name: highly polished and utterly unbreakable. But for most of us, most of the time, our names reveal more about those who have conferred them on us than they do about us.
We may be named after a virtue (easier for girls than for boys), revealing our parents’ aspirations for us. We may be named after a beloved relative, revealing their familial preferences, or after an idol, revealing their cultural preferences. Our names may be a coalition, Vincent David, say, revealing a hard-won truce between parents of different political complexions, or they may commemorate a particular moment in history (I have one friend who named his unfortunate firstborn Halebopp, a folie de grandeur if ever there was). Kylie may grow up to sing like a crow, Rex may mature into the least regal man on earth, and Hope may be a whining nuisance, but their names tell us what their parents once dreamt of.
So can our names ever say anything of value about us?
Today’s Gospel suggests that they can, but that the names that can are names we are yet to discover for ourselves. They are names conferred not by our parents or by our contemporaries, or by ourselves. They are conferred by God. What they have in common with our own names is that they reveal something about the one who confers them – about God. But what they do not have in common with our own names is that what is thus revealed is not transient fashion or unlikely ambition. What is revealed is the identity that God imagines and intends for each of us.
In today’s Gospel two names are conferred, one on Jesus, and one on Simon brother of Andrew. Jesus already has a name, of course, but the words which introduce him to the Gospel reader and thus to the world are words that confer a new name, the inspired words of John the Baptist, ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. Like any such words they reveal the intentions of the one who confers. But the one who confers is not John, playfully inventing a new nickname for his cousin. The one who confers is God the Father, speaking through his prophet, and wanting the reader and the world to understand that Jesus of Nazareth is also Jesus the Lamb, the Lamb of God. He is the lamb who will be sacrificed in order that God’s people may be free. Just as the lamb’s blood smeared on the doorposts saved the children of Israel from God’s wrath and guaranteed them a place among the redeemed, so the blood of Jesus will save God’s people and seal God’s covenant with his people. ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. The mark of the Father is upon the Son. God gives Jesus a name which reveals not God’s preferences or his prejudices but the whole of his Son’s eternal destiny.
The weeks ahead of us in the liturgical year will recall us to the faithfulness with which Jesus lives out this destiny. Simon brother of Andrew, on the other hand, for a long time looks like a much less worthy recipient of his new name. ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’. His old name discloses his parents’ preferences; it identifies him and locates him within his family. His new name discloses his destiny, just as Jesus’s discloses his. ‘Simon’ has been the name of a small boy and a young man, one who has laughed and wept, been praised and admonished, has learned his trade and courted his wife. ‘Simon son of John’ is known to all Capernaum. Cephas, the Rock, is known only to God. Simon is given a name which reveals his foundational role in God’s new order, the name by which he is remembered still.
Last week the Pope gave an address which, despite the media reports, was not concerned chiefly with attacking the Beckhams’ choice of names for their sons. In it he called a child’s Christian, Baptismal name an indelible seal. It is. It identifies us with the tradition. But the Pope also said that Baptism was the beginning of a journey of faith. It is. It is the beginning of a quest for that other name, that name known only to God, that name by which we are known to God. Our Christian names tell us who we are. Our Baptism calls us to what we might be. Amen.
This coherence between nomenclature and identity is rare. Had I never been ordained the name Papadopulos would have said as little about my son as it does about me. I am the son of an engineer (and that, translated into Greek, would probably be still longer and even more unpronounceable). In Great Britain in 2011 we do not expect our names to interpret us to the world. We still expect them to identify us (I am Nicholas Papadopulos, not Mark Lowther). But we no longer inhabit the brightly coloured world of Happy Families, buying our bread from Mr Bun the Baker and asking the time of Mr Constable the Policeman, and our names are not revelatory in the way they once were.
It is true that a certain revelatory quality is sometimes discovered accidentally and applied retrospectively, and when it is it is of immeasurable value to classroom jokers and to tabloid satirists. After the Barclays boss Bob Diamond gave evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee this week the sketch writers were delighted that he had lived up to his name: highly polished and utterly unbreakable. But for most of us, most of the time, our names reveal more about those who have conferred them on us than they do about us.
We may be named after a virtue (easier for girls than for boys), revealing our parents’ aspirations for us. We may be named after a beloved relative, revealing their familial preferences, or after an idol, revealing their cultural preferences. Our names may be a coalition, Vincent David, say, revealing a hard-won truce between parents of different political complexions, or they may commemorate a particular moment in history (I have one friend who named his unfortunate firstborn Halebopp, a folie de grandeur if ever there was). Kylie may grow up to sing like a crow, Rex may mature into the least regal man on earth, and Hope may be a whining nuisance, but their names tell us what their parents once dreamt of.
So can our names ever say anything of value about us?
Today’s Gospel suggests that they can, but that the names that can are names we are yet to discover for ourselves. They are names conferred not by our parents or by our contemporaries, or by ourselves. They are conferred by God. What they have in common with our own names is that they reveal something about the one who confers them – about God. But what they do not have in common with our own names is that what is thus revealed is not transient fashion or unlikely ambition. What is revealed is the identity that God imagines and intends for each of us.
In today’s Gospel two names are conferred, one on Jesus, and one on Simon brother of Andrew. Jesus already has a name, of course, but the words which introduce him to the Gospel reader and thus to the world are words that confer a new name, the inspired words of John the Baptist, ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. Like any such words they reveal the intentions of the one who confers. But the one who confers is not John, playfully inventing a new nickname for his cousin. The one who confers is God the Father, speaking through his prophet, and wanting the reader and the world to understand that Jesus of Nazareth is also Jesus the Lamb, the Lamb of God. He is the lamb who will be sacrificed in order that God’s people may be free. Just as the lamb’s blood smeared on the doorposts saved the children of Israel from God’s wrath and guaranteed them a place among the redeemed, so the blood of Jesus will save God’s people and seal God’s covenant with his people. ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. The mark of the Father is upon the Son. God gives Jesus a name which reveals not God’s preferences or his prejudices but the whole of his Son’s eternal destiny.
The weeks ahead of us in the liturgical year will recall us to the faithfulness with which Jesus lives out this destiny. Simon brother of Andrew, on the other hand, for a long time looks like a much less worthy recipient of his new name. ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’. His old name discloses his parents’ preferences; it identifies him and locates him within his family. His new name discloses his destiny, just as Jesus’s discloses his. ‘Simon’ has been the name of a small boy and a young man, one who has laughed and wept, been praised and admonished, has learned his trade and courted his wife. ‘Simon son of John’ is known to all Capernaum. Cephas, the Rock, is known only to God. Simon is given a name which reveals his foundational role in God’s new order, the name by which he is remembered still.
Last week the Pope gave an address which, despite the media reports, was not concerned chiefly with attacking the Beckhams’ choice of names for their sons. In it he called a child’s Christian, Baptismal name an indelible seal. It is. It identifies us with the tradition. But the Pope also said that Baptism was the beginning of a journey of faith. It is. It is the beginning of a quest for that other name, that name known only to God, that name by which we are known to God. Our Christian names tell us who we are. Our Baptism calls us to what we might be. Amen.
Monday, 15 November 2010
2 November 2010, All Souls Day
‘Man is the image of God, and his inner self is a kind of mirror in which God not only sees himself, but reveals himself... through the dark, transparent mystery of our own inner being we can, as it were, see God ‘through a glass’.
The remnant of Judah, authors of the book of Lamentations, were a people bereaved. They had seen their country overrun and their polity overthrown. They had seen their temple destroyed and their citizenry deported. They gathered in the ruins of Jerusalem’s sacred site and cried aloud of their loss: ‘I have forgotten what happiness is…Gone is my glory’.
They knew that the nature of the world they inhabited was transient. They depended on the succession of the seasons and the cycle of the agricultural year. They understood that the stone with which they built, the linen which they wore, and the iron which they worked was all mutable stuff, susceptible to being burned, or melted, or broken. They had witnessed the fleeting lifespan of proud human constructs. Empires rose and fell, kingly dynasties came and went, cultic fashions flourished and decayed.
Yet in spite of this dependence, in spite of this understanding, in spite of this witness, in spite of their cries, they could not accept their plight. They could not resign themselves to desolation and passively await the next turn of fate’s wheel. Hope stirred incessantly in their breasts. Not the gambler’s blind hope that next time things will be better, but hope invested outside the inexhaustible round of life and death, hope that ‘the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness’.
In their misery, in their abandonment, in their despair, the remnant of Judah looked deep within themselves. In the words of the mystic Thomas Merton, with which I began, they there saw God ‘through a glass’. Through the glass they saw that when immortal souls, made for communion with the divine, are placed in mortal bodies, made for the cycles of a transient world, then disjunction is inevitable and brokenness and heartbreak are inescapable. Through the glass there glimmered darkly the reality of the disjunction – and perhaps the possibility of its healing.
The apostle Paul was no stranger to such disjunction. Imprisoned, chained, shipwrecked, beaten, driven from town to town, and ministering to people who had endured similar, Paul was compelled to seek an interpretation of his and their experience. Through the glass the remnant of conquered Judah saw that if an eternal soul is placed in a temporal world then the eternal soul will suffer. Through the glass Paul of Tarsus saw that if the Creator of the world is placed in the world that he has created then the Creator will suffer. Place love in a world of avarice and love will be crushed. Consequently when the church in Rome to which Paul is writing most sharply experiences the disjunction between Christ’s command of love and the world’s reality of hatred then through the glass Paul sees that it is truly being the church, for it is closely imitating the pattern of Christ. ‘We boast in our sufferings’ he writes.
But the remnant of Judah never saw their proud kingdom restored, and Paul’s converts saw their churches assailed with no apparent vindication. Is it for this alone that we are made – to peer through a glass, to flatten our faces against it, to see but never to taste or touch? Are we made to glimpse hope from the ruins of the sanctuary, and to prize our wounds as trophies of honour? Does heaven give us enough insight to comprehend the misery of our existence, and enough religion to make our pain seem noble? Are we designed for disjunction; are we knowing souls locked in declining flesh, tellers of truth trapped in a tangle of falsehood, innocent doves before the all-surrounding malice?
The words of Jesus Christ, recorded in John’s Gospel, and prefaced with the words ‘’ - translated as ‘very truly’, presaging a teaching of great significance, tell us otherwise. They invite us to a life in which there is no disjunction but one seamless whole. They invite us to step through the looking-glass within.
First, ‘the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise’. The interior life of God is held before Christ’s hearers as a model of mutual co-operation and dependence. Soul is not at war with body, nor body with soul. They are made for each other and need each other. We are one, as God is one.
Secondly, ‘the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished’. Christ’s triumph is held before Christ’s hearers. All things are in the hands of Jesus. The power of Babylon to ravage Jerusalem, the power of Rome to oppress Paul’s friends, and the power of death to tyrannize us have been given to Christ. In him all life’s possibilities – and impossibilities – coalesce.
Thirdly, ‘anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life’. Hope is held before Christ’s hearers not as something glimpsed from afar, nor as a reward for patience during times of trial, but instead as something tangible, something in the here and now. Eternal life begins tonight. It is offered to our souls and it is offered to our bodies, in word, in prayer, and in broken bread and wine outpoured.
‘Our being somehow communicates directly with the Being of God, who is ‘in us’’ writes Thomas Merton. ‘If we enter into ourselves, find our true self and then pass ‘beyond’ the inner ‘I’, we sail forth into the immense darkness in which we confront the ‘I AM’ of the Almighty.’
Living and departed we are one flotilla sailing into the darkness, with Christ as our chart, Christ as our course, and Christ as our final destination. Amen, amen. Very truly, amen, amen.
The remnant of Judah, authors of the book of Lamentations, were a people bereaved. They had seen their country overrun and their polity overthrown. They had seen their temple destroyed and their citizenry deported. They gathered in the ruins of Jerusalem’s sacred site and cried aloud of their loss: ‘I have forgotten what happiness is…Gone is my glory’.
They knew that the nature of the world they inhabited was transient. They depended on the succession of the seasons and the cycle of the agricultural year. They understood that the stone with which they built, the linen which they wore, and the iron which they worked was all mutable stuff, susceptible to being burned, or melted, or broken. They had witnessed the fleeting lifespan of proud human constructs. Empires rose and fell, kingly dynasties came and went, cultic fashions flourished and decayed.
Yet in spite of this dependence, in spite of this understanding, in spite of this witness, in spite of their cries, they could not accept their plight. They could not resign themselves to desolation and passively await the next turn of fate’s wheel. Hope stirred incessantly in their breasts. Not the gambler’s blind hope that next time things will be better, but hope invested outside the inexhaustible round of life and death, hope that ‘the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness’.
In their misery, in their abandonment, in their despair, the remnant of Judah looked deep within themselves. In the words of the mystic Thomas Merton, with which I began, they there saw God ‘through a glass’. Through the glass they saw that when immortal souls, made for communion with the divine, are placed in mortal bodies, made for the cycles of a transient world, then disjunction is inevitable and brokenness and heartbreak are inescapable. Through the glass there glimmered darkly the reality of the disjunction – and perhaps the possibility of its healing.
The apostle Paul was no stranger to such disjunction. Imprisoned, chained, shipwrecked, beaten, driven from town to town, and ministering to people who had endured similar, Paul was compelled to seek an interpretation of his and their experience. Through the glass the remnant of conquered Judah saw that if an eternal soul is placed in a temporal world then the eternal soul will suffer. Through the glass Paul of Tarsus saw that if the Creator of the world is placed in the world that he has created then the Creator will suffer. Place love in a world of avarice and love will be crushed. Consequently when the church in Rome to which Paul is writing most sharply experiences the disjunction between Christ’s command of love and the world’s reality of hatred then through the glass Paul sees that it is truly being the church, for it is closely imitating the pattern of Christ. ‘We boast in our sufferings’ he writes.
But the remnant of Judah never saw their proud kingdom restored, and Paul’s converts saw their churches assailed with no apparent vindication. Is it for this alone that we are made – to peer through a glass, to flatten our faces against it, to see but never to taste or touch? Are we made to glimpse hope from the ruins of the sanctuary, and to prize our wounds as trophies of honour? Does heaven give us enough insight to comprehend the misery of our existence, and enough religion to make our pain seem noble? Are we designed for disjunction; are we knowing souls locked in declining flesh, tellers of truth trapped in a tangle of falsehood, innocent doves before the all-surrounding malice?
The words of Jesus Christ, recorded in John’s Gospel, and prefaced with the words ‘’ - translated as ‘very truly’, presaging a teaching of great significance, tell us otherwise. They invite us to a life in which there is no disjunction but one seamless whole. They invite us to step through the looking-glass within.
First, ‘the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise’. The interior life of God is held before Christ’s hearers as a model of mutual co-operation and dependence. Soul is not at war with body, nor body with soul. They are made for each other and need each other. We are one, as God is one.
Secondly, ‘the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished’. Christ’s triumph is held before Christ’s hearers. All things are in the hands of Jesus. The power of Babylon to ravage Jerusalem, the power of Rome to oppress Paul’s friends, and the power of death to tyrannize us have been given to Christ. In him all life’s possibilities – and impossibilities – coalesce.
Thirdly, ‘anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life’. Hope is held before Christ’s hearers not as something glimpsed from afar, nor as a reward for patience during times of trial, but instead as something tangible, something in the here and now. Eternal life begins tonight. It is offered to our souls and it is offered to our bodies, in word, in prayer, and in broken bread and wine outpoured.
‘Our being somehow communicates directly with the Being of God, who is ‘in us’’ writes Thomas Merton. ‘If we enter into ourselves, find our true self and then pass ‘beyond’ the inner ‘I’, we sail forth into the immense darkness in which we confront the ‘I AM’ of the Almighty.’
Living and departed we are one flotilla sailing into the darkness, with Christ as our chart, Christ as our course, and Christ as our final destination. Amen, amen. Very truly, amen, amen.
Monday, 27 September 2010
Sunday 26 September, Michael and All Angels
When shall we three meet again
in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
when the battle’s lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.
I thought about calling this the ‘Scottish sermon’: after all, it’s said that even speaking the name of the antihero of the play which opens with those lines brings bad fortune. But despite the costumes and the chorus this is a church, not a theatre, and we are not (most of us) luvvies, so: secret black and midnight hags, do your worst!
When Macbeth (for it is he) encounters the Weird Sisters he does so as an all-conquering hero. He has led Duncan’s army to victory over the invading Norwegians and their treacherous Scottish allies. His personal courage and blood-stained military prowess have been sung in glowing terms and his future as a great General and as a great Lord seems assured. Then he is hailed as the future King. The question that generations of theatregoers have puzzled over is the impact that this greeting has on him.
One interpretation is that the witches’ intervention tempts him away from the path of loyal service and sets him on his course as a usurping murderer. Another is that through the device of the three witches Shakespeare has externalized an interior debate that is raging within the troubles Thane of Glamis. Macbeth is an ambitious man who is prepared to kill his King and seize the throne - such are the plots and schemes that haunt his every waking moment. In the three witches these plots and schemes are given quasi-human form and shape. Shakespeare projects Macbeth’s turmoil onto the public stage and enacts it, enabling his audience to follow the inner conversation and to witness the growing hold that Macbeth’s dark desires have over him.
St John the Divine employs a not dissimilar technique in the book of Revelation. The heavenly struggle of Michael against the dragon mirrors exactly the earthly struggle of the Christian martyrs against their accusers that forms the context of the book’s writing. Michael first appears in our Bibles in the book of the prophet Daniel, where he is cast as the figurehead of God’s people in the celestial realms. In Revelation, we read of the victory of Michael and his angels; then we read of the victory of what St John calls ‘our comrades’. Michael wins in heaven; the Christian believers who have been tested even to the point of death win on earth. Their struggle, like Macbeth’s, is projected onto a new stage.
But whereas Shakespeare’s purposes are dramatic, St John’s are theological. He wants his readers to understand that the sufferings they are enduring even as he writes are no small matter. He wants them to understand that their cries are heard in heaven; he wants them to understand that their tribulations are of cosmic significance. When they resist their opponents on earth rebel angels are expelled from heaven. Macbeth’s strife within himself has consequences for all Scotland. The martyrs’ strife within the new Babylon, Rome, has consequences for all creation. But why? Why does the sporadic persecution of a new religious sect threaten to split the heavens asunder?
Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending. It’s a dream, perhaps as much the work of the subconscious as are the longings which tempt Macbeth. But Jacob awakes and finds himself alone. His dream has no external form or shape. There is no ladder and there are no angels. Jacob has to set up a stone pillar to remind himself and others of what has happened. Form and shape come only in the advent of Jesus Christ. He is the ladder, he tells Nathanael. He is the one upon whom the angels of God will ascend and descend. The dream of Jacob, who is also known as Israel, is made real in Jesus.
It is on account of this Jesus that the blood of John’s readers is being spilt; it is on account of their faith in this Jesus. But the faith that has given rise to their plight is not a longing like Macbeth’s or a dream like Jacob’s. It is not an interior belief – it is a baptismal faith. Those facing persecution have conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb’. They have been incorporated into Christ; he is in them and they are in him. What is interior (a first spark of faith, if you will) has become exterior (the clothing of Christ) and there is no longer any distinction between them. When the martyrs suffer Christ suffers; their wounds are his wounds; as they sustain blow after blow the ladder set up to heaven from earth sustains blow after blow. Rupture between the mortal and the divine threatens. Of course the martyrs’ suffering is played out upon the most public stage of all.
Macbeth falls when the unimaginable happens. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and a man not born of woman confronts the desperate tyrant. Humankind is saved when the unimaginable happens. God in Christ bridges the gulf that separates heaven from earth. As the beliefs and acts of our martyred forebears resonated throughout the cosmos so our beliefs and acts resonate throughout the cosmos, for we too have been baptized into Christ. When we witness to truth the heavens sing; when we are false, they weep. On this feast of the angels may we be recalled to the responsibility that is ours. Amen.
in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
when the battle’s lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.
I thought about calling this the ‘Scottish sermon’: after all, it’s said that even speaking the name of the antihero of the play which opens with those lines brings bad fortune. But despite the costumes and the chorus this is a church, not a theatre, and we are not (most of us) luvvies, so: secret black and midnight hags, do your worst!
When Macbeth (for it is he) encounters the Weird Sisters he does so as an all-conquering hero. He has led Duncan’s army to victory over the invading Norwegians and their treacherous Scottish allies. His personal courage and blood-stained military prowess have been sung in glowing terms and his future as a great General and as a great Lord seems assured. Then he is hailed as the future King. The question that generations of theatregoers have puzzled over is the impact that this greeting has on him.
One interpretation is that the witches’ intervention tempts him away from the path of loyal service and sets him on his course as a usurping murderer. Another is that through the device of the three witches Shakespeare has externalized an interior debate that is raging within the troubles Thane of Glamis. Macbeth is an ambitious man who is prepared to kill his King and seize the throne - such are the plots and schemes that haunt his every waking moment. In the three witches these plots and schemes are given quasi-human form and shape. Shakespeare projects Macbeth’s turmoil onto the public stage and enacts it, enabling his audience to follow the inner conversation and to witness the growing hold that Macbeth’s dark desires have over him.
St John the Divine employs a not dissimilar technique in the book of Revelation. The heavenly struggle of Michael against the dragon mirrors exactly the earthly struggle of the Christian martyrs against their accusers that forms the context of the book’s writing. Michael first appears in our Bibles in the book of the prophet Daniel, where he is cast as the figurehead of God’s people in the celestial realms. In Revelation, we read of the victory of Michael and his angels; then we read of the victory of what St John calls ‘our comrades’. Michael wins in heaven; the Christian believers who have been tested even to the point of death win on earth. Their struggle, like Macbeth’s, is projected onto a new stage.
But whereas Shakespeare’s purposes are dramatic, St John’s are theological. He wants his readers to understand that the sufferings they are enduring even as he writes are no small matter. He wants them to understand that their cries are heard in heaven; he wants them to understand that their tribulations are of cosmic significance. When they resist their opponents on earth rebel angels are expelled from heaven. Macbeth’s strife within himself has consequences for all Scotland. The martyrs’ strife within the new Babylon, Rome, has consequences for all creation. But why? Why does the sporadic persecution of a new religious sect threaten to split the heavens asunder?
Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending. It’s a dream, perhaps as much the work of the subconscious as are the longings which tempt Macbeth. But Jacob awakes and finds himself alone. His dream has no external form or shape. There is no ladder and there are no angels. Jacob has to set up a stone pillar to remind himself and others of what has happened. Form and shape come only in the advent of Jesus Christ. He is the ladder, he tells Nathanael. He is the one upon whom the angels of God will ascend and descend. The dream of Jacob, who is also known as Israel, is made real in Jesus.
It is on account of this Jesus that the blood of John’s readers is being spilt; it is on account of their faith in this Jesus. But the faith that has given rise to their plight is not a longing like Macbeth’s or a dream like Jacob’s. It is not an interior belief – it is a baptismal faith. Those facing persecution have conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb’. They have been incorporated into Christ; he is in them and they are in him. What is interior (a first spark of faith, if you will) has become exterior (the clothing of Christ) and there is no longer any distinction between them. When the martyrs suffer Christ suffers; their wounds are his wounds; as they sustain blow after blow the ladder set up to heaven from earth sustains blow after blow. Rupture between the mortal and the divine threatens. Of course the martyrs’ suffering is played out upon the most public stage of all.
Macbeth falls when the unimaginable happens. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and a man not born of woman confronts the desperate tyrant. Humankind is saved when the unimaginable happens. God in Christ bridges the gulf that separates heaven from earth. As the beliefs and acts of our martyred forebears resonated throughout the cosmos so our beliefs and acts resonate throughout the cosmos, for we too have been baptized into Christ. When we witness to truth the heavens sing; when we are false, they weep. On this feast of the angels may we be recalled to the responsibility that is ours. Amen.
Monday, 6 September 2010
Sunday 5 September, Fourteenth after Trinity
I could never be justly accused of being a dedicated follower of fashion; for that matter I could never be justly accused of being a casual follower of fashion. However in the summer of 1982 baggy T-shirts with slogans printed on them in bold capital letters were all the rage. ‘ARM THE UNEMPLOYED’ screamed one. ‘RELAX’ shouted another. ‘CHOOSE LIFE’ proclaimed a third. That was the one I chose, in bright turquoise. I blush at the remembrance, and so entranced was I at my own elegance that I gave little thought to the provenance of the slogan. I certainly never thought it had its roots in the book of Deuteronomy.
Yet ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.’
Choose life. The context in which those words are spoken is important. They form part of Moses’ farewell, part of his final counsel to his people. He has led Israel through the wilderness for forty years, and he knows that his own death is drawing near. The land that God has promised is stretched out before the people. They are poised to enter it. Moses tells them that they have a choice. They can choose God, who has sustained them through their years of exodus, and live; or they can choose the idols of Canaan, the false gods of the land they are being given, and die. ‘Choose life’, Moses urges.
The context in which Jesus speaks the words of this morning’s Gospel is also important. They are addressed to the large crowds travelling with him, travelling towards Jerusalem, travelling to the city to which Luke tells us that Jesus has set his face, in which Luke tells us Jesus will accomplish a new exodus. The parallels are obvious and irresistible. Like Moses, Jesus is leading his people out of slavery. Like Moses, Jesus knows that his death is drawing near. Like Moses, Jesus believes that beyond death is the liberty that God has promised.
So Jesus too offers a choice to Israel, but the choice he offers appears to subvert the choice offered by his famous forebear. ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ he says. ‘Choose God; choose life’ says Moses. ‘Choose God; hate life’ says Jesus.
This appears to be a subversion, a turning upside-down of Israel’s tradition. And this subversion, this turning upside-down continues in the two illustrations Jesus sketches out for his listeners. A person building a tower must count his money carefully; a king going out to wage war must count his troops carefully. Builder and warrior must ensure that they have resources that are adequate for the completion of the task. The implication is that would-be disciples of Jesus should do the same. Discipleship needs preparation. Disciples should not embark upon the journey that is prefigured by the journey to Jerusalem unless they are ready for it. But this readiness consists not in saving up funds or packing a rucksack. It consists in stripping everything back and letting everything go. ‘None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions’.
Choose life. Jesus re-fashions the teaching of the patriarchs for his audience. To win everything you must surrender everything; to choose life you must choose death; you must carry the cross. And we see the ramifications of that choice played out in the little drama of Paul, Philemon and Onesimus.
Onesimus is in all probability the heathen slave sent by his Christian master, Philemon, to care for Paul while he is in prison, as a token of thanks for Paul’s ministry. In the course of attending to Paul’s needs Onesimus has become Paul’s child: that is, he has been baptized. Now Paul is sending him back to Philemon, together with the letter that we heard as our second reading. Although it is not couched in the sharp terms of Moses or of Jesus, Paul is nonetheless offering Philemon the same choice that they offer. The name ‘Onesimus’ means ‘useful. In fact, says Paul, Onesimus has formerly been useless. He has been, in the Greek, ‘achrestos’. Philemon would have read that word and heard the similar-sounding ‘achristos’, ‘without Christ’. Onesimus was useless before his baptism. Now he is with Christ; only now he can live up to his name; only now he is truly useful.
The choice before Philemon is whether he receives back a useless slave, or a true brother in Christ; whether he plays the master or the fellow-believer; whether he behaves like the owner or the companion redeemed sinner. The choice before Philemon is whether he will give up what is rightfully his, whether he will give up his possession. The choice before Philemon is whether he will choose the way of Christ, whether he will surrender his proper claims, whether he will forego his rightful dues. Will Philemon hate life and choose death, in order to win the life that Christ promises?
That T-shirt was revived a couple of years ago, now printed, in typical Noughties fashion, on organic cotton in various pastel shades, and retailing at prices way in excess of its gaudy, mass-produced forebears. It was a rebellious, feel-good catchphrase for my generation, for Thatcher’s children in the era of nuclear proliferation and unprecedented unemployment, and, I suppose, for the same generation now approaching middle-age in the era of the war on terror and the global financial crisis. Choose Life. Well, we have the T-shirt, but dare we give it away? We can talk the talk, but can we walk the walk? Can we set our faces to Jerusalem? Amen.
Yet ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.’
Choose life. The context in which those words are spoken is important. They form part of Moses’ farewell, part of his final counsel to his people. He has led Israel through the wilderness for forty years, and he knows that his own death is drawing near. The land that God has promised is stretched out before the people. They are poised to enter it. Moses tells them that they have a choice. They can choose God, who has sustained them through their years of exodus, and live; or they can choose the idols of Canaan, the false gods of the land they are being given, and die. ‘Choose life’, Moses urges.
The context in which Jesus speaks the words of this morning’s Gospel is also important. They are addressed to the large crowds travelling with him, travelling towards Jerusalem, travelling to the city to which Luke tells us that Jesus has set his face, in which Luke tells us Jesus will accomplish a new exodus. The parallels are obvious and irresistible. Like Moses, Jesus is leading his people out of slavery. Like Moses, Jesus knows that his death is drawing near. Like Moses, Jesus believes that beyond death is the liberty that God has promised.
So Jesus too offers a choice to Israel, but the choice he offers appears to subvert the choice offered by his famous forebear. ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ he says. ‘Choose God; choose life’ says Moses. ‘Choose God; hate life’ says Jesus.
This appears to be a subversion, a turning upside-down of Israel’s tradition. And this subversion, this turning upside-down continues in the two illustrations Jesus sketches out for his listeners. A person building a tower must count his money carefully; a king going out to wage war must count his troops carefully. Builder and warrior must ensure that they have resources that are adequate for the completion of the task. The implication is that would-be disciples of Jesus should do the same. Discipleship needs preparation. Disciples should not embark upon the journey that is prefigured by the journey to Jerusalem unless they are ready for it. But this readiness consists not in saving up funds or packing a rucksack. It consists in stripping everything back and letting everything go. ‘None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions’.
Choose life. Jesus re-fashions the teaching of the patriarchs for his audience. To win everything you must surrender everything; to choose life you must choose death; you must carry the cross. And we see the ramifications of that choice played out in the little drama of Paul, Philemon and Onesimus.
Onesimus is in all probability the heathen slave sent by his Christian master, Philemon, to care for Paul while he is in prison, as a token of thanks for Paul’s ministry. In the course of attending to Paul’s needs Onesimus has become Paul’s child: that is, he has been baptized. Now Paul is sending him back to Philemon, together with the letter that we heard as our second reading. Although it is not couched in the sharp terms of Moses or of Jesus, Paul is nonetheless offering Philemon the same choice that they offer. The name ‘Onesimus’ means ‘useful. In fact, says Paul, Onesimus has formerly been useless. He has been, in the Greek, ‘achrestos’. Philemon would have read that word and heard the similar-sounding ‘achristos’, ‘without Christ’. Onesimus was useless before his baptism. Now he is with Christ; only now he can live up to his name; only now he is truly useful.
The choice before Philemon is whether he receives back a useless slave, or a true brother in Christ; whether he plays the master or the fellow-believer; whether he behaves like the owner or the companion redeemed sinner. The choice before Philemon is whether he will give up what is rightfully his, whether he will give up his possession. The choice before Philemon is whether he will choose the way of Christ, whether he will surrender his proper claims, whether he will forego his rightful dues. Will Philemon hate life and choose death, in order to win the life that Christ promises?
That T-shirt was revived a couple of years ago, now printed, in typical Noughties fashion, on organic cotton in various pastel shades, and retailing at prices way in excess of its gaudy, mass-produced forebears. It was a rebellious, feel-good catchphrase for my generation, for Thatcher’s children in the era of nuclear proliferation and unprecedented unemployment, and, I suppose, for the same generation now approaching middle-age in the era of the war on terror and the global financial crisis. Choose Life. Well, we have the T-shirt, but dare we give it away? We can talk the talk, but can we walk the walk? Can we set our faces to Jerusalem? Amen.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Sunday 11 July 2010, Sixth after Trinity
‘A lawyer stood up to test Jesus’.
My career as a lawyer spanned a brief seven years. Those seven years did include, though, one case in which the threat of the death penalty hung over the head of the party I represented. His name was Bandit, and his crime was that he was alleged to be a pit-bull terrier. The allegation, I must admit, was hardly helped by the name which his thoughtful owner had bestowed upon him. The prosecution was brought under the infamous Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, a knee-jerk response from the then Government to serial reports of supposedly domesticated pets visiting terror upon our fellow citizens.
The Act was widely reviled as one of the most spectacularly ineffective pieces of legislation in history. It outlawed the ownership of various types of dog instead of addressing those dogs’ vicious conduct. So long as I could establish that Bandit was not a pit-bull he would in theory be free to go and maul whoever he chose. It was a bonanza for dog-breeding experts, who found themselves in demand up and down the land, giving their opinion on whether the dog under investigation was or was not a Japanese Tosa. Type, or category, was everything; conduct, or behaviour, was not.
Successive Governments have since 1991 repented of the haste with which the Act was passed, but they have not repented of the legal principle which underpinned it. This is that it is within the competence of the law to define almost anything, and that such definition is inevitably for the common good. The last Government created more new crimes than any of its predecessors has ever done. To take an obvious example, there are now no fewer than seventy sexual offences on the statute book. This rush to law, this urge to codify is not confined to the civil authorities. The General Synod of our Church is spending this weekend debating not whether women should in principle be ordained as bishops, but what consideration should be afforded those who cannot in conscience accept their ordination. The particular focus is whether such consideration should be enshrined in law, whether those who object should be a legally-entrenched constituency.
It is in response to a lawyer’s question that Jesus tells one of the most famous of his parables. ‘Wanting to justify himself’ writes Saint Luke, the lawyer asks Jesus ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Lawyers are trained never to ask a question to which they don’t know the answer, and this was doubtless forming on his lips even as the question left them. My neighbours are the people with whom the Lord has made his eternal covenant. My neighbours strive to love him as I strive to love him. My neighbours worship him in Jerusalem, the sanctuary of his choosing. My neighbours can be easily identified.
It is to such a mindset that Jesus speaks of the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and message that he speaks is scandalous. It is not the priest or the Levite who is moved with pity at the plight of their fellow Jew. No: they are holy men, mindful that contact with his corpse will destroy their ritual cleanliness. It is a Samaritan who is moved. A Samaritan: one of the schismatics who challenged the authority of Jerusalem, one of the heretics who turned their backs on its temple, one of the slanderers who held that the orthodox faith of the Jews was a corruption of God’s truth. The lawyer would certainly have had a category for Samaritans, and it would equally certainly not have been labelled ‘neighbour’.
Yet in his parable Jesus insists that neighbourliness is not like dog type. It cannot be defined in the terms beloved of lawyers. It is not dependent on ties of blood or ancestry; it is not regulated by ethnicity or class; it is not restricted by faith or tradition. The action of the Samaritan reveals that neighbourliness has no bounds.
The action of the Samaritan also reveals that neighbourliness means not complacent, stultifying obligation, but unprompted loving action. The traveller’s neighbour turns out to be the one who had shown him mercy. To be a neighbour is to respond to need. To be a neighbour is to demonstrate purposeful, practical care.
To act as the Samaritan acts is to tear up every category and to re-draw both the bounds of neighbourliness and the duties of neighbourliness. Under the Dangerous Dogs Act, remember, type is everything; for the lawyer in the story, type is everything; but for Jesus type is nothing and action is everything. It is for this reason that I will be unhappy with any legislation for women bishops which resorts to legal categorization and creates the sort of apartheid that has bedevilled the preaching of the Gospel for two thousand years. The parable of the Samaritan calls us to act generously to those who are not like us. The parable of the Samaritan challenges us not to take refuge in unbridgeable enclaves of purity. The parable of the Samaritan asks us to cross the road and kneel alongside the one whom we fear. Neighbourliness means unprompted, loving action.
My part in Bandit’s story had a happy ending. The Court allowed him to live (although I hope not to fight) another day. Today we celebrate a happy occasion - a baptism. The Samaritan has the courage and the clear-sightedness to see past the wounded traveller’s race and religion. He refuses the easy categories - strange foreigner, hated enemy, worthless victim. He sees the need and responds. In baptism God sees past our humanity’s frailty and sin. He refuses the easy categories – faithless weakling, distracted wretch, biddable miscreant. He sees the need and responds.
Today God crosses the road, reaching out to this child and holding him up as surely as the Samaritan did the robbers’ prey. In God’s response to the promise of this child’s life we see enacted the limitless bounds of neighbourliness and the work that it demands. So let’s go to it. Amen.
My career as a lawyer spanned a brief seven years. Those seven years did include, though, one case in which the threat of the death penalty hung over the head of the party I represented. His name was Bandit, and his crime was that he was alleged to be a pit-bull terrier. The allegation, I must admit, was hardly helped by the name which his thoughtful owner had bestowed upon him. The prosecution was brought under the infamous Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, a knee-jerk response from the then Government to serial reports of supposedly domesticated pets visiting terror upon our fellow citizens.
The Act was widely reviled as one of the most spectacularly ineffective pieces of legislation in history. It outlawed the ownership of various types of dog instead of addressing those dogs’ vicious conduct. So long as I could establish that Bandit was not a pit-bull he would in theory be free to go and maul whoever he chose. It was a bonanza for dog-breeding experts, who found themselves in demand up and down the land, giving their opinion on whether the dog under investigation was or was not a Japanese Tosa. Type, or category, was everything; conduct, or behaviour, was not.
Successive Governments have since 1991 repented of the haste with which the Act was passed, but they have not repented of the legal principle which underpinned it. This is that it is within the competence of the law to define almost anything, and that such definition is inevitably for the common good. The last Government created more new crimes than any of its predecessors has ever done. To take an obvious example, there are now no fewer than seventy sexual offences on the statute book. This rush to law, this urge to codify is not confined to the civil authorities. The General Synod of our Church is spending this weekend debating not whether women should in principle be ordained as bishops, but what consideration should be afforded those who cannot in conscience accept their ordination. The particular focus is whether such consideration should be enshrined in law, whether those who object should be a legally-entrenched constituency.
It is in response to a lawyer’s question that Jesus tells one of the most famous of his parables. ‘Wanting to justify himself’ writes Saint Luke, the lawyer asks Jesus ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Lawyers are trained never to ask a question to which they don’t know the answer, and this was doubtless forming on his lips even as the question left them. My neighbours are the people with whom the Lord has made his eternal covenant. My neighbours strive to love him as I strive to love him. My neighbours worship him in Jerusalem, the sanctuary of his choosing. My neighbours can be easily identified.
It is to such a mindset that Jesus speaks of the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and message that he speaks is scandalous. It is not the priest or the Levite who is moved with pity at the plight of their fellow Jew. No: they are holy men, mindful that contact with his corpse will destroy their ritual cleanliness. It is a Samaritan who is moved. A Samaritan: one of the schismatics who challenged the authority of Jerusalem, one of the heretics who turned their backs on its temple, one of the slanderers who held that the orthodox faith of the Jews was a corruption of God’s truth. The lawyer would certainly have had a category for Samaritans, and it would equally certainly not have been labelled ‘neighbour’.
Yet in his parable Jesus insists that neighbourliness is not like dog type. It cannot be defined in the terms beloved of lawyers. It is not dependent on ties of blood or ancestry; it is not regulated by ethnicity or class; it is not restricted by faith or tradition. The action of the Samaritan reveals that neighbourliness has no bounds.
The action of the Samaritan also reveals that neighbourliness means not complacent, stultifying obligation, but unprompted loving action. The traveller’s neighbour turns out to be the one who had shown him mercy. To be a neighbour is to respond to need. To be a neighbour is to demonstrate purposeful, practical care.
To act as the Samaritan acts is to tear up every category and to re-draw both the bounds of neighbourliness and the duties of neighbourliness. Under the Dangerous Dogs Act, remember, type is everything; for the lawyer in the story, type is everything; but for Jesus type is nothing and action is everything. It is for this reason that I will be unhappy with any legislation for women bishops which resorts to legal categorization and creates the sort of apartheid that has bedevilled the preaching of the Gospel for two thousand years. The parable of the Samaritan calls us to act generously to those who are not like us. The parable of the Samaritan challenges us not to take refuge in unbridgeable enclaves of purity. The parable of the Samaritan asks us to cross the road and kneel alongside the one whom we fear. Neighbourliness means unprompted, loving action.
My part in Bandit’s story had a happy ending. The Court allowed him to live (although I hope not to fight) another day. Today we celebrate a happy occasion - a baptism. The Samaritan has the courage and the clear-sightedness to see past the wounded traveller’s race and religion. He refuses the easy categories - strange foreigner, hated enemy, worthless victim. He sees the need and responds. In baptism God sees past our humanity’s frailty and sin. He refuses the easy categories – faithless weakling, distracted wretch, biddable miscreant. He sees the need and responds.
Today God crosses the road, reaching out to this child and holding him up as surely as the Samaritan did the robbers’ prey. In God’s response to the promise of this child’s life we see enacted the limitless bounds of neighbourliness and the work that it demands. So let’s go to it. Amen.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Sunday 27 June 2010, 4 after Trinity
It’s forty-five years since Bob Dylan recorded Subterranean Homesick Blues, a raucous, joyous stream of words and images articulating his profound unease at the staid conventions of American life.
Girl by the whirlpool looking for a new fool, he sang, don’t follow leaders watch the parking meters. Bob Dylan’s generation is beginning to draw its pension; it is being succeeded by a generation which grew up listening to its parents’ records; and on the evidence of the last few weeks it has listened hard.
Don’t follow leaders. The Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has found himself out of a job after expressing doubts about the team surrounding his Commander-in-Chief. His Commander-in-Chief has found himself battling to maintain his credibility as oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico, growing (to some ears at least) ever more shrill and ever more belligerent in his treatment of the Chief Executive of BP. The Chief Executive of BP has found himself under attack for what he has said and for what he has not said, for what he has done and for what he has not done. Don’t follow leaders. Fabio Capello knows what his fate will be if his side does not trounce the Germans in Bloemfontein this afternoon. The power of the great man to rally his people and convince them to follow him in a common endeavour has never seemed weaker.
This ought to make the Church pause, for we are a company of followers. We are those who have heard a call and have responded, as surely as Elisha heard the call of the prophet Elijah and followed him, and as surely as the men and women of the Galilean villages heard the call of the prophet Jesus and followed him. And as a company of followers we are asked to call others. Don’t follow leaders. How can we hope to set about this task in the cynical, coalition-governed twenty-first century?
Tomorrow Nigel Moreland, Carl Boswell and PJ Luard will arrive at Land’s End. They will have run there from John O’Groats in just seventeen days, completing a double marathon on each of those days. Moreland, Boswell and Luard were all comrades of Captain Mark Hale, killed in Afghanistan last August while attempting to rescue an injured soldier. Their record-breaking fund-raising run is a tribute to their fallen friend, and they reckon that the compound fractures and muscle injuries they have sustained are worth it. Meanwhile crowds numbering tens of thousands are passing up the conveniences of the iTunes era to spend the weekend camping in Glastonbury. This year the weather is being kind to them, but they won’t have known that when they bought their tickets. The music festival, a child of the age of Subterranean Homesick Blues, has not gone the way of the beehive hairdo or the kaftan. It has grown and grown in popularity.
We will not follow political leaders who are unable to control events, whether that inability is their fault or not; political leaders will not follow military leaders who speak too freely to the press, whether they speak the truth or not; the markets will not follow business leaders who appear out of touch with reality, whether that appearance is fair or not. Yet we will follow Mark Hale all the way to Land’s End and we will brave heatstroke or trench foot at Glastonbury for the sake of Kylie, Dizzee Rascal and Seasick Steve.
Why follow these leaders? Mark Hale’s comrades do not offer a political ideology. They offer one man’s story, a story of authentic heroism, a story of personal valour. The story connects in a way that the ideology does not. Glastonbury does not offer a business strategy. It offers a shared experience, an experience of common life, an experience of common celebration. The experience connects in a way that the strategy cannot. Long-distance run and open-air festival do not offer a military solution. They offer, through the good-will and the funds that they generate, an opportunity to effect real and positive change to the world. The opportunity connects in a way that a proposed solution never can and never will.
Our age follows leaders who offer an authentic story; the possibility of a shared experience; and opportunity to make a positive change. Our Church is built around the story of Jesus Christ, who gave his life for love of us and was raised on the third day; around the shared experience of prayer and worship, which gathers saint and sinner, prostitute and priest to gather at one table; around the transforming power that is released through those glass doors into our community week by week. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows sang Dylan. But perhaps we do; perhaps we need to be reminded of the story we share, the experience we offer, the power we wield. We have a Gospel to proclaim. Haven’t we?
Girl by the whirlpool looking for a new fool, he sang, don’t follow leaders watch the parking meters. Bob Dylan’s generation is beginning to draw its pension; it is being succeeded by a generation which grew up listening to its parents’ records; and on the evidence of the last few weeks it has listened hard.
Don’t follow leaders. The Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has found himself out of a job after expressing doubts about the team surrounding his Commander-in-Chief. His Commander-in-Chief has found himself battling to maintain his credibility as oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico, growing (to some ears at least) ever more shrill and ever more belligerent in his treatment of the Chief Executive of BP. The Chief Executive of BP has found himself under attack for what he has said and for what he has not said, for what he has done and for what he has not done. Don’t follow leaders. Fabio Capello knows what his fate will be if his side does not trounce the Germans in Bloemfontein this afternoon. The power of the great man to rally his people and convince them to follow him in a common endeavour has never seemed weaker.
This ought to make the Church pause, for we are a company of followers. We are those who have heard a call and have responded, as surely as Elisha heard the call of the prophet Elijah and followed him, and as surely as the men and women of the Galilean villages heard the call of the prophet Jesus and followed him. And as a company of followers we are asked to call others. Don’t follow leaders. How can we hope to set about this task in the cynical, coalition-governed twenty-first century?
Tomorrow Nigel Moreland, Carl Boswell and PJ Luard will arrive at Land’s End. They will have run there from John O’Groats in just seventeen days, completing a double marathon on each of those days. Moreland, Boswell and Luard were all comrades of Captain Mark Hale, killed in Afghanistan last August while attempting to rescue an injured soldier. Their record-breaking fund-raising run is a tribute to their fallen friend, and they reckon that the compound fractures and muscle injuries they have sustained are worth it. Meanwhile crowds numbering tens of thousands are passing up the conveniences of the iTunes era to spend the weekend camping in Glastonbury. This year the weather is being kind to them, but they won’t have known that when they bought their tickets. The music festival, a child of the age of Subterranean Homesick Blues, has not gone the way of the beehive hairdo or the kaftan. It has grown and grown in popularity.
We will not follow political leaders who are unable to control events, whether that inability is their fault or not; political leaders will not follow military leaders who speak too freely to the press, whether they speak the truth or not; the markets will not follow business leaders who appear out of touch with reality, whether that appearance is fair or not. Yet we will follow Mark Hale all the way to Land’s End and we will brave heatstroke or trench foot at Glastonbury for the sake of Kylie, Dizzee Rascal and Seasick Steve.
Why follow these leaders? Mark Hale’s comrades do not offer a political ideology. They offer one man’s story, a story of authentic heroism, a story of personal valour. The story connects in a way that the ideology does not. Glastonbury does not offer a business strategy. It offers a shared experience, an experience of common life, an experience of common celebration. The experience connects in a way that the strategy cannot. Long-distance run and open-air festival do not offer a military solution. They offer, through the good-will and the funds that they generate, an opportunity to effect real and positive change to the world. The opportunity connects in a way that a proposed solution never can and never will.
Our age follows leaders who offer an authentic story; the possibility of a shared experience; and opportunity to make a positive change. Our Church is built around the story of Jesus Christ, who gave his life for love of us and was raised on the third day; around the shared experience of prayer and worship, which gathers saint and sinner, prostitute and priest to gather at one table; around the transforming power that is released through those glass doors into our community week by week. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows sang Dylan. But perhaps we do; perhaps we need to be reminded of the story we share, the experience we offer, the power we wield. We have a Gospel to proclaim. Haven’t we?
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