religious archeology

Religious archeology? What’s that, a cross between Tony Robinson enthusiastically digging up a dusty pew and Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou earnestly making stuff up [surely, digging stuff up? Ed.] to get on TV?

Neither actually. I came across this fascinating concept whilst meeting with the chaplaincy team at our local specialist cancer hospital. They were talking about how many people, when facing death or its possibility, often turn back to their concepts of God and religion they had when they were previously ‘spiritually active’. Or just went to church. As often people he would talk to were older people, who went to Sunday School etc… and then grew up and grew out of church, in order to understand the God they understand you need to go back to the 1950′s or thereabouts. Once you understand how God was understood back then, you can begin to find a way to relate to these new seekers. 

Religious archeology, then. Digging down through the decades to discover what paradigms and concepts and understandings of God to start with. You can’t take 21st century concepts of God and expect them to slot comfortably over these dusted-off concepts.

The chaplain added a note of caution though. Because he said that these people, who are ill now, are the last generation of people who had a pretty much guaranteed Christian foundation, even it was the basics of Sunday School. In 10 or 20 years those people who are facing imminent death, and therefore begin to search for meaning and becoming open to the possibilities of God, will have nothing to dig for. There will be no paradigm for God, no matter how 1950′s. Just a murky muddy quagmire of pop theology, folk religion and wishful thinking – if even that – which will serve to provide little in the way of comfort, let alone a bridge back to the God they never believed in.

Of course, it can be true that having no paradigm for God can be more helpful than having a bad one. But without one at all we are limiting the chances people will be open to searching for God at all. And this gives me hope and it gives me encouragement for some of the tasks that I perform that can seem to tedious, pointless, and theologically dubious. For some, what we call ‘occasional offices’ – baptisms, weddings and funerals (or hatches, matches and dispatches) – are central to their ministry. I try to see it like that, but more often than not the time taken to perform a service in which no-one else believes in God can seem a little… hypocritical. And time-consuming.

But instead of seeing it like that, on my good days I see it like giving the religious archeologists of the future something to dig for. If I can give these people, usually now with little or no church background, a snippet of a positive memory of the church, a small but significant encounter with the church – which for them equates with an encounter with God – in which the church say yes and you’re welcome, the church says Jesus loves you and the church says come, then it’s no longer a waste of time.

Like planting a seed-bomb on a wasteland, you don’t know if it will grow, but the hope is always there. 

Always. 

baggage

There’s lots of half-truths and myths and wishful thinking that we bandy around at church. We’re all as guilty as each other, which is kind of comforting to know. Unless you believe you have the whole and complete and unblemished truth of course, in which case it might be disconcerting.

One of the half-truths came to mind when I was doing my regular Saturday parkrun. I saw this sign. It spoke volumes. 

non-secure baggage here

When we come to Jesus we can give him our baggage and he can redeem it. All that stuff that has us back and holds us down. Guilt, bad habits, too much cheese. Cumbered with a load of care? Come to Jesus. His yoke is easy and his burden is light.

Half-truth. Theologically it works. Practically, it’s a work in progress. The trouble is when we give Jesus our baggage usually we are giving it via the church, which is when the “non-secure” part of the photo springs to mind.

This isn’t to say we don’t give it at all in case it goes wrong. At the parkrun we leave our baggage together in one place because there safety in a shared risk, and when someone is likely to be keeping an eye on it. Though of course we don’t leave our valuables in view, and if you’re like me you keep anything really valuable strapped to your arm (there’s another illustration there about leadership and vulnerability…).

So yes, we do place our burdens on Jesus, we allow him to nail it to the cross and deal with it… but we also live in the knowledge that it’s a work in progress, that when we do this we take risks, risks involve trust and though God won’t us down it might sometimes feel like it. And people probably will.

So, baggage. Non-secure, left at your own risk.  The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the half-truth.

to the unknown god

I wonder when you last prayed? Was it this morning, that the alarm clock wouldn’t go off, or when you realised you hadn’t done the right homework and would be in even more trouble? Was it a few days ago when you nearly got hit by a car crossing the road in the split-second of blind panic you shoot a prayer like an arrow ‘just in case’ there’s a power up there listening. I take a lot of funerals as part of my job, and most of the people in those families are not church-goers or religious but they believe in God when someone dies. They pray then. 

A couple of weeks ago the Bolton footballer Fabrice Muamba had a heart attack on the pitch, and the response from his team mates and thousands of supporters was what…? To simply wish him well. To write a card? To send him good vibes? To read his star sign to see if it mentions recovering from a heart attack? To tell his family all the bad things religion has done? Or… was it to pray? 

His whole team came out in t-shirts saying ‘pray for Muamba’. Which is fantastic and demonstrates that the doo doo hits the fan we know – we know! – there is something out there, someone out there, someone who might just be able to help. It’s an instinct we have, it’s a connection we have with out creator that even if we have forgotten about, our souls haven’t. 

So when we pray, who do we pray to? A nameless face, a ball of gas, a statue, an idea? Maybe we are praying to a mystery, maybe we are praying to whoever you want God to be? 

I think not. 

I believe that I know who the God is that we pray to. I believe that God isn’t nameless and faceless, that God doesn’t hide away behind the clouds. That God in’t just for certain people at a certain time. And that God isn’t reserved for those who ‘feel’ the spiritual or like to have a fuzzy feeling and say [Darth Vader voice] *The force is strong with you..*.

And I believe God is here.  

My faith is rooted in actual historical events. I believe that the God we pray to in emergencies is revealed to us through Jesus, who is present here by his Holy Spirit. I believe that the man Jesus was actually God, that he actually gave us a face and a name. I believe that God so loved the world – that is, you and me and this earth – that he came to earth as one of us to show us, to be present with us. I believe that he so wants to be in relationship with us that instead of staying far way and hoping one day we’ll discover him for ourselves he came looking for us. 

You see, there is this dividing wall between us and God, it’s what prevents us from being in a relationship with him. God is a God of love and goodness and compassion and every time we don’t live like that, like he does, and all the time we don’t recognise him as God, it’s like a new brick in the wall. Jesus came to break down that dividing wall between us and God. And not just to break it down, but at the same time to transform us so that we might be able to approach God and be in relationship with him. 

Because all that bad stuff we do when we don’t live lives of love and goodness and worship sticks to us like charcoal, makes us dirty. And God is clean, like Morgan Freeman in a white suit in Bruce Almighty. So he makes us clean. When we trust in him, when we follow him, Jesus makes us clean. When he embraces us. We don’t have to be clean before God will embrace us. That is so important. Morgan Freeman’s suit takes on our dirt. We don’t have to be good, fine, sorted, religious to be embraced by God. In fact, it’s because I’m not good, sorted and religious I know I need Jesus. 

That is what happened that first Easter. Jesus took all the bad stuff – we call it sin – on himself, so that we might be holy and be in relationship with God. Paid the price to free the slave. That’s me. You.

This is the God I believe in. A God who came to be with us, who searched us out; a God who answers prayer, who isn’t a nameless and faceless force; a God who is Jesus, who came to break down the wall that divides us and God so that we might live as we were meant to live, in relationship with God who made us and loves us. A God who is personal. A God who shows us love. Love that is real and true and deep, not a love that goes up and down on a tide of emotion like a teenage crush or tugs at the heart strings like the backstories on X Factor. Love, unconditional and unfailing love. 

That is the God I believe in. This is the God to whom we pray. He’s called Jesus, and he is here right now by his Holy Spirit. Do you want to know him? 

an inconvenient love of women

Thursday 8th March 2012 is International Women’s Day. According to Christian Aid 70% of the world’s poor are women. It is good that this falls in Lent because it must act as a call to action. Why? 

The primary action at the beginning of Lent for Anglicans is the imposition of ashes. The ashes represent all that is broken and lost in the world, the burnt cross of the execution stake. Because they are smeared and spread on our foreheads, imposed on the most viewed part of us, smudged across our make-up, spoiling our fringe, and sometimes forgotten about until someone says ‘when did you last wash?’

God always wants to remind us to do decent service, not to do a decent service. Not to fast whilst we are still slagging off our wives; not to put our feet up whilst the women do the work; not to worship whilst we are spending money other families need more; not to pray in public lest we forget to clothe the naked.

This can be imposition for us. So easily we – and I include me – slip into the kingdom of comfort, feel we’ve done our time in the kingdom of pain. We become desensitised, we get compassion-fatigue or whatever else we call it. We forget to be human and humane and close our eyes to the suffering of all – including women - around us. To remember is an imposition. To be reminded is an inconvenience.

Well, says God, allow me to impose. Allow me to inconvenience you. Because any sort of faith that doesn’t have at its heart God’s care for the exiled, the pained, the tortured, the bereaved and the hurting is no faith I recognise. Any faith that speaks of caring for the poor as if that is a hobby and not a lifestyle is not a faith I recognise. Any faith that doesn’t welcome and truly welcome the strange and the stranger and the strangest is not a faith I recognise. Any faith that turns a blind eye to abuse of women in all its forms is not a faith I recognise. Any faith that denigrates instead of celebrates women is not a faith I recognise. 

Allow me to impose, says God. Because I get religion-fatigue. I can’t be bothered any more. Your religion interests me; I would love to study it sometime. But now, please, for goodness sake get back to basics, strip it down and see what you really need. I think you’ll find it’s me.

I am the poor. You have clothes. And I am naked.  

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Whilst you are here, why not check out this campaign from the Home Office called This is Abuse.

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This is an edited version of religion-fatigue and the imposition of haberdashery that I wrote back in 2010. I re-read and thought I’d share it again… 

lampposts and landrovers

I was out with my running club the other night. It’s something I do from time to time to confirm the stereotype that skinny people are good at long-distance running. Anyway, we were doing this horrible training run where you run hard up a steep hill, then turn round and jog back slowly to a fixed point. And repeat it as many times as you can in 30 minutes.

I say fixed point. You see, often with these runs we use lampposts as markers but the pavement was being dug up so we used a parked car as a landmark. A Land Rover. Which was fine. And very appropriate.

Trouble is, on the 2nd repetition the Land Rover (predictably) disappeared. It threw me momentarily. It reminded me of the time I was walking over Kinder Scout in the Peak District, lost my way and took a compass bearing on the only fixed point I could see. A cloud. I know, not good. But we survived. 

Following fixed points when following Jesus sometimes feels like he has got in the landmark and driven it away. Jesus refuses to be pigeon-holed or boxed. Which we deny, time and time again by making him into fixed point. Turning a parked car into a lamppost is fine if you want to light up a tiny area but not go anywhere.  

I mean, there are fixed points. I’m not saying there aren’t. But the Word of God is person not a book; a personality and not a sentence. Being dogmatic about Jesus is like catching a cloud in a jar to ensure your compass reading is accurate. We don’t really know where Jesus really stands on contemporary conundrums from banking to sex to fig trees to being gay. Ok, we know about fig trees.

We think we know; we make leaps from principles to practice which we may well absolutely believe are true to Jesus. And they may well be. But… Sometimes he drives the landmark away. 

So when we obsess over fixed points, be they about homosexuality and marriage or about anger or adultery or fig trees (and other gardening issues) let’s try and remember that Jesus always – always – saw the person, and the bigger picture; always put loving people first. 

He operated on fixed points. Of course he did, he was a devout Jew. But he also moved them. Redefined them. And to steal from Rob Bell, Jesus didn’t say get out of the box. Because there is no box. This doesn’t get us off the hook when it comes to living well. It doesn’t mean we don’t aim for holiness.

But it does mean we don’t just stand still and admire the small pool of light the lamppost makes around us. Because Jesus has just driven away.  

beware of the dog

Look into my eyes...

My fear of dogs comes from when I was attacked by a German Shepherd when I was a kid. As in the big scary dog. Not a Bavarian farmer. That incident has lived long in my mind. It sets my default reaction to all dogs that they will, this time or another, attack me.

Because that is what dogs do.

As a runner who likes the solitude of cross-country or woods, this pre-determined fear of canine treachery does not bode well. But my experience tells me I am right. So when I hear stories of dog attacks, it backs up my theory. No matter the hundreds of dogs I pass who do me no harm. No matter my old flame Sasha, the borrowed black labrador I used to take to Tilgate forest to run with me. Dogs like that don’t fit my prejudice, so I can ignore them.

But here comes the rub. Maybe it’s a confession. The dog attack I mentioned earlier. Did I mention it was a dream? A nightmare really, but it wasn’t real. I was a child, and I had a bad dream about my leg being bitten by an Alsatian. But it wasn’t real, although my leg did hurt.

But the fear of dog it gave me was very real. From an imaginary event. Backed up by prejudice and conjecture. 

It got me thinking. About people’s experiences of god. Their fear of him. The very real fear that he is out to get them. That he will find them out and punish them. That he might look all friendly but maybe this time, maybe the next. He will attack.

Because that is what gods do.

I would love to shatter the myth of the attack-god, to show people when their perceptions of God are created from dreams or fantasies or things they’ve heard from someone who once said that God will burn everyone who doesn’t behave themselves and sing falsetto in the choir. A sort of Dante-esque horror story of eternal punishment that some Christians get off on. Backed up by prejudice and conjecture. And, of course, fear. 

The myths we carry in our minds about God can be so dangerous because they block us from experiencing the real thing. Like a fear of dogs that forever blocks us from relaxing in the presence of the friendliest of canines, the misplaced fear of God can forever block us from relaxing in the presence of God.

Who, as CS Lewis famously said of Aslan (not a dog), is of course not safe. But he is good.

I can't believe I have used this cliche. But it seemed to fit.

 

slave waver

there was no apple

When the writers of the Bible talk about people in being in slavery to sin it all seems a bit, well, harsh. Slavery? How many of us would say we are enslaved to sin? The language calls to mind images of the devil binding us in chains or possessing us in some scary poltergeisty sort of way. We may prefer to think that we flirt with sin, we may clothe ourselves occasionally, because actually it is just a bit of fun. Isn’t sin more fun anyway? Better to be in slavery to sin that befriended by boredom? Read here about evil and sin actually being pretty dull and banal and boring.

I  had 2 conversations with people a while back that went something like this.

Conversation1:

Me: Why did you assault my friend?
Person a: I had to defend my family.
Me: Perhaps that wasn’t the best way to react?
Person a: I can’t help it, it is how my family always react. It is in my genes. It is just the way I am.

Conversation 2:

Person b: why did you grass on my son?
Me: Because he was doing something dangerous and illegal.
Person b: We don‘t grass on estates. You want to be careful doing things like that round here.

My point is that neither of those men would say they are enslaved to sin; I would not say that to them either! But their reactions as grown men to situations around them come from a position of slavery. To the gene pool, to the domination system, to ‘the way things are’, the way that oppresses freely because that is how life is. I don’t say that as a value judgement on them. I honestly think they think they have no choice. They have seen no other way that works. As I wrote following the Faithworks Conference, that is exactly the kind of slavery that Jesus came to free us from.

It does not need to be that way. Our character need not be defined by our genes, our family and our upbringing, though they will always be part of who we are. Our character can be defined by the Holy Spirit living in us. The system of domination and fear that we live in and support by living in it does not need to define us. We can be defined by the kingdom of God not the kingdom of fear.

I pray for slave waver in our community. Where anger is replaced by patience, fear by love, fists by feasts. When teenagers talk about something other than sex and slagging each other and don’t need to get a rush from being (nearly) nicked; when men can  be real men instead of being something they think they ought to be and women can be themselves without fear of being judged or taken for granted or simply ignored.

My deepest longing is that this slave waver happens because people meet Jesus and by his Holy Spirit they are transformed and sanctified and other wonderfully big words and maybe I even mentioned being saved but… but… I kinda just want it to happen anyway whether or not they discover Jesus. Through our influence or through nothing to do with us. If slaves waver and the world gets better and looks more like the kingdom, I’m not so worried about why…

forgive us our debts

Maybe the national debt crisis isn’t affecting you directly. I am pleased for you. There are so many for whom it is tragic. The latest figures from Credit Action are pretty startling. Here are some high (low?)lights: 

• Average household debt in the UK (excluding mortgages) was £7,948 in December. This is down from a revised £7,972 in November.
• Average household debt in the UK (including mortgages) was £55,823 in December. This is up from a revised £55,818 in November.
• The average amount owed per UK adult (including mortgages) was £29,547 in December. This was around 122% of average earnings.
• 331 people are declared insolvent or bankrupt every day (based on Q3 2011 trends). This is equivalent to 1 person every 60 seconds during each working day.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 8,652 new debt problems every working day during the year ending September 2011.
• 193 mortgage possession claims are issued and 153 mortgage possession orders are made every day

A lot of this is our fault. We make bad decisions. We are coerced into thinking that we need need need all these things that we can’t afford, and are tempted to borrow borrow borrow so that we can have have have. But sometimes we just have rotten luck and are made redundant. Sometimes life just goes belly-up. I have made more referrals to the Sutton Foodbank in the last 3 months than in the previous 2 years out together. 

So if this isn’t affecting you, spare a generous thought for those it is. And think about how you could help. And if it is affecting you, do something about it TODAY! Contact Christians Against Poverty or search DirectGov here, but do not not not go to a payday loan company. Please! 

yellow book

So, how was school today?
Fine.

Probably for most people picking kids up from school that’s the most you can hope for. They’ll talk endlessly about anything else, but anything useful about school…?!  

But we’ve got the yellow book. Ah, the yellow book. The yellow book that tells the truth, the yellow book in which the teachers write their own answer to the same question: how was school today? The yellow book never lies. 

I think a lot of people think that God has a yellow book. In which he keeps records of our behaviour, in which he can look to check whether or not we had really been as good and respectable and well-behaved as we may claim to have been. And of course he keeps the books as they pile up. He logs and catalogues all our misdemeanours. And boy does he hold them against us. He keeps the book in church, in the vestry behind the big dusty Bible that used to be on the altar but no-one knows what to do with now. 

I don’t think God thinks like that at all. He knows all that we do, of course. But there’s no need for a yellow book. Because there’s no need to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. So there’s no need for a yellow book that tells the real truth. The truth is out there already. He knows everything.

Trust that there is no secret yellow book in which God stores up things to hold against us. Learning to embrace that may well be the beginning of wisdom and the foundation of a healthy relationship with God. 

Amazing what you can learn from a simple yellow book. And today was a good day at school, by the way.  

 

the weakness in [christmas] love

Have I been good enough?

Have I been good enough this year? To receive some presents? I wonder what scale I will use to decide. Maybe comparing myself to others. That usually works well in my favour. I’m no Mother Teresa but I’m no Kim Jong Il either… therefore I am good.

Have I been good enough?

Sometimes to make sure we have been good enough to receive good things we draw up charts and lists. Most of these are good things, or at least they start off that way. We might think of the 10 commandments or the law of the land. I haven’t broken any laws, so I’ve been good. Maybe a little speeding, the odd tax dodge and a Blackberry from the back of a lorry but apart from that I’ve been good.

Have I been good enough?

If that is the question we believe that God is asking us – and for many it will be – then can I reassure you that he is not.  God is not interested in whether or not you have been good. What?!? But surely being a Christian is the same as being a good person, isn’t it? Aren’t Christians goody-goodies? Isn’t that what the 10 commandments are all about?

The Christmas story shows us year after tinsel-covered year that God is not interested in whether we are good. Which is lucky because although we might feel we have ‘kept the 10 commandments’, which a lot of people tell me they do because they haven’t killed anyone or been jealous of their neighbours ass we all fall down at the very first one.

When God came into the world taking the form of a human being, demeaning himself and coming down to our fragile, human level, God was saying the rules and the laws are not working and though I love it when you live well and do good the most important thing is not that you are good but that you are love.

Have I been good enough?

To receive from God? You think you need to be good to receive?

If you are carrying guilt that it has been a bad year and you think you haven’t been good enough to receive from God, then think again. The story of Jesus birth and of his life show us that God consistently surprises and gives to people who least expect it and who represent what the world sees as ‘bad people’ – shepherds, tax collectors, prostitutes, unclean people.

It is not too late to receive from God, to turn ourselves to face him and to receive from him.

If you are carrying pride that it has been a good year and that you have done pretty well, so should expect to receive from God some sort of reward, then think again. The story of Jesus life and birth show us that God consistently surprises people who call themselves ‘good’ and humbles them – King Herod, the Pharisees, the religious scholars, the rich.

It is not too late though to humble ourselves and receive from God, to turn ourselves to face him and to receive from him.

John’s gospel talks of Jesus as being the light that gives life,  a light that changes us because it shines into our darkest places and transforms them from darkness to light, whether our greatest darkness is pride or addiction or self-loathing or apathy or fear or abuse or doubt… Christmas is a time to remember God broke into our world in a surprising and reckless way  not that we might be good but that we might love and be loved.

The sting in the tail is that it is much easier to be good than it is to give and receive love, especially God’s love. Which is why so many of us default to trying to be good, instead of allowing ourselves to be loved. Allowing ourselves to be loved is perhaps the hardest thing of all.  That love transforms us and turns us into the best you and me we can be, but it is not a quick fix and it is not easy. But it is worth it.

The weakness in love is it’s greatest strength.

May we be people of the light, people who love and know love, who give and receive love that comes from God the Father revealed in Jesus Christ and living on through the Holy Spirit, people who turn and face God and receive openly from him; may we be people who truly and openly pray O come to us, Abide with us, our Lord Immanuel.

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**this is an edited version of my Christmas Eve Midnight Communion talk**