Living Wittily

Who we once was and who we now wish to be!

Just spent a weekend at a church helping celebrate their anniversary. A Church Anniversary is a bit like a birthday but without the presents. Years ago it was a big deal, and the biggest social event in the Church Calendar. Now the date survives in some church programmes but it isn't the major occasion it used to be.

I suppose one of the more useful functions of an anniversary is gratitude for what has been. That has to be combined though with a willingness to ask about the future. And these two questions, who we have been, and who we are now called to be, lie at the heart of our identity, both as local church, and as denominational expression of our own distinctives.

Nothing of this is peculiar to Baptists. Every denomination is now in that place that can be called liminal. And in a culture fast dissolving and reforming into ever more complex and unpredictable expressions of community and conviction, and evolving increasingly diverse moral codes and social mores, the church is in danger of being what it has always feared being, and at times succeeded in being - an anachronsm desperately seeking relevance to give content to its being and reason for being.

I enjoyed my time with the friends who shared the weekend. Many spoke of being helped and provoked to think in new ways. But I am left with the feeling, not just arising from this weekend experience but from many encounters with churches seeking to find a good way ahead, that who we have been and who we would now feel called to be, are going to be very different pictures. Going to think more about this  - but not expecting it will make gently encouraging devotional reading!!

Raphael, Transfiguration and facing the reality of failure

 

Amongst the aha moments on the recent London trip was a visit to see the Raphael cartoons at the V&A. In our own age of flickering images, CGI's and global publicity our eyes and imagination are overloaded even overwhelmed by visual data. There comes a point when we begin not to notice, when attentiveness is attenuated, and when we are weary of technological cleverness.

So to stand in front of half a dozen very large panels, and gaze on these hand painted images, meticulously detailed, richly woven with biblical allusion and imaginative reconstruction, is a sight for sore eyes.

Raphael is one of the great biblical exegetes. The cartoons are now faded with age, but the mellowing of colour, itself impossible to achieve by mere technique, gives them an aura of old truth still to be told.

One of my favourite Raphael paintings (not in London, but in The Vatican) is "The Transfiguration" in which the whole story is collapsed into one picture. Including the failed exorcism of the disciples. One of Mark's more telling one liners is uttered by the boy's father, "I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they couldn’t." (Mk 9.13) Against the backdrop of glory and Trasfiguration, the failure of the disciples to exorcise the evil spirit is a startling and intended contrast. And failure is an interesting theme in Mark's gospel, and in the lives we all have to live!

Failure, if taken rightly to heart, is an education in humility, in self understanding, an opportunity to grow. But not for the disciples in Mark’s Gospel. Having failed to exorcise an evil spirit themselves, they then become the self-appointed Regional Quality Assurance officers for Exorcisms. Not surprising, that desire to regulate others, control the boundaries,  – they’d just been having an argument about who is the greatest. Reminds you of years ago, a kind of Blair - Brown ambition-fest as to who would be the leader of the disciples. Jesus had just given the kind of answer that only works in the politics of the Kingdom of God, ‘Whoever wants to be first , must be last of all and servant of all.’ And like the self-preoccupied movers and shakers they believed themselves to be, they didn’t, as John Reid another used to be politician would say, ‘get it’.

 So failed exorcists with a lust for leadership, presume to disqualify others from their ministry in Jesus name, and in doing so disqualify themeselves. The same John  Reid would say, ‘Disciples not fit for purpose’. How dare any of us erect boundaries around compassionate ministry exercised in Jesus name. And before we become all self-defensive, ‘Well of course not all services done for people is done in Jesus name’, we do well to listen to Jesus reply, generously inclusive, ministry affirming, and welcoming compassion wherever it rears its beautiful head …"whoever is not against us is for us."

That is an ecumenicity of the heart, and it is only possible when being first is an irrelevance, and being servant of all is a priority; whoever is not against us is for us, gives not only the benefit of the doubt, but the benefit of trust; to live with such an attitude of openness to goodness, to see each act of kindness as Christ serving, to believe each costly casting out of evil wherever it lurks collaborates with God’s Kingdom, to recognise, acknowledge and celebrate compassion wherever it radiates into human lives, is to take on the generous inclusiveness of Jesus who welcomes all the help the world needs for no one who does a deed of power in Jesus name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of him.

And one closing thought – identify that part in each of our hearts, that leads us to say, without thinking clearly what we mean, ‘we tried to stop him because he was not following us’.

Happy Birthday to me - and thank God we never stop learning and seeing new things in new ways

Regular readers of Living Wittily will know that there aren't usually such long spaces between posts unless there is a good reason. How about a 60th birthday? And 4 days in London? A visit to see The Lion King, the National Gallery, the V&A, a Vivaldi concert by candlelight in St Martin in the Fields, the London Eye, the usual iconic buildings from the Palace to Parliament, and several expensive but indulgent patisseries!!

Where to start describing such a crowded temporal canvas. The highlights can't be chosen between - The Lion King was a stunning show - imaginative, African, colourful, funny, moving, musically throbbing and rhythmic - wouldn't have missed it and have seldom spent loadsa money to better prupose. The Sainsbury Wing of the National was for me an overwhelming encounter with beauty, religious devotion, history and some of the finest art of Europe gathered in one location. I've decided over Lent to do a series of posts on paintings in the National Gallery (two or three a week), as a way of distilling high points of experience into more permanently appropriated insight, appreciation, and that elusive golden strand that runs through all transformative aesthetic experience - joy in beauty. Ruskin wasn't wrong - a thing of beauty is a joy forever. I saw, and enjoyed so much - with time and a refusal to rush into gushing newsiness about it all, perhaps the impact of such lavishly displayed genius will have time to dissipate, leaving behind those wounds of knowledge that give permanence to those touches that change the way we are, and the way we view the world.

 
But as one example, and because I can't forbear - and don't want to anyway! Here is one of the works that made me go in the first place. I have a postcard of this, The Virgin on the Rocks, which is a more faithful representation of the depth and texture of the colours than any web page. But nothing prepares for the moment you stand in front of this and know yourself addressed by beauty, truth and goodness. You go all the way to London to appraise a painting, and find yourself judged and wanting in the everyday skills of perception and understanding, and not because such ability is inadequate - more fundamentally, I found they were not appropriate.

There are ways of knowing, levels of comprehension, modes of apprehension, that do not survive intact the authoritative demand of a work of art which threatens to revise the assuredness of all our previous knowledge, to ransack fruitlessly our existent vocabulary, and reduces to incidentals the absoluteness of much of our personal experience. To stand before this painting is to be relativised, to re-calibrate our criteria of judgement, to acknowledge yet again, as a necessary and necessarily recurring process of correction, that what we know, really and deeply know, is always and ever provisional, partial, limited, and therefore has to be open to the possibility of expansion, enrichment and newness in those places of encounter where previous experience leaves us unprepared, and thus vulnerable to wonder.

Viewing this painting was for me a religious experience in its own right. I've now read up on it and learned some important facts about context, technique and the artist's likely purposes. But these are secondary, the painting is primary; I am, and hope to remain vulnerable to its wonder.

Walter Brueggemann - seeing differently and saying so

"We preachers are summoned to get up and utter a sub-version of reality, an alternative vision of reality, that says another way of life in the world is not only possible but is peculiarly mandated and peculiarly valid...This sub-version intends to empower a community of sub-versives who are determined to practice their lives according to a different way of imagining".

Walter Brueggemann, quoted in Disruptive Grace, page 8.

Walter Brueggemann - still subverting cosy Christian worldviews

You know how enthusiasts for one author or another say that each publication by their favoured writer is an "event"?

And you know how we all nod sceptically, roll the metaphorical eyes and forgive the enthusiasm but wish for some balanced realism?

Well it wouldn't be true to say every book Walter Brueggemann publishes is an "event". Some are slim, some are derivative of earlier work, and maybe he just publishes too much.

Or maybe not.

In any case this collection of essays and lectures does, at least for enthusiasts of Brueggemann's theological adventurousness, deserve "event" status. It is a hardback at £12.99 which is the least significant reason for buying it. It touches major areas of theological importance for Christian thinkers grappling with the implications for a fixed shape church, of a liquid world, and the cost and consequences of ignoring a culture that is rapidly transforming and transformative of human behaviours, perceptions and life goals. It is written with the usual startling originality of verbal juxtaposition - I use the clumsy term deliberately because there are few writers who so cleverly and persuasively write to undermine familiarity and subvert cosy worldviews long held in the cherished corners of our allegedly Christian pieties. 

The book comes at the right time. Lent is nearly upon us - and rather than grovel around in the scary recesses of our own guilty and self-pre-occupied souls, here's a book that will dare us to look out, not in; to think of the other, not me; to listen for the strange voice of God rather than the familiar voice of our favourite devotional writers; to sing new and upsetting songs rather than the songs of our imagined Zion to which we are blithely marching; and to pay attention to the pain and hopes of the oppressed and vulnerable rather than worry about the prospects for the church in a postmodern culture which long ago stopped taking the church seriously as a cultural, intellectual or spiritual rival worth taking on. 

And if all that sounds like a rant, it probably is. But I am no longer persuaded by the strident calls to do this and that; nor attracted to emotional, personal, individual apprehensions of spirituality, even when communally pursued and practiced. I am much more persuaded by, attracted to, a spirituality that is astringent, alert to the church's self-concern, critical of the cultural status quo (Brueggemann  calls it the capitalist, consuymerist hegemony of empire!), and ready to listen to new ways of serving and following faithfully after Jesus come hell or high water. And the gates of hell shall not prevail - you will notice that I decline to capitalise hell - it has no ultimacy.

The Body of Christ in the world is a subversive community daring to embody a Gospel of reconciliation. We are people gathered beneath the cross but with our faces turned towards the dawn and that displaced stone, discarded shroud and defeated grave, - these are the realities for the church, by which we live, and by which we take on both the hell and the high water. And the last people who should be afraid of high water are baptised Christians, who through immersion declare the resurrection; and the last peopel to fear hell are those who have the nerve to call Jesus Lord, and in doing so hold their nerve in the face of whatever. I've no idea where the church is now going - how and in what shape it will survive in such a messy, mashed up, scintillatingly unpredictable world with its polarities and similarities, its paradoxes and possibilities. But wherever it's going - John 3.16 remains a defining statement of its destiny - it is a God-loved world, and the business of the church is to go on arguing that - by the way we live in faithfully following  Jesus. 

Many a truth is told in gaffe

Driving south around 7.45 and listening to radio 4.

Big discussion about the the Big Society idea.

Seems it might be in trouble as a major plank in the social platform.

David Cameron to speak about it today to rescue the credibility of the idea.

Enter Radio 4 Presenter and I quote:

"David Cameron will nail his colours to the mask."

Just a slip - but then........

 

 

Vincent Van Gogh - painting fragility

Been looking again at this painting by Vincent. I have a magnetic bookmark that I use all the time that has the butterflies detail. One of Van Gogh's final paintings, it shows two beautiful life forms which are transient, fragile and lovely. But I guess it's a sad painting, or at least one that hints at the sadness and poignancy of an artist who could paint life and death, joy and sadness, sunlight and shadow with immense power and humane sympathy. Amongst my life ambitions is a visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Someone asked me recently my favourite song - too hard a question, too many songs, and my own knowledge is limited by the usual prejudices, opportunities and interests. But somewhere amongst the ones I've listened to most is Don Maclean's version of Starry Night. The tragedy and the triumph of Vincent are captured in simple lyrics, sung with minimal accompaniment, and a resonant sympathy with this most emotionally complex artist. Oh, and the best episode of Dr Who I've ever watched was the one about Vincent being brought to the present to hear the admiration of the greatest art critics and see the public queue to see his work.

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will...

Tired of giving in - Rosa Parks and a new missiological disposition?

Amongst the most remarkable and inspiring people who show us the ways of righteousness is Rosa Parks. I came across her name again in parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach.  The people who matter in a community are those who embody, enact and embrace their convictions, and in the demonstration of a life lived well, wisely and with disturbing courage affirm their identity and integrity. So when she sat in the whites-only section of that bus over 50 years ago, Rosa Parks asserted her humanity, affirmed her identity and confirmed her integrity. Not by words, but by an action that declared "her heart's knowledge of her own humanity". Why on that day did she sit there and refuse to move?

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually wasat the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of meas being old then. I was forty two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in"

Tired of giving in. Weary of wearing the weight of the status quo. Exhausted by the tedium and tyrranny of laws formed by imprisoned minds, intended to imprison the minds and hearts of others. By the simple act of sitting, Rosa Parks defied an entire mindset, challenged a racist worldview, embodied a protest against inhumanity by placing her human body in the way of harm and witnessing to the value, dignity and equality of each human being.

Now it would be easy enough to identify in our time those social practices and political policies, those economic decisions and legal impositions that diminish, devalue and demonise others. But instead of doing that simply the question, what have we too long given in to? Put up with? Culpably tolerated? Too easily accepted? And will we reach the stage where we are tired of giving in to institutional and unchallenged injuistice? What is our equivalent of sitting in the wrong place in the segregated bus? That I think might be a missiological question, and one the churches of Jesus Christ could do worse than address - and then find the place where we are called to sit.   

Intercessions for Egypt and peace in the Middle East

The following prayer was written and offered at worship where I was preaching this morning. Members of the congregation have friends and work colleagues currently living in Cairo. 

Prayer for Egypt

 Creator God, by whose love everything exists,

Gracious God by whose mercy we live and move and have our being,

God of Israel, Egypt and the nations,

Hear our prayers for our troubled world.

 

For two weeks we have watched events in Cairo,

Watching thousands of people crying out for change,

Faces anxious, angry, pleading for support;

faces bruised and bleeding,

voices crying out their aspirations for freedom,

their hunger for a more just society,

Some words are too easily take for granted,

living in the relative security of this country –

Justice, freedom, peace, safety;

and there are those experiences that demonstrate

the dangers of their opposites –

injustice, oppression, conflict, violence.

 

Lord in your world, amongst the nations,

Let justice roll down like waters,

And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

 

Sung Response

From dark despair to hope,

   from fear to trust in God,

from hate to love, from war to peace,

   still lead us on dear Lord.

 ...

 

Creator God, Gracious God,

God of Israel and the nations;

We pray for the kind of peace

which is not the capitulation of peoples hopes,

nor the silencing of freedom’s cries.

When the nations are in tumult

our prayers can too easily become our asking you

to bless our amateur political solutions,

as if you act within the tiny parameters of our wisdom.

God of peace who brought again the Lord Jesus from the dead,

into this situation of anger and violence,

move by your Spirit in peace and reconciliation;

restrain the forces of evil,

may military force protect rather than attack the people,

and bring forth peace, justice freedom

and the birth of new hopes,

not only for Egypt but for all the peoples of the Middle East.

 

Lord in your world, amongst the nations,

Let justice roll down like waters,

And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

 

Sung Response

From dark despair to hope,

   from fear to trust in God,

from hate to love, from war to peace,

   still lead us on dear Lord.

Forget Sat Nav! It's Radio Four that helps you get home!

Driving to Aberdeen on Thursday through gales and rain and surface water pounded into opaquely fluid airborne spray by anything travelling on tyres, I was listening to Radio 4. That station is an oasis of sanity, a source of solace, a conservator of culture, an always fulfilled promise of intellectual pleasure, and that without which some of us would find the world of airwaves bereft of one of our life's essentials.

I listened to Afternoon Reading: The Poet's Year, read by the Welsh National Poet Gillian Clarke, and adapted from her wonderful book, At The Source. I've just discovered Gillian Clarke's work. The reading was exquisite - from her Journal of the turn of the year, a description of harvesting honey and observing with closely attendant affection and respect for the livingness of the countryside.

In complete contrast to the darkness of a late winter's night, buffeting gales and trillions of driven rain pellets all homing in on my windscreen, I listened to a poet reading the prose poem account of her summer. The description of honey harvest was contemplative, and quietly, trustfully, reverent of the cost in millions of bee-flights to achieve the 36 lbs of amber honey lovingly potted, sealed and stored. Now where else in all the wide world would I have been lifted from the concentrated misery of such a night drive in appalling weather, to that other place of the imagination, than in a car with Radio Four playing? Just going to listen again on IPlayer to all three episodes.