Taking a week off...

...back soon!

A Christian Country?

David Cameron wrote in the Church Times last week of his belief in Britain as a 'Christian country', and our need to be 'more confident about our status' as such. He expressed appreciation of what the churches contribute to our society: Christian values of 'responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility and love'; faith to strengthen us 'in the toughest of times'; and a belief that Christianity can inspire us to 'change people's lives, and improve both the spiritual, physical and moral state of our country, and even the world.' Describing himself as a 'classic' member of the Church of England, he said that he welcomed the contributions of church leaders and faith communities to contemporary issues.

His article drew a robust response from some leading writers, artists, scientists, politicians and philosophers, who wrote an open letter to three of our national newspapers. They accuse the PM of  'mischaracterising ...our country as a Christian country' and suggest there are 'negative consequences for our politics and society' engendered by this view. Quoting recent census data, they seek to demonstrate that in fact religious faith is in decline, and the growth of other ethnic groups and religious faiths further weakens the claim to be a Christian country. They suggest that Cameron's views could even foster alienation, and regret the 'increasing incursions of religion into politics'. 

If I'm honest, as far as the 'Christian country' bit is concerned, I think I am rather on the side of the secularists. Not because I think that such a view is divisive necessarily (many people of other faiths are happy to live in a society where the language of faith is freely spoken and shared values are expressed), but because I'm not sure what it means. There is no way it could be claimed that as a nation we live by Christian values, by and large - otherwise, for example, we would be addressing far more rigorously the rich/poor divide. On the other hand, it is equally obvious that we have a Christian heritage witnessed by the way our laws are set, and by our many ancient buildings, and sublime examples of art, music and literature.

However, history shows that when church and state come too close, when politicians try to recruit Christians to their cause, there are likely to be severe problems. That, for example, is what Hitler did and many German church leaders were naive enough to go along with his rhetoric. The Barmen Declaration of 1934 (written largely by Karl Barth, and with Bonhoeffer among others as signatories) was a courageous stand against the politicization of the church.

For the moment, what interests me most is that Christianity, despite all the obvious signs of decline, still clearly matters! The fact that a PM writes so positively about the Church, and the fact that leading secularists bother to attack it is proof enough that we still have a major influence in the life of our nation. Is it my imagination, but this Holy Week and Easter, were there not even more programmes with Christian content on mainstream radio and TV? And were there not even more public depictions of the Passion story through art and drama - including, for example, the use of 12 shipping containers in the north-east?  If only, as a Church, we were more alert to our calling as witnesses to Christ and the values of his Kingdom; and more aware that there is an audience out there, more ready to listen than we sometimes think.

Happy Easter!

I have just returned from our Sunrise Communion service. It is always a joy to gather with members of our church community outdoors, around a bonfire, before entering church with the new paschal candle lit from the fire. I rejoice that we always have 25-30 hardy individuals who gather at dawn for this special Easter celebration. This morning was bright and clear, the birdsong was amazing; earlier, there had even been a flock of honking geese flying over, symbols of the Holy Spirit in Celtic thought. It felt like resurrection.

I don't go to London often, but when I do I like to ride the Underground. Checking the destination board (1st train...2nd train...3rd train...), the distant rumble, the rush of air pushed out ahead of the train, the loud, almost deafening clattering and then the light as the train emerges from the tunnel. It always seems to me to be going too fast to stop in time! This subterranean experience speaks to me of resurrection.

Mary Magdalene and friends had not read the script ('they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead'); they had not heard the rumblings of new life in Jesus' words, nor felt the rush of the Spirit's breath which told them God was on the move. So they were caught completely by surprise that first Easter day. Not so with us. We have read, heard, felt, even seen evidence of the resurrection to prepare us for that general resurrection on the Last Day.

Henri Nouwen writes movingly of an Easter morning service in a l'Arche community. Philippe is a badly disabled and disfigured young man, by an accident of birth. Incapable of speech, he cries out from deep within himself as the Easter liturgy proceeds. Nouwen notices his plight, but also the loving, tender care Philippe receives from community members. One day, Philippe will have a new body; meanwhile the attention he receives prefigures that resurrection and is in preparation for it. Just so, the love, the tenderness, the care we show for others is in readiness for that day when all shall be gathered up in Christ and all will be made new.

Meanwhile, we live with the ups and downs of life, our moments of anger and tranquility, times of sorrow and celebration. This past week we have remembered the Hillsborough 96 here in Liverpool; we have also heard of the dreadful ferry disaster in Korea, with nearly 300 children drowned. The grief and the anger in both cases is past our understanding if we are not personally involved. And yet...and yet... there is hope. Hope that, one day, we shall hear those subterranean rumblings, feel the bright wind of the Spirit, be dazzled by the light, and 'we shall all be be changed' (1 Corinthians 15. 51).

For we have read the script!

An Unholy Evening?

Hmm - not sure I made the right decision tonight, to go to Goodison Park in the middle of Holy Week! Do you think it was God's sense of humour that we lost 2-3 to Crystal Palace? Looks like we have blown our chances of Champions League football next season. Don't know what happened: several of the players just didn't seem to show up. Worst performance I've seen for a long time, though to be fair CP were reasonably good - certainly played better than Everton.

Maundy Thursday tomorrow, and I hope a number of people will come to our special celebration of Holy Communion (7.30 at St Barnabas), commemorating the Last Supper of the Lord. We will be thinking about hands - the hands of Jesus. There is a marvelous line in Graham Kendrick's song, The Servant King: hands that flung stars into space, To cruel nails surrendered. What a wonderful way of connecting the divinity of Christ and his work of creation, with the humanity of Christ and his work of salvation. Those same hands also washed his friends' feet, broke bread and poured wine. Previously, they had touched lepers, healed blind eyes, raised both a sick child and even a dead man. After his resurrection, Jesus showed his scarred hands as evidence that it was really him, neither impostor nor ghost. It is truly amazing that the creator of the universe should so lower himself to become the servant and even the victim of humanity.

At the Last Supper, Jesus issued some instructions to his disciples. They were to wash one another's feet, as Jesus had washed theirs; they were to continue to bread bread and drink wine in memory of him; and they were to love one another, as he had loved them. Our hands are thus to be employed in the service of others, whether in menial tasks, hospitality or acts of service. Our Holy Week services and meditations are not mere times of indulgence but calls to action - to do as Jesus has done for us.

Palm Sunday

It's been a long time since I last blogged - almost exactly 6 months in fact. I've been toying with the idea of returning to the blogosphere for a while - I'd rather do it regularly or not at all - and have decided to go for it. Maybe twice a week? We'll see.

It's Palm Sunday, and the beginning of Holy Week seems a good time to start again. This morning, we made extensive use of video and PowerPoint: it will be so much better when, God willing, we install permanent projection equipment and screens this summer. At the moment we manage with a rickety old screen and a projector mounted on old hymn books (knew they'd come in useful!). The service began with a video showing Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, to the soundtrack of the intermezzo from Sibelius' Karelia Suite. It was powerful. In the talk, we considered the style of Messiahship Jesus chose, having first considered the style of different football managers. This seemed appropriate on the weekend when Liverpool and Everton advanced further to 1st/4th positions in the Premiership. All would agree that their respective managers have much to do with their success. We noted the fact that Jesus seemed oblivious to the crowd, not waving or acknowledging them in any way, centring himself not on popular adulation but on the journey before him, to the Cross and beyond. It was this unflinching obedience to the Father that enabled him to enter deeply into the human experience. 'There is nothing he does not fully know. There is no one he does not fully love.' (Henri Nouwen).

My prayer for this week: Jesus, take me with you on your journey. But this is not just a personal journey for an individual Christian. Gatherings of people are very much part of the story: on Palm Sunday and on Good Friday, in large number; and that small group around the upper room and in Gethsemane on the night Jesus was betrayed. Members of All Hallows, St Barnabas and Mossley Hill: let's make this a week to share.
 

The Taming of the News

A phenomenal experience last night, as Les and I went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the Echo Arena (a late birthday present - thanks family!) I was totally gripped by the whole performance, amazed at the power and the energy, and deeply moved by the story. I've seen it on stage once before, years ago, and am acquainted with many of the songs. After all, it's been around since 1969! Interestingly JCS was released as an album before it was a stage show. Lloyd Webber, who wrote the music, was only 21 at the time. It's hard to believe that, when it first came out, it was regarded as blasphemous by some Christians, who opposed it vehemently, not least because it finishes with the Crucifixion - there is no resurrection. Somehow, they seemed to miss the point: this was a representation of the Gospel story, not the whole truth.

Cleverly, the setting for this performance is the global economic crisis, and the Occupy! movement. Jesus' disciples come from the ranks of the protesters outside an unidentified government building. From the beginning, revolution was in the air and the message of Jesus was one that naturally threatened authority, both political and religious. He drew people around himself, eager for his 'good news' of love and empowerment for the weak, the sick and the powerless; he shows himself indifferent to the opposition of the state. You could tell it was written by young men! He was always controversial, and a key figure in the show is Judas - an anguished and desperate man, who is disillusioned in the end by Jesus. Like everyone else in the story, Judas just doesn't 'get Jesus'. ('What's it all about', sings Mary Magdalene.)

The most powerful moment in this production is Jesus in Gethsemane, wrestling with God (a truly amazing performance by Ben Forster) as he finally surrenders himself to death. Humanity and divinity in conflict, and resolved only by surrender. Goodness, it seems, must sacrifice itself in order to triumph. The final scene in this production is the kind of shrine that we see nowadays, when a community or nation mourns - as we first experienced when Princess Diana died. A huge outpouring of grief, guilt, love and sorrow.

It made me think how tame sometimes is our presentation of  the 'good news'; how ineffective the church in commending the power of God's love, proclaming the arrival of a new world order under the sovereignty of the now risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is because we are unwilling to sacrifice ourselves. Perhaps we are more interested in self-preservation. How does one - how do I - recover that sense of a divine, cutting-edge mission which brings good news?

I have been driven back to the Gospel, and spent a couple of hours reading Mark this morning. It's interesting how often (in Tom Wright's translation, which I read for freshness) the words 'astonished' or 'amazed' or 'afraid' occur in reaction to Jesus' words and actions. How often is there any kind of reaction to what the Church does? Is that about social indifference to the Gospel in our culture, or our failure to connect?

The Gospel of Mark begins: 'This is where the good news starts...';  it ends 'They (the disciples) went out and announced the message everywhere...' There is an obvious connection  between the message Jesus brought (and died for) and what the Church is about (and dies for?) I'm not sure we always 'get it' - 'get Jesus'.

Stocks, Shares and Stories

I have never owned stocks and shares, but I have a sense that the flotation of the Royal Mail reveals something of what is wrong in our society and with modern capitalism. As I understand it, the original idea of stocks and shares was to enable a company to set up business and the shareholders had literally a vested interest in the enterprise. Those who paid the piper called the tune, you might say: managers or directors managed or directed on behalf of the shareholders. But with the growth of capitalism and the flourishing of huge multi-national corporations, the distance between shareholder and manager grew and grew with the result that ownership was separated from overall control. Managers/directors reign supreme and shareholders have become impotent, though with one benefit: the shareholder has exchanged control and responsibility for the delights of liquidity (F. Mount, The New Few). In other words, the shareholder can make a killing and institutional investors make vast fortunes: in the case of Royal Mail, £433m on the first day!

Now there is nothing wrong with this per se, and it is a perfectly acceptable way of investing and making money. However, it seems to me that lack of 'ownership' is a problem becoming endemic throughout society, and our economic system reveals it. There is powerlessness on the part of the many, and increasing power and wealth for the few. Everything is someone else's problem, which leads to the opt-out we are seeing in our political system. In the end, we just play the game and do what's right by ourselves. Or as someone said recently, 'No one believes anything any more'. An overstatement that makes the point.

How refreshing then to see the film Les and I watched at the weekend, Life of Pi. It was a wonderful film, both visually and the plot. Often you asked yourself, 'how did they do that?' - boy and tiger on lifeboat following shipwreck. The best line for me is when Pi describes himself as a Catholic Hindu (or was it Hindu Catholic?)  'I didn't know you could be both,' says his friend. 'Yes,' says Pi. 'I feel guilty before a hundred gods!' Essentially, it is a story about human growth through adversity with a richly spiritual theme, as Pi does battle with what St Paul might call 'the elemental spirits of the universe.' In the end, it turns out there are two versions of  the same story and Pi's friend is invited to choose which he prefers - with or without God? The version with God being the better, according to Pi.