Like Jesus

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Just because you are accepted by God doesn’t mean you will be acceptable to the world.

Just because you do things in line with God’s will doesn’t mean the powers of the world will treat you well.

Just because you are becoming like Jesus that doesn’t mean religious and secular authorities will deal with you any differently to the way they treated Jesus … and Stephen, and Paul, and many, many more followers since.

So why is it that here in Caversham (maybe where you live too?) the authorities just leave us to get on our churchgoing? What is it about our expression of faith that the authorities see as safe and unthreatening to their status and power?

This final beatitude both circles back to the first and looks forward to the next section of Jesus’ teaching in his 'sermon on the mount'.

It circles back by showing that as Jesus’ followers are persecuted, excluded and marginalised by religious authorities, so they are among the ‘poor in spirit’ whose place in God’s kingdom is already given. The world attempts to destroy our hope but Jesus guarantees it.

Those who are persecuted for seeking God’s justice align themselves with the poor and so share in their oppression, but they also share in their reward.

At the time Matthew wrote this Jesus’ followers had suffered a generation or more of persecution from religious leaders of the day and their inappropriately zealous followers. The idea that those who they considered unworthy – “Gentiles and sinners” - might be acceptable to God was just too much for them to accept.

Today, if we want to live like Jesus then we need to be open-eyed and pure-hearted about whose side he was on: the victim and never the bully, the outsider and never the excluder, the poor and never the oppressor.

This beatitude also looks forward in defiance: the world may persecute you for being like Jesus but you remain salt and light, so live as such and don’t pretend or disguise your Christ-likeness. Live in Grace but excel in Godliness, so that all may see Jesus in your faith and in your persecution.

Finally, we are called to love those who persecute us – who but a madman or a Christian would do such a thing?

Peace Positive Peace

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

It's a hundred years since an armistice marked the end of fighting in the First World War, and the beginning of the peace negotiations in Paris which led up to the Treaty of Versailles. The British staff officer Archibald Wavell said despondently of that Paris Peace Conference, "After the 'war to end war', they seem to have been pretty successful in Paris at making the 'Peace to end Peace'." Sadly, he was right. There is more to peace than a pause in fighting.

Peacemaking is where the Beatitudes all come together. ‘Peace’ in the Bible is a very positive concept: not so much about absence of conflict, much more about positive peace, security and, especially, restoration of relationships. Relationships with God, relationships with one another, even restoration of our relationship with the natural world: restoration of our given role as responsible stewards of creation. Peace is about balancing justice and mercy so that they become two sides of the same coin. And peace is about seeing God’s will in the situations around us and being transparent enough to allow Jesus to work through us to carry out that will.

But how can someone ‘make’ peace if they have not first received peace? This beatitude follows on from the previous one because it is through seeing God and spending time with him that one receives his peace. As Paul puts it:

The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

A bit later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus extends his ideas of peacemaking in ways which highlight just how and why that Paris Peace Conference failed so badly:

You know that you have been taught, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you. ... You have heard people say, “Love your neighbours and hate your enemies.” But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you. Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong. If you love only those people who love you, will God reward you for that? Even tax collectors love their friends. If you greet only your friends, what’s so great about that? Don’t even unbelievers do that? But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Given God’s peace and security within us, Jesus’ words about loving enemies and praying for those who persecute us become less abnormal and more like a natural response to what we have received and want to share. It is as we treat all alike, with love, that we develop our relationship with them, as well as with God. It is also how we gain people’s trust, which is an essential prerequisite to building peace with and between them.

Jesus’ call, at the end of the quote above, to be perfect, just like God, sounds like an impossible demand. Looked at another way though - remembering the previous beatitude's emphasis on seeing things with purity of heart - it is an amazing promise! In part it is a promise for after the resurrection, when we are to be renewed in a renewed heaven and earth; but it is also a promise for here and now. Not that we ourselves are now perfect, but that Jesus, who is perfect, can work in and through us, here and now.

This parish, following on from the Oxford Diocese, has a vision statement about 'becoming Christ-like'. But this beatitude is where that vision – if taken simplistically – rather breaks down. It is not enough that we be like Jesus – we need to bring Jesus himself to the people and situations around us daily. In purity of heart we not only see God but also let his love shine through. We are not just called to be Christ-like; we are called to be Christ’s body - his heart and hands, feet and voice in Caversham and beyond, today and in the days and weeks to come.

When We Judge Others We Condemn Ourselves

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

There are a number of places in the Gospels which tell of Jesus healing someone in desperate need, only for those in positions of religious authority to condemn him for it. One example is told by Matthew:

Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw.  And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?”  But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.”

Jesus responds that "the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." People whose hearts are full of evil will see evil, even in what is good.

Which brings us to our next Beatitude: blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. It is only as our hearts are purified from the filth which enshrouds them that we begin to see the pure wholesome light of God.

Jesus tells us not to judge others; doing so is a sign that our hearts are not pure. There is a passage in St Paul's letter to the church in Rome which begins by talking about people who are far from God whose lifestyles end up in a mess. That bit is often quoted by religious types, but they somehow forget about the punchline:

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.

Those self-appointed judges struggle with this: how can they be accused of "degrading passions" and a "debased mind"? The truth is that in passing judgement on others they show themselves to have impure and degraded hearts, fully deserving of all the rigours of God's judgement.

If they had pure hearts they would see God present and at work wherever they looked, for God is everywhere. They would see children of God, who he loves and longs to save, and would do everything they could to show these children God's loving grace, not heartless judgement.

If only we had pure hearts, what difference could we make with Jesus?

But how can our hearts be purified? By us praying lots and reading the Bible? Well, it can't hurt ... but remember that the Pharisees did a lot of that. By asking God to change our hearts through his Holy Spirit within us? Probably better, and it does fit in with the words of the ancient prophet Ezekiel:

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

But we are called to more than that. God will do the bulk of the work, of course, but we must do our part as well: we need to actively look for Jesus in the people and situations around us, and join in with whatever he is doing. We must freely share God's grace and God's love.

We must let people know the good news that God wants to include everyone in his family, however unlikely that may seem in human terms. It is as we see Jesus in those who our neighbours scorn, especially those despised by our religious neighbours, that we know we are making progress.

Everybody has a choice, of course, and can turn away from God as easily as they can turn to him. May your choices in the coming weeks always turn you toward the light of God  and may you and yours know the blessings of his wonderful grace.

Justice & Mercy: Back To Back

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Justice and mercy, for Jesus, are like two sides of a single coin. Those who hunger and thirst after justice want the rules to be followed, especially those that protect the poor. Those who are merciful want them relaxed, particularly as they apply to those in desperate need.

If you view Jesus’ words as about rules rather than people this beatitude seems to be a contradiction of the previous one. But if you understand Jesus as speaking hope to people whose hope is lost, it becomes clear that these beatitudes are to be seen as standing back-to-back supporting one another, together revealing good news for the poor.

Like many of the terms used in these beatitudes, ‘mercy’ is a complex concept. It is about compassion and it is about letting people off who have broken an agreement and it is about not demanding that someone repays a debt if they cannot afford it and it is about forgiving someone who has wronged you.

Most fundamentally, mercy it is about giving someone a break with whom you are in some sort of relationship. It is about not holding things against people who matter to us, but instead showing the sort of love Paul speaks about in his letter to the Corinthian church:

Love is patient, love is kind;
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
It is not irritable or resentful;
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

That’s the basic idea of ‘mercy’, but Luke's Gospel tells us that Jesus ramps this up to also apply to enemies: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." Consider also the ‘Who is my neighbour?’ question answered in the Parable of the Good Samaritan as “The one who shows mercy”. For mercy triumphs over judgement, as James puts it!

Mercy is about attitude, especially our attitude toward people who are different. If someone is in need, it should be irrelevant what their colour, creed, or culture is like: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We are to be merciful as our Father is merciful; helping according to need not according to status, enmity, ingratitude or inability to repay.

As James, a leader of the early church, puts it in his letter, this really matters: “For judgement will be shown without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.” We have been warned.

But remember that "mercy triumphs over judgement". May you know and show God's mercy this week.

Justice, Righteousness & Law

A small diversion into the problems which can arise when trying to understand Biblical language in a very different culture.

The fourth beatitude says (in the usual English translation) "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness ...", so why does my previous post talk about justice?

On a simplistic level it is because the underlying Greek word used by Matthew, dikaiosynēn, literally means 'impartial justice'. 

The problem is that 'justice' in Biblical context is not the same as in the western-European (and ex-colonies) context we tend to assume. Indeed, this is true of legal language in general, which is why many traditional approaches to St Paul's letter to the Romans often miss its point.

We tend to think of law and justice in the sense of criminal law and criminal justice: some sort of abstract and unchanging right and wrong. In the Bible things are much more concrete: law and justice are about contract law - keeping or breaking a solemn and binding agreement. A lot of Biblical language, not least 'Testament' and 'Covenant', reflects this.

In the Old Testament the central contract is that made between God and the Israelites on Mt Sinai: the Torah, or Jewish Law, a contract with ten key clauses and several hundred sub-clauses and applications. 

So ‘righteousness’, in Jesus' context, means justice, but a particular idea of justice which is about conformity to God’s Law – more precisely, conformity to the terms and conditions of the covenant which God and the Israelites entered into on Mt Sinai. God is righteous because he keeps his side of that contract; the Israelites, again and again, are unrighteous because they persistently and deliberately fail to keep theirs.

In the third beatitude, those of the poor who lost their land were supposed to have had it returned at the following Jubilee. This hasn’t happened – there is a great injustice – but justice will come, “rolling on like river,” as Amos puts it (Amos 5:24), and “righteousness like a never-failing stream.”

One difference between law as a contract and law as an abstract idea is that a contract can be bought out - redeemed for a price agreed by both sides. Which still leaves the problems that the original Sinai contract was made to address, so you need a new contract: foreshadowed in the prophet Ezekiel's "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Which leads us into the great mysteries of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the role of the Holy Spirit in changing us so that we might become "perfect as our heavenly father is perfect."

Grace and peace to you and to all who love you.

Give Us Hope (Joanna)!

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Sl o o o o wly continuing a series on The Beatitudes, we reach a change of perspective: from the early beatitudes' hope and comfort to those in desperate straits (rejected, devastated, oppressed) to hope and encouragement for those who want to make a difference, to make the world a better place.

If you have been following along this year's Beatitudes posts, and have heard about the people to whom Jesus’ early beatitudes are meant to bring hope and security, how have you felt? How do you feel about religious authorities who try to exclude people from the hope of God’s kingdom; about those who have suffered devastating loss and need comfort; about the desperately poor, oppressed and crushed by injustice?

Do you look at those first three beatitudes and ache, feeling the pain of a world where these things happen? Do you share the frustration of the ancient prophet Habakkuk?

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not hear?
Or cry to you "Violence!"

Why do you make me see iniquity,
and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.

So the law is paralyzed,
and justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
so justice goes forth perverted.

Is the injustice filling the world, two thousand years after Jesus spoke out about these things, all too much for you? Then this fourth beatitude is for you.

It contains the hope and the promise that, in Caversham, Britain and throughout the world, God really is at work: that his Kingdom will come and his will be done in Caversham as in heaven. The challenge, especially for any church interesting in “Becoming a Christlike community”, is whether we can see God at work and come together as Jesus’ followers to join in. Whether we care enough to speak out against injustice and work with those who suffer, to challenge the powerful vested interests and to make ‘the system’ work for people instead of against them.

In Jesus we have a covenant of Grace, but it is no less a promise of Justice. There will be an accounting, there will be restoration of all that is stolen, and there will be truth. Then there will be renewal and new life, providing there is mercy – see the forthcoming post on the next beatitude (hopefully a bit sooner than I've been achieving so far).

In the meantime, a poem from the First World War, written by Robert Palmer, who died in 1916, aged just 27:

How Long, O Lord? 

How long, O Lord, how long, before the flood
Of crimson-welling carnage shall abate?
From sodden plains in West and East, the blood
Of kindly men steams up in mists of hate,
Polluting Thy clean air; and nations great
In reputation of the arts that bind
The world with hopes of heaven, sink to the state
Of brute barbarians, whose ferocious mind
Gloats o'er the bloody havoc of their kind,
Not knowing love or mercy. Lord, how long
Shall Satan in high places lead the blind
To battle for the passions of the strong?
Oh, touch Thy children's hearts, that they may know
Hate their most hateful, pride their deadliest foe.

A final note about the great Eddy Grant's protest song referenced in this post's title. Grant was singing about a great injustice of his time: apartheid in South Africa. He released the song in 1988; by 1991 apartheid was formally over, and in 1994 there was the first democratic election, leading to Nelson Mandela becoming president. To date, whilst a painful and damaging legacy of apartheid remains in South Africa, there has been no bloodbath and no economic collapse.

There remains hope, Jo'anna, so let us all do our parts in promoting justice wherever we are.

May Grace, peace and the hope of real change fill your week ahead.

When Will There Be Justice For The Landless Poor?

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth"

Something like that, anyway. Jesus told a story about workers in a vineyard: casual labourers who worked for a daily rate which was just, and only just, enough to live on. So if you were only hired for part of the day then normally your family went hungry.

Land was important in Biblical times: if you had your own piece of land you hand a chance to grow food for your family. Otherwise, if you were part of the 'landless poor' - a group most English translations unhelpfully render as 'the meek' - then you were destitute, dependent on rich landowners offering work, at the lowest pay possible, or on begging. Even if you had land and were poor, the rich landowners would try to unjustly pressure you until you were forced to sell the land. That's the way the world seems to work; but it wasn't meant to be the way God's people do things.

The idea that everyone had their own little piece of land was fundamental to the way that Jewish society worked – it was their living and their security. That is why the Jewish Law specified that no family could lose their land permanently – every fifty years there was to be a Jubilee when the land was returned.

Of course, this was never followed: throughout Israel’s history the rich acquired the land of the poor and exploited those who were now landless. In Jesus’ day land injustice was a major social issue, as it is today in much of the world (see the picture above for just one example).

Psalm 37 counsels patient trust in God:

Be still before the Lord
   and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
    when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
    do not fret — it leads only to evil.
For those who are evil will be destroyed,
    but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
    though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land
    and enjoy peace and prosperity.

Both the opening beatitude and Psalm 37 tell us that those who are currently oppressed and landless are to wait patiently, trusting that the Lord will provide the inheritance of the land which they need. Their security lies in their faith as they wait for God’s Kingdom to come down to earth and for God’s will to be done here as in heaven.

“The landless poor are secure in God because they shall inherit the land,” is one translation of today's beatitude. But, more generally, it is about those whose relationship with their neighbours, with their society, and with the world around them has been broken by injustice and oppression.

Like the first two beatitudes this is about people who are desperate and without hope in the world being given good news by Jesus: that God keeps his promises and that he will have the last word.

The trouble is that Jesus said this two thousand years ago. Two thousand years! Where is the hope of justice from a God who leaves injustice to thrive for two thousand years after the price has been paid to end it? One theory is that Jesus wants to work through his church, but it has spent much of the time refusing to cooperate – something to ponder, perhaps, as we seek to genuinely follow Jesus today.

Singer/songwriter Harvey Andrews wrote a song some years back, called Requiem, about the loss of hope that comes with growing older. It included the lyric (about Jesus): “For two thousand years he’s brought nothing but tears, and the crosses to plant on the graves.”

If you have the song (or can play it from Spotify), try playing Requiem, and as you listen consider the lost hopes of your neighbours, whether in Caversham or elsewhere, and how we can restore people’s hope in God.

"Faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest of these is love". May your life be filled with all three in the weeks ahead.

Comfort In Times Of Loss

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted"

Comforted by whom? The ancient prophet Jeremiah spoke of God himself comforting those who suffered devastating loss, but Jesus' second beatitude just says they will be comforted. Is that because God works through people? People like you and I? But how?

How can a ten-year-old girl deal with the death of her father; or a middle-aged couple come to terms with the suicide of their son; or an elderly man who has already buried both his children find peace when his wife follows? You don’t have to travel far in Caversham and Reading - or doubtless wherever you live - before you come across stories like these. What can we say? What can any church – as a community of those seeking to follow Jesus – have to offer in the face of such loss? And where does Jesus come into the story?

Maybe you can turn to the Bible – Jesus often did that.

There are three approaches (at least) in the Bible to comfort in the face of devastating loss. There is the 'God will make it up to you' approach, for example Joel 2:25a: “I will repay you for the years the swarming locust has eaten,” and Job 42:10: “The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”

Then there is the 'God will bring them back,' approach of resurrection, for example John 11:23b: “Your brother will rise again” and 1 Thess. 4:14: “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”

And finally there is the 'God is with us in the midst of suffering' approach, for example Isaiah 13a: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you,” and 43:2a: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you,” along with Matthew 28:20b: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” as well as the evocative “Jesus wept,” in the middle of the story of his friend Lazarus, who had died:.

"When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept."

You might want to consider when it is best to talk to people about such things. Is it useful to say them to someone who is already devastated? Or are they most useful to know in advance, before the devastation comes, so someone can cling to them in the storm?

And maybe, when the storm does come, the best comfort we can provide to someone is to stand with them in the heart of the storm and weep, then to provide practical support and help as long as it is needed – often longer than you might expect. Maybe share some Psalms of lament. And tell them stories of Jesus, who stood with his friend’s sisters and wept.

Whose Is The Kingdom Of Heaven?

Beatitudes: long pause, life happens, church happens, let's see if I can get back on track ...

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"

So, to answer the question in the title: it's the poor in spirit. Umm. One of the most important things in studying the Bible is to keep asking questions, because the easy answers will often be like this one and - at least in themselves - not really answer anything. The kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor in spirit: it's good news for them but ... who are they?

Let's start with Jesus: who was spiritually destitute in his society and to whom did he offer God's kingdom? And let's follow Jesus' example by starting from a story, the story of Simon the Pharisee:

A Pharisee invited Jesus to have dinner with him. So Jesus went to the Pharisee’s home and got ready to eat.

When a sinful woman in that town found out that Jesus was there, she bought an expensive bottle of perfume. Then she came and stood behind Jesus. She cried and started washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. The woman kissed his feet and poured the perfume on them.

The Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw this and said to himself, “If this man really were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him! He would know that she is a sinner.”

Jesus said to the Pharisee, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”

“Teacher, what is it?” Simon replied.

Jesus told him, “Two people were in debt to a moneylender. One of them owed him five hundred silver coins, and the other owed him fifty. 42 Since neither of them could pay him back, the moneylender said that they didn’t have to pay him anything. Which one of them will like him more?”

Simon answered, “I suppose it would be the one who had owed more and didn’t have to pay it back.”

“You are right,” Jesus said.

He turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Have you noticed this woman? When I came into your home, you didn’t give me any water so I could wash my feet. But she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You didn’t even pour olive oil on my head, but she has poured expensive perfume on my feet. So I tell you that all her sins are forgiven, and that is why she has shown great love. But anyone who has been forgiven for only a little will show only a little love.”

Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

In that story, who is spiritually lost and who is spiritually wealthy? Who does Jesus invite into the Kingdom (by forgiving her sins - all that kept her apart from God)?

To be a Jew in Jesus’ day was to belong within the People of God. It was to have an identity as part of the tight-knit community, and it was to have the hope and assurance of a place in God’s Kingdom. Unless you were a ‘sinner’.

Then, despised and rejected, especially by religious leaders, you knew that the community did not want you and that God did not want you. You were lost. People like the unnamed woman on the fringes of Simon’s party, forever looking in from outside; people like Matthew the religiously unclean tax collector. Spiritually destitute, living lives without hope and without meaning.

The ancient prophet Isaiah wrote of one to be sent from God who would be despised and rejected himself, who would suffer to redeem the lost. Jesus identified with the spiritually destitute and he brought them good news. The good news that even though their community - especially its spiritually privileged elites - rejected them, God does not. They are a part of God’s Kingdom: in him is their hope, their meaning and their future. They belong. Jesus came to save the lost, the poor in spirit, not because they deserve it but because that is who Jesus is.

It is not hard to find people around our communities today who feel excluded and unwanted by at least some churches in their area, for example:-

• Wheelchair users;
• Remarried divorcees;
• Parents with noisy or hyperactive children;
• Same-sex couples;
• Those with mental health issues (in many different ways);
• People who just don’t find that sitting in rows being talked at and singing songs from an alien culture in any way helps them relate to God.

Sometimes Jesus met with people who came to him; sometimes he took the good news to them. There is a need for those who follow Jesus today to welcome strangers who come to us. Also to go out and announce his message that God’s Kingdom already belongs to spiritually marginalised people … remembering, in due humility, that where we churchgoers might fit in is not stated.

Leonard Cohen, in his song Anthem, includes the chorus:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

It's a great track to listen to whilst considering the strangeness of a God who chooses to show his power through his followers’ weakness.

Secure In God

SECURE IN GOD

Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up to a raised place where he sat, his disciples gathered around him, and addressed them, teaching:

“Spiritual rejects are secure in God because the kingdom of the heavens is already theirs.

Those devastated by loss are secure in God because they will receive comfort.

The oppressed landless poor are secure in God because they will inherit the land.

Those starved of justice are secure in God because they will be fully satisfied.

Those who compassionately forgive are secure in God because they will be compassionately forgiven.

The clean of heart are secure in God because he is the one they will see.

Those who restore shalom are secure in God because they will be called his children.

Those persecuted for following God’s way are secure in him because the kingdom of the heavens is already theirs.”

Blessed English Translations

The Beatitudes are so called because each one starts with a Greek word, Makarios, which was rendered Beati in Latin and, most commonly, Blessed in English. That being the case you might expect that the underlying word used by Matthew would have something to do with blessings, or with being blessed. Nope. Makarios, the word Matthew uses, is unrelated to the Greek words for either.

A lot of commentaries on the Beatitudes tie themselves in knots attempting to explain why people who are clearly have not been blessed are described by Jesus as being so. They are missing the point. Others treat Jesus' words as if they are a list of things we have to do or be in order to be blessed by God: legalistic nonsense! You'd think there were enough rules and regulations in the Old Testament for anyone (613 is, I believe, the traditional count) without adding more (and Jesus is explicit, later in the sermon, that the Law stands as it is: no adding or taking away from it).

A few English translations render makarios as 'happy' instead of 'blessed'. That too is another word entirely. So what does makarios mean?

Originally makarios simply meant 'free from daily cares or worries' - which has an obvious link with later on in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ... But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

But words in all languages are living things, with multiple meanings and implications, and makarios found itself being used in a conventional formula:-

• "Makarios is the family man with his children" - because they were both his security for old age and the security of his line for future generations.
• "Makarios is the rich man with his wealth" - because that protects against hard times when they come.
• "Makarios are the pious on their inward well-being" - because that allows them to face future vicissitudes with equanimity.
• "Makarios are the religious on their experience of God" - who will presumably ensure their future.

The link to the original meaning is reasonably clear for these, but then the meaning developed a bit further to become something more like 'congratulations' - for a new child, for a profitable business deal, for progress on piety or religion, and so on.

The other link in the chain to the Beatitudes comes with the adaptation of that formula to the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) where it is used (especially in the Psalms) about the peace and security which comes from doing things God's way:

• Makarios is the nation whose God is the Lord; the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance (Psalm 33:12).
• Makarios is the man whose hope is in the name of the Lord (Psalm 40:4).
• Makarios is the man who thinks on the poor and needy: the Lord shall deliver him in an evil day (Psalm 41:1).
• O Lord of hosts, Makarios is the man that trusts in you (Psalm 84:12).
• Makarios are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times (Psalm 106:3).
• Makarios are all they that fear the Lord; who walk in his ways. You shall eat the labours of your hands: makarios are you, and it shall be well with you. Your wife shall be as a fruitful vine on the sides of your house: your children as young olive-plants round about your table. (Psalm 128:1-3).

That final one is a bit longer but gives a nice parallel to the earlier Greek example of the family man and his children.

So the meaning of makarios is somewhere in the range from 'free from care and worry', through 'secure for the future' and 'secure in God' to 'congratulations' (on securing your future).

There is at least one English translation which uses 'congratulations' for the Beatitudes; personally I feel uncomfortable congratulating people on their devastating loss or crushing oppression, however secure their future in God might be.

There is clearly no simple single English word which reflects exactly the resonances of makarios in Matthew's original - never mind Jesus' probable underlying Hebrew word ‘eshrê. So, pre-empting some future posts discussing other parts of the Beatitudes, I am currently inclined to go with 'secure in God', along the lines of:-

• Secure in God are the spiritually poor, because they are already part of God's kingdom.
• Secure in God are those who have suffered devastating loss, because they will be comforted. 
• Secure in God are the crushed and oppressed, especially the landless poor, because they will inherit the land.

and so on.

In the end the Beatitudes are about bringing hope to the apparently hopeless and a future in God to those who feel they have no future.

A final thought: it's the Feast of St Brigit in a couple of days; if you click on the picture above, or on this link, it will take you to a poem called Brigit's Feast, which seems appropriate in a discussion on the Sermon on the Mount.

Beatitudes

It shouldn't be a surprise that spiritually important people like bishops would struggle with a passage from Jesus which begins by saying that it is the spiritually poor to whom God's kingdom belongs. Nonetheless, I do find the Bishop of Oxford's booklet, Exploring The Beatitudes, which is promoting his 'Contemplative, Compassionate and Courageous' vision for Oxford Diocese, to be disappointingly detached from what Jesus said.

Even in the 21st century people forget that the 'Sermon on the Mount' - which the Beatitudes are the introduction to - was a Jewish preacher speaking to a mostly-Jewish audience about the Jewish scriptures (which we know as the Old Testament), as recorded by Matthew in a strongly Hebrew-influenced dialect of 1st century Greek.

Instead we look at Bible translations which emphasise the smooth elegance of Tyndale's 16th century English. The unfortunate way these very English versions  bury Jesus' radical announcements of God's concern for those who are at the bottom of the heap is presumably considered a price worth paying by those near the tops of their various heaps.

Here in Caversham we are in the third year of our Partnership for Missional Church initiative; one key focus of PMC is on seeing what God is already doing in the community around us and where we can join in. The Beatitudes give us a picture of which people and groups of people God is particularly focused on, which should help to guide us.

I plan to look at the Beatitudes individually over the coming weeks, so I won't jump into them here, but there are a number of things to notice about the Beatitudes as a whole:

• They are the introduction to a longer 'sermon', not a standalone passage. As such they are intended to catch people's attention, introduce later themes and topics, and to help listeners to see, personally and collectively, where they themselves fit in with Jesus' message.
• They are an announcement of hope, justice and affirmation for those who have been crushed and marginalised by the 'business as usual' of an unjust world, as well as for those who want to do something about it.
• They are succinct, even spikily terse, with every word carefully chosen to deeply and powerfully resonate with Jesus' listeners.
• They are deeply rooted in Old Testament Scripture.
• They are individually and collectively cohesive. In particular, each beatitude comes in two linked parts - "blessed are ... because ...". The inevitable multiple possible meanings which come from translating ancient languages can be narrowed down both by investigating their Old Testament roots and by seeing which potential meanings resonate with one another most powerfully. Collectively there is a clear pattern to the way they are organised and an obvious link-back from the last beatitude to the first.

As an example of the difference the above can make, consider the third beatitude, rendered by most English translations as "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth". Obvious questions are: what exactly does 'meek' mean here, how on earth does being meek relate to inheriting anything, and is Jesus telling us we ought to become meek or is he announcing something good to those who already are?

More detail on this in a later post, but for now I'll just say that 'meek' refers to those who are oppressed and crushed, with a specific application to the landless poor. Also the word Tyndale translated 'earth' really applies to 'earth' in the soil sense, rather than the whole world, and from there it extends to arable land and hence to useful land in general. In the Old Testament a family's land was their inheritance and could not be taken away for more than fifty years - not that rich landowners had ever taken any notice.

So that third beatitude can be rendered in English as: "Blessed are the landless poor, because they will inherit the land". Which surely makes more sense - although commentators today would need to fill in background which Jesus' original hearers would have known only too well.

This post is quite long enough, I reckon. So do have a happy and blessed 2018. (Blessed'? What does that mean?).

"Jesus Might Have Been Gay"

That made me blink!

The context was a book promotion, by its three Dutch authors, of a new book called Re-imagining The Bible For Today. It was advertised as being about engaging people from around the fringes of faith with the Bible, which was enough to drag me across to Salisbury on my scooter one slightly chilly Friday afternoon.

One of the areas they talked about in their presentation was times they had encouraged special-interest groups to question and interact with the text: feminists, environmentalists and gay groups included. I must admit my 'political correctness' alarm was ringing at this point, but the discussions actually seem to have been carefully structured and focused to genuinely provoke a different way of looking at well-known texts.

One example Bert Dicou spoke about was a time he led a discussion on the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, with a gay activist group. It seems they related easily to ideas about travelling and eating together and so growing a relationship, but one of the young men had a question: might Jesus have been gay? It seems Dicou (or maybe someone else involved) told him that he might have been. The young man found himself freed to start attending his local church, for the first time since childhood.

That has to be a good thing, surely, but I must admit the answer given brought me up short - it was, for me, such an unexpected idea. Which I guess is the idea of such discussions, they help us think the unthinkable. I find it raises two main extra questions of its own.

The first is the obvious one: might Jesus have been gay ... really?

I am not aware of anything in the Gospels which so much as hints that Jesus was sexually active: contextually it seems plausible to assume that he was not. Which leaves his sexuality - in the sense of any romantic or sexual attractions - a completely blank page. Within the constraints of what we are told, the rest we tentatively assume for ourselves. So it is genuinely reasonable to say that Jesus might have been gay - although also reasonable to say that he probably wasn't.

The other question I find myself wondering is why that 'might' made such a difference to the young man?

I suspect it could be to do with being part of a community which has long been discriminated against: an 'us and them' with Jesus assumed to be part of the excluding majority. A session engaging with Jesus as a companion and  a traveller helps to break down religious preconceptions, then even just the possibility that Jesus might have been part of the young man's community helps him to see that Jesus can accept and love him as he is. The rigid boundary just isn't there with Jesus.

That simple might leaves the understanding that, for him, Jesus really was 'one of us', therefore he can be one of Jesus' followers. He is free because he understands that Jesus is free, is another way to look at it.

Either way, a good excuse for an excellent song from Joan Osborne:

Seventy Disciples Or Seventy-Two?

Last Sunday at St John's we tried to get the congregation seeing (and feeling) a Bible passage from the inside, as it were, by getting them all to take part. The results were remarkable and illustrated just how much power there is in Scripture if you take the time to go deeper than the abstract religious stuff. But that's not my point today.

The passage we used was from Luke's Gospel, in the New Living Translation, and began:

The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit.

Straightforward enough, one might think, except that we've been seeing this passage quite a lot during our Partnership for Missional Church initiative, but usually in the New Revised Standard Version where it begins:

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

Spot the difference.

On Sunday nobody mentioned this - they were too busy being struck by the contrasting experiences of welcome, exclusion and judgement which come later in the passage - but it certainly struck me as being odd: how can two modern translations of the Bible differ on something so simple? So I did some research.

The short answer seems to be that the original written by Luke probably said seventy-two, but that seventy makes more sense.

Translators don't have access to Luke's original, of course, so they have to work from copies of copies. The people who made these copies were incredibly accurate, but over centuries changes and 'corrections' did creep in. The earliest copies we have of this passage say 'seventy-two', but later on someone seems to have 'corrected' that to 'seventy' and copies of this 'corrected' version went on to be very influential in early English Bible translations.

So now we have a situation where translations which prioritise faithfulness to the original, such as the NLT, say there were seventy-two disciples sent out, whereas those which prioritise faithfulness to tradition, such as the NRSV, say there were seventy.

Problem solved? Not really: it just moves the question on to why anybody ever thought 'seventy' was a correction in the first place? Which takes us to the book of Genesis.

In chapter 10 of Genesis you get a passage known as the 'Table of Nations', where Noah is presented as the father of all the different races and people groups in the world. In the earliest Hebrew versions of this we have found there are seventy names in this list. However, in the main Greek version, called the Septuagint and translated two or three centuries before Luke was born, there are two extra names, making seventy-two. If I tell you that Luke's Gospel, like the rest of the New Testament, was written in Greek and tended to quote from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Scriptures, you can probably see where this is going.

The odds are that Luke was trying to make a point in this story about the disciples who were sent out representing all of the races of mankind, not just one or two. This sort of inclusiveness is an important theme in Luke's writing. So he uses a number which his readers would have recognised as referencing the Old Testament list of all the peoples of the world: seventy-two.

But later translators of the Old Testament used the Hebrew as their primary source so they ended up with just seventy races in the Table of Nations list - breaking the connection. Therefore they 'corrected' Luke to restore the likely point of the number in the first place.

So which number is best today? To be honest, hardly anybody in churches today knows their Old Testament well enough to recognise the point of either, so it doesn't really make a lot of difference.

Today we tend to think that numbers are all about counting, so we are more inclined to ask something along the lines of "how many were there really?" This would have seemed a very odd question back then, but does tend to bother us today.

The short answer, of course, is that we don't know. A longer answer might be that if Jesus was wanting to make the point he would have used the number from the Hebrew Scriptures: seventy. But for Luke the correct translation of that into Greek - meaning for meaning - would then be seventy-two. So working on pure likelihoods: seventy is probably the correct count of disciples, seventy-two is probably the correct literal translation of Luke, and seventy with a footnote back to Genesis 10 would probably be the truest meaning-for-meaning translation: I don't think any of them do that!

So, is there a less technical point to all this Bible geekiness? Actually I can think of three:

1. The mission of the church includes everybody, irrespective of race, gender or all the other things that normally divide us;
2. Have sympathy with Bible translators: it is a far more difficult job than we imagine;
3. If you're given to quoting the Bible at people, always do so with extreme humility: there's a lot more to Scripture than we can possibly grasp, and our understanding is bound to be less than God's. The flip side of this is that if someone quotes Scripture at you, especially if they do so in a judgemental way, treat their words with caution: their understanding is also far less than God's, and if they are being judgemental then they don't even understand the very basics of Scriptural teaching:

"Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself"

On which (slightly judgemental) note I wish you grace and peace in the days ahead, and every blessing for you and yours.

Is There A Biblical Definition Of Marriage?

The short answer is, no there's not. And anyone who tells you there is probably hasn't bothered to read and think about the Bible for themselves.

There is, of course, a longer answer which is rather more nuanced, but first let's dispose of the commonly quoted reference to Genesis chapters 1 and 2, right at the beginning of the Bible, mentioned by Jesus in chapter 19 of Matthew's account of the Gospel.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ... Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

The '...' in the middle of that quote covers a lot of ground, including: "The Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.' So the point of the story in Genesis is that a man and his wife are partners, working together, to the extent that they can be called 'one flesh'. No direct mention of 'marriage' let alone a definition thereof.

Another point before I move onto the New Testament: the passage itself doesn't say whether the relationship it describes is exclusive, normative or illustrative. In other words: is one man plus one wife the only possible relationship which can be described as one flesh; is it the usual relationship which can be so described, with other options available as well; or is it just one example out of many possibilities.

If the relationship described corresponds to marriage then it is clear that in the Bible the 'one flesh' description does not just apply to one man plus one woman.

Consider the case of Jacob, Leah and Rachel in Genesis chapter 29. Jacob is conned into marrying Laban's eldest daughter Leah, when he loves (and was promised) Rachel. So he works for Laban for another seven years, then marries Rachel too. One man plus one woman ... plus another woman. The Bible still describes it as marriage. Hence 'one man plus one woman' may be a common pattern for marriage but it is not the only configuration in the Bible.

Jesus does apply the 'one flesh' idea to marriage and divorce, concluding: "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." But, importantly, he says nothing to indicate that 'one man plus one woman' is in any way a Scriptural definition of marriage. Just that 'one flesh' is intended to be for life (although even that might be broken due to 'hardness of heart', according to Jewish Law).

It's worth highlighting that Jesus explicitly said that he did not come to change anything in the Jewish Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy in our Bibles), but rather to fulfil it. So you cannot claim that Genesis 1 and 2 are okay but chapter 29 is somehow nullified by Jesus. Either all apply or none.

Paul also references the 'one flesh' passage from Genesis, in chapter 6 of his first letter to the church at Corinth:

Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”

So Paul takes the Genesis reading as also covering prostitution, not just marriage. Is prostitution only ever one man and one woman? Hardly! In Paul's day, as now, there were prostitutes available for any permutation of men and women that could be imagined. All would appear to be covered by Paul's horror at uniting Jesus' body (ie members of the local church) with prostitutes (quite likely temple prostitutes, in Corinth) as 'one flesh'.

So a definition of 'Biblical marriage' as exclusively one man and one woman simply does not exist in the Bible. There are other patterns described as marriage in the Bible and there are other applications of the 'one flesh' description which are definitely not marriage.

However, there are Biblical patterns for how marriage is meant to be if you look for them, focussing on the type and quality of relationship.

The first is mentioned above: that marriage corresponds to a strong partnership of two people working together in God's world. The 'two' in that statement has all the weaknesses mentioned above, but probably works well enough if it is treated as normative: the usual pattern. Sticking with normative it is reasonable to add that marriage generally involves some form of sexual relationship, based on the way Paul applies the 'one flesh' image.

The second part of the pattern is given by Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." Marriage is about serving one another, not being self-centred but other-centred. Paul uses the 'one flesh' reference in this passage too, applying it to Jesus and the church.

So the Biblical pattern for marriage is about partnership and service: serving God together and serving one another. Simples!

Divorce: Jesus And Religion

The Roman Catholic Church starts its three week synod on the family today, which is expected to look at, among other things, the way their church treats remarried divorcees.

Possibly coincidentally, today's Gospel reading in CofE churches was the divorce passage from Mark's Gospel:

Then some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?”  They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”  But Jesus said to them, “He wrote this commandment for you because of your hard hearts.  But from the beginning of creation he made them male and female.  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
In the house once again, the disciples asked him about this. So he told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

It looks such a simple passage, yet beneath the surface so much is going on.

The story represents three different viewpoints; the three key concepts have very different meanings today from 2,000 years ago; few people today are familiar enough with the Old Testament to get the underlying issue; and religious institutions persistently reverse the approach taken by Jesus.

I had a stab at this passage a few months ago, Are Wives Like Cars, so I'll try to avoid repeating too much from that, and start with the underlying issue. Jesus tried to point the Pharisees back to this when he asked what Moses had commanded, but they miss the point ... as do we, probably. I'll quote the full passage from Deuteronomy, rather than the Pharisees' gloss on it:

If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house. When she has left him she may go and become someone else’s wife. If the second husband rejects her and then divorces her, gives her the papers, and evicts her from his house, or if the second husband who married her dies, her first husband who divorced her is not permitted to remarry her after she has become ritually impure, for that is offensive to the Lord.

Turn the first sentence around and the point becomes more obvious: before a man can throw his wife out of his house he must give her a certificate saying she is free to remarry. At that time a lone woman, by and large, had no access to any means of making a living other than begging or prostitution. So a wife thrown out by her husband would be destitute. This law is about compassion in the face of hard-heartedness: the woman needed to have a husband in those days, so if her first husband throws her out she must be allowed to become someone else's wife; even if she ends up a low-status second or third wife that is still better than destitution.

Note also the point that once she has remarried, the first marriage is over: she may not go back to her first husband. So religious people who suggest that even after a second marriage is completed the first marriage is still the 'real' one are simply wrong, at least in God's eyes.

Marriage in those days was pretty much a contract of ownership: a wife belonged to her husband (see the tenth commandment). That's why a man could have multiple wives but a woman belonged to just one husband.

So the Pharisees see this passage as allowing a man to get rid of his wife, at least under certain circumstances. Their 'test' question is really about what those circumstances are, and what we now call 'churchmanship': where does Jesus lie on the liberal/conservative spectrum - the sort of thing that seems to matter so much to religious people. 'Liberals' reckoned that a husband could get rid of his wife for any reason he liked, such as overcooking his dinner, whereas 'conservatives' were more inclined to focus on the production of legitimate children, so the wife could only be put away for adultery or, probably, infertility. Either way treats women as 'things', as possessions, and Jesus is having none of it.

When the Pharisees don't get his point about certificates of divorce and compassion, he takes them back to first principles. Marriage was not designed to be about ownership, with the wife as a disposable possession, but about lifelong partnership: two people working together in the world God made. Divorce was allowed not to encourage hardness of heart, but to give a compassionate response to the fallenness of this world.

Mark appears to gloss what Jesus said later to his disciples - to make it more relevant in Rome - by talking about women divorcing men, which couldn't happen in Judaism (it still can't in Orthodox Judaism). But his basic point is clear: marriage is meant to be lifelong, and both parties have their part to play in making that work. Marriage is a lifelong contract and remarriage therefore breaks that contract: the essential meaning of 'adultery' in this context is 'contract-breaking'. Once the remarriage is complete, though, that first contract is over and a second lifelong contract takes its place. The remarriage is real and must be honoured.

So we come to religious institutions. Jesus is teaching about compassion and justice, religious people respond with judgement and exclusion. Church of England treatment of divorcees who want to remarry is pretty shabby, to be blunt; but the current Roman Catholic approach to remarried divorcees is simply unChristian. I hope over the next few weeks the Church of Rome's approach will become more humane; the CofE is already changing ... although ever so slowly.

Bottom line: to break up a marriage is wrong (but note that this may happen long before the actual divorce) but we live in a fallen world. When someone remarries after a divorce that new relationship is now a valid marriage and should be respected and supported by all ... especially by the couple's local church.

All-Age Worship For All Ages? Ramble

Let's Dance Together

Who else would all-age worship be for? Ah, if only things were that simple!

These posts are all rambles, of course, but this one is even more than usual a setting down of initial thoughts on a subject. My views are very much subject to change. You could always use the comments section below to help with that ;)

The trouble with 'all-age worship' in the Church of England is that it's often used as a euphemism for 'family worship', which itself is often a euphemism for 'children's church'. Which is often ... childish.

On top of that, St Johns has had the problem of the CTM Parish losing clergy just as the all-age service started development, resulting in a loss of vision and coherence, along with a balance of ages at the service which has been highly variable. Some months we have been heaving with children, and the challenge is to involve them all, other months there were very few, and they didn't want to be involved anyway.

We now have a clear idea where we are for clergy over the next six months or so, after Jeremy has moved up north: decidedly lacking. Therefore there is a lay team who will be responsible for the monthly all-age service, from next month. I am part of that team, hence my desire to explore a vision for a reboot.

I think we should start by going back to the basics of gathered worship: praising God together and listening to God together - praise and prayer.

So I think we start by finding out the favourite hymns and songs of the congregation and using them: we are a small congregation so we need everyone to really put some oomph into their singing. People have got used to action songs at all-age worship and all ages seem to enjoy them - if not overdone - so that is an addition to help create  a sense of movement and involvement. Given a foundation of good singing, we can gradually introduce some good newer songs, in order to stop things getting stale and to find new favourites.

The intercessory prayer slot in the basic Anglican service outline is a suitable place to build something a bit different from the usual fare. Because all-age services don't include a Eucharist there is time and space for being a bit more adventurous here. Although prayertime is probably something we will need to prepare variations for, depending on who comes that morning. If there are lots of young children then prolonged silence is going to be tricky to achieve, if there are almost none then lots of running around will find few takers.

Initial thoughts include Taizé chants, Celtic prayers - even healing prayers - and using icons. We have quite a few icons scattered around St John's and moving the congregation around a few of them (vaguely after the manner of stations of the cross) may be engaging.

One piece of feedback that has come through clearly is that people like movement and they like involvement, whatever their age.

One basic I haven't mentioned yet is the Bible: sharing together in the word of God. This isn't because I don't think it is important - far from it - but because I am currently short of ideas. In general lay people don't have permission to preach in Anglican services, unless they are LLMs. As I'm the only LLM in the parish that is limiting in one sense, although liberating in another.

Traditional preaching, even with visuals and a bit of question-and-answer interaction, is not the only way to engage with God's word. It's probably not even the best way. The challenge is to somehow combine giving the context of a passage with helping people draw out for themselves, maybe in small groups, the meaning in their lives. But it's not just about words: talking about the Bible is one thing, responding to it, creatively and actively, is another.

So, developing all-age worship, for all ages, around the basics of praise, prayer and the word seems to me to be the way to go.

The next step, I think, is clear: hymns and songs 'by request'. The step after that is slightly hazier, but is to do with a more interactive, engaged approach to praying together. The third step is downright fuzzy: engaging together with God's word. That's okay, fuzziness is where faith comes in. So long as the first step is clear we trust that the steps after will be ready once we have actually stepped out in faith.

I am working to a mental timescale of 6 months to get these three steps, or something a bit like them, up and running. That is roughly how long we expect it to take to recruit a new priest into the parish, bringing us up to our clergy complement. Having all-age worship which works by then opens up opportunities and challenges for the future.

Postscript: When looking on Google for a suitable picture for this post, I found the above which I thought looked good. When I followed up on its link I was surprised to find it led me to a church in West Warrington, the place Jeremy Tear, our previous community priest, has just moved to. The wonder of coincidence!

One God In Community

The Christian picture of a Trinitarian God does have some important consequences.

A key implication is that the Trinity in some way reflects an important property of God's nature: that he is in an essential way relational; that community is somehow central to the creator of the universe.

One has to be really careful here, of course, not to go confusing a Trinitarian picture of God with some kind of cosy human family gathering. God is much, much more than that; but it is likely that He is not less than that.

Notwithstanding the Western Church, over recent centuries, slowly but surely moving to a focus on individualism and on each individual's relationship with God, the pattern of the Bible is very different.

From Genesis, where it is not good for man to be alone, throughout the Old Testament, with its emphasis on God's dealings with His people, to the New Testament, where the story moves from Jesus with his disciples, to the Spirit working in and through the Church, Jesus' body, the Bible is about communities of people following (or not) God.

One way of presenting the 'big picture' of the Bible is about relationships: broken in the opening chapters and being restored by Jesus' sacrifice and the power of God's Spirit. Relationships between people and God, between people and other people, and between people and the natural world, God's creation. These are still issues in our world today - the Bible story doesn't end with the final page of Revelation, it carries on through the lives and work of Jesus' followers throughout history - until the day Jesus returns and makes all things new.

I would argue that this is how you can tell the true Church, Jesus' real followers: are they in the business of restoring relationships or of harming them? Not that even the best churches don't make mistakes and wander off the path, but one can still question both the overall pattern, and the quality of the hopes and dreams of the members: do they build up and welcome in, or do they knock down and exclude?

The Bible tells us that "God is love", and love is the essence of true relationship. If God is love then his followers must also be love, and must ensure that their understanding and practice of that love follows the radical patterns laid down by Jesus. Love isn't about gooey feelings and sex, but about genuine and practical care for someone else, backed with a willingness to sacrifice oneself to meet their deepest needs. To love is to to take up one's cross for the sake of another.

Love starts with loving God with all that we are, continues with loving our neighbour as our selves - even when that neighbour is strange, foreign, or in some other way 'alien' - and ends with God's people loving one another.

Remember that God's love for you is far greater than any human love.

God loves you, He died for you: he is on your side. God is not out to get you, He is out to save you. But He always gives you a choice: love respects freedom of choice. As a parent of young adults I suspect I have a very faint insight into how hard that must be ... even for God.

All Things Necessary For Salvation

‘Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation.’

I came across this on a network of Christian bloggers as a required belief for anyone wanting to join the network. Being inclined to contrariness, I immediately had reservations.

It is Jesus who saves us, not the Bible. The Bible is essentially an intricately carved and cunningly decorated piece of wood, at risk of becoming an idol.

I do know what the clause means, really, and - as a pointer - agree with it: Mark's Gospel introduces us to Jesus, Ephesians 2 tells us about salvation:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

And John 10 links the two:

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

This post's opening sentence comes from Article 6 of the Church of England's 39 Articles of Religion, their attempt to navigate a faithful path between the extremes of Roman Catholicism on the one side and hard-line Protestantism on the other.

The way I have addressed the meaning of this above begs the question, what about the rest of the Bible? Paul's second letter to Timothy is helpful: he tells us that all scripture is useful for Christian living. Strictly speaking he is only referring to Old Testament scriptures there, but it is not a big jump to extend it to the rest of the New Testament also.

Whilst hard-line Protestants tend to emphasise sola scriptura - only scripture, nothing else - the C of E goes for prima scriptura: scripture first, but the Spirit guides us in other ways also (including reason, tradition and experience).

Actually sola scriptura falls at the first hurdle: the original scriptures were written in a mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek. Without dictionaries and other translation tools these are meaningless to the modern reader. Even with translation tools you end up with circular, meaningless or tradition-determined translations without other writings to compare them to. You also need tools to determine which of a range of different ancient texts is closest to the original (note that the ones used by the original translators of the King James version are late and significantly different from earlier, better texts - the KJV was great in its day, but now it is only useful as a museum piece).

My view, in summary, is that the Bible is a wonderful book, filled with all sorts of poetry, narrative, drama, melodrama, and a variety of other writing types, which points us to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit and to God the Father, and which is a wonderful guide to living in God's way, the way recommended in love as the best way for us to live most fully. Some of the Bible is crystal clear, like the need to turn to God through Jesus to find healing and new life; some of it is less so; and some of the Bible is downright obscure and difficult to understand. Just like God's creation really. To my mind that is part of the joy of both - there is always more to discover, always more to learn, and always more to experience.

God is good ... and so is his word.

Politics & The Bible II

"Christianity is an incarnational faith – Jesus Christ lived as one of us, shared the joys and hardships of ordinary life and died a violent and shameful death. Wherever we find ourselves, he has shared our condition. His resurrection is a sign that the sufferings of the world are not the last word and that God’s transforming power can turn the material world – not just the spiritual – to work for good. Christians believe that we are called to share in this responsibility for bringing to birth a new creation."

The above is a quote from the Anglican bishops' pastoral letter (pdf link) published in February addressing the forthcoming general election, under the heading "Who is my neighbour?" Part of the point of the quote is that this world matters because Jesus was born into it, becoming one of us.

Whenever Christians pray "your Kingdom come" we are committing ourselves to doing what we can to help that to happen, and Jesus' life and teaching show us that God's Kingdom is far more about the way we treat others - particularly the sick, the scorned, and the outsider - than about some form of private personal belief system. As James puts it:

"Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?"

Even before the letter was published the right-leaning press were complaining about it, and Tory MPs were, we are told on Nick Baines' blog, criticising it even though they admitted they had not actually read the document. The implication has to be that some right-wingers assume, without needing to check, that their favoured policies are simply unChristian.

The letter itself is careful neither to choose any one party over another, nor to promote specific political policies. What it does try to do is to promote a new vision for political life, and indeed for British society's values. It's a huge document but well worth a read.

My aim in this post is rather more modest: I just want to address a couple of political hot-spots and look at how it is that Christians in different parties may, in good faith, promote different approaches.

Take economic policies. The Bible is clear:

“The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none, and the person who has food must do likewise.”

For one person to have more than they need, whilst another has less is simply wrong, that's easy. But what you do about it is less so. If the wealthy ignore the call to share their riches, like the rich man with Lazarus at his gate, what is to be done?

One view is that the state should step in, remove some of the excess wealth and pass it on to those in poverty. Another view is that it is down to an individual's conscience what they do with their money and if they choose to spend it on themselves that is their right. Maybe the church should be more persuasive in its teaching?

There is a lot of data to show that inequality is harmful to societies (see The Spirit Level, by Wilkinson & Pickett, for a slightly dated summary of the scientific evidence). There is also evidence to show that excessive welfare can also be harmful to societies, including to the recipients (John Bird of The Big Issue is an outspoken proponent that another approach is needed). Something more dynamic and more balanced is required.

So there are Christians in all the main political parties, all working for justice and to alleviate poverty, but in different ways, using different strategies. Some of them, some of the time, maybe compromise on God's Kingdom in favour of their political ideology, but we should all be wary of casting the first stone.

Health is an area that seems to have been central to Jesus' proclamation of God's Kingdom, so any Christian should be concerned about healthcare for all. In UK politics the argument is then over whether state control or more private/market provision is the best way of delivering that.

I have to say that I personally would find the market approaches more credible if they were not so obviously influenced by the USA's incredibly expensive and inefficient system, which has become a huge moneymaker for the health industry whilst leaving their nation generally unhealthy. There are many nations which do have efficient healthcare systems - both public and private. If the political parties were seen to be learning from them I would find it a lot more credible.

Finally, foreigners. Immigration is a big issue in this election, and it is a tricky one because clearly racism, overt or covert, is a part of the equation. Nevertheless one doesn't have to be racist to believe that there are problems which need to be addressed.

In the Old Testament the Israelites are reminded that they used to be slaves in Egypt until God rescued them and took them to another land. So, in some places, the importance of welcoming strangers and treating them well is highlighted. Other parts of the OT are rather more chauvinistic.

In the New Testament we have Jesus' family finding refuge in Egypt, when Herod was gunning for them. We also see in Acts and in Paul's writings a call for the church to accept people of all races and conditions, all equal in Christ. Racism and racial prejudice are alien to Christian living.

UKIP has its roots in anti-European groups of the past and has leading members today who appear to be out-and-out racists. Whether the current leader and official party policy are part of this or not, it remains part of the DNA of the party, and it will be a long time, if ever, before that is purged, in my view.

Other parties, though, also 'talk tough' on immigration, reacting to a perception that it is a problem in Britain. Given global mobility it is hard to see that completely open borders would work as a policy, so again it becomes a matter of degree.

In my view the questions that Christians should be asking about different parties' immigration policies should address whether they are promoting fear and division; whether they affirm the humanity of all immigrants, established, new and failed; and whether they are accompanied by policies to alleviate conditions which drive these people movements. For example the current government's attempts to keep overseas aid at generous levels is a positive example, whilst the current foreign secretary's warmongering tone has helped encourage the instabilities in Syria and Libya which generate so many refugees.

Ultimately, we live in a fallen world. No political system or party can deliver true peace and prosperity, only God; all parties and party leaders are fallible; all voters and members of our society are also fallible. Part of the judgement we must make as we come to vote includes how the policies and decision makers balance a vision of a better world with a reality in dealing with this one.

However the elections go this Thursday, may God bless and guide all who shoulder the heavy burden of guiding our country through the next five years.