The Last Word?

I once knew a middle-aged lady whose marriage fell apart after the kids left home. A while after her husband moved in with someone else she found a lump on her breast ... which she carefully ignored ... and ignored ... until at last she could ignore it no longer.

She underwent treatment for the breast cancer and came through. During her phased return to work they found a secondary in her brain, which killed her. At her funeral a neighbour said:

"It's hard to believe in God when something like this happens."

I knew another middle-aged lady who had a very difficult childhood. In her twenties and early thirties she fought back and thrived, making something special of her life. Then the demons caught up with her, gradually tearing much of what she had achieved apart and eventually killing her:

It's hard to believe in God when the demons win.

I can see the point, but for me it is far harder to not believe in God when such things happen. To not believe in God is to say that disease and demons have the last word.  To me, God is about meaning and purpose even in the midst of destruction and despair, about Resurrection when evil seems to have won.

For those of us who do make it through middle-age there is another 'd' waiting - decay. The longer we live the more we fall apart. In God I can even see meaning in that; but without God there is little to learn, or at least not much future in learning it.

I believe God has the last word: after disease and demons and decay and despair have done their worst, God still has something to say. And God's final word is about hope and love and life and purpose and a new future in a world of justice and peace and meaning.

But sometimes I do feel very, very tired.

Judgement & Exclusion

There's rather a lot about judgement in Matthew's account of Jesus' life. In part this makes sense as the people he was writing to were attempting to come to terms with the destruction of their Temple in Jerusalem and the suffering which accompanied it.

So this is introduced in a series of stories and parables highlighting the faithlessness of the religious leaders in Jesus' day and the judgement which would surely follow after they persecuted first Jesus and then his followers for so many years.

Finally, the end of chapter 23 and the bulk of 24 addresses the consequence of this, bringing together the terrible suffering during the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the hope of Jesus' eventual return into one terrible apocalyptic warning. We're bad at apocalyptic today so we tend to get lost in this passage but it most likely made sense, even brought a sense of comfort and meaning, to its early readers.

Then in chapter 25 the scope widens and we get three quick parables about judgement more generally, which are potentially easier to follow and apply today. These parables, known traditionally as The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, The Parable of the Talents and The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats are all parables of judgement.

Interestingly, given the traditional  Protestant religious focus on 'Salvation by faith not works', all three parables are most immediately about actions. Equally interestingly, given the traditional religious focus on avoiding 'sin' - refraining from doing forbidden things - all three are about people's failure (or not) to do what they should have done; no-one is criticised for doing something wrong, just for failing to do something right.

In the first, ten young women are chosen to accompany a bridegroom to his wedding feast. Five of the ten are prepared and ready when he comes, so they are welcomed into the feast in places of honour. The other five were not ready when he came and they are excluded: the bridegroom says he does not know them.

In the second parable a wealthy man goes on a journey so he gives his servants portions of his immense wealth to use while he is away. This is a tremendous opportunity which two of the servants use, whilst the third buries the wealth away and tries to go on with his life. When their master returns those who used the opportunity are praised and "given charge of many things"; the servant who deliberately failed to use the opportunity, however, is sharply criticised and thrown outside "into the darkness".

The final parable has Jesus returning in glory to judge people from all the nations. When he judges he does so on the basis of how they have treated those in need around them. He says the way we have treated the neediest is the way we treat him, and he separates people on this basis into those facing eternal life and those facing punishment.

Literally the word translated 'punishment' in that final parable means 'pruning' or cutting away, so again the implication is that judgement is about separation: separating those included in God's Kingdom from those who are excluded from it.

The basis for that separation is either what we do or, maybe more likely, on the underlying attitude: an attitude of expectancy which leads us to make sure we are ready and prepared; an attitude of trust which leads us to make use of opportunities God gives us; and especially an attitude of compassion for those we see in need.

And, in the end, inclusion means life and exclusion means death. How we live matters.

Respect For Life

Once we used to think that microbes were just 'germs', harmful and to be wiped out wherever possible. Now we are beginning to realise just how important they are.

In our guts we have an immense and complex microbial ecosystem, which affects our health in many ways. Whenever we take oral antibiotics that is really badly messed up. It would be a lot better if we kept antibiotics as a last resort and instead focussed on helping our gut microflora develop in ways which are healthy for them and for us. Respecting the life which is inside us and working with it rather than against it.

Researchers are also just beginning to home in onto a similar complexity of microbial life on our skins and in our mouths. It would be good if some serious studies were done on the consequences of wiping out parts of these communities with antiseptic soaps and mouthwashes - they may be doing more harm than good. Our microbiome is a lot more complex than we had previously realised; it should be treated with respect.

It is fairly well known now that insecticides are problematic. They kill insect predators as well as the main insect 'pests' - and the latter are much quicker to develop resistance. They also tend to accumulate up the food chain. Adjusting conditions to favour a more balanced and stable ecosystem is, in the long run, far more effective.

When it comes to effective use of the earth's land surface to grow food for the human population, studies have shown that some areas are best suited to growing plants for food and other are best suited to rearing animals. To feed our growing population fairly and effectively requires both plant foodstuffs and meat.

The proportion of the ideal diet which is meat should be significantly lower than the current average in the developed world, and significantly higher than parts of the developing world. Intensive rearing and general 'factory farming' are not efficient users of resources, so more sustainable patterns are required, for both plants and animals. Again we should be aiming to work with complex ecosystems rather than against them, recognising that monocultures and mass poisoning are both ineffective and inefficient.

One of the features of a successful ecosystem is that life and death are both a part of the web. I don't want to go all Disney 'circle of life' - reality is far more complex with its webs and time dependencies - but respecting life includes respecting the place of death. Every living thing dies (more or less), it is a part of life. Killing unnecessarily is disrespectful of life, but so is pretending death won't happen.

If humanity is to survive on this planet in the longer term we need to find ways to integrate ourselves into the wider ecosystem. In part that means stabilising our population; in part it means using sustainable food production methods, utilising both plants and animals; but mostly it means respecting life in all its diversity and complexity and working with it rather than against it. We are a part of something far larger than ourselves.

To apply this to the questions raised in my 'Cecil' post: as a generalisation a diverse ecosystem is healthier and more resilient than a narrow one. New species form and old ones die out, but we should do what we can to maintain a balance, and should certainly avoid putting unnecessary pressure on species and their environments.

As a slight aside, respect for the diversity of life in ecosystems across the world should be accompanied by respect for diversity within humanity, in my view. Both are essential for wholeness of life in the present, and stability of life into the future.

A final 'Cecil' question was about 'speciesism' - how far should we treat homo sapiens' life as being uniquely valuable?

From a Chrstian point of view, we believe that men and women are all made in God's image, and should be respected as such. But we also believe that we are called by God to be responsible stewards looking after this world, not just exploiting it for our own ends. All life came from God and should be treated with care and respect.

There is a bit of a question mark over what particular aspect of people is 'in God's image'. It is unlikely to be physical - as God is spirit - so it is more likely something to do with creativity and free will and 'sentience' - the ability to feel and experience subjectively. Some animals show signs of doing these things too, to a greater or lesser extent.

Does that mean that some are closer to God's image than others, with mankind at the peak? Could that be a basis for valuing a dolphin's life, say, over a tuna's?

I'm not really sure how well that works, but I do believe that a respect for life in all its aspects is a fundamental of living in the best way we can.

Mark: Awe & Wonder

There is a sense in which I cheated with yesterday's post: this week's section of the CTM parish sermon series is meant to cover chapter 4 of Mark, as well as the two chapters I looked at yesterday. Chapter 4 is important because at the end of it Mark plants a big signpost to who Jesus is, and why he matters, at the quarter-way point of his book.

My defence is that sermons and blog posts are different beasts, of different length and shape. I would see a sermon on these chapters starting with Jesus' words and actions, and the reactions they produced, and finishing with the storm story (see below) as a kind of punchline. But you can be a little longer and more complex in a sermon (although not too much so in the CofE!); in a blog context I decided two posts fitted better, with this bit of woffle linking them.

This way also gives me a bit of space to mention the parables block which makes up the bulk of chapter 4, and which the sermon series explicitly leaves out. One big problem with parables is that they are usually treated as 'stand-alones', not as part of an ongoing story. Since this sermon series is meant to be about context and continuity within Mark's Gospel, that wouldn't help.

The context of these parables is that they are a follow up to all that Jesus has been saying and doing about a message of good news which demands a reaction, effectively as a summary and reinforcement of the previous chapters.

So you have an apparently careless farmer scattering his seed onto mostly spoiled land, reflecting Jesus mission to the sick who know their need of a doctor, rather than to those who are sure they are well. Then you have other parables about a Kingdom which is visible, a light to the world, but which is to be held generously, given freely, and which grows in unexpected ways to bring comfort to many who are in need.

These are word pictures which make most sense when you look at the things which Jesus has already been saying and doing; if you just try to analyse and dissect their meaning from their text alone you end up with nothing more than dead words chopped up on the ground.

As chapter 4 draws to close, Mark has been painting a picture of Jesus as a remarkable teacher, preacher and prophet. Someone who speaks words of hope and comfort to the lost and words of truth to the powerful, and who backs up those words with action, healing and a sense of urgency.

Then Mark pulls the rug out. The final section of chapter 4 suddenly shows a new picture of Jesus, like a flash of lightning illuminating something new and unexpected.

It's just a brief story: Jesus is asleep in a boat, whilst the disciples take him across the Sea of Galilee. A storm blows up and the disciples - experienced fishermen - are panicking. They wake Jesus and complain to him. Jesus simply tells the wind to quieten down and the sea to be still ... and they do as they are told. "Who is this," the disciples say, "that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

It's a good question. There is a common view today that Jesus was a good man teaching wisdom and truth. That seems to have been about as far as the disciples had got, at this stage. This story is here as a signpost that there is a lot more to Jesus than that. That the Kingdom of God is far more real and impactful than maybe we imagine.

At the time Mark was writing this Gospel, this story mattered. Christians in Rome had been persecuted and brutally murdered; Judea and Galilee were aflame in a terrible revolt, brutally suppressed; the Roman Empire itself was in danger of falling apart as powerful men fought to be emperor. To most Jews of Jesus' day the sea and storms represented death and chaos, like the death and chaos that surrounded them in their lives.

Who is this who can quieten chaos and bring peace to death?

Then, as now, the question mattered.

Life Renewed

The tomb is empty; so is the cross!

A somewhat belated Easter follow-up to Life Matters from last Good Friday.

The basic Biblical picture of life is that we are born, we live, we die, then we are physically raised either to renewed life or to the 'second death', pictured as a lake of fire. The 'going to be with God in heaven when we die' stuff is, Biblically, something of a minor aside, although I have known Christians who thought that was what it was all about.

So, for a follower of Jesus who trusts him to see us through judgement and into that renewed life, death is not be something to be feared. Just as Jesus was physically raised that first Easter, so we will be physically raised when he returns. Death is not the end; renewed life is.

Sometimes people over-think this and decide that life after death is what matters, not the life we live now. This is nonsense. Life is life. The hope of new life forever may well give us a different perspective on the things which happen in our lives now, but that doesn't alter the basic fact that life matters - life now and renewed life in a renewed world.

I realise I have skated across a lot in the above - feel free to use the comments to drill deeper. But for now I want to pick up on a flip-side to the previous post.

There I used an example of extensive medical intervention to help keep a child alive and thriving. What about the other end of life? When someone is dying and technology is used to keep them alive? Sometimes there is a temptation to try to preserve life at all costs, to intervene even when there is no meaningful purpose (except perhaps to keep the surgeon's hand in).

If life matters, and if death is not the end of life, then surely the way that life is lived matters, even in the period before dying. Once there was the idea of a 'good death' in the sense that during the final moments relationships were healed - dying with your family around you, at peace with God and with your neighbours. It didn't necessarily mean a pain-free death, but one where neither pain nor drugs got in the way of these relationships. In modern times this sort of idea lies behind the hospice movement's approach to terminal care.

Easter is important in dying for several reasons. Firstly, Jesus' death and resurrection allow us to be reconciled to God, at peace with him. Secondly Jesus' resurrection foreshadows our own resurrections, and those of the people whom we love. If we live and die 'in Jesus' (whatever that means - a topic for another post) then we will be reunited at our resurrection - not only is death not the end of life, it needn't be the end of relationships either.

Finally, whilst we are alive, here and now, Jesus encourages us to reconcile any broken relationships we may have: to forgive and to seek to be forgiven. It saddens me how many families have factions who fell out years ago and who now never talk. Forgiveness is a great healer, and helps to avoid the 'if only's of death.

So, may your week ahead be filled with blessing, may you experience life which matters, and may you find peace in your memories of those you hope to meet again, come the resurrection.

Life Matters

If a puppy was born with a badly deformed heart, so it was in pain and distress, if it needed a long series of major operations to have even a chance of growing up, most people would sadly take it to the vet to be painlessly put down, I suspect. It would be seen as a mercy.

I have known two babies born with badly deformed hearts. Both suffered pain and distress and went through a long series of major operations, without a great chance of success. So far, both have made it through: they are battlers. In their short lives they have known far more than their fair share of suffering, but they have also known much joy and love.

Should they have been put down at birth, or even before? I suspect most of us would strongly feel they should be given their chance at life, although some high-profile figures might disagree. Somehow life is important and its quality depends on more than just lack of pain and life's significance lies in more than just its length.

Good Friday is a day when Christians remember the suffering and death of Jesus, we believe for the sake of the world, so that all who put their trust in him may have fullness of life, forever.

I think this has relevance to the suffering that goes on in the world; although no way would I claim a complete answer to this venerable question (recently brought up by Stephen Fry and treated by the media as if it were a new thought).

Why do we live in a world where children are born with deformed hearts? I don't know, but I do believe that their lives matter, and that surrounding them with all the love we can matters, and that their parents are heroes who should be celebrated.

Why do we live in such a world? One answer is that God is either incompetent (or at least not omnipotent) or evil. This is slack logic: these may be two options, but they are not the only two. One other that strikes me is that any alternative may be worse.

Why did the parents of these babies allow them to go through such distress? Because they believed that their lives mattered, and they did whatever they could to allow their child every chance to experience life and love and joy. They could have wiped the slate clean and started again, but they chose not to. That individual baby mattered.

Our lives matter to God: that we find love and joy and meaning is, I believe, his priority. Rather than wiping the slate of the world clean, he gave his son to live with us and to die for us, so that we might have every chance to find that love, joy and fulfilment. Every loving parent knows that there is a price to be paid for their love; sometimes that price is hard to bear. God, through Jesus, paid the highest price, because he loves us and because our lives matter to him.

There may be all sorts of other reasons for the suffering in this world. I don't know, I am not God. But I do know that faith is about trust.

I trust that God is good and loving, and that life is in him. And life matters.

Funerals

Howard, with son & younger brother

I'm not a great fan of funerals at the best of times, but two in five days is clearly excessive. Especially when both were more-or-less my contemporaries, both died suddenly, and one had been a friend since college days, some thirty-five years ago.

I generally try to wear something green to funerals, in amongst all the dreary black, because I do believe in all the "unless a seed is planted" stuff about resurrection. But in the meantime there is separation, and a breaking of immediate ties. Ties of family and friendship and responsibility. There is a hope that all will meet again come the resurrection, but for now there is an absence and a space unfilled.

Although, when I think about it, both these friends died after their kids had grown up, not before. One - many years ago, whilst his kids were young - had suffered from a brain tumour, which was expected to be fatal but unexpectedly responded to treatment/prayer. The other spent many years wandering around the globe, so for him absence has not been unusual. He had been settled back in the UK for a while before he died, though, so there was some time to spend (the photo above is from last summer). Life is a gift, length of life can be a gift, but often we want more.

Of the two friends with funerals, one, George, was a committed churchgoer - he was actually my house-group leader when I first went to Caversham Baptist Church some 18 years ago - the other, Howard was not. Often that makes a difference to the feel of the funeral, to how well it reflects the person being mourned/celebrated. In this case it was a bit different.

The minister taking George's funeral did a decent enough job, but was perhaps too close, took it too personally. The result failed to reflect the breadth and variety of George's life and the people he had been involved with - and had come to the funeral - on the one hand, and didn't really reflect much hope on the other.

Although Howard wasn't a churchgoer, it turned out the minister there, 'oop north' in Runcorn Old Town, had actually met him a couple of times. He also remembered his sister dying six years ago. Their Mum is still alive and he made the link between the horribleness for a parent of seeing their child die and the experience of Mary in the Bible. A difficult link to carry off without being naff or unkind, I thought, but he handled it well. The family gave two 'tributes' before the minister spoke - as happened for George's funeral - and he let them handle the more personal stuff, whilst he focussed on pain, hope and resurrection. I thought he did an amazing job, myself.

So I guess funerals do have their place: a time to say farewell, a chance to get together to share memories, an opportunity to pay one's respects, a reminder of the Christian hope that we will meet again. I still don't like them, but I am glad I went ... to both, but especially to Howard's in far-off Runcorn.

May 2012 Ramble

I think last month has to go down as being very definitely not my favourite month.

It began (and continued) with my wife hobbling about on crutches, off work and needing to be taken everywhere by car - including extra trips to physios, doctors, scans, etc. Lousy for her, challenging for my CFS/ME. Thankfully she's now working part time - mornings - trundling around on her crutches, although that gets very painful for her after a while.

I gather there are increasing numbers of people being injured by out-of-control dogs in our local parks. It is the old problem of an incompetent and inconsiderate minority messing things up for everyone else - if they cannot control their dog they should keep it on a lead, it's that simple surely.

Having had CFS/ME more-or-less under control for many years now, I have occasionally wondered how far the symptoms nowadays are more down to middle age and physical unfitness. Mid-May I was hit by a virus when my system was already on the edge, and simply crashed. There is a distinctive combination of feverishness, migraine, nausea, hunger and utter exhaustion - suddenly it all came rushing back to me. Now I'm just fragile and sleeping like a toddler (or old, old man) every afternoon.

A fortnight ago my father-in-law (pictured) died; his funeral was last week. He'd been very poorly since last summer, and not at all well for several years before that, so it wasn't really a surprise ... but still a shock, if you see what I mean. Similarly, it was very sad that he's gone ... but also not sad, because he really was not well and emphysema isn't something you recover from. It's amusing to think of him up with Simon Peter: discussing boats, supping fine ale, and setting the world to rights. Then settling down for a good long rest.

The sting in the tail is that it would have been my Dad's birthday at the beginning of the month; he too died of emphysema a few years back. Not good.

Any silver lining to this May? Well, there was the Delain concert I have already posted about, and there was my son home for the final week. We expected him back for his Grandad's funeral, but he suddenly turned up several days earlier than I'd expected; so that was a pleasant surprise.

That's about it though, in truth. Oh well, here's looking forward to June with optimism and hope. We never quite know what treats might be just around the corner.

Harry Potter & The King's Cross

We went as a family to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (a mouthful of a name!) at the Showcase Cinema in Winnersh yesterday. It was, like all of the HP movies, a fun watch: well-paced, visually dramatic, disjointed in plot, variously wooden and/or OTT in acting, and overall very entertaining. As with the other more recent HP movies it was also very sad in parts: as JK Rowling has said, if you want to fight evil there is going to be a cost.

I understand there are people who watch the movies without having read the books ... how on earth they manage to follow the plot I can't imagine. Maybe they don't; they just go along for the exciting ride. As the second part of what is really one story, this film is more incomprehensible than most. It's a year or two now since I last read the books (and about 9 months since I saw 'Part 1'), and I was feeling a little lost at times. Still, the film moves on so fast that it doesn't matter.

NB: There are spoilers coming.

When I was reading the books, waiting for the final instalment, one of the puzzles was how the climax was going to work out. The parallels with the Jesus story were already obvious, so Harry was very likely to end up sacrificing himself. But surely Rowling wouldn't be able to pull off a resurrection. Amazingly, in the book she not only pulls a resurrection off, but she also makes it obvious that this is the only way the battle against great evil could possibly be won. And she hammers the parallel home by having Harry meet Dumbledore at King's Cross station. I thought it was a masterful piece of writing. But not the sort of thing they could do in film, surely.

In fact the film handles this remarkably well, I think. Harry learns that the only way Voldemort can be defeated is if Harry offers up his own life, to be killed by Voldemort, in the final 'victory' of evil. So Harry goes to his death and is duly murdered. He carries Voldemort's evil with him down to King's Cross, then returns leaving it behind. About as clear an imagery of 'dying to sin and rising to new life' as one can hope for. Rather than fudging this, the film made it even more explicit, emphasising the 'man born to die' aspect in Snape's final gift of his memories.

The most poignant character for me, in both book and film, is Severus Snape, the Judas figure. The book gives more depth and detail, but still the film shows well how this unpleasant figure is redeemed by love, and given the courage to do what had to be done. As Harry Potter says to his son, many years later:

"Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew."

My finishing quote, though, is from Albus Dumbledore himself:

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living and above all, those who live without love."

Hospices & Healing

Several weeks ago we had an excellent visiting preacher at Caversham Baptist. He preached about healing - which is easy to preach about badly, hard to preach well - and presented it in terms of the Kingdom of God breaking through into our 'ordinary' world. It is unpredictable and often unexpected, but when it does break in you can only wonder and give thanks.

He gave an example of someone he knew who has cancer, of a generally fairly treatable form, and was undergoing chemo. But there was a complication and she had been taken into hospital - very poorly indeed - where she just wasn't responding to treatment. Because she was so poorly they were about to stop the chemo, with long term consequences. The preacher and the young woman's mother prayed for her healing, then he left. A couple of days later, there she was, with her mother, walking into town, looking positively perky.

This story begs a lot of questions, of course. Was it God doing the healing, or was it the treatment at the hospital? If it was God, then why did she still have cancer, and still need the long course of chemo with no guarantee of the result at the end? Why didn't God just fix everything for her ... indeed why not fix it for everyone in the hospital? You could worry about the questions, or you could just look at this young woman who had been really unwell and now was out and about, living freely. And you could just thank God for that.

Some years ago, my wife worked at the Sue Ryder Hospice, out at Nettlebed. They've broadened their clientele a little since, but back then they mostly worked with people suffering from terminal illnesses. This gives a rather different view of what 'healing' means. In hospitals they tend to be mostly concerned with patching up your body and sending you home 'mended'. In hospices dealing with terminal care, the body isn't going to be patched: mending it isn't an option. Instead hospices look at enhanced quality of life, at relationships, at alleviating suffering: at the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and of their friends and family. Many (although certainly not all) of the staff are Christians who regularly pray. But in most cases praying for longer lives for their patients isn't meaningful, instead they pray for healing and wholeness and peace, as each individual person comes to the end of their life.

At the church service, the preacher did one of those "raise your hand if you want to be prayed for" things. Fair enough, I guess, although I'm not a big fan. Then he did the slightly cringey, "I'm feeling there's someone here who has problems with their right arm" bit. In a congregation of some 80 people, ranging from 20's to 80's or 90's, there's bound to be someone with a sore arm. As it happened that included me, but to be honest I wasn't concerned about anyone praying for my arm. If we were going to have a time of prayer for the Kingdom of God to break through, I had a much higher priority.

Someone I know, and like, and respect, had spiralled completely out of control. Her life had crashed, she was in an utter mess, and it was not at all obvious how she could possibly get out in one piece. So I prayed for her, desperately. A day or two later, there was a development which looked like it was just going to make things worse. In practice, though, it moved her out of her pit of utter despair and into a place where she has the possibility of - slowly and painfully - rebuilding her life. She's not out of the woods by a long shot: sometimes it still looks as if she just wants to lose everything; but still she now has a chance at life and hope and rebuilding. As miracles go it might seem a bit low-key, and maybe it would have happened anyway, but that's no reason for me not to thank God for the change.