tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40348792393240466182024-03-16T01:11:59.837+00:00Present on EarthA blog about liberal Christianity, systems thinking, the interdisciplinary concept of information, social justice and gay rights. May contain sermons.Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.comBlogger129125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-17978878441926207042023-07-21T19:01:00.003+01:002023-11-10T12:53:29.152+00:00Gaps in translation: Babel, information and colonialism<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://harpercollins.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/x500_4519abcd-4822-47ae-9169-e1426a0ca88c.jpg?v=1698846147&width=350" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://harpercollins.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/x500_4519abcd-4822-47ae-9169-e1426a0ca88c.jpg?v=1698846147&width=350" width="210" /></a></div></div>Recently I've been reading the novel <a href="https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/babel-or-the-necessity-of-violence-an-arcane-history-of-the-oxford-translators-revolution-rf-kuang?variant=40155497267278"><i>Babel</i> </a>by Rebecca Kuang, and found it both highly enjoyable and thought-provoking. Very much an academic's view of a good fantasy story: set in Oxford, heroes and villains alike are academics, the magic that the book describes only works with a thorough study of language and etymology, and the novel is full of footnotes. <p></p><p>Moreover, the setting is a very interesting period of history in the 1830s, when the second British Empire was still taking shape, with its rapacious attention shifting from the Americas (fifty years after US independence and with slavery finally abolished) to South and East Asia. The backdrop of the book is the smuggling of opium by British agents linked to the East India Company into China, and the run-up to the first Opium War. At the same time, industrialisation was taking place in large-scale within the UK, with the building of railways as well as factory machinery, and the consequent struggles for jobs and for democracy. Most of the novel presents this history faithfully, but laced with some fantasy elements.</p><p>In lots of ways I'd have been quite happy with this as a historical novel - the details are fascinating. When we meet leftwing demonstrators, they talk of the Chartists, of the Luddites, Peterloo and the 1832 uprising in Paris that is the centrepiece of <i>Les Miserables</i>. The effects of industrialisation on people, already working rubbish jobs which they lose due to more technology. The taking-over of subject peoples around the world but the unwillingness to accept people from those places within British society. And the true wickedness of the opium trade, when a supposedly civilized people got a great nation (China) hooked on drugs to make money and to subjugate them further, and when they protested. </p><p>Some of these details led me down fascinating rabbit-holes. At one point the characters travel to Canton to 'negotiate' on behalf of a Mr Jardin and Mr Matheson who are trying to bring opium into China. So I learnt about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jardine_Matheson_%26_Co.">their story</a>, of becoming rich through drug smuggling, taking on Lot Number 1 in Hong Kong and growing into a company that is still rich today, but wouldn't have started without the creation of drug addicts. Meanwhile at home, James Matheson became an MP, governor of the Bank of England, and bought the island of Lewis from which he cleared large numbers of people to build a castle. Oh, and both were Scottish, as sadly was too often true with the British Empire.</p><p>But really all this is background for the book, which is about translation and its issues. The blurb begins with the Italian phrase <i>traductore, tradditore</i> - roughly, translators are traitors, or in the more elegant version of the blurb, "an act of translation is always an act of betrayal". Because in this world, the heart of power in Oxford, fuelling the British Empire, is the Royal Institute of Translation - the eight-floor tower known inevitably as Babel. The focus of much of the book is on a group of undergraduate students entering that institute, as people as the academics who teach them and others who also work in the tower. In that tower, silver bars are endowed with a special form of magic - a word in English (typically) is written on one side, while on the other side <span>is a version of that word in another language. </span></p><p><span>The magic comes in the gaps in translation - in the subtleties of meaning that one language captures but another misses. Sometimes the words are similar - the difference between French <i>triacle</i> and English <i>treacle</i> is the basis for healing from cholera in the first few pages. Sometimes they're different in appearance despite the languages being similar, such as German <i>heimlich</i> and English <i>clandestine</i> (used to create secrecy in the home, given that the German shares the same root as the English <i>home</i>). And sometimes the languages are quite different. </span></p><p>That translation never captures the full meaning, however good the translator, is well-known. How can it, when languages are different in their grammar and syntax, and the words have different histories and implications? </p><p>Any reader of translated fiction knows this. I'm going on holiday to northern Italy next month, and a colleague recommended that I read <i>I promisi sposi</i> (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni, a 19th century classic of Italian fiction though not much known outside Italy, and set in the region where we're going. But at least three translations into English are widely available, all in different styles, and the reading experience varies a lot depending on which I pick. In the same way, I recently read Thomas Mann's celebrated novella <i lang="de">Der Tod in Venedig </i><span lang="de">(</span>Death in Venice<span lang="de">)</span><span lang="de">, in a 1930 American translation which after reading it I learnt is regarded as somewhat censorial, toning down the homoerotic themes considerably for the American audience.<br /></span></p><p><span lang="de">The same is true in non-fiction. I vividly remember as a PhD student reading German sociologists and philosophers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jurgen Habermas, in English translations full of little translators' footnotes on why they'd picked certain readings of words and their full implications in the original. Every Biblical scholar and most preachers spend much of their time explaining the difference between Greek words and their common English renditions (I have myself constructed big chunks of sermons on why 'eternal life' and<i> zoe aionios </i>have <a href="http://girardianlectionary.net/learn/eternal-life-in-scripture/">very different implications</a>, and heard many on the different possible readings of <i>logos</i> beyond the simple 'word').</span></p><p><span lang="de">It was for this reason that the field of hermeneutics (the study of interpretation) developed initially in Christian theology, before moving to other areas. It can never be neutral - it is deeply dependent on the positionality of the interpreter, as well as their understanding of the text. As the radical Biblical scholar Ched Myers wrote: </span></p><blockquote>Claims that the meaning of the text is ‘obvious’, requiring no interpretation, or that someone interprets without bias, are no longer credible. Hermeneutics takes seriously the burden and responsibility of the interpreter as ‘translator’, trying to bridge two vastly different worlds. Moreover, interpretation is a conversation between text and reader, requiring not detachment but involvement. … [I]f we are genuinely listening to the text, we will allow it to influence how we understand and what we do about our situation (it ‘interprets’ us). Until the circle from context to text and back to context is completed, we cannot be said to have truly interpreted the text.<br /><br />(<i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/dfWFDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">Binding the Strong Man</a></i>, 1988, p.5)</blockquote><p><span lang="de">And so to information. These gaps in translation have much to do with the nature of information. Gregory Bateson famously described information as 'the different that makes a difference', and a gap in translation that can be used for magical purposes is surely exactly a difference that makes a difference. </span></p><p><span lang="de">Gaps in translation are also an illustration of my colleague David Chapman's claim that <a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/40555/1/Information%20is%20Provisional-Preprint%20for%20ORO.pdf">information is provisional</a> - we can never be certain whether it is accurate or not at any one moment. This is because, as David and I <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/12/2/77">wrote together</a>: "it is impossible to know, with complete certainty for all time, whether something is true, and, according to Floridi’s veridicality thesis of information, information has to be true otherwise it is not information". When our information relies upon translation, it cannot be otherwise than provisional: because its fundamental meaning is always uncertain. </span></p><p><span lang="de">One further thought on information and translation. When communication technologies are analysed, they often are shown in successive layers within the sender, converting the message into a simple form (such as 1s and 0s on a phone line) which can then be relayed to the recipient where it is built up into a different form. In the paper on information being provisional, David Chapman used this technique to analyse information. However, where translation is concerned, there is no simple form into which the words are first of all converted before being built up in the other language. The spoken or written words go as a whole unit from one individual to another. At best they are held in the same sort of neurones within the brain, but not in a way available to human consciousness. In my view (and maybe others would see this differently), translated words move as a whole from one language to another, without an intermediate form.</span></p><p><span lang="de">And so to return to Babel and betrayal. At some level it is undeniable that translation is betrayal - the meaning behind the words changes, ideas are lost or added. For the most part, this is not a deliberate betrayal. Fascinatingly, in the novel there are further layers of betrayal - because the students that the novel focuses upon have mostly come to Oxford from other countries, chosen for their fluency in other languages to make the translation magic work effectively. And because their work powers the British Empire, they are thus put in a position of choosing either to betray their country of origin, or to betray their fellow-students within Babel. </span></p><p><span lang="de">Which option they choose would be a spoiler for the novel - but it mirrors the choices that colonised peoples, and their successors as the descendants of colonised peoples (whether or not citizens of post-imperial states such as Britain) have always faced and always continue to face. In the style of early 19th century novels, the book has several subtitles, one of which is 'the necessity of violence', and what it means to do violence in such a situation (even if that violence is to things and institutions rather than human beings). As a pacifist, I found this really troubling, but also thought-provoking in the light of debates on decolonisation but also groups such as Just Stop Oil which use forms of violence against property (though not people) as has been the case for campaigning groups such as the Suffragettes in the past. </span></p><p><span lang="de">Because ultimately <i>Babel </i>is a book about power; and translation is always an issue of power. The question is who holds the power, and what use they put it to.<br /></span></p>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-42422974286516314362023-01-05T19:33:00.001+00:002023-01-05T22:38:29.410+00:00Christmas and the mystery of practice<p>Today is Twelfth Night, the 12th day on from Christmas day, and in some churches the end of the liturgical season of Christmas. Traditionally it's when decorations come down, and it has me reflecting on my experience of Christmas this year. </p><p>I have long found the run-up to Christmas (i.e. most of December) to be exhausting, stressful and depressing. I feel considerable effort involved in buying presents, writing and sending cards, planning food. I often experience sensory overload from the bombardment of lights and sounds in shops and on streets. Society demands excess consumption. The time is suffused with memories and nostalgia, which can be pleasant but also painful. And there's a considerable degree of emotional labour - as a parent, one has to perform Christmas for the sake of children, but also to show a degree of enthusiasm (even joy) for the season to avoid spoiling it for others, whatever one's own feeling. </p><p>I won't continue in this vein for fear of being equated to Ebeneezer Scrooge or The Grinch, but you get the idea. I do really like spending time with my family in a relaxed and celebratory way, and the repetition of happy rituals (watching <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338348/">The Polar Express</a></i>, singing the final verse of <i><a href="https://hymnary.org/text/o_come_all_ye_faithful_joyful_and_triump">O Come All Ye Faithful</a> </i>on Christmas morning and so on) can be very special. And I have a genuine fondness for mince pies, mulled wine and lebkuchen. But there really is just so much of it all.</p><p>My negativity about all this has often been tempered by religious practice - the series of special services, prayers, liturgies and songs which have been devised for the Christmas season. They do interweave with the secular Christmas events - some people would make little division between them - but they give meaning and purpose to the season. The midnight Christmas Eve service has long been a particular favourite, from attending it with my family as a child, through my father leading services in various churches, to a couple of times when I led them myself. And there are a wealth of church resources which argue for a reduced emphasis on the material Christmas in favour of a more relational one, such as <a href="https://adventconspiracy.org/">Advent Conspiracy</a>. The concept of incarnation, that God should take on human flesh and be born in poverty, is one that inspires so much of the best of Christian theology (my own graspings on the topic are best found in a <a href="https://presentonearth.blogspot.com/2017/05/knowing-me-knowing-you-following-way-to.html">sermon that I gave five years ago</a> on a much-misused passage in the gospel of John). In a somewhat dualistic fashion, I sometimes have contrasted the religious Christmas with the secular Christmas, to the detriment of the latter. </p><p>However, my somewhat meandering spiritual journey has led me back to Quakers, after ten years in the United Reformed Church (I've reflected on this in blog posts on '<a href="http://presentonearth.blogspot.com/2020/07/sojourning-in-silence-and-systems.html">sojourning in silence and systems</a>' and '<a href="http://presentonearth.blogspot.com/2021/02/on-being-nomad-multiple-experiences-of.html">on being a nomad</a>'). Quakers are lovely people, with deep spirituality that expresses itself in often very radical action, profoundly inclusive values, and a form of silent worship that is different every time and (at its best) extremely profound. But they/we also have a 'testimony' (a collective practice) against following the traditional church practice of setting aside particular 'times and seasons' as special or different. We should be open to the religious message of Christmas every day, just as we should be open to every day being Easter or Pentecost. Janet Scott <a href="https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/27-42/">wrote thirty years ago</a> that: </p><blockquote>We might understand this as part of the conviction that all of life is sacramental; that since all times are therefore holy, no time should be marked out as more holy; that what God has done for us should always be remembered and not only on the occasions named Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.</blockquote>Although Janet Scott observed in 1994 that the testimony seemed to be dying of neglect, it has changed somewhat: practically every Quaker will celebrate Christmas in its secular form, but I know few Quaker meeting houses with Christmas trees and none with special acts of worship. One might or might not hear people speaking in December in our meetings for worship about themes relating to Christmas. This year, Christmas Day was a Sunday; in my meeting, there wasn't even a normal meeting for worship held at the meeting house because not enough people were available, though a few gathered on Zoom. The huge emphasis on the religious aspects of the Christmas season is absent in most of Quaker practice.<p></p><div>Of course, I could go to other churches; I did so when I was previously a Quaker, and both this year and last, I was at an Anglican service on Christmas morning with family. But I wouldn't be getting the same steady experience of publicly exploring and celebrating the incarnation week by week, unless I chose to spend all of December at another kind of church. </div><div><br /></div><div>But religious experience is all about embodied practice - people coming together as a community to live their faith and explore it through forms of ritual behaviour. The great scholar of religion, Karen Armstrong, observes that this goes back at least as far as the 6th century BCE, and the Greek rituals known as 'mysteries'. Of these mysteries, she observes: "it was not something that you thought (or failed to think!) but something that you did" (<i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Case_for_God/-VuV1L-7zi4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA60&printsec=frontcover">The Case for God</a></i>, 2009, p.60). Moreover, it is clear from Armstrong's work that these actions only make sense in the context of communal practice: we make sense of the world together, and express our faith together, through action. </div><div><br /></div><div>So one can only practice Christmas (as a religious form) in combination with others, as part of a religious community. The individual believer can surely dip in and out of Christmas rituals (many a church minister has enjoyed ironically saying "see you next year" at a Christmas service to those in their congregation they won't see until next Christmas) but their experience is very different from those who participate in many Christmas services over a period of weeks. And thus if one is part of a religious community that does <i>not</i> practice Christmas services in an explicit form, then one has the choice of either absenting oneself from that community, or going along with this practice. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In the coming year, I will be writing on a new module about Systems Thinking in Practice, and specifically ways to become a better practitioner. And as someone who has spent a lot of time in faith communities, I find religious practice to be an example I keep coming back to (although perhaps not in teaching materials, for fear of putting students off). My colleague Martin Reynolds (<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Systems_Practice_How_to_Act/qZswDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">quoted by another colleague, Ray Ison</a>) defines practice as:</div><blockquote>human interfaced activities – processes, including speech, conversation and knowing – that effect transformation in situations (what people, or groups, do when they do what they do – a state of “doing”).</blockquote><p>In other words, practice - whether it is systems practice, religious practice, or another form of practice - is made up of processes that change situations. By being part of a religious practice that explicitly emphasises Christmas, or one that keeps it tacit, changes the situation in which we find ourselves - into one which treats the Christmas season very differently. </p><p>I can't say how this will affect me in the next Christmas season. It is certainly my hope that I might find the way to express the mystery of the incarnation throughout the year. For a believer in the Christian understanding of God, this ought to affect one's own life, to change one's own practice. The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart <a href="https://upwardcall.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/unceasing-incarnation-struggling-to-walk-in-our-vocation-as-theotokos-and-bethlehem/">wrote</a>:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God 1400 years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.</p><div></div></blockquote><div>So perhaps when December next arrives, I'll be better prepared to experience both the religious Christmas and the secular Christmas through an appropriate form of practice. May it be so.</div>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-6477029743033832052022-02-06T22:09:00.007+00:002022-02-06T22:11:27.480+00:00Cantus Firmus, The Armed Man and the love of God<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81nfiBsZGWL._AC_SX569_.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="569" height="200" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81nfiBsZGWL._AC_SX569_.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: CD cover of <br /><i>The Armed Man</i></td></tr></tbody></table>Today I've been singing <i><a href="https://www.classicfm.com/composers/jenkins/music/karl-jenkins-armed-man-mass-peace/">The Armed Man</a></i> by Karl Jenkins, as part of the <a href="http://northamptonbachchoir.org.uk/">Northampton Bach Choir</a> (and alongside the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra). It's only actually the second time I've sung the whole piece, but it's one of my very favourite pieces of classical music, partly because it was the first concert my wife Becky heard me perform and we played the Benedictus as a settling-down piece at our wedding; but also because of the very fine themes of peace and war that it portrays in a really vivid and accessible way. <p></p><p>Rehearsing it again over the past two months, I've learnt a lot about the piece from the choir's main conductor Lee Dunleavy and our guest conductor Adrian Partington who actually conducted the piece in concert. In particular, from Adrian I learnt about a piece of musical theory that's important to understanding one of the movements: the idea of a <i>cantus firmus</i>. This was described by <a href="https://www.classical-music.com/features/articles/what-cantus-firmus/">BBC Music Magazine</a> as "a fixed tune around which polyphonic choral music is developed" - an existing tune or phrase which is typically sung or very slowly and by low voices, underneath other parts to form a foundation. For centuries, one such tune was the medieval song <i>L'homme arm<span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">é</span>e, </i>which is also the basis of The Armed Man. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent.fltn3-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/273505755_10159213743428937_7003826750139308402_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=0debeb&_nc_ohc=nJpXFtVRGfIAX9dEsDn&_nc_ht=scontent.fltn3-2.fna&oh=00_AT-vsadik9AkaDf3tcdPY-m2NeWYeRoFjjOcOU4VcVbQ9g&oe=62058B5D" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://scontent.fltn3-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/273505755_10159213743428937_7003826750139308402_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=0debeb&_nc_ohc=nJpXFtVRGfIAX9dEsDn&_nc_ht=scontent.fltn3-2.fna&oh=00_AT-vsadik9AkaDf3tcdPY-m2NeWYeRoFjjOcOU4VcVbQ9g&oe=62058B5D" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Lee Dunleavy, <br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=northamptonbachchoir&set=a.10159213401728937">Northampton Bach Choir</a> [via Facebook]</td></tr></tbody></table>In the Kyrie of The Armed Man, there's a couple of minutes of unaccompanied plainsong to the words 'Christe eleison', based on a setting of <i>Missa de l'homme </i><i>arm<span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.6933px;">é</span>e </i>by Palestrina, and the second tenors (of which I am proudly one!) sing a cantus firmus - a very slow and sonorous version of the main theme which sits as an underlay to the rest of the plainsong. Adrian flattered the second tenors at one of our rehearsals by saying that we had the most important part in that section of the movement, and the more I think about it, the more I can see that musically.<p></p><p>But I was also really interested to learn (tbh from Wikipedia in the first instance, but subsequently from other sources) that the concept of a cantus firmus has been used metaphorically by various thinkers. Perhaps most notably, it was used by the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a metaphor for the love that a believer should have for God and how it relates to our love for the world and other humans (in all the different forms of love):</p><blockquote>God, the Eternal, wants to be loved with our whole heart, not to the detriment of earthly love or to diminish it, but as a sort of Cantus Firmus to which the other voices of life resound in counterpoint. One of these contrapuntal themes, which keep their <i>full independence</i>, but are still related to the Cantus Firmus, is earthly love. ... Where the Cantus Firmus is clear and distinct, a counterpoint can develop as mightily as it wants. The two are ‘undivided and yet distinct,’ as the Definition of Chalcedon says, like the divine and human natures in Christ. Is that perhaps why we are so at home with polyphony in music, why it is important to us, because it is the musical image of the Christological fact and thus also our Christian life? [Extract from <i>Letters and Papers from Prison, pp. 393-4</i>, available online via <a href="https://www.cf-ministry.com/what-does-cantus-firmus-mean">Cantus Firmus Ministries</a>] </blockquote><p>This idea of the cantus firmus and our love for God was much in my mind during the Quaker meeting for worship that I attended this morning immediately before our concert-day rehearsal for The Armed Man. My experience of singing the cantus firmus in the Kyrie is that it has the following characteristics:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>It is massively slower than the parts in the other voices</li><li>It sits below those other parts, giving them foundation and depth</li><li>It can be hard to hear by itself, but if you're able to listen hard for it, it's then difficult to ignore (my ability at picking out individual lines on a recording is only average but the cantus firmus on the Armed Man recording is very clear)</li><li>It is not easy to sing, and requires a lot of concentration but once you try, it can be really rewarding</li><li>It is something that especially works through sharing - at one point today I was part of a group of just three second tenors and that was especially hard, but when the choir was reconfigured so that a larger group were together, the cantus firmus was much easier to pick up</li></ol><div>I think all of these can be said of God's love for God's creation - it is more fundamental than human love, and happens at a different pace; once you know it, it's not hard to see but it requires work to do so; and that love can best be experienced along with others. In my own experience, Quaker stillness is an especially good way to experience God's love, but others have found it through many other contemplative practices within Christianity and other faiths. And the same processes can be said to be true of other response to God and our love for God - it requires effort, and to be foundational underneath other loves, and it can perhaps best be learnt and shown in a group of others.</div><div><br /></div><div>As St Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans:</div><blockquote>And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor [rulers] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+8%3A38&version=NLT">Romans 8:38, New Living Translation</a>)</blockquote><p></p>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-14975470091233233242021-04-10T17:20:00.001+01:002021-04-10T17:20:30.409+01:00On hunting and being hunted: the role of narrative in The Testament of MaryUntil lions have historians (it is said), history will always be written from the perspective of the hunter. This was my overwhelming feeling on finishing reading Colm Tóibín's excellent short novel, <i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Testament_of_Mary/Dv0rwY6cPA0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">The Testament of Mary</a></i>. It's very much a book about narratives, and how alternative narratives are constructed.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/prh/books/187/187011/9780241962978.jpg.transform/PRHDesktopWide_small/image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="681" data-original-width="440" height="320" src="https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/prh/books/187/187011/9780241962978.jpg.transform/PRHDesktopWide_small/image.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>The book presents Mary (the mother of Jesus) at the end of her life, reflecting both on the tumultuous events which took place around her son's death, and her own subsequent life in hiding. She's doubly hunted: by the agents of the Roman Empire, who would like to see her silenced; and by Jesus' followers, two of whom act as her protectors and who feed and house her, but in return for a constant stream of reflections and questions about her experiences of her son. The name of Jesus never occurs in the book - at one point Mary says that she can't bring herself to speak his name, so great is her grief - so it's always "my son" or "him". But he's present throughout the book, his words and his deeds. </div><div><br /></div><div>Tradition suggests that Mary fled to Ephesus, on the coast of Asia Minor (now part of Turkey) where she lived out the rest of her life, and Colm Tóibín follows that tradition; thus one of her protectors may be taken to be John, the 'beloved disciple', whose oral tradition formed the basis of the Gospel of John. Given my comment above about Mary being hunted, it's striking that Ephesus was the site of the major temple to Artemis, the hunting goddess, which Mary is described in the book as visiting.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mary's recollections of a number of the key events in Jesus' life that are central to John's gospel - the wedding at Cana, the death and rebirth of Lazarus, the crucifixion - are somewhat different both to the story as we have it in the gospels, and to the story as the disciples are gradually reconstructing it from Mary's accounts. It's very clear that they want to create a story about Jesus as someone supernatural, as the Son of God, and that they see his death as something very distinctive and important.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's true that the process of creating any sort of biography, even by modern historical standards, is one of selection of which facts to present and how to present them; and this was even more the case in the ancient world. Nonetheless, the way in which the disciples are shown as shaping the narrative around Jesus is striking. It's doing a certain amount of damage to Mary's perception of herself and her life with her son - using both of these to create something new. </div><div><br /></div><div>They're doing this for enlightened reasons, to reshape the world's understanding of itself, and in the process to bring hope to the oppressed within the Roman Empire. And narratives are inexorably tied up with power - as <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/12/2/77">David Chapman and I have written</a>, "narratives of information are constructed by those in power, sometimes in ignorance of the less powerful and sometimes deliberately to exclude those with less power". Nonetheless, the book ends sadly, with Mary left alone and with her self-perception of her life considerably harmed by those who have supposedly written about her.</div><div><br /></div><div>The novel reminded me at times of Philip Pullman's book <i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Good_Man_Jesus_and_the_Scoundrel_Chr/XxOs7nbSv9oC?hl=en&gbpv=0">The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ</a></i>, which also shows the developing narrative around Jesus. While Pullman is an avowed atheist, it's tempting to say that Tóibín is presenting a secularised version of Mary's story, but that would be unfair. There's a constant sense of Mary's spirituality - she regularly prays, goes to the temple (Jewish and that of Artemis), and is shown having multiple spiritual experiences. Her version of the narrative - and of course she too is constructing a narrative - is at odds with the conclusions of John's version, but it is no less religious. </div><div><br /></div><div>Ultimately, all experiences are shaped by narrative, and all narratives are derived from experiences. The only question is what we seek to do with those narratives, and how close we want them to be to the literal truth of our experiences.</div>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-49437561361616759702021-02-14T22:55:00.001+00:002021-02-14T22:55:32.586+00:00On being a nomad: multiple experiences of spiritual community<p>(I think that 'words that I might have offered in ministry but didn't quite feel appropriate' must be a distinctive Quaker literary form. Here is one such.)</p><p>This morning in Meeting for Worship we were reminded of the words of Caroline Stephen, written in 1908, that "the presence of fellow-worshippers in some gently penetrating manner reveals to the spirit something of the divine presence" (<a href="https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/2-39/">Quaker Faith & Practice 2.39</a>). So I spent much of the meeting thinking about my experience of spiritual community.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/poem-building-community-1068x529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Group of linked hands from several people, forming a heart shape between them" border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="800" height="159" src="https://jewishjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/poem-building-community-1068x529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/spiritual/poetry/318321/building-the-beloved-community-a-prayer/">Jewish Journal</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p>I've recently been reading a recent wonderful collection of short articles on sexuality and religion, <i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Book_of_Queer_Prophets_24_Writers_on/9I25DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover">The Book of Queer Prophets</a></i> (ed. Ruth Hunt), appropriate for LGBT History Month. Among many lovely pieces is one by Padraig O'Tuama, who writes among other things about community among LGBT people and compares their (and his) experience to that of the Israelites being persecuted in Egypt, and the way that persecution shaped their community. He writes: "A people became a people because of their shared need to move out from a system that abhorred them. ... 'Let my people go', someone said to a person in power, and those under the power realised they were a people."</p><p>That experience of being persecuted for one's difference, and then that persecution leading to the formation of community, is one that many groups have found around the world. Some scholars suggest that the ancient Israelites were not a single ethnic group (notwithstanding the origin story of Jacob and Joseph in the book of Genesis), but rather were a disparate group who formed around their slavery, escape from Egypt, and journeys in the wilderness. The story of gay men finding a common identity through persecution and death in the 1980s is told beautifully in the recent TV series <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/its-a-sin">It's a Sin</a>. Successive generations of African-Americans have built supportive community in the face of white supremacy and found ways to fight for justice (during slavery, the Jim Crow period in the southern states, in the Civil Rights movement, and more recently in Black Lives Matter). And Quakers too formed and were shaped through persecution, in the early decades of their movement when their theological and political radicalism was so threatening to the state that many were imprisoned and sometimes Quaker meetings were kept alive by their children.</p><p>For myself, my life experience haven't led to that sort of persecution or that sort of community. I'm white and middle-class. I've never been persecuted for my faith, whether as a Quaker or as a liberal/progressive participant in Presbyterian churches (I've occasionally been accused of not being a true Christian by evangelicals, and even left one church when it became too evangelical, but that's hardly persecution). And while I've been on the fringes of the LGBT community for many years, I've largely been sufficiently straight-acting not to attract hostility from anyone. </p><p>And yet I found myself realising that I have a deep yearning and need for spiritual community, to join with others to explore what it means to be in relationship with God, what it means to be human, what it means to seek after truth, what it means to have love for others, what it means to live in harmony with the natural world, what it means to seek justice. </p><p>I've found some of that sense of spiritual community through Quaker meeting, sometimes through local meetings (I've been a close part of at least eight local meetings, though none for more than a few years as life took me to different places) but just as much through national Quaker groups. I've found some of it through churches in the United Reformed Church and the Church of Scotland (again at least four of those, but more loosely with a number of other churches where I've preached). I've found it through the Iona Community, in Glasgow and on Iona but just as much in our local and regional groupings; and by attending the Greenbelt festival for a decade. I've found it through conversations with family and friends. And in a way I've found it through a community of ideas around progressive Christianity, in books and podcasts where I'm more of a recipient than a generator of ideas, but of which I certainly feel a part and which inform some of the other spaces.</p><p>This long and disparate list of spiritual communities shows the difficulty in some ways of my spiritual journeys - I've very much been a nomad rather than a settler, and even though many of the ideas and experiences have a lot in common, the people and the groupings are quite distinct. I've had a deep sense of connection with many people through these communities, but not always for very long. This is a very different experience both from the person who's been part of a single spiritual community (such as a church) for many years, and it's also very different from the people I discussed above who have been joined together in community through persecution. My experience is richer for perhaps being quite broad, but poorer for perhaps being more more shallow. There's a lot more 'I' in this piece than 'we'. Sometimes I feel that I would like to settle in a single spiritual community. Sometimes I've felt that I had found one, and then life changed in various ways. </p><p>And maybe this nomad form of community is its own form of spiritual experience, as I've met and encountered others with the same pattern from time to time, who find their way through travelling rather than arriving. In a <a href="https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/worship/singing-the-faith-plus/posts/god-who-sets-us-on-a-journey-website-only/">hymn by Joy Dine</a> that has spoken to me for some years are the words: "When we set up camp and settle / to avoid love’s risk and pain / you disturb complacent comfort / pull the tent pegs up again". Perhaps there is calling in this way of peripatetic spirituality. But I do value depth in community as well as breadth. So my own search for community continues.</p>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-37630378556106735512021-01-13T10:08:00.002+00:002021-01-13T11:57:29.337+00:00Life in the midst of deathDeath is so present at the moment. Covid-19 deaths in the UK (and other countries) are sky-rocketing, in quite scary ways. Within our church communities, we know a number of people who have lost loved ones recently. <div><br /></div><div>And yet there is always a tension between death and life. There is death in life, and life in death. I have no firm belief about what an afterlife might look like, but I find comfort in traditional Christian imagery around the life to come, even if it seems more like poetry than prose to me. Indeed, I think such words and images exist to comfort the grieving rather than to provide anything like a model of the nature of the universe. Certainly I learnt much more about the words of Brahms' Requiem "What then do I hope for? my hope is in thee" after I said goodbye to a colleague who shortly afterwards died; and I learnt more about the statement in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+21%3A1-6&version=NRSVA">Revelation 21:4</a> that "Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more" when I read it at my father's funeral.</div><div><br /></div><div>And these words are especially encapsulated in music for me. In John Rutter's Requiem, there is a wonderful setting of the Agnus Dei, the traditional words from the Requiem Mass in Latin, that read "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace" (Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem). Those words are given to the high voices, who sing in a hopeful, but tense and anxious way. At the same time, the low voices sing under them words from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: "In the midst of life, we are in death". </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CnwLGZxWy3Q" width="320" youtube-src-id="CnwLGZxWy3Q"></iframe></div><br /><div>And the combination is breathtaking, and achingly hopeful and sad at once. There is death in life, and there is life in death. </div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://asc-cybernetics.org/2014/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/mcb.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="689" height="139" src="http://asc-cybernetics.org/2014/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/mcb.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image: <a href="https://asc-cybernetics.org/2014/?page_id=121">American Society for Cybernetics</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table>This combination was one of the many themes found in the writing of the anthropologist and systems thinker Mary Catherine Bateson, who died a week ago on 2nd January 2021 at the age of 81. I was very fond of her work - in my book <i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Systems_Thinkers/WrPRDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA306&printsec=frontcover">Systems Thinkers</a></i> (with Karen Shipp), we wrote of her "strong respect for the individual with an awareness of wider forces to which they relate" and described her as "an individual who has taken systems ideas so deeply into herself that they influence all of her thinking and writing, and who has written at length about that process". </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Since her death I have been reading a lovely piece she wrote in 1993 entitled 'Into the Trees' (written for an anthology which <a href="https://archive.org/details/sacredtrustsessa0000unse">can be found online</a>, but also republished in her excellent collection <i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Willing_to_Learn/Ek3aAAAAMAAJ?hl=en">Willing to Learn</a></i>). She writes at length about forests as embodiments of this tension between death and life: </div><blockquote>Walking through the woods, I am reminded that there is as much death here as life. It is a mistake to think the word <i>forest</i> refers only to the living, for equally it refers to the incessant dying. It is mistake to speak of preserving forests as preventing the death of trees. Forests live out of the deaths of toppled giants across the decades, as well as the incessant dying of microscopic being. Without death, the forest would die. Ultimately, it is only the removal of trees that can deplete the forest. ... Death is apparently not a failure of life, but a mode of functioning as intrinsic to life as reproduction. To see life without seeing death is like believing that the earth is flat and matter solid - a convenient blindness.</blockquote><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q7Vsa11b7u4/X_7CNzrazfI/AAAAAAAArCg/6DxHPnKM6lEqxQSBShABJPZeBsnGrF0bQCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_20191128_125717730_HDR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q7Vsa11b7u4/X_7CNzrazfI/AAAAAAAArCg/6DxHPnKM6lEqxQSBShABJPZeBsnGrF0bQCPcBGAsYHg/w400-h225/IMG_20191128_125717730_HDR.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Mary Catherine Bateson was a committed member of the (American) Episcopal Church, so she would have known the old Book of Common Prayer, and I see in her words their insight that in the midst of life, we are in death. One of her much-loved articles discusses the death of her father, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, under the evocative title '<a href="http://www.oikos.org/batdeath.htm">Six Days of Dying</a>'. In a marvellous <a href="https://onbeing.org/programs/mary-catherine-bateson-living-as-an-improvisational-art/">interview</a> for the podcast <i>On Being</i>, originally recorded in 2015 but rebroadcast just days before her death, she said about her insight from writing about her father's death:</div><blockquote>death is a very important part of life that we shouldn’t deny, that in spite of our terrible hubris and greed and competitiveness, that we can learn to see ourselves in proportion and realize that we’re small and temporary and don’t understand as much as we need to. And we live in a time of real urgency, where we have to mine the insights of the past.</blockquote><p>Mary Catherine Bateson wrote extensively about life - perhaps her most widely-read book (and the theme of the much of the On Being interview) was entitled <i><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/JyGqoCRj9BYC?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizj7j9yZjuAhWGzoUKHYxWDBwQre8FMBN6BAgLEAY">Composing a Life</a></i>, on how we learn to live as a form of improvisation, and progressively find meaning in our lives as we go. Eventually life ends, but that brings me to one last piece of her wisdom from her memoir of her parents, <i><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/With_a_Daughter_s_Eye/8hR2PwAACAAJ?kptab=overview">With a Daughter's Eye</a>, </i>p.269 (thanks to my colleague Kevin Collins for finding the reference - there's a searchable version on Amazon):</p><blockquote>The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.</blockquote><p>I appreciate that wisdom as a historian of people with ideas, whose ideas can only really be understood once we them in full after their death (and sadly I've often understood systems thinkers best through their obituary and memorial articles in journals). But I also appreciate that wisdom as a person, still coming to terms with the death of my father just over a year ago, as we all need to take time to reflect on the lives of those we have known and those we have loved. Even if their stories have ended, our reading of those stories goes on for a long time to come.</p><p>In the midst of life, we are in death. But hope can be found in life, and hope can be found after death.</p><p></p>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-2888537246310652222020-10-11T22:04:00.005+01:002020-10-11T22:12:05.535+01:00All are welcome at the feast: a sermon on food and inclusion<p><i>Sermon preached at <a href="http://dustonurc.org.uk/">Duston United Reformed Church</a> on 11th October 2020. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+25%3A4-8&version=NRSVA">Isaiah 25:4-8</a>; <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+14%3A15-24&version=NRSVA">Luke 14:15-24</a>.</i></p><p>All the passages we’ve heard today – from <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2023&version=NRSVA">Psalm 23</a>, from Isaiah, and from Luke – are to do with feasting. The word feast is perhaps a little old-fashioned now. It conjures up images of Oxford colleges or medieval banquets, it belongs to the world of Henry VIII or Hogwarts. Indeed, there are many memorable feasts in the Harry Potter books. Here’s how <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=x4beDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA131&dq=Harry%E2%80%99s%20mouth%20fell%20open.%20The%20dishes%20in%20front%20of%20him%20were%20now%20piled%20with%20food&pg=PA131#v=onepage&q=%22Harry%E2%80%99s%20mouth%20fell%20open%22&f=false">JK Rowling writes</a> about the first one that Harry encounters, fresh from his unhappy cupboard under the stairs:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p>"Harry’s mouth fell open. The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, chips, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some strange reason, mint humbugs."<div><div><p>Harry’s reaction is an important one, because although he was never starved at his terrible aunt and uncle’s house, he never had quite enough and never got the nicest things. In the same way, in a poor society where people are just scraping by, feasting on special occasions, every now and then, becomes really important. It’s a time to put away your everyday poverty and go wild for a brief time. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.psephizo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/16-08-28-Feast.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="800" height="276" src="https://www.psephizo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/16-08-28-Feast.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Brueghel, via <a href="https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/the-politics-of-the-table-in-luke-14/">Psephizo.com</a></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p></p><p>Let’s talk about food poverty in the world today for a moment, to put this in context. According to the most recent estimates, more than 800 million people across the world, roughly 1 in 9 of the world’s population, are undernourished – they don’t have enough food to live a normal active everyday life. This figure had been declining as a result of many international efforts, but it’s started to rise again in the past few years. </p><p>As you might have heard, the United Nations’ World Food Programme has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-54476569">just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize</a>. They give direct assistance to the very poorest people in the world, <a href="https://insight.wfp.org/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-world-food-programme-4f8ee1914334">more than 100 million people</a>, and their work has been all the more important during the coronavirus pandemic. Food and hunger really matter. The World Food Programme’s director, David Beazley, <a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/world-food-programme-awarded-nobel-peace-prize-statement-wfp-executive-director-david-beasley">said the following</a> after the announcement of the prize:</p><p>"Where there is conflict, there is hunger. And where there is hunger, there is often conflict. Today is a reminder that food security, peace and stability go together. Without peace, we cannot achieve our global goal of zero hunger; and while there is hunger, we will never have a peaceful world."</p><p>Nor is this just a problem of so-called less developed countries elsewhere in the world. In our own rich country, <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/#">according to Oxfam</a>, more than two million people are undernourished, and half a million people are reliant on food parcels. This is a national and a global scandal. Helping individuals such as happens here with the food bank is really important, but ultimately we need deep changes to the systems which allow so many people to go hungry.</p><p>Returning to the world of ancient Israel, they lived in an agricultural society where many people were only one harvest away from starvation. The wider middle eastern area from Iraq to Egypt, including Israel, was known as the Fertile Crescent for its benign climate for growing crops, compared to many other areas, but there were frequent famines and disasters. In that world, feasting took on a deeper symbolism. It was a rare and special event. You couldn’t rely on it, and it felt like a gift from God. </p><p>As a result, many societies have ritualised such feasts, built them into religious traditions of all sorts, and ancient Israel had plenty of those. It also had a deeper significance, in that feasting was a key image of what they looked forward to when God brought about a better world in the future, in the end times. Thus the prophets are full of accounts of the future time when God will make a great feast, a banquet of rich foods and fine wines, in the way that we saw from Isaiah. There’s no sense of this being a different place – this is a new earth rather than heaven – but it’s a world transformed, a world of justice and peace, a world where everyone is welcome and everyone is fed. </p><p>And it’s that sort of feast that Jesus was talking about in his parable of the great banquet. It’s quite a complex story, of people being invited and refusing and then others put in their place. I have to confess that I’m not using the version of the parable that’s in the lectionary for today. We should be hearing the parable from the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+22%3A1-14&version=NRSVA">gospel of Matthew</a>, which tells roughly the same story but adds layers of violence, exclusion and pretty blatant anti-semitism. Luke’s version is neater, has fewer layers, and is a lot less problematic. But there’s still a lot going on. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/cdri/jpeg/Mafa065.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="700" height="271" src="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/cdri/jpeg/Mafa065.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: Jesus Mafa, via <a href="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48397">Vanderbilt University</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Now it’s not obvious from the text, but invitations in the time of Jesus were quite unlike in our time. Today when you’re invited to a dinner or a celebration, you’re told the time and place. In Jesus’ time, the guests were invited well in advance, agreed to come, and only later would they be told when the celebration was actually happening. So those excuses are partly because something else had come up in the mean time, those people who’d bought land or oxen, or who’d just got married. They’re partly to do with the time that had elapsed between the initial invitation and getting the details. I’ve done that myself at work – said I was free for a meeting on a range of dates, then had some of those dates fill up. It’s not necessarily that you don’t want to make the date, but it’s certainly a matter of priorities. The people invited simply don’t find the dinner as important as the other things they’ve got on. Now this parable has often been read allegorically, with lots of different groups reckoned to be the various people who reject the invitation, but I suggest that a simpler reading is easier: some people were invited to the feast, but they couldn’t make it any more because they had more important things to do.</p><p>And understandably, this would be pretty hurtful to the person giving the feast. They’d put in lots of effort and money planning this feast, and their guests don’t want to come. That’s a pretty horrible feeling. I’ve organised various events, in churches or at work or socially, and the start time was approaching, and people weren’t turning up, and my heart began to sink. </p><p>So I can readily imagine how the organiser of the feast might have felt by all those rejections. I think we can assume that he was a person of some high standing, so that all those rejections would have impacted on his social status as well, made him look less important. </p><p>He begins to sound pretty angry about the whole thing. “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” and then later when that’s not enough, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled”. There’s a fair amount of grumpiness in that, but also a great deal of generosity. If we reckon that this man is rich, and was expecting lots of important guests at the feast, then it’s quite a shift to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. In a typical large social event of the time, those are the people who’d be at the far end of the table from the host, perhaps with less good food, if they got an invitation at all. But immediately before this parable, Jesus instructs those holding a feast to invite the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame rather than relatives or rich neighbours, as those people can’t repay you through a return invitation. And the treatment of people like these who the Hebrew prophets constantly held up as the example of justice in society – doing God’s work is to care for widows, orphans, refugees and the disabled. It turns a typical middle eastern banquet for the privileged into what one commentator, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=25GmOQAACAAJ&dq=gospel+luke+leith+fisher&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjis9OTtK3sAhXFUhUIHR0cCk4Q6AEwAHoECAAQAg">Leith Fisher</a>, called “the rugged folk’s banquet”.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://theadditionalneedsblogfather.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/luke-14-banquet-copyright-2017-hyatt-moore.jpg?w=2000" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="295" data-original-width="800" height="148" src="https://theadditionalneedsblogfather.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/luke-14-banquet-copyright-2017-hyatt-moore.jpg?w=2000" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://theadditionalneedsblogfather.com/2017/12/07/children-with-additional-needs-are-not-second-best-to-jesus/">The Additional Needs Blogfather</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>So I think this parable is a call to generosity for those who have power and money and privilege, both individuals and society, to consider first those people who are disadvantaged. Stronger than that, it’s a statement that this is the way of the kingdom of God, to welcome all and to include all. The kingdom of God upends the structures of society. The rich, the leaders, the privileged in private jets and expensive houses – they come last; the poor, the downtrodden, the marginalised – they come first in God’s kingdom. </p><p>It’s a call to the church as well, to be a place of inclusion rather than exclusion. The hymn we heard before the sermon says that ‘<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKJgcv8SdnQ">all are welcome in this place</a>’. It’s so wrong, indeed it’s breaking the clear word of Jesus in this parable, when churches turn away from their doors those who are disabled, or young children, or old people, or gay people, or people with autism, or transgender people, or people who don’t live locally, or people who aren’t enough like those in the existing congregation. The last hymn we’ll hear today begins “come all you vagabonds, come all you ‘don’t belongs’” and it was written based on this parable. Because that’s what the church is, or at least that’s what the church should be – the home of those who don’t belong, the home of the marginalised and the excluded.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s27D7M8biuI" width="320" youtube-src-id="s27D7M8biuI"></iframe></div><p>And to me that’s a message of great hope. Because these are really rubbish times for a lot of people, but in those times that signs of hope are needed, and where messages like the feasts shown by Isaiah and by Jesus are so important. But they say: if you’re marginalised, if you’re on the edge of society in whatever way – then YOU are welcome at the table of the Lord. YOU are the invited guest at the great banquet. And YOU are beloved by God, in this time and in the world to come. </p><p>Amen.</p><div><br /></div></div></div>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-10906970725592313602020-09-13T15:40:00.008+01:002020-09-13T16:02:50.963+01:00Forgiving others, as we are forgiven<p><i>Sermon preached at <a href="http://dustonurc.org.uk/">Duston United Reformed Church</a>, 13/9/2020. Text: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+18%3A21-35&version=NRSVA">Matthew 18:21-35</a>.</i></p>In the past couple of months, we’ve been mildly obsessed as a family with the musical <a href="https://hamiltonmusical.com/london/home/">Hamilton</a>, the big-ticket show in New York and London which was released in a filmed version on Disney Plus this summer. We’ve watched it three times and listened many times to the music. For those who don’t know, it’s a mostly historically accurate portrayal of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_(musical)">Alexander Hamilton</a>, a key figure in the American revolution and the founding of the United States as an independent nation. It’s full of brilliant music and lyrics, and some very powerful moments. One of the most emotional scenes is concerned with forgiveness, so it’s directly relevant to this passage.<br /><br /><span style="text-align: left;">In a terrible series of events, Hamilton had an affair when he was a prominent politician and his wife Eliza was away. He was subsequently blackmailed by the husband of the woman he’d had the affair with, which for complicated reasons left him open to charges of public embezzlement. To clear his name of those charges, he wrote a public pamphlet confessing to the affair, ruining his reputation and breaking his wife’s heart. His young adult son was then killed in a duel defending Hamilton’s honour, leading to a huge rift between Hamilton and Eliza.<p>In a beautiful song, Eliza burns all of Hamilton’s letters, writing herself out of his future narrative. And then they move together to a quiet part of New York, where they grieve and Hamilton <a href="https://youtu.be/vjEoOeXId1k">sings how sorry he is</a>, and where eventually Eliza is able to forgive him – and as Hamilton weeps, the chorus sing the word “forgiveness” over and over again. Another character refers to Eliza’s forgiveness as “a grace too powerful to name”.</p><p></p>Because that’s the thing about forgiveness. It’s really hard - really really hard. It takes time and it takes real work to forgive someone who’s done you wrong. Seventy-seven times, or seven times seventy times, as Jesus puts it. And for the one that gets forgiven, it’s experienced as an act of supreme grace. <p></p><p>Forgiveness is a central theme in Jesus’ ministry, from start to end. He came proclaiming <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%201%3A4&version=NRSVA">a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins</a>. When he healed, he often told people that <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+9%3A2-8&version=NRSVA">their sins were forgiven</a>. And as he died, according to the gospel of Luke, he said “<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2023%3A33%2D35&version=NRSVA">Father forgive them</a>, for they do not know what they are doing”. </p><p>Jesus also taught about forgiveness in two important places in Matthew’s gospel. This is one, but the other we’ve spoken already in this service – the Lord’s Prayer, where he said the disciples should pray “<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+6%3A9-13&version=NRSVA">forgive us our sins</a>, as we forgive those who sin against us” ['forgive us our debts' in the Gospel], or “trespasses” as it’s often prayed in English churches, and <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6%3A14-15&version=NIVUK">went on after the prayer to say</a>: “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins”. That’s his only commentary on the Lord’s Prayer – forgiveness is literally the most important part of the prayer according to Jesus.</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.societyarts.org/uploads/1/1/1/3/111331221/the-unforgiving-servant-oil-on-canvas-40x90-2016-copy_orig.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="500" src="https://www.societyarts.org/uploads/1/1/1/3/111331221/the-unforgiving-servant-oil-on-canvas-40x90-2016-copy_orig.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Unforgiving Servant</i> by <a href="https://www.societyarts.org/in-the-studio-learning-to-see.html">James Janknegt</a> </td></tr></tbody></table><br />And so to the parable. It’s really quite complicated with its different servants. First thing to say is that it’s full of hyperbole, with details that are made deliberately stronger than they need to be. The amount the first servant is said to owe is so large to be impossible – in our money today it would be perhaps £4 billion. That’s the national debt of a small country. But it shows the sort of person the servant would have to be – someone huge and powerful in a life of the kind of hierarchical society pictured in the parable. That would make him a great lord, owing many obligations to his king but in turn owed many obligations by those in the many layers of the pyramid beneath him. And if the king forgave the debts of someone at the top of the pyramid, all the people below him also had their debts forgiven. So in refusing to forgive this much smaller debt – roughly worth £7000 in today’s money – the rich servant was not being mean and selfish, he was actively going against the whole point of forgiveness. By having his own debts forgiven, he was supposed to have forgiven those of others; he was breaking the rules, not passing on the good thing he had received. And debt is precisely the word found in the Lord’s Prayer, still said in Scotland as “forgive us our debts”, but as sins or trespasses here.<p></p><p>And it’s not hard to see why Jesus tells this story, why he links it to the life of the church community. Because forgiveness really matters in keeping any sort of community going. Consider conflict within churches. Conflict can simmer and remain around for many years, because people stay in the same churches for many years, even sometimes generations. I was part of a church once, in a town far from here, where thirty years earlier there’d been a big argument over the use of the building, a group of people had left to worship in another part of town, and progressively the people who had left got old and died off, with just a small number of them remaining. But the rift hadn’t healed. And it was still a hurt that people didn’t want to talk about. They really needed to forgive one another, but they simply couldn’t do so.</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</a> is a man who has dedicated much of his ministry to forgiveness. In South Africa after the end of apartheid, he chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which enabled an entire society of people to forgive those who had done unbelievable harm to them. Tutu has spoken and written at great length about the necessity and the power of forgiveness. He <a href="http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/2016/01/03/ten-quotes-from-desmond-tutu-to-inspire-change-makers-in-2016/">wrote that</a> “without forgiveness, there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations”.</p><p>We’ve all done so many things that we need to ask others to be forgiven, and many of us have had things done to us that are so hard to forgive. This is a subject that’s pretty difficult to confront. For some people, there are things that are too hard to forgive, or which take a very long time. It’s simply wrong to tell abuse victims, or families of those murdered, or people who have persecuted and hurt by institutions, that it’s their duty to forgive. One of the nasty and insidious ways that this passage has been used has to be try to force victims to come to terms with those who have hurt them, suggesting that otherwise they’re not fulfilling God’s will. Nobody should tell someone who’s been terribly wronged that they have to forgive.</p><p>And yet there are so many amazing stories of people who are willing to forgive those who have done them terrible harm. Desmond Tutu’s daughter, <a href="http://www.mphotutuvanfurth.com/">Mpho Tutu van Furth</a>, herself an ordained priest, has <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KgAWAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=book%20of%20forgiving&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=book%20of%20forgiving&f=false">written extensively</a> of her experience in forgiving someone who murdered a person close to her. I heard her speak about this once, at the Greenbelt festival. She says that there is no one who cannot be forgiven – nobody is beyond forgiveness. Moreover, it is possible to forgive someone even if they show no remorse, and indeed by not forgiving someone you allow the one who injured you to dictate who you are. Forgiveness releases you to let go of the hurt and to move on. Or it might do so eventually.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://theotherpress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/OPINIONS_Forgiveness-1024x727.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="800" height="227" src="http://theotherpress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/OPINIONS_Forgiveness-1024x727.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="http://theotherpress.ca/forgiveness-is-not-weakness-or-defeat/">The Other Press</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>Nor is forgiveness just an individual thing. As a society we have committed so many acts that require forgiveness. The wealth of this nation for so many centuries was built on colonialism and on the slave trade, the exploitation of other people’s bodies to enrich people here. We can <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-53004748">cast Edward Colston into Bristol Harbour</a>, and quite right too, but our whole nation requires forgiveness. </p><p>Right now, we are damaging our planet on a level that is wholly unsustainable, through the profligacy of our lifestyle, with its pollution and its destruction of natural resources. We need to seek forgiveness from the earth, but just as much we need to seek forgiveness from future generations, those who are young right now like the school strikers, but also those generations as yet unborn whose lives may never have the same richness of the natural world that all of us here currently enjoy. This is an individual matter – we could all drive less, fly less, use less plastic, eat more sustainably and so on; but more so it’s a collective matter, and we need to change it collectively. </p><p>And I could go on about things we do, individually and collectively, that require forgiveness. I’m sure everyone here can think of many such things. But we have Jesus’ example to follow, in the forgiveness he gave to so many people through his teaching and through his life. The parable presents the negative side, of what happens if we don’t forgive. But Jesus offered forgiveness to so many, and continue to offer forgiveness to us today. God through Jesus forgives us of all our sins, however terrible; it’s simply asked of us to do likewise. In the Iona Community’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9QKBwVti6h0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA16#v=onepage&q=christ%20renew%20you&f=false">prayer of confession</a> in their <a href="https://iona.org.uk/about-us/prayer/daily-office-from-the-abbey-worship-book/">daily liturgy</a>, the words of forgiveness read:</p><p>May God forgive you, Christ renew you, and the Spirit enable you to grow in love.</p><p>May it be so for all of us today, and may we find that forgiveness reflected in the way we forgive others. Amen.</p><div><br /></div></span>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-43223216153471853162020-09-01T23:31:00.002+01:002020-09-01T23:31:23.349+01:00Reflecting on twenty years at the Open UniversityTwenty years ago today, I started work at the Open University, and I haven't stopped there since. This seems like a long time - as I'll be 50 in a few months, it's just over 40% of my life, a much higher proportion of my adult life. There's been times I've been very fed up with the OU or various of its aspects, but I've always been proud to work there. So to mark the occasion I've been reflecting a bit, on what I've done and what I might still do there.<div><br /></div><div>The OU is amazing in the way it touches people's lives - giving the opportunity for higher education to those who have missed out in one way or another. It was set up with an explicit intent for social justice, and despite ups and downs has always retained that. I'm constantly struck by how much colleagues buy into the mission of the university, and especially this goal for social justice - as much as anything else, this is what has kept me at the OU all this time. Years ago I remember speaking at Quakers' Britain Yearly Meeting in a session about social action, with lots of people talking about brilliant work they were carrying out, feeling quite inadequate, but realising that working at the OU was its own form of social action - and I still feel that way.</div><div><br /></div><div>In addition: I like the many people I've worked with at the OU, uniformly creative and caring; I like the fact that I'm basically paid to be a writer of high-quality teaching texts; I like the amount of freedom that my job allows, in what I do and when I do it; I like the way that around us academics is a huge infrastructure of people to turn our draft materials into really polished collections of learning resources (whether on paper or online); I like the caring nature of the organisational culture; and indeed I like working in Milton Keynes (even if I'm not sure when I'll next be there in person). </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--9S8f78MgPo/X07J3YyBZRI/AAAAAAAApdY/unyDsn6YJ5sLlz9GCLPlGBFJORli0kFagCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/door.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="250" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--9S8f78MgPo/X07J3YyBZRI/AAAAAAAApdY/unyDsn6YJ5sLlz9GCLPlGBFJORli0kFagCLcBGAsYHQ/w188-h250/door.jpg" title="My office for 20 years" width="188" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My office door for the past 20 years<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>I also like having had the freedom to change my academic interests and affiliations over time. I've had the same office and the same job title for twenty years, but institutional changes have meant that I've been in three different faculties and four different departments, each with a somewhat different scope. When I joined, I was in the Systems Discipline, part of the Centre for Complexity and Change (still the best department title ever) in the Faculty of Technology; today I'm in the School of Computing & Communications in the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics. Some of that's a merging process - we have much larger departments and faculties than 20 years ago, and I'm not sure that's all for the best - but quite a bit of it is to do with boundary shifting. </div><div><br /></div><div>Like most academics, my brain is wired to think of my work in the three categories of teaching, research and administration, so I'll write a bit in those categories.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Teaching</h3><div>The bulk of everyone's work at the OU has always involved teaching, and really good teaching at that. This sets us apart in the sense that a lot of universities (especially the more high-status ones) look down on teaching. In my twenty years I've written significant amounts of teaching materials for eight separate modules (which used to be called courses when I first arrived). These have the codes (the only way OU insiders refer to them) of T205, T853, T810, T215, T219, TM353, TM255, TB872; and they cover topics of systems thinking (in various forms), information systems, information & communications technology, and environmental management. </div><div><br /></div><div>Each of these modules/courses took a team of several academics (smallest was just me, largest over a dozen) around 2-3 years of intensive work of generating ideas, writing and rewriting, along with lots of media specialists to edit and make it look nice, at an investment of over £1m for the university. And each one (apart from one) has lasted around 8 years, with hundreds of students and a series of ongoing tasks of writing assessments, modifying materials, dealing with the tutors who teach our stuff directly, and many more. </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zAVOFcSYSBg/X07KM5G5dPI/AAAAAAAApdg/NFs_aJw9d9IDOTjBOIr9DVmcJlM20PI8QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/office%2Bwindow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="384" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zAVOFcSYSBg/X07KM5G5dPI/AAAAAAAApdg/NFs_aJw9d9IDOTjBOIr9DVmcJlM20PI8QCLcBGAsYHQ/w512-h384/office%2Bwindow.jpg" width="512" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from my office window in springtime</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>I've chaired four of these modules, three of them in 'production' (of a new module, including T810 which never quite got off the ground but begat the very successful Systems Thinking in Practice postgraduate programme), and three of them in 'presentation' (i.e. the actual study and management of the module over several years). For all these modules, the commitment has been multi-year and involved building an ongoing relationship with a team of academics and others. At any one time, I've only usually been working on a couple of modules (though I've been on various exam boards for other modules at the same time), but almost always have been writing for one module or another. </div><div><br /></div><div>None of this is especially unique - all OU academics have a similar story of teaching. I'm moved around somewhat in the subjects I've taught, more than some people, less than others (I know people who have written on both electronics and music, as just one example). But it's a very distinctive way of teaching, that non-OU people don't always realise. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Research</h3><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.springer.com/sgw/books/medium/9781447174745.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="232" data-original-width="153" src="https://images.springer.com/sgw/books/medium/9781447174745.jpg" /></a></div><br />My research interests have also changed over time. By many academics' standards, my research career at the OU has been somewhat low-key, even weak. I've had no significant large-scale projects and no external grants (I've seldom seen the need, though occasionally I've applied for grants). I've published 3 books, 7 journal articles, 6 book chapters, and 7 good conference papers - not hugely many. But some of my research work I'm immensely proud of. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Two areas to mention specifically:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Systems Thinkers</i>: this is the biggest and best thing I've done. Back in 2002, Karen Shipp and I hatched a plan to take up one of the Systems Discipline's unfinished project, to write about the lives and work of the key people in systems thinking. After 2.5 years of a reading group with colleagues, and almost 5 years of intensive writing (and huge amounts of reading), this became our book <i>Systems Thinkers </i>(2009), which discusses 30 amazing people in loving detail through a series of 2500 word essays pinpointing their ideas and their lives accompanied by extracts from their work. Ten years later, Karen and I went through the 30 authors again, re-read our chapters, I read everything new I could find by or about our authors, and rewrote each chapter in the light of this, to produce our second edition (2020). I felt a real sense of passion for every single one of those 30 people as I wrote about them, a real urge to tell their story and link their ideas to the body of systems work; and I continue to be really pleased when I meet people who've found the book helpful. To date, chapters from the book have been downloaded more than 90,000 times.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>DTMD</i>: my other big research work at the OU, this time with David Chapman. In 2007 we co-organised an internal workshop to look at the way different academic disciplines gave a prominent role to information as a concept, but treated it in very different ways. This led to an edited book, two more workshops in Milton Keynes but with an international reach and some excellent speakers; and then three more workshops at other people's conferences. Many of the events ran under the label 'DTMD', The Difference That Makes a Difference, from Gregory Bateson's celebrated definition of information. We brought together a lot of interesting people and really managed to contribute to the burgeoning field of information studies (and even had a research group for a time under the DTMD label). Latterly, with other OU colleagues, we moved the work in a more critical direction, looking at the social, political, racial and gender impact of information and refocusing it under the banner of 'critical information studies'.</li></ul><div>In addition to these, I've written more on online communications and collaboration, a topic which was really niche when I did my PhD in the mid-90s, still not that popular when we produced a book-length reader for T215, but now extremely mainstream. I've supervised two PhD students to completion, and I'm supporting a third at present. And I edited the long-standing journal <i>Kybernetes</i> for four years (with three other OU colleagues), which was exciting and high-profile but a huge amount of work and eventually just too much (especially publishing around 100 papers a year). So not too small an amount of research!</div></div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Admin</h3><div>And lastly to the member of the academic trio that we all profess to hate. The OU does have an extraordinary amount of bureaucracy, stifling processes, growing hierarchy and form-filling. But it's all done in the cause of high-quality education and social justice, so it's still just about tolerable. And we still have vestiges of a collaborative approach to governance and self-management which I really appreciated when I first arrived, and some of which we still see today. </div><div><br /></div><div>So as well as the module chairing, I've regularly attended department and faculty meetings every few weeks or months - when I was first at the OU, monthly Systems Discipline meetings and quarterly Senate meetings (originally open to all) felt like really special and important occasions. I've been on a series of departmental committees, occasionally participated in organisational reviews and restructurings, and sat on various teaching committees. </div><div><br /></div><div>Since 2014, two admin roles have increasingly defined my working life at the OU. </div><div><br /></div><div>First, I've been an elected member of Senate for six years, participated in its quarterly meetings, written reports on each meeting, had numerous pre-meetings and side meetings, and participated in various attempts to work through Senate to lessen the damage of a series of really foolish attempts at organisational change (which ultimately led to the vice-chancellor being forced from office). </div><div><br /></div><div>Second, I've been part of the department's work on gender equality, first as a member and later as chair of the self-assessment team for the Athena SWAN scheme. I profoundly believe in gender equality, and the field of computing and communications which bounds my current department is discriminatory against women in all sorts of ways. So it's satisfying work, although also very very procedural and bureaucratic, with action plans and accreditation scheme. It's also drawn me into university-level gender equality work. </div><div><br /></div><div>All this admin takes a lot of time, and I sometimes doubt my usefulness to it. But it also contributes to the ongoing building of the OU.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">The future</h3><div>Who knows? People stay at the OU for a long time. I've thought about leaving more than once, and actively tried to go elsewhere a few times, but those didn't work out. For now, the variety, the commitments to social justice and high-quality teaching, and the chance to continue reading and writing, keep me there. Working with systems thinking again in the past couple of years is especially pleasing. I've been proud to be at the OU for 20 years, and I'm certainly not bored of it yet!</div>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-71295632967453188572020-07-03T09:33:00.003+01:002020-07-03T09:36:32.142+01:00Sojourning in silence and systems<div>100 days into Covid-19 lockdown, and many people’s lives have changed. In lots of cases these are for the worse, but also things have become possible which were not previously seen as possible. Some have tried new patterns (as well as having new patterns forced upon them) – in my case I’ve also been returning to old patterns.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here are two changed patterns.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was a Quaker for fifteen years, a time of deep spiritual nurture, strong sense of shared values, and close community. I learnt hugely through my time as a Quaker, made many friends, served the Religious Society of Friends on several committees, and met and married my lovely wife Becky. I owe Friends (Quakers are the Religious Society of Friends) a great deal. Yet in time Becky and I chose to leave Friends, for both personal and theological reasons, and joined the United Reformed Church which is close cousin of the Church of Scotland where I grew up. We’ve been active in the URC for ten years now. </div><div><br /></div><div>But in lockdown I’ve returned to <a href="https://quaker.org.uk/about-quakers/our-faith">Quaker worship</a>, which has entirely shifted online through Zoom. For the first few weeks of lockdown I attended online URC services in a variety of places (our own local church’s leadership refused to organise online worship) but found them slightly dissatisfying and passive. For a change, I attended my first Quaker meeting for worship in years, through a large gathering at <a href="https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/about/online-mfw">Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre</a>. It was anonymous enough not to feel visible (though I recognised some names among the 150 people on Zoom), but I had a strong sense of rightness about the experience. Quakers sit together in silence, praying or meditating, until someone feels called to speak. There was a worshipfulness in the silence, strong ministry among those who spoke, and I had a sense of returning to something very familiar and loved – even though it was online and those 150 people were scattered through their own homes around the UK and beyond.</div><div><br /></div><div>After a few weeks of attending worship at Woodbrooke, I thought it was time to make links with local Quakers. So I asked the clerk of Northampton meeting (where Becky and I were members for a few years) if I could have the link for the local Zoom meeting, and have been worshipping there every Sunday for a bit less than two months. Early days. And given that I didn’t leave Quakers entirely happily before, I’ve got quite a lot to process. But I feel a real rightness about being in the meeting for worship. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now these are extraordinary times for us all – times of transition, times between times, times when we’re all forced into new places. Quakers use the word sojourning for those Friends who are living away from their home meeting for a limited period of time, and who join in the active life of the meeting where they’re currently living. Sojourning Friends are full members of their current meeting, but only on a temporary basis. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is roughly how it feels for me to be attending Quaker worship at present. I honestly can’t say how things will feel after lockdown and face-to-face worship returns. I may return to the local URC, and to the lay preaching in other churches that has given me a lot of satisfaction over the past eight years. Or I may stay with Quaker worship, and consider rejoining the Religious Society of Friends (if they’ll have me). Of course this affects others in my family, and so it’s not just my decision alone. And of course there’s other context – our minister at my local URC has recently retired so the church is in vacancy, which can be a very fruitful or very challenging time for churches; and it’s still only nine months since my father died, which I’m still coming to terms with (and because he was deeply involved in churches, my feelings are inevitably affected by his death). </div><div><br /></div><div>A second story. This autumn I’ll be marking 20 years of employment at The Open University. I joined the Systems Department, and enthusiastically worked on systems courses for years, perhaps most fruitfully writing my book <i><a href="https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9781447174745">Systems Thinkers</a></i> (written with Karen Shipp), which we published in 2009. I learnt hugely from people in the department, and learnt how to do good systems work. For various reasons – frustration with some of the department’s ways of working, a faculty and departmental restructuring, and keenness to work with others – I drifted away from the Systems Department. When our temporary department was split in two in 2014, I went with my colleagues in the ICT group and joined a new Computing & Communications department, and left the Systems people completely (who all joined the Engineering & Innovation department). I designed and led a new module with a strong Systems component (and drawing in some of the Systems group) but didn’t consider myself part of the residual Systems group – though I did edit a journal of cybernetics and given the work I was doing on information theory, was never far from the Systems world in research terms. </div><div><br /></div><div>Gradually wounds closed and I was persuaded to work on a second edition of Systems Thinkers, to support a rewrite of the successful Masters programme in Systemic Thinking in Practice which made use of the book. I had a really great time doing this last year, and realised in the process how much I missed working directly with the Systems group and on explicitly Systems courses. So I asked whether I could work on Masters programme, and agreed a block in a <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/modules/tb872">module on Managing Change</a> which needed attention (with due permission from my head of department to allow for the complexities of OU inter-departmental politics and costings). </div><div><br /></div><div>It’s been a pleasing and strange experience to return to the Systems group, to return to the lineage of ideas and techniques which predated my arrival at the OU by more than 25 years, and to resume work with the people who I’ve known throughout my time at the OU. I’ve been a bit slow to get my head around approaches to systems in the material I’ve been given to revise, that are somewhat different to my own, but that’s no bad thing as a challenge. So my head is full of communities of practice and social learning, the theme of the block I’m writing/revising.</div><div><br /></div><div>And I’ve made new connections. Prior to the lockdown I went to a workshop in Bristol on systemic leadership, run by the National Leadership Centre, along with two people from the Systems group. And since the lockdown began, I’ve spoken to my co-author on the Masters module weekly, Ray Ison, and attended a weekly online meeting with the Systems group. Through that weekly meeting, I agreed to co-facilitate an online workshop with a small charity to help them develop communities of practice, along with a Systems group colleague, Natalie Foster, who has joined the group in recent years and who I’ve only met in person a couple of times. Running that workshop was also a challenge but again really interesting.</div><div><br /></div><div>So in many ways I’m also sojourning with the Systems group. I’m quite an active participant at present, in terms of teaching and research but also of group affiliation. It’s a bit of a different experience from my Quaker sojourning. The nature of departmental ties means that, because we’re in different departments, it would be a bit of a struggle to carry on like this for a long time – but not impossible. And I have other ties (teaching, research and administrative) that continue with people in Computing & Communications. </div><div><br /></div><div>But for now I’m happily sitting with part of my academic life back within the Systems group, just as I’m sitting with part of my spiritual life back within Quakers. Sojourning in each, who knows for how long? For the present, it’s a good place to be.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>“For my journey was not solitary, but one undertaken with my friends as we moved towards each other and together travelled inwards.” – George Gorman, 1973 (<a href="https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/2-03/">Quaker Faith & Practice, 2.03</a>)</i></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-55573532090157591872019-07-21T13:53:00.002+01:002019-07-21T13:53:53.925+01:00Mary and Martha – a dichotomy or an invitation?<i>Sermon preached at <a href="http://dustonurc.org.uk/">Duston United Reformed Church</a>, 21 July 2019. Text: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A38-42&version=NRSVA">Luke 10:38-42</a>.</i><br />
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This is a well-known passage that has sometimes been badly used to attack women, to present a <a href="http://www.davidlose.net/2013/10/luke-10-38-42/">never-good-enough situation</a> where every option is wrong. So it’s a passage with danger in it. Yet to me it’s also a passage that’s got plenty of hope and encouragement. And first of all I want to say that I think it’s a mistake to treat this story as simply one about the domestic sphere. We’ll touch on that on and off, but ultimately it’s a story about discipleship and what it means to be a disciple, and it’s a story about hospitality, and what it means to offer hospitality. But ultimately I think it’s really important not to see it as putting two different ways of living in conflict with each other. The answer to Martha and Mary is one of both/and, rather than either/or.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Johannes_(Jan)_Vermeer_-_Christ_in_the_House_of_Martha_and_Mary_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="692" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Johannes_(Jan)_Vermeer_-_Christ_in_the_House_of_Martha_and_Mary_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="276" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_in_the_House_of_Martha_and_Mary_(Vermeer)">Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, Jan Vermeer</a></td></tr>
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By this point in Luke’s gospel, Jesus has quite an entourage. In the previous chapter, which we read in the lectionary two weeks ago, he sent out seventy disciples to do his work, and then they returned to him. This story only mentions him going alone to Martha’s village, but he could well have had others with him. I think this explains some of Martha’s anxiety, that she was going to have to look after a large number of people.<br />
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It’s important to notice that this was Martha’s house that Jesus entered. Not Martha’s husband or brother or father’s house. She was the householder. If you know <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+11%3A1-16&version=NRSVA">John’s account</a> of the death of Lazarus, Martha and Mary are described there as his sisters, but here in Luke no such link is made, and this story about Martha and Mary is only found in Luke. These events were taking place in a deeply patriarchical society, but there were women who owned property, and it was often those women who provided great amounts of practical support to Jesus in his ministry. So she was the host both in terms of her work around the house and in terms of the invitation.<br />
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There's a crucial word in the Greek where Martha complains about Mary not helping her. It's often translated as service or serving, but the Greek word is <i>diakonia</i>, and it's the root of our English word deacon. That's a specific ministry in many church traditions. In some of the congregational churches which became URC, the people we now call elders, who run the church both spiritually and practically, were called deacons. The church of England ordains its clergy as deacons before they become priests. And in the church where I grew up, we had both deacons to do practical leadership and elders to do spiritual leadership. But in all these traditions, the role of a deacon is a distinct form of ministry which involves practical service.<br />
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So when Martha is rushing around doing things, she's deaconing, she’s doing the work of a deacon, an act of ministry. We often think she’s simply doing domestic chores, preparing food or bringing guests drinks or whatever, and that may well have been part of it, but the text doesn’t actually say this. It’s equally possible she’s doing wider work in supporting these travelling preachers, Jesus and his disciples, of finding them accommodation or working out routes or warning of dangerous places along the way or seeking out money for them. Jesus told his followers not to carry a bag or sandals, and that only worked if there were people like Martha to welcome them and care for their needs.<br />
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So it’s little wonder that Martha was distracted by all that she has to do. <a href="http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/07/marthas-anxiety-struggling-alone.html">The Greek word that is translated as distracted</a> is really strong. It means she was close to breaking point, and is the root of our word spasm. Martha was not just some flighty woman having a bit of a moan, as she’s all too frequently been described. Martha was a strong woman carrying out an important ministry, and was driven practically to despair by the amount she had to do. Now maybe she’d taken on too much but maybe it was just the nature of the work. It continues today. I’ve been reading a book [<i><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1113605/invisible-women/9781784741723.html">Invisible Women</a></i>] by the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, and she observes if you look at both paid and unpaid work, including household and caring work as well as formal employment, then women today work longer hours than men in almost every part of the world, and it has significant effect on their physical and mental health.<br />
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One more thing to say about Martha’s work. As I’ve said earlier, hospitality really mattered in that society, a message that’s emphasised through the Old Testament, and she was the one that was showing hospitality to others. Indeed, the story of Martha and Mary immediately follows the parable of the Good Samaritan, that tale of a man who helped others, and the closing words from Jesus to that parable are “Go and do likewise”.<br />
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This is all really important, because there’s a common reading of the story which is to downplay all this practical work of Martha. The closing phrase that “Mary has chosen the better part” has often been used to suggest that women’s work matters less, and especially that women’s domestic work matters less. I don’t know how many people have read or seen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale"><i>The Handmaid’s Tale</i></a>, Margaret Attwood’s dystopia about a fundamentalist totalitarian society that places women into strictly policed roles. The domestic servants in that book are called Marthas, after this story, and in the TV adaptation they’re constantly shown in these <a href="https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Martha">very drab olive green dresses</a>, and always working and working. But it’s really unfair to our Martha here, as I’ve shown already, and it’s really unfair to those who do domestic work, and especially women. Because the meals need to be cooked, the disciples need to be fed, <a href="http://actsofhope.blogspot.com/2007/07/martha-mary-double-bind-sermon.html">the laundry needs to be done</a>.<br />
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I’ve spoken quite a lot in support of Martha, so let’s turn to Mary. She’s also a really interesting figure. Because she was acting in a deeply counter-cultural role here, was really challenging her patriarchal society by engaging so actively with Jesus, in a way that was really uncommon for women. This phrase about sitting at his feet, as illustrated by Vermeer, can perhaps be taken literally, but it’s not just about gazing up at him adoringly. To sit at the feet of a teacher was to listen to them actively, to be their direct student, to absorb not just their words and messages but also their lifestyle, their way of talking and thinking. It was learning through observation, very much like being an apprentice. And of course the name for that kind of student was a disciple. Mary was actively being a disciple of Jesus. And it’s clear she was really listening, really absorbed in Jesus’ teaching.<br />
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There’s an interesting observation in <a href="https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/a-provocation-sixth-sunday-after-pentecost-proper-11-16-july-21-2019-luke-1038-42/">one of the commentaries</a> [by Richard Swanson] I read this week. The Jewish tradition of studying Torah is that it’s always carried out in dialogue with others. You need a study buddy. It’s not a matter of reading it and finding the right interpretation by yourself. Everything is open to discussion, debate, and there are no final conclusions. Jewish texts such as the Talmud are full of alternative interpretations and debates between scholars. And we can think of Jesus and Mary in this light, discussing the meaning and implications of a particular text or set of ideas. But then Mary is carrying out a vital service to Jesus, in discussing and debating with him, in enabling him to share and develop his ideas. Mary is showing hospitality to Jesus, in a different way from Martha, but a way that is just as important.<br />
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Because I think it’s quite wrong to put Mary and Martha in opposition to each other. Neither is better than the other. Both are necessary ways of being. And both are open to all of us. Jesus is clearly in favour of people showing hospitality, and he’s in favour of all people being able to learn and engage with important subjects. We all need to do both of these. “Are you a Martha or a Mary?” goes the question, and it’s the wrong question. The only good answer is “both of these, at different times of life”. The theologian <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Falling_Upward.html?id=YkFNDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Richard Rohr</a> talks about the way that at one time in our life, we’re active in the world, rushing around, driven by success; and at other times we’re slower, quieter, more contemplative. He links it to different stages of life, younger and older people, but it’s also possible for us to live in these different ways at any time of our live. In other words, sometimes we’re Martha and sometimes we’re Mary.<br />
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And so when Jesus says “Martha, Martha”, he’s not criticising her or condemning her lifestyle or way of acting in the world. He’s offering her an invitation, that she too could exhibit the kind of discipleship that Mary was living, in addition to her own form of discipleship and ministry.<br />
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And he offers us the same invitation, the same opportunity to live in a different way. Even if we spend our time rushing around madly distracted by our many tasks, we’re invited to sit at Jesus’ feet and absorb his message. And likewise, if our place is to contemplate and read and discuss and think, then that needs to be tempered by action and caring work for the needs of others. Because it’s not about being either Martha or Mary. It’s about being both. And in that way we’re enabled to live in the fullness that Jesus promised to his disciples, and also to enable others to live in that fullness. Amen.<br />
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Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-2266229631526586672019-05-19T20:55:00.003+01:002019-05-19T20:55:50.073+01:00New commandment, new creation<i>Sermon preached at <a href="https://www.urc5.org.uk/church/5d31">The Headlands United Reformed Church</a>, 19 May 2019. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13%3A31-35&version=NRSVA">John 13:31-35</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+21%3A1-6&version=NRSVA">Revelation 21:1-6</a>.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://www.trinitytoledo.org/love-one-another-2/">Trinity Toledo Episcopal Church</a></td></tr>
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We’ve heard two passages this morning about things that are new. We have a new heaven and a new earth in the book of Revelation, and a new commandment in the gospel of John. For me, spring often feels like a time of new growth, of new life. And we are still in the season of Easter, and the readings are still on the theme of new life after death. In my view these two different things that are new are very closely linked. So we’ll talk first about the new heaven and new earth, and move on to the new commandment.<br />
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First thing to be said about the passage from Revelation, as ever with any reading of that strange book, is that nothing in it should be taken as prediction or at face value. It belongs to the category of apocalyptic literature and like all such work, it’s mostly a deep social commentary upon the world of its time, full of symbolism and strange imagery. It’s a book that’s often seen as rather threatening in mainstream churches, but I spent a month a couple of year ago reading my way through the book before the start of Advent and <a href="https://presentonearth.blogspot.com/2016/11/revelation-before-advent-introduction.html">blogging about it</a>, chapter by chapter, and I ended up with a strong respect for Revelation. <br />
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So what’s this about? It’s not so much about the end-times as about the nature of the kingdom of God. It’s about bringing together heaven and earth into one, and building it on earth. Because although most translations talk about a new heaven and earth, <a href="https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/easter5c">there’s apparently a good case in the Greek</a> for the word ‘new’ to be understood not so much as ‘brand new’ but as ‘renewed’, as recreated. Some special places in the world are sometimes described as thin places, a phrase I first heard to describe the island of Iona. In these places the gap between heaven and earth is said to be less than elsewhere. Well in this new Jerusalem, there is no gap at all between heaven and earth. God has come to live with his people here and now. And I do believe that the author of Revelation means this as a model for the present time, not just for the future, just as Jesus said ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you’.<br />
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If God is present among us in this new Jerusalem, then all the bad things of the world will be at an end. Because the other thing about Revelation is that it was written at a time of great persecution, and written to people who knew all about death and mourning and pain. This is why the words are of such comfort, and why they’re often read today at funerals and have been set to beautiful music. My favourite setting is <a href="https://youtu.be/iABljr3obFw">by Karl Jenkins</a>, in his mass for peace in times of war, <i>The Armed Man</i>. As an idea it’s also the basis of CS Lewis’ vision of the eternal future in his final book in the Narnia series, where after the end of the world of Narnia he talks of the ‘<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mmaH0IuFWT8C&lpg=PT164&dq=real%20Narnia%2C%20which%20has%20always%20been%20here%20and%20always%20will%20be%20here&pg=PT164#v=onepage&q=real%20Narnia,%20which%20has%20always%20been%20here%20and%20always%20will%20be%20here&f=false">real Narnia</a>, which has always been here and always will be here’. The new earth is the same as the current earth, only more real and better than the current earth.<br />
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But if it’s true that this is an image of the kingdom of God now rather than just in the future, if it fits with the words of the Lord’s Prayer that “your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”, then how is this to happen? Well, I think for that we need to look to our other text for today. And as a link I want to share with you <a href="https://www.sixmaddens.org/?p=2137">a hymn from the Iona Community</a>, written by John Bell, which reads:<br />
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Behold, behold, I make all things new,<br />Beginning with you and starting today.<br />Behold, behold, I make all things new,<br />My promise is true, for I am Christ the way.</blockquote>
So let’s turn to the new commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples. It’s the same word for new in the Greek as the new heaven & new earth, so there’s a clear link there, along with the same sense of renewal. It’s a strange thing to call new in some ways, the idea of loving one another. If we just see that in terms of love within the group of believers, just as love for fellow Christians, then that’s not new at all. The idea of loving one’s neighbour is in the book of Deuteronomy, and it was described by Jesus as summing up the whole of the law, along with loving God. But when asked who he meant by neighbour, he offered the amazing parable of the Good Samaritan, full of images of outsiders and crossing of boundaries. And throughout his ministry he warns that simply loving those who love us is insufficient, and that we must love our enemies and forgive those who hurt us, even seventy-seven times. So already in the gospels we see Jesus presenting love for others as being something expansive and costly.<br />
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Yet in this passage we see a still more costly love being presented as a model. Context is always important in understanding scripture, and although the lectionary presents this as the gospel reading four Sundays after Easter, it occurs in the narrative at the Last Supper. Shortly before this passage, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, giving them his model of leadership and love through sacrifice – what is sometimes called servant leadership; and he explicitly says that the disciples should wash each other’s feet. Then we have Jesus’ prediction that one of the disciples will betray him, and he makes it clear through his actions that he’s talking about Judas Iscariot, who leaves the room. There’s a quality like a film script to all this, and the passage we heard begins with the words “when we had gone out”, meaning Judas on his way to betray Jesus. And immediately after the passage we heard, the camera turns to Peter, who is usual impetuous way says he’ll lay down his life for Jesus, and Jesus says that in fact he’ll deny even knowing Jesus before the next morning.<br />
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I say all this because it all goes to show what Jesus means when he says “that you love one another as I have loved you”. This is the love Jesus has shown to his disciples. It’s one of sacrifice, one of putting them first before himself, one of encouragement and care. It’s an self-denying love, not expecting something back and not holding anything back. Now that kind of love is hard. When others hate you, love them. When others call you names, love them. When others deny that you can be a Christian because you don’t conform to their narrow pattern of Christianity, love them. Jesus doesn’t say anything about liking these people, but he does say a lot about loving them. And the context matters because he’s saying it midway between betrayal by one disciple and being cut off by another disciple.<br />
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Indeed the context matters so much that we named the entire day after this saying. Because in Latin, ‘new commandment’ is ‘<i>mandatum novum</i>’, and from that word mandatum, we get our name Maundy Thursday for the day before Jesus died, the day that he washed feet, the day that he gave this commandment. The new commandment is the most important thing that happened on that day. In essence, it’s Jesus’ last instructions to his disciples.<br />
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Jesus also links this commandment to this rather complex saying about the son of Man (i.e. Jesus himself) being glorified, and God being glorified in him. Now that word glorified, and glory more generally, is not really one that we see used in modern English outside of a church context. It’s around in lots of church language, plenty of times in the Bible and in hymns and prayers, but hardly ever outside of the church. <a href="http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/04/commanding-love.html">The word in Greek</a>, <i>doxa</i>, also means thought or appearance, but came to be used as a Greek version of a Hebrew word <i>kavod</i>, which refers to the presence of God but also to a sense of honour or respect. So perhaps we might say that God has been given honour by Jesus’ actions, that by the way Jesus behaves and lives, God’s presence has been felt and greater honour has been given to God. Some of this will come in the manner of Jesus’ death, but the sense of glorification must been seen first of all through the life of Jesus, and through the way he has been interacting with others in the self-giving love we have already seen.<br />
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This self-giving love from Jesus, in both his life and his death, fit alongside a Jewish idea of commandment always being linked to covenant relationships. The Ten Commandments were given at Sinai after a covenant was reached between Moses and God. And these covenants required a guarantee, often to do with sacrifice and blood – and the twin forms of self-giving love from Jesus form precisely this kind of guarantee. So we see love and sacrifice linked in the backdrop and support for this new commandment.<br />
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Now that’s a whole lot of theology. It’s quite dense stuff. But if we want to be part of bringing about a new heaven and a new earth, we have to start by loving one another, in the self-giving way that Jesus demonstrated, the kind of love I described earlier in the lives of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Valjean">Jean Valjean</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/05/rachel-held-evans-death-progressive-christianity/588784/">Rachel Held Evans</a>. And I believe strongly that this kind of love is intended as the precursor of the new Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth. There’s no way that it can be confined to love between Christians, or within a particular church or denomination. It must stretch to love for the whole world. Yet love within churches and within the Christian family is surely the start. Jesus says that the world will see that we’re his disciples through our love for each other.<br />
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It’s therefore not just a tragedy but a direct disobedience of the one we call Lord and Messiah that the church has proved really really awful at loving each other over the centuries of Christianity. Heresy trials, schisms, excommunication of Christian by Christian, the inquisition, the crusades. The list goes on and on, century after century. It goes on today, to our shame. There are those who profess to follow Christ who refuse to call another their brother or sister because that person is gay, or because they believe something different about the nature of God, or because they have different politics. It’s a disgrace. If Jesus should have taught us anything, it’s to love those around us. The theologian Tom Wright puts it like this:<br />
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As we read verse 35 we are bound to cringe with shame at the way in which professing Christians have treated each other down the years. We have turned the gospel into a weapon of our own various cultures. We have hit each other over the head with it, burnt each other at the stake with it. We have defined the ‘one another’ so tightly that it means only ‘love the people who reinforce your own sense of who you are’.” (John for Everyone Part 2, p.56)</blockquote>
But let’s return to the positive. Jesus presents us with a mighty challenge, to love one another according to his self-giving example. But he promises such a rich outcome from this love, that who would not want to follow it? Jesus calls us to love as he has loved, and this new commandment will lead us to the model of the new heaven and the new earth, and love will come over all the earth, and God will come to make his home among mortals, and death and mourning will be no more. Amen.<br />
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<br />Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-21512304945897278822019-03-17T16:08:00.002+00:002019-03-17T16:09:42.361+00:00The fox and the hen – a sermon about the journey to resurrection<i>Sermon given at <a href="http://www.creaton.org.uk/index.asp?pageid=319435">Creaton United Reformed Church</a>, 17 March 2019. Text: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+13%3A31-35&version=NRSVA">Luke 13:31-35</a>. See also earlier address about <a href="https://presentonearth.blogspot.com/2019/03/covenant-in-dazzling-darkness-abram.html">Abram and covenant</a>.</i><br />
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We’re all about the animals in this passage. St Patrick is said to have chased the snakes out of Ireland (he didn't), but here we have a fox and a hen appearing. They make a nice contrast, and we’ll come back to them later.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55314">Endless Road</a> by Margret Hofheinz-Doring, <br />
via Vanderbilt University</td></tr>
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So Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. The gospel of Luke has a lot to say about journeys, and especially the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem. We first hear about him ‘setting his face to Jerusalem’ in chapter 9, and the account of Palm Sunday is in chapter 19. In other words it takes 10 chapters, out of a book with 24 chapters, for him to reach Jerusalem after he starts on his way there. And he’s still got a long way to go, here in chapter 13. There’s an admirable <a href="http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=5295">sense of determination</a> here. Jesus is absolutely sure he’s got to be there, to accomplish his task. And yet also lots of things happen on the journey. Much of Jesus’ ministry, his teaching and his miracles, his encounters with crowds and with individuals, happens on the road to Jerusalem. He’s on the journey, but <a href="http://www.davidlose.net/2019/03/lent-2-c-meanwhile/">part of that journey is what he does on the way</a>.<br />
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Why Jerusalem? Why does it matter so much? That might sound a strange question, but why was his work not happening in Galilee? Or further afield, in one of the Roman garrison towns such as Caesarea Philippi, or even in Rome itself? That might sound an odd question, but the answer sheds important light on Jesus and his mission. He was going to Jerusalem because he was a Jew, and because to the Jewish people, Jerusalem was the most important place in the world. It was the place where God and humanity communicated. It was the place of worldly power and authority, but it mattered much more as being the place of spiritual authority. Everything that mattered happened in Jerusalem. It’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Prophets">not literally true</a> when Jesus says that all the prophets were killed in Jerusalem – Jeremiah died in Egypt and Ezekiel died in the land of the Chaldeans, to name two, but it expresses the truth that Jerusalem was absolutely central to Jewish life.<br />
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We do well to remember this, in our fevered atmosphere of us-and-them, of Leavers and Remainers, of Jews and Muslims, of Protestant and Catholic. There’s no us-and-them between Jesus and the Jews, and when we find Jewish leaders persecuting Jesus that doesn’t reflect some kind of separation, and should never ever have been a justification for the church’s poisonous brand of antisemitism that has marred our faith for centuries and killed so many. The Jews are not the enemy here. Likewise, the gospels are full of invective against Pharisees, but that’s mostly because Jesus was so close to the ideas of the Pharisees so it was one of those wars of small differences, like the Judean People’s Front against the People’s Front of Judea in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4">Life of Brian</a>. There were differences of emphasis, but Jesus is forever hanging out with Pharisees, often arguing with them, but eating and spending time with them. And importantly we see Pharisees warning Jesus that Herod’s out to get him. So <a href="https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/lent2c">the Pharisees aren’t the enemy either</a>.<br />
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So who is the enemy? That would be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Antipas">Herod Antipas</a>, son of Herod the Great, ruler of Galilee under the Romans, killer of John the Baptist and eventually of Jesus. Herod Antipas ruled for 41 years, and while he wasn’t the worst of the Romans’ client kings, like all rulers of the day he was dedicated to power, violence, hierarchy and exclusion. And by contrast, Jesus was dedicated to the opposite of these – to living with the outcasts and marginalised, to preaching hope to the downtrodden, to proclaiming the kingdom where power would be turned on its head. He had a job to do, he said – to cast out demons and perform cures. He knew Herod was the opposite of this worldview, had the opposite mission to him in the world.<br />
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And thus the fox reference. In the Greek world, foxes were cunning and quite impressive – think of Aesop’s fables. But in the Jewish world, they were a destructive pest, and their cunning was one of evil rather than something to be impressed by. They got in the way, and they were horrible. But they also weren’t the worst of enemies that could be found in the animal kingdom. It’s not like Jesus called Herod after the kinds of animals that threatened people and sheep in Israel – say a lion, or a wild beast, or even an eagle like the Roman one. So there’s a double insult here – Jesus is being quite dismissive of Herod, at the same time as he’s saying he’s untrustworthy. He’s a nasty piece of work, but he’s also not up to much. I’ve been thinking about Harry Potter analogies here – the cunning and nasty bit sounds a bit like Jesus is saying Herod should be in Slytherin, except it would be a version of Slytherin that was simultaneously nasty and a bit rubbish.<br />
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Jesus, of course, has a nice farmyard contrast to the fox. He wants to nurture the people of Jerusalem like a hen protects its chicks under its wings. I love this image, because it’s so loving and caring. It reminds me of the Celtic blessing that ends ‘until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand’. God will hold us all in the palm of God’s hand, and will care for us under her wings. It’s also a feminine image that stands in contrast to all those God-the-father images. Many of us know perfectly well that God has no gender, yet the scriptures are saturated with masculine imagery, and sometimes they’re not good enough to capture the full nature of God. If we can only think of God as a father, and our father was abusive or controlling or absent, how can we love God? If we only have images such as Lord God of Hosts, at the front of armies, how can we react if our lives have been blighted by war? God goes beyond gender, but our images don’t. At best we might have a sense of the holy spirit as female, but even that gets resisted by some people. And yes, Jesus as a human being was male, but a man who can’t embrace feminine imagery for themselves is emotionally impoverished. So I really like this image of Jesus the mother hen.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://www.circleofhope.net/dailyprayerdeeper/2016/09/14/september-14-2016-listening-julian-norwich/">Circle of Hope</a></td></tr>
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But of course Jesus notes that ultimately he was expecting to be rejected by people in Jerusalem. Because he’s realistic about what he’s facing. He knows that whether or not people saying “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, as of course happened on Palm Sunday, his ideas are too radical to be accepted. He knows that what he preaches, the way he lives, goes against the ideas that the powerful in his world will accept.<br />
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Jesus knows that <a href="https://politicaltheology.com/the-politics-of-the-dangerous-city-luke-1331-35/">when he finally gets to Jerusalem</a>, he’ll face struggle and death. And he’s willing to embrace it, but I don’t think that’s the point of his journey. Because in this reading we hear twice about Jesus finishing his work on the third day. Not the day of the cross, but of the empty tomb. Not the crucifixion, but the resurrection.<br />
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And here’s the good news about this passage. We heard in the first reading that God formed a covenant which, if broken, required the death of God. Well we know that covenant was broken many times. We know that relationships between humanity and God broke down, and have broken down. But they broke down precisely because of the violence and oppression which Herod Antipas and the Roman Empire stood for. And they weren’t going to be cured by a continuation of the same thing again.<br />
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So for Jesus to die wasn’t enough. That wouldn’t solve anything. The cross by itself, that instrument of torture and Roman power, solved nothing. But <a href="https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/lent2c">what came next was the third day</a>. The day when God took the power of violence and turned it on its head, when the nurturing God remade not just the covenant with Abraham but every covenant, and every idea of every covenant. On Easter Sunday, God changed the rules themselves. He brought up the powerless, and sent the rich away empty.<br />
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Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem wasn’t to go and get himself killed. He went with a much more important mission – to change the nature of the world, to set aside the power of empire and to bring forward the new reign of God on earth.<br />
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So as we prepare in the coming month to journey towards Easter, we must remember that when we stand for equality and justice, and stand against authority and power, we are on the side of Jesus. When we approach defeat by the powers of the world, we are in the same position as Jesus. And we can be assured that, like Jesus found, love and hope will prevail even in the deepest darkness. Amen.<br />
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Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-67826983029792271332019-03-17T16:08:00.000+00:002019-03-17T16:10:19.109+00:00Covenant in the dazzling darkness: Abram, qarrtsiluni and hope in despair<i>Opening address given at <a href="http://www.creaton.org.uk/index.asp?pageid=319435">Creaton United Reformed Church</a>, 17 March 2019. Text: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+15%3A1-18&version=NRSVA">Genesis 15:1-18</a>. See also <a href="https://presentonearth.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-fox-and-hen-sermon-about-journey-to.html">sermon about Jesus' journey to Jerusalem</a>, which followed later in the service.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: Total eclipse, by <a href="https://jimfriedrich.com/2017/08/25/a-deep-but-dazzling-darkness/">Jim Friedrich</a></td></tr>
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Two shorter addresses on two passages today, as they’re linked but too important to treat together.<br />
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What promises does God make to God’s people, in the depth of darkness and despair? The psalm says that “when evildoers assail me to devour my flesh, they shall stumble and fall”. What really happens then? We have hope from the psalm, but is that the experience that most people actually have? Because there are people in real despair, in real darkness. People in Christchurch whose whole world was ripped apart on Friday by a far-right terrorist. People who are living on the street, only kept going by alcohol or drugs that are also killing them. People who are watching the ones they love slowly fade and die. People who don’t know where the next meal is coming from. That kind of despair.<br />
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So to Abram, in a weird kind of despair. If you have a spare half-hour, I do recommend reading the whole story of Abram-who-becomes-Abraham, which occupies chapters 12 to 25 of the book of Genesis. He was quite a peculiar character with all sorts of peculiar events in his life, not all of them especially commendable. Genesis as a whole is a semi-mythical account of the backstory to why the Israelites were the people of God stranded in slavery in Egypt. It’s a mistake to take it too literally. And Abram is at the start of it all, representing the creation of the people of Israel through one individual, showing God’s covenant with Israel in one person. And this is a story about covenant.<br />
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Abram begins the story basically whining. He’s rich, he has plenty of power, and in the previous chapter he has just defeated his enemies in battle and been blessed by the local high priest. Yet he’s annoyed because he’s been promised an heir, a child to take up his mantle, and he doesn’t have one. That sounds trivial compared to the kind of darkness I’ve mentioned, but for Abram it’s a real issue. It’s about his future, about whether everything he stands for will come to an end after his death. If you know about the life of Henry VIII, he was desperate for a male heir because his kingdom was invested in the individual, and the Tudor monarchy was very precarious. So it is with Abram, and as I’ve said he’s not just an individual but a symbol of the people of Israel. His lack of heir means a lack of continuation of the whole people of Israel. The whole story wouldn’t get off the ground. So for Abram it’s real darkness.<br />
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And God makes a covenant with him in the darkness. And the weird story about heifers and goats and pigeons is important. Because in the later years of the Jewish people, when this text was written down, <a href="http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4001">that was how you solemnised a covenant</a>. Trigger warning for animal lovers and vegetarians: this bit’s not very nice. You take an animal, or several animals, and cut them in half, then you separate them, leave a good-size gap between them. Then the two parties who are making some kind of agreement with each other walk down the middle between the halves of the animals. And that seals the bargain. Because symbolically it’s saying “if we don’t keep our side of the bargain, may we be cut in two like the animals”. Sometimes <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/berit">this kind of covenanting</a> was done with individuals, but much more often with groups. It was a collective undertaking.<br />
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So here we see God coming to Abram in what’s described as a deep and terrifying darkness. And in that dark time, that dark place, Abram sees a symbol of God, fire and smoke, passing between the two halves of the animals. God has come to Abram in the dark. God has stood alongside Abram in the dark.<br />
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I read recently that the Inuit people of the Arctic regions have an amazing word for this experience, “<a href="https://onbeing.org/programs/teju-cole-sitting-together-in-the-dark-feb2019/">qarrtsiluni</a>”. It means “sitting together in the dark, waiting for something to happen.” Groups sit together in the darkness, and out of that darkness comes… insight. Sometimes, in the hunting communities of the Inuit, it’s <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-correct-pronunciation-of-the-word-qarrtsiluni">song or storytelling</a>. And to Abram, it’s life, and it’s hope for the future. It’s the promise of God, that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.<br />
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And from that experience Abram, and through him the whole people of Israel, had strength to continue. Because God had been with him in his darkness. An Anglican priest called Rachel Mann calls this <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ECVFDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT63#v=onepage&q=dazzling%20darkness&f=false">dazzling darkness</a>, and writes that “this is the God we cannot use for our purposes and devices, for deep darkness consumes us and denies us the means to chart our way. We are liberated from our own convinced power of control and talent and mastery.”<br />
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And it leaves us with the love and power of God. Because God has made a covenant with Abram, and God has guaranteed it with his own life. So that when the covenant becomes stretched and broken, the only thing that will repair it is the death of God himself. The faithfulness of Abram and the faithfulness of God lead us towards the cross. It takes us on the journey of Lent that will end in Good Friday. But the cross is not the end, and that’s where we come to in the second passage later. For now, let’s rest with Abram, accompanied and blessed by God in covenant relationship, sitting in that dazzling darkness.Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-86914929895445452132019-02-24T21:40:00.004+00:002019-02-24T21:40:56.882+00:00Who is my enemy? Do I really have to love them?<i>Sermon preached on 24 February 2019 at <a href="http://dustonurc.org.uk/">Duston United Reformed Church</a>. Text: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6%3A27-38&version=NRSVA">Luke 6:27-38</a>.</i><br />
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Let’s imagine a parable – or at least a variation on a well-known one. Jesus had been preaching all day on a to a large crowd, teaching about God’s mercy and how we should show love for our enemies. A man came to him that evening at the house where he was saying, and asked him “Teacher, who is my enemy?”. And Jesus replied: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was set upon by thieves, passed by people who should know better, and helped by someone his people had been in conflict with for centuries. Now, who do you think was that man’s enemy?”. And alas, the man’s answer was not recorded in the parable. But perhaps we might guess it for ourselves.<br />
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And that’s my question for today. Who are our enemies? And alongside that, do we really have to love them? And what does it really mean to have an enemy? It’s tempting to domesticate this passage, to bring it to the equal of petty disputes with neighbours or at work, but the <a href="http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2019/02/what-is-grace-to-you.html">biblical scholars tell us</a> that the word translated as enemy means people who pose you and your tribe a real threat, or the people that your tribe poses a real threat to. Armies at the town gates, terrible persecution, long history of rivalry and dispute, that kind of thing.<br />
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For much of my life I was rather sceptical about this teaching. I believed it strongly enough but also thought it didn’t really apply to me. I’ve spent my whole life as a pacifist, and never really identified with the various wars my country has fought. In my lifetime, British soldiers have been at war in the Falklands, twice in Iraq, in Afghanistan, as well as lower-key involvement in lots of other places. Then there was the Cold War, and terrorist attacks from Northern Ireland and more recently from Islamic extremists. But they always felt like other people’s battles, and I have seldom been convinced that the British response was appropriate or proportionate. I don’t say this to make a case for my politics, and I recognise that others feel quite differently about this subject. But it made me uncertain who I really could call my enemy.<br />
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Now some of this is due to privilege. I’ve experienced little sense of persecution in my life. I’m white, male, middle-class – all thoroughly privileged groups. And the wars I mentioned were far away, and although I was afraid as a teenager of nuclear war like many of my generation, these things were complicated and mostly happening somewhere else. So I’ve had little sense of persecution or threat, no real sense of enemies facing me.<br />
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And yet I’ve gradually come to realise that I do have enemies. There are people who would hate me enough to kill me because of where I live and my background, and who don’t care about the nuances of one British person against another. There are people who hold my opinions to be reprehensible and would like to see them weeded out. And there are opinions, groups, that I also find reprehensible; and I might not hate the people individually who hold them, but I certainly see myself as the enemy of their opinions and would like to see those come to an end.<br />
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Plenty of other people are in a similar position. I don’t really want to use the B-word, but political debate has become more and more heated in this country since the Brexit referendum was called. Whatever your opinion about the right outcome, the discussion has become dangerously polarised, with positions becoming harder and more extreme. Our two main political parties are dominated by the edges of their political traditions, not their centres. So many people see the other side as their enemy. We haven’t had much political violence in this country, apart from the murder of the MP Jo Cox, but MPs and activists get all sorts of abuse, online and in person.<br />
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When Jesus talked about enemies, he was speaking from a far worse context of powerlessness and persecution. The Jewish people had been marginalised and persecuted for centuries, most recently by the Roman occupation. We were on Hadrian’s Wall this week, and had a real sense of the power and ruthlessness of the Roman empire. They built their forts on an identical plan, from Britain to Germany to Palestine, they co-opted local leaders, and they expected total compliance with Roman authority in a whole range of ways. They taxed highly, suppressed local religions, and crucified rebels. And by the time Luke wrote his gospel, the temple at Jerusalem had been destroyed, the Jewish people scattered, and the great split between Christians and Jews had occurred and was becoming irrevocable, but not yet recognised by the Romans. This meant that Christians were persecuted both by the Romans as a Jewish sect and by Jewish authorities as heretics, and it’s in that context that Luke put together his gospel and chose to quote Jesus’ words in this way.<br />
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So Jesus, and Luke after him, had a lot of reason to think about people who hated them, abused them, cursed them and so on. And that’s why the passage assumes that the listeners are victims, not victimizers – these people may have enemies but they’re not the ones doing the persecution, they’re not the ones with the armies, they’re not subjecting people to abuse on Twitter.<br />
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And of course there are so many people today who are genuinely persecuted, across the world. People who are subject to abuse for their gender, or their race, or their religion, or their sexuality, or their disability, or their age – there are so many ways to persecute. And so many powerful groups treat these people as enemies. I’m sorry to say that this includes church groups, past and present – so many churches have marginalised women, or people of colour, or gay people, or disabled people, or foreigners. Too many people have awful experiences at the hands of Christians. In these places the church has turned itself into an enemy of the people of God, and it’s shameful.<br />
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But in the face of this kind of persecution, Jesus doesn’t say, meet violence with violence, meet curses with curses. He says: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. This might sound passive but it’s incredibly radical. He doesn’t say that persecuted people should ignore their persecution, should let their enemies off the hook. He says, acknowledge that you’ve been hurt, but don’t let them think that they’ve got the better of you. They’re wrong and you’re right. But also: you’re better than they are. Their violence doesn’t need to be met with further violence, because that only makes things worse.<br />
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And then he goes further, to advise persecuted people that they should confront those who hurt them, and turn their negative experiences upon their persecutors. You may well know that there was context behind these sayings – that turning the other cheek after being struck with the right hand meant someone would either have to strike you with the back of the hand or the less-favoured left hand. Likewise if someone takes away your cloak, which for many people in Jesus’ time would be their only outer garment, then they’re depriving that person of so much protection that they might as well be stripped naked – which is basically Jesus’ advice. Because turning the other cheek doesn’t mean to be a doormat; it means radically to face down the persecutor and confront them with the consequences of their actions, not allowing them to damage you and then let it go. These are deeply subversive acts.<br />
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A good recent example of this pattern of behaviour is the #MeToo movement, where women who had been assaulted by powerful men came together to stand up to those men, to show them that their behaviour was unacceptable. They didn’t fight the men, they brought the truth into the open, showed the extent to which these men had not only behaved unacceptably, but thought they were too powerful to be challenged. And these brave women, many of them perfectly ordinary people as well as a small handful of celebrities, stood up and told of their experiences. Recounting the story of their abuse must have hurt, had to take a lot of courage. And very often their courage has stopped powerful people from continuing their abuse, frequently requiring them at last to face the justice they’d avoided for a long time. Sometimes it wasn’t enough – I’m thinking of the extraordinary testimony of Christine Blasey Ford in front of the US Senate last year, confronting the past abuse done to her by a would-be judge. In that case, politics won the day, but her voice was powerful and the judge and his political supporters left damaged by it.<br />
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This kind of active non-violence has been practiced by peaceful but assertive liberation movements on many occasions. It was the method used by Mahatma Gandhi in India, by Martin Luther King in the United States, by Desmond Tutu and others in South Africa. But it’s an old tradition, and goes back to Jesus’ call to love your enemies, to break cycles of violence and persecution through being better than them.<br />
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And being better than your enemy has spiritual value as well as being practically effective. As well as his involvement in the anti-apartheid struggles, Archbishop Desmond Tutu led the amazing Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. He became deeply aware of issues of forgiveness, and has written and spoken at length on why forgiving others is a radical act. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/22/archbishop-desmond-tutu-sorry-hard-to-say">He wrote the following</a>:<br />
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Forgiveness is not dependent on the actions of others. Yes, it is certainly easier to offer forgiveness when the perpetrator expresses remorse and offers some sort of reparation or restitution. Then, you can feel as if you have been paid back in some way. … We don't forgive to help the other person. We don't forgive for others. We forgive for ourselves. Forgiveness, in other words, is the best form of self-interest.</blockquote>
This is put in a slightly different way towards the end of the passage by Jesus himself, when he says “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”. Because ultimately this is about how we live our lives, and it’s about the model we take for our lives. And mercy is absolutely at the heart of the gospel of Luke, the heart of the good news that Jesus brings us. God is love, God’s mercy is absolute. The kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims is not one where people’s wrong-doings are counted up and weighed against them. It’s one that says that God loves us all, with a rich and deep love so great that it’s like measuring out flour, or some liquid, and keeping on pouring and pouring until it flows everywhere. It’s a love, a merciful love, that desires wholeness and peace for everyone, with more generosity than you can possibly imagine. But it’s also a demanding love, because it says that if that’s the nature of God’s love, then it needs to be the nature of our love too. The only possible response to that level of love is to share it with others, to always be on the side of the downtrodden, never to side with the persecutors or the powerful, and always to respond to violence and abuse with still more love.<br />
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That’s a tough call, and there’s one more thing to say. Some of this passage, like the Joseph story, is a bit dangerous. Ideas like turning the other cheek can be misused by the powerful to try to shut up persecuted people. Nobody has a right to do this. If people who have suffered harm choose to stand up to their abuser in this kind of way, then that is their right, and it serve them well. But this is the invitation of Jesus, not his commandment, and it can never be used to silence or tell the downtrodden what to do.<br />
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And lastly, as so often, Martin Luther King puts it beautifully. Dr King was in jail for his activism and was accused by public opinion of being an extremist. And <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">he wrote the following</a>, with this passage today in mind:<br />
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Was not Jesus an extremist for love… So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?</blockquote>
May we all love our enemies, and in that way be extremists for love. Amen.<br />
<br />Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-25951391847889680452018-12-02T22:07:00.003+00:002018-12-02T22:19:07.143+00:00Hope in the darkness, hope in the apocalypse: a sermon for Advent Sunday<div>
<i>Sermon preached on 2nd December 2018 at <a href="https://longbuckbyurc.org.uk/index.php">Long Buckby URC</a>. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+21%3A25-36&version=NRSVA">Luke 21:25-36</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+33%3A14-16&version=NRSVA">Jeremiah 33:14-16</a>.</i></div>
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So Advent is here, and it’s time for preachers everywhere to remind congregations that this is not a time for feasting. Nor is it just a time to prepare our houses and our families for Christmas. Because we live in the time between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ. And Advent is a time to prepare for the second coming as well as to prepare to remember the first.</div>
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This is why, as a Scottish Presbyterian who grew up without much awareness of liturgical seasons, I’m now really keen on Advent. Because it’s a solemn time. The gospel readings are full of doom and woe and foreboding, solid Presbyterian themes. But let’s face it, also themes which resonate with today’s world. And they’re threaded through with hope, with words of consolation and reassurance that look forward to the future. Because we know that 2000 years ago, a baby was born in difficult times and in difficult circumstances, and that baby ushered in a new world. And we’re promised that one day the world will change, and the kingdom of love and hope will surround the whole world, when Christ comes again. And that to me is the hope of Advent. <br />
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But we can’t get there the easy way. There’s no point in Advent, no point in Christmas really, if it’s all about sentiment and jingle bells. Let’s not mince words. The world’s in a terrible state just now. Authoritarian and far-right leaders are in power in Brazil, Italy, Turkey and the United States among others. Our own country is split down the middle over Brexit, facing an uncertain future with little prospect of a positive outcome. Homelessness and food bank use are increasingly rapidly. The oceans are polluted, with coral reefs dying and plastic waste everywhere. Global temperatures are rising to dangerous levels, maybe to the point of irreversible damage. And many of us have personal stories to match.<br />
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Yes, there have been worse times in history. And who knows, there could be worse to come. But just now feels like a really dark time. So it’s timely to think about apocalyptic pieces like this one we heard, with the sun and the stars and the sea and all that. Now apocalyptic literature needs to be treated carefully. There was a lot of it written around the time of Jesus, and it had a very specific form and purpose. It’s not prophecy. It’s not to be taken literally. It’s partly poetry, partly commentary on the current world, partly a cry for help. Because apocalyptic literature grows when people are oppressed. The book of Daniel was written when a Greek king threatened to destroy Jewish worship in the temple at Jerusalem. The book of Revelation was written when the early Christians were being persecuted across the Greek-speaking Jewish world. And the various apocalyptic stories of Jesus’ time were told and written under Roman persecution of the Jewish people, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem. <br />
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But you need to read it carefully. In the weeks leading up to Advent two years ago, I <a href="https://presentonearth.blogspot.com/2016/11/revelation-before-advent-introduction.html">read and blogged my way through the book of Revelation</a>, the longest and most vivid piece of apocalyptic writing in our scriptures. That’s an extraordinary book, full of incredible imagery and poetry, weird symbolism, vicious commentary on the wickedness of the Roman empire, and texts so beautiful that they’ve been set to music by some of the greatest composers. My head was full of song as I read Revelation. But what I found I couldn’t do was look at it directly. It’s like one of those optical illusions by Escher - it only makes sense if you look at it from the side, if you look at it head-on your eyes go funny and your brain hurts and nothing makes sense. And one of the great problems with Revelation is that it’s read as if it was a weather forecast, and you get bizarre American websites tracking the events of the book against real life and scoring how close we are to the events shown, or trying to make movies and popular books showing the events of Revelation in our current world. None of that makes any sense of the book, and at worst it can be actively harmful if it’s used as a guide to policy or life.<br />
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And all this goes with our passage today. I don’t believe that the detail of the signs Jesus is talking about are important. He’s using these as symbols, within the accepted style of the time, to give a clear message about what happens in situations of disaster. He says that the signs will be clear that the kingdom of God is coming near. The form of the disaster isn’t so clear, but what is entirely clear is that the kingdom of God is coming. <br />
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So if we think of the end of the world, we can think of it as the end of <i>this </i>world. As the end of the world of pain. As the end of the world of oppression. As the end of the world where power is everything, where hierarchy is central, where climbing the ladder and pushing others down matters. The end of the world where violence is the heart of society. The end of the world where if you gain, then I lose. The end of the world that mistreats people because they’re black, or female, or a minority religion, or gay, or disabled, or transgender. The end of that world. Carrying on with Revelation, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+21%3A1-4&version=NRSVA">we’re told at the end of that book</a> that “Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away”.<br />
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Now that’s a hopeful kind of apocalypse. And it goes back to another Jewish theme, the coming of the Day of the Lord, which is a day of judgement and trial for evil forces in society, for those who put others down, but for ordinary people is a day of hope and a day of celebration. This is the promise given through the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament reading that we heard – that God will fulfil his promises, and will save Jerusalem and Judah through the descendants of David. We hear this as relating to Jesus, as a descendant of David, but it’s a promise given to the Jewish people in a time of their great need. It’s a collective promise rather than an individual promise, a gift given to a whole people who were suffering and struggling. Jeremiah has a reputation of being a rather gloomy prophet, but that section of the book is sometimes known as the Book of Consolation and it’s full of reassurance and hope for the people of Judah in dark times.<br />
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And in the same way Jesus offers reassurance and hope in dark times. He tells us that the kingdom of God is near. That phrase is familiar and occurs throughout the gospels, but here he uses it to refer to the coming kingdom at the end of days, when the justice and righteousness that Jeremiah promises will spread throughout the whole world. He says that his words will never pass away, that redemption is coming soon.<br />
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All this is more important than the troubles that will be found in the apocalyptic times. And so Jesus instructs his disciples to be alert, to be watchful, to be ready for that day to come. Now we know when Christmas will come – 3 weeks on Tuesday, check those last posting dates and the deadlines for turkey orders – but we have no idea when that second coming will occur. The early Christians believed it was imminent – there is a statement of that in Jesus’ words that “this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place”, and there are many occasions when St Paul writes of expecting the second coming happening within his own life. In the ensuing Christian centuries, people have often believed it to be imminent, and lived their lives accordingly. <br />
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In the strict sense of the calendar, they were wrong. Christ has not come again in glory, evil still walks on the earth. And yet the process of waiting, of watchfulness, of readiness for the kingdom is a very powerful one. For if Christ could return at any time, how can we not be ready? If he has instructed us to love our neighbour, indeed to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked, how can we possibly not be doing those things right now? This instant! How can we possibly be so self-indulgent as to hate others, or to allow those who work in our name as churches and governments to treat others badly? How can we tolerate mistreatment of immigrants, or allow poverty to persist, or permit prejudice and discrimination in all its ugly forms? Because Christ could be coming back any moment, and he will call us to account for the keeping of his word. That’s the kind of watchfulness that I think he’s calling us to in this passage – to live as though the kingdom of God has already arrived, to live in that upside-down kingdom where the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the hungry are filled with good things. And that’s a true calling of watchfulness. <br />
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The early church knew this. They were watching for the return of Christ, and they lived in that spirit. My son is called Gregory, which means watchful, and that name was so popular in the first centuries of Christianity because the church was watching for the return of Christ. And they were living in the spirit of this kingdom. And yet the passing of the centuries and the deal they eventually did with the Roman Empire meant that this spirit was lost. <br />
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There’s another way in which we can look for the second coming. Various religious groups have believed that Christ had already come again, such as the early Quakers for whom the return of Christ was an inward experience. George Fox, the founder of Quakers in the mid-17th century, said that “<a href="https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/19-19/">Christ has come to teach his people himself</a>”, and this led them to challenge the powers of the world and still animates their mixture of social action, radicalism, and contemplative worship. In a more mainstream form of liberal theology, the late American theologian <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aF-pAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT127&dq=During%20Advent%2C%20we%20remember%20the%20first%20coming%20of%20Jesus%20borg&pg=PT127#v=onepage&q=%22During%20Advent,%20we%20remember%22&f=false">Marcus Borg wrote</a>:<br />
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During Advent, we remember the first coming of Jesus, even as we prepare for his second coming. And the second coming occurs each year at Christmas, with the birth of Christ within us, the coming of Christ into our lives. Christ comes again and again and again, and in many ways. In a symbolic and spiritual sense, the second coming of Christ is about the coming of the Christ who is already here.</blockquote>
So perhaps this is the hope for Advent, and the message of this passage. In the midst of desolation, in the midst of despair, be watchful, be ready, live your life so that Christ can come again within you and among you at any time. And he will give you strength, and hope, and new life and transformation.<br />
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Amen.<br />
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Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-86921361237043763782018-10-28T22:33:00.002+00:002018-10-28T22:33:42.465+00:00Courage, faith and healing: a sermon on Bartimaeus as a model for discipleship<i>Sermon preached at The Headlands URC, 28 October 2018. Text: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10%3A46-52&version=NRSVA">Mark 10:46-52</a>.</i><br />
<i><br />NB: As an 'introduction to the theme', I spoken about healing in the <a href="https://iona.org.uk/about-us/prayer/the-iona-prayer-circle/">understanding of the Iona Community</a> (and my own recent experience of the <a href="https://www.wildgoose.scot/event/weewonderbox-an-iona-community-liturgy-of-healing/2017-05-31/">Iona healing service</a>). In particular, I stressed that 'success' in healing is not an indicator of one's level of faith; and that healing may take many forms, not just physical. I did not stress these points further in the sermon but they form an important backdrop to the sermon.</i><br />
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We have here one of the great healing stories in a gospel full of healing stories. But more than that, this is a story about the faith and courage of one man, and what that tells us about discipleship. Bartimaeus is a man who suffers but he’s also a man who shows great courage, and who begins to follow Jesus before he’s healed. It’s also a story about how one of the most marginalised people was able to see things that the privileged people couldn’t.<br />
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A few words about context before we look at the content of the story. This encounter is the very last passage described before Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, before Palm Sunday. Jericho is about 15 miles from the edge of Jerusalem, a day’s walk or so, and there wasn’t much between the two. Remember that the parable of the Good Samaritan happens on the Jericho road, and preachers often talk of the isolation of that road. So it’s next stop Jerusalem, the donkey and palm branches, the events in the temple, and ultimately Jesus’ betrayal and death. There are no other healings in this gospel. Bartimaeus has no further chance to be healed by this electrifying young rabbi. So he simply can’t afford to be denied by those around Jesus.<br />
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That’s looking forward in the text. Looking back, the story of Bartimaeus comes after a series of dialogues that Jesus has with his disciples and with those around him. We’ll come to a few of them, but in short, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, shows himself to have more insight than any of the disciples, more wisdom than James and John, and more courage than a rich man. The ongoing theme of Jesus’ dialogues before entering Jerusalem is that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and we see this really clearly in Bartimaeus. He’s a disciple for our times.<br />
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The first thing we learn about Bartimaeus is his name. He’s the only person Jesus heals in Mark’s gospel who gets a name. As I’ve said, there’s a lot of healing in 10 short chapters of Mark, but the healed person only gets a description – the leper, or the person with unclean spirits, and so on. So he could have been just the blind beggar, and in fact that’s how he appears in Luke and Matthew’s versions of the story. But it’s an odd name. Bartimaeus simply means ‘son of Timaeus’ in Aramaic, as Mark tells us. Naming someone as the son of someone was common enough – Jesus would have been called ‘Yeshua bar Yosef’ in Aramaic, just as the most famous holder of my first name was called Magnus Magnusson because that’s still the style in Iceland. But Bartimaeus only gets his father’s name – it’s as if in his misery he doesn’t really have an identity. Commentators disagree about the meaning of Timaeus as a name, but it’s a Greek word not an Aramaic or Hebrew one, so there’s a further sense of distance, and <a href="https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/proper25b">at least one possible meaning</a> is ‘unclean person’. Bartimaeus does get a name, but it’s the name of a downtrodden and marginalised person.<br />
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Carrying on with the story, he’s told that Jesus is here, and he starts to shout out “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me”. This is the first time that Jesus is referred to as the Son of David in Mark’s gospel. It’s a pretty political statement, fifteen miles from Jerusalem and just before the Passover. Son of David is a way of saying that Jesus is heir to the throne of David, that he’s a ruler; because David was an anointed king, it’s also a way of saying Messiah. The fact that the crowds are quick to silence Bartimaeus may have been simply because he was yet another person wanting something from Jesus, just as earlier in the chapter <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10%3A13-16&version=NRSVA">the disciples rebuked</a> those who brought young children to Jesus. But I think there may have been a political fear as well. The Roman occupation of Palestine, and its client rulers, kept a watchful eye for political insurgents and often stamped hard on it. So close to Jerusalem, in a town such as Jericho where lots of priests from the temple lived, and so close to the Passover, they would have been really watchful. By calling Jesus the son of David, Bartimaeus was putting himself in immediate danger and possibly also those around him in danger. So they’d want to silence him for his sake and for their own.<br />
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But the attempted silencing has no effect on Bartimaeus, and he shouts all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”. He’s quite insistent – he will be heard, he won’t be silenced. As <a href="http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2012/10/bartimaeus-bar-timaeus-and-joy-of.html">one commentator writes</a> on this passage, the last time there was shouting like that outside Jericho, the walls came tumbling down. Because another aspect of kingship is a care for the downtrodden and the ability to heal. So Bartimaeus is almost issuing a challenge to Jesus: if you really are the Messiah, then do your job and heal me! Of course, Jesus had the compassion and healing ability of the expected Messiah, but the kingdom he was bringing was a very different kind, not based on violence and power but on justice and sacrifice.<br />
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And Jesus listens and calls Bartimaeus over, and then we have a key pair of verses, perhaps the heart of the passage. Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, springs up and comes over to Jesus. And Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants Jesus to do for him, to which he replies that he’d like his sight restored. There’s so much in that about discipleship.<br />
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First is Bartimaeus’ trust and courage in throwing off his cloak. He was blind and a beggar, so his cloak was quite likely his only possession. It kept him warm, it kept him safe. He would spread it out on the road to beg for money to live on. In throwing it off, he was making himself incredibly vulnerable for the sake of this Jesus. Now that is a sign of trust. And it compares amazingly to the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10%3A17-31&version=NRSVA">rich young man</a> who spoke to Jesus earlier in this chapter, who Jesus said had to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor, in order to gain life in all its abundance. The rich man refused and went away grieving – we might imagine him walking head down, dejected, his enthusiasm lost. By contrast we’re told that Bartimaeus leapt up and came over to Jesus – full of hope and trust in this new opportunity for life.<br />
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Then we see Jesus ask a question which might seem surprising but is entirely in line with his way of thinking. He asks Bartimaeus “what do you want me to do for you?”. He doesn’t assume what Bartimaeus wants or needs, he doesn’t tell Bartimaeus what ought to happen. He waits for Bartimaeus to tell Jesus for himself. Too often, the church has told people what ought to happen to them, what’s best for them. But people know themselves what they need. This requires Bartimaeus to articulate for himself what’s wrong with him, to admit that he’s blind. This matters as well: we have to face up to what’s wrong with us. The first step to healing for anyone, whatever is wrong with them, can often be to name their condition. And if you’re not willing to give your condition a name, not willing to say out loud that you need to be healed, it’s often much harder to help.<br />
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Last week’s gospel reading had <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10%3A35-45&version=NRSVA">Jesus talking with James and John</a>, who asked to sit on his right hand and left hand when he came into his glory. His question to them was exactly the same: “what is is you want me to do for you?” – but their answer was about power, about maintaining the same kind of authority structures in the kingdom of God that we have on this earth. And Jesus told them off for it, because that was precisely not what he was here to do. He came to turn upside the power, to put the first last and the last first, to give sight to the blind and hope to the downtrodden. So Bartimaeus had it right – he didn’t ask for power, he asked for sight. He asked to be able to see the world clearly, to live a life like others.<br />
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One more point from Jesus and Bartimaeus’ conversation that fascinates me. When he replies to Jesus, Bartimaeus uses the Aramaic word ‘<i>Rabbouni</i>’, my teacher. It’s a version of the word Rabbi, but more intimate and direct. It occurs only one other place in all the gospels, in the beautiful <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+20%3A11-18&version=NRSVA">encounter of Mary Magdalene with the risen Jesus</a> on Easter morning. Mary doesn’t recognise Jesus at first, until he says her name, and her response is that word Rabbouni. For it to be said by a blind beggar on the roadside in Jericho is a sign of enormous trust and faithfulness. And of course he follows Jesus on his way to Jerusalem – where else would he go now?<br />
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The story of Bartimaeus is a fascinating one, as much about the nature of discipleship as about healing. It can give us hope – if we want to be a disciple of Jesus, or if we want to be healed, or both, we must first learn to name our needs and be willing to trust Jesus. And as the church, if we really want to be able to follow the gospel, we need to look to people like Bartimaeus rather than the rich young man – to be willing to say, our mission is to these people. And then to be able really to listen to them and their needs, to build relationship with them, and answer their needs.<br />
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I want to give the last word to an American writer and activist called Ched Myers who has written and preached and based his ministry on Bartimaeus for forty years. <a href="https://chedmyers.org/2018/10/25/the-feast-of-bartimaeus-celebrating-an-old-tome-a-new-home-and-a-sacred-story-by-ched-myers/">He writes that</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What this tale has taught me over the years is this: that embracing Jesus’ call is not a matter of cognitive assent, nor of churchly habits, nor of liturgical or theological sophistication, nor doctrinal correctness, nor of religious piety, nor any of the other poor substitutes that we Christians have conjured through the ages. Rather, discipleship is at its core a matter of whether or not we really want to see. To see our weary world as it truly is, without denial and delusion: the inconvenient truths about economic disparity and racial oppression and ecological destruction and war without end. And to see our beautiful world as it truly could be, free of despair or distraction: the divine dream of enough for all and beloved community and restored creation and the peaceable kingdom. Discipleship invites us to apprehend life in its deepest trauma and its greatest ecstasy, in order that we might live into God’s vision of the pain and the promise.</blockquote>
Amen.Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-88554854363903314872018-09-09T22:11:00.000+01:002018-09-09T22:11:57.148+01:00Widening the circle of God’s love: a sermon on being wrong and being corrected<i>Sermon preached at Duston United Reformed Church on 9th September 2018. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+7%3A24-37&version=NRSVA">Mark 7:24-37</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+2%3A1-17&version=NRSVA">James 2:1-17</a>.</i><br />
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Have you ever had that kind of conversation where someone you really like and admire suddenly says something offensive or obnoxious – something racist, embarrassingly sexist, toe-curlingly old-fashioned, that kind of thing? And your heart sinks and you wonder whether to argue back. Bad enough if it’s directed to other people. Awful, really horrible, if it’s directed to you. And worse still if the person saying it has power over you, or you need something from them.<br />
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So it is in the story which begins today’s gospel reading. And yet it has a happy ending of sorts, which shows Jesus widening the circle of what he understands as God’s love, of where he sees as his mission field, going beyond the narrow confines of the people of Israel to people everywhere. Now this might sound shocking in a different way. We know that Jesus had a temper had times, that gentle Jesus meek and mild was no such thing, but the son of God being actively racist? Or the son of God learning from his mistakes? Well he was human as well as divine, and humans say dumb things, humans do dumb things, and then learn to do things better. So is a story of hope for us all.<br />
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We start by seeing Jesus in foreign lands. The city of Tyre was an important port in what is now Lebanon, and was then part of the province of Phoenicia or Syria. But as you can see from <a href="https://www.thebiblejourney.org//the-bible-journey/5-jesuss-journeys-beyond-galilee/jesus-journeys-among-the-gentiles/">the map</a>, to Jewish eyes it was a long way from home. Remember that Galilee, the heart of Jesus’ ministry, was already seen as the distant north to the people Israel and Judea; and Tyre was far away from Galilee. Like various of their neighbours, the Jewish people didn’t much like the people of Tyre, and those living there would definitely be seen as foreigners.<br />
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It’s not clear from the text why Jesus was in Tyre, but we are told that he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. So he could have been on some kind of retreat, or just needing a bit of space. And speaking as an introvert, I can empathise with him getting grumpy with anyone invading that sense of privacy. But then a woman comes to his door. The gospel writer takes care to describe her as doubly-foreign. First she’s described as Syro-Phoenician, which is to say from the coastline around Tyre. Second, in many translations she’s called a Gentile, but the word in the original is simply ‘Greek’, part of the Greek-speaking culture found all around the eastern Mediterranean. The point from the gospel writer is clear: she’s a foreigner, she’s the Other, she’s not one of the chosen people.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/cdri/jpeg/Rahib-canaanite-849.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/cdri/jpeg/Rahib-canaanite-849.jpg" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="471" height="200" width="117" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: Ilyas Basim Khuri <br />Bazzi Rahib (1684),<br /><a href="http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55922">via Vanderbilt University</a></td></tr>
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But she’s in the kind of desperation that often brought people to Jesus – her daughter has some incurable condition and she’s in search of healing and she’s heard that someone is in town who might help. She throws herself at his feet, begs for his help. So does Jesus take pity on her, proclaiming that her faith has healed her daughter?<br />
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No, he does not. Instead he continues with this othering process and he refuses to heal her daughter. His mission is to the children of Israel, and they must be fed first – to take that from them is as bad is taking food from children and giving it away. And then he uses a racial slur, comparing the Syro-Phoenician woman and her daughter to dogs. This wasn’t an uncommon comparison for Jesus’ day as a term of abuse by Jewish people towards foreigners, but it needs a few words. Here’s how we think of dogs today – pets, companions, members of a household. Whether you’re a dog person or not, most of us have a similar sense of dogs. Certainly there are badly behaved dogs, with strays and the like, but mostly they live with humans and mostly behave themselves.<br />
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In Jesus’ time, dogs were seen very differently. They were frequently wild, often scavengers. Unpleasant, wild creatures. You didn’t throw food to them, you didn’t give them little treats. If they were under a table, it wasn’t to be given food as part of a family, it was picking up what they could get where they could get it. So to be compared to a dog, to have a gift of healing compared to giving food to dogs, that was pretty insulting. And let’s be clear – this was explicitly a racialised insult. I have no wish to sully this church by speaking out modern equivalents, but I’m sure you can think of some. There are abusive words which are spoken by the powerful to the less powerful, and which are specific to the abused person’s race, or gender, or sexuality. They continue today and they’re horrible. That Jesus was in a foreign land is not relevant, because history is full of people whose culture had led them to believe themselves superior, going to foreign lands and treating the natives badly. Think about the British in India, or the Belgians in the Congo.<br />
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Now, the idea of the son of God speaking in a racist manner punctures a lot of what we like to think about Jesus, so over the centuries there have been attempts to explain this language away. The word for dog is a diminuitive form, a little dog, so perhaps he was playfully calling her a puppy. Or perhaps he was testing her, in the way that rabbis sometimes did, being deliberately provocative to bring out an answer. Or perhaps that the woman was actually part of an economic elite in Tyre and he was criticising her for her privilege. Or something else. I get why people feel the need to defend Jesus, but I’m not convinced by these, it doesn’t fit to the text. In my view, this simply shows Jesus in a bad light, but demonstrates that nobody is perfect, even the one who was sent by God to change the world and who hung out with the poor and the downtrodden, that even Jesus had his moments.<br />
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And fortunately it doesn’t last. Because the woman replies with an argument that changes Jesus’ mind. In a few words she convinces him that he’s wrong. These are calm words, the kind of words that oppressed people have often used to challenge those in power. She doesn’t dispute the dog imagery, but she says that even if that’s so, then the dogs get crumbs from under the table. This is standing up to authority. This is speaking truth to power. I like this image, because this is the image of a woman coming out from oppression and seeing her own power<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://easyyolktoo.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/lentz.jpg?w=237&h=300" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="237" height="200" src="https://easyyolktoo.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/lentz.jpg?w=237&h=300" width="157" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2015/09/03/learning-from-the-other/">Ched Myers</a></td></tr>
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. This is saying that she matters, that her life matters, that her daughter’s life matters. It’s the same spirit that inspired the civil rights movement in the US, and that today inspires those young people who stand up and call for gun control. It’s the same spirit that inspires gay people to march in Pride parades and demand equal marriage from the state and from the church. It’s the same spirit that inspired the women’s suffrage movement. It’s the same spirit that inspired the anti-slavery campaigner Sojourner Truth, herself born a slave in the USA, to say the words “ain’t I a woman?”. It is, ironically, the spirit of Christ, of the gospel of liberation and love, but it’s words spoken not by Jesus but to Jesus.<br />
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In fact, and I use this phrase carefully and with respect, the woman is saying that Syro-Phoenician lives matter. Her call is for racial justice. And Jesus, because all his message is about widening the circle of God’s people, about bringing justice to people in all sorts of oppression, Jesus hears her argument. And here’s a thing – he doesn’t commend her for her faith, he commends her for her argument. The Greek is logos, often translated as word with a capital W, identified in the gospel of John with the eternal Christ who comes before the human Jesus, and is the spirit of wisdom. Logos is not something you attributes to dogs, to sub-humans, to inferiors. Logos is a word you use of someone you respect. It’s a sign that Jesus has really heard this woman, that her words have touched him and affected his ministry. He immediately says that her daughter is cured. But then, as this slide says, he understood justice more deeply because of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s insistence on justice for herself and her daughter.<br />
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And then Jesus moves on, not south back towards Galilee or Jerusalem, but north, further into Gentile territory, to the city of Sidon and then back to the Romanised area of small towns called the Decapolis. He’s heard the Syro-Phoenician woman’s argument, and he’s off to heal and preach to the Gentiles. And as if to emphasise the point, he heals a man who is deaf and mute, in quite a physical way that’s described in detail by Mark. He allows the man the power of hearing and speech, by urging him to Be Opened – which is Aramaic is that splendidly unpronounceable word ‘<i>Ephphatha</i>’ which most of the translations preserve. Because opening is what this whole passage is about. Opening up an understanding of God’s justice. Opening up an understanding of who is welcome in the kingdom. Opening up an sense of God’s love as wider than human boundaries or categories or prejudices.<br />
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We say in the church that we’re open to all. But are we really? There are too many stories of churches which said they welcomed everyone, but only on their own terms, only if they’re willing to fit in with the dominant culture. Churches which say they’re open to children, but make no effort to change their wordy sermons or archaic liturgy. Churches which say they’re open to autistic people or those with dementia, but give no pointers to help those people make sense of their worship. Churches which say they’re open to gay people, but not if they want to bring a same-sex partner or get married in the church. Even churches which say they’re open to women, but refuse to let them have leadership positions.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.umc.org/">United Methodist Church</a> in the USA has a slogan based on these ideas, ‘open hearts, open minds, open doors’. Which are wonderful words, except that members of that church have pointed out the many ways that the United Methodists fall short of that ideal [see the <a href="https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/proper18b">Pulpit Fiction podcast</a> for this week]. And they’re not even bad as American churches go, they’re a long way from the evangelist megachurches. Openness to all really matters. It’s at the very heart of justice. But we have to be able to live out what we say.<br />
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So a quick return to the epistle of James that we heard before the gospel. A few verses before the passage we heard is the wonderful phrase which in the King James Version reads ‘be ye doers of the word, not hearers only’. I quote this version because it’s on the lectern in the chapel of Westminster College in Cambridge, and there’s something rather charming about having those words on a lectern. But it’s the way to truth: not only to hear the word of God, but to live it out.<br />
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Put in a different way, we heard in the reading from James that ‘faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’. There was a lot said in the Reformation about faith and works, about what you believe and what you do, and Martin Luther didn’t like this book much, but I find it very profound. If we don’t put into practice what we believe, is there really any point in believing it? The church doesn’t exist as a cosy club of people who believe the right things, it exists to transform the world, to help to bring about the kingdom of God on earth. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a much later member of Luther’s church put it so well: <a href="https://quotefancy.com/quote/794923/Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Faith-without-works-is-not-faith-at-all-but-a-simple-lack-of">without works, there’s no faith at all, and no obedience to God</a>.<br />
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I’ve not spoken about the long and interesting story with which the passage from James began, and it would make this sermon too long, but it’s quite scary that people might judge those who come into a church and give the best seats to those they consider rich. Not us, you say, and probably not – but in some places and some times yes, and there are certainly those who are more favoured in going into new churches than others. But where it connects back to the rest of this sermon is the idea of dishonouring the poor and favouring the rich. Our society does this so well, especially if we extend the word rich to mean those with privilege and power, those who are white or male or able-bodied, those who aren’t too young and aren’t too old. Even though we know the rich, the privileged, don’t always have the interest of others, and although we know the world is stacked in their favour – we still let the world turn for them.<br />
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And yet here is the message that the Syro-Phoenician woman, speaking her truth to power, taught to Jesus and can teach to us: the circle needs to widen. The rich might always be there, the privileged might always have fortune, but the kingdom of God belongs to those who weep, to those who mourn, to those who are downtrodden by life and by the world. God is on the side of the poor, God is on the side of the foreigners, God is on the side of those who have been ruled out by those who claimed to speak for God. It’s sometimes taken the church a long time to work this out. It even took Jesus some time to work it out. But Jesus worked it out, and Jesus widened his understanding of God’s love, and with the grace of God, we can widen our understanding too, and the church can widen its understanding, and come to heal all people and to love all people and to value all people. For of such is the kingdom of God.<br />
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Amen.<br />
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Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-60997445936675984172018-07-08T22:53:00.002+01:002018-07-08T22:53:57.628+01:00Sent out to transform the world - a sermon on rejection, repentance and discipleship<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://reverandandys.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/11705277_1025230754176400_7895478622006202186_n.jpg?w=300&h=169" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="169" data-original-width="300" height="112" src="https://reverandandys.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/11705277_1025230754176400_7895478622006202186_n.jpg?w=300&h=169" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://revandy.org/2015/10/06/day-twenty-two-with-mark-mark-66-13/">Rev Andy Stoddard</a></td></tr>
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<i>Sermon preached at <a href="http://dustonurc.org.uk/">Duston United Reformed Church</a>, 8th July 2018. Main text: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%206%3A1-13&version=NRSVA">Mark 6:1-13</a>, with <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+2%3A1-5&version=NRSVA">Ezekiel 2:1-5</a>.</i><br />
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Movie writers sometimes talk about a backstory. Behind the hero, there’s some kind of past history which can floor them completely and makes them unable to function. Perhaps it’s an undisclosed secret. We watched the movie of Les Miserables the other day, and you learn near the end that the former convict Jean Valjean has never told his adopted daughter Cosette about his past, for fear she’ll reject him. Or perhaps it’s an object that renders you powerless, like the way Superman is unable to function in the presence of the element Kryptonite. But for many people, it’s to do with past relationships. The people we used to know years ago can have a hold on us, and their over-familiarity, or their belittling, or their contempt, can reduce us as a person, and make us quite unable to be the selves we’ve become. This is why school reunions aren’t always a great idea.<br />
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Because people change over time. I’m quite different from the person I was before I became a parent, or before I got married, or before I started work at the Open University. It’s not just that I’m older. I may or may not be wiser. But I’ve gained skills, I’ve gained experience, I’ve seen and done things, and I’ve matured as a person. The same is true for all of us. If someone from your distant past comes along and expects you to be the same, or judges you according to the things they knew from those days, then not only will they be wrong, but they could well do you damage in the process.<br />
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And so it is for Jesus. He returns to Nazareth, where he grew up, and people don’t see the healer and the preacher, the one who has been wowing the crowds around Galilee. And they begin muttering about him.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I’ve always thought there was something a bit odd about him.”<br />“He’s not properly educated, just some labourer.”<br />“And what about that story about his birth? OK he’s Mary’s son but nobody ever worked out who his father was”<br />“Plus he left his mother and sisters at home to be looked after by his little brothers, while he went waltzing around with weirdos.”</blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/sem/b/to/14/b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/sem/b/to/14/b.jpg" data-original-height="669" data-original-width="472" height="320" width="224" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/sem/b/to/14/b.jpg">Cerezo Barredo</a></td></tr>
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Because small communities are like that. They remember gossip. They use little innuendos to put people in their place. Israel was a patriarchal society, men were referred to as the son of their father, not as the son of their mother. To call Jesus the son of Mary meant that at best his father was dead, but more likely it’s a way of saying he was illegitimate. And the word translated as carpenter, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekt%C5%8Dn">tekton</a></i>, is a pretty demeaning word – it’s not a skilled role, more like a day labourer on a building site. So he’s low status, of questionable parentage, and he’s left his family behind in the village when he should be looking after them.<br />
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No welcome with open arms for Jesus. When he later told his parable about the prodigal son, perhaps he remembered this moment – but there was no fatted calf in his story. Instead: demeaning language, belittling him and his background. Sounds horrible. No wonder he couldn’t do any deeds of power there in Nazareth.<br />
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Now you might think, well he’s ok, he has his friends. There are plenty of people rejected by family and their past associations who find a new life with a set of friends instead. Except Jesus never quite does what you expect, and as soon as he’s been rejected in his hometown, he sends them all away to get preaching.<br />
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Except of course he sends them away with a purpose – to start to preach the gospel. He sends them off with a mission, to preach repentance and to heal those who were sick. Notice these two emphases fit closely with what Jesus has been calling for throughout the gospel to that point. The first five chapters of Mark are full of healings – a leper, a paralysed man, someone with a withered hand, a man with a severe mental condition, a child who had died, a woman who suffered years of haemorrhages. We’re told that he healed many more, but these are told as stories. These healings are interesting. They are all people whose conditions cut them off from society, which made them unable to care for themselves or made them outcasts, unclean and unfit to associate with devout Jews. So Jesus healing these people was not just a kind deed. It was a set of actions which challenged oppression, which challenged marginalisation, one person at a time.<br />
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But Jesus went further than this. His <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+1%3A14-15&version=NRSVA">first recorded words</a> in the gospel of Mark are “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news”. In our time, the idea of repentance and good news are often tied up with a post-Easter vision of the crucified and resurrected Jesus. But the good news Jesus was talking about was a different sort. And it had to do with repentance, the key to Jesus’ preaching and the command he gave to the disciples.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://firstfridayletter.worldmethodistcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Metanoia-ArtCanvas_MetanoiaLogo-Main-Full-620x402.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://firstfridayletter.worldmethodistcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Metanoia-ArtCanvas_MetanoiaLogo-Main-Full-620x402.png" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="620" height="129" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="http://firstfridayletter.worldmethodistcouncil.org/2017/11/metanoia-2018-life-changing-faith-shaping/">Kimberley D. Reisman</a></td></tr>
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Jesus called people to repent. In the Greek, that’s the word <i><a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3341.htm">metanoia</a></i>, which means a changing of your mind. Not simply a change in mind about whether you want pizza or curry for dinner, but a complete mental shift in your worldview, in everything you understand about the world. The point is not to condemn yourself, but to recognise that you’ve strayed from the right path, that your true self is better than this. The Hebrew word for this idea, the lovely word <i><a href="https://midrash.wordpress.com/tag/matthew-3/">teshuvah</a></i>, has a sense of homecoming about it. You are a beloved child of God, you can come home to the love of God. But in the process you show love to others. So this is a repentance about changing your life around.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341c019953ef01bb0875b291970d-320wi" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341c019953ef01bb0875b291970d-320wi" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="320" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2015/09/almost-yom-kippur.html">Rabbi Rachel Barenblat</a></td></tr>
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It’s a repentance that’s deeply related to the idea of the kingdom of God. It says: turn away from violence and hatred, come home to the power of God’s love. It says: turn away from power and hierarchy, come home to equality and care for the downtrodden. It says: turn away from war, come home to peace. It says: turn away from the kingdom of the emperor, come home to the kingdom of God. It was a deeply radical and transgressive message. It echoed the words of the Hebrew prophets for centuries but it was an incredible challenge to the Roman and Jewish authorities. It’s still a challenge today, in a world governed for the benefit of power and money, run by puffed-up egos such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, full of their own self-importance and with little care for those who get in their way.<br />
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So a proclamation that people should repent, and an offer to cure them of their sicknesses – those are radical ideas for Jesus to be sending out his disciples to fulfil. This story in Mark has parallel versions in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus preaches in the synagogue at Nazareth, and he quotes from the prophet Isaiah. He speaks words there that have been described as the Nazareth Manifesto, the foundation of Jesus’ commandments to his disciples then and now. <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+4%3A16-21&version=NRSVA">They read</a>:<br />
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“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”<br />
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And in case there’s any doubt, Jesus says plainly that these words are fulfilled today in the hearing of the people in Nazareth. That’s what repentance is about. That’s what the healing he conducts in Mark is about – proclaiming good news to the poor and setting the oppressed free. It’s not about just about individual healing. It’s about healing society. It’s about radical social change.<br />
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Repent, and put your faith in the power of God to change the world, and you will be healed.<br />
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There’s a further challenge in the way he tells the disciples to go out. Travelling preachers weren’t uncommon in Jesus’ day, but they went equipped – spare clothes, food, money. The disciples aren’t to do that. They’re to accept hospitality wherever they can. That has its own challenge. Because leaders are supposed to be givers, not receivers. But part of the upside-down kingdom of God is being willing to receive when something is freely offered, no matter how meagre. It’s not about getting rich on others’ giving – Jesus says his disciples were to stay in the first house they entered, not to go climbing up the social hierarchy of a town. There are no private jets here for the followers of Jesus. This kind of simplicity reminds me of the Franciscans, travelling people in simple robes who accepted the hospitality they were given. And St Francis emphasised the value of action in addition to words, saying that “The deeds you do may be the only sermon some persons will hear today”.<br />
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Jesus has been rejected by his family and those he grew up with. He’s lacking in authority in Nazareth. But he has great authority in himself, and he passes on that authority to the disciples.<br />
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Yet the rejection Jesus received from his family was similar to the rejection the disciples would receive from society. Yes, they healed and they preached. They spread the good news of the kingdom, and they transformed through their lives, and they slowly built up followers of Jesus, especially after his death. But within a fairly short time, all of the twelve sent out by Jesus would be killed for their teaching and their actions, for the challenge they posed to Roman domination. And Jesus’ followers continue to be persecuted for their faith, from the Christians thrown to the lions, to Martin Luther King shot down for preaching equality and justice. They are persecuted by their own, like the singer Vicky Beeching who was the darling of the evangelical church and then ostracised when she came out as a lesbian. And yet, as Ezekiel was promised by God for his own preaching, “whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they shall know that there has been a prophet among them”.<br />
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Because it was the sending out of those twelve disciples that began the slow road towards the establishment of the church, towards the spreading of Jesus’ message throughout the world. And it’s through that message that the gospel is spread today.<br />
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The world needs repentance today as much it did 2000 years ago. People today need healing as much as they did 2000 years ago. And the pattern established for the twelve is a pattern for us today. We are called to <a href="https://urc.org.uk/our-work/walking-the-way.html">walk the way</a> of Jesus today. We are called as followers of Jesus to urge others to repentance, to cast off the power structures of this world, to become lovers of justice, to show the power of God through the way we live our lives. We are called to heal others in whatever ways we have power to do so, but also to heal society in whatever ways we have power to do so. We might not have to wander the streets to do so, but we can preach the gospel of love in the places we find ourselves daily, in the places we are sent when Jesus calls us to go. We might face rejection, but we will be acting in the authority of Jesus. And we will play a part in bringing about the kingdom of God.<br />
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Amen.<br />
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<br />Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-7067236536505051642018-05-20T20:25:00.001+01:002018-05-20T20:25:27.215+01:00Catalyst and disturber: don’t domesticate the dove <i>Sermon preached on 20 May 2018 (Pentecost) at <a href="http://www.creaton.org.uk/index.asp?pageid=319435">Creaton URC</a>. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+37%3A1-14&version=NRSVA">Ezekiel 37:1-14</a>; <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+2%3A1-21&version=NRSVA">Acts 2:1-21</a>.</i><br />
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<a href="http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/new-testament/pentecostcnt/">Don’t domesticate the dove</a>. I read that phrase online this week. Don’t make the Holy Spirit into something small, contained, Encountering the Holy Spirit is an awe-inspiring and life-changing event. It’s not cosy. It’s not simple. It’s not easy to put into words. Pentecost is such a familiar story that we can too readily forget the vastness of the experience. It was so profound that the disciples were left scraping for metaphors to describe it. And yet it changed their lives. And experiences with the Holy Spirit can change our lives too.<br />
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Now the Bible is full of occasions where human beings encounter the divine – Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus at his baptism, Paul on the road to Damascus. They often struggled to put their experiences into words, beyond umpteen variations on the theme of ‘wow’. But images of wind and fire are common ones. Recall the pillar of fire which accompanied the Israelites in the desert, or the hurricane in which God appeared to Job, or the still small voice after the wind and fire when God spoke to Elijah.<br />
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These would all have been very familiar images to the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. With the idea of Pentecost as the birthday of the church, and all the talk of different languages and different peoples, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this was a deeply Jewish occasion. All of those Parthians and Medes and the rest were members of Jewish communities scattered around the Eastern Mediterranean who had come to Jerusalem for the festival of Shavuot, which was originally the first of two harvest festivals, but was venerated as the time when the Torah was given to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai, again with fire and cloud and wind. That event was in many ways the birth of the people of Israel – they came together through persecution and flight from Egypt, but they gained identity when God gave them a way of living. In the same way, the followers of Christ had come together through his preaching and example, but gained identity as a group when God gave them the Holy Spirit.<br />
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This year and next, Shavuot falls on the same day as Pentecost though the complexities of religious calendars means this isn’t always the case. This year, Muslims are also celebrating Ramadan just now, which celebrates the revelation of the Qu’ran to Muhammad. Both faiths celebrate by reading their scriptures right through – many Jews stayed up all night yesterday into today to read the Torah. The disciples at Pentecost received a different sort of revelation of God, a direct experience of his power and energy. They received not just the word of God, but the very breath of God – because the word for breath and spirit are the same in both Hebrew and Greek. That’s the point Ezekiel makes about the dry bones being breathed into life. The followers of Jesus, still reeling from his death and the uncertain events of his resurrection and ascension, were empty and lifeless. And then God came and breathed on them. And nothing was ever the same.<br />
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The phrase about domesticating the dove that I quoted comes from an author by the name of Danielle Shroyer. <a href="http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/new-testament/pentecostcnt/">She also writes</a>: “The Spirit of God has been released into the world. Not contained but set free. Not limited but expanding. And what else would we expect, if this Spirit of Life is indeed the One through whom God raised Jesus? This is the Spirit of Life, who God has called not only to raise Jesus to new life but to raise all of creation to new life. Without Pentecost, we’d just be people who tell Jesus’ story. With Pentecost, we’re people who live into Jesus’ story.”<br />
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So I say again: we need to be careful not to underestimate the power of this Holy Spirit and not to make the story sound too comfortable. Because it’s not a comfortable experience. Let me talk personally. Some of you know that I spent 15 years as a Quaker. If you’ve not been to a Quaker meeting for worship, it’s an interesting experience. The congregation sits in a circle in a simple room, listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit. Nobody speaks until they feel compelled to do so by the Spirit, and there are no set words or preachers. But the power of the Holy Spirit can be really compelling, a physical as well as spiritual experience. I remember once having words come to me, and wanting to speak, but not having the courage – and afterwards I felt awful. Another time I was in the annual business meeting of British Quakers, with several hundred others, and we were at the end of three days of discussion and decisions and in a closing period of worship which was normally kept silent. But words came to me about community and love, and I could not be silent, and I was shaking and my ears were buzzing but I was convinced that I was instructed by the Spirit to speak, and so I did; and afterwards others told me that they found value in whatever I said. Because at the moment I was not speaking my own words, I was speaking the words that were given to me.<br />
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Now Quakers, for all their many good works in peace and justice and social change that this experience of the Holy Spirit has made possible, are a quieter bunch than charismatics. The ecstatic experiences of raising your hands and singing for half an hour, or speaking in tongues, or healing with the touch of hands – those experiences don’t appeal to me, they feel rather alien and frightening – but I understand where they’re coming from. They come from a place of compulsion by the Holy Spirit, of being filled and being transformed and being a channel. Not my will, not my voice, but that of the Lord.<br />
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Of course that wasn’t a new experience at Pentecost. Peter’s sermon, once he had done pointing out that his colleagues weren’t drunk because it was too early in the day, which I’ve always thought is a good start to a sermon, Peter then quotes the prophet Joel talking of God pouring out his spirit on all flesh, and all kinds of people prophesying. A commentator on the book of Joel <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DWUTDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA580&ots=y4hJ6oysxZ&dq=oxford%20bible%20commentary%20%22they%20dance%20frenziedly%22&pg=PA580#v=onepage&q=oxford%20bible%20commentary%20%22they%20dance%20frenziedly%22&f=false">has some vivid words to say about this passage</a>: “Whenever God pours out his divine energy, people are transformed; they behave like madmen, they dance frenziedly; seized by ecstasy they undress and lie naked on the ground. Moreover they have visions and enter the heavenly realm.” Quite a party. And very threatening indeed to the political and religious establishments. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit does some odd things.<br />
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Here’s something else that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit brings: justice and equality. Again this has a precedence in the festival of Shavuot. In the book of Leviticus where that festival is commanded, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+23%3A22&version=NRSV">the next verse reads</a> “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien”. The giving of Law is bound up with the giving of social justice, because it comes out of a place where the Israelites were oppressed and both law and justice were responses to that oppression. I talked earlier about the parallels with Ramadan, and you may know that the Muslim practice of zakat, the giving of a proportion of one’s income to the poor and to charity, is a key feature of Ramadan, as much as fasting. Law and justice are joined together in both faiths.<br />
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And we see the same thing at Pentecost. Because on that day the Holy Spirit broke down the boundaries which separated people in the very segregated society of 1st century Roman Palestine. The Spirit rested upon women just as on men. The Spirit rested on poor people just as on rich ones. It rested upon people from Jerusalem, from Galilee and from all the lands of the Jewish diaspora. It rested upon slaves as well upon freed people. It rested upon the old and the young alike. And to show that this wasn’t just coincidence, that it was part of the plan, Peter quoted Joel who said exactly that these things would happen. The Spirit came to all of them.<br />
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And it comes to all of us today. We cannot exclude women from ministry, because the Spirit came to women. We cannot exclude old people or young people or rich people or poor people or gay people or disabled people or transgender people or people with dementia or people with autism, because the Spirit came to all those people. Pentecost is a story about inclusion, a story about God’s justice being so expansive that he breathed his very Spirit upon peoples of all kinds.<br />
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And Pentecost continues today. The Spirit is moving in our world today. Where there is hopelessness and God’s people receive renewal, the Spirit is moving. Where there is injustice and God’s people are enabled to fight for justice, the Spirit is moving. Where people are pushed under the weight of oppressive governments, or the power of money-grabbing corporations, or violence of all kinds, and they say enough! – the Spirit is moving. The young people who are speaking out about gun laws in the United States, the parents protesting against food poverty in rich countries, those brave souls campaigning against female genital mutilation in various African countries – amongst them all, the Spirit is moving.<br />
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The Spirit is moving in our world today. It brings life to situations of hopelessness. The valley of dry bones in Ezekiel is the valley of the shadow of death. We all know of valleys like that in our world. There are places of death, like the waste processing towns of China, or the polluted lakes caused by industrialisation in Russia, or the desolate landscapes caused by oil sands extraction in Canada, or the impacts of plastic throughout the world’s oceans. There are places of spiritual death too, the lands where violence has stripped away hope from the people, or where financial austerity has meant life has become harder and harder, or where homeless people are walked over by the rich on their way to fat-cat jobs. And yet in all of these places: the Holy Spirit is present. And it might sound glib and just the vain prattling of preacher-talk, but God has promised to the bones that he will cause breath to enter them, that he will bring life back to them, that he will restore hope to them. And it might feel like nothing much, or it might feel like a rushing of wind and tongues of fire, but the Day of Lord is approaching, when all pain will cease, and when hope will come. And the Spirit is always with us. This is the promise of the day of Pentecost.<br />
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I’d like to close with some words from a book entitled The Fire Runs about mission and the work of the Holy Spirit in the world. It was written by a Church of Scotland minister called Ian Fraser who <a href="https://iona.org.uk/2018/04/11/a-tribute-to-the-rev-dr-ian-fraser/">died last month at the age of 100</a>. His book was the basis of a conference on liberation theology which I attended in St Andrews around 25 years ago. I remember that in one act of worship we were offered images for the Holy Spirit, and the two which have always stayed with me were the words catalyst and disturber. The Holy Spirit changes and mixes and transforms, it brings the fire that forms the spark that sets alight change in our world – that’s the catalyst. And the Holy Spirit shakes us up, it comes in with a mighty wind that blows away our preconceptions and our prejudices and our past experiences that stop us from following the path of Christ – that’s the disturber. The Spirit was a catalyst and a disturber on the day of Pentecost, and may it be so for all of us today. Here are the words of Ian Fraser in his poem:<br />
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Like fireworks lighting up the night<br />the Holy Spirit came;<br />dejected Christians felt the touch<br />of living fronds of flame -<br />and suddenly the world was young<br />and nothing looked the same.</blockquote>
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For Jesus’ nearness gave them heart<br />to venture, come what would:<br />the love of Jesus bade them share<br />their house, possessions, food:<br />the mind of Jesus gave them speech<br />the whole world understood.</blockquote>
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This is the Spirit who, today,<br />new daring will inspire<br />and common folk are given gifts<br />to change the world entire:<br />the sparks which flew at Pentecost<br />started a forest fire.</blockquote>
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Amen.<br />
<br />Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-24028828105345246252018-04-22T22:37:00.001+01:002018-04-22T22:37:17.561+01:00The good leader, making us rest <i>Sermon preached at <a href="http://www.urc5.org.uk/church/5d31">The Headlands United Reformed Church</a>, Northampton, on 22nd April 2018. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+10%3A11-18&version=NRSVA">John 10:11-18</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+23&version=NRSVA">Psalm 23</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+3%3A16-24&version=NRSVA">1 John 3:16-24</a>.</i><br />
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Let’s start with true confessions time. I’ve never met a shepherd. Now I’m a bit of a townie, but I’ve met a fair number of farmers in my time. Some of them probably even farmed sheep. And my wife grew up on a farm, so I've heard a bit about looking after sheep. But a real-life shepherd who lived and breathed sheep? Bloke with a crook and a sheepdog? Nope.<br />
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I doubt I’m alone, though knowing my luck there are people tutting even now and going “well I know lots of shepherds”. Quite so. But my point is that what was once a commonplace metaphor has progressively become less so, and the characteristics of shepherds has become less well known. But this wasn’t so in Jesus’ time, and before him in the times when the Old Testament was written. Sheep and shepherds were everywhere.<br />
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The first thing to say about them is to observe that sheep in 1st century Judaea were mostly kept for wool, not meat – so that the shepherd kept a herd together and developed a close bond with the sheep over a number of years. So on the whole shepherds had a long-term relationship with their flocks, not a short bit of guarding then off to the slaughterhouse. And they were famously brave and willing to do battle with the dangerous animals that might attack their sheep out there on the hills. Remember that King David was a shepherd boy originally, and learnt his skills with a slingshot in attacking mountain lions and the like.<br />
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The second thing is that shepherds were loners, rural folk who spent lots of time alone on the hills, weren’t rich or well-educated, maybe didn’t smell so good, a bit rough around the edges, tended not to be trusted by the townsfolk. Remember the shepherds in Luke’s version of the birth of Jesus, out there on the hills.<br />
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The third thing about shepherds is that the Old Testament is full of places where the leaders of Israel are compared to shepherds. Sometimes it’s even the same Hebrew word. And the prophets used this comparison to good effect. The prophet Ezekiel had a <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ezekiel+34&version=NRSVA">fantastic rant</a> against the shepherds of Israel, in words that are very close to what we’ve heard already:<br />
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“Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.” [<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+34%3A2b-4&version=NRSVA">34:2b-4</a>]</blockquote>
and later Ezekiel carries on:<br />
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“For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.” [<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+34%3A11%2C14-16&version=NRSVA">34:11,14-16</a>]</blockquote>
Now Jesus knew his prophets, and so did his listeners. So when he talked about good shepherds, he and his listeners would inevitably have that question of leadership behind his words. Moreover, it’s clear if you look to the end of the previous chapter that he’s speaking to a group of Pharisees who have been questioning him after he healed a blind man. And the word he uses that’s translated ‘good’, which is <i><a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2570.htm">kalos</a></i> in Greek, doesn’t just mean morally right, but also noble, attractive, magnificent. It’s the kind of goodness that shines out of someone and draws you to them.<br />
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So that’s one kind of leader – one who heals, one who feeds their sheep, who leads them to good pastures, and who is willing to protect them followers to the bitter end, to willingly lay down their life. Contrast that with the other kind of leader, who Jesus refers to as a hired hand, someone who might do a reasonable job to start with, but when trouble comes will run away and leave their sheep, those they’re supposed to care for, at the mercy of the troubles around them.<br />
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Now we have all come across leaders like that. Whether it’s politicians, CEOs of large corporations, university vice-chancellors – we see some dreadful leaders in place. They swan in from outside having no experience of the organisation they’ve come to lead, sometimes even the kind of organisation they lead, only knowing money and management, but paid huge sums. And their focus isn’t on protecting the organisation and its people, but on making money or on quick change. And we see slashing cuts to staff, offices closed, unnecessary restructuring, mismanagement. All because they were hired hands rather than good shepherds. We had an example of this kind of leadership recently where I work, and it did huge damage to a fine organisation, from which we’ll hopefully recover.<br />
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The church likewise is not immune to this kind of lack of leadership. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Christian radicals such as the early Quakers preached and <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1865262181"></span>wrote furious invectives<span id="goog_1865262182"></span></a> against what they called ‘hireling priests’, referring to this very passage. A radical Anglican theologian of the 18th century by the name of Thomas Woolston, born and raised here in Northampton, wrote a book where he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KL8sAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA139&dq=hireling%20priests&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q=%22whether%20the%20hireling-preachers%20of%20this%20age%22&f=false">offered to debate</a> with anyone who’d come “whether the hireling-preachers of this age, who are all ministers of the letter, be not worshippers of the apocalyptic beast, and ministers of Anti-Christ?”. Which on the whole is what I think you’d call a loaded question for debate. Most of today’s clergy, and naturally all lay preachers, are not in it for the money – but there have been terrible stories of clerical misbehaviour, including sexual abuse scandals which were covered up, but also many other cases of misuse of power and authority.<br />
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And against that kind of poor leadership, Jesus sets out the role of a good shepherd. That takes us back to Psalm 23, which we heard at the start of the service. That psalm is so familiar that many people can recite it off by heart. It’s been set to music so many times, and even was used for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAZN1oVir5A">Vicar of Dibley</a> theme tune! It’s read at many funerals. It’s probably the best-loved and most-familiar of all the psalms. And of course as a result, it’s not read as closely as it might be. Three thoughts about the 23rd psalm. <br />
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First, it could be seen as a job description for a good shepherd. It shows God leading us on a journey through life, taking us to safe and good places which are full of peace and rest and nurture, guiding us past the dangers of life, protecting us from those who trouble us. What more could a sheep ask for from their shepherd?<br />
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Second thing to say about the 23rd psalm. We all have our favourite parts, but mine is in the second verse. It reads “he makes me lie down in green pastures”. The psalmist doesn’t say that God invites us to have a quick lie-down, just for a few minutes, if we’re not too busy. God does not invite, God insists. Now I’m a chronically busy person, I take on more than I should, and I struggle to stop and relax, and I grew up in a Scottish Presbyterian culture which was suspicious of not using your talents to the full and which said there was always something else you could be doing. Others here may be able to relate to that feeling! But the psalm tells us that a good shepherd will make us blooming well stop in those green pastures and by those still waters. This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.<br />
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Last thing on the 23rd psalm. Many commentators observe that the final verse is a poor translation. Most versions have some variety of “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”, but the <a href="http://biblehub.com/hebrew/7291.htm">Hebrew word</a> we have as ‘follow’ is more active than that, and means more like pursue. <a href="https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=88#gospel_reading">Last Sunday’s lectionary gospel</a> had Jesus appearing to the disciples, pursuing them from beyond death and in the face of their scepticism, because of his love for them. The Easter encounters with the risen Christ are all about Jesus pursuing, of reaching out to the disciples in their despair and hopelessness, when they least expected it, and suddenly transforming their lives like when he simply <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+20%3A1-18&version=NRSVA">called Mary by her name</a> outside the tomb, or where he simply broke bread and blessed it in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+24%3A13-49&version=NRSVA">Emmaus</a>. The good shepherd runs after their sheep, chases them and protects them, and rejoices when they are found, as Jesus tells in his parable of the lost sheep.<br />
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And the good shepherd will ultimately lay down their life for the sheep. Now we’re in the season of Easter, and we immediately connect this phrase with the cross, with Jesus knowingly dying out of love from his followers, to protect them and restore them to life. But if we <a href="http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/good-life-giving-shepherd-of-many.html">look at the Greek</a> again, we find that the word translated as life is not <i><a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2222.htm">zoe</a></i>, the usual Greek word for life, but it’s actually <i><a href="http://biblehub.com/str/greek/5590.htm">psyche</a></i>, from which we have words such as psychology and psychiatry. It’s more about soul, the internal and fundamental part of life, than it’s about physical life. Jesus is laying down his soul for his followers. He is losing his <i>shalom</i>, his wholeness, his integrity, his peace.<br />
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The key prayer of Judaism, then and now, is the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy+6%3A5&version=NRSVA">Shema</a>, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might”, and that word soul in the <a href="http://en.katabiblon.com/us/index.php?text=LXX&book=Dt&ch=6">Greek version of the Shema</a> is <i>psyche</i>. So Jesus as a good Jew is laying down a fundamental part of his witness to God. He laying down what makes him good, what makes him lovely, what makes him a unique individual, what makes him able to witness to God. When he cried on the cross “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, that wasn’t just the cry of someone who was about to lose their life, but the cry of someone about to lose their soul. And in saying that Jesus is the good shepherd, that is the promise he’s making, that’s the level of sacrifice he’s willing to make.<br />
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Note that it’s not just for those of us here in this room. Because John’s version of Jesus is the universal Christ, the Christ as we learnt about him after the resurrection. He’s not just the Messiah for the Jews. He’s not just the saviour for the Christians. He’s the saviour of the whole world. He has other sheep that will listen to his voice, and he lays down his life for them too. They might give him other names, they might not believe the same about him as we do, they might be followers of other faiths, but if they too follow in Jesus’ way of love of God and love of neighbour, if they too participate in his upside-down kingdom, then Jesus is the good shepherd for them too. And Jesus lays down his soul for them too.<br />
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And what of us? Are we also commanded to lay down our lives for others? We’re told as much in the first epistle of John that we heard earlier, the verse sometimes describes as the other John 3:16. <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+john+3%3A16&version=NRSVA">It reads</a> “we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another”. And here again it’s that word <i>psyche</i>. Now there are plenty of passages in the gospels about taking up one’s cross, but I don’t think this necessarily refers to physical death. What I think it refers to comes in the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+john+3%3A17-18&version=NRSVA">following verses</a> of 1st John: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” and then “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action”. This is not about death, but about change. It’s about laying down the parts of our souls which stop us from helping those in need. It’s about laying down the parts of our souls which stop us from speaking truth to power, that stop us from taking action for the good. It’s about laying down our fears and our egos and our prejudices. And just as the good shepherd takes up his soul again, we too are commanded to take up our souls again, cleansed of these things, and filled with God’s love, ready to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves, ready to tend to those in need, whether it is physical, spiritual or emotional.<br />
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We are not called to be as shepherds, but we are called to live in the way of love. And as we do so, we shall be led like sheep through green pastures and pursued by goodness and mercy, and led to the peace and wholeness that Jesus offers us, to life lived in abundance, in the name of him who lost everything so that we might gain everything. Amen.Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-63454550414466488582018-03-19T21:18:00.001+00:002018-03-19T21:21:29.116+00:00Lent & the USS strike<a href="https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/8714/USS-under-attack/image/yourpensionaxed1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="800" height="168" src="https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/8714/USS-under-attack/image/yourpensionaxed1.png" width="320" /></a>Today is my first day back at work following 14 days of strike action called by the Universities & <br />
College Union in support of our pensions (held at the Universities Superannuation Scheme, USS). Very much can be found online about the <a href="https://www.ucu.org.uk/strikeforuss">rationale for the strike</a> and I won't repeat it here.<br />
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I've been a member of the union, and its predecessor, for most of my academic career. I've not always taken strike action when called, and had reservations whether to do so this time (because 14 days striking is a big loss of pay), but I'm glad I did. Partly this is because I think the strike matters, but also because it's had a positive impact on me.<br />
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I commented to a few people before the start of the strike that it seemed appropriate that it was taking place during Lent. I mostly thought of this in terms of sacrifice - of giving up 14 days of salary, and indeed the community of colleagues.<br />
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Although the sacrifice element was true, it also reflected for me the frequent experience that Lenten 'sacrifice' can lead to a greater realisation of the things that matter. In the event I found it to be a positive experience.<br />
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First was the sense of stripping away, and a realisation of how much of my work time is taken up with ephemera:<br />
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<li>I looked at no <b>work email </b>on strike days, and so my time was not absorbed in the constant streams of reading others' thoughts. Sometimes these are helpful, sometimes not, but they are often disruptive to deeper work.</li>
<li>I played no part in university <b>administration</b> during these days. As a member of Senate and a role-holder within my department, I spend quite a bit of my time worrying about how the university is run. Some of this matters, but huge amounts of the work is reactive.</li>
<li>I attended no <b>meetings </b>on these days. I like meetings in theory, but too many university meetings are over-long, badly-managed and without participation. It used to be the exception that people would sit in meetings with a laptop and do other things; now it's the rule.</li>
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In addition, I set aside my more fundamental work, of teaching and research, but I knew this would mostly be safely left for a little while so I could gently put it to one side. </div>
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Now I understand that this is hardly an original list - all academics, and knowledge workers in many bureaucratised fields, would give a similar list of ephemera, of the things that get in the way of doing their job. But there was real power in stripping them away. In the process I came to realise that the important things in my work are not associated with much of what absorbs my time day-to-day. </div>
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<a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYVL1_CXcAEuJYa.jpg:large" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYVL1_CXcAEuJYa.jpg:large" width="320" /></a>That doesn't stop the way that the university is run from mattering to me. We were, after all, on strike because of the way the sector as a whole is run (and underlying the pensions dispute is a wider question that relates to it, about university governance and its economic basis). And at various times I was able to discuss with various colleagues about better ways to organise the university. I didn't stand on any picket lines, which I gather was a source of such discussions. But I did take part in a march and rally in London, and I gave a talk as part of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AltOpenUni/">Alternative University of the Air</a>, our OU teach-out on Facebook Live.</div>
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And I'm left after returning to work with a residual sense of anger against the collective senior management of the HE sector and their distance from the real work and real conditions of their staff; a determination to help it to be better in the difficult times ahead at the OU; but a realisation that the things that matter in academia ultimately are not these, but are our students, our ideas, our research, and the change we make in the world. Not a bad realisation for Lent.</div>
Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-54261718690854092122018-03-12T14:28:00.000+00:002018-03-12T14:28:16.478+00:00God’s generous love, our generous response: why John 3:16 can be good news after all<i>Sermon preached at <a href="http://dustonurc.org.uk/">Duston URC</a>, 11 March 2018. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+21%3A4-9&version=NRSVA">Numbers 21:4-9</a> and <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3%3A14-21&version=NRSVA">John 3:14-21</a>.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: imgflip.com</td></tr>
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A couple of months ago, my son and I went to see the new Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi. Perhaps my favourite moment in the movie, and there are no spoilers ahead because it’s in the trailer, is where Luke Skywalker says, “this is not going to go the way you think”. Well the same is true with this passage.<br />
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There’s such a lot we could talk about here. I’m not going to spend time on the reading from Numbers, which is a very odd story indeed. It’s in the lectionary because it’s quoted by Jesus, and because there are parallels to Jesus’ story – of the people of God rescued from suffering by an intervention provided by God. The parallel to the snake on the pole, and the phrase about Jesus being lifted up, may make you think of the cross, and I think that’s part of the story but not the whole thing. Because Jesus was lifted up in other ways too – he was raised from death, which is the same word; and in later time he was lifted up to heaven in the event we call the ascension. It’s not enough to look just to the crucifixion – we have to look to the resurrection and the ascension as a package together to see the way in which Jesus was lifted up, the way he gave life to others.<br />
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But I want to spend most of this sermon unpacking one verse in the John reading. You may have noticed that the John passage contains one of the best-known verses in the New Testament – <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3%3A16&version=NRSVA">John 3:16,</a> “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him may not die but have eternal life”. That’s one of those verses that appears everywhere, especially in the more evangelical parts of the church. It’s on adverts, T-shirts, tattoos. It’s a verse that a lot of people learn by heart. When you hear the 8 verses of this passage, or the 21 verses of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3%3A1-21&version=NRSVA">Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus</a> that this is part of – your eye, your ear, they just jump to this passage. It takes up all the oxygen in the room.<br />
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And it’s well-known for a good reason. It’s short, it’s apparently straightforward. Martin Luther described it as the gospel in a nutshell. But here’s the thing. It’s often really badly misinterpreted. The verse itself has many subtleties that make its meaning quite different from the way it’s often treated, and the passage as a whole shows those up even more clearly. So that’s why I’m agreeing with Luke Skywalker: John 3:16 is not going to go the way you think. And that’s good news, that’s gospel news.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://biblia.com/bible/Jn%203.16">Biblia</a></td></tr>
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The interpretation you’ll often here goes like this: because of God’s love, he sent Jesus to die on the cross. We must each respond individually, by taking up a set of intellectual opinions about Jesus and his nature. If we do that, we’ll go to heaven after we die; if we don’t, we won’t.<br />
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Now I want to be a little gentle with this interpretation, because it’s a source of hope for many people. But <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OqzUe-6EfVAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT2#v=onepage&q=%22good%20news%22&f=false">the good news is better than that</a>. What we see in this interpretation is a God who is unable to forgive human beings, and has to be placated by an act of violence. We see a God who separates people into those who live and those who die. We see a God who requires an individual response, based on what you think about the world. It’s not a happy picture of God at all. It’s a picture of a God of fear, not a God of love. Sadly it’s a picture of God which is held by a lot of people, and it does them harm, because we have a God of fear and violence, then the universe is built on fear and violence, and human society needs to be built on fear and violence. And then you get war, gun crime, terrorism, and so on. And it’s also a picture of God which is driving people away from the church in droves – because if God’s like that, why does he deserve any worship?<br />
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But the good news is right here in the passage if you read it different. And I’m afraid that requires me to mention a few more <a href="http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/facing-evil-coming-to-light.html">Greek words</a> than many sermons.<br />
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We’re told in verse 16 that God loved the world, and indeed the word is <i>kosmos</i>, so that’s the whole universe rather than just our little planet. God is a God of love for the entire universe, whatever their race or nationality or religion. Flag-waving nationalism and racism have no place in the love of God.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: <a href="https://dlollis.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/john-316-reflection-for-god-so-loved-the-world/">Transforming Me</a></td></tr>
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Then we’re told that God didn’t send his Son into the world to condemn the world, or to judge the world, but in order to save it. Now the word translated condemn or judge doesn’t really have the same negative connotation in Greek as in English, and so although we are told that people are condemned by their own actions, it’s perhaps better to say that by their own actions they are separated from God.<br />
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Specifically, we’re told in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3%3A19&version=NRSVA">verse 19</a> that the light has come into the world and yet there are those who loved darkness rather than light. The gospel of John is full of images of light – recall that <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A5&version=NRSVA">phrase in the prologue</a> to the gospel that “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it” – and at several points describes Jesus as the light of the world. We all know of people who hate light and love darkness, who are dedicated to causing other people pain rather than giving them joy. [more on who] Yet they have not been forced away from the light – they have chosen to turn away from it, and thus have chosen to separate themselves from God.<br />
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Often in John’s gospel we see light and life twinned together. The gospel begins by <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A4&version=NRSVA">saying that</a> “in him was life and the life was the light of all people”. And elsewhere in John’s gospel Jesus <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+10%3A10&version=NRSVA">says that</a> “I came that they may have life, and have it in abundance”. So turning towards the light or away from the light is about choosing life. It’s about choosing the eternal life that Jesus mentions.<br />
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And now we need to look at that idea of eternal life. To our modern understanding, it’s about life that lasts for ever. But that’s not the way that Jewish people of Jesus’ time understood the phrase, and it’s not really what the Greek word <i><a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/166.htm">aiōnion</a></i>, which is translated as ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’, means. That word is related to the word ‘aeon’, or age. It’s not about a very long period of time, but is rather about a particular quality of time. It’s about life which exists outside of time and inside of time at once. Jesus said in many places that the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand, or that it’s within you. The Kingdom of Heaven is not something you get when you die, if you’ve been good enough. That’s why Jesus’ promise is so important – the Kingdom of Heaven is something you can experience here on earth, right now. And there’s one more clue in the Greek to that point, which is the word ‘have’ in the phrase ‘have eternal life’ is in the <a href="https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/lent4b">present tense</a> not the future tense as you might think for life after death. Eternal life, the life of Heaven, life lived in abundance, is something Jesus offers to us right here and right now.<br />
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Jesus is that generous. God is that generous. He came not to offer us some kind of future life after death. He came to offer us real, deep, life in communion with God right now.<br />
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And this is absolutely crucial for the way we live our lives. Because if we live in this kind of eternal life, if we choose life for ourselves, we surely can’t do anything other than choose it for others. And again I don’t mean this in an evangelical, convert-the-unbeliever, way. I mean it in the way that Jesus taught us: that the way to love God is to love our neighbour as ourselves. That if we choose life, we must choose to follow the path Jesus taught in the parable of the sheep and the goats, which also talks of eternal life: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit those in prison.<br />
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Put another way: if God has been as generous with his love as to send his son to us, we too must be as generous with our love towards others. If God loved the whole universe, we too must love the whole universe. We must love all people as individuals, and we must love them as groups. We must be agents of God’s liberation, against the oppression of the world. I was reading recently an amazing <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-black-theology/theodicy-de-lawd-knowed-how-it-was-black-theology-and-black-suffering/E43B1B0449DBF18C5F203CF7485660D8">article on black theology</a> in the face of suffering and oppression, by the Reverend Allan Boesak who was deeply involved in the struggle against apartheid. Boesak writes that:<br />
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When we fail to stand with those who suffer, we fail to stand with God, because that is precisely where, and how, God stands, not just in front of the oppressed, in protection of them; not just alongside in solidarity with their struggle but in identification with them in their struggle for liberation.</blockquote>
God’s love for the world involves justice for the oppressed peoples of the world. We see that again and again throughout the scriptures. But this means that if we are following the love of God, we too must stand for justice for oppressed peoples. It’s shameful to the church when it supports oppression, when it reads the Bible in twisted ways that allow it to support slavery, or the subjugation of women, or treating same-sex relationships as less than equal. Some of this has gone from the church, some of it is still around. But it is not the love of God, or experience of eternal life.<br />
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There’s one more thing to say about this passage and our response to it. Jesus says that it’s those who believe in God’s son who’ll have eternal life. Except he does and he doesn’t. Because that word ‘believe’ is another wonderful Greek word, <i>pisteuōn</i>, which means believing in somebody in the sense of <a href="https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1687-in-a-nutshell">putting all your trust in them</a>, putting your faith in them, putting your life into their hands. It’s precisely what people mean when they say “I believe in you”. When you fly on a plane or have a medical procedure, you believe in the pilot or the doctor. This means far more than believe that they exist, or some theoretical idea about who they are. It means that you have put your trust in them, in a very deep way. It’s profoundly about relationships. In the same way, Jesus expects his followers to put their trust in them. It has nothing to do with credal statements – it doesn’t matter whether you think he was born from a virgin, or your doctrine of the trinity, or your view on atonement theories. What matters is that you put your trust in Jesus, your life in his hands, and follow in his way.<br />
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This is a difficult passage, which is full of beauty and depth but equally has the potential for misuse and misunderstanding, in ways that cause harm to those in the church and to the world as a whole. But ultimately it really is about the most amazing good news: that God loves the entire world, that those who place their faith and trust in Jesus can find their way towards the life of the kingdom of God here on this earth, and that in placing their trust we enter into a calling to show God’s love towards others.<br />
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Moses was the great liberator of the people of Israel from oppression in the land of Egypt. He knew about God’s love and its relationship to liberation, and he knew about life. In one of his last sayings to the people of Israel, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+30%3A19-20&version=NRSVA">he said</a>:<br />
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I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.</blockquote>
May we all choose life, and choose to have it in abundance and joy through trusting in Christ Jesus. Amen.Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-19346836465844866982018-02-02T19:43:00.000+00:002018-02-02T19:43:08.757+00:00Race, gender and class: deeply intertwined with information<div>
Our <a href="http://www.dtmd.org.uk/">research group</a> is increasingly focused on developing a discipline of critical information studies - exploring the social impact of information and information systems, in particular through examining the way they interact with, and strengthen, imbalances between different powerful groups. As part of this we're especially concerned with the ways that race, gender and class interact with each other, with power issues, and with informational phenomena.</div>
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My colleague on the group, <a href="http://www9.open.ac.uk/mct/people/mustafa.ali">Dr Mustafa Ali</a>, is working hard on issues of decolonial computing, and we have been having many discussions about the interplay between race and gender in particular - the concept often called intersectionality, but which Mustafa prefers to call entanglement.</div>
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Mustafa pointed me to the work of Thomas Curry, who argues strongly against the concept of intersectionality as being inadequate to capture the lived-experience of black people and their relation to gender. In an essay entitled <a href="http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190236953.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190236953-e-27">Ethnological Theories of Race/Sex in Nineteenth-Century Black Thought: Implications for the Race/Gender Debate of the Twenty-First Century</a> [subscription], Curry argues that "In the nineteenth century, what we know as gender was believed to exist only among civilized races" and that "Under nineteenth-century ethnological thinking, races were gendered, rather than those bodies biologically designated as male or female by sex". </div>
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I find this very interesting, and it raises all sorts of questions. I doubt anyone would subscribe explicitly to a view like the 19th century approach to race & gender (though there’s probably a nastier sort of intersection between white supremacists and so-called men’s rights activists) but I can readily see how such a view was only widely-held and would persist in some kind of background form. All that said: it strengthens my view that race, gender and class issues are deeply intertwined and need to be considered together, and that in turn they’re intertwined with information. Because it seems to me that these views are deeply based on information - constructed narratives which put together half-selected 'facts' about the world, from a strong worldview, choosing those which fit and rejecting those which don't. </div>
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<br />Two more thoughts about the intertwining of race, gender and class. Earlier this week I was reading about the Irish potato famine and specifically the <a href="http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/history-of-ireland/galway-society-in-the-pas/the-early-workhouses-in-g/gregory-clause/">Gregory Clause</a> of 1847 which worsened the plight of the poor considerably (my eye lit on it because my son is called Gregory). Named after a Sir William Gregory MP, it restricted public assistance to those who possessed essentially no land, less than ¼ acre, to avoid ‘absorption by undeserving persons of a large portion of the public funds’. Interesting because of the entanglement here of class and race – the Irish of course are white but have always been treated as a sub-race by the British/English.<br /><br />Second, in <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/wikis/ouchoir/OU_Choir">choir</a> yesterday we were singing <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/sch%C3%BCtz-st-john-passion-0">Heinrich Schütz’s St John Passion</a>. Of all the gospel accounts, John’s is often said to be the most anti-semitic, and I’m finding the English translation here to be very starkly so (dated 1963 in the score but I think possibly a few years older). There are constant references to ‘the Jews’ saying nasty remarks, or asking for unpleasant actions. It reflects older Bible scholarship, and the translators (Imogen Holst and Peter Pears) were musicians not theologians, but no modern translations of John’s gospel would say ‘the Jews’ – they say ‘the Jewish leaders’ or a more specific term such as ‘the Sanhedrin’ (the ruling court of leaders). I’m wrestling with the text still, but in a way it gives me hope, that ideas do shift, and that contemporary Christians, however suffused with racism (and I can name plenty), are recognising our need to move away from our historic anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.<br />
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Lastly all this makes me uncomfortable about my own complicity as an affluent middle-class white male, but as I've written <a href="http://presentonearth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/sermon-preached-at-stamford-united.html">more than once</a> on this blog, I'm used to that discomfort!<br />Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034879239324046618.post-39753342527149639162018-01-15T22:00:00.000+00:002018-01-15T22:00:10.981+00:00Being seen and being called<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Sermon preached at <a href="https://longbuckbyurc.org.uk/index.php">Long Buckby URC</a> on 14th January 2018. Texts: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+3%3A1-10&version=NRSVA">1 Samuel 3:1-10</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A43-51&version=NRSVA">John 1:43-51</a>.</i></div>
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Listen. Look. Be watchful. </div>
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These two passages are often described as being about calling. The calling of Samuel. The calling of Philip and Nathanael. Now calling matters. We are called to all sorts of different things in this world, Some of us are called to parenthood. Others are called to teaching, or medicine, or creating art, or fixing problems. Others are called to care for others. Some are called to preach the gospel. But we’re all called to something. I believe that calling changes through life, and that part of our role in life is to discern what God is calling us to, and how that might be changing. </div>
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But part of calling is about being authentic, true to ourselves, about accepting OUR call against the call that was given to others. There is a Hasidic tale told about a certain Rabbi Zusya, who said as an old man, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’ We must all guard against not being ourselves. </div>
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The American Quaker author Parker J. Palmer comments on the story of Rabbi Zusya and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=czmQDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT18#v=snippet&q=%22Vocation%20does%20not%20come%22&f=false">writes that</a>:</div>
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Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfil the original selfhood given to me at birth by God.</blockquote>
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So the calling of Samuel and Nathanael is important. But I think in lots of ways that those aren’t the main point of these passages. Rather, they’re about being able to listen and to see, to wait for the presence of God. </div>
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We’re only a week on from the celebration of Epiphany, and in some churches the period between that festival and the start of Lent is referred to as the season of Epiphany. Now Epiphany is often associated with the Magi bringing their gifts to the Christ-child, but the Magi and gifts aren’t really the point. Epiphany is about an experience of the divine, breaking through suddenly like the rays of the sun through the clouds.</div>
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And to me the thing that’s so interesting is that both Samuel and Nathanael were experiencing the divine already, but they didn’t know it until they were able to see. </div>
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Listen. Look. Be watchful. </div>
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Samuel was being called by God, again and again. And yes he responds with ‘Here I am’, just as in the song we sang, but he’s responding to the wrong person. He thinks that Eli is the one calling him, and so he hears the calling in the light of that assumption, and he gets it wrong. Samuel’s call is genuine, but he needs to listen better. </div>
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Nathanael had it differently. He had received witness from Philip that Jesus was the one they’d been waiting for. Yet Nathanael was prevented from seeing who Jesus really was, by his own prejudices and preconceptions.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://marshmk.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/jesus-calling-philip-and-nathaniel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="500" height="259" src="https://marshmk.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/jesus-calling-philip-and-nathaniel.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="https://interruptingthesilence.com/2012/01/16/jesus-of-nazareth-meets-nathanael-of-the-fig-tree-a-sermon-on-john-143-51-epiphany-2b/">Interrupting the Silence</a></td></tr>
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We don’t know a lot about Nathanael, beyond this story and his name, which means ‘gift of God’. However John tells us at the end of his gospel that Nathanael came from Cana in Galilee, the place where Jesus performed his miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding. This might explain Nathanael’s rather crass question as to whether anything good can come from Nazareth. You may have heard that Donald Trump made some recent remarks about immigrants from Africa that even by his standards look particularly unpleasant. Nathanael’s scepticism about Nazareth may not be quite so extreme, perhaps it was only founded on the kind of local rivalry. To pick a local example, it’s as if somebody here was told the Messiah was to come from Daventry or Rugby, and to respond with incredulity. </div>
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Philip responds with an invitation. He doesn’t tell Nathanael he’s a small-minded fool, he instead gives Nathanael the offer to see for himself – he says ‘come and see’, the same invitation that a few verses earlier in John’s gospel, Jesus had given to Andrew, the first disciple to follow him.</div>
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But before Nathanael can see, he is seen. Jesus has already seen him under the fig tree. Nathanael’s calling is an act of pure grace on Jesus’ part – Jesus reaches out to him, and sees him as he truly is, an honest and decent man. Jesus looks inside Nathanael’s soul and sees good. </div>
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And that’s the first message from this passage. We have to be ready to respond to God’s calling, to seeing Jesus, but it’s always possible because God always makes it possible. Because God looks inside each one of us and sees good. He sees past the uncertainty and doubt, past the weariness, past the wrongs we’ve done or think we’ve done, past our sense that we can’t cope – and he sees us as good, sees us as loved children of God. I know that’s something I need to hear, that however much I can’t believe it myself, I am called by God through the love of God, not through any action of my own.</div>
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Listen. Look. Be watchful. </div>
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Now January can be an exciting time, with the new year and new life and new challenges. But it can also be a dark time, if you don’t know what the year will bring. It can literally be dark – the mornings continue to get darker not lighter for a few weeks after the winter solstice, and the Christmas lights and decorations have gone down at last. But sometimes it’s precisely in the dark times that God speaks to us. A couple of stories that I heard recently of God speaking into the darkness.</div>
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Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King, celebrated as a holiday in the United States. Dr King was a great agent of change, a man of the gospel, and a powerful orator, but he too suffered doubts. In his book describing the Montgomery bus boycott, <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/autobiography-martin-luther-king-jr-contents/chapter-8-violence-desperate">he writes</a> of a moment of despair in his kitchen:</div>
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I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud.</blockquote>
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The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. "I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.</blockquote>
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At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever." Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.</blockquote>
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If Martin Luther King could face that kind of despair, how can it be wrong for the rest of us to do so? Yet that kind of experience of God is just as much available to all of us as it was to Dr King. Sometimes it comes through others as much as well. Here is an example of this.</div>
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The BBC broadcaster <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09jcnf8">Ernie Rea tells</a> of attending an Easter Vigil in the night in a Catholic church in Derry during the Troubles. The church was in complete darkness, but not a peaceful darkness – on all sides he could hear the sounds of violence, of gunfire. And then the priest lit a single candle, and proclaimed the light of Christ, and the light spread through the church, bringing hope in the darkness. But then something else happened. Ernie Rea was the only Protestant in the church, so when all the rest of the congregation moved forward to take the Eucharist, he stayed seated – and again, he felt cast down into darkness. But having served the others, the priest walked all the way down the aisle, and served Ernie Rea the Eucharist at his seat. And he was lifted up, and it felt to him that light had returned to that place. Because the priest hadn’t tried to teach anything, he had simply shown by his actions that hope comes through relationship, that God acts through other people.</div>
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And that can be part of our response to God’s calling upon our lives. It’s partly about understanding what we’re being asked to do or be, about casting aside preconceptions and assumptions, about learning to listen to the still small voice of God which doesn’t for most of us come booming out of the sky but calmly chips away at what we thought we knew. But it’s also about building relationships, about demonstrating God’s love through our actions. It’s about inviting others to ‘come and see’, and it’s about living our lives so that people will see God’s love through us.</div>
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Listen. Look. Be watchful. </div>
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Samuel eventually responds to God’s calling as you might expect a prophet to do – faithfully, carefully, preparing himself to listen and act. We’re not told in the reading today of the message God will give him, but it turns out to be unexpectedly powerful, one which “will make both ears of anyone who hears it tingle”. Because Eli’s sons are corrupt and violent, and Eli isn’t doing anything to stop them, and Samuel’s message from God is that he, Samuel, a boy, is to speak up against Eli the great prophet, a powerful figure, his own mentor. So Samuel’s message turns out to be a tough one. And sometimes we’re called to speak out against the powerful, to call out corruption or bad practice or sexual violence or a lack of compassion, and to say ‘no! this is wrong!’. And sometimes we’re given strength to do that speaking out, and we’re carried in the arms of God – and other times it’s much harder to do so, and we might suffer for it, as Martin Luther King suffered for his witness against oppression. </div>
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Then we turn to Nathanael’s response. And that’s perhaps still more surprising. Because he turns 180 degrees, he suddenly goes from having no interest in Jesus to recognising him as the son of God and the king of Israel. In our world, 2000 years on, those are important but innocuous titles, common things to call Jesus. But in Roman-occupied Israel, they were revolutionary statements. Because the king of Israel was ultimately the Roman Emperor, and the Son of God was a title that the Emperor gave to himself. And if Jesus was those things, then the Emperor was either a liar or due to be deposed or set aside. Nathanael was not making a profession of faith, he was making a political statement. He was setting himself very clearly on one side rather than another. </div>
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And Jesus promises Nathanael that this particular epiphany is just part of a much larger epiphany to come, when he will see the angels and the son of Man face to face, language to do with the end-times in Jewish thought. Nathanael’s experience and his statement will lead on to more and greater experiences of God.</div>
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And so at last we’re promised this too. That if we listen for our calling, if we build relationships and bring hope to others, if we challenge the powers of this world and put ourselves on the side of the powers of the kingdom of God. That if we do these things, we will see God and we will hear God and we will walk more deeply with God.</div>
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Listen. Look. Be watchful. And respond. </div>
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Amen.</div>
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Magnus Ramagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18405481292821369074noreply@blogger.com0