Everything Changes?

Happy Easter everybody - He is risen!

 

I have a confession to make...

From a personal perspective, I'm a little disappointed in the Church of England's choice of hashtag to promote its Easter tweets - #everythingchanges.

Now let me make it clear, I'm not going to be aggressively snarky about it, I'm absolutely grateful that the C of E bothers to engage on Twitter and has actually put some thought into a campaign at all. I also completely theologically agree with what I perceive to be at the heart of that statement. Easter is a game changer; as the sun dawned on that fateful first century Sunday morning, humankind went from being outcast... to family member, darkness... to light, death... to life. The hashtag absolutely reflects themes that prevail throughout Easter.

So what exactly bugs me about it?

Well for me, it is primarily an aesthetic thing. I don't like to think of myself as fundamentalist and in fact if anything, in a broad church I've turned running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds into something of art form. However #everythingchanges aside from being culturally reminiscent of a cheesy Take That song, feels a little vague and understated to me. Without something tying it into the events of Easter Sunday, it's easy for people who are not tweeting on topic to come in and subvert it (either accidentally or purposefully). This aside, we live in a world of constant flux... everything changes all the time; you might not think it if you look out of the window and still see snow and frost, but everything - the weather, our position in time and space and the fundamental elements that drive our universe - matter and energy are in a constant state of change.

When Jesus happened (I'm not sure I even wish to describe it as "what happened to Jesus" because He was the catalyst), it was an event like nothing ever seen before. People had been raised from the dead before (3 by prophets in the Old Testament and 2 by Jesus himself), but in those cases it was merely a case of the odometer being set back a few notches. Those people lived out the lives that had been given back to them... but in time, death would return to claim them.

 

Christ's resurrection was very different:

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

John 10:17-18

 

Jesus was resurrected by his own authority he didn't just temporarily survive death... he went beyond it, travelling through it and coming out on the other side:

 

"Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.  The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God."

Romans 6:8-10

 

Death no longer has mastery over him.... and the amazing thing is that Romans tells us  in that same excerpt that His death covers the cost of the wrongs we have committed... and that we have the unconditional offer to live his risen life. 1 Corinthians tells us that death has lost its sting... yes it still claims us from this life, but its effects are only temporal and not eternal.

 

So yes the rules, the game, the very nature of humankind's destiny have changed. Yet the changes are so much immeasurably higher, wider, deeper and truer than anything our humanity could conjure, ask or imagine... that to just say everything changes feels somewhat like living in a world where Apollo 11 is blasting off for the moon in the days of the cavemen... who as they celebrate the invention of their stone tools and wheels and fire, categorise the wonder they have just witnessed piercing the clouds in the same bracket.

 

So yes I'm sure that #everythingchanges will be a numeric success and I pray for it and wish it well in terms of outreach.

 

But let's remember that the resurrection of Christ is a concept so mind blowingly wonderful, with such a powerful message... that we need to make every effort to convey it in terms that do justice to its concept.

Cheesus.... or Jesus? A Response to Giles Fraser.

I entered pretty late into the furore surrounding Giles Fraser's latest article for The Guardian, only picking up on various exchanges about it on Twitter, yesterday evening. Nevertheless, having now read the article I decided to make a couple of observations.

 

First off, let me point out that I have no axe to grind... I respected the moral principle behind his resignation from St. Paul's Cathedral and I'm sure we have our differences on the theological spectrum... but in a broad church you take those things on a case by case basis... or at least,  I believe spiritual maturity requires us to do so.

 

I believe Fraser was attacking the superficial spirituality and language of cliché that sometimes plagues the Church. Quite why he singled out the evangelical wing of the church on this issue is beyond me... perhaps *he* had an axe to grind, perhaps not. Nevertheless I think his article comes across as portraying a syllogistically flawed argument, something like this:

Some Christians are evangelical

Some Christians are clichéd and superficial

Therefore all evangelicals are clichéd and superficial.

 

As a teenager, the youth group I was a member of had a pretty evangelical outlook. As we grew in faith and maturity... we recognised that some of the terminology was clichéd and a little alien to the outsider: Terms like "saved", "washed in the blood of the lamb", "slain in the Spirit", were among these. Whenever a brainstorming chart was being used in a seminar/preaching session, you could bet your bottom dollar that among the first responses would be "Jesus", "the Bible" or "peer pressure".

 

Never once would I have said that all my contemporaries were superficial Christians. It is just that sometimes, just sometimes if you hang around the same people often enough you pick up the trappings of a language. This is true in all walks of life.  It doesn't invalidate the principles behind the terminology, it just means that sometimes the terminology is unhelpful.

 

Fraser takes issue with the term "personal relationship". I get where he's coming from on this... the term is used so very often that it has become a bit of a cliché. However it is not like the word "Inconceivable" in The Princess Bride. In most cases people who invoke the term know *exactly* what it means and how important it is.  What is important though, is that the principles behind what a personal relationship with God means, and why it is so vital in Christian development are equally covered.

 

I dare say I have an evangelical outlook, I try not to use the terminology when I preach or talk... but I hope to God I get the principles across.

 

I don't like the idea that Fraser implies that I see Jesus as "buddy Christ". Yes I, do see him as the closest companion in my life journey... but if that truly means anything it has to have an effect on us and not just be a term. It leads to some pretty strange emotional places. For the apostle Paul it meant contemplating the desire to lose his own salvation if it  meant that others would gain it (he obviously knew that was not a place he would or even could go to, but it was a feeling he was expressing). For a friend of mine (and indeed myself), it sometimes means getting worked up when seeing a representation of The Passion - yes, theologically you know the crucifixion is the absolutely essential and inescapable destiny of Jesus... and you know that your own salvation (and that of others), depends on it happening... but as a developed Christian one who truly has a "personal relationship" with Christ... you kind of get pretty upset when you see someone representing him suffering.

 

This week, on Maundy Thursday... I'll be making my annual midnight pilgrimage up a local hill. I go there every year because I remember that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus's friends fell asleep and left him to suffer in anguish on his own... as he awaited the inevitable fate that awaited him. 2,000 years after the event, this does not sit well with me. There's precious little I can do but that which I can... I do. So just for an hour I try and get myself as close to the events as I can. I head out onto a remote hill overlooking town - in the cold... alone and vulnerable, and I read through the gospel accounts and I pray for Jesus.

 

As I said... "personal relationship" when genuine can lead you to strange places.

 

And as a Christian I have to say, I know how shockingly poor and bankrupt a Christian I can be sometimes... I know how dependent on God's grace I truly am. I have no place or time to patronise people because I know only too well how pitiful I am. I'm just as broken and in need of God's compassion as everybody else on this God favoured planet.

 

But this was not all Giles Fraser said and its not the part that upset most people I conversed online with.

 

He went on to suggest that the evangelistic position is one that somehow hardens a person against empathy towards the suffering of others.... but this is utterly wrong. I'm not saying this is not a possibility... but I will say that in my experience most evangelicals I know are most passionate about the concept of personal relationship because of tragic cost - always the tragic price that Christ paid and often the tragic cost of personal circumstances that the nearness of Christ's presence helped them through in a very real way.

 

Fraser suggests that the newly enthroned Archbishop of Canterbury - Justin Welby may be "inoculated" against evangelical cheesiness because he has suffered the bitter blows of personal tragedy, yet in the same paragraph expresses the fear that this merely masks a latent evangelism picked up from Welby's theological heritage.

 

I am greatly encouraged by Justin Welby (not least after meeting him last week). Aside from Fraser's comments, he's not without his critics in the evangelical wing either and personally I see this as a good thing. He strikes me as a man willing to listen and share the concerns of all those he is pastorally responsible for, not least those he theologically disagrees with. He seems assertive about his own beliefs and doesn't fall into the pitfalls of aggression or passiveness. This is what the church needs - to openly talk about its disagreements in a frank uncondemnatory way... and I suspect Welby may have a gift for this.

 

I'm reminded of the parable Jesus told a Pharisee named Simon, after receiving his criticism for being anointed by a "sinful" woman. The point that Jesus drove home was that the amount of affection we display is a response to the amount we realise we have been forgiven. This isn't just about sin though, is it? Jesus does not merely promise forgiveness... but life in abundance. When we are in the midst of the fiercest storm and the deepest spiritual need... He is there. When we have known times in our lives where clinging to that promise has meant absolutely everything to us... it fundamentally changes us and makes us more loving to those on the outside.

 

I know that thus far, I have by God's grace avoided the most tragic of personal circumstances... but I also know that there was a very long, dark time in my life when I felt trapped in a situation and had nobody I could talk to about it. In those times I know God did not give up on me and I know in the fullness of time it was He who directly delivered me out of that place. That experience and the knowledge of the patience and love of God for me during all that time changed everything for me... and having been faced with the insufficiency of my own ways, I know that my debt to Christ is immeasurably supermassive and that tempers any illusions I might ever had of being somehow superior.

 

In conclusion, it is not our various theological positions that define the depth of our relationship with God and our compassion towards others... it is our understanding of how dependent we are upon the vast storehouses of all that God provides in the harshest and fairest of seasons alike.

 

One more thing. Giles Fraser expressed fears for Justin Welby on the basis of his spiritual history with Holy Trinity Brompton. Let me redress the balance by reminding you of another part of his history.  For many years, Welby was on the frontline of the Ministry of Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral. Perhaps then, it is fitting that following the fallout this article has caused... whatever our views, we contemplate together the litany of reconciliation... and remember that when we judge one another we mar God's image within us and need to be reconciled to one another... and to Him:

 

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God...

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,

Father Forgive.

 

The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,


Father Forgive.

 

The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,

Father Forgive.

 

Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,


Father Forgive.

 

Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,


Father Forgive.

 

The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,


Father Forgive.

 

The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,

Father Forgive.

 

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.





If you wish to read more of what others have contributed, I am adding links below that I have discovered on the topic that provide additional commentaries:

God and Politics UK
Peter Ould
Hannah Mudge
alwaysperhaps
 

The Cathedral & The Crucible

Due to my inability to book holiday without procrastination I've been able to benefit from a fair bit of time off in recent days and as luck would have it, it transpired that events had unfolded to provide me with a unique opportunity.

 

Justin Welby - The new Archbishop of Canterbury, has been progressing through the country on a prayer pilgrimage ahead of his enthronement on the 21st March 2013. The second sojourn of his journey led him back to Coventry - the diocese where he had spent roughly 15 years of ministry, culminating in his tenure as Sub Dean and Canon for Reconciliation Ministry.

 

Having the day off on Friday, I decided to take part in the event - both the church I worship at and the church I grew up in  are part of the Diocese of Coventry and its cathedral is therefore in "old money" terms, my mother church. I decided that I was going to make as much of a day of it as I could and found myself strolling into Broadgate at the early hour of 8:30am. As I was early I wandered back and forth, to and fro as the market was being set up and the PA system was being rigged for the welcome address. I approached some local dignitaries... who promptly backed off, apparently intimidated- maybe it was a bad idea for a 6'4" leviathan to wear a hoodie, or maybe they were just picking up on some kind of Alcestrian aura emanating from me.

 

Drummers Leading Archbishop Justin to the Cathedral.

Eventually the Archbishop arrived and after a meet and greet with the local media followed by a welcome by Coventry's mayor and a brief prayer of blessing, those of us who had gathered made our way to the ruins of the old cathedral... led by some drummers. As we arrived, it became apparent that larger throng had gathered outside the cathedral and together we prayed through the Litany of Reconciliation.  Following this we all made our way into the cathedral, which had been divided up into a series of 9 prayer areas with different formats for different people to use.

 

I love Coventry Cathedral; for those of you who don't know, it is a relatively new building that is nestled among the ruins of its predecessor... which was devastated during the destruction of Coventry by the Luftwaffe. I like the distribution of stained glass windows... on the inside it looks very much like something that you might expect to find on the Minbari homeworld in Babylon 5.  I'm also extremely fond of the star and circular shaped chapels at each end. When you look back from the nave, the entrance window is filled with frosted figures of angels and saints that seem to hover above the ruins... keeping watch over the cathedral and the city.

 

Praying Amidst the Ruins of the Old Cathedral

As previously mentioned, I was there for the whole event and decided to work my way around the various stations as best I could... and aside from praying for the Archbishop made the day something of a prayer retreat... something I haven't done for a good while. Being fond of Celtic expressions of prayer, I made my way to the round Chapel of Christ the Servant. and sat there working through a few prayers.  I must have looked a little odd because I'd taken my shoes off... it's a biblical practice that I've adopted when seeking a deeper focus in prayer... and I guess I've picked it up off my old vicar, Steve Burch. Straight away I felt my thoughts being tugged towards issues that periodically cycle from latency to active burden in my heart. I felt very much hemmed in and awestruck.

 

Following this period, I made my way to a Powerpoint station which split the Lord's Prayer up in segments with a particular focus for each line... designed to take 15 minutes to work through. I then made my way down the nave and bumped into some folk from my hometown. I chatted with them briefly and tried not to draw too much attention to my shoeless condition (no luck there), I then made my way to a Labyrinth that had been laid out in the centre of the nave. Funnily enough, this actually required me to be shoeless and having read through the gist of the prayer format, I started out. It was not to be however, as I was yanked out by one of the people from Alcester because the hourly prayer led by Archbishop Justin was starting. I know he thought he was doing the right thing... but I was seriously getting in the zone and it disrupted me - he should have left me to it really... but never mind. A bit like not being able to get back to sleep having been woken by something, I joined the other people in the nave and prayed the hourly prayer.

 

Once this was finished, I made my way back to the Labyrinth... and what followed was by far and away the most profound experience in my day. The idea is that you make your way along a winding path towards the centre and eventually out along another path. There are stations along the route and there are no dead ends. After a period of focused reflection I made my way inward - the first part of which invited me to invoke God's mercy. Gradually I made my way along until I came to the Ignatian Examen... which had some techniques based on a paraphrase of Isaiah 48:

 

Come near and listen to this:
from the beginning I have never spoken to you obscurely,
and all the time these things have been happening, I have been present
Thus says Yahweh, your redeemer, the Holy One:
I, your God, teach you what is good for you,
I lead you in the way that you must go.
If only you had been alert...

 

The meditation required me to examine which part of the text jumped out most vividly to me (I've highlighted what I experienced for you). I felt extremely challenged by this... I'm very guilty of being the kind of Christian who looks for signs and desires wisdom before committing to a path... and I felt that I was being advised that I already know what I need to know... the silence that I have assumed to be in place... has not been real at all.  When you reach the centre of the Labyrinth, you are supposed to just get comfortable and allow God to have you... and not do it at "drive-through" pace... but to be still and wait for God.

 

The final station I came to as I was working my way out, was a biblical meditative vision quest; I'm very fond of these... and I think people should be aware they exist, because they are a powerful area of spirituality that largely remain untapped in the Western church while people flock to similar such things that are available from the more questionable sources in Eastern mysticism.

 

The passage used was the account of Jesus appearing to disciples on the Road to Emmaus. It invited me to breathe the air, to hear the dusty road beneath my feet, to see the hooded stranger and to communicate with him and talk about the kind of feelings that were associated with the people in the passage. I remember very strongly at the end of this meditation seeing Jesus give a wry smile and a wink before vanishing. I felt his reassurance and that he was filling me with hope for the road ahead.

 

As I drew to the end of the Labyrinth, a period of contemplative worship was being performed by a man called Jimmy Lawrence. I felt deeply moved and sang along solemnly. This drew  the next hour to a close and we prayed again with Archbishop Justin.

 

For the next hour I kept drifting towards the accompanied prayer area... but there never seemed to be anyone to pray with. I felt like I could have done with that at that time.  so for the next hour I sat and gazed at the baptistery window in silent contemplation.

 

Eventually hunger got the better of me and I made my way down to the refectory to grab some sustenance. As there were no empty tables, I found myself talking to one of the cathedral chaplains and a visiting couple. Halfway into our chat, the old lady asked me if I was a vicar. I said that no, I wasn't... and I had a familiar strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.

 

Just before 2.00pm I returned for the final hour of prayer and after Archbishop Justin had prayed with us... I decided with a small group of others to go forward and meet him.  Upon greeting him, I took the opportunity to pray over him for his ministry and he in turn prayed for me.  Following this I tied a prayer to the prayer tree and submitted some prayers to the prayer text service that was scrolling on a screen on the right of the cathedral.

 

It was an amazing experience. I truly feel God took a cacophony of emotions and experiences and forged them into something immensely powerful and awe inspiring.

 

I also think I know what that feeling I get when people ask me *that* question, is about.

 

It's embarrassment. I feel it may be akin to the feelings that Peter must have felt when people asked him if he was one of Christ's disciples in the early hours of Good Friday.

 

I think that gives me something really challenging to look at.... and requires me to act perhaps more swiftly than I might appreciate.

 

All in all, my time at the cathedral felt very much akin to being in a crucible.