Think Question Believe

We all know, much as we push the thought away, that our own lives are finite.  But also, most of us thankfully, do not know the day or the hour of our ending. But the downside of that is that sometimes we can act as if we have all the time in the world.All too easily our lives drift along, lots of activity, but sometimes little change. Plenty of tasks and busyness, but if we are not careful those can simply be external distractions, we can really be drifting, simply marking time and avoiding the internal work that is required.Part of the problem is that we can get to a place in life that may not be the most comfortable, the most at ease with ourselves and our lives that we could be, but at least it is comfortable enough, or even uncomfortable, but not enough for us to risk shaking it all up and making changes, and who knows in any case what the new life would look like?And this failing is not just in the life of faith, but in every life; for in reality there is no continual oasis of normality to return to, no state of perpetual tranquility to be reclaimed – all lives are in reality, in a perpetual state of flux, of challenge and testing.

Possessions had and still have a profoundly symbolic function for humanity. If life feels fragile and precarious we seem to think that possessions will render it more secure; even though the possessions themselves are even frailer than life itself. Whilst the rich man in the parable of the rich fool was supposedly rich in goods, his soul was impoverished. His purse was full, but his heart a desert.By contrast, Jesus calls us respond in faith and loving trust; and manage our goods, be they many or few, in accordance with that faith. We are to share what we have, and who we are with others, rather than indulge some insatiable need to accumulate.It is the insatiable, pathological pursuit of wealth, the desire to merely possess, deaf to those in need, and the suffering in our world, that represents the true poverty of heart and soul.

The early church was itself puzzled by the Spirit, and unable to make much in the way of theological sense of this area of doctrine. And even today the Holy Spirit is an area fraught with competing interpretations.  So, what is the Holy Spirit? How might we recognize it? How might our lives be touched, shaped and directed by the Spirit? Where do we start to take on the awesome responsibility of discerning quite where the Spirit may be leading us?And when we pray, if we pray, do we really understand what we are praying for – and what we should be praying for?And how do we even begin to defeat hate, cruelty and indifference, not only in our world, but also within our own hearts?

Jesus staying with Mary and Martha is another story told only by Luke, and it continues a theme that is clearly dear to him. The breaking of cultural and religious boundaries and a declaration of radical acceptance and inclusion.And, of course, the story is not really about doing the dishes, and it's not really about Martha and Mary – but about us.In our lives, what do we place first – keeping busy, getting lots of things done, perhaps keeping even intentionally distracted by the mundane and unchallenging, convincing ourselves that we are working hard, or getting on with the real task, the real and more difficult work of our lives?Isn’t it so easy – just to juggle our lives away?

Tensions have always been intrinsic to the Christian Church, think of the controversies surrounding slavery, race, divorce, women’s role in the church, one could go on.On the one hand there are those, like Peter, who believe the Church should have boundaries and borders, acting like a fortress, which can only care for and protect those within, by defining, identifying and excluding those who are without. That the old ways need to resist the challenge of the new, if not forever, then certainly for as long as possible – church as a perpetual rearguard action – holding back the winds of change and compromise – fidelity to the past.On the other hand, the modern counterparts of Paul, who believe that the Truth the Church professes can only be so if it is universal; that to be the Good News, it must, of necessity, be so for all.That the central revelation of Christianity is that all notions of tribalism, social, ethnic and gender distinction were swept away, by the life, teaching, ministry, and new life in Jesus.Could we not learn from the example of Peter and Paul? After all they too believed they were fighting for the future of the Church, and their visions were very different indeed.Each would come to pursue their own mission, their own calling, trusting that Providence would, in time, resolve any inconsistencies, reservations and doubts that they might harbour.They had neither a shared policy, nor shared theology, but simply a mutually recognised commitment that each would serve the Gospel, as best he could, in his own way, and what the Holy Spirit would bless, it would bless.

In the story of the Gadarene swine we encounter a man, afflicted and tormented by forces beyond his control.In terrible mental anguish, ostracised by his own people, driven from their midst, he now lives like a wounded wild animal, naked, dehumanised.And not just then, we know that any oppressed minority today, who endure overt and covert discrimination suffer higher levels of mental illness, stroke, heart disease, even certain cancers, and a whole ‘host’ of other disorders linked to social injustice and abuse.We are challenged to question who we continue to reject, and push to the margins, who we demonise. Certainly, the poor, the disabled, those who mentally ill, and LGBTQIA+ people, continue to feel other, less than and marginalised, sadly even, sometimes especially within our churches. And what does that say about the sickness of ourselves and the systems we devise and protect?

There is a familiar expression that someone has a ‘bright’ idea or a ‘lightbulb moment’. Or that someone’s performance was ‘electrifying’, or the atmosphere in the theatre was ‘electric’ - We can have a ‘burning desire to succeed’, or we can have a ‘blazing row’, emotions can become ‘inflamed’, and someone can have a ‘fiery temper’, or a ‘burning hatred’. We might compliment a performer by saying there were ‘on fire’ last night.The Pentecost story is perhaps, hopefully, one of the most obvious and uncontentious employments of metaphor in scripture – but from it we can draw a wider lesson – that we do ourselves, our world, and the original writers of scripture a terrible disservice, if we cannot allow their use of metaphor to enrich, colour and deepen our understanding, and instead insist upon simply a literal surface level reading of the stories that they strived for so long to craft and create.So, what is at the heart of Pentecost? What is significant, of prime importance for us?

Let’s be honest, have you ever liked or respected someone who said to you ‘You are either for me or against me’?Usually, the words of a bully, certainly those of limited wisdom and imagination. Especially if those words are backed up with threat and intimidation. But, this duality of thinking, right or wrong, good or bad, in or out, is all too pervasive throughout history and human psychology to this day. Economists and mathematical game theorists call this type of thinking the zero-sum game, in which each participant's gain (or loss) is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the other participant(s).In other words, if someone is to win, then someone has to lose.You can find people who embrace these false dichotomies, and there are a lot of them, in politics, in the White House, in everyday life, in theology.This is not at all how I see Jesus, or the divine reality that inspired him. This not the God I believe in, or the type of church that I believe we should build.Instead, we should strive to create a community where all are welcome, all are valued, all are loved for who and what they are, without reserve and without limit.

A Bishop was once reported in the press to have commented that the resurrection was about a ‘conjuring trick with old bones’. Bishop David Jenkins was branded the ‘unbelieving Bishop’ and the satirical TV puppet show ‘Spitting Image’ even had a sketch of him persuading God to become an atheist.That misquote of the Bishop has cascaded down through the years, following him wherever he went – the problem is – he never said it.In fact, what the Bishop of Durham had said was that the resurrection is ‘so much more than a conjuring trick with old bones’ an entirely different statement.Because Bishop David was trying to get us to focus on the meaning, the significance of the resurrection, on the transformation of the disciples and the growth of the Christian community, and potentially of ourselves, rather than obsessing about overly literal interpretations of the experience of Jesus, real or embellished, after his death.The secret to practising resurrection is in letting go of the artificial self, the person we pretend to be, the masks we wear, the possessions that trap us and giving ourselves to something greater than ourselves.The Jewish theologian Martin Buber tells the story of an ageing pious man, Rabbi Susya, who became fearful as his life drew to a close. His friends chided him saying “What! Are you afraid that you’ll be reproached for not being Moses” “No,” the rabbi replied. “That I was not truly myself”.

I cannot stand unfairness and injustice.Today, not only as Chair of Changing Attitude Ireland, but also simply as someone who abhors unfairness, I see this all too clearly in the treatment of LGBTQ people within our church. Within most churches.Of course, there are those who for one reason or another disapprove of, denigrate and discriminate against the LGBTQ community and will cite scripture or tradition, with varying degrees of casuistry and equivocation to justify their fears and prejudices. I find little to defend the variety of their arguments, but at least one knows where one stands. But what I find indefensible are those who affect to sympathise, who acknowledge the injustice, who declare themselves committed to the righting of the wrong, to securing justice for those discriminated against – but not yet. Essentially throwing a minority under the bus for some spurious and entirely illusory sense of church unity.Of course, it is usually the defenceless and the voiceless who are sacrificed so blithely, sacrifices are rarely required of those who have influence and power.But justice only for some, is really justice for none. If any organisation, and especially the church, tolerates injustice towards the few, then it is an unjust community. Its claims to show love, acceptance and compassion are meaningless unless they extend to all.And to knowingly practice injustice, just for the sake of church politics and pragmatism is even worse than prejudice and bigotry – for at least the intolerant own their opinions. But to be unjust, knowing it to be wrong, continuing anyway, for some supposed ulterior goal, is the worst kind of hypocrisy and mendacity.There can be no place for it in our church and in our lives.

I wonder, not only about the first Easter, but especially the Easters that soon followed, those of the first and second centuries, when Christianity was still so new, so radical and relatively untouched by the worlds of wealth and power. And the people who spoke of themselves as following ‘the Way’.We now live through a time when Christianity seems under threat as never before, at least in the West, and there is an emerging generation who regard, often rightly, some of its past beliefs and prejudices as socially and morally toxic.So, is it still possible to speak of new life and new hope? Is resurrection still a story we can tell?In fact, I believe that there are signs that the Christian faith has still very much to say to our world and to help shape the future of mankind. But it requires us to look to ‘The Way’ once again, to prioritise not what we claim to believe, but what we do, how we act, how we live out Jesus’ great commandments of love.

It was a widespread belief of Jesus’ time that suffering and misfortune were a sign of God’s displeasure and punishment, that they were somehow earned and deserved.Let’s be frank, we can even fall prey to the same superstitious beliefs today, where adversity and affliction can all too easily be labelled as the consequences of such phrases as ‘poor choices’ or ‘unhealthy lifestyle’ – at least by those who lead privileged lives.But two thousand years ago, Jesus was warning about this erroneous connection between good fortune and virtue, and misfortune and vice.Sometimes, mostly, suffering is random, undeserved, not the consequences of our guilt or complicity and conversely, good fortune and advantage in life is rarely distributed equitably.Especially it seems in American and Western politics, no question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals, than the element of luck in economic success.But in recent years, social scientists have discovered that sheer chance actually plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine, or we are comfortable acknowledging.This, of course, should engender our compassion for those who suffer, and greater humility in our privilege – but I wonder, in reality, if it does?

Christians are called upon to be honest with God, and most of all honest with ourselves. We are called to account, to face what needs to be faced, to confront that which we have avoided and from which we shrink.To show humility, acceptance of the errors we have made, the sins we have committed, the debts that we owe.The feast of St Patrick is a day on which the thoughts of many turn to Ireland, perhaps especially for those with family ties and links to this land – the isle of saints and scholars – a place of great beauty, so many wonderful people, and a place of many tears.And for me raised in England, of Irish ancestry, now living back in Ireland – it brings to mind a disconnect between those two countries, that remains to this day, because of past unacknowledged and unrepented sins. I speak of an Gorta Mór or the ‘Great Hunger’ – known incorrectly and reprehensibly in the UK as the ‘potato famine’.The need for repentance is as true for nations as it is for individuals, because old sins cast very long shadows, shadows that can overcast and hide much that is good, because sins that are unacknowledged and unrepented do not heal, they only fester – as much, if not more, for the perpetrator as the victim.

Dictators and brutes throughout history have somehow convinced themselves that their violence and inhumanity will secure them power. That fear and intimidation, the force of arms will win the day. And all too sadly there seem to be no end of those who are willing to be their creatures.Today we see the willing capitulation and self-subjugation of those who so want to be in positions of supposed power and wealth, that they are willing to abase themselves, to deny reality itself if they are told to do so, to pretend to convictions they do not have and a loyalty that they do not possess.And while they may enjoy some temporary advantage, in the end they only achieve their own undoing, as they sew the very seeds of their destruction, as hubris and arrogance, greed and selfishness is confronted and confounded by the quiet dignity and courage of those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for a better way and a better world.As we live through these times of mendacity, extortion, venality and toxic narcissism, where it feels as if the leadership of the world has been handed over to psychopaths and gangsters, we can reflect that in the story of the temptation in the desert, all that evil could offer, can ever offer, was and is the victory of the moment, the glory of the fleeting instant, but at the price of the destruction of those who suppose themselves to be the conqueror – but are in fact the conquered.

War and violence have always been with us, despite our experience of some decades of comparative peace, we have always been beset by the storms of life.And sadly today, black clouds of intolerance, bitterness, greed and indifference to the suffering of others are gathering and deepening.And an ominous warning sign, like the outbreak of bush fires all around us is the slow death of truth. No society – no civil society can hope to live without it, and yet daily it is under assault from those, who at least in the past ,paid some lip service to its defence – however tarnished the world of global politics has always been.The tragedy of our present time, is that many leaders in our world, and their enablers, do not fear the truth of that statement, they are counting on it.At a time when black is white, up is down heroes become villains and monsters lauded as heroes, when friends are treated as enemies and enemies as friends, when the victims are to blame and the aggressors, the abusers and the bullies are excused – what are we to do?Too many of our more moral leaders, well intentioned, motivated by integrity no doubt, seem to feel that we must weather the storm, not be too combative, tolerate the nonsense, in the hope that sense will later prevail. But that is the way to merely slow the death of truth. It is the way of complicity.Instead, truth must be fought for, upheld, reasserted time and again, by everyone, everywhere, all the time. We must call out every lie, from whoever, wherever and however they are shared.

We live in a world, both in terms of income and social and political power where inequality has been on the rise across the globe for several decades.We lionize the bullies, the liars, the psychopathic and the heartless. We seem prepared to place our trust in those who lack compassion, who are devoid of a consistent moral compass, and who have only the most tenuous grasp on the truth, that they view as plastic, malleable and disposable according to the advantage of the moment.The popularity of autocratic and authoritarian leaders and parties, even in the so called free-world is due, in part, to a desire to hide away.Where people pretend that there is nothing they can do, so there is nothing they need do – other than to retreat into a privatized world of insular consolation.And this is so much more than politics, although the church also has a significant duty to be active in that compromised human endeavour.It is about our spiritual health and preparedness to identify the moral standards for which we as Christians stand and then to take a stand; to be visionary, bold and courageous.Above all we need to throw off the cloak of helplessness that too many in our world draw around themselves as a blanket of comfort and detachment.

We are living through the rise of heartless authoritarianism across the world, itself borne out of and sustained by fear; the seeming destruction of a sense of integrity, public truth and reason before our very eyes, daily on our screens and in our newspapers.When an immensely rich US president cancels charitable aid to the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, suggests ethnic cleansing as a way to bring peace to the Middle-East, – and now levies personal sanctions against staff of the International Criminal Court who seek to bring some measure of justice to victims of crimes against humanity and genocide – then we know that the time for Christians to be courageous and stand up is now.And when the new vice-president of America says that a Christian teaching is that ‘charity begins at home’ – and let me remind you that the phrase received its greatest exposition in Charles Dicken’s ‘Martin Chuzzlewitt, where it was used by the villain of the book, Montague Tigg, a con man and a thief, to justify his own swindling and corruption.The salad days are over - If our Christian faith does not inspire us to condemn, to object and to resist then we must question whether our convictions are merely fair-weather affectations – as the saying goes, ‘all for show and not for blow’.

Sometimes the most significant moments, the greatest trials of our lives are only understood in hindsight. As the Danish Philosopher and Theologian, Soren Kirkegaard once said: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”. That is the human condition.We should all seek to take time to look back, to reflect on the journey, this pilgrimage of life that has brought us this far, but also a time to look forward, with all the freshness of hope of a child to the path we yet have to tread.And what better to guide us, perhaps, than to hear the story of Martin the cobbler.

In the Western church, to a large part through the influence of Augustine, his genius, but also his own disabling guilt and shame, we have been bequeathed a view of salvation as the remission of punishment, by a stern and judicial God, being spared abandonment and damnation that otherwise would be ours. We might call this ‘Salvation from’, - salvation from hell, salvation from retribution, salvation from banishment.Some traditions emphasize much more than others, of course, but whatever the degree, this perspective can create a very warped idea of God.But there is another view, more prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy, but also within strands of the Western Church where human sin and error are viewed, not so much in terms of crime, guilt and therefore resultant legal penalty, but in terms of illness.In the face of which we are offered compassion, wholeness  and healing.

The American moral, legal and political philosopher John Rawls devised a concept called the 'Veil of Ignorance'. A challenge to all those who might like to define what the ideal society should be. Devise away, he said, but first, you need to assume that you have no way of knowing where in that society you might be placed; would you be male or female, gay, trans or heterosexual; would you be male or female, rich or poor, educated, uneducated? From behind the Veil of Ignorance, would you want to create a society with prejudice, disadvantage, unfairness, the arbitrary benefitting of one group over another, the suppression of certain groups and individuals? After all you might end up one of the oppressed and subjugated ‘losers’, rather than a random and undeserving ‘winner’.