I have a sabbatical soon.
I want to explore how we use the Bible in urban areas, and as importantly how we teach our story to those who are biblically almost illiterate.
I made a start in Lent.
I am posting the first power point.
I really think there is some mileage in using Tom Wright’s work on the drama of the biblical narrative to promote biblical literacy.
Without such literacy, disciples cannot be formed.
She will always be for me ‘that woman’. That is what my dad always called her.
She was, I believe, a devout Christian. Many will recall Margaret Thatcher quoting the Prayer of St Francis, as Margaret Thatcher came into office before she went into No 10 for the first time as PM.
The archbishop of Canterbury has released the following as part of Lambeth Palace’s official statement: “It is right that today we give thanks for a life devoted to public service, acknowledging also the faith that inspired and sustained her.”
I am afraid I am finding it difficult to give thanks, although I am doing my very best to imagine the pain of her children and grandchildren, as well as the many who will have been among her personal friends. Death is always jarring and never ever nothing at all
It is because my understanding and hers of the Christian faith are fundamentally different that I am struggling. It is not that I cannot respect her for the battles she would have fought to be selected as a candidate for the Tory Party. It would have been for any woman, and for any woman sadly in any party. Rather, I find the words used to describe her leadership sit, for me, uncomfortability with the Christian faith. ‘Iron Lady’, ‘unbending’, uncompromising’ and ‘always right’ are words that have slipped out from those who knew her best. There is a fundamental absence of vulnerability upon which Christ-like leadership is fashioned. The first woman PM had the opportunity to tear up the rule book as to what political leadership could be like, and the chance was not taken. I have to say that her male successors have all kept to the rulebook, sadly.
On the other hand, she was a visionary; but what was that vision? All parts of the hagiography have made much of the opportunity to buy your own home. I lived on a street in sunny Sheffield, where that opportunity was taken. People did buy their homes. However, it made them different to those of who did not, or so it seemed to my child-like eyes. It was not the purchase per se, but the investment afterwards. The appearance of the home changed – there is nothing wrong with that. I understand as a homeowner the need to repair, replace and renew. What happened gradually was that the more people spent on their homes, the less inclined they were to give to the continued creation of community. I know this is a simplistic analysis, and take me to task for it; however I do recall what I saw.
This was not Mrs Thatcher’s fault. Each person is responsible for what they do. It would be as foolish for me to blame our former leader for the breakdown in community that has ensued over the last three decades as it would for me to blame welfare for the murder of children in a fire in Derby. However, together we did allow a situation to come into play where to be someone you had to own, you had to spend beyond your means to do it, where you were defined by your monetary value; rather than who you are. I am not sure that was the kind of leadership the country needed. Mrs Thatcher did not do this by herself, we allowed ourselves to be led in such a way.
Therefore, while I very much pray she rests in peace; I trust we will seize the moment to look at where we have come from and we were are, and together perhaps seize the opportunity to plan the future differently.
I will never forget the look of desolation in my dad’s eyes when he took my mum to one side and told he was being made redundant. I will never forget the sadness and the tears of that evening. I will never forget the indignity of that proud man being numbered at the dole office.
I will always remember that he never ever lost his faith and hope that things would get better. I will remember his passionate commitment to social justice.
I will always remember that he cared passionately for those he thought ‘less fortunate’ than himself, and my mum’s exasperated look at the number of waifs and strays it was possible to invited for lunch, even when we did not have food to go round.
I will remember that he believed passionately that men and women are equal, that regardless of where you start, everyone had the right to have the best opportunity possible.
I will remember when I graduated from Newcastle University, his cheers amongst the silence when I got my degree.
He more than any other informed my understanding of the world; and today he would rage. He would be angered at the fact that the Labour Party he worked so tirelessly for had allowed Benefit Cuts Monday to happen with with a mute soundbite and abstention or two.
And he got all of this not from the Labour Party but from his single-parent mum and the chapel he attended. From the Bible that he loved and the community that he served. He was a community activist, liberation theologian and class warrior all rolled into one.
I am glad he is not around to see today.
But today I stand alongside side him and others of his generation and say we can make a difference. We can change this. We can speak truth to power and make sure those in power are brought love if necessary.
I can stand in no other place, otherwise I will not have remembered. In not remembering, I will cease to be me.
Luke 23:50-56
50 Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, 51 had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. 52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53 Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. 54 It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning.[o] 55 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. 56 Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.
Thought for Holy Saturday
Jesus was buried. It is mentioned in Scripture almost as a footnote. This is because we have for the most part learnt to do without Holy Saturday; it is almost as if we move from the final breath to the first gasp of Easter air without a pause. Pause today and take stock; for somehow in the darkness, light has escaped: it has redefined the darkness and there is now no reason to be afraid. Only in the stillness and the waiting will we be able to see this and begin to remember that darkness and light are both the same to the one who made us. That is God’s story, and with grace it might become ours.
Prayer
God of hope and stillness
God of grace and glory
Darkness and Light are both the same to you; help us to appreciate that
In the Name of Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.
As she cradled the battered body of her broken boy, Mary lifted her eyes to the heavens, from where help seemed not to come. Her lips moved and almost inaudibly, she whispered; my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, who is my salvation. These words spat out mingled with others that she knew from her Scriptures, I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me’ and ‘For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you cast me off?
As her tired hands held his cold ones, hope faded. The dreams that she had nurtured as his unborn body grew with her womb collapsed as her eyes took in the bloodied and beaten corpse. Hope had died. Her imagination as he had played with his brothers and sisters had soared as she had created a world in which injustice would be no more and Israel would be restored came crashing down as she held, in her arms, yet another victim of Rome’s intolerant justice.
Mary knew the stories of old: how God had rescued her ancestors. She had lived them through the celebration of Passover and the other festivals. She had seen in the vibrancy of her son that God still acted in the praises of those who could not see, in the dance of those who could walk and the breath of Lazarus, his friend. And yet, the hands that had shaped the mud to put on the eyes of the blind man and the feet that had partied at his bar mitzvah and at the wedding at Cana had been stilled. The lips that had tasted the wine and the hair that she had stroked when he was child and adult were palled and flat.
For Mary the stories of old could not take away the mind-numbing reality that death had come and for her would never be nothing at all. she remembered other deaths too, of Joseph; and what she would have given for that kind, strong and generous man to be with her now. She had lost Elizabeth and Zechariah too, and the wild man, John, with whom Jesus played in the Jordan when they were young.
The face of the ancient priest, Simeon, flooded unwanted into her mind. This is beyond piercing, more painful that could possibly be imagined. Nothing had prepared her for this.
It is hard to think of Mary like that. We do not do it very much at all. Good Friday has become mechanical; it has become a means of our salvation: our being made whole. We have stripped away from the Cross the corpse, as we have allowed the crescendo of our Easter alleluias to drown out the cries of the crucified and the agony of the mother who had lost her son. Death had been cleansed rather than allowed to remain jagged. Such torture has no part in our individualistic views of deliverance.
In being like this, we rob ourselves of reality and make our deliverance less than it is meant to be. Death is no longer allowed to be the last enemy; the one that angered Jesus at the grave of his friend. It is not something that then, as now, rips the heart out of families and mourning is invalidated because the man on the Cross is not allowed to be dead.
If he is dead, however, all sorts of possibilities are allowed to happen. That is a strange paradox, the possibilities of death. With the death of God’s Son comes not only the rumour of salvation; of the tangible probability that the older order of sin and death have been swept aside. What also comes is the opportunity to be vulnerable, to be human. For when we confront the deep darkness of death; then and only then can we accept our mortality and the sure and certain hope that we have been liberated.
For that Jesus has to be allowed to die. That is painful. Agony! An agony not just for him, but for us; for most us do not allow ourselves to be confronted by death.
The Shadow of Death has fallen.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? This is a question that many, who trust in the God of Israel, have asked down the centuries in times of crisis, whether personal or corporate.
Separation from God is only one kind of separation; although that would seem to Christian and Jewish thinkers to be the deepest most searing genre of division, and it is something we will return to.
Separations happen in all spheres of human relationships: Parents can be estranged from children; siblings can be at odds with each other, marriages can (sadly) collapse because the covenant made between husband and wife is shattered. Separation does not just happen in relationships between individuals. History is littered with examples of countries, cities, towns and villages torn apart. To this list we would need to add businesses, whether small or multi-national. At the heart of such separations lies more often than not individual human failure. The pain of separation is deep and long lingering. It lodges in our memories on a personal and corporate level. I remember quite vividly some of the disagreements I have had with others in the past, and can sometimes recall expressions, feelings, intensity and words. Sometimes every recall of a relationship that has broken can deepen the damage that has been made. Separation can stunt our ability to move on and grow; although at times it can be liberating.
An example of the former is found in the following story. There was a United Benefice of Churches in rural Suffolk. Four of the churches got on very well, mixing and attending each others’ gatherings. One church, although legally part of the team was emotionally cold to anything the other churches offered. A brave curate asked at that church’s PCC what the problem actually was. The question was met with incredulity, as a formidable warden replied ‘the Vikings’. Further research showed that the enmity between this Parish and the others stemmed from the fact that the others had not warned that village that the Vikings were coming. Such a story, whilst amusing, serves as a reminder that the pain of separations runs more deep than we often dare to imagine; and require deep remedies to resolve.
There are of course other separations, for example when a child leaves the parental home or a friend or family member will not be seen for a period of time. There is also the separation of death.
The Story of God, as uniquely chronicled in our scriptures, is one of covenantal relationship, which is often cherished and sometimes broken. In a seemingly cyclical spiral: God loves and chooses a people, the people love him, and then wander off often creating gods in their own image leading to God allowing the chosen people to separate themselves from him. I am deeply committed to the fundamental truth that God has demonstrated a capacity to love, cherish and nurture human beings. There is the other fact that we as human beings have verified time and time again that we are unworthy of such generosity. We have the capacity to rebel. We have the ability to turn the laws of God on their heads. We have the power to live as if there is no God. In little ways, we are able to choose separation from God. We do so to our cost.
There is another kind of separation, one which we avoid for the most part. It is the separation that Jesus experienced on the Cross. It is not though found in the anguished scream quoting from Psalm 22, ‘My God why have you forsaken me’ or in the unfounded suggestions that somehow Jesus thought of himself as dying in failure.
It is the idea first expounded by Paul, albeit in embryonic terms that in some mysterious way, God placed our sin upon his Son that we might go free.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
At the heart of this idea is that by Jesus experiencing a searing separation for God opens for us the possibility of a lively relationship with God, who is our heavenly father.
Part of the problem with such thinking is that it appears a tad too mechanical. It is for this reason that some liberal thinkers have shunned the approach believing that it amounts to a form of perverse cruelty.
Such an attitude profoundly misunderstands the God of the covenant, who will go to the ends of the earth, lavish his generosity to the end of its limits and beyond to allow people to be reconciled to him. It misconstrues what Paul knows that it is God himself who suffers to bring together all that is separated.
On the Cross, Jesus is separated. He is separated from those who love him. He is separated from those he loves. He is separated from God who cannot bear to look upon the sin that is yours and mind.
Separation for those who believe in Jesus is though the door to forgiveness. By going through that door we will be free; and will begin life’s greatest adventure. That does not quite mask the pain that separation causes.
The Shadow of separation has fallen.
Denial seems at first glance to be less than betrayal. In the context of the Passion of the Christ this is understandable, for Simon Peter is restored and becomes a model of discipleship; with his belief in Jesus, as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, gradually evolving; whereas Judas has been simply labelled as beyond the pale. Denial has become something palatable. It does not even rank as betrayal lite.
The denial by the rock, the one upon whom the Messiah will fashion his church, by refusing to acknowledge Jesus to a servant girl and others in the high priest’s courtyard is passed over, except perhaps as part of the story of Peter’s restoration. In a sense there is absolutely no problem with this; repentance needs to be appropriately noted and celebrated. In another sense, though, it is passed over because Peter has become a more likeable character than Judas. This is intriguing in and of itself for this is more to do with what they have become rather than any firm intimation as to their characters from the Gospels themselves.
Denial is though (for Christians) the opposite of making the good confession. The term good confession is one of the phrases used by the Apostle Paul. He employs it to describe the witness offered by Jesus on trial before Pontius Pilate. Confession and witness are theologically loaded terms, for both are related to the word ‘martyr’ and ‘martyrdom’.
In the New Testament, confession, witness and martyrdom come together around the figure of John the Baptist. Those of you familiar with the New Testament stories will remember him as the preacher of repentance, with an unfamiliar set of dietary habits and unfashionable set of clothing. He was Jesus’ cousin, baptised Jesus, and the person who announced who Jesus was at the beginning of his public ministry. His confession (his call to repentance) led to his arrest when those with power were uncomfortable with what such repentance would cost them, and his continued witness led to his death.
The Baptist also made the good confession by declaring that Jesus must increase, whilst he (John) must decrease. Such an attitude, however admirable, serves as a deep and profound challenge to many of us. If having Jesus as the Messiah at the centre of our lives is making the good confession, then many of us, myself included, do not make such a witness.
Speaking personally, it might be that I come closer to denial in terms of my public witness than I do to confession. It is not that I often sit by firesides in the courtyards of high priests, and deny I know Jesus; but I do have to hold up my hands and say sometimes I declare all too often how much I am willing to do for my Lord, and then fail often times to reach the first hurdle.
Denial, confession and witness are public acts. I am too often beguiled into believing that firstly, religion is a private matter with no right to infringe beyond my own pattern of life or that witness, martyrdom and confession are worthy artefacts from the past.
Faith in Christ has never been a private matter. It transcends boundaries and involves calling others to leave their nets, tax collectors booths, and even families to follow one who had no place to lay his head.
Archbishop Justin Welby in his enthronement sermon noted
I look at the Anglican leaders here and remember that in many cases round the world their people are scattered to the four winds or driven underground: by persecution, by storms of all sorts, even by cultural change. Many Christians are martyred now as in the past.
Every Christian is called to make the good confession, regardless of where they are from and who they are. Many of us though live with the shadow of denial.
We are in a good company, with Peter and the other disciples, both men and women, who fled.
We can though, like Peter be restored. To that we need though to seek God’s forgiveness for the times the way we live our lives amounts to us declaring, with oaths, that we do not know the man.
The Shadow of Denial has fallen.
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| Michael Bancroft on Reflection One; 15 minute… |
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