Forgiveness and Healing

God's word is the hammer that shatters rocks in pieces, even or perhaps especially on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. This Sunday many of my colleagues may have been sucking their pencils and feeling blank, but some of them will preach the sermon of their lives. By “sheer coincidence” the Lectionary serves up readings today about forgiveness. 

Romans 14 is about the handling of profound conscientious difference that produce strong mutual antagonism among Christians— something they experienced in the first century, too:

we will all stand before the judgment seat of God... then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean...

This approach has not generally been taken by the top brass of the Anglican Communion in the last ten years. Their occasional eschewings of judgment have ministered grace, but their fondest strategies for dodging the embarrassment of sexuality issues, or devising an ingenious lawyer’s band aid, have simply backfired and compounded the hurt. Go figure. Romans 14 really is the only way. Sooner rather than later, I hope.

And then Matthew 18, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who uncompromisingly told his followers to love their enemies, kicks in, straight to the solar plexus

Peter came and said to him, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

 Jesus goes on to tell the story of the unforgiving servant, that exposes the complete idiocy of our wraths and sorrows. How do we love our enemies, though?

Here in Great Missenden, Rosie the Vicar explored with tremendous clarity what forgiveness is and isn’t. The thief hanging on the cross was unquestionably guilty, and Jesus unquestionably innocent. Their interaction is outrageously simple. 

This made me reflect that if we try to forgive out of our own supposed resources of niceness, we will only compound the anger and hurt. All we can work out of, fruitfully, is our own receiving of forgiveness, love as strong as death, love with open eyes.

Her sermon went on to say true forgiveness is the hardest thing in the world. It is NOT

• Forgetting — it doesn't change the past, or choose to ignore it
• Reconciliation — it takes two to be reconciled, but only one to forgive
• Condoning — it is not about excusing bad behaviour
• Dismissing — saying it doesn’t matter when it does
• Pardoning — which is legal release from the penalty or other legal consequences of having done wrong

It is a personal transaction that releases the one offended against from the offence. That’s all.

She went on to quote the Roman Catholic psychiatrist Dr Jack Dominian, one of the Church’s greatest and wisest teachers about the reality of being human. He was talking here about marriage breakdown:

Forgiveness is not enough. We need to go beyond forgiveness and do as Christ did, who knew what it was to be man. We must try to understand what lies behind the act of aggression. One set of reasons is that the aggressor himself is hurt, insecure, vulnerable, bored, tired, depressed, confused, under stress and is seeking help through aggression. If that is the case, it is not good enough to forgive. We have to do something about remedying the cause of the aggression.

Even more important, the cause may be ourselves. There is nothing more hypocritical in Christian life than to forgive the aggressor with magnanimity when in fact we are responsible for his aggression.

The woman who forgives her husband for having an affair when she denies him love and affection is no saint. The parent who forgives the errant child who is not allowed their independence and is constantly devalued and undermined is no saint. the friend who forgives while driving their companion to distraction is no saint.

She went on to say

You have to be pretty honest with yourself to recognise your own culpability when you have always thought of yourself as the victim — but being able to think in such a way can be the key to unlocking hurts that have rumbled on for years

I wondered, leaving Church, whether the same skill of costly forgiveness that Jesus commanded his followers to exercise an infinite number of times when they fell out, the grace to let go, is not also necessary if we are to be released from idols, especially those we have inherited from the past, and so become what God is calling us to be as we embrace his future.

Revelation: Saving Faith

Speaking on Newsnight last week, John Broadhurst suggested that current disputations among Christians are really all about revelation, and I think he has a very useful point. Rosie Harper picked it up on the programme by pointing out that “Revelation is something which evolves; tradition grows in response to the work of the Holy Spirit.”

For some people, revelation is the process of handing down a fixed corpus of doctrine, a wrapped package that we label “the faith once delivered to the saints.” Faith is the work of protecting, propogating and defending that deposit against all comers. That’s where Saul started out, a Pharisee of the pharisees, zealous in his defence of the faith in which he had been brought up, a persecutor and zealot.

Then Saul encountered Jesus on the Damascus Road, and even though some of the rags and cultural assumptions of a persecuting zealot clung to him thereafter, the whole course of his life was changed. Faith was not slavishly adhering to works of the law, but exhibiting the courage, vision and hope of Abraham whose faith was accounted to him as righteousness. Once someone was in Christ they could not simply carry on using the old absolutist auto-pilot. They were subject to the Spirit who gives life, not the letter of the law that kills.

For Paul the Apostle, the faith once delivered to the saints is not an ideology but life in the Spirit by grace through faith, a revolutionary process of renewal by the Spirit. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counted for anything but grace working through faith, a new creation, to incorporate someone in Christ. This is the work of the Spirit, not human agency. In this way of looking at things Revelation is a dynamic personal process, not an instutional or ideological fix.

This renewal process didn’t nullify the law, but it did set it in a radical new perspective in a way that painfully exposed its limitations. The law was good as far as it went, but Grace accomplished what the law, weakened by sin, never could — the constitution of a new humanity in Christ where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.

Looking back at the law which had been his everything, Paul did not rubbish the concerns of those who stood where he had been, hanging onto various kinds of legalism, obsessing over meat sacrificed to idols and the like. But still he insisted, the reality of being in Christ transcends all else, and every decision now needs to be interpreted in the light of its over-riding significance.

In this perspective, the disputes that arise between Christians are a means of proving the genuineness of their convictions. Factionalism is part of human nature, but if indulged, it becomes Cancer in the body of Christ which needs to be watched and stamped on hard. Therefore erecting any Apostle, even Cephas or Appollos, into a rallying point for intra-Church exclusivism or disunity is profoundly abusive, however well-intentioned.

The challenge is to incorporate the vision of Pauline Christianity in our consciousness consistently as a way of life, and not to produce a new Pharisaism. Make no mistake, this was the big issue for early Christians, and concern about it runs through pretty much every page of the Epistles. Had the broader transformative Pauline vision not won through, the Church would almost certainly have survived only as a minor Jewish sect. The transformative stuff comes from the Spirit, and against its justice there can be no law.

Confronted with causes that divide people today, as then, what we need to do is reflect on the realities of the context in which God has set us, the mystery of Christ and the call of the Spirit, and then go figure.

The radical willingness to do this is saving faith, and by its fruits the world shall know Christ for who he is.

General Synod: Karma Chameleons?

I have now spent two evenings hearing election adddresses from candidates for houses of Clergy and Laity. Lesley Fellows’ top ten tips for General Synod Election Addresses strike deep chords within me

1. I'm dyslexic, do me a favour, keep it to one side of A4, use a font like Arial and font size 12. Simple. Oh, and I like pictures.

2. Be open and honest. If you are against Women Bishops, say it, don't make me glean it out of clever phrases.

3. Tell me what five or six issues you feel will come up at the next synod, and which way you are inclined to vote. (Without lots of words as to why, and what a jolly good chap you are).

4. If you want, tell me one legislation that you would like to see come up and why.

5. If you can, give me evidence that you are good at politics and lobbying.

6. Tell me if you are associated with any groups that aid you in your politics and lobbying.

7. Don't give me 25 points of things that are important to you. Just tell me your top three (and make it real rather than bull shitty). I will roll my eyes if you say you are passionate about mission - what does that mean?

8. I don't care whether your hobbies are paragliding or stamp collecting - really - I don't care.

9. I don't care whether you have been a priest 100 years or you are a curate.

10. I don't care whether you are single, divorced, married with 17 children.

In both local meetings there has been a lot of talking dirty about mission and Extreme Being Nice. “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” asks the Prophet Amos. Well, apparently they can, in England anyway. That’s nice.

Like Lesley, I looked for trenchant Conservative conviction, and have to say I picked up a curious mood music from semi-professional church politicians, appealing to rather than contesting inclusivity as a value. Better late than never, I suppose. A visitor from another planet would never have known, on the basis of what was said, that any candidate did not bleed for radical inclusivity.

Mindful of Lesley’s top ten tips, one speech stood out head and shoulders for me. It suggested what synod is about apart from Extreme Being Nice — a place to become aligned to our gospel values, and to articulate them to outsiders. In sheer hard headed terms I found this very much the Gettysburg Address of both evenings, from my learned friend, chaplain, and local Vicar Rosie Harper. Having covered Lesley’s points (3) (4) and (6) in her written paper, this is what she said:

Good evening. I’m Rosie Harper, the incumbent here and also Bishop Alan’s chaplain. I had a real wake-up call a couple of weeks ago.

A group of us were working with a very senior consultant around the nature of our institutional processes. It fell to me to give him a lift to the station at the end of the session -so of course I asked him what he made of what he had learnt about us.

This is what he said: ‘It seems to me that you are working as if you didn’t actually believe in what you are doing.’

Scary or what?

We all know that fabulous stuff is going on at the local parish level, and here in Bucks we are trying to be an Archdeaconry which models a very high degree of actually doing what we believe.

But………

General Synod undoubtedly sets the tone in the country -mostly because of its fairly high media profile. What the country hears are not our gospel values; they hear that we don’t do equality, we are locked into archaic financial systems, and there is still a considerable lack of transparency.

But, you might want to say -we are all equal in the church -well yes -so long as you are white, middle class, straight, male and preferable with at least one degree. Whilst this remains the case our integrity is so severely compromised that –to be frank -anyone with any sense struggles to take us seriously.

The good news is that we can change all that. We can preach a gospel that is good news for Everyone. We can get grown up about the way we do money and we can begin to put our passion and energy in to what the Lord requires: to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.’ Micah 6.8

I would like to be one of the sensible people at General synod — forward looking, a bit radical and full of faith that God will continue to build his church. To do that I need your vote. Please!

Fashion-conscious Clergy? Hmm...

Vot does a Vooman Vont? Big Issue, of course, for Sigmund Freud. I wondered myself as I appeared fleetingly, but long enough for people to notice, on Trinny and Susannah a couple of days ago. The main subject was my vicar, chaplain and colleague, Rosie Harper, (previous on ths blog here) trying out new alternatives to conventional “Dibley” dog collars with them. And yes, I confess, I did ask Susannah Constantine whether she thought my bum looked big in this. Was (weak) joke, not necessarily intended for primetime national TV... and perhaps it was unfortunate the clip made the trailer as well as the show.

On a rather Female show, I realised how blokey and ignorant I am about Fashion and all its works. It wasn’t quite like Father Ted and colleagues in the lingerie department, but I realised how little I know about that stuff. The TV crew and Susannah Constantine were delightful, and easy to have around. There’s an idiot response to fashion which just sees it as inherently superficial. I disagree, now. I understand that many don’t have much choice about their appearance, but how they look is not inherently egotistical, just part of their real humanity. I was amazed by the dignity and care about appearance of families in Indian Villages last year. Dismissing appearances says, on one level, that people don’t matter, and I think that’s as questionable a notion, for an incarnational religion, as airhead obsession down the mall. OK, ironside Puritans, what’s wrong with people being creative about themseves, and feeling more confident?

Looking around clergy colleagues milling around with Susannah and TV crew, they struck me as a varied, enterprising, original group of people. Actually there wasn't a single look among them you could label “County Lady” or whatever. Some are more appearance conscious than others, and doubtless some more adept than others at the dark arts of knowing and managing how they come over; all, however, very engaged in role, and wonderfully interactive.

Wondering about makeover options for bishops, I came across two interesting image statements from the good old days when bishops really looked like bishops, both Cosmo Gordon Lang.

I fear neither is quite me. The one on the Right especially gives me the creeps. How scary is that? My bum would definitely look big like that...

Let’s begin at the very beginning...

... the Baptism of Christ yesterday and Aelred of Rievaulx today. I was delighted to celebrate the Eucharist with a religious community this morning, Burnham Abbey. 750 years ago, Aelred wrote about the problem of “particular friendships” in the monastery. Of course monastics will have positive/ negative reactions to others in community, and preferences. G. K. Chesterton said the reason Christ bids us love our enemies and love our neighbours is that these are generally the same people. All the more so in Community. Here’s the Big Issue about this:

1. On the one hand, If people pair off, where does that leave the common life of the house?
   
2. On the other hand, all love is particular and if people hold themselves entirely aloof, how can it be said that the love of Christ dwells in them?
   

Aelred says that all love is particular; but chaste particular love will be generous, and increase our capacity to offer unconditional love, which does not seek its own. Selfish desire, however is always a narrowing thing. The kingdom has to be worked out in community with others; it cannot be done by ego in isolation.

Yesterday morning in Church, Rosie our Vicar took a penetrating view of the baptism of Christ as the place we have to begin if we want to be Christians. Descartes said “Cogito Ergo sum.” Really? Brains on sticks? Is it really worth getting up in the morning for that? How about “Amo ergo sum?”

Mike Higton has found a starting point for understanding the theology of Rowan Williams, during a trying few hours, wasted in an airport lounge:

aware of the work-stale glances of the airport staff, of the quickly averted eyes of my fellow travellers, of the anticipated scrutiny of those I was going to meet, of the assessing gaze of my employers carried around in my head, and of my own anxious self-regard. What difference would it have made if I had let myself believe that, beyond all these, I was held in a wholly loving gaze... subject to a gaze that saw all my surface accidents and arrangement, all my inner habits and inheritances, all my anxieties and arrogances, all my history — and yet a gaze which nevertheless loved that whole tangled bundle which makes me the self I am, with an utterly free, utterly selfless love?

And what difference would it have made if I had seen each face around me in that departure lounge... as individually held in the same overwhelming loving gaze... if I believed each person around me to be loved ith the same focus, by a love which sw each person’s unique history, unique problems, unique capacity, unique gift?

Yesterday morning, Rosie quoted Raymond Carver’s poem “Late Fragment,” writen shorly before his tragically early death:

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth

“This is my beloved Son...” Jesus begins by knwing that there is a God who loves us with open eyes, always there, in whose gentle but searching sight we live, and fear, and dream and hope, and fail and try again.

If our image of ourselves is degraded and impersonal, our image of God will be impoverished, shrill and graceless. Unless we know that he calls us his beloved children, religion can be no more than a harsh, sour business. Zeal for ideology compounds this problem. The only way out is loving relationships in a community of grace. We love because he first loved us; showing us how to love, by doing it. But when you try to love someone who finds themselves unlovable, they will initially do everything they can to prove their negative image of themselves was right...

Jesus warned pharisees against sincerely searching the Scriptures for God, only to find a vengeful idol of their own invention, reflecting their own self-absorbtion, personal insecurity and self-righteousness. Perhaps, for some people, this is the Idol they can only junk by boarding the atheist bus. One sign of knowing God for ourselves is the ability to let go of paranoid anxiety, the cornerstone of Pelagianism masquerading as faith.

So here is my personal checklist of de-personalising symptoms to watch out for this coming year, each of them far more spiritual perilous than “Liberalism” or “Conservatism” could ever be:

• Temptation to treat God as either a vengeful Mikado or breezy disengaged “boys will be boys” uncle.
  
  
• “Glass half empty” whining and self pity.
  
  
• Greater allowance for my own failings than those of others, and its old friend, being an expert on the shortcomings of people who differ from me, but less of an expert on my own. The only answer to this is to seek out and listen carefully to the people whose presence makes me most awkward.
  
  
• Sarcasm really is the cheapest form of wit.
  
  
• Selective reading of the Bible, with the subtlety and paradox of the actual text surgically removed, reducing it to a series of soundbites which prove God, giess what, agrees with me and my chums.
  
  
• Fixation on dogma as though it were, in itself faith. Which it isn’t. It’s just the aspect of faith that’s easiest to verbalise about, that’s all; and the most provisional.
  

I might also take another read of these:

Lambeth Conference survival kit

Safely settled at the University of Kent. No hot water for us this morning, though — ascetic retreat coming up, then. Lucy and I were delighted to open an eiscopally coloured packet from Church last Sunday and find a Lambeth Survival Kit from our vicar and chaplain. How Handy.

There’s an emergency shot of Swiss Vodka, of course, a copy of the Beano for those long evenings on the fringe, and some Lindt. There's a Cross to remind me what it’s all about really, but best of all, a bag of High Fibre Temptations. These turn out to be Mixed Fruit, nuts and seeds. There’s a sermon in that bag — Mixed nuts that plant seeds bear fruit...

And so, after satisfyingly chunky night prayer, led by members of religious communities, to bed on day 1. Retreat tomorrow.

Fruit of the Spirit or Lambeth Walk?

Every few weeks I get a Sunday morning where I can just go to Church as a punter, with Lucy. Rosie the Vicar has been preaching about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, and got to three really interesting, counter-intuitive ones this week:

1. Faithfulness, as opposed to self-centredness, cynicism, ambition and political opportunism
   
2. Gentleness, which always seems weak and weedy in a world of hard-nosed assertive achievement. Pride, anger, ambition are far more fun. It’s all that some hacks can pick up on their radar, poor dears.
   
3. Self-control, flies in the face of hedonism (eat, drink and be merry) and hi-ego self-actualization. Ironically, the only real way to self actualise is to defocus on self and get a life.

Of course, like all fruit, you can’t command them to happen from the outside in. You just have to focus on the Spirit, then let them grow from the inside out. We are stuck with a persistent nagging lower nature. This expresses itself in “works of the flesh,” sometiems about sex and booze, but far, far more often among the religious, the Synodical sins of enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy. Far more people out there can’t see Christ in us because of the latter than the former.

The success of Lambeth this year is all about whether we bishops can prioiritse God through the indaba process, based on listening, where everyone has a voice. Alternately we simply stick with what we’ve always done before. The people with big mouths and hot heads exercise them freely. The same old bores listen basically to themselves on the big stage. Everybody else shuts up as usual and tries to enjoy the sideshows. Some people love it, because the process does not challenge their basic lack of self-awareness, makes them feel rather grand, and feeds their self-importance. In this (still) overwhelmingly male gathering, it has to be said this is a bit of a little boys’ thing, too. The characteristic result is a bunch of grandiose pronouncements, mostly about about other people, which end up on the shelf, as ammo for strife and dissension.

Well, it’s up to us. That’s the challenge. The resources to meet it can’t be commanded behaviourally, but need to be growing inside from the Spirit — and allowing that deeper, more personal process, to happen is the real challenge.

Holy joy in a (nameless) holy place

Easter Day this year ended up for me celebrating Christ’s resurrection with a couple of dozen people in what I’m told is the smallest Church in Bucks — Little Hampden. For just over 800 years it has served what is now a few scattered houses up a valley high in the Chilterns. Historically it went with Hartwell, miles away, but it’s now in with Great Missenden, most ably served by Rosie Harper, and Tricia Neale. It’s so small that it’s hard not to feel very much connected and part of things. Worship included the world’s most adorable baby, about eighteen months old, who pootled up and down throughout proceedings smiling at everything and commenting in a surprisingly quiet and gentle, stream of consciousness, kind of way. A tangerine is certainly not a small orange.

It’s all split levels, with a beautiful simple altar table from the fourteenth century. There’s a parvis room over the porch, but nobody knew the way in any more! This church has no certain dedication, but a lot of Saint Christopher, in the glass, and in an unusually tall 13th century wall painting that originally greeted you as you entered the Church from the other side.

It has a lot of wall painting, including this doom in an usual position on the South wall — St Michael weighing souls, whilst the Devil jumps up and down on the bad side, trying (unsuccessfully) to outweigh Our Lady on the good side! I also noticed a 12th century Bishop, wearing exactly the gear I’d just had on at Coleshill for the big service earlier that morning. It’s always moving to stand in the place where hundreds of years of Christians have worshipped, especially in the very intimate setting of Little Hampden, with us all jammed together closely in a holy place the size of a living room.

Somebody said to me how disappointed they are by Fleet Street dwindling congregations, so we looked in the book which went back sixty years, and discovered that in general more people go to Church there now than did sixty years ago! I have had exactly this conversation followed by the same revelation of reality three times already this year. It’s strange how Flat Earth News becomes part of people’s consciousness, regardless of reality...

Real Biblical Christianity

Helpful sermon from Rosie the Vicar in Church yesterday morning for anyone trying to grow as a disciple, or wrestling with their neighbours’ annoying behavioural proclivities, or trying to stay sane in the Anglican playground. It was about the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:

We have these two main themes. A person who knows themselves to be loved and accepted by God will have no need to make a fool of themselves by pretending to be better than others and judging them. And prayer is nothing without integrity... There’s a fantastic, liberating final sentence “If you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself”...

Simple message this morning. Grace and Integrity. A very potent mix. A mixture which grows Christian men and women of real stature, men and women who go on to make a real difference in the world.

Thinks: Aha! She’s been at The Message — the Bible in contemporary language that is, not the 1982 hip hop song by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. It’s rendering of Luke 18:14 reminds me of a certain picture downstairs. It puts me in mind of something else I've recently read. Barna Group (US Evangelical research foundation) has been researching what a new generation really thinks about Christianity and why it matters. Of everything I've read this month, this book the one where I've made the most mental underlinings and margin notes, so, as the witch used to say in Narnia, “We will hear more of this hereafter.”

In one of the reaction pieces to the fifth research finding of the study (“judgmental”) Jud Wilhite, pastor of Central Christian Church in “Sin City — Las Vegas, a city built on exhibitionism and excess,” says he has recently read a paragraph by C. S Lewis that blew his mind: (Where did he find it?)

There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, even though some of his actions and thoughts revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love. That person is me. There are plenty of things I do that I don’t like, but if I can love myself without approving of all that I do, I can also love others without approving of all they do...

Jesus and the Old Testament alike call us to “love our neighbour as ourselves” (actually this command comes directly in Leviticus, Matthew/Mark, Romans, Galatians and James!). If we want to be “Biblical” in our faith, here’s another way to do it, rather than picking obscure techie nuggets out of the bible and using them as gravel to stone other people whose lifestyles disgust us. Missionally speaking, it’s a no-brainer, too.

Who Dares Wins?

A wise and timely sermon in Great Missenden Church this morning from Rosie, our Vicar, in her series about Neglected Christian Virtues, about Courage.

Courage is a matter of the heart — the ability to see things clearly as they are, not the absence of fear, but rising above it. If we are going to be salt and light in the world, we need to engage with things as they are. This means being real and learning how to embrace conflict, cherishing our freedom to speak without being destructive. If we fail to rise to this challenge, we shrink back from community and cease to connect with anyone outside our own particular churchy bubble. We need faith to believe God's promises, and then courage to act on that faith.

The interesting fact is you don't get God's strength in one great encouraging dollop then, when all the ducks are in a line, the courage to act. It is by acting we actually develop the courage to act. Aristotle says “we become brave by doing brave acts.” Psalm 37 says “Wait on the Lord. be of good courage and (then) he will strengthen your heart.” This isn't a discussion starter (though you could have an interesting discussion about it). It's an invitation to get on with it and start living courageously by grace through faith made real!

Waiting — a forgotten part of real discipleship

Rosie our Vicar preached a sermon I found really perceptive and helpful at this morning's 8.00 in Great Missenden, on the almost forgotten Christian virtue of Patience.

14 times the New Testament speaks of its centrality for life, and as a fruit of the Spirit. Unfortunately, from terrorists to supermarket shoppers, whatever it is, we want it our way, we want it Now, and nothing less will do. Not to have an instant solution is the ultimate failure. There's no such thing any more as a season for which we wait, not even for strawberries. Perhaps that's one reason so many people can't get no satisfaction, and are so angry and unhappy, scanning the bookshop for a 'How To' Book that will somehow take the waiting out of wanting.

But think how patient God is all the time! In us, Patience is a fruit of the Spirit that grows, in due season, as we wait in hope. The Eucharist itself is the joyful expectation of an unfulfilled hope — an act of patience.

So exactly the people to break bread with are the people you can't stand, whilst you wait, with them, for something better. That's exactly the point of the ruddy thing! Hang up on them and you cut yourself off, because God hasn't hung up on them yet, even if you have.

Food for thought.