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.

Planting an apple tree in Bremen

A few stray shots do no justice to what was, overwhelmingly, the largest and most impressive learning gathering for Christians in Europe this year. Dancing around the streets to 20 samba bands with 250,000 others is, indeed, an unusual thing to be able to do. There’s a great account of the event by Martin Flower, a member of St Anne & St Agnes Lutheran Church in the City of London, who went to entrely different things from me, here.

One challenging phrase was quoted incidentally, however, at 3 events I attended. It is one description, by Martin Luther, of what it means to have real faith:

Auch wenn ich wüsste,
dass morgen die Welt zugrunde geht,
würde ich heute noch
einen Apfelbaum pflanzen.

Which being translated means

Even if I knew that the whole world
was going to smash tomorrow,
Still, I would plant an Apple Tree today.

Grief transformed, prayer answered

Someone recently bereaved was telling me about his first new year alone — bleak and unpromising, nothing doing in an empty house, he wandered slightly aimlessly into town. There on the streets, he met a beggar. “What are you doing here?” the beggar asked him. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you what,” replied my friend. “You’re coming with me. We’re going tenpin bowling, then MacDonalds and New Year together.” They had a memorable evening. And next term, at school, the children sang in assembly love isn’t love unless you give it away. They’re right.

I was reminded of a sappy perhaps, but profoundly true sentiment about prayer from the (rather uneven) Evan Almighty, voiced by Morgan Freeman, who is fast cornering the market in playing the Voice of God:

Obama, transition, leadership, hope

The US limbers up for its 1997 Blair moment; The staging may be Busby Berkeley, but the emotion is real, and the sense of release, and hope. Non-trivial moments in history are catured by images that become, to use a much abused word, iconic.

Icons are windows into the divine providence; Iconic images mark out the turning points in our story. Soldiers on Iwo Jima (US) or St Paul’s in the Blitz (UK) spoke of struggle and hope, the child being shot in Vietnam spoke of victimhood and futility of the war, the twin towers of the end of progressive secular dreamland. The next two days will throw up several images, one or two of which will surely become iconic.

But only if the promise is given substance, fulfilled. We shall have to wait and see how that happens, or doesn’t. Obama is Lincoln-theming his inauguration; a noble cross-party gesture, especially if like the President-elect, you are a competent constitutional lawyer who actually knows the first thing about Lincoln. Obama's epic struggle to get there, involved transcending a name which was hardly designed for the hour by Madison Avenue. Lincoln was dismissed as “a fourth-rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar,” whose speeches wcomposer of “illiterate compositions... interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes.” Nastier things have no doubt been said about Obama. The Tribune said of Lincoln that his shrewd course through the contraditctory torrents heading for the rocks at the Chicago Convention of 1860 was not trimming, “the result of ambition which measures words or regulates acts” but “the natural consequence of an equable nature and a mental constitution that is never off its balance.” So obscure was he that half the press were undertain as to whether his Christian name was “Abraham” or “Abram.” Lincoln came to his inauguration as a man who knew his own name, made public property.

Now Obama is on that spot, how is he supposed to do it? How do we all manage our expectations? Here are a couple of quotes to ponder about Leadership and future-making from the head of the best new West Coast religion to emerge in the past thirty years, Steve Jobs:

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

and, speaking of the kind of attitude he wants to grow in his colleagues,

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

Barack Obama inauguration Ahoy!

Barack Obama’s inauguration preparations are well in hand, as the free world awaits some fresh thinking. Meanwhile Despair.com celebrates its 500,000th order. Even Budweiser guys are gagging for a bit of hope:

Advent Hope: Could it happen to you?

Advent 1: Though-provoking Obama Ad — “It Could happen to you” by Alexandra Barreto, Rider Strong ad Shiloh Strong of Los Angeles Ca, won the Funniest Ad category of MoveOn.org’s Obama in 30 seconds Contest. Could it happen to you? think about it...

and for anyone still in search of fresh online Advent stimulation, try the (US) Advent Conspiracy:

Wagon ring or wagon train?

Very interesting conversations today at our Board of Social Responsibility. Are the wagons on the trail, or circled round against real or imaginary foes? Is our onward mission driving and guiding ministry, or are attempts to sustain ministry as we have received it defining our sense of mission (purpose)?

How we can become the kind of missional community we long to be, in which the wagons move forward, not round and round in circles? We have vital work to do. To give one small example, someone had been round secondary schools and met children feeling deep seated despair about the future of the earth. They have enough information to know it’s questionable under present management, but no confidence, no framework of hope, in which this perception could galvanise them into action. The result was a pervasive spirit of “we can’t do anything about it anyway, so why does it matter?”

So why do so many of our powerful network of practitioners working in fields as diverse as criminal justice, environment, food futures, education and social care, feel so stymied so much of the time? Busyness, you may say, but what attitudes and assumptions are underlying that, and paralysing best intentions?

Some kind of internal distraction process seems to be pulling the wagons off the trail, dragging them into a defensive, inward looking circle. To change the metaphor, perhaps the body of Christ is subject to the kind of illness in which the body’s immune system turns on the body itself, producing illness, despair and frustration. If these both/ands become either/ors, they are symptoms of sickness:

1. Academy versus the Field
   In fact the only learning worth doing makes a difference to the ways we envision the world, or our response to it. Separating off academic theology from lived theology is bad news, either to despise it (in the UK) or venerate it (most of the rest of the world). Both need to inform each other.
   
2. Gathered versus Dispersed Church
   Human groups have a way of degenerating into self-serving cliques. One of God’s mechanisms for preventing this is to send along a healthy crop of alternative people to leaven and enliven them. Really strong cliques, however, have a way of making it pretty obvious up with what they will put in others. They can pray as hard as they want for growth. No responsible deity, however, would put more people into their sausage machine, until they grow up and become joinable.
   
3. Church versus World
   There are a few instances in the Scriptures of “world” meaning “everything organising itself over and against God.” Its prime use, however, the world is the place God created and loves so much he gave his only Son. He loves it that much. Why don’t we? Clique church can become a refusge for misnathropic people who are profoundly cynical or despairing about the real world, who try and whip the Church into grinding their axes. Unless God gives up entirely on the Church, it can’t oblige. As a result they can only become angrier and more frustrated.
   
4. Ministry versus Mission
   Rowan talks about mission as finding out what God’s doing and joining in. There is an essential continuity between serving God and serving all life. Serving is Ministry. Conflicted and Lost Cliques playing at Church appropriate Ministry to themselves as a consumer faciity to make them feel better; the irony is they end up losing any sense of what ministry is about, and, often as not, with no ministers.
   
5. Tradition versus Creativity
   Being part of the Church in time and space carries you back and forward as you identify with those who have trod this way before you, through places of great resourcefulness and learning. Real tradition is a powerful living force for change — revolution by tradition. Selfish cliques like you find in wagon rings appropriate “tradition” exclusively for themselves. Randy for antique, they sentimentalise their conception of tradition and bag it up into a totem which curses them and everyone else. The living faith of dead people is debased into dead works for living people.
   
6. Parish versus Workplace
   The point of participation in a gathered Christian community is to resource authentic living out in the world. Cliques don’t see it that way. For them, the point of life in the world is to resource their own Disneyland conception of Church. When people who wold be rally sensible at work start behaving like complete idiots in Church, you now you’ve got a problem here.
   
7. Leadership versus Democracy
   God gifts everybody distinctively for the work he calls them to do. When he does this across a whole community, there’s a sense among the faithful that can workshop and weigh individual passions and initiatives. When this function goes wrong, people collect into little cabals and play politics with religion. The key sign of this is exclusivism based on purity. In classic Christianity God does the throwing out at the end of the world. In this debased form, we give him a hand now.
   
8. Centre versus Cells (Universal versus Local?)
   In a healthy Church, each limb or organ rejoices to be doing what it’s for. In a sick one, people play the one off against the others, in various elaborate “them and us” games. St one extreme the local group becomes the only reality; at the other some fantasy or imperialistic conception of the whole tyranises the local. Corporate engagement grows mutual respect; sickness in this department grows resentment and suspicion.
   
9. Ecclesiology versus Evangelism
   maintaining effective order internally is part of the fitness for purpose of the Church. It’s infrastructural, and part of becoming an intentional and realistic delivery system for the kingdom. Turned in on, or as an end in itself, it soon becomes toxic and self-serving. People can marvel at what’s achieved, but what’s the point? For whom else is it good news? When Evangelism disconnects from Ecclesiology, abuse and non-accountability are never far behind. What are people being evangelised into, and what will they do when they get there? Or is it all just a pyramid selling scam?
   
10. Spiritual versus Physical
    We cannot live fruitfully by bread alone. But neither can we survive on a disconnected vapid spirituality, driven by narcissism and subjectivity. Christianity is a sacramental way of life, in which everything is charged with potential meaning, and the best ideas cannot be completed without finding some expression in real life. Every real philosophy demands action.
    

Looking up, without baggage

Wonderful and inspiring day yesterday at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Bedgrove. It was very energizing to experience vibrant Charismatic Evangelical worship, and to feel part of a real learning, discipled community. There are wise and committed home-grown leaders within the congregation. I found at least one of any sociological group you care to name, always a sign of strength in depth.

They are currently looking for a new Vicar. The challenge will be to find someone gifted to catalyze able people for service, and draw the act together by mutual accountability. Power games would be lethal, as would fantasy football Church (“I've got a great half baked idea which I'm going to download on you anyway...”), or Fat Controller grandiosity.

We explored Jesus’ baptism as a type of our baptism — standing at the lowest place on earth, turning from thirty years of home and small town life, looking up to all that was to be. Inspired by George and Ben’s incredible journey, I quoted an old thing I came across years ago. It’s all over the internet, sourced from “an anonymous Confederate soldier.” It says something helpful about our ambitions and expectations at the beginning of 2008:

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve —
I was made weak, that I might humbly obey.
I asked for health, that I might do great things for God —
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy —
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, to earn the praise of men —
I was given weakness, that I might feel my need of God
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life —
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things
I asked for great things in the future —
I was given the joy of the present moment.
I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for —
I am most richly blessed among all...

Call this a Free Country?

Really? George & Ben find out by taking the long walk from Land’s End to John o’Groats, entirely reliant on the generosity of the British public, apart from their Union Jack Boxers. The whole story’s here. Saint Francis would be right proud of the lads. Mahood & Cocks went mendicant to prove a point — “how bloody nice people are.” They call into question any tendency to “misunderestimate” (© G. Bush) the kindness of strangers.

OK, fellow Christians. What does Faith mean to us, and what are we doing about it?

Praying for the peace of Jerusalem?

CCJ Middle East briefing at the House of Commons with Professor Shai Feldman, director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis. Joke: CNN asked on the streets of Tel Aviv for a summary outlook. One word? “Good.” Two words? “Not Good!”

Wikipedia’s List of middle East peace proposals since 1919, says “this list is incomplete. You can expand it.” But how? Looking ahead to the Annapolis Convention, what exactly could this be whenever it happens?

1. The Crowning moment of a peace process? Lovely idea, but crowning what?
   
2. An opportunity to negotiate, like Camp David? fine, but Bush ain’t no Carter or Clinton in this region, especially not post-Iraq. Post-Iraq?
   
3. a Launching board for a new process phase, as the Madrid conference was? It could be, but will need careful timetabling and focus to reassure the parties they can move forward.

For what could we all focus prayers right now in the middle east?

1. Stabilization — West Bank settlement activity ends / Palestinians end violence. Great idea. All attempts so far to do this have failed...
2. Road Map 2 — “provisional state building” / “Comprehensive armistice” Some kind of recognition thing would be a start.
3. Negotiate permanent status agreement — ideal, but who’s really ready for this, and how?

It would be lovely to think that Annapolis could be more than a high class photo opportunity. But how, I wondered?

1. The cleansing of historical memory on all sides is fundamental. Competing narratives cannot be reconciled right now, not even on the level of “wie es eigentlich gewesen.” They have to be acknowledged for what they are, and how they impact the communities that hold them. Mental note to read the new edition of Benny Goodman’s analysis.
2. The good ol’ British Army Bloody Fool theory says the other lot are just like they are because they are who they are. Because everyone is, to a certain extent, a bloody fool, it explains everything. This thinking produces designer conflicts on the TV news, which the media just feed, like they used to in Northern Ireland. Stereotypes are not enough. Just say no. Progress will only come as people, including “us”, are willing to go the second mile, imaginatively, compassionately, and rationally. This means acknowledging provisionality but not losing hope. It means assessing people’s motives in terms of their basic needs and perceptions, and refusing to create simple goodies and baddies. When tempted to settle for “they just do it because they are...” just say no.
   
3. The Scriptures picture a future that is God’s, and hold out hope. It's always necessary to be realistic about others’ motives and intentions, but all forms of cynicism, including crude instrumentalism, are not enough. Everybody has legitimate needs and aspirations. How could these fit together? Religious people have a special duty, and, theoretically, special resources to cherish and model respect, imagination, compassion and understanding. Religion that doesn't do these things is just licensed insanity.

Love and Death...

Dr Randy Pausch (47) teaches computer science at Carnegie Mellon university, and is a world rated Virtual Reality Guru and Ubergeek. CMU challenges its professors, if you could only give one last lecture about the things that really matter, what would you say? Last Tuesday's “last lecture” was different. Dr Pausch is actually suffering from Pancreatic Cancer, and has only a few more months to live. He talks about his childhood dreams and what happened to them, and what's to live for, and how.
Have you got any “last words” for anyone? What would you say?
OK. If you've got more than six months to live, How are you going to live, and what for?

Above is a very brief extract of the lecture — Here's a higher quality video of the whole lecture, in context — The talk runs for about an hour from 10 minutes or so in — you can scroll through when it's running:

Is this the Truth? Could things really turn around?

Stick with the possibilities of this — There's a twist in it!

Kudos to Eric Bramlett, Creative Arts monkey @ Community Christian Church of Chicago.