Timing...

When I think back, I can now remember that I never thought I would see old age.  I can’t put my finger on why but I didn’t.

Perhaps I was influenced by the immortal line in the film Blade Runner where the creator of the rogue replicants says to him “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly.”

I was aware that I had been blessed with so many wonderful experiences of God, beyond anything I could justify. I have heard God speaking to me in many and various ways from my childhood. I experienced things on a regular basis which many Christians longed for just once.  God had been so good to me and his light had indeed burned so very very brightly.

This gave me a kind of fearlessness which embraced racing around the streets of London on two wheels, or sharing bunk beds with a recent triad ex–addict without question.

When I really needed God to speak to me, I knew where I could go and how to wait to hear from God.  I didn’t always get a direct answer to my questions, but I always received the next piece of the puzzle.

I had been so blessed and God’s light had burned so bright for me, perhaps I could only ever expect to live half as long.

That is not so unusual amongst the young, of course.  Being old seems such a very long way away, and so incomprehensible when you are in your teens and your twenties.

As I grew older however, other people came into my life – wife, son, daughter. Priorities change.  Plans change.  Whereas once I could be ready to pack bags at a moment's notice for a new experience in life, there were now other people to think about.  Other considerations.  Growing old starts to become more attractive as the time of life when I could relax with my wife after our children had flown the nest.

Mel and I had planned to retire to Oban on the west coast of Scotland.  I would buy a second hand Rib and explore the channels and islands.  We would hold hands and watch the sun setting over the sea.

I forgot about my younger premonitions.

Now of course, we know that will never be. After another few weeks of struggling, I was admitted to hospital last week for more scans.  They showed that my cancer has now spread to my liver and lungs. That’s a full house for the major organs which are monitored for Prostate Cancer.  It is travelling at will around my body.  I have reached the limit of treatment for radiotherapy.  There is no chemotherapy available.  My cancer is resistant to the standard chemo and I am not well enough to even contemplate the only stronger alternative.

The  consensus is that I have entered my last few months of life on this earth.

And so to timing.

Recently, I shared my ambivalent thoughts on retiring (Broken Vessels) and it just so happened that on the day of my official retirement last Friday, I was transferred from hospital to our local hospice in Dorchester.  The timing was poignant to say the least.

I should only be here for a few days this time to get my meds on an even keel and control my pain to give me some quality of life for the time I have left.

Which brings me to one positive thought tonight and the opportunity to express it.  As I face this shortening fuse, at least I get the opportunity to prepare for my death – a luxury which many do not enjoy - and I want use it to ensure that, wherever possible, I am at peace with others.

So to anyone I have hurt over the years, I humbly ask your forgiveness. And to anyone who knows they have hurt me, may I assure you of mine.

In the last few moments of Blade Runner it is the android, the replicant who is about to die, that displays the greatest humanity.  Built to destroy, he chooses to save a life as his last act before the curtains come down on his own – and he saves the life of the person  who has been sent to kill him.

There is nothing so dramatic in my life, but I have often found myself in conflict with others during my ministry and conflict almost inevitably leads to one or both parties being hurt.

Neither is this a death-bed confession (I've got a few months to go yet and nothing to warrent such hype!) but setting things straight is given a high priority in the Gospels.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

(Matthew 5:23;24)

In the Lord's Prayer, our own forgiveness is inextricably linked with our willingness to forgive others.

"Forgive us our sins
as we have forgiven those who sin against us."

Forgiveness shared and exchanged is the only way in God’s kingdom and I both offer and seek this as part of my preparation for what lies ahead.

Beyond that, I would ask for your continuing prayers for my wife Mel, son Isaac and  daughter Iona. They are uppermost in my thoughts and prayers at this time and I would be grateful if you could spare a moment for them from time to time.

For myself, I have found encouragement in the words of Psalm 16 recently:

I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Amen.

Growing in confidence

Crossing the Line - part 27

As the weeks and months at Tai Tam went by, I began to grow into the pattern of life there.

I developed my own kind of harmony with the routine of day to day life.  I discovered my niche in our ever changing community of brothers and helpers. I discovered the things I liked to do on my day off each week and the things I didn’t. 

My fellow western helpers were a wonderfully mixed bunch of people, drawn mostly from the UK, USA, & New Zealand.  I got used to being called ‘Beenie’ by my Kiwi colleagues and ‘Ah Bey-neigh’ by the Chinese brothers.  We were also blessed with 2 or 3 Chinese helpers at any one time, themselves ex-addicts who had stayed within the ministry to help others.  They understood 10 times more than us westerners of what was being said around us and had the wisdom to share with us the things we needed to know, without telling us too much.  Sometimes, in difficult moments, it was better not to understand what was being said to you in Cantonese, making it easier to remain calm & collected!  One of them also acted as translator for us in meetings and in 1-1 chats with individual brothers – a role which was very demanding.

Living in a Cantonese speaking world with 20 teachers, (all the brothers at Tai Tam) the basic Cantonese which my vicar back in London had taught me came into its own.  What had felt unnatural and incomprehensible in London, now felt very natural and I started to learn quickly without making too many mistakes.  In a tonal language it is easy to get things wrong without realising.  In an airport for example, the same words with different tonal inflections means ‘to catch a plane’ or ‘hit the waiter’.  One of our helpers got confused between the words for sorry (Dur’me ju) and praise the Lord (Jan’me Ju) and wondered why people looked at her strangely when she bumped into them on the busy Hong Kong streets and immediately exclaimed “Praise the Lord!”

The Cantonese I learned was rather peculiar though.  Within a few months I could talk about drugs, being filled with the Holy Spirit and receiving the gifts of the Spirit but couldn’t order a meal in a Cantonese restaurant.  I also learned when to speak Cantonese and when to speak English.  Given that most of my teachers were ex-triads, the Cantonese that they taught me was more like learning English from a mobster in New York.  Occasionally I was invited out to lunch or afternoon tea with some of the more respectable members of the Church congregation.  I soon learned not to try out my Cantonese there as I could see their eyebrows rise or their jaws drop at the street Cantonese which came out of my mouth – English was always the better option there!

On my days off I enjoyed doing 2 things – breakfast and walking.  The best place for breakfast was the YWCA in Wanchai.  Back in 1988 it was right on the harbour front and its restaurant had the most beautiful panoramic view of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the harbour in between.  Their international buffet breakfast was served from 7:30am – 11am and you could eat all you wanted for $20HK (less than £2).  I would go there to eat, drink coffee and write letters most mornings on my days off and then decide which district of Hong Kong I was going to walk around for the rest of the day.

I also found that my guitar was in demand after all.  I played for the evening worship time at Tai Tam most evenings, and learned to sing in Cantonese. Most of the brothers wanted to learn to play guitar too, so I would try to teach them as best as I could.  Soon I learned the fluid, effortless way of leading worship in English and Cantonese which fitted the sung worship at St Stephens Society.  When the time came for our worship leader at the weekly helper’s meeting to return to the UK, I was asked to take his place.  This was an immense and unexpected honour. 

The weekly western helper’s meeting was the only time all of the westerners came together from the different parts of the ministry.  There were between 30-40 of us and Jackie Pullinger would be there to lead the meeting as a whole.  It was a cross between prayer, praise and therapy as we could all let our hair down for a couple of hours, share the things which had been happening (good and bad) and support one another with a hug of empathy, a smile of encouragement or prayer ministry for strength or healing.  Sung worship would normally fill about half of the two hours we spent together so being asked to lead this was huge.  Soon afterwards I was also asked to join the Sunday worship group for church on the Sundays I was there.

I learned so much from both these experiences about what brings people close to God, and how to lead worship simply, without manipulating people’s emotions, while letting God do what he wants to do in their lives.  For all Jackie’s fame as a Charismatic icon, she was very down to earth, and hated seeing people manipulated by overly emotional songs or over-spiritualising everything.  I remember Jackie being prayed with at one meeting because she was feeling particularly low and tired at the time.  Someone shared a picture of a wide river which she was trying to cross, where the current was so strong that it almost swept her away.  Then a word of prophecy was shared which said, “Don’t worry Jackie – God is with you and you will reach the other side safely.”  After everyone had finished praying with her, she leaned over to me and whispered, “I can cross the rivers – it’s coming back to get everyone else that gets me down!”

Most of all though, I learned a different way of Christian life and ministry, one which would change my whole outlook and sense of calling for life.

Jackie Pullinger’s approach to ministry was simple.  Start with the poor.  Jesus always started with the poor, and if you minister to the poor, the rich will sit up and take notice.  So if you want to reach the world with the Good News of the Gospel, start with the poor.  This might not sound that radical, but it was completely different to my experience in the Church of England where anyone looking in on our congregations would assume that Jesus came for the educated middle class and little else!

Jesus’ first sermon at Nazareth sets the scene.  He read from the prophet Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
Because the Lord has anointed me,
To bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
To proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
(Isaiah 61)

As he passed the scroll back to the synagogue official he said, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4)

Today this passage is often referred to as the Nazareth manifesto.  Jesus setting out his stall at the outset of his public ministry, and of all the thousands of verses in the Old Testament, he chose these as the heart of what he was about – good news to the poor - and here in Hong Kong, for the first time, that is what I was witnessing.  The poor were being put first.  The broken hearted, prisoners and captives being set free and healed, not as an afterthought, but at the very core of God’s plan.  I knew there were those in the UK who advocated this.  David Shepherd’s book “Bias to the Poor” made similar arguments in the early 80’s, but the Church of England is a slow and ponderous institution and there was also a backlash to the suggestion that God might have favourites (especially if you were not one of them!)

Here I saw the poor being put first and valued as I had never seen before.  I saw love transforming lives and began to read the Gospels afresh.  I saw that almost invariably the first people Jesus went to were the sinners, outcasts and sick; those on the margins of society; those who were looked down on by the religious and political classes. Why should the church of today be doing things any differently?  Perhaps because we have become the religious and political class of our day?

I also realised that it was the difference he made to people’s lives which resulted in them putting their faith in him.  He didn’t bombard them with clever arguments and then ask them to decide.  He simply poured out the Father’s love upon them and left the response to them.  In the ‘enlightened’ west, we focus on intellectual argument.  The church tries to convince people of the case for Christianity, of the historical evidence, of the philosophical integrity of the Gospel.  That is what most evangelistic sermons are about; putting together a case for the Christian faith, and hoping it will persuade people to sign up.  But the poor are not interested in intellectual arguments.  If you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, the intellectual integrity of a belief system is not your top priority – what you want to know is ‘Does it work?’!

I referred in Walled City to faith in a god called Jesus who helps heroin addicts.  When addicts came to our meetings in Walled City, they knew nothing about Jesus except this and just as we read in the New Testament, God poured out his love upon them.  They met with God within a few minutes of walking inside the door as they were filled with the Holy Spirit and chose to put their trust in him.  They were still heroin addicts but God poured out is Spirit on them.  They were still triad members, but God poured out his Spirit on them.  They would be going home from the meeting into their often horrendous way of life, but God poured out his Spirit on them.

This in turn challenged my unspoken understanding of how God works.  All through my Christian life, I had mistakenly thought that you could only experience more of God if you understood more about him and changed your life to be more like him.  Yet at Walled City and Tai Tam, I saw God pouring out his Spirit on people who knew nothing and had not yet changed!  On people who were drug dealers, pimps, enforcers, and thugs.  Why?  Because they knew their need of him.  They didn’t have to believe the right things before God would work in their lives.  They simply needed to open their hearts to him.

I saw this in many different ways.  There was one brother at Tai Tam who was always difficult and eventually he ran away.  As often happened when brothers ran away, he came to the next Walled City meeting regretting his decision to leave.  He was visibly high on heroin and he looked a mess.  We prayed with him, more out of duty than conviction.  Yet when it came to our time of worship, God used him to bring a message to the whole meeting.  It was one of the most beautiful words of prophecy I have ever heard, and as a result, half a dozen hardened men broke down in tears and asked for prayer to live a new life. He was used by God more powerfully than anything I did that night.

In the Gospels I began to realise that Jesus poured out healing and love on people unconditionally.  Whether they chose to follow him or shout “Crucify”, he healed, blessed, forgave and set people free.

I saw that when he called the disciples, he didn’t give them a lecture and a theology test before asking them to be his disciples.  He simply said follow me.  It was as they spent time with him, that they slowly (often very slowly) began to understand who he was and what he had come to do.  Now I was beginning to understand in a new way too.

I mentioned last week in Tai Tam to our evening worship time, when songs of praise were sung with heart and soul, but that didn’t always make me smile.  During a particularly difficult time with some brothers, I remember looking at their angelic faces during one of these times of worship and thinking, “You hypocrites!  An hour ago you were being manipulative, selfish and putting us through hell!  Don’t think you can simply put on your worship face and pretend it never happened!”  In the quietness a few minutes later however, God was gracious enough to speak to me and said, “When you see them praise me, you are looking at who they really are.  That is the real person I created.  And now I have given them new life and that is what you see in worship.  The person you see when they make life difficult – that is not them anymore.  That is their old life which is passing away.”  It was me that had jumped to the wrong conclusions, and it was my way of thinking which needed to be turned on its head!

When Jackie was asked about the success rate at St Stephens Society, she always said it was 100%.  This often puzzled the journalist or visitor who was asking because they knew not everyone stuck with the programme.  For Jackie however, success was not defined by the outcome in their addiction, because even if they dropped out, they went away with Jesus in their hearts and whenever they came back, she welcomed them as brothers in Christ, ready for the next step of their walk with him.

In Hong Kong I discovered a new God.  A God who is generous beyond our wildest dreams.  A God who loves the poor, the broken-hearted and the captive, and puts them first.  A God who uses the most unlikely people to bless others.  A God who doesn’t let go.  A God who pours out his Spirit on people according to their need, rather than as a reward.  A God who, having given everything on the cross, still gives more.

This God is called Jesus.  I knew him before, but much more dimly.  I thought I knew him well, but I

discovered that my understanding of him had such a long way to go.

After a few months, I finally got my hair cut; not because I was pressured or bullied into it; not because I was threatened with having my pony tail it cut off as I slept (although I was!)   It was because I came to realise that my long hair was a barrier between me and some of the brothers who found it hard to accept.  We made the event into a celebration at Tai Tam with everyone gathered around as the scissors did their work and a huge cheer went up as I was handed the hair, held together by a hairband.  We ate celebration cake together. 

I did it because I saw that it stood in the way of our relationship as brothers in Christ. We are all equal before God and all pilgrims on the road. 

Sometimes less is more.

Click here for part 28 - Breaking the Law

Click here for an introduction to Crossing the Line

The Embrace

I have been very struck by this painting over the last few days.  It hangs in the Farmhouse at Lox Lane Christian Centre near Shaftsbury.

My first reaction was “That’s something I could do with!”  The warm embrace of Jesus; an ordinary person being gathered up into his arms; the sense of security it conveys; the moment of wonder it implies.  Above all the simple, uncluttered love which flows out of this precious moment.

But then I thought again.  When we are feeling down, hurt, angry or confused, there are times when we push others away rather than looking to them for comfort.  There have been times in my life when I have done this with God.  I kept God at arm’s length for some time after my wife’s accident 15 years ago.  My sense of pain and bewilderment meant that the warmth of God’s embrace was the last thing I wanted.  I wasn’t sure I trusted Him anymore and a hug or a kiss would not have made it all better.

Perhaps now, as I come to terms with cancer, I don’t want to be hugged by Christ, no matter how special that would seem to be.  I am not a very touchy-feely kind of person at the best of times and, as I wrote in my last post, I am currently fighting depression as the intensity of treatment gives way to the limbo of watchful waiting.

But as I continued to look at the painting, I noticed more than simply the embrace.  I saw his hands with the mark of the nails, still red and bloody.  I saw the crown of thorns still there, biting into his head.  This is a risen Christ that still bears the scars and the pain of his crucifixion – who still bears the marks of his own death.

This is a Jesus who understands pain, sorrow and confusion.  This is the Jesus who cried out on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  This is the Jesus who was “despised and rejected, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” and who “bore our suffering” as he hung there.

It is this Jesus who gathers us up into his loving embrace.

So perhaps my first reaction was right after all.  I would like to feel the warm embrace of Christ afterall.  It is not an embrace which ignores the downsides of life.  It is not escapism into a world of fluffy clouds and impossible dreams.  It is the down to earth embrace of the man of sorrows, whose love brings light into the darkest places of our lives and which can melt the hardest of hearts.

The very last words of the Bible are these,

“Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people.  Amen”

Perhaps today I would add –

The embrace of the Lord Jesus be with us too.  Amen

The Cardinal Sin...

So now we know…

We know what drove Cardinal Keith O’Brien to be so dogmatic and so offensive to people in same-sex relationships.

Last year the Cardinal was voted ‘Bigot of the Year’ by Stonewall after his outspoken campaign against same-sex marriage. 

At various times he described same-sex marriage as a "grotesque subversion”, an "aberration" and he likened it to slavery.

In May 2005 he told members of the Scottish Parliament that homosexuals were "captives of sexual aberrations" and writing in the Scottish Catholic Observer, he said

“The empirical evidence is clear, same-sex relationships are demonstrably harmful to the medical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of those involved, no compassionate society should ever enact legislation to facilitate or promote such relationships…”   http://www.sconews.co.uk/latest-edition/14858/scotland-fails-homosexual-people/ 

So when allegations emerged from Catholic Priests of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ it must have been utterly devastating.  The Cardinal resigned almost immediately, and now he has all but admitted that the allegations are true.

Such is tragedy of Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

The Roman Catholic Church appears to be responding to this by saying that the church has always had both saints and sinners in its ranks, but this is a gross over-simplification.   Speaking so strongly against same-sex relationships while all the time knowing the history of his own desires and sexual actions, reveals a man filled with self-loathing who learned to live with himself by transferring that anger and self-hatred onto others.

It is the classic vicious circle that almost always ends up in the kind of abusive words and actions which we have witnessed.

At its root is a concept of ‘sin’ which is defined not by what damages people and society, but by the application of an arbitrary set of rules claiming some divine authority.  For some, the authority for such arbitrary spiritual laws is the Church, for others it is the Bible, but the effect is the same - condemning people to live in this twilight world of secret shame and misdirected anger.

The approach is not just limited to Roman Catholics of course.  Evangelical Alliance recently updated its guidance on responding to homosexuality.   At its heart are ‘Ten Affirmations’ which should guide and direct evangelicals in their pastoral and theological attitudes to gay and lesbian people.  The first one begins with the words, “We recognise that all of us are sinners, and that the only true hope for sinful people – whatever our sexuality – is in Jesus Christ.”

While the intention behind this opening is benign, encouraging all evangelicals to recognise their own sinfulness rather than just focusing on the ‘sinfulness’ of homosexuals, it reveals something much deeper in the mindset of the writers – that when we are talking about homosexuality, we can only be talking about sin.

For them, this is the non-negotiable bottom line, and everything which follows is based on that assumption.   Their authority is a reading of the Bible which is just as selectively legalistic, arbitrary, and inconsistent as the Roman Catholic theology that led Cardinal O’Brien to the torture of his alleged double life.

 But the God I serve is not arbitrary, legalistic or inconsistent. 

 When Jesus was asked about ‘The Law’, he consistently directed people to look at the Spirit behind the Law, rather than being limited to the legalism of the words themselves.   And when the New Testament declares that love, not law, is at the heart of the Gospel it never says “unless you are gay”.  God has been unfolding his plan for the redemption of human kind from the Garden of Eden onwards, and every generation has learned that this redemption continues to unfold as we seek to order our lives and society in a way which enables everyone to love God and their neighbour more fully.

The harm which Cardinal O’Brien spoke out against when he said, 

“The empirical evidence is clear, same-sex relationships are demonstrably harmful to the medical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of those involved, no compassionate society should ever enact legislation to facilitate or promote such relationships…”  

… is as misdirected as his own self-loathing. 

What he should have said is, 

“The empirical evidence is clear, religious or cultural repression of same-sex relationships is demonstrably harmful to the medical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of those involved, no compassionate society should ever enact legislation to facilitate or promote such repression…”  

The cardinal sin in this affair is not that of ‘homosexuality’.  It is the sin of a religious institution which created the toxic mixture of moral repression, secrecy, abuse of power, tortuous inner conflict and misdirected self-loathing – and then used it to oppose the aspirations of those in genuine, loving same-sex relationships.

This is this sin which both the Church and Keith O’Brien need to reflect on and repent of – not the ‘sin’ of homosexuality.

New jam - new jam jars...

It is good to see that the Churches in England are finally catching up with Jesus teaching on jam-jars.

In a landmark move, the Churches Legislation AdvisoryService (CLAS) has issued guidance to churches of all denominations, pointing out that EU(European Union) regulations now forbid the re-use of jam jars for selling produce at church fetes.  While it is legal to give home-made jams and preserves away in old jam-jars as personal gifts, old jam-jars must not be sold under any circumstances.  Even the great repository of wisdom and knowledge known as the WI, has confirmed this to be true.

The EU ruling is, of course, reminiscent of Christ’s famousteaching on wineskins.  “Who puts new wine onto old wineskins?” he asked.  “If you do you will lose the lot!”

Which makes you wonder – why did it take the EU to identify the dangers of putting new jam into old jam-jars?  Why did the church not recognise the problem decades ago?

The issues which worry the EU are, of course, slightly different than those that Christ drew our attention to.  The EU is more concerned with the hygiene risk of ‘old jam-jars’ .  Old bugs and bacteria might contaminate the new jam endangering those who consume it.  But the analogy still holds true when we look at the church today.

Churches have been putting the new jam of the gospel into the culturally contaminated jam-jars of the Victorian era for over 150 years and the results are all too obvious.  Young people stay away from the church in droves; deeper understanding in areas like gender and sexuality are contaminated by outdated Victorian values; and the result is often seen in virulent outbreaks of ecclesiastical nausea and vomiting.

The few young people who stay can also become infected by the same Victorian values which infuse those old jam-jars.  At best many seem to accept that this is quite normal – at worst some rise with zombie like conviction to defend views of which are un-Christian, compromised and arcane.

Yet again we find that Jesus was right.  Whether it is wineskins or jam-jars, we constantly need to put the new wine (or jam) of the gospel into the new skins (or jars) of the Kingdom of God today.

But sadly the church of today seems more attached to its old jam-jars than to the gospel.  No wonder church attendance is falling…

 

The Power behind the Throne

There is a throne in Canterbury Cathedral called the Chair of St Augustine.

It is the chair on which the new Archbishop of Canterbury will be seated when he begins his ministry.  Named after the first Archbishop of Canterbury, it conveys the authority and responsibilities of the role to the new Archbishop and the Anglican Church.  It is an ancient throne, one of oldest in existence, and when the new Archbishop is seated upon it, the Church of England will have a new leader.

I first became aware of its power some years ago when I was part of a small group who went to talk to Rowan Williams about the mess the church has got itself into on sexuality.  We met in the Archbishop in Lambeth Palace.  We met him in the hope that we could persuade him to be more proactive in promoting a new spirit of openness.  We met him hoping to re-awaken those things which he knew to be true about the gift of God at work in people of the same sex who love each other.

We should have been pushing at an open door.  Rowan Williams had gone on the record many times before he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in support of greater openness, acceptance and inclusion. 

But as our conversation developed, it became clear that no such commitment would be forthcoming.  Time and time again, he referred to his role as the present occupant of the Chair of St Augustine.  He talked of the weight of history and responsibility which the occupant of that Chair carries.  He talked about the need to preserve what he had been given – what had been entrusted to him.  He talked about his role as Archbishop in terms of being a guardian.  He told us that what he thought (as an individual) was irrelevant because his job as Archbishop was to hold together the great responsibility which the occupant of the Seat of St Augustine is given.

Our hearts sank.  We had hoped to meet with an anointed leader for the future - instead we found a guardian of the past.  We had met someone who had been called to leadership because of his great gifts – but then neutered by the power of the institution which had called him – the power behind the throne.

I have seen it before…

I saw it at work among the Church Commissioners when fighting to preserve affordable social housing in the Octavia Hill Estates which they owned and managed.  When I met them as individuals, I met thoughtful genuine Christians keen to listen and engage.  But when I met them as an institution, entrusted only with maximising profits, a very different persona emerged.  The power of the institution had overtaken them – they had become ‘institutionalised’ – only able to act in the way which was expected of them, putting money first and people second.

I have also experienced the corrupting power of the institution at first hand - the subtle pressure to behave in a particular way contrary to personal conviction.  I experienced it when I was a member of the OICCU Exec – the committee which ran the Oxford University Christian Union.  I was asked to take on the role of Outreach Secretary – to encourage and enable evangelism.  I came full of hope for what we might be able to do together – with fresh ideas, hopes and expectations, but I was naïve about the power of the institution.

Before we started our work, we were all taken away for the weekend by UCCF to be trained for the vital role we had been given.  We were reminded that we were being entrusted with a weighty responsibility – the continuation of many years of faithful evangelical witness to the University.  We were reminded of the tools we were to work with – the Bible and the Doctrinal Basis.  We were told that if we did our job properly, we would ensure that the next generation of leaders in the UK were Evangelical Christians who would, in turn, ensure that we continued to be a Christian Country (what a pretentious heresy that was!)  Our role was not to bring innovation or change – it was to continue the work of those who had been before and to defend OICCU against error and compromise.

And I have to say that I was taken in.  The criteria for our decisions became not ‘what seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’ (Acts 15:28)  It was to do what was expected of us.

I remember the moment when this dawned on me.

It was when we voted to revoke an invitation to one of the most gifted and fruitful evangelists in Oxford - Canon Michael Green – because he would not sign our Doctrinal Basis of Faith.  His preaching had brought many hundreds of students in Oxford to faith in Christ.   He went on to be Professor of Evangelism at Regents College Vancouver, and came back to lead the Archbishops Springboard for Evangelism.  He wrote over 50 books on Christian apologetics and evangelism, but he wasn’t good enough to speak at our precious Christian Union because he would not conform himself to the expectations of our institution.

We had allowed ourselves to become institutionalised.

As the Crown Nominations Commission meets this week to decide who the next Archbishop of Canterbury will be, I can honestly say that I don’t know who should be appointed.  But unless it is someone who is strong enough to resist the power of the institution, I am also tempted to say that it doesn’t really matter.

What we need is an Archbishop who is courageous enough to lead us in the way of Christ. 

Jesus was no defender of the institution.  He refused to be boxed in, channelled or handled.  His concern was to bring new life – not preserve old structures, and he would not be manipulated into meeting the expectations of others.

And that is the Archbishop I am praying for…

Acceptance

We were thinking about how we welcome people at church last night, and were asked the question “What makes you feel welcome when you come to church?”

As I reflected on this, I realised that the key word for me was ‘acceptance’.  I feel welcome when I feel accepted.

Sadly this is not always the case in churches.  All too often we become places where only people like us are accepted and welcomed.  If you fit the profile, you get welcomed – if you don’t, you don’t.

I have lots of experience of this.  

Some years ago I worked as an outreach worker with churches who have run-down social housing estates in their parishes.  I would go and spend a few months at a time in those churches and their estates.  Often the church congregation were quite respectable and middle class which created a social divide between them and their neighbours.

So on my first Sunday in the church, I would turn up unannounced without a dog collar, on my motorbike, in jeans, leather jacket and biker boots, and just sit in the congregation to see what kind of welcome I would receive. 

Sometimes I was welcomed, but more often I could sense the unease, fear or disapproval which my arrival provoked.  In one church, the vicar then preached on the project we were about to start and said that the Bishop had appointed “an especially rough priest to help us – he’s the one in the leather jacket who looks more likely to pull a knife or sell you some crack”.  All eyes turned to look at me.

In contrast, when I reflect on Christian ministries where I have experienced exciting, dynamic expressions of the Gospel, they have all had a common characteristic.  They have been communities of radical, loving, acceptance.

I think back to the Youth Fellowship which I was part of as a teenager.  It grew from just a handful of teenagers to a group of over 50 – meeting each week for worship, prayer and Bible Study.  It was a group of radical acceptance drawing together teenagers from different schools, different backgrounds, and different life experiences – from the ‘posh’ kids at the fee paying day school to the local comprehensive to those who had dropped out of school completely, working on market stalls.  Alongside one member who is now a University Professor in Philosophy was another who, when she first came, had a ‘Saturday job’ as a prostitute.  It didn’t matter who turned up – they were accepted and welcomed.

Then I think of the outreach meetings in ‘Walled City’, Hong Kong, where heroin addicts came because they had heard of a god called Jesus who helped drug addicts.  They often arrived strung out or high, in tatty clothes having done whatever it took that day to get their next fix, and within minutes they were each embraced in the love of God by 3 or 4 helpers and ex-addicts who would be praying with them in a powerful and personal way.  Such radical acceptance often brought hardened violent men to tears as they experienced the love of Christians and of God.

But then I contrast that with a conversation on Facebook last night with someone who has just left the church.  For her, the final nail in the coffin was the Church of England’s response to the Government proposals for same-sex marriage.

She wrote:

“For me this was the final straw, I've now left the church…  It's not that they don't approve of me that I mind so much but that they have to lie about me and the danger I represent, that they ignore all my answers to their theology and then claim the theology hasn't been done, that they make assertions even the church lawyers know are wrong... and then pretend it's the official position of The Church. I feel as if I’m looking at an old Politbureau photo where politicians who had fallen out of favour were just erased from the picture by those who had the power to do so. I cannot cope with a church that believes this to be an acceptable way of engaging with its own members.”

And when I replied with a lame “Well said” she responded, “Benny, we always say it well, it's what we've all done for years. It makes no difference though. Those who have the power keep brazening it out and keep getting away with it. It's spiritually deadening in the extreme. I'm lucky, I have not lost my faith. But I have had conversations with at least 3 people recently who have lost theirs over this. We're not supposed to be stumbling blocks to people's faith - in reality, these people are a whole mountain range.”

I was deeply saddened by this conversation because it exposed just how unaccepting the Church of England is, and our real failing is that we don’t realise how wrong this is.  When I went to churches to help them relate to housing estates, most of them recognised that their reluctance to welcome was a problem – their problem!  When it comes to the Church of England and sexuality – we think that this ‘unacceptance’ is a virtue!  We call it standing up for the truth when it is nothing of the sort.  We claim to ‘welcome’ LGB&T people but then push them away with our patronising, demeaning, unacceptance.

Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are heavy laiden, and I will give you rest” while we, the church, place burdens on the backs of gay people which are too heavy for any of us to bear.

Radical acceptance is what marked Jesus out – more than the healings and the miracles, it both encouraged and challenged those around him.  It brought the crowds to hear him and drove the religious institutions away.

I feel welcome when I feel truly and genuinely accepted for who and what I am.  When we come to God, we find ourselves accepted for who and what we are.  If that is good enough for God, who is the Chruch to say (or act) otherwise?

PS.  If - like 1,000's of others - you don't feel that the Church of England's response on same-sex marriage speaks for you, why not sign the petition "Not in my name"

Were the Patriarchs really married ?

“Marriage as created by God is an exclusive relationship between one man and one woman that is entered into for life …”

So says the St Matthias Day Statement from the Church of England Evangelical Council and the Church of England’s official response to Government proposals for same-sex marriage.  The Archbishop of York agrees.  “Marriage is marriage is marriage” he states, and “neither the State nor the Church, or any religious group can change the essential nature of marriage”.

But that evokes a curious question in my mind – in that case, were some of the most prominent marriages in the Old Testament really marriages at all?

The question arises, of course, because most of the famous marriages in the Old Testament were not ‘an exclusive relationship between one man and one woman’.  Therefore, according to the CofE and the Archbishop, they were not marriages at all.

Let’s take Jacob for example.  He worked for Laban for 7 years to ‘earn’ the hand of Rachel in marriage.  But when Laban deceived him and married him off to her sister Leah, he worked for another 7 years to get the bride he really wanted as well.  He married two sisters, and it didn’t stop there - he also had children with Rachel and Leah’s servants.  Were these marriages in the sight of God?  These ‘marriages’ were not exclusive relationships between one man and one woman as created by God.   And what about the children which resulted?  Even if we accept Jacob’s first marriage to Leah as the one that really counts, that means that 5 of the tribes of Israel were born outside of wedlock, as a result of nothing less than institutionalised adultery.

Perhaps Jacob can be forgiven because at least he came before the Law was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai.  Surely this pivotal point in God’s relationship with humanity would put all that straight.  Indeed it did include some regulations on divorce, but no definitive statement or definition which would put the matter rest once and for all.

Then there were David and Solomon, both heroic Kings of the Old Testament, and both of whom were married many times over.  David appears to have had at least 8 wives (and many more concubines) and yet he wrote some of the Bible’s most moving Psalms extolling the Word of God.  Could these really be marriages?  Apparently not, according to the Evangelical Council!  Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines according to 1 Kings 11 and the only rebuke which Scripture offers is that many of them were foreigners.

Indeed the relationship between David and Solomon is problematic in the extreme as Solomon was David and Bathsheba’s child - and we all know how that relationship began.  David committed adultery with Bathsheba (Uriah’s wife) and then had him killed in battle when Bathsheba found she was pregnant.  Surely David and Bathsheba’s marriage could not be valid in the sight of God – nor could Israel or the Levites make it a ‘marriage’ because “marriage is marriage is marriage” and “neither the State nor Church can change it” from that which was “created by God” as “an exclusive relationship between one man and one woman that is entered into for life”.

So what is the point of all this?   Am I really advocating polygamy as a Biblically valid form of marriage?  Or arguing that we should re-define marriage to be more ‘biblical’ in this sense?

No – I am not!

What this does show however, is the limitation of trying to give eternal status to our current definition of marriage and claim that it is, and has always been the created will of God.

In fact, there is no normative example of marriage in Scripture that ends the story once and for all.  Even Adam and Eve cannot be claimed as such, as their story is meant to be figurative rather than literal.  (Otherwise we open up yet another can of worms as we have to concede that their children must have married each other, thereby opening up the possibility of incestual marriage as well!)

If ‘marriage is marriage is marriage’, and cannot be any different to our current definition, then most of the people in the Bible were not married, their children were born out of wedlock, and all sexual activity in those ‘non-marriages’ could not have been blessed by God because they were sinful, pure and simple.

The alternative is to recognise that our understanding of marriage has changed over the centuries and continues to change.  Whether it is the slow transition to monogamy, or the marriage of slaves, or interracial marriage, or the continual tension between marriage and divorce, we have continually amended our understanding of what does and does not constitute marriage in the sight of God.

In these areas the church universal has never been unanimous in its attitudes or practise, and if we want to look biblically at marriage (which I hope we do) we have to recognise that God appears to have been far more willing to embrace different forms of marriage than the church of today. 

We also need to delve much deeper into Paul’s ultimate paradigm for marriage.  The marriage of Christ and his bride, the Church is a marriage which is not dependant on gender or sex, and which is expressed in the substance of the relationship, rather than the correctness of the formula (one man + one woman = Marriage).

In the end, all definitions and understandings of marriage through history have been temporary and will remain temporary this side of eternity.  It was Jesus himself that said, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage.  But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage… for they are like the angels.” (Luke 20:34&35).

It is time we acknowledged the temporal nature of our limited understanding and looked for marriages which are life-giving relationships based on the vows and promises which the marriage partners make to each other, rather than the gender of the partners. 

When the woman at the well challenged Jesus on the correct place to worship God, he told her that the time was coming when God’s true worshippers would not be tied to one place, but would worship God ‘in Spirit and in Truth’.

Once again, perhaps, we need to look beyond our limited views and disagreements to marriages which are grounded ‘in Spirit and in Truth’.  For there we will find God.

It's all about Me, Me, Me!

We have all met them.

The needy person in the pub or at the dinner party whose insecurities mean that they have to be at the centre of every conversation.  No matter what the subject, they always find a way of bring the conversation back to themselves.   “It’s all about Me!” is their mantra – even when it clearly isn’t.

Well I am sorry to say that the Church of England is becoming exactly that.

Whenever the Government tries to introduce some new legislation to ensure more equal access to some aspect of public life, the CofE has got into the most annoying of habits of turning the conversation round to itself rather than the people who are being excluded.

Whether it is employment legislation, or access to services, or Civil Partnerships, membership of the House of Lords  – or now same-sex Marriage – the Church is getting very adept at making itself the centre of conversation and crying out “It’s all about Me!”

The latest example of this came late last night in its response to Government proposals on Marriage.

“It’s all about Me!” we cry.  It’s not really about the gay people who would benefit from being able to get married – it is about what the consequences would be for the Church.   If you do this you will destroy our place in the nation – if you let gay people get married you will dis-establish the church – if you do this, you will undermine the monopoly we thought we had on saying what is and is not acceptable in marriage.  You can’t introduce marriage for gay couples because it’s not really about them – it’s about Me!

No wonder the nation is tiring of the pompous neediness of the Church.  No wonder people are being turned off from the message we preach.  No wonder people don’t want to come anymore, because at the end of the day, the needy person in the corner of the room is not attractive and certainly not the one that people want to spend their time with.

Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be great must be the servant of all.”  The servant puts the needs of others before their own needs.  The servant listens rather than pontificates.  God does not call the church to be a slave to society – but neither does God call us to make ourselves the centre of attention by twisting every conversation back to ourselves.

Until we rediscover this fundamental truth, I fear that we will continue to be a Church that is all about Me, rather than the Church that is all about Him – our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.