Not Ashamed ...

"The Gospel has been under attack.  The Church has been under attack.  Christianity in our country has been under attack for decades."

Thus says the opening speaker in the promo video for the 'Not Ashamed'  Campaign which former Archbishop George Carey launched recently.

It has taken me a little while to get my head around this one.  I have been in something of a dilemma about the campaign, and unsure as to how to respond to it.

On the one hand, I am not ashamed of the Gospel, or my Christian faith.  I am certainly not ashamed of Jesus Christ my Saviour and Lord (although I often find myself being ashamed of His Church of which I am a part).  So from that point of view I want to join the campaign and state clearly my allegiance to Christ.

But on the other hand, I do not recognise the portrayal of a Church and faith under systematic attack for decades.

Sure, I have sometimes been ridiculed for my faith and know how to stand up for what I believe.  This was especially true back in my school days when my fervent teenage faith was a cause for concern in staff meetings, as well as attracting the attention of less caring class-mates.  But I wouldn't call that an attack on Christianity - merely the standard rigours of a all boy's school.

I didn't experience any such attack when I have worked with Local Authority Youth Teams during my training for ordination 20 years ago.  I have never felt under attack as an Anglican Priest, working in some of the most politically correct of London Boroughs.  I have not experienced attack when working with the Metropolitan Police in Community Groups where I always found an open ear when we were seeking to rehabilitate offenders who had come to Christian faith and commitment.

Indeed I certainly did not experience any attack on the Church or Gospel 10 years ago, when I served on the Government's Community Forum for Neighbourhood Renewal, along with a fellow Baptist Minister, and several URC Community Workers.  We were appointed among 20 others from over 600 applicants to advise the then Labour Deputy Prime Minister on urban regeneration.

I do not feel under attack or marginalised when I lead worship and Communion Services today for almost 500 school pupils at a time - by far my biggest regular congregation - or take weekly Christian Assemblies at non-church,  local authority schools.  Nor do I feel under attack when I am granted permission by ward staff  in hospital, to visit a patient outside visiting hours, despite the fact that I will offer to pray with that patient before I leave.

So I am puzzled when the basis of this campaign seems to be that the Gospel is under attack. 

It seems to me that the only times when the Church comes under attack are when we refuse to engage in equality legislation enabling us to claim exemptions and continue to discriminate against women and homosexuals - or when we try to claim a continuing right to unelected representation in the House of Lords in spite of our consistent attempts to sidestep the law on the basis of the Christian faith, and in opposition to public opinion.

If there is any sense of the Gospel being under attack in Britain today it is because we have presented a distorted gospel, more concerned with our own prejudices and self-righteous desire for power than with serving our neighbours in the love of God.

So on balance, I will not be joining the campaign, but I will continue to be completely unashamed of my faith in Jesus Christ, and continue to pray for a Church which will proclaim that faith without prejudice or discrimination.

If this link does not work please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7oUbHBGOGs&feature=BF&list=MLGxdCwVVULXd23tdAi9Wn1WyvVA9TuysQ&index=4

I'm dreaming of a white (black, gay, straight, gypsy, immigrant, rich, poor) Christmas ...

As we approach Christmas, our thoughts naturally turn to the ones we love.  Family, friends, & neighbours all feature in our minds as we write our Christmas cards, buy gifts and wrap presents.

But there is so much more to the Christmas story.

There is politics, military occupation, rough-sleeping shepherds, migrant foreigners, and in the end, a family of refugees forced to become asylum seekers.  Not quite the snowy scene of a Christmas card.

And there is plenty of prejudice, injustice, abuse of power, and vulnerability to go around.

Yet Christ came to challenge all these things.  In his birth, he challenges all our pre-conceptions about who is, and is not important in God's eyes.  In those who responded to the call to worship the baby , God challenges our attitudes to wanderers, foreigners and those of other faiths.  In the actions of the powerful, God shows us the futility of earthly power and authority.

In Christ's birth, he challenges us to a new way of looking at the world where everyone is valued, and all have a part in God's plan, irrespective of the prejudices of others.

So who will we have in mind as we hear the Christmas story this year?   People  like us, or people very different to us?  Whoever they may be.

An Antidote to the Covenant




Cartoon by Dave Walker  http://www.cartoonchurch.com/

 

Over the last few weeks as controversy around the Anglican Covenant has intensified, a story has come to mind that I heard as a young teenager. 

It was told by a young Argentinean preacher called Jaun Carlos Ortiz, and it made a deep impression on me when I was a young Christian.  His book 'Disciple' made a deep impression on many Christians in the late 1970's and I still have a copy on my bookshelf.   So I clearly remember going to hear him preach on a UK tour.

The story relates to what happened whenever he used to come back from time away from home.  On his return, he used to be greeted by his children with their tennis rackets, asking him to play tennis with them.  "We have been waiting for you - we can't play tennis when you are away" they would complain.

"But why don't you play tennis with each other?" he would ask, but they both came up with excuses.  "She's hopeless - she always misses" one would say.  "He hits the ball too hard" the other would complain.

So what did he do?

He played tennis with one, and then with the other - but he couldn't help wishing that they would find a way to play with one another.

The point of his story is that we are exactly the same with God and each other.   We fall out with each other as Christians and Churches so easily.  We won't play with each other, even though God wishes we would.  So He plays with each of us, but longs for us to play together.

As I pondered this modern parable, I wondered what had become of this young insightful preacher, so I 'Googled'  his name, and found that despite a number of personal challenges and tragedies, he is a senior Pastor and teacher at The Crystal Cathedral - one of California's evangelical mega-churches.

As I dug a little deeper, I found a chapter in one of his books which spoke to me so clearly about the mess we are getting ourselves into, as we try to define who is and who is not a proper Anglican.

The Book is "Living with Jesus Today" and Chapter 14 is called "We cannot choose our brothers" 

Here are some excerpts from it:

The problem really isn't the denomination itself.  We are fooling ourselves if we believe that. We are the problem! The denomination is just another excuse for our flesh to become enmeshed in division, which it likes to do....

Most denominations begin in the same way. In a church, one group of people barks at another group, dividing over a particular issue. The other group then barks back. It takes two to fight. So we bark at one another, and division follows...

Really, we shouldn't speak of the church as divided.  You can divide the number ten into ten ones, into two fives, or into five two's. You can divide a group of five into two groups (three and two) or into five ones. You also can divide two into two ones. But you cannot divide one. The church is one, and it cannot be divided. You can only break one.   When they amputate your leg, you don't say, "They divided my body." You say, "They cut off one of my legs." So, too, the church is not divided; it is broken in pieces...

Today we are not under Christ, but under other banners. So we have a broken church that is fractured into hundreds of denominations. But Jesus does not have many churches.  The church is the bride of Christ, and He is not a polygamist. He is going to marry just one church...

The church has a tendency to be a Christian club. A club is an institution in which all of the members agree to certain principles... 

When we gather together around principles or doctrines, that's a club. Anything that is centred in a set of rules or concepts is a club. But when we gather together around a living person whose name is Jesus, we are a church...

When Jesus comes to church, He does not find joy in our doctrinal divisions.   He commands us to repent of our hatred of one another.  And when He lives within us and we are led by His Spirit, we will accept each other as members of His body not because of doctrines, but simply because He has accepted us. We will be one church because we all share one common life—the life of Christ in us.

In the current climate of the Anglican Communion, Covenant and GAFCON, perhaps this is just the challenge we need.  There are probably many things he preaches which I would not agree with today (and vice versa) but that is exactly the point.  We are one church, no matter how much we try to divide ourselves against each other.  We are one church, with one faith, with one Lord, Jesus Christ.

If only we would play tennis with each other...

(You can read the whole Chapter at Called to Be Free)

Bible says No - Part 2 - Leviticus 18

The first rule of understanding the Bible is prayer.  The second is context.

There is the story of a person who prayed and picked verses in his Bible to read at random. 

• The first verse said,  "And Judas went and hanged himself"
• The second was more disturbing when he read "Go thou and do likewise"
• The third verse nearly put him off reading the Bible forever when he read the words "What are you waiting for!"

He was reading Bible verses but not putting them in context and it could led to a very nasty conclusion!

If we want to find out what the Bible is saying  to us today, we have to read it in context.  There are actually 2 contexts we need to be aware of.  The first is an awareness of the people and cultures it was first written for.  Secondly, we need to see the verses we are reading in the context of the surrounding passage and indeed Scripture as a whole.

This is especially true of controversial issues such as the verses on homosexual sex.

The first prohibition is found in Leviticus 18:22.  Among a number of sexual no-no's, it says ...

²² ‘Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.' (NIV)

This might seem clear enough,  but there are 2 issues which make it far from an 'open and shut case' The first comes as we look at what else is described as “detestable”  in Leviticus.

Leviticus 11 is a good example:

“¹²Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be detestable to you.

So apparently, prawns, shrimps and crab are detestable and although my wife may agree with that (she hates any shell fish!) that doesn't make it an eternal law.

There are also other things which are forbidden in Leviticus which, if they applied today,  would mean that many of us are living in sin   Eg. Leviticus 19:27 commands, "‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard."   This is set alongside another command that prohibits eating steak cooked 'rare' (vs 26).  And yet these commands which are hard to get our heads around today, are alongside others which we would endorse wholeheartedly like "Do not degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute"! (vs  29)

There is more to reading this part of the Bible than  simply extracting single verses, if we are to understand which rules apply today and which do not - and indeed what the rules do, and do not, prohibit.  They were written in a very different culture with its own taboos and concerns, and some of the commands in Leviticus reflect that culture, while others reflect the eternal will of God.  The challenge is to discern which are which.

The second issue with Leviticus 18 is the word which the NIV Bible translates as 'detestable'.  We sometimes forget that the Bible was not written in English!  What we have is a translation, and the constant challenge in any work of translation is discerning how to best convey the fullest meaning of the words we translate.  This is not an easy task - as evidenced by  the large number of translations out there.

The Hebrew word in this case is   תעב 'to-ebah'.  The King James version translates it as 'abomination'.   In the list of sexual no-no's in Leviticus 18, 'lying with a man as with a woman' is singled out in the list as 'to-ebah'.   So what does this word mean?  And what picture would it have evoked in the Hebrews who first heard it?

The word 'to-ebah' occurs many times in the Old Testament, and is primarily associated with the worship of idols.

In Deuteronomy, there are 15 verses which use the word, and 12 of them either refer to idolatry.

One example is Dt 27:15

⁵Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place.

Another,  (Dt 23:18) links 'to-ebah' to money which came from  male temple prostitutes.

In the books of Kings and Chronicles, 'to-ebah' is used 10  times, almost all of them referring specifically to the worship of idols and again there is a link in 1 Kings 14:24 with male temple prostitutes.

²³For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree. ²⁴there were also male temple prostitutes in the land. They committed all the abominations of the nations that the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.       

So there would have been a clear and specific link in the minds of the people of Israel between 'to-ebah' and idolatry, and between homosexual sex and religious male prostitution.

The link between 'to-ebah' and idolatry is also present in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  The only book of the Bible where this does not apply is the book of Proverbs which uses the word 'to-ebah' in a bewildering variety of contexts.   But then the book of Proverbs is poetry, written in a different style and with different aims.  The Old Testament scholar, RN Whybray, in his commentary on Proverbs says "It cannot be too strongly emphasised  that Proverbs is an entirely different kind of book from the other OT books; indeed it is unique.  It served an entirely different purpose ...   Proverbs has one unifying characteristic: it is written entirely in poetry  ... Suffice to say that in general poetry makes up in allusiveness what it lacks in precision."  

If we set aside this poetic use of the word in Proverbs, we find that in up to 80% of the times 'to-ebah' is used, it refers to false worship or the worship of idols, and in some of those references there is a clear link made with male temple prostitution.

So why do we assume that it applies to  same-sex relationships?    Looking  at the evidence, it is much more likely  that when Leviticus condemns 'men lying with men as with a woman', it has homosexual temple prostitution to idols in mind, which is a world away from a self-giving loving committed relationship between 2 people of the same sex today.

The most frustrating thing about "Computer says No"  (the Little Britain comedy sketch which started this series)  is the fact that no explanation is given, no discussion takes place - there no analysis of why the answer is 'no'.  Both the Scriptures and LGBT people deserve so much more than that.

Next time - 1 Corinthians 6...

For the First Blog in this series - Bible says No - follow this link.
For the next Blog in the series - Bible says No - part 3 - follow this link