Episodes
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Christians are called upon to be honest with God, and most of all honest with ourselves. We are called to account, to face what needs to be faced, to confront that which we have avoided and from which we shrink.
To show humility, acceptance of the errors we have made, the sins we have committed, the debts that we owe.
The feast of St Patrick is a day on which the thoughts of many turn to Ireland, perhaps especially for those with family ties and links to this land – the isle of saints and scholars – a place of great beauty, so many wonderful people, and a place of many tears.
And for me raised in England, of Irish ancestry, now living back in Ireland – it brings to mind a disconnect between those two countries, that remains to this day, because of past unacknowledged and unrepented sins. I speak of an Gorta Mór or the ‘Great Hunger’ – known incorrectly and reprehensibly in the UK as the ‘potato famine’.
The need for repentance is as true for nations as it is for individuals, because old sins cast very long shadows, shadows that can overcast and hide much that is good, because sins that are unacknowledged and unrepented do not heal, they only fester – as much, if not more, for the perpetrator as the victim.
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Dictators and brutes throughout history have somehow convinced themselves that their violence and inhumanity will secure them power. That fear and intimidation, the force of arms will win the day. And all too sadly there seem to be no end of those who are willing to be their creatures.
Today we see the willing capitulation and self-subjugation of those who so want to be in positions of supposed power and wealth, that they are willing to abase themselves, to deny reality itself if they are told to do so, to pretend to convictions they do not have and a loyalty that they do not possess.
And while they may enjoy some temporary advantage, in the end they only achieve their own undoing, as they sew the very seeds of their destruction, as hubris and arrogance, greed and selfishness is confronted and confounded by the quiet dignity and courage of those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for a better way and a better world.
As we live through these times of mendacity, extortion, venality and toxic narcissism, where it feels as if the leadership of the world has been handed over to psychopaths and gangsters, we can reflect that in the story of the temptation in the desert, all that evil could offer, can ever offer, was and is the victory of the moment, the glory of the fleeting instant, but at the price of the destruction of those who suppose themselves to be the conqueror – but are in fact the conquered.
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Missing episodes?
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War and violence have always been with us, despite our experience of some decades of comparative peace, we have always been beset by the storms of life.
And sadly today, black clouds of intolerance, bitterness, greed and indifference to the suffering of others are gathering and deepening.
And an ominous warning sign, like the outbreak of bush fires all around us is the slow death of truth. No society – no civil society can hope to live without it, and yet daily it is under assault from those, who at least in the past ,paid some lip service to its defence – however tarnished the world of global politics has always been.
The tragedy of our present time, is that many leaders in our world, and their enablers, do not fear the truth of that statement, they are counting on it.
At a time when black is white, up is down heroes become villains and monsters lauded as heroes, when friends are treated as enemies and enemies as friends, when the victims are to blame and the aggressors, the abusers and the bullies are excused – what are we to do?
Too many of our more moral leaders, well intentioned, motivated by integrity no doubt, seem to feel that we must weather the storm, not be too combative, tolerate the nonsense, in the hope that sense will later prevail. But that is the way to merely slow the death of truth. It is the way of complicity.
Instead, truth must be fought for, upheld, reasserted time and again, by everyone, everywhere, all the time. We must call out every lie, from whoever, wherever and however they are shared.
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We live in a world, both in terms of income and social and political power where inequality has been on the rise across the globe for several decades.
We lionize the bullies, the liars, the psychopathic and the heartless. We seem prepared to place our trust in those who lack compassion, who are devoid of a consistent moral compass, and who have only the most tenuous grasp on the truth, that they view as plastic, malleable and disposable according to the advantage of the moment.
The popularity of autocratic and authoritarian leaders and parties, even in the so called free-world is due, in part, to a desire to hide away.
Where people pretend that there is nothing they can do, so there is nothing they need do – other than to retreat into a privatized world of insular consolation.
And this is so much more than politics, although the church also has a significant duty to be active in that compromised human endeavour.
It is about our spiritual health and preparedness to identify the moral standards for which we as Christians stand and then to take a stand; to be visionary, bold and courageous.
Above all we need to throw off the cloak of helplessness that too many in our world draw around themselves as a blanket of comfort and detachment.
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We are living through the rise of heartless authoritarianism across the world, itself borne out of and sustained by fear; the seeming destruction of a sense of integrity, public truth and reason before our very eyes, daily on our screens and in our newspapers.
When an immensely rich US president cancels charitable aid to the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, suggests ethnic cleansing as a way to bring peace to the Middle-East, – and now levies personal sanctions against staff of the International Criminal Court who seek to bring some measure of justice to victims of crimes against humanity and genocide – then we know that the time for Christians to be courageous and stand up is now.
And when the new vice-president of America says that a Christian teaching is that ‘charity begins at home’ – and let me remind you that the phrase received its greatest exposition in Charles Dicken’s ‘Martin Chuzzlewitt, where it was used by the villain of the book, Montague Tigg, a con man and a thief, to justify his own swindling and corruption.
The salad days are over - If our Christian faith does not inspire us to condemn, to object and to resist then we must question whether our convictions are merely fair-weather affectations – as the saying goes, ‘all for show and not for blow’.
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Sometimes the most significant moments, the greatest trials of our lives are only understood in hindsight.
As the Danish Philosopher and Theologian, Soren Kirkegaard once said: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”.
That is the human condition.
We should all seek to take time to look back, to reflect on the journey, this pilgrimage of life that has brought us this far, but also a time to look forward, with all the freshness of hope of a child to the path we yet have to tread.
And what better to guide us, perhaps, than to hear the story of Martin the cobbler.
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In the Western church, to a large part through the influence of Augustine, his genius, but also his own disabling guilt and shame, we have been bequeathed a view of salvation as the remission of punishment, by a stern and judicial God, being spared abandonment and damnation that otherwise would be ours. We might call this ‘Salvation from’, - salvation from hell, salvation from retribution, salvation from banishment.
Some traditions emphasize much more than others, of course, but whatever the degree, this perspective can create a very warped idea of God.
But there is another view, more prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy, but also within strands of the Western Church where human sin and error are viewed, not so much in terms of crime, guilt and therefore resultant legal penalty, but in terms of illness.
In the face of which we are offered compassion, wholeness and healing.
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The American moral, legal and political philosopher John Rawls devised a concept called the 'Veil of Ignorance'. A challenge to all those who might like to define what the ideal society should be. Devise away, he said, but first, you need to assume that you have no way of knowing where in that society you might be placed; would you be male or female, gay, trans or heterosexual; would you be male or female, rich or poor, educated, uneducated? From behind the Veil of Ignorance, would you want to create a society with prejudice, disadvantage, unfairness, the arbitrary benefitting of one group over another, the suppression of certain groups and individuals? After all you might end up one of the oppressed and subjugated ‘losers’, rather than a random and undeserving ‘winner’.
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Every year we seem to start sooner. Shops, cafés, pubs and public buildings are already decked out with Christmas decorations, the sound of Christmas tunes carries across their sound systems. And it is not even December.But in the rush to savour its delights way, way before time, we miss out on something profoundly important – something we need, if only we were wise enough to recognise it.Advent.Advent is not only a time for us to prepare, to await and to ready ourselves for the wonder to come, but also a time of heighten awareness, of participating in the divine nature, the divine reality, into which we also are invited. Of seeing God not as a ‘being’ not even as ‘being’ but as ‘a becoming’.
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There is a human tendency to only look for information that confirms what we already believe, and to reject, ignore, or even just not notice anything that is a challenge to our mindset. It’s called ‘confirmation bias’. We look for confirmation, that we are right.And if we receive a message that is a challenge or a contradiction, then it might not get through at all, Or, it will become so altered that we might never recognise it, as the story we told, at all.It brings to mind such expressions as ‘talking to a brick wall’, ‘flogging a dead horse’ or ‘preaching to deaf ears’. And one can’t help but wonder how Jesus might view the matter, because sometimes, maybe often, we simply don’t get the point at all.This festival of Christ the King is one of those times in Church life, a feast, a celebration, when we appear to be doing the opposite of what he intended…….Perhaps one day, we might listen to Jesus, and no longer distance him and his message from us, by placing him on a throne.
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In the story of the feeding of the five thousand we need to look beyond the confines of conventional interpretations, beyond the banal limitations of time and place, and seek instead what are timeless, eternal truths.The gospel writers each use the same story to achieve different ends with different listeners in different Christian communities.We might therefore ask ourselves, with such a vastly greater separation of time and context from the action, how we might tell and interpret the story today, whilst still retaining, and indeed underscoring the resonances at its first telling.If we are to grow, if we are to progress in our spiritual life and experience of God, in our relationships with others and within ourselves, then we must be open to the entirely new.Jesus calls us to uneasiness and skepticism about well-worn paths, to reject the safety of the familiar, the pedestrian, the everyday. Spiritual growth does not take root in certainty and dogmatism, the sanctuary of the known and expected – it flourishes in the rich soil of humility, of vulnerability, of risk.
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Is there a tendency, within the church, to revert to the Pharisee, to retreat into rules and constraints and the sanctuary of the few, the exclusive club, that cares more for law than the suffering of humanity?Do we allow the practice of our religion to smother and obscure with rules and regulations and prejudices of the past that which should be simple and uplifting and liberating?We must ask ourselves are we even hypocrites, actors who enact rituals and a certain religious theatre, who utter words of piety and devotion, yet do not take them to heart and demonstrate in our lives that they have made a true home there, that we have been changed inside as a result?
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‘Now we see through a glass darkly’ said the Apostle Paul, for both our ability to understand, and the lenses through which we look are compromised, each in their own way.We might regard both the Bible and the church/churches, not as divinely perfect ordinations, divine products, but as the earnest attempt of humanity to witness to and express their experience and understanding of the divine reality, however flawed and insufficient those perceptions may be.Likewise, we might have sufficient humility to acknowledge that our fantasy images of the character of Jesus, might not survive an encounter with reality.
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Donald Woods Winnicott who died in 1971 was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of developmental psychology. He is best known for his ideas on the true self and the false self.In the 1980s the psychologist Richard Schwartz developed the concept that the mind is made up of different discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities. Not just one character on a stage – but a whole company of actors.Then there is the famous psychologist Victor Frankl, who survived the death camp in Auschwitz having learned a lesson that would stay with him for the rest of his life – and shape his entire future as a doctor, psychiatrist and philosopher.So, three psychologists, three philosophers of the human mind and personality, all who deeply influence my thinking, training and development as a priest, and as a therapist.But what light can they shed on our faith and the Gospel?
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Let’s be honest, no one takes the whole Bible literally, no one. Otherwise, they would already be in prison for murder or a fugitive from the law. We are all selective, and rightly so, in our reading of scripture.We no longer practice, support or condone slavery, prejudice against the disabled (at least in part) and the silencing and marginalisation of women in the Church (again at least to some extent - although injustices still remain).So why are particular texts still treated by some as first-order instructions to be obeyed and ruthlessly enforced (unlike many other instructions in the same books and letters that are no longer insisted upon)?So again, a selective interpretation has been made - a choice to perpetuate past cultural taboos and prejudices - for example against LGBTQIA people - but why?
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Throughout the Gospel of John “the Jews” are presented as hostile to Jesus and to all who assert that he is the Christ. They are said to plot against him, to convince Pilate to execute him; even after his crucifixion they are said to oppose Pilate placing the sign ‘King of the Jews’; supposedly the disciples hid for fear of “the Jews”.In the past this has led to some terrible misunderstandings and crimes against the Jewish people:This toxic history has made some conclude that the language of John is so violently anti-Semitic that the time has now come to stop using the Gospel in today’s Christian churches – that we should lay John quietly to rest.However, so much scripture is culture bound within the first century, that were we to start editing and cutting the Bible to irradicate awkward passages we should never stop – so perhaps it is better to understand, to de-construct, to re-interpret.Particularly, we need to be very clear about the purpose of John’s Gospel and what is truly meant by this term “the Jews”.
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It can be pleasing when you find a meeting of minds, as it were, between science and religion, after all, there is no need for them to be at odds, and at best they can act as a corrective and a refiner, one to the other. Religion can humanize science, can bring to it ethical and spiritual insights that otherwise it might lack. Science can bring to religion the challenge of intellectual rigour – otherwise Galileo would still be condemned and we would still think the world flat.But together, and working in harmony, they can bring so much to our understanding of the world and our place in it. In John's Gospel, and in the lesson of the grain of wheat, we find one such example – of the two working hand in hand.
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J. John, the famous preacher speaks of how he was once asked at a funeral “Did your uncle leave much?” he replied “O yes - he left everything”.He also said that the problem of the rat race is, even if you win, you are still a rat.If you can’t take it with you, and you will never have enough - then the rat race itself better be fun - and I wonder if it is and for how many?Sadly, we have bought the great lie. The great deception.Schopenhauer, the 19th century philosopher said that this great lie is like seawater - the more we drink, the thirstier we become. Coveting is based on an illusion - it cannot deliver what it promises. We can of course experience temporary highs from presents, a new car, a pay rise - but how long does the effect last? How long before we are thirsty again?
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Anyone who has held their newborn child in their arms knows that time, when nothing else is of any account, when the miracle of new life is our total focus, when we become aware of the awesome continuity of it all.
As any parent knows the journey through the pregnancy is one of hope, joy, worry, optimism, struggle, expectation and fear. In a way the birth becomes such a focal point that we can’t see past that day, everything is building up to the delivery almost as if time beyond that point doesn’t exist.
But, of course, it does, and far from being a destination the new birth becomes just the start of such a change in our lives, inconceivable before; such a turning point, that you look back and hardly recognize yourself before.
The birth of any child is momentous and precious, the birth of this child is of cosmic and timeless significance.
And how infinitely more so with the coming of Jesus, a source of joy and hope not only to his parents and family, but soon to be a source of new hope to a world in desperate need. A tiny baby that grew up to be the most significant human being who has ever lived.
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In the Gospels the writers report that Jesus warns of the times to come, of the apocalypse that his listeners should expect.The fact that the apocalypse didn’t happen as they felt Jesus had foretold, should not blind us to the truth that for them, at the time, it truly felt like the end. After the sacking of the city and Temple in AD70 Jerusalem was never the same again, the Jewish faith and the Jewish nation, were never the same again.In this way, the Gospel, is not so much mistaken, even if it is not exactly correct. Instead, we might regard the voice of Jesus, at least as reported by Matthew, as speaking the truth, rather than a fact.This is an important lesson to learn in our journey of faith, to distinguish the two. The Bible offers much insight and wisdom, and right guidance to us in our lives today, despite the distance of time. But like the parables told by Jesus, which convey much that is truthful, they do not necessarily need to be factual. There are, in fact, stories made up to convey the truth.We do the Bible a great disservice if we constrain it all within the smaller circle of fact, rather than let it live and breathe and grow within the larger circle of truth. We also need to accept that certain parts may no longer convey the truth today.
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