Learning about the powers from an 'unsophisticated' Pope

As we draw near the end of our series in YWBC on Ephesians, a recurring theme in recent weeks has been ‘challenging powers,’ one of the elements of the mission statement we’ve been developing in church over the last year. Over the weekend I was struck by a great example of this practice when reading Jonathan Freedland’s Saturday comment in the Guardian, on Pope Francis.

Since becoming Pope, Francis has hit the headlines on a recurring basis, both because of his decision to shun the opulence which has previously characterised the papal office, and also his frequent remarks on the issues of justice and the need for the church to offer a more humble and humane stance to those who have previously felt ostracised by it. Freedland’s article cites as examples comments made in May this year about the ‘dangers of unbridled capitalism’ and as well as a recent tweet lamenting the ‘bitter fruits’ of ‘the “throw-away” culture.’

Perhaps, it’s not surprising that Francis’s stance hasn’t earned him universal approval. Freedland also quotes recent criticism of the Popeby the free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, who bemoan the fact that he lacks the more ‘sophisticated’ approach of his predecessors. What struck me most forcefully about the IEA article was the way in which author Philip Booth attacks the ‘error of arguing that ‘systems’ can have ‘goals’ or ‘idols’. It is acting, rational people who make good or bad moral choices. It is certainly legitimate for priests to criticise greed amongst the several billion people taking economic decisions each and every day, if they feel this is an important moral issue. However, ‘systems’ do not take such moral decisions independently of human persons. The system produces what is willed by the persons who participate in economic life.’

Booth’s comments strike me as misguided for several reasons. Strangely, they seem to contradict the attitudes of most free market champions I’ve known, who usually speak with awe and reverence about market ‘forces’. The market is spoken of as the higher power, the supreme arbiter who can shake out the wheat from the chaff, the viable from the unviable, who can benevolently ensure the trickle down of wealth from top to bottom.

Secondly, I wonder how many of us really feel ourselves to be independent or fully in control in the spending choices we make. We are all constrained by our upbringing, social location, circumstances or by limits to the choices which are available to us. Is someone genuinely free when they spend excessively to sustain an image which they hope will win the approval of others? Is someone trapped by unemployment and taking out the pay day loan they need to feed their family for the remainder of a month really making an ‘independent moral decision’?

Finally, Booth’s comments seem to me to be contradicted by scripture. On Sunday, Duncan will be concluding our series and talking about Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesian believers to put on the armour of God. In Ephesians 6 he famously writes that, ‘our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’ In Naming the Powers, Walter Wink describes Paul’s language here as a ‘heaping up of terms to describe the ineffable, invisible world-enveloping reach of a spiritual network of powers.’

In this current age, it may not be possible to fully overcome the powers, given the great reach they have into every aspect of our lives and society. There may be moments when the best we can do is to simply ‘stand,’ to use the language of Paul. We resist, we determine that where and when we can we will make the choices that best reflect the values of the age to come. My hope is that by talking together about challenging powers, perhaps in time coming to the point where we can be more honest with each other about our own struggles and the ways we feel controlled by the culture of our day, we can all discover a new strength and resolve in living in the way Paul describes in Ephesians, ‘a life worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called.’ Perhaps not a perspective as ‘sophisticated’ as those held by the Institute of Economic Affairs, but one which is, ultimately, far more liberating.

The parable of the strivers and skivers

As usual on a Wednesday at YWBC, we shared Morning Office earlier today. This was my reflection on one of our readings, from Matthew 20.

Let me tell you again what the kingdom of heaven is like. One day a businessman came up with an idea for a new venture, one which had the potential to revolutionise the sector in which he was competing. He went out looking for people who might be able to help make his dream a reality:

• People with skills and imagination, with the creativity and insight to exploit gaps in the market when they arose.
• People who work hard – people who get out of bed early in the morning, when others are still asleep. People who are willing to put in the hours for the cause, people who pay their taxes and don’t cause a drain on the public finances.
• People who are respectable – the kind of people you and I would want to be the face of our company, the kind of people who would ensure the good reputation of the business.

Over time the business grew – as wealth was created, new opportunities arose. But it’s not always easy to get hold of the sort of staff you need to enable you to sustain growth. The businessman found himself struggling when he looked around for people who might be of use to him. There were graduates who weren’t able to adjust to the demands of a competitive business, there were people lacking the necessary drive and determination, there were people with no employment history, people with no history of standing on their own two feet.

Time went on and the business grew and the owner took the decision to look for even more staff. One day, he walked out of his office and across the road to the pub where men spent the mornings playing pool and the afternoons drinking beer. ‘Why are you sitting here, idle?’ he asked them. ‘Because no one has given us a job,’ came the reply.

So he took them on – the men from the pub across the road, the people on the welfare to work scheme, the immigrants whose presence in the town had become the source of so much tension.

One month later, he got together all of his workforce for a special announcement: every single person in the company, those who had been there from the start, those who had just joined, the finance director, the delivery driver, the head of sales and marketing, the cleaner.

‘Our company is prospering,’ and he said, ‘and to enable us to grow further, I’ve decided that we should float on the London Stock Exchange. This is a marvellous opportunity. And to say thank you to all of you, I’ve decided that you should each have 200 shares in the new PLC.’

The directors of the company were appalled. They pointed at those who had only just signed up to work with them. ‘This is so unfair,’ they said. ‘We have worked hard, grafted, put in the hours, borne the burden of getting this business off the ground. And yet you treat us in the same way as these freeloaders who haven’t been here for five minutes.’

And the reply of the businessman: ‘But you knew the deal. Take your shares and go. I’ve paid you everything I said I would, and if I want others to share in my wealth why is that such a problem for you? Why are you reacting in such an angry way to my generosity?’

‘Jesus is not a pansy.’ Appropriate language for gospel people?

I’ve not posted much in recent months, a combination of busyness and waiting for an issue to arise that I feel strongly enough about to write. But a few days ago, I read Mark Driscoll’s post, ‘Is God a Pacifist?’ where he explains distinctions between killing and murdering, before coming to the conclusion that the coming of the kingdom ‘is only possible if an all-powerful, benevolent Authority vanquishes his enemies. In other words, the Prince of Peace is not a pacifist.’

Greg Boyd has already provided a response to Driscoll which is more articulate and cogent than anything I could produce. Leaving aside Driscoll’s failure to acknowledge than the vanquishing he speaks of is actually achieved through the non-retaliation that takes Jesus to the cross, where he disarms the rulers and authorities and triumphs over them, his article has also got me thinking about the sort of language which is appropriate for us to use when we talk about Jesus.

The line which stood out most to me in Driscoll’s article, and which has been disturbing me ever since, is the statement that, ‘Jesus is not a pansy or a pacifist.’ Maybe my perspective is skewed by the three years I spent at Junior High School as a prime target for bullying (in case you’re wondering I wasn’t a pansy, I was the school swot instead, and I’m still getting over the scarring that comes from a sustained period wearing 1980s style NHS children’s glasses). But since when has it been acceptable to use the word ‘pansy’ when talking about Jesus? I’m not just angered by the thinly-veiled homophobia, but rather the bigger implication than anything which smacks of being gentle, sympathetic or kind-hearted isn’t somehow tough or impressive enough to keep up with people’s expectations of all action hero figure God. Are there any other clarifications we need to offer about Jesus: that he wasn’t a namby-pamby or a goody-two-shoes?

I know that I write from the perspective of a European with a humanities degree (it appears from later in his article that these are two further attributes which could earn someone the dis-approval of Driscoll). But can there ever be any place for this sort of vocabulary when we speak of Jesus? To me it betrays the insecurity of the playground intimidator, who doesn’t like what he sees when he comes face-to-face with the ways in which God has worked to bring in his new kingdom, a disappointment that God has revealed himself to be different from the tough guys who are celebrated by our culture.

Earlier this week, David Cameron was rebuked in the Commons for his use of the phrase ‘con-man’in relation to Ed Miliband. It wasn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened to our Prime Minister. Under pressure, he has a tendency to hit out with disdain, but these moments stay with us, the use of language which reveals our true colours to others. All of which goes to underline the need for each of us to use such care and precision in the words we use to talk about God, and in our relating to each other.

A rant for Saturday evening

We’ve spent most of Saturday at the wedding of friends, a happy and relaxing occasion, and a lovely service conducted by an excellent minister. The whole thing was superb, with the exception of verse 3 of the opening hymn. Allow me to explain…

Perhaps I’ve been on a different planet from other hymn-singers during my 41 years here on earth, but I’d never heard this version of ‘All things bright and beautiful,’ and my eyes were somewhat agog when they read these extra four lines (suffice to say, they’re not in the Songs of Fellowship version):

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly

And ordered their estate.

Now I know the Church of England is sometimes described as ‘The Tory Party at prayer.’ I just didn’t realise it may be also be Tory Party at sung worship.

I wouldn’t say I was upset to read this. More like angry, enraged, appalled, embarrassed and cringing as I looked round at the congregation, most of whom I’d guess aren’t regular church-goers. Can I simply say that this verse struck me as the most offensive, unbiblical, theologically-dubious, patronising, anti-prophetic, status-quo affirming lyric I have ever encountered?

.., and now that’s off my chest, I can relax for the evening.

Everything I learned about leadership I learned from Johan Cruyff

We’ve spent the last two weeks on holiday, offering much needed time to reflect and think, and also the opportunity to catch up on reading. Every summer, I try to take in at least one book on pastoral practice, to make me think about my priorities, and this year was no exception. I wasn’t disappointed by David Hansen’s Art of Pastoring, challenging and full of wisdom, but the most thought-provoking reading on leadership came from an unexpected source.

Graham Hunter’s Barca tells the modern history of Barcelona Football Club, culminating in the recent reign of Pep Guardiola’s wonderful side who won 11 trophies in the four seasons from 2008 to 2012.

The story of Barcelona’s recent success is the ultimate demonstration of the importance of corporate culture. To find the roots of Guardiola’s success, you need to go back to 1988 when the club persuaded one of its greatest players, Johan Cruyff, to return as manager. Barca won four La Liga titles and one European Cup with Cruyff at the helm, but those headlines can’t begin to do justice to the legacy he left behind. A more important contribution was his overhaul of the club’s famous youth development system, the cantera (literally ‘quarry’) based at La Masia.

When Cruyff arrived at Barcelona, each age-group at La Masia played a different style of football, depending on the coach. Cruyff, however, insisted on a wholly different approach, with the same tactics taught to players at each stage of their development. Even at the age of 12 or 13, players at La Masia now play seven-aside football with a 3-2-1 formation that closely matches that of the senior side (two overlapping full backs either side of a ‘pivot’ in defence, and Xavi and Iniesta type midfielders behind one forward).

So next time you watch Barcelona’s irresistible football, and a beautifully fashioned goal, try to appreciate that it wasn’t conceived a week ago on the training pitch. It’s been years in the making, it’s not a way of playing a game but rather a philosophy. Barcelona Football Club doesn’t train its players, it moulds them.

And all of this has got me thinking again about the role of a pastor. Is it just to get results next Sunday, or rather to shape the culture of a church, to establish norms and practices which will still be forming disciples many years later?

Short term thinking produces results of sorts, but all too often it’s something shallow, lacking deep enough roots to sustain longer-term fruitfulness.

There’s a final insight offered by Hunter which seems especially relevant to this issue of leadership and culture. He writes about the constant queue of coaches from clubs around the world who want to come and visit Barcelona, to see how they operate. But he points out that ‘… unless the club from which the person is sent is ready for a total overhaul of its scouting, development and training structure, as well as its basic football philosophy, then picking up ‘bits and pieces’ of the Barca credo is a waste of time.’

Purpose Driven Football Club?  

Engagement and/or entertainment

At the risk of coming over all ‘grumpy old man,’ a couple of thoughts have occurred to me in light of the frenzy of excitement which has arisen in the last 24 hours, in light of the internet sensation that is Kate Bottley’s Flashmob performance at a wedding she recently officiated. (If you have been in a cave/on the moon/in your own world, over the weekend, you can catch up on the story here.)

1. Kate Bottley is great – obviously a warm and winsome personality, and I wish I had her charisma and could dance like she can, but she has clearly has more rhythm in her big toe than exists in all of my gangling six foot two inches frame. If I tried to imitate her approach, the results would be embarrassing for me and all concerned, and besides, ministry is not about imitation, but finding the best expression of the values of the kingdom in whatever context we find ourselves in. More than anything else, people are looking for a church which is authentic.
2. The church does need to find patterns of worship which engage all of our senses, and which are participatory, but we don’t all want to dance and we’re not all extroverts. What some people regard as wonderful fun is living hell for others. I’ve met a number of people in church in recent months who’ve wanted to come and hide for a while, find a quiet space to recover from life's wounds, and receive God’s grace and healing.
3. The sooner we have women bishops the better, but leading a dance at a wedding does not automatically qualify someone for the role.
4. Being relevant and fun really impresses some people, but makes us open to parody in the eyes of others. If you’re not sure what I mean, watch this.

Bible reading skills in a digital age

It’s been a busy couple of weeks recently, in church and family life, with little opportunity to blog or reflect, but I thought it was worth sharing a particularly thought-provoking piece by Jonathan Freedland in yesterday’s Guardian, which you can read here. His column reflects on the impact of digital technology on the depth of what we know and share. There’s little need to study facts or information and come to our conclusions, when information is invariably one click away (a trend brilliantly summed up by Stephen Colbert’s concept of ‘truthiness’), and we’ve traded in forms of communication like letter writing, for emails, texts and social networks. The result is that we share our lives with far more people than ever before, but often on a far more superficial level.

I was particularly struck by Freedland’s comment on how tools like Twitter have reduced the time that we take to process and reflect on significant events. A news story trends quickly, inspiring a flurry of hashtagged comment and analysis which quickly evaporates, as the news cycle moves on to the next big event.

Perhaps most disconcerting of all is a closing observation by the American intellectual Leon Wieseltier, that the very skill of reading itself is under threat, as we become addicted to acquiring, commenting and then discarding information at an ever increasing speed.

What are the implications of these trends for discipleship? How do we embrace the benefits of the digital age, whilst also forming habits that are intentionally different in key ways?

Perhaps we can begin with a love for Scripture which plays itself out in a deliberate slowing down of our reading speed. The Psalmist famously wrote (119:11), ‘I treasure your word in my heart,’ which suggests a ponderous, reflective process of of pausing and lingering over words. We don’t encourage people to read Dickens or Shakespeare in a year, but we do think that’s a good thing to do with the Bible. I understand the desire to help people acquire an overview of the whole biblical story, but it’s not a text which works well with speed-reading: take it a verse at a time, a parable at a time, recognise that you’re engaged in the task of a lifetime.

And if there’s a part of the story you’ve not yet read, why is that a problem when you worship God and serve him in a community with someone who has? Perhaps a bigger risk than thinking the Bible is a book to be read in a hurry is the idea that it’s a book to be read on our own. We read it, not with the commentary of disembodied tweets, but with the perspectives of people we’re on a long journey with, and whose joys and disappointments we share. 

Confusing testimony with control – follow up thoughts from Sunday

Two days ago, our series on the Sermon on the Mount arrived at the end of Matthew 5, and we reflected on Jesus’ deeply challenging words on the need for us to love our enemies, a theme which seemed especially poignant in light of last week’s horrific attack on Drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of Woolwich.

You can listen to the sermon here. After I preached, we had time for questions and answers, and I've been mulling over two of the points which were made from the floor. Alan spoke about the transition which is proving so painful to many of us at the moment, as the church finds itself losing the political power and influence to which it has become so accustomed in the history of Christendom. And then John, alluding to Romans 13, pointed out that while we’re called to love our enemies, it remains the role of those in civic authority to uphold law and order, which sometimes means withdrawing freedom from criminals, or imposing other penalties on them. In Paul’s words, the government is ‘the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer’ (Romans 13:5).

Reflecting on this feedback yesterday, I remembered some words from Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s wonderful book, Resident Aliens. In it, they describe the Sermon on the Mount as, ‘A vision of the inbreaking of a new society. They are indicatives, promises, instances, imaginative examples of life in the kingdom of God. In Matthew 5, Jesus repeatedly cites an older command, already tough enough to keep in itself, and then radically deepens its significance, not to lay some gigantic ethical burden on the backs of potential ethical heroes, but rather to illustrate what is happening in our midst.’ (p84)

Offering the world a demonstration of the new work of God, of the values of the kingdom he is bringing to birth is a task which doesn’t sit easily with dictating terms to everyone. As soon as power is placed in the hands of the church, it’s only natural that we begin to feel a sense of presumption or entitlement about the level of control we feel we can exert on the lives of others, and we want to start playing the roles of judge, jury and executioner which scripture tells us to leave to others.

True love for enemies is something we don’t see often, which makes it so dazzling and compelling in the rare moments we encounter it, an unveiling of God’s love and mercy. Perhaps a key lesson we can take from Sunday’s reflection is a fresh awareness that demonstration of this love represents the prime calling of the church, with law and order a task best left to others.

Suggestions for our church swear box?

I’ve spent some time this morning getting ready for Sunday morning at YWBC. We’re carrying on with our series on the Sermon on the Mount, and this week we’ve arrived at Matthew 5:33-37, the section where Jesus calls for our language to be characterised by honesty, and free from guile or deception. On the same morning, it’s been striking to read reports of Google executives appearing before the Public Accounts Committee to face questions on their financial reporting and tax bills, with exasperated MPs asking them to ‘call a spade a spade.’

I realise that we live at a moment when trust in the credibility of statements made by public figures is low, but I can’t help feeling this is one more area of life where it’s easier to distract ourselves with what goes ‘in the world,’ conveniently forgetting about the need to put our own affairs in order first.

Reading the passage again this morning has reminded me of so many of the pretentious ways we use language in church, how we dress up our gossip or criticisms in pious language (we don’t pass on bits of juicy information, instead we say ‘I’m just telling you this for prayer…) or how we use euphemisms to play down the significance of behaviour which causes hurt or bad feeling. I thought this morning of a person I once knew who prided themselves on the fact that ‘folk always know where I stand with them.’ This was a coded way of acknowledging that lots of people had been crushed by their criticism over the years.

I’ve also been reminded this morning of Adrian Plass’ excellent, and very funny, book, Bacon Sandwiches and Salvation, where he provides an A to Z of definitions on the Christian life. For example, ‘Pillar of the church’ is defined as ‘(1) person who is consistent and reliable in their commitment to the well-being of the congregation (2) big thick thing that holds everything up and restricts vision.’

I think that a major step in combatting this problem is to start by naming it for what it is, to be upfront with each other about the games we sometimes play. So, why not have a church swear box? But let’s make sure that it’s not just about the outlawing of ‘rude’ words, but the prevention of self-righteousness and pretensions. Let me know your suggestions in the comments section below.

On social media and self-projection in ministry

Over the weekend I’ve been doing some reading which has helped me crystallise thoughts which have been on the back of my mind for the couple of months since I took the plunge and entered the Twittersphere. I’ve been working through James Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom, the second of his Cultural Liturgies series, which follows 2009’s Desiring the Kingdom.

The central thrust of Smith’s argument is that our discipleship often fails to be effective because it focuses on head knowledge. We believe that if we get people to think correctly they will be able to live well for Jesus, forgetting that we have bodies as well as minds and that our passions and impulses are competed for by a culture which is constantly and compellingly offering us an alternative story to the Christian one.

A part of the book which I found especially helpful was Smith’s analysis of social media. At one point he writes:

‘… both Facebook and Twitter can seem to foster habits of self-display that closely resemble the vice of vainglory. Or at the very least, they amplify the self-consciousness and ironic distance that characterises late modern capitalism – to a debilitating degree.’ (p145)

Later on the same page, Smith fleshes out these observations in a discussion of the impact of social media on the average Western teenager: ‘Her Twitter feed incessantly updates her about all of the exciting, hip things she is not doing with the “popular” girls; her Facebook pings nonstop with photos that highlight how boring her homebound existence is. And so she is compelled to be constantly “on,” to be “updating” and “checking in.” The competition for coolness never stops.’

Years ago at College, I remember the regular advice of one of our tutors that the last thing to ask anyone at a minister’s meeting was the question: ‘How many people do you get on a Sunday morning?’ I suspect the loneliness and thanklessness of this role make those who hold it more susceptible than most to insecurity, even to the occasional prima donna moment. Added to that can be the need we often feel to justify ourselves and our use of time.

And then enter Twitter. Am I being overly-anxious when I detect a variety of trends in the content of our tweets? There are…

• The ones which show how edgy we are: e.g. I’ve just spent the morning at our new missional/radical/enterprising project
• The ones which show how connected we are: e.g. great to meet today with @’insert name of high profile colleague here’
• The ones which show how techy we are: I’ve shared x, y or z, on my most recent gadget acquisition or on the latest app I’ve discovered.

And as I read this, there’s a nagging question at the back of my mind: For whose benefit do we broadcast all this news? Of course, I realise that one of the great advantages of a tool like Twitter is to share ideas and information. I do it myself with updates to friends and members of our church, so I don’t want these words to be misunderstood as cynical, or critical. But when most of us have felt the lack of honesty in our churches, the feeling we have that we often can’t be real about how awful we feel, the lack of lament in our worship, isn’t it troubling that we may now have discovered a tool which takes this problem to a whole new level?

So a plea… how can we redeem this medium with a bit more honesty and balance? Or am I being naïve to think we could actually reach the point where we feel sufficiently honest to tweet that it’s been a lousy day and we could really do with a prayer or encouragement, or that all I’ve done today is follow the same routines I’ve done for weeks, months and years, because a major part of our calling is simply to be faithful?

On Salt and Light and being 'Sorted'

I spent this morning getting ready for Sunday in YWBC, when we’ll be carrying on our series on the Sermon on the Mount with a reflection on Matthew 5:13-16, Jesus’ famous words on the role of the church, to be ‘the salt of the earth’ and ‘the light of the world.’

As I’ve mulled over the passage, a question has occurred to me which we might want to think of ahead of Sunday: is be better to be deliberately different to others, or does being salt and light mean we model a lifestyle which is a redeemed and more attractive version of what everyone else is doing?

My reason for posing this question arises from time checking out the website of Sorted, which makes the claim to be ‘The UK’s Only Christian Magazine for Men.’

At this point, it’s probably only right to declare my prejudices ahead of browsing the site. I’ve had one or two bad experiences of men’s Christian gatherings. I realise they’re very helpful to some chaps, but my abiding memory of Mandate in Belfast several years ago was a lecture from a retired US Army General who didn’t actually tell us all to ‘man up’ even if that was the gist of his message. Think of Robert de Niro from Meet the Parents in a pulpit and you’ll get a picture of what I’m talking about. I’ve decided I like a mixture of testosterone and oestrogen in church, I’m not ‘wild at heart’ and I’ve never been able to share the angst of those who feel the church is somehow overly-feminised.  

Perhaps because of that, I came to Sorted in particular need of convincing. But I didn’t expect to be so taken aback by the way in which it’s so obviously in thrall to our culture’s idea of what it means to be successful and a proper man. Can someone explain to me the redemptive nature of articles like ‘the ultimate guide to cool winter coats’ or a review of the latest smartphones?

The underlying message is clear – to be a credible witness means we need the latest gadgets, clothing, and a body that we wouldn’t be ashamed of at the gym? But in the Sermon on the Mount, doesn’t Jesus go on to say that it’s ‘the Gentiles who strive for all these things,’ before calling us to ‘strive first for the Kingdom of God’? How can we ever redeem shallow notions of what it means to be successful or masculine, if we’re so obsessed with our need to somehow prove ourselves as being capable of reaching those standards ourselves?

This isn’t call for all of us to live like Amish communities, trading in our cars for horses and carriages. But there are serious grounds for concern here. Five years on from a financial meltdown of global proportions, having chased the idols of credit and conspicuous consumption, lots of people in our country face the prospect of struggling on, either unemployed, underemployed or overworked. When so many are asking big questions about the sustainability of our current economic mode, are we really being salt and light if our message is simply that you too can have Jesus, an iPhone and a great six pack?

Exodus 21: Rules and regulations

The American satirist PJ O’Rourke once remarked that, ‘God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations.’

We spent last night in church looking at Exodus 21, one of those passages which contains a long list of instructions for various scenarios. Perhaps, PJ O’Rourke has read Exodus 21 too, and he reckons it’s texts like this which represent such a drag on God’s reputation. But as I’ve spent time thinking about Exodus 21, I’ve begun to think about similar OT passages in a new way.

One of the strangest things about Exodus 21 is the subject matter of the opening verses: how to treat slaves. Given that the people of Israel have just been delivered from the bondage of Egypt, this is the last thing you would expect to read. It seems like such a letdown to contemplate that in the post-Exodus landscape there will still be those who are owned by others, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that this is still a world which is governed by some harsh economic realities. However, Exodus 21 does at least affirm that in Israel’s life slaves are to have certain fundamental rights, disappointing to us but a significant piece of progress in 1200 BC.

Thinking about these instructions, I remembered Jesus’ words about divorce in Matthew 19, where he says that Moses only allowed such measures, ‘because you were so hard-hearted.’ These rules and regulations don’t exist to make us better people, they exist to safeguard us and the community when things, inevitably, go wrong. I was also reminded of how, in his letters, Paul seems to have recognised the gap between God’s ideal and what was achievable in the circumstances of his day. In a moment of lyrical rhetoric he proclaimed to the Galatian Christians that ‘there is no longer slave or free,’ but several years later, when he writes to the Ephesians and Philemon, he appears to be much more pragmatic on the issue of slavery. He is still a voice for change, in that he calls on masters not to threaten those they own, but his thinking also seems to be grounded in the realistic understanding that the abolition of slavery would have had catastrophic economic consequences at that point in history.

What has also struck me as I’ve reflected on these passages is the room for manoeuvre offered by many of the rules and regulations. For example, Exodus 21:12 instructs that a sentence of death for anyone guilty of deliberate murder, but the following verse offers the potential for leniency, if the act was ‘not premeditated but came about by an act of God,’ a clause which seems to provide ample scope for flexible interpretation. When I read the Gospels, it seems to me that Jesus never speaks of the law as harsh or restrictive (in fact he says he hasn’t come to take away one letter of it), but he is at his angriest when he finds the Pharisees applying the law with no flexibility, no willingness to look with compassion on what lies behind people’s actions on certain occasions.

I wonder what lessons there are for us from Exodus 21. It seems to me that one of the basic assumptions behind these rules is that you will never guarantee perfect behaviour. People will sin, people will make mistakes. But Israel is given a set of guidelines for knowing how best to minimise the impact of the mistakes on individuals and the whole of the community and we might want to think in that light about our own commitment to Christian standards. So often, it feels like our default option when relating to the world is to throw the rule book at people. We think we have the right to control others, and we forgot our calling is to model something more attractive, and to lovingly help when things go wrong.

A helpful resource on Exodus and violence

A question which has come up a couple of times in recent months, as we’ve been exploring Exodus in Yardley Wood BC, is the issue of divine violence in the Old Testament. I noticed today that Greg Boyd, whose writing I’ve found to be tremendously helpful, has promised a series of posts on this topic on his excellent ReKnew website. You can find out more at: 

http://reknew.org/2013/02/reflections-on-divine-violence-in-the-old-testament/

God, Egypt and nature... some follow up thoughts

Time off this week has offered a welcome opportunity to catch up on viewing and reading, and a couple of items have caught my attention, provoking further thought about a subject we reflected on in YWBC a few weeks ago.

One of the concerns expressed by a number of people in our discussion on the plague stories of Exodus was the suffering experienced by nature and animals during the sequence of afflictions which befell Egypt. For example, animals, as well as humans, are afflicted by gnats and boils, the land is ‘ruined’ by flies, trees and plants are ‘shattered’ by thunder and hail. And, of course, even the firstborn of all the livestock, as well as humans, are struck down.

When we discussed this in church a few weeks ago, I made the suggestion that nature is caught up in the suffering which results from Pharaoh’s intransigence, but also as part of a process by which God will eventually secure for it a better future under the protective care of the people of Israel. At the time of the Exodus, Egypt was regarded as the ‘bread basket’ of the world, a thriving economy that provided food to the surrounding region. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to think about the intensive farming methods that would have been employed by Egypt. In contrast, the new order planned by God for Israel is one where the land lies fallow for recovery every seven years and donkeys get to rest on the Sabbath (Exod 23:10-12).

I’ve been reminded in recent weeks how we read the Bible from a very human-centred perspective, which can blind us to the bigger story God is unfolding, a story of freedom for all creation, for which it longs, groaning as if in labour (Rom 8:22). Over the weekend, we spent an hour enjoying the ‘last chance to watch’ the BBC’s wonderful documentary Africa, on iPlayer. One of the most moving lessons of Africa was the way it demonstrated the terrible hardship, a daily battle for survival, which is experienced by so many animals in our world. Watching Africa, and its account of elephants and zebras walking for days on end in a search for water, I was reminded of God’s words at the end of Job 38:

³⁹ ‘Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
   or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, 
⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens,
   or lie in wait in their covert? 
⁴¹ Who provides for the raven its prey,
   when its young ones cry to God,
   and wander about for lack of food? 

It seems that part of the lesson God is trying to teach Job is that there is work that he is doing in our world, a work of care and provision for his creation, that humans are often oblivious to.

A second point which emerges from Job is the way God is portrayed as wrestling with his creation, seeking to bring order to a world which is beset by chaos. This is an issue which has wider implications for how we understand God’s relationship to our world. Is creation perfectly ordered, a clockwork universe which has been set in motion by a God who now regulates every tiny event of every life, or is God still seeking to lovingly assert his authority on our world, a process only to be completed at the eventual moment when all things are made new? This brings me to the second article I came across this week, the news that the cosmos may be ‘inherently unstable.’ You can read the full story here, the suggestion that research on the properties of the Higgs boson is reviving an ‘old idea that the Big Bang Universe we observe today is just the latest version in a permanent cycle of events.’ Reading Scripture, in light of these new scientific discoveries, seems to me to provide further support for the idea of viewing creation as untamed, and God as one who is lovingly working to bring about its deliverance, as well as ours.

God, Pharaoh and how our own hearts sometimes get hardened

This morning we spent time in YWBC thinking about one of the most troubling parts of the Exodus story, the process by which Pharaoh’s heart becomes hardened. We usually refer to the natural disasters which God visited upon Egypt, in order to bring Pharaoh to his senses and make him aware of the need to set the people of Israel free, as the ten plagues. But Exodus also describes these events as ten ‘signs’ (E.g. Exod 8:23).

As we discussed this morning, my view on this story is not that God has predestined the response of Pharaoh from the beginning. I suspect that if Pharaoh had paid attention to, say, the first three signs, there would have been no need for the final seven. Take a look, for example, at Exodus 4, where God is discussing the creative power he will loan out to Moses to persuade the Israelites of his credibility as a leader. God comes across not as someone with a blueprint, but as someone who is confident he can respond to whatever challenges or objections Moses has to deal with.

In Exodus, the word often used to describe Pharaoh’s hardness is kabed, which means strength – it carries a sense of obstinacy, of arrogance. Even at the beginning of the plague stories, Pharaoh is presented as someone who is stubborn and pride, the sort of person with too much to lose from admitting their own faults or mistakes (not just losing slaves, but losing face as well). There was probably never a strong chance of Pharaoh being flexible with Moses. When God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, it seems like he is merely strengthening a resolve and determination which is already entrenched.

There are some people I know who seem to become more and more set in their ways over time, more bloody-minded and frustrated with the people and the world around them which, unlike them, continues to change. Sometimes we describe these people as becoming a ‘parody’ or ‘caricature’ of themselves, which sums up the way their behaviour becomes more extreme. Whether these people are plain bad-tempered, or just have an air of the ‘prima donna’ or ‘misery guts’ about them, there is one common pattern. Over time, they alienate people. Those around them become frustrated with them or wary, or even plain scared of them (I’ve known ‘scary’ people in every church I’ve been part of), and so these folks drive away the friends who might be able to offer them words of constructive criticism. I’m no expert on psychology, but my sense is that this process does set in very early in some people’s lives, and sadly reaches a point of no return for others. We find ourselves able to predict how they will react badly in circumstances where they don’t get their way.

It’s easy to read the plagues story as just a demonstration of God’s greatness over the powers of the Empire. But the case of Pharaoh’s hardened heart offers a deeper, personal challenge. And it’s also worth reflecting that this is not the only part of the Exodus narrative where people are becoming increasingly stubborn or ‘stiff-necked.’ In the second half of the story, it’s Israel itself displaying increasingly hardened behaviour. Pharaoh’s an easy target for insider readers of the story, but sometimes the barriers to God within his people are as big as the barriers outside. Specks in the eyes of others, planks in our own etc etc....

On God’s forgetting and remembering

Last Sunday we started our new sermon series on Exodus, reflecting briefly on the closing verses of chapter 2, which describe how the Hebrew slaves cry out to God about their suffering and oppression. God’s response to their groaning is described by the Exodus writer in the following way: ‘God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.’ As someone pointed out to me after the service, this statement is troubling, in so far as it suggests God has forgotten the plight of the slaves. It raises the very question they posed to me: ‘Can God forget?’

In part, making sense of what is said here depends on our understanding of the Hebrew word for remember, zākar, which doesn’t so much convey the idea of recalling something forgotten, but rather God deciding to be actively involved in a situation in light of previous commitments he has made. This explains the way the word is sometimes used in the Psalms. For example, in Psalm 25:6, when David asks God to ‘remember... your great mercy and love,’ as the NIV translates it, he’s not trying to jog God’s memory about one of his characteristics. Rather, he wants to see that mercy actively applied to his situation. For this particular verse, the NRSV translates zākar as ‘be mindful,’ which seems to me to be a rendering of the word which gets closer to its real meaning.

All of which is interesting, but only up to a point... we’re still left with the problem of God’s apparent inactivity, the fact that he comes across as sitting on his hands while his people are suffering.

I make no claim to have ‘solved’ this conundrum, but offer below a brief summary of where I’ve got to in my own thinking on this verse over the last few days.

One thought concerns the issue of whether or not God is ‘static’ or ‘unchanging’ with regard to his attitudes and resolve. There are some of God’s attributes which we understand to be unchanging. We know he is always loving, holy and faithful, for example. But does this mean he always feels an equal amount of determination to act in each and every situation? For example, in Exodus 5 we read of how Moses goes to Pharaoh, requesting the people of Israel be granted a three day leave of absence to celebrate a festival in the wilderness. This strategy appears to backfire, when Pharaoh cruelly demands that the slaves be required to gather their own straw for bricks. Pharaoh’s callous attitudes appears to provoke a greater sense of urgency in God to deal with him, implied in God’s words in Exodus 6:1: ‘Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh: Indeed, by a mighty hand he will let them go; by a mighty hand he will drive them out of his land.’

Could it be that God is inclined to a peaceable solution with Pharaoh, that the dreadful destruction of the plagues narrative is not his preferred option, but only something he is driven to by the continued intransigence of the Egyptian ruler? (I’m aware this statement raises the conundrum of Pharaoh’s ‘hardened heart,’ an issue I hope to address in a few weeks’ time). Such an idea seems, to me, to fit with the picture we have of God in the warnings to Israel concerning exile. Exile will be the inevitable result of the people’s continued rebellion, but it is not, in itself, inevitable. There is another option made available by God, the option of repentance. This openness of possibilities appears to be implied in Jeremiah 18:7-11: ‘At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.’ (Emphases in italics are mine.)

The end of Exodus 2 also raises the issue of how the specific ways in which God can intervene may sometimes be affected by circumstances. As I mentioned on Sunday, there seems to be no coincidence in the fact that the time when the slaves begin to groan is a moment of regime change in Egypt. As Greg Boyd points out in his excellent book God at War, scripture does not present us with a picture of a God who plans meticulously everything which happens to us, good or bad. God never wills evil, but always fights against it, and sometimes his battle is against strong forces which hold great power in certain times and places. The death of one Pharaoh, and his replacement with another, seems to present an opportune moment for change. I suggested on Sunday that this could be compared with the regime changes in South Africa and the USSR where the incoming governments of FW De Klerk and Mikhail Gorbachev presented the possibility of the end of Apartheid and Communism. After the service, someone pointed out to me that this doesn’t mean God wasn’t doing anything during the darkest moments of these regimes, which is an important point to bear in mind. People were praying, God was intervening in certain ‘micro’ cases, but the timing wasn’t right for the ultimate ‘macro’ downfall of these evil structures.

Finally, there’s no escaping the importance in this Exodus story of the role of the slaves themselves. The end of Exodus 2 describes their groaning rising up to God, and somehow mobilising him, causing him to become active in the circumstances of Israel. Could it be that there are moments when our own despair and lack of hope, our servile acceptance of circumstances or belief that things will never change, limit the extent to which God can work in our lives and our church? 

Supermarkets, quotas and challenging the powers

This week the markets are pronouncing judgement on the UK’s supermarkets. As each of our leading retailers announces their crucial Christmas sales figures, analysts are crunching the numbers as they try to work out who’s up and who’s down. You’ve probably read some of the news stories. Sainsbury’s and Tesco have so far reported strong numbers, and it appears that M&S is set to be this year’s fall guy, disappointing shareholders and analysts with news of a 1.8% drop in sales over the festive period. Look behind the headlines and you discover that things aren’t as bad as they might appear at first. M&S did sell record amounts of food and it says profit margins are improving, which seems pretty encouraging for a company that last year reported pre-tax profits of £658m, but... not good enough. What the market demands is year on year growth. On Thursday morning, M&S shares fell by 4.5%.

I thought about M&S this week, while preparing my reflections for Sunday evening, when, as a church, we’ll be thinking again about the theme of ‘Challenging the Powers,’ from the perspective of Exodus. We’ll be focussing our thoughts on Exodus 5, when Moses goes to Pharaoh for the first time, requesting that the Israelites be released from their labour for three days so they can go out to the wilderness for a celebration festival in honour of God.

Pharaoh’s response is to show no flexibility, no willingness to compromise. It seems he fears any relaxation of his rules, any possibility that production will slow down. Indeed, his response is to ratchet up the economic targets: ‘Go and get straw yourselves, wherever you can find it; but your work will not be lessened in the least.’

Quotas, targets, an insistence on relentless growth... such are the demands of the Empire. It’s always been this way. As God’s people, what responses can we make which demonstrate our desire to challenge the constantly acquisitive and driven nature of our world? This is one of the themes we’ll attempt to unpack on Sunday evening. It would be good to know your thoughts, either shared on Sunday or as a comment here.

Book recommendation – The Madness of St Paul

Christmas means holidays, and holidays means a chance to catch up on reading. I took a few hours to work through Richard Dormandy’s The Madness of St Paul, a refreshing and realistic perspective on Paul’s state of mind, particularly when he writes 2 Corinthians, a roller-coaster of a letter where the Apostle’s language implies nervous exhaustion and a suspicion, verging on paranoia, about the way he’s been treated by the church in Corinth. As Dormandy points out, most of us revere Paul to such an extent that we usually give him the benefit of the doubt when reading sections where he seems defensive or sarcastic. We may even credit him with deliberately adopting a rhetorical strategy which he has chosen to be the most appropriate for the audience to which he is writing.

But what if the reality was further away from that ideal? What if Paul was driven in part by his own vanity, and his need to be taken with the utmost seriousness by everyone around him? What if part of the problem was on his side, an insistence on always being in charge, even in churches which he’d planted some years previously and moved on from?

Dormandy’s book isn’t one which has caused me to completely revise my opinion of Paul, but it has caused me to look at 2 Corinthians in a fresh light. And it also raises important questions about how we regard the authors of the Bible. There are probably books waiting to be written called The Madness of Jeremiah or The Madness of Elijah – does the fact that we regard Scripture as ‘inspired’ mean that we think it’s invalid to question the behaviour of any of its authors? And isn’t there another danger in putting characters like Paul on a pedestal? We assume that the only appropriate ‘biblical’ behaviour is to be in a permanent state of mind that consists of being ‘content with whatever I have.’ But the reality is that even the person who wrote those very words had his moments when there was a gap between belief and experience.