The Olympics and the ‘healing of the nations.’

We’re off this afternoon to Olympics football in Coventry, having been genuinely impressed and uplifted by Friday night’s opening ceremony. The spectacular transformation from a rural scene to the industrial revolution was brilliantly executed, and I thought it was great to see the NHS given pride of place in an event designed to showcase the achievements of modern Britain.

But the part of the evening which got me thinking most came when the competitors from all 204 teams took their time to process into the arena. I was reminded of John’s vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21: ‘And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations.’

Could it be that the scenes we saw on Friday were so uplifting for us, because they point forward to something we hunger for deep down, an eventual healing of relationships as people are gathered by God in a new world free from war and violence. I realise that so much of modern sport falls short of the ideal vision many of us would wish to see realised. There’s too much money and too many egos, but there’s also a lot to celebrate, not only the individual performances of people who have trained long and hard to get to the games but the way sport unites.

Perhaps this is the reason why the more I think about it, the more astonished and offended I am about MP Aidan Burley’s now notorious tweet about "leftie multi-cultural" rubbish. The whole point of 204 nations gathering together to compete is that the games will be multi-cultural. What else but sport could bring about such a diverse and vast set of people and unite them in an atmosphere which allows a brief respite from political agendas? Let’s put our cynicism on hold for just a little while, and also look upon the games as a brief but tantalising foretaste of a longer-lasting unity God will one day usher in.

Presenting the Gospel to the Austerity Generation

A busy couple of weeks has meant no chance to blog recently, but a lecture on faith and the Big Society at a recent event at Bristol Baptist College has got me thinking about changes which we might see (and which we’ll almost certainly need)in our approach to evangelism over the next few years.

The session in question was led by Phil Jump, Team Leader of the North West Baptist Association. Phil made a passing comment on the way the Gospel has been presented differently in different decades reflecting the zeitgeist of each period. For example, during the years of relative prosperity of the ‘noughties,’ the primary evangelism tools of UK churches have tended to be courses such as Alpha or Christianity Explored. I have more recent and firsthand experience of Alpha but I think it’s fair to say that both courses tend towards a cerebral and modernist approach to Christianity. That’s an opinion that seems reasonable in light of the subjects addressed.

The topics covered by Alpha, for example, are:

1.  Is there more to life than this?
2.  Who is Jesus?
3.  Why did Jesus die?
4. How can we have faith?
5. Why and how do I pray?
6. Why and how should I read the Bible?
7. How does God guide us?
8. Who is the Holy Spirit?
9. What does the Holy Spirit?
10.  How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit?
11. How can I resist evil?
12. Why and how should I tell others?
13.  Does God heal today?
14. What about the church?
15. How can I make the most of the rest of my life? 

Compare and contrast, if you wish, to the hot topics covered by Christianity Explored:

1. Good News
2. Identity
3. Sin
4. The Cross
5. Resurrection
6. Grace
7. Come and Die

So the question arises... who would be interested in thinking through these sorts of issues? During the 1990s and 2000s it may well be that for lots of people in comfortable, middle-class jobs, wondering if there was more to life than two cars, a semi-detached home and foreign holidays, these courses had an appeal. Memories come to mind of watching Nicky Gumbel on video at HTB, putting across his case with compelling logic, week by week, to lots of beautiful people who presumably stopped off at Alpha on their way home from high-powered jobs in the City.

But in the years to come, are these topics going to pack the same punch of relevance? For many of us, the questions we’re asking are different. We’re no longer concerned with the emptiness of our comfortable, if mediocre, existences. We’re anxious about the state of our economy, angry at the bankers and governments who’ve brought us to the edge of the austerity abyss, fearful that we may not be able to retire in comfort. And if we feel less apprehension for ourselves, we certainly ought to concerned about the plight of our children. The old social contract of ‘work hard, play by the rules and you’ll get a good job’ has been torn up.

So does this mean there’s another kind of course waiting to be written, which poses a different type of question? Why is the world so unfair and does God care any way? What will my life amount to? Can we really make a difference about injustice? Are there any alternative visions for society and the world, which offer something more than our current economic and political models? 

The Credit Crunch, Austerity and Sin

Time off over half-term has meant the chance to relax and even, on Monday, the opportunity to go to a shop to buy a newspaper and then read it! What’s got me thinking this week has been the interview in Monday’s Guardian with the Princeton economist Paul Krugman (pictured above). Krugman has been appearing on various UK media outlets, promoting his new book, End This Depression Now! You can read his Guardian interview here, and also watch here his appearance last week on Newsnight.

Near the beginning of the Guardian article, we’re told of Krugman’s frustration with the many ‘Very Serious People’ he has met recently who are convinced of the need for governments to reduce deficits. ‘These Very Serious People present economics as a morality play, in which debt is a sin, and we have all sinned, so now we must all pay the price by tightening our belts together. They tell us the crisis will take a long time to resolve, and must inevitably be painful.’ Contrast that analysis with another Guardian article written a few weeks ago by the Irish journalist Mary Kenny, explaining the willingness of the Irish people to support the EU’s fiscal treaty. Kenny notes that 84% of the Irish population still define themselves as Roman Catholic, and then writes: ‘That, I believe, is one reason the Irish are not uncomfortable with the concept of economic austerity. "Austerity" is the due enactment of penance, following sin or self-indulgence. I've heard scores of people all over the country say: "A bit of self-denial will do us no harm at all. Sure, we went over the top altogether with mad spending."’

These articles raise important questions on sin, and where it’s to be found in the current debates on austerity versus Keynesian stimulation of the economy – watch Krugman’s interview on Newsnight and you’ll hear him suggest that debt and credit are not the worst of sins, but that it’s more offensive to sacrifice a future generation and their jobs on the altar of economic dogma. That observation is crucial because it helps move the debate beyond its current, skewed moral stance. The arguments for austerity are often framed in moral terms and delivered by a privileged elite who want to preach the virtues of hard work and thriftiness. Messrs Cameron and Osborne et al remind us constantly that we can’t go on living beyond our means, Christine Lagarde of the IMF (who benefits from diplomatic rules which means she pays no taxes) tells the Greeks it’s ‘payback time.’ And all these statements are framed within the wider narrative, that governments are bad and markets are good, conveniently forgetting the excesses of the banking system which brought all of us to our knees.

So maybe it’s time to reframe the argument on austerity and sin, to acknowledge that if our determination to pay off debt at all costs is going to close down the hopes of our young people and cause decades of suffering for poorer nations then we need to take a different approach. Of course, there is an even more radical solution which would offer all of us the possibility of a new start...

Imagine the implications of our leaders taking to heart these laws from Leviticus 25, legislating for the Year of Jubilee: ‘³⁹ If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves.⁴⁰They shall remain with you as hired or bound labourers. They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. ⁴¹Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property. ⁴²For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold. ⁴³You shall not rule over them with harshness, but shall fear your God.’

Alternative plans

I thought of a joke the other day. It’s not particularly funny, I know, but it helps express something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently.

Question: What’s the difference between God and George Osborne?

Answer: God has a plan B.

This issue has arisen in several ways, through thinking about stories in the Bible, things which have happened recently in my role as minister, conversations with friends. A few days ago I was reading the story of 1 Samuel 15, where Saul is told by the prophet Samuel that he’s to lose the throne of Israel because of his disobedient act of sparing the life of the Amalekite King, Agag. At the end of the chapter we’re told that ‘the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.’

Fast forward another 3,000 years and we read about Peter, in Acts 10, on the roof of Cornelius’ house, seeing a vision of all manner of food and being told by God that he’s permitted to eat it all. And yet it’s not Peter who’s remembered as ‘Apostle to the Gentiles.’ Galatians 2 tells the story of how Peter ‘drew back and kept himself separate’ from Gentiles, an event which meant Paul had to assume the mantle of leading the sharing the Gospel with non-Jews.

All of which raises some difficult but important questions. When God first instructs Samuel to anoint Saul as king, does he know about the way the story will end, in eventual failure? How do we understand Saul’s prophecy of 1 Samuel 10? Does this show some evidence that Saul started out being the right man for the job, the best man available to God? Does God always foresee how people will change? When he revealed his vision of clean foods to Peter, could it be that, at the time, Peter seemed to be the best person for sharing the gospel to the Gentiles?

I talk to so many people who regret how things have worked out in their life, and who see this as a failure on their part, an inability to properly listen to God. I didn’t know how that person would turn out when I married them, I’d no idea the complications that there would be when I moved to that new job. There is often an added dimension of personal guilt for Christians when they try to make sense of these sorts of disappointments. I wonder how many people in Israel berated Samuel for picking the wrong king...

But what if God is inside time, alongside us? He knows everything there is to know, but that can’t include events in the future which are not fully settled. In that case, we could have been clearly hearing from God, who felt at that moment that for us that job, that home, that husband or wife was right. I realise this is a huge change in thinking for many of us, but I can’t help feeling it’s one which helps us make more sense of a lot of the struggles we face, and shows God not to be weak but rather loving and responsive, able to work powerfully and resourcefully even when things go wrong.

Finding God in the Neighbourhood

Last night a number of us spent time in Billesley, taking photographs for a presentation which we’ll be sharing on Sunday morning at a family service focussed on prayer for our community. We spent some time listening to our soundtrack, Gungor’s ‘Beautiful Things’ which you can listen to here. And then we went off to find some appropriate images which would give expression to the theme of the song, the idea of God birthing something new and lovely in the midst of the apparent chaos and failure of our own lives.

As we set off, I had in mind some words which I read recently in Alan Roxburgh’s recent book, Missional. Much of the book is a prolonged reflection on Luke 10’s account of the sending of the seventy, where Roxburgh argues for a shift in thinking about mission, a new orientation focussed not on attracting people to a pre-defined package on offer from church but rather listening and responding to the ways and means God appears to be at work in our community. Roxburgh suggests that, ‘... the primary way to know what God is up to in our world when the boundary markers seem to have been erased is by entering into the ordinary, everyday life of the neighbourhoods and communities where we live.’

Next Sunday morning will provide us with the opportunity to think in more detail about where and how God is at work in our community, as we listen to members of our local policing team and others involved in the Third Sector. My hope is that it will challenge some of our preconceived notions about the problems in Billesley – after all, how can we show God’s love to those around us, if we don’t show some love ourselves, love which starts with listening?

If anyone out there has stories to share on Sunday morning, it would be good to hear from you...

Prayer - being honest with God, honest with ourselves

I’ve spent a large part of today getting ready for next Sunday’s Family Service at YWBC. We’re continuing to look at the theme of prayer, and posing the question, ‘What should we ask for?’

One of the passages we’re looking at is 1 Kings 3, and the famous story of King Solomon’s prayer for wisdom. The opening chapters of 1 Kings are not pleasant reading – Solomon does not have a clear path to the throne and his power is consolidated only after a number of violent deaths, including that of his brother Adonijah and his father’s military commander Joab. The chapters make little attempt to hide the fact that the trail of responsibility for these murders ultimately leads back to Solomon.

But in chapter 3, we have a very different portrait of the King, to whom God appears in a dream. God instructs Solomon to ‘Ask what I should give you.’ Reading Solomon’s reply, I’m particularly struck by one claim which he makes: ‘I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in.’ Considering the guile and ruthlessness Solomon has just shown in order to secure power, these words demonstrate either breathtaking nerve before God or a genuine humility in his presence, or both.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to make judgements about Solomon. I wonder if all of us have played this game at one time or another, presenting ourselves as innocent victims before God, failing to acknowledge completely our own culpability where things have gone wrong. Perhaps, God is gracious enough to see beyond this sort of self-deception, recognising it as part-and-parcel of the human condition. He is certainly approving of Solomon’s request for wisdom, granting him ‘a wise and discerning mind.’

And yet the Solomon story does not work out well. For all his apparent humility in asking for wisdom, it’s hard to escape the feeling that a basic instinct for power and wealth is never really dealt with in his life. Ultimately, his life is not one characterised by humble rule or justice. Instead, he comes as acquisitive, for power, for riches, for women. It’s telling that when God appears again to Solomon in 1 Kings 9 the message delivered to him is one of warning about the danger of falling away.

So I wonder if 1 Kings 3 offers insights on prayer at all sorts of levels. At face value, we’re taught to ask for what is right. But beyond that there’s another lesson, that if our prayers don’t really reflect a true depth of changed character then their long-term impact may be much less than might otherwise be expected.

Exodus 32: Prayer as a means of shaping our future

This morning we began our new teaching series on prayer, reflecting on the astonishing story of Moses’ prayer to God in the aftermath of Israel’s building of the Golden Calf, a betrayal which brings God perilously close to getting rid of Israel, and starting again with a new people. Hopefully the talk will appear soon on YWBC’s audio page.

Reading Exodus 32 again over the past week, I’ve been struck again by how significant Moses’ prayers were. Filled with hurt and anger, God tells Moses to ‘let me alone,’ so he can come to terms with Israel’s idolatry and proceed with plans to get rid of them, starting afresh with a new people borne of Moses. But Moses doesn’t give God the space he’s looking for. Instead, he encourages God to think of his reputation (what would the Egyptians think if God brought the Israelites out of slavery only to annihilate them in the future?) and also the promises made to forefathers such as Abraham and Isaac.

This isn’t the only biblical story where God’s mind appears to be changed by human pleading. In Genesis 18 Abraham negotiates with God and persuades him not to destroy Sodom, and in 2 Kings 20 we read of Hezekiah’s life being prolonged for another 15 years because of his prayers.

The question is, how do we live differently in the light of such passages? In his excellent book, God of the Possible, Greg Boyd suggests: ‘Many Christians do not pray as passionately as they could because they don’t see how it could make any significant difference. They pray, but they often do so out of sheer obedience and without the sense of urgency that Scripture consistently attaches to prayer.’

Sometimes it feels as if we’re passively sitting, waiting, wondering when the renewal we all hope for is going to begin. But as James writes, ‘You do not have, because you do not ask’ (James 4:2). Shaping the future of our church begins with prayer, not presuming upon God’s blessing, but starting to show God how dissatisfied and demanding we are.

It would be good to hear the thoughts of others of others on this issue, and good to hear of anything you sense God saying as you pray.