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. 

Toxic Charity

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend who has several years of experience working with a local homelessness charity, and they commented to me on how ineffective they think churches are. They spoke of how their charity works with several hundred young people at any time, and has a clear process for supporting their clients towards improving their life skills and becoming more independent. And then came their concluding statement: ‘We would be worried if, after a year, we haven’t helped someone get to the point of living independently. But churches are full of people who have been supported with the same issues for years, and who haven’t moved on.’

Discuss.

A similar set of issues is addressed by Robert Lupton in Toxic Charity. The book’s subtitle provides a helpful summary of Lupton’s argument: ‘How churches and charities hurt those they help.’ In the opening paragraphs of the book Lupton comments: ‘I have worked with churches, government agencies, entrepreneurs, and armies of volunteers and know from firsthand experience the many ways “good intentions” can translate into ineffective care or even harm’ (ps1-2).

Lupton addresses the problems of charities and aid both at the levels of local church and international development. At the end of a small book (only 190 pages of large font, which could be read in a few hours), I was left frustrated that his argument never seemed to develop beyond the basic assertions made at the beginning, and also felt this was a work long on diagnosing the problem and short on offering practical solutions. But I’d still call it recommended reading, because it’s impossible to escape the difficult questions he is asking. If churches run activities, year in year out, giving to the same people but never helping them change, what benefit are we achieving? Is our service sometimes motivated more by a sense of our self-worth (I do good things, which must make a good Christian), rather than built around the needs of those we are seeking to help? As Neil Hudson has recently pointed out in ImagineChurch, do we have a ‘church contract’ which only offers to care for people, and not disciple them?

One of Lupton’s most helpful suggestions is the following ‘Oath for Compassionate Service’ which he recommends for all churches seeking to serve those who are disadvantaged. I wonder how many of our churches’ regular activities would pass these tests:

• Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.
• Limit one way giving to emergency situations.
• Strive to empower the poor through unemployment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.
• Subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served.
• Listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said - unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.
• Above all, do no harm (p128).

One of the great puzzles of biblical interpretation is finally resolved...

I came across this today. So funny, it had to be shared...

Celebrating goodwill and partnership

Just a few days ago, I was blown away by the kindest of gestures. In recent weeks, a focus of our attention in church has been developing plans to open a satellite Foodbank in the New Year. Word of our plans has reached another agency in our area who contacted me with the offer of a Christmas gift, sacrificing the presents which would otherwise have gone to their staff.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this gift, especially in light of Mark 9, which tells the story of an incident when John comes to Jesus, complaining about someone, ‘casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’John is clearly appalled at this unregulated activity on behalf of kingdom, but Jesus shows no inclination to rein in such work. He points out that those who do work in his name are unlikely to turn against him in the future and someone who isn’t an enemy can instead be considered an ally. Finally, he tells the disciples that, ‘whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.'

In his excellent commentary on Mark, Binding the Strong Man, Ched Myers comments on these verses:

John is entertaining “holier than thou” delusions, but Jesus points out how his followers will often find themselves on the receiving end of compassion. In other words, disciples have no corner on the ministry of healing and liberation, and therefore should without prejudice work alongside those whose practice is redemptive.

Our friends in Birmingham have offered us this generous gift, and they’ve come in on the ministry of ‘healing and liberation.’ So often, it seems we’re still like John, still wary of ‘the world’ and suspicious of partnership with agencies outside of the church, who we regard as being in competition, or even opposition, to us. In the process, we blind ourselves to the goodwill and grace which is extended to us by so many people who want the same as us, the redemption of our communities.

Today’s news is all about the question of whether or not we need regulation of the press. I sometimes wonder if we need a debate in church on our attempts to regulate the work of God...

James 5 and The Gospel in Urban Britain

This evening we spent some time in our Evening Service having a retrospective look at the letter of James, as we draw near the end of a series of sermons on the book.

Over the last 8 weeks, one of the things which has struck me most forcefully is the polemic tone of James’s language, especially the way he speaks about the rich. James hints at what is to come in 1:9-11, but the opening verses of chapter are 5 are the most strident, a famous warning about the impending judgement the rich are facing.

It’s hardly surprising that James addresses these themes.  He’s writing at a time in history when most wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very rich minority, and the vast majority of early Christians are very poor, right at the bottom of the pile in terms of status and economic power. The issue of wealth, of who has it and how it’s been acquired, is one of urgency.

So how does this apply to us? The similarities between James’s time and our own are striking, with the gap between rich and the poor widening. Last week, the BBC reported that senior executives in the UK's biggest companies have seen their average earnings go up by more than a quarter in the past 12 months. All of this during a year when we’ve seen long-term unemployment rise and benefits cut, and when manyemployers still fail to see the need to pay a living wage.

What would James have to say about this? The answer seems fairly clear:

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten.

James 5:1-2

The question we thought about tonight is how we express this truth is our own times? Is it appropriate, in 2012, in an area like Billesley or Yardley Wood, for part of the message of the Gospel to be: a day of justice is coming? One day, the rich, the privileged people who run the coalition and cut the benefits of the poor, the board members of companies who earn huge amounts of money while their staff struggle, the boards of companies who avoid paying corporation tax on UK earnings... one day, there will be a reckoning for these people. There will be a levelling, their wealth will not count anymore.

This brought us on to the topic of evangelism – the most successful tool in British churches, over the last twenty years, has been Alpha. It’s been great – but it has worked in a time of prosperity, the nineties and noughties, it’s asks quite abstract questions which appeal to educated people.

If I live in Billesley, I am not asking questions like, ‘Why should I read the Bible?’ or ‘How does God guide me?’ I am asking questions like ‘Why do I have no prospect of ever having a job?’ ‘Why is life unfair?’ ‘How come the bankers got away with it?’

Interestingly,  the early Christians never became a political movement. Except for the fact that they pledged their allegiance to Jesus not Caesar! They didn’t grab power... but they were not embarrassed about talking about justice and economics and how this impacted their understanding of what God was doing in the world, and how it shaped their hope of what he would do in the future. Just as a new expression of the justice of the kingdom emerged from the flavellas of Latin America in the 1970s, is now the time for the church of urban Britain to articulate the same message?