Remembrance Sunday 2024

 

Lectionary readings: Hebrews 9.24-28 and Mark 1.14-20

Jesus and his first followers lived under the occupation of the Roman Empire. Indeed, Galilee had been successively occupied, over a period of seven hundred years, by the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the (Persian) Achaemenid, the Ptolemaic, Greek-Seleucid, and Roman Empires.

Around the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire invaded Britain, defeating the indigenous tribes with whom they had previously traded, and whom they had unsuccessfully invaded, twice, a hundred years earlier.

The Romans ruled over us for four hundred years, bringing Christianity with them. Then they were summoned home to defend Rome, though many simply refused to go.

In their wake we had two centuries of Germanic migration – pagan Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and Frisians;

followed by two centuries of consolidation into around a dozen Anglo-Saxon kingdoms competing for dominance (Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex among them) and efforts to convert them to Christianity by both their neo-Celtic British neighbours – the fabled Northern Saints – and by missionaries from Rome;

followed by two centuries of Danish migration.

Then, in the eleventh century, the Norman invasion, the most comprehensive dispossession and replacement of the ruling class.

For the next three hundred years, the boundaries between English and French were blurred and bloody, while England also laid claim to Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The fourteenth century saw the Black Plague wipe out half the population of England.

The fifteenth century saw the War of the Roses.

The sixteenth century saw Tudor England, and a violently contested break from the Church of Rome, pulling the country back and forth, Catholic and Protestant factions fighting for dominance.

The seventeenth century saw Union with Scotland; Civil War and the state execution of a king; a restoration of the monarchy; and the Glorious Revolution, the deposition of a Catholic king.

The eighteenth century saw the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution;

the nineteenth century saw the Napoleonic Wars and expansion of the British Empire;

the twentieth century saw the First World War – as German expansion in Europe threatened Britain’s global Empire – and a Second World War, followed by rapid decolonization, and new – ongoing – waves of migration from nations we had claimed our own.

What does it mean to be British? What does it mean to be British and Christian? What do these things mean, at any given point in time?

Jesus and his first followers lived under the occupation of the Roman Empire. The emperor in Rome justified his claim to their land, and to their lives, by declaring himself to be the bringer of Good News, the herald of universal peace, the Pax Romana.

And Jesus arrives on the scene proclaiming a different kingdom, the kingdom of God, a divine rule that is not concerned with claims over nations or nationalities but is demonstrated in addressing the needs of those who experience crushing poverty, in healing the sick, feeding the hungry, standing with those marginalized by their communities.

I have a confession. I find Remembrance Sunday the most uncomfortable day of the year, because it is a day on which we are reminded of how utterly addicted we are to violence in defence of a moment in history we cannot hold on to. We have done this every year for the past hundred years, and still we are surrounded by war, and still we see the rise of neo-fascism around the world as strong men declare themselves to be anointed by God to defend Christian values, with bloodshed if necessary.

And I have absolutely no skin in this game. I am not looking for the downfall of this nation, I just know – history shows us – that it will continue to change, as will all the other nations. But as I get on with my life, as best I can, in the moment in history that has been allotted to me, Jesus comes to me and says, Follow me.

Follow me, and together we shall scoop others up into this utterly different kingdom, with this utterly different king, whom Empire put to death but whom God raised again to life.

An early follower of Jesus wrote to Christians scattered by the ebb and flow of Empire, saying the signs and symbols we see now are at best pale imitations of reality. Today we wear poppies, a flower that grew in fields that had been soaked with the blood of a generation. A symbol of life returning again, even after utter and comprehensive destruction. A symbol of the unimaginable goodness of God towards us. But the poppy can become an opiate, numbing us to good as well as pain. So, I shall wear my poppy, but I shall look to Jesus, and choose to follow him, to hold out good news to those on the underside of our society, including those maimed physically and scarred emotionally by war.

 

Twelfth Sunday after Trinity 2024

 

Lectionary readings: Proverbs 9.1-6 and John 6.51-58

I wonder, what is your favourite meal? [This is not a rhetorical question.]

And what is it about that meal that makes it your favourite? [Again, not a rhetorical question.] Perhaps it has to do with the flavours and textures of the food. Perhaps associations with particular people or special memories are factors too.

I wonder whether there is a meal that you like to make, to share with others? That is, of course, a labour of love. And I wonder whether you have ever taught someone else to make that meal; or, indeed, whether someone else taught you? There is a world of difference between following a recipe from a cookbook and a family meal passed down from generation to generation.

In our reading from the Old Testament today, wisdom is personified as a hostess. Again and again throughout the Bible relationships between people, and between people and God, are built around a table. This is the place of encounter, to which we are invited, and to which anyone who wants to live in harmony with their neighbour comes.

There is something we need to note and take to heart here. We need to learn to eat with others, not simply to feed others. When we feed people but do not eat with them, we create a power dynamic that places them in our debt; but when people eat together the barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is dismantled. I appreciate that some people are shy around folk they don’t know, and the kitchen is a safe place to hide in—I am one of those people myself, and my neurodivergence is a big factor; whenever I spend time with other people, I need to go away and recharge. But, collectively, we need to learn to eat with people, not just feed them. It isn’t, primarily, about physical hunger, but about our common need for connection.

There is a proverbial saying that You Are What You Eat. At a physical level, a healthy diet increases our fitness, while, over time, an unhealthy diet harms us. The same is true spiritually speaking. What we consume shapes us, for good or evil. If our daily diet is a particular newspaper or other news source, it will shape us in very particular ways, and largely, in a context of constant and instant news, towards anxiety. If our daily diet is social media, we will be intentionally shaped by algorithms to be quick to judge, harshly, on matters about which we are very largely uninformed, and to never be satisfied but to always want more. Social media might be an alien world to you, but we all consume something, and we are all being consumed by the thing we consume, whether by hate or by love.

Jesus says, make me your daily bread. Eat of me. Take me into you, and see how you will be transformed, over time, into the fullness of what God intends for you.

How do we do that? By building our lives around him. By finding, through experimentation, daily, weekly, and less frequent patterns that enable us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Patterns such as setting apart some time each day to prayerfully read and meditate on scripture, perhaps a psalm or Gospel passage, perhaps using the daily prayer resources of the Church of England so that we are reading along with many others, or perhaps using resources prepared by 24/7 Prayer or Scripture Union or BRF with people of different ages and stages of life in mind. Patterns such as taking communion week by week; and by eating food with others, at a table, on a weekly basis. I know of at least one member of our community, who lives alone, who goes out or breakfast with friends every week. And patterns such as reducing or restricting less healthy food. Watching television is not wrong, but if we are watching too much, perhaps we need to set ourselves limits, not in a legalistic way, but in a way that sees it as a treat rather than a staple of our diet.

Wisdom says come to the feast. We feast on God in worship, in acknowledging that God is good all the time, in every circumstance and situation, and in contrast to the impact of sin and death in the world, which is insubstantial in comparison and fleeting, but gets a lot of attention.

And if this is already your pattern, who might benefit from what you have learnt?

 

Eleventh Sunday after Trinity 2024

 

I wonder how your days are? Collectively, it might be said that we are going through difficult times; though I am not sure that these times are very different from any others. At a personal level, as we grow older we may become more comfortable in our own skin; and as we grow older still, we may feel that our bodies begin to let us down. You don’t have to be an Olympian to know that our moments can have real highs and lows – and that sometimes the deepest lows come hard on the heels of the most dizzying heights. That was certainly so for the prophet Elijah. I wonder whether you can relate to his story? Let’s take a closer look at it.

As we do so, a couple of things to be aware of. Ancient Hebrew has far fewer words than modern English, and so the same word can have multiple meanings. Also, language conveys our understanding of the world, and ancient Hebrew works at both a literal/material and metaphorical/spiritual level.

We read that Elijah ‘went a day’s journey into the wilderness.’ Let’s break that down.

The word for wilderness/desert is, at root, also the word for mouth/speech. This is both fascinating and unsurprising, as the wilderness is the place where God speaks, or, more accurately, where humans speak with God.

The word for journey is also the word for Way, as in a way of life, which is worked out through conversation – which is also the same word.

The word for day is also the word for daily.

So, at a literal/material level, Elijah ‘went a day’s journey into the wilderness.’ And at a metaphorical/spiritual level, it is Elijah’s practice to be in daily conversation with God. We would call that prayer.

Now, some would argue that we work out which of the possible meanings a word should be given by the context. But I would argue that where a word can be understood in more than one way, it should be understood in more than one way. Because the context for the spiritual is always material, and the material is always spiritual. They belong together.

So, I would take it at face value that Elijah, whose practice it was to be in daily conversation with God, took a walk into the wilderness. And there he sat down under a broom tree.

Now, the broom tree also appears in Job chapter 30 and Psalm 120. For Job it is a symbol of those expelled by society, which Job applies to himself to say he feels rejected by God. That is interesting, given the days we live in, where some are calling for immigrants to be expelled from our society, and others are calling for the expulsion of racists. Are we brave enough to see ourselves in the eyes of immigrants and racists, alike, and to lament where we find ourselves as a society? Psalm 120 links the wood of the broom tree, which was prized for how well it burned, with a peacemaker dwelling amongst those who hate peace. That also feels pertinent to our days. In any case, this is where Elijah chooses to sit down, to stop walking on the way, to end his conversation. He has had enough. Perhaps you have had enough, too.

God sends a messenger, an ambassador, who comes to Elijah as he sleeps, breaks off some branches from the broom tree, heats some flat stones on them, and bakes flat bread on the stones. (I love cake, but it is a misleading translation.) That is to say, God answers Elijah (who was not asking a question or seeking a continuation of their conversation) with food and drink. Again, I would take this at both a material and a spiritual level. Sustenance for body and soul. These, also, go together.

Elijah awoke, ate and drank, and lay down again to sleep. Later, the ambassador returns, wakes him again, provides him with more food and water, and tells him that he needs to eat and drink if he is to have the strength [this word also means chameleon; weird, huh?] that he needs to undergo the journey ahead of him. That journey takes him to Horeb, the mountain of the Lord.

Horeb means Desolate. God waits for us in the place of our desolation. In the place where nothing else can console us. God waits for us, and, moreover, sustains us on the conversation that will bring us to that place, to confront ourselves, stripped of all the many outer layers with which we have tried to blend in, to mask ourselves [chameleon].

This is necessary work, and it is hard work. To find ourselves standing before God, defenceless against divine love, is not something we can do in our own strength. It is only possible because we are strengthened by Jesus, we are incorporated into him – and through him, into the inner life of God – because we are clothed in Christ [chameleon].

God sends his Son into the world, saying, ‘Get up, eat and drink. Come to me, feast on me. You shall find rest for your bones and healing for your soul.’ Day by day, walking with him on the Way, meditating on God’s word, sharing in this communion.

So come, eat and drink.

 

Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

 

Tenth Sunday after Trinity: Exodus 16.2-4, 9-15 and John 6.24-35

Our Gospel reading this Sunday (John 6.24-35) gives us the aftermath of the feeding of the five thousand. The context is this. Galilee was a hotbed of rebellion against Roman rule. There had been an uprising in 6 CE sparked by a tax census (this is the census that gets mentioned in Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus, albeit badly handled in translation: Luke’s point isn’t that this was the census that displaced Joseph and Mary, but that this was the most famous—or, notorious—census; and it was the most famous because of the rebellion it sparked). There will be another uprising in 46 CE and yet another in 66 CE, but at this point, in the early 30s, a crowd of men are chasing Jesus around the Galilean countryside with the intent of making him the focal point of an uprising. There are five thousand of them, plus women and children; but the unnumbered women and children aren’t an afterthought: the point is this, that five thousand men is roughly the size of a Roman army legion. They are coming to Jesus and saying, ‘Look, we have a legion at your disposal: lead us!’ [1] Jesus responds by instructing them to organise themselves into groups of between 50 and 100—that is, the size of a ‘century’ of soldiers led by a centurion (‘At last! Now we are getting somewhere!’)—but then, instead of handing out weapons, he hands out bread and fish.

When it becomes clear that the crowd still intends to make him their king by force, Jesus slips away. They don’t realise until the next day, when eventually—and confused as to how this had happened—they find him once more on the other side of the lake. ‘How did you get here?’ they ask.

And Jesus engages them in a wide-ranging conversation. A conversation about what it is they truly desire, and how deep that longing goes. A conversation about work, and how or even whether God can be encountered in everyday life or revealed through our everyday actions. A conversation about wisdom, someone in the crowd quoting from the Wisdom of Solomon (a Jewish text translated into Greek in Egypt; Wisdom chapter 16, which speaks of divine judgement and mercy, of God’s word as nourishment and healing, and of God leading mortals down to the gates of Hades and back again).

And in this conversation, Jesus calls them—and us—to believe in him: that is, to be with Jesus, in order to become like Jesus, and do the things that Jesus did (this is what distinguishes disciples from the crowds) [2].

In that conversation, Jesus claims to be the bread—the sustenance—of God that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world: ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’

Many in the crowd will decide that this is not what they are looking for, will go back to their homes and wait for someone else to come along. But some will take Jesus at his word, as God’s daily provision for their deepest desires, to live in harmony with God, with themselves, and with their fellow human beings.

Jo and I have just spent a week camping with some fourteen thousand other people—including two thousand children and another two thousand teenagers—at a festival of worship and hearing from God. And we have heard testimony from around the country of how hungry the younger generations—children, youth and young adults—are for God. 95% of them aren’t in our churches. Their hunger is, in part, because they are starving, because they haven’t been fed, spiritually, by the generation that raised them. But we have heard, and even seen with our own eyes, stories of children and teenagers asking their parents to bring them to church (that is to say, bringing their parents with them). We have heard stories of young adults having dreams about Jesus and turning up at churches saying, ‘Tell me about this Jesus I have been dreaming about!’ At St Nic’s we have welcomed children and prepared them to receive communion, because they are hungry for Jesus, who feeds us with his very self in word and in sacrament. And my expectation is that we will see more of this, over the months to come; and that we need to be ready.

This weekend we have seen violence on the streets of our city. People without hope, whose fear is exploited, who feel that they need to project a show of strength to hide how scared they are. People offered scapegoats and a society to rail against. These people, many though not all of them young, are hungry too. We can turn their anger back against them and perpetuate division; or we can love them and pray for them, pray that they might meet Jesus, and that we might have opportunity to introduce him to them.

And if you are hungry for the bread of life today, come, take, eat. There is more than enough to share.

 

[1] With thanks to Bishop Ruth Bushyager for highlighting this, in her bible readings on Mark’s Gospel, at the New Wine 2024 festival.

[2] John Mark Comer writes about this well in ‘Practicing the Way’ (SPCK 2024).

 

Sixth Sunday after Trinity 2024

 

I was struck, on Friday, by the final speech made by Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, and by the first speech made by his successor in that role, Keir Starmer. Both men acknowledged the role that the support and hard work of others had played in the opportunity presented to them; the will of others in constraining their own hopes; and the reality that whatever can be built, however our common life is shaped, is and can only be done together.

We do not impose our will on the world, or other people, as a blank canvas or a lump of putty. Indeed, we do not only discover the extent to which our will may be realised in engagement with other people and the physical world we share; our will is actually formed in relation to the will of others.

In the Gospel passage set for this Sunday, Mark 6.1-13, we are reminded that Jesus is constrained by his work as a carpenter, by his family of origin, and by the wider community in which he is situated. This embeddedness places limits on what he is able to do, and in this passage he discovers something of those limits. But these constraints are not solely negative. It is within the contexts of these constraints, these interactions that combine to give shape to what is possible, that Jesus comes to understand himself not only as the Son of Mary, but as the Son of Man, that is, what it is to be a human being, part of humanity. It is within these same constraints that others come to see Jesus as the Son of God, or also the Son (descendant) of David, both of which are to say, the legitimate king of Israel.

Within this embedded context, indeed within the specific context of coming up against the push-back of others, Jesus calls twelve others to him, and sends them out ahead of him into the surrounding area. As they go, and meet other people in the embeddedness of their lives, they proclaim that all should repent. To repent means to change your mind, in relation to something; but, more than that, to change your mind as a consequence of having spent time with another person, of getting to know something of them and their life. The twelve do not go out telling people, repent, or that certain types of people need to repent, but proclaiming that all (that is, the twelve included) should repent.

In other words, this is the work of building bridges, between people, between me and you, together. For this to happen, I must reassess what I believe, including my assumptions about Others, in light of having met with you, having listened to you, having seen you, and you, me. This is listening to people on their doorsteps, rather than just speaking at them.

This goes against the grain of our cultural assumptions, which denies the existence of a grain to work with. We surely only need to programme our desired outcome into the 3D printer. But Jesus was a carpenter, and a carpenter becomes a master carpenter in the mutual submission of the carpenter to the wood and the wood to the carpenter. They work together, this sentient being, and this given material reality or Other, which would only frustrate the inexperienced or immature worker.

We live in a world where the grandson of immigrants, or a man who grew up in a working-class home can become Prime Minister—and can be removed from office. But this is not to say that you can be anything that you want, which is an unbearable burden that can only result in a sense of failure and the deep shame that comes with it, the sense of inadequacy for which we alone are to blame. It means that we start, somewhere, with a set of givens that shape possibilities, that shape further possibilities. Like sailing across a lake, at times we advance carried by the wind, at times we must tack into the wind as a corrective; and at times the wind is so hard against us that we can only get anywhere at great effort, abandoning our ideal plan for what is possible.

Generally speaking, we would prefer that other people repent, than we are willing to repent ourselves. We want to impose our will, or we surrender any willpower and abandon ourselves to fate. We need, instead, to learn that the world is created, and that we are creative agents in that world, through mutual submission. That requires trust, and the willingness to honour the other, even (especially) those with whom we disagree. In this, on Friday gone, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer both served us, as a nation, well.

 

Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2024

 

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, concluding, today, with equalities and rights, and democracy. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

Let’s begin with some principles. First, it is worth noting that Jesus did not live in a democracy, but under the rule of a colonial empire, the latest in a succession of colonising empires. The State we live in, and the state of that State, is a constantly changing accident of history, and not something to vest ultimate identity in. Nor did Jesus ever advocate exerting religious power for temporal gain. Whenever the Church is seduced into trying to do so, the vision of following Jesus is corrupted.

Second, Jesus emphasises the command ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ Command, here, should be understood as divine decree: that it is the human vocation to love one another, in the same way that it is the vocation of the sun and the moon to light the day and the night. When we seek to withhold from others what we would not want withheld from ourselves—and not least when we seek to exercise control over others by declaring that we know what is best for their own good, better than they do—we violate that divine calling.

Third, while democracy, as a system of government, is traced back to ancient Greece, Jesus adopts and expands this model, taking the term ekklesia—a word used 114 times in the New Testament—to describe the church he will build. The ekklesia was the citizen’s assembly in Greek city-states, such as the Decapolis, a league of ten such cities local to Jesus, which enjoyed political autonomy from the Herodian Kingdom and its successors, the Herodian tetrarchy and the Roman province of Judea. The Athenian model was based on three institutions, the ekklesia, boule, and dikasteria. The ekklesia was the sovereign governing body, meeting weekly, writing laws, determining foreign policy, and appointing officials to serve one-year terms as head of state and organisers of festivals. The boule was a council of representatives, chosen by lot from each district (‘tribe’), meeting daily for a one-year term, responsible for the day-to-day running of the city, and setting the agenda for the ekklesia. The dikasteria were courts in which cases were brought before lottery-selected jurors.

In the early church we see citizenship—the criteria for participation in the ekklesia—broadened to include women, slaves, foreigners (the gentiles), and youths, all of whom were excluded from the Athenian ekklesia. We see representatives appointed to administrative roles by lottery, but also by refined terms (when the Hellenist widows complained that they were being overlooked in the distribution of food to widows, those chosen to administer the distribution fairly were only selected from among the Hellenist part of the church community). Settling disputes within the church rather than going to external courts was also encouraged—deliberative democracy, working alongside representative democracy.

So, we see that Jesus and his first followers take up and develop democracy. We see this today in our structures of church governance, including the congregation as local ekklesia, with its own parochial church council and elected officers, as well as elected representative synods and appointed bishops. It is also worth noting that Christianity has been a major influence in the evolving democracy of England.

Let us turn now to the readings set for this Sunday, asking what light they might shed.

Our Old Testament reading is Lamentations 3.22-33. The context is this: Jerusalem has been laid waste, Solomon’s temple burnt to the ground, the city walls pulled down, the royal court taken into exile, all at the end of a devastating siege. Everything is broken. Yet we are reminded that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. And so, we are encouraged to hope, in place of despair; to look for evidence of the Lord’s compassion; and to bear the burden of rebuilding. Every party standing in the forthcoming General Election has appealed to our collective sense of brokenness—a creaking NHS, a cost-of-living crisis, anxiety about broken borders. We would do well to attend to the tone of their messages: do they emphasise hope? do they highlight compassion? do they make messianic claims as to their own (and theirs alone) ability to save us? are they honest about the challenges facing us, and the cost?

Our Gospel reading is Mark 5.21-43. We meet a desperate father, who wants the best for his daughter, and a desperate woman, who is excluded from full participation in society. This raises questions of what we might call equalities and rights. It is worth noting that the woman is trapped by a law intended to ensure menstrual health, and also that the World Health Organisation calls for us to recognise that menstrual health should be recognised, framed and addressed as a health and human rights issue, not a hygiene issue. It is worth noting that the woman chooses to ignore the law, in her determination for restoration, and despite her fear of the consequences. We might also note that Jesus uses power to empower others, as opposed to building his own empire. He focuses his attention—and ours—on the woman, not the crowd, and on the little girl, not the commotion around her.

Finally, let’s turn to policies set out in the various manifestos, relating to equalities and rights, and to democracy.

On equalities and rights, Labour and the LibDems highlight equality for women in the workplace, Race Equality (Labour proposes an Act, the LibDems a Strategy), and workplace equality and ease of access to public life for disabled people, while the Conservative focus here is more on health and welfare reform. On gender identity, the Conservatives plan to implement the Cass Review recommendations, to ‘protect young people who are questioning their gender identity from ideologically-driven care,’ while Labour insists upon ‘freedom to explore sexual orientation and gender identity.’ Both statements uphold the importance of safe space, to question or explore. The LibDems go further, proposing reform of the gender recognition process in favour of respecting a person’s identity claim, and the Greens further still, simply affirming the right to self-identification for trans and non-binary people. This is clearly an example of a complex and contested issue—of crowds and commotion—where legislation matters, and compassion for real lives, including family members, matters even more.

The LibDems affirm the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Greens the Human Rights Act and ECHR, while Reform UK would leave the ECHR, remove the 2010 Equalities Act, introduce a Comprehensive Free Speech Bill expressly ‘to stop left-wing bias and politically correct ideology that threatens personal freedom and democracy’ (i.e. no freedom of speech unless you agree with us) and an Anti-Corruption Unit for Westminster (which could be weaponized against political opponents).

On democracy, Labour, the LibDems, and Greens all propose extending the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds (at 16 you can join the British army; Athenian democratic citizenship was from the age of military service) enabling them to participate in the democratic processes that impact every area of their lives. The Greens recognise the right to national self-determination for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the LibDems propose a federal UK with a Federal Constitution, including determining the structures of government in England. Labour would reform the House of Lords, the Greens replace it with a second elected chamber, and Reform UK replace it with a structure to be determined. Reform UK would also replace the Civil Service with political appointees that changed with every government.

Issues of equalities and rights, and of democracy, have a bearing on how we conduct ourselves, as the ekklesia Jesus is building. Who is included, as a citizen in the kingdom of heaven? Who is here, in this place, on equal standing? Who gets to have their voice heard, their perspective respected, their daily lived experience taken into consideration? Are those who have been here for fifty years entitled to more power than those who have been here for six months, simply by virtue of having been here ‘first’—or should the first be last, when it comes to exercising power in this kingdom? Are all included, equally, regardless of gender, age, socio-economic means, ethnicity, disability, abilities, sexuality, family status, education? If not, whose ekklesia are we?

These issues also have a bearing on how we vote. We live in a democracy. There are four political parties standing in Sunderland Central: the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Greens. Reform UK offers an alternative to democracy: namely, authoritarian populism. It is an alternative that many Christians in the USA have embraced, the ‘Christian nationalism’ that coopts Jesus in service of political power concentrated in the hands of wealthy, white, culturally ultra-conservative men to the exclusion and control of other groups. It is antithetical to the Way of Jesus, beloved, and to waiting quietly for the salvation of the Lord. I said that it is not my intention to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for, but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote? This is my caveat: I would have significant issues with anyone who called themselves a follower of Jesus and who voted for an authoritarian populist movement.

As we place our cross in a box on the ballot paper, may we reach out to Jesus, and, grasping the hem of his outer garment, may we be rescued from whatever keeps us from loving service of our neighbour. And may we go out at peace and be made whole.

 

 

Fourth Sunday after Trinity 2024

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, continuing, today, with the environment. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

I think that I could make a case for the book of Job being the first treatise on the environment. It starts with God in conversation with an angelic being called the Accuser. God asks whether he has noticed how exemplary a human being Job is? The Accuser responds that this is self-serving on Job’s part, because God has planted a hedge around him, to shelter and protect him. God is not convinced and permits the Accuser to cut down the hedge and see what will happen. What transpires is a heady cocktail of attacks from neighbouring tribes competing for resources, and natural disasters, that between them strip away all Job’s flocks and herds and leave his servants and his children dead. When Job persists in his integrity of character, the Accuser asks to afflict his body with sores, but is prevented from taking his life.

When they hear of Job’s misfortune, his three closest friends come to him, and they do a beautiful thing. They sit with him, in silence, for seven days and seven nights. No trying to offer easy answers where there are none, to ease their own discomfort. And after that, Job speaks. A damn bursts, and words pour out of him. He wishes that he had died in the womb, that there had been no joy at his birth, that the stars had been blotted out by clouds. If you have lost a baby, that might be hard to hear, or understand; but Job is not alone in wishing that he had never been born, not alone in finding himself in such a dark place. He feels utterly hedged-in by God—which does not feel like shelter, but like torment—and his anguish pours out from him like water. God notes everything Job says but, for now, says nothing in return. Instead, Job’s friends speak up, and their advice to him is, to put it in environmental terms, a pile of steaming, well-rotted manure.

Only when they have spent all their words does God speak, answering Job’s complaint from out of the storm (starting with our first reading today, Job 38:1-11). He takes up Job’s death-wish image-for-image with God’s own wish for life. Neither obliterated nor silenced, the morning stars sing for joy. The sea is born, full of vigorous life; and God uses the sea fret to make swaddling bands, to wrap the new-born sea tight—as Mary would wrap Jesus—so that it feels safe and secure. God literally plants a hedge around the sea—a boundary to shelter it—and brings the swell of outpoured waters to peace. In what follows, God reveals a divine fascination with and joy in learning about nature, in discovering how creation will participate in the gift of life. Christians believe that we are made in the image of this God: which is to say, we are made to discover and rejoice in the wider environment.

The divine calming of the swelling waves is taken up in our Gospel passage, Mark 4.35-41. A violent storm comes out of nowhere, threatening to overwhelm the boats in which Jesus and his disciples were caught on the lake. We read that Jesus rebuked the wind, but the Greek means to esteem or place due weight or honour on something. We might say, Jesus, as a frail human, paid due respect to the power of the wind—and that the wind, in return, paid due respect to Jesus. There is something here of human harnessing the wind for human good. There is also something noteworthy in the calm displayed by Jesus before calm is displayed by the waves. He models the contrast between excessive fear and having been persuaded of God’s trustworthiness.

The environment is a major issue, and more so for younger voters. For many younger people, climate change and environmental loss is an existential crisis, which galvanises some to action and paralyses others in despair. The four political parties standing in Sunderland Central—the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and the Greens—agree that environmental policy must be tied to energy production and a commitment to reaching carbon net zero. All four promote significant investment in offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar energy production, including more localised storage and distribution, with both the Conservatives and Labour also supporting new nuclear power, to which the Green party is opposed. All four are aware that this will take strategic investment, targeted support for industries in transition, and various mechanisms for holding businesses to account. Holding water companies to account is prominent in the Conservative and Labour manifestos.

Reform UK is also standing in Sunderland Central. They are a registered business, rather than a political party (thus getting around certain restrictions on political parties, such as the need to be transparent about their funding). They take a very different approach, rejecting net zero ambitions, advocating that we adapt to a warmer climate, and calling for fast-tracking of licenses for North Sea gas and oil, shale gas extraction (fracking), small nuclear reactors, and incentivised mining for lithium and clean coal.

Christians believe that God created the world, and continues to sustain it; that God entrusted humanity with responsibility to guard the flourishing of all life on earth; and that the threat to life on earth for all species is at least in part tied to human abdication of that God-given responsibility, with hope for all living things also tied to God’s initiative—through the divine person of Jesus Christ—to restore humanity to their rightful position as environmental guardians. Indeed, ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth’ is one of the five marks of Anglican mission, across the world (the others being: to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom; to teach, baptise and nurture new believers; to respond to human need by loving service; to seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation). While Labour, the LibDems and Greens all highlight the importance of international cooperation and targeted development funding, links across the Anglican Communion allow for actual connection and partnership between local communities. Durham diocese has a link with the kingdom of Lesotho, which could benefit from renewal post the hiatus of the global Coronavirus pandemic.

There are things we can do here, too. Some are large, and will require drawing on external funds, such as replacing our heating systems, in the church hall as a matter of priority and in the church as a matter of planning for the future. But there are other things we can do, to take responsibility in this regard. We can shape and adopt an environmental policy, adapting existing templates for churches to our context. These cover energy use, which banks we might use and which charities we might support, how we apply principles of reducing, re-using and recycling waste to the products we buy for church use, the food and dink we consume, the changes we make in our own homes, and the worship and teaching Sunday by Sunday.

Every church, church school and diocese in the Church of England is also encouraged to engage with the Eco Church scheme, which supports churches to become better stewards of God’s creation working progressively through bronze, silver, and gold awards. We are signed-up to this—and it wouldn’t take a lot of work to reach bronze accreditation—but really we need someone with a vision to serve as an Environmental Champion for the church and parish of St Nicholas, to take this on. Perhaps this is something that God might put on your heart—perhaps in response to a sense of discouragement, as God responded to Job and as Jesus responded to his disciples. Perhaps this is where your faith will grow?

And we can make use of resources from the wider Church to help us engage with care for God’s creation, resources such as those produced to support the annual Season of Creation, which runs from 1 September to 4 October each year. This year’s theme is the firstfruits of hope. Blackburn diocese have produced six sessions of material, including prayers, worship, play, activity and actions to take, designed to help primary aged children join in with creation care. They have generously made this resource available more widely.

The environment is one of those issues that cannot be left to ‘someone else’ to address: we all need to play our part, and as Christians, we do so from a faith perspective. It is also one of those issues where we don’t always know what to do—though there is also plenty of consensus over what we ought to do, but don’t want to do. Here, too, our faith engages us, with the promise that Jesus—the one through whom, and for whom, God created all things—is with us, guiding us where we do not know what we ought to do, and strengthening us where we do know the way forward—or at least the next steps—but do not want to follow, for fear of the cost. Where we are overwhelmed, by guilt or shame or anger or denial, he rises and speaks peace into being in our lives.

Third Sunday after Trinity 2024

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, continuing, today, with housing, transport, immigration and education. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

In September 2023 the world-famous Sycamore Gap Tree was felled in an act of vandalism. The outpouring of grief made it very clear that many, many people across the northeast of England, and far beyond, felt a special connection with this one, iconic, tree, a deep bond that is hard to explain to someone who does not share it, but undeniable. There is a real sense of loss, but also hope, a desire that the tree might have a legacy: the stump, left in the ground, will hopefully sprout again; seedlings have been carefully gathered and stored to produce new trees, through grafting and other methods; and the felled trunk and branches have been preserved in hope that commissioned artists will create works to enhance a wide variety of contexts across the region.

Human connection to trees is nothing new. In the Bible, trees are often used as allegories for people, sometimes rulers and sometimes nations. Sometimes these trees are transplanted or cut down. For example, the prophet Ezekiel does this in chapter 17—from which our first reading this morning is an extract—and again in chapter 31. The cedar in chapter 17 is an allegory of the fortunes of Judah, while the cedar in chapter 31 is an allegory of the fortunes of Egypt.

Under king Saul, and then king David, a federation of tribes became a nation. The reign of David’s son, Solomon, was considered a Golden Age. Their neighbour to the immediate north was the island city of Tyre, jewel of the sea. Tyre controlled the great forests of Lebanon, that produced the finest cedars. They used this resource to build fine ships, becoming legendary merchants. But they had no land for growing cereal or farming animals. David and Solomon made alliances with king Hiram of Tyre, supplying food in exchange for cedarwood—and master craftsmen—to build David’s royal palace and Solomon’s temple: and so, the cedar became a symbol of the king in Jerusalem too.

But after Solomon’s death, the kingdom split in two, Israel in the north declaring independence from Judah in the south. The two nations coexisted for some time, until, in 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian empire—known as the Great—besieged and captured Jerusalem, carrying king Jehoiachin, the royal court and king’s own regiments, into exile in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar put Jehoiachin’s uncle, Mattaniah, on the throne in his place; and Mattaniah take the name Zedekiah. But ten years later, in 587 BCE, Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonia, gambling on an alliance with Egypt. The gamble did not pay off: Jerusalem was besieged for a second time, its walls destroyed, Solomon’s temple burnt down, and the entirety of the remaining population carried off into exile in Babylon. There they would remain until Babylon in turn fell to the Persians under Cyrus the Great, when they would return, in three waves: led by Zerubbabel, who began rebuilding the temple; by Ezra, the reformer; and by Nehemiah, who oversaw the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

This is what is alluded to in Ezekiel’s allegory of the tree: in the earlier part of the chapter, an allegory of Nebuchadnezzar establishing Zedekiah in Jerusalem, and Zedekiah turning to Egypt to support his rebellion; but towards the end of the chapter, the Lord God promises that he will replant his people in their own land and restore their fortunes. They will become a shelter for all nations (birds) and through them all nations (trees, again) will come to know that the Lord is God.

Trees can be considered an ecosystem in their own right. Our two native species of oak—the English Oak, national tree of England; and the Sessile oak, national tree of both Wales and Ireland—support 2,300 wildlife species, providing food and shelter for insects, birds and mammals, as well as lichens, mosses, and fungi. Likewise, the Scots Pine—our only native pine, and the national tree of Scotland—is a keystone species, supporting many other, including rare, species. Trees are a complex, living infrastructure, which make them a good analogy for infrastructure issues such as housing, transport, immigration, and education.

There is a need for a new vision for housing in the UK, including, crucially affordable housing. The average house value has risen by an average 10% every year for the past fifty years, leaving our housing stock beyond the reach of younger first-time buyers. The Conservative and Labour party manifestos share a commitment to build 1.6 & 1.5 million homes over the course of the next parliament. Labour and the Liberal Democrats both propose a new generation of new towns or garden cities, while the Greens favour smaller scale development. The left-of-centre parties want developers to provide supporting infrastructure, while the right-of-centre parties want to remove this constraint. Some focus more than others on upgrading existing housing to be more energy efficient. Regarding the relationship between landlords and tenants, those on the right want to strengthen the rights of landlords, while those on the left want to strengthen the rights of tenants. The imagery of a tree that supports a rich variety of life in different ways, including nests on branches or hollowed out of dead wood, and sets and burrows within the roots, speaks to a diversity of innovative solutions.

A reliable and fit-for-purpose transport infrastructure is essential if communities are to flourish. Our rail network is key, and all parties are calling for its reform. Labour, the LibDems, and the Green party all call for public ownership; while Reform UK proposes that 50% of our infrastructure be publicly owned and 50% held by a UK pensions fund. Buses are key to connecting local communities, raising questions about fit-for-purpose services are best planned, paid for. The LibDems vison extends to light rail and trams, moving to zero-emissions, shifting more freight from roads to rail, and—in common with the Greens—banning short domestic flights and a moratorium on new airports. Cycleways and footpaths should be integral to urban planning.

Immigration is a thorny issue. Claiming that asylum seekers are illegal migrants is a deflection. An illegal migrant is someone who came into the country on a travel, work or study visa and who remained in this country after their visa expired. Illegal migrants should be sent home. Safe routes to sanctuary must be reestablished for those fleeing persecution. There is both compassion and economic sense in processing claims quickly, allowing those who are granted asylum time to establish themselves (currently they are made homeless within two weeks; the LibDems propose a 60-day transition), and permitting people to work while their application is being processed (Greens). The bigger issue is addressing legal migration: and whether this is best done by a salary threshold (Conservative, currently £38,700 for a family visa) or a strategic workforce strategy identifying specific needs and how to address them through balancing the training of our own population and targeted immigration (Labour, LibDem).

Ezekiel’s vision of the tree included the promise that, in a renewed society, the surrounding nations would come to know that the Lord was God. This raises the question, what is the purpose of education? What is it that we want our children to know? For what are we shaping them? The world is changing, with new technologies advancing rapidly. A primary role of our education system has long been producing a workforce. The Conservative vision is built on rewarding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, fostering competition, replacing the exam structure (yet again) with the Advanced British Standard, with pupils spending more time in the classroom, studying more subjects, including English and Maths to 18 years old. They also promise 100,000 more apprenticeships. Labour look to fund investment in state schools through ending VAT exemption for private schools. They aim to recruit 6,500 new teachers with a focus on areas that present the greatest recruitment and retainment challenges; and address systemic challenges through breakfast clubs and placing dedicated mental health professionals in every school. The LibDems highlight professional development for teachers, a richer curriculum for pupils, and the need to understand and remove underlying barriers to attendance. The Greens would advocate for restoring university grants and abolishing tuition fees; while Reform UK focus on banning the teaching of ideologies they disapprove of in schools, while cutting funding to universities that undermine free speech.

Having an imagination shaped by the Hebrew Bible, as well as the land and its people, Jesus employed crops and trees in his parables, including today’s Gospel passage, Mark 4.26-34. He notes that while the sower scatters seed, the earth produces of itself, which the sower harvests. Infrastructure issues are like this: we invest in certain ways; what grows will grow; and later, we reap the fruit, the good and bad consequences. With a General Election, a government inherits the consequences of whatever someone else has sown. No party has a monopoly on the best ideas, nor control over the soil in which they are sown. No party can take too much credit for the success that follows their actions—the earth produces of itself. Whoever forms our next government, they will face significant challenges and address them as they see best, with mixed results. We must trust that God is at work, through us, and ask how we might both love and bless our neighbour, however small we may feel our agency to be, paying special attention to the most vulnerable. Rather than saying, ‘What difference can one person make?’, attend to the tiny mustard seed and the prolific tree that grows from it.

  

Second Sunday after Trinity 2024

Here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, continuing, today, with health, welfare and pensions. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

Our first reading today, Genesis 3.8-15, is part of the mythic story with which the Bible opens. By myth, I mean a story that transcends the context in which it was first told, and that takes on new layers of meaning in subsequent contexts. We have such myths in our national history—stories of King Arthur, or Robin Hood, for example, retold, reimagined, and repurposed to speak to distant descendants facing crises of their own.

In this myth, God creates the human being—male and female—in God’s image. The world of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was a world of expanding empires. When an army besieged and defeated a city at distance from their own capital, they would erect a statue, an image of their king, to say though this king is not here in person, they are king here now. These representations expressed the ideal image of the time, to which others aspired. Look at statues of Roman emperors (a timeline that stretches beyond the New Testament) and you will see that the first thirteen, from Augustus to Trajan, are all clean-shaven. This changes in 117 CE with Hadrian: the next eight emperors all follow hirsute suit, sporting magnificently sculpted beards. But the Genesis myth presents us with something different: it is not a statue that represents the king in his absence, but living creatures, sculpted from clay, yes, but breathed into life.

God places the humans in a garden paradise, from which they are to go forth and multiply and fill the earth. But for now, there are boundaries: the limit of the garden walls, and a restriction on what they can eat—the fruit of any tree, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The purpose is not to keep them contained or ignorant, but in fact the very opposite: as we experience adolescence, as we navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood, we need space to explore, to take risks, to make mistakes and together with peers learn from them and decide on a way forward, to learn how to mend small ruptures in relationships, to take on progressively more responsibility, to spend longer periods away from our parents while having a secure base to return to and go out from.

In the garden, the serpent engages the woman in conversation. The humans, remember, are still learning, are facing the challenges that will help them grow. As the woman—with childlike impulse—attempts to help a fellow child grow in understanding, we discover that, whereas God has told them not to eat of the fruit of one tree, they are not yet brave enough even to touch that tree. But the serpent—whose motive is not childlike—claims that to eat its fruit will be good for them, making them like God. Children are predisposed to want to be like their parent—copying them, before we learn to obey, or disobey—and, together, the woman and the man eat. And in this moment, something changes. They see themselves with a heightened self-consciousness. And then, they hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hide.

When God calls to them, ‘Where are you?’ the man replies, I heard you, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid. Fear is a double-edged (s)word: it refers both to an elevated reverence for someone else, and to an elevated sense of threat to oneself. One biblical tradition asserts that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom (Psalm 111.10, Proverbs 1.7 and 9.10). This, then, is the birthplace of wisdom, of learning how to approach God and of learning how to bear God’s likeness. [This reminds me of the conversation in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Susan asks whether the lion Aslan is “quite safe” and Mr Beaver replies, “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”] But here we also see the birth of comparison: the humans compare their naked selves against the Lord God and feel threatened. They also see one another as a threat, to be pre-empted.

What has this to do with health, welfare and pensions? I would suggest, a great deal.

First, across the English-speaking Western world in particular, we have witnessed a spectacular breakdown in the mental health of our young adults. In his book The Anxious Generation, psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the impact of the virtual world on girls and boys. As backstory, Haidt notes the loss of play-based childhood from the 1990s onward, as adults became overly protective of children within physical space, denying them the freedom to explore. Drawing on many research studies, he charts the impact of the growth of the internet, and the advent of the smart phone from around 2010. This trend has been bad for boys and disastrous for girls. We all experience motivation to agency—to growing competence and assertiveness—and motivation to communion with others—to cooperation and empathy. But in general terms, boys are encouraged more towards agency, and girls more towards communion. Business understands this, and so, in the virtual world, boys have been targeted by video games (increasingly massive multiplayer platforms) and pornography (increasingly hardcore) and girls have been targeted by social media platforms. Boys have withdrawn more and more from the physical world, losing confidence and competence there, while girls have experienced the devastating impact of manipulated visual social comparison, relational aggression, and wanting to fit in by copying influencers. Girls have elevated impossible and unreal expectations of beauty and, unable to live up to them, have hidden themselves deeper into the forest of anxiety. Boys are being taught to blame women for their woes, exacerbated by a shift from male-heavy industrial communities to service-based economies where women are better-equipped to excel.

All of this is almost entirely unchecked by society, which still tends to overfocus on physical safety. But the physical safety of our children has increased for several generations (in part, perhaps, due to a withdrawal from the physical world). In the UK we have seen a significant rise in knife-enabled crime over the past decade, though injuries and homicides have fallen. Where children are carrying knives, mostly for defence, it is because they perceive the world outside to be more dangerous than it actually is, arguably because it has become a more alien environment to them. Addressing this may involve putting more police officers on the ground (Con 20,000; Lab 13,000), adult-organised youth hubs with mental health provision (Lab), or a dedicated mental health professional in every school (LibDem); but we also need to address the loss of public space where children can play unsupervised (including hostile attitudes towards groups of young people) as well as holding online platform developers to a far greater level of accountability. Where parties want to extend fast broadband, so no community is left behind (Green, LibDem), what measures do they propose to protect our children online? We should pay close attention to the proposals of the different parties in addressing this mental health crisis—a crisis of adult making, but falling on children, who are not a problem to be solved. They are certainly not to be demonised. Which brings us nicely to Jesus’ observation, in the context of being misunderstood and demonised, that ‘if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand’ (Mark 3.20-35).

Health, welfare and pensions are major issues in the forthcoming General Election. They are issues that have an impact on all our lives, and they are issues that play deeply to any insecurity in our sense of identity, and to the sense of fear that springs from comparing ourselves to others—or, for those whose circumstances change, comparing ourselves as we see ourselves today against how we saw ourselves in the past.

Taken as a whole, the income and wealth of pensioners has increased over the past 30 years but is subject to widening inequality. 33% of Asian older people and 30% of Black older people live below the poverty line, compared to 16% of White older people; while17% of pensioners are in the top fifth of all household income. This has significant impact on health, on life-expectancy and quality of life. It has a bearing on hospital-based care, and on social care to support independent living; on how we fund the NHS and how that funding is shared. The Green Party’s proposal for modest tax rises for the wealthiest, and Reform UK’s proposal to remove the ‘free at the point of use’ principle for those who can afford to pay are two very different approaches on offer.

And how do we go about addressing the overwhelming levels of need, including waiting lists, in ways that honour those who work in health and social care, who, despite our claiming that the NHS is a national treasure, are often treated—badly—as our household servants? In Genesis 3, the Lord God moves to remove shame and restore dignity. In Mark 3, Jesus redefines our understanding of family, beyond self-interest, and aligned with God’s desire for a caring society. No one party has a monopoly on the best way forward; these issues deserve cross-party collaboration, not the trading of apportioning blame and deflecting responsibility we have seen so far in this Election campaign.

It is easy to write-off politicians for such human behaviour—as if we are any different. But while there are things best delivered nationally, or regionally, repairing a caring society cannot be left to government alone or to market forces. It requires of us all that we act as those who bear the image of God, and that we recognise our neighbour as bearing that same image. Weigh the party manifestos and exercise your vote. But also ask, how might we as a local community address some of these issues, whether by creating space for young people or through the Parish Nursing movement, by identifying need and working with others to meet it in sustainable ways.

  

First Sunday after Trinity 2024

 

It won’t have escaped your notice that here in the UK there will be a General Election on 04 July. Over the five Sundays in June, I intend to look at several key issues relating to how we vote, beginning, today, with work and the economy. My intention is not to tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for—though I will touch on policies—but to ask how does Christian faith inform how we cast our vote?

Work impacts all our lives, including the lives of children and pensioners. And work is a good thing, where it enables us to express something of ourselves, in ways that make a meaningful contribution to society, and in exchange to receive back what we need to meet our needs. It is also a sphere of life where humans exploit other humans, and people experience injustice. The UK has a very high level of income inequality [pay, bonuses, pensions] compared to other developed nations, and an even higher level of wealth inequality [land and property ownership].

One of the foundational events in the Bible is the exodus of the descendants of Jacob from Egypt, where they had initially been welcomed as economic refugees but were later heavily exploited amid rising fear that their population had grown too large to live peaceably alongside their hosts. Soon after Moses leads their escape, God presents them with Ten Words—we know them as the Ten Commandments. These were fundamental for society to flourish but needed fleshing-out in practical case law. One of the Words concerned work, and, specifically, the key importance of regular rest from labour or exertion, grounded in the rhythms of nature itself. When, forty years later, Moses restated the Ten Words to the generation who had left Egypt as children, or who had been born after that experience, he reframed the Word explicitly as protection against exploitation:

‘Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.’ (Deuteronomy 5.12-15)

Sabbath means to cease exertion, to rest. And the Word concerning work flows out rest. That is to say, it places restriction on work. In a sense, it seeks to save work from itself. By putting a limit on work, it prevents a good thing from becoming an idol, an all-consuming thing that exploits us. It provides clear margins around work for rest, for celebration, for other expressions of community. And of course, this pattern presupposes that the labour of six days provides for seven. You cannot rest if you are worrying about how you are expected to choose between eating and keeping warm. So, we might want to ask, of each party’s manifesto, what is your understanding of work? And do you value people as more than economic units?

This Word is expansive: it starts with you and extends to others. The primary focus is on those with the most means. The Word places a limit on the pursuit of profit and insists on a duty of care towards others. These are not others who are ‘less fortunate than ourselves’—a phrase I dislike intensely, a phrase that shields the rich from addressing systemic unfairness. No, this Word is concerned with justice for all. The Labour Party’s policy of making the minimum wage a real living wage, and the Green Party’s policy of introducing a Universal Basic Income, giving everyone the agency to take time away from work to care for family, learn new skills, volunteer, or pursue other interests, would be ways of fleshing this out.

The Word turns to addressing young adults. What does liveable work and rest mean for them? Zero-hour contracts might sound attractive when the worker can easily step outside work commitments for a time and take up other employment fairly easily; but where a diversity of opportunity is missing, such terms are exploitative. I don’t know what you think of the Conservative policy that every 18-year-old should do National Service? Perhaps you think it is just what they need. Perhaps you think that many young people are already volunteering in the community, and perhaps it should be compulsory for all ages. Perhaps you think it isn’t a bad idea, but it needs more thought: who is going to supervise these young people, and monitor the value of the experience? But ‘[requiring] another person to perform forced or compulsory labour’ is an offence under the Modern Slavery Act 2015; and perhaps we should rather ask how do we protect the margin of free time around young adults? Related to this, we might ask, why is the minimum wage for those under 21 less than that for those who are 21 and over? Someone might respond that young people have fewer commitments; but that isn’t the basis on which we pay for labour. Why should they not have the opportunity to build up savings, rather than the idea that, in the long run, it is good for people to experience getting into debt? [It isn’t.]

Next, gender is addressed. Do not discriminate. In this country, it is illegal to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same work. But it happens all the time. It happens in hidden ways, such as men being given larger bonuses, and also because women have too often assumed that the law is being observed. Women face discrimination, for example because maternity leave costs an employer in ways that have no immediate benefit to the employer: if profit is your bottom line, rather than a duty of care, women make poor employees, and all employees—regardless of gender—are disposable. What do the various party manifestos have to say about workers’ rights, and about the balance of care between the employer, the state, and the individual?

The Word addresses beasts of burden, which, in our context, might be expanded to include machinery and tools. There is something here about technology, about obsolescence, about the relentless exploitation of the natural world; and about commitment to a greater contentment and appreciation of what we have. Again, there is something here that resists reducing everything to short-term profit, and that asks whether we might reimagine what has been termed a ‘greening’ of the economy.

And the Word addresses our attitude towards the resident alien in our towns. This is, of course, highly contentious in our society: but it is not an issue that will be addressed by ignoring it. Since the lifting of Covid restrictions, and the ending of the EU transitional arrangements, we have seen a very marked rise in long term immigration among non-EU nationals, with those on ‘skilled worker – health and care’ visas having overtaken those on study visas, and dependents of those with ‘skilled worker – health and care’ visas having overtaken primary applicants. We have experienced the impact of this on our own congregation, with healthcare workers from Nigeria and Ghana and India and their families worshipping with us. So, we might ask, if we are content for immigrants to perform care work, for which they are often both overqualified and poorly paid, what might we owe them, as a society? And if we do want to reduce immigration, how might we go about that well? Reform UK propose a higher rate of National Insurance to be paid by businesses that employ non-British nationals, though, tellingly, their proposal would exempt the health and care sector.

Moses ends with a reminder that we do this in part because of an appreciation of our own history of exploitation experienced by previous generations. That we are not to lightly throw away rights won. In this nation, this would include the right to vote, the right to Union representation, rights in the workplace, maternity provision, protection in times of sickness, benefits of the welfare state. Rights that are constantly resisted and pushed back on by vested interests who would exploit others for personal gain. There are many stories of resistance and demand for change in our shared history. Some have been championed by the Church, some ignored, some actively resisted. But stories, and how we tell them, matter.

Let’s turn to our Gospel passage, Mark 2.23-3.6. I’m not going to read it out, you can look it up for yourself later. Here, I simply want to offer some thoughts on how we should conduct ourselves over the coming weeks. The Gospel passage records two clashes between Jesus and a group who saw him as a threat to their vested interests, to their privileged position in society. Who saw Jesus as their enemy, to be destroyed. First, they use a very harsh interpretation of the law to discredit Jesus’ disciples; then they pretend that engaging with Jesus’ questions is beneath their dignity.

In contrast, Jesus reminds them of a story from their history that they have chosen to bury, a story that raises compassion above control. Every party, every candidate standing in this General Election will remind us of certain stories about our shared history, that emphasise particular characteristics. The point is not to seek balance, but to ask ourselves, are the stories told—the characteristics highlighted—ones we would choose to celebrate, or lament in penitence? And how do we respond to the stories we would distance ourselves from? Do we accuse the storyteller of being unpatriotic, or the enemy within; or do we recognise that our shared story is not reductive to the Right or the Left?

And, finally, Jesus ‘was grieved at their hardness of heart.’ He moves to restore a withered hand—to restore the man’s opportunity to contribute to society—while his opponents move to destroy him above all else. May we resist the hardening of our hearts against those with whom we disagree. May we love, and pray for, those we count as enemies.

 

 

Fourth Sunday of Easter 2024

 

Lectionary readings: Acts 4.5-12 and John 10.11-18

Around 12,000 years ago the world was emerging from the most recent Ice Age. Humans had spread through every continent. There were in total around 1 million of them, and they were all hunter gatherers. If they were going to develop beyond that, they would need to develop farming. And that required several factors (such as significant rivers) but two things in particular: indigenous cereals, to produce a food surplus freeing up some of the community to do other things; and the kind of animals you can put to work, of which there are surprisingly few. Australia had no natural advantages. Africa and the Americas, both lying north-south through several distinct climate zones, had limited cereals (sorghum, millet; maize, quinoa) or suitable animals (camel, donkey; llama, alpaca). With a temperate climate stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, producing wheat, barley, millet, and rice, and home to the sheep, goat, pig, cow, and horse, Eurasian farmers had a distinct advantage [see A. Wilson, Remaking the World]. This is why we see the early rise of so many major civilisations—and empires—in this part of the world, growing around the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus, the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, as well as the Nile. These are not the only major civilisations, of course, but they are the earliest.

Across this zone, settled communities developed houses: and, across the many diverse cultures of this zone those houses—from humble homes to royal palaces—took form around an internal, or interior, courtyard. Why? In part because it was easier for humans (as well as for grains and other animals) to move east-west, learning from one another. And in part because the internal courtyard offered several advantages:

it invites natural light, while maintaining privacy—walls also storing the sun’s heat for nighttime warmth (passive heating).

it encourages air movement, providing a welcome cooling breeze in warmer regions and helping to maintain thermal equilibrium (passive cooling).

It collects and stores rainwater, typically in a shallow pool, for use in drier times.

it creates relaxing space, a safe place to enjoy company, eat and drink together, discuss ideas.

The internal courtyard is a key indicator of having moved beyond surviving into flourishing.

Which is all very interesting (or perhaps not) but what has it to do with our readings from the Bible (Acts 4.5-12 and John 10.11-18)? Well, our readings bring together an image from the world of agriculture and an image from the world of architecture.

Let’s start with Jesus, and his words, ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.’ The word translated ‘fold’ is the word for an internal courtyard. It can mean sheepfold (its primary meaning in the metaphor of sheep and shepherd) but it also refers to the interior courtyard of a house or palace. Jesus brings those who come to him into his internal courtyard, where we see by his beautiful light; experience the breeze of the Holy Spirit; are cleansed and renewed in baptism, fed in holy communion; and can relax knowing that we are safe from harm. In him, there is, simply put, a rightness to the world.

Now let’s turn to Peter. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter quotes Psalm 118: “the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.” Literally, it has become ‘the head of the corner.’ The cornerstone is the architrave (the ‘chief beam’) that sits on top of, and holds together, the columns that support the roof, so that the roof—having a large hole in it to let in light and air and water, doesn’t collapse.

Peter’s experience of the church is of a dwelling—a family home, a royal palace—being built for all people around an internal courtyard: around a space that lets the light of Christ illumine our lives; a space where we can feel, and benefit from, the movement of the life-giving Spirit; a space defined by repentance and baptism, and by a common meal; a safe space where we can enjoy one another’s company in fellowship. It is certainly a place of goodness and healing, of restoration of health.

This, then, is the ‘ideal model’ of the Church, for Jesus and for Peter. Indeed, many of the earliest churches met in the internal courtyard of the homes of their hosts. This was the main and semi-public room, around a pool where baptisms took place (Paul baptises the household of a Roman army veteran in Philippi, establishing a second church in the city) and a dining table. And when Christians first began to build dedicated places of worship, they built them around an atrium (the Latin name for the internal courtyard). The shape of our buildings has evolved over the centuries, but we still see that form in the cloisters of our own Durham cathedral.

We don’t have an internal courtyard, but the metaphor stands. And, just as we have covered over the interior courtyard of our buildings, so we see patterns of behaviour at play within the Church of God that try to shut out the light of Christ, keep out the wind of the Holy Spirit, detach baptism and communion from discipleship, and lord over an unsafe place where people experience spiritual abuse.

Even as we get work done to replace the physical roof above the south aisle, let us attend to maintaining the metaphorical opening over our heads, that we may be a flourishing community within the courts of the Lord. The measure might be to ask:

Is our worship focused on Jesus, welcoming his light, and responding in repentance and joy?

Is our worship open to the Holy Spirit, the giver and sustainer of life?

Do we prepare people of all ages for baptism and to receive communion—and to live the life that flows from these sacraments—well?

Do we nurture a safe environment where people of various ages, abilities and needs can get to know one another and flourish together?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘not really,’ how might we attend to that?

And one final thing. Jesus says, ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.’  Jesus goes out into the world to bring others back, with him, into his fold. We are called to follow him, where he leads, and to do the things he does. If we have found, in this place, an internal courtyard in the world, who do we know who might also find a welcome here? Whom might we invite to come with us? Whom might we speak to, whom Jesus might speak to through us, who might hear his voice and respond?

Don’t think of the fold as being tight for space, but as a gracious space, a hospitable space, an inviting space. A blessing you would want to let others in on, that they might be blessed too.