Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Thoughts after preaching from the book of James
The Epistle of James says, when Christian communities are bolstered with self-regard, when they bask in the approval of the rich and powerful and convince themselves that the correct belief alone will justify them, they deceive themselves. This is especially the case when they simultaneously deny justice and dignity to those on the margins, to labourers, to people living on the edge – those who present to us the tangible judgement of God on the way we arrange our lives and our world.
In his 1977 book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, which prefigured much of the more recent concern among evangelical churches for people and planet, Ron Sider tells the story of a US pastor who causes great offence in the pews by delivering a fearsome manifesto denouncing the wiles of the rich and the mistreatment of poor people and workers. His congregation in turn accuse him of sedition and of ‘pulpit politics’. But he points out to them that, in fact, every word he has used is sourced directly from the likes of Isaiah, from Amos and from James. They call themselves biblical people, but the Word is apparently unknown to them when it comes to acting justly, seeking mercy and walking humbly before God as a social reality.
Yet the uncomfortable fact is that more often than not the Gospel reverses our ‘normal’ judgments, our idea of what is ‘natural’ and ‘right’. If we are to judge correctly, and not find ourselves hoist with our own legalistic petard, we need to discover what it is to live and to have faith with integrity, says the Epistle of James. This means seeking the knowledge of God that comes to us through merciful action, not through pious sounding words or recourse to the protection of religious tradition. In these terms, the Christian message is un-common sense – something rare and precious – rather than mere ‘conventional wisdom’.
In his 1977 book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, which prefigured much of the more recent concern among evangelical churches for people and planet, Ron Sider tells the story of a US pastor who causes great offence in the pews by delivering a fearsome manifesto denouncing the wiles of the rich and the mistreatment of poor people and workers. His congregation in turn accuse him of sedition and of ‘pulpit politics’. But he points out to them that, in fact, every word he has used is sourced directly from the likes of Isaiah, from Amos and from James. They call themselves biblical people, but the Word is apparently unknown to them when it comes to acting justly, seeking mercy and walking humbly before God as a social reality.
Yet the uncomfortable fact is that more often than not the Gospel reverses our ‘normal’ judgments, our idea of what is ‘natural’ and ‘right’. If we are to judge correctly, and not find ourselves hoist with our own legalistic petard, we need to discover what it is to live and to have faith with integrity, says the Epistle of James. This means seeking the knowledge of God that comes to us through merciful action, not through pious sounding words or recourse to the protection of religious tradition. In these terms, the Christian message is un-common sense – something rare and precious – rather than mere ‘conventional wisdom’.
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Chanting the slogans of Empire, and making alliance with Caesar
Despite protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that "economic forces" automatically work for good and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that "progress" is good... It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and faults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation.
(from "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" pp 114-115 Wendell Berry)
(from "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" pp 114-115 Wendell Berry)
Monday, 17 August 2009
Climate Change debate in the Australian Parliament
I've read what I have been able. I've worked really hard to understand. And this is the conclusion I've come to both for the Government and the Opposition.
Armed with cost-benefit analyses, they report that saving the planet for its inhabitants may be all very well and good… but it is simply too expensive for the capitalist economy to afford. So, bad luck any real climate change.
Armed with cost-benefit analyses, they report that saving the planet for its inhabitants may be all very well and good… but it is simply too expensive for the capitalist economy to afford. So, bad luck any real climate change.
Monday, 27 July 2009
Really Taking a Break
More interesting reading from overseas clergy friends
Work has always created pressure on us as people, but the tools we have recently developed – ostensibly to make our lives easier, like all tools are meant to do – have created untold tensions within people. Always-on email, instant responses and decisions required, the need for each moment to turn a profit. When we feel a sense of control over it, this can make work rewarding and exciting; when we lack that control it creates anxiety.
A recent article in The Observer entitled ‘Welcome to the Age of Exhaustion‘ William Leith described his own battles with crunching fatigue and illness that was no more than a symptom of modern living.
What we need of course is a holiday. A ‘holy day’. An extended Sabbath. A time in the tradition of Jubilee when we are liberated from our labour. In modern terms: a time to down tools.
We may mock Orthodox Jews for their often comic attempts to get round the Sabbath obligation to do no work. But, as is so often the case, beneath the comic veneer is a sound principle that we are foolish to have abandoned: we need regular times away from our tools.
Too often, because of the business of our lives (or the shocking lack of annual leave afforded US citizens) we try to pack so much into our holidays. We spend fortunes visiting far off places and trying to consume new experiences, all the while clicking away on cameras and nipping into internet cafés to catch up. We drive and fly back jetlagged and exhausted… only to have to return to 50 weeks work.
In his article Leith quotes a New York doctor, Frank Lipman, who has identified this condition of being at the end of our tether with a succinct diagnosis. These people, he says, are ’spent.’ He is spot on. In a world of ubiquitous consumer ideologies, what better way to describe those who cannot compete any more? They are spent people, with no more in the bank.
I believe part of the art of being on holiday has to be a deliberate attempt to down tools, to step away from our technologies and simply be present. Having been ‘created from the earth’ an essential part of our re-creation should be to reconnect with that founding substance of the earth.
The explorer and prolific walker Sebastian Snow once described what happened on a long walk:
“By some transcendental process, I seemed to take on the characteristics of a Shire [horse], my head lowered, resolute, I just plunked one foot in front of t’other, mentally munching nothingness.”
This is recreation in process: mentally munching nothingness. The art of the holiday, the art of downing tools and entering a period of Sabbath, is no more than a decision to strip away the wires that tie us, to walk, and sit, with no pressure to spend.
Enjoy your time away, whether that’s a holiday in your own living room, or to some farther shore. I hope it feels like the river when it flows, joyful, surprising and unfolding.
Work has always created pressure on us as people, but the tools we have recently developed – ostensibly to make our lives easier, like all tools are meant to do – have created untold tensions within people. Always-on email, instant responses and decisions required, the need for each moment to turn a profit. When we feel a sense of control over it, this can make work rewarding and exciting; when we lack that control it creates anxiety.
A recent article in The Observer entitled ‘Welcome to the Age of Exhaustion‘ William Leith described his own battles with crunching fatigue and illness that was no more than a symptom of modern living.
What we need of course is a holiday. A ‘holy day’. An extended Sabbath. A time in the tradition of Jubilee when we are liberated from our labour. In modern terms: a time to down tools.
We may mock Orthodox Jews for their often comic attempts to get round the Sabbath obligation to do no work. But, as is so often the case, beneath the comic veneer is a sound principle that we are foolish to have abandoned: we need regular times away from our tools.
Too often, because of the business of our lives (or the shocking lack of annual leave afforded US citizens) we try to pack so much into our holidays. We spend fortunes visiting far off places and trying to consume new experiences, all the while clicking away on cameras and nipping into internet cafés to catch up. We drive and fly back jetlagged and exhausted… only to have to return to 50 weeks work.
In his article Leith quotes a New York doctor, Frank Lipman, who has identified this condition of being at the end of our tether with a succinct diagnosis. These people, he says, are ’spent.’ He is spot on. In a world of ubiquitous consumer ideologies, what better way to describe those who cannot compete any more? They are spent people, with no more in the bank.
I believe part of the art of being on holiday has to be a deliberate attempt to down tools, to step away from our technologies and simply be present. Having been ‘created from the earth’ an essential part of our re-creation should be to reconnect with that founding substance of the earth.
The explorer and prolific walker Sebastian Snow once described what happened on a long walk:
“By some transcendental process, I seemed to take on the characteristics of a Shire [horse], my head lowered, resolute, I just plunked one foot in front of t’other, mentally munching nothingness.”
This is recreation in process: mentally munching nothingness. The art of the holiday, the art of downing tools and entering a period of Sabbath, is no more than a decision to strip away the wires that tie us, to walk, and sit, with no pressure to spend.
Enjoy your time away, whether that’s a holiday in your own living room, or to some farther shore. I hope it feels like the river when it flows, joyful, surprising and unfolding.
Talking to myself after yesterday’s worship service
A friend of mine in the USA sent me the following article early this morning. After my experience of worship yesterday it seemed to be very much addressed to me. So I've done a bit of re-writing on it to make it mine too.
The idea of a Misery Index has been around for a long time — since the early ’70s. It’s actually an economic bellwether that’s determined by factoring inflation and unemployment. Economists reason that when unemployment and inflation are high, that generally spells misery for consumers.
The current Misery Index (for June 2009) is 8.16.
Yesterday was a particularly “low” day in our worship service. It was cold. Many people were away with all manner of ailments, many related to winter. Others had been on holiday and were ill. Others just stayed home, I’m told, because they just don’t feel like coming out at the moment. We struggled with hymns, Bible reading and Prayers. Many parents with children were absent, so our Sunday School was “light on”. I preached as fervently as I could, but the faces looking back at me seemed blank and bored. I came home to a time of “low prayer” – O Lord help me, I feel as if I have been laid low. (Sort of like a ‘Lamentation’.
How does one preach when people are miserable – and the preacher feels miserable too!. Along with the above “winter stuff” I have people in my congregation who have lost their jobs, maybe they might lose their homes, their retirement packages. They’ve watched their stock portfolios plunge in value, and many are delaying retirement because they simply can’t afford to retire right now. People are struggling to make ends meet. How does one preach in such contexts?
This brings me to the Mystery Index, which is suggested to me by what I remember of Gabriel Marcel’s ruminations on the general subject. How one can keep faith and have hope when utterly miserable has got to be the greatest mystery of all time.
Marcel, a philosopher and playwright, has been dead for more than 25 years now, but he’s still worth a read. Called by some a Christian existentialist, he addresses our subject in his book The Mystery of Being, originally delivered as the Gifford Lectures at Harvard.
Although Marcel doesn’t refer to a Mystery Index, in my thinking the Mystery Index is determined by the factors of faith (what Marcel calls “creative fidelity”) and hope. His ideas about being and having, availability and nonavailability are worth review. He says that too often people talk about trying to “have” this or that, when in fact, it isn’t a question of having something, such as love or hope, but being love and hope. A key component in this mystery is how we relate to others. When we make ourselves available to others, we link ourselves with their world and experience. We are present to them and for them, in communication with them. We are at their disposal when they’re in need. They aren’t alone.
When we are present to others, i.e., available to others, they are enabled, or empowered, to be faith and to be hope in miserable times. The problem with faith is that it must be constant and must have someone or something as its object. While God is the ultimate object of faith, our preaching helps mediate that object.
As for hope, Marcel argues that a person who is hope doesn’t accept the current situation as final. Hope isn’t fixed on any particular method of deliverance. Surgery to remove a cancer, for example, may not produce a desired result. But as a person of hope whose hope isn’t linked to a particular soteriological methodology, regardless of a surgical outcome, I am not shaken.
This doesn’t mean that hope is passive or merely a form of stoicism or resignation. Hope might be called “active patience,” and one who is hope is one who knows that God is for him or her, in partnership with him or her.
Our preaching must aim to elevate the Mystery Index, the mystery of faith and hope. It must be a sign that we are making ourselves available to others, helping miserable people become mysterious people! That is, people who understand that their constant faith in God is not misplaced. People of faith and hope are people whose hope and faith shall not go unrewarded.
The alternative is despair, which says that there is nothing — really — worth living for. The reward of faith and hope is that, well, yes, there is much in my current and future reality worth living for. And, by God, I am going to do it. I am going to live — in faith and in hope. In mystery.
The idea of a Misery Index has been around for a long time — since the early ’70s. It’s actually an economic bellwether that’s determined by factoring inflation and unemployment. Economists reason that when unemployment and inflation are high, that generally spells misery for consumers.
The current Misery Index (for June 2009) is 8.16.
Yesterday was a particularly “low” day in our worship service. It was cold. Many people were away with all manner of ailments, many related to winter. Others had been on holiday and were ill. Others just stayed home, I’m told, because they just don’t feel like coming out at the moment. We struggled with hymns, Bible reading and Prayers. Many parents with children were absent, so our Sunday School was “light on”. I preached as fervently as I could, but the faces looking back at me seemed blank and bored. I came home to a time of “low prayer” – O Lord help me, I feel as if I have been laid low. (Sort of like a ‘Lamentation’.
How does one preach when people are miserable – and the preacher feels miserable too!. Along with the above “winter stuff” I have people in my congregation who have lost their jobs, maybe they might lose their homes, their retirement packages. They’ve watched their stock portfolios plunge in value, and many are delaying retirement because they simply can’t afford to retire right now. People are struggling to make ends meet. How does one preach in such contexts?
This brings me to the Mystery Index, which is suggested to me by what I remember of Gabriel Marcel’s ruminations on the general subject. How one can keep faith and have hope when utterly miserable has got to be the greatest mystery of all time.
Marcel, a philosopher and playwright, has been dead for more than 25 years now, but he’s still worth a read. Called by some a Christian existentialist, he addresses our subject in his book The Mystery of Being, originally delivered as the Gifford Lectures at Harvard.
Although Marcel doesn’t refer to a Mystery Index, in my thinking the Mystery Index is determined by the factors of faith (what Marcel calls “creative fidelity”) and hope. His ideas about being and having, availability and nonavailability are worth review. He says that too often people talk about trying to “have” this or that, when in fact, it isn’t a question of having something, such as love or hope, but being love and hope. A key component in this mystery is how we relate to others. When we make ourselves available to others, we link ourselves with their world and experience. We are present to them and for them, in communication with them. We are at their disposal when they’re in need. They aren’t alone.
When we are present to others, i.e., available to others, they are enabled, or empowered, to be faith and to be hope in miserable times. The problem with faith is that it must be constant and must have someone or something as its object. While God is the ultimate object of faith, our preaching helps mediate that object.
As for hope, Marcel argues that a person who is hope doesn’t accept the current situation as final. Hope isn’t fixed on any particular method of deliverance. Surgery to remove a cancer, for example, may not produce a desired result. But as a person of hope whose hope isn’t linked to a particular soteriological methodology, regardless of a surgical outcome, I am not shaken.
This doesn’t mean that hope is passive or merely a form of stoicism or resignation. Hope might be called “active patience,” and one who is hope is one who knows that God is for him or her, in partnership with him or her.
Our preaching must aim to elevate the Mystery Index, the mystery of faith and hope. It must be a sign that we are making ourselves available to others, helping miserable people become mysterious people! That is, people who understand that their constant faith in God is not misplaced. People of faith and hope are people whose hope and faith shall not go unrewarded.
The alternative is despair, which says that there is nothing — really — worth living for. The reward of faith and hope is that, well, yes, there is much in my current and future reality worth living for. And, by God, I am going to do it. I am going to live — in faith and in hope. In mystery.
From "In The thick Of It"
‘The church is on the frontline of efforts to tackle poverty: it is at the heart of poor communities
and shares in their suffering. Pastors and congregations are making a real difference as they roll
their sleeves up, get their hands dirty, offer support and bring communities together. In many
contexts only the church can reach the poorest in this way. And the church could do so much more.
The church as a whole needs to wake up to its God-given mandate and potential to tackle poverty
– at home and overseas ...
THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, DR JOHN SENTAMU
and shares in their suffering. Pastors and congregations are making a real difference as they roll
their sleeves up, get their hands dirty, offer support and bring communities together. In many
contexts only the church can reach the poorest in this way. And the church could do so much more.
The church as a whole needs to wake up to its God-given mandate and potential to tackle poverty
– at home and overseas ...
THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, DR JOHN SENTAMU
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