Easter Message - Lost in Translation

Sometimes things are not as they seem or as sensationalist newspaper headlines would have us believe. Just as well or we already be 20 feet under the waves of global warming! Having seen the by now infamous Easter message from Jeffrey John, it is far from liberal apostasy! It is a very challenging, inspiring and comforting message and represents the best of what Christianity can be. It will never satisfy those who would have us make penal substitutionary atonement a litmus test of faith and that is a good thing. For me personally that God is not a God that I can find myself attracted towards. I fail to understand how some people seem to embrace bad news with such glee - again a bit like the zealots of global warming who remind me in turn of the strange cult of the extreme fundamentalist 'Left Behind' readers. There is enough misery in this world without Christians joining those who perversly enjoy wallowing in the misery and pain of others! What ever happened to the Good News?! Read Jeffrey John's message here.

A not so traditional Easter message!

In a BBC Radio 4 show, Mr Jeffrey John, who is now Dean of St Albans, urges a revision of the traditional explanation, known as "penal substitution".Christian theology has taught that because humans have sinned, God sent Christ as a substitute to suffer and die in our place."In other words, Jesus took the rap and we got forgiven as long as we said we believed in him," says Mr John. "This is repulsive as well as nonsensical. It makes God sound like a psychopath. If a human behaved like this we'd say that they were a monster."Mr John argues that too many Christians go through their lives failing to realise that God is about "love and truth", not "wrath and punishment". He offers an alternative interpretation, suggesting that Christ was crucified so he could "share in the worst of grief and suffering that life can throw at us". (Daily Telegraph)

In the light of the above I was drawn to have another look at a book I read last year. That book is Marcus Borg’s, "The Heart of Christianity" (a real gem), in which he looks at among other things atonement theology. Borg is very clear that the traditional understanding of Jesus’ life and death as expressed in the signature phrase: "Jesus died for your sins" is not the only interpretation of Jesus life and death in the New Testament and that the theory only found mature formulation in the last 900 years. The principal problem Borg sees with this approach at the expense of all others seems to be two-fold:

1: If forgiveness is possible only for those who believe "Jesus died for our sins", then a rigorous following of this approach implies a limitation on God's power to forgive!

2: It gives no account of the historical reasons for Jesus' execution!

Borg suggests that "Jesus died for our sins" in the context of the day is not so much a literal description of God's purpose or Jesus' vocation but rather a subversion of the Temple sacrificial system and a declaration of radical grace. i.e. God in Jesus has already provided the sacrifice and thus taken care of what we think seperates us from God; we have access to God apart from the temple and its system of sacrifice. He actually describes it as 'Amazing Grace'

By way of illustration of the dangers of this singular understanding of Jesus life and death he goes on to quote another author, Barbara Ehrenreich, who was attending a tent revival meeting where the theme of the sermon was "Jesus on the Cross". As she listened she found herself thinking and here I quote as it is too good to paraphrase:

"It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth. I would like to stay around for the speaking in tongues, should it occur, but the mosquitoes, worked into a frenzy by all this talk of His blood, are launching a full-scale attack. I get up to leave, timing my exit for when the preacher's metronomic head movements have him looking the other way, and walk out to search for my car, half expecting to find Jesus out there in the dark, gagged and tethered to a tent pole,"

I think the difficulty arises for us again and again when we insist on painting our faith using only a palette of 2 colours! I love Leonard Sweet's ability to express in a few words the richness of reality. In his recent “The Gospel according to Starbucks”, his description of Paradox as the "midwife of truth" is so provocative. He asks rhetorically where we ever got the notion that truth is "clear and singular" when it is better described as "misty and multiple". As for heresy, it is "choosing one truth to the exclusion of all other truths" where Truth is "when a body holds together its various parts in conversation and harmony".

In summary - Jeffrey John may have used very strong and perhaps irresponsible and sensationalist language in his playing down traditional atonement theology but he did present another quite valid dimension of Jesus' life and death. He is not saying anything which many Christians have not said and thought before and it may be that he has played into the hands of those who are actively looking for the chinks in the armour of a person who is more of an anathema to some because of his sexuality and not his theology (Or am I being cynical?). We do well to remember that the fullness of who Christ was and is cannot be contained by any of our theologies and can perhaps be best experienced by immersing ourselves in the paradox and complexities of faith which are of themselves food for our souls.

Your enemies just might be your best friends!

A prayer by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, Serbian bishop who spoke out against Naziism, was arrested, and taken to Dachau.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth; enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.

Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish. Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a [fly].

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

So that my fleeing will have no return; So that all my hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs; So that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;

So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Redemption through Coffee!

In his recent book: "The Gospel according to Starbucks", Christian writer and professor of evangelism, Leonard Sweet, tells of a sermon he once preached . When people entered the church they were each presented with a paper cup with a solitary coffee bean in the cup…..Not just any coffee bean but the most expensive coffee bean in the world … €250 a pound. This Coffee called Kopi Luwak is sold by the ounce and only about a thousand pounds of it reaches world markets every year. It comes from the island of Sumatra in Indonesia in a region known as Java. Sweet tells how he encourages the congregation to smell and taste the bean – a very chocolaty taste apparently – and then he tells them more about the bean.

Kopi, he says is Indonesian for coffee and Luwak is Indonesian for the civet cat which has a role in harvesting the bean. The civet cat is a very discerning feeder and only selects the best of coffee cherries to eat. It then defecates the undigested coffee cherries in sausage-like links and they are harvested by the local farmers who wash them (Very well one hopes) , dry them in the sun and send them to the exporters.

Having told the story, Sweet comments that only one person had to leave the church in a hurry to throw up their coffee bean!

I contemplated using this illustration in my Easter sermon this year but thought better of it - just in case :-). But it would make a superb illustration of the story of Easter.

Why you might ask?

Well the Kopi Luwak Coffee is not the only example of how God works to transform what we consider disgusting and worthless into something truly wonderful. As Sweet goes on to point out
Honey is passed through Bees - He calls it Bee Shih Tzu! ; In Asian cultures the white make-up that women wear is made from bird droppings; Mushrooms grow best in you know what!; Wine is the product of rotting fungus; Jesus grew up in a place of which it was said with disdain: “Can anything good come from [Nazareth]?”; He was born in a stable in dirt and squalor; He was crucified on the city dump of Jerusalem….he died with smell of rubbish in his nostrils and yet out of this came the RESURRECTION! When we consider that we must surely realise that there are grounds for the HOPE that is in us as we look forward to that glorious day.

Finding God

This is from Gordon Atkinson aka Reallivepreacher and it speaks for itself:

When it comes to God, religion, spirituality, whatever you want to call it, ignore just about everything you see on television or in movies. If you are serious about making a spiritual connection with a power greater than ourselves, try the following suggestions:

* Let go of big things and embrace little things.
* Ignore loud things and listen for quiet things.
* Put aside obvious things and seek out hidden things.
* Forget easy things and learn hard and ancient things.
* Stop saving your life and start losing it.
* Let your thinking and believing become doing and serving.
* Quit trying to arrive and become at home on the journey.
* Lose your road maps and find a wise guide to walk with you.

Love the idea of God with all your heart, soul, mind, body, life, work, and strength. And while you're at it, try loving other people as much as you love yourself. You won't be able to do either of these, but trying will be very good for you.

Do these things all of your days and forever. Do these things and live.

'Sticky Ideas'

Sermon for Sunday 25th March 2007
RCL Year C - John 12:1-8

‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

I don’t normally give my sermons a title but today I’m making an exception:
The title I have chosen is just 3 words and one of the words is LOVE!
No I am not about to tell you all that “I love you” – You know that already!
No the title of this sermon is “It’s LOVE stupid!”

Does that phrase sound familiar?...It should do!...If you follow international news and politics at all it should ring a few bells. It is a slight adaptation of a phrase coined by James Carville, an aide to President Clinton and used by Clinton, when he was campaigning for office as President of the United States. The slogan he used was: “It’s the economy stupid” and in those few words was conveyed a very simple and powerful message: All the electorate really care about – what really gets votes is: “How much money will I have in my pocket if I vote for you”? It seems very cynical and disappointing but it probably reflects political reality….and so the phrase or rebuke: “It’s the ECONOMY stupid!” By keeping that slogan to the fore Clinton kept his electoral machine on target or “on message” as is the phrase used today and achieved electoral triumph.
And today that phrase is everywhere – it is constantly quoted in Irish, British and European Politics – It is as compact and true a summary of our political motivation as you will find anywhere.

Simple concise phrases communicate so much and are far more memorable than long and lengthy philosophies of life…….the Bible is full of them…..quite literally: The Book of Proverbs is exactly that: a collection of seminal wisdom and truth expressed in compact, memorable and poetic language. The Sermon on the Mount equally expresses profound truth in succinct and rich phrases.

Our own contemporary language is full of similar examples…….take the phrase: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”…a proverb that has truly stood the test of time and can be traced back to the year 570BC! A recent book by brothers Chip and Dan Heath called “Made to Stick – why some ideas survive and others die” comments that this same proverb needed no advertising campaign or publicity budget to facilitate its spread across time, space and culture. It was a simple but profound expression of truth which was and is naturally “sticky”. The Heath brothers point out that these compact ideas are not to be confused with the contemporary fascination with the sound bite which is an unreliable medium but are in fact best described as Cervantes described Proverbs: “Short sentences drawn from long experience”.

So back to our Gospel : ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

It may not be as compact and as succinct a message as some of the examples we have looked at but it is an expression by Jesus of something that he and his followers say again and again: “It’s Love stupid!”
Perhaps not in that exact phraseology but in the rebuke that Jesus gives Judas, he points out that what was important was Mary’s motivation: her love for Jesus and perhaps her discernment of what was about to happen to him. Because of that there is an excuse for the extravagance of her Love in anointing his feet with a pound of expensive perfume as she anticipated (whether consciously or not) the Love that Jesus was about to demonstrate on the Cross. And so it’s all about Love – and Judas just doesn’t get it! Why? Because his mind is on other things! We’re told quite explicitly he is a thief who robs from the common purse and so resents this waste of money that he could have used to his own ends…..he doesn’t get it at all – he turns his back on Love and as we know it all ends in tragedy. “It’s Love stupid” is a phrase that we might long to say to him…..because of course we don’t identify with him in that story – Do we?

No we are all Mary…pouring precious perfume over our Lord’s feet and cleaning them with our hair! We know about Love and we are on the side of Love.
We have heard Jesus’ summary of the law from Matthew 22: “Love God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself” In this simple but powerful formula we find the basis for the Christian life.
We have heard and read 1st Corinthians 13 perhaps more than any passage in the Bible apart from the birth narratives of Jesus – We know that “if we speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, [We are] only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal”……that if we “have not love, [we] gain nothing”
We know all that so we don’t need to be told: “It’s Love stupid!” We know!

But wait a moment! – Judas knew all this – he walked with the earthly Jesus – he knew his earthly Love and presence and yet he walked away! He was distracted by other things which got in the way of the message of Gods love for him. Going back to our earlier political analogy he had gone “off message”…..even one so close as he had lost the plot and ended in oblivion. Scripture constantly reminds us that it is those times that we are especially close to God that we are simultaneously especially vulnerable…..our guard is down and we become complacent.

We do not all drift away from God’s Love in such dramatic fashion as Judas but there are more subtle ways in which we too go “off message”.

We do it when we treat our Church as an exclusive club with rules of admission instead of a place with no locks on the doors where all are welcome…..we do it when we meet the stranger and pass instant judgement on them because of the colour of their skin, their ethnic background or their religious tradition…we do it when we are more concerned with preserving ourselves and our own sanctity than reaching out to the broken and wounded people ….we do it when we say to ourselves thank God I am not as bad as this or that person….we do it when we fail to make peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ and yet claim to love Jesus.

It's all about Love and without it everything that we do will be in vain!
Living in Christ is not about doing the right thing! Its about doing the loving thing! It's about a "sticky idea": IT'S LOVE STUPID!

New Name - New Address - Same old Same old....

Hi! PaddyAnglican here! - I've moved from my old home at Paddy-Anglican (with a hyphen) and settled here leaving the hyphen behind! Give me a chance to unpack my stuff and I'll start posting again soon.
Stephen