Here let us stand

‘Since Christmas a day: and the day of St Stephen, First Martyr.
‘Since St Stephen a day: and the day of St John the Apostle.
‘Since St John the Apostle a day: and the day of the Holy Innocents.
‘Since the Holy Innocents a day: the fourth day from Christmas.
‘To-day, what is to-day?’

So wrote T S Eliot at the start of the second act of his play Murder in the Cathedral, written for the 1935 Canterbury Festival, and first performed in the Chapter House at Canterbury, just a few yards from where, on this day in 1170, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, was killed.

The murder, or assassination, of Thomas Becket within his cathedral church shocked the whole of western Christendom. Within three years he had been canonized, his name added to the roll of saints of the Church, and King Henry II forced to do penance for his role in Becket’s death. From Iceland to Italy there are churches dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, and relics, statues and images from just a few years after 1170.

The cause for which Becket died, however, is not one that today we necessarily regard as unambiguously right. As Eliot has the assassins remind his audience, the rule of law that we treasure as a great protection was begun by the reforms of Henry II that Becket stood against. ‘Remember,’ says the Second Knight in his speech to the audience, ‘remember that it is we who took the first step. We have been instrumental in bringing about the state of affairs that you approve.’ On the other hand, the rule of law that Henry II was introducing was harsh, whereas the rule of the Church, which Becket wanted to encompass as many people as possible, was more lenient.

And yet we cannot easily regard the murder of Becket as justified, even if we can agree with some of the sentiments Eliot has the knights express. The end does not justify the means. The powerful cannot go around murdering those they disagree with, whether they be political rivals or obstacles (as Becket had become to Henry II), or the weak and impoverished (as the boys of Bethlehem were to Herod, or indeed today). The prophets of the Old Testament remind us of this too: we see David brought to book by Nathan for arranging the death of Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11, 12); and Elijah foretells disaster on the house of Ahab for his complicity in bearing false witness against Naboth and causing him to be executed (1 Kings 21); and there are plenty of other examples.

The very rule of law that Henry II wanted to introduce requires that arbitrary exercise of power is not allowed. The murder of Thomas Becket reminds us still that the rule of law (tempered by equity and mercy) is fundamental to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and that it applies as much if not more to the rich and powerful and to the rulers as it does to the dispossessed, the powerless and the ruled. Those in power must always be held to account for their treatment of those who are in their power.

‘To-day, what is to-day?’
‘Let our thanks ascend
To God, who has given us another Saint in Canterbury.’
‘Blessed Thomas, pray for us.’

Wholly Innocent

Today, the fourth day of Christmas, the Church remembers an incident recorded in Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus. The evangelist tells us how Herod, warned that a ‘new king of the Jews’ had been born in Bethlehem, gave orders for the massacre of all the boys aged two years or under in and around Bethlehem. The evangelist notes that this is a fulfilment of the words of Jeremiah. Later legend puts the number involved in the thousands, or even in the hundreds of thousands, though it has been estimated that the likely number of boys of that age in a town the size of Bethlehem might have been around twenty.

Scholars doubt the historical accuracy of this story, and we do not need to take it literally to commemorate today all who are wrongly persecuted and betrayed by those who should be protecting them.

The young boys in the story know nothing of Jesus, nor indeed of the politics and powers of this world. They cannot by any stretch of historical or theological imagination be described as Christians. Just babies or toddlers with a few words, they are the epitome of powerlessness and vulnerability, still dependent on others for all their needs. Primarily they depend upon their parents, but secondarily they depend on their neighbours, and on the earthly powers-that-be for protection from the evils and disasters that can strike at any time.

And despite their ignorance of Jesus, the Church has from ancient times commemorated them: a reminder that God’s love is for all; a reminder of the sufferings endured by so many; and a reminder of our responsibilities towards those who depend upon us, and those who are weaker than we are. And a reminder too of the need to hold the powerful to account, and to ensure, so far as we are able, that they too remember their responsibilities to the weak and powerless, and not abuse their power for their own ends.

It is a sad fact that such abuse of power and responsibility not only still exists, but also that it is not just confined to the obviously evil. From terrorists exercising power without responsibility, not caring about the suffering of the innocent, through politicians convinced of the ‘greater good’, to religious leaders who fail to use to the utmost their moral power and influence, we still see connivance, deliberate and thoughtless, in the persecution of those who have every right to expect the protection of the more powerful.

The best way in which we can commemorate this feast today of the Holy Innocents is to speak out against and to work towards the end of the tyranny of evil. Not just this day, but every day.

In the Beginning was the Word

‘In the beginning was the Word’. So begins the gospel according to John, and it is John that is commemorated today: John the apostle, and John the gospel-writer or evangelist — perhaps the same person, perhaps not, but apostle and evangelist commemorated as one today.

In this prologue to the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, the evangelist writes in poetic language and connects the eternal Word of God with this living person, Jesus of Nazareth, whom he had known.

In the beginning was the Word

The universe is something that we observe, and in particular something that scientists observe and try to understand. And one of the things that they observe is that there is something about the universe that tends towards what might be called ‘creativity’. At one level this can be explained as a result of electro-magnetic and nuclear forces acting at infinitesimally small distances or of gravity acting over unimaginably large distances. It is these forces that create galaxies and stars, that cause the creation of the elements within these massive stars and the dispersal of these elements around a galaxy to enable younger stars and planets to be formed. At another level it is the creation of localized negative entropy systems (though there is net gain of entropy in the larger closed system) which enables life to exist here on Earth.

This ‘creativity’ seems to be built in to the universe that we inhabit and observe, and to the scientist this can be described by formulations such as the weak anthropic principle (that if the universe were not pretty much like it is then we wouldn’t exist and so wouldn’t be here to observe that it is like this).

In the biological and social spheres we can observe similar tendencies towards creativity — in biological reproduction, and in the care that we as humans try to take towards the young and to those responsible for them, and towards each other. And we see it in our own attempts at creativity — in the arts and in the sciences.

As Christians we can associate this ‘tendency towards creativity’ with the divine creativity. In John’s gospel, following the lead of Greek philosophers, this creativity is called the Word, (the ‘Logos’ in Greek), and the writer reminds us that everything was made through this creativity, nothing was made without it, and that it was there from the very beginning. This can be compared with the poetry of Genesis, in which it is similarly the word of God that brings the universe into existence.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us

And then, says the evangelist, ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’. This creativity, this divine spark, was uniquely focussed in a particular human being, the human being we know as Jesus.

This creativity is revealed in Jesus to be at one with the divine love — love for the creation, love for our fellow creatures, and love for the divine creator. This profound religious truth is revealed to us in the incarnation, in the message of Christmas, and recorded for us by the evangelist, John. And as we struggle towards understanding we can understand too that the creativity and love that is at the heart of our own human existence is also part of that divine creativity, the divine inspiration or inbreathing of the Spirit of God.

We saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth

The glory of God, the glory of creation, is revealed in human love, shown to us in the life and teaching of Jesus who cared about all who suffered, and shown to us today by all who follow that same path.

On the Feast of Stephen

‘Good King Wenceslas looked out,’ we sing in the popular carol, ‘on the feast of Stephen’. Today is the feast of Stephen, perhaps the most under-observed feast in the calendar. Its proximity to the feast of the Nativity is intended to honour Stephen, the first person to suffer death for their faith in Jesus of Nazareth — but in practice this proximity means that most people, even seasoned churchgoers, are taking the day off.

Stephen, though, deserves more than a passing commemoration.

Stephen was a Greek-speaking Jew, described as ‘full of faith and the Holy Spirit’. In the earliest period of the development of the Church, when it had become too large for the Twelve to manage by themselves, he was chosen as one of seven men to look especially after the Greek speakers in the Church, and particularly to ensure that the widows received their share of daily bread.

The initial description of the role of Stephen and his six fellows is a servant ministry, and although not described as such, they are accounted as the first deacons.

But Stephen and the others were not limited to ensuring that the widows received their daily bread. Stephen did great wonders and signs, and disputed with other members of the synagogue. And so he was brought before the Council, and stoned to death.

In the Acts of the Apostles the author tells us two more things about Stephen. First, Stephen is given a lengthy speech in which he describes the great sweep of Jewish history, from Abraham onwards, all pointing towards the birth of Jesus, and in which he criticizes the leaders of the Jews for resisting the Holy Spirit, persecuting the prophets, and not keeping God’s law.

Secondly, the description of Stephen parallels that of Jesus in many ways: being filled with the Holy Spirit; seeing the Son of Man at the right hand of God, as Jesus promised he would be; commending his spirit to Jesus, as Jesus commended his to the Father; kneeling as Jesus did in Gethsemane and asking forgiveness for his persecutors.

Witnessing to Jesus by acting like Jesus in every way is thus seen by the author of Acts to be essential to the Christian life.

Alleluias from a Good Friday people

On Friday the local ecumenical act of witness, packed in between Sainsbury’s and the gates of the market, featured a gospel group, the accents of the old East End, prayers led by a Nigerian nun, songs in Urdu, and a Portuguese version of ‘Jesus, name above all names’. It was very wet, and mildly chaotic.

Nothing wrong with any of that: indeed, there was much to welcome in a gathering of such diversity bearing witness together, and it certainly illustrated the variety of Christian communities in this part of east London. But I came away to prepare for Stations of the Cross in our own church and on the way I was talking to a friend. The two of us found ourselves struggling with the inability of some of our brothers and sisters to stay with Good Friday; they had raced ahead to Easter, to the triumph and the alleluias, while we were still focussed on crucifixion, on suffering and on death.

Different traditions work in different ways. But I think there was something deeper and more subtle at work as well.

Every couple of months, in our Sunday eucharist, we change the way in which intercessions are offered. Instead of one person coming forward to speak on behalf of the rest, we invite anyone from the congregation to offer prayer for a person or place or situation who or which is a cause for concern or gratitude. What we hear is a very powerful statement of the pains and needs of the people present, their families, the situations they have left behind. What we very rarely hear, although they are always invited, are words of thanksgiving.

Perhaps we are a people who understand Good Friday much better than we do Easter. Suffering, grief, loss, these are familiar states. Any priest or pastor, looking round her or his congregation, will know a fair number of those who are struggling – and know that there are more whose struggle is hidden. Here, amongst the 60 or so who will gather on a Sunday, I can recognise those whose lives are shadowed by untimely death, sometimes violent, by poverty, by worries over residence qualifications, by domestic violence, by imminent or recent bereavement, by poor health, mental or physical.

So, when we say or sing or even shout our ‘alleluias’ today, what are we saluting? And what relationship do those ‘alleluias’ have to our intercessions? We are not, of course, acknowledging the disappearance of suffering in each of these lives, and in the world to which this congregation is so well connected. Nor are we rejoicing in a facile conviction that our own contributions to injustice and pain have suddenly disappeared. But those prayers of intercession come from a heartfelt need of God’s love and support – and a deep, absolute, trust that it will be found. And I think it is that trust which we will celebrate. It is a trust, articulated or not, in the eschatological promise, in what J D Crossan describes as ‘the Great, Divine, Clean-Up of the world’.  The promise of another way, which is not just for the hereafter but which is already being followed. The way of violence, of damage, of exclusion has been challenged – and the heart of our resurrection belief is that the challenge has been triumphantly, mysteriously successful.

Our inheritance

There is a stillness to Holy Saturday which is quite unlike any other time of the year.

The quiet between Christmas Day and new year’s is an exhaustion, not least from trying to keep events focussed on God’s place in the stories, amidst the corrosive demands both of an hysterical marketplace and childish sentimentality. This season of the year has a different quality of quietness, though it also has its subversions, more subtle and more insidious than Christmas. Two years ago, one made its way to the movies

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, was a depiction of the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life. The script was based on an 18th century work, a transcription of the meditations on the passion by an Augustinian nun, Sister Anne Emmerich. It was a brutal, savage depiction of an idea that Jesus suffered because God demanded his life in compensation for the affront of human sin.

It was the latest and very gruesome incarnation of an old thread running through Christian theology, from Ambrose to Anselm and beyond, that only the violent sacrifice of a perfect and sinless Jesus could appease a God whose honour had been offended, and whose anger had been aroused by sinful human beings.

On both sides of the Atlantic, churches block-booked entire cinemas. The faithful were told that this movie showed how it really was, this is what people on the edge of Christian faith need to see, in order to turn to Jesus. The problem was that, for many, it backfired. Whatever the film evoked in our feelings for Jesus, it did not instill any sense of gratitude to God. While one could believe in a divine father who might demand such things of his son, one could not love such a God, who emerges as brutal, affronted and barbaric.

Once you begin to believe in a God who demands compensation, you inherit a spirituality which is always demanding that we give more to assuage our sense of imperfection and failure to live as we feel we are required. This may be why churches which espouse such an understanding of God and sacrifice, also have large incomes.

There is another view of what Jesus accomplished, but it is not so straightforward, does not slot neatly into a Christian basics class. In the sermon we call the Letter to the Hebrews in the Christian Canon, the writer is addressing a congregation creaking under the demands of a compensation demanding deity. The writer describes Jesus as a great High Priest, one who walked as we do, experienced life as we do, endured the same trials as we do but, in all he did, he stayed on track. He did not allow the dark powers to set the terms of engagement. Unlike the War on Terror, in which we have mimicked and multiplied the violence of those who provoked it, Jesus did not return evil for evil, he never compromised his humanity.

The writer to the Hebrews describes Jesus’ last days in terms of offering himself as a sacrifice in the temple of God, not as one taking the punishment necessary to appease an angry God, but as a whole human life fully lived and uncompromised, life as it was created to be.

It matters what we think Jesus accomplished on Good Friday, because from it we decide what God demands us to be and do. Mel Gibson and those who think like him can only deliver us into the hands of a vengeful God, whose demands lead to a relationship between father and son which scarcely bears contemplation. The writer to the Hebrews presents us with a Jesus who is able to let evil pass through him, and not knock him off his course; a Jesus who, in the midst of suffering, cries out, “with prayers and supplications … to the one who was able to save.”

There is a stillness to Holy Saturday which is quite unlike any other time of the year, it is a lull before the end of the story, Jesus’ story and our story. For Jesus it will be the empty tomb, but the writer to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus calls us his brothers and sisters so, in the stillness, we contemplate what is possible for us to follow his way to become fully human.

When Sin Has Done its Worst

As we come before the cross today, we inevitably ask “Why did Jesus have to die like this?” Yes, the incarnation, accepting human life, brought with it the inevitability of some kind of death. But did it have to be the kind of death portrayed all too vividly in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ?

Our founding myth tells of the first death, the murder of Abel, at the hands of his brother Cain, and its message is remarkable. Both brothers had offered sacrifices to God.

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

History, they say, is only told by the victors. They make excuses to prove their own goodness. They affirm the righteousness of their cause in destroying those who opposed them.

But the Bible starts on the other foot. There is, of course Cain’s excuse that his resentment has made him think that God regards his brother’s sacrifice more highly than his own. But it is clear in the telling that he is only trying to justify his own envy. God’s judgement is that he is called to overcome temptation and not yield to the sin he has in mind.

Scripture reveals that murderous envy is the founding sin of humanity. It is this which will bring about the death of God’s Son. It is so universal that it is central to every tragedy, from Greek myth to Italian opera. It has been present in every good night out at the theatre for millennia. And because the tale is so well told, it seduces us into believing that this is how life should be.

The tragedy opens with the introduction of a great hero. But quickly, the person most to be admired, the person everyone would like to be, becomes the person most envied. And the tragedy provides an outlet for the envy felt by the audience. We know that the hero will die. A fatal flaw is discovered in the hero’s character.

We could turn the biblical story into a classical tragedy, starting with the line

the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.

In a Greek drama we could explain the murder by playing on the capricious favouritism shown by the gods. But the Hebrew scripture, more faithfully to God’s eternal plan, simply reports the sin.

Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.

In the universal human tragedy, the envious must have their revenge. Shakespeare’s famous line from Julius Caesar “et tu, Brute” reveals that the closest of friends shares in both the murderous envy and the violence.

As the Psalmist says

Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted,
who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me.

Once the sin of envy takes hold, everyone in the theatre, whether Greek, Shakespearean, the New York Met or the courtyard of Pilate’s house joins the mob baying for blood. They know how tragedy ends, and even the disciples cannot resist. The Roman governor who correctly deduces that Jesus has been handed over because of envy has to go along with the wishes of the mob, because their lust for blood is getting out of hand. If they are refused their victim, they might turn on Pilate himself. They have come to see a tragedy. Caiaphas the high priest had predicted “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

It still happens. In the wake of 9-11 the President of the United States found himself at the head of a nation demanding retribution. Like Pilate, he knew that he had to find a victim, or he would be driven out of office. His victim, the man he envied, was in Iraq. Saddam remained confidently in place years after George Bush senior had been consigned to history. Bush envied his long term hold on power, he envied the oil revenues, he envied the richness of this culture which so evidently despised the West and he envied the loyalty of the Iraqi army to their leader. As in all tragedies, Bush would start a lying rumour about the man he envied — links to terrorists, weapons of mass destruction — it didn’t matter what. So long as people would join him, then the victors would be able to write their own history afterwards, a history in which they would declare that God was on their side. Blair and Aznar were willing members of the cast of America’s tragedy.

But violence breeds more violence. Iraq has no government. It is on the verge of civil war. It has been bombed into third world status. The liberators have been revealed as persecutors. And for Bush, the impresario of the theatre of death, the only remedy is seen as inviting the world to watch another tragedy, this time with Iran as the envied hero who has to be murdered. Where will it end?

We should have learned from the tale of Cain and Abel. The writing was on the wall from the first murder in scriptural history. We should have learned that envious murder is a sin. Envious murder is not an art form to be celebrated, or a way for people and nations to relate to each other. The foundation of every tragedy is a lie. Surely, when we see what art is displayed in the cause of tragedy, Satan’s greatest victory is the lie that the mob is right in murdering the person they envy.

So the eternal Word of God, through whom all things came into being, came in person, in the hope that even though those who claimed to be his own people might reject him, some of them might actually perceive that there was a different way. Life, not tragic death, was its foundation.

Even his disciples couldn’t believe he was serious about the consequences of his mission. They couldn’t see that his goodness would arouse such envy. All too soon they found themselves sucked into it. But on the way they discovered just enough to be able to recognise a different way, and that when sin has done its worst, God’s plan of love and justice is ultimately accomplished for all humanity from Abel onwards, in the resurrection of the dead.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Feasting in God’s Kingdom

Maundy Thursday is a turning point.

Up to today Jesus’s ministry has continued — preaching and teaching, proclaiming the kingdom. But after today the pace quickens considerably, with his arrest, trial and death before another 24 hours have passed.

Maundy Thursday is a turning point too in the story of the relationship between God and humanity.

Throughout his ministry we see Jesus acting out the very message that he was proclaiming. He tells his listeners that the kingdom of God is at hand, that it is among them — and all the while he is doing the things he is talking about. He proclaims that in God’s kingdom the blind will see, the lame will walk, and the sick will be healed — and he goes around restoring sight, raising the paralysed, curing the sick; he proclaims that the kingdom is like a feast to which all will be invited — and he goes around eating and drinking with everyone, from members of the Council to the outcasts of society and the ritually impure, in their ones and twos and in their thousands.

Jesus is not just proclaiming the kingdom, he is also living it: he is inaugurating it and embodying it. And he draws his disciples and others into this realization of the kingdom, above all when they share a meal together.

And then in the last meal before his death, Jesus does something new.

Earlier in the week we saw Jesus’s challenge to the sale of sacrificial animals in the Temple, a challenge to the Temple cult and the covenant which underpinned it. The time of the old covenant is past, and now Jesus inaugurates a new covenant.

In the Temple a person would offer for sacrifice an animal with which they had virtually no connection.

Jesus, however, takes in his hands something which every household would have, a loaf of bread, the work of human hands. As he has eaten with his friends throughout his ministry, so they are to remember him when they break bread together. And it is not an animal that he will offer for sacrifice. This bread, he says, is the body which is his sacrifice. This cup of wine, he says, is the blood of his sacrifice. Jesus’s new covenant between God and humanity, a covenant of fellowship with God in his kingdom, is inaugurated.

Jesus has taken ordinary bread and ordinary wine and declared that these are the sacrificial objects which his friends can offer. This gathering of friends is the temple and this table is the altar for the sacrifice. Forgiveness is offered, and its acceptance is signified by fellowship with Jesus. There is no need any more for the Temple in Jerusalem with all its failings. And at the same time, this meal is itself an enactment, a part, of the feast in God’s kingdom.

And there is one more thing to come. 

Before another day has passed Jesus himself will be hanging from the cross, his broken body and out-poured blood now once and for all identified with the bread and the cup. To the remembrance of Jesus’s table-fellowship is added the remembrance of his cross and passion.

Together, identification and remembrance form a sacrament: in remembrance we make present the once-and-for-all actions of Christ at the Last Supper and on the cross; and in identification we can truly see the bread and wine as one with the body and blood of Christ hanging on that cross. In the sacrament the sins of the penitent are wiped clean. And together we proclaim and feast in the kingdom. Here, then, is the sacrament of Jesus’s new covenant.

And yet this is a sacrament that in our human failings manages to divide the followers of Christ. It divides us in our theology and understanding of the sacrament, and it divides us into groups that forbid sharing the sacrament with others or won’t accept it from others who are willing to share. So, our prayer today should echo some more words of Jesus on this day: May they all be one, that the world might believe (John 17.21).

Hercules in Holy Week

Handel’s Hercules, recently staged at the Barbican in London, was designed as an oratorio to be presented during Lent rather than an opera. After the great success of the Messiah, Handel had turned increasingly to serious religious works and away from opera.

The original story by Sophocles tells of Hercules’ tragic death after returning from successfully completing his twelve labours. In Greek myths great heroes are always envied. They become scapegoats who have to be sacrificed to restore harmony in the community. The envious mob, the audience at the drama, justifies the killing of the hero, by revealing his fatal weakness.

Hercules returns victorious from his labours with a captive princess, and his wife poisons him out of jealousy. In the Greek tragedy the hero has indeed been unfaithful to his wife, and this proves to be his undoing. His wife has a cloak which she thinks will restore the love of someone who has strayed, but in fact it is soaked in poison. So, according to Sophocles, the flawed hero gets his just deserts, and those who envied him feel justified in wishing him dead. The wife, who does not realise the cloak will kill Hercules, is found to be innocent.

Handel’s drama is retold as a moral tale suitable for Lent by a clergyman, the Revd Thomas Broughton. As in Messiah, the hero is portrayed as an innocent victim of envy who does not deserve to die. The jealousy of Hercules’ wife is without foundation. The story will reveal her sin as surely as scripture reveals the sin of those who crucified Jesus.

In Broughton’s story, Hercules is not unfaithful. He wants his son to marry the princess, and his dying wish is fulfilled when they accept each other. When Hercules dies he is welcomed into heaven by the immortal gods who know his innocence, whilst his jealous wife, realising the enormity of her sin, goes mad. The story has been rewritten with a Christ figure, and also a Judas.

Handel’s oratorio wasn’t popular. Perhaps the audience didn’t like the story Thomas Broughton was telling, because it points the finger at our murderous envy of heroes. His Lenten drama called the audience to the virtue of emulating our hero, rather than to the sin of envying him. And emulation, whether it is described as ‘taking up our cross’, or as ‘the imitation of Christ’, is our calling.

doing Easter

Airline passengers arriving in Dublin will, as they leave the airport, pass a billboard poster advertising the Airbus A350 airplane. I have observed this several times and remain unsure of what it is there for. I don’t suppose we are being invited to consider purchasing one of these quality items. But maybe some bright spark at Airbus Industrie SA thought it would make a neat and rather exclusive gift; and in that case the decision to put up the poster around the Feast of the Epiphany (which is when it first appeared) made some sense.

Perhaps it is still possible to take the currents and rhythms of modern life and set them into the context of the church year. The Wise Men did not turn up in Bethlehem bearing the gift of an intercontinental jetliner, but even in our secular culture we have heard the references to gold, frankincense and myrrh enough to feel that what they did bring still has a contemporary resonance, and we can track the Christmas narrative into today’s world, including the world of commerce.

But is that true of the Passion and — if we can mention it gently during this week — the Resurrection? Dublin airport is still advertising the A350 today — so you have not missed your chance to take the special offer — and inside the terminal building the shops and other outlets are full of suggestions for gifts and delicacies ‘for this family season of giving’ (as one poster there suggests). I remember Dublin as recently as the mid-1980s, when you would in Holy Week hear only sombre music on the radio and see edifying black and white films on the television. Now all is changed, and Holy Week has become another great shopping opportunity, with Good Friday now one of the most lucrative days in retailing outside of the pre-Christmas season. Conversely Sunday and Monday will be rather quiet, and in Ireland there will only be a rather smaller number of people preparing for what for them is one of the absolute highlights of the year: the Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse on Easter Monday.

As Anglicans, we believe that the Passion and the Resurrection are indispensable ingredients of the Christian narrative, and complete the story of the Incarnation. Is this a message we can no longer communicate to the wider world, leaving what is left of Christianity in the sentimental state to which it is consigned by the makers of Christmas cards?

In fact, religion as a Disney product doesn’t work. We understand the ups and downs of life, and the story of the Passion has its own resonances in today’s world of famine and terror and tyranny. The planes that brought you to exotic holidays also destroyed the World Trade Centre on 9/11. In Ireland specifically, Easter has a strong historical association with passion and redemption, from Easter 1916 to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. All these associations are still there, but the church has become bad at prompting them in the public mind.

I fear we have become bad at ‘doing Easter’, and sometimes are uncomfortable with the Passion. This Good Friday, as on every Good Friday, I shall find myself moved again as I approach the great Cross during the Liturgy of the Passion. Maybe I shall make just a bit more of an effort not to come to that alone. I don’t necessarily mean that I shall ask my secular friends to accompany me — though perhaps I should — but I shall bring into church with me just a little bit of the world of Easter eggs and special April gifts, and the world of all those travellers on the A350, and maybe I shall take back out with me just a little bit of the Cross, and the great gift of Him who hung thereon.

in the Temple

After his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus visits the Temple.

His reaction is one of anger and violence. In the first three gospels, he upsets the tables of the money-changers and those selling doves. In John’s gospel (where this event is strategically positioned at the very start of Jesus’s ministry) he expels those selling cattle, sheep and doves, together with their animals.

It is hard to say if this is a minor skirmish or a major disturbance, but what is clear is that Jesus had issues with the way that the Temple was being run.

The Temple cult, with its associated priests and other officials, was the religious establishment of his day. The sacrifice of cattle, sheep and doves was at the heart of the covenant relationship between God and his people, the Jews. A Jew handed over one of his own animals for sacrifice as a sin-offering, or as a thank-offering for blessings received. In making a sacrifice of his own goods, the faithful and repentant Jew was freed from his sins.

Animals brought for sacrifice had themselves to be pure, free from any defect. Many people in an urban and agrarian setting were unable to provide such animals, and so they could buy them in the Temple forecourt. The purchaser laid their hands on the animal, symbolically taking ownership, before the animal was led away behind the scenes to be sacrificed by the priests.

The buyer thus had little contact with the beast or the sacrifice, despite the requirements of the covenant and the Law.

Jesus saw the relationship with God as being centred around the things that are important to us, everyday meals and deeds and friendships, frequently with the ritually impure. As the psalmist had sung ‘You have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you will not despise’ (Psalm 51.16, 17).

Jesus’s challenge to the establishment is clear, and that challenge echoes down to us too. Established opinion can be comfortable, and cosy, and we can justify to ourselves the decisions we make as being in line with the received view — whether that is the received view of society or the received view of our fellow believers.

Jesus’s action in the Temple makes a dramatic break with the past. We can see it as symbolic of the ending of the covenant, the covenant to which the Temple cult with its animal sacrifices bore witness. The old establishment, with its comfortable certainties, is no more. Its time is past, and a new covenant between God and all humanity will soon take its place — even the outward form of sacrifice will barely endure for another generation before its destruction by the fire of the Roman invaders. We shall see, later in the week, what Jesus puts in its place.

The missing picture

Fancy some high-class works of art to enrich your Holy Week? Then pop along (as I and a dozen other Bishops on CME did last week) to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Almost every scene has been depicted. In loving detail the great Masters lay before us the Last Supper, Gethsemane, Jesus before the High Priest, and on through to a wonderful image of Christ rising from a sarcophagus clutching a flag of St. George – making him look like a rather dishevelled member of the Barmy Army after a particularly heavy Ashes victory. But something’s missing. And that thing is today – Palm Sunday. Liturgically it’s a major part of the Easter Drama, pictorially it has vanished off the radar.

I’m sure there must be some depictions of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem — and I expect the anoraks among aficionados of this web site to provide us all with hyperlinks — but by comparison with the other major events of Holy Week and Passiontide they are few in numbers. Why?

My suspicion is that Palm Sunday is uncomfortable for Christian art because it is too near the bone. Central to it are people who greet Jesus enthusiastically , scattering palms. And five days later, when he failed to conform to their expectations, they are ready to assent to his crucifixion. The betrayal of Jesus by the Jewish authorities, by Rome’s officers, by the Jerusalem mob and even by his immediate disciples is something we can distance ourselves from. But betrayal by those who cry “Hosanna” and welcome him into their lives as a Saviour, well that’s much harder to push away.

Today we’re forced to think about the equivocal nature of our welcome to Jesus. We let him into our lives and into our faith but on our terms. He mustn’t bring children or those with learning disabilities with him, as they might disturb the peace of our worship. He can help us say our prayers but mustn’t make any major demands on our money. He’s welcome to chide us gently about some of the minor sins we commit, but he must restrict his real challenge to other people’s temptations. And he must be prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the battle to save the church from those dreadful liberals, conservatives, homosexuals, misogynists, radicals, evangelicals, charismatics, Nigerians, Americans…

To paint the Jerusalem welcome is to depict ourselves, and to draw attention to the conditionality and ambivalence of our faith. No wonder many churches have moved the focus of their Palm Sunday Services to an overview of the whole Passion Narrative, we can lose ourselves among Peter and Judas, Caiaphas and Pilate.

St Francis of Assisi recognised that he would never fully welcome Jesus until he had embraced those he most feared and despised — lepers. He could then go on to welcome Lady Poverty and, in due course, Sister Death. Today you and I are given the opportunity to face a similar challenge. Or we could find some less threatening picture to look at.

women in the priesthood : women as bishops

Some opposition to women priests appears to centre on the fact that Jesus was a man, and possibly also on the “Fatherhood” of God. The argument assumes that representing Christ at the Eucharist requires a male person. I doubt whether Jesus would have supported the line of reasoning. Matthew 22.23-33 has a story in which Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection ask, mockingly, about who will be married at the resurrection to a woman who has had seven husbands on earth. Jesus’ reply is “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

Artists have traditionally followed this guidance by depicting angelic beings without beards or breasts, with no (female) head covering and with clothing which does not denote the sex of the wearer. Depictions of cherubs, sometimes with all the sexuality of the Roman god Cupid, owe more to classical taste than to scripture. Portraying sexuality in angels is mistaken.

Thus Orthodox ikons of the Trinity, which illustrate the appearance of God to Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18) show three angels with wings. The angels look like triplets. They are beardless. The three persons are distinguished mainly by the green robe of the Holy Spirit, and the deacon’s stole on the shoulder of Christ, denoting that he “took the form of a servant”.

Western pictures by contrast might show an old man with a long beard, the young man on the cross, and a dove somewhere between them, with no discernable relationship between the three persons. No doubt it is this somewhat dysfunctional looking image which provides preachers with such a difficult task on Trinity Sunday.

The Orthodox show three beings in fellowship, and the relationship between the persons is devoid of any sexual expression. Christ sits behind a table which clearly also represents an altar on which the Eucharist is presented. He wears his humanity in the deacon’s stole over one shoulder, but the masculinity of Jesus during his life on earth has given way to a depiction in which he is “like the angels in heaven” who “neither marry nor are given in marriage.”

One might then argue that whilst the priest represents the humanity of Christ, what is represented is not just the Jesus of Nazareth who died on the Cross, who was male. Rather, the priest must also represent the risen Christ of the upper room, of Emmaus and of the shore of Galilee, who is “like the angels in heaven” and, mysteriously, difficult even for his closest followers to recognise.

The sex of the priest who represents Christ our great high priest at the Eucharist is then immaterial. The priestly function is not a sexual one, but, in representing Christ who is risen, “neither male nor female”.

Looking Forward

In his advent letter to the Primates of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Rowan Williams offers his advent hopes for individuals, societies and the Church. For the last of these he gives us just two themes – reconciliation and renewal. Being a sucker for alliteration, I would like to add a third – readiness – to make a new version of the “3 R’s”. I have been trying to reflect on these hopes through the season.

I rather regret that in recent times it has become unfashionable in Advent to preach on the “Last Things” (Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven). Indeed, instead of looking forward to eternity, we are now asked by our lectionaries to look back (to the patriarchs, prophets, John the Baptist and Mary). To be frank, I don‘t think looking at the past is much help in terms of any of these three “R’s”. So let me suggest an Advent alternative.

From this perspective, reconciliation is about recognising that those we are in dispute with on Earth are also those with whom we hope to spend eternity. Despite the old joke (told at some point against most Christian denominations) there is no walled-off enclosure in heaven reserved for those who don’t think that anyone else is up there. In eternity, those with whom I have fallen out now, and to whom I may have behaved uncharitably, will be closer to me than the nearest human being in this present life. The Advent call to the Churches for reconciliation is therefore not so much “unity in diversity”, as “unity in eternity”.

Renewal also has its Advent dimension. We are to breath new life into our earthbound church so that we anticipate something of eternity. Taking just one example, it’s a call to make sure that the heavenly dimension is not absent from our liturgy and worship. And if that seems a rather too obvious thing to say, it is not that uncommon in my experience to find church services that appear to value matey-ness above mystery. A worship that is anticipatory of eternity will speak powerfully to our emotions, to our intellects and to our aesthetic senses. All too often we settle for being gently entertained.

Finally in Advent we are called to readiness. We are invited to prepare ourselves for a God who acts, not capriciously as did the Greek and Roman deities, but with a consistent and loving purpose moving ever towards the ultimate and complete fulfilment of his will. To be ready means to be prepared to wait. To wait for a God who may act sooner or later than we expect. It means to travel light so that, at any point, we are prepared to drop anything that holds us back from responding to where God is. As Archbishop Rowan has said elsewhere, the task of the Church is to notice what God is doing and join in with it.

In the final days of Advent maybe we can move beyond the remembrance of things past, so beloved of our current lectionaries, and begin to look forward. And as we do so, may we look forward both to that great breaking of God into the world that we call the incarnation, and that even greater breaking in of the world into God that we call eternity.

Be Prepared

Two news stories have caught my attention in this first week of Advent, and provided contrasting commentaries on the theme of the season.

The first was the kidnap of Norman Kember and his fellow ‘peace activists’ in Iraq. The outline of the story, westerners abducted, lives threatened, is both familiar and shocking, as is so much news coming from that country. The details, as they emerged, tell a less common story. After years of commitment to peace and reconciliation - and a history of opposition to the invasion of Iraq - Norman Kember decided that demonstration, meetings, the Greenbelt peace tent, weren’t enough. ‘I’ve done a lot of writing and talking about peacemaking. I’ve demonstrated, you name it, I’ve been on it, but I feel that’s what I’d call cheap peacemaking.’ He presumably knew the risks he ran in going to Iraq as a westerner, a professing Christian, and operating outside the protective structures of the occupying forces. Prophetic wisdom, or wild folly?

The second story was the Adair Turner report on pensions, which has prompted discussions ranging well beyond the issue of state pension provision. Without doubt, the discussions are much needed, and any outcome will require wisdom and foresight in planning for a future which is sustainable, in which those in greatest need can be supported, in which skills and gifts are used for the common good, and a proper balance is found between rest and continuing productive economic engagement. Sadly, much of what has been said and written has focussed either on individuals or on a sense of unfairness which reminds me of my own childhood dissatisfaction that my brother had a Christmas stocking until he was 13, while for me the cut-off point was 10!

Both stories, for me, echo the Advent theme of preparedness. Norman Kember has left behind security, certainty, physical well-being, and stepped into a world where he must have been prepared for the worst to happen - and it has. The discussion over pensions is a search for the very opposite; it is about preparing for security, for assurance, for the certainty that each of us will be able to live in at least moderate prosperity for the later part of our lives.

I’m 99% sure that I shall be looking for a secure pension in a few years time, not abandoning all assurance in the pursuit of peace. But I found myself wondering whether the Advent call to readiness was really about investing in pension plans; I suspect Norman Kember’s attentiveness to the people of Iraq is closer to the watching and waiting required.

Labouring in the same field

The 300 page report Women Bishops in the Church of England? spends far too long in skirting around peripheral issues, and in failing to address the central point.

If we start with scripture, it must be with Paul — ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’ The Church made excuses for not eradicating slavery for centuries, and has made similar excuses for not recognizing the equality of women with men. Certainly there is a complementarity, and the other scripture texts point to that. Men and women are very different. But, for the Church of God to be whole, just as in a human family, the roles of both mother and father need to be present. The Church has too long presented itself as a single parent family in which men ruled, and the women were grudgingly accepted as housekeepers.

It is very evident that clergy chapters throughout England, which were once boys’ clubs, have been enormously transformed by the presence of women as equal partners in ministry, and indeed, as leaders of the group in the role of rural dean. A great deal of the posturing about different styles of churchmanship has been tempered, and there has been a more gracious acceptance of those who are different, yet labouring in the same field.

Yet this has been achieved at a very high price in England; allowing a polarization about the ordination of women that has enabled those opposed to become caricatures of their churchmanship in the cosy clubs of traditional Catholics and Evangelicals. These boys’ clubs have become entrenched in their views, and have moved further out of touch with the mood of the nation as a whole. They define themselves by their opposition to women priests and bishops, and undermine their notable work in former times at home and abroad, working in slum parishes here, and ending slavery around the world.

The presence of large numbers of women in public life is slowly having a civilizing influence. Public policy and the conduct of parliament is being transformed. And in many parishes the presence of women priests has brought enormous change and new ways of working. The Church of England’s report needed to look carefully at the way in which the presence of women in public life has made a difference today. Ignoring this is a major omission, and a refusal to see the benefits of making the change. It looks as though the Church doesn’t even yet believe in women having the vote.

We know the arguments about the priest or bishop being an ikon of Christ. We need to see women in that role precisely because we need to show both men and women that the Church believes we are all one in Christ, and that it is humanity, not just men, who are made in the image of God.

Supporting Civil Partnerships

The Civil Partnership Act, which will allow same sex couples to register a civil partnership, will come into force at the end of this year. The House of Bishops of the Church of England has issued this statement on the subject.

The tone of the statement, and the speed with which it was issued, suggests that the bishops were fearful of the growing rift with some parts of the Anglican Communion about the issue of homosexual relationships.

Peter Selby, the Bishop of Worcester, has distanced himself from the statement, saying that a previous commitment to ‘listen to the experience of lesbian and gay people’ has not been honoured. He maintains that the new Civil Partnership Act should be regarded as ‘A source of delight, not fear’. He notes that although the General Synod in 1997 urged ‘deanery synods, clergy chapters and congregations to find time for prayerful study and reflection on the issues’ about homosexual relationships, in fact little discussion has taken place. We have been very shy of raising the issues at all.

Our local deanery synod and clergy chapter in Cambridge recently shared in some most fruitful discussions on the subject led by the vicar of St. Mark’s, the Revd Dr. Sam Wells. (He is now Dean of Chapel at Duke University) For many people this provided the first opportunity to discuss issues about homosexuality in a Christian context. For the clergy it opened the door to further preaching and discussion and this has been widely welcomed.

The Bishops, in making their statement, had been anxious to preserve what they saw as a world wide Anglican consensus on an issue which is proving divisive. But no worldwide consensus exists. Whilst in Europe the rights of homosexual people are increasingly defended by law, in many other parts of the world, notably in parts of Africa and South East Asia, the opposite situation prevails. We have a responsibility to work within the laws of our own nations as far as conscience allows. The Anglican Church does not make the law, either here, or in any other country.

In Britain the Civil Partnership Act could not have been passed unless those framing the law were convinced that what was being offered was right, good and proper. It has been done after listening to the experience of lesbian and gay people, and coming to an appreciation of their place in society. The government has clearly gone ahead of public opinion, but that is not unusual. All of society, not just homosexual people, has suffered in the past because people felt afraid to be open about their relationships. A dozen years ago even MPs were taunted just for being gay, and the Church remained silent and afraid to discuss the issue.

The Church is not being asked to allow such partnerships to be registered in church in the way that a marriage can be registered by a priest. However, these partnerships will be ‘legal, decent, honest, truthful’, to quote the line used by the Advertising Standards Authority.

Since heterosexual couples, dedicating the rest of their lives to each other, may do so with prayer in church, even if they are not married in church, then we might consider giving the same opportunity to same-sex couples.

We shall need time to appreciate the significance of the act. Some analogy with marriage has to be made, particularly in the way that the public declaration of a partnership means it should be respected by all. The partners promise to be faithful to each other, and society, represented by the witnesses, promises to respect the exclusivity of their relationship. Surely this ‘strengthens society’ as we affirm in the marriage service. More than this, as Peter Selby says, it should be ‘a source of delight’.

It is worth noting that he is not the only senior churchman to welcome the new legislation. When it came to the House of Lords eight of the Bishops who are members, Chelmsford, Manchester, Norwich, Oxford, Peterborough, St Albans, St Edmondsbury & Ipswich and Truro, took the trouble to be present and vote in favour of the measure.

It is encouraging that they felt able to do so. Perhaps the statement subsequently made by the Bishops was hasty. We might need to do some more listening, and see how the new act works out in practice.

Dancing with Terrorists

I arrived for a six week visit to our sister diocese of Peru about 10 days after the London bombings. A few days later a second set of bombers attempted, but failed, to set off four more devices. Everywhere I went I met huge outpourings of support for Britain. And the accompanying message was always, “We know what your country is going through. We have experienced terrorism here too”.

The effects of the Shining Path violence are still evident in Peruvian society. For about a decade the rural hinterland of the country was especially unsafe. Over that period millions flocked into the shanty towns or “pueblos jovenes” that surround Lima, mostly living in shacks made of matting. Economic life stagnated. Businesses failed. The Anglican Diocese itself almost collapsed totally as foreign personnel (especially targeted by the guerrillas) were withdrawn and Peruvian nationals with saleable skills headed north, to the USA or elsewhere. Priests told me of messages pushed under doors threatening to burn their churches down. Then, in the late 90’s, the government of President Fujimori (himself now in exile after fleeing corruption charges, but planning a new presidential bid next year) broke the back of the Maoist movement and Peru began to enjoy the peace, stability and economic growth that characterise it today.

Everyone I met had their stories of suffering from the Shining Path period. It was good of them to empathise with the present London experience, if somewhat overgenerous – it is unlikely that Britain will face anything remotely resembling the sustained attack on its structures and economy that Peru went through.

About a month into my stay, by which time I had been joined by 16 fellow members of the Diocese of Worcester, we were invited, with the permission of the prison authorities, to spend a day as part of our hosts’ long standing ministry to women prisoners. Sentences are undeniably harsh by European standards, particularly for women, and it is not uncommon to spend well over a year in custody awaiting trial. But the regime itself in some ways compared favourably. There are real efforts to teach skills, and mothers can have their children with them up to three years of age. The prisoners make craft goods which are then sold outside with the money returning to the producers to provide funds for extra toiletries, food etc. There was good access to outside telephones lines, though medical assistance is not as readily available as in European penal institutions. Much mirrored the conditions of life in the poorer areas of Lima itself.

With the exception of telephone kiosks the same seemed to apply in the maximum security section we visited after lunch. We were allowed, even encouraged, to take in a modest amount of cash with which to purchase handicrafts from the prisoners. There were few prison officers but the women told us there were no problems with violence. One block brought out guitars and sang songs to us and we replied with the “a capella” version of the 23rd psalm we had practised for such eventualities. Then they began a dance and invited us to join in. The women told us of how dramatically their conditions had improved in recent years. We were introduced to a tiny baby conceived during a conjugal visit to one woman from her husband who is a prisoner in another jail. We watched some of them making sculptures from clay and painting. And we learned that visitors are permitted for most of the day. Some prisoners told us that they are currently awaiting retrials because the law under which they had been convicted had been ruled unconstitutional. Then they began to speak of how they cared for each other because they were all members of the same party, and how their leader was prevented from mixing with the other prisoners. Suddenly the lack of religious pictures and scriptural passages on the walls (unusual for Latin America) struck home – these were the Shining Path members we had heard so much about on the outside.

One of the hardest things that Britain has had to cope with in these last few weeks has been the very normality of the lives of those who detonated bombs in London. We want the perpetrators of such atrocities to be radically different from ourselves, creatures of utter evil whose lives are depraved in every aspect. However, even allowing for some wrongful convictions, and for some whose offences may have been entirely non-violent, I can’t escape the fact that, in Peru, I have been dancing with terrorists. And that they were without exception pleasant, friendly, appreciative individuals.

I need to hold on to the fact that well-intentioned and caring individuals can commit appalling atrocities in the name of some cause deemed high enough to justify it. The original aim of Shining Path – to present a solution to the poverty and inequality rife in Peru by promoting a society based on the radical equality that underpins communism – is not of itself evil; indeed it has much in it that is laudable. The use of violence as part of the means to overthrow despotic regimes is the story of the liberation of Africa (and elsewhere) in the 20th century. Somewhere Shining Path lost the balance. It terrorised the general population more than it pressurised the government. And maybe it was ill-fated in presenting a communist solution at the very moment when that political philosophy was collapsing across the globe. It never succeeded in breaking out from being a small vanguardist force. Its attacks on Peru’s economy did not persuade the mass of the people that capitalism was the prime problem. Part of the tragedy of the recent bombings in London (and before that in Madrid and elsewhere) is that it is hard to see any realistic link between the political goals of the bombers and their actions.

It was a thesis of the French existentialist (and erstwhile international goalkeeper) Albert Camus that to understand all is to forgive all. For Christians I suspect that has to be a statement more about God than humanity. To understand is not automatically to forgive. Or maybe to forgive is not to exonerate from the consequences of a person’s actions. I’m glad, not least for the sake of the many friends I have made in Peru, that the Shining Path terrorism is a thing of the past, and that those who led it on its violent course are largely now behind bars. But I’m grateful that I was allowed, briefly, to see not only the scars that Peru bears from its history, but the humanity, the normality, and even the face of Christ, in some of those who bear responsibility for it, and who now serve out their sentences. And that the Anglican Church continues to minister in such places.

letter from Peru

I’m writing this piece some four weeks into a stay in the Diocese of Peru. It’s my first lengthy opportunity to spend time in a part of the Anglican Communion in the global south.

Part of coming here has been not only to see what a sister diocese is doing but also to gain some perspective on my own ministry and priorities, and to see the life of the Church of England from a different viewpoint. The reflections are obviously my own, and equally obviously carry all the naivety that goes with only a month’s exposure.

Being Anglican in this country that is neither English speaking nor a former part of the British Empire is about having a faith that has both the liveliness of some of the more recent Pentecostal missions (usually imported from North America) and the sacramental underpinning and liturgy of Catholicism. There is evidence that this wasn’t always the case. At some points in the past British missionaries have used South America as a place to export both very partial styles of churchmanship that were marginal positions at home and their personal disgruntlement with British Anglicanism too. Mercifully this is no longer prevalent.

To what feels now a very healthy mixture is added a real imperative to work among the poor in both the expanding metropolitan areas and the remote, highly underdeveloped, rural regions. A generation ago, in the time of Gustavo Guttierez, there was much impressive work done by the Roman Catholic Church in taking up the concerns of the marginalised in the urban “pueblos jovenes” or shanties. Sadly, this seems to have been lost through the consistent policy of the previous pope in imposing conservative bishops on the dioceses. Several of the Anglican clergy are themselves former RC priests.

After very difficult times in the period of the Shining Path guerrilla movement Peru has enjoyed more settled years of late. There is evidence all around of the economy growing. The Lima shanties that Henri Nouwen described twenty years ago are now graced by solid houses and tarmac roads. Further out onto the slopes of the mountains new developments of basic shacks repeat what he then described, but the evidence is of communities over time becoming established and gradually edging from grinding poverty to relative poverty. The pattern is similar elsewhere in the country.

This mixture of civil stability and growth is providing a solid foundation on which the church can expand. What a small body such as the Anglican diocese, with no more than a dozen or so churches and a handful of missions in development, can achieve is necessarily limited, but it is being done with real passion in schools, churches, children’s homes, medical clinics, employment training projects and canteens. New church missions are being planted in the most recent and poorest areas, whilst in more established ones existing work is being expanded. Priests and lay workers are being trained in the diocese, and a new seminary to open shortly in Lima (there is already a part time one in Arequipa) will at last allow potential clergy to be trained in a fully Anglican environment. Parish mission teams come from North America and beyond. They experience a week or so in the life of the church here, and help with the practical work of the missions. In many cases when they return home they continue to offer support to the ongoing work.

The church here knows how important it is to be a member of a wider communion. A very significant proportion of time and energy goes into welcoming visitors from other parts of the world. As a small and relatively recently established church it knows how much it benefits from being part of a communion that has many millions of adherents across the globe, and from the insights and experiences of Anglicanism that they bring. I’m sure that many Anglicans here are scarcely aware of what they have to offer in return, not least as a church that is discovering and delighting in an identity and pattern of mission that many of us elsewhere simply take for granted. Moreover, if being deeply, loyally Anglican mattered less then decisions taken by provinces in the global north could be more easily shrugged off.

To be human is to prioritise. There are only so many battles that can be fought at once and only so many areas in which the church can deepen its life. The priorities hare are pretty hard to argue with. They are to build the church, especially in the poorer areas, through good liturgy, lively worship, social action and Christian teaching. And to build it in ways that are coherent with indigenous culture and sustainable into the long term; avoiding overdependence on the particular gifts and preferences of the small number of overseas personnel that might be working here at any particular time. In Peru at least, the increasing role of women as sole providers for their families, and the presence of a small number of women deacons, suggests that the ground is being prepared for future debate about gender inequalities in the church and beyond. However any idea that the church here either could or should get itself into a position to open up a wider debate on sexuality issues is pretty far fetched.

Earlier this week I stood overlooking the Colca Canyon as a Peruvian Anglican priest pointed out the remote villages, with neither electricity nor roads, on the opposite side. It takes him several days to complete a circuit of them on foot. It took the pair of us six hours and one breakdown on a rickety bus to even reach this point. It took as long with two breakdowns to get back again. It’s a long way geographically from a diocese in Central England where I can be in any of 280 church buildings in less than an hour from home. And some of the pressing issues may seem very different too. But what I am experiencing here is both prayerfully thoughtful and essentially Anglican.

Stigamup

Some small Parisian boys, back from their Saturday morning at the pictures almost half a century ago, were anxious to know the formula spoken by a cowboy holding a gun when he required someone to raise their hands in the air. The films had sub titles, rather than being dubbed, and the boys were convinced that there ought to be a definitive, universally understood expression. To their way of thinking, saying “Stigamup”, or something like it, usually guaranteed that in the lawless western frontiers of the USA, an unnecessary shooting was often avoided. Whilst the first application of this expression would be in their games, maybe they were thinking that, were they ever to travel to the wild west, they would need to recognise the one phrase which demanded instant obedience.

Just as everyone understood the culture of American Westerns, in which the law was that of the gun, so people knew that in Britain, the law was represented by an unarmed officer of the Crown in a dark uniform, with an immensely tall, distinctive hat.

On my way to Paris, I had arrived at Euston station in the early morning on a postal train. The tube hadn’t started running, so there was nothing to do but wait. Two dishevelled, unshaven men asked me my business. They presented me with their police warrants as proof of their good intentions. Presumably they were wondering whether this schoolboy had run away from home.

I didn’t believe them. What could a police warrant mean to me? They declined my offer to verify whether they were who they claimed to be by going with me to the police office clearly visible on the station. So, after a few more questions which I refused to answer, they left, as they said “in order to preserve their anonymity”.

It is perfectly possible that a visitor to London today would still expect the capital’s police to be identifiable. A real Bobby still has a tall hat. Armed police on television are in uniform, and guns are carried with a prominent swagger. With this level of understanding by the public, any first encounter with a plainclothes officer could give rise to misunderstanding. He might be regarded as a potential thief or a mugger, which is exactly what I thought of the men who approached me. To an innocent person, an armed man with no uniform would appear to be a criminal.

Our police have obviously little idea of the huge change in culture that would be required before someone with a gun but no uniform might, on shouting “Stigamup” get the same response as that seen in old western films.

Nor do the police appear to understand the gulf in perception which being on an anti terrorist mission puts between them and the ordinary public. Statistically, our experience of the police is not about terrorism. It is confined to speeding fines and parking tickets. Our thinking and that of the police are worlds apart.

It also appears that, if the word “terrorist” appears, normal behaviour by the police is suspended. Actions can look like the result of an adrenaline fuelled high rather than following from a proper assessment of information. “Intelligence” in the case of the shooting of Harry Stanley in 1999, for carrying a chair leg in a carrier bag, or in the case of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, was woefully inadequate. The fact that the latter was killed by a hail of bullets adds to the impression that adrenaline had taken over from reason in the minds of all the officers involved. Long hours, no leave because of the current emergency, and a constant feeling of being under pressure can’t have helped.

It is difficult to see how such mistakes can be avoided, when the gap in perception between an ordinary innocent person going about their business and the police officer, pumping adrenaline and believing himself to be on an anti-terrorist mission, is so high. If Harry Stanley was shot for having an “Irish” accent, when he was clearly Scots, and a Brazilian gets shot for appearing middle eastern, the potential for further cases of mistaken identity is enormous.

What makes things worse is the attempts to blacken the name of the innocent victim. We’ve heard that he was in the country illegally, that he was fiddling with wires, that his jacket looked as though it concealed a bomb. All of this and more now seems false, and the police hadn’t even checked to see how many flats lay behind the shared entrance.

Half the population of London — that is anyone other than a white Anglo-Saxon, must feel that they are under suspicion. They must feel threatened by both terrorists and police. In the heat of the moment they won’t know whether someone in plain clothes with a gun is a police officer or a terrorist taking hostages.

It is hard to know what a Christian, particularly a white Anglo-Saxon one should do. Certainly we need to put ourselves alongside those who feel afraid. Do we need to show our solidarity with those who may be targeted by looking like them? Should we darken our complexions, dye our hair black, and for good measure adopt at least one item of middle eastern attire? Perhaps then at least, travelling around London, we might be able to experience the hostility and alienation currently felt by many Muslims. Or do we wear and wave a Brazilian flag, as the sign that the man who was killed was our brother and our neighbour?

It is even harder to know how the police should behave. But surely there is a case for continuing as normal, for engaging people in conversation in a way which does not immediately look threatening. We know how to respond to “Excuse me sir, just a routine enquiry.” We don’t know how to react to guns, and the police appear dangerously unaware of that.

It isn’t easy to know what to do in the face of a terrorist threat. But when we kill innocent citizens, the terrorists are the only people who win.

The right, good old way

A couple of weeks ago, I visited Little Gidding. Not for the first time, and not, I hope, for the last, either. But it was the first time I had been in about five years, so it was good to be back.

A long time before, back in 1993, at the dawn of the popular internet, I wrote a piece about a visit to Little Gidding for an Anglican email list. (You can read a copy of that piece here.) At that time Little Gidding was the home of a small community, as well as a wider group of Friends, but in the intervening years the community disbanded and there was some dispute over the future ownership of the community buildings. But now the dispute has been settled, the Friends of Little Gidding have been reconstituted, new wardens installed in Ferrar House, and the ministry of hospitality continues.

So, on a lovely Sunday afternoon we headed up the A14, across the A1, turning off at Leighton Bromswold (to pay homage to George Herbert) and on to Little Gidding. The ‘dull facade’ looked almost beautiful in the late afternoon sun, the noticeboard (new since our last visit) slightly detracting from the composition. Inside, the sun shone brightly through the clear glass and the stained glass of the windows, and the old familiar place looked just the same. This is the place where the Ferrar family, led by Deacon Nicholas, came to say their prayers, morning and evening each day, the centre of their spiritual life. This is the place, hallowed by their community, where ‘prayer has been valid’, this is the place closest to us, now and in England.

Nicholas Ferrar lived in a time of increasing prosperity, with the foundations being laid for the later British commercial and imperial greatness. Ferrar himself came from a wealthy mercantile family, involved in foreign trade and the settlement of English colonies in North America.

It was also a time of religious turmoil in England. Just five years before his birth an attempted invasion by a foreign power aiming to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and her protestant government had been foiled by a combination of the heroics of Sir Francis Drake and the stormy weather. When Ferrar was 12 a conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament and to kill the king and his government was only narrowly averted, thanks to careful intelligence and leaks from the inside. And not long after his death England erupted into civil war.

Ferrar’s response to this, like that of his contemporary George Herbert, was to live a quiet and godly life. He abandoned the pursuit of worldly wealth and status for a life of prayer and contemplation, in a community of family and other associates. But this was not escapism. Rather, it was an engagement in real life, an engagement with ordinary people and their everyday concerns, as a teacher, as a healer (Ferrar had studied medicine at Cambridge, Padua and Leipzig), as a counsellor. He and his community were consulted by the poor, by the politically active, and by the great and the good — right up to the king himself.

Although Nicholas Ferrar died in his 40s on 4 December 1637 and his community survived only another decade before it was ransacked by the victorious Puritans, and dissolved a further decade later at the death of Nicholas’s eldest brother John, his example still shines as a beacon of sanity in a complex and sometimes frightening world. A life of caring for ordinary people, of ministering to their needs, physical, intellectual and spiritual, a life of quiet, undemonstrative prayer and study, is one that we would all do well to emulate. ‘It is the right, good old way you are in,’ Nicholas Ferrar said to his brother, shortly before he died; ‘keep in it.’

English bombers 1605-2005

The revelation that those who carried out the suicide bombings in London were British citizens is a shock. It would have been far easier to be able to regard the terrorists as people from out there, people who were totally different, people with whom we had nothing in common, and for whom were needed have no fellow feeling.

But we have been here before, and we need to learn from our history. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, possibly the most audacious acts of terrorism ever planned. It was planned by Englishmen. It was planned not by the poor or the dispossessed, but by people who largely were privileged and comfortable.

At the accession of King James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603, those who wanted to worship as Catholics had hoped that the new king would be more sympathetic to them than Queen Elizabeth had been. At first James had appeared to favour them, but the Puritans objected to the new relaxed attitudes. James brought back the fines for those who would not worship as Anglicans, and expelled Catholic priests and Jesuits. This intolerance proved to be a breeding ground for extremism of the most audacious kind. And this was within the hearts of Englishmen who loved England. Like the men who successfully bombed London last week, they were indistinguishable from the rest of the population.

Today we have to learn from history. 400 years ago a religious war was beginning in England. The Puritans were determined to get the king to treat Catholics so harshly that they didn’t feel they had a future in England. The Gunpowder Plot led to more repression, partly to the Civil War, certainly to Cromwell’s hated campaigns in Ireland. In the city of Drogheda he ordered the death of every man in the garrison, describing this as “a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches”. In Wexford he slaughtered townspeople and garrison alike.

The legacy of the response to the gunpowder plot has been severe repression and hostility particularly in Ireland which has continued until our own day. It has set the native largely catholic population against the immigrant ruling protestant class for generation after generation. The two communities have been unable to trust each other, and the reason both catholic and protestant terrorists were able to function was that on both sides they knew no-one in their own community would betray them.

Today we stand at that same point in relation to the recent bombings in London as people stood on November 5th 1605. And today we have to reach out and acknowledge that people of Muslim faith have a legitimate and valuable part to play in British society today. We cannot afford to reject people of good will. We need them on our side if good is to triumph.

The Bush administration in the USA with its war on terror has been just as misguided as that of Oliver Cromwell. Its indiscriminate bombing, destruction of infrastructure and failure to establish a rule of law which could be trusted, its treatment of prisoners and detainees have all made things infinitely worse since 9-11.

Jesus tells a parable (Matthew 13.24-30,36-43) which is appropriate to today’s situation. An enemy comes by night and sows weeds in the field. The slaves of the household are up in arms, and want to rush into the field and gather up the weeds. But Jesus says “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”

Our danger is that we could, as in the heavy handed and intolerant response to the gunpowder plot 400 years ago, rush in and make things infinitely worse, alienating good citizens of Muslim faith here, and breeding terrorists across the world. We have, fortunately, the good example of the dignified and appropriate response of Spain to the Madrid bombings as a much better example to follow.

The parable of the weeds sown in the crop has an important lesson. We are to live with those who are different. We do not know, and we do not decide which of us is ultimately the good seed which God will harvest at the end of the age. He sends his angels to do that. But we trample down those who are different at our peril, for in doing so, we spoil the good crop, we spoil even ourselves. We find our good intentions turned to hatred and our zeal to oppose what is wrong carries us away in a fury of righteous anger. And we become like an Oliver Cromwell, trampling on the whole of Ireland, turning people against each other for generation after generation.

Our task is to produce the good seed for the harvest, so that at the judgement we will be those whose response to God’s grace will find its fulfilment in his kingdom.

A matter of life or death

Some myths of course we haven’t believed for a long time. Few of us really thought that Britain was somehow exempt from terrorist attack. Nor did we seriously expect that on each and every occasion security forces would be able to prevent an atrocity before it happened. But the myth that many of us held until this week, and which we have now painfully had to relinquish, was that terrorists are radically different from you and me. As I write, the backgrounds of the four suicide bombers are beginning to become clear. From what we can tell at this stage these were ordinary young British men. Born and brought up in this country, educated here, from unremarkable law abiding families. Outwardly at least their interests were the same as those of many of their age and sex.

Chillingly, that closeness is not defined to their backgrounds. For those of us of religious conviction it is equally present in their motivations. Christianity is founded on the story of a man who gave up his life for the sake of others. Faith relativises death in two ways. Most religions declare it neither to be the end nor the most important factor to be considered. I guess that the bombers were like us too in wanting (and this is rightly especially prevalent among young adults) to feel that they were part of something huge – even the outworking of God’s plan itself. The motivations of the original crusaders (who detonated the first suicide bomb a thousand years ago) are not so different from those of these young men.

It’s only after having recognised our similarities that we should go on to focus on the differences. I am helped enormously by the comment of a brother bishop some years ago. He drew an illuminating distinction between “theologies of life” and “theologies of death”. Both are present in Christianity. Both have their place. And in any one of us both will be operating at the same time. One or other however will be the dominant.

Theologies of death focus on temptation, sin, the battle between the divine and the demonic. The central symbol is the cross with Jesus hanging bleeding on it. The world is the entity that nails him there.

Theologies of life by comparison focus on love, forgiveness, the rich abundance of God’s creation. The cross remains the central symbol but here it is empty. Christ is risen, gone before, leading his people. The world, and the rich diversity in it, is itself a pointer to God’s glory.

Those who detonate bombs killing themselves and innocent travellers are operating from within a theology of death. We are closer to them than is comfortable whenever we allow our faith to be more rooted or expressed in what we oppose than in what we affirm. As the scriptures reiterate again and again the mission of Jesus was to bring not death but life. If we are to seriously distinguish ourselves from terrorism it is a theology of life that must predominate, whatever the particular matters being debated.

Faith leaders are rarely to be found with rucksacks full of explosives strapped to their backs but when we propound theologies that place God’s creation under the control of the devil or we declare humanity to be utterly depraved and make that the lynchpin of our position we are ultimately providing the ideological underpinning for actions that in themselves we rightly abhor.

A white band around Edinburgh

As we await news of the G8’s deliberations, it was good to receive, as others must have done, letters from Tony Blair to all who had contacted him about the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign. It read like a ringing endorsement of our participation in the march around Edinburgh last Saturday.

As soon as we discovered that a cheap flight from Stansted would allow us to join the demonstaration, visit my sister in Edinburgh and get back in time for the Sunday services, we had to go. Initially the organisers had hoped for 100,000 people, double the number that had gone to make a human chain around Birmingham in 1998, appealing for the relief of debt as the jubilee year approached. Certainly our government had welcomed that human chain as a sign that the G8 needed a new agenda.

This time the numbers and the organisation proved far greater. Where Birmingham had a static human chain, Edinburgh the chain was a march which went on for hours. By the time we completed the circuit there were still so many people waiting to begin the march the whole queue was at a standstill, three hours after the first people had begun.

Initially the crowd met in the Meadows, where two stages with giant screens were set up. Images, speeches and music underlined the message of why we were there. Glorious sunshine, and colourful banners added to the enjoyment of the occasion. The rival attraction of watching the Bob Geldof concert either at home or on a large screen somewhere had obviously not diminished the crowds.

Compared with Birmingham, the police presence and the vast number of barricades, looked like complete overkill. On Princes Street, the main thoroughfare of the city, the width of the road filled with four rows of barricades was greater than the width afforded to the marchers. But why? The joyful crowds were adequately marshalled by a large contingent of trade unionists in yellow vests. Under their guidance we were held back at the start and then allowed through a fairly narrow gap, about ten abreast, for the march. Above us, across Edinburgh Castle on its crag, was a huge MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY banner.

One wag with a megaphone yelled out “Call this a march? It’s only an amble. Step it out as if you mean it!” He then turned on the megaphone to give a brief imitation of a police siren.

Amongst the sea of white clothing, a few anarchist troublemakers in black with hoods and faces covered stood out so much that they were easily rounded up by police before any problems could be caused.

The day before, preparations being made in the shopping centre were hugely varied. Some places remained open, and we were certainly grateful for the opportunity of a late lunch. Thousands more marchers must have appreciated the fact that most eating places were open. But apart from the demonstrators, Edinburgh was extremely quiet and many people must have gone on holiday. Some shops were closed, and had signs in the window saying “Closed — so that our staff can join the march”. Others were boarded up, some in order to remain open behind fortress like entrances, but the majority were closed. Perhaps Saturday, for the police and for those who boarded up their shops, was only a seen as a prelude to protests by violent protesters.

But for all who dressed in white and joined the march, it was a great and purposeful day, helping to set the world’s agenda in a way which meant that the poor could no longer be ignored, and that justice needed to be done. The city’s transport coped well, and there were no problems in making return journeys. Indeed, we were at home in time to see the conclusion of the Hyde Park concert.

Scapegoating the gay community

The Co-op Bank does not want to hold an account for Christian Voice. The Bank is taking this stance because of the organisation’s attitude to homosexuals. It says ‘99% of Christians would not support the level of discrimination against homosexuals urged by Christian Voice’

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme Simon Williams for the Bank said ‘They are extreme views. They are not mild views… They simply do not fit with our ethical policies… such as… “Homosexual policemen are corrupted by what they do. How can they investigate cases of corruption?”’

Having seen the Christian Voice web site, which has a large section devoted to the participation of police in gay pride marches, it does appear that Christian Voice has an obsession with homosexuality which seems unusual. They do not, for example, suggest that divorced police officers should not investigate matrimonial disputes, or that police officers who commit adultery should not investigate cases of corruption. And whereas they may consider that homosexual activity is a crime against God, it is not, like adultery, also a crime against the spouses of those who engage in adulterous relationships.

It looks as though homosexuals are being singled out for hatred as the Co-op Bank say.

The Archbishop of Canterbury referred to this kind of behaviour in his presidential address to the Anglican Consultative Council on 20 June 2005. He said:

We are always in danger of the easiest religious technique of all, the search for the scapegoat; Paul insists without any shadow of compromise upon our solidarity in rebellion against God, and so tells us that we shall not achieve peace and virtue by creating a community we believe to be pure. And these words are spoken both to the Jew and the Gentile, both to the prophetic radical and the loyal traditionalist. The prophet, says Barth, ‘knows the catastrophe of the Church to be inevitable’ and he knows also that there is no friendly lifeboat into which he can clamber and row clear of the imminent disaster.’

‘We are all butchers pretending to be sacrificers. When we understand this, the skandalon that we had always managed to discharge upon some scapegoat becomes our own responsibility, a stone as unbearably heavy upon our hearts as Jesus himself upon the saint’s shoulders in the Christopher legend’. Not Barth this time, but René Girard, the French philosopher (A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare, p.341), once again paraphrasing Paul’s central theme.

I’d like to ask why Christian Voice should particularly choose to scapegoat the gay community. In one sense, the question has no rational answer. It is as incomprehensible as the idea which erupted in many parts of Europe in the middle ages that Jews took Christian boys to sacrifice at Passover. Both are just examples of a group finding solidarity in turning their corporate wrath on to a scapegoat. We can possibly appreciate how people in the middle ages might have perceived those of different faith or customs to be a threat. But what threat could a homosexual person possibly pose to heterosexual people? The gay man is not going to steal my wife, and I know that sex with any other person, male or female, breaks the marriage vows which I took before God and in the eyes of the state.

So is the problem for Christian Voice precisely that the gay man does not want my wife? He doesn’t envy me for having an attractive wife, or see me as a rival for someone he desires? Reading the Archbishop’s references to Girard, is the perceived problem about gay people the fact that they seem often so envy free in comparison with those whose role model is the dominant male? Is that why they are victimised?

Or is it particularly for men who see themselves as dominant, a fear of being raped? Often they are the people who maintain that the Church must be led by men, and that women should “submit” to their husbands. Such men enjoy dominance, and see that view supported by scripture. For such a person, homosexual rape is the ultimate humiliation. This is the story of the men of Sodom in Genesis 19 and one can see how repugnant it is. But Lot’s solution ‘Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please.’ is even more horrific: he appears to treat his daughters as property which he can give for anyone to abuse.

Within a Christian context the situation in Uganda where in 1885 King Mwanga had three pages dismembered and burned for rejecting his homosexual advances is almost equally well known. The young men are rightly regarded as martyrs.

Homosexual rape is an extreme example of male domination, with a specific intention of humiliating the victim. Of course, fear of this kind of activity should give men an insight in to the horror which any woman has of being raped, and this danger is much greater than the danger to men. It is at least arguable that throughout the Bible what is condemned about homosexual activity is that it is not seen as an act of love but of repugnant male violence by a dominant person against an unwilling, weaker sexual partner.

But a loving partnership of two people of the same sex is completely different from that. For, just as one would hope that in a marriage the partners should seek each other’s greatest good and happiness in their sexual activity, one would suppose that the same intentions would be present in a homosexual couple. The law provides protection against rape both for homosexual and heterosexual couples, even where the latter are married. It is for the individual to judge whether sexual activity is consensual or abusive.

To my mind that should be the limit of the church’s concern about homosexual couples. After all, in Britain today, we have far more unmarried heterosexual couples, and