I took a decent Christmas break in God's county, Suffolk, and this is the first lunchtime talk of 2012. Given at All Hallows on the Wall in the City of London on Tues 17 Jan. We read John 3. 1-10, where Jesus tells Nicodemus that he needs to be born again, and the poem Variation on a Theme by Rilke  by Denise Levertov (see below).

The first time I said this, I felt a bit like Peter denying Christ before the cock crowed. Someone asked me, “Are you a born again Christian?” And I said, “no”.
   Having been brought up to believe that it was important at every opportunity to nail my Christian colours to the mast, and not, in Paul’s words, “to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ”, I found this uncomfortable. Uncomfortable, but necessary. Because I know that when people ask you if you’re a born again Christian, they’re mostly not asking you if you are a follower of Christ, they’re – more or less – asking you if you’d vote Republican, and are in league with the Tea Party. Because being “born again” is understood as a package, which personally, I don’t subscribe to. And I don’t want to be boxed in.
   The phrase “born again” comes from the King James Bible, and later versions talk about being “born from above”, which may be more accurate, but doesn’t have the same resonance, that’s why we had the traditional reading today. And of course, this passage has been used many times as a call to conversion. Fair enough.
   But I don’t believe that’s the only way of reading this. This is a reported conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus. Jesus is telling him that his priorities are wrong – it’s what he tells Pharisees all the time: “you’re obsessed with religious observance, not with inner transformation”. “You’re a master of Israel and you don’t know that?”
   So what do we take from this? Jesus says “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit”. I don’t think he’s talking about baptism, but the cleansing, renewing activity of the Holy Spirit. Then Jesus mixes his metaphors. I’m liking this. Next time the sub editors at work take me to task for this, I can tell them I have biblical precedent. Jesus goes on to talk about the Spirit being like the unpredictable and invisible wind, which you can only see by its effect.
   So, as ever, with Jesus you have nuanced, poetic, slightly enigmatic, multi-layered statements, none of which are finally tied down, but all of which are fascinating.
   For today, I’m sticking with the idea of being born again. I find it helpful to think about being born again every day. Every morning gives me the chance to start over. It’s not a matter of the past being the past, and to be forgotten, but there is an element of being given a clean sheet of paper. Did you notice? I mixed metaphors there … me and Jesus, we’re just like that.
   I popped out of the womb this morning and I’ll pop out again tomorrow. You might say that I’m still waking up with all the history of previous days, which need to be dealt with. That’s true. But if being born again means anything, maybe it’s to do with changing the place from where we stand to look at it. Washing your face, or standing under the shower (or whatever it is you do), and stepping outside to be rinsed by wind – it’s about starting all over again. Not even babies are born without history. They’re not blank slates. Their DNA is written, they are born into a family and a culture and a locality.
   But it’s still new. As Denise Levertov says in Variation on a Theme by Rilke, every new day confronts us, appoints us, as if we are knighted. It challenges us, granting us “an honour and a task”. She mixes her metaphors too, talking of the way in which “The day's blow / rang out, metallic or it was I, a bell awakened”. It’s as if, when the alarm goes off, as we surface into a new day, we get the chance to breathe in the Spirit, look around – a tad blearily perhaps – but with a sense that our “whole self” is “saying and singing what it knew: I can”.

Variation on a Theme by Rilke Denise Levertov

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me – a sky, air light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

This talk was given at All Hallows on the Wall in the City of London, on 13 Dec 2011. We read Woman to Child Judith Wright, and Luke 1.26-34

 

There are four words in the English language which a woman can say that is calculated to strike terror into a man’s heart. “I’m having a baby”. Though, of course, these same four words can also bring about an explosion of joy.
  I’m having a baby means: nothing will ever be the same again. Another human being comes into your life, with whom you have – in my experience at least – a bond so deep that it defies reason. Once a child comes along, you’re gone. They’re part of who you are. For ever.
   Through a very ordinary, everyday process, that’s happened millions upon millions of times, a freshly minted human being takes his or her place on planet earth. In stark biological terms, there’s nothing miraculous about this at all. It’s called reproduction. But in human terms it’s an occasion of profound mystery and wonder.
   When a child is in its mother’s womb, and even once it’s born, we have very little idea of how she or he will turn out. That nine months is a period of intense speculation, anxiety even. OK, soon, if we can’t already, we’ll be able to tell what diseases they might be prone to, but we won’t be able to tell who they are going to be.
   We’ve just read that classic text from Luke, “The Annunciation”, the subject of a thousand paintings. In a way, it’s the classic Advent text – the announcement by the angel Gabriel sentences Mary to a nine month period of waiting, wondering who she has inside her, and how this is going to turn out.

   Gabriel says: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” No pressure, then… No wonder Mary, in bewilderment, responds, “How can this be?
   The Australian writer Judith Wright’s poem, Woman to Child, isn’t, as far as I know, about Mary, but it is about birth. It’s also about the organic and mystical rootedness that is absorbed in the process of gestation and birth, any birth.
“You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me…”
   It resonated for me with the idea of Mary carrying this child who, whether she knew it or not, was going to change the world for ever. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, all births – the arrival of any human being – tilts the earth, sends a ripple that goes on for ever. But this birth, of all births, changed history and the way we look at the world.
   I can’t explain the mystery and miracle of Jesus, except to talk about the way in which he was wholly transparent to God. The goodness of a compassionate, loving, suffering God was incandescent in him. As it says in John’s Gospel: “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth… From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” “Grace and truth”. The second century writer and thinker Irenaeus said: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” That does it for me. This is what we see in the life of Jesus, what we celebrate at Christmas. That is what we call the incarnation, the embodiment of God. The human face of God. God with us.
   And it all started with a pregnancy, a child who was nurtured and nourished in Mary’s womb. And it’s this earthiness, that, for me, is important to remember at Christmas – “the Word became flesh and lived among us”. Jesus had a mother, who brought him into the world. Her job was done, but it was not over”
“I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night”

As Mary asks: “How can this be?”

Woman to Child Judith Wright

You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.

O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape-
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
that nurtures still your crescent cell.

I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night

This is a talk given at All Hallows on the Wall in the City of London 6 Dec 2011. We read Table by Edip Cansever, and Matt 22. 23-33

 

I’m a big fan of Masterchef. I love the way that Gregg Wallace (he’s the short round one) attacks a pudding. His eyes light up with glee. And when he puts a forkful of something melting and gooey into his mouth, his eyes close in ecstasy. “Oh, mate!” he sighs. That was one great big chocolate kiss!”.
   In fact what I like about Masterchef, apart from all the cooking tips you pick, up is the way that Wallace and Terode taste food. They don’t sip, or get a little morsel on the end of a teaspoon. They take a decent forkful of everything on the plate and shove it in. They have gusto, appetite. Michelle Roux Jr, the judge in the current Masterchef the Professionals series, always looks slightly more pained, but I’m being pedantic.
   The Sadducees, in our reading, were something of a contrast. At the risk of telling you stuff you already know, they were a sect, or tradition within Judaism at the time of Christ. They were part of the upper echelons of the society, and had religious and political leadership roles to play, including the priesthood. It doesn’t seem that they were a different denomination to the Pharisees, they were all religious Jews but differed in interpretation – a bit like Evangelicals and Anglo Catholics within the Church of England. One of their distinctives was that, unlike the Pharisees,  they didn’t believe in an afterlife, or an ultimate resurrection of the dead.
   So, quite why they were asking Jesus Jesuitical questions about  who would marry whom in heaven is a bit of strange. Well it isn’t that odd, I suppose, since they weren’t really asking a question, they were simply trying to point out that the afterlife didn’t make logical sense. If a woman had been married to seven different men, who would be her husband in heaven, they asked. “See, now get out of that one, why don’t ya?” It’s not a question they actually want an answer to.
   Jesus, understandably subverts the question. He often seems irritated by these kind of quibbles. Instead, as he often does, he goes for the big picture. “Have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.”
   “He is God not of the dead, but of the living.”  “Forget all this speculation, all these rhetorical questions,” he seems to be saying. Get on with living. So many denominational issues and factional struggles within the church are fixated on stuff that’s unimportant: Who wears what, when, and what happens to bread when you bless it, and who’s allowed to bless it in the first place; for whom, and how, and why did Jesus die; Yes, God loves us all, equally, but for goodness sake don’t let me near a priest who’s gay or a woman.
   “Get a life.” In fact, I think that, in essence, is what Jesus is saying to the Sadducees, and the rest of us. Jesus of Nazareth encourages us to have an appetite for life, to attack it  with gusto. To relish it like Gregg Wallace relishes rhubarb and custard. The poet Edip Cansever is Turkish, and Table evokes a Mediterranean scene, as the man puts his entire life on the table. All the things he values, not just objects: “He put there the light that came in through the window,/Sounds of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel./The softness of bread and weather he put there./On the table the man put/Things that happened in his mind./What he wanted to do in life, /He put that there./Those he loved, those he didn't love,/The man put them on the table too.”
   I love the idea that we bring our entire life to the table. That is the example and teaching of Jesus. It’s all there in it’s variegated deliciousness. Sweet, savoury, piquant, creamy, crunchy, salty, chewy and tender. “He reached out and placed on the table endlessness./So many days he had wanted to drink a beer!/He put on the table the pouring of that beer./He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness;/His hunger and his fullness he placed there.”
   “She had an appetite for life.” It’s not a bad epitaph. Get a life. Bon appétit.

 

Table Edip Cansever

A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put his eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in through the window,
Sounds of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and weather he put there.
On the table the man put
Things that happened in his mind.
What he wanted to do in life,

Three times three make nine:
The man put nine on the table.
He was next to the window next to the sky;

Now that's what I call a table!
It didn't complain at all about the load.
It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm.
The man kept piling things on.

 

A talk given at All Hallows on the Wall, the City of London on 29 Nov 2011. We read a section from  AD by RS Thomas, and Matthew 21:12-19 

The excitement of the standoff between the Occupy camp and St Paul’s helped drag out an old question that I thought we’d seen the back of last century: “What would Jesus do?” In the 1990s, everyone was wearing the wristbands, and you may remember, it gave rise to other, allied,  satirical questions like: “What would Jesus drive?” and “Who would Jesus bomb?”

   The question has been somewhat derided, because the people who tend to ask it, are often looking for a cut-and-dried certifiable answer, in words of one syllable. But the fact is, there’s rarely an answer to this question that’s concise enough to fit on a tweet.
   Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s an entirely daft question. It’s certainly something that I’ve asked myself on more than one occasion. It’s a useful internal discussion starter. But it is a bit hypothetical.
   A friend of mine is the proud owner of the new iPhone 4S, which, as you may have seen from the ads, will obey verbal instructions. It will also answer certain questions. And, as you can imagine with the makers of Mac, sometimes these answers can be quite knowing. For instance, my friend asked his phone: “What is the meaning of life?” It replied: I’m not sure. Let me write a very long play in which nothing happens.”
   Yesterday, I asked him to ask his phone what Jesus would do. it replied with another question, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, what would Jesus do?” The iPhone 4S is probably right: “What would Jesus do?” is essentially a rhetorical question.  The reason for this is that Jesus was not someone who’s behaviour is predictable. In the  debate about St Paul’s and the Occupy camp, people wanted an answer to the question because they wanted Jesus to take sides.
   The example which kept raising it’s head was this one in today’s reading. The suggestion was that, at St Paul’s, the money-men had once again taken over the Temple. In the debate over St Paul’s people seemed to want to determine whether Jesus was inside with the clergy or outside with the protesters. The American activist Jim Wallis visited the site and said the camp provided a “space for prophetic witness” which the Church “should long for. He said: “The unique thing about the Christian faith is the incarnation: in Jesus Christ, God hits the streets. This is incarnation.”
   OK. But you could also argue that St Paul’s as it did during World War II, was a symbol of the endurance of faith against in the face of trial. That it provides an actual and symbolic place of sanctuary, where people could bring their trials, and sorrows. That, with the St Paul’s Institute run by Giles Fraser, that it created space for debate and challenge about the values on which our city is based. The debate continues.
   What we know about Jesus of Nazareth was that he spent time with those who had power, and with those who had none. He touched people with skin disease and washed people’s feet. But he could be short and apparently dismissive with his blood relations, and his friends, and now and again, would simply disappear. He could embrace a small child, but take a whip to the tradesmen in the temple. And you had to watch out of you were a fig tree.
   Jesus was a prophet, a truth-teller. And there is a long tradition of prophets in the Hebrew scriptures acting out their prophecies in public spaces. It was a cross between street theatre and performance art. The prophet Ezekiel built a small installation modelled on the city of Jerusalem and lay on one side looking at it for 390 days. And you think conceptual art's weird…
   When Jesus strode into the temple, this wasn’t a hissy fit. He very deliberately wanted to draw the public's attention to corruption and elitism. And he wanted to provoke the religious establishment. It's not that Jesus wasn't angry about what was happening in the Temple, but what he did was focus his anger on making a change.
   Jesus was, and is, an enigma. RS Thomas’s poem is talking about God as Father, and the way that this metaphor threatens “to domesticate an enigma”. Asking the question “what would Jesus do, risks the same. Thomas is presented with two faces, / that of a flower opening / and of a fist contracting / like the gripping of ice.”, he says. “You speak to me with two / voices, one thundering / on the ear's drum, the other / one mistakeable for silence.
   We can’t domesticate God. We can’t domesticate Jesus either. “Mild and dire, / Now and absent, like us but / wholly other – which side / of you am I to believe?” asks Thomas. What would Jesus do? Answers on a postcard. Or a placard? 

You show me two faces,
that of a flower opening
and of a fist contracting
like the gripping of ice.

You speak to me with two
voices, one thundering
on the ear's drum, the other
one mistakeable for silence.

Father, I said, domesticating
an enigma; and as though
To humour me you came.
But there are precipices

within you. Mild and dire,
Now and absent, like us but
wholly other – which side
of you am I to believe?

A talk given at All Hallows on the Wall, City of London on 22 Nov 2011
We read: : The Armful by Robert Frost; Matthew 19. 16-22

 In the church where I grew up in, the ten commandments were set up as a test no-one could pass. They simply existed to prove you were a sinner. In a strict religious household like ours, you could tick off  some of the boxes – like not having any other gods, or making graven images (that one never occurred to us for some reason). And the Sabbath was dead holy. Church three times a day, and no telly. Oh, and not killing – safe on that one. Stealing? I did once nick some sweets from Woolworths, but that was Billy Walker’s fault, really.
    But lying, coveting and respecting your mother and father? No, had to hold my hands up there. Failed the test. I was officially a sinner, destined for the fires of hell.
   What this attitude to the ten commandments did was to focus on failure. It was used a means to point out that, however good we thought we might be, we were ultimately sinners who needed God’s forgiveness. We needed to be saved. Wherever you were, whatever you did, the ten commandments were there to trip you up, and to tell you how far you had fallen short of God’s expectations for you. And it turned God, at best, into a figure who looked down on your failure with a disappointed shake of the head. Even if you kept nine out of ten, you’d still fail the test, and, with sadness, God would turn away. Nothing you could do would please him.
   And, it seems, even if you were perfect in everyway, as the man in today’s reading said he was, there was an extra hoop to jump through. In his case “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor.” There’s always something else isn’t there? It’s a bit like those fairy tales, or the classic stories of antiquity where, to win the hand of the fair maiden, you had a string of impossible tasks to undertake.
  So, elsewhere, Jesus says: “You’ve heard it said you shall not murder, but I say if you are angry with a brother or sister, you are liable to judgement”.’ Oh for goodness sake! Talk about cranking up the level of difficulty. And then to make it worse, he adds. “You’ve heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say that anyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” That’s it… Busted!
   What are we to do with the ten commandments? I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to create myself some wriggle room. Yes, they’re a foundational statement of morality, providing sound footings for any culture and community which wants to live in mutual respect and stability.
   But what Jesus is saying, and many Jewish teachers agree, is that we don’t live simply by the letter of the law. Morality and ethics aren’t just about living life from a list of prohibitions, it’s about what’s going on in our hearts, it’s being true to the spirit of the law.
   I don’t think, for instance, that Jesus is ultimately condemning you or me for getting angry with someone who’s done us wrong, or for feeling the sap rise when we see someone lovely walk by. It’s more a matter of recognising that actions come from the inside, and that we have to give ourselves health-checks to make sure that we’re not actually harbouring, or cultivating, destructive feelings of hate or lust which then spill over into actions.
   I was struck by Robert Frost’s poem and his description of the frustration and the ultimate failure of trying to trying to gather together a whole host of packages: “For every parcel I stoop down to seize / I lose some other off my arms and knees” It does sound a bit like trying to keep the ten commandments. You can’t quite keep hold of them all.
   I don’t actually read this incident with Jesus and the rich young man as an account of Jesus trying to add yet another burden to his impossible task. That was the trick that the Pharisees were fond of. No, Jesus’ challenge to the rich young man seemed to be to examine his heart – to ask himself what it was that really got him out of bed in the morning. What was it that ruled his life. What was it that he feared losing more than anything else. What would really make him lose his identity, his sense of who he was. To him it was his possessions and the security that gave him. For you or me it might be something different.

   As you know, Jesus was very big on losing things in order to find them – on being able to let go of things we cherish in order to risk growing up. In Robert Frost’s poem, he needed to give up trying to hold on to everything. “I had to drop the armful in the road / And try to stack them in a better load.”
   Not sure if there’s something, some preoccupation, some activity, some security blanket which I need to dispense with. I’m going to need to spend some time thinking about this.

 

 

 

The Armful Robert Frost

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns –
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load. 

A talk given at All Hallows on the Wall, Lonfon on Nov 15
We read: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (extract), William Wordsworth; Matt 18. 1-6  

Some years ago, my wife and I wrote a sex book. For seven-year-olds. One of the  main reasons we wrote it was to keep our kids quiet. They'd be forever pestering us to answer the question, “Where do babies come from?”
   And, of course, they had a knack of asking it at the most awkward and inappropriate times. On the bus. In the checkout queue at Tescos. And when Grannie came round for tea. “Not now”, we'd whisper. “Tell you later.”
So in the end we wrote a book – with pictures – which explained everything. It was big in Germany for some reason… Our kids are now in their 30s, but they haven't had children of their own yet, and I'm beginning to wonder whether we might have left something out…
   The point is, one of the best things about children is the questions they ask. They're honest and sometimes brutal. “Why does she smell funny?” “Where’s his hair gone?” “Why can’t we go home now?” It's how they find out about the world.
   I grew up being told that when Jesus said we had to become like children, it meant we had to have a simple, child-like faith. In other words, you put your mind on the shelf and believed. But that’s not my experience of what kids are like. Nor is it my experience about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
   Children are curious and demanding and frank. Alongside the embarrassing questions, they're also likely to ask some of the big ones: “What happens when you die?” “Who made God?” “Why are there so many poor people?”.
   Kids are physically inquisitive as well. Their curiosity knows no bounds. They want to get their hands in the cake mix, they want play with your iPhone, take the back off the radio, and eat the cow pat. “Let me have a go”, they’re saying. “I want to do that for myself.” They test things to destruction.
   And children are also often more visceral, more earthed than grownups. They’re hilariously fascinated by poo and wee, and burps and farts. If it hurts, they’ll cry, if it’s funny they’ll fall about laughing. If they’re bored they’ll walk away, or just drop off. How often have you wanted to do that?
   And the world they inhabit is open to all sorts of imaginative possibilities: imaginary friends with special dietary needs; scary creatures who live under the bed; princesses, swineherds; Gruffalos.
   And of course, children have anxieties and doubts too. They need love, attention. Touch
   But perhaps the finest quality children have is the abundant sense of wonder, and the ability to express it without irony or self-consciousness: at everything from the saltiness of the sea and the stickiness of mud. And what Jesus seems to be saying is that this questioning, this curiosity, this frankness, this earthiness this imaginative innocence – this wonder – is something we all need to hold on to. But we don’t always.
   This is Wordsworth’s experience: “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth, and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / The glory and the freshness of a dream…”
   But he adds, regretfully, “But yet I know, where'er I go, / That there hath past away a glory from the earth.”
   There hasn’t, of course. The earth hasn’t lost anything. It’s him. He’s lost, not quite his mojo, but at least some sense of child-like spirit. Wordsworth asks: “Whither is fled the visionary gleam? /Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”
   As grownups we need to recapture this child-likeness. Because: “trailing clouds of glory do we come / From God, who is our home: / Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”
   For some reason this weekend, I found myself humming a Kate Bush song, days before I discovered that this passage was in this week’s lectionary readings. it was “the man with the child in his eyes”. I’ve always thought it was a good line and now I think so even more so.
   We need to drop our guards more, lose our sense of cool. And that means letting loose the little kid that's inside. And looking through the child in our eyes.
  Shades of the prison-house begin to close / Upon the growing Boy, / But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, / He sees it in his joy;

Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (extract) William Wordsworth

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:--
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
--But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

This talk was given at All Hallows on the Wall in the City of London on Tues 8 Nove 2011. We read part of Nehemiah 4 and  Jerusalem by Wil; William Blake.

 

My late mother-in-law used to live in Peacehaven on the Sussex coast. When she was alive, we were in Crouch End, a gentrified area of north London, shortly to get its first Starbucks, and therefore definitely heading upmarket. But Mrs Fergus would listen to the news on radio and read the Daily Mail. So she assumed, at all times, that we were either about to be murdered in our beds by anyone from a cast comprising African Caribbean muggers, immigrants on benefits, or the Provisional IRA; and that our house and assets would be stripped and nationalised by socialist government, embodied by Michael Foot. “That dreadful man”.
   I’ve just spent a week and a bit recuperating from my op in Suffolk. And I found myself, if not in sympathy with Mrs Fergus, then at least – to some degree – made paranoid by the stream of news. Serial resignations at St Paul’s Cathedral; the church becoming the focus of the debate, rather than economic justice; the protesters around St Paul’s becoming objects of derision, because of their lack of programme; the European economy heading for hell in a handcart; the Arab spring losing its bounce; Islamist targeting Christians in Nigeria.
   I felt removed, depressed, impotent. Which was, apparently what Nehemiah felt, back in something like the 5^th century BC. He was living in exile in the court of the Persian King Artaxerxes, where he had risen to the vaunted position of cup bearer. He was aware of his Israelite compatriots, who were encamped in the ruins of Jerusalem, surrounded by hostile nations, but felt powerless to help them.
   In short, he persuaded the king to let him return to his homeland and gather the rump of Israel to rebuild the walls of the city. But this was a rag-tag army of peasants and farmers and merchants – and the task was huge. And the people from the surrounding tribes treated them as objects of scorn.
   When I read this passage, I was immediately reminded of people’s attitude to the St Paul’s protesters. They have been denigrated as a feckless collection of idealists, performers, part-time activists, soft-headed, soft-hearted complainers who want to replace capitalism with something nicer. Where is their agenda? What is their programme? Who’s writing their policy?
   In our reading, Sanballat the Honorite, and Tobiah the Ammonite took the same approach. They looked on at Nehemiah’s amateur crew and said: , “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore things? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish — and burned ones at that?” They had a point. Jerusalem was a wreck.
   But, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and those who lived in the countryside around, who came into the city to make common cause with them, were not daunted. With Nehemiah’s inspiration and drive, the started work, and “rebuilt the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height; for the people had a mind to work…”
   “For the people had a mind to work.” The surrounding tribes were wrong footed by their determination and the speed with which they worked. They gathered their forces together and planned to attack the half-built walls, targeting the gaps in the walls and the weakest points. But the response of the inhabitants was to redouble their determination: “The burden bearers carried their loads in such a way that each laboured on the work with one hand and with the other held a weapon. ¹⁸And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built.”
   Even so, they were thin on the ground, working in isolated, vulnerable areas. So Nehemiah appointed a trumpeter, so that whenever there was danger. The trumpet would sound and people would rally to the call.
   I don’t know about you, but I find this inspiring stuff. I’m not by nature an activist. I do think there’s some soft-headedness about in some of the protest that’s around, some lack of focus. But the it’s a great deal better than sitting mired in impotent depression or rage.
   The Kingdom of God, the new Jerusalem, honour and equity, will not be built among dark satanic mills, unless someone picks up a trowel to build it and (figuratively, I hope) picks up a sword to defend the work of reconstruction. This is not a call for bloody revolution, but it is a call for dogged, intelligent, persistent determination, against the odds and in the face of derision. William Blake takes the role of Nehemiah’s the trumpeter: “I will not cease from mental fight, / Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, / Till we have built Jerusalem / In England's green and pleasant land.”

 

 Jerusalem William Blake

 

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

 

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

 

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

 

 

A talk given at All Hallows on the Wall, the City of London on Tues 25 October

Readings: The Waking by Theodore Roethke; Matthew 13. 1-9 (the parable of the sower)

A friend of ours gave us some carrots the other day. He went to his veg plot, and pulled them out of the ground. They tasted gorgeous. He gave us some salad leaves too. They tasted even better, with this powerful green taste. You could feel them doing you good.
   Now David, who gave us these things, is a professional gardener. So you’d expect the stuff he grows to be good. And you could say that there’s an element of cheating, because he did buy in some of his topsoil which is now in a series of raised beds. But he has subsequently worked the ground, he’s dug all sorts of organic matter into it. He’s tended it and raked it. It’s beautiful stuff.
   We’ve got a veg plot too, of which we’re inordinately proud. But ours is lumpy, and weedy with all sorts of foreign things which keep appearing – especially fennel which grows like a weed and threatens to take over. Not to mention the bamboo. Don’t get me started on that…
   Still, it’s not too bad. Jack Stannard the old farmer who built our house in the 1950s, used to grow vegetables there, on pretty unpromising, sandy soil. But as Mark, the local pond man observed appreciatively, when he came to dig the hole for the water. “Mmmmm, I think he’s dug a lot of muck in, in here.”
   The parable we read this morning is a classic. Obviously I’ve read the parable of the sower loads of times – and certainly when I was growing up, understood it as the parable of the bad farmer, who obviously couldn’t aim properly and simply scattered seed randomly about.
   But it’s probably more about soil. However, it’s easy to see this as a bit fatalistic – in that there are various bits of earth here, which just happen to be hard-beaten paths, or stony, or thorny. Or good. The deficiency of the metaphor is that it suggest we can be inert, passive receivers of the seed.
   But perhaps another way to think about this is to think about ourselves as earthy. “You are dust and to dust you shall return” it says in Genesis. In the second of the two creation stories, God  forms humankind from the earth, and blew the breath of life into our nostrils. We are earthly and earthy.
   I love all those synonyms for earth: dirt, sod, soil, mud, ground,  terra, tilth, humus. And earth is a rich metaphor in itself: it’s organic, crumbly, fertile – alive with bacteria. You can grow in earth, build with it, shape it, fire it, tunnel through it and hollow it out*
   And the fact that we are earthy, means we are part of this world, not separate from it. I’m not sure if I’ve gone on about the Hebrew word nephesh, but this is the word that is often translated in our Bibles as ‘soul’. It’s the word that’s used when the Bible is talking about who we are, the essence of us. It appears over 700 times in the bible, so it’s quite important, but to call it soul is suggest it some disembodied spirit. This is not the case. Nephesh can be rendered as life, heart, being, person. It’s a bodily word, it’s an earthy word. We are part of the earth.*
   I think this is maybe part of what Theodore Roethke is getting at in his poem, The Waking. He writes: “I learn by going where I have to go. / We think by feeling. What is there to know? / I hear my being dance from ear to ear”.
   Reason is good. Deduction is good, calculation, argument, intellect. All fine. But now and again it important to remember that we are of the earth and we need to listen to our instincts and “learn by going where we have to go”, to “think by feeling”. I’m not sure what it means to hear your “being dance from ear to ear”, but I love the idea. And it seems to me that it’s about having an ear close to the ground.
   The headline from Jesus parable is of course, that we need to cultivate ourselves, that we need to prepare ourselves, so that we become a rich and receptive loam, out of which we can be abundant, fruitful people.
   I was in our garden yesterday, and everything’s slowing down and dying back. The growing season is over and everything is beginning to mulch down. “God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, / And learn by going where I have to go.” This is a time to be receptive, to dig the muck in. So if you want some holy advice, it’s “go on, sod off”.

*I’ve said a bit more about this in a little book my pal Martin Wroe and I brought out, called Elemental: Earth, Water, Air Fire. You can buy it for £4.80 or get an e-version for 99p at http://bit.ly/swCmBQ

The Waking, Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

 

A talk given at All Hallows on the Wall, the City of London on 18 October 2011.

The Word by Tony Hoagland; Jeremiah 29. 1, 4-8

Try this. First, fold your arms as your normally would. Now try to do it the opposite way, with the other arm first…
   Feel weird? If you’re anything like me, it’s not nearly so straightforward. You have to think deliberately about something you would normally do automatically, subconciously.
   It’s what can happen when you find yourself removed from that overused phrase, your ‘comfort zone’, when you get thrust into new surroundings, where the normal landmarks are absent. You don’t quite know where to put yourself.
   This is a slightly pathetic example, but it’s mine own. Just over a year ago, I got a job. For the first time in 19 years. As most of you know, I joined the Church Times as Features editor. For close on two decades, my daily commute had been upstairs to the loft, carrying a cup of coffee.
   Now I found myself sitting in the corner of an open plan office, working on a hideous PC rather than a Mac, in a place where the object was to produce a weekly paper in a manner which was alien to me, and where no-one really had the time to explain the language or the culture. I was a stranger in a strange land. It really did feel like I was in a foreign country where I could not understand what was going on, or quite how I was to behave. It was a very uncomfortable first few weeks. I had started with the mutual agreement that the editor and we would give it six weeks, and then decide whether to carry on. And for at least half of that I thought, “Help, someone please take me home.”
   This passage in Jeremiah is fascinating. For once, it’s not the angry prophet denouncing everything – he’s giving some sage advice in the form of a letter to the elders of Israel, who had been taken by Nebuchadnezzar into exile in Babylon.
   This period of exile was to prove hugely important – fruitful even – to the history of Israel, and to the rest of us. Because it was essentially the time when they gathered their, largely oral, history and traditions together and turned them into what people of the Christian tradition now know as the Old Testament.
   And Jeremiah’s advice to them, his ‘word from the Lord’, is unusual. He doesn’t, as you might imagine, remind them of the alien, pagan, infidel nature of their Babylonian hosts. God isn’t, he says, telling them to remind themselves that they are in exile, but instead, to: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” In other words, to make themselves at home. In essence, he warns them against forming a ghetto community, but rather to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf.”
   The Israelites aren’t being told to forego their identity, or ethnicity, but nevertheless to come to terms with their migrant status, even maybe to embrace it. This is fascinating. Babylon has become, partly because of it’s use by Rastafarians, a byword for the enemy, the oppressor, but Jeremiah seems to be saying, if you want to survive, there’s no point in sitting in the corner and sulking. There’s no future in pining for home, or dreaming about the good old days. You need to come to terms with where you are. Better than that, throw yourselves into the life of where you are and work for its good: “for in [Babylon’s] welfare you will find your welfare.”
   Alright, this is contestable advice. These were people who had been taken by force, wrenched from their homeland. They were displaced people. They had every reason to take the fight to their captors, and this is very different counsel than their forebears had been given in Egypt. In that case, it was their escape from Egypt which defined the nation, and it’s relationship with God.
   This is where we have to be careful with biblical instruction. I don’t believe all of it is for all time, or for all circumstances. But, in this case, for these people, you can see what Jeremiah is getting at. He doesn’t want them to tear themselves apart, but to find a way of making themselves at home. A bit like Tony Hoagland says in The Word, of finding in the midst of dreariness, a delight in the discovery of sunlight: “as if you had a friend / and sunlight were a present / he had sent you from some place distant / as this morning – to cheer you up,  / and to remind you that, / among your duties, pleasure /is a thing, / that also needs accomplishing.
   If you find yourself in an uncomfortable place, with a foreign language or culture, maybe Jeremiah’s advice is that looking  beyond yourself to the welfare of the city, may help heal the feeling of alienation. I certainly found becoming part of the weird cultural rituals of the Church Times helped me.
   As Tony Hoagland puts it, you can: “get a telegram, / from the heart in exile / proclaiming that the kingdom still exists”. But first, you have to make yourself comfortable, “sit out in the sun and listen.”

The Word Tony Hoagland
Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list 
of things you have to do today,  

between "green thread" 
and "broccoli" you find 
that you have penciled "sunlight."  

Resting on the page, the word 
is as beautiful, it touches you 
as if you had a friend  

and sunlight were a present 
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,  

and to remind you that, 
among your duties, pleasure 
is a thing,  

that also needs accomplishing 
Do you remember? 
that time and light are kinds  

of love, and love 
is no less practical 
than a coffee grinder  

or a safe spare tire? 
Tomorrow you may be utterly 
without a clue  

but today you get a telegram, 
from the heart in exile 
proclaiming that the kingdom  

still exists, 
the king and queen alive, 
still speaking to their children,  

- to any one among them 
who can find the time, 
to sit out in the sun and listen.

 

 

Talk given at All Hallows on the Wall,  City of London on 11 October 2011
Snake by Theodore Roethke; Matthew 10.16-23

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a snake in the wild. I once heard a rustle and saw something move in the grass while on a cliff walk near Folkestone, when I was a kid. But It was hardly a bona fide sighting. We’ve been told to expect to see grass snakes and the occasional adder in our garden. They like the warmth of the compost heap, apparently. Bur nothing so far. We’ve had lizards, and slow worms – slow worms look like tiny brass-coloured snakes, but are actually technically a legless lizard. I hope one day maybe.
   Actually, I’m scared of snakes, in theory. I’ve got them filed alongside rats and sharks among those creatures for whom I harbour an irrational sub-conscious fear. Snakes are a bit like that. They have meaning beyond their substance, they stand for something. As do doves.
   “Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves,” Jesus says in our reading. Twin symbols – metaphors. Jesus is talking in the context of what it could mean to be a follower of his in a hostile world. He is telling them to be prepared, he is trying to instil in them an attitude of mind. “Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves.” It’s not easy to think ourselves back into a first century Jewish mind, but let’s have a go.
   It’s interesting that the New Revised Standard version of the Bible, from which we read, uses the word “serpent” – not sure why a modern translation should use such an anachronistic word, but it certainly adds even more freight to the idea of the snake as a symbolic creature. The snake, the serpent, is of course, most famous for its appearance in the garden of Eden, as the lurking presence of evil. More of a lizard of course in that story, since as a consequence of tempting Eve to eat the fruit it is “cursed… among all animals… upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall l eat… I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.”
   But on one occasion, in the wilderness years – during the long sojourn of the Israelites between Egypt and the promised land – the snake became a symbol of salvation. When a plague of snakes came upon the Israelite incampment, Moses had a bronze serpent placed on a pole, and those who looked on it would be saved from the venom of the snakebite. And Jesus is quoted as citing this symbol of redemption: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so will the son of man be lifted up.”
   The dove, on the other hand, as Jesus’ statement suggests, is a symbol of innocence. Doves were used in sacrifice, like lambs, as symbols of purity. There were also messengers. Noah sent one out to see if the flood had subsided. The Holy spirit settled on the head of Jesus at his baptism in the form of a dove. Throughout the Old Testament they were symbols of wildness, love and beauty. Blimey, this is turning into an old fashioned Bible study.
   So what do we take from this? How are we to be snakes and doves? Maybe the best thing is to look at how this worked out in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a prime example of serpentine doveness – he was someone who lived in  a dangerous world, who said contestable, prophetic things and took dramatic actions in a plural time, where the forces of Judaism and Hellenism were beginning to interweave.
   Like the snake in Roethke’s poem, Jesus was earthy, sensuous, subtle, nuanced. He appeared and vanished. He was bold when he needed to be, and shy when it made sense. He could bask, coiled  in the pleasure of the sun “feeling his slow blood warm”, or strike where he saw oppression or hypocrisy.
   Like a dove, he was gentle. He drew people to him, eased their burdens and freed them from what bound them; he soothed their cares, healed their wounds, brought with him a message of peace and humility, moved by a spirit of love.
   There is an abiding tendency for human beings to separate flesh and spirit. To see one as profane and the other as sacred. It sounds like Jesus was telling us that we need to hold the two together in creative tension: touch and feel; scale and fearther; earth and sky. It takes time to form the our serpent and dove together. Like Roethke, “I long to be that thing”. I’m hoping “I may be, some time.”

Snake Theodore Roethke

I saw a young snake glide
Out of the mottled shade
And hang, limp on a stone:
A thin mouth, and a tongue
Stayed, in the still air.

It turned; it drew away;
Its shadow bent in half;
It quickened and was gone

I felt my slow blood warm.
I longed to be that thing.
The pure, sensuous form.

And I may be, some time.