I recently had the privilege of preparing and baptising two babies at church, and I could not have asked for a pair of more lovely families or babies for my first time. Both sets of parents showed such generosity in welcoming me into their homes, as we thought about baptism together, and then entrusted me with their precious child while I poured water over him or her!! Little T. and R. were absolutely delightful too, and were very kind in not screaming/throwing up/poo-ing in my arms (not that those things would have mattered, of course, but I’m still glad they didn’t happen).
Infant baptism (or christening – same thing, different name) is one of those potentially divisive issues in the church. Some folk only practise what you might call a “believer’s baptism” (namely, that the person being baptised owns and believes the faith for themselves). In the Church of England we practise infant baptism, where the parents and godparents own and believe the faith on behalf of the child, in the hope that that child will grow up into that faith him- or herself. As I understand it, the differences in opinion arise in part from an individualistic vs. a communal outlook on life, and in part as a reaction to the historical/superstitious practices of the medieval period (cf. the Reformation). I’m not sure that the Bible is definitive either way, and it basically hinges on how you interpret certain passages, and how much weight you give them (although it’s only fair to observe that Christians also disagree about this!!) As a member of the Church of England it is academic in any case – we baptise children, and we think that it’s a good thing. Anyway, if this sort of things float your boat, there are plenty of resources to look into this further – and a booklet from Grove Books is usually an excellent (and good value) starting place on almost any area of Christian thought.
What Christians do agree on, at least, is that baptism is something important and significant, and fundamentally the “why” comes down to the dominical command (which is a fancy way of saying that Jesus told us to do it!) in the Great Commission of Matthew 28, when Jesus says “Go and make disciples of every people group, baptising them in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”.
So we agree on the “why”, we disagree on the “how” – but what I have been particularly thinking about is what baptism means, and what “happens” during it. Thankfully we have largely moved beyond the theology that anyone who isn’t baptised automatically goes to hell (and conversely, that anyone who is automatically doesn’t) – although once again some see this differently. I personally cannot reconcile God’s infinite grace, love, and unknowability with a formula that says “baptised == saved”. But I do also think that something happens.
I reckon part of the key is in symbols and symbolism. Now the danger with symbols is that it is very easy to think that, if something is symbolic, then it’s not real. One of our tutors at St Hild pointed out the wording on bank notes – “I promise the pay the bearer on demand…” In other words, the bank note itself isn’t money per se, but rather a promise that it can be exchanged for money at the bank. Or, you might say that the bank note is a symbol, a physical representation of something else. Yet I challenge you to find anyone who says a tenner isn’t real money! Something similar is going on with wedding rings and marriage. The gold band on my finger is still, essentially, just a lump of metal (who says romance is dead?!) I am no more or less married whether I am wearing the ring or not. I am no better or worse husband. Yet the ring is a symbol of the love and commitment – the visible sign of an invisible reality (to misappropriate St Augustine). Come to that, marriage itself is not – really – the definition of the relationship; I loved my wife no more one minute after the wedding then I did one minute before. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that marriage isn’t important (far from it), and actually something did change as we made a public and legal commitment to one another. My point is just that it is perhaps helpful to start to disentangle the underlying reality (in this case the relationship) from its physical/visible expression (wedding rings), especially when thinking about baptism.
So in baptism there are 3 main symbols/symbolic actions that occur in the service; the water, the candle, and the signing with the cross. The water is particularly rich in imagery and theology; although a lot of it hangs on the idea of full immersion – which is to say going completely under the water for a few moments. We don’t tend to do this with babies!! However, the sprinkling/pouring of water is intended to represent the full immersion. Most obviously, the water is about being washed clean. Being made utterly new, as if we had never known dirt (or done anything wrong). It also carries the less obvious imagery of dying and rising, with the submersion representing being buried, and the coming out of water like being raised to life again. There is something about being (re)born – emerging from the waters of the font as if from the womb? (This not my favourite element of the symbolism!!) There is also a sense of being clothed in Christ; the water completely surrounds and encompasses, so Jesus completely encompasses us with new spiritual “clothes”, befitting of our new status as daughters and sons of God. I suspect there are other images in play as well. The signing with the cross and the candles are a bit more straightforward in their imagery, I think, but no less powerful. Anyway, there are many more accomplished theologians than me who can (and have) unpack all this, so I will leave that as an exercise for the reader…
Instead, and at the risk of completely going off on one, drawing the oblique analogy between marriage and baptism above set me to musing that maybe baptism is actually quite a lot like marriage? It’s not as strange as it might sound at first – after all the church (i.e. the baptised community of believers) is repeatedly described as the bride of Christ, and the Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a wedding. And if you describe marriage as making a public commitment, supported by friends, family, and the church, and entering into a lifelong relationship then suddenly it sounds just like (adult) baptism to me. With infant baptism it falls down a bit with the fact that a marriage is between consenting adults – clearly not the case here. So maybe infant baptism is a more like an engagement or betrothal? By which I mean a concrete promise made regarding a future commitment, with the hope and expectation (but no guarantee) of the fulfilment of that promise. To extend the analogy, in the Church of England, we call this fulfilment Confirmation (but I’m not going there in this post!)
We do have a little bit of translation to do; these days engagements don’t carry quite the same level of commitment and gravity that they used to, where breaking off an engagement was almost like a divorce. And to push it a bit further, maybe infant baptism is almost a bit like an arranged marriage? In the West we react very negatively to the concept of arranged marriages, obsessed as we are with rights, individual choice, and eros (romantic/erotic love). But if we can move beyond our own cultural filters, then someone (who knows us best and loves us the most) making a choice on our behalf (which they believe is the very best for us, our families, and local community) doesn’t sound entirely without merit… or a million miles away from infant baptism? Might there be some sense of the parents betrothing their child to Christ?
I fully admit this sounds a bit odd, and I’m not convinced that it is a helpful line of enquiry… I probably won’t be preparing my next baptism family by telling them they are putting their child into an arranged marriage! Yet I kind of think that there is something here. Either way, the symbols help us catch a glimpse of a deeper and wonderful reality, but one which is always ultimately going to end in mystery. Do I know what happens at baptism? No, not really. But at some level it is saying “yes” to Jesus, and at the end of the day that is enough for me.
Earlier this year, I took my two boys to Harrogate Theatre to see Dick and Dom (from CBBC). Inevitably, perhaps, I was volunteered to go up on stage to play some daft game. Of course, the whole point of these games is that the parent is (a) hapless, and (b) ridiculed in front of several hundred people, especially his or her own children. Fortunately I have plenty of practice at both of these things.
However, one thing I did chicken out of was saying that I was training to be a vicar, at least in part because I hadn’t really thought it through as a scenario, and I figured that the conversation probably wouldn’t have gone the way I would have wanted it to. Note to theological colleges – be sure to cover how to handle an interview with stars of kids’ TV, while wearing boxing gloves and dribbling baked beans!!
But the occasion has stuck with me. As a complete digression; one of the things I’m fascinated by is why some people seem utterly comfortable and natural on TV (or stage, or at the front of a room), while others seem very awkward and unnatural. You see it on any sort of panel programme, and it’s especially interesting to contrast Pointless with Pointless Celebrities, say. I (theoretically at least) could have bounced up onto stage, larger than life, and bantered with Dick and Dom as if I was an equal part of of the show – but I actually think that would have been a bit weird, as well as making me a “pro-active self-starter” (as we used to refer to this kind of attitude at one of my old jobs).
Anyway, back to Dick and Dom, here’s how the conversation might have played out:
Dick: And what do you do?
Me: I’m a computer programmer, and a part-time vicar.
Dick: Wow, that’s amazing – Please, tell us all the good news about Jesus, and how we can give our lives to Him today.
Now I admit that this is a fairly unlikely scenario, so my back-up scenario was as follows:
Dick: Wow – but where’s your dog collar?
Me: Not with me today – but we can soon fix that, if you’ve got a bit of card? James quickly fashions a dog collar using origami jujitsu, does up his top collar, and inserts it, to the amusement and amazement of the theatre audience.
Dick: Well, that’s worth a round of applause – but why do you wear one at all?
Me: It’s mainly so I don’t run off when I’m taken for a walk, and also so that people don’t think I’m a stray. Cue extended hilarity from the audience, and Dick and Dom cancelling the rest of the show because they couldn’t follow that.
Such is my inner world – do pray for me.
But there is actually something potentially quite profound in my imagined glib response. After enjoying my own witty repartee in the privacy of my head, it struck me that one could phrase this another way.
The dog collar helps me stay safe, from wandering too far from the path; and it shows everyone I am owned, loved, and cared for by someone.
Suddenly there is something else, and much deeper going on here. And it’s something which applies to all who would call themselves follows of Jesus (not just the nut edge cases who are ordained). The well loved Psalm 23 talks of being led, and being kept on the right path: “He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.” Proverbs speaks of those who walk in wisdom “Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble.” In a slightly different, but related, vein, in John’s gospel Jesus asserts: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Please understand, I’m not saying that life is automatically a bed of roses as soon as we become Christians – if anything the opposite. But it is, perhaps, a little bit like the difference between being a stray roaming the streets, living off scraps, with nowhere to call home; and being known and loved, having a home, and being fed.
As Christians, we are all living witnesses of what it means to be owned and loved by someone – and unlike with our real canine friends, there is an open invitation for others to be adopted and have this ownership and love for themselves. Maybe part of the point of the dog collar is to keep this invitation on the cards? Sticking with our four legged friends, there is perhaps something about a voluntary submission to a master as well. The bible repeatedly uses the language of doulos (which means slave) to describe the Christian life, and even Jesus himself is described as a servant. Of course, slavery doesn’t have many positive connotations these days, but maybe couching this in terms of a dog being a “slave” to his or her master can redeem the language a little? Utter faithfulness, devotion, happiness, security (and at this point you realise that it’s a while since I have owned a dog!!) I don’t claim any of this to be particularly novel, and you must forgive my continued reflections on “The Collar”.
As with any analogy or metaphor, it has its limits, and the Bible far prefers to talk about us as children of God rather than pets!! And lest we forget, a dog lead is really about limitation and control, which is more or less the opposite of the point I’m trying to make.
In any case – Richard and Dominic, if you happen to be reading this, and want me to demonstrate my dog collar origami next time you do a show in Harrogate, you know how to reach me…
One of the things I am getting used to is being out and about with a dog collar on. I should say that at this point that wearing a clerical shirt and a collar doesn’t sit particularly comfortably with my theology of ordination, priesthood, and ministry – but that’s a topic for another day (and in any case is still a work in progress)!
What has been interesting though is that, in a very small way, people’s behaviour around me appears to be influenced by the fact that I am wearing a dog collar. It seems to me that people are just a little bit nicer, or more polite, or kinder. At one level this is very superficial: people don’t want to swear in front of the vicar! In that sense I suppose it’s not unlike the police? So a couple of days ago I was out driving when I noticed a police car behind me. What was my immediate reaction? To check that I was driving within the speed limit, and to try and be a “good driver”. Of course, as soon as the police car turned off, I relaxed and stopped paying quite the same degree of attention to my speed!! You see this even more clearly on motorways, when cars will zoom up at 90 – see a police car and cruise steadly by at 72, then accelerate again as soon as they’re out of sight. This is not an entirely positive thing; after all it is essentially motivated by fear, and almost certainly a localised and temporary effect. But that said, the visible police presence (or, I suppose, clerical presence) is enough to make us pause, and check how our behaviour measures up against some sort of perceived standard of what is good/acceptable/appropriate. In my rose-tinted world world, this would lead to further self-reflection and change!!! (i.e. If my driving changes when I see the police, doesn’t that say something about my normal driving?)
As I thought about this a bit more, it struck me that – localised and temporary as is it – the world is actually (in general) a slightly safer place immediately around a police-man or -woman. And in the same way, in some sense the world is a slightly kinder or nicer place immediately around someone in clericals. People do genuinely seem a little friendlier around me when I’m collared. They seem more willing to meet my eye and smile (although I accept that this cuts both ways, and when I’m out in my collar I am also more intentional about meeting people’s eyes and smiling). The really interesting thing about it all is that I am not actually doing anything. The effect is entirely down to our presence. The posh word for this is ontological – it’s about being rather than doing.
I suppose there are a couple of thoughts that follow.
Firstly, I am reminded of Jesus describing us (i.e. his followers) as the salt of the world, in Matthew 5. At the risk of doing some damage to the original context, I think that part of his point was about seasoning – salt flavours and preserves the environment in which it’s put. This is maybe why he goes on to describe salt which has lost its taste as worthless. Salt doesn’t do anything as such; rather it is just by being there that it has a positive effect on its surroundings. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus chose that particular metaphor for those who follow him?
This in turn got me thinking of how much I (and the rest of us) can – and arguably should – have this effect, whether or not we’re wearing special clothes. I love that advert that was on the telly a few years ago, of a kindness “ripple” being spread from person to person, as each one is the recipent of someone being randomly kind, which inspires them to be randomly kind to someone else, and so. It obviously wasn’t a particular effective advert, as I can’t now remember the product, but there are plenty of “kindness ripple” videos on YouTube which portray the same sort of thing. This is where the salt metaphor breaks down a little (unless we venture into the realms of alchemy!!), as salt doesn’t turn other things into salt. But as we lighten someone elses day, in some sense this lightness can be passed on in a ripple.
The challenge for me, then, is to what degree am I making the world immediately around me a little kinder, or nicer, or better, or more like the Kingdom of God through my presence and – yes – my words and my deeds too? Do I always have an open countenance, a positive presence, whether or not I’m wearing a collar, or do I go incognito when the bit of plastic comes off?
Food for thought.. Oh, and pass the salt, will you?
It struck me yesterday, as I was doing some ironing, that Christian ministry is a little bit like ironing (bear with me!)…
The obvious analogies didn’t strike me at first (more on them in a mo), it was simply that I had half-an-hour, I ironed solidly for that whole time, starting with the most pressing (boom boom), and then I stopped. At the end of it, the ironing basket was still full of clothes which needed ironing, but that was my ironing slot over.
This may sound perfectly normal to you, but it is almost entirely contrary to my nature! To stop a task before it is finished, and just leave stuff hanging around for another opportunity!?! I would previously always have soldiered on through the whole pile of clothes, and than collapsed happily, feeling fulfilled and satisified at a job well done (or at least over for another week). But I have other things to do with my time which, superficially perhaps, are less important. I’ve been trying to put my finger on this idea of intentionally choosing not to do things which are good and important without it being about procrastination, laziness, or irresponsibility.
What I’m getting at, I think, is that the task is endless. There is no defined “end” for Christian ministry, there will probably never again be the point where I have got to the “end” of my list of jobs and collapse satisified with a glass of wine. To wait for these moments of completion before going out to play simply means the time of going out to play never comes. It’s a bit like Covey talks about in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – an appreciation of the choices we have and the decisions we make (and the language we use). I seem to have mislaid my copy of the book, so I can’t give a direct quote, but I remember finding it challenging reading as a Christian when I read it many years ago, and it has stuck with me. I must also give a nod to Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes by Richards and O’Brien, who have undermined by (previously) unquestioned acceptance of the Protestent work ethic as a biblical virtue!!
Of course, this is absolutely not limited to ordaination, or ordained ministry – all followers of Jesus are, by definition, full time Christian ministers. But it is also true to say that I am now much more aware of the need to carve out time for the stuff which isn’t, ostensibly, important at the expense of the stuff which is, without feeling guilty about it. There is something about sabbath rest in here too, of course.
I promised the obvious analogies – well, we’re all wrinkled in one way or another, and Jesus is the one who helps us becomes spotless and pure… and he often uses his church as the means. Also, an iron is just a lump of cold metal, which is pretty ineffective at doing anything, until it is filled with power and hot, including the steam of the spirit. It is the heat and steam which do all the work. I always worry that analogies like this border on being trite, and reduce God to a domestic chore; but I guess some people may find them helpful? Perhaps I’ll work one into a sermon!
As for the stubborn creases? Well, whoever heard of such a thing in church….
I preached my first sermon at St Mark’s on Sunday, at the 7pm service! Always nice to get a ‘first’ in the bag. One of the challenges that I’m finding around being a new curate – especially at a church as large as St Mark’s, and even more especially as a self-supporting minister – is working out where and how I (and my family) fit into the life of the church. On the one hand, just turning up on a Sunday and sitting in the congregation doesn’t really feel like the point; on the other hand, I’m still learning the styles and formats of the services, and my availability in the week is limited in terms of being able to meet with people and prepare. It is very early days, and I also know that much of ordained ministry is about being rather than doing… being present, listening, praying. About leading worship from within the congregation (which I know needs a little more unpacking, but that will have to wait for another post). But it was still nice to actually do something!
Anyway, I decided to approach this sermon in the TED style (and I do have to plug “Talk like Ted” by Carmine Gallo at this point, which describes a fantastic approach to public speaking in a way that is very accessible and easy to read. Highly recommended). Two of the elements Carmine advocates are “memorability” and “humour”, and I’d already thought I might use some of my photos to these ends. As I was browsing through my back catalogue, I spotted some of my Danbo Photos, and thought “Yes!”. Cue the rest of Friday evening spent with camera and lights and a makeshift studio on the kitchen table. I admit that I got a little bit carried away, but photography is one of my passions, and the chance to combine this with preaching seemed to good to pass up.
The passage was Matthew 6:5-13, which is Jesus teaching on prayer, including the Lord’s prayer. I like my sermons to have a bit of interaction, so we spent a bit of time talking about what prayer actually is (and isn’t), before I spoke a bit about my own experience of prayer, in particular praying the Daily Office. There is a choice we face each morning – a crossroads, if you like. We can set aside the time to pray; or we can allow it to be squeezed out by the inevitable demands of daily life. In my experience, whether or not Morning Prayer gets squeezed out sets the tone for the whole day. When I start the day with prayer, I find my approach to the day, my focus, and my responses are much closer to how I would want to respond. However, when I don’t prayer, the opposite happens, and I don’t respond well to the day’s events.
We also spent a bit of time thinking about Matthew’s gospel in composite, and the course that Jesus charts between a rock and a soft place; neither accepting the strict adherence of the law demanded by the Jewish leaders, but neither rejecting the law altogether. Instead Jesus gets to the heart of the law, which is good, and fulfills it. In fact, if anything Jesus extends the law to be more comprehensive (for instance a few verses earlier in Matthew 5, Jesus takes the law “do not commit adultery” and applies it to the human heart – “looking lustfully at a woman is to commit adultery”!!)
So as Jesus teaches on prayer, it’s neither the strict outward adherence to particular customs, but neither is it the “anything goes” of the pagans. Instead Jesus sets out a model, or structure, or approach to prayer, which we now call the Lord’s Prayer. I do not believe Jesus was intending this prayer to be said verbatim as the sum total of prayer. Never-the-less, the elements of looking UP to God (“Our father in heaven…”), looking OUT to His Mission (“Thy kingdom come…”), and looking IN to our own needs (“give us today…”) are each important. We also reflected on the need to be both intentional about prayer, and to do it every day. There is an analogy here with the whole “date night” thing if you’re married. Yes, on one level you could say it’s legalistic and lacks spontaneity – but on the other hand without it you easily end up never actually spending time together having fun, as friends and lovers. So the time together is intentional and protected, but within that space there is freedom and joy.
Because I think that one of the thing that God loves most is us spending time with Him. I think that He is thrilled and delighted with us, and He cherishes every moment we spend in prayer. So rest in His arms!
PS – You can read about how I came to have a back catalogue of photos on my 365 page of my personal blog. Be warned I will almost certainly be recycling them in future sermons, and St Mark’s also hasn’t seen the last of Danbo…..
I made a friendship bracelet for myself on my pre-ordination retreat, as a focus and enactment of my prayers and thoughts. I know that you’re not really supposed to make yourself a friendship bracelet, but I wanted to do something concrete as well as prayerful and meditative. It’s a good 15 years since I’d last made one, and even now sitting with a bunch of embroidery threads safety-pinned to my jeans transports me back 30 years to when I sat on the grass by lake Llangorse one summer’s evening, being taught by a girl I’d fallen madly in love with (as you do). But I digress…
Anyway, the bracelet is symbolic really, in that it represents something more than itself. Not only the prayers I prayed as I made it, but also that each colour has a significance, which picks up the traditional or liturgical associations for these colours.
Green reflects God in the ordinary and everyday.
White is about holiness and purity (doubled up, cos I really need it!)
Purple is because I am serving the King of Kings.
Red is for the Holy Spirit and power.
Black is because I have a dark/shadow side, which is also part of who I am, and which will be part of my ministry.
As I knotted it over the retreat, I prayed to commit each particular area of life or ministry to God. For instance as I made the red ‘fish’ (pictured) I prayed for the Holy Spirit to work with me and through me in the ordinary, as a servant of the King, in my failures, and so on.
When I put it on each morning, it’s a little aide-memoir that I’m now ordained. During the day it catches my eye, or I can run my fingers over it and recall the prayers woven into it. I guess I wear a cross on a necklace for a similar reason – i.e. to remind myself of whose I am (and I’ve blogged about this elsewhere eutony.net/2010/09/19/remember-member-member/).
One of the ‘in’ songs during my student radio days was Enigma’s “Return to Innocence” (along with “Something Inside so Strong” by Labi Siffre, which seemed to have some deep significance for a lot of my peers that I never quite got the bottom of!). It’s a song that particularly resonated with me at the time, partly because I quite liked it, but mainly because of this idea of returning to innocence.
Innocence is an interesting thing in today’s society. Along with its close cousin naivete, it seems to me that it’s seen as something bad, or at least something to be looked down again; as in “He’s so naive”. It’s also seen as something fragile, which is easily lost and once lost is gone forever, like Platoon’s strapline: “the first casualty of war is innocence.”
I have a different take on this, which in part hangs on the hook of Enigma’s song, and in part relies on the work on the French theologian Paul Ricoeur, about which I’ll say a bit more in a minute.
I have come to see that innocence can be an intentional choice – not because we don’t know any better, but because we do! This is perhaps part of what Jesus was getting at when he told his disciples to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:6, NRSV). In my own journey, I had a bit of a wild time at college, at the stage of my life where I reckoned I could make a better job of it than God. But I had a epiphany moment when I woke up one morning, and cast my mind back to the evening before, and thought (for the 1,000th time) “Oh no – I can’t believe I did/said that last night”. Only on that occasion I made the leap to realising how foolish it is to consistently wake up with regrets. I have to say that God wasn’t quite ready to let go of me either, and was working on me in all sorts of ways – but one of the outcomes was that I started trying to be intentionally innocence. To believe the best of people and situations. To enjoy myself in ways where I could look myself (and my friends) in eye the next day. I should probably make it clear that I wasn’t necessarily doing anything out of the ordinary for students, but never-the-less I was not proud of how I was living my life.
This brings us to Paul Ricoeur. Actually he was more of a philosopher than a theologian, and he is particularly close to my heart because I got my highest grade for my assignment on him!! His hermeneutic approach (that it is to say, how we can understand and apply the Bible today) was that we start with a naive reading of a biblical text as the word/work of God. We then apply rigorous scholarly analysis, treating it with suspicion it deserves as something that it also a work of man. Ricoeur’s particular contribution was that we don’t stop there. Instead we return to the text again as a work of God, and submit ourselves to the “naive” reading, while holding on to, and in times despite of, the insight from the critical analysis. It seems to me that this is captured beautifully in the lyric “return to innocence”.
I strongly suspect that this is the sort of thing that Paul had in mind when he wrote to the church in Philippi. As the preacher at my church on Sunday reminded us, this is the way to peace; and I am inclined to treat “peace” and “innocence” as almost synonymous in this context, perhaps tapping also into the depth and beauty of shalom.
Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. (Phil 4:8-9)
This intentional innocence is not the easy option. The first innocence is easy, because you don’t know any better. The loss of innocence isn’t easy to go through at the time, but equally I’ve come to see that being “clever” (or cynical, or worldy-wise, or suspicious, or whatever phrase you might want to use) is actually also the easy option. Worse that this, in some cases it is no less than bullying when it is at someone else’s expense. I also wonder if it’s a form of self-protection, that avoids having to seriously engage with the people and situation. To continue to believe and trust despite having been let down and hurt, indeed to do so knowing that you may or even will be betrayed again – that costs. In fact, it is the sort of innocence that led Jesus to be betrayed by Judas, abandoned by his disciples, and in the end to death on the cross.
But there is a bigger narrative in the Bible as well, which you might describe as from innocence to innocence, or innocence lost and innocence regained (if Milton will forgive this misappropriation!). In the Garden of Eden is pure innocence, which is lost through the ‘apple’, and immediately peace and right relationships are replaced with fear and accusation. Genesis 3 onwards paints the picture of an increasing downward and outward spiral of violence as humanity drifts further from God and his goodness. However, the ultimate end of the picture is a new creation, and renewed innocence, where there will be no more tears, suffering, pain or death. Where the created order will co-exist once more in peace and innocence and which – despite the cynics cheap accusations of boredom – will be absolutely wonderful.
Do I always achieve innocence? Of course not. But I’m going to keep on trying, and perhaps draw a little closer to the Kingdom of God in the process, and hopefully spread some of its joy and peace along the way.
One of the questions that the Bishop asked me in the pre-ordination interview was “Where was God in Grenfell Tower?” The context was a reporter from Sky News (say) holding a microphone up to my face.
The question stayed with me throughout my pre-ordination retreat – not so much because of theodicy (aka “why does God allow suffering?”), but more because conversations with the other ordinands, the bible readings, and my own reflections have cast it in several different lights.
Let’s be clear – the events at Grenfell Tower were horrific. I had to turn off Radio 4 when I was driving because the stories being told were so upsetting and harrowing that I was in real danger of weeping (not good when driving) and/or crashing the car. This isn’t a sterile theological exercise, or an attempt to justify or apologise for God. I have no answer for why He didn’t intervene, and – idolatrous as it is – if I were God I can’t help thinking I would have done something. Yet He didn’t stop the fire. Scores, maybe yet more than a hundred innocent people – some of the babies and children – were burnt to death, many by following the official (and good, in normal circumstances) advice. It has broken our hearts.
There is no easy answer. There may be no answer at all. And it seems to me that there is a serious danger of being insulting and disrespectful to the victims and survivors. I write this entry with the refrain “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” very much in the front of my mind. I also don’t think that God needs defending or justifying, although it is only natural to try to understand how the God of love, the God who is love, can allow these senseless tragedies to happen.
My response in my interview was that God was and is right there. In the incredible stories of sacrifice, courage, and love. In the firefighters entering that building to try and save people. In the money raised, food and clothes offered, accommodation provided. In the neighbours banging and shouting on one another’s doors. He was comforting those who mourn. So while I can’t answer the question “why did God allow this”, I fully affirm that God was there, fully present and suffering with those who suffered. The Bishop spoke (and I paraphrase) of mess – that the world is messy, and God is in the mess. He embraces it. He stretches wide his arms to welcome us, and we see the ultimate expression of God entering into the mess, and stretching wide his arms on the cross, in the person of Jesus Christ.
To go back to my own thoughts, I have also found myself reminded that God is in the business of redemption – which could be described as bringing good things out of bad. Grenfell was unmitigatedly bad, but I have faith that God can, has, and will bring good out of it, as hard as this is to stomach or fathom.
It is worth reflecting that it is increasingly clear that human sin is at the heart of this tragedy – the age old story of the (relatively) rich and powerful thriving so at the expense of the poor and powerless. This story goes back to the Old Testament, and issues of Righteousness and Justice (mishpat and tsadaq in Hebrew), which are close to God’s heart, especially regarding the poor and oppressed. In this case, cheap(er) but highly flammable cladding was used on the building, with no regard for the occupants safety. Please understand, in no way am I talking about punishment – it is the innocent who have suffered. Yet if we do want to point the finger of blame, does it really point to heaven? And, as uncomfortable as it may be, most of us have played a part in creating a society and culture within which events like Grenfell happen. Maybe this is in part what Jesus was getting at in Luke 13, when he responded to a similar question with the answer “repent” (as was pointed out to me by someone else at the retreat).
The fire on the 14th June was a senseless and avoidable tragedy, beyond our comprehension. Yet I also believe this life isn’t the whole story, and that God through Jesus, can redeem and overcome all darkness, as He did that first Easter. But in the meantime I weep with those who weep, do what I can to help, and firmly believe that God is with us in the mess, embracing us and inviting us to sit and eat with him.
The passage was Matthew 6:5-13, which is Jesus teaching on prayer, including the Lord’s prayer. I like my sermons to have a bit of interaction, so we spent a bit of time talking about what prayer actually is (and isn’t), before I spoke a bit about my own experience of prayer, in particular praying the Daily Office. There is a choice we face each morning – a crossroads, if you like. We can set aside the time to pray; or we can allow it to be squeezed out by the inevitable demands of daily life. In my experience, whether or not Morning Prayer gets squeezed out sets the tone for the whole day. When I start the day with prayer, I find my approach to the day, my focus, and my responses are much closer to how I would want to respond. However, when I don’t prayer, the opposite happens, and I don’t respond well to the day’s events.
