Eternal Life, Quality vs Quantity

Christmas. Jesus. Baby. Manger. Hay. Doting parents. Awestruck shepherds. Nonchalant livestock. It's surely the ultimate divine comedy that God answered Mary and Joseph's frantic prayers for a room in a B&B by providing a parking space for their donkey instead. So who was he, this holy infant so tender and mild? Why did he come? What did his words mean? How should his actions be interpreted?

Probably the most famously used abbreviation of this remarkable life is the one found in John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life'. As it happens I've been thinking a lot lately about this eternal life. I'm far from convinced that it is at all synonymous with the much loved idea of 'going to heaven'. ‘Perishing’ has always struck me as being a greengrocer sort of image. We have a fancy silver bowl in our kitchen that frequently contains perishing fruits of various types. Leave them in there long enough and they'll all perish into various forms of fungus and fuzz. None of them have eternal life. You see the things of this world deteriorate. There is a peak of life, energy, vitality (that I passed many moons ago) and beyond this zenith life grows less and less. The words of Jesus quoted in John 3:16 seem to be suggesting that God desires to gift to us, through his son, a state of being with the fear of rot removed, a permanent peak, no morning after the night before.

Related to this, I find that all too often, at mention of the phrase ‘eternal life’, my mind races off into the future searching out to measure the length of that promised infinity. This of course produces nothing but an ‘error’ message in the brain, the concept of eternity is as troubling as it is promising. But what if I were to consider ‘eternal life’ in terms of quality- a fruit of spectacular taste and texture, rather than quantity - a fruit with no best-before date. Do you get me? I think I'm trying to say, what if the linear dimension of time were not my singular reference point, but rather I managed to gain a glimpse into a life being lived in and measured by fullness. And after all, wasn’t the language of fullness used very interchangeably with the language of eternity in the words of Jesus, and later of the Apostles too, most notably Paul?

Anyway, to draw this to a close, suffice to say, this Christmas I’m trying to remember that Jesus came to open the way for me first and foremost into a quality of life, with the quantity of that life finding relevance merely as a shadow finds relevance from a solid object. Is that a bit too philosophical for Christmas Day?

Stretching the Truth

'Stretching the truth' is a turn of phrase that you might use to describe a kid who is trying to give a plausible excuse to her maths teacher for why she hasn't done her homework on time. But does truth actually possess elastic qualities? Can it be stretched? If truth isn't elastic does that render it brittle? If it is, does it have an elastic limit beyond which it will... snnaaAP!
These questions are important to me because of the faith-journey I find myself on. I feel like I'm in a very dynamic place where there's a lot of movement going on, movement that I'm part of. (a dance?) It's very different from where I was a few years ago which felt a lot like standing on sinking sand. But with so much movement all around the challenge is to locate those fixed points that offer reliable orientation and prevent the onset of nausea!
I'll be having some friends round on Saturday morning to talk about this sort of stuff. I'm really looking forward to it, especially as there will be a whole range of positions and perspectives represented. Where will we end up? I really don't know, but that's the exciting thing. I don't know if the truth can be stretched, but I can, I want to be.

"Faith alone is certainty. Everything but faith is subject to doubt. Jesus Christ alone is the certainty of faith." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

The Beeb's Passion

I've just finished watching the final episode of The Passion on BBC One. It's been a great little series, the recreation of ancient Jerusalem felt particularly convincing (of course how would I know what ancient Jerusalem looked like!). The emphasis on the three way power struggle was a great angle on the story, particularly the Caiaphas character. I loved the tension between the protectors of the present order, Pilate representing the political and military might of Rome and Caiaphas representing the religious and cultural establishment of the Jewish homeland, both under threat by the stranger from Galilee who speaks of a new way and a new world. It reminded me again of the contagious revolutionary DNA Jesus carried.
But today is Easter Sunday, and ever since the first episode I've been feeling that this series would ultimately stand or fall by how well the resurrection was rendered. So what do I think? Well hey, a damn sight better than Jesus Christ Superstar which doesn't even include the resurrection, and I hesitate to say, even better than Mel Gibson's version with it's short but very sweet resurrection moment from inside the tomb looking out. Even so, it was still a tad underwhelming. The producer, Nigel Stafford-Clark, references Mark's gospel as his key source which may well be the problem, it's probably the least potent of the four resurrection accounts. If only he'd taken a broader creative approach the scenes could've been so much stronger, even simple touches like the location and the lighting would've helped as the dusty old hillside he used just had zero atmosphere. However, what saved it for me was the inclusion of the Emmaus road encounter (albeit with James and Matthew). I did find it genuinely moving to see their reaction as the guy they're eating with starts to break bread and then reveals his true face before their eyes.

Passion Week

I'm really looking forward to the BBC miniseries due to start on Sunday. There is no greater drama than those scenes surrounding Jesus of Nazareth during that fateful Passover festival 2000 years ago. For a few short days the Jerusalem air was filled with a heady cocktail of parody, irony, anger, love, justice, corruption, betrayal, loss, hope and belief. The world has never been the same.

"...but this is a Christian nation!"

"...but this is a Christian nation!" So ends another whining diatribe against the latest secular or islamic or humanistic or homo-erotic or politically correct initiative / incident / news story.
Two things collided this week to remind me again just how misguided these passionately held sentiments are. Firstly, I've been reading the Old Testament books of Jeremiah and Daniel, alongside Brueggemann's 'The Prophetic Imagination'. Then, midweek, Channel 4 showed 'Kingdom of Heaven' and whilst the film as a whole was largely a disappointment to me it was still thought provoking on a number of levels. At one point in the film Jeremy Irons delivers a line about Jerusalem (and I wish I could remember it) that evokes the contradiction at the heart of that much used phrase "Christian nation." The blood that has been shed over that dusty bit of land is utterly heinous. Jesus himself made it absolutely clear that his intention was not to establish a Kingdom with geographic borders but a Kingdom defined by a Way of life, exemplified by people of every ethnos living in relationship with him and harmony with one another.
And where do Jeremiah and Daniel fit into that? Well they are just two of the characters we meet in the grand timeline of biblical history who are doing exactly what we (Christians in 21st Century Britain) ought to be doing - working out by our daily choices and actions exactly what it means to honour God and live for him in the midst of a society that revolves around a very different centre of gravity. The quirk of global history known as Christendom is over and we find ourselves living out the same question as our biblical forebears - those who sweated in Egypt, wept in Babylon and faced down Caesar's lions... "How can we prove the value of our convictions over-against the current socio-political backdrop?"

Contagious holiness

In contrast to the traditional view that uncleanness was contagious, Jesus regarded holiness as contagious. The physician is not overcome by those who are ill, but rather overcomes their illness. Thus Jesus touches people who have leprosy, or who are unclean or sick or women, without fear of contamination. Jesus is not rendered unclean by the contact; rather, those whom society regarded as defiled are made clean. Holiness, he saw, was not something to be protected; rather, it was God's miraculous power of transformation. God's holiness cannot be soiled; rather, it is a cleansing and healing agent. It does not need to be shut up and quarantined in the temple; it is now, through Jesus' healings and fellowship with the despised and rejected, breaking out into the world to transform it.

Walter Wink, The Powers That be: Theology for a New Millennium

The Story...

I've heard hundreds of people attempt to communicate the big story we find ourselves in. Different people have different views - emphasis is placed here, there or somewhere else. As a way of ordering my thoughts I've had a go myself. So here it is, 'The Story of God + Us' using just 10 pictures. I have some words too but it's getting late and tomorrow's my first day back at work. Maybe it's better if you make up your own narration anyway ;-)

Happy New Year!

Insurgency of Love

"When a nation is conquered and occupied by another nation, insurgent movements seek to expel the occupiers. The insurgents see themselves not as criminals or rebels fighting a legitimate authority, but rather as a resistance movement fighting occupiers of injustice. They are freedom fighters seeking liberation from tyranny; they are a legitimate power seeking to expel an illegitimate one...
...everyone is caught up in the ultimate vicious cycle of terror and counterterror, violence and counterviolence, hate and counterhate. We can only escape by defecting from this whole vicious, suicidal system... walking away from the king in Rome, walking away from the armed rebels who dream of overthrowing him, and following a weaponless prophet in Galilee...
...seemingly disparate people defect and band together in the way of Jesus... they secretly plot detonations of hope. They quietly conspire to set off explosions of kindness. The plan gentle coup d'etats to replace regimes of domination and oppression with movements of empowerment and service. In a complete overthrow of violent terrorism, they fly planes of generosity into towers of need and plant improvised encouragement devices by roadsides in neighborhoods everywhere..."

from Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope by Brian McLaren

On the importance of tents

I'm pretty sure that my most quoted verse in the whole bible is John 1v14. It's the fulcrum of history. Eugene Peterson offers my favourite rendering of it, "The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood." But you don't need to know more than very basic Greek to recognise that all the various translations are paraphrasing a root noun that basically means tent. According to John, when Jesus appeared on the scene it was as if God was, 'pitching his tent among us.' So it would seem then that the humble tent now becomes a pretty important New Testament image (as indeed it was in the Old). However, it was only yesterday, doing some prep for a talk on the subject of worship that I came across this in Revelation chapter 7v15: "he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them". Same writer using the same metaphor. He clearly knows exactly what he's doing.
The importance of tents then? Well, don't you see? If the incarnation was merely a pitching of God's tent among us, what we can look forward to eschatologically is that great day when we will be fully enveloped within the tent of God. And even for someone with a deep-rooted loathing of camping, that sounds very cool indeed.

A story of two gardens

I've been thinking recently that the story of the bible is in many ways a story of two gardens.

In the first garden (Genesis 3) we find a man and a woman playing the blame game and going through the pain of dislocation from the one who gives meaning to their lives. They are sent out of the garden disgraced and disillusioned.

In the second garden (John 20) we find a man and a woman. But this man treats the woman very differently. He wipes away her tears, removes her shame and restores her to her purpose. She is sent from the garden rejoicing. Go and tell of the victory... sing Miriam sing... God has made a way through the sea, the time of slavery is over!

It's not surprising that the apostle Paul calls this man in the second garden the 'last Adam'.

Forrest Gump Christianity

Forrest Gump was an endearing character and when the film came out in 1994 it took the world by storm. It won 6 oscars (nominated for 13), it had a top selling soundtrack, it tapped into something. Yes, he was slow, simple and made sense of the world around him through his mothers childish proverbs. But as Forrest Gump blundered through life amazing things happened to him and he did amazing things.
And that touches us deep inside.
Because we yearn for simplicity in a complicated world.
We shrink from the responsibility of being grown up.
It’s comforting to believe that we’re OK as we are, that we don’t need to change, that good things will happen to us because we’re good people.
And so we can make a nice comfortable theology for ourselves by plucking verses from here and there; that we don’t need to worry because God clothes the flowers of the field, or that we must simply come to him as little children, or that his house has many rooms and one day he’ll come and take us there… but who are we trying to kid? Jesus did not live a Forrest Gump style existence! Neither did he appear on the earth as a finished product - an all-knowing rugrat revealing universal mysteries at the Bethlehem mums and tots group. He needed to grow into all his human potential just like we do. The bible says that he, "grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men." (Luke 2:52) Later it says that "in all things" we need to "grow up into him". (Ephesians 4:15)
No matter how much we want our growing pains to come to an end we should just think first what it really means to stop growing... it means we start dying.

Turning the tables

Prompted by a conversation I had in a coffee shop the other day I've been thinking about the story of Jesus getting mad with the money-changers and traders in Jerusalem's temple courts. The writers of the four gospels all give us slightly different perspectives on the event and therefore the variations in the text offer shades of meaning. But going beyond the words into a bit of architecture takes us even deeper. The key thing in this story may well be not simply what the traders were doing but where they were doing it. I don't know a lot about the Temple but I know this, the spacious outer courts were known as the 'Courts of the Gentiles' and according to the Law unless you were a full-blooded Jew you couldn't get any closer than this in your desire for connection with God. How significant then that as he violently throws over the tables Jesus shouts out the words of Isaiah 56, the classic prophecy relating to God's desire to welcome foreigners into his presence, which of course contains these wonderful words, "my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations."
I've never considered before that Jesus wasn't simply embarking on some puritan vendetta against the sharks and the charlatans; he was reclaiming worship space for the foreigners, he was making a statement about the way the practices of those who are already in the in-crowd impact those who are still trying to find their way in. The anger was a venting of holy steam - God's own desperation to receive the worship of the seekers and the wanderers. The challenge to us today is are we still building temples of exclusion? Are we cluttering the outer courts, the fringe space in which those hungry to know God can come as they are without discrimination? God forgive us if we are.

Is God good?

For quite a while now I've been struggling with large chunks of the Old Testament. By struggling I mean finding it hard to engage with passages of scripture from my 21st century perspective, for example the amount of wanton and apparently God-sanctioned or even God-initiated violence. So on the whole I've buried my head in the gospels and hoped that I might be able to just ignore all that stuff. But of course it's impossible to ignore all that stuff as one of the amazing things about the bible is the continuity of it's meta-narrative and for better or worse those ancient tales make up a large part of it.
The other day I was challenged to re-engage with this stuff and to see what deeper examination of the text might reveal, so I did. So far I've just looked at the first 7 chapters of Joshua (one of the most bloodthirsty books) and guess what I found... Prior to embarking on the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of Jericho the zealous Joshua has an encounter:
"Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord have for his servant?" The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." Joshua 5:13-15.
Fascinating. Bible scholars pretty much all agree that this incident was a christophany. And what message is delivered to Joshua? "I'm not taking sides here OK." And then he goes on to remind Joshua of the sanctity of the world in which he has been granted leadership responsibility. Even more fascinating then reading on to chapter 6 when: "the LORD said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men." (v2). Er, did you hear that Joshua? According to the rules of engagement your army may put to the sword the enlisted men of the city, but who mentioned the women and the children? The NIV tactfully translates the genocide of the city as a 'devotion' to the Lord. Interestingly chapter 7 begins with God's anger burning against Israel because of the 'devoted things'. I'm no Hebrew scholar but seems to me that this incident is not at all what it first seems. What truth is hiding in that opaque language? I'm now wondering how many more of these Old Testament stories may have similar undercurrents? I'll do some more digging and let you know what I find.

When Jim met Jon

This dates back a couple of years but I'd never seen it before, it's Jim Wallis on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I reckon it's one of the best examples I've seen of a Christian communitcating to culture (with the exception of Bono's various public rants and prayers!). Check it out and let me know what you think.

Our 3 journeys

About 2 years ago I came across a concept called 'LifeShapes' in a book called The Passionate Church, by Mike Breen. The book was written in a way that would naturally appeal to anyone with a picture-oriented mind like me. One of the images that's stayed with me was a reflection drawn from the lifestyle of Jesus in Luke 6:12 -19. Imagine an equilateral triangle drawn on a page, the top points Up, the left points In and the right points Out. Up refers to our relationship with God, In refers to our relationship with each other and Out refers to our relationship with the wider world around us.

Well, a few days ago I just found a very similar concept being used by an emerging church group in Australia (right), which appears to have been developed entirely on its own with no reference to Mike's book. I find this really encouraging because it shows me that God is working around the world revealing his ways to people who put their trust in him. The way a certain revelation is understood and communicated may differ, after all any illustration, whether visual or verbal, is just an imperfect attempt to grasp a truth. In this case we have two perspectives on a single simple reality - we need God, we need friends, and we need to reach the world.

Evolution? Reincarnation? Resurrection?

Readers of my established blog Urban Faithscape will be aware that I recently threatened to commit blog suicide. And I did. Except I'm clearly not dead - I'm here. So 'Hi, happy new year!' What's happened to me in the transition from 06 to 07? In short, I've changed. Will you notice the change? I hope so - I hope it's a change for the better. Unlike Neo in The Matrix I don't seem to have gained any special new powers on this side of my resurrection, which is a tad disappointing. What I do have though is that new level of determination and focus that a new year brings. What am I determined and focused about? Simply this: to write a blog which is useful to people other than myself. Over the 18 months or so that I've been blogging it's been basically a cathartic exercise. I empty out my thoughts and, rather like Dumbledore with his Pensieve, stir them around a bit to try and make sense of them. This meant that Urban Faithscape became a highly eclectic mix of news and views (it's all archived so you can see for yourself). My desire for Faithscape 21 is to attempt to deal more consciously with issues relevant to 21st century people trying to live in a way that will make Jesus smile. I hope that lots of you will join me on the journey.