Category: Religion

Facebook Faith

Brian Draper has written about Facebook in this week’s LICC Connecting With Culture column. Dave Warnock has recently written two posts on the phenomenon.

Recently I too, succumbed, and set up a profile. I’m too old for MySpace, whose grotty layouts seem to reflect the acne of its most avid users. I only like checking out bands on it, because it’s a great way to preview their music (that’s how I recently got into Duke Special). Facebook seems a little more grown-up, which may be surprising, given its origins among students. Expanding beyond the American student communities and opening up its API to outside developers to produce new applications have both been significant ‘growing up’ actions. Linkedin seems too much about CVs, job hunting and head-hunting – which makes it inappropriate for my particular calling/profession.

For me, Facebook is currently functioning like a broader Friends Reunited. I’ve belonged to that for a few years and made contact with some old school friends, but it’s limited by needing to know the school/college/workplace someone was at. They joy of the last few days on Facebook has been to find again old friends I worked with, especially from ecumenical youth ministry in Hertford in the mid-1990s. I have to remember it isn’t the same as face-to-face contact. It’s a helpful second best to meeting up again with these people who meant the world to me. I’ve never had friends like I had there.

Draper talks about how Facebook could prompt us into strengthening (or renewing?) friendships in their proper sense. He also talks about how well we know ourselves and are known by ourselves and God. Disclosure is an interesting theme for faith and the web. There is the question of how much self-disclosure we engage in online, and open ourselves to the risk of identity theft. It becomes a parallel to the way we fear to open up face-to-face with people, perhaps due to bad past experiences of the wisdom of caution. Jesus didn’t entrust himself to everyone, because he knew what was in their hearts. But – as we know increasingly these days – ‘story’ is vital. Our story and its part in God’s great story is significant, not least because it touches others. In this sense ‘testimony’ is of course much more than a conversion account (as it always should have been).

But Draper’s other comment about how well we know others is one that hits me as a minister, especially in a week when I am consumed with funerals. Whenever I take the funeral of someone I knew in a congregation, I always learn things from their loved ones that I never knew before. That happened to me on Wednesday. I conducted the service for a saint who, in the two years I had known him, had been ravaged by Alzheimer’s Disease. In the address I pointed to 1 Corinthians 13:12, where Paul says that now we look through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face-to-face; we shall know, even as we are fully known (by God). God doesn’t need Facebook; we have his profile elsewhere: Jesus said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father, and even then, there is more to know of God. But for dear David who died, the Gospel is that not only is his knowledge healed back from the distortions of what it was before Alzheimer’s caused its two deaths (the death of his personality and then the death of his body), he now knows better than he ever did. He knows ‘as he is fully known.’

Facebook can’t do any of that for us, but whatever its faults I am convinced it can be a kingdom of God tool. I don’t mean that we just post a Christian application on our profile. I mean that it can help us get going on that process of knowing one another’s story in the great story of God. That then has to be followed up, and that has to mean incarnationally, in flesh and blood, not the ones and zeros of the digital world.

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The Religion Of Branding

I’ve just found this three-year-old interview with Naomi Klein about the problem of branding. Here are some extracts which bear Christian reflection:

In a marketplace where it’s so easy to produce products, where your
competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need
to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added
value is the identity, the idea behind your brand. And this is spoken
of in many different ways, “the story behind the brand.” I don’t think
we can understand this phenomenon just in terms of how easy it is to
produce products. I think it also has to do with a reaction to a
culture in the ’80s where people were longing for some kind of deeper
meaning in their lives.So what brands started selling was a kind of pseudo-spirituality — a
sense of belonging, a community. So brands started filling a gap that
citizens, not just consumers, used to get elsewhere, whether from
religion, whether from a sense of belonging in their community….

How has branding moved into politics?
I think it was when George Bush went to Baghdad for Thanksgiving and
held up the turkey. I have a friend who says that since September 11,
she’s felt as if she’s been living in a movie. What I realized when I
saw that image was that, in fact, it’s not that American politics is
being influenced by Hollywood, but that it’s being deeply influenced by
Madison Avenue. That image with Bush holding the turkey was a
quintessential advertising image. It was more than just a political
photo op. He was being treated in a sense as a corporate mascot — not
as a president, but the corporate mascot of the nation. That image of
holding that platter is a quintessential advertising image, almost like
Aunt Jemima, the early brand images of the comforting corporate mascot

What do you say to the American who feels overwhelmed by all this?
One other thing I wanted to say is that I do think that we care more
than we’re given credit for. And I always think it’s quite amazing that
after September 11, there was this amazing outpouring of caring. And
the response from the government of the U.S., from Bush, was, “Go
shopping.” And it wasn’t just once or twice. Essentially the entire
government response after September 11 in terms of what individuals
could do to make a difference was to shop. There was a big campaign in
Canada; we got in on this, and we had “Canada Loves New York” weekends,
where we would just come here and shop. And the idea that … the
greatest way to express solidarity with people is through consumption,
when people were responding in ways that were much, much more
significant and human, and [were] helping each other in a time of need,
and [then they were] told by the government: “No, do something really
isolated; just shop. Save your country; support people that way.”How do we wake up?

Can we break this cycle of artifice?
I don’t think there’s a way out of this until we actually — not to
get too New Age here — but I think we really need to ask ourselves
what we’re honestly shopping for when we’re shopping. Sometimes you’re
really just shopping because you need something, but shopping is now
the primary leisure activity, the primary family activity, and a lot of
it is extraordinarily un-fun and unsatisfying. And I think that it is
important to ask yourselves what you’re actually shopping for. If you
are shopping for community, if you are shopping for democracy, you
actually are not going to get it at the mall. And you will only be
cured of this particular malaise if you find ways to fulfill those
desires elsewhere. That’s certainly the only way I kicked my shopping
habit.

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Blogging Towards Postmodern (Evangelical?) Faith

I’ve just had a book, A New Kind Of Conversation, drawn to my attention. It results from the blog of the same name, and aims to explore by a blogging conversation that includes the likes of Brian McLaren what it means to develop postmodern Christian faith, at least in part from evangelical roots. I’ve added it to my Amazon wish list, although reading it will have to wait for a little while: next on my pile to read is the Martyn Atkins book Resourcing Renewal.

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Tomorrow’s Sermon: Jesus Wasn’t Nice

Luke 12:49-56

Introduction
Popular myths: St George slew the dragon. Satanists run
Procter and Gamble. The Government is to fund a huge mosque in east
London. Scientists
drilling in Siberia drilled too far, and punched a hole into Hell, where
they heard the screams of the damned. Britain is a Christian country. If you’re
good, you go to heaven.

And ‘Jesus was nice’. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild – and all
that. We make Jesus out to be nicer than he was. This reading bears little
resemblance to such a picture of him. Fire, suffering, divided families and
castigating people for not interpreting the times. It isn’t what we regularly
assume about him. And it doesn’t fit our popular assumptions of him. We want to
believe that Jesus brings peace – and there are other passages that certainly
back up that sentiment. But come with me on a journey through this unsettling
passage, because the disturbing and challenging content of Jesus’ words here
are vital for our life and health.

1. Chaos
We often like to do things in good order in the church. In Methodism, one
rationale behind largely limiting the leadership of sacramental services to
ministers is that we are the ones who can keep ‘good order’ at them! With the
change of the church from a grassroots Jesus movement to a monolithic
institution, the requirement for good order has become paramount to many. It
seems to be part of our culture.

But Jesus hardly describes ‘good order’ as the fruit of his
coming:

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were
already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I
am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to
the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one
household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will
be divided:
father against son
   and son against father,
mother against daughter
   and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
   and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’
(verses 49-53)

The fire of purification; a baptism of suffering for Jesus
himself; and families divided over their response to Jesus. It hardly sounds
like good order! Perhaps ‘chaos’ would be a better word.

We are not used to thinking that chaos is good and order is
bad; certainly, Debbie gets frustrated by the chaos that is often seen on my
study desk – especially as she has to share it! But chaos can be a good thing. It
can be creative. Staying at the point of chaos can be the place where we
discover positive ways forward.

Order, on the other hand, is often something that comes with
decline and stagnation. Perhaps you have heard the saying that the most orderly
place on earth is … the graveyard. Might it be that Jesus is thrusting us into
chaos for the sake of God’s kingdom?

That may be an extraordinary statement to make, so let me
unpack it. Here I have been stimulated by the work of Alan Hirsch and his book The
Forgotten Ways. He refers to the study of what is called ‘chaos theory’,
which is very helpful for the church in charting the unfamiliar waters of
today’s culture, which are so different from recent centuries.

For Christians, the point is this: often the most formative
times for the people of God have been periods of danger. Israel arose with a
distinct identity out of suffering in Egypt, the plagues, the deliverance at
the Red Sea, and forty years in the wilderness. The Church appeared out of the
crucifixion of Christ, and the persecution of the early disciples. Jesus alludes
to such in this passage: his baptism of suffering, and division within families
over allegiance to him.

You could say – and many do – that we face a crisis in the
church today. Declining numbers, especially of younger generations, put our
future at risk. We are also further to the margins of society than the centre. It’s
natural to worry. I sometimes wonder whether there will be a Methodist Church
around to pay my pension!

The temptation is to opt for survival, but that is more
risky to our future than riding the storm. What would have happened if Jesus
had opted for survival? We would never have had his atoning death, there would
not have been the joy of Easter morning and … there would be no Christian
Church. Jesus calls us to face the storm, and that will mean a number of
things.

It will mean a different approach to Christian leadership. Many
churches still want ministers who can keep the old repertoire of pastoral care,
nurture, cascading orders down from the ‘top’ and managing the system. That might
work well in a stable, unchanging world – but we are no longer in such a
situation. Facing chaos requires leaders who will be open about the bad news
and not promise a false ‘peace in our time’. It requires leaders who won’t go
through the established tricks and tips, but be ready to lead into the unknown,
not implementing a formula nor dictating from above, but recognising that everyone
has a part to play in finding the way forward, perhaps especially those who are
on the margins – as Jesus himself was.

Put it another way: equilibrium is death. The Christian
Church may have begun in an exciting and dynamic form, but it has declined over
the years into tired, stable, safe institutions. Every now and then, a renewal
movement arises – Methodism was one – which shares the dynamism of the early
church. But it too decays into a static and moribund form. To live productively
in chaos means the church has to embrace being consistently disturbed out of
her quiet equilibrium. She needs to love change – not change for the sake of
fashion, but change for the sake of mission.

I remember a survey of favourite hymns at my home church
when I was a teenager. The top choice was:

In heavenly love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear,
And safe is such confiding,
For nothing changes here.

The love of God never changes, but I imagined some people
singing the line, ‘For nothing changes here’ with particular vigour! The love
of God doesn’t change, the Gospel is constant, but the Church ever has to
change for the sake of mission. She needs to stay on the edge of chaos, facing
the problems, because there she will find the creative ways forward. She will
not give into the culture – that is the classic liberal mistake – but hold the
tension between Gospel, Church and culture in order to press on for the kingdom
of God. How we organise and run things only emerges from getting our hands
dirty in risky mission. Rather than fine-tuning the existing organisation, we
edge forward in new ways.

These, then, are the chaotic ways of fire, the baptism of suffering
and even division. They are not remotely like the play-safe version of church with
which we are so familiar. But they are the Jesus way of church.

2. Signs
What do you think when you watch the weather forecast? Last week, while on
holiday, without digital television or the Internet for 24-hours-a-day weather
forecasts, Debbie and I watched the standard forecast at the end of the 10:00
news. At the end of each bulletin she said, ‘Let’s hope it’s not as bad as they
think.’ And generally, it wasn’t. Unlike most of the country, we only had one
wet day. We know that in the UK, the weather forecasts, however scientific, are
an art of approximation. I am no meteorologist, but we seem subject to a large
dose of the random in our weather.

It wasn’t like that in Jesus’ culture:

He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in
the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. And
when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”;
and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of
earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
(verses 54-56)

Rain would come from the west, picking up moisture from the
Mediterranean Sea; winds from the south or south-west would be desert winds,
bringing heat from the desert.[1]
Reading the weather signs was easy in first century Palestine!

Yet – they can’t follow the signs of the times. But what
does Jesus mean by this? Down the ages, Christians have given some extravagant
and crazy answers to this. When I was a teenage Christian in the 1970s, it was
all Hal Lindsey with his book ‘The Late
Great Planet Earth’, predicting the end of the world at the hands of
Communist China and the – ahem – Soviet Union. But Jesus is not about making
wacky predictions. The ‘present time’ he refers to is his own ministry, and if
that gives signs for the future, it’s surely about the importance of responding
to him as he ushers in the kingdom of God by his life, teaching, death,
resurrection and ascension. All that Jesus is and does points to the need to
centre life on him.

Let me put it this way. Since coming to Chelmsford, I have
from time to time attended Chelmsford Theological
Society. Now don’t let the words ‘Theological Society’ put you off – what I’m
about to say isn’t complicated! In January last year I heard a lecture by Mike Higton
entitled, ‘Reading The Signs Of The Times’. One simple point he made was this. Many
people tell you that God has a special plan for your life – well, he revealed his
plan for you two thousand years ago on the Cross. God’s plan for you and me is
Christ crucified, and all that entails.

Which makes this a useful counterbalance to all the stuff in
my first point about chaos. Yes, the ministry of Jesus means that we need not
to turn from the chaos but ride on the edge of it into the future, because that
is what the Saviour did and calls us to do. But that doesn’t mean we have to
become experts in predicting the future. Far from it! We hold onto Christ and
his Cross, while facing the eye of the storm. The Cross is our anchor. All that
it reveals about the inability of human beings to save themselves and makes
themselves acceptable to God on their own terms grounds us. All that it tells
us about the lavish love and passionate grace of God in the face of human sin
keeps our feet steady.

On 27th September 1997, the Daily Telegraph carried this story:

Wiltshire police were alarmed to come across a coachload of
Japanese tourists standing in the middle of the A303, which is a very busy
road, taking photographs of Stonehenge. They didn’t seem to be worried by the
cars and lorries whizzing past them on both sides. It was only when the police
officers had shepherded the party off the road and onto the safety of the verge
that they discovered the reason why the tourists had thought they were safe. Pointing
to a speed camera sign by the side of the road, they explained that they had assumed
that this was a designated photography area.[2]

So don’t mistake the signs: you might be run over! The Cross
is always the ‘sign of the times’ for Christians. Let us keep our focus there,
and in doing so, let us be daring. The Cross will not allow us to settle for
the safe life. It will invite us into chaos, a revolutionary chaos whose tumult
leads us into God’s future for his people, not the stagnant ditchwater of tired
human institutions.

It’s the chaos of Cross-centred new life, or the orderliness
of the graveyard, then: which will we choose?

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

0

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Jesus Wasn’t Nice

Luke 12:49-56

Introduction
Popular myths: St George slew the dragon. Satanists run
Procter and Gamble. The Government is to fund a huge mosque in east
London. Scientists
drilling in Siberia drilled too far, and punched a hole into Hell, where
they heard the screams of the damned. Britain is a Christian country. If you’re
good, you go to heaven.

And ‘Jesus was nice’. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild – and all
that. We make Jesus out to be nicer than he was. This reading bears little
resemblance to such a picture of him. Fire, suffering, divided families and
castigating people for not interpreting the times. It isn’t what we regularly
assume about him. And it doesn’t fit our popular assumptions of him. We want to
believe that Jesus brings peace – and there are other passages that certainly
back up that sentiment. But come with me on a journey through this unsettling
passage, because the disturbing and challenging content of Jesus’ words here
are vital for our life and health.

1. Chaos
We often like to do things in good order in the church. In Methodism, one
rationale behind largely limiting the leadership of sacramental services to
ministers is that we are the ones who can keep ‘good order’ at them! With the
change of the church from a grassroots Jesus movement to a monolithic
institution, the requirement for good order has become paramount to many. It
seems to be part of our culture.

But Jesus hardly describes ‘good order’ as the fruit of his
coming:

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were
already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I
am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to
the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one
household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will
be divided:
father against son
   and son against father,
mother against daughter
   and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
   and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’
(verses 49-53)

The fire of purification; a baptism of suffering for Jesus
himself; and families divided over their response to Jesus. It hardly sounds
like good order! Perhaps ‘chaos’ would be a better word.

We are not used to thinking that chaos is good and order is
bad; certainly, Debbie gets frustrated by the chaos that is often seen on my
study desk – especially as she has to share it! But chaos can be a good thing. It
can be creative. Staying at the point of chaos can be the place where we
discover positive ways forward.

Order, on the other hand, is often something that comes with
decline and stagnation. Perhaps you have heard the saying that the most orderly
place on earth is … the graveyard. Might it be that Jesus is thrusting us into
chaos for the sake of God’s kingdom?

That may be an extraordinary statement to make, so let me
unpack it. Here I have been stimulated by the work of Alan Hirsch and his book The
Forgotten Ways. He refers to the study of what is called ‘chaos theory’,
which is very helpful for the church in charting the unfamiliar waters of
today’s culture, which are so different from recent centuries.

For Christians, the point is this: often the most formative
times for the people of God have been periods of danger. Israel arose with a
distinct identity out of suffering in Egypt, the plagues, the deliverance at
the Red Sea, and forty years in the wilderness. The Church appeared out of the
crucifixion of Christ, and the persecution of the early disciples. Jesus alludes
to such in this passage: his baptism of suffering, and division within families
over allegiance to him.

You could say – and many do – that we face a crisis in the
church today. Declining numbers, especially of younger generations, put our
future at risk. We are also further to the margins of society than the centre. It’s
natural to worry. I sometimes wonder whether there will be a Methodist Church
around to pay my pension!

The temptation is to opt for survival, but that is more
risky to our future than riding the storm. What would have happened if Jesus
had opted for survival? We would never have had his atoning death, there would
not have been the joy of Easter morning and … there would be no Christian
Church. Jesus calls us to face the storm, and that will mean a number of
things.

It will mean a different approach to Christian leadership. Many
churches still want ministers who can keep the old repertoire of pastoral care,
nurture, cascading orders down from the ‘top’ and managing the system. That might
work well in a stable, unchanging world – but we are no longer in such a
situation. Facing chaos requires leaders who will be open about the bad news
and not promise a false ‘peace in our time’. It requires leaders who won’t go
through the established tricks and tips, but be ready to lead into the unknown,
not implementing a formula nor dictating from above, but recognising that everyone
has a part to play in finding the way forward, perhaps especially those who are
on the margins – as Jesus himself was.

Put it another way: equilibrium is death. The Christian
Church may have begun in an exciting and dynamic form, but it has declined over
the years into tired, stable, safe institutions. Every now and then, a renewal
movement arises – Methodism was one – which shares the dynamism of the early
church. But it too decays into a static and moribund form. To live productively
in chaos means the church has to embrace being consistently disturbed out of
her quiet equilibrium. She needs to love change – not change for the sake of
fashion, but change for the sake of mission.

I remember a survey of favourite hymns at my home church
when I was a teenager. The top choice was:

In heavenly love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear,
And safe is such confiding,
For nothing changes here.

The love of God never changes, but I imagined some people
singing the line, ‘For nothing changes here’ with particular vigour! The love
of God doesn’t change, the Gospel is constant, but the Church ever has to
change for the sake of mission. She needs to stay on the edge of chaos, facing
the problems, because there she will find the creative ways forward. She will
not give into the culture – that is the classic liberal mistake – but hold the
tension between Gospel, Church and culture in order to press on for the kingdom
of God. How we organise and run things only emerges from getting our hands
dirty in risky mission. Rather than fine-tuning the existing organisation, we
edge forward in new ways.

These, then, are the chaotic ways of fire, the baptism of suffering
and even division. They are not remotely like the play-safe version of church with
which we are so familiar. But they are the Jesus way of church.

2. Signs
What do you think when you watch the weather forecast? Last week, while on
holiday, without digital television or the Internet for 24-hours-a-day weather
forecasts, Debbie and I watched the standard forecast at the end of the 10:00
news. At the end of each bulletin she said, ‘Let’s hope it’s not as bad as they
think.’ And generally, it wasn’t. Unlike most of the country, we only had one
wet day. We know that in the UK, the weather forecasts, however scientific, are
an art of approximation. I am no meteorologist, but we seem subject to a large
dose of the random in our weather.

It wasn’t like that in Jesus’ culture:

He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in
the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. And
when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”;
and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of
earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
(verses 54-56)

Rain would come from the west, picking up moisture from the
Mediterranean Sea; winds from the south or south-west would be desert winds,
bringing heat from the desert.[1]
Reading the weather signs was easy in first century Palestine!

Yet – they can’t follow the signs of the times. But what
does Jesus mean by this? Down the ages, Christians have given some extravagant
and crazy answers to this. When I was a teenage Christian in the 1970s, it was
all Hal Lindsey with his book ‘The Late
Great Planet Earth’, predicting the end of the world at the hands of
Communist China and the – ahem – Soviet Union. But Jesus is not about making
wacky predictions. The ‘present time’ he refers to is his own ministry, and if
that gives signs for the future, it’s surely about the importance of responding
to him as he ushers in the kingdom of God by his life, teaching, death,
resurrection and ascension. All that Jesus is and does points to the need to
centre life on him.

Let me put it this way. Since coming to Chelmsford, I have
from time to time attended Chelmsford Theological
Society. Now don’t let the words ‘Theological Society’ put you off – what I’m
about to say isn’t complicated! In January last year I heard a lecture by Mike Higton
entitled, ‘Reading The Signs Of The Times’. One simple point he made was this. Many
people tell you that God has a special plan for your life – well, he revealed his
plan for you two thousand years ago on the Cross. God’s plan for you and me is
Christ crucified, and all that entails.

Which makes this a useful counterbalance to all the stuff in
my first point about chaos. Yes, the ministry of Jesus means that we need not
to turn from the chaos but ride on the edge of it into the future, because that
is what the Saviour did and calls us to do. But that doesn’t mean we have to
become experts in predicting the future. Far from it! We hold onto Christ and
his Cross, while facing the eye of the storm. The Cross is our anchor. All that
it reveals about the inability of human beings to save themselves and makes
themselves acceptable to God on their own terms grounds us. All that it tells
us about the lavish love and passionate grace of God in the face of human sin
keeps our feet steady.

On 27th September 1997, the Daily Telegraph carried this story:

Wiltshire police were alarmed to come across a coachload of
Japanese tourists standing in the middle of the A303, which is a very busy
road, taking photographs of Stonehenge. They didn’t seem to be worried by the
cars and lorries whizzing past them on both sides. It was only when the police
officers had shepherded the party off the road and onto the safety of the verge
that they discovered the reason why the tourists had thought they were safe. Pointing
to a speed camera sign by the side of the road, they explained that they had assumed
that this was a designated photography area.[2]

So don’t mistake the signs: you might be run over! The Cross
is always the ‘sign of the times’ for Christians. Let us keep our focus there,
and in doing so, let us be daring. The Cross will not allow us to settle for
the safe life. It will invite us into chaos, a revolutionary chaos whose tumult
leads us into God’s future for his people, not the stagnant ditchwater of tired
human institutions.

It’s the chaos of Cross-centred new life, or the orderliness
of the graveyard, then: which will we choose?

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

0

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Jesus Wasn’t Nice

Luke 12:49-56

Introduction
Popular myths: St George slew the dragon. Satanists run
Procter and Gamble. The Government is to fund a huge mosque in east
London. Scientists
drilling in Siberia drilled too far, and punched a hole into Hell, where
they heard the screams of the damned. Britain is a Christian country. If you’re
good, you go to heaven.

And ‘Jesus was nice’. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild – and all
that. We make Jesus out to be nicer than he was. This reading bears little
resemblance to such a picture of him. Fire, suffering, divided families and
castigating people for not interpreting the times. It isn’t what we regularly
assume about him. And it doesn’t fit our popular assumptions of him. We want to
believe that Jesus brings peace – and there are other passages that certainly
back up that sentiment. But come with me on a journey through this unsettling
passage, because the disturbing and challenging content of Jesus’ words here
are vital for our life and health.

1. Chaos
We often like to do things in good order in the church. In Methodism, one
rationale behind largely limiting the leadership of sacramental services to
ministers is that we are the ones who can keep ‘good order’ at them! With the
change of the church from a grassroots Jesus movement to a monolithic
institution, the requirement for good order has become paramount to many. It
seems to be part of our culture.

But Jesus hardly describes ‘good order’ as the fruit of his
coming:

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were
already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I
am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to
the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one
household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will
be divided:
father against son
   and son against father,
mother against daughter
   and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
   and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’
(verses 49-53)

The fire of purification; a baptism of suffering for Jesus
himself; and families divided over their response to Jesus. It hardly sounds
like good order! Perhaps ‘chaos’ would be a better word.

We are not used to thinking that chaos is good and order is
bad; certainly, Debbie gets frustrated by the chaos that is often seen on my
study desk – especially as she has to share it! But chaos can be a good thing. It
can be creative. Staying at the point of chaos can be the place where we
discover positive ways forward.

Order, on the other hand, is often something that comes with
decline and stagnation. Perhaps you have heard the saying that the most orderly
place on earth is … the graveyard. Might it be that Jesus is thrusting us into
chaos for the sake of God’s kingdom?

That may be an extraordinary statement to make, so let me
unpack it. Here I have been stimulated by the work of Alan Hirsch and his book The
Forgotten Ways. He refers to the study of what is called ‘chaos theory’,
which is very helpful for the church in charting the unfamiliar waters of
today’s culture, which are so different from recent centuries.

For Christians, the point is this: often the most formative
times for the people of God have been periods of danger. Israel arose with a
distinct identity out of suffering in Egypt, the plagues, the deliverance at
the Red Sea, and forty years in the wilderness. The Church appeared out of the
crucifixion of Christ, and the persecution of the early disciples. Jesus alludes
to such in this passage: his baptism of suffering, and division within families
over allegiance to him.

You could say – and many do – that we face a crisis in the
church today. Declining numbers, especially of younger generations, put our
future at risk. We are also further to the margins of society than the centre. It’s
natural to worry. I sometimes wonder whether there will be a Methodist Church
around to pay my pension!

The temptation is to opt for survival, but that is more
risky to our future than riding the storm. What would have happened if Jesus
had opted for survival? We would never have had his atoning death, there would
not have been the joy of Easter morning and … there would be no Christian
Church. Jesus calls us to face the storm, and that will mean a number of
things.

It will mean a different approach to Christian leadership. Many
churches still want ministers who can keep the old repertoire of pastoral care,
nurture, cascading orders down from the ‘top’ and managing the system. That might
work well in a stable, unchanging world – but we are no longer in such a
situation. Facing chaos requires leaders who will be open about the bad news
and not promise a false ‘peace in our time’. It requires leaders who won’t go
through the established tricks and tips, but be ready to lead into the unknown,
not implementing a formula nor dictating from above, but recognising that everyone
has a part to play in finding the way forward, perhaps especially those who are
on the margins – as Jesus himself was.

Put it another way: equilibrium is death. The Christian
Church may have begun in an exciting and dynamic form, but it has declined over
the years into tired, stable, safe institutions. Every now and then, a renewal
movement arises – Methodism was one – which shares the dynamism of the early
church. But it too decays into a static and moribund form. To live productively
in chaos means the church has to embrace being consistently disturbed out of
her quiet equilibrium. She needs to love change – not change for the sake of
fashion, but change for the sake of mission.

I remember a survey of favourite hymns at my home church
when I was a teenager. The top choice was:

In heavenly love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear,
And safe is such confiding,
For nothing changes here.

The love of God never changes, but I imagined some people
singing the line, ‘For nothing changes here’ with particular vigour! The love
of God doesn’t change, the Gospel is constant, but the Church ever has to
change for the sake of mission. She needs to stay on the edge of chaos, facing
the problems, because there she will find the creative ways forward. She will
not give into the culture – that is the classic liberal mistake – but hold the
tension between Gospel, Church and culture in order to press on for the kingdom
of God. How we organise and run things only emerges from getting our hands
dirty in risky mission. Rather than fine-tuning the existing organisation, we
edge forward in new ways.

These, then, are the chaotic ways of fire, the baptism of suffering
and even division. They are not remotely like the play-safe version of church with
which we are so familiar. But they are the Jesus way of church.

2. Signs
What do you think when you watch the weather forecast? Last week, while on
holiday, without digital television or the Internet for 24-hours-a-day weather
forecasts, Debbie and I watched the standard forecast at the end of the 10:00
news. At the end of each bulletin she said, ‘Let’s hope it’s not as bad as they
think.’ And generally, it wasn’t. Unlike most of the country, we only had one
wet day. We know that in the UK, the weather forecasts, however scientific, are
an art of approximation. I am no meteorologist, but we seem subject to a large
dose of the random in our weather.

It wasn’t like that in Jesus’ culture:

He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in
the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. And
when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”;
and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of
earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
(verses 54-56)

Rain would come from the west, picking up moisture from the
Mediterranean Sea; winds from the south or south-west would be desert winds,
bringing heat from the desert.[1]
Reading the weather signs was easy in first century Palestine!

Yet – they can’t follow the signs of the times. But what
does Jesus mean by this? Down the ages, Christians have given some extravagant
and crazy answers to this. When I was a teenage Christian in the 1970s, it was
all Hal Lindsey with his book ‘The Late
Great Planet Earth’, predicting the end of the world at the hands of
Communist China and the – ahem – Soviet Union. But Jesus is not about making
wacky predictions. The ‘present time’ he refers to is his own ministry, and if
that gives signs for the future, it’s surely about the importance of responding
to him as he ushers in the kingdom of God by his life, teaching, death,
resurrection and ascension. All that Jesus is and does points to the need to
centre life on him.

Let me put it this way. Since coming to Chelmsford, I have
from time to time attended Chelmsford Theological
Society. Now don’t let the words ‘Theological Society’ put you off – what I’m
about to say isn’t complicated! In January last year I heard a lecture by Mike Higton
entitled, ‘Reading The Signs Of The Times’. One simple point he made was this. Many
people tell you that God has a special plan for your life – well, he revealed his
plan for you two thousand years ago on the Cross. God’s plan for you and me is
Christ crucified, and all that entails.

Which makes this a useful counterbalance to all the stuff in
my first point about chaos. Yes, the ministry of Jesus means that we need not
to turn from the chaos but ride on the edge of it into the future, because that
is what the Saviour did and calls us to do. But that doesn’t mean we have to
become experts in predicting the future. Far from it! We hold onto Christ and
his Cross, while facing the eye of the storm. The Cross is our anchor. All that
it reveals about the inability of human beings to save themselves and makes
themselves acceptable to God on their own terms grounds us. All that it tells
us about the lavish love and passionate grace of God in the face of human sin
keeps our feet steady.

On 27th September 1997, the Daily Telegraph carried this story:

Wiltshire police were alarmed to come across a coachload of
Japanese tourists standing in the middle of the A303, which is a very busy
road, taking photographs of Stonehenge. They didn’t seem to be worried by the
cars and lorries whizzing past them on both sides. It was only when the police
officers had shepherded the party off the road and onto the safety of the verge
that they discovered the reason why the tourists had thought they were safe. Pointing
to a speed camera sign by the side of the road, they explained that they had assumed
that this was a designated photography area.[2]

So don’t mistake the signs: you might be run over! The Cross
is always the ‘sign of the times’ for Christians. Let us keep our focus there,
and in doing so, let us be daring. The Cross will not allow us to settle for
the safe life. It will invite us into chaos, a revolutionary chaos whose tumult
leads us into God’s future for his people, not the stagnant ditchwater of tired
human institutions.

It’s the chaos of Cross-centred new life, or the orderliness
of the graveyard, then: which will we choose?

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What’s Your Theological Worldview?

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan, You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
93%

Neo orthodox
71%

Emergent/Postmodern
71%

Charismatic/Pentecostal
57%

Roman Catholic
54%

Reformed Evangelical
54%

Fundamentalist
36%

Classical Liberal
25%

Modern Liberal
18%

What’s your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Well, that’s a relief, then.

HT: Dave Warnock.

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0

What’s Your Theological Worldview?

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan, You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
93%

Neo orthodox
71%

Emergent/Postmodern
71%

Charismatic/Pentecostal
57%

Roman Catholic
54%

Reformed Evangelical
54%

Fundamentalist
36%

Classical Liberal
25%

Modern Liberal
18%

What’s your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Well, that’s a relief, then.

HT: Dave Warnock.

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0

What’s Your Theological Worldview?

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan, You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
93%

Neo orthodox
71%

Emergent/Postmodern
71%

Charismatic/Pentecostal
57%

Roman Catholic
54%

Reformed Evangelical
54%

Fundamentalist
36%

Classical Liberal
25%

Modern Liberal
18%

What’s your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Well, that’s a relief, then.

HT: Dave Warnock.

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Books That Changed My Life (3): Spirituality

Despite my charismatic leanings, there are few charismatic books that have shaped my spirituality. The obvious exception would be John Wimber’s first two books, Power Evangelism and Power Healing. Whatever their imperfections, and the apparent contradictions some have detected in books that were write-ups of lecture notes, they introduced me to a way of understanding the kingdom of God that has stayed with me ever since (even if I interpreted it in my own way). It was the adoption of a now/not yet model of the kingdom that I found particularly helpful. It provided an ‘optimism of grace’ about what God could do in the here and now, but it also set the framework (although not any explanation) for the times when prayers did not seem to be answered positively. Combine that with the emphasis in the prayer approach in the second book that models both listening to the person and listening to God, and I shall always be grateful for those foundations.

Beyond that, two books helped me with the aversion to written liturgy (“It’s boring!”) with which I grew up. One was Robert Webber’s book Evangelicals On The Canterbury Trail. His ability to document how these structures could frame a biblical spirituality was significant for me – and it was also my reflection on his words that made me realise my own conversion actually came through liturgy! No longer could I accept the ignorant criticisms of liturgy from places such as some ‘house church’ circles, which said it was just a device to produce an act of worship without ‘the anointing’.

A quite different book taught me to see life sacramentally. Henri Nouwen’s Life Of The Beloved takes the four actions of Jesus at the Last Supper, which have become the four movements of liturgical communion services since Gregory Dix wrote The Shape Of The Liturgy, and makes them into discipleship actions. What Jesus did with the bread and wine, he does with us. He takes us, blesses God for us, breaks us and gives us to others. It’s a stunning way to see the life of faith.

Then there is the question of how to read the Bible ‘spiritually’. Many from my evangelical tradition talk of Bible study, and I think ‘study’ is a telling word. It’s meant to have an application, but ends up staying in the brain. So although I was influenced at college by historical-critical methods of biblical study and developed a healthy scepticism for those who make fanciful applications, I had to learn other ways. A little booklet by Brother Ramon SSF entitled Praying The Bible did it for me. It was a simple introduction to Ignatian Bible study, with the uses of the senses and the imagination.

All of which gets me into the ‘How does God speak to us?’ issue. Without giving a long reflection here, I grew up – at least implicitly – with the ‘Wesleyan Quadrilateral’ of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience (with experience for me including that which came through ‘charismatic’ gifts). But I heard a speaker at a conference recommend Ken Gire’s book Windows Of The Soul. I hunted it down, and found it a wonderful introduction to the many areas of life in which we can hear God speak. Gire is also a wonderful writer. Too few Christian authors can craft their prose beautifully; Gire is an exception. (At time of writing, it’s back in stock at Amazon: don’t miss it.) A similar book that took me down similar roads was Seeing God In The Ordinary by Michael Frost.

Finally, a book for the heart. Many have read and eulogised Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? I’m afraid I haven’t. But a similar book on that theme did me a power of good: The Grace Awakening by Charles Swindoll. Although I am someone whose conversion story is one of a conversion from legalism to faith, it’s surprising how often I need the reminders about grace. The old bad habits of perfectionism and shaky self-esteem still pop back up like a jack-in-a-box. And besides, if grace isn’t central, we’re all sunk!

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