Here’s another excellent new resource from the Methodist Church’s Connexional Team. Put together by Dave Webster, our Internet officer, you can now find a fed with all the latest from British Methodist bloggers. It’s available here on the official site, powered by Yahoo! Pipes. Dave told me (and doubtless other bloggers) about it in an email yesterday, just before it went live, when he asked permission to include my blog. It is officially now public, although this morning it doesn’t seem to be pulling in any feeds (whereas yesterday it was working well). I imagine normal service will soon be resumed. You may find it an easy way to check out official and unofficial Methodist thinking all in one place.
Big Circumstance On Facebook
Just to say I’ve now created a separate page for this blog on Facebook. Go here and you can sign up to be a ‘fan’ (horrible word I know, but it’s Facebook lingo) to see my posts there. Some while ago I took the feed from the blog out of Facebook due to problems with the way FB generated ‘notes’. I hope this is a better way. Please give me some helpful feedback when it’s been up and running a while.
PrayNow
Right, I’m back to topical blogging. If you’ve followed my Twitter feed, you’ll know where I’ve been – Disneyland Paris. With Debbie and the children, of course. It was an advance present for a rather big birthday I have looming in the next fortnight. Too big, in fact, for my liking.
I’ll blog a bit about the experience soon, but in the meantime let me just put a marker down for something I came back to discover when I was wading through my Facebook feed. The remarkable Sir Peter of Phillips has blogged today about an excellent new initiative set up by the Methodist Church, called PrayNow. Send a text saying PRAYNOW to 82088 (at your network’s standard message rate) and you will receive free weekly texts with personal and topical prayer requests. (To stop, send STOP PRAYNOW to 82088.) Small church groups have been doing things like this for ages, and it’s good to see it taken up on a national scale. And having been somewhat wary in recent weeks about some official Methodist attitudes to social tools, it’s only right I praise what looks like a positive initiative.
Do read Pete’s article for links to other Christian-flavoured social tools, especially ones that help people interact with the Bible.
The Wife-Swapping Club
(My last repost in this series. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you what’s been happening.)
“If you get bored, then look at the windows.”
So said our leader at the beginning of a course I attended.
“They are beautiful stained glass, I’m sure you’ll enjoy them if you find what I say is boring.”
I didn’t need to gaze at the windows. But her self-deprecating comment reminded me of other occasions.
There was my friend Pete, struggling through a boring and lengthy sermon by an earnest and well-intentioned preacher. “I know exactly how many window panes we’ve got in the church,” he told me a few days later.
But there was also the time at college in Manchester. Once a year the college put on a lecture to which old students and friends were invited. A distinguished speaker was always invited. This was my first year. I wasn’t any the wiser.
He was well-known for his views on marriage. We, however, remembered very few of his views from that lecture. His inspiration level was that of window-pane counting.
Except that … we all latched onto one of the things he advocated. He said that given the fragility of marriage today, it should not be viewed as a life-long commitment but as something that should be reviewed by the couple after ten years. More like a fixed-term renewable contract. This was not what we expected to hear from a Christian speaker on the subject.
And so it was that over coffee afterwards, one of the students went around canvassing to start up the college wife-swapping club. He was generous enough even to include the single students.
Christians may be known for sharing (or we should be), but this is not an area to which our generosity is expected to extend. An early Christian leader called Tertullian said, “We share everything except our wives.”
I suppose our distinguished speaker wanted to take seriously the tragedy of relationship breakdown in our society. Being married now to a divorcée myself, I am not without sympathy to that concern.
I know too the statistics that suggest second marriages on average last fewer years than first marriages. I have heard the saying that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
Yet for all this there is no way I want to model a relationship on the fixed-term renewable contract idea. My understanding of love must come from Jesus, whose love is unconditional, unchanging, and a covenant commitment of faithfulness.
Yes, that means relationships where we burn our bridges. But what kind of love is it that does not have risk and vulnerability at its heart?
Pregnancy The Easy Way?
(And another old post.)
“So how’s Debbie?”
I knew the reason for the question. Debbie was seven months pregnant with our first child. The woman who asked barely knew her, so it was a kind question.
“She’s doing well, thank you,” I replied, “there have been odd little things, but really we couldn’t have wished for a better pregnancy. She’s having the best pregnancy of all the mums-to-be in our ante-natal class.”
“Ah well, you know why that is, don’t you?”
I recognised the implication: Debbie’s model pregnancy was because we were Christians. I countered:
“But of the eight couples in the ante-natal class, we aren’t the only Christians. We are one of three Christian couples, and they haven’t been let off as lightly as we have.”
“Oh.”
Not only that, but around that time, two other Christian women we knew gave birth to babies with major health problems. One baby had just a one in three chance of survival; the other had a hole in the heart and a bowel disorder. A colostomy bag from birth until she was strong enough for corrective surgery.
So God isn’t just some celestial insurance policy. Believe in God and life will be ‘lovely jubbly’, as Del Boy would say. It’s not like that.
A young child is reputed to have asked its mother, “Mummy, do all fairy-tales end with the words ‘And they all lived happily ever after’?”
“No,” said Mum, “some say, ‘When I became a Christian all my problems disappeared’.”
Christians live between the glory and the flame, the joy and the suffering. God’s reign has begun in Jesus, but there is still plenty of cosmic and human resistance.
I still believe in an ‘optimism of grace’, that God loves to hear and answer our prayers. I don’t know why I don’t always get what I think I need. I simply don’t have all the answers.
But I’ve seen enough of God in Jesus to believe he is trustworthy. And in the meantime I’ll pray and act in the cause of the flame giving way to glory.
Laugh-A-Minute Faulkner
(Next in my series of old articles is one about joy and personal integration.)
Laugh-a-minute Faulkner, she called me. She had not worshipped at the church where I was the minister during my time, but she had heard the stories. David Faulkner told jokes in his sermons, and it was not the done thing.
It was her misfortune, then, to attend a united service for all the churches in the town one Easter Sunday evening, where I was the speaker. Having read that on Easter Day in Russia the Orthodox priests gathered in the afternoon to tell one another jokes as a sign of their joy, and having also read a line of a poet who called the resurrection of Jesus ‘a laugh freed for ever’, I felt I had adequate theological precedent to begin my talk with a joke.
One person conspicuously avoided me afterwards.
I thought of that occasion again recently, when someone said that I had matured: I had gone from ‘flippant’ to ‘serious’ sermons. I would take great issue with the idea that I was flippant, but I am concerned for those who feel you can’t have a belly-laugh in a service.
My concerns are twofold. Firstly, I think they’ve misread Jesus and the Bible. Yes, Jesus in his sufferings was a ‘man of sorrows, acquainted with grief’. But he was more. He was the one who turned water into wine. Wouldn’t you invite him to your parties? (By the way, Lord, if it’s not too much to ask, mine is a Californian Zinfandel or an Aussie Semillon.) He said he had come to bring ‘life in all its fullness’ – was he bringing a misery package? And he told his petty critics that they were ‘straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel’ – sounds like satire to me.
Jesus wasn’t unique in the Bible. Laughter among the spiritual didn’t begin with him. When Elijah had a ding-dong with the prophets of the idol Baal at Mount Carmel, Baal’s gang got so desperate that their god wasn’t answering their prayers that they even resorted to self-harm. Elijah mocked them, saying, “Perhaps your god has gone to the loo”. Yes, really.
If my first concern is for a lack of wholeness in appreciating the spiritual life, my second concern is that the criticism of laughter in worship implies another lack of wholeness: a lack of inner wholeness as a person, a lack of integration. It manifests itself in other ways: the same person may listen to secular pop music for entertainment, but insist on traditional hymns in a church service. There doesn’t seem to be enough sauce goose to cover the gander.
Such a lack of personal wholeness is often allied with an approach to Christian worship that regards it as an escape from the world. Yet Jesus didn’t come to set up a ghetto of escapists. He came to transform people who would engage with a broken world, people who would bring the whole of themselves to worship and service, not just a religious segment.
It seems to me that these symptoms indicate a number of problems: a inner dualism, a lack of sensing that all of life is lived in relation to Jesus, an unacknowledged inner brokenness. It suggests that life is something to run away from, rather than to look in the eye. Given the healthy postmodern desire for wholeness, is it any surprise that so few people are persuaded by we Christians about our faith when this is often what we are like?
The Hearse At The Pub
(Continuing my series of old posts reposted.)
It was a warm evening, with drinks to match. We were relaxing in the garden of a local pub, toasting the end of a well-received musical production we’d been involved in these last few nights.
It was then that we saw it arrive. No ordinary car being driven into the pub grounds, it was a hearse.
Ribald comments flashed around our group, jokers trying to top each preceding witty remark. Until the hearse passed our table, and one of our number realised: the people in the hearse were friends of his.
“What are you doing with a hearse?” he asked his friends.
“Oh, we’ve just bought it.”
“Why?”
“We’re going to take a holiday touring Europe, and wanted a vehicle where whoever wasn’t driving at night would have room to lie down and sleep.”
Now what would you have given to have been a border guard on the European mainland, maybe Romania, somewhere near – oh, for argument’s sake, Transylvania? You go round to the back of the hearse, peer in, and someone rises from the catafalque. And what if the person who had been disturbed from sleep and was now getting up had not had American standards of dental work?
Sometimes life comes out of nowhere and grabs you. Sometimes all your preconceived ideas get thrown out of the window.
I like the story of the man who was convinced he was dead. He told his wife, his friends, his work colleagues.
So persistent was he that they became very worried about him. As you would.
Finally they clubbed together to pay for him to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist set about his work diligently. Using medical textbooks, he proved to the man one simple fact: dead men don’t bleed.
“OK, OK, I accept what you’re saying,” said the man, “Dead men don’t bleed.”
At which point the psychiatrist produced a lancet and jabbed it into the man’s flesh.
As blood throbbed out, the man looked in horror: “Maybe dead men do bleed after all.”
Got any preconceived ideas that need a decent burial? About God, for example?
Celine Dion At The Crematorium
(For the next several days, I’m not going to be able to post any new topical material, nor shall I be able to interact with your comments. However, I am going to repost some old pieces that once appeared on my now defunct website at http://www.davefaulkner.co.uk. I hope you enjoy them.)
The curate from the Victor Meldrew School of Theology had turned down this funeral. Which was a good job. She never should have been asked. The daughter of the deceased was an occasional worshipper at one of the churches I served.
Like many people at the time, she wanted Celine Dion’s love theme from the film ‘Titanic’, ‘My heart will go on’, to be played at the service. It’s the sort of music that brings me out in a rash, but hey, it was her wish.
We were ready to begin. The congregation was seated in the crematorium chapel. I was outside with the pallbearers from the undertaker’s. I gave the nod to the crem attendant. He pressed ‘play’. Well, it was Celine Dion, it was ‘My heart will go on’ … but it was the dance remix.
As a thumping drumbeat massacred the gloopy song, one of the pallbearers turned to me and said, “So are we meant to take the coffin in at this pace?”
“No,” said one of his colleagues, “it isn’t a drum, it’s the deceased knocking on the coffin, trying to get out!”
It became one of the challenges of my ministry to maintain dignity and not burst into hysterics during the funeral.
The next day, the daughter phoned me to thank me for the service. I thought it prudent to ask her about the music.
“Did you notice the music at the beginning of the service?”
“No.”
“You didn’t notice that it was the dance version of ‘My heart will go on’?”
“No.”
“Only I just thought I should ask, in case any of your relatives were upset.”
“Nah – anyway, my mum was a bit of a goer, and she’d have loved it!”
Embarrassing moment over, I breathed a sigh of relief when I put down the phone.
Now I’ve seen a funeral or two in my time. I’ve made friends with the crem attendants. One says, “Don’t wear trousers with turn-ups, or you’ll bring your work home with you.”
I’ve seen inconsolable grief at the crem, and I can understand that. Without the hope I gain from the Resurrection of Jesus, I can see why Paul in the Bible said that people “grieve without hope”.
I’ve also seen overbearing, unnatural joy. I don’t mean the way Christians (with the hope of the Resurrection) can look forward, I mean a kind of forced joy that psychologically is a denial of bereavement’s true pain. Most grief is nothing to be guilty about, whatever our feelings tell us. It’s an expression of our love for the deceased, love we can no longer give them, because they are not with us.
Maybe then my offering is to say that the healthy thing – the Jesus thing – is the gift of grieving with hope.
Lent Material
It’s the last Sunday before Lent. (Yes, I know it’s Valentine’s Day and I haven’t forgotten my lovely wife, but that’s not what I’m writing about here.) I thought I’d recommend a couple of Lent resources.
First off, a collaboration that would have been unthinkable some years ago. The Methodist Relief and Development Fund and the Evangelical Alliance have combined to provide Bible study notes and weekly videos. You can download notes for ‘What does the Bible say about power?‘ from the MRDF site; videos will be posted weekly from the 17th at the EA site. The EA are using this to link social justice with the Biblefresh initiative. Years ago, official Methodism wouldn’t even have talked with the EA; what a wonderful sign of changed moods.
Secondly, just to say that Tom Wright‘s new book is out. ‘Virtue Reborn‘ addresses issues of Christian character and behaviour – a good theme for Lent.
What are you doing for Lent?
Sermon: Jesus Of The Transfiguration
A neighbour of ours three doors down periodically changes her photo on Facebook. For a long time it was a snap of her with the rock singer Jon Bon Jovi. Then it became a picture of her with the Hollywood actor Johnny Depp. Michelle looks very happy and relaxed with them. They look pretty happy with her. It does rather help the matter that Michelle is quite glamorous!
Me, I’m not so sure I’d look as cool and laid back with a famous person as she does. Not that I’m terribly interested in handsome male rock stars or actors; I just have to fend off Debbie’s regular ribbing because I once commented how pretty one of the teachers at our children’s school is!
However, as I said, I don’t think I’d be as relaxed as Michelle. I think if I met a hero, or a famous beautiful woman, I think I would be a blubbering mess. How journalists keep their cool to interview well-known people, I don’t know.
All of which makes me rather like Peter at the Mount of Transfiguration. When he offers to make three dwellings – one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah – Luke comments that he didn’t know what he was saying (verse 33). He’s overwhelmed, and he says something stupid. He’d like to preserve the moment or turn it into something he knows and can cope with – the three dwelling places he proposes are reminiscent of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.
But he’s missed the significance of the event as a result of his blubbering, and needs correction. That takes him into the terrifying experience in the cloud, where he hears the frightening, correcting voice of God: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (Verse 35) Don’t get blubbery about Moses and Elijah: listen to Jesus!
And I want to take that as an entry point into thinking about the Transfiguration today. It’s a traditional reading for the last Sunday before Lent, and I want us to look at how it shows Jesus as being superior to Moses and Elijah.
Firstly, Jesus’ superiority to Moses. So you book your dream holiday. You pay the deposit. You renew your passports. A couple of months before going, you pay the balance. A week before the off, you return to the travel agent to pick up your tickets and your currency. A day or two beforehand, you pack your luggage. Everything is ready for your departure.
And the Transfiguration is about a departure – especially in the connection with Moses. When Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, we read
They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Verse 31)
His departure. Why the Moses connection? Because there’s an Old Testament book called ‘Departure’. It’s just that we know it by its Greek name: Exodus. The story of Moses leading God’s people to freedom from Egypt. When Luke writes about Jesus’ departure here, it is in the Greek his exodos. Moses’ departure was a liberation, Jesus’ forthcoming ‘departure’ from Jerusalem will be a liberation, too. But because Jesus is superior to Moses, his liberation will be superior, too.
If it’s Jesus’ departure from Jerusalem, then clearly we’re talking about his death, resurrection and ascension. That departure brings liberation. Jesus has been pointing the way to his future suffering and has said that disciples need to take up their crosses and follow him. Now we begin to understand that what is coming is a freedom event. The Cross will bring freedom. Jesus’ departure in his death is not a tragic event, as I once heard a Methodist church steward call it in the vestry before a Good Friday service. It is sacrificial love for the blessing of the world. Yes, it is agony and injustice. But it is also true heroism.
Now if this is the case, then we have to see the Transfiguration as more than we have often interpreted it. We know that the disciples come back down from the mountain to the challenges of everyday life. Hence we say that you can’t live on ‘mountain-top experiences’ all the time, you have to get on with ordinary living again. But if the Transfiguration points to Jesus’ departure at the Cross, it isn’t about coming down from a ‘high’ to face the mundane and the routine again. Rather, it’s about Jesus being strengthened to face his coming trial.
So if Jesus is being strengthened to face the trial of the Cross here, perhaps this event is similar to one or two others in the Gospels. It might be like the powerful spiritual experience he had at his baptism with the Holy Spirit coming down on him like a dove and – again – a voice from heaven affirming him, immediately before the Spirit leads him to the wilderness to fast and conquer temptation. It might be like the way he was mysteriously strengthened in the Garden of Gethsemane as he wrestled with his forthcoming betrayal and suffering. No wonder we read this on the last Sunday before Lent.
Isn’t it wonderful, then, that Jesus needed to be strengthened before he faced trials, including the greatest of all? And if that’s the case, then perhaps we might interpret our own ‘mountain-top experiences’ differently. They may not simply be a boost before we get back to the grind; they may be God’s way of equipping us for whatever difficulties are coming our way, particularly those where we end up in a painful place because of our faith. Perhaps God has a blessing for us in Christ that will give us the fortitude to face our trials, or perhaps we can look back at problematic times in our lives and see that before then God prepared us with a blessing. He may have given us our own mini-transfigurations. Not in the sense of exalting who we are – he only does that for Jesus – but in empowering and encouraging us.
Secondly, Jesus’ superiority to Elijah. How does Elijah connect with Jesus’ departure? The Moses connection is quite easy to see when you think of the word ‘exodus’, but it’s less easy to see why Elijah should be hanging out with Jesus now, and the particular way in which Jesus is superior to him.
However, there is a link between Jesus’ departure at Jerusalem and Elijah, and it goes like this. For Jews, Elijah was the great prophet of the end-time deliverance. He was the one who was expected to appear before God’s Messiah. You may recall there was a hoo-hah in the Gospels as to whether John the Baptist was Elijah come back from the dead to precede the Messiah. All this means that Elijah was the figure of hope. He signified to Jewish minds that God would make all things right, just and whole in his kingdom. Hence the theme of hope.
That may well have been why Peter almost thoughtlessly suggested the building of three booths, like the Feast of Tabernacles, as I said, because that festival was also known as the Feast of Ingathering, and looked forward to the fullness of God’s kingdom on earth. Peter’s mistake was just to see Jesus as an equal with Moses and Elijah.
But the voice from heaven says, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (verse 35), because Jesus is superior even to Elijah. So we must infer that Jesus brings a superior hope at his departure.
I suggest we find that in his resurrection and ascension. Jesus will be raised physically from the dead. His body will be restored to him in a new way. Jesus’ resurrection body is the beginning of God’s new creation. God will make all things new, and he begins with his own Son. Elijah might be a sign or symbol of hope, but Jesus is more than that: his own resurrection body embodies our hope, even guarantees our hope of a new heaven and a new earth.
So death may and will come, but it doesn’t get the last laugh. God does. We wait in heaven, in what looks from earth like the sleep of death, but one day the Great Surprise will happen when God raises us from the dead and renews his creation. Elijah can teach us much, but only the Son of God can teach us all this. The Christian who dies trusting in Christ does so in peace, because Jesus fills her with hope in ways no-one else can.
And then there’s the ascension, Jesus’ final bodily departure from Jerusalem, reminiscent of the way Elijah left this world yet – again – superior to it. He ascends to the Father’s right hand, where he will reign until everything has been put under his feet. This is the part of hope that sustains us until God makes all things new, when the new Jerusalem descends and all creation is renewed.
It’s easy to lose hope and think that God is not reigning in heaven when we see evil in the world, in the church and in ourselves. No wonder I read yesterday that John Stott apparently once said,
The Christian’s chief occupational hazards are depression and discouragement.
But the Ascension reminds us that Jesus is reigning, even while rebellion takes place against his rule. Battles may be won or lost, but in the final analysis Christ is on the throne. To say that Christ is not reigning because there is still sin in the world would be like saying there cannot be a government in power because crime is still being committed.
In conclusion, then, Jesus at the Transfiguration offers us awesome hope. The liberation of the Cross, the hope in the Resurrection of God’s new creation and the assurance of his reign through the Ascension. Moses and Elijah may have been good, but Jesus outranks them everywhere.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, ‘Any study of Christ must begin in silence.’ No wonder we read that
When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. (Verse 36)
Sometimes I’m all for the response to a sermon being in words and deeds after the service. Today, maybe like Peter, James and John, our best response might just be awed silence at the majesty of Christ.
Big Circumstance 