The Godless Gospel

 

If you are unfamiliar with the work of populist philosopher Julian Baggini then this may not be quite the place to start. My introduction to him was the best-seller The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten: And 99 Other Thought Experiments. Which made me think.

In The Godless Gospel (Was Jesus a Great Moral Teacher?) (Granta 2020) Baggini attempts to remove Jesus' moral teaching from its theological framework to see if there is anything to help those who don't want to swallow the whole God thing.

It is an interesting exercise, applauded  on the jacket by no less than Richard Holloway, he who wrote Godless Morality whilst still an Archbishop although he has since moved nearer to godless than god-fearing.

Does it work? There is good stuff in the opening sections, especially about individual attitude, humility and the process of doing thinking. He acknowledges that reading the gospel is not like reading a modern treatise on moral philosophy. It is not an argument to be followed but a biography to be pondered. Whether you can think about it clearly whilst dismissing the thing that holds it all together is the big question. The attempt to distance Jesus' teaching from his understanding of God, the Father, in whom he trusted and who he believed he served, seems, to me, to pull on a thread that unravels everything.

The last third of the book is a new version of the Gospel, replacing mentions  of God with 'good' in many cases and yet leaving references to prayer unaltered. If there was no God and he was mistaken about praying then surely the whole of Jesus' manifesto implodes? The parable of the kingdom and the return of the king are included. To be fair, Baggini discuses this at length but we draw different conclusions.

Annoyingly Baggini chooses to word his Gospel harmonisation in the language of the Authorised Version because he prefers the poetry. Which makes it harder, not easier, to follow. Living words need lively translation, not archiving or confining to the theatre. 

Interesting effort and nicely written but I wasn't convinced. The Gospel writers all, for sure, had axes to grind and used what Karen Armstrong calls mythos to make their points. But they wrote that we might have life in all its fulness in Jesus' name (John says this directly), not that we might pick and choose which bits we like.

Thought for the Day

I pre-recorded this one for BBC Radio Bristol on Tuesday and then the story I based it on was bumped from the Breakfast Show because of a rescheduled balloon mass ascent. So it went out today. Apologies to my fan who I misinformed on Sunday.

We had an interesting discussion in our house. I was gently nursing our ancient dishwasher through its final few tasks before it went to the domestic appliance graveyard. My family laughed at my efforts to turn the water off as the programme finished, which involved squeezing into the cupboard under the sink with a pair of mole-grips and a torch.

After a few days without our labour-saving device our privileged position is to be able to afford a new one. But washing up by hand was annoying because we'd filled the labour-saving time with tasks, not leisure. More fool us.

Once my ancestors would have fed the scraps to the animals, washed up in the river and hunter-gathered the next meal.

Today I look at relative scarcity on the supermarket shelves and remind myself how fragile our grip on life is.

'As for people', the psalmist said, 'their days are like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.'

Pretty bleak thought. Good job the next verse says:

'But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear him...'

Good news. Good God. Good morning.

Thought for the Day

As delivered to BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

Many hymns include a line such as 'Come down O love divine'. The desire that God would visit his people in person. Tongues of fire optional.

In my short career in insurance ages ago I ended up in a claims department where one of the tasks was to put a value on human suffering. How much for a broken arm? A lost tooth? A scar on the face? The death of a child?

Complex questions - careful calculations.

People are pretty hopeless at assessing risk. It is several times less risky for your child to walk to school alone as it is to take them in a car. In fact the biggest danger to children walking to school alone is people in cars. Pedestrians are still in a less risky position than passengers.

Recently I have had to work with colleagues on risk assessments. As have teachers and school admin staff. Many of you will have done that in the places where you work.

We ask questions such as:

How likely is the risk to happen?

How serious would the consequences be?

We all embrace a certain amount of risk in our lives. The trick is to avoid any possibility of risks with serious consequences and to minimise risks with minor consequences.

So my heart goes out to those supervising students in the new mask-wearing, socially distanced world we inhabit. Respect.

But singing a song inviting God to visit his people in person? Are you sure you want to take that risk?

Freely, Freely - Article 10/39

X. OF FREE-WILL

THE condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.

Interesting to note the change of use of the word prevent. It used to mean going before. Now it usually means stopping. And, of course, the generic use of 'man' on which we now turn our backs.

We remind ourselves that these historic formularies bear witness to the same God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who contemporary Christians worship, as best we can.

This article is headed 'Of Free Will'. O'Donovan reminds us that the reformers meant, very specifically, the free will to turn to and please God by our own natural strength. It was not saying that we cannot make decisions for ourselves, that we are somehow stuck in a rut of predestination (more on that later, probably).

The story the Articles tell is of a creator God, far beyond the grasp of human understanding, based in a time when human understanding was half a millennium less developed than our own. And of that remote (in the 'graspable' sense) God revealing himself in Jesus Christ, uniquely. And on that, surprisingly orthodox, note, I'm going for a lie down.

Just the Three of Us - Article 1/39

1. OF FAITH IN THE HOLY TRINITY
THERE is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Possibly the first thing we will note, and which will annoy us throughout, is the seemingly random use of capitals. But there is a method. Here we find capitalisation for God, members of the Godhead, pronouns for Him and active attributes of Him – Maker, Preserver in this case. It is a type of respect from which we have moved.

They start with God. They could have started with method – this is how we will do this and these are our working assumptions. But no. They start with God.

They remind us that today we need to recapture the otherness of God. Over fifty years on from the publication of John Robinson's 'Honest to God' our culture's professional atheists still argue against a God that is too small. A god of the gaps shrinks as science explains. The Articles say more than that our God is a great big God and he holds us in his hands. That song, fun as it is, suggests the existence of other, smaller gods. Article 1 says no. It's all metaphor though. God is real and language is metaphor. Creeds, Articles and other proclamations are inadequate. And God is certainly not what is left after science has finished explaining.

This Article is a not entirely unexpected Trinitarian formula, the test case for classic Christianity. We believe in one God, Father, Son and (we now say) Holy Spirit.

O'Donovan describes the gospel as the proper tension between the transcendence and the incarnate nearness of God. So if you want to know what God is like, says Paul to the Colossians, look at Jesus. We will. Tomorrow.

Thought for the Day

As delivered on BBC Radio Bristol's Breakfast Show just now:

The God I worship and follow is of infinite variety and the creation I am part of reflects that.

How does a Thought for the Day script come to pass? You may have wondered.

Weeks in advance those of us who contribute to this slot get to agree a few dates.

Then, the day before we are to speak, the producer contacts us with a list of stories that will be covered on the show. We are invited to either link our thought to one of the stories, or to talk about something, from the perspective of our faith, that connects the stories.

Over the last five years I have spoken about the economy, education and Englishness; tower cranes and whale vomit.

So I submit a script, the producer checks that what I say won't get myself or the BBC into trouble, and away we go.

Why tell you this dear listener? Because the random selection of stories I received yesterday was the most varied I have come across:

Meals on wheels problems, a new school, a faithful lifeboat volunteer, stolen paving slabs, prosthetic limbs and all this on International Women's Day.

The capacity to use our individuality for good or evil is represented in the stories.

Psalm 104 tells of the many works of God and concludes that us mere mortals can mimic that creativity in worship and praise, with deed as well as word, or can destroy the very world with bad deeds and harmful words.

I don't know if you have spent your days nicking paving slabs or making the world a better place. All I know is that the God I worship and follow is of infinite variety and the creation I am part of reflects that.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning on Breakfast with Emma Britton:

I enjoyed spending some time with my two sons over Christmas. They rarely fail to make me laugh. Don't tell them. We keep our relationship strictly sarcastic. Occasional guests at our Christmas table find our conversation complex. It's rudeness without throwing things and never gets out of hand.

At one point a rather cringe-worthy conversation developed in which Mrs Tilley and I found ourselves having our parenting skills critiqued.

Turns out that, when watching our boys play football, we were embarrassing parents. The summary of our ability to encourage was that we stood on the touchline and shouted, perhaps too loudly, 'Play better'.

Getting advice about your parenting twenty five years too late isn't that helpful, although I pass it on for the benefit of those of you who still have relationships to fix.

Our view of God can be pretty similar. He stands on the sidelines looking at our lives and we occasionally hear him shout:

Do better.

Be cleverer.

Act wiser.

Many of the items in the news today are not things we can do anything about. The weather. Celestial displays. A motorway closure to move a large aeroplane.

But maybe we can react better, cleverer and wiser.

We have finished our annual rehearsal of the great Christmas stories of the Christian tradition. But one theme is worth taking on with us into the new year. How will you react when news is unusual or unexpected?

The year to come will present unique opportunities to strain our patience. If you don't feel up to responding to the challenge, the truth is that God is down to it. And of course BBC Radio Bristol is here to hold your hand on the journey. No pressure Emma. No pressure.

Advent Thought 14 and Number 2

If...

Then...

I know nothing about computer programming but if I were a betting man I would take a punt on some version of if... then... being important.

If I press the x key then a letter x appears on screen. Bongo, which is like bingo only typed wrong.

A lot of people conduct their relationship with God this way. I'll do this for you 2 3 if you do this for me 2 3. The gospel of the business deal. We end up not understanding why our surgery had complications 'because we prayed about it'. Whereas believing God, somehow, in all the mess, has a bigger picture and will be faithful, liberates us from only trusting him when things are good.

Which brings us, rather niftily, to covenant.

The Christian gospel is not if... then... It's, 'I'll do this for you, whatever.'

What difference would it make to your relationships today if you covenanted not to make your behaviour towards the other person be if... then... but 'I will'?

... words will never show
The you I've come to know

Thought for the Day

We interrupt the daily cycle of Advent TFTDs to bring you this one as delivered at BBC Radio Bristol an hour ago:

One of the most common themes linking daily stories on BBC Radio Bristol is change.

Things people want to be different. Change as improvement.

Learn about sepsis or online grooming so bad things don't happen again.

Things people want to keep the same. Change as the enemy.

Don't let the dry dock be turned into housing.

We are all guilty of becoming more interested in issues when they affect us. A wise vicar friend of mine once told me that Christians should not be in the business of shouting for their own rights, but speaking out for the rights of others.

In Advent Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus' birth as a baby is a story of change. It marks a specific time when Christians believe the boundary between earth and heaven was crossed and God appeared on earth in the flesh.

The Christian understanding of God is not of a remote observer who watches and mocks at the mess the creation gets into, but who joins in and experiences life in all its fullness. Parties, miracles, free food and great teaching with a side order of hunger, pain, thirst, dirt, blood and death. God who understood suffering by suffering. Incarnation in anything means full involvement.

As a universal story we can all place ourselves in it. For God did this for us, whether or not we like or acknowledge it.

And it places a responsibility on those who take the story seriously to be the change we would like to see in other places. For if we have heard the story of Jesus and it hasn't left us wanting to make a difference in this world. Well I'm afraid we haven't really heard it properly.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

I wrote this poem last year in the pre-Christmas rush:

Christmas turns up about now
Screams to a halt - tyre rubber in the road
Look at me

Advent walked here, carefully holding a candle

Christmas bares its soul about now
Make me happy with food, fragrance and fashion
Buy me

Advent cradles its light from the breeze

Christmas accessorises everything about now
You need two of those, extra glitter and ribbons
Box me

Advent speaks of a truth beyond packaging

Operating with a sense of other-worldliness can be hard. Monday and Tuesday's Thought for the Day contributors spoke of Advent as a period of reflection, waiting, hoping. Advent asks us to wait gently while the world sits outside in its car, beeping its horn. Come on.

Does a carnival anticipate a heavenly party? Do Christmas lights speak of the one who is the light of the world? Do ambulances remind us of our humanity but that one day every tear will be wiped from our eye? Do medals for bravery emphasise the otherness of this world where there is evil but goodness can, and will, overcome it? Well, (beat) they might.

St Paul spoke of this world as seeing through a glass darkly - looking forward to seeing face to face.

The great seers and sages of the Christian past described special sites in our world as 'thin places' where God can be glimpsed more easily.

In one of his novels Philip Pullman spoke of the spirit world being accessed by a subtle knife - if you could find the right place you could cut your way though.

I hope you see God through the gaps in the rush and find yourselves in some thin places today. Peace.

Thought for the Day

I managed to reference a lot of the stories on the show today and, of course, received the usual feedback I get every time I mention how old I am. This is what I presented at BBC Radio Bristol this morning, amidst tears of laughter for reasons not entirely unrelated to Noel Edmonds telephoning cats:

Today's starter question. In a mature society, what should we pay for? What should be free?

Jesus told his disciples that there was no point gaining the whole world and losing your soul. And he told them if they wanted to follow him to take up their cross. Souls valuable; bodies expendable, we conclude. Tough challenge.

Having time to kill in a big city recently I went into a museum. I was encouraged to make a donation but I didn't need to. It was free.

Wandering around I felt the first twinges of toothache. My thoughts moved quite quickly from the pain and inconvenience to 'I'm glad I pay for a dental plan.'

Museums free.

Dentistry costs.

Nailsea is the first place I've ever lived where town centre car-parking is free. I've reached that peculiarly arbitrary age where prescriptions are free and I can get discounts on travel costs.

Meanwhile people are having to find huge amounts of money to pay for a university education, which I got free, and some have found that it's cheaper to go to the United States to get a degree.

Tax credits have been a brave attempt to make sure that work always pays - perhaps making the point in the process that nothing comes for free.

Meanwhile repairing acts of vandalism is expensive for our city.

So, what should be free? Education? Prescriptions? Dentistry? Museums? Transport? Basic benefits? None of the above?

The job of politics is to work out how to organise services into free, subsidised and fully-charged stuff. The work of the faith community is to remind everyone what is of real value.

A relationship with God has no price tag. It's a free gift. But it has very costly implications.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

How do you make decisions? Do you arm yourself with the best possible information then sit down with a cuppa and go through the details? Or do you act on hunches? Have an intuitive sense of what's wrong and what's right?

Should you vaccinate your children? Are the warnings right? Which experts should I listen to? Do I believe what I read in the papers? How do I assess risk?

And what about the relaxing things I can do that may involve substances? Cigarettes? Coffee? Beer? Nitrous oxide? Is it my decision? Should I listen to advice? Does it affect my decision if they are legal or illegal things?

Should I get fit? How? Train for a marathon? Or should I perhaps start on the easy level of a fun-run?

But have you noticed that a lot of life is about decisions? Have you heard of the Bible book of Job? Did you know that after questioning God, asking why he had suffered, apparently for no reason, the book ends with four chapters of God's questions?

Who is this that darkens my counsel? Where were you Job when I laid the earth's foundations? Who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars danced together and the angels shouted for joy?

What answer do you think Job gave after hearing a hundred such jibes? Did he own up to questioning things beyond his understanding? Or did he stand up to God and voice what he thought?

Do you think I'm going to tell you the answer? Or have you noticed, in this age of personal decision-making, that every sentence of today's thought is a question? Is it me that does thought for the day? Or is it you?

A Word of 2015 Testimony

Stephen Fry said recently that you can't believe in a God who allows parasites to eat the eyes of African children. It's an imagination failure really. People find it very hard to imagine a thing, a being, an essence (words fail us) who inhales bad and breathes out good. Someonething so amazing that their very existence encompasses all that is evil and redeems it.

It is amazing that some of these people with such a limited imagination are actors.

Almost fifty years since we moved beyond the god-of-the-gaps idea - that God is what you have left when science has reached its limit - still there are people who carry the idea of a too-small God around with them in case they have to do some emergency debunking.

The faith community can live with this. We laugh at it. We know that it is better debating style to select the strongest expression of your opponent's case to argue against. At least, some of us do.

We do not all recognise the God the atheists hate.

But we also chuckle at the way some people, who pronounce themselves members of the faith community, actually have put their trust in something they think they've proved. They believe in God on the basis of evidence, the balance of probabilities. That's not faith my friends. But sadly, neither is it science. It's pseudo-science and it deserves to be ridiculed. Even the very sad expression 'intelligent design' suggests that other human theories, by comparison, are unintelligent. This is, on the one hand plain rude, and on the other placing far too much infinite value on the earthly word 'intelligent'. Don't ascribe human characteristics to God. That way lies a barren land of omni-this and all-that. Take your shoes and socks off instead.

Faith is acting as if something is true because in doing so it becomes real for you and makes sense of your story. It provides a meta-narrative (and I know we are a bit suspicious of meta-narratives these days) which guides, points and helps. Neither a crutch, nor proving it but simply a theory of everything. Now where have I heard that expression before?

We all prefer to live in hope. My missing child will return. My cancer will be cured. I will find a job. And no, putting those three things in the same paragraph is not to confer equal seriousness upon them. So living, in what the Church of England funeral service describes as the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, is not counter-intuitive at all. It helps us live.

And so from this standpoint we observe the scientific community describing the universe as we know it beginning at a Big Bang, then refining the theory to suggest a series of bangs and crunches ad infinitum backwards and forwards (whatever that means in a multiverse we may have to now know as eternal). And as we observe we posit the existence of the infinite, the ultimate, the beyond-our-ken, the logos, the ground of our being, God. And for some of us it nourishes and sustains us to hope there is more than this, to live as people of faith that this life is not the only one on the market.

Not that we can tell with certainty if our atoms are to be redistributed around the universe or if there is to be a general resurrection. Most thinking Christians have jettisoned the whole damned-to-an-eternity-in-torment thing.

Wise guy once suggested this was the equivalent of seeing through a glass darkly, stealing an idea from Plato. And same guy suggested that in Jesus of Nazareth there were more clues to the other-world than in anyone else.

Which means that many great human stories and metaphors were told to try and get the truth of this man (somehow human and yet divine) taped. God's son? The lamb of God? The son of man? All make a point yet all fall short. No construct of words will ever get anywhere nearer than shoes and socks off time.

Trying to make sense of his death - some call the attempts 'theories of the atonement' - has led to all sorts of forms of words. Christus victor? Substitutionary atonement? Victory over death, sin, the world, the flesh, the devil?

For the evangelical community substitutionary atonement has become more than a model. It was, they say, what actually happened. Christ died in our place. So any member, or former member, of that community in all its breadth, is ostracised for daring to suggest that this might not be the whole truth.

I made this point in a Twitter conversation a few months back and the great Richard Dawkins said something along the lines of 'You mean God sent his son to die for the sake of a metaphor. That's worse.' Meaning that it was worse than all the other theories of the atonement with which people were wrestling and he was disagreeing. I love Dawkins. He writes well. He has helped me understand complex science. And he has had the humility to pull back from his rather aggressive stance against people of faith. He now acknowledges that friendly conversation works better. Respect.

I promised to write a bit more about it and it has taken until today to say this. Believe in God or not. It is entirely up to you. But make sure, if you don't believe, that the God you don't believe in isn't too small for anyone to believe in. Any creed, metaphor or historical account that is raised beyond the level of faith to actual, real, historical truth about the one we hope and trust is the creator and sustainer of the universe has become an idol. And we don't do idols in the Christian community.

Christ did not die for the sake of a metaphor. But metaphors are all we have to describe the sake he did die for.

Sermons from March 9th

I preached the first in our Lent series yesterday. I tweeted that if preaching is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable then this one definitely fell in the latter camp. As a result I think I will be starting an 'Is it OK?' group to sit in a pub once a month and re-imagine, or at least re-visit, precious doctrines. Probably in the summer.

I preached twice, using different passages in the morning and evening. Text from the morning sermon only is in green. Evening only is in red.

Difficult sermon coming up. Not only will it be online but I will publish the exact text. I expect it to start some conversations.

Series idea. In part 1 we looked at God's eternal qualities. We established a biblical view of who he is.

Separate, personal, creator, sustainer, judge and king. In part two we look at some of the tensions involved in seeing God from our human perspective.

We have called the series, which we will follow through Lent, 'Triumphantly Painful'. We have played with many titles. Also 'Balancing Act'. The Father feels these tensions:

Triumph or failure?
Grace or severity?
Justice or forgiveness?
Obedience or rescue?

Or does he?

Thing is that my understanding, my human grasp of a supreme being, does not include the idea of one who struggles. I cannot believe God feels tense, nervous, pressure. What kind of a God is it who wakes up feeling worried about what he has done?

No, to that. Big no.

So let's, once again, do some theology. Some logos theos - words about God.

When we say the father feels the tension between:

Triumph or failure?
Grace or severity?
Justice or forgiveness?
Obedience or rescue?

What we mean is that we do.

When we talk of God we find ourselves tense, nervous and under pressure.

And we resolve our tensions with statements that make sense of these.

'God', we say to ourselves, 'must hate sin and love the sinner.'

'God's verdict on sin', we say, 'is death, but his verdict on Jesus is resurrection.'

'God's wrath needs to be satisfied' we say 'so he poured it out on his own son.'

'Sin needs a sacrifice' we say 'and Jesus is the one sufficient sacrifice.'

Those sorts of statement have kept me company all my adult life as I lived as a Christian.

And slowly, nigglingly, they have failed to satisfy me as modern Christian writers - yes, Christian writers - have unpicked them, re-imagined them and invited me to look again, see again, think again.

Rationalism, making sense of the world through the mind and logic, gave us the desire to make such statements.

Modernism, and now post-modernism, presents a greater willingness to live with contradictions.

This morning someone reminded me that quantum physics relies on the contradiction of particles being in more than one place at once.

So writers and thinkers started questioning where the world was headed and how we imagine God in such a world.

1. The novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, in his book Never Let Me Go conceived a world where a group of children were raised for a specific purpose - to be cloned and available to replace the organs of their twin should the need arise. And readers cried foul. This must never happen.

Christian writer Steve Chalke started asking questions about substitutionary atonement - the idea that Jesus died in my place. You often have to have a really good phrase or saying to get noticed if you are stirring things up and the one he found was this 'cosmic child-abuse'. This, he said, is what it would be, if a parent gave a child's life for anything. And Christians cried foul. You can't call God this.

Was Jesus simply born to die? To replace our damaged organ, albeit our soul or spirit?

What's the difference between Chalke's God and Ishiguro's future?

And we look at Hebrews and we note something very odd. This writer saw a father beating his son as a good thing, a discipline, a way of life.

And we look at Genesis and we note something very odd. This writer saw describing God as one who punished, disciplined, inflicted pain, threw people out as normal. For that is how fathers dealt with wayward children.

And we know better. We have moved on. I repent of smacking my sons. I was one of the first of the new generation to begin to realise it wasn't the way forward.

We might need to re-imagine God. There is failure in the garden as well as triumph.

2. In our world we began to see attempts at harmonising contradictions failing. People want to take decisions at the most local level possible but don't want a post-code lottery when it comes to serious medical treatment. People want to identify nationhood with the smallest ethnic people group possible, making for lots of new, smaller countries. Yet we want to be part of a big joined-up world as unity is safer.

Then theologians such as Pete Rollins, who works amongst Northern Irish Christians pointed out that you can't harmonise all the contradictions in the understanding of God.

'The Bible itself is a dynamic text full of poetry, prose, history, law and myth all clashing together in a cacophony of voices. We are presented with a warrior God and a peacemaker, a God of territorial allegiance and a God who transcends all territorial divides, an unchanging God and a God who can be redirected, a God of peace and a God of war, a God who is always watching the world and a God who fails to notice the oppression against Israel in Egypt.

'The interesting thing about all this is not that these conflicts exist but that we know they exist. In other words, the writers and editors of the text did not see any reason to try and iron out these inconsistencies - inconsistencies that make any systematic attempt to master the text both violent and irredeemably impossible.

The result is not an account that is hopelessly ideological, but rather a text that shows the extent to which no one ideology or group of ideologies can lay hold of the divine. The text is not only full of fractures, tensions and contradictions but informs us that fractures, tensions and contradictions are all we can hope for.'

(Peter Rollins: How (Not) to Speak of God. SPCK 2006)

What's the difference between Rollins' God and the new political future?

And we look at Hebrews and find reference to a great cloud of witnesses - all the heroes of the faith from the Old Testament - who fought and struggled for a little people group who became a nation. People who were warriors, murderers, violent men and adulterers who are commended for their faithfulness.

And we look at Genesis and find reference to a serpent. It represents the possibility of evil built into the creation God had made, fighting against it. A creation that has to be protected from human inquisitiveness by a warrior's flaming sword.

We don't like this warrior God any more.

We might need to re-imagine God. We don't like that sort of triumph.

3. Then we found a modern, western, world that began abandoning the organised church and yet embracing eastern religions, ancient spirituality, Druidism and paganism.

People who liked candles but did not understand the light of the world.

People who liked peace but who hadn't seen that we followed the prince of peace, for we had hidden that.

And theologians such as Karen Armstrong, with her monastic background, took us back to ideas of mystery and suggested that not understanding everything about God is OK:

'When we contemplate God, we are thinking of what is beyond thought; when we speak of God, we are talking of what cannot be contained in words. By revealing the inherent limitation of words and concepts, theology should reduce both the speaker and his audience to silent awe. When reason was applied to faith, it must show that what we call 'God' was beyond the grasp of the human mind. If it failed to do this, its statements about the divine would be idolatrous.'

(Karen Armstrong: The Case for God. The Bodley Head 2009)

What's the difference between the new spiritual searching and Armstrong's vision of the future?

And we look at Hebrews. And find that the prince of peace suffered and it is he who we are to follow. The 'perfecter of our faith' (Hebrews words) endured opposition.

And we look at Genesis. And find that telling great stories to explain the evils of our world - pain in childbirth, male dominance, hard work cultivating land - are premised on the basis of a God who wants to avoid people living for ever like the gods do.

We might need to re-imagine God. He seems to want us to fail.

When Job's story was told his suffering was great. His friends attempts to rationalise it hopeless. The best thing they did was sit in silence with him for a week.

In Genesis 3, without explanation, we have a serpent appear in a perfect creation, representing the possibility of evil being inherent all along.

Is it OK to say that Jesus' ministry was a failure as well as a triumph?

Is it OK to say that if God is God we can leave it at that and agree not to understand.

Is it OK to say that sometimes things are bad and we won't get it?

Is it OK to say that we can't write a full theology of the atonement without becoming gods ourselves?

Well that is the mysterious place that this 40 years a follower of Jesus has reached. Neither word, triumph or failure, does justice to that dead man on a cross. It's not good enough to say his father punished him. It's not good enough to say he defeated his enemies. It's not good enough to say the Bible has all the answers.

It is, as the saying goes, better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, but a new theology of God the father, for me, needs to include some mystery and some silence.

As Rudyard Kipling said:

'If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same...'

Exactly.

Creation Good - Creationism Bad?

I am preaching the third in a series tomorrow, on God as creator. It is a tougher subject than it used to be. And whose fault is that?

I want to set that up a bit this morning.

You see whenever those who are not members of the faith community, and in particular those who would not call themselves Jesus-followers, hear the word creation these days they hear 'creationist'. And when they hear 'creationist' they hear 'fruit-loops'.

So all of us who believe in a greater power, a higher force, an uncaused cause, a prime-mover, a logos (made flesh or otherwise) have to do a lot of explaining that 'what creationists think' and 'what many normal Christians think' are not the same thing. Even though I do believe in a creator he is bigger, by definition, than the creationists can possibly imagine. He is bigger than the knock-god-down opponents describe. For the god they usually knock down is too small.

I watched the last episode of Series 1 of Aaron Sorkin's 'The Newsroom' last night. In it news anchor Will McEvoy (Jeff Daniels), who is portrayed as a liberalish Republican (bless), unleashes an amazing anti-Tea Party rant. In short he says how dare anyone suggest that God might be on their political side. It is why the founding fathers left religion out of it. And from this he deduces that there is not a single 'Christian position' on a whole load of issues.

My understanding of God as creator does not belong in science classes. The Bible is not, and has never been intended to be, a science text book. It is the developing story of God's relationship with his people, and theirs with him, and how they understood God. In the Old Testament they thought he was a warrior God who gave battle victory in response to obedience. They were wrong. They thought he liked them setting animals on fire as a sacrifice. They were confused. They thought he wanted them to sacrifice their children. He didn't. How do we know? The don't-kill-your-children thing was revealed early (to Abraham on a mountain). Then Jesus, the likeness of the invisible God (Colossians 1), told us and showed us the rest.

If we take a literal approach to the Old Testament (and it occurs to me that those who do are still very selective) then we have to concoct all sorts of complex theories, unacceptable to the majority of the scientific community, to explain why the dates add up, why evolution is discredited and only a theory and why the search for the actual Garden of Eden, or Ark of Noah, is worth carrying out.

For me there is nothing historical about Genesis 1-11. Not all truth is historical truth.

The blood-lusting, confused picture of God is the one anti-creationists such as Richard Dawkins and Alice Roberts say is wrong. They are right.

So what picture of God as creator is right? Find out tomorrow. Trendlewood Church at 1015 or Holy Trinity, Nailsea at 1830.

Carol Service Sermon

Sunday Evening Carol Service Sermon 6.30
Holy Trinity 22/12/13
Luke 1:26-38

Top ten google searches 2013:

1. What is twerking? (ask your mother)

2. What is my IP?

3. What is YOLO? (you only live once)

4. What is a prime number?

5. What is illuminati?

6. What is my car worth?

7. What is spooning?

8. What is global warming?

9. What is zumba?

10. What is the meaning of life?

Meaning of life number 10

Thousands and thousands of people have seen google as the place to get an answer. So it would be a fair guess on my part that that would be a question on many people's lips as they come for a carol and a ponder at Christmas. You will not find out much about twerking or zumba here tonight.

Thing is that, perversely, the answer to the question of the meaning of life is - another question? Lord will you speak to me?

But will you dare risk asking the question? For many have said, 'Lord speak, your servant is listening,' without ever contemplating what journey the word of the Lord might take them on if they heard it. It may be why most of us don't listen properly. Or ask.

Will you be the sort of receptive we read God is looking for?

For this story of Mary and the angel is not a piece of historical biography. If it were we could step back and say 'Not for me then' with some justification. This, as all the stories of the infant Jesus, are there to set out the type of response God seeks from all his servants. She is portrayed to us as an Everywoman and an Everyman. One who listens and is ready to respond.

What kind of greeting is this?
How will this work?
I am your servant.

What sort of work is this word? (29)
How will this word work? (34)
May this word work as you say! (38)

Let it be to me as you have said. Perhaps the greatest response to the word of the Lord ever.

As we head off into this Christmas celebration week do you have the guts to start it with a willingness to listen to a quiet alternative voice that speaks in the stillness and calls you to follow the man this baby grew into. What theologian Andrew Lincoln calls '...the still astonishing and life-changing truth claim that in the fully human life of Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph and Mary, and for the sake of humanity and the world God became incarnate.'

The life of the mother of Jesus would become a life of constant yeses - acknowledging that your child is to be so special and engaged in God's business day after day until you see him die not for disobedience but for his damned obedience. Tough call. Shocking.

You do not say yes to God just the once, although it must start with one of them. And then, as the final reading, which is to come in a moment, will say, you may begin to see his glory.

Thanks for listening. And Happy Christmas.

Quote Book Index 571-580

573. If you would know what God thinks of money, you only have to look at those to whom he gives it.
(Maurice Baring)

Quote Book Index 131-140

Indexing my quote books ten at a time and sharing the best of the ten:

138. The language of God seems mostly metaphor. His love is like a red, red rose. His love is like the old waiter with shingles, the guitar-playing Buddhist tramp, the raped child and the one who raped her. There is no image too far-fetched, no combination of sounds too harsh, no spelling too irregular, no allusion too obscure or outrageous. The alphabet of grace is full of gutturals. (Frederic Buechner)

750 Words

People who follow me - @s1eve - on Twitter will be greeted, most days by a post such as today's:

I wrote 767 words in 21 minutes (3 day streak): http://750words.com/entries/share/2318875 …

I have explained a bit about this before. The idea of 'Morning Words', for that is what the exercise is, is that a brain dump of the first things you want to say without a great need to worry about style or typos will be of benefit. You can also try and capture your dreams.

If you follow the link to my stuff my sharing preferences will tell you things such as how many words I wrote, how long it took me, how many days in a row I have managed and a list of the most common words in each entry. I will not let you read my work and sometimes, if the list of words has a dead giveaway, I don't share at all. You would worry if my most common words one day were church, warden and brake-pipes. They aren't.

Having done a couple of months I have subtly tweaked how I use the tool. For years I have suffered that slight evangelical guilt that a daily 'Quiet Time' to read the Bible and pray is a good thing. I have never found it easy, or good. Indeed the more I read the Bible the less I found the necessity to read it every day as biblical.

So, as someone who spends a great chunk of his day with a Bible open, I don't need an extra ten minutes at the beginning of the day on an unconnected passage. I don't do that dualistic thinking that it is not quite Quiet Time if you are preparing something. And I find the Bible is enthusiastic for me to pray continually - to involve God, as I understand God, in all I do and say.

So I have decided to make my 750 word exercise my prayer. For what is prayer but blurting your heart out in faith? And in those gaps where I know not what to write? Well surely that is listening for the still small voice - inner or outer - to inspire me.

After many years I have made the connection between the ability to type fast and the desire to take time out at the start of the day to think, reflect and wait in hope.

And, of course, you can all know if I am keeping it up.

Works for me.

(That was post 2,500. Thanks for reading.)

Unapologetics

People who have been hanging around me these last few days will not have got far into a conversation before I started whooping with joy about this book. I am not a very experienced whooper but Francis Spufford caused me to give it a go.

You do not find many great-reads in the faith market. Spufford manages it with delightful prose and clever plotting. As you read on, drawn into his emotional world as a believer, you genuinely want to know how and why it works for him. It is not apologetic. He explains on the jacket that this is firstly because others have done that but, secondly, because he's not sorry.

I encountered this book by reading an extract in The Guardian Review. It is unusual to find a book defending Christian faith covered there in such detail.

The first forty pages were so good I had already begun notes for a review and decided to buy multi-copies for Christmas presents. It is the first book I can say I will be genuinely unashamed to put into the hands of my well-read family members who don't share my faith. And to my Christian friends, parishioners and colleagues. This is pretty much how it feels to be the Christian me.

Last night at a meeting a group of us were asked to say what we thought our identity was. When nobody answered this question we were told it was not meant to be rhetorical and I was picked on to answer. I said I got my identity from being a humanoid life-form on the third planet from the Sun. The 'correct' answer was that we get our identity from being in Christ. Well no. Churches Together in Nailsea and District Annual Meetings are not the place for a row but no, no and no. The trouble with us Christians is that we describe our identity so much in terms of our separateness we forget our shared humanity. Placing our identity there saves us from racism, sexism and faithism. I am a human who has found out some truths about living my life which may help other fellow humans. That is all.

This book, although Spufford would never put it as clumsily as I just did, shares my outlook.

I was dreading finding something in it with which I disagreed. It came eventually. I would seek to be more positive about ancient biblical texts than to say some of them are 'wrong.' I would ask, what were these people trying to say that made them say that then? And how does it relate to us now? Not wrong; just outdated and needing interpretation. I want to be a Christian like Spufford is and I want to hold that the sixty-six books of the canon are special, inspired and, somehow, alive with the spirit of their inspirer.

Chapter two is the best piece of writing about sin I have ever read. Spufford prefers to call it the HPtFtU - the Human Potential to Foul things Up and no, that word isn't 'foul' in the book so if you can't read Anglo-Saxon without writing a letter of complaint to the Daily Mail, don't. It explains why 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.'

It is the first unputdownable Christian book I have read since Brain McLaren's 'A New Kind of Christian' series. I reached for it whenever I was free.

The chapter on Jesus (Yeshua) is a beautiful story told by amalgamating later Christian theology with the events of the gospels. It comes close to John Crace's Quarantine, Philip Pulman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ and Norman Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son in imagining what it might have been like to be Jesus. I might read the chapter one day instead of a couple of sermons. Easter? Hmm.

Occasional works of literature hold keys to that other-worldliness which is sometimes near at hand and can be grasped. This is one such. If you don't read this I would like to say that you are missing something really important.