Violence, Bible and Palestine

I wonder if you can get your imagination to a place where you feel so persecuted that you can imagine causing harm to the children of the persecutor?

I have been fortunate to have never come anywhere near this point but I have lived a very safe and sheltered life. I can disagree with the government without fear of arrest. My land borders are not disputed. The authorities take no interest in my clothes or sexual orientation. It has been my privilege not to be persecuted.

My formative teenage years had a backdrop of IRA atrocity. I was in Birmingham's Tavern in the Town the night before a bomb exploded there killing many. I've felt fortunate since then. The further away from it I get the closer it seems.

I found it hard to grasp a cause which dealt with the innocent like that.

Then, in 1988, I read, on an album sleeve of all places, this:

'On October 5 1968, a peaceful civil rights march in Derry (including parents and members of the band) was brutally attacked by the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the instructions of the Unionist-controlled Stormont Government. This was followed by the organised attack of a peaceful student march from Belfast to Derry by Unionist extremists setting a precedent of anti-nationalist violence in the subsequent months and culminating in the British Government's decision to draft in its troops to uphold 'law and order'.

'In the face of such belligerent intransigence, it was a small step from demanding civil rights to demanding a complete severance of ties from Britain and the establishment of a Socialist Irish State. The resurgence of the Irish Republican Army, largely dormant from the late '50s, heralded an age where constitutional politics went from sick-joke status to complete irrelevancy for the nationalist community.'

I make no claims about the factual accuracy of the piece. It simply became a personal tipping point. I understood the gut-led emotional reaction of anger of five young Catholic men utterly helpless in the face of aggression. Of course I am not defending the IRA. And the young men responded with music not violence

Psalm 137 was put on the lips of every young person of my generation in 1978 when Boney M charted with By the Rivers of Babylon. In fact the song was a cover, the original dating from 1970. Psalm 137 is a response to a taunt. People in exile in Babylon are asked by their captors to sing one of their Hebrew songs. They respond, I paraphrase, 'How can we sing the Lord's songs in a strange land?' Songs of the Temple won't work elsewhere.

At the end of Psalm 137 is a verse that Boney M chose not to sing. Again to paraphrase, 'Happy (is he) who takes your little ones and bashes their heads against the rocks.' Maybe, as Robert Alter says, it is a good job the captors did not understand the Hebrew in which the song-response to the taunt was delivered. Whether there was ever any intention of acting so, I doubt. But the song tells of a people angry enough to think it.

The religions of the Book have the highest possible care for the non-combatants during war-time. Hebrew Scriptures emphasise reasonable response (eye for eye, tooth for tooth). The New Testament suggests loving your enemy and praying for those who persecute you. The Quran specifically prohibits the killing of innocent people.

People often deride religions for causing wars. These days it is usually land-grabbing that causes wars and religion is sometimes enlisted for justification on either or both sides. The Hebrew Scriptures are a story of God-condoned land-grabbing and also, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, 'a national literature of self-criticism.'

I lament for the innocent of Israel and Palestine. I don't understand how the national boundaries can be finalised without concessions. I do understand why a first reaction is to bang the heads of the enemy against the rocks. Trouble is, we've been having nothing but first reaction for two and a half thousand years. And the children get their heads smashed in.

Song of Songs Goes to a Bar

In honour of the Morning Prayer readings from Song of Songs here is a sketch I wrote for Scripture Union's Word Live a few years back.

Bad Chat Up Lines

The scene is a bar. The mood can be set by quiet 'lounge' music and the occasional clinking of glasses or noise of cutlery and crockery.

Barkeeper Yes what can I get you?

Female customer Can I have a Diet Coke please?

Barkeeper Sure. Are you alone? Waiting for someone?

Female customer No. Yes I am. My friend will be along in a minute. Is there a (pause) problem with that?

Barkeeper Oh no, no. But Derek's in the bar over there and he comes over and chats up any new attractive female customers. I just try and keep him away, that's all. His lines are all terrible clichés.

Female customer You mean 'Your father was a thief...'

Barkeeper '...he stole the stars and put them in your eyes.' Yeah that's about the measure of Derek.

Female customer Do you believe in love at first sight?

Barkeeper Or should I walk past again? Is there an airport round here?

Female customer My heart is taking off. I think I've heard them, all.

Barkeeper Watch out for 'You see that Porsche in the car park...'

Female customer Ooh sorry, not familiar.

Barkeeper When you say 'Yes' he says, 'Well mine's the Transit van parked behind it.'

Female customer Oh dear (pause), but listen. Can I have a go? I think I'm quite good at repelling boarders.

Barkeeper Of course. Be my guest. I don't want to interfere. I'll be over here if you need me. Ey up. Here he comes.

Derek Well (cheeky laugh), what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

Female customer Girl? Girl? If I were a girl I would be under age and should be thrown out.

Derek I'm sorry. I was confused by your beauty.

Female customer Easily confused are you?

Derek Only in the presence of such grace and elegance. Can I buy you a drink?

Female customer Can you do the sweet smell of mandrake and the fresh fruit of the vineyard?

Derek You what? I was thinking of another Coke.

Female customer Moving on. My round thighs? Perhaps you consider they are like jewels, the work of an artist's hands?

Derek Eh?

Female customer Surely my neck is an ivory tower and my nose a mountain?

Barkeeper There's nothing wrong with your nose; it's lovely.

Female customer Do you not find my eyes like pools of infinite depth?

Derek (A little embarrassed) Well they are, er very nice but er, that is...

Female customer Isn't my hair like finest purple cloth?

Derek It looks blond in this light.

Female customer Does not my breath smell of sweetest apples; my mouth of finest wine?

Derek I know they don't clean the pipes that often but that Coke must be off.

Barkeeper I heard that.

Derek Sorry Trev.

Female customer I haven't yet heard you praise my navel like a drinking cup, my stomach a pile of wheat surrounded by lilies. My breasts are like fawns. I am a tall palm tree and my breasts like its bunches of ...

Derek (Running away) Hey lads. Leave this one. She's a nutter.

Barkeeper Wow. Have one on the house. Where did all that stuff come from? That was an epic performance.

Female customer Oh, it was more than epic. It was (pause) biblical. Here's my date now. Isn't he just a gazelle? Pomegranate wine darling (air kissing) - mhwa mhwa.

Barkeeper (Aside) Oy Derek. I think you could be right for once. Weird this one. What sort of Bible can she have been reading?

Contradictions - Article 20/39

XX. OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH

THE Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

Who, or what, is 'the church' in this article? Same answer as in the last part of the previous post. The one true church is the catholic (meaning worldwide, because of the lower case c) church. All of us erring institutions are part of that yet we are not, in any one place, a complete representation of it.

Percy helpfully draws our attention to the analogy Jesus used – he is the vine and we are the branches. This suggests interdependence rather than independence (chopped off branches don't do well) and a need to acknowledge the existence of the trunk, or the whole vine, to stick with the metaphor.

Individual churches should not over-stress their particularity (these days that is often on sexual matters, which have taken over from initiation rites as the cue for division). 'The consequence' says Percy 'is that the branches attempt to define the vine.'

There are some hidden gems in this Article. It keeps Scripture as the reference point (we have got used to that by now) but it doesn't allow what we call 'proof-texting'. You can't call a verse in your defence if the opposite is also in Scripture. This behaviour is described a 'repugnant'. In early debates with non-Christian friends the argument was often raised that Scripture is contradictory. The solution is that the same advice does not work in all circumstances.

My College Old Testament tutor John Goldingay showed us, in a lecture on Proverbs, that 26:4 and 26:5 were contradictory. He said, I try to recall, 'The Bible understands that some things in life are paradoxical; so it puts them next to each other.' There will be times to worship in faith and times to respond with works. Lifting a verse from the Bible that recommends one or the other is not clever.

Can we track the 'lawful' of the first part of the sentence into the second? Not sure. Maybe. But we are not so down on illegality these days as the reformers were.

Being a witness to Holy Writ is a great responsibility. We should not deny any of it nor add to it. The job of the church member is to either be a Bible student or to listen to those who are. One job of the church leader is to increase the number of Bible students in the congregation. This will enable the load of ministry to be shard and the orthodoxy of the particular church to be constantly re-evaluated.

If you would prefer a milder god please ask - Article 7/39

VII. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

THE Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.

I've recently enjoyed the company of a small group of people who make up what we call the Bible Book Club. We have a set book, or a clear narrative section from a longer book, which we read in advance. Then, over a drink for an hour, we discuss questions from Book Club world. Did you enjoy the book? Did you follow the plot? If you were making a film who would you cast in the various roles? If it were a separate book what artwork would you put on the cover?

The stories from the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) have been a wonderful resource to us. We do not come away with the feeling that 'milder gods are available' but that the great tales represent a striving for meaning which finds completeness in the Gospels. The Bible is the story of what O'Donovan calls 'an emerging theological idea'. The Articles are proof that the written word of God is complete but the ideas continue to emerge – or I wouldn't be writing this.

At BBC (yeah, great initials) we read each story separately and treat it on its merits. If you are local to Nailsea you'd be more than welcome to join us; faith experience not necessary. Contact me for joining details or visit the church web-site.

It has been reformed Christian teaching, ever since the Articles clarified it, that post-Jesus' time on earth we are freed from the burden of the ceremonial and festival law but not the ethical. The commandments (not just the ten) are still a good limitation on human weakness, but we can eat what we want and the pigeons live.

Ruth - A Further Thought

One final thing about the Old Testament Book of Ruth which we discussed at Bible Book Club last week.

Fairly late into the conversation I introduced the contextual material from Genesis 19:30-38. The myth told there about the origins of the Moabites was that the daughters of Lot got their father drunk and had sex with him in order to continue the family line. The answer to the child's question 'Daddy where do Moabites come from?' is that Moabites are what you get if you have sex with your father. It's not pretty and it's not complementary. The Bible is terribly xenophobic in places.

It means that the Book of Ruth is, to some extent, the parable of the Good Moabite and anticipates Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan.

The Bible and History

What do vicars do for fun on their day off? Well I can't speak for the rest but I find baiting the conservative evangelical world a nice pastime. Good morning.

A few years ago I was commissioned by a leading evangelical Christian home mission agency (narrowed down enough?)  to write a long piece on the Bible and history. I wrote it. You can read it here.

If it is too long for you there is a shorter, punchier version here.

The piece was rejected. The line in the rejection letter which stuck with me was, as close as I can recall - We don't think most Christians get out of bed in the morning thinking about issues of historicity.  I responded not by saying they were wrong but that they were right and the article would show people why they should (get out of bed with historicity on their mind and with apologies to Rory Gallagher for whom the problem was bullfrogs).

It was unpublished but they still paid me as I had done what they asked. I imagine the guy who actually commissioned the piece is still in the dungeons. All evangelical home mission agencies have dungeons don't they? During my short career as a writer I can recall three occasions when I was well paid for pieces that were not used.

Why am I telling you this? So, if you heard Today on BBC Radio 4 this morning you will have heard an expert (yes, we still have them) talking about the mismatch between the archaeological evidence and the written tradition in the life of Kings David and Solomon (there is a gap in archaeology between roughly 1000BCE and 800BCE).

Challenged as to whether this presented problems for the readers of the Hebrew Bible he responded that it depended on your approach to biblical interpretation.

So  my intuition was correct. BBC Radio 4 Today is helping more people to get out of bed with historicity on their mind. As well they should. The Hebrew ancient literature is both a national document of self-criticism (Jonathan Sacks) and (if misinterpreted) a theology of land-grabbing (me).

So, with tentativity, here is my course for those wanting to allow the possibility that we can learn about God without having to swallow whales:

The Liberal Evangelical Lectures - The Omega Course

• Why everything you thought you knew about Christianity is wrong.
• It's more about what you do than what you believe. If you're not improving the world stop claiming to be a Christian. Creeds should be about making a difference now.
• There is no dotted line to sign on. There is water not to get too far from.
• Jesus probably had a real Dad. The New Testament speaks of the seed of David as much as born of a virgin.
• You can make church what you want it to be as long as it is gathering.
• Booklist: A new kind of Christian, Love wins, The Case for God, Unapologetic.
• There never was a garden but anyway, snakes can't hear. The devil ain't all that real but sin is. For many people hell is now.
• The more I study the Bible the more liberal I become.
• You can sleep with whomsoever you want except...
• If you want to know what God's like look at Jesus.
• Jonah was a story; Job was a play, Noah was a mythos. Some Bible stories are more than true.

This is not a complete course specification.

Like it? How can we make it happen?

Don't like it? Your consolation prize is Rory Gallagher singing Bullfrog Blues live.

Advent Thought 19 and Number 666 or 144,000

The Bible, and step forward please the Book of Revelation, teases us with numbers:

12 tribes and 12 apostles
40 days and 40 years
7 days of creation and deadly sins
The Holy and Undivided Trinity 3 in 1 and 1 in 3
Feeding of the 4,000 and the 5,000

Even the number of fish recorded by John as the miraculous catch at the end of his Gospel is counted - 153.

So we are left with some numbers that look important but probably aren't. And some numbers which don't seem all that significant but surely are. And despite all that Dan Brown has written we are left with no easy way to sort the one from the other. We will not find our symbologists able to provide us with dogma.

Revelation tempts us to be interested in the Number of the Beast - 666; and the number of the saved - 144,000. But both those numbers are clearly symbolic and are neither code nor amulet; not a secret insight or parameter.

The number 7 is far more interesting in Revelation. It is the narrative device John uses to hold his book together. 7 letters to 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpets, 7 visions, 7 bowls, 7 heads, 7 kings.

The band Genesis got from 666, to 7 to Pythagoras who:

...with the looking glass reflects the full moon

(See I gave you a big clue today.) But they were playing with symbolic numbers too.

What we do find is that where a number has significance in the Old Testament the New Testament writers will use it to add relevance to ther story. The Israelites wandered for 40 years in the wilderness; Jesus was tempted 40 days in the wilderness. This is not a trick. It was widely used at that time. There is history behind both events; the numbers should not be seen as part of it.

And if you think we have got beyond doiung that. Well that's a good subject for today's ponder. I'm happy to wait for your answer. For years. For ages. Until hell freezes over.

Thought for the Day

This morning one of the stories on BBC Radio Bristol was that someone had, almost certainly, discovered a large amount of ambergris on a North Somerset beach. But the challenge was to get a Thought for the Day out of it:

So, someone has found ambergris on a local beach.

There's a story in the Bible about a prophet who didn't go where he was told to go. Eventually, making headway in the wrong direction, some superstitious sailors threw him overboard believing he was the cause of the storm they were in. According to the story the weather then calmed, which terrified them, and the prophet was swallowed by a large fish.

In this unlikely tale it was in the fish's stomach that the man came to his senses - people in the Bible often come to their senses in strange places - and the fish vomited him up onto dry land. Maybe he should have checked to see if there was anything valuable nearby.

The man, name of Jonah by the way, then went where he had been called to go, to preach to people he didn't like very much. God, it is said, decided not to strike them all down and Jonah got mad because that was what he would have preferred God to do.

Later Jonah became angry at the death of a plant under which he was sheltering. God asked him a key question - if you're upset about a plant why shouldn't I be concerned about a huge group of people?

Jonah had no answer and we often forget that the fishy tale ends there.

You can read a lot into this well-known story, which we often call Jonah and the whale. Maybe the shortest lesson is that if God is calling you to do something you simply don't get to opt out.

And for us to to think about today? That pearls are oyster grit, ambergris is whale puke and brilliant, valuable stories can come from equally unlikely places.

For the first time in three and a bit years I got a round of applause in the studio (if two people can constitute a 'round').

Religion and Violence

I have found this an incredibly useful book. No easy answers but lots of excellent analysis and insightful stories and illustrations.

The central section revisits some of the Genesis family narratives with great gentleness and scholarship. What did the compilers of the stories of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel and Joseph and his brothers think they were doing? And have we, in going down the road of the scandal of particularity where God apparently chooses one over another, missed the point that always both parties get a blessing. And apart from the first example, where one party dies, they do not become enemies.

Wisdom usually whispers. The hard work of interpretation is to be preferred over the fundamentalist desire that religious texts be simple and taken at face value.

Islam, Judaism and Christianity have a common ancestor in Abraham - our future peace may well come from looking at these texts together and seeing what we have missed.

'When religion divests itself of power, it is freed from the burden of rearranging the deckchairs on the ship of state and returns to its real task: changing lives.'

Spinning David

By the time of Jesus the verdict on Israel's great king, David, was fixed. Here is the man against whom kingship standards are measured.

So although John's gospel goes out of the way to say that Jesus comes from Galilee, and shows Jesus demonstrating from Isaiah 9 that this is just as much a messianic expectation as Bethlehem, it is still important that he is of David's line for the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke).

Which might mean we would find good things in the biblical account of the history of David. And indeed we do, in the commentaries upon it. But in 1 Samuel we find an account of a king doing as a king does - beating up the little guys, choosing the best women for his harem and holding grudges.

Consider one of the three accounts of the beginning of David's coming to the notice of the Court of Saul (there are three, and none of them makes reference to any of the others) - the story of Goliath. A later hint that the giant was killed by someone other than David and then the narrative placed in David's life (2 Samuel 21:19) is rarely referred to by preachers. Indeed 1 Chronicles 20:5 smooths over the inconsistency by suggesting Goliath had a brother. 1 and 2 Chronicles do this sort of thing a lot.

Taking the account at face value, what is the first thing that David says as he strolls onto the world stage? In the narrative of the choosing and anointing of the youngest son of Jesse, David has no lines. In the account of the harp-playing, trouble-soother of Saul's demons he has no speech either. Only in the Goliath story of 1 Samuel 17 does David speak. How does he announce himself?

'What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine?'

Yes folks, that's right. David wanders in with the line 'What's in it for me?' He may be a good-looking shepherd-boy but he has a mercenery's heart. He wants a reward.

David's ability in battle is, however, more than just legendary. Whether or not he actually discarded his bronze-age armour and used his stone-age weapon to defeat his iron-age adversary, he eventually becomes the subject of a chant 'Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands'.

And in a world where we are rightly horrified by beheading, the habit of collecting the foreskins of the vanquished is a bit of biblical history we also wander quickly beyond.

Cue another bit of unspun action. David asks his best mate Jonathan to lie to explain his absence from a royal banquet.

This is seen as perfectly normal behaviour by the authors. It warrants no criticism.

And so our account of the life of David proceeds. Mistresses and wives collected. Adultery committed. The husband of one of his female conquests bumped off by placing him on the front line. And by his death bed a list of enemies for his son Solomon to continue beating up on.

The judgement of history from the letter to the Hebrews, where great heroes of the faith are listed, is this:

'I do not have time to tell about ... David ...'

So he was not everyone's cup of tea. Our Morning Prayer lectionary walk through the life of David as told by 1 Samuel is the story of kings doing as kings do.

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail the king arrives in a village. The Pythons announced him with this timeless two lines of dialogue:

How do we know he's the king?
He ain't got shit on him.

That's the truth about ancient kingdoms. The boss avoided the shit. Others protected them from it, and once you were the king all matters of right and wrong are judged on the basis that the king must be right. And only occasionally will a prophet brave the court to challenge in the name of The Lord. Samuel, Nathan and the company of the prophets are going to be our heroes and heroines.

Yet I give the last word to musician Bono who, writing an introduction to the controversial, but brilliant Pocket Canons, said:

'That the Scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries used to shock me; now it is a source of great comfort.'
(Introduction to Psalms)

Noah

Not too much plot spoiling here because the story is well-known.

Russell Crowe scowls through almost every scene of this re-imagined biblical myth. He is a dark, brooding character, haunted by the feeling of a mission from his god but never fully clear what it will be. Each step of the way is revealed to him in dreams, symbolic moments, miracles and developing perception. His grandfather Methuselah has the power of vision and healing at his command and touch and is the patriarchal consultant for the whole family.

In that way it is more in keeping with the way people feel they hear God today. No voice from heaven but a need to act on hunches, consult the wise, and interpret these in terms of obedience/disobedience afterwards. Although Noah gets a good dose of God's special effects with very good CGI.

This Noah does not expect to repopulate the earth. Indeed he feels compelled to make sure this will not happen, leading to conflict with his own family.

It is a classic battle between good and evil. In order to provide some narrative tension we have a stowaway on the ark and much made of Ham and Japheth's concern that they have no wives. The biblical narrative simply describes the occupants of the ark as Noah and his wife, his sons and their wives (unnamed). By the end we see how the film thinks this might happen. It is a bit awkward for us. All the pre-genesis 12 stories take liberties with the table of kindred and affinity (if you take them literally).

Andreas Whittam Smith, writing in The Independent last week, said he was disappointed that it was not 'a literal reading of the ancient accounts'. He was looking for ark design tips, survival techniques and final-resting-place solutions. None of these questions are answered by the Bible so how a literal reading could have helped him is beyond me. Furthermore, in using the existence of fallen angels - the film calls them 'Watchers' - director Darren Aronofsky has solved the problem of how the ark's occupants manage to hold back the crowds of potential boat-crashers. He also invents a sleeping gas which solves the many questions about animal behaviour on board.

Myths and legends raise many questions of detail; we are not meant to worry about their precise answers. We are meant to be concerned about questions of selfish human behaviour where every inclination of the thoughts of our hearts might be only evil all the time. And if there is a god how such selfishness might be perceived.

The Bible wants us to be fruitful and multiply in peaceful co-operation. And this early agenda is strictly vegetarian. This film asks serious questions of those whose industrial behaviour robs the land of its non-renewables. We watch three endings in effect. The rainbow is there but we are not given its biblical meaning. Ham marches off but we are not told he is to be the father of the Canaanites, or how. Noah is seen by his sons, drunk and naked but we are not told how offensive this is in such a culture.

Our lovely friends at Damaris have made some fantastic resources to go along with the film and use it to explore the truth.

Enjoyable escapism with a lot to ponder.

Fig Trees

Did anyone else have a hmmm moment in this morning's reading from Micah 4? I was thinking of this:

Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig-tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.

For the prophet, writing several centuries before Christ, anticipates a future where one picture of God being with his people is the ability to relax. A kip in the garden under the shade of your own fig tree is a taste of paradise.

Does that make Jesus' cursing of a fig-tree, for no apparent reason, in Mark 11, more or less dramatic? What was once only a matter of when, not how, it would happen is now put in doubt. There may be no shade for those who thought themselves protected after all.

Playing with these thoughts.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at Radio Bristol this morning after an early morning re-write - I had done a light piece but the news changed the agenda:

'It was such an ordinary day.' How many stories of tragedy start with that? A short drive can end traumatically with an accident. Or a trip, a fall, and a life-changing injury. Over the weekend a visit to the shops was the mundane last act of those whose destination was a mall in Nairobi and a mass shooting. Attendance at a church in Peshawar, Pakistan ended in a massacre.

 

What helpful thoughts can we conjure up in the light of such appalling evil? What words spring to mind? Vengeance? Justice? Anger?

 

I'd hope we might take a more detached view but I really don't know. Of course it will make a big difference if you are affected personally.

 

In the Bible an Old Testament story is about a man called Job, happy and wealthy. We are shown a conversation between God and The Devil. Job knows nothing of this. God proudly exclaims how faithful Job is. The Devil says, in effect, that this is because Job 'has it all'. 'Were he to experience hardship he would not continue to worship you' taunts the Devil.

 

Cue incredible suffering.

 

Eventually Job has a conversation with God. He gets no answer to his questions, just more questions.

 

If anyone gives you an easy answer to the question of suffering walk away. They are bogus. There are none. Neither do I believe God is having a wager with the devil about the faithfulness of his servants. But he may as well be for all we know.

 

A Job's comforter is someone who offers unhelpful advice at a time of difficulty. In the story, the best thing the comforters actually offered was silence whilst keeping Job company. For those who are suffering today? Maybe there's a lesson for us there.

Job

It has been interesting reading the book of Job in Morning Prayer recently. The books of the Bible that started life as literature are by far and away my favourite parts. I love stories and especially ones with a moral or a deeper meaning. So let's hear it for Genesis 1-11, Esther, Jonah and Job. They remind us of the story-teller's secret art.

Job may have started life as a play. If you've never read it then I am about to plot-spoil. Sorry. Go read all forty-two chapters and come back in a couple of hours.

In my rather conservative New International Version of the Bible an introduction tells us that Job, '...helps to explain why righteous people suffer.' This is such a small fraction of the truth as to be almost worthless. In fact the book does not explain and ends up with God telling Job to stop messing with things that are beyond his understanding. But wait. We are getting ahead of ourselves.

Job starts with a brag and a bet. We are introduced to the character of Job in the first five verses, a man who has it all. Yet a man who is so holy he offers sacrifices to God on behalf of his children in case any of them have sinned accidentally. Satan and the angels present themselves to God who describes Job to them glowingly. 'There is no-one on earth like him...'

Satan responds that this is because Job has wealth. 'He won't be so holy if you let me mess with him.'

God agrees that Satan may so mess.

And so, without knowing he is the subject of this 'gentleman's' wager, Job experiences the loss of his children and servants in four random and simultaneous disasters. Staging the play, the consecutive messengers running on and announcing doom and gloom would be almost black comedy.

Ten dead children and all animal wealth gone. But Job accepts his lot and continues to worship.

Back to the heavens. Satan says it is not surprising that Job is still worshipping (yes it is, we say) because he still has his health. 'He won't be so holy if you let me mess with that.'

God agrees that Satan may so mess, but Job must live.

Job, still unaware that he is being treated like Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places, wishes he was dead but refuses to curse his God.

Three friends turn up. They have a conference before arriving in Job's presence and then sit with him in silence, dust on their heads and robes ripped.

The three friends then take it in turns to make speeches to which Job responds. Amongst other things they put it to him that:

• If he pleads with God this will all end.
• If he is devoted and confesses sin things will change.
• If he stops cursing God his suffering will finish (he has moaned but not cursed).
• God's anger is all you can expect.

Job does not justify himself but refuses to admit wrong-doing. He longs for the days when he enjoyed God's 'intimate friendship' mistakenly equating that with the time of his wealth and success. He seeks a reason for his suffering, not someone to blame. He believes that he is in a court-case and has received judgement and punishment but no evidence.

A fourth friend turns up. The words of Elihu can be removed from the story without it losing its continuity. He is not referred to before his speech or after. Unlike the speeches of the first three 'comforters', Job does not respond. Elihu speaks last because he is the youngest, describing himself as having waited 'bottled up' while the elders spoke. It corresponds with the lot of the young sometimes to speak last, speak wisest and be ignored.

Then God speaks. He does not mention the bet. He lists a load of questions nobody can answer.

Job is finally humbled. 'My lips had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.' Job's privilege is not an answer to his questions about suffering but an audience with his maker.

God tells the three comforters that they were wrong, a helpful reminder to us never to read passages of our Bibles without context for some of it is the record of the speeches of the foolish. They are sent off to repent and make good. Job is instructed to pray for them.

And Job? He gets ten more children. A consolation? His new daughters are more beautiful. Does that help? And his health and wealth back. Big deal? You almost never know what things your new acquaintances have been through to get where they are.

The wager is never mentioned.

The story is for us. Job means 'persecuted one'. A symbolic name for a fictitious and imaginary character who stands for all those who suffer randomly. God may as well, for all we know, be having a bet with Satan about our holiness. It is not for us to know why children die, illnesses strike down good people or warmongers bring terror to us and not the guy next door.

We should not seek meaning or place responsibility for such things. We should recall that the Christian hope is a dead man on a cross identifying with human suffering not explaining it. If times are tough then life is being just as normal as if times are good.

Starting Ecclesiastes

For those who'd rather read than listen here is my opening to our series of sermons on Ecclesiastes. If you want to compare delivery to script go to our church's web-site.

 

Trendlewood

21/4/13

Ecclesiastes Series

Chapter 1 Life is a bag of pants.

So when I wrote some notes on this book for a teenage Bible study series some years ago that was what we called it.

It's my favourite book of the Bible so I've been very patient not timetabling it for a sermon series for six years.

I've got three parts today. An introduction to the whole book, some comments on the content of chapter one, and four spiritual exercises you might like to pick one from.

Introduction

Feeling down? Weary? Need a helping hand? Tough. Read Ecclesiastes and you’ll discover, that the only way is down, down, deeper and down.

If you've ever listened to a song and thought, ‘That’s a great line but I’ve no idea what the song is about,' welcome to Ecclesiastesworld; a world where there are some great one-liners but the theme of the song is a little hard to grasp. Our author starts his (it was probably a ‘him’) look at life by leaving God out of the equation and looking at life through atheistic spectacles.

Still, mustn’t grumble. Sometimes it can help you when you’re down to discover that other people have been down there too and got back up again, at least a bit.

So prepare for ‘...Meaningless! Meaningless! ..Everything is meaningless.’ (1:2), ‘The more the words, the less the meaning...’ (6:11) and, ‘Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.’ (12:12).

In Ecclesiastes we look at life from the non-God point of view. The conclusion? Well it’s used pants, frankly. Life is useless, meaningless, vanity and a chasing after wind.

And it is true. Without an understanding of a creator/sustainer God, the world certainly has pants-like tendencies. Ecclesiastes is going to help us explore our world-view.

But the writer occasionally offers glimmers of hope and snatches of wisdom. Life looked at from a purely human point of view seems largely pointless. But God is in the picture and you can’t ignore him.

We will spend the next few weeks in the company of a teacher and philosopher who saw a lot of stuff going on, wondered what it all meant and ended up seeing God in the midst of the chaos.

Ecclesiastes is not a particularly clearly structured book and the chapter headings in the Bible are not especially significant.

Ecclesiastes has recurring themes rather than clear structure.

It feels like a collection of recollections (Those two words - interesting.)

So who is this ‘teacher’ (v1)? The actual Hebrew word Quoheleth is not easy to translate. ‘Teacher’ is one attempt, but it could just as easily be ‘philosopher’. Probably not ‘preacher’. This person had a school of followers not a pulpit for the public.

Vv12-18 tell us that this book has been placed on the lips of a great king with a reputation for wisdom. That can only mean Solomon, a man who enjoyed many of the great things the writer of the book seems to attain but finds useless.

But a word of caution. In the world of the Old Testament it would be a tribute to ascribe a book of wisdom to the school of Solomon. It does not mean he wrote it all.

Content

So here are today’s philosophy starters, and remember you’re not allowed to answer as if God exists. Not today, anyway. (I know that’s rude to God but bear with me; it’s just a training exercise):

• Why bother to work? (v3)

• Why doesn’t the sea fill up? (v7)

• Is there anything new? (v10)

• Will anybody remember you when you’re dead? (v11)

• Is life pointless? (whole passage)

Try and think of the different world-views (ways that other people make sense of the world). Christians, hopefully, have a biblical world-view. What other world views are there?

(Talk to neighbour then shout some out)

The second half of our chapter has some explanation (not necessarily answers). Vv12-18. Unless wisdom starts with God it will not get us anywhere.

We are also privileged in a way that the philosopher of Ecclesiastes wasn't.

We read Ecclesiastes from the other side of Jesus.

Application

1. We asked the question, ‘Is anything new?’ Ponder on. There are all sorts of inventions and loads of creative people, but is anything really ‘new’ rather than simply advancement. What about the creation of a piece of music? Is that creation out of nothing?

2. The passage seems to suggest not that we are uncreative but that each generation faces the same type of problems. They just come round again. We don’t learn from experience. Resolve to learn from every mistake you make. The most trainable people in the world are those for whom even a negative experience is a learning experience. Review and learn.

3. We often give a copy of one of the Gospels to friends interested in exploring Christianity. Why not give them a Bible and suggest they start with Ecclesiastes? Its absence of easy answers and its relevance to the human condition might make it the perfect starting point for the unconventional explorer. You’ll need to be around to answer questions but you might have a better conversation if you give them a copy of Ecclesiastes.

4. Some Christians find Ecclesiastes a very difficult book. They ask questions such as, ‘What’s it doing in the Bible?’ Others love it and consider it their favourite book. You might like to think about why it has managed to be so divisive?

Quote Book Index 41-50

I think I've reached about 1985/6.

47. The bow in the sky above Noah was a war bow - that is why the Hebrew signifies peace. (Alec Motyer)

King David; Good or Bad?

I have been very much helped so far this Lent by reading David Runcorn's book on God-centred leadership called 'Fear and Trust'. He tells the story of 1 and 2 Samuel with good insights from that world to today's world and the vision of a theologian who speaks of God at work.

Yesterday he was dealing with the three stories that introduce David to us, the audience.

Now we make a lot of the fact that David was the great king. It was important for the Gospel writers that Jesus, although being of a family from Nazareth, was seen to be born in David's town of Bethlehem and also that Joseph be counted as one of David's line.

Given this great king we might ponder how the Bible introduces him to us. We do well to ponder for it is in an odd way.

Hebrew writing does not need to be linear. We like to harmonise conflicting accounts but the biblical writers do not. They just give us the stories. Three stories. Each one seems to say, 'I am the first.' (This also happens in Genesis where we have two separate creation narratives one after the other without comment.)

So story one is the account of Samuel being sent by Yahweh to Jesse's family because there he has been told he will find the next king and he is to anoint him. Samuel works through the sons until the youngest, David, is summoned from sheep-watching duties. Although Samuel has been told not to look on the outside it happens that David is good-looking after all. He is the one. 1 Samuel 16:1-13.

In the second story the first King, Saul, needs calming - the madness of King Saul will be a theme of the story as it unfolds -  and a son of Jesse (we have just read about him but the passage assumes we don't know who he is) who can play the harp is called for. David pitches up and tenderises Saul's blues. 1 Samuel 16:14-23.

In the third story the  army is struggling with the Philistines and in particular a taunty giant of a man called Goliath. David turns up with food for his brothers who are serving. We are told who he is as if we have not read the previous two accounts. He rejects the iron age armour and uses stone age weapons to defeat this bronze age hero.

Here's a question then. What is the first thing David says in these stories?

In the anointing passage he is silent. In the music passage he speaks only with his harp. In the Goliath story he speaks for the first time, 'What's in it for me?' The great king, the king of all earthly kings, the king everyone wants to say is an archetype for Jesus is on stage and he asks what might be the reward for a bit of giant-killing. Finding out that it will be a cool sum he does the deed.

David is not a nice man. His kingship is ruthless, his relationships manipulative, his adultery legendary, his wives and mistresses more than one of each and his death-bed speech a list of enemies who need dealing with.

And he is what the Bible calls great. A man of faith. A man of obedience to his God. But he was, and you'll need to excuse me here, what we would call today a complete bastard.

A Bit of Dissonance

My head has been in a bit of a spin today. It started with a vague feeling of I don't-know-whatness at Morning Prayer and it hasn't gone away. I'm not ill or stressed; it's just that there's a thought trying to fly.

It may come from having had my notions of order challenged and being invited to embrace the conflict (see Monday's post and comments) but I seem to be more than usually aware of the bigness of God and the smallness of humanity.

It is also a time where many are discussing the future of the church, especially the Church of England, in the light of the TV programme Rev (tonight 9.00 p.m) and also a few articles being Facebooked and Twittered (some quite old) about the decline in the church. Others are renewing their spleen-venting over disestablishment and literal understandings of the Bible. I'm with them on both counts so they may as well save their spleens when in my company.

In Psalm 76 this morning we were invited to ponder a view of God that was enormous:

You are resplendent with light,
more majestic than mountains rich with game.
Valiant men lie plundered,
they sleep their last sleep;
not one of the warriors
can lift his hands.
At your rebuke, O God of Jacob,
both horse and chariot lie still.

This human view of God's majesty was that creatures were attractive because they were food and defeat in battle was all part of God's mighty, all-encompassing command and control. When he says die, you die.

Some say that they dislike the bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament. In fact it is the people who were bloodthirsty. The psalmist suggests that God is bigger than all this.

The Old Testament contains a lot of history and, as we all know, history is often written by the winners.

Then we started the Book of Zephaniah. He prophesied during the reign of Josiah. Josiah is always lauded as a good king who preserved Israel's sacred religious traditions and instituted reforms on that basis. He listened to the prophets and obeyed them. But the words of Zephaniah fly in the face of that. Here's a guy who proclaims death and judgement while things are improving and being renewed. It looks as if Josiah and he may have shared a great-grandfather (King Hezekiah) so that may be how Zephaniah managed to avoid becoming lion food. He is not mentioned in the parallel accounts in the historical books of 2 Kings or 2 Chronicles.

Then we had that little passage in Matthew where Jesus gets his and Peter's temple tax paid by doing a magic trick with a fish. It smacks of folk-tale to me, an invention of Matthew to keep Jews paying their taxes after the fall of Jerusalem.

We (there were four of us at Morning Prayer) often have a short discussion about the readings but today we sat in silence and I enjoyed my own discussion.

During a pastoral prayer meeting a little later I pondered on the simple faith of some of those prayers. At one point I jotted this down, addressed to those who rubbish the church:

The God you mock, the one who intervenes from time to time, occasionally doing our will, is too small. The God  I think I recognise, and know, always intervenes and my prayers are a way of seeing my unique issues in an eternal context.

This thought, not quite fully-formed enough to write down but what-the-hell, wants to suggest that in getting to grasp the fullness of the wonder of God, literalism can be a real hindrance. Sometimes it doesn't mean quite what it appears to says. That doesn't mean it ain't truth. We may need to search harder to find what is. None of these passages, experiences or events will reveal its meaning alone.

Leaving Church

‘A Churchless Faith’ by Alan Jamieson is about people who kept their faith but left church. A member of a congregation gave it to me. Perhaps I should take the hint.

It’s heavy, but worth the struggle. The author interviewed people who could no longer cope with their local evangelical church. The common theme of the replies – many of the people were in leadership positions in churches – was that they had questions which seemed a step too far.

The interviewees raised issues, some of which go right to the crux of Christian faith. Others are peripheral. Questions such as:

Can we really trust the Bible?

Can you be a Christian without being certain of your faith?

Why do our churches apparently have so many rules?

Why so much emphasis on sexual behaviour?

Is the church leader always right?

There are many more. The questioners felt that the very act of asking was deemed to be so divisive that they had to, eventually, take their queries outside the church community, painful as that was.

Once, a man called Job suffered greatly. Read about him in the Bible. He’s got a whole book named after him. For thirty seven chapters he questions God about his pain, whilst listening to the dodgy advice of human comforters. Eventually he shuts up and listens. God asks some questions back. Job can’t answer. He ends up saying, ‘I have talked about things that are far beyond my understanding.’ He learnt through questioning.

As a Christian Minister I hear loads of questions; about church, about God, about everything. I have some myself. I feel my church is a reasonably safe place to raise them. The answers may cause someone to leave but asking should not. All churches should have signs over the door, even if only imaginary, saying ‘Questioners always welcome.’

A Nomadic People

I write a regular piece for Urban Saints as part of their excellent Energize material for youth and children's groups. If you haven't come across it I do commend it to you.

The particular thing I do is to produce a study based on an item in the news. Although you will need to subscribe to get the full benefit, you can browse the site. Recent studies have been on riots, Libya, Egypt, that Royal wedding and the Japanese tsunami. Topical stuff.

Last week they asked me to do some thinking on the Dale Farm eviction. That is the slightly surreal story of the travellers who want to stay where they are.

I do not want to steal my own thunder but just to say that the biblical material was fascinating. What right have any of us got, if we place our citizenship in heaven, to say we have arrived anywhere? We are all nomads. We have been ever since Abram heard God tell him to go somewhere else. We are a pilgrim people descended from a pilgrim people. So although from time to time some settle down and stay put others continue on missionary journeys.

Some members of the Dale Farm community have probably broken some laws, or done somethings without formal permission. Basildon Council doesn't exactly come out of the affair smelling of roses though.

The fewer travellers there are the rarer the land, in a densely populated country, on which they might make their temporary home. There's the rub.