Updated Sunday evening
Same-sex blessings are in the news again in Canada.
Ottawa
The Anglican Journal reports that Ottawa diocese appoints committee to consider ‘blessings’ and there is material in the March issue of Crosstalk in a PDF file. See cover story and then on page 2, Bishop John Chapman has written a column. The Journal reports:
The bishop of the diocese of Ottawa, John Chapman, has appointed a doctrine and worship committee to determine whether same-sex unions can be blessed on a limited basis in the diocese.
If the committee recommends that such blessings be allowed “in the spirit of experiential discernment,” Bishop Chapman said it would only be offered in one parish, St. John the Evangelist, an inner city parish which has long advocated for the rights of gays and lesbians.
“In the event that I instruct the parish of St. John the Evangelist to proceed, this is as far as I am prepared to move on the matter until General Synod 2010,” he said in his March column at the diocesan newspaper, Crosstalk…
Update His March column can be read in full as a web page here.
The National Post reported this under the headline Anglican diocese will defy and bless but also reported that the diocese denied it was breaking a moratorium:
…In a press release issued on Monday night, the diocese said: “Just as the Church was not able to come to a clear mind regarding the benefits of the ordination of women to the priesthood until it experienced the priestly ministry of women, Bishop [John H.] Chapman has taken the process of discernment with regards to same sex blessings to a place beyond discussion.”
and this was confirmed by a spokesman for the Anglican Church of Canada who said:
…what the Diocese of Ottawa is doing is not a breaking the ban but rather a continuation of their “discernment process.”
Niagara
The same Anglican Journal report goes on to cover a related development in the diocese of Niagara. Bishop Michael Bird reports here on his recent visit to Lambeth Palace. Here’s an extract:
26 Comments…In that interview I reviewed with him the multitude of task forces, hearings, Bishop’s statements, regional and parish meetings and the long list of Diocesan and General Synods that have discussed and wrestled with this issue since 1976. I gave him a full account of our dealings with dissenting parishes and the court proceedings we have been involved in. I shared with Archbishop Rowan our experience of the incredible contribution that gay and lesbian people have made and continue to make in every aspect of our Church’s life and witness, and expressed the overwhelming desire on the part of two Synod’s to move forward with the blessing of committed same-sex relationships for couples who have been civilly married. I also indicated to him my intentions with regard to my giving permission for these blessings to begin to take place.
One of the most powerful moments in the course of my fifty minute meeting with the Archbishop was the opportunity to describe the process of how our new Vision has emerged and how we believe that God is calling us as a Diocesan family to enhance and develop our work together under the five key areas of focus that are outlined in the Vision. In fact I indicated that it was my sense that the challenge the Vision offers us around the work of prophetic justice-making has made us even more determined to become a more open and inclusive Church.
Archbishop Williams listened carefully to my presentation and there was no doubt that I had his full attention. He thanked me for such a full and detailed report and he indicated how important this opportunity was for him to hear from me personally. We went on to have a very helpful and frank conversation about the implications involved and I expressed my own personal commitment and the strong desire of the Diocese of Niagara to remain in communication and dialogue with our sister and brother Anglicans around the world. I made it clear that we very much value and hold dear our membership in the Anglican Communion and we are grateful for his leadership and ministry…
The BBC has a report by Trevor Timpson titled Women ‘to change CofE for ever’ which reports on two groups in favour of women bishops, Fulcrum and Affirming Catholicism.
…What is reported less often, is that many Anglicans in both traditions support the appointment of female bishops.
Some of these believe the proposal is completely in line with their Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic beliefs, and that the ministry of women priests has already brought great blessings on the Church…
Meanwhile, Forward in Faith has published several articles in New Directions following on from the February debate in General Synod, see Bishop of London, Bishop of Chichester Jonathan Baker, and Geoffrey Kirk. and the resolution passed at the FiF Special Assembly on 14 February is here.
23 CommentsIn The Times John Shepherd writes about Revelation and the straitjacket of human language.
The Guardian has Simon Rocker writing about the Haredim in Face to Faith.
Giles Fraser writes in the Church Times that Jade Goody shows how to die.
Nick Baines wrote about Martin Niemoeller in Death of a Hero.
Alan Wilson wrote about How our grandpas twittered…
Simon Barrow wrote at Ekklesia that Faith needs a freedom agenda. Savi Hensman wrote about Moving faith forward on civil liberties. Vaughan Jones wrote about Humanity and justice is ‘modern liberty’ for Christians.
0 CommentsI have been thinking about money. First, a few snapshots:
February’s General Synod had two goes at the Financial Crisis. I was impressed that the debate wasn’t defensive about the impact on the church, but speaker after speaker said that the church needs to stand alongside those who are affected by debt and repossession, and we heard about some good projects.
Then last week, I was at the Archbishops’ Council’s Finance Committee. It was the most interesting and lively Finance Committee I have been to. It was as if the financial crisis had shaken things up and created a new freedom. Someone said, ‘does this mean that we can do things differently now?’ It left me hopeful that good things will emerge from these difficult times.
Last year, one of my churches closed for worship and began the process of merging with a neighbouring parish. The crisis was triggered by money worries, though the causes went deeper. The PCC made its decision prayerfully and responsibly. It was a huge achievement.
I am working temporarily with another pair of parishes, and people are complaining about the parish share. There is a huge amount of ignorance about the purpose of the parish share. Telling them it contributes towards the cost of ministry doesn’t help much, as the benefice has been vacant for over three years, and they think the money would be better spent on maintenance for crumbling buildings.
Each deanery in our diocese is developing a deanery plan. One angry response criticises the process for being driven by money rather than by God’s will. If we pray and do what God wants, we will not lack resources, the critic says. Human, secular ways of planning will fail.
None of these images will surprise you — they are all familiar expressions of the Church’s sometimes uneasy relationship with money.
Just a few thoughts — and I am sure you will offer more:
Money is a language. God will speak to us in whatever language we are able to listen. If there is a crisis with money, what is God saying? When I consider the Financial Crisis on a theological level (and of course it can and must be read on other levels as well), I hear a condemnation of our society’s love of money and insatiable appetites that must be satisfied now. We do need to repent and rebuild our infrastructure on better values.
Money also asks questions of the church about its priorities. In a crisis, money tells us that we can’t do what we thought we wanted to do, and maybe we need to go back to think and pray about what it is that we are called to do in this place, at this time. It may be that we need to do less of something that is good in order to do another thing that is better. It may be that we need to close some churches to make space for fresh expressions. Sometimes we need the challenge that money poses to look again at who we are and what God wants of us. Mostly what I see in the church, particularly at local level, is people avoiding those questions. There is such fear.
But the wrestling is important. When we allow ourselves and our churches to be challenged, I think we shall emerge with new values, new understanding and new vision. We should welcome the opportunities to wrestle with plans that explore our relationships with money and weigh our priorities in a prayerful way. Money in itself is not evil, but we do need to bring it before God.
10 CommentsA Church of England press release today is titled Update published on Clergy Pensions Scheme.
The Church of England has today published a paper on the impact of the credit crunch and recession on the financial position of the Funded Clergy Pension Scheme and what this might mean for the future of the scheme…
There is also a paper from the Task Group:
The Task Group comprises the Chairman of the Pensions Board (Dr Jonathan Spencer), the First Church Estates Commissioner (Andreas Whittam Smith) and the Chairman of the Archbishops’ Council’s Finance Committee (Andrew Britton) assisted by the Chief Officers of the three organisations and the Chief of Staff at Lambeth Palace. Their initial paper is available via the Church of England website here. (.doc file)
And it is also available as a more accessible web page at Scene-Setting Paper from Archbishops’ Task Group.
17 CommentsUpdated Friday evening
First, ENS has a report Network members support expanded role for Anglican women:
Noting that women make up just six percent of the Anglican Communion’s top decision-makers, the International Anglican Women’s Network urged at its February 22-27 meeting in New York City that the worldwide church study the role of women and find ways to empower female leadership.
Representatives of 30 of the 38 Anglican provinces (national or regional groupings of national churches) and the network’s steering committee met in person for the first time since the network, which represents 40 million Anglican women in 165 countries, was formed in 1996.
Read the full text of the statement issued at the First Meeting of the IAWN Provincial Links and Steering Group.
And the Church of England contact? Check this page.
Now to the UN meeting. ENS also carries this:
In recognition of International Women’s Day, Episcopal Life Weekly bulletin inserts for March 8 outline the work of Anglican representatives to the 53rd session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. The commission will meet this year from March 2-13.
As the bulletin insert says:
A delegation of women from the Anglican Communion will take part in the 53rd session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW), to be held March 2 to 13. The Anglican women, representing some 30 of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion, are nominated by the Primates (leading archbishops or presiding bishops) of their provinces.
Read the whole insert as a PDF here.
For more information see Ecumenical Women at the United Nations. There is also a helpful guide to the UNCSW here.
See the statement submitted to the CSW by the Anglican Consultative Council.
And there is also this statement submitted by the Mothers’ Union.
Friday update
ENS has a further report, Anglican women find strength at network meeting.
4 CommentsTheos has announced Biggest evolution and God survey ever launched today.
Among its key findings, the report reveals that:
- Only 54% of people know that Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species (3% believe he wrote The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and 1% think he wrote The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver).
- Only 15% of people know that Charles Darwin was a self-described agnostic towards the end of his life (20% think he was an atheist).
- 42% of people believe that evolution presents some challenges to Christianity but that it is possible to believe in both.
The research also canvassed people across the UK about the origins of human life and found that:
- The East has the largest proportion of people in the UK who believe that the theory of evolution removes any need for God (44%)
- Wales has the largest proportion of theistic evolutionists (the belief that evolution is part of God’s plan – 38%).
- Northern Ireland has the highest proportion of people who believe in Intelligent Design (16%) and Creationism (25%).
Read the full report as a PDF here (1.1.Mb).
The Guardian has published a snazzy interactive map which shows more details of the regional breakdown of answers. This accompanies a news report headlined Four out of five Britons repudiate creationism.
35 CommentsUpdated Tuesday morning
A report from the Anglican Journal in Canada says Burundi archbishop supports Canadian church in opposing cross-border interventions, and there is also ‘Stay the course’ in Burundi, UN envoy advises Canadian Anglican delegation.
Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, has thanked his Burundian counterpart, Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi, for the Anglican Church of Burundi’s stance against cross-border interventions, notwithstanding its opposition to more liberal views on homosexuality in some churches in Canada.
Meanwhile, there is an announcement from Lambeth Palace about the Pastoral Visitors, which says:
Pastoral Visitors Briefing Seminar
Following the Report of the Windsor Continuation Group to the Archbishop of Canterbury (which was published at the Primates Meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, in February 2009) the initial group of Pastoral Visitors called for by the Windsor Continuation Group in their Report and commended by the Primates Meeting in their Communiqué (para 15) met for a briefing session at Virginia Theological Seminary from 25-28 February.
Those appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pastoral Visitors team are: the Rt Rev’d Santosh Marray, the Rt Rev’d Colin Bennetts, the Rt Rev’d Simon Chiwanga, Maj Gen (ret’d) Tim Cross, Canon Dr Chad Gandiya, who all participated in the briefing seminar, and the Very Rev’d Justin Welby, who was unable to attend.
The meeting was facilitated by the Rt Rev’d Peter Price, Bishop of Bath and Wells, England, and received briefings from the Rev’d Dr Ephraim Radner (Wycliffe Theological Seminary, Toronto) the Rt Rev’d Gary Lillibridge (Bishop of West Texas, TEC and member of the Windsor Continuation Group), The Rev’d Canon Dr Chuck Robertson (Canon to the Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church), the Rt Rev’d Herbert Donovan (Deputy to the Presiding Bishop for Anglican Communion Relations, TEC) and the Ven Paul Fehely (Principal Secretary to the Primate, the Anglican Church of Canada) and members of the Faculty at VTS.
The Pastoral Visitors team will now report to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Update Tuesday
More details about these individuals are contained in the report by Matthew Davies at ENS Pastoral visitors appointed by Archbishop of Canterbury:
And there is slightly more information in this Living Church article, by George Conger Pastoral Visitors Hold Inaugural Meeting:
Last year, I made an analysis of the July vote which I titled Bishops give a clear lead, in which I said:
Episcopal opposition turned out to be almost entirely limited to a core group of only twelve bishops. These included five who later signed the 15 August letter (see below) and who also have votes in Synod, i.e. the Bishops of Blackburn, Chichester, Europe, Burnley and Beverley. There were also seven others: the Bishops of Birmingham, Exeter, London, Rochester, Winchester, Dover and, significantly, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
At the end of the debate, the Archbishop abstained, and the other eleven all voted against the substantive motion. The only other bishop who voted “No” was the Bishop of Durham, whose earlier motion to adjourn the debate had support from only 46% of the synod. He had consistently opposed every amendment throughout the debate.
So, how did these thirteen bishops vote in February 2009, and who else voted AGAINST this legislation?
An examination of the February voting record shows as follows:
Thus altogether only seven bishops of the “July thirteen” voted against the draft measure, and only five voted against the draft canon.
However, there were other bishops who cast negative votes: Chester, Norwich and Wakefield voted against the draft measure, and Salisbury and Wakefield voted against the draft canon while Chester abstained in relation to the canon (Norwich voted for it).
In summary, the bishops gave a even clearer lead than in July.
6 CommentsMichael Brown wrote at Religious Intelligence about the FiF meeting following the February synod sessions, Anglo-Catholics warned of split threat in UK.
There is considerable audio material of that meeting available here.
Anglican Mainstream carries an article by Roland Mourant What Future Strategy should Forward in Faith UK adopt?
Earlier, the Church Times had an article by Paul Vallely headed Squaring up to the traditionalists (This was only partly about the CofE.) It provoked letters to the editor the following week.
25 CommentsThe Church of Ireland Gazette had this editorial comment: A Consultative Fellowship. It begins:
In their Alexandria communiqué, the primates indicated that successive Lambeth Conferences had urged them “to assume an enhanced responsibility for the life of the Communion”, referring to Lambeth Conference resolutions from the 1978, 1988 and 1998 meetings.
However, the relevant resolutions of Lambeth 1978 (Nos. 11 and 12) do not use the term “enhanced responsibility” at all; they advise member Churches of the Communion to consult with a Lambeth Conference or the primates on issues of concern to the whole Communion and request the primates to study Anglican authority and the best way to co-ordinate inter-Anglican meetings…
The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church wrote about the meeting at Episcopal Life Online: Varied Understandings. One excerpt:
…The striking thing was that the meeting room where the primates’ deliberations took place, the hotel’s largest and principal conference room, was bedecked with several large paintings of half-naked women. It was a space that, in normal circumstances, apparently was used only by men. I found it striking that public expectations of women are modest dress and covering, yet there is evidently a rather different attitude toward men’s entertainment…
In this week’s Church Times Pat Ashworth has reported on the letter from Archbishop Peter Akinola that was reported earlier here. See Primates trivialised problem — Akinola.
9 CommentsGiles Fraser writes in the Church Times about Sodom and Gomorrah. See Meeting the stench of the slums.
Jonathan Sacks writes in The Times that ‘Faith is the defeat of probability by possibility’
Comment is free Belief asks Are Christians persecuted in the UK? Answers come from Mark Vernon, Terry Sanderson, Jenny Taylor, Jonathan Bartley, and Bishop Alan Wilson.
Alan Wilson also wrote on his own blog: Mushing our Brains on Facebook?
Robert Pigott at the BBC launched a Faith Diary with a survey of public opinion. The full results are available here as a PDF. Ekklesia reported on this as Mixed picture emerges on British attitudes to religion in public life.
1 CommentUpdated again Sunday evening
The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) has published a Pastoral Letter from Bishop Robert Duncan. The website home page summarises the letter thus:
Bishop Duncan comments on the decision of the new Episcopal Church diocese to reject mediation.
Sunday Update
I should have added some background when posting the above note. First, the previous TA report on the Pittsburgh saga is Pittsburgh: national church seeks intervention.
Subsequent to that report, on 23 February, the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh issued a letter dated 18 February, which can be read in full as a PDF over here.
Sunday evening
Lionel Deimel has attempted an analysis of the Duncan letter, see Duncan Letter Decoded.
20 CommentsToday is the day on which the Church of England commemorates George Herbert.
Justin Lewis-Anthony has published a series of articles on his blog under the title Killing George Herbert, arguing that:
For three hundred and fifty years the Church of England has been haunted by a pattern of parochial ministry, based upon a fantasy and untenable for more than a hundred of those years. The pattern, derived from a romantic and wrong-headed false memory of the life and ministry of George Herbert, finally died on the South Bank of the Thames in the mid 1960s… and nobody noticed…
Read KGH : Death to Herbertism for the rest of the introductory article, below which is a list of links to all the articles.
For today’s blog entry see KGH: Memento Mori II.
These articles are but a prelude to Justin’s book, which is coming soon, see If You Meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him: Radically Re-thinking Priestly Ministry.
Meanwhile, his other book, Circles of Thorns: Hieronymus Bosch and Being Human, is available and has been designated as Mowbray’s Lent Book 2009. Peter McGeary reviewed it recently for the Church Times.
Study guides are available starting here.
11 CommentsWe published links to some of the Church Times detailed reports on this month’s General Synod last week. The remainder are now generally available.
UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST: Bishops asked for help in pressing Christian claims
DRAINAGE BILLS: Water charges are taxation, Synod told
YOUTH LITURGY: Request for teenage eucharistic prayers rejected
ANGLICAN COVENANT: Wide-ranging opinions on the St Andrew’s Draft
ASYLUM: Let asylum-seekers work, urges Synod
INTERFAITH WITNESS: Update given on bridge-building effort
RETREAT HOUSES: Fears for diocesan quiet places
CHURCH FEES: ‘Brown envelopes’ debated
FINANCIAL CRISIS: Members have an economics seminar
CHURCH’S VOICE: Faith is ‘not a private matter’
HUMAN TRAFFICKING: ‘The white van that slows down in my parish in the middle of the day . . .’
CRISIS RESPONSE: ‘We have been stealing from the next generation’
2 CommentsThis week saw the tenth anniversary of the landmark report into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Stephen, a young black man, died at the hands of racist thugs on a London street and the Metropolitan Police at the time failed to investigate the crime properly. To mark the occasion some 300 or so of us, including Stephen’s mother, Doreen Lawrence (a tireless campaigner), three cabinet ministers (Home Secretary, Justice Secretary, Communities Secretary) and senior police officers and officials spent the day conferring on the interaction of police and race in Britain. If you want news reports or copies of the politicians’ speeches you can Google them, but it seems to me there were two unresolved tensions underpinning the event worthy of TA reflection.
The first is that secular society finds it hard to manage the tension between acknowledging achievement and recognising that where we have got to is still far from good enough. Ministers and Chief Constables rightly drew to our attention that the majority of the report’s recommendations have been accepted and implemented; for example there are many more black and minority ethnic police in Britain than when Stephen was killed and open racism is much harder to find among serving officers. By contrast comments from the floor suggested that the scarcity of BME faces among the senior ranks of the 43 constabularies and the huge disproportionality in “stop and search” practices means that little has changed in the underlying culture of British policing. One sounded complacent, the other incapable of recognising as progress anything less than total success. I was left feeling that what was missing was the ability to bring together repentance and thanksgiving, without denying the force of either, that is a hallmark of Christian liturgy. My impression was confirmed by the final speaker of the day, an evangelical pastor, who did hold the two together. Do the churches have something to offer here? If so, how can we make it accessible?
The second tension was between those promoting the “single equality” route to engaging with diversity and the advocates for separate treatment of distinctive strands. Here I am firmly in the former camp. I understand the concerns that those working primarily on race and racism express, that as soon as race is linked to something else the attention moves over to the something else and race gets marginalised. Against this however are a number of telling arguments. Individuals do not engage with the world separately as black, or muslim or female or gay or disabled or young, depending on the particular moment and cause. We always engage with our whole identity, and with all the aspects of that identity that make us diverse beings. The cutting edge of equality and diversity work lies in the interplay between the strands. Being black and female, I am sure, is not simply an amalgam of being black and being a woman; engagements that separate gender from ethnicity treat black women poorly. The same applies, I suspect, to being gay and muslim or young and disabled. For me as a Christian from the Anglican tradition it’s particularly important that the church operates a single equalities methodology lest we end up using different standards, even opposed standards, by which to engage with different aspects of diversity.
Stephen Lawrence had the ambition and the capacity to be an architect; nobody knows what buildings he would have erected had he enjoyed a full span of life. Instead his monument is the sea change in equality and diversity work that his murder and the subsequent enquiry provoked. It’s an edifice that is still very much “under construction”.
0 CommentsThe archbishops of Canterbury and York have issued a joint appeal, as mentioned here yesterday, to help counter the humanitarian crisis and deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe.
They have jointly authored an article in today’s Times newspaper, Mugabe has ruined Africa’s beacon of hope. See also Archbishops of Canterbury and York condemn regime in Zimbabwe and Ash Wednesday: Say a Prayer for Zim.
The Archbishop of York has also invited people to come to join him today in a city centre Church in York praying for the people of Zimbabwe.
And see BBC ‘Pray and fast’ plea for Zimbabwe which includes a video interview with both archbishops.
8 CommentsToday many of us will have some ashes smudged on our heads, reminding us that we are going to die, and asking each one of us to turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ. How should you react? How should you react if someone were to say to you that you’re going to be turned to ashes, that you’re all going to die? And why does thinking about your eventual death help you to turn away from sin? I mean, if you are going to die, perhaps you should get some serious sinning under your belt, or maybe even some serious sinning below your belt!
So why the stress on death? Why does the Church want to remind you that you’re going to die? Isn’t the Church supposed to be spreading good news, emphasising new life in Christ, emphasising eternal life? Why death?
The simple answer is that Jesus emphasised it again and again. You’ll remember the saying, ‘If anyone saves his life, he will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will save it’. Or again, ‘If people try to make their life secure, they will lose it; but those who lose their life will keep it.’ Or, ‘Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ Our baptismal liturgy echoes much the same theme: in baptism we literally drown and are reborn — we die to sin and come to real life. And Jesus’ own life is very much the story of someone who had to let go of his own life for others. And for that reason, we are told, God raised him to new life. Had he clung to life, we wouldn’t be here today.
Given the radical centrality of this death-life connection, it’s a bit odd that Christians have kind of sidelined death — or at least they have sidelined it theologically — for several thousand years. Death, they said, was a result of sin, original sin. Prior to Adam’s and Eve’s sin, there apparently was no death. Prior to Adam’s and Eve’s sin, we’re told, no one died, no one had deadly diseases, no one hurt themselves when they fell off cliffs or high trees; no one was devoured by lions; deadly cancer didn’t exist; birth defects didn’t exist. Death only came into the world when sin entered the world — a teaching based not so much on Genesis, which is ambiguous on this point, but on Romans 5, which could (and probably should) be seen as St Paul’s using physical death as a symbol for spiritual, even eternal, death.
I must say that I took such an approach myself for quite a few years. I thought to myself that, if death were an evil (and it does seem pretty nasty), then God couldn’t be the cause of it. After all, God wouldn’t, God couldn’t, create anything that wasn’t good; therefore death couldn’t possibly be part of God’s original plan; it couldn’t be part of God’s original creation. Someone else must be to blame.
But that’s too easy. Human beings have always been finite, which is to say we are and never have been in-finite: we’re not and we’ve never been God. No doubt death has a lot to do with sin, with the evil we do to ourselves and to one another; and it is probably the perfect symbol for understanding what sin does to us; but death is an inherent part of our being finite creatures. Death is and always has been natural — as natural as living. If you’re biological, you will die. Physical death is not a punishment in and of itself. And our finitude, our being finite beings — this is a universal and good aspect of all of creation: it’s not an evil to be explained away. We don’t need to make excuses for God: God created a finite universe.
The thing is, because we wrote off death as something evil, we rarely bothered to ask whether there is anything good in death. We rarely asked why God made a universe where all living things inevitably die, where even non-living things — all of them — inevitably lose the battle against entropy and die out too. But what if death cannot be written off? If God created death, as it were, shouldn’t we be asking why? Could it be that, in being created in the image and likeness of God, our living and our dying are both — somehow — in the image and likeness of God? Could it be that there is something about our having to face death that reveals something about God?
If, like me, you’ve had family members who have died recently, then these questions are not just theoretical questions, but exquisitely painful questions, especially as you watch death slowly overtake the body of a loved one, as you wrestle with the God who created the universe, knowing full-well that people would invariably die — and die often in the most horrendous and painful circumstances, leaving the survivors to experience the soul-numbing pain of separation.
And yet Jesus realised that clinging on to life is futile: ‘If anyone tries to make his life secure, he will lose it; but those who lose their life will keep it.’
This is a huge paradox, but Jesus is surely right. If you consider your own death, as you are asked to do today, you can either descend into moroseness (or a whole range of neuroses) or you can discover an unusual kind of freedom. If we’re all going to die anyway, then perhaps nothing has any real meaning at all. That’s certainly one way of looking at things. But if we are going to die anyway, then we ultimately have nothing to lose: we can live life to the full, we can take real risks, we can live radically, love radically, risk courageously: you can even dare to love your enemy. And if that’s true for each of us, just imagine what a community of people who thought that way could accomplish.
All of this cuts to the very heart of Jesus’s teaching: God is so trustworthy that you can choose to do the right thing, you can dare to love sacrificially; because, in the end, you’re going to have to trust God anyway: death ensures that. And Jesus’s own death and resurrection — these are God’s way of assuring us that such trust is not in vain.
There is this strange sense that we do have to let go of life, let go of our fear of losing life, in order to live life. And that’s not just a nice, theoretical, paradoxical sort of maxim. No, we actually have to do it. We have to let go of life physically. I’m well in my fifties now, and I can already feel it happening bit by bit. We’re talking about real death here. We have to live life facing death. In the face of death, we discover that we can’t cause ourselves to continue to exist. We face the fact that we can’t save ourselves. We realise that we are creatures — finite creatures — not gods: we can’t even claim our own lives as our own. If we are to live again, as Christians hope and believe, then such a life is not something we can give to ourselves.
And what does this reveal about God? Well, it reveals that all love, even or especially divine love, involves a dying to self; it involves a giving of self. Love demands that we not cling to life and hoard it as some possession. In the Trinity, the Father gives of his very own life to the Son. The Father does not cling to life; instead he shares it completely. And the Son does not cling to his equality with God, but empties himself, as we can read in Philippians 2.5, and offers his life, his Spirit, back to the Father. And this shared Spirit is offered to us, not as something we can own, but only as something we can share. And that emptying, that embracing of death, even death on a cross, that sharing of life itself — that is the Christian image of the costliness of love: not just for Jesus, but for the Father as well … the Father who shares infinitely in the pain of his Son’s having to let go of life, and yet the Father who also knows that Jesus’s faith was well-placed, that God indeed is in fact ultimately trustworthy, that death is not the final word. Love is the final word.
As I alluded to earlier, I realise that some of us have faced and are facing the deaths of loved ones. No doubt you are already anticipating the pain of loss: Do you dare love him or her so much as she dies? Do you dare believe that love makes sense in the face of death? If not, then nothing would make any sense at all. Nothing would matter in the end. But we know that things matter, because we do love, and we choose love. That’s the choice. That’s what Jesus was asking us to do: choose life, choose love, choose God. And the power of that radical choice comes to the fore when we confront death, as we do symbolically in the ceremony of the sprinkling of ashes.
22 CommentsThe Church of England has launched several initiatives as Lent approaches.
See the Love Life Live Lent website, and the CofE press release Church gives out ‘tweets’ for Lent. The Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/c_of_e and for Facebook users, there is this.
Also see the Shrinking the Footprint website, and the CofE press release Cut the carbon this Lent, says Church of England.
And don’t forget the communion-wide campaign for Zimbabwe, see Anglican Communion joins Prayers for Zimbabwe on Ash Wednesday. Posters and fliers can be downloaded from USPG announces Archbishops’ Appeal for Zimbabwe. To donate online, go here.
16 CommentsUpdated again Wednesday afternoon
A recent news item concerned the UK government’s banning members of the so-called Westboro Baptist Church from entering the country. Less widely reported was the joint statement issued by six Christian organisations, the day after government action, including the Evangelical Alliance, which said:
“We are dismayed that members of Westboro Baptist Church (based in Kansas, USA and not associated with the Baptist Union of Great Britain) might picket the performance of The Laramie Project in Basingstoke on Friday.
“We do not share their hatred of lesbian and gay people. We believe that God loves all, irrespective of sexual orientation, and we unreservedly stand against their message of hate toward those communities.
“Neither the style nor substance of their preaching expresses the historic, orthodox Christian faith. And we ask that the members of Westboro Baptist Church refrain from stirring up any more homophobic hatred in the UK or elsewhere.”
This prompted Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia to issue the following response:
“It is welcome that a number of churches and evangelical groups have made a public statement and joined the many others who are opposing Westboro’ Baptist church-style hate speech. But it is relatively easy to issue statements against extremists, distance oneself, and condemn them. It is more challenging, and uncomfortable, to acknowledge what one might have in common with those we find abhorrent. But that is what the message at the heart of the Christian faith requires.
“This is the real challenge that Westboro Baptist church presents. And among those who have condemned Westboro are some who preach rejection of faithful gay relationships, who deny their baptism and Christian ministry, and who refuse their wisdom. Some have attempted to negotiate opt-outs from equalities legislation so they can themselves discriminate against lesbian and gay people in employment and in the provision of goods and services. The Evangelical Alliance in particular removed the Courage Trust from its membership when the Trust made a Christian commitment to affirming lesbian and gay people.
“The six churches and groups have said with one voice: ‘We believe that God loves all, irrespective of sexual orientation’ We invite them to reflect these words in their actions.”
Ekklesia also issued a background report, Churches condemn Westboro hate speech, but challenge remains.
The other five organisations were: The Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Evangelical Alliance UK, Faithworks, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, the United Reformed Church and the Bible Society-funded thinktank Theos.
Update Monday
A further statement has now been issued by another group of Christian organisations:
…Accepting Evangelicals, Courage, the Network of Baptists Affirming Lesbian and Gay Christians, the Evangelical Fellowship for Lesbian & Gay Christians, and the Christian think-tank Ekklesia have issued a joint statement saying that opposition to the Westboro Baptist Church USA’s hate-stance towards gay people does not go far enough.
“The real challenge to evangelicals is to face the need for change themselves,” they say. “This means: engaging more fully and openly with lesbian and gay Christians and accepting them as equal under God; examining the way prejudice against gay people has distorted biblical understanding; prayerfully re-thinking church policies of exclusion and acknowledging the harm they cause; and recognising the growing number of evangelicals who have had a heart-change and now affirm faithful gay relationships.”
Ekklesia has the full statement at Evangelicals call for change of attitude on gays.
Update Wednesday
Simon Barrow has written about this at Comment is free Evangelicals who love their gay neighbours.
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