O ye of Little Pea faith

I have so far resisted gloating about Manchester United’s masterful evisceration of the Russian multi-millionaire playboy’s toy aka Chel$ki, however, I happened to catch The Guardian Football Weekly podcast and was pleasantly surprised by the discussion.

The podcast kicked off with some banter about United’s opening goal scorer Javier Hernandez who is known as Chicharito or ‘Little  Pea’. Before each match Chicharito kneels in the centre circle and prays and last Sunday he then went on to score 37 seconds into the game! The comments began rather cynically with Barry Glendenning suggesting it was ‘an ostentatious display of piety’ but one of the others chipped in with:

‘What’s your problem with piety? In a world where footballers are routinely accused of being impure surely for them to prostrate themselves before the Lord and ask for his blessing sets a very good example to young people who often wear their trousers too low.’

Perhaps it was a tongue in cheek comment but then James ‘AC Jimbo’ Richardson, one of the best pundits in the game said this:

‘… actually, maybe what he’s doing, rather than saying “I’m special look at me chat to my pal God, maybe what he is saying is “Look I do believe and it’s not silly to have faith” which is an interesting and very positive message to send out…’

All rather refreshing and a great deal more edifying than discussing Chicharito’s fellow striker Wayne Rooney swearing down the camera lens or flicking a V sign at the baying Chel$ki fans.

Love Wins in the pub #ashmedia

Took time out from unpacking after the house move to meet up with some social media pals to discuss Rob Bell’s book Love Wins and Pete Rollins’ Pyro Theology. Looking back I realise that despite enjoying a stimulating conversation I found it a frustrating experience. In part my frustration was simply the constraint of time  which meant that I could only stay for just over an hour and didn’t  really get into discussion of Rollins’ theology. Primarily, however, my frustration was because of the material we were discussing. I felt that most of our conversation highlighted the weaknesses of Love Wins in that the book raises lots of questions that it never really gets round to answering and so our conversation was less about the book and more about our own soteriologies.

One of the most interesting questions raised came from Johanna Clare who wanted to ask why the book has caused such a stir? This is a good question because Bell is not saying anything new and what he does say is not very clear. One person commented that Bell is resisting the temptation to reduce his position to sound bites, fair enough but he should be able to articulate what he does believe in clearer and more unambiguous terms. Another commented that Bell is more theologically astute and literate than we given him credit for. I’m not so sure. Bell does seek to give theological weight to his arguments by drawing on the Church Fathers for example, but they are never referenced properly nor their arguments set in context or developed and explored in any depth and so I am left wondering whether he just lifted a few patristic quotes that seemed to beef up his position. In the same way I think Bell has dipped in to Tom Wright (Surprised by Hope rather than The Resurrection of the Son of God) and C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce) without really understanding what they are saying.

Pete Phillips offered some incisive comments about Bell’s linguistic and hermeneutical deficiencies which undermine the book’s use of scripture. I share Pete’s questioning of Bell’s exposition of Dives and Lazarus, though again others were more positive.

A few of the group had seen Bell on his recent tour in the U.K. and several said how surprised they were by the brevity of his presentation of the book and its themes. Bell is an engaging and charismatic speaker and the style of the book reflects the way he speaks and preaches. The impact he has had on thousands of people cannot be lightly dismissed and Bell has a passion for communicating the faith that puts many of us to shame. Nevertheless, I am left with a feeling that there is less to the book and Bell’s argument than meets the eye. Though I was frustrated at leaving the conversation early, I wonder whether there was much more to say about the book?

Consider

I first came across this picture Consider the Lillies by Stanley Spencer when Stephen Cottrell (now Bishop of Chelmsford) led a meditation on it as part of a Springboard day at the end of the 90s. It is one of a series of paintings by Spencer on the theme of Christ in the Wilderness. Spencer had planned to create forty paintings on the theme but in the end only finished eight, having sketched out twenty.

I have a print of the painting in my Bible and every now and then find myself considering Consider the Lillies (Matthew 6:28-29). This morning as I sat in the conservatory of our new Rectory for my prayers I looked at the painting and then began to look again through the windows at the garden surrounding the house. The garden has been carefully tended while the house was vacant, just one of many things we are so grateful to the church for, but then there is the gift of the glorious bird songs and the plants beginning to poke through in unplanned places. The grass is gradually being carpeted with daisies suggesting I need to cut the grass. I think I’ll wait, not just because there is so much else to do, but because it might just remind me to take time to get down on my hands and needs and wonder at the graciousness of God.

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lillies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.

In the Garden

When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?
When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?
Did they know He was the Son of God, did they know that He was Lord?
Did they hear when He told Peter, "Peter, put up your sword"?
When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?
When they came for Him in the garden, did they know?

When He spoke to them in the city, did they hear?
When He spoke to them in the city, did they hear?
Nicodemus came at night so he wouldn't be seen by men
Saying, “Master, tell me why a man must be born again?”
When He spoke to them in the city, did they hear?
When He spoke to them in the city, did they hear?

When He healed the blind and crippled, did they see?
When He healed the blind and crippled, did they see?
When He said, "Pick up your bed and walk, why must you criticize?
Same thing My Father do, I can do likewise"
When He healed the blind and crippled, did they see?
When He healed the blind and crippled, did they see?

Did they speak out against Him, did they dare?
Did they speak out against Him, did they dare?
The multitude wanted to make Him king, put a crown upon His head
Why did He slip away to a quiet place instead?
Did they speak out against Him, did they dare?
Did they speak out against Him, did they dare?

When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
He said, "All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth"
Did they know right then and there what that power was worth?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?
When He rose from the dead, did they believe?


Bob Dylan: In the Garden

Williams and Wright are right

Part of the role of church leaders is to speak truth to power and to raise moral and ethical concerns about public policy and action at national and international level. It was therefore no surprise when Archbishop Rowan Williams was asked to comment on the death/execution of Osama bin Laden last week at a press conference. The Telegraph reported ++Rowan’s response to the question of whether he thought it was right for the United States to kill the al-Qaeda leader:

I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling, because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done in those circumstances.

I think it’s also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help here.

Critics have weighed in, including Cristina Odone again in The Telegraph:

Archbishop Williams is a fine man, a good man. But he is dead wrong here. Summary execution, ie killing without trial, is just desserts for some tyrants. And Osama, the hate merchant and death peddler, was a tyrant to rank with some of the worst. His fate should be no better than theirs.

…when he (Williams) addresses the nation, as he did this morning, he should not speak as a Guardian reader but as a religious leader. And as such, surely he sees that drawing parallels between Osama and any other unarmed man is a mistake.

I would suggest to Odone that ++Rowan did exactly as she had requested, he had spoken as a religious leader raising moral questions about justice and perception. Actions have ethical implications and unless these implications are carefully thought through then the action may simply exacerbate a situation.

However, the article that really stirred up the hornets nest was N.T. Wright’s comment piece in The Guardian. Wright raised the question of whether the United States seemed to apply different standards to its own behaviour in the international arena to those applied to everyone else. Again this seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable question to raise because the killing of bin Laden involved an incursion into another country, Pakistan, without that country’s knowledge or permission. Wright asked how the United States would feel if the British SAS had run covert operations into its territory to kill IRA terrorists using the U.S. as a haven?

Wright describes U.S. international policy as:

American exceptionalism. America is subject to different rules to the rest of the world. By what right? Who says?

The former Bishop of Durham suggests that this approach reflects the acting out of the Myth of the American Super Hero. The U.S. as the world’s self appointed saviour battling injustice and sorting out the bad guys. In this scenario the U.S. is free therefore to take the law into its own hands to execute justice in its own best interest.

The problem with such an approach which, if operating in disregard of international law, can be seen as little more that vigilantism is that it removes the moral basis for challenging others countries that decide to operate in a similar way:

Of course, proper justice is hard to come by internationally. America regularly casts the UN (and the international criminal court) as the hapless sheriff, and so continues to play the world's undercover policeman. The UK has gone along for the ride. What will we do when new superpowers arise and try the same trick on us?

As far as I am aware neither Williams or Wright were excusing or apologising for bin Laden or denying that he should be brought to account for his actions. Rather they were highlighting the legitimate moral concerns of executing a terrorist in another sovereign territory without due process and drawing attention to the potential consequences of such an action which might create more problems that it solves.

Because He is Risen

Because He is risen
Spring is possible
In all the cold hard places
Gripped by winter
And freedom jumps the queue
To take fear’s place
as our focus
Because He is risen

Because He is risen
My future is an epic novel
Where once it was a mere short story
My contract on life is renewed in perpetuity
My options are open-ended
My travel plans are cosmic
Because He is risen

Because He is risen
Healing is on order and assured
And every disability will bow
Before the endless dance of his ability
And my grave too will open
When my life is restored
For this frail and fragile body
Will not be the final word
on my condition
Because He is risen

Because He is risen
Hunger will go begging in the streets
For want of a home
And selfishness will have a shortened shelf-life
And we will throng to the funeral of famine
And dance on the callous grave of war
And poverty will be history
In our history
Because He is risen

And because He is risen
A fire burns in my bones
And my eyes see possibilities
And my heart hears hope
Like a whisper on the wind
And the song that rises in me
Will not be silenced
As life disrupts
This shadowed place of death
Like a butterfly under the skin
And death itself
Runs terrified to hide
Because He is risen

Gerard Kelly: Spoken Worship

Suddenly

As I had always known
he would come, unannounced,
remarkable merely for the absence
of clamour. So truth must appear
to the thinker; so, at a stage
of the experiment, the answer
must quietly emerge. I looked
at him, not with the eye
only, but with the whole
of my being, overflowing with
him as a chalice would
with the sea. Yet was he
no more there than before,
his area occupied
by the unhaloed presences.
You could put your hand
in him without consciousness
of his wounds. The gamblers
at the foot of the unnoticed
cross went on with
their dicing; yet the invisible
garment for which they played
was no longer at stake, but worn
by him in this risen existence.

R. S. Thomas Collected Poems 1945-1990