Song for Advent #20: Meet on the Ledge - Fairport Convention

Richard Thompson, who wrote the song when he was seventeen, says that he isn't sure what this song is about. Meet on the Ledge is the song that concludes most Fairport Convention encores and the underlying theme is of looking forward to a reunion. The song is often played at funerals expressing the hope of being reunited with loved ones. Wishful thinking? Our hope as Christians is not wishful thinking, but a sure and certain hope founded on the Lord Jesus Christ and we look forward to that day when we shall be raised to new life with him.

Peter's Song

Peter’s Song

​“Upside down you’re turning me

​You’re giving love instinctively”

​A paradox, contrary thing,

​lion/lamb, servant/King

​My King, our King, their King

​Breaking

​Breaking down before our eyes

​Beaten, abandoned and despised

​Can’t take any more

​I’m finished, I’m done

​Can’t feel the heat anymore from the Son

​‘It is finished’ – even you said that

​Just dropped your head

​No fight, just dead.

​And yet…

​Something niggles at the back of my mind

​Those looks you gave, like I was blind

​Hurt, disappointed but not unkind.

​When the women came and said what they’d seen

​I had to be sure and now I’m running

​Rushing wind through sleeping streets​

​Exhilaration in my feet

​“Choose life…

​Choose a future”

​A different beat.

​

​Something’s happened I can’t explain

​But nothing will ever be the same.

​I’m seeing things from the other side

​Love survived. It’s death that died.

​“Upside down you’re turning me”

​Quite literally, upside…down.

​

​Kate Ritchie

Inventing the mythical Jesus

This is the best piece I've read this Eastertide. As another blogger has said 'Doug being brilliant'.

Inventing the mythical Jesus. 

Hawking heaven

I am always bemused at the seriousness with which certain people’s words are taken when they are talking about subjects outside their own particular discipline. Richard Dawkins opens his mouth about religion and the media goes into a frenzy, unable or unwilling to spot the weaknesses and at times blatant ignorance beneath the froth of the headline quotes.  Another media favourite is the eminent cosmologist Stephen Hawking. A couple of days ago The Guardian reported an interview with Hawking covering a wide range of issues. The quote that got the headlines was when Hawking declared that heaven is just ‘a fairy story for people afraid of the dark’. Here is the full quote:

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he said.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he added.

An excellent response to Hawking was offered by Michael Wenham, a fellow sufferer of motor neurone disease, again published in The Guardian. Wenham challenged Hawking’s comment about the brain as a computer:

It's unarguably true that there's no heaven for broken down computers, as I have found to my cost when I poured fruit juice over my laptop. The brain may be nothing but a most remarkable computer, yet there's something generically different from a computer in a brain which, when it starts to malfunction as happens in MND, can begin to love Wagner's music and "enjoy life more". That, I would say, is irrational, but not uncommon. Human beings, it would appear, are something more than machines. Maybe science will one day describe what the difference is.

And with regard to Hawking’s remarks about heaven Wenham comments:

Finally, Stephen Hawking's headlined observation about death, that an after-life "is a fairy-story for people afraid of the dark" is both sad and misinformed. Openness to the theoretical possibility of there being 11 dimensions and fundamental particles "as yet undiscovered" shows an intellectual humility strangely at odds with writing off the possibility of other dimensions of existence.

For someone "facing the prospect of an early death", with probably an unpleasant prelude, the idea of extinction holds no more fear than sleep. It really is insulting to accuse me of believing there might be life after death because I'm afraid of the dark. On the contrary, sad though I shall be to leave behind those I love, I suspect the end of life, whatever happens, will be a relief. And, like Pascal making his wager, if it is dark, I really won't mind, because, of course, there won't be a me to mind.

Wenham’s response continued with an affirmation of his own faith, founded on his belief in the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, before concluding:

As for the idea that belief in an afterlife is a consolation, it is not just about heaven. Most faiths in fact have a notion of judgment, which is hardly comfortable for anyone, although it does focus the motivation not to waste one's life. Moreover in our situation Professor Hawking surely knows better than that some notion in your head, whatever that notion might be, makes the frustrations and pains of a terminal illness somehow more bearable. That's the nonsense of those who have not been there. I can't prove it of course, but on good grounds I'd stake my life on it, that beyond death will be another great adventure; but first I have to get finish this one.

Another response to Hawking’s views about heaven and the afterlife was offered today by Tom Wright in the Washington Post.

It’s depressing to see Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds in his field, trying to speak as an expert on things he sadly seems to know rather less about than many averagely intelligent Christians. Of course there are people who think of ‘heaven’ as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that’s a problem as old as the human race. But in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when they die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, ‘the cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, the persons of Christians because they, too, were ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of ‘going to heaven.’ Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death -- first, a time ‘with Christ’ in ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise,’and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection -- he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible. But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it -- most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much.

Wright goes on to a more general critique of Hawking and others who share his worldview:

As for the creation being self-caused: I wonder if he realises that he is simply repeating a version of ancient Epicureanism? i.e. the gods are out of the picture, a long way away, so the world/human life/etc has to get on under its own steam. This is hardly a ‘conclusion’ from his study of the evidence; it’s simply a well known worldview shared by most post-Enlightenment westerners…

The depressing thing is that Hawking doesn’t seem to realize this and so hasn’t even stopped to think that there might be quite sophisticated critiques of Epicureanism, ancient and modern, which he should work through. Not least the Christian one, which again focuses on Jesus.

My own comment is this: I do wish that those who clearly have a brain (computer or not) would use it to think through what they say about faith with the same measure of rigour that they apply to their own areas of expertise.

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

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

Oh death, Up yours!

It’s a bit hectic in the Ritchie household as we prepare for our move to a new parish next week so not much blogging going on. I have been trying to snatch the odd moment to do some reading around the themes of Easter including Rob Bell’s Love Wins, Tom Wright’s Justification and Paula Gooder’s This Risen Existence. Lots of good, thought provoking material to mull over while slapping the paint on a bedroom wall.

However, my favourite quote over the Easter period has come from Revd Richard Coles. On hearing news of the death of the great Poly Styrene former singer with X-Ray Spex, Richard sent the following tweet:

Have just heard of the death of Poly Styrene - may flights of angels hymn her to her rest. RIP, and , in Easter Hope, Oh Death , Up YOURS!

I was wondering whether we could use this in some Easter liturgy. How about:

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Oh death, Up yours!