Ascension pt II

In 2014 I did a two part sermon in the morning and the evening of one day, someone recently asked me about the questionable ending to Mark's Gospel (Covered in the 2nd Sermon), so I thought I'd share what I'd already written on the subject...

2014.06.01 6pm
Ephesians 1:15-23
Mark 16:14-20

This morning we were looking at the Ascension of Christ in to heaven, and we were thinking about how hard it is to tell the story of these unique events in the life of the early Church, and particularly how hard it must have been for the disciples to find the words to describe something they had never seen before. We talked about the difficulty of knowing when to finish a story and how in some stories it is important to include something of what comes next.

This morning we heard the account of the Ascension from the writer of Luke in Acts chapter 1. This evening we heard the account of the ascension from Mark's Gospel. This account gives us some dilemmas to deal with. This morning we thought about some films that go on too long and some that finish at just the right moment, and how important it was that we don't simply end this story with the empty tomb. Now ironically the struggle with Mark's Gospel is that some of the early manuscripts that we have of it do just that. They finish with the women fleeing in fear from the empty tomb. Those versions of Mark's Gospel leave everything open including the tomb. Cinematically that's a great ending - that leaves the universe hanging on a knife edge. It's like the end of the films The Italian Job, The Usual Suspects or Inception.

But what do we do with the knowledge that there is more than one version of the ending of Mark's Gospel out there? In a way it's like the several versions of the classic 1980's Sci-fi movie Blade Runner that now exist, the most important difference being the change in the ending with some versions that fundamentally change the nature of the lead character. With fictional stories it's all bit of fun to wrestle over ambiguous endings and alternative versions. But With the Gospel's we are talking about differences that change the world. So what do we do with that? Do we trust those who chose to add the ascension story? Do we dig into the history and find out more? Do we take a cynical stance and only trust the material that is in all of the versions?

Well to start with let's be clear, the shorter version casts no particular doubt, it simply leaves the ending open. Secondly, history is not so simple that we can assume that the earliest or the shorter version is the most accurate. If I were to offer you a booklet printed in 1947 about the history of the second world war and another 800 page book written by a professor of military History From Durham University in 2011, which one do you think might have the most accurate and comprehensive account of the events of the war?

The addition could be a matter of creative choice, about theological emphasis, about the time taken to reflect on what is important, what needs to be included and what needs to be left out. All this is very interesting but it means very little unless we actually deal with the contents of the text.

But before we do that I want to bring some context using our reading from Ephesians. Now I'm sure that there were a number of important theological reasons why these texts were put together in the Lectionary. Theological links with the ascension when Paul talks about when God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. There are important theological issues being raised in this passage about this being an eternal heavenly inheritance that we enter into as believers and not a finite, fleeting earthly inheritance, and the point being that this is reflected in Christ's resurrection body nor remaining on earth or decaying but ascending into heaven.

But that's not the point I want to focus on right now. The point I want to focus on is that this is one of the few letters where Paul actually seems to be genuinely filled with Joy about the people to whom he is writing. Often in this letters he has a very well written joyous greeting at the beginning of the letter which rapidly gives way to him setting them straight on a number of things they are doing wrong, and you can usually tell a lot about his mood by the number of cheerful verses at the beginning of the letter. Ephesians I think is second only in cheerfulness to Philippians.

What is important here is that when Paul is happy with people, he is thankful for them and wants to dwell with them. Our reading this evening began at verse 15 and he's still being thankful and joyous, and if we go back for a moment to verses 7 & 8 we hear these words 7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

He wants to dwell with those people of faith who bring him joy and no doubt strengthen his faith as much as he strengthens theirs. By Contrast though, the end of Mark's Gospel gives us a strangely different mood. There is less of a desire to dwell and more of a command to get on with the job;
 Jesus appears to the disciples and has a go at them because they lack faith then commands them to; “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. After all the subtlety and nuance of Jesus' ministry we are suddenly hit by this rather black and white statement 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

Jesus says a few more words and then that's it, he's taken up into heaven. Luke's account is softer and more descriptive. We can't say for sure which one is the more accurate account or whether either of them represent a true account of Jesus' last words on Earth. Certainly the "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." Bit has a great final words ring to it, but after all that had been done and all that Christ had achieved through his actions, to leave his disciples having just rebuked the m like that seems odd.

Perhaps we need to look more the places where these accounts were being read in order to consider why these particular aspects of the story were being emphasised. Luke was writing for the Gentiles, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians was celebrating one of many healthy growing Christian communities that were springing up across the Roman Empire.

It is most likely that Mark's Gospel was written for Jewish Christians near the time of the war that led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. These were troubled times and there was indeed work to be done, this was not time for sitting back and dwelling in each other's presence with the Joy of the Lord in their hearts - it was time of life and death decisions, decisions about what it was to be Jewish Christian in a place where the Jewish nation was about to be crushed.

How we tell our story depends in part on who we are telling it to. That was true then and it is true now. Perhaps there was a time when Mark's Gospel didn't need such a certain ending, perhaps there was a time when there was time to marvel at the mystery of the empty tomb, to dwell within the questions and imagine the nature of Christ's resurrection. But perhaps there came a time when God's people needed every drop of certainty they could hold onto, and maybe then it was time to add those extra words and to record them in such a way as was useful to those people living on the verge of destruction. It may also be true that the two versions hung around side by side in different places for a while until the longer one was chosen as part of the canon of New Testament books.

It would be easy to presume that finding those other and versions of Mark's Gospel without the added ending ought to be cause for historical worry and concern about our faith, but the reality is that our story is richer than that, deeper than that and even the differences between those versions are a part of the story we have to tell. They help remind us that we are in a new place and a new time and we need to find the right words, the right way to tell these stories to this generation. Some of our words should be about dwelling with our brothers and sisters in Christ, about reaching wide our open arms of hospitality to a world in need of God's love and Grace. And some of our words should be about the need to get on with the job, to be aware of the darkness and the trouble around us.

Sometimes our telling of these stories should have a short sharp snappy ending, to get people thinking and to get them coming back for more. Other times we should linger a while, dwell with the text, to seek deeper understanding and to understand what it is to express these stories together as a community.

In any case I'm glad they kept the longer ending for Mark's gospel because however we tell it, it reminds us that Jesus left up with the call to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation."

Part i: http://revpetebrazier.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ascension-pt-i.html

Ascension Pt I

On Ascension Sunday in 2014 I did a two part sermon in the morning and the evening of one day, someone recently asked me about the questionable ending to Mark's Gospel (Covered in the 2nd Sermon), so I thought I'd share what I'd already written on the subject...

2014.06.01 10am
Acts 1:6-14
John 17:1-11

 Here's a phrase you shouldn't begin a sermon with; 'The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but...'

And yet that is how I want to begin this sermon. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but where do you go from there. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but it's a slightly awkward end to the story. God incarnate has come and raised up a group of disciples, he has taught them over a number of years and he has made the ultimate sacrifice to atone for their sins, this was the greatest and most important moment in the history of the universe, and then as if that was not enough, Jesus Christ returns from the dead to demonstrate how eternal life is possible for all people. And so what next?

This morning we are thinking about the ascension of Christ into heaven. This is a peculiar and dramatic story, and the way that we go about telling the peculiar and dramatic events in life is an interesting thing to consider. Memories of unusual events are complicated, and they are complicated in part because we lack the language to describe what is happening; we lack a set of similar experiences to compare it to.

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Clouds, heaven, sky and two men dressed in white - I wonder what it was they actually saw, how they might describe it if they had all the right words for such a situation. This was the early Church Struggling to find the words for a very special event; a dramatic event.

If you like big dramatic action movies you will probably be aware that the ending is the most difficult bit to get right. After the battle is won, after the disaster is averted, after the hero has saved the day, what do you do? Do you end the film right there or do you tie up all the loose ends. Do you land on the dramatic punch line and go straight to the credits or do you drag it out for another ten minutes with clearing up the love stories and the whatever happened to that guy who was stuck in the basement bits. Do you end on the high drama or do you end with the more personal more emotional stories, perhaps a joke or even a final twist in the plot.

Some films get this balance perfect, others get it horribly wrong. Often the ones that get it right are the ones that finish as soon as the big surprise ending hits you, 'the Usual Suspects' is a great example of this or perhaps the original Planet of the Apes from 1968. The ones that get it wrong are usually those ones that go one too long after the big event has happened, mission Impossible III springs to mind, perhaps The Lost World Jurassic Park II, Casino Royale, which is a great film but just out stays its welcome  as it drags out the ending a little too far.

Very occasionally you get a classic film, a near perfect piece of cinema that manages to be so in spite of or even in part because it took the time to play out the story to the very end. The Wizard of Oz is one of those, perhaps not the most serious film on the world, but a masterpiece none the less and for 1939 the visual effects were stunning. And the full ending is completely necessary. You couldn't just have Dorothy click, click, click her heels and go home and let that be the ending, because you would miss so much of what the film is about.

The story of Jesus is no fiction, but people still needed to make decisions about how to tell the story, which details to keep in and which to leave out. They needed to make decisions about how much to join the dots between the various features of the story and how much to let the stories tell themselves and allow the reader to make up their own minds about the meaning. The two readings we had today came from Acts, written by Luke, the only guy who attempted to do a sequel to his Gospel, and John. And John has many of the marks of a remake, but something you don't see often these days, it's a good remake, a remake worth paying attention to. And you can tell this is a remake because a lot of the things you think you've read in John's Gospel aren't actually there.

He alludes to things, he plants ideas in your mind and he tells stories on the presumption that you will already know what he's talking about. He tells the story of the last supper without the supper; he convinces you that the Word at the beginning of his gospel is Jesus, without ever saying it directly. And most importantly for today, John gives us no account of the Ascension. Instead we have hints of it throughout his ministry and particularly in the reading we heard today which comes from before the crucifixion. As in this we hear Jesus say "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" and "I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you.

You could not have two more different Gospel Writers than Luke and John. Luke is a collector of stories, who places a light editorial hand on the text in the hope that we might be convicted of the truth of the text. Whereas John comes with a heavier hand, joining up the theology like a web or a map, leaving gaps where he wants us to think and placing brightly coloured flags where he wants us to pay attention. This was the early Church Struggling to find the words for a very special event.
 It is important sometimes to look for the right words to describe the miraculous in the ordinary, like when we see the nature of God in the turning of the Earth and see his healing grace in the running waters of a stream. And there are times when we need to find ordinary words to describe the miraculous. Like in John Chapter 3 when we hear the words For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not die but receive eternal life. But there are times when we need to make some attempt to describe the indescribable, to find a set of words to capture a unique event.

The temptation is to say that the Crucifixion and the resurrection are the heart of the story; they come together to make the punch-line event, the plot twist to end all plot twist. Why bother with the ascension? Surely the story ends best with the empty tomb. Big Shock, awesome ending, roll the credits. But no, this is like the Wizard of Oz. There is time at the end of that film to reflect on what everything meant. How the characters and the themes connected up. How lessons learned in the fantastic and colourful story would play out in the black and white of day to day life.

If you end with the empty tomb you miss so much of the point. You miss that the story is not over, that the retelling of the story by the disciples to all the world, is part of the story. You miss that God has begin the process of handing the keys of his Kingdom to his people. You miss that the resurrection was not simply about a temporary physical reprieve from the Grave; it is about a move to a new life a new kind of life. Not the old one, rehashed to last forever but a new life that is eternal in its very nature And in Christ's ascension we see a glimpse of this eternal life played out before us. Not so much an ending as a teaser for the sequel; the beginning of what comes next, because as all the best movie trailors say, that was when everything changed. But then, we have that moment to reflect on the fantastic colourful event before the coming of the holy spirit at Pentecost. As this passage ends;

12 Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. 13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Fade to black, end credits. Amen.

Part ii: http://revpetebrazier.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ascension-pt-ii.html

Humour is a funny thing

I wrote this for a local Church magazine and ironically posted it to the editor just hours before hearing about the death of Robin Williams... 

Funny is often associated with happy and yet many of the funniest people in the world have been quite sad people. Humour can be a difficult thing to spot when for one reason or another you cannot see the joke. Sometimes a joke may be used as a test of your knowledge of a group or culture; are you one of us? It can also be used as a handy shortcut to knowing how well a child's intelligence is developing. There is a close link between humour and intelligence. .Jokes can cause pain, they can be caused by pain, and at its best humour can be a healer of pain.

Stand up comedians and preachers actually share a lot in common. Both need to hold the attention of a group of people with their words; both rely on the ability to move people emotionally. Good preachers and good comedians rely very much on timing and the rhythm of their speech, the cadences and pace of their delivery, both have punch lines to deliver. The best of both are in the business of sharing grace. Perhaps though, one of the biggest differences is that historically congregations have been more polite about dull sermons than audiences have been about unfunny comedians. I am simultaneously grateful for and sorry about that.

But one of the funniest (funny peculiar) things about humour, is what it tells us about when we are tired. There are different kinds of tired. For example there is the, 'I've had a busy day doing exciting things' kind of tired, and there are those kinds of tired where we think, 'I've had enough today' or 'I can't do this anymore.' Those kinds of tired seriously reduce our capacity to get the joke, to engage in the humour of a situation. It is that kind of tiredness that leaves people grumpy and snappy and lacking in grace. Our capacity for intelligent thought is seriously reduced by fatigue and that in part is why it is tired people rather than sad people who often find it hardest to be funny.

And there is a theology to our humour. We can ask ourselves if our humour is full of grace and whether it is a healing kind rather than a hurting kind. We can also ask if our humour is gracious towards those with that deep sense of fatigue and sadness. Sometimes one of the most grace filled things we can do is to get the joke on someone else's behalf, not to expect them to laugh, but to know when to diffuse the situation with humour; to tell the joke they would have told if they had the emotional energy.

I hope you have all had moments of joyous laughter this summer, but for those who are not able to laugh right now, know that there are people out there looking after your sense of humour until you are ready to reclaim it.

‘Do this, do what?’ An exploration of the elements of bread and wine in communion

This theological journey began a few years ago with a conversation between myself and a woman who described herself as Anglo-catholic. We both shared a desire for Communion to be more like a shared meal with proper amounts of bread and wine, with people gathered around a table. But, during the conversation, I raised the suggestion of using culturally contextualised elements like pasties and cider for Cornwall, or rice and saké for Japan. On this matter we disagreed deeply. I was struck by how much of a problem the suggestion of alternative elements was for her and how little it worried me.

In subsequent conversations with other people, I noted that the many issues and ideas surrounding the communion elements elicited equal amounts of reverence and ridicule.  Some love the idea of cider and pasties; others thought it irreverent. Some see the practice of consuming the bread and wine at the end of a service, and the various high church rules for coping with spillages, as nonsensical, others see it as reverential and essential. And so I wanted to understand why, and if these differences could be reconciled.

As a child in the Methodist Church I didn't feel that Communion made much sense. I knew the story being enacted, but the ritual seemed to bear little resemblance to the Biblical text. In my view there was very little drama and too many words. As I grew, I found that this feeling towards Communion changed little, except perhaps in sermons that described that moment of remembrance on the Emmaus Road when the disciples recognised Jesus in the breaking of the bread, and in some ecumenical Communion services such as the Communion at Greenbelt Festival.

Though Communion goes back to the earliest days of the church, there is some disagreement about how much change has occurred over time. Continuity of practice is a healthy way of maintaining a connection with the past and following the instructions of Jesus. However in recent years, many people have become disillusioned with the institutions of Christianity, so it seems right now also to ask if this tradition, in its current form, is robust enough to weather these changes or whether there are some wider ways that we can think about the Lord's Supper.

There are a number of Biblical texts as well as Jewish traditions which provide an untapped potential to widen the scope of how we look at the sacrament of Communion. In particular I want to look at how some words are used both in the old and new Testaments, and how those words might paint a picture of how the disciples might have understood what Jesus was saying and doing at that last supper. We cannot see inside the minds of ancient Jews, but we can look at these texts that were familiar to first century Jewish people and tease out how the words of the institution may have sounded to them in the light of those texts.

Whether Communion is approached from a belief in transubstantiation or a symbolic viewpoint, one significant problem remains. The drinking of blood was and is abhorrent to the Jewish tradition, asking the disciples to do this, even as a symbolic act this would seem to be in poor taste. The three gospel writers who include what we call the institution narrative place the last supper in a Passover context. Therefore we can presume an awareness of the problem with blood. I want to suggest that Jesus was instigating a significant reform at the last supper that does not dismiss, but rather makes use of Jewish tradition. However the nature of this change is obscure to our modern western ears.

There is in the Old Testament a suggestion of a movement of life from God to his creations (both human and animal) and back to God, through death or through sacrifice. Life begins with God and is passed to humans and animals through the breath. Genesis 2 and Ezekiel 37 both talk of the ‘breath’ or spirit being breathed into man to create ‘living life forces’ (chayah and nephesh). To what extent this ‘life force’ contains the unique identity of the individual is up for debate. However, the frequent translation of the word nephesh as ‘soul’ would seem to suggest many translators think it does.

Genesis 9:4 and Leviticus 17:11 talk about this ‘life force’ or soul as being in the blood, and this life force leaves the body with the blood in the sacrifice. Leviticus 17:11 also establishes that theological concept of blood atoning for sins that we understand to be at the heart of what Jesus is doing on the cross; ‘life force’ for ‘life force’, suggesting that the nephesh of the animal blood is transferred to humans via God through the aroma (reyach)  of the sacrifice.

And so there seems to be a general sense in Old Testament language, of life being something that moves from God to creature and back, and changes as it moves. Some movements are normal and acceptable, some are not. Movement of life from a sacrificial animal to the body of a human being is absolutely unacceptable, as this life is the life that is to return to God in order to atone for that human being.

The change that Jesus is symbolising at the last supper seems to be a fundamental shift in the flow of life - through his death and resurrection. The movement now is from Jesus, the sacrificial Passover lamb, who is both human and divine, pouring out, not the initial breath of life, but the nephesh in the blood that is, as it were stamped with Christ's identity for us to take on as his Church. What is being symbolised here is the pouring out of God’s life force to all people; echoing Joel 2:28 'I will pour out my spirit on all people in those days'.

In the new testament, In 1 Corinthians 11:24 Jesus says of the bread ‘this is my body’; in verse 29 Paul speaks of ‘discerning the body’ before entering into communion. Then in 12:12-29 he suggests that ‘you (the church) are the body of Christ’. Clearly Paul had made the connection between the bread, the body of Christ and the Church. But there is also a play on words that exists in the concept of breaking the bread and discerning the body. The Greek word translated as discernment is diakrinon, which literally means separation or separate throughout. So the implication here would seem to be that the bread = body = church and the constant need to break bread together is linked with the constant need to break down, to discern and to reform the community of believers in the image of Christ.

While there are differences in the versions of the institution narratives, much of the language remains the same, and these words link into deep wells of theological imagery. It is also important to note the words that are not used. Matthew, Mark, Luke and 1 Corinthians all use the word azuma, the word for unleavened bread, but never in conjunction with the words of institution, which use artos, the more generic word for bread. Artos can also be used to metaphorically imply general food or nourishment - as in give us this day our daily artos in the Lord's prayer.

It is also interesting to note that wine is never mentioned in the biblical texts with regard to communion; instead the words ‘blood’ and ‘cup’ are used. This use of generic words seems to place the emphasis on the theological and the symbolic. The biblical text does not call specifically for ‘juice of the grape’, and the word artos, whilst literally meaning bread, would be poor word to use if any limitation was intended.

The meal that we see in the gospels is based on the Seder meal, which comes at the beginning of the week-long festival of Passover. There is a tradition at the Seder meal to break bread and hide half of it under a cloth, that hidden part symbolised the coming messiah, or the return of Moses. So in this act Jesus may have been declaring himself as the new Moses and announcing a New Exodus.

Matthew, Mark and Luke speak of Jesus not partaking of the produce of the vine until they meet again in the kingdom. This has echoes Seder meal where they promise to meet again in Jerusalem next year, indicating that this last supper is instigating a new exodus, but perhaps in search of a heavenly promised land, a New Jerusalem. But it also dips into all the biblical symbolic references to vines, such as ‘I am the vine; you are the branches,’ suggesting this may be more about how we function as church than the correct choice of drink for the ceremony. 

So as we put together this new understanding of blood or the wine and the bread, what we have is a symbolic act of breaking down and pouring out - breaking down that which has become fixed, particularly those parts of the Church which have taken a wrong turn or are stagnating, and reforming them so that God's spirit may be poured out to all people.

There are several ways to apply this new pattern to the choices of elements. We can use food that corresponds to the symbolism of breaking and pouring. The pasty and cider or rice and Saké, though the rice ought to be in rice cake form, but there are many others that could be used. There is scope to engage children with the use of elements like juice and biscuits.

Or we could use the language of structure and flow. This would apply to anything where solid and liquid are in relationship and is perhaps easier to use for illustrations that don't involve food, like rivers or the blood stream and. But it is also useful for structures that rely on things that behave in a fluid way, like financial systems or town planning. These make good illustrations but there is also a potential for this theology to speak to the reality of those situations - how might communion inform the plan of a town? Just something to think about really, But the Church needs to have a sense of structure and flow as well. How can the Church be best structured in order to enable the flow of the Spirit?

We can also use ‘the produce of the vine’ symbolism. Many plants are classed as vines and many kinds of produce. For example blackberry jam spread on toast might make a useful set of elements for a breakfast Communion. Also Flower arrangers might want to use vine flowers for communion decorations. The vine is an important image for structuring the church because each branch only survives because it is rooted in the vine.

There are also a number of ways of applying these ideas to our worship;

One way is to construct simpler and more easily remembered liturgies. This is a possible structure for a simplified Communion service;

·         We gather

·         We give thanks to God the Father for the food and drink

·         We remember Jesus the Son

·         We break the food to symbolise the breaking down of the church to be examined

·         We share the food to symbolise equality and unity

·         We share the drink to symbolise the Holy Spirit flowing out to the whole community

·         We look forward to being with Christ again

This could be used as it is or expanded to contain as much detail as is required.

Another way is to write new prayers. This is a Communion prayer with responses based on the concept of discerning the body through breaking;

We break the church to form it anew

May the life of Christ flow out through us

We break our cliques to build new friendships

May the life of Christ flow out through us

We break our habits and learn to love

May the life of Christ flow out through us

We break with tradition and do something new

May the life of Christ flow out through us

We break from our striving, and listen to ancient wisdom

May the life of Christ flow out through us

We allow our hearts to be broken

So the life of Christ may flow out through us

In the breaking of bread we are broken

And in the drinking from the cup,
We drink in the breath of God

The most exciting prospect of this new pattern is that it suggests the potential for the Church not just to act out Communion, but to live out Communion. The implication is that this breaking down or restructuring is part of what enables the flow of the Spirit throughout the Church, whether in a service, committee meeting, prayer group or other activity.

If communion is only understood at a surface level then, as our culture changes, so meanings are in danger of being lost. But if the meaning of Communion can be understood as something that informs how we exist as church then it becomes more robust, more transportable and more translatable into modern culture. If Communion is still Communion without the bread and wine then it can be more deeply woven into the fabric of our existence and through it God may be able to break us and remould us in his image.

It's all in the story

Life is a journey of constant learning. Sometimes the big learning experiences come to us without warning, and sometimes we find ourselves entering consciously and deliberately into a big learning experience, whether it be an academic degree, a Bible study or actually reading the instructions for building a piece of furniture for once.

In these deliberate learning experiences we have expectations about what it is we are going to learn; there are, to varying extents, predictable learning outcomes. Yet even with these deliberate times of learning there are still surprises and unexpected revelations. In fact it is the inherent paradox of choosing to learn a particular subject skill or piece of information; if we knew exactly what we going to learn then we wouldn't need to learn it. This surprise element has certainly been true of some of the learning I have done in recent years. My theology and ministry studies have, perhaps surprisingly taken me deeper into the world of Mathematics than I have ever been - and even stranger than that, it is perhaps the maths more than the biblical studies, that have reminded me of the importance of story.

The area of mathematics I've been studying is a fairly young branch and has an important story of its own to tell about its journey through our world so far. Fractal geometry is an applied form of maths with many practical uses, but there are those who are put off by the idea of mathematics of any kind, let alone the complex, abstract world of fractals. So how about if we tell the story of fractals as if they were a real child; a kind of Pinocchio type story if you will. 

Let's call this child 'Ben'. In Hebrew 'Ben' means 'son of' and this is useful for our story...

Ben was the child of Benoit B Mandelbrot, a wandering Mathematician. Ben was born in 1975 and grew up visiting places like geography, biology, geology, art, quantum mechanics and astrophysics. Ben's young adult life found him embarking on a remarkable film career starring in almost every film that used computer graphics to create believable landscapes and strange worlds from the imaginations of the writers and directors. Through him many new worlds were created - beginning with the Genesis project planet in Star Trek's 'the Wrath of Khan'. But even before Ben was born, the ideas that came to make him were conceived by Benoit in the world of economics out of ideas that went way back to the beginning of mathematics.

Sadly, Ben and his father were rejected by most of the economists, so they were forced to move elsewhere, into the world of computers. The economists were, and to a great extent still are, too tied up in their traditions to see the importance of what Ben had to say. Yet it was that move to computers that really allowed Ben to be born into this world as something we could see for ourselves, as Benoit produced the first real images of the 'Mandelbrot Set' using calculations that could never have been done by hand. Ben's message continues to be discovered in new places. Only recently has the world of theology begun to take much notice of him, but still he is misunderstood by many.

And in the tradition of all good (or not so good) children's talks in Church, that's a little bit like Jesus isn't it? It's like what now?  Well, Ben is more than just an idea and more than just the iterations of that idea. Like Jesus, you can't have one side without the other. Like Jesus, Ben has always had to deal with the context in which he is working, and his value in the context is nothing without his underlying message. Like Ben, Jesus was understood by very few to begin with, but over the years the Church has spread to almost every part of the globe. 

Let's be clear, Ben is not the source of salvation for humanity, but like the Christian message, Ben has been often misunderstood, yet equally helpful wherever his message has been understood. I note as I look at this story that Ben continues to be just as mobile now as he was when he was young, because he only packs as much as he needs for the journey; a simple equation - the right one for the right context. 

That's one of the fundamental things about fractals; they are, as it were, big ideas travelling light. God is the biggest idea and Jesus is that idea travelling light, iterated into human form. Yet, contrary to how Jesus instructed his disciples, over the centuries the Church seems to have gained and carried with it a lot of baggage. This, I think, is the key story that The Church needs to learn from fractals. 

You can read more about my theological journey into fractals here; 

http://revpetebrazier.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/exploring-fractal-geometry-of-mission.html

The Long and Winding Road

            As a minister I often find myself staring at maps. Sometimes it is to work out how to get to someone I am going to visit, or to find the location of a Church at which I am preaching. For those travelling by car it is usually easiest these days to put a postcode into a Sat Nav and point the car in the right direction. As a minister who doesn't drive, my relationship with maps is a little more complex. When my wife is driving, I am usually the navigator and then it's mainly a case of using Google Maps on my 'smart phone'. But if I need to visit someone I may be considering walking, going by bus or getting on my bike. So then I study the map a little more carefully, I look to see how straight the roads are, how steep the hills are, how bumpy the tracks. I look to see if there are paths between the roads and tracks that go across the fields. I need to consult timetables for busses, I use Google maps' satellite image option to find those handy little pathways between houses that aren't on the printed maps and I need to take into account the possibility that my bike may not be welcome along the path that I have chosen.

            All these things help me decide which route to take and which mode of transport will be the most appropriate, but there is more to it than that. Sometimes I need to choose a route and a mode of transport based on what I need to take with me and sometimes I choose a route that helps me to see something new about the community, to let me bump into new people and see places I haven't seen before. I also use my map studying time to help me understand things about the local community. Seeing where the shops and the pubs are, where the schools and churches are, and where people go to work. I even seek out historical maps to help me understand how a place has grown over time. All these things say a lot about a community.

            In the same way the routes we choose in life show people a great deal about our intended destinations and they also say a lot about how we intend to get there; The metaphorical routes as well as the physical ones. When we choose products in the supermarket it affects people across the world, when we choose a bank account or a utility company do we just choose the cheapest or do we also consider the environment and our impact on developing countries? What truths do we carry with us as we travel through life? What burdens? When we look back over the route maps of our lives will they tell a story about how we wanted to get to where we wanted to go by the easiest route? Or will they speak of generosity, hospitality, a love for God's creation and a concern for the stranger who needed our help? 

Some thoughts on Ash Wednesday

                In the lectionary reading for Ash Wednesday,[1] from Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 we hear about the need for penitence, the need to return to God with weeping and mourning - this is at the heart of what Ash Wednesday is about. And in Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 we hear about how penitent people ought to act in the world, acts of religion that are out of the public eye, giving that is not announced, humble prayer, fasting without seeking attention or sympathy and the desire to store up heavenly wealth, not earthly possessions. That extract from the sermon on the mount offers us perhaps a picture of the finished product, the holy people we seek to become. But there is a stage in between Joel and Matthew, there is a time between our repentance and our stepping out into the world again as new creations. The reading from Matthew's gospel is suggesting that we don't make a fuss, we don't get wrapped up in religious pomp and circumstance, but rather we get on with doing the work of the lord, we get on with the work of being God's people. But there are some things we need to attend to before we can be those people. The way we group these two readings together in the lectionary for this service is very protestant, it's very modern and western. We repent, we are forgiven, we get up and get on with the work. But in between there are things that we are called to do.

     I think the first of these is the need to dwell for a moment in the place where we are, to dwell with the reality and the darkness of whatever situations we are experiencing. I have met a number of people in my life with severe depression, and one of the things I have learned through them is that the very worst thing you can do is to try to cure them, to solve their problems. What you do is to sit with them to listen to dwell with them in their pain. If you're really in tune with their feelings you might possibly be able to make them laugh for a moment or two, and that helps. But the last thing you try to do is offer a solution, because that's not how depression works.

     This often feels problematic to those Christians who want to save people simply by converting them to Christianity without understanding the subtle complexity of what discipleship and healing are truly about. That desire to dwell amongst people who are suffering is modelled for us by God through Jesus, who came to dwell amongst us, but it is also demonstrated in the old Testament. Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes we are encouraged to dwell amongst the harsh realities of the world, the futility and the hopelessness of many situations, in order that we might see what is truly of value and what is truly lasting.

     The other thing we are called to do in between repentance and being new creations is to go out. This is different to the being sent out as the people of God to heal and baptise, and to spread the word of God's coming Kingdom. And it's different to the going out on the town for a big party. This is the call to go out beyond the boundaries and the necessities of your daily life, to go beyond your normal places and activities to some place where you can be alone with God, to reflect and to grow, to allow the dust to settle in your soul, to wrestle with issues in your heart and to reconcile yourself to changes that need to be made. On Sunday the lectionary Gospel reading will be Matthew's account of the Temptation of Jesus in the wilderness - this is that time of going out for Jesus. And this is God modelling good practice for us through Jesus. This is what lent is about, this is what Ash Wednesday draws us into. This is our time to repent - to dwell within that repentance to dwell in the hurt to go out beyond the normal boundaries of our lives to be with God in isolation, without the distraction, and then, when we are ready, to return, ready to celebrate the risen Christ to be the people of God, ready to do his work.

---

[1] http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=23

Science and Religion - Changing the story from conflict to harmony

            I have recently been learning about the relationship between science and theology with Rev Prof David Wilkinson, and the thing that most struck me about what I have studied so far is the extent to which faith plays a fundamental part in the construct of science. I am not suggesting that you need to be a Christian to be a scientist or that all scientists are secretly religious, although many scientists do have a religious faith. No, the suggestion I am making is far more simple and far more specific than that. In order to study science you need to have an inherent belief that the world makes sense, that it is comprehensible, otherwise experiments wouldn't be repeatable and theories wouldn't be provable.

            It is the presumption of science that something which is true here is also true on a planet that spins around a distant star, even though none of us has ever been there to test out such a theory; and it is the presumption of science that something that is true today will also be true tomorrow. As none of us have yet been to tomorrow we cannot be certain that anything we know to be true today will still be true tomorrow. In many ways the assumption of science is not a wild one; yesterday we thought that the rules of physics would be the same today and so it is not unreasonable to assume that the same will still be true tomorrow, and if gravity and light can be observed doing the same things to a distant planet, as they do to our own then we can make a healthy guess that things work the same there as they do here.

            But there are two interesting points to be made here. The first is that this concept of the world being comprehensible comes historically from religious ideas that influenced the birth of science and so the idea that science and religion are at odds is really quite a modern story. The second is the interesting idea that although both Christian theology and Science have a concept of a comprehensible universe, both also have areas where mystery and incompatible realities take the fore. This can be seen in theological issues such as miracles and the nature of God's incarnation in Christ. Likewise with science there are strange incompatibilities between the way things function at the tiny quantum level and how they work at the cosmic level of astrophysics. There are mysteries in science like the question of whether light is a wave or a particle, and even whether uncertainty is an intrinsic part of the sub atomic world. But in both areas of study it is these mysteries that lead us to push forward in our exploration and seek to discover more.

            In the course of my studies I have found myself looking more deeply into the arguments of Richard Dawkins, and whilst he is a great biologist I realise that his arguments against religion come entirely from a prejudged view of religion as intrinsically bad, and he does this without ever requiring himself to produce the empirical data that he is expecting from others. At a basic level he never even reconciles that theology and religion are as different as scientists and people who use toasters. But I am realising more and more that the flawed nature of his arguments is not what worries me most; it is their divisiveness.

            I think the most useful thing that Dawkins offers this generation is that he highlights the way that many of those gullible enough to be convinced by poorly formulated forms of religion are just as easily convinced by his distracting mixture of science, pseudo science and scientism. The conclusion that the Church perhaps ought to take from this is that we should no longer sit back and politely accept ill-informed theologies and ecclesiologies, but rather seek to challenge them with a sense of maturity, diplomacy and grace. In short, we need to do religion better. We can only hope that inasmuch as he draws the gullible to accept his spurious arguments, he will also encourage the curious to ask deeper questions about his assertions. The worst thing that Dawkins has brought to this generation is yet another poorly formed religion and a descent into the kind of dogmatic conflict that he himself claims to abhor. 

            However, I have also found myself looking at the history of what we now call 'creationism'. And I have learned that the word was not used to describe people who believed in a seven day creation or those who oppose evolution until 1929 in a book called 'Back to Creationism' by Harold Clark, a little known biology teacher from California. What follows this book is a tale of divisive theological arguments, that were neither great theology, nor great science. They came from an ever expanding minority of fundamentalists that would eventually spread beyond America and even to some extent beyond Christianity, into Judaism and Islam.

            I find myself quite angered now by the way that fundamentalists on both sides of the science and religion argument have hijacked the concept and the language of creation and made it into a wedge to drive between groups of human beings who never should have been enemies. So perhaps we ought to spend more time together in harmony with scientists simply marvelling at the mysterious wonder of God's creation and sharing our stories with each other.

Jonah and some cows

Jonah is often seen as a story for children; particularly young children. But why do we consider this story of a defiant prophet with suicidal tendencies to be a good story for that age group? This morning I did a year 9 assembly at which I read a version of the story based on my own translation from the Hebrew. Perhaps even year 9 students are a little young for this story, but young people around the age of 13 are beginning to engage with some pretty complex emotions. So I endeavoured to adjust my translation for that age. I had already translated chapters 1, 3 and 4, but hadn't got round to translating the tricky poetry of chapter 2 (the bit with the fish) and I felt like I wanted to shift the emphasis away from whales and more towards the dark and sometimes surreal humour of the book. So I dealt with the fish chapter in one line and endeavoured to bring out some of the hidden humour of the rest of the text, I think it works. Anyway, here it is, see what you think...

 

Jonah

The Lord spoke Jonah son of Amitai, saying;

“Get up, go to Nineveh, the great city and call out to her (because the city was she), and because their evil has, how should I say, wafted up in front of me.”

So Jonah, obviously, decides to run away to Tarshish (the opposite direction from Nineveh) so that God wouldn’t be all up in his grill.  So he went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish, Jonah hired her (for the boat was a she) and he went with her, and some sailors, to go to Tarshish to hide from the Lord and his big old face.
 

However, the Lord threw a great storm over the sea, and the ship, well she was working on a plan to get all smashed up on the rocks.

And the sailors were afraid and each man cried out to his own God and they threw the cargo from the ship to the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah went down to the belly of the ship and lay down and had a little sleep in her, like a little baby in the womb.
 

And the captain came down and visited him and said to him “what is with you sleepy head? Get up and call out to your God, then perhaps God will think of us and we won’t be destroyed”

And each sailor said to his friend, let’s roll some dice and each number will represent a someone on the boat, and whoever’s name comes up is the person who is to blame for this storm. So they rolled the dice and Jonah’s number came up. Not a good lottery to win.
 

So they said to him “explain how this evil has landed on us, Who do you work for? Where are you from? What land do your people come from?”

And Jonah said to them “I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of the heavens, who made the soggy sea and the dry land.”

And the men feared with a fearsome fear and they said to him, “what have you done?” because they’d pretty much sussed out that he was running from God’s big old face,  and they’d sussed it out mainly because he’d told them that’s what he was doing.
 

So they said to him “what shall we do with you in order to make the sea hush his noisy face?” because the sea was a he, and because he was getting very stormy by now.

And Jonah said to them “Just chuck me in the sea, so that the sea will hush its face, I know this is all my fault, just chuck me in.”

Even so, the sailors tried to row the boat to safety, but they couldn’t because the storm was getting rougher all the time.
 

And so they cried out to the Lord, Jonah’s God this time, and they said please Lord do not let us perish with this man, and please don’t let his innocent blood be on our hands just because of what’s gone on between you and him.

So they picked up Jonah and threw him to the sea, and the sea… well he stood still from his raging.

And the men feared a great fear of the Lord, and they sacrificed a sacrifice to the Lord, and they vowed vows.

 

…So Jonah’s in the water, get’s swallowed by a fish, he sings a little sad song whilst he’s there about getting wrapped up in seaweed, and then the fish pukes him up on a beach.

 

Again the Lord spoke Jonah son of Amitai, saying;

“Get up and go to Nineveh, the great city and call out against her and call out the proclamation which I am speaking to you.

And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord, and Nineveh was a big city, even to God, it would take you three days to walk around all its streets.
 

And so Jonah began to do a one day walk around the city, and he called out and said to them “yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

And – massive surprise, the men of Nineveh actually trusted God, and they called a fast, and they all wore sackcloth to show they were very sorry, from the oldest to the youngest.

And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he got up from his throne and he took off his fancy robe and put on sackcloth and he sat on some ashes to show how sorry he was.
 

And he had these words proclaimed across Nineveh “the man and the beast, the herd and the flock let them not eat anything let them not graze and let them not drink the waters. And the sackcloth will cover the man and the beast, and let them call out to God in strength and let each man turn from his way of evil, and from the violence which is in their hands. Who knows? God may turn and repent, he may turn from his burning anger and maybe we will not perish.”

And God did indeed notice that they had turned from their evil ways, and decided not to destroy them.
 

Which of course, to Jonah, was somehow a bad thing, a great evil, and he was full of anger. And he prayed to the Lord saying “please Lord, didn’t I say this would happen? That’s why I ran off to Tarshish; I knew that you’d be all kind and gracious and loyal to these people and not punish them for all the evil they’ve done. Why don’t you just take me now, I mean, what’s the point of my life? I’d be better off dead than alive.
 

And the Lord said “Ah, You’re angry are you? well good for you”

And Jonah went out of the city so that the city wouldn’t be all up in his grill, and he made a little shelter and he sat in her shade (for the shelter was a she) and he hid there so he couldn’t see what was going on in the city. 

And the Lord assigned a plant and to grow over Jonah to help shade his head from the hot sun and stop him being a miserable so and so. And Jonah rejoiced on account of the plant, with great rejoicing.
 

And then God assigned a worm in the rising dawn of the next day and she struck the plant, (for the worm was a she) and the plant withered.

And so it was with the rising of the sun that God assigned an easterly wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he felt cross and miserable. And again he said “I’d be better off dead than alive.”
 

And God said to Jonah “Good for you, you are angry because of the plant, And good for me, I am angry until I see justice. You had pity on that plant, even though you didn’t do anything to make it grow, it came in the night and it went in the night.
 

Did you think I wouldn’t have pity on Nineveh, the City that even I thought was big; the city which had a population of over 12,000 people, people that didn’t know their left from their right before you turned up and gave them my word? ...And they’ve got cows!"