So What?

East Midlands Trains' Alternative to Ticket Barrier

A major controversy has been raging in Sheffield for several months now.

You will be aware that Sheffield is (like Rome) built on seven hills (otherwise, it is not at all like Rome).  One of those hills is behind Sheffield Midland Station.  A footbridge, built through local taxation, passes through the station, linking people living up the hill with the town centre.

East Midlands Trains (a new franchise) decided some time ago this footbridge is an open invitation to fare dodgers and so proposed installing barriers open to ticket holders only.

To cut a long story short, the opposition to this proposal was pretty much universal and the council threw it out.

EMT went to the government and the plan was resurrected.  So, a few weeks ago I joined a protest march across the footbridge.

We then heard that EMT and the government had withdrawn plans to close the footbridge although they reserved the right to erect temporary barriers.  I imagined this would be chains of staff holding hands and capturing fare dodgers, in order to extract due recompense.

Imagine my horror, as I hobbled (sprained ankle) into the station this morning to discover the terrible truth ...

I understand Winston Churchill tried something similar during the second world war and it almost ended in tears.  If EMT persists with these drastic measures they'll have another demonstration on their hands.

Emmanuel Garibay's Emmaus

I first saw this painting at an exhibition called Jesus Laughing and Loving .  It is a touring exhibition and I saw it at my church.  This painting caught my attention and I remember the thrill when I noticed the woman's hands.  I was told a school party earlier that week had visited the exhibition and an eleven year old boy spent half an hour in front of the painting.

The other day, at a meeting of the Centre for Radical Christianity , Nicola Slee led a day, considering the Christa.  I posted a photo of a Christa recently  and the first half of the day focused on this type of crucifixion image. 

After lunch, Nicola Slee asked whether there were similar resurrection images.  Indeed, there are and this painting was reproduced in our packs.  I intend to find out more about Garibay and his paintings.  He is a Filipino artist and this painting shows a sort of Asian night club where the woman is a hostess.  Despite the seedy atmosphere there is a real sense of joy and the onlooker is drawn in.

What struck me was a parallel with the Rublev icon of the Trinity (below).  There are three men, with three bottles of beer and three spliffs.  The woman does not partake.  It seems to me the gestures of the men echo something of the gestures of the men in the icon.  Obviously, the icon is not full of quite so much laughter but the placing of hands and the direction of gazes is important.  The Trinity regard each other, the Garibay men regard the woman.

In the icon, the fourth side of the table faces the viewer.  The Garibay Emmaus is turned around and the woman occupies the fourth side but her gaze is fixed on the viewer.

We can read this painting as we choose.  The point to me is about incarnation.  We cannot find God in heaven, God is in other people.  This means God can as easily be found as a woman in a seedy bar as anywhere else.  Unremarkable, suspect ... this is the meaning of the resurrection.

On Religious Authority

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, reviewed Philip Pullman's new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ  in The Guardian Review, 3 April 2010.  I have mentioned this new book before  but still not read it!  Here are a couple of quotes from the review:

Pullman's Jesus is scathing about "smartarse priests" who talk about God's absence really being his presence.  Well, yes: Christians use this kind of language.  But not to let themselves off lightly; they're arguing that you only get anywhere near the truth when all the easy things to say about God are dismantled - so that your image of God is no longer just a big projection of your self-centred wish-fulfillment fantasies.

They (Francis of Assisi, Bonhoeffer, Romero) have seen through the surface froth of religion and heard the voice Pullman himself obviously finds so compelling.  That should make us pause before deciding that the New Testament is quite as successful in sanitising an uncomfortable history through religiously convenient truth as Pullman implies.  It is aware of its own temptations.  It trains its readers in self-questioning.

The late Ed Kessler, lecturing about parables at the Urban Theology Unit , captured the point of the parable of the Wheat and the Tares in unforgettable fashion.  He formed his fingers into a gun and pointed at his own temple.  He said, 'I'm going to shoot the tares.'

You remember the story of the landowner, who finds tares are growing with his wheat?  His servants ask whether they should pull up the tares.  As any fool knows, this would pull up the wheat too. 

It seems, as I read atheist critiques of Christianity, they are enthusiastic tare removers.  I agree with 99% of what they're saying and yet ... and yet I'm always left with the feeling they have missed the point.

Of course we should question what religious people say.  The world is full of people who want power and try to get it through claiming a hotline to God.  But if you consistently deny the existence of all gods (as atheists do and the first Christians did), what are you left with?

Atheists claim nothing.  They need to take a long hard look at what they mean by nothing.  I suspect nothing is their god.

And what do Christians who reject all gods find?  How do you speak of something where if you speak of it, you misrepresent it?  For it to be real, we have to deny the reality of the nothing we find ...

Is the Theology of Christ Discriminatory?

John Vincent is reviewing his life's writings and this year a few of us are meeting with him to review his books.  Last Saturday, we were looking at Secular Christ .  This book was one of those  I chose for this year's Lent sequence.

On page 70, Vincent writes:

The theology of Christ is thus unashamedly discriminatory.  By choosing to come as a man, Jesus excluded womanhood (hence, of course, the divinization of Mary).  By coming as a Galilean, Jesus excluded the Torah-obedient traditionalism of the rabbis.  By belonging to the "pious poor" of the land, Jesus excluded the middle class and the beggars.  By being a carpenter, Jesus excludes the rich and wise.  By preaching in Galilee, Jesus excluded the Judeans, let alone the Samaritans.  By being a bachelor, Jesus excluded the insights of love and family.  And so on.

This Saturday, I questioned the premise that this was discrimination.  It seems to me we can argue discrimination was deliberate (I don't think this is what Vincent meant), or unconscious - the accidental consequences of a certain strategy.  A third possibility is that Jesus accepted all whom he met but chose to take paths that meant he encountered only certain people.  The exceptions, such as the Centurion with a sick slave or the Syro-Phoenician woman, are instructive.  Jesus insists he is there for Israel only and then helps them anyway.

In Secular Christ, Vincent makes the point that these instances of discrimination are accidentals.  I argued from Matthew's account of the temptations in the wilderness , which shows us Jesus abandoning all expectations of what it means to be a Messiah.  So, the image we get is one of stepping out without a clear goal.  Jesus was a man with a mission but no idea where his mission was leading. 

We live in a society that favours targets.  Jesus had a vision but no targets.  His approach was to put people at the centre of his ministry and the way he dealt with them set his feet upon the road to Jerusalem.    Would he have been able to achieve what he did had he been a woman?  Possibly not.  Does this mean he is no example to women?  Probably not.

The Shooting of General De Gaulle

I heard this story on BBC Radio 4 last week.  In August 1944, General De Gaulle returned to Paris from his exile in Britain.  As he entered Notre Dame de Paris, snipers, concealed in the walls, opened fire.  Apparently, the passages in the walls are extensive and so no-one was caught.  The likelihood is the snipers were Germans, intending to terminate de Gaulle's triumphant return.

De Gaulle walked down the aisle, through the hail of bullets and bits of masonry, and stood facing the altar.  He was unharmed.

I wonder what was going through his mind.  He must have understood that if he was unharmed, his reputation would be enhanced and so he took the chance.  This was an instant decision and one I can only admire.

It's still Easter and it seems likely Jesus did something similar.  He had chosen to follow God, with no plan or strategy, simply reacting in love to each situation he encountered.  Knowing the right thing to do and sticking to it, with no guarantees about how it would turn out.  I think this is probably what we call faith; courage on behalf of others.

29 Proofs for the Existence of God

I found 29 proofs for the existence of God on a website  devoted to debates between Christians and atheists.  (I'm not sure how long this link will last for but in the event of its demise, I think this post will still make sense.)  I love this sort of thing.  All 29 were worthy and of course profoundly tedious.  Taken together,  apparently they might provide weight of evidence in favour of theism.  Do try to keep awake.

The atheists had a field day; at long last they had a formal statement of the case for theism.  So, they systematically demolished every argument.  For which the atheists have my most profound gratitude.

History is full of nutters who think they have the final conclusive proof of their particular take on divinity.  Theists need atheists to rein in their excesses and ensure Christians never have any conclusive proof for the existence of God.

The one proof that has any weight for me is the proof from religious experience.  Here it is:

1.   Many people of different eras and of widely different
  cultures claim to have had an experience of the "divine."
2.   It is inconceivable that so many people could have been so
  utterly wrong about the nature and content of their own
   experience.
3.   Therefore, there exists a "divine" reality which many people
   of different eras and of widely different cultures have
   experienced.

Inevitably this formal proof firmly grasps the wrong end of the stick.  It is tempting to appeal to the combined might of 2 billion plus believers.  But this is not the point.  The Christian faith is not based upon the dictatorship of a majority (or a minority for that matter).

My story is of a journey with God and as a preacher, a teller of stories and a writer; perhaps something of God's presence in my life will mean something to others.  The experience that matters first, is our relationship with God.  How it makes sense, in the light of the central stories, turns my story into our story. 

We are not philosophers producing final proofs but weavers of stories that make sense.  Our witness is to that moment when everything slots into place and the sceptic, who believes there is nothing new under the sun, suddenly captures a glimpse of the reality behind all the old stuff.

The churches can forget theirs is a living faith.  But each of us, as we struggle with the stories that have been handed down to us, can catch a glimpse of something real.  This something real cannot be proved, if it could it would become just another thing we have to see through or around to capture a glimpse of the something real that always eludes us.

There's nothing magic or supernatural about any of this, just love.

Some thoughts about reading the Bible 5: Truth and Meaning

What is the relationship between truth and meaning?  Just how important is it that every word of scripture is true?  Do we really have to be certain everything really happened exactly as stated?  Do our beliefs, our experience of God, really depend upon such flimsy evidence?

Truth, in the sense of events happening exactly as stated, has nothing to do with the meaning of a text.  Why should it matter whether the events in the book of Jonah happened just as it says?  Believe this about Jonah if you wish but so far, the story has not spoken to you.  How much of your life do you wish to spend demonstrating to doubters a fish can swallow a grown man and then spew him up alive? 

Isn't this like Jonah, who would do anything rather than what God called him to do.  And what of the people who listen to you, find God through your ministry and then refuse to believe the Book of Jonah is true?  Are you going to complain to God, these people you converted are not true believers? 

The most believable thing in the Book of Jonah, is where God ordains a worm, for the education of Jonah.  I am happy to believe God ordains worms for all of us.

Some thoughts about reading the Bible 4: Stories

Have you ever read the Bible and wondered why these stories were chosen and others were not?  The reasons will vary.  Sometimes it was to support a particular view and often these are balanced by others, from a different perspective.  But out of the thousands of stories circulating at the time, why were these chosen for inclusion?

And why were they written in the way they were written?  Any storyteller adapts the story to their purpose and this must be true of the writers who first wrote down these stories.

And why did these stories survive?  Why were they made canon by church authorities? 

Ultimately, they are stories, letters and prophecies the people found helpful.  Of course, power was at play and some things might have been imposed but without the consent of the people they wouldn't be there at all.

Does this leave God out of the equation?  Not really.  God speaks through the text.  The text moves us towards God, by challenging our assumptions.  The canon exists because generations have found it helpful.

Some thoughts about reading the Bible 3: Contradictions

So, you think the truth of the Bible matters?  You read it and come to a claim science views as false.  By your interpretation, the Bible says the world was created by God in 7 days.  So, either the text is false or the world is false (fossils were put there by God as a joke).  Why God couldn't equally place a false claim in the Bible as a joke remains unclear.

The problem is, God is made out to be a liar either in the text or in the world.

When this happens, either your understanding of the text, or God, or both is at fault.  You're not interpreting the text in your context, you're imposing a reading from another context onto it.  If you live in the twenty first century, science is part of your context.  Of course, there will be tensions between science and scripture, it would be a miracle if there weren't.  Our task is to find interpretations that transcend these tensions.  God does not play false in the texts or the world, so if we see a contradiction, we need to search for the right interpretation and be patient until we find it.

Some thoughts about reading the Bible 2: Misleading Claims

When someone claims the Bible is inerrant, what are they doing?  Leave aside the question as to whether they are right or wrong making this assertion, what are they doing?

To claim inerrancy, is to step outside the text.  To assert the literal truth of the text is to say something about the text, not about its meaning.

So, the text becomes a political football.  It is no longer seen as a source of inspiration but as a source of power.

If you think the text's historical or scientific claims are important, you're barking up entirely the wrong lamppost.