So What?

Lent 39: Charles Dickens

Thomas Gradgrind, sir.  A man of realities.  A man of fact and calculations.  A man who proceeds upon the principles that two and two are four and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.  Thomas Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind.  With rule and a pair of scales, and a multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to.  It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic.  You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all suppositious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!  (From: Hard Times , chapter 2)

This is from the famous chapter where a horse is defined as 'Quadruped.  Graminivorous.  Forty teeth ...' and we learn horses should not be featured upon wallpaper as we would never find a horse in fact walking across our walls.  This chapter is brilliant satire and is as much alive today as it was in Dickens' time.  This is another perspective on the trends addressed by Isaac Watts in his hymn .

Margaret Thatcher told us ' there is no such thing as society'.  You don't accept this is a fact?  I think you'll find that by and large you live as if it is a fact.

 

Lent 26: Isaac Watts

His dying crimson, like a robe,

Spreads o'er his body on the tree;

Then am I dead to all the globe,

And all the globe is dead to me.  (From: Hymns and Psalms, 180, verse 4)

This is a radical hymn.  Most people don't realise it is a radical hymn. No space to go into the detail of the whole hymn.   It is common for verse 4 to be omitted.  Why?  I am indebted to John Hull, who interpreted the hymn in a lecture some years ago.  Just two points.  When I Survey the Wondrous Cross was written around 1707, when the centre of the world's economy was moving from the Netherlands to Britain.  Perhaps it should be Great Britain, for this was the year the United Kingdom was founded.  The reason the verse is so often omitted, is not as some think the mention of blood (Watts father was a dealer in dye and the image is of crimson dye spreading through a cloth).  It is the word globe.  We no longer realise how important globes were in Watts' world.  They were used to plan trade routes. 

Watts could see which way his world was going.  Are we able to join with him in the last verse and sacrifice the whole globe for the demands of love?

Lent 19: Sydney Carter

Sing John Ball, and tell it to us all,

Tell of the day that is dawning,

I'll crow like a cock and I'll carol like a lark

For the light that is coming in the morning.

(From: Gentle Angry People, 10)

Sydney Carter was a Quaker and his best known hymn is probably Lord of the Dance.  We used to sing this one, Eve is a Queen and Adam is a King, in the Sheffield Liberation Congregation, about 20 years ago.  It had its origins in the 1981 500 years commemoration of the Peasants Revolt.  John Ball was a priest who is best known for the saying: 'when Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?'  Gentle Angry People was published by the late lamented Alliance of Radical Methodists in 1987.

'All shall be ruled by the love of one another' has been the cry of radical Christians down the ages.  Reflect upon how readily Christians sacrifice the rule of love for the rule of law.

Lent 18: Ebenezer Elliott

Shall crime bring crime forever,

Strength aiding still the strong?

Is it thy will, O Father,

That man shall toil for wrong?

No! say Thy mountains: No! Thy skies;

Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise.

And songs be heard instead of sighs:

God save the people!

(From: Methodist Hymn Book, 909, verse 2)

Some of us discovered this hymn in 1982, when I lived above Grimesthorpe Methodist Centre in Sheffield.  Elliott was known as the corn law rhymer and his statue is in Weston Park in Sheffield.  The house where he lived is marked with a blue plaque in Upperthorpe, Sheffield.  The members of the Grimesthorpe Methodist Centre, who were in their late eighties, told us they were not allowed to sing this when they were young because it's telling God off!  More likely it was frowned upon because it was written in the nineteenth century soon after the National Anthem.  When wilt thou save the people? enjoyed a renaissance in the musical Godspell in 1970.  It is usually sung to Commonwealth.

I still believe this hymn should be sung more often.  It is a miracle it found its way into the hymn book in the first place and it is significant it is not in the current one.  The lyrics might be seen as sexist but I hope this can be excused this one time.  We should ask ourselves why Christians are so reluctant to sing revolutionary songs these days.  We seem to have given up on anything other than anodyne worship songs about nothing real.

Lent 11: John J Vincent

What can be meant by calling this a "secular" Gospel?  From our summary even so far, we see that Mark's purpose has been plainly to show that the life and ministry of Jesus on earth contained more than appeared on the surface - naturally, for Mark writes for those who, thirty years after, had never known Jesus "after the flesh"!  Consequently, what we might call the nonsecular references are already beginning to be heightened.  But the whole story is not about God, or heaven, or eternity, or ideas, or goodness, or providence, or anything else not available to ordinary man using his ordinary senses.  His whole story is about Jesus, walking, talking, getting into boats, doing controversial things, healing, getting into arguments, evading opponents, securing friends, explaining himself, explaining his teaching.  His whole story is about a secular event, an event within this world, which presupposes the limitations and opportunities of living in this world.  (From Secular Christ (1968), page 78)

John Vincent chose to live this story in Pitsmoor, Sheffield and has had a teaching ministry there ever since the late sixties, soon after this book was published.  For me, it is always John's teaching that springs to mind as I preach and exercise my own ministry.  I am one of what must amount to many thousands who have been influenced by him down the years.  I would certainly say his teaching has been more influential than his writing and indeed, I suspect his earlier writing has more significance than his later publications.  This in no way detracts from his, often controversial teachings, although it raises the question how influential he will be in 50 or 100 years time.  John has been responsible for several initiatives in Pitsmoor, the photo is of his latest, developed since his retirement.

Like Winstanley , John sees the Gospels from the point of view of the ordinary people who passed on the stories of Jesus.  John started as an academic and has remained an academic in the place he found himself, inner city Pitsmoor.  Perhaps his most profound teaching is that putting down roots in a particular time and place makes sense of the Gospel.  Perhaps we all need to reflect upon how engagement with what is real is central to our own faith. 

Lent 5: Gerrard Winstanley

The Scriptures of the Bible were written by the experimental hand of shepherds, husbandmen, fishermen and such inferior men of the world.  And the university learned ones have got these men's writings, and flourishes their plain language over with their dark interpretation and glosses, as if it were too hard for ordinary men now to understand them: and thereby they deceive the simple and makes a prey of the poor, and cozens them of the earth, and of the tenth of their labours.  (Spring 1650)  (from A Radical Reader: The Struggle for change in England 1381 - 1914 , edited by Christopher Hampton (1984), page 237)

About two decades ago we regularly sang as members of the Liberation Congregation in Sheffield, the song that begins (from memory) "In 1649, to St George's Hill a ragged band they called the Diggers, came to do the peoples' will, they forswore their property, they forswore the law, they were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs."  In December, I saw the recently issued DVD of Kevin Brownlow's film Winstanley .  The film is of its time (1975) but certainly captures the relentless persecution of the Diggers by the landowners and military.

These days St George's Hill is a well to do estate whose inhabitants apparently do not wish to be reminded of its place in the history of English radicalism.  Perhaps it is worth asking how the memory lingers on even when many would prefer to forget.  There is something about these half remembered acted parables that invites us to make a similar commitment in our own time and place.