So What?

Lent 29: Timothy Dudley-Smith

Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his might!

Powers and dominions lay their glory by;

Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight,

The hungry fed, the humble lifted high.  (Hymns and Psalms, 86 v3)

I've admired Dudley-Smith  ever since I discovered Child of the Stable's Secret Birth , in the 1980s, soon after Hymns and Psalms was first published.  This hymn, Tell Out My Soul (Tune: Woodlands), is based upon the Magnificat and is possibly better known.  Dudley-Smith retired a long time ago but is still writing hymns (I discovered the video on 13 March 2010 and so he is clearly still active).  He is a modern hymn writer who is much under-valued (at least by British Methodists).

This verse addresses the issues Walter Wink  identifies and once again we have a glimpse into the radical world-turned-upsidedown we never lose sight of as we read the Gospels.  It is a struggle to keep radical as we wrestle with the words of Scripture.  I wonder whether this hymn really helps?

Lent 28: John Bell

Feel for the parents who've lost their child,

Feel for the women whom men have defiled,

Feel for the baby for whom there's no breast,

And feel for the weary who find no rest.  (From: A Touching Place, Wee Worship Book , page 58.  Tune: Dream Angus)

I first encountered John Bell at the Abbey on Iona in what must have been about 1983.  I was part of a group who worked with John to produce the Iona Community's first ever recording Through Wood and Nails, which was of course issued on vinyl (and so, is no longer available).  Since then he has written, with Graham Maule, a large number of modern hymns in the Celtic tradition.  I've chosen this verse because it is a good example of his direct and grounded style.  The link is to a later edition of the Wee Worship Book than mine. 

The Iona Community is part of a revival of interest in Celtic Christianity.  John Bell has popularised it by writing modern hymns!  It is easy to forget when we take pleasure in his Celtic approach, enjoy the music and sing the words that the Christian faith is about suffering and love.  These words are an the invitation to encounter the pain of others, to ground our wilder flights of spirituality.  This is how we learn to love.

Lent 27: Muhammad Yunus

The next day I called in Maimuna, a university student who collected data for me, and I asked her to assist me in making a list of how many in Jobra, like Sufia, were borrowing from traders and missing out on what they should have been earning from the fruits of their labours.  Within a week we had prepared a list.  It named forty-two people who in total had borrowed 856 taka, a total of less than $27.  'My God, my God, all this misery in all these forty-two families all because of the lack of $27!' I exclaimed.  Maimuna stood there without saying a word.  We were both astounded, shocked, but also sickened by the pathos of it all.  (From: Banker to the Poor , page 11)

The first edition of Yunus' autobiography, was published in 1998 and I read it in 1999, during a short period of unemployment.  The truth Yunus discovered is the poor are kept poor because they can't get credit.  Without credit they are trapped in a cycle of poverty.  In Bangladesh the amounts they need are unbelievably small.  This made the Grameen Bank a possibility.

Like so many of the radical ideas that really work, this approach is based upon trust.  It is not about making a profit, but it is about helping people prove their own ability to work their way out of poverty.  Why are we not able to do this in our communities in Britain?

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 25: Marcus Borg

I encounter this in my university students.  Every term one or more of them says to me after class, "This is all very interesting, but I have a problem every time you use the word 'God', because, you see" - here there's usually a pause and a deep breath - "I really don't believe in God."  I always respond in the same way: "Tell me about the God you don't believe in."  Invariably, it is the God of supernatural theism.  I then tell them that I don't believe in that God either.  They are surprised, for they know that I believe in God.  They're simply not aware that there is an option other than supernatural theism.  (From: The Heart of Christianity , page 68)

If you want to know what the other option is, you will have to read the book!  As a preacher I spend a lot of time correcting false images of God.  Both Christians and atheists believe in the same unbelievable supernatural God.  I include Borg in this series because he is a well-known radical theologian who does not make the common liberal mistake, where having rubbished the supernatural God, we are left suspended with half a faith and no way of moving anywhere else.

We need to ask ourselves who we are fooling.  Why do we find it so difficult to pass the Christian faith on?  Our educators, preachers, theologians and ministers conspire to set up barriers to God through their insistence in belief or doubt about a God who does not exist and is not believed in by people of faith.

Lent 24: Robert Linthicum

The primary purpose of a community organisation is to create a community - to create out of a victimised, marginalised, destructive conglomerate of people a community whose quality of life is such that people find fulfilment and joy in living there.  It is to enable the people to build their society around their common articulated, intentionally pursued values.  If such a community is not created, then all that we have accomplished through community organising is the replacement of one oppressor by another in the tyranny of the now powerful poor.  The power of the oppressor must be replaced by a quality of corporate life that is of such superiority to either the formerly oppressed or their oppressors that it brings purpose, direction, joy, and fulfillment to all who experience it.  That is the true objective of community organisation.  (From: Building a People of Power , page 243)

Linthicum, with others, picked up Allinski's  organising and made Citizens' Organising the powerful movement it is today in the United States.  It is worth putting Linthicum's approach alongside Lovell's (see yesterday's post).  What they have in common is the commitment to allowing others the space to make their own community or their own ministry.

We see, in the tendency for the oppressed to turn oppressor, the need to understand this flaw in all human relationships.  Traditionally, Christians call this sin.  The struggle to maintain community, in the inner city as much as in religious communities, is a call to live life on the knife edge.  This is why John Wesley  said, there is no holiness apart from social holiness.

Lent 23: George Lovell

But the time and energy to think is strictly limited!  It simply is not possible to think in a thorough-going way about everything all the time.  Doing so would paralyse us.  This does not mean, as some infer, that there is little point in trying to think about anything in depth.  On the contrary, it points us to the vital importance of selecting carefully just what we should be thinking about at any particular time.  Of itself that requires thought.  Life is, in fact, sustained by an ever changing pattern of doing things without thinking, doing and thinking at the same time, and thinking before doing.  Human and spiritual development occurs when the combination of thought and action is creatively integrated.  (From: Analysis and Design , page 16)

I think I first encountered George Lovell in the early 1990s, when he was involved with Avec, at Chelsea Methodist Church.  At that time, I took one of the Avec courses.  (Avec is the French for with.)  Over ten years later, I took part in his post-graduate diploma, Consultancy, Mission and Ministry, which drew on his long experience of non-directive practice for church and community workers.  If Britain has a home grown equivalent to Citizens' Organising in the States, it was Avec and more recently the CMM course, which continues despite George Lovell's retirement.  It is a pity his work is not better known but then non-directive working has never been particularly valued in the UK.

The creative integration of thought and action is sometimes called Praxis.  I believe all the great movements of Christian inspired change have achieved, at least for a period, integration of thought and action.  Sometimes we call it integrity.  This is a theme we should reflect upon, particularly if we value the transformation of human societies.

Lent 22: Terry Pratchett

History finds a way.  The nature of events changed, but the nature of the dead had not.  It had been a mean, shameful little fight that ended them, a flyspecked footnote of history, but they hadn't been mean or shameful men.  They hadn't run, and they could have run with honour.  They'd stayed not because they wanted to be heroes, but because they chose to think of it as their job, and it was in front of them - (From: Night Watch , page 461)

Pratchett is a comic writer and a very good comic writer.  I have read most of his books and note the progression from his early Discworld spoofs of fantasy fiction to a deepening of character.  He is brilliant at plot and humour but what is remarkable is the way his characters have developed.  In this paragraph, one of Pratchett's most developed characters, Vimes, reflects on an incident, several decades ago, where his men lost their lives.  (He was there twice of course - it is a fantasy!)  The last seven words summarise Vimes' character - the importance of doing what is in front of you; doing what you have to do.  Everyone in Pratchett's later novels faces this dilemma.  How do I cope with being a vampire, a werewolf or transported to an uncomfortable place?  The shy Banshee pushes a note under the door, reading 'Ooooooooo ...'.

The secret is, there are no heroes.  There are just people who do what they have to do.  The ordinary person who discovers they are a hero, often doesn't feel at all heroic, perhaps embarrassed, fearful, irritated ...  This has infinite comic potential, perhaps because it is so real.

Lent 21: Charles Wesley

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature's night;

Thine eye defused a quickening ray -

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light,

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

(From: And can it be, 216 verse 4 in Hymns and Psalms)

About one fifth of the hymns in Hymns and Psalms are by Charles Wesley.  John and Charles understood people would learn their theology through singing; Methodism was born in song.  I've been singing these hymns for over 30 years, and I am probably unaware of how they have formed my beliefs.  Although John Wesley  is thought of as a theologian, it is Charles' theology which is better known because Methodists still sing his hymns most weeks.  As a preacher, I usually find I've included at least one of his hymns in my services, usually without making a particular effort.  This hymn, best sung to Sagina or Abingdon, is probably the best known.  I've chosen this verse because it speaks (or sings) of the experience of liberation the Christian experiences.  We do not go forth to be enslaved to some ideology, particularly any ideology with the label 'Christian'.

Methodism was a movement of the people.  The clergy were not always happy with this idea but the nature of the movement was always a radical opportunity for the most marginalised to build their own faith as a community.  We need to remember liberation is not only from something but to something new.  What does it mean to be one follower amongst others?

Lent 20: Psalm 139

If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night',

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

(New Revised Standard Version, vv 11, 12)

This psalm was one identified on the first Dark Holy Ground  course in Cleveland County during the 1980s.  Here long term unemployed and people in employment met to contemplate their experiences.  A big revelation was when they found the writers of the psalms were experiencing the same as unemployed people on Cleveland's housing estates.  In this psalm, one of their favourites, they observed the psalmist is saying it is still night!

It is the dark places where creativity happens.  Why do we have negative associations for darkness?  The seed germinates in the dark.  The embryo develops in the dark.  Our hearts beat without any light at all.  Spiritually, dark places can lead us to encounters with God.  Sometimes we are able to say our darkest times are the best things that happen to us.  They are no less dark for that.