27 July 2018

When it is dark – 27 July 2018


It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.  (John 6:17[RM1] ; cf Matthew 14:22-33, Mark 6:45-52[RM2] [RM3] )

This is another story of the disciples in a storm on Lake Galilee.  Quite recently we touched on a former event which has Jesus asleep in the boat, they wake him and he commands the storm to cease.[1]  Now, in John’s Gospel, but also in Matthew and Mark, the disciples are again in a storm on the lake.  They are far from land, we are told.  The narrators stress, it is dark, the fourth watch of the night, says Matthew – that is the Roman measurement of time and the 4th watch is about 3 am, just when everything seems worst, as every insomniac knows.  The wind was against them, we read, they were making headway painfully, says Mark… beaten by the waves, writes Matthew.  So we recognise the despair and fear, the sense of helplessness, being able to see no way out.  This narrative, in all its versions, is packed with allusion and metaphor, intended to make us think about our own storms and darkness, to make us use our imaginations, help us to identify with the inner realities and with Jesus’s presence.

When they see him he is walking on the water.  Remember, says John, Jesus himself had been increasingly troubled and oppressed by the crowds and their demands.  The latest was that they had wanted to make him king, presumably in the place of Herod.  They were calamitously misinterpreting his message – and so Jesus needed to get away by himself, in the hills on the other side of the lake, away from the disciples also, for a few hours – he made them go back across the lake, report Matthew and Mark.  Now, in the storm, in the dark, they see him, but think at first it is a ghost, a phantom.  Curiously, we are even told that Jesus meant to pass them by…  A man I talked with has suffered a string of pointless, cruel setbacks and tragedies, and through it all he has struggled honestly to do what he can and stay afloat.  But when the latest blow fell he told me how his friends said to him, “That’s life, mate.”  But he said, “It’s not life, is it -- it’s not a fair go.”  He is in the dark and he is in a storm.

When it is a dark and stormy night you either have a faith or you don’t.  You have either learned along the way, perhaps long ago, what Jesus means when he asks them why they are afraid, or you haven’t.  You have either learned that life is not about the self and its survival, or you missed that somehow, or you rejected it. 

Faith is what happens in the dark.  It is how we react when we can’t see.  It is what is in us, despite all that is happening.  It is where we are when we shut down the activity, relinquish the control – control that was always illusory anyway – when we become still and silent, consenting as deeply as we know in mind and heart to the way of Christ.  And then we may indeed see him, as it were walking on the waves, in the storm.





[1] “Being afraid”, June 22, 2018


20 July 2018

No longer strangers – 20 July 2018


For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.  He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.  So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens… (Ephesians 2:14-19)

If Paul wrote this, he probably did so from prison in Rome, near the end of his earthly life and ministry.  It is addressed to a church he knew well in a thriving Roman colony called Ephesus.  Paul had spent a couple of years there, at first among his fellow Jews, then with Jewish Christians, as their community widened to take in other nationalities and faiths living in this centre of trade, drawn to Christ.  We can imagine a Christian community of Jewish, Greek, Roman and other believers, meeting in homes, rich and poor, slave and free, educated and illiterate, male and female…  Normally they would be content to keep to their own kind – but now Christ creates a new community across these boundaries.  It is not that differences are suddenly unimportant, let alone cancelled out.  It is that the differences begin to be understood, appreciated and celebrated.

Paul writes:  He is our peace.  To Jews, as you know, this is shalom, the pre-eminent Hebrew word which embraces health and well-being, not only the absence of conflict.  Unity, peace and understanding are essential to shalom.  And as Paul speaks plainly, he, Jesus, is our shalom.  How is that?  Jesus, says Paul, has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility  Not abolished the differences – Jews still live differently from Greeks or Romans.  The problem was never that we are different -- the wall was constructed of hostility, the determined memory of ancient injuries, it was teaching children to hate, it was reacting with violence to any offence, or by speech which labels and dehumanises other people and creates enemies…  To live with Jesus and his people is to live without walls of hostility.

Then secondly, Paul writes about one new humanity[1].  Well, it is a distant vision.  At a time of history such as ours, when frightened people are withdrawing back behind frontiers, going to war pointlessly, refusing care to desperate refugees, following demagogues and tyrants, taking leave of God and faith… it seems wistful at least to talk about one new humanity, making peace, he writes, reconciling differences.  Nevertheless it is a vision we keep.  It is there in our hearts and in our prayer.  It influences and guides the ways we live, and certainly how we pray.  As Paul writes: For through him (Jesus) we both (Jew and Gentile) have access in one Spirit to the Father. 



[1] Paul actually writes one new man (ἑν καινος ανθρωποςhen kainos anthropos).  Modern translators needed to make it generic and include women.

13 July 2018

God is not what we think – 13 July 2018


Fr Laurence Freeman, among others, likes to say that God is not what we think.  He means two things, mainly.  First, that all attempts to define or describe God by thinking, logically, rationally, wind up less than a howling success.  In the sub-tribe of the Christian tradition I come from, the chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 entitled “Of God and of the Holy Trinity” is a triumph of rich, ornate language over simple clear truth.  God is not what we think. 

Secondly, Fr Laurence means, if we insist on finding God down the road of reason and debate, we are looking in the wrong place anyway.  The Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet of the Middle Ages, Omar Khayyam, famously wrote:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went…
[1]

Of course, it’s not a criticism of reason and logic.  The homely writer of the Cloud of Unknowing tells it in another way, in plain language:  But now you will ask me, “How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?” and I cannot answer you except to say, “I don’t know!” …Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think!  Why?  Because he may well be loved, but not thought.  By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never.[2] 

It does not mean that we leave our brains at home.  But it does mean that our world and our understanding are widened.  “Knowing”, it turns out, may be not necessarily understanding, but a matter of becoming still and open to change, learning to receive what we call grace.  For Jews, any attempt to describe or depict God simply ends in distortion or idolatry.  For followers of Jesus, we learn from St Paul for instance, that it is Christ who is the image, the icon, of the invisible God.[3]  For St John, God is understood only by love.[4]  Indeed, love is the test.  Hate speech, for instance, or attitudes, however disguised, cannot be in the name of God.

So -- continues the writer of the Cloud of Unknowing -- although it may be good at times to consider the kindness and worthiness of God, and though it may be enlightening and part of contemplation, nevertheless, in this work, it should be cast aside and covered with a cloud of forgetting.  Step on it resolutely and enthusiastically with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness above you.  Strike hard at that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.  And whatever happens, don’t give up.



[1] Rubaiyat, Quatrain 27
[2] Cloud of Unknowing, ch.6.  Also 2nd quote, final paragraph.
[3] Colossians 1:15.  “Image” in Greek is eikōn (εικων)
[4] eg. I John 4:7-21

06 July 2018

Travelling light – 6 July 2018


He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.  He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.  If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” (Mark 6: 8-11)

Travelling light is an admirable concept, a noble goal which, speaking for myself, is yet to be attained.  Neither am I likely to reduce my lifestyle to a staff, a pair of sandals and one shirt – carrying, says Jesus, no food, no bag, no money.  I am fond of being warm and well fed, surrounded by books, and having some mobility.  But in no way can this passage be read as a general instruction for all Jesus’s followers.  He called to him “the twelve”, it says, and sent them out to share his ministry, and gave them those instructions.  Our task, in our time and where we are, as always, is to discern what is here to help and edify us. 

First comes the phrase, nothing for their journey except…  For their journey, in the Greek, is simply “on the road”[1].  Nothing on the road except  One of the general differences between much of human culture, and the life Jesus invites us to, is indeed that Christian discipleship is seen as a journey.  It contrasts with the surrounding culture which prioritises safety and security, home and family, walls and fences, defences, borders, right ways and wrong ways.  The culture of Jesus invites and enables us to move on, or at least be open to moving on, to change, to ask questions.  Symbols of this include sitting light to possessions, travelling light.  Jesus pointed to the contrast when he said that foxes have lairs, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head[2].  Indeed, the whole concept of “following” Jesus implies journeying, travelling on in life – inwardly moving and listening, responding and changing, learning better, becoming more like him.  He is not challenging so much the inventory of our possessions – although that may still be something to think about – rather our need to own, possess, control, use and consume.  The planet and its resources are reeling because we have forgotten how to travel light.

It means also an end to shopping around.  I think that is the point of the strange instruction that they enter a town, stay in one home until they leave the town.  If the town is not interested or hostile, then leave.  Don’t argue the point with anyone.  Jesus leaves people completely free to decide for themselves.  Move on, he says… shake off the dust.  We might ask, what are the implications for us, living now amid people, most of whom report no interest in God or religion, and find life manageable, indeed preferable, without all that.   It is, as it always was, much more a matter of how we live, inwardly and outwardly, than of what we say or preach. 



[1] Εις ὁδον (eis hodon), on the road, en route.
[2] Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58