Category: Uncategorized

by Neil Richardson.

Is the Church weighing us down? A conscientious Methodist told me once that she needed a Sunday off! When our churches are numerically declining, we easily forget that supporting the Church and keeping it going isn’t our job; it’s the Holy Spirit’s.

But that decline continues, and it’s tempting to go for growth (to coin a phrase currently fashionable). Yet evangelism with church growth as its aim isn’t really evangelism; it’s proselytizing.

Many people in our churches seem reluctant to talk about God. Money-raising events often attract greater numbers than services of worship. Church-centred Christianity struggles on when something deeper is needed.

I once asked a group of students which words are indispensable if we’re explaining the Christian faith to someone who doesn’t share it. ‘Jesus’, ‘love’ and ‘life’ certainly, but also, I think, ‘God’. That word is so misunderstood we can’t avoid it. But there is another reason. Our President and Vice-President are reminding us that the first commandment is to love God with all our hearts. How can a person who has fallen in love not talk about the love of their life?

But what or who are we talking about? Certainly, a Mystery. The name of God in the Bible is a verb rather than a noun:

‘I will be what I will be.’[1]

The future tense is appropriate to the story the Bible tells. God’s covenant with all creation (Noah), and with Israel (God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) , and then, through Jesus, with all humankind, runs through the whole of Scripture. This future perspective, the divine promise, is especially important as we face the existential threat of climate change.

The Christian faith in our day is changing. Many factors have contributed: two world wars, twentieth century genocides, the accelerating pace of history and much more. We should not be alarmed by this change. Both change and continuity are built into our faith because of God’s coming amongst us in Jesus.

The Incarnation wasn’t a mere episode in the life of God. God ‘took up residence’ amongst us (John 1.14). In this incarnation the cross and resurrection of Jesus reveal the eternal suffering and triumph of the Creator God, who dared to bring homo sapiens into being, with all the grief that would entail. (Genesis 6-8 tell the story).

We need to re-discover this story for a world threatened with self-destruction. Two themes, especially, need to be recovered and shared. First, God’s providence at work in our human history which the prophets perceived. But, second, the refreshing of our belief in what we used to call ‘the Second Coming’ of Christ. ‘The day of Christ’ is more biblical. It means the coming together of heaven and earth, as the final chapters of Revelation show. The Apocalypse, like the New Testament as a whole, is about the climax of God’s creative purposes which began with the incarnation.

We easily miss how Jesus’ teaching about the coming of the Son of Man develops in Paul’s writings: first, we have Jesus coming ‘with all his saints’ (1 Thessalonians 3.13), and, later, ‘the revelation of the sons and daughters of God’, (Romans 8.19), which ushers in the healing of all creation (v.21).

We can’t imagine the final coming together of heaven and earth, this merging of time and eternity. But the New Testament teaches that this ‘day of Christ’ is the climax of what the Church came to call the incarnation. Whenever, in the providence of God, that comes about, there will be ‘life in all its fulness’, as God promised through his prophets. And, as St Paul explained to the church at Thessalonika, no previous generation will be left out.

For now ‘Babylon’, the kingdom of Mammon, is still with us, hell-bent on destroying God’s creation. But already, as the early Church’s addition to the Lord’s Prayer reminds us, ‘Yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory’ (compare Revelation 11.15).

 Disciples of Jesus can join others who are resisting Mammon’s malign influence. In these crisis-ridden days, we are called to be as ‘wise as serpents’, and never ‘lose heart’, (Luke 18.1). Re-discovering, waking up to God is vital.[2]

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[1] The future tense probably reflects the Hebrew better than the more familiar ‘I   am what I am’.

[2] See my Waking Up to God. Re-discovering faith in post-pandemic times, (Sacristy Press, September 2022).

by John Howard.

It is most probably impossible to get a true perspective upon history that is happening around you. However, the years we are living through might well look like a highly significant time when viewed from a later age. That is of course assuming that a later age does ever exist! The COVID pandemic has had a huge impact upon human life across the world. The war in Ukraine has brought conflict back into the continent of Europe for the first time in many years and Russia’s threat to use weapons of mass destruction suggest that boundaries are about to be crossed that have never been crossed before. Dwarfing even those challenges remains the threat to the environment that human abuse of the planet is bringing about. We live in troubled times. “When you hear of wars and rumours of wars….” (Mark 13:7 NRSV)

Reflecting upon the chaos that seems to be everywhere around us in the world, Jesus’ dialogue with the disciples in Mark 13 came to mind. The background was of course that Jesus himself lived in pretty unstable times and clearly saw the prospects of the destruction of Jerusalem, and temple worship there, as likely, indeed seemingly inevitable. Most commentators upon this chapter[1] suggest that it needs to be looked at with a consciousness that sections of the chapter refer to differing things, and indeed differing periods of history, verses 1-8 considers the uncertainties of the future, 9-14 looks at coming persecutions, verses 14-23 predicts the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Other sections of the chapter focus upon differing questions and attempting to bring them together is perilous. The writer of Mark’s Gospel has brought into the one chapter a disparate set of sayings of Jesus.

It was however the later verses in the chapter – from verse 28 onwards that had caught my attention recently when I was looking over a liturgy for a service conducted at Greenbelt. “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branches become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.” The author of Mark is clearly reporting Jesus as saying to his listeners – you can read the signs of the seasons around you – then likewise read the signs from the world around you. The chapter continues with the parable of the absentee landlord with its warning: “and what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

The signs of the times are around us everywhere we look. Signs of the deterioration of the environment, signs of increasing willingness to achieve national ambition by force of arms, signs of humanity’s vulnerability to disease. We might well say that it’s not a lack of signs that is the problem, it’s how to read them! What does this chaos mean? How should Christians respond?

Christians seeking to predict the future have used Mark 13 and other passages of a similar nature to claim an association between events around them in history and these apocalyptic passages. A cool biblical examination of such attempts have always indicated the false nature of such attempts – and I have no intention in engaging in such practice now.

However I do want to ask the question “Given the time we are going through – how should we respond?” A verse from the middle of chapter 13 seems to give a clue – in verse 13 we read “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” Tom Wright in his commentary “Mark for Everyone”[2] comments of this chapter “The resulting command then is not ‘sit down and work out a prophetic timetable – always a more exciting thing to do – but ‘keep awake and watch.’ The little church in the first generation cannot afford to settle down and assimilate itself either to the Jewish or the Pagan world.” The church of today has many more resources and many more members but the warning echoes out across the years to us – we too cannot afford to assimilate ourselves into contemporary society either in the materialism that has been a major factor in leading us to where we are today, or the despair and hopelessness that characterises many people’s response the chaos around us. We need to hear the assertion of the chapter and hang on in there. The times may be hard – and they may well get harder still – but the theological response to the chaos around us is the cry from this chapter – “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Or we could say in the words of a well known hymn….’Trust and Obey!’

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[1] See for example Eduard Schweizer The Good News according to Mark, (Atlanta: Westminster John Knox Press, 1970)

[2] Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, (London: SPCK, 2014)

by Ruth Gee.

On 3 October 2022, Boris Johnson was appointed President of the Conservative Friends of Ukraine. President Zelensky has described Mr Johnson as a “big friend” of his country because he offered support to Ukraine. The model of friendship seen here is that of a relationship developed in response to need in the context of a threat to both parties and complicated by power dynamics.

Why hast thou cast our lot
In the same age and place,
And why together brought
To see each other’s face,
To join with loving sympathy
And mix our friendly souls in thee?[i]

The lot of Mr Zelensky and Mr Johnson is cast in the same age and place, but the relationship described by Charles Wesley is more profound that their power laden friendship.

Charles Wesley is describing Christian friendship, grounded in a relationship with the God of truth and love. Such friendship is not transient, it is costly, formative and enables each to grow in understanding of themselves, the other and God. I suggest such friendship is the most fruitful basis for ecumenism and that it works well as apologetic for ecumenism within the ethos of British Methodism.

Here is an outline of some supporting points.

1. The biblical basis for an understanding of friendship between followers of Jesus as rooted and grounded in the relationship with the God of truth and love is found in the fourth gospel and particularly in John’s gospel, chapters 15:1-17 and 21:15-19.

Jesus calls his disciples friends. They are servants no longer, servants merely obey, friends share a common purpose and understanding. They are Jesus’ friends invited into a relationship with him that enables them to participate in the relationship of Jesus with the Father. Here is a common vision, a binding of hearts, friendship within which the greatest love can be expressed in the laying down of life. In the context of such friendship agape and philia, often distinguished as self-giving love and friendship, are so subtly distinct as to become interchangeable.

In his recently published commentary on the fourth gospel, David Ford argues that the use of two Greek words for “love” in chapter 21 is a deliberate device to point the reader back to the identity of the followers of Jesus as friends abiding in love.[ii]

2. The nature of friendship has been explored in a number of ancient  texts. Gabrielle Thomas has paid particular attention to Aquinas in an article published in “Ecclesiology.”[iii]  Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that friendship must include benevolence and reciprocity which is only possible where there is some kind of equality. Human friendship with God is only possible through God’s love, Jesus calls his disciples friends so through the incarnation we are drawn into friendship with God. We offer friendship grounded in the love of God to one another. Crucially this is how we can offer friendship to those with whom we disagree, because God’s love is for all.

3. Friendship that is gracious and reciprocal necessitates an openness to learning from one another. There is vulnerability in friendship as we accept that we are not perfect and may need to change as we receive from the other.

4. Friendship is a motif that is embedded in British Methodism, for example in our understanding of connexionalism.

“Relationship is at the heart of connexionalism. Methodist structures and practice seek to express and witness to “a mutuality and interdependence which derive from the participation of all Christians through Christ in the very life of God” (Called to Love and Praise, §4.6.1).”[iv]

The connexion is diverse, at its best Methodism seeks to learn from the experience and insights of others.

David Chapman has written about friendship as ecumenical method in Methodism in his essay in The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies.[v] The way in which this method has been worked out has varied over the years as the emphasis in ecumenism has changed.

These points are neither fully explored nor exclusive but I suggest that  the call to friendship, a call rooted in the command of Jesus and the love of God, cannot be denied. Friendship is life enhancing and life changing, it brings joy and challenge and it is the beginning and the goal, the source and the summit of ecumenism.

Through our ecumenical relationships we offer and receive friendship, and model the depth of Christian friendship possible for those who accept the friendship of Jesus. Such friendship is of a different quality from politically expedient and power laden friendships however genuinely they are offered.

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[i] Singing The Faith 620

[ii] David F Ford , The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary, Baker Academic (2021) 426

[iii] Thomas G, ‘Mutual Flourishing’ in the Church of England: Learning from St Thomas Aquinas, Ecclesiology 15 (2019) 302-321

[iv] and this is expressed in the Conference report, The Gift of Connexionalism (2017).

[v] Chapman David M, The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies, OUP (2020), 101-120

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by Inderjit Bhogal.

Isaiah 61:1-3 (See also Psalm 1:3; Jer 17:7-8; Luke 4:18-19)

Jesus cited this text as the basis of his life and ministry (Luke 4:18-19). He prioritises those who are excluded and hurting. Here is a basis of our life and ministry, as followers of Christ.

I am intrigued by the way Oaks and righteousness are brought together in Isaiah 61:3.

Righteousness is central in Hebrew understandings of God.

In God’s first instruction to people within the two covenants (Genesis 9 and 12), justice and righteousness are linked, the “way” of God is revealed as “doing what is right and just” (Genesis 18:17-19). This is what brings about the completion of the will of God. Fairness and impartiality in the rule of law, and sharing of the benefits of belonging together is what is held together here. Justice in law. Justice in love. Retributive justice. Restorative justice. This is a constant thread in the Bible, and in the words of Isaiah, God is “laying a foundation stone…and…will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet..” (Isaiah 28: 16,17). Jesus understood and practiced this tradition (Luke 4). 

Righteousness is clear. What does “Oaks” refer to? The Hebrew text of Isaiah 61:3 speaks more of a leader of a flock. The word translated “Oaks” also speaks of a projecting pillar, which perhaps is why a tree comes to mind, a lofty, strong, enduring tree. This is what a good leader is, like a tree planted by God, displaying the glory of God.

Oaks have been special in human existence for centuries. They have been a source of food, shelter, healing properties, holding things (like soil) together. Bringing Oaks and righteousness together speaks of the deep rootedness, and robustness of righteousness and justice. Like Oaks, righteousness and justice, and good leaders withstand the test of time and trials.

The idea of “oaks of righteousness” is significant, a metaphor for living how God wants us to be and live.

What is to be a leader, and to live as Oaks of righteousness, reflecting the glory of God?

• Walk with those who mourn
• Be good news to the poor/disadvantaged/excluded
• Bind up the broken hearted
• Bring liberty to the captives, the oppressed, and release to the prisoners
• Seek the Kingdom of God and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour

Those who live and serve like this are “Oaks of righteousness”. They are pleasing to God, and a delight, a model for others. They are “Oaks of righteousness, a planting of God for the display of his splendour”. Biblically, “Oaks” are symbols of the angels and prophets of God (Genesis 18:1; Judges 6:11; 1 Kings 19:4,5).

Who comes to your mind as we think of Oaks of Righteousness? We remember those who have been Oaks, and pillars of strength to us and in Church and society, and who have died.

What are the values of being Oaks of Righteousness?

• Strength: In the confidence God is with us
• Healing: reflecting the ministry of Christ, binding the broken hearted, what is good for communities and individuals, upholding equality and diversity and inclusion, working for forgiveness, peace and reconciliation, non-violent, all this is “good news”
• Passion: embracing the cost of such a ministry, bearing the cross
• Hope: always keeping hope alive, liberty, upholding Kingdom values

When we live like this, we direct our decisions and life by the values of God, and honour God, and grow into who/how God wants us to be and use our lives to make life better for all, to make the world a better place for all. We are inspired by those who are and have been Oaks of Righteousness.

“Oaks of Righteousness”, this is the framework of our lives, these are the values in which we are rooted and grounded. These values help us to endure storms and droughts as we seek to serve God.

by Anthony Reddie.

This Spectrum paper is a report on a talk given by Professor Anthony Reddie at the Spectrum conference in May 2022.

In Anthony’s three talks participants were encouraged to engage in Bible studies in which they were challenged to think critically around how scripture can provide a means of interpreting the world.

In this first talk participants engaged in a Bible study entitled ‘Situational Analysis’. Anthony began by sharing some stories from growing up in working class Bradford. He reflected on the role that the church as a whole, and Methodism in particular, played in helping him to dissect the world and to see how issues of power, politics and preference were played out in terms of how societies were organised and who was affirmed and who was not.

The Bible study was based on Matthew 25: vv. 14-30 – the Parable of the Talents. Participants were split into three groups (each one identifying with a character in the story) and were asked ‘Why do you do what you do?’ When the participants returned from their group discussions, they were asked for their reflections. Then, offering a postcolonial hermeneutic, he encouraged them to connect their reflections with his, in order to challenge the more spiritualised reading of this text.

A postcolonial, materialistic reading is one where the socio-political perspectives in which the text was located (in this case, Roman imperialism of Judea, and a reminder that it is the Romans who crucify Jesus and not his fellow Jewish people) are put to the fore and they are taken into account when compared to our contemporary experiences of empire and exploitation.

It goes without saying that most of the participants in character, did not love the master. In fact one might even say that perhaps the actions of the third person of the three different characters (servants or slaves depending on which translation we read) towards him are more honest than those of the other two. For whereas the other two do not give any great indication that they love him, nevertheless they still go along with his wishes and seek to operate within the framework of his expectations and power. But the third servant does not hide his or her lack of affection for him. Instead, he simply gives him back his money and asks him to be happy with it.

Well! We all know what happened to him for daring to question the master’s authority.

The critical question posed by Anthony was why countless generations of believers had been convinced to see this parable as a metaphor for the Kingdom of God?

Why is a cruel and greedy master seen as a synonym for God? Why do we believe that the Kingdom of God has anything to do with the final verse which states ‘To those that have much, more will be given to them, but to those who have little, even the little they have will be taken from them’. This sounds more like a critique of neo-liberal capitalism that has invariably underpinned the modern incarnations of empire as opposed to the generous and loving kindness that underpins the Kingdom of God.

When the participants were asked to inhabit the characters of the three servants in this biblical text, that was an opportunity to go beyond the spiritualized ways in which the reading and interpretation of these stories have often been taught and into one that asks you to live the reality of the people at the centre of this narrative. When the real, lived realities of these characters are placed alongside the historical experience of Black peoples, and then interpreted in light of these experiences, suddenly a new interpretation of the text emerges. Black theology is a form of Christian-inspired reflection on the ways in which life should be lived under the guidance and sustenance of God, for the purposes of full life and liberation for those who are exploited and oppressed. It is informed by those who have been and continue to be exploited and cheated of their full rights, reflecting on the realities of their marginalization and using that as a means to reinterpret the basic meaning of the Christian faith.

Questions:

1. How do you respond to this post-colonial way of interpreting this parable?

2. Are there any other of Jesus’ stories which need re-interpretation?

3. Reflect upon the context in which you feel we are situated today.

We are pleased to continue our partnership with Spectrum, a community of Christians of all denominations which encourages groups and individuals to explore the Christian faith in depth. This year the study papers are from talks by Prof Anthony Reddie and Rev’d Simon Sutcliffe on the theme ‘Being the Salt of the Earth (A look at some peace and justice issues)’. This is the second of six coming through the year.

by Anne Ostrowicz.

For this summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, British-Guyanese artist Hew Locke had wrapped the city’s statue of Queen Victoria with a huge boat carrying the Queen and five slightly smaller Victoria replicas[1]. In the past, statues of Queen Victoria were shipped all over the British Empire, declaring British interests, including one placed in 1894 in front of the law courts in Georgetown, Guyana[2], which Hew Locke passed each day as a boy on his way to school.

Hew’s powerful art installation brought to my mind the explosive words in Genesis[3] where humans are declared to have within them the potential to become images or icons of their Creator, each in their uniqueness and own sphere of life.

As I write, the news is full of the recent death of Queen Elizabeth 2^nd, many journalists and commentators referring to her as an icon representing the best of our nation.

A new academic year has just begun. Working in Religious Education in a secondary school in Birmingham, I am constantly reflecting on the direction in which we want to ‘grow’ our teenagers – and thence our communities. How can the curriculum I teach, in content and method, and my own way of being, help to move my pupils in this direction?

Black American writer James Baldwin describes the impact of some of his icon-teachers. As a boy, when his home life was characterised by poverty and tension, Baldwin lists a number of teachers who pointed the way forward for him, giving him both hope and inspiration. In particular he describes the artist Beauford Delaney as “my principal witness”[4] whose very gaze the young James used to follow to “see” what this man saw. ‘“Look again!” Delaney would challenge him. And “then he noticed!” [5]These teachers set Baldwin on his literary journey and career at a very young age.

Having re-read Malcolm X’s powerful autobiography this summer for teaching purposes, I can’t help wondering whether he would have reached his inclusive conclusions long before he did if only he had had similar helpful teacher-icons. In contrast to Baldwin, a pivotal moment for Malcolm X’s life was when his English teacher poured water over the flames of his fourteen year-old very-evident talent and aspiration to become a lawyer. Instead what was ignited was the anger and alienation which characterised so much of his youth, continuing into his adult life until his ‘enlightenment’ on Hajj when he experienced beautiful people of all colours. In his autobiography he adds to his recounting of the incident at school: “Lansing certainly had no Negro lawyers – or doctors either – in those days, to hold up an image I might have aspired to.” [6]

Given a sabbatical this last summer term, I worked on the year-long course I teach to young teen-agers on the life and teaching of Jesus. After an introduction to historical background and to the gospel writers, pupils are immersed in just a few texts, ‘going deep’ in trying to understand what Jesus stood for, including drawing on perspectives from black liberation and feminist theologians. Religious, ethical and philosophical issues are raised for discussion, and woven throughout are references to art, literature and contemporary events. Sitting at my desk for those months made me even more convinced that everything Jesus says and does seems to be directed towards illuminating what it means to love; that Jesus is the Supreme Icon of Love. And in the classroom, year after year, I am unfailingly moved by teenagers from every religious and secular background who are invariably gripped by Jesus: they see, but more than that they embrace, the beauty and inspiration expressed in his life. Truth is indeed beautiful. On my classroom wall this Autumn is a phrase from Giles Fraser in a recent Thought for the Day[7]. He beautifully described God as “a metaphysical anchor in an ever-changing world”. Many of our icons change but Jesus holds up to me an image of an unchanging and unfailing metaphysical anchor to love.

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[1] The installation was in Victoria Square in front of the Town Hall and Birmingham Museum and Art gallery.

[2] The statue was installed in 1894, dynamited in 1954 by anti-colonialists, restored in Britain and is now  -controversially – back in its original position in front of the law courts in Georgetown.

[3] Genesis 1v.27: “So God created human beings in God’s image… male and female…”.

[4] David Leeming, James Baldwin, a Biography, Arcade Publishing, 2015, p.33

[5] ibid, p.34

[6] The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Penguin Books 2007, p.112

[7] Thought for the Day, Radio Four, Tuesday September 6, 2022

by Tom Greggs.

For a long time, until in fact it became so tatty that it was falling apart, a postcard sat above my desk. The title of the postcard was God’s Filofax, and it was a diary page which followed through Monday to Sunday with the different things God created on each day – night and day; sun and moon; plants; animals; and so forth. On the last day in the same pen and handwriting was written ‘every lasting peace and happiness’. In a red pen, it was crossed out and the word ‘REST’ was written, circled and underlined.

It’s quite a remarkable thought to think that God rests. The world is such a busy place. A place so filled with all kinds of competing demands on us. It is a place where we can rush to fill our time with all kinds of good, well intentioned, activities. But rest and not work is the climax of creation.

We tend to behave as if creation is made for work—as if that is its purpose. Perhaps we have seen the t-shirts, mugs and badges, saying ‘Jesus is coming! Look busy’? Or else, we’ll have seen the ‘Keep calm and carry on’ brand. Life, at the moment, is all about getting the most out of people–optimal engagement with work—prime efficiency. Everything is ordered towards a busy life and saving time. We use dishwashers and food-processors. Everything is about how quick we can get something done in a fast food and microwave culture. To help us keep calm and carry one, we shove other jobs off to other people or technology. There are even robotic vacuums and even robotic lawnmowers. Our vague attempts at getting rest come from shifting work away, but usually so that we can fill the time with something which we perceive to be more profitable.  

Working, being busy, becomes almost a part of our identity – perhaps especially as Christians. But I am really struck by the fact that rest is something we should not squeeze in when we have earned it and completed it, but something that we are given by grace and should receive as a gift. It might be tempting to think that rest is the thing we get when we have finished our work – and when the work isn’t finished we don’t get any. But for Christians, this is key: even if in the seven day creation account rest follows the six days of God’s work of creation, in Christianity the order is reversed. We celebrate Sunday as our day of rest – the first day of the week, not the last. It is not that we work to receive the Sabbath, but that we have Sabbath rest as a gift before we work; it is a grace to us.

All well and good in theory, we might say; but that’s like telling a person swimming to shore they need to stop! We need to get to the shore first, and only then can we rest. However, we are wrong when we think rest comes from stopping and simply doing nothing. True rest is about coming to Christ. It is rest that can be found when we feel like we are drowning because it is a rest that looks to Him who walks to us on the water in the storms of life. Rest involves finding space and time to be with Christ who takes away our burdens, who lifts our yoke. We will never find rest if we work at finding it for ourselves; but only if we seek rest in Christ. We are to share in the rest of the One who gives His rest to us as a gift and as a grace.

St Augustine famously said: ‘Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.’[1] Stopping from the chores of daily life one thing; but the chores will be there the next day. Stopping from the chores of daily life and spending time with Christ, in His rest, is a different thing altogether. He is the One who enables us to be perfected through His power in our weakness. He is the One who enables us to see the world differently. He doesn’t a take a yolk away; instead, He gives us His own. He makes us see what true work is—an act of love that flows from the grace of rest. Teresa of Avila talks of how ‘love turns work into rest’.[2] Learning to love again in the assurance of the love of Christ, regardless of our works, enables us to work in His strength, to see all we do as an exercise motivated by love as a free response to unearned grace.

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[1] Augustine, Confessions 1,1.5.

[2] Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila: Volume 1 (ICS Publications, 1976), 448.

by Barbara Glasson.

I have been pondering the notion of pastoral care. ‘That’s good’, I might hear you mutter, ‘she does teach Pastoral theology after all!’. But the pondering has taken me on a slightly different path, provoked by a lively moment in the classroom last year and remembering my aunties.

The classroom moment came when we were making our way neatly through  the curriculum about the human lifecycle when a number of students of African heritage began to tell stories that began to re-configure our understanding. We had been working with the notion that pastoral care within church communities was the responsibility of individuals pastors – Presbyters, Deacons, pastoral visitors – but what these students were describing was the role of the community as a whole. They told stories of their villages, their extended families, their churches that showed clearly how pastoral care is the role of everyone, not simply individuals.

Then I began to think of aunties. In my growing up there were various categories of aunt. There were those aunts that were part of the family and rocked up at Christmas bearing gifts that could be anything from a dress  you’d always wanted but your mother said was frivolous, to a scratchy embroidered handkerchief in a flat box smelling of mothballs. These aunts were unnegotiable relatives whose wet kisses needed to be endured or could be a source of endless mischief. Then there were the ‘aunties’ that were women who were around the neighbourhood, no blood relation but kept an eye out for you. Some of this category of aunty were known by their first name, ‘Aunty Ethel’ but the posh ones were only known by their surname ‘Aunty Crosswell-Jones’. These aunties at best would give you jammy doughnuts or free reign of their gardens whilst they chatted with your Mum. But then, in my case anyway, there were the church aunties, who had mysterious and sometimes tragic stories  and it was those aunties that more often than not offered pastoral care.

Last time I encountered a whole cohort of aunties was when I was in Pakistan. In the extended families those women hold a great deal of influence. They arrived in bunches to organise weddings, gossip over chai or have opinions on how people were behaving. They commanded both respect and fear but are also a source of solace and wisdom.

These seemingly random musings caused me to Google ‘aunty’ in the Bible and I have to say I drew a bit of a blank – references to the household of faith or what not to do with your brother’s sister soon defaulted to discussing ‘ants’ which it has to be said feature much more prominently than aunts! It’s not that the aunts aren’t there, it’s rather that they are not described as such, they are simply part of the family group.

Maybe the phenomenon of ‘the aunt’ was a Western construct where we individualised relationships within a nuclear family and gave each other specific roles? Maybe the aunties of my generation were those whose marriage prospects had been blown apart by war or whose sexuality remained hidden? However, whatever those untold stories, I would like to say a rather belated ‘thank  you’ to that random group of women.

Meanwhile, I wonder how we might learn from those of different cultural heritages as to how pastoral care could be re-configured so that all care for all?  How could the church embody a place of sufficient safety for all to flourish, not simply as individuals but as and for the community? And what more do we need to learn from the aunties?

By Tom Wilson.

I am currently working on a book, provisionally entitled “His Blood Be Upon Us”: Completion and Condemnation in Matthew’s Gospel. There are two reasons why I decided to write this book. The first is it provides me with an opportunity to reflect at length on one of the most complex sentences in Matthew’s Gospel, the cry of “all the [Jewish] people” that “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25). The second was seeing a photograph of a pro-Palestinian demonstration, held during May 2021, when conflict was raging across Israel-Palestine. One of those present at that demonstration held a placard with a drawing of Christ on the cross accompanied by the words “Don’t let them do it again.” The “them” referred presumably to Israelis or Jews or Israeli Jews. This is the charge of deicide, the killing of God, which has been levelled at Jewish people by Christians for centuries. The incident at the demonstration indicates that the charge is still present today. But is it justified? Was it ever justified? And how do we respond to both the long history of Christian persecution of Jewish people as well as the rise in contemporary antisemitism? Are there any plausible links between the “blood cry” of Matthew 27:25 and the so-called “blood libel” that began in 1150, and still resurfaces today? Exploring these issues is the task I have set myself in writing this book.

In a sense, the key question this book discusses is who does Matthew think is responsible for the death of Jesus. My answer is that it is Jesus himself, because three times he predicts his own death (16:21-23; 17:22-23; 20:17-19) and he acts provocatively and makes deliberate claims that invite his audience to conclude either he is divine, or he is blaspheming. Jesus does this knowing that the punishment for blasphemy is death. Jesus also sets himself up as a rebel against the authority of the Roman Emperor and of Rome, and the penalty for such treason is also death. But ultimately, within the interpretative framework of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is the fulfilment of the Jewish messianic hope, and he brings God’s plan for the redemption of humanity to its intended goal through his own life, death, and resurrection. It is Jesus who chooses death so that others may have life. Any charge of deicide is misplaced if it does not focus on these facts.

 

Yet this interpretation remains contested; the charge of deicide and the arguably associated blood libel, have become enduring cultural tropes and excuses for discrimination, hatred, and murder. Numerous Jewish scholars whose work I have read in preparation for writing cite their own, contemporary experience of this accusation. To give one example, when Levine was seven, she was accused of deicide:

‘A friend on the school bus said to me, “You killed our Lord.” “I did not,” I responded with some indignation. Deicide would be the sort of thing I would have recalled. “Yes, you did,” the girl insisted. “Our priest said so.” Apparently, she had been taught that “the Jews” were responsible for the death of Jesus. Since I was the only one she knew, I must be guilty.'(2006, 2)

Whilst we may not go around accusing Jewish people of killing Jesus, how confident are we that we are not perpetuating antisemitism? When we presume Christianity is a religion of grace, but Judaism is one of legalism and pointless works, we are guilty of stereotyping and misinformation. Taking the polemic of Matthew 23 as if it were an objective description of all Pharisees for all time is another mistake preachers might make. I could go on, but then I’d share the whole book, which I hope will be out by the end of the year.

 

At the conclusion to her discussion of Jesus as “the misunderstood Jew,” Levine tells the story of Rebbe Moshe Leib of Sassov (1745-1807), who told his disciples that he had overheard a conversation between two villagers which taught him what it meant to love his neighbour. The first said, “Tell me, my friend, do you love me?” and the second replied that he loved his fellow deeply. The first responded, “Do you know what causes me pain?” and the second said that he did not. The answer came, “If you do not know what causes me pain, how can you say that you truly love me?” The rebbe’s point was that to truly know what causes another pain is to truly love him (Levine 2006, 116-17). As a Christian, if I am to truly love my Jewish sisters and brothers, I must endeavour to understand how the faith I follow has caused them pain. That is my real purpose in writing this book.

 

Reference:

Levine, Amy-Jill. 2006. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. New York: HarperOne.

by Caroline Wickens.

What does justice look like through someone else’s eyes? That question engaged me when I worked as a mission partner in Zambia and Kenya, teaching alongside African theologians as they explored what justice meant for them. Over the years since, I’ve continued to benefit from listening in on conversations which begin from places outside my own experience. I hope these voices may help us in British Methodism to reflect on justice, injustice and walking with Micah.

Almost all African countries experienced colonial take-over by a European power. The mother of African women’s theologies, Ghanaian Mercy Amba Oduyoye, comments:

In practice, racism was central to the relationship between African and European. The chief reasons for this were ethnocentricity and greed.

The colonial past is still with contemporary Africa. Memories of violence are keen. Colonial languages continue to dominate. Western styles of clothing are popular, often via trade in second-hand clothes which threatens local enterprise. There is capacity for extracting raw materials but still very little to process it into manufactured goods, and in recent years the same economic approach has fuelled a complex relationship with China.

Independence brought celebration but also fresh injustice. A senior Kenyan theologian, JNK Mugambi, describes how the Cold War was fought by proxy in numerous African states. More recently, the Bretton-Woods institutions imposed ‘structural adjustment programmes’ on states with unmanageable levels of Western debt. The impact on basic health-care and education was appalling. Mugambi sees globalisation as the latest version of the West’s attempt to dominate Africa. Technological advances promote a Euro-American way of life and glorify white Western culture, sometimes described as Cocacolanisation.

And then HIV/AIDS struck. From Rwanda, Michel Kamanzi provides statistics from 2006: 24.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa; some countries in south central Africa with prevalence above 20%; children infected or orphaned. ARVs have improved the situation, but HIV/AIDS continues to wound society. Despite this, African governments find themselves under pressure once again to pay debts to the West rather than spend on health and education.

Yet the conversations focus on hope, not despair. From the DRC, Ghislain Tshikendwa Matadi writes on Job in the time of HIV/AIDS. He discerns the possibility of justice even in a pandemic:

‘In the midst of absurd suffering, we are invited to maintain just and loving relationships with our fellow human beings and with God who identified with human weakness by adopting human form precisely in order to save the human race’.

From Benin, Valentin Dedji comments that African leaders’ first step is to collaborate to reconstruct African people’s broken human dignity. From Botswana, feminist theologian Musa Dube writes about mama Africa, a princess with a palace at Great Zimbabwe and a summer residence in the golden sands of Egypt, who finds herself sick and bleeding after the years of colonial imperialism. She turns to Dr.Neo-Colonialism and Dr.Global Village for help but finds none, then finds herself struck down by HIV/AIDS, burying her children. Her story ends like this:

When she called out, “Who is there? Who is there?”, she was told, “Jesus Christ, the healer of all diseases, is passing by.” She heard that Jesus is on his way to heal a little girl who is already dead, the daughter of Jairus.

Mama Africa is standing up. She is not talking. She is not asking. She is not offering any more money – for none is left. Mama Africa is coming behind Jesus. She is pushing through a strong human barricade of crowds. Weak and still bleeding but determined, she is stretching out her hands. If only she can touch the garments of Jesus Christ…

African theologians give voice to a passion to rebalance life away from deep injustice. The reflections above help in naming injustice:

• When economic or military power removes agency from indigenous leaders
• When human flourishing is restricted through lack of access to resources that are widely available elsewhere, ranging from COVID-19 vaccination to reliable food supplies and clean water
• When local or global cultural assumptions identify some ways of life as valuable and right, while disparaging others and despising those who live in those ways, whether or not by their own choice

Naming injustice in this way clarifies the challenge: what needs to change so that we can walk with Micah and do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God?

The Methodist Church is currently undertaking a two year exploration of what it means to be a justice-seeking church through the Walking with Micah project.  Theology Everywhere is working in partnership with the project to host a series of articles about justice. For more information visit www.methodist.org.uk/walking-with-micah/