Category: Uncategorized

by Roger Walton.

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/

Justice is talked about everywhere, and not least in Christian communities.  Embracing Justice, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book for 2022,is the latest in a string of books on the subject,[i]  whilst The Methodist Church is undertaking a two year project, Walking with Micah, to discern how best to be a justice-seeking church. This is the tip of the iceberg.  Many write from places of injustice or campaign about specific issues that demand resolution or restitution, and academic departments from politics and philosophy to science, law and theology engage with how to enact justice.

That Christians should be part of this endeavour needs no argument or justification here, I hope.  We stand in the Judeo-Christian tradition, where the call for justice is deeply embedded and an essential part of being a disciple. Our task is rather to wrestle with how to pursue justice in our own day and age.

This is not a straightforward exercise on several fronts.  First, justice is a contested notion in theory and practice.  Some seek justice for the unborn child in the name of right to life whilst some fight for the justice of women to decide what to do with their own bodies. Some see free speech as the key to both truth and a fair society but others point to the damage done by hate speech.

This raises the second problem.  We approach justice from where we find ourselves.  For some that will be from the experience of marginalisation, discrimination and the denial of rights; for others it will be places of power and privilege, the latter often benefitting, consciously or unconsciously, from the systems that perpetuate the former.  Becoming aware of where we start our engagement and what are our interests, is crucial but may not be easy.

Equally problematic is that the Bible, whilst having much to say about justice, does not set out a full picture or theory of justice.  Indeed, there are hints that God’s justice may be different from human notions of justice and only partially glimpsed.[ii]  Further, we need to acknowledge that what some biblical texts claim in the name of justice is merely a cover for revenge and even genocide.

Having said that, we have much to aid us in our wrestling.  

First, the scriptures carry persistent themes, which inform our practice of seeking justice. God is concerned about injustice particularly as experienced by the oppressed, the marginalised and the poor.  The Exodus begins with God hearing the cry of an oppressed people. The prophets consistently take up this theme, which is echoed in the Psalms and in the life and teaching of Jesus. All people are made in the image of God and to be honoured and treatment fairly, but the weak and vulnerable are to be accorded special attention. In the contemporary world, this will include hearing the cries of an oppressed and exploited creation.

In the Wisdom literature, upholding justice is a prime responsibility of those in power. Here wisdom is wisdom for justice.[iii]  Thus hearing the cries of the oppressed, attempting to understand the experience (if it is not our own), being alongside those seeking justice and reminding those in power of their responsibilities is the Christian calling. For this, we can learn from and be challenged by the lived experience of personal testimony and the reflections of Christians who stand in and with oppressed communities (e.g. Black, Feminist, Womanist, Queer and Eco-theologians).

Second, we are part of an ongoing active and interpretative community. The fact that the Bible does not give an exhaustive or all-encompassing view of justice acts as an invitation to participate in the ongoing search for justice, which requires the engagement of our minds, as well as our action.  We cannot stand outside the concrete issues of our world theorising.  We find justice in the struggle and all must be activists in some form. This requires courage, humility and a willingness to make the, sometimes costly, journey of discovery.

Finally, participation in the mission of God requires we keep in tune with God, for our transformation is part of this too. Fortunately, we have the gift of the Spirit but this requires our disciplined engagement with the means of grace. Kathy Galloway outlines a set of disciplines that the Iona’s community use in its work on justice and reconciliation.[iv]  These include prayer, listening to those with first-hand experience, solidarity and acting together a community.  There is much here to help us to pray and work for justice.

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[i] Isabelle Hamley, Embracing Justice, 2021 SPCK. Others include James Jones, Justice for Christ’s Sake, SPCK 2021; Tom Stuckey Covid-19 God’s Wake-up Call, 2021; and Vic McCracken Christian Faith and Social Justice Bloomsbury 2014.

[ii] See e.g. Isaiah 55.9; Job; and Matthew 20.1-16. 

[iii] Prov 8.15

[iv] Kathy Galloway, Living by the Rule,  Wild Goose Publications, 2010

by Kerry Tankard.

Rob Ryan is best known as an artist who uses paper cuts to transform his pencil drawings into pieces of art, holding word and image together in beauty and fragility.[i] Unlike working with paint, it is not about applying subsequent layers, but about subtraction. It is a meticulous process in which pieces of paper are taken away to reveal a piece of work that is wholly connected. As Rob Ryan has reflected himself:

Compared to painting, where you need tubes of paint, water, oil, brushes, palettes, palette knives, and a canvas, all I needed now to start making pictures was a single sheet of paper, a pencil, an eraser, a scalpel, and a cutting board. Not only that, but so many of the decisions of the past: tone, shade, perspective, colour, chiaroscuro – everything was gone but the shape of the silhouette, in black or white. I immediately felt freer than ever before.[ii]

The work proceeds from an idea that takes a simple form through a pencil on paper. That paper is then cut to reveal the depth of the idea and bring it to vibrant life. A further feature of his work is in observing that “when a paper cut is produced, you end up with less. You start with a blank sheet and by cutting bits away, by making it less, you make it more.”[iii] By making it less, you make it more! The statement may appear counter-intuitive, but I believe it is a crucial re-imagining that needs to be part of our understanding of Church. I would also suggest that it is theologically pertinent to our identity as human beings, where our pursuit of more increasingly diminishes our sense of created self, but I simply want to address the idea in relation to the Church here.

Our understanding of being Church has become increasingly burdened with the things we think are essential to our identity, rather than being the simple and beautiful community we are called to be. Our predisposition is to add more, to justify ourselves to ourselves, to increase our mass because somehow that suggests we are more substantial and meaningful. We layer on paint, rather than submit to the art of taking away. We have buildings we have to run and then we need things in them to make them viable. As Methodists, we act like a church of millions in the UK, rather than the small, dispersed connexional communities we are. We desire to say something about everything, rather than using what words we have in the right place, at the right time, and trusting the voices of others to share in other spaces. In truth, these are just some of the things we convince ourselves we need to do, or be, to justify ourselves to ourselves.

What if we remember we, the Church, begin not in our own intention but by the will of God? What If we imagine we are the pencil drawing on paper, slowly being revealed as more, in each deliberate and careful cut and act of taking away? When we forget where we come from, and God’s vision of who we are to be, we risk disconnecting our identity through either obliterating God’s intention with paint or trying to seize the scalpel and cutting away carelessly. All this causes me to wonder what we need to wilfully, but carefully, cut away to be the less that emerges as more, or rather what we are willing to let God take away to allow the beauty of who we are to emerge.

As Martha was encouraged to forgo the many things and instead consider the few or the one thing that was needed (Luke 10.41-42); as disciples were sent out with the instruction to take nothing for the journey (Luke 9.3); as the vine was pruned for its own fruitfulness (John 15.2); or as the Son emptied himself and assumed our life (Philippians 2.6-8), what are we to do?

What is the less God is seeking to make us, that we might be more like Christ? How might we enjoy God’s art of taking away and will we feel freer than every before?

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[i] You can find an introduction to his work here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvUfafedKqo&t=117s.

[ii] Rob Ryan, Op Cit., p.39

[iii] Nichols, Ibid, p.7

by Philip Sudworth.

“You don’t have to switch off your brain to be a Christian.”  I’ve heard this defensive comment many times in recent years.  It’s quite right.  However, we do have to use our brains appropriately. When we total a bill or solve a crossword, we think differently from when we appreciate music or respond to feelings of love.  Although we use both analytical and expressive thinking all the time, the balance varies according to the situation. It’s important to use the correct brain process for the task.  In a school, I asked a girl how she’d arrived at 11+7=27.  She cheerfully replied, “Because I like 27, it’s a nice number.”  It would be equally inappropriate for a man to confess his love to his girlfriend in scientific terms.

Each form of thinking has its own type of knowledge and truth.  One relies on verifiable facts, logical proofs and rational argument, while the other deals with experiences, intuitive insights and inner knowledge. “You shall know the truth,” promised Jesus, “And the truth shall set you free.”  What kind of truth is this? – Factual statements about God that can be set down in a logical scheme, or the knowledge of God’s love and  creative power that you feel from the very centre of your being? Within Christianity, there’s a wide range in the balance between these two types of thinking.

When Jesus told his disciples to think of God as Father, he wasn’t teaching them data about the essential being of God.  He was encouraging them to develop a relationship with God based on filial trust rather than on servant-like compliance with rules in expectation of reward or slave-like fear of punishment for disobedience. The early Christians saw themselves as “Followers of the Way”, as exponents of “the truthas it is in Jesus.”  Such a faith is experienced and its truth lived out.  How we explain it is the outer layer, which we should expect to refine, renew and expand over time to allow the core faith to grow. If we become preoccupied with defending and preserving the explanations, the outer layer, we can constrict the development of the core. It can also be difficult for new generations to penetrate through to the essential nature of faith. Once Christianity became a state religion, those in power sought to codify it in order to control it. Orthodox beliefs and loyalty to them became central.  Faith came to be seen as accepting the truth about Jesus, as taught by the church.

Our modern culture values reasoning more highly than intuitive thought.  This results in church leaders wanting to treat religious experiences objectively and to justify Christianity intellectually.  It leads to some confusing of the different kinds of truth.  One can’t prove what are matters of faith and personal experience. Some very intelligent people over recent centuries have tried unsuccessfully to prove the existence of God. Yet billions of people have ‘known’ God from personal experience.  Currently, there are popular, but sometimes disingenuous, attempts in some outreach courses to demonstrate the divinity of Jesus, attempts which come close to a docetic diminishment of his humanity. The bible’s power to change people’s lives is an experiential truth.  Its power is felt in the words themselves.  Arguing that the bible says, “All scripture is God-breathed,” so the bible must all be true is circular logic. It can lead to literalism and a focus on the wording of individual texts rather than on the spirit of the message as a whole.

We can never grasp the essence of a religion through intellectual investigation alone.  We need to understand it also as a way of life, a vision, a relationship and a commitment through intuitive brain processes. That is why depictions of other religions in terms of beliefs, rituals and festivals and metanarratives often feel so hollow. They describe the outer framework and miss out the essence of the faith which motivates and inspires the adherents. It leads to a misunderstanding of other faiths that mirrors Richard Dawkins’ mischaracterisation of Christianity.

Awareness of the need to distinguish between rational and experiential thinking has grown within the church over recent decades.  However, outsiders are still too often presented with traditional Christian doctrines as statements of fact to be believed literally or rejected. We have to be more open about different types of thinking, and to acknowledge our frequent use of poetic language and images. We can leave factual details about the physical universe and its development to science.  Religious truth is about relationships, meaning, hope, and fullness of life. It demands a response in the way we live.

by Tom Stuckey.

My latest book Covid-19: God’s Wake-Up Call was published in June 2021¹. In eighteen short chapters the book takes us from what has been called ‘the old normal’ through ‘abnormality’ into ‘the new normal’.  At the centre of the book is a chapter on ‘lament’. It focuses on the liminal period between the old and the new.

I have written many times about an imminent ‘paradigm shift’² and of the necessity of ‘repentance’ – metanoia. In my last article for Theology Everywhere I acknowledged that this particular word has struck the wrong chord for many Methodists.³

There have been over 150,000 deaths in Britain attributed to Covid-19. Such a statistic takes little account of the anguish of bereavement or the frustration of people. Political attempts to distract us from this harsh reality by trumpeting Britain’s success with the vaccine have now been derailed by news of ‘Party Times’ at No.10.

The lament of David over the deaths of Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1 gives voice to the pain of personal bereavement. In poetry intense and intimate David bares his soul. His grief is expressed publicly as the daughters of Israel are invited to ‘weep over Saul who clothed you with crimson’ (v.24). David’s lament is also ecological because he invites the mountains of Gilboa to share in his pain. ‘Let there be no dew or rain upon you’ (v.21). My new book shows that there is a dynamic relationship between our lament and the groans of the earth.

When Jesus rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he weeps over the city and speaks of its destruction (Lk.19.41-44). Lament is not only corporate, public and ecological, but also political.  To politically ignore lament has devastating consequences for the health of a nation. In our contemporary culture where memory has little significance there must be lament ‘lest we forget’. In an act of remembrance by the new President of the US in 2021 on the eve of his inauguration, he acknowledged the thousands who had died from Covid-19. In doing this he was symbolically taking the American people back to their roots for, ‘only memory allows possibility’.⁴ As justice and righteousness give an ethical grounding for the stability of a nation, so lament and thanksgiving provide the emotional foundation for a healthy community. 

The book of Lamentations contemplates the destruction of Jerusalem (BC 587). It gives voice to the magnitude of a nation’s pain. Part of the horror of human suffering is that it is unheard, forgotten or airbrushed out. Lamentations is a summons to ‘listen to the voices of the sufferers in the profusion and confusion of their pain, the bitterness of their protest, their shafts of self condemnation, their brief flashes of hope in the long night of despair, and their plaintive pleading with God just to look and see’.⁵

The author of Lamentations adds an additional ingredient to lament; namely, personal accountability. He is brutally honest in acknowledging that the people of Jerusalem have contributed to their own destruction. He even includes himself in this indictment, ‘I have rebelled against his word’. Human accountability and the necessity of repentance must not be swept under the carpet.

Anger is a further ingredient of lament. It is present beneath the surface of Lamentations (1.21, 1.7, 1.21, 2.14, 2.16) but finally erupts in chapter 3. ‘Pay them back for their deeds…Give them anguish of heart; your curse be on them! Pursue them in anger and destroy them’ (v.64f).  An increasing number of people in Britain are now finding their anger: anger over the death of loved ones; anger at being prevented from being with them at the end; anger at lockdown; anger at those in Government who set the rules but fail to keep them.

There is also anger directed at God. ‘He has driven me and brought me into darkness without light: against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones’ (Lam.3.2-4).

In the New Testament there are 29 references to anger. The anger of Jesus (Mk.3.5), Stephen (Acts 7.51) and Paul (Gal.1.6) is fuelled by their concern for truth and justice. Most Christians today think anger to be a sin. The writer of Ephesians however tells us to ‘be angry but sin not’ (Eph.4.26). In today’s Church we do not ‘do anger’ but we do not ‘do justice’ either! A.V Campell tells us that in banishing anger we have produced a ‘gospel of niceness which often leads to pettiness’.⁶

Lament in the Bible is not a tombstone but a launch pad. It opens a door to the future. It is God’s motivating vehicle of transformation. Unless fully expressed theologically, practically and emotionally our anticipated new normal will become even more problematic than the old.

1. Tom Stuckey, Covid-19 God’s Wake-Up Call: Angry Bible Reflections in a Pandemic, 2021, Amazon.

2. Tom Stuckey, Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land: The Future of the Church in Britain, A Methodist Perspective, 2017, Church in the Market Place, (obtainable from Amazon).

3. Theology Everywhere, 15^th June 2020.

4.  Walter Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination, Fortress, 1986, p.114.

5. Christopher Wright, The Message of Lamentations, 1VP, 2015, p.35.   

6. A.V Campell, Gospel of Anger, SPCK, 1986, p.61.

by Rachael Lowe (with input from Catrin Harland-Davies)

“What’s wrong with you?” is not the most welcoming of ways to greet a university student looking for a new church family to join! Every disabled person has their own experiences and stories to tell. This article is my attempt, through my own recurring experiences at different churches, to briefly consider how we can make disabled people feel more welcomed and included.

Let’s start with language. I am a disabled person and use the social model of disability, but what does that mean? The social model says that disabled people are not a ‘problem to be fixed’ but rather we are disabled by the barriers that are created by society. For example, it could be the way that the built environment is designed, an organisation is set up and the attitudes which are held by individuals and communities, which disables people with impairments from full or easy participation.

The Bible has a lot to say about community, including church community. Paul reminds us of our interdependence – 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of us as a body, whose various parts each bring something different to the whole. No one part of the body can decide that it doesn’t belong. How much less, then, can we decide that someone else has no part to play, or limit what role they can exercise? Yet that is precisely what we are doing, if our buildings, the format of our worship, our language or attitudes exclude someone. And even our well-meaning intentions to include can come across as patronising and in themselves become a barrier. When we congratulate ourselves on our openness, because we’re willing to install a ramp or a hearing loop, or to introduce gluten-free bread, perhaps we should pause and reframe our perception. Are we going the extra mile to create an inclusive environment, or are we tokenistically rectifying our previous exclusive practices? Are we simply inviting ‘them’ into our space, or are we willing to recognise our own spiritual impoverishment and to journey humbly alongside people who experience our world differently?

At their best, churches are places of grace, in which we recognise that none of us comes in our own strength, but all are invited by Christ, who places no barriers in our way. Wesley claimed that ‘there is no holiness but social holiness’ – holiness comes by sharing together in the means of grace. As Methodists we recognise that ‘All can be saved’; surely, then, this means that all must be given the opportunity to be fully part of that sharing? Anything about our life and worship which creates barriers to people’s sharing in that social experience of holiness diminishes us all.

Churches are full of kind, well-meaning people. I might be touched that you want to pray for me, but to pray for healing without consent is very impertinent and insensitive. It does not recognise and value where the disabled individual is with their health and spiritual journey. In fact, if you ever feel moved by the Holy Spirit to pray for someone, do not assume, simply ask them what they would like prayers for. It’s about respecting that everyone can be in a different place and a healing for a visible disability might not be what that person most needs prayer for!

So what are the barriers in our churches? Commonly people think about physical barriers like steps to the front door. While this is true, I have come across many churches that have an accessible porch but then steps to the front! Or steps to the pulpit – disabled people are not only found in the congregation! Attitudes can also be a huge barrier. It has happened a few times where I have visited a new church wearing my university hoodie (you need a few brain cells to get into uni) and yet I get spoken to with a baby voice: “Awww, heellooo”!

When I arrive at a new church and get asked “What’s wrong with you?”, the asker isn’t appreciating that it’s as inappropriate  as asking a lady her dress size! – It’s that personal – there are more interesting things about me than the fact I am a wheelchair user! Try asking a question that shows you are interested in me, perhaps about my degree or travel experiences?

My challenge for us all is to think and reflect on the assumptions we make. If you are unsure how to help a disabled person – just ask them!

by Richard Saunders-Hindley

The church in the West is in crisis as it declines in both numbers and influence at an ever‑increasing rate. The reasons for this are complex and deep-rooted, but in answer to the question of what the main problem is in the Western church, N.T. Wright’s response is startlingly simple: disunity.[i] Disunity is as old as the church itself, but Wright has in mind particularly Protestant disunity, and it is this that I want to focus on here.[ii]

If Wright’s assessment is accurate, it challenges many Protestant assumptions not only about questions of church structure and doctrine, but about the nature of the church itself. Put simply, what is the church? This, I suggest, is the foundational question that lies at the root of Protestant disunity. The tendency for Protestants to act apart from the wider church, manifested in such issues as doctrinal unilateralism and sectarian church planting, stems from a lack of a shared Protestant understanding of the church around which churches and individuals can coalesce.[iii] Addressing this issue is much more than can be done here, but I would like simply to offer two well-known motifs as a basis for further thought and discussion: the church as a people, and John Wesley’s description of ‘catholic spirit’.[iv]

The church as a people

The New Testament uses a variety of descriptions for the church. Arguably the most profound is found in the claim that, in Christ, God has now formed his eschatological people, that somehow ‘there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no ‘male and female’; you are all one in the Messiah, Jesus.’ (Galatians 3.28, New Testament for Everyone). Elsewhere Paul even seems to say that the church is a new kind of nationality, distinct form Jews or Greeks (1 Corinthians 10.32).

But it is in 1 Peter 2.9-10 where we find perhaps the most explicit expression of the peoplehood of the church, drawn from the deep well of Hebrew Scripture:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (NIV)

The eschatological nature of the people of God in Christ is apposite for Protestants. Just as we eschatologically already transcend old identities, so those old identities are not yet ended. Even as existing ethnicities, social statuses and genders all remain, so we have to live out what it means to be a single people. Conceptually, the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of new creation provides a framework within which it should be possible for different groupings to identify and act with a single purpose.

John Wesley’s ‘catholic spirit’

As the leader of a potentially schismatic movement, Wesley was clear in both his teaching and practice that disunity and separation were to be met head on and resisted. His famous sermon Catholic Spirit almost catechetically builds up his proposal for Christian unity point by point:

1. Is thy heart right with God?
2. Dost thou believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘God over all, blessed for ever’?
3. Is thy faith filled with the energy of love?
4. Art thou employed in doing ‘not thy own will, but the will of him that sent thee’?
5. Does the love of God constrain thee to ‘serve’ him ‘with fear’?
6. Is thy heart right toward thy neighbour?
7. Do you show your love by your works?[v]

Wesley’s concept of ‘catholic spirit’ is not indifferent to doctrine, denominations or opinions, but neither is it about these things. It is, rather, about the identification of the universal church in terms of faith and, above all, love: ‘love alone gives the title to this character: catholic love is catholic spirit.’[vi] This catholic love is itself fourfold:

1. It demands Christians love one another ‘with a very tender affection… as a brother in Christ, a fellow citizen of the New Jerusalem, a fellow soldier engaged in the same warfare, under the same Captain of our salvation.’[vii]
2. It demands constant mutual intercession for ‘a fuller conviction of things not seen and a stronger view of the love of God in Christ Jesus.’[viii]
3. It fosters mutual missional zeal, wrought in community and fellowship: ‘provoke me to love and good works … Quicken me in the work which God has given me to do, and instruct me how to do it more perfectly.’[ix]
4. It results in action: ‘So far as in conscience thou canst (retaining still thy own opinions and thy own manner of worshipping God), join with me in the work of God; and let us go on hand in hand.’[x]

‘Catholic spirit’ is therefore not a manifesto for abstract structural unity, or for vague sentiments of inclusivity. Rather it provides a paradigm in which embodied faith works by love: God’s grace is made known through the outward expression of love and unity of those who have experienced it inwardly in justification and new birth. Conceptually it provides a framework in which doctrine and ecclesial identities can find a coherent concrete expression that can transcend differences without denying them.

Conclusion

We know that the problem of Protestant disunity will not be solved quickly. But if it is possible for some to start to consider themselves within the broader conceptual frameworks set out here, then perhaps it may be possible to avoid some of the mistakes that have contributed to the decline of the church. This will not be easy and the results are likely to be patchy. But even faltering steps forward are better than collapse.

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[i]   For example see What is The Main Problem In The Western Church? | N.T. Wright (accessed 17/12/21). Wright has consistently made the same point elsewhere.

[ii]   Throughout this piece I am using the term ‘Protestant’ in its broad sense to denote all ecclesial, doctrinal and theological commitments that trace their origins back to the Reformation.

[iii] For a helpful summary of approaches to and impacts of church planting, see Stefan Paas, 2016, Church Planting in the Secular West: Learning from the European Experience (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co).

[iv] For a treatment of Protestant ecclesiology in relation to Wesley’s concept of catholic spirit, see Tom Greggs, “The Catholic Spirit of Protestantism: A Very Methodist take on the Third Article, Visible Unity and Ecumenism”, Pro Ecclesia Vol. XXVI No. 4, 353-372.

[v]   John Wesley, Sermon 34 Catholic Spirit I.12-18, The Works of John Wesley Bicentennial Edition (BCE) 2:87-9.

[vi]  Catholic Spirit III. 4, BCE 2:94.

[vii] Catholic Spirit II.3, BCE 2:90.

[viii] Catholic Spirit II.5, BCE 2:91.

[ix]  Catholic Spirit II.6, BCE 2:91.

[x] Catholic Spirit II.7, BCE 2:92.

by Catherine Bird.

This is the fourth of our series of articles through the year from Spectrum, on the theme ‘Darkness and Light are both alike to Thee’. This month the article is by Catherine Bird.

Darkness has had a rather incredible journey throughout time, shifting like the sands in terms of how it is perceived and understood.

But as humanity developed and evolved, a deep seated and intuitive understanding of the balance of nature also emerged and there wasn’t from the beginning of humankind and civilisation this understanding of light as good and dark as bad, things were much more interconnected – in a way that really goes against our modern dualistic association of light with goodness and dark with evil – that’s an association that is not really very widely reflected in what is known of many ancient cultures.  But at various points in the history of Christianity, Darkness has been variously upheld as either a genuine pathway to divine encounter or as a symbol of heresy and evil.

In the Hebrew Bible, in the book of Genesis, darkness is the fundamental state – God draws light from darkness. We might ask, if darkness was so terrible, why didn’t God at that point decide to get rid of darkness? But God keeps the darkness, as much of it as the light, 50-50 wherever we are in the world, and God saw that it was good. And many Creation myths share this as a common narrative, darkness as a pure state from within which beautiful things emerge.

The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament is actually replete with poetic and positive, dark related images which offer a vision of God residing in the darkness.  Stories which have God using the cover of darkness as a means of liberation and enlightenment, loads of events which take place in the darkness and offer hopeful and positive narratives of transformation and Divine encounter.

One of the best known and most frequently quoted dark related images in the Old Testament is that to be found in Psalm 139.

In the context of a treatise about God’s omnipresence and omniscience, we read in verses 11 and 12, ‘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.’

The writer here is describing the impossibility of hiding from God’s presence, and I do not read this Psalm as saying that darkness does not exist for God, or that light is supreme. Rather that darkness is not a place in which God is, or can ever be, absent. It is a place of growth, spiritual formation and sanctuary, a place in which God meets us at our most vulnerable.

Similarly in the New Testament, nany wonderful things happen under the cover of darkness.  Even in John’s gospel, which loves the light good/dark bed metaphor, even there, we meet Nicodemus, the learned teacher and scholar who comes to Jesus after sundown to seek answers and to expand his mind. The night apparently serves Nicodemus well, setting him off on a journey in which we see him let go of a purely rational way of thinking and embrace the more mystical path of Jesus. 

The inconsistency between metaphor and reality in John’s and to a lesser extent the other gospels, seems to pass the writers by actually! In the darkness of night an epiphany and a conversation of potential life changing significance take place; resurrection breaks through and the Glory of God is revealed. Yet still, in the midst of these things, darkness continues to be used as a term to describe malevolence and the absence of God.

For Reflection

• Think about Scripture – where in the Bible is darkness used positively, either as a metaphor or as a device?

by Ian Howarth.

For those of us leading worship over the Advent and Christmas period there is always a tension between the liturgical calendar and the rhythm of Christmas celebrations in our society. We are very conscious of it in Advent, wondering when whether we should start singing Christmas carols, when the readings focus on John the Baptist and Mary when people have already gone to community carol events. But there is also a tension in the post-Christmas period, which I sense particularly this year.

Liturgically, Christmas Day is the start of period of celebration, including Epiphany and going on until Candelmas. In practice, people tend to take time off from church after Christmas and return for a Covenant service at the beginning of the year, which can often take priority over Epiphany. I would indeed want to affirm the centrality of the Covenant service in our Methodist tradition but are there dangers in playing down the theological significance of the incarnation and reducing Christmas to carols and nativity.

Emotionally, it is always hard to keep the feeling of celebration going post-Christmas. It feels odd singing carols after Christmas day, and many of us are tired and need a rest. This year, with the rise of Omicron and the uncertainty around it, and with the deep tiredness many are feeling it is more difficult than ever.

However, it might be more important than ever for us to reflect on the meaning of the coming of Jesus into the world as God incarnate; to move on from stories of the baby in the manger to a deeper understanding of what it means to recognise Jesus as Emmanuel ‘God with us.’

As people have struggled to come to terms with the effect of the pandemic on their lives and on their churches, a struggle that will be exacerbated by the developments of recent weeks, a question that arises for many is: ‘Where is God in this?’

In January 2020, two months before lockdown, we held a retreat on the Psalms with the poet and theologian Carla Grosch-Miller, who reminded us that many of the Psalms were a response to the trauma of exile, and were asking that very question: ‘Where is God in this?’ The questions: ‘How long, O Lord?’ ‘Will you hide yourself forever?’ or simply ‘Why….?’ Punctuate such psalms.

Such psalms have been a rich and helpful resource through the corporate traumas of the past twenty months, enabling a sharing of the deep questions about our current situation in prayer and worship.

But the implication of traditional understandings of salvation history is that the hard questions asked in these psalms find an answer in the incarnation, in the coming of Jesus. However, in the Christmas season as we affirm that God has come in Christ, we have to acknowledge that we are still asking questions of God like ‘How long?’ and ‘Why?’

One way of holding that together is to push the issue into the future and see the resolution in the second coming of Jesus at the eschaton. However, that seems to me to be a denial of what are trying to say about the incarnation. Namely, that God comes into the world in Jesus because this world matters to God. Any eschatology that sees salvation as an escape from this world rather than an engagement with it in a renewed way, calls into question the meaning of the incarnation.

However, that means that any incarnational theology has to articulate what it means for God to have come into the world in Jesus, and how that affects our understanding of those situations that seem to deny God’s presence, whether that be the pandemic, the threat of climate change, or challenging aspects of our personal circumstances.

If the incarnation is a demonstration that this world matters to God, then the realities of our questions and requests do not go away with the coming of Jesus. The Christmas stories are written to remind us that Jesus comes into those realities, homeless, fleeing from political oppression, and so on. It is by entering into the world as it was and is, with all its joys and sorrows, that God shares in our humanity. In Jesus, God is not immune from the challenges we face.

As we celebrate the coming of Jesus in this Christmas period, if we have any awareness of the wider world we have to recognise it cannot be a celebration of a God who has come to provide all the answers. However, it can be a thanksgiving for a God who travels with us, and offers a way for that journey in Jesus; a way that takes the questions this world poses seriously and helps us address them through a renewed vision that the coming of Jesus offers us. A vision of transformation that comes through our understanding of the life, death and resurrection, the teaching and example of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us.

by Philip Sudworth.

We all owe our lives, and the lives of those we’ve loved, to the existence of death. If there were no death, none of us would have been born; Earth would have been full up long ago. If the story of Adam and Eve were literally true, our first parents actually did our generation a great favour. But is that particular creation story really about humanity being banned from Paradise or about a wrathful God sentencing humanity to a life with difficulties, pain and death? If we suggest that a boy starving to death in sub-Saharan Africa or a girl dying from cancer in a local hospice are reaping God’s anger against Adam’s disobedience, what kind of a God are we proclaiming? 

An alternative understanding sees the story as more about the implications of growing knowledge and insights, both as a human race and as individuals. Young children have their needs met and, in their innocence, happily run around naked. We grow out of the of childhood, towards self-consciousness, self-reliance and responsibility.  The need to earn our own living and provide for our families is a natural development. Growing self-awareness and socialisation bring an awareness of good and evil, together with a conscience, a sense of shame, and of justice. As we transition into independence, we take responsibility for our actions and mistakes. Self-awareness means we understand life brings danger, suffering, grief, and death. 

Traditional Christianity suggests that Eden provided for all human needs and was safe. It was how the world was meant to be; it’s how the world will be when Jesus returns. Yet life can lack a sense of purpose, unless there’s some challenge. Is paradise really the absence of danger, suffering and death? Without danger there’s no courage; without shortages, no generosity; without struggle, no achievement; without hurt, no compassion; without uncertainty, no hope or faith. Without the deep feelings that can lead to grief, we’d never be able to enjoy the intimate love of those with whom we’ve shared joy, fun and companionship. Without freedom to act wrongly, there’s no virtue. If everything were perfect, there’d be no possibility for development, progress or vision.  Without death, there’d be no future generations. Perhaps the world isn’t “fallen” through humanity’s fault, but the original intention of God. Such a worldmay be a necessary condition for spiritual development. John Keats wrote, ‘Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul.’

This causes problems for traditional understandings of Adam’s sin, the inherited sinfulness of humanity, and the need for an act of atonement. Consequently, many Christians insist on the historicity of Genesis despite the genomic evidence, despite contradictions of observable science, despite discrepancies within Genesis and despite other differing creation accounts in the bible. Others take a hybrid position, acknowledging that Genesis 1 is poetry rather than science, but still insisting that Adam’s disobedience brought death and pain into the world. It took the Catholic church 300 years to acknowledge that Galileo was right. How long will it take the modern church to reconcile Christianity and evolution? Or to acknowledge openly that the small 3-tier cosmos of the bible is a pre-scientific image, which bears no relation to an expanding universe which is 93 billion light years across and contains 125 billion galaxies?

In the 13th century, John Duns Scotus maintained that the incarnation of Jesus wasn’t a response to a problem but was always the intended plan. Franciscans have understood that Jesus didn’t come to complete a divine transaction that would enable God to forgive humans; he came to change the way humans thought about God.  It was always a matter of love and freedom rather than divine justice. This fits the view that true love and forgiveness cannot be conditional on anything that is thought, said or done. We can’t earn grace; it is a gift. Repentance rituals are perhaps helpful for those who harbor a sense of guilt and sinfulness and find that such rituals help them to put the past behind them and mark a transition to a new start. To suggest, however, that those rituals or a set of beliefs are essential, and that God cannot forgive people until they have jumped through those hoops is not only to place barriers between individuals and God; it diminishes God. We end up with a God that is too small for the present age.

by David Clough.

Whatever international action happens as a result of the inconclusive COP26 conference, it is clear that carbon emissions from human activity are changing the world’s climate in ways that are already displacing many people from the places that have been their home and will soon displace many more. Islands are being inundated. Changes to weather patterns are disrupting the growing of food crops and the grazing of animals, as well as increasing the incidence of wildfires and storms. Christians should grieve and lament the devastation caused to human communities and other living creatures as a result of culpable inaction from industrialised nations over decades. We should be angered by the injustice that the heaviest costs of climate change are falling on those who have least responsibility for causing the problem. We should be driven by these emotions to continue to make the case for urgent concerted international action to avoid making the crisis still worse.

But Christians should also prepare themselves for the political consequences of this environmental crisis. The UNHCR reported 82.4 million displaced people at the end of 2020, one in 95 of the global population. The climate crisis was one of the factors that led to the civil war in Syria. The crisis continues to provoke conflict and increase the numbers of displaced people, refugees, and asylum seekers. This presents a new international challenge. Industrialised nations need to decide either to recognise their responsibility to support people displaced by the climate crisis or to ignore these pressing humanitarian needs and instead invest in stronger borders to attempt to insulate themselves from the global disruption. There is a serious risk that some politicians will see opportunities in rushing directly from denial and inaction in relation to the causes of the climate crisis to making the case for prioritizing national self-interest rather than recognizing international responsibilities. In the UK, a clear direction of travel is evident in the government setting aside longstanding commitments concerning the international aid budget, its proposed new Nationality and Borders bill, and inadequate responses from ministers to the rising numbers of asylum seekers drowning in the Channel as a result of the lack of legal routes to claim asylum in the UK.

For many Christians, the implications of their faith for the question of the obligations of the most wealthy nations to care for those in need is clear. Jesus’ injunction to love one’s neighbour and the parables of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25–37) and the Last Judgement (Mt 25:31–46) are obvious reference points. But Christians in the US voted disproportionately for Trump in the context of promises of an implausible wall along the Mexican border. In the UK, most members of the Church of England voted for Brexit in the context of a campaign affirming the priority of national self-interest. So those hoping that Christian churches might help generate political support for international cooperation to help people displaced as a result of the climate crisis have work to do.

One sign of the challenge ahead is a recent article in the journal Studies in Christian Ethics by Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ Church, Oxford. ‘Whatever Happened to the Canaanites? Principles of a Christian Ethic of Mass Immigration’ makes a Christian ethical case for prioritising national self-interest above providing for the needy beyond a nation’s borders. Its argument relies on a tendentious framing of the issue and on false oppositions. The key current issue for the UK and many other countries is ethical and legal responsibilities to those seeking asylum; the article misdirects attention towards fears about ‘mass migration’ and completely open borders. The article will not convince many Christian ethicists that it presents a plausible reading of biblical and theological traditions on this topic. The problem is that it does not need to convince anyone: it just needs to provide a theological fig-leaf for those who have already decided that prioritising the pursuit of narrow national self-interest is politically expedient. It is therefore more important than ever to make the case that unjust and uncompassionate policies on international aid, the reception of asylum seekers, and immigration, are contrary to Christian ethics.

If you are a Christian convinced that churches should be supporting hospitality to asylum seekers, aid for refugees, and justice for those displaced by the climate crisis, it is time to get ready to join the debate. Reading up on the important work of the ecumenical Joint Public Issues Team on asylum and migration is a great place to start.