Category: Uncategorized

by Ben Pugh.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement: love it or hate it, it is eminently comprehensible. Subtle it is not (nuance generally has to be added), but there is a certain logic about it. In fact, so great is its elegance that it has become a tract-writer’s dream (I have a small collection of these tracts, going all the way back to 1976). It is completely soundbite-able. It can be summarised easily and without remainder in one sentence. Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is as Tweetable as it is logically compelling.

Trouble is, ideas that are that condensable become part of the furniture after a while. They get woven into our working assumptions. They cease to be examined and become a lens through which we examine everything else. I see it all the time. Many good Christians are locked within a set of ideas that are all about death as the penalty for sin introduced at Eden – all sin, however minor, carries this penalty. Then, we follow the familiar, almost arithmetic logic: Christ died as a substitute to pay that penalty, to take that punishment, all inflicted by the Father who turns his face away. When pressed about what we mean by death (since Adam and Eve did not immediately drop dead) we might sooner or later end up with a variation of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) in Hell.

These are good people who believe this. They are lovely. Yet this version of the ‘good’ news nestles between two pieces of horrific news, one pointing back in time and the other pointing forwards. We are pointed back in time to the cross and told ‘you deserved that,’ and we are pointed forwards in time to Hell and told ‘you will deserve that.’ And the solution in the present is that, by faith, we accept what Christ has done for us. Most would probably not put it in quite such stark terms, of course. But that’s just the problem. Many don’t even think about it for long enough to see that that is in fact what we are saying. 

However, there are signs that this PSA-ECT superstructure is melting away. I was recently giving a teaching session with a church that most would consider to be conservative. I presented four views of Hell ranging from ECT to Hopeful Universalism.As far as I could tell, not one person in the room was willing to defend ECT. Ok, perhaps I could have presented it a bit more charitably but, reading the room, I got a sense that everyone had been quietly moving away from the idea for some time; they just didn’t know what the alternatives were.

So, one side of the equation: ECT, has become so unmentionable it is fading away for lack of oxygen. But there remains the other side: PSA. There is still, in many sincere Christians, a failure to see how unappealing this message would seem to someone not yet inducted into that way of seeing things.

My summer project is to answer the question: is there a way to explain the work of Christ that might sound like genuinely good news to people, and which is elegant enough to be explained with brevity? The first thing I would highlight is that there has already existed – for almost two millennia – an alternative gospel soundbite. It is a phrase that recurs so often in the Greek Fathers, it is described as a ‘formula.’ Scholars call it the Exchange Formula. The most quoted version of the Exchange Formula is in Irenaeus: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, through his superabundant love, became what we are so that he might make us altogether what he himself is.’^[1]

In the Exchange Formula it is the incarnation that tells us everything we need to know. And it works in two halves: a divine-human union shown in God’s descent to us results in lots and lots of divine-human unions as we ascend in Christ.

This way of seeing atonement welcomes back into the picture the entire breath-taking sweep of the coming of Christ. Through this lens can see how Christ enters every phase of human existence, even to its very depths as he undergoes an unjust and violent death. He assumes and heals the entire human experience on behalf of the entire human race. That’s the gospel.

I call this Easter through Christmas spectacles.

Problem: when we look at things this way, doesn’t his death become a bit less important? It’s no longer an essential piece in the arithmetic of penalty-payment and substitution. Space is limited but, there are some excellent biblical reasons to see the whole consecrated life of Christ, culminating in his self-offering on the cross, as being the key thing that fulfilled the whole purpose of the sacrificial system and the covenant.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far:The gospel is that, in Jesus of Nazareth, we recognise that the Son of God came to live our life and die our death, dedicating himself to God on behalf of wayward and violent humanity and rose again from the dead so that we, by the power of the Holy Spirit joining our lives to his risen life, might get another chance at life, a dedicated life, an abundant life, the life of the age to come.

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[1] Irenaeus, Against Heresies V, Preface.

by Ken Howcroft.

Methodist Conference Monday 30 June 2025

This was a reflection I was asked to give at evening prayer on the Monday evening of the Conference at Telford. The references to particular hills are to those in the region, but in your imagination you can change them to hills that you know. Similarly the reference to the Conference Agenda can stand for anything that you have been doing.

Psalm 121

¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills—
    from where will my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴ He who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
⁸ The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time on and forevermore.

Introduction

Many parts of scripture, and the Psalms in particular, provide words that are intended to prompt you to form images or even short films in your imagination. I hope that you were doing that whilst you were reading that Psalm. I hope that you will continue doing it as you read this reflection on it.

Reflection

At the end of a long, hard day I feel the need to look up from the Agenda and out beyond these walls. In my imagination I look out at the natural beauties of the Wrekin, the South Shropshire Hills and the Welsh mountains beyond. I can also see homes and workplaces, sacred places of worship, palaces of shopping, playspaces of sport and entertainment. Or in my mind’s eye I can look at huge screens livestreaming social media with celebrity gossip and other trivia interspersed with news of natural disasters, droughts, famines, refugees, wars and rumours of wars. All of these things can distract me, but in the end they leave me saying ‘vanity of vanities’, emptiness piled on emptiness. None seem able to help me. 

Yet perhaps to expect them to help me is to make idols out of them rather than icons through which I can know God – the God who comes before all things, goes beyond all things and holds all things and all experience within themselves. As George Herbert put it, I can look at the glass of a telescope lens and only see my own reflection or I can put it to my eye and see the heavens through it. It is when I have done the latter that I have started to find real help.

It is when I remember this that I can start to hear another still, small voice addressing me. Parts of the Psalms and the prophetic writings are like playscripts where the different characters and who is saying what and when are no longer indicated. So, is this still, small voice that I am starting to hear another aspect of me, part of a conversation going on within me? Or is it a prophet, pastor, preacher or priest speaking to me? Or is it God? Or a mixture of all of those? You will need to step into the Psalm to decide for yourselves.

And what is the voice saying? It is saying a mixture of promise and blessing. Above all, in our goings out and our comings in at this Conference and in every other aspect of our life, seen or unseen, (as Mr Wesley reputedly said even on his deathbed) “God is with us.”

by Inderjit Bhogal.

Essential to the things that make for peace are peacemakers. Peacemakers are blessed by Jesus. Their blessing is that Jesus calls them “children of God”.

Neither the title “peacemakers” nor the title “children of God” are self-designations. However, you can choose to be a peacemaker. Peacemakers strive and aim for healing, not harming, and will always seek non-violent solutions to conflict.

Peace-making is not a popular task, nor is it an easy or a soft option. Peacemakers often attract hostility. Peace making is tough, and more difficult than making conflict or inflicting violence. Jesus was a peacemaker and is the Christian pattern and example to follow. He is described as “our peace”, making peace by breaking down dividing walls of segregation and hostility (Ephesians 2:14). He taught his followers to love their neighbours, to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44, 45).

Twice in Matthew Chapter 5, those who work for peace are called “children” of God. What this means is that you most closely reflect the nature and character of God, the great Peacemaker, when you are a peacemaker.  God is the God of peace. All the great religions of the world teach this be they Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Judaism, Islam, Sikh or Zoroastrian.

In God’s wisdom human beings are made in “the Image and likeness of God”, but not the same. Human beings are made in the Image of God but are marked by their immense differences.

This is what makes us beautiful, but herein also lies the route to our brokenness. Brokenness and conflict arise when instead of valuing differences as gift and strength, they are seen as things to be feared and generate hostility. We can see this in all conflict in the world. Conflict arises when differences of appearance or opinions are seen as a problem rather than an enrichment.

Peace-making is essentially about valuing differences and diversity of opinions, facilitating deep and respectful listening to all views without rubbishing or dehumanising or humiliating anyone. Peace-making is rooted in seeing and valuing the Image of God in all people, including those who may revile or persecute you, and who may see you as their “enemy”.

Peace-making means you listen and enable listening however much you dislike what is being said, and asking questions that seek greater clarity in what is being said, and often this helps to see strengths and weaknesses in points raised. This is frequently the way to achieving shared strategic wisdom and ways forward.

Maya Angelou, the African American writer and poet says, that parents should teach children early that there is a beauty and strength in diversity. The Rev Dr Martin Luther King was often heard saying “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of it’s creed that all people are made equal”. Not same, equal.

Saint Oscar Romero, who was Archbishop of El Salvador, at the height of the civil war in his country used to tell the soldiers in his country not to kill people because they were only killing their own brothers and sisters. He was seen as such a threat for preaching peace that he was assassinated, shot dead in March 1980 as he lifted the bread and wine at a service of Holy Communion.

The one who most closely portrays God, according to the New Testament, is Jesus who is “our peace”. How does Jesus make peace? By removing dividing walls of hatred. By bringing hostile people together. He paid for this with his life (Ephesians 2:13).

The word translated “peacemaker” means being active in holding people together. Peacemakers see the Image of God in all people, they live on a larger map, see the bigger picture, treat all people equally, and so they reflect the nature and character of God.

The world needs more peacemakers. Be a Peacemaker, in your congregation, in your school and community, in your home, in your work place and playground, in your neighbourhood, in your nation, in the world.

Peacemakers are ordinary, vulnerable people. They try to live with a purity of heart, which most importantly means, with a capacity to see the Image of God in all people, not least in those who look, and think, and speak differently. This requirement goes deep into the need for honesty, humility and integrity in relationships, and clarity and focus in thought and being. It calls on you to pray for others, including your enemies and those who revile you or persecute you. It calls on you to always strive, do your uttermost, to aim at healing, never at harming.

Make sure that your morality, ethics and attitudes are defined by the values of God seen in the life and teachings of Christ and all he called “children of God”.

by David Hunter.

I think we Christians get into a muddle from time to time and perhaps no more so than with the word “sin”. We seem to have lost the important distinction between “Sin” meaning wrong Being and “sin” meaning wrong Doing. Theologians as different in time and place as Oswald Chambers and Douglas John Hall raise this issue.[1]  Chambers quotes 2 Cor.5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”[2]

The Gospels show Jesus forgiving sins readily and without any sign of anguish, so much so that it becomes an accusation against him (Mark 2:3ff). Also, Jesus gives authority to his disciples to forgive sins and through them to his church (John 20:23). The social aspect of forgiving sins is embedded in The Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”.

But the forgiveness of Sin – wrong Being – is an altogether different matter. Here we encounter not the symptom but its cause, Sin.

The story of the Fall encapsulates Humankind’s predicament, death follows disobedience (Gen 2:16f) which at its heart is a desire to escape creaturehood and become like God, knowing everything and so exercising control over Creation.

That Jesus, who is alive and reigns with God, continues to forgive our sins, our wrong Doing, should go without saying. But to say that he died to be able to do this is simply wrong and totally misses the profound, life changing reality of Christ’s death and resurrection for both the Cosmos and Humanity, for all Creation!

The fractured relationship between Humankind, Adam and Eve, and God , which also fractured the relationship between the Cosmos and God (Romans 8:19f) is “Sin”: wrong “Being”.

In his dying and death Jesus became wrong “Being”, the gulf, the chasm, that Adam and Eve created between God and themselves which all Humankind has inherited. We all inherited the broken relationship and the death God said would follow on from that fracture of disobedience and hubris (Gen.2:16f). Death hangs over all of us like the Sword of Damocles.

Our Lord’s “Cry of Dereliction” was authentic, he died Godless and alone. (Mark 15:34). As Christ died so the chasm died, disappeared, was destroyed completely, a work that only God could do. (Romans 5:10f)

The death of the broken relationship between God and All Creation is irreversible (Romans 6:9f) and the New Covenant envisaged by Jeremiah (Jer.31:31ff) is established. Oswald Chambers can say “We are condemned to salvation through the Cross of Jesus Christ”. And St. Paul says, “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” (1 Cor.15:22). “Dying you destroyed our death. Rising you restored our life” (Methodist Worship Book, p170)

In the light of this understanding of our Lord’s death what is the task of the Church? It must surely begin with the message of Reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18f) “The Living God has befriended you!”

And then be clear that we, all of us who would be Christians, enter into the reality of God’s friendship through believing in the Resurrection of Jesus. (John 20:27ff).

We know that the journey home to our Heavenly Father, through Christ our Lord and in the power of the Holy Spirit, cannot be reduced to a plan or schema! But the Church must know to where it is leading people so as to prompt and encourage the journey when we are tempted to stay where we are through certitude, sloth, fear or anything else.

With the Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ a new Covenant and a New Age has begun, sealed by belief (John 6:29) and blessed by the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8). The New Age and the Old Age exist together until the Parousia,[3] the second Advent of Jesus, the end of history and the fulfilment of all God’s promises (Mark 13:32).

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev.21:1), and we journey to it together with God: “Jesus answered him, Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them”. (John 14:23)

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[1] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for his Highest. Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London: reprint 1975; Douglas John Hall, The Cross in our Context. Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2003, p104.

[2] Chambers, My Utmost for his Highest, October 7^th.

[3] James D G Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle. T & T Clark Ltd, Edinburgh: 1998, p464-5.

by Philip Sudworth.

When Paul went to Athens, he soon realised that the preaching approach that had been successful amongst his fellow Jews was not going to work there.  He wandered around the city, got to know it and then presented his message in a form tailor-made for those people.  That sense of the need to cater for people with differing experiences, interests, education and religious background when presenting the message seems to be lacking in some of our churches.  

It didn’t matter so much in the 1950s when there was much greater consensus on key social and religious issues and the potential conflict between the biblical literalism and developments in scientific ideas was hardly publicised.   These days with so many people with little religious background, so few used to listening to long talks, and the church no longer such a strong focus of social activities, it matters a great deal. The ethos of education has altered in our schools over the last two generations. Pupils are no longer expected to sit quietly, absorb what they are told and to regurgitate it in examinations. They are encouraged to investigate, to question, to formulate their own theories, as well as to learn the latest theories. They are aware that knowledge is developing, that new discoveries and new ideas are changing perceptions. Just look at how rapidly information technology has progressed over the last 30 years.

Yet many of our local churches seem to take a single approach, which is based primarily on the minister’s personal theology and his/her own worship preferences.   Too many of the clergy seem to view their role as getting their entire congregation and as many others as possible to the point of faith that they have reached, by the same route – creating Christians in their own image.  Some of the clergy appear to struggle with the idea that there are personal paths to God and that the next best spiritual step for some individuals may be outside the cleric’s own experience.

Many evangelical leaders are particularly good in providing clear and confident structure of faith for those who need to feel certain that they have the only truth.  However, if their only response to those with questioning minds is to tell them that they lack faith, if they don’t hold the “right” beliefs, they are failing them.   A literalist approach to scripture supports those who want an infallible guide to life but leaves others dismissing a religion that believes that the stories of Adam and Noah are factual history and rejecting a God who could, according to Numbers 31, order genocide and the rape of 10-, 11- and 12-year-old virgins (13- and 14-year-olds would be already married in those days).  Liberal preachers need to appreciate that, while they may cope well with those open to new religious ideas, other people with problems want clear answers not philosophy.  The pulpit is not the place for pondering out loud.  If people come seeking answers to life’s problems but leave with more questions than they had before, their needs are not being served.

The problem with both the evangelical and liberal approaches is that they can become introspective and two-dimensional.  The liberal may become absorbed in his personal musings about the nature of God and what following Christ means in the reality of the 21^st century.  The evangelical may become wrapped up in the intensity of her love for Jesus – “Just you and me, Jesus” – and in her own personal salvation and in the personal salvation of members of her flock.  Neither is a healthy spiritual situation.  Christianity is supposed to be an active three-dimensional faith, expressing love of God and love of others in practical terms. 

It is when we start to put this into practice that we can include and respond to a wider range of people.  Provided that a loving outreach to others through practical projects is genuinely altruistic and not an evangelism strategy, it can be a unifying way of allowing people with all shades of theology to participate in a common service to God and expression of their faith.  Once we discover in practical situations that we can embrace all those who seek to live in response to God and find a role that suits their individual circumstances, perhaps we shall be more able to take account of individual differences when it comes to worship, pulpit pronouncements and pastoral and spiritual support.  Humans are not designed to fit into a mould.  Our differences are there for a purpose.  Let’s celebrate them, respond to them and so allow God to make effective use of them!

by Josie Smith.

The other day I came across some of my old broadcast scripts from the late 1980s – book reviews mostly.  Those were the days when hot topics in the churches apart from ecumenism were ‘Women in the Ministry’ often with a question mark, and ‘Inclusive Language’.  Methodism had of course ordained women as far back as 1974, but not always to popular acclaim.  In 1986 a book had appeared called Women, Authority and the Bible, subtitled ‘an evangelical breakthrough on the Biblical debate’.[1]  All the writers originally presented their material at the Evangelical Colloquium on Women in the Bible held in Illinois in 1984. It was open only to evangelical theologians and leaders by invitation, and they met to talk and listen for three days.  Given the North American flavor (sic) and the inevitable patchiness of a book with 27 different writers I commended anyone interested in the ministry of women to pick up this book and browse.  Chapter 8 is more readable than most: Kyle R. Snodgrass, a professor of biblical literature, thinks that Galatians 3:28 is the most socially explosive statement in the New Testament.  We must, though, Prof. Snodgrass says, allow Paul to be Paul.  He was not addressing our situation or our set of questions, and we only distort the thinking when we transfer it directly to our time.  Would Paul be able to deal with the concept of ordination, he asks.  He might well need time to get accustomed to the idea.

This is a book not just about ambiguous bits of Greek, or about the practices of another culture in another age.  It’s a book about truth and justice and trying to discern the Will of God, and in keeping with American practice there are two or three chapters at the end about what has been learnt from the experience.  All the members of the colloquium were evangelical Christians, and if there was a weakness other than that, it was that there wasn’t a Graham Leonard there to put a spanner in the works, but there was evidently plenty of argument.

The Church of England in Britain was meanwhile agonising over the larger half of its members who are women.  Another book All that is Unseen asked, ‘Can the Church in Britain today learn to long for the full contribution of women rather than fearing and fighting it?’[2]  It’s a wide-ranging study of women generally, at work outside or inside the home, but readers are challenged to assess who does what in their churches, and to see whether this really reflects the best use of gifts among those present.

The third book was Making Women Visible.[3]  Try reacting to these two newspaper headlines –
‘People are much more likely to be influenced by their wives than by opinion polls’. 
‘Man kills his next door neighbour’s wife.’
The male perspective is seen as the dominant one, the ‘normal’ way of looking at life. The two examples are from the secular press, but the church is, if anything, more entrenched in its assumptions.  When I was at school (an all girls’ school) one of our most often used hymns was ‘O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother’.  There wasn’t a brother in the building and the only man was the school caretaker.  Once you have recognised a problem you see how pervasive it is.  Hence the many changes in the liturgy.

More thoughts: An Anglican friend, a Revd. Canon, tells me that even now, in 2O25, in ecumenical gatherings of clergy, some of the male clergy do not recognise the validity of her ordination.

When I was appointed a Circuit Steward many years ago, I asked my mother-in-law’s advice about the best way to do the new job.  Father-in-law was a Methodist minister, retired, so who better than the in-laws to know how it worked and how I could be most useful? ‘I can’t help you, dear’ she said.  ‘In my day, Circuit Stewards always had wives’.

With those rediscovered scripts there was a slip of paper on which I had written ‘The Old Testament has the woman being made from the rib of a man.  The New Testament has the Son of Man being born of a woman. What message for the feminists?  Or from them?’

It was Tony Benn who said in 1993, ‘I hope I live to see the day when a woman Archbishop of Canterbury greets a Pope in a church that has ordained women.’  He didn’t – but most of the Church of England has become accustomed to women in the ordained ministry, and some of them have become Bishops.  Have a look at the list of possible candidates on the list to become the next Archbishop…

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[1] Alvera Mickelsen, Women, Authority and the Bible. IVP, 1986.

[2] Rosemary Dawson, And All That is Unseen: A New Look at Women’s Work. Church House Publishing, 1986.

[3] Making Women Visible: The Use of Inclusive Language with the ASB: A Report by the Liturgical Commission of the General Synod of the Church of England. Church House Publishing, 1989

by Frances Young.

On April 26^th 2025 a group of us were standing in the spring sunshine by a lake shore, peering over the wall at the sunken remains of an ancient basilica. It was quite recently, they said, that someone in a light aircraft had spotted something hidden under the water – now it was an archaeological dig. Further along the shore there was a children’s playground – Iznik was a bit of a resort. Back in 325 CE it was a resort known as Nicaea, a retreat for the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, and here he assembled the bishops, demanding that they unify the Church to unite the Empire.

We were an ecumenical group of roughly a dozen invited by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople-New Rome to commemorate that 1st Nicene Council held seventeen centuries ago, and they were almost certainly assembled in that sunken basilica below us. The Chair of our symposium read in the original Greek the creed they then agreed, affirming that the Son/Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ was “of one being with Father” (homoousios tōi Patri).

This was the third day of our meeting “with field trips.” We had been at the Patriarchate’s conference centre in Istanbul reading papers to each other, discussing the impact of the Council, its creed and canons, visiting key Christian sites in the city. Now our final session was held in Nicaea itself, with papers from three Orthodox scholars; earlier sessions had contributions from Western Christian traditions, Roman Catholic, Anglican and various Protestants. Our concerns had ranged from ecumenical politics to theology, but the spirit was a common respect for the essentially scriptural truth promulgated then and upheld throughout all the major splits, between Byzantines and Orientals, between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, and indeed through the Reformation and the Evangelical Revival: the Son of God is fully God in every sense of the Word, not some semi-divine or angelic subordinate.

This remarkable seventeenth centenary has kept me busy over recent months, with requests for articles, lectures and indeed a paper for the symposium in Istanbul. It has provoked deepening reflection on the amazing consequence that we can read off the character of God from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – for being homoousios with the Father means he was – yes, truly human – but also one who was God in every sense of the term, one who out of sheer love chose to “empty” the divine self (Phil. 2.7) so as to be able to experience the constraints of our creaturely life, our suffering, even our death. It is an utter paradox, something that explodes our categories: “the immortal dies,” sings Charles Wesley, “’tis mystery all.”

And that not only demands a certain intellectual humility, but also challenges our culture. We tend to assume that a mystery is something to be solved, as in a detective-story, something to be explained away – that recourse to a claim to mystery is a cop-out. It is interesting that the neuroscientist and philosopher, Iain McGilchrist, has challenged this in his wide-ranging discussion of the short-comings of Western culture, The Matter with Things (2 vols, subtitled, “Our Brians, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World”, published in 2021 by Perspectiva Press, London):

Mystery does not imply muddled thinking. On the other hand thinking you can be clear about something which in its nature is essentially mysterious is muddled thinking. Nor does mystery betoken a lack of meaning – rather a superabundance of meaning in relation to our normal finite vision. (p. 1258)

So what about the resurrection? To take away the mystery and claim that Jesus “literally” or “as a historical fact” rose from the dead is to diminish it – like the novel which told how Jesus came round in the cool cave, managed to get out, married Mary Magdalene and lived happily ever after in Egypt. That kind of resuscitation would mean he would have to die again, and it’s not what we mean by resurrection, is it? “’Tis mystery all” because the eternal has broken into the time-space universe, because an event has occurred beyond historical investigation or proof, and new life utterly beyond death enables Christ’s presence, presence everywhere and anywhere, like the omni-presence of God.

Is it any wonder, then, that in the Gospel of John (10.30) Jesus is presented as affirming “I and the Father are one,” that the bishops at Nicaea concluded that the Son of God is “of one being with the Father,” and Charles Wesley sang of “Our God contracted to a span/incomprehensibly made man”?

by Jennifer Smith.

Each week TV presenter Stacey Solomon and her unflinchingly cheerful team have been rescuing a household drowning in possessions and helping them have a clear out.  Their belongings are displayed in perfect rows in a cavernous warehouse, and the household is ruthlessly cajoled to sort their possessions into three groups: keep, sell, donate.  With tears and memories, they work their way to letting go all but what is loved or needed.  Meanwhile, the team at home blitzes and paints, creating new ordered space to receive inhabitants and the (many fewer) possessions back.  In the final scenes, the household gasps and rejoices. 

Having less feels like having gained so much more: they can live and breathe to see and use and enjoy their possessions and each other.[1]  At least on camera, no one laments after the fact or goes diving through the skip to retrieve a cracked serving dish.  And no one addresses the serious questions about why we accumulate so much, how much time and money has been spent on the process, or what impact my consumption might be having on someone else.

What is going on here?  Why is ‘Sort your life out’ such compelling viewing, and what might the process of downsizing actually offer as a means of grace?  I am interested partly because I am in the middle of downsizing myself in preparation for moving to a much smaller, if quirkily beautiful house.  But more than that, I am interested because I am aware that my ownership of things, my acquiring or divesting of ‘stuff’ is not morally neutral.  First of all, many in our immediate neighbourhoods can afford very little or only the most basic necessities, which is why there is a market for my ‘to be donated’ no-longer-non-stick frying pan.  Should I feel virtuous about giving four away to buy one new, when I have decided those four were unfit?  Being able to own less by choice is a massively privileged unusual situation in human history.  It speaks of the injustice of our present world, and any reflection on the process of downsizing needs to start with that reality. 

Second of all, each of the objects I am getting rid of was made by someone.  Whether in a factory or piecework in someone else’s home, a real person assembled the hairclips and T shirts, novelty curios or fridge magnets.  Our getting of stuff is not an individual action, but part of a whole inter-related network different people working together for good and ill.  It should not be news to Methodists that our way of spending or keeping money and the things it buys are part of our ‘social holiness.’  In his sermon ‘On the use of money,’ John Wesley was specific that no earning of it could be righteous if it caused workers harm, or distorted a marketplace.[2]  James K A Smith observed that if the mall or online purchase has replaced cathedral and religious ritual in our contemporary culture.  This means that of course I end up with too much, if I have enough money or credit to do so.  It is in the process of acquisition that I come to know I exist, and by which I belong to a group and participate in a common culture.[3]  In this culture, perhaps the show ‘sort your life out’ is the new form of participatory public repentance. 

How then, might downsizing be a means of grace?  Obviously, it is helping me to remember that my stuff is not the foundation of my personhood, much as I have loved some of it.  Objects are for me signs of memory, reminders of story.  But even memory and story are themselves signs in turn of our creation by a God who loves us and delights in us.  So downsizing is about reclaiming a more durable identity, I hope.  It is hard, as it means walking again through times of loss.  And a laying aside of some parts of life that for me are finished.  But I hope, in this season as I get ready to move, I might also re-focus on what I do love, and who I love, and how my getting and giving sits in my whole community.  I don’t think John Greenleaf Whittier meant anything as prosaic as cluttered closets when he wrote ‘…take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.’ [4] But if I start with a closet, maybe it gets easier to move on to an institution, to an economy, to a culture or political system.  One household at a time. 

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[1] ‘Sort your life out’ plays Tuesdays at 8 pm on BBC1, until 10 June.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00116n4  (31 May, 2025)

[2] John Wesley, ‘The Use of Money,’ Sermon 44 in Sermons on Several Occasions, (London: Epworth Press, 1944). pp 576-81.

[3] James K A Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. (Michigan, USA: Baker Academic, 2009).

[4] John Greenleaf Whittier, ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ in Singing the Faith. (London: The Methodist Church, 2011). 495.

by Ruth Gee.

Writing in another week of news about the actions of powerful leaders and the impact of their decisions on the most vulnerable in the world, I am reminded of a paradox at the heart of the Christian faith. The sorrow of Holy Week, including the crucifixion and death of Jesus and the long, despairing wait on Holy Saturday are transformed to joy on Easter Day as we proclaim, “Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! Alleluia!”  St Paul wrote, “…God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25). It is this that we proclaim as followers of Jesus in whom the glory of God was revealed on the cross.

On 24 May 1738, John Wesley came to a deep realisation that assurance was not something that could ever result from his own actions and strengths but is a gracious gift from God. Any true strength we have comes only from acknowledging our weakness and our need of grace.[i]

As I reflected on these things, I was reminded of a reflection that I wrote some years ago:

Mother and Son: End and Beginning.

Your hair is so dark, streaked with red, the blood of birth. They told me you would be born with hair when they knew how very sick I felt as I carried you, my son. How could human hair have so profound an effect on me and on you?  This dark hair can never be cut; it marks you out as chosen for better or for worse.

I remember the first time I felt that overwhelming nausea and the faintness that made me sit down quickly to prevent falling. I didn’t know what was wrong and I was frightened until he explained it to me. I never expected to be pregnant, no-one expected that of the barren one. That is how I am known, the barren wife of Manoah, descendent of a people once great and now without hope. Your birth has changed all that, with you the change begins. This is the promise made to me and binding on you, God’s promise to the nameless that the sun will rise in its might. You are named for that promise, Samson.

You are precious my son, full of potential and offering so much hope. The blood of life and death runs through your dark hair.

Your grip on my finger is strong, your mouth moves urgently, seeking comfort from the breast. You suck and are at peace. Sure of your own importance you are at the centre of your own world. All is well.  All is quiet and there is a hush of expectation in the air.

Outside your range of dim vision, he arrives and the sound of sudden movement startles you. Your arms fly up and out pushing against the weak resistant air until all is well again – you are at rest. My son with blood-streaked hair.

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Mother, see me bound in chains and led by a child. Where is the promise now? Blood from the beating is sticky in my new born hair. I am in pain. I long for your love, your trust, your hope – all gone now and buried in sorrow.

I have no ass or fox or fire to help me here. They are taunting me and I am alone with only the hesitant grip of a child to keep me safe. Named for the sun, I see no light. My enemies have my eyes, my lover has my hair, and a child has my hand in this place of fear and darkness.

I am the centre of a celebration that is not mine. I am important only for my weakness, the product of treachery and broken promises. I am a symbol of all who place their hope in their own strength and desire beauty above truth. I am God forsaken; my bones are as wax and my heart thrice broken.

I, who cannot be held, am bound to solid stone and I am desolate. There is no comfort now, not even from the small hand of the child. The tumultuous crowd quietens into a pregnant, expectant, dark silence. Is this the quiet before the storm?

Then, beyond my dimmed vision I hear a sudden movement.  Like a startled infant, I call out – “Mother, God help me!” My arms fly out and up and push against the stone and the blood runs through my dark new hair.

It is finished.

(Judges chapters 13-16)

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[i] On 24 May 1738, John Wesley wrote, “I felt I did trust I Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

by Philip Sudworth.

“When a scientist brings a bottle of sea water back to his laboratory, it is still essentially sea.”  A church leader used this analogy to try to explain how the man Jesus was still actually God himself.  What it did  illustrate to me was how we can sometimes have too limited a view of God.

Suppose an exchange teacher took a bottle of seawater to a landlocked country, showed it to the children and told them that they had now seen the sea.  What a limited understanding of the sea that would be.

Even those who have dived into the depths only have a partial knowledge of the oceans. South Sea islanders may spend most of their lives by, in or on the sea but they have no appreciation of what the sea can be like for the crew on an Icelandic trawler in a winter storm.  Even oceanographers would not claim to know everything that goes on in the great deeps. On Boxing Day 2004 the world was shocked at the power within one wave. 

How much more beyond our understanding then is the creative force that produced the oceans and the thousands of species in them on this minor planet orbiting one of trillions of stars?  Yet we too often think that we can encapsulate God in doctrines.  Some even have the effrontery to claim that they have the only truth about God and all other religious experiences are invalid.   It is like telling people that unless they have ridden the waves on a surfboard, they have no real experience of the sea.

No such attempt to present the “the simple truth” about God as a neat package of ideas is going to come even close to doing him justice. He is far more wonderful and multi-dimensional than we can ever imagine.  St Augustine warned us that, “If you understand, then it is not God.”  When we insist that people see God as we do, we attempt to contain God within our own faith-shaped bottle.

Too often we project onto God our own understandings of unlimited power and complete knowledge.  Hence God is often depicted like a medieval king on his throne – listening to petitions, munificent to those who submit to him but executing terrible justice on those who disobey him. Just what we would do, if we were in his place.  Some even claim to know how God thinks and attribute to God motives, such as “God must always act against sin” or “God can only forgive people if they believe the church’s teaching.”  This measures their own level of compassion rather than the depth of God’s love and mercy.  Such thinking puts God in a bottle shaped in our own image. 

Those who believe that God is perfectly revealed in scripture forget that God cannot be contained in words.   The pre-scientific and often poetic descriptions of people’s experiences of God present such different pictures as a God who orders genocide and joins in battles by hurling great hailstones and one who is the good shepherd going to great lengths to find one lost sheep.  Whenever we read or discuss scripture, we interpret the words.  Unfortunately, we too often use scripture more to condemn others and to exclude their beliefs rather than to challenge ourselves.  Scripture becomes the word of God when it is lived out and so changes people’s lives.  God does not fit into a book-shaped bottle.

We should encourage people to develop their own personal experience of God rather than try to impose our own faith upon them by telling them what they must believe about God.  How many people have we lost because we insisted that their faith must be a particular shape and their experience of God did not fit into that bottle? 

Jesus compared the attempt to contain the power and vibrancy of a living and dynamic faith within inflexible religious traditions with the folly of putting new wine into old bottles. Attempts by church leaders to constrain new experiences of God within the bottle of orthodoxy have led to young people leaking out of the church in huge numbers in recent decades.

Albert Schweitzer only fulfilled his potential in God’s service when he stopped trying to shape and contain God with definitions and dogma and allowed God to shape him.  Like him, we have to worry less over doctrine about Jesus and respond to the call to live out our faith in Jesus by the way we live our lives.