Theology Everywhere

by Jo Cox-Darling.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that we are all going to die.

In this first of two contributions to Theology Everywhere some of the issues around current trends in the death industry are explored.  The second article will tell the story of a local community seeking to discover what bereavement resilience might look like in practice.

Death is an ultimate fact of life, yet it’s surprising how distant people have become to death, dying, and the impact of grief in daily life.  The death knoll to the church’s involvement in all stages of bereavement has been tolling for a while. 

Much can be placed at the door of our under-researched experience of Covid lockdowns.  Those who were deemed vulnerable were kept at a distance from the rest of society.  Care workers were expected to make impossible decisions about who received treatment options and who did not.  Locally, temporary mortuaries were constructed out of sight of communities. One of the largest of these temporary mortuaries was a refrigerated hanger at the end of the runway at Birmingham airport.  Aeroplanes were replaced by ambulances taxying the dead to their final destination. 

Every day people were given the instructions for survival – and survive we did, intoxicated by the fear of becoming another statistic in a global pandemic. 

In Covid, we learned that funerals accommodating more than a handful of people wasn’t necessary, and that it can be easier to let the dirty business of death be done by other people.  We become protected from the contagion of grief which can be so incapacitating and overwhelming – and if we protect ourselves, then we’ve learnt that we are also protecting others.

An unexpected consequence of this clinical, politicised, approach to death has led to the huge rise in Direct Cremations.

The 2025 Sunlife Cost of Dying report revealed that 20% funerals are now Direct Cremations[1] – sold (widely on daytime advertising slots) as being an economic and compassionate alternative to expensive funerals, direct cremations are completely unattended cremations.  With the awareness within both the industry and wider society that some sort of death-ritual is a psychological (perhaps even spiritual) necessity, the National Association of Funeral Directors suggest that ‘pure’ direct cremations could be as low as 11%[2], with the difference being influenced by the addition of a reflective space, post-cremation memorial, graveside service at the burial of ashes, or even a wake.

The physical processes of death and dying continue to be clinicalised and professionalised.  Palliative care professional Dr Kathryn Mannix, in her book With The End In Mind to note:

‘The death rate remains 100 per cent, and the pattern of the final days, and the way we actually die, are unchanged. What is different is that we have lost the familiarity we once had with that process, and we have lost the vocabulary and etiquette that served us so well in past times, when death was acknowledged to be inevitable. Instead of dying in a dear and familiar room with people we love around us, we now die in ambulances and emergency rooms and intensive care units, our loved ones separated from us by the machinery of life preservation.’[3]

In 2023, 72% of 18-24 year olds had experienced the death of a loved one but only 33% had physically seen a dead body.[4]  This lack of lived experience of death and dying continues to lead to a lack of engagement with grief and bereavement – which in turn has an ongoing detrimental impact of the parasympathetic nervous system and the general wellbeing of people across all sectors of society.[5]  This had led to Theos producing an animation which explores simply what happens naturally to a body during the death process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayMhA1pRLeY

As the Sunlife research concludes, ‘Brits still don’t like talking about death.’[6]

If the Theos research about attitudes to death and dying is right, and that:

‘…ours is a society which keeps death at arm’s length and out of sight. Many of us experience bereavement without direct exposure to death, and most do not feel well-prepared for our own deaths… We are increasingly likely to grieve for others behind closed doors too: religious or not, we think a funeral should celebrate the life of the deceased and hold space for mourning together, but less than half of us (47%) now say we want a funeral at all. Financial pressures…made greater room for market forces to shape how we grieve. The result is a significant realignment in British grieving practices…[including] openness to emerging “grief technologies” among the young.’[7]

I want to argue that the Church has a responsibility to begin to understand the missional needs that are now apparent to us.  Dying isn’t often a shared experience for families.  Funeral services are no longer the purview of the ordained.  Death rituals are no longer assumed part of community life.  As a consequence, we are all suffering – unable to pay attention to our bodies, our psychology, and our spirituality. 

Public health and healthcare professionals continue to grapple with the need to become a bereavement resilient society[8], the church still has much to offer into this space and sector.

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[1] ‘Cost of Dying’, Sunlife, https://www.sunlife.co.uk/siteassets/documents/cost-of-dying/sunlife-cost-of-dying-report-2025.pdf

[2] https://www.nafd.org.uk/2024/01/15/nafd-highlights-the-impact-of-inflation-and-importance-of-talking-about-funeral-wishes-in-response-to-cost-of-dying-report/

[3] Kathryn Mannix, With The End In Mind, London: William Collins, 2017, p.2

[4] Love, Grief, and Hope’, Theos, https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/cmsfiles/Love-Grief-and-Hope.-Emotional-responses-to-death-and-dying-in-the-UK.pdf, p.14

[5] https://www.oprah.com/health_wellness/how-your-body-really-processes-grief

[6] Cost of Dying, p.34

[7] Ibid. p.xii

[8] ‘Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care: A national framework for local action 2021-2026’, National Palliative and End of Life Care Partnership, https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/ambitions-for-palliative-and-end-of-life-care-a-national-framework-for-local-action-2021-2026/

by John Lampard.

There are not many books which get a review in both The Church Times and The Financial Times, but The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People by Paul Seabright (Princeton University Press, 2024) achieved this unusual honour.

The thesis of the book is in the title. Seabright looks at religious organisations (mainly Christian, but not exclusively) as though they were the same as any other commercial organisation, which wanted to succeed in today’s world. It does not look at theological issues as such (although they are often close to the surface) but the effect churches have in a social setting.

A theme often revisited is, ‘Why do poor people give money and help to richer people?’ Seabright instances a young Ghanaian girl, Grace, who earns a pittance selling pieces of ice to motorists stuck in traffic jams in Accra. On a Sunday she donates more than a tithe to a church with a wealthy pastor, who is bedecked with gold jewellery. On a less dramatic scale the same question often went through my mind when I received the collection plate at a church I served in the 1970s, in a very rundown area of Leeds, containing many (then very poor) pensioners. Although we as a family felt we were just scraping by, our standard of living was considerably higher than many in the congregation.

Seabright suggests that Grace ‘benefits’ from an opportunity to dress up, to be treated with respect, to find friends (and possibly a suitable husband), she can sing and express herself, act as a ‘greeter’ and be responsible for younger and more vulnerable people than herself. I also think of a village chapel where many of the women who had known each other for years, and who were in service as maids etc, called each other ‘Mrs’ because the church was the only place they received that respect from others. Perhaps treating people with ‘respect’ is one of the most powerful evangelical tools available to the church.

Perhaps the most penetrating insight of the book, at least to me, is that it looks on church organisations as ‘platforms’ rather than as organisations. The word ‘platform’ conjures up today the digital universe of social media, search engines and apps, but Seabright argues that platforms, ‘Are organisations that facilitate relationships that could not form, or could not function as effectively, in the platforms’ absence.’ It occurred to me, as I read Seabright, that Mr Wesley was ahead of his time in creating a connexional ‘platform’ which was more about relationships, with travelling preachers and class leaders, rather than an organisation. A platform facilitates relationships into which people can opt in or out as they wish or as they feel the need.

Seabright uses the idea of the platform to examine three areas which a platform understanding can address. First, what are the needs in individual human beings which religious movements address?  Time and again he comes back to ‘purpose.’ ‘Human beings find purpose in activities that have a collective dimension.’ And religious organisations (unlike other purpose-creating organisations such as political parties) ‘have access to historical traditions, and stories from those traditions, that give them a powerful edge.’

The second series of questions are organisational. For example, why do different religious movements flourish, split, or die?  Seabright concludes, ‘they turn around questions of mission, of structure, of strategy, and of message. The way in which religious movements make these choices bear a marked resemblance to the ways that secular businesses do.’

The final questions are about the use of power. One insight I found particularly illuminating was the way in which religious organisations are more eloquent about the need for the sacrifice, that violence strategies require, than secular organisations. They can articulate the need for sacrifice (and Christian organisations have an advantage here with the centrality of the Cross) more successfully that a political organisation, which may need to base its appeal to ‘country.’ Think of the Crusades, the churches on both sides in World War One, and the Russian Orthodox Church today. Perhaps one of the reasons the churches struggle today is that sacrifice (giving, service and commitment) are not popular in a culture of me, me, me.

I am, in conclusion, aware that a contribution to Theology Everywhere, which is about a book which is not about theology, may seem an odd choice. But my grounding in the sociology of religion has been a constant insight into the theology I have tried to proclaim, and the church leadership I have tried to offer.

by Philip Turner.

‘It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed’^[1]

When the sun should have been at its most radiant, Matthew, Mark and Luke are united in recording that the noon-day light is replaced by darkness at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Without light it is near-impossible to see. ‘God is ignoring me,’ said the woman I was supporting in the hospital where I work as a chaplain.  Doctors had told her she had cancer and, with her husband recently dead, she now sensed her own life was at it’s end.  ‘I pray but God isn’t there,’ she said ‘but when I used to pray I knew God was there.’  How might we see when it feels like light has failed?

The contemporary experience of living on earth today might also be likened to a failure of light.  Putin’s territorial ambitions.  Genocide in Gaza.^[2]  12 million Sudanese refugees.^[3]  Global temperatures soaring past the critical 1.5C threshold.^[4]  Foreign aid diverted to pay for military spending.  We live in times where it can be difficult to glimpse light.  Yet, the noon-day light should be burning bright.  Never before has there been so many Christians on our planet as there are today.^[5]  So why is there darkness after noon?

Looking to Moses and the prophets^[6] could suggest that God is the bringer of darkness, perhaps to dazzle us with how much the world is misaligned with God’s kingdom.  This may be true, but it does not in itself offer hope for the cancer patient: it does not offer hope in a world where so much feels outside our control. 

In the darkness of the afternoon when Jesus hung on the cross Luke offers two avenues that are hopeful, if not necessarily comfortable.  The first is the example of Jesus who, in the noon-day darkness, articulates an active and embodied faith: ‘into your hands I commend my spirit’.^[7]  When we can no longer see, we can only trust in God’s vision, and stretch out our hands to be led.^[8]  The second is a reminder that trust in God can spring up beyond belief boundaries, like in the centurion who, as part of Rome’s military machine, seems to have developed eyes suited for seeing in darkness.  Where might we find such people today: the people who praise God, because in darkness they have seen the flame of God’s love?^[9]

Both avenues require surrendering the current way we see, in our own life, in the life of our churches and in the wider world.  Tomáš Halík, a Czech Catholic priest, philosopher, and theologian, draws on analytical psychology to suggest that the noon-day crisis is where the image of ourselves we have worked hard to create begins to crack, inviting us to root ourselves more deeply, and let our ego decrease so that the Christ within us may increase.^[10]  It is a book that challenges the way Christians have often unconsciously made the Christian mission colonial, where we seek more people like us, or more people to become like us.  Darkness might describe non-egocentric mission, the mission of the crucified Christ.

Perhaps Jesus’ followers today are called to the task of acknowledging how dark the afternoon can seem, but also that it cannot last.  Halík notes that evening must follow the afternoon, and in the Bible the evening is when a new day begins.^[11]  A new day that is rooted in surrender, because what Easter celebrates is not resuscitation, but resurrection: a transformation into a new way of being.

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^[1] Luke 23.44f.

^[2] UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war, 14 November 2024 [https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-committee-finds-israels-warfare-methods-gaza-consistent-genocide]

^[3] Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-59035053]

^[4] January 2025 sees record global temperatures despite La Niña [https://wmo.int/media/news/january-2025-sees-record-global-temperatures-despite-la-nina]

^[5] Tomáš Halík, The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change (University of Notre Dame Press, 2024), p.60.

^[6] e.g Exodus 10.22, Amos 8.9

^[7] Luke 23.46

^[8] John 21.18

^[9] Luke 23.47.

^[10] Halík, The Afternoon of Christianity, p.31-33

^[11]Halík, The Afternoon of Christianity, p.211

by Karen Turner.

Each week I bake a cake and bring it to campus at the University of Bath and theological discussion ensues, like sugar-fuelled magic, where both the questions and the answers are student-led.

One topic this week was whether or not people thought the Bible (or parts of it) might be ‘the word of God’. The various answers given by the students were probably not that different from the answers you would get from a random sample of Methodists.  Some wanted to throw out the tricky bits, or even the entire Old Testament, while others protested that ‘God wrote every word in it’.

After a few moments, Ethan spoke up.  ‘I wonder if we are in danger of limiting the Bible to our time in history, when the Bible is for all time?  What I mean is, some bits of the Bible speak to me and some don’t.  But what if those bits spoke to people thousands of years ago in ways I can’t understand today?  And anyway, even in the span of a human lifetime, the same passage at different times might speak in totally different ways.’

His comment caught my attention. I was just back from a few days of silent retreat where I recognised my own foolish impulse to try to squeeze the Logos into a box.  As a chaplain, I’ve felt drawn to John the Baptist; a person speaking from the wilderness, pointing to Jesus, offering a way in from the edge.  So on the retreat I chose to spend time with the first chapter of John’s Gospel, where, in my mind’s eye, John stands near the river alone, as his companions leave him and follow Jesus. The message I expected to hear was that John loves people and lets them go on to better things.

But instead I found myself with more questions than consolation. I read on to chapter 3:

After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptised. John also was baptising at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptised^[1]

The only reason given for Jesus and John baptising at the same time (and this after John very clearly sent his own disciples to follow the Lamb of God^[2]) is because of the abundance of water. The parallel baptising doesn’t make sense. It’s messy. It feels like an awkward timeline oversight that someone should have edited – especially since it isn’t mentioned in the other gospels.

Why is the untidiness there? What would it feel like to stand between them on the riverbank at that point of timeless incongruity?  John offering ‘the way of righteousness’^[3] as people come out to find freedom in God’s forgiveness and a new start, knowing all the while that this baptism isn’t the whole story, but carrying on.  Meanwhile Jesus is also baptising.  The waters are abundant.

John had such a prolific ministry that, later on, as far away as Ephesus and Corinth, Paul encounters people who had received the ‘baptism of John’.^[4]  Priscilla, Aquila and Paul fill in the gaps and explain about the baptism of Jesus and they receive the Spirit.

Before and after.  Decrease and Increase. End and Beginning. Die and live. How does the timeless God meet us in our time captivity?  David Ford writes that the whole Gospel of John ‘can be read as an education of desire’.^[5]  What are we looking for?  Are we ready for this baptism?  John knows what it will mean.

If there is ever a sense that Christ is present ‘at the still point of the turning world’^[6] in scripture, they are moments that jar us from our sentimental or even logical assumptions. God’s love breaks out of my boxes.  God is on the move in ways we cannot predict and throughout time in ways we cannot fully understand.

Last month I attended the confirmation of a former Bath student who, in his testimony, spoke movingly of the way he had found a home in his local Methodist church^[7] because his doubts were welcomed. He asked me afterwards if I could have predicted his faith journey.  ‘In all honesty, no,’ I replied.  God was at work in ways I could not see. God is always at work in ways we cannot see.  Let’s go where the water is abundant and work out what it means afterwards.

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^[1] John 3. 21, 22, NRSV.

^[2] John 1.29, NRSV.

^[3] Matthew 21.32, NRSV.

^[4] Acts 18 and 19.

^[5] David F Ford, The Gospel of John p. 54.

^[6] T S Eliot, Four Quartets, ‘Burnt Norton’ p.5.

^[7] Castle Street Methodist Church, Cambridge seems like a community of abundant water.

by Richard Clutterbuck.

When I invite a Methodist congregation – usually in a service of Holy Communion – to recite the Nicene Creed with me, there’s often a sense of surprise. It’s as if this is a strange and eccentric thing to do in an act of worship. So, we might not expect Methodists to be in the forefront of the celebrations for this year’s 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. What does it matter that 318 (according to legend) bishops and their assistants assembled in a corner of the Eastern Roman Empire to thrash out a formula for teaching Christian doctrine? As a student once said to me in an Early Christian Doctrine class, “Why bother, these people are all dead, aren’t they?”

I do need to acknowledge that the historic creeds (the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed) have had a mixed reception in Methodism. Its more evangelical members might think that the councils and creeds are unnecessary; after all, we have the Bible, so what more do we need? Liberals, on the other hand, may find the idea of councils too controlling and creeds too restrictive; “don’t let anyone tell me what to believe!” John Wesley, as so often, sends a mixed message. He was always a staunch defender of the basic tenets of the Nicene Creed, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, in spite of their many contemporary critics. On the other hand, Wesley omitted the Nicene Creed from the communion service in his version of the Book of Common Prayer, edited for the newly-independent Methodist Church in the USA.

So, why should we celebrate Nicaea? I could suggest a number of reasons. One would be our solidarity with other Christians, past and present, what Jurgen Moltmann called ‘the ecumenism of time’. Another might be the conciliar method of bringing together Christians with different points of view to find a common understanding – something that, at its best, Methodism has done with its conferences. But asked to give just one reason, I would say this: Nicaea gives us an answer to the question, why bother with Jesus? The creed of the Council of Nicaea is shorter than the version we commonly recite as the Nicene Creed (it’s rather light on the Holy Spirit) but it shares the same emphasis on the drama of God’s action in creation and salvation. Jesus, the person who walked the lanes of Judea, taught in synagogues,  gathered disciples, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of religious and imperial powers, and (so his followers believed) rose from the dead, is one with the God who created the universe and works for its salvation.

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible;
And in one Lord. Jesus Christ, the Son of God…”

The clauses that follow make it clear that not only has everything that exists come into being through God’s creative care, that same God’s saving love for humanity finds its expression in the Father’s Son, Jesus Christ. Famously, Nicaea introduced the word homoousion (of the same substance) to talk up the unity between the Father and the Son, and to refute the claim of Arius (an influential priest in Alexandria) that Jesus was part of creation rather than one with the creator.

If that seems a strange point of view to us, it’s surely because the European Enlightenment sparked a series of attempts to get behind the councils and creeds to a ‘real Jesus’ who could be recovered from their theological formulae. So, the nineteenth-century gave us the ‘Jesus of History’ movement, with multiple attempts to write the life of Jesus, usually with an emphasis on his ethical teaching and example. More recently, the ‘Jesus Seminar’ painted a picture of Jesus as the wandering prophet, a thorn in the side of the powerful. While these movements have given us a lot that’s helpful and challenging, they don’t give us a reason for putting our faith in Jesus, making him the centre of our belief and worship as well as the inspiration for our practice. It’s this that Nicaea does, admittedly in the language of its day, but nonetheless as a genuine call to faith and affirmation of salvation.[i]

What we teach still matters. We might look for different language from that of Nicaea, but we can still share in its faith.

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[i] It wouldn’t be right to claim her as a supporter of my point of view, but I am deeply indebted to one of my fellow-contributors to Theology Everywhere, Frances Young, who is taking a leading part in some of the celebrations of Nicaea this year. Her two recent volumes on Scripture the Genesis of Doctrine (Eerdmans 2023, 2024) shed fresh light on the early church and the complex relationship between the Bible and Christian teaching. In particular, Frances emphasises the importance of teaching in early Christianity. The early church, she says, often looked more like a school for learning than a traditional religion. What you believed really mattered; it wasn’t just a matter of fulfilling the right rituals. This teaching, she tells us, both depended on a dense and creative reading of scripture and developed its own lens for interpreting the Bible. See, also her “A Song for Nicaea” in the bulletin of the Methodist Sacramental Fellowship.

by Sandra Brower.

Epiphany is a good season to think about the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist. ‘Epiphany’ means ‘manifestation’ or ‘appearance’ – we often associate it with an ‘aha’ lightbulb moment. The lightbulb moments in our lives are moments when we see something clearly, more clearly than we’ve seen before. And often these revelations aren’t produced by intensive thinking or pondering on our parts – they just come to us… in the moment.

Good fires bring light and heat in the dark and cold. And heat has the power to soften. About seven years ago our family spent Christmas in Eswatini, and one of the highlights was visiting Ngwenya Glass, where recycled glass was fashioned into all sorts of beautiful objects. There were massive stoves where the glass would melt and become malleable.  And we saw the workers take the molten glass from the fires and mould it into exquisite objects. The fires in the glass factory enabled the crooked to be made straight and the rough made smooth.

Eureka moments, in Scripture, are more often than not, associated with the Spirit of God. John says that while he baptizes with water, someone more powerful would come who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit. Throughout Acts, as people begin to follow Jesus, the disciples ensure that they have received the Holy Spirit; there is no New Testament conception of a follower of Jesus who does not have the Holy Spirit as their guide.  What does it feel like to have the Holy Spirit as a guide? It feels like a kindled heart. John the Baptist speaks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit being like a baptism of fire. His language is harsh. Even the crowds find him confusing for they ask him: ‘What, then, should we do?’  

The hymn, Come Down, O Love Divine, speaks of hearts kindled by a holy flame, and how that flame freely burns, ‘till earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming.’ It’s John the Baptist language; it speaks of the purifying nature of fire, of how the Holy Spirit guides us to do the right thing. To the crowd’s question, ‘what, then, should we do?’ John answers: ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.’ It’s not rocket science, but our lizard brains are often centred on self and not others.

When Jesus was baptised by John, a voice from heaven says, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved’. But what do we make of the Holy Spirit descending on him?  I mean, it’s not as if the Spirit hasn’t been with the Son all along. They are together in creation, the Spirit is there at Jesus’s conception, and has been with him as he grew in strength and wisdom, and the Spirit continues to be with Jesus throughout his ministry, guiding him and teaching him all the ways of his Father in heaven. So his baptism is not the first time that the Spirit shows up in his life. But the voice says something else in that moment: ‘with you I am well pleased’.

Right after the event of Jesus’s baptism, the rest of the chapter talks about the ancestors of Jesus, through his earthly father’s lineage. The Gospel of Matthew starts with Abraham and names all the generations to Jesus, son of Joseph – husband of Mary. Luke starts with Joseph – husband of Mary, and traces Jesus’s lineage beyond David to Adam, son of God. While it might be boring to read, it is included to emphasise that Jesus is not only the Son of God, he is also the Son of Joseph and Mary. He is human. The Father is well-pleased with Jesus because of what he does for us. Taking on our baptism at the beginning of his ministry is rich with meaning. One of the early church writers, Irenaeus, spoke about how Jesus passed through every stage of our human life, owning it and bearing it. The miracle of Christmas, that is revealed to us in the season of Epiphany, is that we – just as we are – can be the dwelling place of God’s Spirit because of Jesus, who becomes one of us.

Approaching Lent, and perhaps having celebrated its start with ashes on our foreheads, let’s remember that a kindled heart leaves ashes behind. When we feel convicted, when something is tugging at our hearts – that is good news! Because it means that God is dwelling close to us. Hearts of stone are hard to move. But kindled, malleable hearts, speak of a soul that is yearning for God, yearning for grace, and yearning for love. Don’t be afraid of the fire.

by Tom Stuckey.

“He went and hanged himself.” (Matt 27:5)

This is not a very promising text. It would not be wise to conclude your sermon with the words of Jesus, “Go and do likewise”.  There were 6,069 suicides in England and Wales last year; the highest since 1999. That is about 19 a day. These suicides cover persons of every social/democratic category. Of course a few hit the headlines. In January 2023 Ruth Perry, the headmistress of a Caversham School died by suicide after a destructive OFSTED Report. Then there were the three celebrities who ended their lives following the experience of participating in the popular TV ‘Love Island’. Going further back there were the tragic deaths of Amy Whitehouse and Whitney Houston.[1] Were these two so severely damaged by fame, fortune and the expectations of others that an untimely death was inevitable? Sometimes reasons are obvious but not always so.

Judas, the disciple, is an enduring enigma. As far as we can ascertain he was high up in our Lord’s affections. He was probably lying next to Jesus at the last supper. How else could Jesus have acknowledged him as the betrayer without the other disciples hearing (Matt.26:25)? It has been suggested that Jesus not only gave him the choicest morsel of food but may even have placed it in his mouth (John 13:30). It was love’s last appeal, but tragically Judas had drunk so much darkness into his soul that this token of love was received as wrath. None of the other disciples suspected his dark designs as he left the upper room on the night of betrayal. He was a trusted companion, sent on a special mission by Jesus (John13:29-30). Alan Mann thinks that many today unconsciously take Judas as their role model. ‘He typifies the post-industrial self . . . the intimacy Judas craves is purely for his own satisfaction and that others are expendable.^’[2]

Both Jesus and Judas die “hanging on a tree” (Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29). In the eyes of the law both are cursed. The contrast between Jesus and Judas could not have been greater. The life and death of Judas demonstrates the “down-side” of God’s justice, enacted in wrath. The death of Jesus demonstrates the “up-side” of God’s justice, enacted in love.

 Judas is the antithesis of Jesus.[3] While the Jesus narrative is one of coherence, his is a narrative of incoherence. Judas slips into the “nothingness” of isolation because he cannot maintain relationships. Jesus takes “nothingness” away from people, absorbing it into his own relational identity with the Father. Judas dies because he has based his whole life on an illusion and, losing all sense of self worth, suffers from chronic shame. He cannot confess, because confession would sink him further into shame. He cannot pray, because self-absorption has robbed him of the capacity to know anyone other than himself. He has distanced himself from the corporate world of relationships to such an extent that, when Jesus offers him a token of love, he turns away. The life and death of Judas is a negation of at-one-ment. He kills himself because he knows he is already dead. His suicide is the ultimate act of self-harming in a desperate attempt to feel something. Jesus and Judas represent two polarities; one walks the path to heaven, the other the path to hell!  We have the same choice. 

In Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy there is this inscription over the doorway of hell.

Justice it was that moved my great creator. Divine omnipotence created me and highest wisdom joined with primal love.[4]

Is Dante suggesting that divine justice, power, wisdom, and love have created hell? Jesus and Judas illustrate the inseparable relationship between light and its shadow. Some argue that Dante’s inscription points to the choices people make since love gives us the independence to freely decide on either path. I believe God is more directly involved in that because of his love for the world, he makes himself accountable for the “nothingness”—which is the hell of his “non-creating”. Judas chose the path of “non-creating”. In his quest for absolute affirmation he copied the fall of the angels and dies on a tree. Jesus chose the path of creating. In his quest for justice he is obedient unto death and dies on a tree.

Jesus does not climb the tree like Judas; he is lifted up. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is not only lifted up on the cross, but he is raised up in resurrection. His cross becomes the new tree of life—not a tree of death. Thus Wesley can sing, ‘Thy love on the tree display unto me, and the servant of sin in a moment is free’.[5]

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[1] Amy Winehouse was found dead on 23 July 2011, and Whitney Houston on 11 February 2012.

[2] Alan Mann, Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society. Paternoster, 2005, p125.

[3] I am greatly indebted to Alan Mann’s reflections on these respective narratives of coherence and incoherence. (Mann, 107-131).

[4] Wilson, Dante in Love, Atlantic,2011, p.209.

[5] MHB 200

by Josie Smith.

In January, rather to my surprise, I achieved my ninety-fifth birthday. The oldest inhabitant at my church is 106, and the next in line is 98, and you have only to read the obituaries in the Methodist Recorder to discover that Methodism does longevity rather well on the whole.

What about some Thoughts to encourage you youngsters, then?   A friend of mine less than half my age told me that he couldn’t imagine how it feels to be So Old.  There I have the advantage – I know how it feels to be his age, because I have been there.   I told a young friend at church recently that the nice thing about ‘being a has-been’ is that ‘you once were’.  Her witty response lifted my spirits. ‘You’re not a has-been’ she said decisively ‘You’re very much Current Affairs, you are!’ My church is a good place to be – everyone counts, from the youngest regular attender whose age can be measured in weeks, and though I might appear to be a fragile antique, my input to discussions and decisions is not only sought but heard, and even acted upon when it accords with ‘the feeling of the meeting’.

What then does it feel like to be 95? It’s thirty years since I retired from my last Proper Job, with the Home Mission Division as it was then, and since then it’s been voluntary work of various sorts, and following my interests. And now I have slowed down.

A sort of balance sheet might be in order.   

Aspects of being Very Old: BAD – energy levels and physical strength are (only just) adequate for me to live more or less independently. It takes me four times as long to do anything as it used to, and I need two sticks to walk. (Try carrying anything while both hands are thus occupied!) I gave up my car around my 93rd birthday when I was awaiting complex surgery and using my accelerator foot became too painful. I am recognised to be housebound now, which brings me to GOOD – if I need a Covid jab or a blood test the medical people come to me, and appear to enjoy meeting a non-standard nonagenarian. I do have a regular lift to church on Sunday mornings, which is much appreciated, but our services are live-streamed – GOOD – so that I can take part from home if necessary.

But BAD – Ageism! I keep getting invitations through my door to move to one of the several local care homes, where I should ‘find new friends with whom I have a lot in common.’ Who says? ‘Being Old’ does not guarantee having a lot in common with everybody else who is old, merely because we were born a long time ago – though the requirement to love my neighbour is always part of the deal. One of the things I loved doing as a freelance broadcaster was to visit care homes and talk with some of the residents. What rich and varied lives they had led, and what entertaining stories they told. Many of those voices live on, safely archived in the history department of the local university.

BAD also is the assumption that old = lonely. I love people, but I am also perfectly content if I don’t see anyone for days. I enjoy my own company too. And that of a houseful of books. I am very deaf, so find radio a trial (difficult for a has-been broadcaster to confess that) and always need subtitles – often hilariously ill-translated – for my rare bits of television watching. I can’t hear the telephone ringtone, and even if I could, I can’t move fast enough to reach it before it takes a message instead.

GOOD – I can tell people I love them without embarrassment, which in a religion which is built on love is positive – and at 95 unlikely to be misunderstood. GOOD – My understanding of ‘the World, the Universe and Everything’ is constantly evolving. My present church, an Anglican/Methodist Ecumenical Partnership, provides enough challenge to keep me on my toes. GOOD – I recognise that other faiths have an angle which adds to my own faith, and though I can no longer be an active Local Preacher I do get my turn leading intercessory prayers and reading for services. Even a bit of Am. Dram. if I can do it sitting down. We had a Christingle service on Christmas Eve in which I was the both the Narrator and the chief of the flock, called Ram (suitably clad in a sheepskin) and all the children were shepherds and Magi and Angels as we told the Nativity story from the point of view of the sheep.

And I can view the end of my life with equanimity. I have difficulty in understanding when people bring me ‘sad’ news of the death of someone at a ripe old age after a rich and fruitful life. It is the natural ending of the state of existence we call life, and it can be approached with joy. We as Christians surely know that.

Being alive has not all been sweetness and light for me. I have survived early bereavement, cancer, sepsis, a cracked skull and a fractured femur, as well as lots of minor ailments, accidents, other broken bones and what are known as ‘surgical procedures’. I have been at enough deathbeds to know that it is often a relief when it comes. Death is revealed not as an enemy but as a friend.

So onward and upward, friends! Whatever the state of the world (and of those with the ambition to control it) God will be with you on the journey.

by George Bailey.

‘It [love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’ 1 Corinthians 13:7 (NRSV)

This verse has been in my reflections recently – the lectionary reading for 2^nd February, so also in our weekly Bible study, and featured at several weddings and funerals this month. The key questions I have are whether love has any limits, and how do we read this responsibly in the midst of unbearable suffering?

The first issue is to consider how it is best to translate this verse into English. The NRSV translation above is close to the Greek text and follows the King James Version – ‘all things’ (panta) is repeated four times. Anthony Thistleton raises concerns with this, which I have found to resonate with people’s reactions: how can love have no limits? how can that work in reality? As Thistleton puts it, bearing and believing all things, ‘appears to support Marx’s notion of Christianity as the opium of the people, or Nietzsche’s concept of Christianity as “servile mediocrity,” […]’ or to form a basis for Freud to see Christian faith as ‘a projection derived from inner conflicts resolved by wishful thinking which “believes all things” in order to “endure all things.”’[1] Thistleton proposes an alternative translation to guard against these possible misunderstandings:

‘It never tires of support, never loses faith, never exhausts hope, never gives up.’[2]

This moves away from the Greek, changing the ‘all things’ to a double negative, and altering the way the verbs work, especially requiring an interpretation to render ‘bears’ and ‘endures’. The NIV offers a compromise between these two options:

‘It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

This also requires an interpretation to render ‘bears all things,’ but does not need to use double negatives, and avoids the problems with ‘all things’ – so making it easier to maintain that there are some things which love should not endure or believe, but it can though continue always to protect people and retain trust.[3]

All these translation considerations assume that the love here concerns the relationship between Christians and other people (i.e. from individuals to global issues). This is a common way to interpret verses 4-6, which describe the activity of love. Paul is implicitly listing negative ways that the Corinthian church people were behaving towards each other, and offering the opposite as a vision for community life. Given his arguments elsewhere, he is probably also implicitly offering his own behaviour towards them as a model of love in action. Both these perspectives feature in the way I sometimes use these verses in weddings and funerals, to encourage and celebrate the cultivation of a loving character.

However, there is a third way to interpret verse 4-7 – as a description of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It makes sense to read these verses, replacing the word ‘love’ with ‘Jesus.’ This helps with the pastoral problem of positing such an idealised vision of Christian lifestyle, one which no human can fully exemplify… except that is for Jesus. Karl Barth proposes this; though he does follow the simpler reading for verses 4-6 as encouraging a Christian character, he especially focuses his interpretation of verse 7 in a more Christological way:

‘At this point we catch an unmistakable glimpse of the pattern of Christian existence. And this pattern, the royal man Jesus, is not only the pattern but also the living Head of His community and all its members, in whose life and therefore in whose victory they may participate as such, not just passively but actively, as active subjects. When they love, they become and are this. When they love, they withstand the whole world of hostile forces and defeat it. If in all activities wrought by the Spirit Christians are in undecided conflict with this world, when they love this world is already under and behind them.’[4]

Some situations are extremely challenging to human endurance, and threaten the possibility of maintaining human hope and faith. It is here, Barth seems to be saying, that the persistence of love is not a burden to carried by humans on their own, but it is an activity of Christ, and by the work of the Holy Sprit the community of Christ participates in Christ as love.

David Prior is inspired by Barth’s comments to subtitle his interpretation of verse 7 as ‘Love and apparent darkness in God.’[5] I think this is helpful and is pushing further towards the acknowledgement that there are situations which cause us to question whether God cares, or even if God is really there – we cry out to God in the darkness, ‘Why?!’ Human pain can find a voice in these verses, which should not ever be used to diminish the experience of those who struggle to endure suffering. Perhaps verse 7 is most appropriately interpreted first from a Christological perspective – it is precisely because there are things which we cannot bear and endure, and situations in which our faith and hope are lost, that we need the love of Christ, which is victorious even in death. Jesus Christ ‘bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,’ and this is where we place our faith and hope in unbearable situations.

Paul ends the passage ‘faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love’ (v13) – in the resurrection life, our faith is different to how we experience it now, for we will be face to face with God; hope is different, for time is no more within God’s eternity; but love is the relationship between us and God, in Christ, by the work of the Holy Spirit. What we glimpse of that suffering love of Christ, with us and for us, when we face suffering now, will remain and be completely realised in our eternal relationship with God.

---

[1] Anthony C. Thistleton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. The New International Greek Testament Commentary. Eerdmans’s; Paternoster Press, 2000. p1056-7.

[2] ibid., p1026.

[3] Other commentators are divided on this translation issue: e.g. Gordon Fee uses the NIV option (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Revised Edition. Eerdmans’s, 2014. p522); both David Garland (1 Corinthians: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 2003. p486) and Paul Gardner use the NRSV option, but Gardner in particular, also acknowledges that Thistleton’s concerns need to be considered whenever that version is interpreted (1 Corinthians: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Harper Collins, 2018. p574).

[4] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume 4, part 2, The Doctrine of Reconciliation. (eds. G W Bromiley, Thomas F Torrance). T & T Clark, 1958. p835

[5] David Prior, The Message of 1 Corinthians: Life in the local church. IVP, 1993. p232.

by Michael Wakelin, Elaine Lindridge and Keith Albans.

³⁶He also told them a parable: ‘No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. ³⁷And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. ³⁸But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. ³⁹And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, “The old is good.” ’
Luke 5: 36-39

Although many professed the centrality to the life of their church of mission, community engagement and social action, when the 2020 lockdown hit, the two most common concerns expressed were about provision of weekly services and the management of buildings! Perhaps two expressions of our Christian identity are more deep-seated than we realised!

But the Covid-19 lockdowns have changed us, making some feel less able and willing to participate in the ways, and to the extent, that they had before, while others have reassessed their faith and the contexts of its out-workings.

The Fresh Expressions initiative has been with us since the late 1990s and within Methodism it has morphed into the New Places for New People (NPNP) programme, in which the Mother House is involved.

Some expressions have become home for people with an orthodox faith while others have both reimagined faith and church. All tend to see the focus of their activities away from the confines of the inherited church as they seek to navigate a way in the post-Christian world.

In his parables in Luke 5 Jesus ponders the difficulties of old and new co-existing – things get torn and wine gets spilt. In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul also writes about things getting broken, but now it is precisely so the treasure can be seen, and while the outer reality atrophies, his assurance is that ‘our inner nature is being renewed day by day’ (2 Cor 4: 16). In John 3 Nicodemus struggled with the idea of being born again, but if we’re to be renewed day by day, then we need to be born again, again … and again! And if Nicodemus is still asking, ‘How can this be?’ maybe Jesus will still be saying ‘The wind blows wherever it pleases!’ (John 3: 8)

As models and ideas of church change, history suggests that all too often there comes a point where new and old part ways, badly and acrimoniously. In the post-pandemic world, finding ways of walking together whereby those with inherited models of faith and church feel at home in a reimagined church is a key task.

And for the remnant church, the challenge remains of finding ways of expressing the key messages of a loving and endlessly merciful creator God and a Saviour who brings good news to those on the margins of society. And if it can be a church which is seen to be serving those who are outside its walls, then the call to be salt and light might be lived out.

For reflection:

• How do you respond to the concept that we can be born again, again?

• In the post-pandemic world, what do you think should be the key defining features of a reimagined church?

• After all of your discussions and reflections, do you have an answer to the recurring questions, What role for a remnant church? and Who is the remnant?

This year’s SPECTRUM Conference, What role for the Remnant Church? was held at Swanwick in mid-May and was led by Michael Wakelin and Elaine Lindridge, two speakers who have both written publicly of their growing conviction that some long-held beliefs and practices of Christians and the churches are in urgent need of close scrutiny and critique. Articles are in the form of discussion papers based on their session notes, with editing by Keith Albans – we have shared them periodically on Theology Everywhere. Also see Time for a New Reformation , Reimagining Faith, What are trying to say to the world?, Should I stay or should I go? and Discipleship for the remnant church.