Theology Everywhere

by Elaine Lindridge.

This is the first of a two-part series by Elaine. Part two will follow next week.

Scratch Art Cards were originally a children’s toy but are now quite popular for all ages. They work by scratching off a thick, dark layer of ink to reveal a lighter coloured layer beneath.

As a child, long before they were cheaply available on Amazon, we used to make them at school. The teacher would give us a sheet of card and using wax crayons we’d fill it with a rainbow of colours. Then the thick black wax crayon was used to completely cover over the colour. We’d be given a sharp implement (how times have changed!) and told to scrape off the black to make a new picture.

The memory of carefully scrapping off the black wax to discover a new picture made with beautiful rainbow colours has resurfaced in my thoughts recently. Mainly because I feel like I’m in the process of scraping away some unhelpful beliefs I’ve unwittingly inherited, and in doing so I’m discovering a thing of beauty.  

I could give many examples, but I’d like to focus on the person of Mary. Beautiful, colourful Mary Magdalene whose story has been forcibly cloaked in darkness for far too long.

This new picture has emerged for me through the teachings of Cynthia Bourgeault, Diana Butler Bass, and Mary herself in the words of the Gospel of Mary. I am no expert and I’m not going to pretend to have fully grasped the implications of all I am sharing. I simply offer this reflection as part of my own learning, journey and exploration into the divine feminine.

There is perhaps much ‘unlearning’ we need to do about Mary in order to discover something new in our understanding. The fabrication about Mary being a prostitute permeated the church so deeply that it took nearly 2000 years before it was rescinded – yet even now I still hear people talking about Mary the prostitute. What a travesty that this woman who was marked by Jesus as being ‘worthy’ has been denigrated by man-made lies for millennia. It was Pope Gregory in 591 who first pronounced her a ‘sinful woman’ even though there was evidence to the contrary in the Gospels. Before I was even born, Pope Paul VI removed the identification of Mary as a prostitute – and yet still this view remains in popular culture. Sometimes lies are more readily accepted than the truth.

So what do we actually know about her. Re-reading her story, I want to add my voice to those who now name her as the Apostle to the Apostles. News of the resurrection, and therefore Christianity, is derived from her being the first to encounter the risen Jesus and the first to act as a witness to that event and share the good news with others. She is named as the premier witness to the resurrection. Not only was she there, but she had faithfully and steadfastly remained with Jesus throughout the crucifixion. Hear Cynthia Bourgeault reflect on this;

          ‘All four gospels insist that when the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. She does not run, she does not betray or lie about her commitment, she witnesses. But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed? How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if [the role of Magdalene was acknowledged?] What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone & rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave? For surely this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church?’[1]

When the Holy Week liturgies only remind us that Jesus was betrayed, denied, and deserted, then we are merely shown a half-truth. Only telling those stories is like using a thick, black wax crayon to obliterate a beautiful story of faithful devotion and love. Where are the sermons and liturgies that reflect the dedication that Mary demonstrated?

This is all in our gospels and it’s only our perception that needs to be altered in order to see it. But what do we not see – or what have we been prevented from seeing? Surely questions need to be asked about Mary’s gospel, even if no clear answers are found. Deemed unorthodox by the men of the day, I can’t help but wonder if the attempted eradication of the text was simply a fear response. Was Mary and her message just too hot to handle? If so, that makes me want to study her gospel even more!

 And what if there is literally some black crayon that obscures some of the original texts that were deemed orthodox and make up the bible as we have it today? We will consider that next week.

To be continued!

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[1] ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene

by Josie Smith.

I am not by nature a marcher or a flag-waver or a displayer of placards.   But there are two protests I felt keenly and was not able to make, years ago, and still recall.

The first was in my Primary School days.    We walked to school alone at that time, or with friends we met on the way (something my great-grandchildren find incomprehensible in these fearful days when parents accompany their children to the school gates.   Didn’t my parents care, they want to know) – or sometimes in my case running to try to keep up with a long-legged and fast-walking male teacher at the same school, who lived next door to our family, made no concession for my little legs, and obviously found me an encumbrance.    It was quite a distance.

The school was led by an old-style head teacher, who was nearing retirement age and was remote and austere and frightening.   Each morning, he would lead the assembly, and we would dutifully sing the day’s hymn, and recite the Lord’s Prayer which we had learned by rote and didn’t mean much to most of us – but then he would call up to the platform those who had broken school rules or in other way transgressed.   And that was the point at which his cane came out.

I shall never forget a quiet boy called Michael, who was persistently late for school.    And just as persistently he was caned for being late, on the platform in front of the entire school.    After morning worship.     Did anyone ever ask why he was so often late?    Was he what these days we would call a Young Carer, having to do a lot of work at home to make life possible for a sick mother? Did anyone ever enquire into his home life? What effect this routine beating had on him I can’t guess, nor why it just went on happening, but my grown-up self still feels a sense of outrage.

I left that school when we moved house and I was nine years old, and one was not permitted to question the behaviour of grown-ups.

The second occasion was in church, when I was older, but still diffident.   Some small children were whispering to each other, making a bit of a disturbance and putting the elderly local preacher off his stride.    He stopped speaking, leaned forward with his hands grasping the pulpit Bible, and addressed these kids in a stern voice.     ‘God won’t love you if you’re naughty!’ he said, before resuming his task.

My whole being was shocked.     I wanted to stand up in my pew (we had pews then) and say ‘BUT THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!’   Did he not remember that bit about ‘while we were yet sinners’?    The Grace of God is never conditional!    To this day I feel – again – a sense of outrage.     My adult self wants me to have protested then, but I was only a young member, and was surrounded by elders of the congregation who did nothing.     And one did not answer back in church.

It is often said that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’.     So, I thank God that there are people who have the guts to shout, and march, and protest, and DO SOMETHING.    Heaven knows, there is so much that is wrong, so much hatred and injustice and cruelty and suffering in the world, and doing nothing is not an option.    So I am on the side of the marchers, the whistleblowers, the little solitary Greta Thunbergs pictured on the school steps, the victims of ill-considered decisions – and all who, in whatever way, speak truth to power.    Though my active days are behind me, I can still use words, to Them in Westminster, and to local government, and to businesses, and in encouragement to those who have the energy I no longer have; to light their own candle in the darkness.

by Andrew Pratt.

I walked into a café. You may know it. No matter. There were three floors. The appeal was that I entered at ground level. My right knee had been troubling me and I didn’t want to climb more than I had to. Each floor had a series of tables occupied by one, two, occasionally four people. Though the people were working this wasn’t the usual plethora of laptops, headphones and other paraphernalia. Casual conversation could be heard between the individuals, nothing intense. The atmosphere was relaxed. They were, you might say, pottering. And that sowed the seed of a thought, a germ of spirituality.

Jeremiah, I think, spoke? Wrote? It matters not how the picture developed. It told of a potter and a spoilt jar, squashed, broken, beaten down, then remodelled, refashioned. An allegory of healing? Of reconciliation? Of salvation?

And I noticed that the people were handling pottery, turning it this way and that, carefully manipulating its position so that different, sides, facets, shapes were exposed to view. Gently, or vigorously, they applied paint. Delicate shades like clouds of coloured mist, or sharp jagged lettering describing words, short, staccato sentences.

I wonder if people you see and the things they’re doing ever make you think laterally, take a sideways jump into something unrelated. Perhaps it’s me, though I’ve noticed it in comedians, that it’s not unusual to have an unexpected perspective that makes you think, or laugh, or perhaps both.

That visit to a café, if you want to seek it out it’s in Conwy in North Wales, prompted a train of thought that I want to share. It relates to our ability to use art, words, images to transcend solid things round us and enter something which for me can have a spiritual dimension. Let me explain.

As the people talked, ordinary conversation, the message was not in their words, but the actions in which they were involved. In the throwing of the pottery shape and form had been determined. This was now redefined as colour, light and shade offered perspective. If this had been thought and argument, I sensed that the conversation was shifting. This was now a matter of co-creativity, substance and creator cooperating, or resisting, something new, or evolved. A unique perspective was emerging.

What had been soft, malleable, wet, had now been shaped, then shaded. Ultimately each observer determined when completion was reached, or at least this act of creation, of evolution, could go no further. To kiln and fire each object found itself consigned. Here the testing heat would confirm and set, or fracture, and destroy what had been made.

And as I reflected this mirrored for me something of the life of faith. We grasp something which changes the direction of our lives, a moment of conversion, if you like. Then how we live as much, if not more than what we believe, changes. And are we as human beings tested like the pot being fired, in some parallel way? And if, in our audacity, we strive to improve on this cosmos, which has hatched and nurtured us, and we let our pride run free, what will be the conclusion? If we risk running with the change our faith has formed, humbly accepting that we owe to each other, and to the cosmos, little less than our whole being, what then?

Will fire allow our hatred to exist? Or will our kindness sear our being so that we, born of this earth, this clay, permeate all we are? Might not that greater goodness be the endpoint of our existence?

by Stephen Lindridge.

Though it’s only early September the autumn weather has already brushed up close. Having moved nearer the coast I had my my first taste of fog. A warm summer day lead to a muggy and very dense day of fog. It seemed almost like low cloud. What could be seen so clearly the day before, now it was like it didn’t exist.

The sunning views over the Tyne and down the coast were gone. It’s funny how the mind works when something you knew was there suddenly cannot be seen. I could get lost in a range of pondering questions but the simple truth I reflected on was how the fog brought my focus upon what was close up. No longer casting an eye upon the horizon but to what was before me.

Some might say in the same foggy conditions “you can’t see very much!” True, but it does bring the immediate space you can see into greater attention. The parallel between these unexpected weather conditions and my own situation, caused me to stop and reflect. Having just left a role I have served in for nearly a decade, these last few weeks have felt a little like my focus is very much on what’s immediately before me. I have to say it has brought me much joy and thanksgiving.

To gain a fresh look and some basic things and having the gift of time to truly be attentive to them has been a great blessing. It brought to my mind the time when Jesus’ focus changes, in his journey to raise Jairus’ daughter, as a woman grasps the hem of his garment (verse 30 in Mark 5:20-43). Jesus turns his attention from the on coming to the present, his time is given to attend to the now.

The Bible has a lot to say about the heart. Our heart, God’s heart and what’s being described about it. I am learning that ‘being present’ is a not so much a head action but that it’s a heart one. Those who’ve studied ‘heart-math’^[1], know our hearts are far more complicated, and modern science is discovering again what the ancients knew all too well. We need to attend to our hearts, what’s right in front of us and hear, see, feel, what’s being encountered.

Scientists have discovered the heart has its own complex nervous system. Based on over 25 years of scientific research observing interactions between the heart and the brain they have discovered that the heart possess a network of nerves which contain over 40,000 neurones. More than this the heart communicates with the brain through: hormones biochemically, pulse waves biophysically and energetically through electromagnetic fields.

So we think about what scripture has to say to us about a pure heart (Matthew 5: 8). Jesus said pure hearts can receive love. Love is the way that brings tenderness and forgiveness and compassion to ourselves, that is honest with how we are feeling. It is actually important to stop and notice, to recognise when we’re very stressed out, or anxious, angry, frustrated, and being able to listen to that. Don’t suppress it, listen to it. Don’t resist it, for that is wisdom of the heart – welcome it and see what it has to say to you. Because resisting it can affect your heart rhythm pattern and therefore your thinking. Learning how to change your heart rhythm back in to a regular pattern that restores a balance in our system, bringing a calm state where we can make wise decisions, and order harmony to our minds.

As we attend to our emotions and allow them to flow naturally our hearts will be pure. We can’t have a pure heart when we are emotionally constipated. When we attend to our emotions they naturally dissolve – resting in the heart of God. The heart invites us to ask – what’s the most important thing in this life I need to attend to?

We can find a myriad of ways to let God’s love fill our hearts. The important things is that we do it. I was speaking to a retired senior leader some time back and he said to me the hamster wheel just seemed to be getting faster and faster over this last decade. He said he was more convinced than ever we need to make time every day and in the everyday to drink in what God through Christ’s love wants to breath into us. So I welcomed the fog descending, shortening my focus and reminding me again to pay attention to what’s before me, what’s in my heart and to discover a fresh the value of life in all its fulness. What unexpected interruptions help you to notice God and what the Holy Spirit may be whispering to you to be attentive to?

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^[1] https://www.heartmath.com/science/

by Ken Howcroft.

This is the second of Ken’s two-part series. We published part one last week.

This piece looks at the dynamics around the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, whether there are any traces of them in the Gospel of Mark, and prompts the question of what might be any implications for us today. Part 1 set the historic background. This Part 2 looks at the time of Jesus and the early Church.

Herod the Great died in 4 BCE. Augustus divided Herod’s kingdom into 4 areas to be ruled by three of his sons. Herod Antipas ruled two of them, Galilee and Peraea, until his death in 39 CE. Philip ruled the area east of the Jordan to the north of Peraea until his death in 34 CE. The area of Judaea (including Jerusalem), Idumea and Samaria was ruled by Herod Antipas from 4 BCE until Augustus removed him for incompetence in 6 CE. It was then made into an enlarged Roman province until 41 CE.

Augustus died in 14 CE, and Tiberius ruled until 37. In 26 CE Tiberius appointed Pontius Pilate as procurator of the province of Judaea. To establish his authority Pilate sent his troops to Jerusalem. Josephus states that they entered the city by night with their military standards bearing images that conservative Jews found offensive. People rushed to Pilate in Caesarea to object. Pilate backed down, and continued to rule until 36/7 CE.

Tiberius died in 37 CE and was succeeded by Caligula, whose close friend was Herod Agrippa I. He was a grandson of Herod the Great from Herod’s marriage to a Hasmonean princess. He was named Marcus Julius Agrippa in honour of Augustus’s son-in-law and right-hand man, and spent most of his early years in Rome. In 37 he was appointed by Caligula to be king of the region previously ruled by Philip. Caligula then deposed Herod Antipas, and gave Agrippa that kingdom as well.

Then in 40/1 Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be placed in the Jerusalem Temple and that he be worshipped as a god. That doubtless raised fears of another ‘abomination of desolation’.  He was bravely dissuaded from this at least for a time by his friend Herod Agrippa, to whom he promised the kingdom of his grandfather, Herod the Great. But Caligula then again demanded to be worshipped, and the Temple’s situation was only saved when he was assassinated. Agrippa was then prominent in Claudius being acclaimed as the new Emperor. In return Claudius added Judaea and Samaria to his kingdom.

Claudius ruled from 41-54 CE, followed by Nero from 54-68. In 64 Nero sent Gessius Florus to be governor of Judaea. In 66 Florus used Samaritan troops to confiscate a large sum of money from the Temple. Riots ensued, and when Florus  responded savagely, militants seized control of the Temple. They were led by a young priest, Eleazar. He banned gestures of loyalty to Rome and sacrifices made and paid for on behalf of Caesar. War ensued. The militants defeated the Samaritan garrison and the moderate Judaean peace party. But when the Roman governor of Syria was on the point of taking the Temple, he inexplicably withdrew his troops. They were ambushed and massacred, and the eagle of the XII Legion Fulminata was lost.

Nero’s death in 68 led to the year of the four Emperors, the last of whom, Vespasian, had become the Roman commander in the Jewish war. As he returned to Rome, proclaimed by Josephus as the fulfilment of Jewish messianic prophecies, his son Titus completed the siege of Jerusalem and the final destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Not one stone was left on another.

It was around 70 that the Gospel of Mark probably reached its written form. In Mark 5 the tormented man at Gerasa is called Legion. That term always refers to or alludes to the Roman army. So what is oppressing him is the Roman army. The evil is driven back to the pigs (which were ‘unclean’ so far as Jews were concerned, and so a suitable home for it), and then into the lake (the waters of chaos out of which God created order in Genesis 1). The emblem of the X Legion Fretensis, which was in the region throughout the first century period and which eventually destroyed the Temple, was the wild boar.

In Mark 11 the stories of the temple and the fig tree are intertwined. Jesus prophetically acts against the animal sellers and money-changers in the Court of the Gentiles. He says that the court should be a house of prayer for all nations (gentiles) and not a militant, nationalistic bandits’ den (which is what the word often translated as ‘robbers’ means).

In Mark 12:13ff Jesus is asked about how to deal with the competing claims of the Emperor and the Jewish God. Jesus responds profoundly. If they have Roman coins they are already compromised. If he had asked for a Temple coin, the Tyrian shekels the temple used had an image of the pagan god Melkart on them, and again they would already be compromised.

At the end of Mark 12, Jesus turns his attention to religious tendencies to idolise buildings and status at the expense of living faithfully. The Torah says that the worshipping community should care for widows, orphans and migrants. The Temple is turning that on its head and impoverishing a widow to keep itself and its practices going. In Mark 13 the disciples wonder at the huge stones in the Temple, which had not long been completed. Jesus says that not one stone will be left on another. Jesus then warns of the abomination of desolation appearing. Pilate’s troops had recently brought standards into the city. When these stories were told around 40 CE the saying would resonate with Caligula’s plans for his statue. In 70 it would resonate with the destruction of the Temple.

What might it resonate with today? We have military, economic and political ‘empires’ that can do good or be oppressive. We have local leaders and groups that can do the same, and which often struggle with the ‘empires’ and with each other. What does it mean for us as the contemporary incarnation of the body of Christ to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s?

by Ken Howcroft.

This is the first of a two-part series by Ken. Part two will follow next week.

The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE at a time of regime change in Rome was a major event, and catastrophic for the Jewish people. Have you ever wondered why it is not directly mentioned in the New Testament? Does it have any lasting implications for us in our world? This piece turns over the stones that were thrown down (Mark 13:2) to look at the roles in the drama played by the Temple and its authorities, sundry Herods and the Romans, and the traces of their interactions in the Gospel of Mark. It is in two parts. Part 1 sets the historic background. Part 2 will look at the time of Jesus and the early Church.

The story begins in the time of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled swathes of the Middle East from 175 to 164 BCE. The priestly elite in Jerusalem were at first happy to ‘modernise’ and transform Jerusalem into an Hellenistic city. But in 169 BCE Antiochus IV had  visited Jerusalem and looted the Temple, and then in 167 rededicated its Temple to Olympian Zeus. This is what the Book of Daniel refers to as the ‘abomination of desolation’. it led to a rebellion led by the Maccabees. They ousted the traditional (hereditary) high-priestly families and were then themselves declared to be High Priest-Kings in what we have come to know as the Hasmonean dynasty.

Not all of this was universally popular. One member of the traditional families, Onias IV, failed in an attempt to be reinstated in Jerusalem by the Seleucids and so went off to Egypt around 160 BCE and founded an alternative Temple and cult in Leontopolis. Yet another group of the old elite, the Sadducees, supported the Hasmoneans. A more moderate group however continued seeking to engage with Hellenistic rulers. Against this, the lay movement of Pharisees opposed the Hasmoneans for their usurpation of the High Priesthood. The group that centred around the Dead Sea Scrolls (probably Essenes or closely linked to them) similarly believed that the High Priest-Kings were illegitimate, and also that the Temple rituals were being conducted wrongly on a lunar rather than a solar calendar.

There were therefore major tensions between Jewish groups which focussed on the Temple. These continued for the next two hundred years. In 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey intervened to bring Judaea under direct Roman rule. He besieged and captured Jerusalem. He entered the Temple and, whether inadvertently or not, went into the Holy of Holies and thereby desecrated it. The following day he ordered that it be purified and its rituals resumed.  He left the Hasmonean priests in office, but deprived them of what we would call ‘political’ power.

In 54 BCE however Crassus, who with Julius Caesar and Pompey made up the First Triumvirate, plundered the Temple’s money and gold.

Things began to change with the parallel rise to power of Herod the Great in Judaea and the Emperor Augustus In the whole of the Roman Empire. Herod was a loyal client of Mark Antony. In 47 BCE he was named by the Romans as governor of Galilee. In 40 the Roman Senate appointed him King of Judaea and supported him in regaining Jerusalem from the Parthians in 37 and gaining complete control of the country in 34. When Julius Caesar’s heir, Octavian, had defeated Antony in 31 and become the Emperor Augustus, Herod skilfully moved from being Antony’s loyal client to Augustus’s.   

Augustus’s attempts to settle the empire were mirrored in Herod’s to settle Jerusalem and Judaea. Both involved the creation of infrastructure and investment in huge public building works. While the former built, for example, the Forum Augustum in Rome, the latter built a new harbour and city in Roman style on the coast at Caesarea Maritima (the choice of name being significant!). Aligned with the harbour rather than with the city streets he built an imposing temple to Roma and Augustus. The Roman Empire was being opened up to the Jews.

At the same time in Jerusalem Herod almost completely rebuilt and extended the Temple. The extension included the creation of a Court of the Gentiles which took up about half of the total area. In it Gentiles could study and pray. But also Jews and Gentiles wanting to offer sacrifices and make money offerings could buy temple-approved animals and change their money into temple-approved Tyrian shekels there.  The Temple was being opened up to the Gentiles in general, and the Roman Empire in particular.

Herod therefore followed Augustus in enacting a policy of “eusebeia” – performing the actions that were appropriate to the gods, particularly ‘local’ gods. According to Livy, Augustus was “the founder and restorer of all sanctuaries”. The Jewish writers Josephus and Philo say that in Jerusalem Augustus presented the temple with golden vessels and other precious gifts, and he ordered that whole-offering sacrifices be made on his behalf, paid for from his private purse. That is not the same as saying that he should be worshipped and sacrifices offered to him. His son-in-law and main military commander Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (with whom Herod’s family were closely linked) paid for a hundred oxen to be sacrificed, together with other gifts.

But what did the various Jewish factions make of all this, and are there any traces in, for example, the Gospel of Mark?  We shall explore that in Part 2.

by Will Fletcher.

One of the first posts I wrote here  focused on  my hobby of playing in a brass band. In recent years, I’ve started having a  go at birdwatching. I must admit to not being very good – I don’t always have the patience, and I’m not the best at identifying what I see. However, I do like that it makes me walk a bit slower, being more aware of what is around me. I’m also grateful to friends and church members who have taken me on birdwatching walks and helped me start to learn a little more.

A few weeks ago, I visited a local RSPB reserve on my own. There are a series of hides around the site looking over several ponds. I was in one of those hides looking at the few ducks and geese swimming about. There didn’t seem much out of the ordinary. I was on the verge of moving on. But instead, I lingered a bit longer, and had another scan of the pond with my binoculars. There, in the pond, was a bird I hadn’t seen before, wading through the shallows. After consulting my book (and with confirmation from others present) this mysterious bird was a green sandpiper. Probably not that exciting for experienced birdwatchers, but a nice spot for me.

However, what struck me, was that this bird had been there all the time. It hadn’t flown in but was going about its business unseen by me. What is more, when I took my eyes off it, it disappeared again, until I looked carefully again and found it in a slightly different place in the pond.

This made me think about my encounters with God. My rhythm of prayer is familiar, and sustaining because of that. Watching ducks and geese can be enjoyable enough. Yet it sometimes needs that intention to linger that little bit longer. When it feels as though there is nothing out of the ordinary to see or experience, when there is the danger that the pattern of prayer can feel like a routine where I can predict or expect how things will be, then I need to remember the urge to hold on a little longer, pray a little slower.

As with birdwatching, there still might not be anything unusual to notice. But sometimes, just sometimes, there is the surprising discovery of God present in a way unseen before. Maybe it is in the word of Scripture I’m reading, a line from a hymn, a glimpse at an icon, an ancient prayer, a scene of creation before me, a phrase in a piece of music. Things that feel familiar, yet infused with something new.

It isn’t that God has suddenly appeared, as though God could be absent somehow. Instead, God is the bird that was there all along, in the midst of the busyness of life. With time and care taken to noticing, a new sense of God’s presence is found.

Yet how quickly my attention can slip from that realisation, back to the bustle of life all around me. I remember the jobs I’m meant to be doing, the phone calls I’m meant to make. I start thinking about what I’m going to preach on that coming Sunday, or what I fancy for dinner! So many thoughts flood my mind, distracting me from the thing most important. Despite this rare spot, I’m back again looking at the ducks and geese.

I turn back to where I spotted God before – I rewind the music, I re-sing the hymn, I re-read the Scripture, I look again at the view before me – but it has returned to the everyday. That newness has faded. Have I lost God? Has God departed from me? Taking time to look carefully once more, to turn away from the ducks and the geese, I open myself up once more to discover in a new place, a new moment, the God who has always been there.

This, for me, is at the heart of what prayer is. Not saying the right words to welcome God into my space and time, but creating the space to allow myself to glimpse the God who is always present, and feel that excitement of heart and soul when I do. With that, is also the reassurance when it feels as though I’m only looking at ducks and geese, that God is there in surprising ways, just, as yet, unseen. 

by Simon Edwards.

I was recently convinced by two of my children that they were ready to make use of ‘my’ Lego, which has been stored in several lofts since I was about 16. The instructions have long since disappeared, and the once bright white bricks are now pale yellow, but I know what they can become, I know which boats or aeroplanes or cars could be built. As the children examined the contents, one said to the other “where should we start?”, and the reply was “let’s look at the pieces and see what we can build together.” I returned to later to see that a boat had emerged, a boat that looked familiar, but had never been created before. As I pondered whether my Lego should be used to create things that I hadn’t thought of, I realised that this was an example of how we engage with theology. The church has a treasury of history, tradition, ecclesiology, theology and experience, but perhaps the first step should always be to “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.” 

I am fascinated by the discipline of Practical Theology, which calls us to explore and reflect on experience to gain new theological insight, as Eileen Campbell-Reed notes, practical theology ‘is nothing without a context. Whatever it tries to be without context will be neither practical nor theology’ (2016, p.38). The theological process is a cyclical one, as any experience continues to be explored; it becomes a cycle of reflection which informs theory or practice and leads to further reflection. The aim of this cyclical reflection is articulated by Bennett et al., who propose that the ‘principle of practical theology to date has been to undertake work that makes a practical difference to the life of the Church and the world’ (2018, p.154). In a sense, a new understanding that comes from a commitment to “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.” 

Where do we start? We start with what we have: experience. But it might not be quite as simple as that, because there are (at least) two ways to approach practical theology. Both approaches value the knowledge that can be gained through exploring an experience, but differ in their method. The first potential approach is to begin with established theological principals and use these as a lens through which an experience can be explored. Swinton and Mowat argue that in this exploration, theology must be privileged because ‘the overarching framework within which practical theology takes place is theological. Theology offers a perspective on knowledge, truth and reality’ (2006, p.76). The exploration of an experience provides new ways in which a previously established theological principle can be understood, revealing new perspectives within an theological existing framework. A second way to engage in practical theology is to give priority to the experience without imposing any existing theological framework. Bennet et al argue that in practical theology, ‘everything is up for questioning and critical scrutiny, including the taken-for-granted processes, beliefs and thought patterns of human societies, religious beliefs and practices, and theological constructions’ (Bennett et al., 2018, pp.29-30).

Some of my current work in circuit is amongst pioneers, particularly working in buildings and communities where the Methodist society has ceased to meet, but the building remains open. ‘Where do we start?’ is a question that we return to regularly as we seek to build new ecclesial communities that are embedded within the context. Do we start with what there was and seek to recreate a society where Sunday morning was the principal act, to start with an established theological principal? Or do we do as my two children did and “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.”  We look and see, we examine, and we reflect together asking what there might be of God here; we follow the model where everything is up for questioning and scrutiny. We carefully explore and listen to the voices in the context, and we are beginning to see something new, familiar, but most certainly new, emerge, even though we might not know quite what it is yet! 

With the growth of New Places for New People (and Fresh Expressions or Emerging Church) we are seeing new kinds of ecclesial communities being born. They bring a certain familiarity, but also a wonderful newness as they deeply explore their own context, all that they have, and together see what can be built. 

The key to all of this is that we take seriously the idea that the world in which we live and have our being has much to say theologically, and that every context offers something different, perhaps familiar, but different. We then return to where we began, as we explore theology, all that is familiar, history, tradition, ecclesiology and theology but without imposing existing principles as we “look at the pieces and see what we can build together.”  When we do this, I think that we can find that theology is truly everywhere and sometimes it can even surprise us.

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Bennett, Z., Graham, E., Pattison, S. and Walton, H., 2018. Invitation to research in practical theology. Oxon: Routledge.

Campbell-Reed, E.R., 2016. The power and danger of a single case study in practical theology. In: J.A. Mercer and B.J. Miller-McLemore, 2016. Conundrums in practical theology. Boston, MA: Brill. Ch2

by Leslie Newton.

In the early days of the Fresh Expressions movement the then Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Revd Rowan Williams, coined the phrase ‘mixed economy’ to describe how the Church of the future could embrace both the ‘old’ (or ‘inherited’ or ‘time-honoured’) expressions of church, and the ‘new’ emerging patterns of Christian mission and community.  That was such a helpful image and insight.  Over time the phrase has in some quarters been augmented, or succeeded, by the phrase ‘mixed ecology’ embracing helpful metaphors of nature.  Michael Beck, United Methodist and influential Fresh Expressions leader in the United States now talks of ‘blended ecology.’  His deliberate substitution of the word ‘blended’ is to emphasise the need to ensure that the ‘inherited’ learns and gains from the ‘new’, and the ‘new’ is inspired and fed by the treasures of the ‘inherited’.  The ‘old’ and the ‘new’ need each other!

However, finding ways to enable a ‘blended ecology’ to develop healthily and fruitfully is hard and challenging.  It’s not easy to get to the point where the ‘inherited’ and ‘new’ can really both flourish side by side, in such a way that the result is becoming more than the sum of their parts.  Many circuits, and leaders of both inherited and new contexts, have stories to tell, sometimes with great pain and sadness, of how hard that is proving to be.

An insight I find helpful as we travel this journey is that of ‘Dual Transformation.’  The research underpinning this approach identifies the need to recognise that the work of developing the ‘inherited’ and pioneering the ‘new’ are very different pieces of enterprise.  One is about working with ‘what is’ to support greater health and flourishing. The other is about creating ‘what is not yet’ to become healthy and flourishing.  

The principles of ‘Dual Transformation’ highlight that we can’t do both things well under the same rules: inherited patterns and polity really struggles with new creation! Working with ‘what is’ and ‘what is not yet’ require two entirely different leadership models.

So, although the ultimate aim is for a flourishing ‘blended ecology’, what is needed first of all is to create lots of space for both the ‘new’ and the ‘inherited’ to be valued, supported and encouraged as very distinctively different types of ministry and mission.  As both ‘new’ and ‘inherited’ then flourish within their own ecosystem, the ways in which they can benefit each other become apparent.

In Acts 15 we read of a key moment in the early Church as they wrestled with the interplay between the ‘inherited’ and the ‘new.’  The Council at Jerusalem were struggling to discern what to expect of the new Gentile believers: effectively how much of their ways of being Christian should be expected from those of a completely different background.  Their conclusion was courageous, faith-filled and liberating.  In verse 28 we read that they recognised the prompting of the Holy Spirit to declare that they should not place any extra burdens on the new believers.  This message was received with ‘rejoicing’ by the Gentiles in Antioch (verse 31).  This pivotal declaration fuelled the continuing growth and expansion of the early Church by encouraging diversity to burgeon.  And over time the ’blended ecology’ of mutually enriched mission and ministry did emerge.

As we give thanks for the lead of this year’s Methodist Conference in making the development of the God for All strategy a continuing priority in the next few years, I think it’s important for us to take all this on board.  For the creation of the ‘new’ to really flourish we may need to give it more creative space from our inherited structures than we’ve yet considered.  For the ‘inherited’ to be renewed and play its vital ongoing part we may need to ensure its contribution is more fully honoured and valued than is sometimes evident.

In travelling this path, we must also be careful to remember that ‘creating distinctive space’ for both streams is not about pursuing ‘separation’ and must never lead to ‘competition’.  As Michael Beck identifies: ’The blended ecology is not healthy if both inherited and emerging forms do not have some influence on the other.  As both grow and influence each other, the whole church is strengthened.’[1]

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[1] Michael Beck in Deep Roots, Wild Branches , Revitalizing the Church in the Blended Ecology, 2019, page 10

by Hannah Fremont-Brown.

At my baptism, I was given several pink-spined compendiums that celebrated the presence of women in the Bible. Over the years, the invitation merely to acknowledge the presence of these women and gloss over the complicated contexts they come with has become increasingly unsatisfying. Holding on to my faith has required me to wrestle with the way that the stories of these women and the history of interpretation that accompanies them jars with my understanding of God’s desire for justice.

The invitation of feminist theologians to read biblical texts with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” has been empowering in this task. It has enabled me to notice where the presence of women in the Bible (or interpretation of it) has come at the cost of their exploitation, oppression or lack of agency. Reading with a hermeneutic of suspicion, the goal is not to find a lens which resolves gender equality. Instead, it is liberation.

Take my namesake Hannah’s story, for example. In the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, we encounter Hannah, longing for a child and appealing to God. Hannah’s story is often used to highlight the benefits of prayerful petition. Whilst this may be a good message, using Hannah’s experience to demonstrate it feels uncomfortable. At the boundaries of Hannah’s story, we encounter limitations which mean both her desires and agency are shaped by her need for survival. Hannah’s longing for a son is not simply borne of desire or rivalry with her husband’s second wife, Peninnah, but of necessity. Without a son, Hannah risks becoming kinless after her husband’s death, left to poverty. Her husband, neither childless nor dependent on his offspring to survive, taunts her with her own desperation by constantly questioning her love.

Hannah does express agency throughout the narrative: she names her child, dedicates him to Yahweh, petitions God in prayer and sings out in celebration. In fact, she is the subject of a verb in the narrative more than three times than she is the object. We even glimpse notes of social transformation in her prayer. But all of Hannah’s power to act is tied to her desperate need to bear a son. Her agency beyond the domestic sphere is neither mentioned nor operated, should it even exist. Even the only other woman in the narrative is exploited to this end: as the rivalry between Hannah and Peninnah is used as a narrative tool to demonstrate divine intervention, we ignore the exploitation of both women’s experiences to prop up a moral message.

As 1 Samuel continues, men become kings and Hannah returns to domestic life, her future secure but the limitations of her world intact. Hannah’s story may well be a vehicle for a bigger message, but her experience of it does very little to transform the restrictions imposed on her because of her gender.  As her song concludes, the narrative moves on, dominant structures are fixed, and Hannah is eclipsed from the picture. Even if transformation is to occur in the long term, as Hannah’s song predicts, she won’t be part of it.

Is Hannah’s story redeemable despite all of this? Does it even need to be redeemed in order for it to be part of the good news of the Bible? Perhaps Hannah’s experience of God at work in her life is enough to be good news. Hannah exercises her agency; her plea is heard by God and her future secured. But this isn’t liberation. Hannah’s desire is shaped and met by a patriarchal structure which goes on to be upheld beyond her lifetime. Change happens, but transformation never occurs.

If we’re reading with the goal of liberation, then we must be uncomfortable when the Bible stops short of this. We cannot be comfortable with an understanding of a God who is content to work through structures that perpetuate oppression but never break them. We cannot be satisfied when boundaries that reduce agency and deny power are upheld, even celebrated, because they set the scene for an interesting moral message. If we settle for easy answers that dismiss the pain experienced by people because of inequality and injustice, this does not feel like good news.

Instead, perhaps this complexity and discomfort is exactly what we should seek. Feminist biblical scholar Elna Mouton suggests that a feminist interpretation of the Bible invites us to learn to rest in the liminal space between “wonder” and “discomfort”. ^[i] We must “experience and account for both the richness and the complexity, both the admiration (awe, trust, hope) and the discomfort”. ^[ii] In doing so, we create safe spaces, in Mouton’s words “risky and fragile” spaces, where we experience God’s offer of life alongside all of creation – not just the privileged few. God’s freedom embraces complexity, and our task as readers in pursuit of liberation is to work at the thresholds, refusing to leave anyone trapped by interpretations that uphold unjust structures of oppression. This feels more like good news to me.

 

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[i] Elna Mouton, “Feminist Biblical Interpretation: How Far Do We Have Yet To Go?”, in L. Juliana Claasens and Carolyn J. Sharp, Feminist Frameworks and the Bible: Power, Ambiguity and Intersectionality, (Bloomsbury: T&T Clark, 2017), pp. 211-220, (p. 216).

[ii] Mouton, “Feminist Biblical Interpretation”, p. 216.