The smart reviews that tell me what the chattering classes are reading, have publicised the publication of a book by one Margaret Magnusson on the Swedish art of Döstädning, which means “Death Cleaning”. This does not mean taking a bath before you snuff it, in the spirit of my mother who always advised clean underwear in case I was run over by a tram, when such cleanliness would preserve the family honour; nor does it mean the cleaning of my abode by my next of kin after my death.  It is in fact the daily practice of keeping nothing that might be a burden and/ or an embarrassment to my family after my death. Around the age of forty I should begin to clear out such items so that I can die with a good conscience knowing that my treasured collection of Japanese erotic drawings has been safely donated to the Church of Scotland Naughty Ministers’ Archive.

I find this very Swedish in its orderly rationality, and also in its benign assumption that I would want to spare my family either work or embarrassment. I might guess that far from neing embarrassed by post- mortem revelations, they would in fact be entertained by finding me the same in death as in life. Were they shockable I might still want to tease their sensitive souls with the letter which proves my missionary great grandmother had an affair with a Congolese cannibal, from whom we are all descended.

Of course the death cleaning is also meant to apply to possessions which are no longer useful or desirable, as these will simply add to the labour of those who are clearing my house post mortem meum. It is suggested that unwanted books might be regularly given to friends or neighbours. Mmn? Would this really be an act of charity, or might it be the end of decent relationships. After a while, seeing me coming, they would turn off the TV and hide in the cupboard under the stair, whispering, “Oh no! First it was ‘Teach Yourself Origami” then it was ‘ Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason’; what on earth can it be this time? The ‘Complete Artichoke Grower’?”

I can see that the Swedish art might be useful with certain bits of furniture. Not that my house is over-stocked with these. My wife will bear witness that I have asked disapprovingly, “Do we really need chairs in the lounge? Can’t we move them from the kitchen if we have visitors?” But from time to time we have been given furniture by dear ones which turned out to be worse than the gap they filled. Like the “champagne chesterfield” donated by my mother which turned out to be a very big beige sofa made by Wartime Replicas Ltd. It sat in the lounge, large and unloved, until the cat peed on it and it had to be put down.

I suppose that döstädning arose because Swedes are dutiful consumers, making purchases at the rate approved for socially responsible capitalists, from art and music shops, from Habitat and Ikea, and from intelektual bøkstøres. Without doubt this might require fairly regular uncluttering. It seems not to have occurred to them that you could decide not to clutter things up in the first place; refuse to consume anything other than food and drink, and purchase mainly items that you needed and that might last.

Nevertheless I suspect I have not heard the end of death cleaning, and that people and publications which are attuned to the Zeitgeist will talk about, and perhaps start doing it. Just at the very time when Government cuts have minimised our recycling services. At the risk of sounding smug, I ought to leave my readers with some genuine wisdom on this topic:

Matthew 6

25 ( Jesus said) “Therefore, I tell you, don’t worry about your life — what you will eat or drink; or about your body — what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds flying about! They neither plant nor harvest, nor do they gather food into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they are? 27 Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to his life?

28 “And why be anxious about clothing? Think about the fields of wild irises, and how they grow. They neither work nor spin thread, 29 yet I tell you that not even Shlomo in all his glory was clothed as beautifully as one of these. 30 If this is how God clothes grass in the field — which is here today and gone tomorrow, thrown in an oven — won’t he much more clothe you? What little trust you have!

31 “So don’t be anxious, asking, ‘What will we eat?,’ ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘How will we be clothed?’ 32 For it is the pagans who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. 33 But seek first his Kingdom and his justice and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Don’t worry about tomorrow — tomorrow will worry about itself! Today has enough problems already!

People who follow this teaching would not need döstâding.

In the old days when ministers held communicants classes – nowadays new believers tend  not to come in batches- I had a  class of ten young people and one man in his eighties. When I asked them to say why they had decided to take this step now, he answered, “I thought it was time to study for my finals…”

Maybe it’s time for me to do the same. This week for example I’ve been busy as a locum minister and therefore been too tired to write a blog. It’s not so very long ago that I was working almost full-time yet hardly ever missed a blog. W.B Yeats asked in a poem, “Who could have foretold / that the heart grows old?” I think my heart is reasonably young, but my brain?

These intimations of mortality have been encouraged by hearing on the radio a short extract from Bach’s Cantata 82, which sings of death in the character of Simeon, the faithful old man who received and blessed the child Jesus when he was presented in the Temple, saying:

Now Lord you let your servant depart in peace

according to your word

for my eyes have seen your salvation

which you have prepared in the presence of all people:

a light to enlighten the Gentiles

and to be a glory of your people Israel.

Bach’s text takes this incident and generalises it as a moment in the faith of all believers:

1.Aria

Ich habe genug,
Ich habe den Heiland, das Hoffen der Frommen,
Auf meine begierigen Arme genommen;
Ich habe genug!

It is enough.
I have held the Savior, the hope of all peoples,
In the warm embrace of my arms.
It is enough.

Ich hab ihn erblickt,
Mein Glaube hat Jesum ans Herze gedrückt;
Nun wünsch ich, noch heute mit Freuden
Von hinnen zu scheiden.

I have seen him,
My faith has impressed Jesus on my heart;
Now I wish this very day
To depart from here with joy.

2
Recitativo
Ich habe genug.
Mein Trost ist nur allein,
Dass Jesus mein und ich sein eigen möchte sein.
Im Glauben halt ich ihn,
Da seh ich auch mit Simeon
Die Freude jenes Lebens schon.
Laßt uns mit diesem Manne ziehn!
Ach! möchte mich von meines Leibes Ketten
Der Herr erretten;
Ach! wäre doch mein Abschied hier,l
Mit Freuden sagt ich, Welt, zu dir:
Ich habe genug.

It is enough.
My one consolation is this:
That I am Jesus’ beloved and he is mine.
In faith, I hold him.
For in Simeon, I already see
The joy of life to come.
Let us go forth with Simeon!
Ah! if only the Lord
Would free me from my body’s enslavement;
Ah! if indeed my liberation were soon,
With joy I would say to you, O World,
It is enough.

3
Aria
Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen,
Fallet sanft und selig zu!

Slumber, my weary eyes,
Fall softly and close in contentment.

Welt, ich bleibe nicht mehr hier,
Hab ich doch kein Teil an dir,
Das der Seele könnte taugen.

O World, I will linger here no more.
For indeed, I find nothing in you
Pleasing to my soul.

Hier muss ich das Elend bauen,
Aber dort, dort werd ich schauen
Süßen Friede, stille Ruh.

Here I am resigned to misery,
But there, there I shall feel
Sweet peace and quiet rest.

4
Recitativo
Mein Gott! wann kömmt das schöne: Nun!
Da ich im Friede fahren werde
Und in dem Sande kühler Erde
Und dort bei dir im Schoße ruhn?
Der Abschied ist gemacht,
Welt, gute Nacht!

My God! When will I hear that precious word: “Now!”
Then I will depart in peace,
And rest both here in the humus of the cool earth
And there within your bosom.
My departure is at hand,
O World, good night!

5
Aria
Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod,
Ach, hätt er sich schon eingefunden.

With gladness, I look forward to my death,
(Ah! if only it had already come.)

Da entkomm ich aller Not,
Die mich noch auf der Welt gebunden.

Then shall I escape all despair
That still enslaves me now on earth.

————————————-

I guess that although I’ve always liked this Cantata for its music, I often dismissed its text in the past as a typical piece of Lutheran piety, dating from an era when life expectancy was about half what it is now. This time however, I began to study the piece, by listening to a variety of recorded versions, of which my favourites are by Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau and Lorrraine Hunt Lieberson. As I listened, I realised that Bach had found an interpretation of Simeon as the man who knows he has fulfilled his purpose on earth, the task for which he has been born, and is therefore free to approach his death as a sleep and a liberation from the ills of life. Of course, all of this is the product of his faith in Jesus, whom he has held in his arms, as the Messiah expected by his people, who will open faith in God to all people.

The first aria expresses Simeon’s sense of fulfillment in the ambiguous words, It is enough, which cover both the burdens of life and the unique joy of holding the infant saviour, who is impressed on his heart by faith. The second aria is a lullaby which urges the believer to accept much- needed rest and peace. The final aria dances its way towards death as the end of all unhappiness. It is an astonishing work of art for a comparatively young composer, depicting a complex character with great brevity through profound and varied music. It also has the  grace of simplicity – more than 250 years after its composition it still invites the listeners to enter a musical world which is strange yet like enough the world they normally inhabit to pierce the heart with its truth. Is it possible that the death which I have always seen as an enemy, can in certain circumstances, be a friend?

But surely it’s a con to compare my experience of life with that of Simeon, who has carried Christ, the hope of the world in his arms? Yes, it is; yet the insidious music asks me if my years are not enough for me. Whom have I lifted in my human arms, if not Christ, the One present in all my loved ones and all my needy ones? Have I not seen him and is he not impressed on my heart? As I begin to open myself to this truth, the music delivers its most terrible invitation, that I may close my tired eyes and find rest. I didn’t know how tired they were until the invitation to rest was made and repeated with such gentle insistence, breaking my instinctive distrust of anything other than a resolved endurance. Then finally, having seduced me into an acceptance of final rest, the music wakes me up into a new kind of courage, which allows my spirit to keep dancing on the way to the “now” of death, whenever it comes. A tiny alteration, the movement from a the minor key of courage into the major key of victory, happens in the very last note of the cantata.

Perhaps this is the kind of memento mori (reminder of death) which can help me to live creatively as an older person. It asks me what more I can want than what I’ve been given; who has been handed into my arms if not Christ; how much I need rest; and how little death is to be feared, in the dance of faith.

 

 

This is my first extremejesus blog of 2018, although you will find that my bible blog continues also on emmock.com.

When I started this blog with its image of Dundee culture hero Desperate Dan, who like Jesus is always on the side of the underdog, I was immediately concerned with the analysis of the British Government that any public discourse promoting a narrative different from its own, should be seen as extreme. It struck me that almost any narrative based on Jesus would do just that, challenging the government’s lazy sense of entitlement to righeousness, and in particular the righteouness it was claiming in its dealings with Muslim nations.

This blog, therefore has always had political commitments, which are probably well-known to its regular readers, and will continue to be expressed in the face of the neo-imperial nonsense spouted by Boris Johnson and those in charge of our foreign policy. But the blog has not been exclusively political. It has often discussed matters of social and personal morality, as well as trying to construct a theology which does justice to Christian insights on moral as well as political issues.

Today I want to note something which I have observed very recently, in helping bereaved relatives plan funeral services for their loved ones: hardly anyone any longer believes the Christian teaching about eternal life. This is an observation not a criticism. When I say, they don’t believe, I’m not reporting that they said so, quite the reverse, in fact: many of them express  a kind of half-humorous acknowledgement of popular faith in the afterlife, by which the deceased may be imagined as continuing his favourite pastimes “up there.” Any notion of eternal life as a gift of God, related to trust in Jesus Christ and membership of the visible or invisible church is conspicuous by its a absence. Maybe God does offer life after death, but if he does, that’s what he’s there for; it’s his job.

This is linked to the notion of the funeral service as a ‘celebration of life’ rather than  an act of mourning for the dead. It is often confused or conflated with the notion of a memorial gathering for the deceased where loved ones and colleagues will deliver eulogies. I am wholly in favour of such gatherings, perhaps some weeks after a funeral. But a Christian funeral deals with the fact of death and the mystery of human entry into the life of God. Celebration is not absent, and does touch on the way the deceased has made her human journey, but it primarily expresses joy in God  as the giver and renewer of life. It does not offer any automatic blessing of worldly life, but suggests that we a strangers and sojourners on the earth.

For many people, also, any statement that God might not simply offer this to all comers, but only via trust in Jesus Christ, would be regarded as outrageous and offensive, leading to an immediate appeal to the celestial department of equal opportunities. My own Church of Scotland is a national church that promises to provide the ordinances of religion to all residents of the land, and for this reason many who are not church members ask for a funeral conducted by a clergyman or woman. Perhaps throughout the centuries the church could assume that people knew what they were asking for. Now it seems more likely that ministers will adjust their words to conceal rather than declare the gospel of Jesus.

Let me be clear. I’m sure that God offers eternal life to all creatures, and does not limit the offer to those who have heard of, or put their conscious trust in, Jesus. Trust in Jesus is a provocation to accept God’s life, but many who lack the trust accept the life. My sad experience is that there are those who do not want the life and will always try to refuse it, because they hate it. Perhaps God will ultimately persuade them, but I know he will not force them to leave the darkness they have chosen.

There is then, in the Gospel, a kind of universalism that justifies ministers offering the hope of eternal life to those who have not managed to find faith in Jesus. But this has to be declared in a context which allows it to be received as more than a conventional gesture towards ‘the man upstairs.’ The Roman Catholic requiem mass is such a context, but I remain doubtful if the average 25 minute service at a crematorium, topped and tailed by the deceased’s favourtite pop music, is.

Churches should perhaps encourage the use of their own buildings and traditions of worship, for all funerals, so that its gospel for people who are grieving has a chance of being heard. Even then it will still be important for ministers to resist the immense cultural pressure to trivialise death, and therefore, life also.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our thunder and our war;
But our peace is as far as the angel sings
And our faith is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
We shall at last come home,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are:
In the place where God was homeless
All people are at home.

GK Chesterton (altered)

 

I apologise to lovers of this poem for my alterations – a few words here and there- which I can only justify by confessing that for me Chesterton is 50% wisdom and 50% nonsense, and he frequently published things that a decent editor would have made him revise. Still, even at that, he’s often wonderful.

I’ve spent some blogspace recently building up the elements of a theology of God’s House. Obviously Christmas can be interpreted as a major contribution to such a theology, focusing as it does in popular celebration on a house which is not a house but a stable. Scholars have suggested that the Greek word used by Luke in his birth narrative should be translated “living space” rather than “inn” but the important detail is that in either case, there was no room for a man and his pregnant wife. Luke means his readers to see that the holy child is born amongst animals because he and his parents have been sidelined by the world, as the powerless and needy usually are. The direction of travel of the holy child in Luke’s story is resolutely downward, from the Holy Spirit who comes upon Mary, to the empire ruled by Rome, to the society divided into haves and have-nots, housed and homeless, to the stable with animals. This is the journey that God must make to make sure that nobody is excluded from God’s house, so that no-one can think that God is above or beyond them.

The only people to welcome the child (according to Luke) are shepherds who live outside with their  animals. So this is a very strange house indeed, almost not a house at all, an open dwelling from which nobody is excluded. Nor is it a place of help for the poor and powerless; it is the place where God is poor and powerless, and has to rely on poor but resolute parents to preserve his life. We are not told if Jesus was registered in the census as a baby, or whether the registering was done before his birth. In any case, he barely makes it on to the taxation rolls of the empire which will eventually kill him.

For Luke, this open house is the same as that made evident in Jesus’ ministry to the poor, the outcast, and the sinful; the same as demonstrated in his forgiving death and his risen presence in an inn and a house; the same as offered in the preaching and community life of the first church: an open house of God, where God’s way is revealed and followed, rather than the way of the world. God persuades people into this house through his child who has no wordly status, power or wealth as he quietly helps people to wake up to life.

The church models itself on this house of God, not when it reaches out from its place of comfort to offer help or justice, but rather when it learns from the downward mobility of God, how to divest itself of worldly power, and to become an acccessible house where needy people have the dignity of helping themselves and each other, whatever the need.

The church or the faithful believer both are and are not houses of God, or to be more precise, they are already to some extent, but not yet completely, houses of God; for the house of God is an eschatological reality, existing in its incomplete and persuasive form in time and history, but in its perfection only beyond the horizon of both. The believing person and community acknowledge this truth in their worship which declares that the earthly house belongs to the creator, and is moved by the creative spirit to share the life of Jesus the child  of God, and through him the lives of their brothers and sisters, in the one household.

In the place where God was homeless / all people are at home.

My childhood fascination and terror when reading stories or watching films about haunted houses came I think from an unadmitted knowledge that any house, including my own, could be home to evil spirits. Like most children I had an untutored understanding of the many bible stories about spirit possession. Indeed my adult education in the subtleties of post-Freudian psychology has extended, deepened but not destroyed my trust in the house as metaphor for the individual soul. 

One of the reasons for that is my view, learned from both Christian and Buddhist sources, that the individual soul is only an abstraction from our experience of living in relationship and community. Our selves do not end at our skin; our existence is always co-existence, our being always inter-being. I am always part of the souls of others, they are always part of mine. For this reason I have come to the conclusion that no individual soul- house can be void; there are always tenants for better or for worse. I often quote Bob Dylan in support of this view, “well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve someone,”although I think he imagined such service would always be willing, whereas my experience is that much of it is forced. My understanding of the healing miracles of Jesus suggests that often he was dealing with disease imposed or aggravated by communal powers, which he had to evict in order to liberate the sufferer. Indeed, Jesus’ own story of the evil spirit evicted from its host who hears its old house is clean and vacant and then returns along with even more evil pals, has guided all my thinking on this topic.

As I continue to work towards a ‘House Theology’ I need to remind myself that houses/homes can be places of domination, abuse and murder, as well as equality, caring and life. The terrible statistics of domestic child abuse in Scotland, together with those of domestic rape, are sufficient to challenge any sentimental view of house and home. Many victims testify that their first experience of freedom was when they left the family home.

The bible shares this lack of sentimentality about the home. The first murder happens in the first family. If Abraham and Sarah show something good about the home, then Lot and his family show something bad, namely a casualness in the face of evil which brings trouble upon them. Noah’s drunkenness tears his family home apart, while David’s homicidal lust sets in train a sequence of bad relationships within his house years into future. In the language of the prophets, the ‘house of Israel’ is often depicted as inhabited by the evil spirits of injustice and death.

The New Testament continues this unsparing view of the house. Matthew’s parable of the evil tenants who want to take over the house, Mark’s story of the man who calls himself Legion, who is so traumatised by the Roman invasion that he cannot live in a house any more, Luke’s story of the Pharisee’s house where Jesus and a sinful woman are treated with cold rectitude- these and many others reveal a ‘House Theology’ which is common across different gospel traditions. The story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19 is a particularly clear example. The upwardly mobile Zacchaeus is found up a tree because although he has made himself a big man by collaboration with the enemy, he remains small in his own eyes. He is in thrall to the spirit of greed which inhabits his ‘house.’ Jesus therefore invites himself to Z’s house, which he knows contains an accumulation of the wealth of others. In a sense Jesus breaks in, although Zacchaeus welcomes him because he honours him by his presence. Once Jesus is in the house, the evil stuff and the spirit of greed that gained it, have to go out. This is demonsttated by Z repaying fourfold those whom he has cheated. Jesus announces that the Z and his household have been rescued, in his words, ‘Saving justice has come to this house today!’

The fitst healing by Jesus in Mark’s Gospel is briefly told, but is another good example. In this case there is no house precisely because the community’s fear of the leper’s disease has sen him banished from home and community. This banishment is the source of the leper’s tentative approach to Jesus, ‘If you want to, you can make me whole.’ This explains Jesus’ ‘anger’ which is the reading of the best manuscripts of the gospel: he is angry at the lack of compassion that forces a man to plead for healing. Then he invades this house of evil spirits by the simple and revolutionary gesture of touching him. His hand goes into enemy territory, the place of exclusion, to rescue the human being. He reveals the combination of fear and callousnness which has kept this man out of the communal house.

Jesus himself categorised his healing ministry by comparing himself to a thief breaking into a strong man’s house to take his possessions. He wouldn’t be able to do this, he says, without first tying up the strong man. He’s talking about Beelzebul, the Lord of the flies, the Satan, the enemy of God. Jesus has to neutralise the power of evil before he can set free those who are possessed by it. He does so by his concern for the victim and his often explicit denunciation of the oppressor, enabled by his own trust in God’s goodness.

The whole of Mark’s gospel is taken up with the battle between God’s House,(kingdom) and Satan’s House, which is given a surprise ending: Jesus, the rescuer of human beings, is expelled from the house(hold) of Israel, handed over to foreigners and killed, apparently abandoned by God. He seems to be defeated and placed in the house of Death, but his tomb is found to be empty and his followers told to meet him in the ‘gospel ground’ of Galilee. The result of the battle is left as an existential question for the reader.

For any House Theology, the house of the enemy is almost as important a theme as the house of God.

The “house of God” stories told by Jesus tell us about fathers, male householders and even a strong man who needs to be beaten up, but women do not have a role. Classic Christian theology of God’s house continues this habit and refers to God as the father or the Lord. The classic narratives of Jesus and the twelve disciples limit his intimate followers to men, although they mentionnwomen who were followers. When we get to the letters of St Paul, we see that the young church communities had women in key roles, although the developing church failed to build on this practice and eventually excluded women from leadership. The church grew up in a patriarchal culture but the practice of Jesus and St Paul seems to have been more radical.

If the organisation of the church became patriarchal, its worship and theology followed suit. The Jewish tradition was of a male God, Yahweh, who was often depicted as a king with no consort. Only the book of Proverbs gives us a divine woman, the personification of Wisdom, who is described as God’s companion in creation. This is a fruitful image of God’s femininity, but it was not much used in subsequent Christian theology.

So, if I am engaged in constructing a theology of God’s House, I should be faced with the question in this blog’s title, “Where’s mama God?”

The Roman Catholic Church has an answer to this question. The Virgin Mother Mary, flesh of our flesh but removed into the life of God, is of course the Queen of Heaven, the mother who brings our prayers to her son, the new Eve who is the mother of the beloved disciple, meaning all disciples. Surely it would be good for a protestant like me to accept the wisdom of the Roman Church in its promotion of Mary, a woman, into the process, if not the object, of worship. Here is someone who redresses the balance of male/female in divinity, and allows a female access to God.

I don’t accept this answer, although I admire its power. For here is a woman deprived of her humanity, namely her sexuality as the wife of Joseph, and the mother of Jesus’ siblings. Perpetual virgin she was not, according to the scriptures, and to make her so was a denial of her womanhood, because female sexuality was a problem to the church, and had to be suppressed for the sake of holiness. Mary can become semi-divine because she is no longer really human. This is an image of womanhood which denies the powerful femininity ascribed to Mary in the Gospels and suggests that divinity is achieved by disabling humanity. The Virgin is part of the terrible story of Roman Catholic refusal of healthy sexuality to its laity while permitting an unhealthy sexuality in its celibate priesthood.

The other, perhaps more serious, defect of Marianism, is that it deflects the question about the gender of God. High-minded theology rejects this question out of hand: God is not a human being and cannot be subject to categories which are only suitable for human beings. Well, maybe, but why then call God father, king and lord? The answer to that may be that we cannot easily think of a genderless being, and do not want to in the cae of God, so “he”remains masculine. But if we take seriously Genesis 1: 27- “ God created humanity in his own image; in the image of God he created it; male and female he created them,” then we must believe that God is male and female rather than genderless. We do not need to invent a female partner for a male God, because God is both male and female, although this femaleness has been denied, suppressed and abominated by traditional theology, which reflects the smelly masculinity of its priesthood.

There is a wonderfully robust assertion of the motherhood of God in the “Showings” of Julian of Norwich, who sees that the God who gives birth to humanity and the Christ who gives rebirth in the power of fhe Spirit must be Mother as well as Father. Her subtle and suggestive theology is a model of how we can envisage a God who is more than gendered rather than less. There are also theologies based on Lady Wisdom, or Sophia in her Greek existence, which use the rich resources of the wisdom writings of the bible, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Ruth and Jonah, along with Genesis and the Gospels, to set out the femaleness of God. We should note that this is a matter of ascribing femaleness to all members of the Trinity rather than for example, making only the Spirit female. But Jesus was male, somebody will object. True, he was, but what is he now?

The alert reader will have noticed that I incline to take male and female as more than socially constructed roles. Of course there are social constructions of male and female identity, but they are a response to a sexual dimorphism which is a fact of  most evolved life on earth. It is a beautifully imaginative nsight of the Genesis author that this dimorphism has its origin in the complex nature of its creator.

The house(hold) of God does not need a mother to partner the father, because God is both mother and father, the strength of the female and the tenderness of the male, the wisdom of the male and the will of the female, the love of the female and the justice of the male, begetting and giving birth to the children of God and welcoming them into their true home.

 

 

I’ve been writing a series of blogs (try my last six or seven from the archive) about the Greek word oikos meaning house and its place in the Bible, attempting piece by piece to establish the basis of an oikos theology, that is, one which deals with the house and household of God.

Yesterday I got my hands on the marvellous new translation of the Confessions of St Augustine by Sarah Ruden, which I’ve devoured since in three sittings, and can therefore tell my readers that they should read this great classic of personal faith, now available in a translation that allows him to speak in real English. It is both beautiful and profound. Near the beginning I found this:

So how I will call on God, my God and my Master, since inevitably calling on him is calling him into myself? But what place in me is there to come into for my God- for God to come into me- the God who made heaven and earth? Is it as if, God my master, there is anything in me that could hold you? Could in fact the sky and the earth, which you created, and in which you created me, hold you? Or because without you, whatever is would not be, does it come about that whatever is holds you? Since therefore I also exist, why do I beg that you come into me, when I wouldn’t exist in the first place unless you were in me. I am not now in hell, and yet you are there too, because if I go down into hell, there you are.

To sum up, I would not exist, my God, I would not exist at all, unless you existed in me. Or is it rather that I would not exist unless I existed in you, from whom, through whom, in whom, everything exists? That’s it, Master, that’s it. To what place can I call  you if I am in you?

I can speak along with Augustine’s meditation, and share his conclusion. He is playing with two ‘house’ metaphors, the human self as a house of God, and the divine self as a house for the universe and its creatures. Biblically these metaphors are seen in passages in which God is depicted as dwelling with or in his people on the one hand, and on the other, passages in which the people are depicted as dwelling in God.

We can see these images played out in the biblical story of Jacob who, escaping the wrath of his brother, finds himself in a dream where there is a ladder to heaven, and recognises that it is a house of God He offers himself to God in return for God’s support on his travels. Later, when he decides to face his past and his brother, he wrestles with God, who assures him of his blessing. Once he stops trying to include God in his story and is ready to be included in God’s story, God dwells in him.

”Abide in me” Jesus says, “and I will abide in you.”

Augustine states as a primary truth that he abides in God; but he only knows this because he has opened his heart so that God can abide in him. I also would like to dwell in God forever, or I think I would, but must I also invite God into this poor house, where there are corners, no, whole rooms that haven’t been cleaned for years, where some of my secrets are stashed, where there are places so scary that even I do not go there? Can I be open to the God who is open to me?

Augustine also speaks of Jesus, God’s Word, occupying this frail house of flesh, so that human beings are convinced he is a brother they can trust.  Jesus the eternal word dwelling in flesh is the presence who persuades human beings to open their bodily lives to him. Augustine’s awareness of himself as a body is evident in the Confessions, especially in his anguished recognition of his sexuality as a barrier between himself and God. He rightly refuses to take the easy way out by labeling all bodily and material things as evil – some of his contemporaries did so- and instead sees that he must surrender his whole life to Jesus. But he doesn’t want to give up his sex life. So, he realises the barrier is his own will, which eventually and with great pain, he surrenders to Jesus his Master, and finds peace as he takes up residence in his life. The question is not, as above, “to what place can I call you?” but, “to what place will I give you access?” since God/Jesus/ Spirit will never intrude where they are not wanted. We are always in God, but God is not in us until we invite him/ her in, as Augustine did.

Augustine was sure that he had completely opened his life to God, once and for all, and certainly a profound turning had taken place. But my own experience is that when I invited God into my “house” I put all the messy stuff in one room, locked the door and put up a notice saying, “No Admittance,” but every now and then, God asks me, what’s this? And this? And this? And I realise I didn’t put all the messy stuff away, and that maybe I’d better open the locked room and have no secrets any more.

I’m helped to do this by consciously living ‘in God’s house’ of which the church is a model. There I am being trained to see my living space as God’s house, open to all creatures, providing equally for them all, changing and developing towards the ultimate perfection God desires for it. So far it is no more perfected than I am, since God will not force it to be so but inspires the creativity of his creatures; and my commitment to its future encourages me to cede more and more of my interior territory to God.

“How lovely to me is your dwelling, Lord of armies!” (Psalm 84) The psalmist was singing of the Temple, but it can mean also God’s household, his people, the universe as God’s house of life, and even the little house of the individual soul. It is a place, the Psalm says, where the most insignificant creatures, the sparrow and the swallow can enter and make a home. The human being sings that her very heart and flesh cry out for the living God; and is rewarded by the assurance that those who dwell in God’s house and sing praise are blest by the presence of God.

There is a vital spirituality of God’s house, such as Augustine knew, which can find new and contemporary forms of expression.

 

 

 

I have to confess that I’m with Lewis Carrol who thought that royals were only another topic of desultry conversation:

The time has come, the Walrus said

to talk of many things

of ships and shoes and sealing wax

and cabbages and kings ……

He puts the kings at the end of the line after the fascinating topic of cabbages.

The UK Media have been congratulating themselves, the nation and the newly engaged couple, Harry and Meghan, for proving how tolerant we Brits have become in that we can consider one of our royals marrying a divorced woman, of mixed heritage, who is an actress! Golly gosh, we are so modern; we hate incomers enough to vote for Brexit, yet our big hearts are open to this very special, mixed heritage newcomer. Indeed we are so sensitive we don’t even want to mention the mixed heritage bit too often, for after all, it’s not as she’s black, heavens no, coloured, yes, but in the nice shade you’d want to be after your holidays.

By mixed hertitage naturally we mean she’s got some Afro in her, unlike us who are pure…well pure something or other, Aryan maybe, or is that a Nazi word, well, let’s just call it Anglo- Saxon, pure Anglo-Saxon, that’s us. Except, that rather forgets the Picts and the Celts who were here before the A-S’s, and the Normans who came afterwards, not to mention the Vikings with their rape and pillage, plus the black slaves who have been here for four centuries at least, plus the numerous official and unofficial mixed heritage partnerships from all corners of our beneficial Empire, plus of course the fact that all human beings are descended from the original homo sapiens from Africa. Yes, that’s how “pure”we are.

Being a master race however, the possessors of an empire on which, as I was taught at primary school, the sun never set, we reckoned that some mixed heritages were acceptable and could be forgotten, while others were unaccpetable because they were inferior, meaning OK as servants but not as husbands or wives. And we didn’t actually call them people of mixed heritage, we had a large and interesting vocabulary to describe them:

coconut, coloured, coon, creole, dusky, fuzzy-wuzzy, gollywog,  half-breed, mongrel, mulatto, octoroon, quadroon, and many more.

No newspaper was celebrating Prince Harry’s engagement to a mulatto, for example; even normally racist red tops avoided that sort of language. It’s worth looking at that word as an example of our past thinking. We borrowed it from Latin America where it means a lttle mule. Indeed the simple word mule was also used to describe people of mixed heritage. The idea is that a mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey, a freak of nature which produces a useful beast of burden. That’s how our ancestors thought, most of them, until comparatively recent times. The question is whether our attitudes have improved or merely our vocabulary.

My best guess is that many of those who are celebrating this royal engagement are the very same people who feel anxious about our native traditions being eroded by a “tidal wave” of immigrants, forgetting that as far as eroding such traditions is concerned, we Brits are in the Premiership. Where are the native traditions of Gibraltar, for example, or the Falklands? The polite language we use about race remains evidence of our inherent racism, which still wishes to categorise some of the people whom we perceive as different from ourselves, as of multiple or mixed hertitage, when in fact every single human being has multiple heritage. 

One of the great benefits of the human genome study is to show how much of our genetic identity is shared, not only with all other members of the species homo sapiens, but also other hominids like Neanderthals, and with the great apes, and even the fruit fly.  Take the eye as an example. Eyes developed from about 540 million years ago, in a variety of species, first of all as a simple mechanism for detecting light, then as a means of sensing food or prey. It is possible that eyes were lost and re-invented a number of times in the course of evolution. Human eyes are sophisticated but cannot see the infra red end of light spectrum which is visible to some insects. A golden eagle’s eyes can clearly see a mouse from a height of several hundred feet. An octopus’s eyes unlike ours, have no blind spot. All human eyes are the same and have the ability to see colour.

It’s ironical that an organ which reveals how much we share with many other species in the house of life, and with all our brothers and sisters, should be used to detect a difference in skin colour that is made the basis of division and enmity. Jesus said that if our eye was sound our whole body would be sound, but if it was afflicted with moral darkness, we would be blind indeed.

He taught that we all belong to the one source or father, who also exercises his care over the birds and the plants. We share living space with other  members of the family of this planet, and the greater living space we call the house of God, in whom we live and move and have our being. The most important education we can all receive is the factual evidence about our place in evolution and the moral evidence about the equality of the creatures that share the one house of life, which is God’s creation.

Two  decent young people have got together; let’s celebrate that. But don’t lets give ourselves unearned points for racial equality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my last six blogs, I’ve tried to present some elements of what I have called OIKOS theology, that is, a way of thinking about God as a house for creatures, and about human beings as, potentially, a household of God. New readers might take a look at these blogs before reading this one. I have suggested three disciplines appropriate to dwelling in or being God’s house, all of which contain the English form of the Greek oikos( Greek for house): ecumenism, ecology and economy, a modern version of faith, hope and love.

This blog takes a critical look at the UK Government’s budget, which was unveiled this week.

It is not an ecumenical budget. Its language and philosophy ignores the major problems of the planet, but expresses the narrow interest of the UK; and not even of the whole of the UK, but mainly its financial sector and the kind of businesses which are opposed to any in rise in taxation. Its analysis fails to challenge the “little England” culture of  Brexit enthusiasts, and looks to a sunny future where Britannia rules the waves again, and all our butter comes from New Zealand. It has little to do with global warming or with the already massive problems caused by climate change, including the huge loss of habitat and the consequent movement of refugees into Europe. It expresses a sectarian ideology which defends the interest of the wealthiest in society while categorising anyone who does not want to work for inadequate wages as lazy or addicted to benefits. Can this be the language of one household of humanity or even one household of UK citizens? Only if we think of a  Victorian country house, where the family occupy most of the property and the lower orders are segregated downstairs, except when needed.

Because this budget puts no trust in anything more than markets, it rests on fantasy rather than faith, prejudice rather than fact.

It is not an ecological budget. By that word I am not just referring to its lack of attention to global warming but also to its lack of interest in the landmass of the UK as a house  for the living beings who maintain the health of our soil or the fertility of our trees or the purity of our air. Nor does it make the polluter pay: the oil companies and the automobile manufacturers are treated as honoured guests rather than as the vandals they are. The development of alternative sources of energy and the infrastructure required for their use, is left to private companies, rather than funded by government as present job creation and future prosperity.

Above all, it betrays no understanding of either natural or societal ecosystems, of how the lives of creatures and human beings intertwine with their fellows and with each other. It does not appreciate how communities of insects and human beings struggle against the different kinds of pollution that affllict them; of how bacteria at their level and poor people at theirs share their survival wisdom. It has no inkling of the courage demonstrated by a single mother with three kids, nor of her triumph if she gets to the end of a week without more debt.

Because the budget has no sound knowledge of the lives for which it legislates, it fails to be ecological and offers no real hope.

Defenders of the budget might react to the above by arguing that after all its just a budget and is only meant to deal with the economy. But in my theology economy is management of the one household and its family, with equal concern for all. Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard sets out the ideal that economy means “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” All should have the dignity of contributing creatively to the common wealth, all should receive enough from it to live well.

Obviously the budget is not based on that sort of economy, but rather on a narrow neo -liberal capitalist economy which makes paramount the interests of the possessors of material wealth in any of its forms, and attends minimally or not at all to the abilities or needs of the poor. I emphasise abilities, as well as needs, since the poorer people of our society have abilities and skills which they want to use in work that gives them a fair reward. The whole disgraceful farce of Universal Benefit began with the warped perception of a politician who thought poverty was moral degeneracy rather than injustice, and it has continued in character with the supposition that the poorest people in the land can easily wait six weeks for the benefit to arrive. The budget made some tiny administrative improvements to this system but it remains an example of how welfare provision reveals the bias of the legislator.

Another, less obvious bias of the budget is the way it ignores the true wealth of society, namely the shared life of families, communities, associations and workplaces, where rich humanity is given and received. The material wealth of individuals and society has its real value in enabling these precious interactions. Christians believe in what the early church called the “economy” of God in which the generous creator gave life to all; and when it was impoverished by human evil, became poor in Jesus so that many could become rich in goodness. A good budget would plan for a just and balanced material economy as the basis of a fruitful life for all its citizens. This one does not do so, but in fact disables its poorer citizens by failing to fund adequately the public services on which they rely.

The economy of God’s house is love for all; this budget is loving to some; indifferent to many.