More than a conjuring trick with bones

In the film The Princess Bride,  confronted with a dead Westley (the hero) and told that he is dead, Miracle Max (played by Billy Crystal) says in a delicious NY accent "Look who knows so much about dead ...  it so happens your friend is only *mostly* dead. And mostly dead is a little bit *alive*" and then goes on to administer a restorative which resuscitates Westley so he can go on to finish the plot. I mention it because a lot of us think about resurrection as if it is a kind of resuscitation. A zombie Jesus only mostly dead somehow revived but fundamentally still restricted to the normal laws of time and space, decay and entropy.

Well, it's not like that with Jesus on Holy Saturday /Easter Eve: he's dead, really dead. Dead as the proverbial doornail. Not mostly dead; truly dead. Brain activity: zero. He's gone, passed away, flower food, he is an ex-messiah. More: his soul doesn't go marching on, there's no ghost hanging around fretting about his life's work being unfinished and agonising over his friends' and relatives' grief.

He's as dead as, well,

we are dead when we die. That's it. The end. Finished. Kaput. The long sleep: no awareness because there's nothing to be aware: we're gone; no longer exist, so no wake up call. Oblivion.

And Jesus has to be as dead as that else there's no help for us.

If Jesus does not truly die, then our dying remains the last word.

Jesus has to enter into our death: where there is nothing beyond. Just absence, nonexistence, uncontinuance.

Well, not quite. For, as it is getting popular to say that someone who has died lives on in our memory; that as long as we remember them, they live in us. In some ways that's the democratised version of especially skilled or favoured people wishing to live on in their accomplishments. "I want to achieve immortality through my art". Well, I agree with Woody Allen "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality through not dying."

The problem with 'living on' in someone's remembrance is that 'I' don't really live on. Again as Woody Allen put it "Someone once asked me if my dream was to live on in the hearts of people, and I said I would prefer to live on in my apartment."

Living on in someone's memory seems not to involve me enjoying the world, relationships or, well, life. Some other 'I' gets to do that while borrowing some of what they know of me to interpret their experience*.

So, while living on in remembrance may console the bereaved, it doesn't help us to live on in our apartments**.

And in any case, those who remember themselves die and with them whatever is left of us in their memory.

But there is one who remembers eternally. In fact, to say 'remembers eternally' may not be so different to saying 'knows always', or even foreknew. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God "not of the dead but of the living; for to him all of them are alive" . And that's the point. The remembrance/knowing by the Everliving, the Creator, is who we are. God ever-livingly and ever-lovingly re-members us. Our knowing and remembering each other is a shadow of that fullest knowing-remembrance. While something truly does live on in human remembrances, we truly live on in God's knowing-remembrance for that remembrance is the Source of all living and in loving us, the source and ground and upholding of our being 'us'. In God's remembrance/knowing and creativity 'we' truly are us. God is our continuity of existence.

So, when Jesus enters into our kind of death, becomes one with our finality, the only hope beyond that is that God is the God of the living, not the dead; that God really does know-remember him. The Resurrection is no 'conjuring trick with bones', it is not a resuscitation. God re-members Jesus***. it is a paradigm of New Creation: the New takes up and transfigures the former; creation is caught up into re-creation. Jesus is remembered into Life: the seed of the new creation is planted in the soil of the old order of sin and death. in the words of the liturgy: Jesus 'reveals the resurrection'.

Death is not, after all, the last word. The Last Word is the last word, just as he was the First.

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This post is a re-working of my Easter sermon into a written form and with some further reflection.It's a preliminary set of thoughts heading towards the *** note below. There is a need also to think further about the primacy of Jesus' resurrection.

*I realise that there's a lot more to explore about what 'I' might be. But I don't think elaborating on that discussion doesn't seem to me to take away from my basic pint here. And while I remain indebted to Douglas Hofstadter's exploration, even his 'expansion' of human consciousness doesn't address this fundamental loss of I-ness.

**Putting me in mind of "in my Father's house there are many apartments, and i go to prepare a place for you."

***The relationship of Father and Spirit with the Son is remembered by them. The Resurrection grows out of Trinitarian perichoresis. I would like to explore this further it due course.

'Big Society –just continuing God's work' Is cameron right?

Speaking last night at his Easter reception in Downing Street, the Prime Minister reportedly said he was simply doing God’s work when he launched the “Big Society” initiative of volunteering and civic responsibility.

“Jesus invented the Big Society 2,000 years ago,” Mr Cameron said. “I just want to see more of it.”David Cameron: 'Jesus invented the Big Society – I'm just continuing God's work' - UK Politics - UK - The Independent: 

When I read this I felt that Cameron was both right and wrong: I warmed to his sense that we should be involved in the Mission Dei as defined by Jesus -the idea that God is up to something and that our task is to learn to be a part of it.



What the quote reminds me, though, is how easy it is to get something of our understanding of what God might be up to wrong enough to bring it into disrepute. in this case we need to think a bit about it to see where the difficulty lies.


There are two areas to check out, I think. One is characterising Jesus' teaching -or some significant aspect of it- as equivalent to 'The Big Society'. So, we are asked to identify the Conservatives' slogan with Jesus teaching in some way. Now this is being done without specifics. So first we have a vaguely defined political slogan which seems to be about people helping each other and supporting one another and we are being invited to link that up with, presumably, Jesus' teaching about loving one another. So far so good and in some ways fair enough. However, I would want us to notice that the very vagueness of the two ideas being brought together should be treated with caution. The Big Society sounds fine in headline terms but what dose it mean in context and in practice. On the other hand, Jesus' teaching also contains encouragements to forgive enemies, do good to the 'unworthy' and leave families (I know that needs nuancing but it should be there if only to undomesticate Jesus' teaching in this context) -which I don't see represented very strongly in Conservative visions of society -quite the reverse.

The second thing is more concerning, though. and it relates to the way that 'Big Society' or Jesus' message is framed within a 'bigger' narrative. In this case, it is a return to framing that has worked for Conservatives for quite a while: to claim Christian credentials on the basis of agreeing with the idea that individuals should be nice to one another; a privatised morality where the state is not allowed to encroach or extrapolate. In this version of gospel, I may give a homeless person money, a bed, a meal -whatever, but I should not look at the social and economic forces that might have brought about a situation where someone might find themselves in such a position. And I should not expect to address those forces through law, tax or education (for these are the forces that create Wealth).

Let's just remember, by way of context, that iIn Jesus' time, there was no prospect of government responding to need  such as that: the Roman state was set up to mine  wealth from the provinces and to reduce populations to slave or serf-like conditions so as to provide labour for the the better off and the only hope for the destitute was private charity.

I would argue, in a relatively democratic society where we recognise that there can be such a thing as systematic generation of inequalities (Roman society didn't quite manage to make that recognition), that the proper way to take forward Jesus' concern for the marginalised is to address the systematic causes and effects of unjust inequalities by collective action and use of collective resources. Besides, the record of 'wealth-extraction' systems such as the Roman State and neoliberal capitalism is lousy in respect of addressing compassionate priorities which are meant to be to the fore in 'Big Society' visions.

Remember, we ended up with things like public sewage systems, public roads etc because private enterprise can't do them properly (and in the only models where it can, private companies are fulfilling governmental contracts and can't apparently make a profit without state safeguards and injections of subsidy).

Philanthropy was tried and found wanting -take a look at Victorian Britain. It was found that to address need at the level required took more than charity, it took collective action by government committed to common-good. The Big Society should not be an alibi for trying to leave the common good up to the diminishing capabilities of the good-hearted. The truly Big Society would be bigger than private-enterprise part-time philanthropy; it would be big enough to start to address the scale of need and the systemic nature of it (which is actually also going to be the 'cheapest' way to do it in the end).

So the problem with DC's Big Society is that it is actually a way to avoid Jesus' priorities: remembering the poor, reintegrating the marginal, healing the sick in mind or body. This is because it is actually giving an alibi to making the lives of many vulnerable people miserable because they fall outside the capacity private-enterprise charity to pick up what the collective was just about able to do. Hoping that somehow an army of volunteers can be found among the overworked and a flood of money from the overmortgaged seems a recipe for disaster. Literally -because the costs of leaving the needs unaddressed or being addressed patronisingly by non-professionals are likely to be revolutionary or worse. To model our response on the best that could be managed within in the limits of an oligarchistic (even kleptocratic) empire when we have democratic government and a fuller understanding of things, is frankly a sleight of hand to preserve privilege.

This is a moment to remember that trickle-down economics has never really worked.

And, we are talking about the Jesus who said 'Woe to you who are rich now ...' and 'Blessed are the poor ...' aren't we?

The truly big society should help us to do things together that we can't do (so well) isolatedly and to do so in a way that helps promote a fair contribution from those most able to give it. It should be able to allow us to recognise that all, by virtue of being God's image and loved by God, have an equal right to develop their capacities, talents and abilities and to use them to support themselves and contribute to the common good which nourished and continues to support them. It should recognise that sometimes we must act to redistribute opportunity to prevent its oligopolisation by the privileged and that very often the carrier of opportunity is wealth.

So, yes, the big society is carrying forward God's work, but so is seeking to address the systemic evils which keep the poor poor and degrade the environment. Using the former to evade the latter is undermining God's work, I think, by making a narrower good a substitute for a wider good.

Getting away from a salesforce approach to evangelism

 For much of the last 15 or 20 years, people like John Drane (but not only him -even I have noted it on this very blog: here, here and, for example, here ) have been saying that in the mission of calling disciples to Christ, the western church has been suffering from a credibility gap at the level of spirituality: for many spiritual seekers, Christians don't seem spiritual enough -there's no mysical dimension apparent. It seems that the RC church has now decided that this is probably correct.

 If the Church does not offer instruction in the spiritual life, believers will not give up their desire for it. Often they will seek it in a non-Christian setting, looking to New Age teachers or Far Eastern religions.

In fact, that quote talks about believers, but I suspect that the thrust of what is being said is that it applies to seekers too. Part of the issue, of course, is that it is Christians ourselves who need to be sensed to have a 'mystical' inner life  in order that seekers might infer that at the heart of our faith is a real encounter with a transcendent other.



Part of the report is also about (re)connecting this dimension of mission with the monastic dimension of church life, noting that such communities are resources for mission in this field.

We hope, too, that
monasteries in the West may regain their historical status as cultural
centers, places of pilgrimage and spiritual direction. Eastern
Christians are well equipped to help the West recover its heritage in
this regard.

It does all point, also, to encouraging and enabling ordinary Christians to value and develop this dimension of faith. I fear that many Evangelical churches, by making a primary goal of evangelism, are actually ending up forming a sales force rather than well-rounded people who have an attractive spirituality which would draw seekers 'naturally'. I note that there is actually little exhortation to share faith in the NT -mostly it happens because Christians' spirituality evokes curiosity and admiration (and the flip side: discomfort and anger by those invested in counter-gospel ways of life).



The problem is that there is a cultural resistance to sales and marketting at a personal level and that the framing, in effect, of the gospel as a product is inimical to the real message. We need to be taking a more oblique path in mission: forming communities of generous and lively spirituality who will be a 'hermeneutic of the gospel' (I think that phrase is owed to Lesslie Newbiggin)

Mysticism, Monasticism, and the New Evangelization | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views:

The Fall of Oxytocin the so-called 'love hormone'

After reading stuff that eulogises oxytocin as the creator of empathy and interpersonal love and so the chemical equivalent of 'all you need is love'. The simplistic equation of something that chemically promotes good feelings towards others with moral behaviour was always due to hit the buffers of human realities. And so ... ta da ...

Oxytocin, 'love hormone,' promotes group lying, according to researchers -- ScienceDaily: oxytocin caused participants to lie more to benefit their groups, and to do so more quickly and without expectation of reciprocal dishonesty from their group.

Now, I have to admit I was disposed to see this coming and had even thought it would probably be at this level: something that promotes group solidarity does not necessarily promote inter-group solidarity and could even help solidify a group in rivalry or enmity to another. In other words the 'dark' side is to create the possibility of an out-group which could be an enemy. And so, it would seem, it is.


The disposition to see this coming comes from an appreciation of one way to think about 'total depravity' which can be understood to be saying that there is no dimension of human being that is untouchable by sin -or that there is no human faculty that is automatically free from sin: if there's a way to do wrong; someone somewhere will find it. This is not, of course, the same as saying that everyone is fully 'evil'.



So even the 'love hormone' is capable of being corrupted and become a tool for wrongdoing. Human solidarity is good, but vulnerable to misdirection. A clear understanding of corporisations, the 'Powers', reminds us of that.

Learning war no more

 It used to be the case that the psychological studies seemed to indicate that video games didn't cause violence. I guess that they were mainly showing that there was not a direct causal link. But I had always thought that it wouldn't be a direct link, rather it would be creating dispositions and habits of thought -a 'mentality' as I expressed it, more likely to result in violent attitudes and in turn attitudes would be more likely to foster behaviours. The obverse side to that would be that by funding our imaginations so heavily with responses of violence and aggression, we are failing to develop a repertoire of reactions and attitudes that could lead to non-violent outcomes, defusing tension, reconciliation etc.


So, yet more research has been added to the more recent discoveries in research that indeed the intuition I (and others) had is broadly correct. So:

Children who repeatedly play violent video games are learning thought patterns that will stick with them and influence behaviors as they grow older, according to a new study. The effect is the same regardless of age, gender or culture. The lead researcher says it is really no different than learning math or to play the piano.

Life lessons: Children learn aggressive ways of thinking and behaving from violent video games, study finds -- ScienceDaily:

 Of course, we now have a problem: the earlier directly causal research now inhabits a broad public perception of the matter so there's a culturally significant attitude that we don't have to worry about violence in computer games or on television because it doesn't cause violence and it might even be cathartic. So we have a challenge to reverse that now that we know better: we have to try to get the attitude changed to one of 'garbage in, garbage out: violence in gaming trains us in violent reactions and attitudes'.



Then, what we've got to do is find ways to develop games that are engaging, 'fun' and credible but which 'train' us in conflict resolution and fund imaginations for non-violent reacting. I wonder if anyone is trying to do that?

Theology From Exile Volume II: The Year of Matthew

 I decided to take a look at this book for a handful of reasons: one is that I preach in churches that use RCL; another is that this book seemed to promise commentary on the RCL readings in a way that would bring out the Empire-resistance themes. I was also intrigued by the suggestion in the blurb that insights also from creation spirituality were part of the commentary.

Now, of course, the difficulty of reviewing a book like this within 30 days of receiving it*, is that it is a commentary on the weekly readings, so it's not a regular 'read-straight-through' sort of book since it's meant to be consulted on a a week by week or at least 'as needed' basis and each set of commentary pondered on the way to writing and performing a sermon. This makes it quite hard to read in the same way as a novel or standard book with a unitary argument, thesis or theme. And what is really needed is to 'road test' the volume over several months actual usage in informing the preparation for preaching. So what I'm doing here is having read the readings and commentary for about 3 months' worth of Sunday readings, to give an impression of the kind of commentary being offered. It's a little harder to comment directly on how well the material worked as stimulus for preaching.

The first thing to say is that I think I will continue to refer to the commentary pieces in this volume as a prepare for preaching. This is because the comments I have read do seem to me to have the kinds of insights that could provide the seed of a sermon. There is a useful reference to the kinds of insights that come from the work of people like John Dominic Crossan on the economic and political effects of the Roman Empire on Judea, Galilee and the rest which can yield interesting possibilities in understanding the gospels and epistles. Also an attentiveness to the environmental dimensions of it all are potentially useful to someone like me who is keen to help people to value justice, peace and the integrity of creation in discipleship and therefore in preaching.

What, I guess, I find less helpful is the way that the volume picks up the sometimes strident enemising of more traditional approaches to scripture and theology. Partly this is because I'm not fully 'with the program' that the author is signed up for: I'm not committedly materialist in my philosophical presuppositions, I do tend to think that the Jesus Seminar approach to the texts is unnecessarily skeptical and somewhat belligerent. I sometimes think that creation spirituality is more New Age than orthodox Christian. (That said I think that CS does alert us to distortions of orthodoxy and challenges us to reconsider the tradition and the way that we translate it for contemporary life). So in using the volume, I will not be automatically taking on board all of the perspectives but I do expect that some of the insights will be productive for me and that in wrestling with the things I'm less convinced by or even sense I disagree with, I will be challenged to develop my own thinking and appreciation of the texts more fully and carefully.

I do find myself, as I read, sometimes musing over a certain irony. There is a new orthodoxy espoused which reads the Bible as a manifesto for political resistance and change of a particular sort (I happen to agree with the thrust of this), but I do find it odd that while undermining these writings as Scripture, they are yet being used as in some way authoritative or at least as validating resistance to Empire. This feels a little parasitic on the tradition and I can't really see any reason for retaining it except to access the more general religiosity of north American society compared with Britain and Europe. I'm not sure that holding on to the tradition seems as useful politically in GB and EU and that the kind of orthodox radical approach of people like Jim Wallis or Shane Claiborne is more likely to feel authentic.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: This was a condition of getting a review copy; I received this book free from the  publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255 -even though I am British, residing in Britain.
Theology From Exile Volume II: The Year of Matthew eBook: Sea Raven: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store