Tag: theology

Beginnings and the meaning of life

David Herbert1 Comment

A sermon for the 2nd Sunday before Lent. Both epistle and gospel of the day are about beginnings and the meaning of life. This sermon was for a church in rural Warwickshire.

In the beginning. In the beginning – such a lovely phrase. In the beginning – such a good place to start.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. That’s how John prefaces his gospel.

Our scriptures open at the beginning. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

Some of you will remember Maureen Lipman’s British Telecom adverts. In one she rings her grandson to see how he got on in his exams. He goes through all the exams he failed. She asks, “did you pass anything?”. “I got pottery” – to which grandma says “that’s good, people will always need plates”. “And I got Sociology”. To which Grandma says, “you got an ology and you said you failed!”.

In the beginning was the Word. I’ve not got much in the way of an ology, but I’ve got enough of an “ology” to know that the Greek words for the Word is o-logos. O logos. It is from those two Greek words that we get all our ologies – whether sociology, psychology, geology, astrology, criminology – anyone awarded an ology can claim the credit of beginning to understand the meaning of an aspect of life. 

Putting aside any clever, clever ologies we may have we could all say that we have an OLOGY because the Word became flesh and dwells amongst us, with us always, to the end of time. That’s an ology that God has gifted us. He has gifted us his Word, o logos, made flesh, embodying the meaning of God from the beginning. If we want to know the meaning and purpose of God we have to look no further than Jesus.

The Word means meaning. O logos, the ology given to us, means meaning and purpose. From the beginning life has meaning and purpose. This is the viewpoint of faith, hope and trust.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. That is such a beautiful opening for our scriptures. 

Our generations, with all our ologies, have tended to scoff at this creation story. “It can’t have happened like that” we say, as if the inspired authors of this literature ever believed it happened like that. We are not looking at God’s first diary and to-do list. Inspired fiction sits alongside inspired history in our scriptures – what matters is not what happened, but what is true. In the beginnings described by the first chapter of Genesis, the openings of John’s gospel and our reading from Colossians – in all of them we have inspired theology that conveys truth.

I am ever more conscious that our scriptures are the scriptures of the Jewish people, so frequently overpowered, conquered, enslaved, exiled, occupied, persecuted, oppressed, impoverished and hated, as well as being so often disobedient and misled (just like the rest of us). They become our scriptures as long as we open our hearts and minds to join those who suffer, redirecting the power and wealth we have for their sake, becoming poor in spirit.

When we read scripture we are always looking through the eyes of a people (like Paul writing to the Colossians from prison) who suffered so much and yet dared to wonderfully imagine that from the very beginning God is working his purpose out, that there is meaning even in the midst of tragedy.

The beginnings described in Genesis and in John’s gospel and in our reading from Colossians are profound theological reflections on the meaning of life in the midst of chaos, surrounded by so much diversity and difference, a wealth of creation – and the part we are called to play. 

The “beginnings” of Genesis and John are not the start of things. It’s not a blank page. In the beginning described by John there was stuff going on. There was darkness, and the Word became the light of the world that darkness has never been able to overcome. There was darkness going on, and on and on.

Likewise in Genesis, there was stuff going on. There was formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. In other words, it was chaos – and the creation story imagines what God does with chaos, ordering it and making so much of it for our delight.

The beginnings described by Genesis, John and Paul are all of them in the midst of things. There is always something going on. These scriptures belong to people who are in the midst of things, and passed on to those going through so much. There has been so much love gone into them – their meaning is to inspire faith, hope and love – in us, in the midst of things.

Sometimes life doesn’t seem to have any meaning – particularly when bad things overwhelm us. Sometimes that is about discovering that life doesn’t mean what we thought and that there is a new meaning we have not yet discovered. As we lose sight of the meaning of life we can often forget the meaning of God. We may have been misled into thinking of God in a way he just isn’t. 

When we lose that sense of meaning for our lives, when we’re burnt out and exhausted by excessive busyness, or responsibility, or trauma, when we’ve lost our way in the forest, then we do need to retrace our steps, unwind to the beginning to the time when there was always meaning. 

When we lose sight of the meaning of life we need to follow the sound of music and start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, the beginning when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – a down to earth meaning, embodied in our lives, in our times and in all we try to do.

The meaning of God is the meaning of life. In our first reading, the letter to the Colossians, we have the phrase He is the beginning. Christ is the beginning for God. 

The letter continues: “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross”.

This is the meaning of God and the meaning of life.

We are all “in the beginning” – we are part of the body of Christ who is the beginning. He is the beginning of the work of reconciliation ………. He is the beginning of the repair of broken and exploitative relationships. That is his work, his meaning and purpose. We are all “in the beginning”, in the beginning of a new creation, in the beginning of something new, in the beginning of something better as long as we listen to his word and love his meaning.

In the midst of things, a lot of which we’d rather not be in the midst of, in the midst of things we have the beginnings of life, its meaning and purpose, and the beginnings of God, his meaning and purpose – to find our way where we might lose our way. In our beginning is the Word to inspire our faith, hope and love, the ology which means the world to us.

Colossians 1:15-20

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. 

John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Seeing ourselves as others see us

David Herbert2 Comments
This is Dobri Dobrev who begged in the streets and churches of Sofia, blessing those he met with the words “Rejoice in the Lord!”. He raised thousands for churches and monasteries.

Imagine this.

“A formerly homeless theatre workshop participant searches out the right characters for his tableau; he scans the group, and points to me. He places me in the scene; he lifts my arms and shapes my hand into a dismissive wave; he adjusts my hips and torso; he sculpts my face with his fingers, gently, until I am scowling scornfully. He crouches low, cowering in front of where I stand, and we hold this image. I hold this stance, I become this character.

I feel in my body how he sees people like me, I feel in my body that I am this character. My arms begin to ache; I try to look for cracks in the mould to overwrite this position of scorn, but I am frozen in character before the group. I am implicated.”

That is from Emily Beausoleil’s book The Politics, Science and Art of Receptivity. It was brought to our attention by Al Barrett during a residential conference he facilitated exploring Theology post-Grenfell, post-Brexit (!).

Imagine that. Imagine being so contorted in the eyes of a brother or a sister – someone who is homeless. Imagine what we look like as we step aside, as we look the other way, as we pretend to search our pockets for “no change”. Imagine what we sound like with our feeble excuses and dismissive words. Imagine the ugliness of ignorance and arrogance. Imagine the ugliness of being too busy.

Imagine the hands sculpting our face into scowling impatience and our imposing presence towering over the cowering and crouching.

Then imagine those rough hands at our face again – this time taking our cheek for a kiss, and a “thank you, friend”. What change would there have been in our face, posture and behaviour?

Show me the way to go home.

Preparing for responsible companionship

David Herbert4 Comments

Theological perspectives have changed. Tonight I am meeting with our “Readers’ Council” to hear their concerns about their “Continuing Ministerial (Professional) Development”.These changes in theological perspective will be very much on my mind.

Reader ministry in the Church of England was “revived” in 1561 and in 1866 to minister in poorer parishes “destitute of an incumbent” and to cope with the population explosion in cities in the early 19th century. They had a different point of view from the clergy. The Bishop of Bangor (in 1894) saw the advantage of “Christian men who can bridge the gap between the different classes of society” – And the Dean of Manchester  recognised that most Readers were “more in unison with the masses with whom they mixed”. Although the Diocesan Readers came from the professions, the Parochial Readers were described as ‘the better educated from among the uneducated’. Nowadays Readers and clergy train together both before and after licensing and ordination. I have been ordained long enough to remember that this was not always so, and to remember that the idea that Readers and clergy could train together seemed preposterous. Now we take it for granted and appreciate the advantages of learning together.

This movement of theology is reflected in many of our traditions. From a Roman Catholic perspective, Ilia Delio traces the development of theology from the preserve of the priest in his academic study to a vast lay, creative and inter-disciplinary movement. This huge paradigm shift is dated back as recently as the 1970’s when only 5% of theologians were non-priests. That figure has grown to over 60%. Theological education is now well beyond the control of the institutional church. Diarmuid O’Murchu lists features of this shift in his book Adult Faith:

  1. Theology is no longer reserved to the academic domain.
  2. Theology has gone global, even beyond the boundaries acknowledged in multi-faith dialogue.
  3. Theology has become quite multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. “The contemporary lay theologian seeks to address the here-and-now of evolutionary creation … [casting] a wide net within a contextual landscape … [seeking] dialogue with partners in various fields of learning, transcending wherever possible the dualistic distinction between the sacred and the secular” (O’Murchu, p66f).
  4. Lay theologians do theology in a vastly different way from their clerical counterparts, who “prioritise the church, its traditions, teachings and expectations” (O’Murchu, p119)
  5. Christian theology has become radicalised as theologians “sought to realign Christian faith with one pervasive theme of the Christian Gospels: the New Reign of God”. (O’Murchu). Christian life is increasingly seen as “empowerment” and “called to be a counterculture to all forms of destructive power … facilitated not by some new benign form of hierarchical mediation, but by dynamic creative communities.” (O’Murchu).

For O’Murchu the “Kingdom of God” is “the companionship of empowerment” with theology being the “servant wisdom” of that companionship, so that “theology once more becomes a subversive dangerous memory, unambiguously committed to liberty from all oppressions and to empowerment for that fullness of life to which all creatures are called.” (O’Murchu, p65).

Theology has changed. In many traditions theology was thought to have been the preserve of the clergy. Readers and other lay ministers helped to open those boundaries, but their tendency remains to “prioritise the church, its traditions, teachings and expectations.” Now we increasingly realise that theology goes beyond the church (why has that taken so long?). Our shared “ministerial development” is to realise this, to overcome the tendency to prioritise the church and to engage with the “companionship of empowerment” wherever that is found.