Thoughts – hymnsandbooks

Toward Ascension

The 9th May, 2024 is Ascension Day. That takes my memory back to school days going to, what would now be seen as, a very old-fashioned boys grammar school. On this day we were marched in the morning to a local church for a service. Other than having a morning off from lessons, I remember little of this and grasped nothing of its significance. It makes me wonder what we make of this today, if anything.

Easter was early this year. Then it was over. What then? Actually, in terms of the church calendar, it’s not over until Ascension. So what do we do in these weeks?

Over recent Sundays we have been recounting stories of resurrection. Outside the world moves toward the next commercial opportunity for retailers and hospitality. As to Ascension, what’s that? Good question.

Let’s take it literally from the point of view of the disciples. They had witnessed crucifixion. Then Jesus was back with them. Forgiveness was given, peace proffered. Back to normal. Remember when the lockdown of Covid was lifted. Back to normal, yes. But I’ve recently had another vaccination. Not all is ‘normal’. We have adjusted. I think the disciples experienced a similar rhythm. Jesus death left them orphaned. But Jesus was back. Then this ascension took him away again – ‘Handed over to orphaned, comforted, now comfort less…lost, bereft, as now he leaves them, homeless, friendless, scarred, unblessed’…as a hymn puts it. The gospel according to Matthew says, ‘and some doubted’.

Once beyond this moment what was the new normal for them? Perhaps it can teach us something. Firstly, they had to recognise that Jesus really was dead, not there. Gradually the way beyond this realisation was that the old normal was not coming back. They had to think and act for themselves. This was not just trusting for life after death, but for living life before death.

Without the Ascension they would never have reached this point. Realising this they needed a real new normal. This involved repentance for real. A total and complete change of mind. Following Covid the so called ‘new normal’ drifted back to business as usual. If we have grasped the intention of Ascension there are choices to be made, a new mindset to be adopted and a new life to be lived for real, no drifting back. That new life, for the disciples, began to express the very spirit of Jesus.

So this time coming up to Ascension what are we going to do? A time for reflection? What real new normal do we need to embody that we, you and I, might see Christ in others and they might see Christ in us – that same Spirit of Jesus?

Buzzard; Copyright Andrew Pratt 2024

Revelation, Scripture, Tradition, Reason – some thoughts

I want to suggest that we need to unravel the knitting of Christian, even Judaeo-Christian religion, if not to find truth, at least to be honest about what we claim to believe, to recognise that much, so called, religious belief amounts more to bounded faith statements than often we want to admit. This is nothing new but perhaps I want to go further than most.

Protestants have long relied on the foundations of Revelation, Scripture, Tradition and Reason in order to elaborate the structures of faith, of belief. Just how resistant are these to close examination? I would argue that they are not as strong as many would want to assert. In fact they are very weak indeed.

Let me begin with revelation. This is at once the easiest and most difficult to challenge. Revelation is totally dependent on the experience and interpretation of the person claiming to have received it. Consistently religious orthodoxy has canonised some accounts of revelation and anathematised others. This is helpful for those who want to set boundaries to belief but it is hardly likely to lead to truthful interpretation or honesty. It is as fallacious as the arguments used to justify some of the extremes of the early surrealist movement in the field of art. The argument went something like this. If it is possible to directly access the sub-conscious, one might suggest, say, by going into a trance-like state and then to communicate this through the media of visual art, literature or music then what is produced might reach depths of truth than that achieved in a more cognitive way. New realities and truths might be tapped into. This was what André Breton described as ‘psychic automatism in its pure state’.[1]

I suspect, as with all art movements, there was sincerity in this exploration at the start. One might relate it legitimately to the processes that Brueggemann has alluded to in terms of prophetic imagination.[2] It is undoubtedly possible to discover new solutions to problems by, what we might call, lateral thinking, but the clue is in the word thinking. For someone like Salvador Dali I do not think it disingenuous to suggest that some of his lateral thinking had a distinctly pecuniary intent. What I doubt is the original suggestion that it is possible to tap into the subconscious and communicate what we find, neat, as it were, undiluted by conscious organisation of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason is a pure impossibility.[3] Between the neural connections in which the thought is generated and the communication of the thought, in whatever medium, there is a process of communication in which the purity of the material is sullied, translated. It cannot be otherwise.

Now if we apply this to revelation we need to admit that aside from any later attempt to canonise or authorise a particular revelation there must be an admission to the degree to which such revelation is subject to human thought, interpretation and distortion even if we want to accept that such revelation found its origin outside the recipient. What I am saying is the revelation is a profoundly unreliable conduit for something that we might want to claim as an eternal truth.

Moving to Scripture we find ourselves one step down the ladder from the source of revelation at best. At worst we have either an amalgam of revelation and conscious human construct, or simply human construct.

All of this might be seeming to say that there is nothing metaphysical beyond our own human experience and all religious belief is ‘made up’. The council is out on that as we have no real way of knowing. All we can do is to trust our own intellectual examination of what is presented to us or that of the mothers and fathers of faith who have come before us, that is our tradition. Arguably this tradition is the most unreliable link in the chain which is why some protestants have ridden so light to it. The problem with revelation, scripture and tradition is that all are not as free from contention as we might want them to be, and all can be used, unconsciously or dishonestly, as means of control. At its simplest this can be seen in atonement theory. If it is assumed that all humanity is separate from God and that that is not good then power is given to those who have the knowledge to reconcile us to God. And with such gnosis, knowledge, power, comes the ability to control. Unless you do this or believe that you will not be reconciled. And even if that doesn’t matter much in this life, look out for the life to come. QED! At our most honest we have turned metaphors intended to explain belief into truths to be believed.

I am agnostic about life out of life. I am happy with David Goodbourn’s assertion that ‘To be human is to exist in time, to have a narrative, to live in a world of consequences’.[4]

So where does that place us? We return to Reason. Reason should lead us to evaluate Revelation, Scripture and Tradition, and this is what I have been seeking to do.

[1] Breton, A., Manifeste du Surréalism (1924) quoted by Gomperts, W., in What are you looking at: 150 years of Modern Art, Penguin/Viking, London, 2012, p245.

[2] Brueggemann, W., The Prophetic Imagination, Second Edition, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2001, passim.

[3] Pratt, A.E., unpublished note 20^th February 1971.

[4] Goodbourn.

True Resurrection – a reflection

This is the day of resurrection.

In our narrative, just three short days ago, hatred had free reign. And now, as the sun crept over the horizon on yet another day, change was in the air. Heralded by the sound of a voice, the calling of a name, the offering of peace, the breaking of bread, change was waiting in the wings.

Hatred has had free reign through this year since we celebrated this festival last. And now as the sun creeps over the horizon on yet another day change still pervades the air. Silence and fear mix with the calling of a name, candles are lit, peace is hoped for, bread is broken, people pray, change is in the wings.

What do you do after a death?

Lost voices echo over the gulf of death and shake us, for though silenced, they will never be lost.

Actions, simple actions, will make memories real. My father’s hands, those of your mother, the painted nails of your daughter, the knuckles of my son – all familiar – all echoed in our own hands, bringing us up short. And tears, unexpectedly, sometimes inappropriately, flow and we lose control.

Then someone points out the significance of words which still stay with us, the occasions when we heard them informing what we say and how we act.

This is the day of resurrection, of re-creation, of persistent love.

Some hold this as an historic event easily, a matter of faith. Others feel it is beyond belief. Yet what happened in those days, miraculous or not, is mirrored in our own experiences, yesterday, today, perhaps tomorrow. This was a day that changed lives, offered a new perspective. Mary heard her name being called and the disciples walked into a new future. All that Jesus had said and done lived on for and in them. He changed attitudes and informed actions. But he had died.

Love, however, had not been destroyed. If you can have faith in a literal bodily resurrection hold onto it, it is a gift of grace. But whether you can, or not, reflect with me for a moment on how the first disciples kept Christ alive even beyond crucifixion, resurrection, Ascension.

Acts 2

⁴⁴All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds^[^j^] to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home^[^k^] and ate their food with glad and generous^[^l^] hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

Christ was raised and lived on in the love and kindness of ordinary people like you and me.

Love, real love, cannot be destroyed, for there is nothing in all creation that can separate us from God’s love. That’s what matters and our ongoing love, our persistent loving kindness, is evidence of resurrection NOW!

That is real:

When we greet with loving kindness those who have betrayed us;

When we make peace with those who have let us down;

When we meet apparent strangers, yet learn their names, and call them in loving kindness;

Then Christ is alive.

Christ is alive when persistent loving kindness is alive in your life and mine!

Good Friday reflection

Reflection

This event is almost inconceivable for me. You see, I do not believe in a vindictive God who sacrifices his Son. I do trust, through faith, in the incarnation – God being human. Hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered. A baby in a manger, ‘the Word made flesh’. But if this is our starting point then it is God who hung on a cross on that first ‘good Friday’. I cannot cope with some vast plan of salvation that requires this carnage. What I can understand is a God of love, from whose love we can never be separated (Romans 8, 38)

So where does that leave us? For me Jesus embodies God’s love in totality. Ultimate, complete and utter love has to be totally selfless and this is what I see in Jesus. It is the sort of love that challenges all hypocrisy, injustice and indignity to which we are exposed and which we still experience. But there is a problem here. The moment we start to love those whom others do not, or cannot, love we become a threat to them. We either have to acknowledge that love and ally ourselves with it, ignore it, or oppose it. We are inherently selfish. Humanly we seek our own preservation. That is a biological imperative. So when Jesus challenged the powers, those around him by challenging their economy – the overturning of the tables of the money-changers, the emphasis on the importance of the widow’s tiny monetary gift, pausing to heal a woman, deemed unclean, who pressed on him in the crowd, when he had been called to heal the daughter of a leader of the synagogue – in all these ways it felt as if he was a threat to the culture and religion, the very economy of the people. This threat was to their very being. And how they behaved was no different from how we, in similar situations, behave. They behaved, literally, naturally.

And Jesus response was the only possible response of complete and utter, unconditional, all-inclusive love: that is forgiveness – ‘forgive them for they (literally) know not what they do’!

And the cross becomes wondrous, not as some great theological bargain, or the culmination of a cosmic plan of sacrifice, but in the revelation of the nature of total love that we are called to emulate.

And the world is shrouded in darkness, inevitably for in darkness we cannot see, if God is dead this really is the end. And this is why theologians, then and now, you and I, seek to explain away this horror. Yet Jurgen Moltmann, some years ago in a book which still deserves to be read, The Crucified God, sees the cross to be the test of all that deserves to be called Christian, rather than the resurrection, for here we see God’s utter love and willingness to be vulnerable, as we are vulnerable, even unto death in order to be one with us. And the scandal and uniqueness is that gods are not meant to die, wondrous God, wondrous love indeed!

Countering extremism – living with difference (previously on Facebook)

When you relate so closely to another that you feel their pain, and that pain can only be assuaged when your pain has gone, this is true compassion. That is why Jesus touched the leper, why the Samaritan crossed over. To be human, to love, we do not need to believe in God or to assent to a moral code. We ‘simply’ need to recognise and embody our common humanity with all others. This is the essence of love manifested in the idea of incarnation and can never be imposed on others and is not a condition for us to be loved.