The blog of Richard Hall, a Methodist Minister in Wales.

Mark Byron :: Having a sacred cow

It (ground zero) housed a number of key financial futures markets and a number of high-powered business offices, but it wasn’t a holy site to say the least. Unless money and international finance is your god.

It has become a memorial for the people who died there, but it is sacred only to the American civil religion that blends generic Ten Commandments-style theism with patriotism. A bit of free-market economics gets folded into that faith as well, so that the Word Trade Center’s demolition-by-plane was seen as a jab at American neoliberal economics.
…

Jesus ran the money-changers out of the Temple. Modern patriots are trying to make the modern money-changers HQ into a new temple and want no ideological competition in the neighborhood, especially from seeming fellow-travelers of the folks who trashed the Twin Towers.

It’s an important place of remembrance, yes. But it isn’t worth trashing the Constitution to keep competing visions from that part of Manhattan.

Prof. John Stackhouse - Ground Zero Mosque: It’s a Simple Question

But it seems to me that this is not a difficult matter to understand or decide. In fact, it comes down to an utterly simple question. Either we think all Muslims are somehow implicated in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or we don’t.

If all Muslims are thus implicated, then of course they shouldn’t be allowed to build near Ground Zero. Nor should they be allowed to build near anything else that matters to the rest of us. In fact, they should all be rounded up and exiled as the clear and present dangers that they are.

If we don’t think all Muslims are implicated in the attack, then of course they should be allowed to build a mosque or community centre or whatever the heck they want to build wherever the zoning and funding will allow—just like any other citizens.

(Thanks to Bene Diction for the Stackhouse link)

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COME, O thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell thee who I am,
My misery and sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name,
Look on thy hands, and read it there;
But who, I ask thee, who art Thou?
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.

In vain thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold!
Art thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell;
To know it now resolved I am;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

’Tis all in vain to hold thy tongue
Or touch the hollow of my thigh;
Though every sinew be unstrung,
Out of my arms thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling I will not let thee go
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then I am strong
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail.

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath Thy weighty hand,
Faint to revive, and fall to rise;
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let Thee go
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if thy name is Love.

‘Tis Love! ’tis Love! thou diedst for me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal love thou art;
To me, to all, thy bowels move;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see thee face to face,
I see thee face to face, and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

I know thee, Saviour, who thou art.
Jesus, the feeble sinner’s friend;
Nor wilt thou with the night depart.
But stay and love me to the end,
Thy mercies never shall remove;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

The Sun of righteousness on me
Hath rose with healing in his wings,
Withered my nature’s strength; from thee
My soul its life and succour brings;
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On thee alone for strength depend,
Nor have I power from thee to move;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey,
Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Charles Wesley

I understand that Isaac Watts, himself an incomparable hymn-writer, regarded this as worth all the hymns that he had written. It is a marvellous journey into the scriptures, its 14 verses (!) weaving the story of Jacob wrestling God at Peniel with a rich variety of Biblical allusions and Wesley’s own experience of spiritual struggle and liberation.

Jacob’s struggle, and Wesley’s poetic commentary upon it, remind us that engaging with God is not simply a matter of ‘praying the prayer’ and walking into prosperity and blessing. As Kim* is wont to remind us, “God is the wound, not the bandage.” Jacob leaves the stranger having been given a new name, a new life — but also a limp. Matthew Henry puts it this way in his commentary, “Wrestling believers may obtain glorious victories, and yet come off with broken bones; for ‘When they are weak, then they are strong’, weak in themselves, but strong in Christ”.

The struggle of the believer who wrestles with God is the struggle to know the God whose nature and name is Love. This is therefore always a struggle of faith, not despair. The fight may be hard, but our companion is the God who wounds only to heal and who has himself been wounded for our sake. The hands on which our names have been written (Isaiah 49:16) are the same that bear the marks of crucifixion, hands which lift us up and lead us home.

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1st Hope Scouts have a blog.

That’s it, really. Actually, we’ve had it a while, but for some reason the search engines don’t seem to be picking it up. It’s a bit odd: the main site is being indexed OK.

Anyhow, this is a gratuitous attempt to get the 1st Hope Scouts blog noticed by google.

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I visited the Blue Planet Aquarium today with Mrs H, daughter number 2 and a young friend. It’s a great place to spend a couple of hours. The entry price is quite high, but if you find vouchers it can be made quite reasonable.

The main selling point of the place is a very large tank which is reckoned to house, amongst other things, Europe’s biggest collection of sharks. An important feature of the tank is this tunnel made of clear acrylic so that you can literally walk among the various sea animals.

I’m not sure whether it was an effect of the curved acrylic, the water, or a combination of the two, but I found walking through the tunnel quite disconcerting. Things shifted in my vision in unexpected ways and sometimes different perspectives were presented almost at once. Most disconcerting.

Not unlike some conversations on the internet.

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Ben Myers on why you should be kind to theologians.

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Andrew Brown nails it.

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[D]mergent writes from the bitterest personal experience of reclaiming forgiveness.

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I’m reblogging this post as part of the conversation that’s going on about how we use the Bible. I’m not able to write anything fresh today, and this still says what I want it to. I’d also point you to Why Bible-believing Methodists Shouldn’t Eat Black Pudding, Bishop Alan: Reading the Bible 101 and Internet Monk: Icebergs, Onions and Why You’re Not As Simple As You Think.

In a comment on another post, commenter James* says

This is about the authority of Pauls Epistles. There can only be two schools of thought:

1) The Shelby Spong group where Paul is just some bloke who wrote stuff 2000 years ago, enterpreted it for him and his time but now is redundant due to context etc… This I understand and it is quite a strong argument.

2) The view that Paul was inspired by God and that everything he writes has Gods approval. This helps when dealing with more imaginary concepts like Grace and Justification but for our enlightened minds we cme unstuck when it comes to creationism and (of course) homosexuality.

What James says about St Paul’s epistles might just as well be said of the whole of scripture. In a nutshell, it’s all either made up or it’s been dictated by God. No other options: all or nothing. The implication seems to be that if you adopt any other approach, you simply have no basis for making an informed and reliable interpretation of the text. James seems to believe that the alternative to his stark choices is to pick and choose from the text merely on the whim of the individual interpreter.

Is that really how things are?

If you’ve followed any of the recent threads here, it will come as no surprise that I don’t think so. Rather than construct a theoretical argument about interpretation, I thought I’d just give a couple of simple (non-controversial!) examples to demonstrate how I believe we need to come to St Paul (and indeed the rest of the Bible).

Take Romans 14, the question of eating meat. Paul says quite clearly that the weak (in faith) “eat only vegetables”. He urges strong-faithed meat-eaters not to despise their weaker sisters, but still: “Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables”.

I’m a vegetarian. Does this verse allow you to conclude that my faith is weak? To quote St Paul — “By no means!” (There may be other reasons for you to come to that conclusion, of course) You see, what Paul has in mind is nothing to do with vegetarianism as such, and everything to do with the practice of gentile butchers selling meat that has been offered to pagan idols. In other words, you have to look beyond the words and ask about the reasons that they were written. I’ve never met a vegetarian who became so because they were concerned that the meat might have come from a pagan sacrifice. I have, however, met the occasional Christian who is content to think of vegetarians as having weak faith “because Romans 14:2 says so”. Except, of course, that it doesn’t.

Context. ‘What did this text mean to those who first heard it?’ is a foundational question for exegesis of the Bible. Until you’ve answered that, you can’t answer the question(s) about what it means for today.

Context alone is not enough though. We have to recognize that the Bible is not a simple book and if we are to take it seriously we can’t treat it as a collection of free-standing inerrant sayings. The scriptures are a whole and they must be interpreted (horrid word alert!!) holistically. That is to say, whenever we read the Bible we read it in the light of what we know of the rest of the Bible says. It is self-evident that the more we know about the Bible, the better we are able to interpret it. And yes, some bits of scripture do supersede others, and there are times when we need to decide which way round the superseding works. Let’s take an obvious example: Matthew 5:38,39: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The law of the Torah (itself a merciful limitation on revenge) demands strict retribution, but Jesus both overturns and fulfills this law. The words of Jesus sublate the text of Exodus — the meaning is taken broader and deeper. Sublation occurs all through the Bible, and it means we should always be careful about the way we use the phrase “The Bible says…”

So when we come to, say, homosexuality and St Paul there are questions that have to be asked. First, there’s context. When you read ‘homosexual’ in an English translation of St Paul, is it certain that he has in mind long-term committed same-sex relationships. The answer to that isn’t obvious. Remember the vegetarians of Romans 14? The words that Paul uses, and the way that he uses them, have to be examined carefully. In a case like this, just reading the ESV won’t do. Neither will simply listening to your ‘approved’ teachers. Biblical interpretation is too important just to take someone else’s word. Every Christian is called to wrestle with scripture as strenuously as they are able, and that means taking account of a variety of opinions. Second, how might the teachings of Paul be sublated? Changing tack for a moment, Paul nowhere condemns slavery. It took the church 1800 years to see that while slavery is explicitly approved by scripture, it is implicitly illegitimized by a whole host of texts many of which come from Paul himself. For 1800 years the church lived with the buying and selling of human beings, but now I know of no Christian who regards slavery with anything other than abhorrence. Is it too much to suppose that the something similar may happen to the church’s view of homosexuality? I don’t believe it is.

The simple fact is that there are gay Christian couples living lives of commitment and care who experience the blessing of God in their mutual love. Some of us find this difficult to believe, but it is true. Just as the ministry of women has been blessed against the expectations of those who declare it unscriptural, so gay men and lesbians are, in fact, being used by God in his Kingdom.

Ultimately, that experience will lead the church to a deeper understanding of her scriptures.

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In view of Tim Chesterton’s response to a comment by DH in the thread to my post “Hauerwas on spirituality: ‘the assholes got it’”, here is the first hymn I ever wrote (in desperation, simply because I couldn’t find a hymn in any of the hymnbooks I have that say what I wanted to sing in a service on Bible Sunday).

Scripture is a conversation,
Ezra, Jonah, Peter, Paul;
hidden is God’s revelation,
told to some but meant for all.

Like a conference, many speakers
vie to make their voices heard;
only to the eyes of seekers
is disclosed the living Word.

We are called to be discerning
as we eavesdrop on the text;
not for answers but for learning
may the Spirit richly vex.

Move me from my fixed opinions,
axe laid to the frozen sea;
Lord, I long for your dominion,
liberated from my “me”.

Thus unthreatened by the other,
unconcerned with being wrong,
may we add with sister, brother,
to your all-inclusive song.

Kim Fabricius

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My friend Chris Shannahan has relaunched his blog. Go look at BelievingInTheCity. It’s good.

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Leafing through my The Hauerwas Reader earlier today to consult the essay on euthansaia for a book I’m reviewing, I came across a sheet of A5 on which was printed this excerpt from a November 2001 interview. I must have downloaded it from some blog, when and where I can’t remember. Hauerwas is typically coy - and correct.

I gave up on the language of spirituality because the assholes got it. Spirituality became a way to talk about a universal need that we all have that can be expressed through any religion some way or the other. This kind of individualistic, getting-myself-right with the powers of the world, I’m not sympathetic toward it. I am very sympathetic toward exercises that have been well explored through centuries of Christian practice that are now embodied in wise people that can teach you how to go on. But, never forget, the Devil’s a spirit and the Devil can appear as a spirit of discernment, and so you have to be very careful with that. I wouldn’t want to be among the proponents of spirituality today. I’m more willing, though, to talk about prayer, fasting, obedience, silence. I regard spirituality as learning how to talk. What that means is not being afraid of your “first order” religious convictions, and that you can just say it. The Psalms are “first order” religious convictions, so I take a lot of comfort from the Psalms.

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I’m riding a train heading south* down through the Welsh borders. It’s a journey that almost always gladdens my spirits – this is such beautiful country. Chugging along on the train, you’re never sure which country you’re in. The border between England and Wales is anything but a straight line, and there are no trackside signs.

I’ve recently come back from a family holiday in Ireland, part of which was spent staying with friends in Northern Ireland. (My daughters have since declared that, despite the other ‘cool’ stuff they did, including a bit of pony trekking, this was the best bit of the trip) My friends live in south Armagh, in what once have been called ‘bandit country’. Their farm is on the border with the Republic (the ‘Free State’, they still call it), the nearest border crossing is just a few metres from their front door.

The last time I stayed with them, this border crossing had been declared illegal and was closed to traffic. The army had placed some large blocks of concrete across the road and, if my memory is functioning properly, they had also taken up a section of the surface. Somewhere, I have photos. I’ll have to dig them out. The road was most definitely shut – except for the efforts of the local ‘Bad Boys’, who used JCBs and the like to open a way around the concrete. Opening the road was an act of political defiance and my friends, despite their Loyalism, were pleased to use this route for their journey to their church, a mile or two on the other side of the border.

Now, of course, the road is open. There is no ‘frisson’ as you cross the border. The only difference you notice is the road signage: speed limits change to km/h, warning signs look different, that sort of thing. (Driving down the A1 in NI is quite entertaining: it crosses the border several times, becoming the Irish N1, and requiring lots of different signs to comply with the appropriate traffic regulations) What you don’t notice as you cross the border are any other sudden changes. The accent and speech patterns of the people are the same. The landscape does not alter. The air does not change. To travel through borderlands is almost always a reminder of how artificial our borders can be.

And confusing. Between England and Wales, this is not normally a major issue. Being in the borderlands of Northern Ireland is a different story. Own a British mobile phone in South Armagh, and you’re likely to find yourself connecting to an Irish network. And paying exhorbitant roaming rates. Your currency is the pound, but if you worship in the South, the offering will be taken in Euros. The cheapest local place to buy diesel is the other side of the line, another reason to have Euros in your wallet. Speed limits in Ireland are in km/h, but the clearest markings on your speedometer are in mph. Rules of the road are similar enough to be familiar, and different enough to cause mild anxiety.

There’s no doubt about it. Being on the border can be usettling.

As I’ve reviewed the conversations that have happened here in my virtual absence, I find many echoes of that borderland confusion. Christians live as citizens of the Kingdom, given a new identity which overrides all others. As Tim reminded us in his comment the other day, the ‘we’ of the New Testament is the members of the body of Christ, and our loyalty to that body is greater than the loyalties we feel to nation, flag or culture. These loyalties arise by accident of birth. Our citizenship of the kingdom arises from the design and choice of the Living God. How could the one compete with the other?

Only because we live perpetually in the borderland. Whatever our spiritual passports might say, we find ourselves as often as not travelling in territory where the customs and laws are attractive to us even as we know that they are inimicable to the One who calls and commands us. So we persuade ourselves that our loyalties are not divided, that our self-interest coincides with the interests of the Kingdom, that where we’re born is of greater significance than the great company into which we’re re-born.

Like the Israelites of old, we’ve been called out of Egypt. But getting Egypt out of us is a long hard task.

Until that happens, we’ll continue travelling through the borderlands.

*By the time I’ve posted, I’m on my way north again. But not actually moving. Signal failure, apparently.

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OPEN, Lord, my inward ear,
And bid my heart rejoice;
Bid my quiet spirit hear
Thy comfortable voice;
Never in the whirlwind found,
Or where earthquakes rock the place,
Still and silent is the sound,
The whisper of thy grace.

From the world of sin, and noise,
And hurry I withdraw;
For the small and inward voice
I wait with humble awe;
Silent am I now and still,
Dare not in thy presence move;
To my waiting soul reveal
The secret of thy love.

Thou didst undertake for me,
For me to death wast sold;
Wisdom in a mystery
Of bleeding love unfold;
Teach the lesson of thy cross,
Let me die with thee to reign;
All things let me count but loss,
So I may thee regain.

Show me, as my soul can bear,
The depth of inbred sin!
All the unbelief declare,
The pride that lurks within;
Take me, whom thyself hast bought,
Bring into captivity
Every high aspiring thought,
That would not stoop to thee.

Lord, my time is in thy hand,
My soul to thee convert;
Thou canst make me understand,
Though I am slow of heart;
Thine in whom I live and move,
Thine the work, the praise is thine;
Thou art wisdom, power, and love,
And all thou art is mine.

Charles Wesley

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“Fixed ideas are like a cramp in the foot: the best remedy is to stomp on them.”

“It is claimed that arguments against Christianity arise from doubt. This is a complete misunderstanding. The arguments against Christianity arise out of rebellion, out of reluctance to obey. The battle against objections is but shadow-boxing, because it is intellectual combat with doubt instead of ethical combat against mutiny.”

“When it comes to doing what we know to be God’s will, we do not dare to say: I will not. So we say: I cannot. Is this any less rebellious? If it God’s will that you do it, how is it possible that you cannot?”

“The distinguishing characteristic of Christian love is that it contains an apparent contradiciton - that to love is a duty. And yet it is only this kind of love that discovers the neighbor.”

“Freedom really is freedom only when, in the same moment, the same second, it rushes with infinite speed to bind itself. Freedom is the choice whose truth is that there can be no question of any choice.”

“Christianity has been made so completely devoid of character that there is really nothing to persecute. The chief trouble with Christians, therefore, is that no one wants to kill them anymore!”

From Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, compiled and edited by Charles E. Moore (Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House, 1999).

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Le pécheur est au coeur même de chrétienté…. Nul n’est aussi compétent que le pécheur en matière de chrétienté. Nul, si ce n’est le saint.

The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity…. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody except the saint.

– Charles Péguy

[The epigraph of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter]

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In 1994 … the Smithsonian Institute in Washingston started to plan an exhibit to commemorate the end of World War II. One of its holdings was the B-29 bomber which had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Enola Gay, named by the pilot after his mother, became the centre of a huge controversy when the curators suggested that visitors might want to think about the morality of using the world’s newest and most destructive weapon. Part of the exhibit was to be broken objects retrieved from the rubble at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although the museum had consulted with special interest groups, including veterans’ associations, and with historians, this did not spare it the storm that followed.

The Smithsonian curators tried … to use the Enola Gay to raise questions about the nature of modern war and the role of nuclear weapons. They also hoped to inform the public that the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki had been controversial at the time and had remained so. Such explorations of issues ran up against those who felt strongly that the National Air and Space Museum existed not to encourage public debate, but to commemorate the glories of flight and airpower and to reinforce American patriotism. Neoconservatives charged that the Smithsonian and liberal historians were attacking the record of the United States in World War II and American society itself by suggesting that Hiroshima had been of questionable morality. The Washington Times found something sinister in the fact that the lead curator was both a Canadian and a former professor. Veterans resented the implication that their war had not been an entirely good one….

Members of Congress, newspapers and right-wing radio talk shows jumped in enthusiastically to charge that the Smithsonian was besmirching the honour of the United States and its war heroes… Pat Buchanan, who was soon to announce his candidacy for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, saw the exhibition as part of ‘a sleepless campaign to inculcate in American youth a revulsion toward America’s past’. Nancy Kassebaum, a Republican senator from Kansas, introduced a resolution in the Senate which declared that the exhibit’s script was offensive and directed the National Air and Space Museum not to impugn ‘the memory of those who gave their lives for freedom’. In an election year no one was going to vote against such sentiments… In January 1995 it [the Smithsonian] cancelled the show. Four months later, the director of the National Air and Space Museum resigned.”

Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (London: Profile Books, 2008), pp. 123-25.

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I’m back. Did you miss me? I’m glad to see that things have been jogging along splendidly here - huge gratitude to Kim for keeping things going.

I’ve been on the Emerald Isle: a week in Northern Ireland and another in Connemara. I hope to tell you about it over the next day or two. However, one of the things about going away is that there’s stuff to do when you get back. I haven’t had any significant internet access while I’ve been away. That’s been a a Good Thing in many ways, but it does mean that there’s a lot of tidying to be done on my email before I can be sure what else I need to be doing.

Bear with me.

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God whose presence is an absence,
never like an object “there”,
speak to me in sounds of silence,
in the voiceless void of prayer.

God whose truth’s beyond all showing,
not like one and one are two,
teach us truth’s not known by knowing,
truth is something that we do.

God whose being is an ocean,
sea of love yet unexplored,
keep my flailing faith in motion
as I paddle by the shore.

God who keeps a proper distance,
God who runs ahead at pace,
leave us signs of your existence,
footprints we may track and trace.

When in heaven we behold you,
with the angels, face to face,
we will see that all we’ve been through
was the trailer of your grace.

Tune: Servant Song

Kim Fabricius

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You have made God small,
setting him astride
a pipette or a retort
studying the bubbles,
absorbed in an experiment
that will come to nothing.

I think of him rather
as an enormous owl
abroad in the shadows,
brushing me sometimes
with his wing so the blood
in my veins freezes, able

to find his way from one
soul to another because
he can see in the dark.
I have heard him crooning
to himself, so that almost
I could believe in angels,

those feathered overtones
in love’s rafters, I have heard
him scream, too, fastening
his talons in his great
adversary, or in some lesser
denizen, maybe, like you or me.

In R.S. Thomas, No Truce with the Furies (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1995), p. 52.

[Vintage Thomas: the birdwatcher, the dissector of the scientist's dissections, the poet not only of the hidden God but the predatory God, the God of feral love.]

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