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Last week, three men were in the news, and all in connection with money and wealth. Two are churchmen, and the third, an animation filmaker. For the first two, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Francisco, the issue has been reconciling the relationship Jesus had with money, with the enormous wealth that the two religious institutions they lead have to manage. How can the church truly represent the spirit and power of Jesus, when it’s so linked in to the powers of this world’s “mammon”, the financial institutions we’ve become so accustomed to regarding as the big bosses that run things.
For the Archbishop, the problems arose when he sought to challenge the obscene greed of just one aspect of our 21st Century system of usury, the so called “payday lenders” in the UK. The media immediately took him to task by digging around in some of the more dubious investment practices of the Church Commissioners, the organisation that manages Anglican wealth. Over on the other side of the world, and in a spot more known for its ostentatious wealth and luxury
than for a spirit of self sacrifice, Copacabana Beach the new Pope sought to direct the attention of the three million masses, to a life of simplicity and truth, and away from the more obvious excesses of the Vatican hierarchy’s wealth and corruption.
Interesting for me to compare the two men, and to see how, the one having arrived at senior Church leadership from having had a role in big business, and the other having come up from more lowly origins as a priest, yet both exhibit a similar impatience and, indeed, revulsion with the way that money, and greed for more money, grabs our attention, and ultimately corrupts, and turns us away from the way of Jesus.
The third man, in total contrast, is Sam Simon, the co-creator of the Simpsons cartoon series, along with Matt Groening. Simon is currently dying from colonic cancer, and has been facing up to an eternity without a cash in hand bank balance, by practically divesting himself of the millions he won’t need on the other side, giving them to charitable causes. There’s no particular indication of a spiritual side to his philantropy, or any faith commitment there, but he does confess to the great joy giving money away has given him. Setting these three stories from last week side by side makes me think about how I am at managing the resources given to me.
Down the west coast of Portugal, the Costa Alentejana, lies the Praia de Malhão, that most Irish of Portuguese beaches. Don’t know why it should be so, but it just feels Irish. Something about the smell of the ozone, the way the seagulls wheel around the craggy rock formations, or the splashes of colour where sea pinks and other flowers blossom in the cliffs. Or, maybe it’s the lack of access - no paved carpark, no boardwalk, no coffee shops, no restaurants serving bacalhau and sardines. But it’s wonderful. And still very popular in these summer months with Portuguese holiday makers from the nearby resort of Vila Nova de Milfontes. For me, it’s the undiscovered, non-Algarve, non-Lisbon side of the Portuguese coast I love the best
The sort of beach you want to send home picture postcards about. You know, the sort of cards that says “Wish U Were Here”. I was thinking about that, because of reading John 14:3 today, which is sort of Jesus’ holiday picture postcard to all of his friends, saying how he so wants them to be where he is. We tend to write postcards from holidays to people we care about for two main reasons - one, because we want to share how much we are enjoying it, and secondly, because we value our relationship with them so much, and wish they could be with us. But we often write these sentiments so casually, and without much meaning.
When Jesus says that his desire is that “where I am, there you may be also”, he means every word, and ... the postcard is written in his blood. It’s not a vague throwaway comment - “Oh, I wish you could enjoy Heaven with me”. It’s a purposeful statement of intent. I’m going to make sure that you will get to where I am going - even if it kills me
The BBC website this week highlighted a report by the Relate organisation, calling for more support for older people in maintaining their relationships. This in the light of the growing incidence of marital breakdown among the elderly, the so called “silver divorce” trend. So it makes me ask the question what gives us that “stickability”, and why is it that many couples do stay together for the long haul.
Despite appearances and what the media might say, people want a relationship that will stand the test of time. Half a century ago, the Beatles posed the question “Will you still love me when I’m 64”. More recently, and more poignantly, Lana del Ray, in the Great Gatsby sings “Will you still love me, when I’m no longer young and beautiful. Will you still love me when I’ve got nothing, but my aching soul.”
So, if everyone wants it, if that’s the way we humans are wired, to stay together for the long haul, then how come it’s so difficult to achieve. I watched a TV interview this week in which Patti Scialfa spoke of the complexities of a long term relationship. “People are imperfect.” she said, “We’re all flawed. When you’re young and you get into a relationship you always think love holds some simplistic promise of completion. It’s not true. How could you put that on someone else. It’s too much.”
Who’s Patti Scialfa, you ask, (and I did too). Well, she just
happens to have been married to rock legend Bruce Springsteen for the past 16 years (though, as a member of his E Street band) they’ve known each other since the ‘80s). It’s nice to see that, in the glare of the public gaze and the frenetic rock star lifetsyle, a couple can commit to staying together for the long haul.
This August we will have been married 33 years. And there’s plenty of flaws. But it has been great, genuinely worthwhile over time to discover within ourselves, by God’s help, a mutual commitment to love, and understand and cherish the other person. In August 1982, just two years after us incidentally, there was another iconic couple who tied the knot in Ireland - and they’re still together - Bono and Ali Hewson.
She figures briefly in one of his early music videos (“The Sweetest Thing” - it’s a song about trying to put things right) and I love the expression on her face - a kind of “”Who is this idiot sitting across from me, and how is it that I love him so much!”
Yes. Thank God for his strength for the long haul
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23054615
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WybiA263bw
Consider the swallows of the air. They pay no rent, neither do they go to the supermarket. Yet, they manage to build a house in a rich man’s apartment, and bring up their young to explore the broad expanse of sky above the river.
Even as our good neighbours Sandra and Rodrigo move out of Torre Sul this weekend, we have acquired some new ones! The kind that don’t pay any rent, that make an awful mess of our tiny balcony, and that go screaming around the neighbourhood, making a racket. Still, we don’t mind. It’s a great pleasure to share our apartment with a family of swallows. To watch them as the evening sun goes down, wheeling between the high rise blocks to arrive in their tiny nest with a mouthful of flies and grubs for their young. And to hear those little ones bursting with energy and joy for living in their tiny nest above our heads.
I guess Jesus exhortation in the Sermon on the Mount to consider the lilies of the field is just that. Take your eyes off yourself just for a moment, and away from the mundane round of existence you are struggling with. Look at the grand design around you, and the way that things, animals and birds, apparently without effort, come into being and make their way through life, without thought of market rates, or economic slumps or whatever.
And, yes, turn your eyes to the great Creator of life, and give Him thanks for this one basic fact - that He cares for you far above any lily of the field, or swallow of the air.
I’m working my way through Eric Metaxas biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, at the moment and what a man he was. I’m not a great one for reading lengthy biographies, but this one gripped my imagination for the way the story of one’s man life is interwoven into the broad sweep of Twentieth Century History that it covered, and the insights of the Christian struggle against Nazism in Germany that it reveals.
Like many of my generation, I’ve had a copy of Bonhoeffer’s “Cost of Discipleship” on my bookshelf for long enough, but I’ve never fully appreciated just how much that cost meant for him personally, when the path of discipleship runs foul of the accepted wisdom of the day. The book traces his path as a student, thinker, Pastor and theologian and then as a pacifist, conscientious objector and finally co-conspirator in the attempt to remove Hitler, and eventually prisoner and martyr.
Makes me wonder how much does my discipleship cost me in personal terms. Am I guilty of being a recipient of what Bonhoeffer likes to call “cheap grace”? Grace, that is happily taken up without thought to what it costs in terms of living for Christ in the real world. How much more costly does that same grace appear for a North Korean believer, or for a follower of Christ in Vietnam, for example, than for me. And, is it likely, that that cost for us in Europe is set to increase with the continued erosion of Biblical values in our society, and as the tide swings further and further away from it’s Christian foundations? Few Christians in pre-WWII Germany fully discerned that welcoming the promised renewal of Germany's greatness that Hitler brought, would mean also adopting a world view which so totally diminished and devalued the Christianity of the Bible. Tendencies can creep in so subtly, and in today's world no less so.
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer "The Cost of Discipleship" (1937)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bonhoeffer-Pastor-Martyr-Prophet-Spy/dp/1595552464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371723331&sr=8-1&keywords=bonhoeffer
I subscribe to The Courier Internacional, which is an excellent monthly Portuguese monthly news journal. As well, as it’s own analysis, it picks up and translates interesting articles from the world’s press like Le Monde, Die Welt, La Repubblica etc for a local audience. This June edition is running a feature on .... wait for it... God, with the tile “Afinal, Deus não Morreu” (“In the end, God’s still alive”) and comments that, whereas the Twentieth century was an era of post-religious ideologies and nationalisms that declared with various degrees of intensity, the death of God, the Twenty-first could well see a resurgence of spirituality and religious faith.
The article, understandably, talks as much about the rise of Islam, and the growing New Age style spirituality of today’s generation, as it does about any growth in evangelical Christianity worldwide, but that is also part of the conversation. At any rate, it’s interesting to see that particular slogan (that God is dead) blown out of the water.
Even an article by a leading secularist and columnist in the online magazine “The European”, Alexander Gorlach, which sets out to claim that belief in the existence of God or not makes little difference in the development of the European project, acknowledges the importance of religious thought and Christian values, not only in European history, but as recently as the latter post war period of the twentieth Century.
“After the destruction of World War II” he says “ and this is the flipside of the European project – there was the need for reconciliation. In the countries that had been occupied by the Nazis, some found the strength to forgive the Germans for what they had done. Forgiveness was fueled by the power and with the support of Christian faith. It is embodied in the common knowledge of the Christian tradition: Christ forgave his persecutors before he died. This ideal of forgiveness has been a role model of the postwar era.”
http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/alexander-goerlach--2/6722-european-secularism
So, we’re moving on into the Twentyfirst knowing that faith is important, that values like forgiveness and compassion are born out of an understanding of the nature of who God is, and that, in the end, God does matter, and that there’s a lot more to life than just that which exists in the physical, the financial and the political realms.
Sharon rang us on Skype yesterday morning from Mumbai, and I could hear the violent hissing of the first monsoon rains hitting the city in the background. She switched on video and we watched it teeming over her balcony and down into the street below. Took me straight back, in my memory, to those long hot days of late June in Pakistan when you were just gasping for air and longing for the monsoon rains to arrive.. Nothing moves. The sun seems to stand still in the heavens. The earth bakes. Just need some sweet refreshment from the intense heat.
And then came July, and the clouds began to gather (the monsoon arrives later in Pakistan than India) and, then, by about the second week of July, the skies grow heavy and thick, and eventually break, and then --- there was rain. Sweet refreshing rain. Moistening the parched, hardened ground. Powerful, intense rain. Breaking bridges and causing landslides. The same rain can bring life and vitality, and can cause death and inconvenience. But, in the first instance, when it first arrives, it was always welcome.
Alexander Frater writes about the arrival of the monsoon, in "Chasing the Monsoon", a book I picked up some years ago - can’t remember where - probably in some second hand bookshop in Islamabad or Karachi. In it, he follows the course of the monsoon rains from the southern tip of the subcontinent to the north, and writes vividly about its effect on the land and the people.
Rain figures largely in a few examples of music I am listening to today. First in my list, there’s an electronic dance track by Armin van Burren, which cleverly expresses musically the incessant drumming of a constant downpour. Then, Ladysmith Black Mombasa, from South Africa, singing about the “rain, rain, rain, beautiful rain” falling on the dry African earth. Thirdly, any one of the countless expressions of the “barsat kaa mausam” (Monsoon season) that appear in the musical genre of the Urdu ghazal (this one by Jaswinder Singh). And finally Misty Edwards, longing for the sweet rain of God’s presence with the track “Waiting for the rain". As the prophet Hosea says
“Let us acknowledge the Lord;
........let us press on to acknowledge him
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
........he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug7myED6nOk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pLWunYWWtQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHn3wmkNAU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXcqPPsz4Q0
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chasing-Monsoon-Alexander-Frater/dp/0140105166
