A thicker Jesus

Easter week - what a great week to die! To go through Holy Week, Good Friday and then to celebrate the resurrection on Easter Day ... to have five days to really let the truth of resurrection sink in once again, and then to die - wow!  That is exactly what Glen Stassen did last week.

But who, I hear you ask, was Glen Stassen?

"Glen Stassen" we are reminded today by Jim Wallis, "was not only a professor of Christian ethics (both at Southern and later at Fuller Theological Seminary, USA), but he was also an activist for ethics who knew how to affect society. Like his father, Harold Stassen, a former governor and presidential candidate from Minnesota, Glen sought to bring Christian ethics to public life. When I worked with Glen on the strategy committee of the national Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign, I saw not just an ethical theorist but a smart practitioner who knew how to mobilize movements and change public policy. Glen wanted to change the world, just as Jesus called his disciples to do."

It was only very late in his life that I discovered Glen. It was through his classic book Kingdom Ethics. His parting gift to us, his last book, however is even more relevant to the issues we are currently dealing with in Faith2Share through our 'Depth Discipleship' programme.  In A thicker Jesus: Incarnational discipleship in a seular age Glen explores what it means to follow Jesus into the kingdom of God and into the world. The victim of an agressive cancer, Glen has entered the next stage of Kingdom life ahead of us but he has left us a wonderful guide for Kingdom living in this world.

Dying is never easy, but I guess Glen will have been pleased to go in Easter week.

Equality for Mothering

With the first same-gender marriages taking place the day before Mothering Sunday I have been thinking a little about Mothering. In fact my train of thought was encouraged by our preacher this morning who, out of a desire to be inclusive, encouraged us all, male, female, married, single, young and old, to consider our calling to "mother" other people.

The key question for me concerns three paired concepts, namely: male-female; masculine-feminine; and mothering-fathering. There are, of course, other related pairs but these are the three that I have been playing around with in my mind today (whilst digging trenches in the garden - another story). If we think of these three pairs as characteristics belonging to persons then they pan out rather differently. The first pair divides humanity fairly clearly into two sets (with the tiny, but not to be forgotten, percentage of those who are born physically transgender). The second pair however is much more interesting with a high degree of overlap and gradation. Although some societies value only masculine qualities in a man (and the feminine in a woman), there are others that recognise that a balance of masculine and feminine characteristic in the same person can be a strength, the one moderating the other. So what then of 'mothering' and 'fathering'?

By default, and I believe to the detriment of society, many women today find themselves required to father, as well as mother, their children. The same is true of a smaller number of men. Single parents are obliged to mother and father their children as best they can, although is some more communal societies the local community is good at providing surrogate fathers and mothers when the natural ones are not present. As I thought about this I was reminded that Jesus spoke of himself as a mother - a mother hen gathering and protecting her chicks. So perhaps Mothering Sunday is a good day for me to think a little more about how I mother those God brings to me, how I offer God's protection, care, nurturing, suckling, to His children.

What does all this mean for same-gender marriage?  If you were expecting me to answer that one you were hoping for too much.  But perhaps we should be concerned about our ministry of mothering and fathering so many children (and I include adult children) in our society who have just not received the nurture and care God intended for them - as concerned about that as much as we are about the morality of same-gender marriage.

Down The Well - for 20 years

Great to see a community project in Glasgow that I was privileged to be part of in the early days celebrating its first 20 years.



I was just a small part of the support group when it was set up but the exciting side of all that was bringing a family from the north-west frontier of Pakistan to Glasgow to be part of the team. Well done 'The Well' team - you must have served 'the living water' to thousands of people over the years.

Bifocal nation watching

Having received an email earlier today from a colleague in the USA about Ukraine - an email I found quite alarming - I deliberately sat down tonight to watch the news on BBC and then flicked over to see the news on Russia Today. Both were talking about a nation they called Ukraine but they were two very different places it seems. One of those Ukraines has been overrun by terrorists who have ousted the elected president. Hope however is not lost because good citizens in the east and south are maintaining their links with neighbouring Russia and will eventually restore law and order. Some of the terrorists we saw in the pictures were very violent, attacking police and setting fire to public buildings.  In the other Ukraine there has been an invasion by thousands of Russian troops and an illegal referendum is being organised by rebels in the south. The Russian soldiers we saw in the pictures were 'digging in' ready for battle.

These two nations also have different histories. One, it appears has always been a European state with international borders which must remain sacrosanct. The other has a long history of being partly in the Austro-Hungarian empire, partly in the Soviet Union, and more recently a satellite state of Russia with international borders that have been very fluid over the centuries.

Even their religious make up is very different. One has a majority Russian Orthodox Church and a few Catholics in the east (who can be trouble makers). The other has multiple Orthodox Churches, a large Catholic population, Protestants, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and everything else - in fact exactly the eclectic mix you would expect to find in a contemporary European state.

The real problem is that these two nations have co-terminus territory.

God give us understanding - of complex identities, long and difficult histories, interwoven religious communities and a matrix of relationship between the people of these two Ukraines which in the end will be their salvation or their hell.

I am not Ukrainian. My concern tonight is about media reporting that sees exactly what it wants to see (soldiers without insignia must be Russians, an angry citizen holding aloft a lump of wood must be a terrorist) and outsiders who want a simplistic view.  One question asked in the email this morning that started all this was, "Who is to blame - Russia or Ukraine?"  To ask that question is to fail to understand.

God give us wisdom.

Did David Bosch miss something?

Next month will mark the 20th. anniversary of the untimely death of David Bosch so let me get in first before everyone else comments on his legacy - and some legacy it is!

I only met David once. Frankly he was not very impressive, that is until you got him talking. It is almost axiomatic today to say that if you have not read his seminal Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission you have not really begun studying mission. His 519 close packed pages are hard work but I have yet to meet anyone who regretted reading them. That accident on the N4 between Belfast and Middleburg, in his native South Africa, 20 years ago robbed us of a genius.

But, twenty years on, I have been rereading his final chapter and realising that he missed something. In fact it is the second thing he missed. As soon as Transforming Mission was published  he himself realised that he had missed one thing. He saw that he had not commented sufficiently on the missional challenge of post-modernity. He quickly put that right in his little monograph Believing in the Future: Towards a Missiology of Western Culture.  But he missed something else as well, something we can only really see with hindsight.

His final chapter in Transforming Mission, called Elements of an Emerging Ecumenical Missionary Paradigm, verges on the prophetic. His thirteen 'elements' cover so many aspects of what many of us today consider essential aspects of the mission of God. He includes evangelism, liberation, contextualisation, justice, inculturation, the mediation of salvation, the need for unity in mission, the role of every Christian in mission and much more.  So what did he miss?  Some would say he paid too little attention to mission as creation care, but much more significantly I would say he missed a seismic shift in mission, only just beginning as he wrote - the work of the Spirit in raising up myriad new mission movements around the world, especially in the Global South.  That final chapter describes well (and prophetically) the mission we know today emanating from the Global North but it stands uncomfortably as a pointer to what the Spirit is doing today in Africa, Latin America, China, and so many corners of Asia.

We now need someone to write a new chapter in honour of David. Something like, "Elements of an Emerging Global South Spirit-led Missionary Paradigm".

My brother's keeper

"The plain fact is there are some Americans who, in the aggregate, are consistently doing worse in our society — groups that have had the odds stacked against them in unique ways that require unique solutions; groups who’ve seen fewer opportunities that have spanned generations. … 50 years after Dr. King talked about his dream for America’s children, the stubborn fact is that the life chances of the average black or brown child in this country lags behind by almost every measure, and is worse for boys and young men."  President Obama launching his 'My brother's keeper' initiative this week.

"The initial investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence was seriously flawed and deserving of severe criticism. The underlying causes of the failure were more troublesome and potentially more sinister. The impact of incompetence, racism and corruption on the investigation had been the subject of much evidence and debate. The Inquiry concluded that institutional racism affected the murder investigation, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and police services elsewhere, as well as other institutions and organisations." Mark Ellison QC reporting on the British police investigation into the murder of a young black man, Stephen Lawrence.

With all eyes on Ukraine it would have been easy to miss these other two significant events this week. As we enter Lent the failings of our own societies ought to concern us as much as those elsewhere.

Every black teenage boy (or girl) deprived of justice is a nail in the coffin of righteous society, a nail in the cross of Christ who died for that girl, that boy.

Too hot to publish - for 900 years!

Preparing my sermon for Ash Wednesday tonight (well, yes, it was a little late) I found myself wondering why the first twelve verses of John 8 (the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday in our church) are missing in some Bibles and (more often) printed as a sort of footnote in others.  I'm sure I learnt that at theological college but I had forgotten. Turning to my reference books took me to an interesting journey of textual archaeology.

Apparently (credit goes to Raymond Brown's wonderful two volume commentary) although the passage does not appear in any standard texts of John's gospel until after 900AD, it was known to theologians much earlier, in the second and third centuries. There is plenty of evidence to show that it is a genuine ancient story about Jesus which must have been known to those who put the Bible together. So why was such a great story left out? Because, Brown suggests, and I suspect, it was just too hot to handle.

Oh, I forgot to mention what the story is about.  It's that one where Jesus is confronted with a prostitute, invited to condemn her and instead just writes in the sand, and then comes out with that masterly suggestion, "The one of you who has not sinned should throw the first stone to kill her."  In modern context it's rather like Jesus saying about a serial pedophile, "You deserve to die but I am going to love you instead!"  No wonder it did not get published for 900 years.

Is God's forgiveness really that shocking?

Turn the other fist?

Is religion good for world peace? Taking the latest research figures from the Pew Research Center at face value, the obvious answer is 'no'. If you want to achieve world peace then a very good first plan would be to abolish religion. Wow, that's difficult.

Pew Research, one of the most reputable socio-religious research outfits, last month published figures for December 2012 which showed clearly that highly religious countries are more likely to experience social conflict than those that are secularised. Consider Pakistan, Syria, Sri Lanka and Nigeria on one side and Austria, Canada, and Australia on the other.

Researchers go on to say, "The share of countries with a high or very high level of social hostilities involving religion reached a six-year peak in 2012. A third (33%) of the 198 countries and territories included in the study had high religious hostilities in 2012, up from 29% in 2011 and 20% as of mid-2007. Religious hostilities increased in every major region of the world except the Americas. The sharpest increase was in the Middle East and North Africa, which still is feeling the effects of the 2010-11 political uprisings known as the Arab Spring. There also was a significant increase in religious hostilities in the Asia-Pacific region, where China edged into the “high” category for the first time."

So is social hostility linked to religious observance or are there other complicating factors? Looking closely at the Pew lists I could not help noticing that 'high hostility' also equates to 'low economic development' and/or 'internal economic disparity' in many if not most cases. So perhaps there is a link between 'religion' and 'levels of economic development'? My gut feeling is that there are many factors intertwined here and it is not so helpful for Pew to link just two.

Nevertheless, it does leave us with a question to face. How do followers of Jesus establish his reign on earth without heightening inter-community hostility? Not a new question of course.

88 dead - don't worry

I was struggling with the reading we had from the gospels in church this morning. Having just listened to the over-night news from Ukraine, with 88 deaths declared as a result of the recent uprising, I heard Jesus telling us to "not worry about tomorrow". With America backing the new provisional government in Kiev, Putin now free from celebrating the Sochi Olympic success, pro-Europeans in Independence Square, Kiev, and miners on the streets protecting the statue of Lenin in Kharkiv ... sure I'm worried.

The good old King James Bible says "Take therefore no thought for the morrow". I know we celebrated the King James Bible just last year but I'm glad we moved on. The New International Version translates Jesus' words here in Matthew 6:34 as "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself" (going on to add the telling, "Each day has enough trouble of its own"). There is an ocean of a difference between "take no thought for" and "do not worry" and I believe the more recent translations of scripture have done us a service here.

If Jesus was, as I believe he is, sitting around a brazier on Independence Square in Kiev tonight I don't think he would be advocating any degree of thoughtlessness about tomorrow - the future of Ukraine (and Europe with it) requires very careful thought tonight, by courageous and honest thinkers. But Jesus might tell us not to worry. Worry betrays a lack of faith in a God who does not intervene in history (at least not every day) but who always and everywhere has our best interests at heart.

With my friends in Ukraine I go to bed tonight with many thoughts and uncertainties about tomorrow - but, please God, let me not worry.

Little white girls ... and boys

I don't normally re-post other people's thoughts on this blog but I was struck today by the wisdom of this 'little white girl' called Pippa so I decided to draw on her thoughts. I do this mainly because, ever since the topic came up in the study group I led for Edinburgh 2010, I have become increasingly concerned by the growth of short term mission.

When I began my work with the Church Mission Society in 1988 'short term' mission meant two years possibly extended to three. Now the same term, as Pippa observes, seems to designate one week on mission, a week's safari to follow and an opportunity to raise £3,000 from your friends and relatives to get there. I still see the plus points but I also have very big questions ... but today let Pipa speak.  Please read.

Holy or unholy indignation?

That great Latin American missiologist, Rene Padilla, once wrote, "One does not become a revolutionary through science but through indignation." Simplistic? No, powerfully insightful. The great man went on to say of his native continent, "In Latin America I believe very few people become Marxist because it has intellectual appeal; rather they become Marxist because they see poverty and injustice, they are moved to indignation and they wanted to do something about it". *

I have been reflecting on this as I listened to the family of Abdul Waheed Majid (the British suicide bomber who blew himself up in Syria last week) talk about his desire to do humanitarian work. Did Abdul leave Britain as a radicalised Muslim terrorist or as a compassionate humanitarian volunteer? Is it not just possible that he left his family to go to Syria because he really wanted to care for traumatised families? But what happened next? Was what he saw there so overwhelming that his indignation and revolt demanded a more vigorous response than handing out bottles of water and sticking plasters? Did his indignation find a home in radicalised Islam? When he sat in the cab of that truck-bomb was he still looking for a way to deal with his indignation?  Probably, we will never know the answers to those questions.

But I have another question ... What about holy indignation? Is there enough indignation in the Christian community to radicalise us, to turn us into a powerful, revolutionary, force for the Kingdom? Or is that too dangerous?

* in "Marxism and Christianity" published in "Facing the New Challenges: The message of PACLA" Padilla,R. 1978  page359

'Armageddon' in perspective

To listen to some people in the UK talk about the current flooding of the Somerset levels and the Thames valley you would be forgiven for thinking that Armageddon was about to strike. So let me share an email I received today ...

"More than 100 people were killed by torrential rains, flooding, and landslides in Burundi [last week], with homes swept away, roads decimated, and many left without power. The rains began on the evening of February 9th, and caused flooding in the northern areas surrounding the capital of Bujumbura.

"Over 1000 houses were destroyed by heavy stones and water, and more than 12,000 people are homeless. Survivors have been put in different places where plastic sheetings have been prepared to help them during this hard time.

"The government of Burundi will pay for hospital treatment for those injured and buried the victims of the flooding. Homes in the poorest sections of Bujumbura are often made of mud bricks, which offered no resistance to the massive deluge of water and mud. Bujumbura is on a relatively flat plain between the hills and Lake Tanganyika. These people are in great need of water, blankets, food, medication and housing."  Deogratias, CCDB, Burundi.

CCDB is a member of Faith2Share network and will be responding to needs in this community.

Where the devil is not white

A friend from Togo wrote to me today, "we sincerely need you to pray along with us that God will establish and lay a solid and firm foundation for the work in Togo". We first met last November when I was in northern Nigeria. This determined and brave single Nigerian lady has been a missionary for some years. When she first went to Togo she was horrified to discover that in the north of the country local folklore taught that albino children were possessed by evil spirits. Many were killed, often by their own families. My friend offered to care for these children instead of letting them die and began to teach the people that an albino child, like any child, is a gift from God. This care for albino children was the trigger that began to release whole communities from their captivity to fear and superstition.

Christian churches are growing rapidly in many parts of this west African country. Amazingly some local land owners are offering to give land so a church can be built - in fact they are pleading with the Nigerian missionaries to build a church. They see the real benefits that faith in Jesus is bringing to their local communities.

Join me, if you will, in prayer for Togo and its people - and thank God for his albino children.

Generosity measured

In which countries of the world do people give the most? An interesting question. But how do you go about measuring giving?  Well, I suppose you can measure how much money the average citizen gives to charity.

With that in mind I looked at the following map which I was sent today. But it raised some questions in my mind.

 



How do Sudan, Thailand and Azerbijan all score higher than France?   I was forced to read the report to find out. The clue comes in how you measure 'giving'.  Of course I, being a Westerner, simply equated giving with pounds or dollars but the authors of this report have a much better definition. The ratings given to each of the 135 countries studied was based to the responses people gave to three simple questions:

Have you done any of the following in the past month?

• Donated money to a charity?
• Volunteered your time to an organisation?
• Helped a stranger, or someone you didn’t know who needed help?

Now that's a better definition of generosity.

To read the full report click here.

Holiness as Surprise

A colleague in Greece, an Orthodox theologian, just shared an interesting article with me tonight which I want to pass on to those who like surprises. The challenging thing about surprises, of course, is that they are not all good! But perhaps they are all God? If you are someone who likes life to be very predictable you will not enjoy this article - but, come on, who want predictability!

Athanasios Papathanasiou (right) teaches at the Hellenic Open University in Athens and contributed this article to the International Journal of Orthodox Theology on whose advisory board he serves. He talks about the surprise of the journey, of suffering, of creating the world anew and of liberation; and then ends with the surprise of the anti-superman.

"The Christian is he who is waiting, but this waiting is not inertia. The waiting Christian is a traveller, together with his God, who is not only coming, but also going"

Access the full article here.

Hermaphrodite bishops?

Or to put it another way, "Mummy, where do baby bishops come from?"  "If there are only daddy bishops and no mummy bishops where do new baby bishops come from?"

Well yesterday I had a "baby bishop" in my office, so that was a good opportunity to find out. Bishop Onesimus Park is the new Anglican bishop of Busan in South Korea and is currently in the UK to attend the annual training conference for newly appointed bishops - the "baby bishops' conference" as it is often called. Bishop Park was keen to find out about Faith2Share and how he can build networks of support with others committed to the mission of God's people as he is.

But back to episcopal gender.  Today the General Synod of the Church of England is rushing forward the legislation which may give us female bishops later this year. (Of course there have been female Anglican bishops in many parts of the world for decades but England is about to catch up.)  My question about the hermaphroditic nature of bishops is a serious one, but I speak corporately. In his great wisdom God created some creatures to be hermaphrodites but humanity he created male and female - and I guess he did it for a reason.

Gender differentiation implies gender complimentarity and complimentarity works best when there equality of esteem, status and role. An episcopate (corporate) which is uni-gendered deprives the church of the fertility and creativity that it requires to grow and thrive.

I was pleased to hear from our Korean baby bishop that at the 'baby bishop conference' they are being nurtured and fed by just as many women as men (even if the women lack episcopal recognition - for the time being).

A more difficult question.  Has our refusal to allow the birth of female bishops amounted to episcopal infanticide?

What population explosion?

It is raining outside, again, I'm bored with Facebook, and TV hurts my brain so, as you do, I downloaded the UN 2013 Population report tonight - all 118 pages and that's just the 'highlights' version. I won't pretend I read it all but I was fascinated by the chapter on human global fertility. Take a look at this chart.

I was brought up on all that doomsday stuff about population explosion and all of us standing squashed together until we fell into the sea. But things have changed big time. It all began (according to the UN, and I guess they know) in 1965.  That was the year the fertility rate (number of children per woman) fell below the 'replacement level', which is approximately 2.3, in 'developed regions'.  In other words a couple needs to produce 2.3 children to replace those who die (allowing for those who are childless) to maintain a steady population.  So ever since populations in developed regions have been declining (if you ignore migration which does not effect total global population).

1965 was also the year when fertility rates in less developed regions started to fall rather than increase and the same happened a decade later in the least developed regions. 

What is driving this?  Basically (says the UN) improved economies in places such as China, India and Brazil. The better off people are economically the less children they have (or can afford!)  Poor people cannot afford not to have lots of children. Rich people cannot affort to have children.

Any implications for mission?  I'm just beginning to get my mind around this but I see huge implications.  For a start we are going to have to learn how to share the gospel with 40 year olds and 105 year olds, not just children, youth and students. And in terms of holistic mission, what does the gospel mean in a world where more and more older people have fewer and fewer young people to care for them?

Lot's more thinking to do!

Listening

Some days I talk too much but today I have been listening, and it wasn't always easy. In fact it has left me arguing with myself.

Most of the day was spent with Nigerian colleagues who are staying in my house and then joined me in the office for the day. Titus leads the Church of Nigeria Missionary Society, an indigenous Anglican Nigerian mission movement. Listening to him talk about their work in West Africa was inspirational - especially as he spoke about their new work in Togo, Chad and elsewhere. The picture here is of a new church planted quite recently in Togo. The challenge came later.

In the evening we fell to talking about politics in Nigeria and predictably the role of Islam in that country was soon a hot topic. Living in leafy Oxford with Muslim friends along the road and a Muslim security guard at work who comes to pray with me, it is really quite painful to listen to Nigerian Christians talking about Muslims. Their context is so different. Half of me wants to understand but the other half wants to stop listening and go one living with the illusion that we really can work out our differences as friends walking together along the Isis (the river at the end of my road).

Tonight my internet friend from Romania wrote to me again. His mission is to persuade me that I am wrong to regard many of my Orthodox friends as Christian. I wanted to hit the 'delete' key but somehow I know that was dishonest. I need to listen even though it hurts me to have my Orthodox friends described that way. My 'friend' has a view. It is not my view. It offends me at times. God give me grace to listen. That delete key is so tempting.