rock & redemption
August 24, 2005
Some of the most suggestive and creative theology is to be found outside religious texts. It's certainly where some of the most insightful and surprisingly rich reflections can be found. Those of us whose professional tools include the Bible and the tradition need to recognise that our theological imaginations are shaped and limited by these tools. That isn't to say anything bad or critical - it is to acknowledge reality. We look through a lens which has been polished by the medium in which we work. Musicians look through a different lens. Theirs is the lens of lyrics, the symbol systems of musical traditions, rhythms, sound, cadence and rhyme. And it colours their theology. That's why find the theology in certain songs to be far more exciting and creative than much of the very worthy stuff I read in theological text books. It's not usually the content so much as the vehicle. There are startling things to be discovered.I reckon few do it better than the (not-very-holy) trinity of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen. That's why I'm running a course at the Windermere Centre on Rock & Redemption (21-24 November). It's an opportunity to do some very serious theological exploration - but also to listen to some good music on the way. I'm not doing it alone.I'll do 3 sessions on Cohen's music. It will be a straightforward case of using songs as an entry into theological areas. So we will look at brokenness & grace ("Anthem"), sex & sacramentality ("Hallelujah") and kingdom & eschatology ("Democracy"). Peter Noble, Moderator of the URC Wales Synod, is looking at Springsteen as a way of exploring the gospel and evangelism. He will look at Bruce's treatment of the American Dream (see my post "The Boss & Gethsemane") as an example of how to understand the gospel and evangelism. He will look at the construction of a redemption narrative which first of all exposes and confronts the present "bad news" prophetically, moves through the evocation of an alternative reality of promise (Hope & Dreams?) and then to a summons to discipleship. It yields an understanding of gospel and evangelism that is prophetic and passionate but not pietistic. It is radically communal rather than individualistic, yet utterly self-involving.Lance Stone, former lecturer at Westminster College, Cambridge, and soon-to-be minister of Emmanuel URC, Cambridge, is looking at Dylan's music as providing an interesting window in the nature and function of the Bible in preaching and faith. Taking some of Brueggemann's insights into post modern, postliberal views of the Bible, Lance sees the open-endedness of Dylan's lyrics and their ever-retranslatable quality as an important parallel to understanding the Bible's function. Because the songs never allow closure, their meaning can never be frozen buit is always able to open new vistas in a different time and place.So if you want to do some serious theology, or if you like the music, or the Lake District, you can't go far wrong. If all three of those are your "thing", you can't fail. Meatloaf was right when he said that "Two out of three ain't bad"), but I reckon any one thing on its own will be a good enough reason to be here! So download the Booking Form and get registered while there are still spaces …
stop the wall!
August 23, 2005
Homileo pointed me to a photo album of the apartheid wall being erected by the Israelis to seal in Palestinians (yes, I know they claim it's to keep out suicide bombers, but they use it to exclude Palestinians from Israeli territory, regardless of how long they've lived there. I spoke to a Palestinain who found himself and his family on the wrong side of the wall. His business was in Jerusalem, and he can no longer get there. He can't enter the city. Jerusalemites pay high taxes, but get significant privileges as a result. These Palestinians had been cut off from their livelihoods, but still had to pay Jerusalem taxes! Of course, they'll have to sell up and move away. And the only people who'll buy their houses are Israelis's - for a peppercorn price!). Standing in Abu Dis, which cuts that village in half, at the foot of the wall is an incredible experience. Literally unbelievable! A nation that is founded on the memory of the Holocaust and the Warsaw ghetto is creating just such a ghetto in its own borders.
I have become uncomfortably aware of how crucial to a gospel witness opposition to the Wall is. In 2003 American Christians gave the Israeli government $65 million towards its settlement programme. It gave them that money to deprive Christian Palestinians (among others) of their lands and livelihoods! The Christian Right has poured billions into Israel in support of their land grab policies. A combination of the OT texts about land and guilt over the Holocaust has led to an uncritical, vociferous and deadly support for Israeli oppression and terrorism in the occupied territories. What sort of witness is this? Are Palestinians to believe that the God we see in Jesus Christ sanctions this sort of oppression? Christians there are losing their faith. And the Muslims see Christianity as synonymous with American expansionism and anti-Arab policies.
When support for Israel is so loudly and effectively being proclaimed as the gospel, it is incumbent on the Church to preach the Truth, live the Truth and do the Truth! This isn't about particular political dispositions. It is about what the Truth of the God revealed in Christ means today in Palestine.
Go to http://www.stopthewall.org/ - it's a good website.
discovering dissonance
August 23, 2005
I came across Mark Balfour's dissonant bible blog. He's doing some important stuff there. Have a look at his post on David's concubines.
Hope and redemption at the Bagdad Cafe
August 20, 2005
This is a movie I should have seen years ago! What a delight! The story of the group of mismatched characters who find happiness, hope and redemption - "magic" - is not just heartwarming. It's a thoroughly believable exploration of the way in which human beings can be the agents of transformation. If you've ever wondered what "entertaining angels unawares" might be like, this will show you. The film is superbly crafted. It avoids Hollywood-type film techniques. The Director's use of time and light is stunning. The film never hurries. The transformation doesn't happen overnight - it evolves, gestates and emerges, and you'd be hard pressed to pinpoint the moment. I thought Jasmin (Marianne Sagebrecht) was an interesting redeemer figure. She was a wounded healer, as much in need as able to give. It's one of those films that makes for good theological reflection - not because its theme is overtly religious, but because its values are the mustard seeds that bring about change. What are your favourite "theological movies"?
Selective compassion in Gaza
August 16, 2005
It's true, you know: we human beings can always easily see the splinters in others' eyes, all the while breathtakingly unaware of the dirty great planks in our own! If nothing else, the coverage of the Jewish settlements demonstrates how selective compassion works. I've just been watching Sky news, where a Jewish settler asks one of the soldiers sent to ensure the evacuation of the settlement, "Where's your humanity?" And we've had to listen to the Israeli prime minister apologising to the settlers for their "betrayal" as they're "forced to leave the land and homes they have occupied for decades". "Occupied" is precisely the word, isn't it? The Israeli settlement policy has gone ahead with brazen disregard for the rights and humanity of the Palestinian people. Palestinians have been forcibly evicted from the land that their families have owned for generations - millennia, sometimes! When I was there, I spoke to family who can trace their lineage and family land back to the time of Christ. Now the Wall cuts straight through their olive plantation, and they have neither the right nor the means of getting to it. More than half their land has been stolen overnight, and with it, their livelihood.
I spoke to others who were residents of one of the refugee camps. Camps that are over 40 years old! And to others who had had to watch while the Israeli bulldozers reduced their homes to rubble and tore up their plantations because their home had been zoned for the site of the latest settlement. And I want to know, where was Israeli humanity then? Do the settlers somehow think that the grief, andger, fear and heartache is something only they would feel when they are uprooted from their homes? Are Palestinian people somehow less human?
Com-passion means, literally, "suffering with". Compassion is what defines God's nature for Jesus. Look at the parable of the Good Samaritan. What makes the Samaritan different from the priest and the Levite is that he has compassion on the mugging victim, lying half-dead on the roadside. And his response, says Jesus, is not only the answer to the question of "Who is my neighbour?" but, even more fundamentally, also to the question of "How can I love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength?" Compassion is god-likness. It is holy.
It is also non-selective. Compassion looks at everyone and "suffers with" them. In effect, it says, "Imagine if that person were me! How would I feel?" The result? We start to "do to others as we hope others would do to us". This is the mustard seed of a world in which there are no more victims.
The cry of the settler was not one of compassion, but of self-pity. He could see only himself and his pain. Self-pity asks, "Why me?" There is no doubt: the Jewish settlements ought to go. They are an affront not only to Israel but to a world which wages war on Saddam Hussein on the pretext of his non-compliance with UN Resolutions, yet has stood by and watched Israel illegally and in contravention of all that might be named "humanity" steal Palestinian land, build an apartheid style Wall, and thumb its nose against resolution after resolution by the UN.
So what might compassion mean in the case of the Gaza settlers? I find myself dangerously unmoved by the settlers' grief. I want to say, "But you've brought it on yourselves. You've had it all - illegally - for so many years. NOW you're getting a feel for what it's like! GOOD!!!!" But that makes me pause. Without backtracking at all on the rightness of the pull out, I try to see them, not as part of a regime I regard as terrorist and hateful, but as victims of that same regime (albeit willing participants, not those on the recieving end!). They are victims only on this sense: that their humanity has been so stunted, twisted and scarred by being part of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians that they are left lost and bewildered, able only to see their own pain and loss. And maybe - just maybe - this may prove to be the birth of new possibilities. Because it is when we find ourselves victims of the same type of injustice that we mete out to others that our self-pity has the possibility of growing and being transformed into compassion. That is when we make the sorts of vows that say, "What has happened to me must never be allowed to happen to another human being!" Then oppressor and victim are united in a shared experience that just might open their eyes to a shared humanity.
Wouldn't it be great if significant numbers of former settlers found themselves thus converted, and themselves became mustard seeds of a new, compassionate, human way of being Israeli?
pay ‘em a visit
August 16, 2005
Isn't it good to discover friends who are fellow bloggers? Drop in on Jane at Lost coins. It's a brand new blog so she'll welcome the encouragement, I'm sure. Kate's Breadbreaker is more established and has some great artwork. Read her reflection on the feeding stories. Both Jane and Kate are URC ministers. We erk-bloggers are an endangered species!
“The Boss” on Gethsemane
August 14, 2005
Devils & Dust, the latest Springsteen album, is a “must buy”! Bruce has gone theological on us, and the critics are debating whether he’s finally “got religion”. The good Catholic boy, whose childhood was blighted and faith shattered by the nuns who ran his school, has consistently embraced Christian values but repudiated faith and institutional church. Until now.
Springsteen’s concerts – especially on his native American soil – have always been stunning examples of secular evangelism. His gospel is a re-visioning of the American Dream. It is the Good News that, although the Dream has been betrayed by greedy, self-serving politicians and the dominance of the American Right, there is an alternative – an America where the poor, the dispossessed, the working classes and the no-hopers are the significant shapers of a new society.
Bruce doesn’t just produce a playlist for his concerts. He crafts a story – a journey. “Covenant to come with me,” he tells his audience at the outset, “and I’ll take you somewhere good. Come with me and I’ll show you the Promised Land - the Land of Hope and Dreams!” His songs tell the story of hope betrayed, of corruption and war-mongering. They move through to hope and new possibilities. They end, standing, Moses-like, on the threshold of the Promised Land.
Get hold of the DVD of The Rising. Watch “Land of Hope and Dreams”. The metaphor is the traditional gospel train. In fact, he closes with a two-line reprise of the black spiritual, “People Get Ready”: “People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’/Don’t need no ticket – you just get on board!” Yet while the spiritual belongs in the holiness tradition, and excludes unworthy passengers, the train that journeys to the Land of Hope and Dreams is different: “This train/carries saints and sinners/this train/carries whores and gamblers/this train/carries lost souls.” It’s a radically inclusive vision. And it goes on: “This train/dreams will not be thwarted/This train/faith will be rewarded …” I defy anyone to listen and watch and remain unmoved.
And, having preached the gospel and presented the vision, there’s the “altar call”. “Come and be born again! Come down into the river! Be baptised!” Bruce struts the stage, calling to would-be converts. Ever the satirist, he deliberately mimics the stage antics of evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart. Yet the satire only underlies his own passionate seriousness.
His music and metaphors have always been steeped in the Bible and in traditional gospel spirituality. Devils & Dust moves into explicitly Christian, theological territory, however. The title track is an anti-war song, decrying the ways in which war dehumanises the participants: “It’ll take your God-filled soul/and fill it with devils and dust!” It’s not clear whether this song was written before or after 9/11. Is it the Vietnam war he is on about, or Iraq? Whichever, it was Iraq that took Springsteen off the political fence and he campaigned actively against George W Bush. In a masterpiece of political irony, Bush wanted to use Springsteen’s best-known anthem, “Born in the USA” as a Republican campaign theme song. He obviously hadn’t listened to anything other than the chorus, because the song is a vitriolic denunciation of Vietnam and the militarism of the Republican government … DUH!
But it’s “Jesus was an only Son” that gets my vote as something worth serious theological attention. The second verse goes like this:
“In the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed for the life he’d never live/He beseeched his heavenly Father to remove the cup of death from his lips/And there’s a loss that can never be replaced, a destination that cannot be reached/a light you’ll never find in another’s face, a sea whose distance cannot be breached”
“… he prayed for the life he’d never live”? Wow! I’d never thought of that, nor seen it in any exegesis of the agony of Gethsemane (though it was the theme of Scorsese’s account of the cross in The Last Temptation of Christ). But it’s true, isn’t it? Death means a life that cannot now be lived. It’s the death of possibilities, joys, sadnesses, meetings, partings, experiences, relationships. And it was for Christ just as much for anyone else. More familiarly, it was the death of the possibility of the coming of the Kingdom – all that Jesus had lived for. Yet somehow, phrasing it as he does, Springsteen adds so much more to the agony. He reclaims the humanity of Jesus, which can so easily be obscured by the divine significance of this encounter between Son and Father.
And isn’t it true, too, that there is a loss that can never be replaced? Resurrection (and eschatology) may make possible something good and wonderful and new, but it doesn’t undo or make good the loss of the life never lived. A different future is a marvellous gift, because it is a future born out of the ashes of the old life, but it is a different future and precludes ever reaching the original destination.
To me, that says something vitally true about human bereavement. It reminds me, too, that God in Christ has entered into the human experience of irredeemable loss that accompanies every human death – both for those who die and those left behind. God is marked by loss as we are. These insights into the reality of bereavement are so important pastorally and as part of our theology of the cross. They’re so much more gritty and real than the Christian guff we often pump out over bereavements and at funerals, that balks at giving expression and reality to the agony of loss. Darn, Bruce, but you’re good …