In answer to Tim - Devil contd

Tim has written a comment following the post regarding Isabelle's question about the Devil. This is my response:

Dear Tim,

Sometimes it is difficult to know where to start a conversation when two people are approaching the same subject so differently. It is always tempting to say “I’m right and you’re wrong”, but that doesn’t assist mutual understanding.

I’m reminded of a story about a young man coming to a well known spiritual teacher. This young man knew his Bible. He not only could quote it, he followed all its commandments. Yet the young man was still not happy. The teacher listened patiently and then, guessing that the young man had considerable wealth, told him to cash it all up and give the money to the poor. The teacher’s advice wasn’t in the young man’s Bible! Yet it was where the young man would find happiness if only he could thwart his love of money.

Tim, you state that the Bible is a book from God. I would say that it is a book that points us to God. For God’s wisdom takes different forms and shapes depending on circumstances and culture - just as it did with the rich young man. It is not the words of the Bible that we are to worship, follow, and obey. It is God, whom the Bible points to that we are to worship, follow, and obey.

You go on to infer that my dismissal of a literal devil is proof that my understanding comes from the devil. I think you need to be careful in labelling the arguments of your critics as from the devil. It is unfortunately a way, well-attested to in history, of plugging your ears to truth other than your own.

There are a number of things in the Bible that are simply not true. The Bible taken literally says, for example, that woman was made from a man’s rib, and that women need to keep silent in church. The Bible contains dietary prohibitions regarding pork, shellfish, and the like. The Bible has God incinerating people from the skies, usually the author’s opponents. Every Christian will work out what parts of the Bible they will adhere to and what they will overlook or dismiss; what bits they will ascribe to the culture and thought forms of the authors and editors and what bits are timelessly relevant. To literally adhere to every word of the Bible would lock you into the 2nd century world of when the last epistle was written, and therefore deny the existent and power of God in the last 18 centuries.

Tim, I would also caution you about assuming whose names are in the ‘Book of Life’. You assume that Isabelle’s isn’t. Whatever you believe about judgement, the Christian tradition is very clear about who is the judge – and it’s not you, or me.

If you wish to read further about the devil can I commend to you Elaine Pagel’s book The Origin of Satan. It traces the history of the Satan/devil idea through antiquity, the biblical books, and into church history. It is a sobering read. Demonizing one’s opponents, other Christians, and Jews, was a precursor to inflicting pain and death. It is a dangerous path and does not lead to life.

Peace,
Glynn

Questions from Isabelle - Devil stuff

Dear Revd Glynn,

What are devils? And what do devils do? What do devils eat? Do devils babies come from eggs or do they not?

Your Friend
Isabelle.

From Mum:
P.S. Isabelle had a dress-up day at school today, and one of her friends came as a devil. Hence the questions.

Dear Isabelle,

There has always been goodness in the world, and there’s always been evil. Usually when we think about evil we think about a really bad person who might have, for example, killed or hurt a lot of people. But sometimes evil is bigger than just one person or group of people. We call that an evil system. About 65 years ago the Jewish people in Europe were nearly all killed – some 6 million people died. It happened in Germany. While there were a few evil people who thought up this horrific idea, lots of ordinary Germans were involved in it coming about. The evil was bigger than the people involved.

Back in the time the Bible was written some people talked about this idea of an evil system by making an imaginary creature to symbolize it. So like Ronald McDonald symbolizes McDonald hamburgers, the devil symbolizes evil. And like Ronald is just an actor dressing up [there is no real person called Ronald McDonald], so there is no real person or being called the devil.

However we humans always like dressing up and having fun. And dressing up as the bad guy is particularly fun. Our imagination has dressed devils in red, with horns on top, a tail behind, and a pitchfork in hand. At parties we go around and mischievously prod people with the pitchfork! Devils at parties eat what everyone else eats – though they usually have pepperoni and barbeque sauce on their pizza! I haven’t heard about them having babies – they’d probably have to grow up first.

Evil of course is deadly serious, and devils you meet at parties can be seriously funny. There comes a problem when the two are mixed together. If a person who has done evil acts starts being called a devil then people can start treating him or her as less than human. It is very dangerous to our soul, and to the safety of all, to start treating anybody as less than human.

Kind regards,
Glynn

Questions from Isabelle - Why is God called God?

Dear Revd Glynn,

Why is God called God, if God is love?

From Isabelle.

With a mum postscript:

P.S. Isabelle heard me on the computer, and this was a bit muddled with sleepiness. I think the translation is "Why is God not called love, instead of God, if God means love?" Confused? I am!

Dear Isabelle,

I love your questions!

Words called nouns name an object that we can see – like t-r-e-e names that thing with leaves and branches outside my window. The word G-o-d though names something we can’t see. It names a spiritual power that flows through people’s lives. That power is within, beyond, and between us. It is something we experience, like feelings, but can’t be proved scientifically.

Christians believe that the main feeling and evidence of that spiritual power is love. Sometimes we might meet a person who is so full of goodness that it seems that while she or he is with us that spiritual power called God is with us. This was the experience of people who knew Jesus. He was stuffed full of God.

Some people want to call that spiritual power a ‘Him’ or a ‘Lord’. They make G-o-d into a noun. I prefer to think of G-o-d as a verb: a flowing, moving, loving force. Sort of like the power that lights up the bulb rather than the light bulb itself.

Kind regards,
Glynn

Questions from Isabelle - what does God do?

Dear Revd Glynn,

What does God do?

From Isabelle


Dear Isabelle,

As you probably guessed by now I would put the word ‘love’ into the question instead of the word ‘God’. So the question would read ‘What does love do?”

Here’s a little list that is by no means complete:

1. Love tucks me into bed at night, listens to the good and bad things about my day, and gives me a kiss goodnight
2. Love encourages me to think about what is good for others. What does my brother/sister need, and how can I help?
3. Love is the joy I feel when playing in piles of autumn leaves, throwing snowballs, making sand sculptures, or running into the sea.
4. Love is joined to wonder – that feeling I get when starring at the stars on a cloudless night.

Another way of saying all the above is that God comforts and encourages us; God urges us to think about the needs of others; God joins us as we play; and God excites us in wonder.

Of course, particularly with no. 1, God has the human face and heart of your mum or dad.

Kind regards,
Glynn

Questions from Isabelle - how does God make water?

Dear Revd Glynn,

How does God make water?

From Isabelle

This letter from Isabelle contained a postscript from her mum:

P.S. We have tried to explain the scientific theory, with atoms, molecules, electrons and things sticking together (like magnets!), but we wish Isabelle to explore other ideas as well. She has a very inquisitive mind and is always asking rather searching questions. We would appreciate it immensely if you are able to reply to this email, and no doubt future ones.

Dear Isabelle,

There are some things in this world that are made – like biscuits and television – and some things that just are there – like rain and ponies. Science can tell us what rain is made up of – all those molecules and things – and how ponies are born from their mothers, but science can’t really tell us how they are made. It’s not like someone sat down and designed and drew rain and ponies, and then made them. Some people when they don’t have an explanation from science say God made them. Well, God is the power of love that flows through the universe. God is not a Santa who sits in a workshop and designs and builds things. So the short answer to your question is that God didn’t make water – just like how love doesn’t make water.

Kind regards,
Glynn

Go to Hell, straight to Hell

I was at breakfast with some friends when I was asked about hell. Not the pizza company that bears the name, but the celestial Dante version.

I told them the story of an Australian friend who in the rarified air of Sydney Anglican thelogical debates had to bite his tongue and quell his urge to either laugh or cry when listening to hellish debates. On one side were the snuff brigade - instant incineration. The snuffers were the 'liberals'. On the other side were the spit roasters - continual torment. They were the 'conservatives'.

My breakfast companions, being well-travelled, also had horror stories to share on religious nonsense. Such stories would be hilarious if only some people didn't believe them and subject others to them.

The conversation concluded with a question to me: "What do you think Glynn about heaven and hell?"

"Well," I replied, "if there is a heaven we are all going to be there. For some it will be paradise and for others it will be hell."

p.s. for those who haven't visited Mr Deity yet - check out their version of hell.
http://grouper.com/video/MediaDetails.aspx?id=1826735&ml=o%3d12%26fpl%3d68726%26fx%3d&

Questions from Isabelle - how was God made?

Dear Revd Glynn,

How was God made?

From Isabelle.

Dear Isabelle,

Some things have no beginning and no end. Not many things, but some things. Like infinity. Like space. Like love. These things just are. Love is not born when a mother has a child. Love is there already, like a bulb in the ground, and bursts into flower when the child is born. God is like infinity, space, and love. God was never made, or can be unmade.

Kind regards,
Glynn

Questions from a 5 year old - Seeing God

One of the joys in life is engaging with an inquiring mind. As a priest it is a privilege to receive letters from children. What follows is a series of letters from Isabelle, a 5 year old, and my attempts as a 47 year old to answer her questions.

Dear Revd Glynn,

Why can't we see God?

From Isabelle.

Dear Isabelle,

Some people understand God to be a powerful man stuck up in the sky. I don’t. I think God is best thought of as love.

Love is, for example, something like the feeling between you and your mum. You can’t see that feeling but you can feel it. That’s what God’s like. You can’t see God but you can feel God, and God feels like love.

Another way to think of God is to imagine God is like the wind. Again you can’t see God but you can feel God’s effect. Being blown by an invisible force is both exciting and scary. Just like God.

Kind regards,
Glynn

Winter Time

As the leaves continue to fall, denuding the trees, may the pressing demands of our lives likewise drop to the ground and be blown away. These demands can absorb so much of our life and light, fooling us into thinking they are so important.

Winter time is a season for the soul. It is time to draw on the inner life, on the reserves within, rather than on our bright personalities, skills, or relationships. Foliage without does not compensate for strength within.

It is time to sit down, mull over wine, and breathe slowly. There is a season to speak, and there is a season to be in the silent company of one. There is a season to write for others, and a season to write for your self. There is a time to feed the world, and a time to feed your soul.

It is strange how nature has us stand naked in winter shivering from the lack of protective foliage. All those bright accessories have fallen away. Our life has diminished. Our space has withered. Our growth has slowed. We feel vulnerable.

We wish the winter would move on. When will the new possibilities, fresh vision, and dynamic relationships spring forth? Can’t nature hurry up? After all there is a world to save and timetables to meet.

Prayer goes at its own pace. We think we are in control, but the prayer I’m talking about has a mind of its own. It takes its time and disregards mine. It giggles when I’m trying to be serious, and is sombre when I’m trying to be sociable. It is as elusive as the morning mist, and often as silent.

The leaves have all fallen now. The cold has come among the trees. The mist descends most mornings. There is aloneness, nakedness, and longing. Yet hidden away, beneath the bark, respiration continues.

I stand still in the park, leaving the dog to her antics. I try to breathe with the trees, feeling their wisdom, and trying to glean a little. Winter is soul time.

Lucky goes Video

Lucky is trying his hand at a new media (for him). He has just made his first YouTube video. In it we see and hear Lucky's view on baptism.

Bare Earth, Bare Feet, Bare Soul

“There is a considerable difference between walking on the beach with shoes on”, he said, “and walking with shoes off. The latter enhances the spiritual feeling.” I was listening to a radio interview with a gentleman who runs a charter boat in Fiordland. He didn’t want to get too explicit about what he meant by spiritual, and acknowledged that many people would pooh-pooh the idea. He concluded, “When you walk barefoot, with an open heart, on a beach or in the bush, something happens to your spirit.”

I’m reminded of Moses’ experience in Exodus chapter three. Confronted with the power of the extraordinary and mysterious he felt compelled to remove his shoes. The baring of his feet mirrored the baring of his soul. It symbolized removing a layer of protection, thereby increasing his vulnerability. Receptivity to the spiritual often involves a degree of vulnerability.

Vulnerability however did not inhibit Moses from disagreeing with the Divine. Vulnerability is not submission but the willingness to meet the metaphysical stranger. Sometimes we wrestle with and are wounded by this stranger, this God-of-the-mist. Sometimes we greet the stranger as the breaking dawn. Otherness can be both threatening and redemptive.

As I listened to the radio I mused about those experiences where the spiritual power embedded in the earth penetrates through protective layers into our very souls. I thought about the smell of dripping Urewera bush, the tingling sands of Bethell’s beach, the crescendo of crashing West Coast waves, and the song of a joyous Tui dipping its head into flax nectar. The power of smell, sight and sound mingles with mystery, vastness, and beauty. Indefinable heaven touches our earthly feelings, if we let it.

These spiritual feelings, these exchanges between heaven and earth, are not just about nature giving and we receiving. We are invited to participate, to enter into the wonder and magic of this power, and even into its longing and pain. This spiritual interaction can be thought of as a song. But the universe doesn’t sing and we passively listen, nor is it an invitation to blend into a celestial chorale. Rather we are invited, like with a jazz ensemble, to improvise in our own creative way.

There is, like with Moses, a call to us. The spirit song is not passive, detached from the potency and sufferings of planet earth. It calls firstly to the pain within us. The gentleman in the radio interview spoke of clients breaking down in tears. The spiritual power reaches out to us and we can feel both our alienation from it and our yearning for it. Sorrow and hope combine like a love song.

Secondly, the song calls to our power. It calls to that determination within us not to be overwhelmed by the demands of the dollar, the pressure of performance, and the commitments of family and community. It calls to that fighting spirit lodged in each of us – a spirit that longs to see harmony restored in and between people, and between the planet and its population.

Lastly, the song calls us to transcend our own needs for the needs of the whole. There is a piece of countercultural Jesus Zen that goes: ‘To find yourself you must lose yourself.’ We are reticent to lose ourselves, especially when so much of our Western world is geared to improving and fulfilling ourselves. We are reluctant to let go of what we want in order to consider the wants of all. Yet the paradox is that by transcending our personal desires we actually find the fulfilment we wanted all along. Unless more of us begin to care about the whole the world will go to pieces.

We begin by travelling to a place apart, taking off our shoes, feeling the vulnerability of both ourselves and the earth, listening for the call of the spirit song, and then wrestling with its meaning. Bare earth, bare feet, bare soul.

Parliamentary Prayer

In 1840 New Zealand, due to the wisdom of both government and church leaders, chose not to have an established religion. They did not want one branch of Christianity to be unfairly privileged. The parliamentary prayer has remained as an anachronism as New Zealand has changed into a society of many cultures and many faiths.

The current parliamentary prayer, while commendable for trying to curb self-interest and promote altruism, is a 19th century Christian product. The inclusion of antiquated words, like ‘Thy’, is insulting. By continuing to use such language it is inferred that Christianity is merely a religion of the past, of tradition and history, and is to be valued as an artefact rather than as a vibrant and life-changing contemporary faith. Indeed many of those in favour of the current parliamentary prayer argue that they want to retain an historic custom. It seems they want to preserve Christianity like a fossil from a bygone age.

There is a concern expressed in the current religious diversity debate that tolerance towards the perspectives of other faiths or none will lead to a diminution of the Christian faith. On the contrary I think tolerance can be understood not as a wimpy, ‘anything goes’ attitude, but as a vigorous engagement founded upon intrinsic respect for other human beings.

Every faith in New Zealand needs to be robustly proclaimed by its adherents. More education and public debate on religious matters should be promoted, not for the purpose of finding what we have in common, but for the purpose of learning to live together in this multi-faith society. I’m not going to dumb down my faith, or shut up when it’s too controversial, and I don’t expect proponents of other faiths to either.

While not compromising our heritage of human rights, particularly freedom of speech, destructive militant fundamentalism of whatever variety needs to be watched. However I suspect that extremism might be avoided more by allowing each faith the freedom to practice and proclaim its teachings, and by providing opportunities for public discourse, rather than by giving preferential treatment to Christianity.

We Don't Need Preferential Treatment

Parliament is not a house of prayer, and nor should it be. Politicians of course, like the citizens they represent, are welcome to pray individually how they wish. In Parliament however a corporate prayer indirectly endorses a religious view of the world and can be understood as divinely inspiring, and thus sanctioning, decisions. The parliamentary prayer subliminally co-opts Christianity as a handmaiden of the State. It is better for the health of each to keep separate.

Christianity doesn’t need preferential treatment. It doesn’t need privileges that aren’t available to other faiths. The understandings and insights of Christianity don’t need to be validated by any government; they are well able to stand on their own merits. We Christians don’t need parliament to use a Christian prayer. Our faith is not so weak as to be diminished by other faiths and other prayers. Likewise our faith doesn’t need to be shored up by the erroneous declaration that this is a Christian country.

In the history of Christianity the relationship with governments and ruling powers has been a mixed blessing. When a government adopts a religion as it’s favoured or only brand inevitably that religion is forced to make compromises. The ability of the Christian faith, for example, to critique regal injustice has often been compromised by the royal privileges it’s been consuming. For a religion to have power and wealth does not necessarily mean that faith will flourish, often the reverse.

Separation of church and state is not an atheistic idea dreamt up by those who wanted religion marginalized. It was an idea actively promoted by Christians who heeded Jesus’ warnings about the corrosive nature of power and wealth, and who were familiar with their history. Getting into bed with governments is not good for Christianity. Having Christianity with favoured status would also provide a precedent for the future when another religion might oust Christianity from its place of privilege. States with embedded religion usually oppress religious minorities.

Jesus healed illness not disease

I believe Jesus confronted the deep social, political, and theological illness of his society. This illness isolated and excluded those who were sick, different, and foreign. This illness created segregated poolside communities, dumping grounds for the tainted, Bantustans for the disabled... Jesus spent his life shooting holes in the philosophical and theological rationale that under-girded such segregation. He sought to bring the powerless to the powerful in order to question the nature and distribution of power. He sought to bring the labellers of illness to those so labelled in order that labels were lifted from the backs of the excluded. Jesus physically challenged and confronted the system of oppression.

Those who believe Jesus was a faith-healer who cured people’s disability have a problem. They have to believe that God physically intervenes to cure some and not others. This belief, however, apart from being irrational and immoral does not critique society at all. The disability is the man’s problem, not the society’s. The cure is fixing the man, not society. ‘There is nothing wrong with society,’ say the advocates of Jesus the faith-healer, ‘What is wrong is the man’s disability’. They paint Jesus as a healer of individuals, not a revolutionary out to change the world. He’s safer that way.

Jesus’ challenge to the lepers and disabled he met was to walk into confrontation. Following him wasn’t going to be all nice, safe, and predictable. It was going to be awkward, hard, and scary. Instead of sitting safe amongst the excluded waiting for some Benny Hinn, Jesus asked them to get up, and hobble along with Jesus into the so-called clean and able community and to challenge their prejudice. They weren’t going to be welcomed there. Sure they might find a few allies but generally they were going to be labelled anarchists, parasites, and told to go far away.

Did Jesus Heal?

Medical anthropology distinguishes between a disease and an illness. A disease is between me, my doctor, and a bug.[i] Illness is between me, my family, neighbours and society. Disease refers to the physical effects; illness refers to the social effects. AIDS then, for example, is both a disease - a bug affecting the individual, and an illness - how society relates to that individual.

Jesus healed illness by refusing to accept the ritual uncleanness and social rejection that accompanied disease in his time and culture. He forced others to either reject him from society or to include the diseased within it as well. He aligned himself with the outsiders in order to challenge the whole power structure of insider/outsider relationships.

I don’t believe that God endows particular people with the ability to go around laying their hands on those who are sick, disabled, and terminally ill, in order to instantaneously and supernaturally heal them. I don’t think that Jesus supernaturally healed diseases.

However, I do think there are people who by nature are therapeutic, and Jesus was one of them. I also think there is a lot about medicine we still don’t know and so-called alternative medicine should not be dismissed out of hand. Further, I think that prayer is often helpful and can affect both physical and social healing. There is still a lot of unknowns and mystery around healing.

On the other hand I am aware that people who are sick, and their families, are very vulnerable to charlatans and religious quackery. I am very sceptical about the antics of religious faith-healers, like Benny Hinn who has a billboard down the street. They invariably fail to answer why some are healed and some are not, and why some experience so-called ‘healing’ at the time and then regress shortly afterwards. If we believe that God is love, consistently wants the best for us, and can suspend the natural laws of the universe to effect that, then one needs to ask why some of the most loving and saintly people never heal and continue to suffer, and why some of the worst rogues seem to get a miraculous reprieve.

Benny of course, like many infamous faith-healers believes that God requires that he live as opulently as possible, including having a $49 million jet.[ii]

[i] Crossan, J. D. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, San Francisco : Harper, 1989, p.81
[ii] For further reading exposing Benny Hinn’s teachings search http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/bhinn.html

The Great Easter Deception

Like in the parable of the fire-maker, the first post-resurrection Christians found the liberating spirit of Jesus wonderful, enlightening, and world changing. However, in time, other Christians, especially some in positions of power, found it frightening. They wanted to restrain and control the Jesus spirit. They were anxious that people would take courage, turn the world upside down, and thus upset the way things are. They were anxious that their power would be reduced.

So what some leaders did was take the metaphorical language about sacrifice [that had been around awhile] and applied it definitively to the Easter stories. They turned Jesus’ death into a once-for-all blood sacrifice to cleanse us of our alleged sin. Instead of the forces of injustice killing Jesus all of us so-called sinners were responsible. His death was de-politicized. If it weren’t for our sin, so the story was re-told, he wouldn’t have had to die.

Jesus was now no longer the confrontational revolutionary prophet but a self-sacrificing lamb. Good Friday was not the Romans killing off a pestilent rebel but the assisted suicide of the forgiving martyr. Easter Sunday was not the days of new hope, determination, and resistance congealing among his followers but a 40-day power display in order to show the benefits of having Jesus forgive us.

Like in the story of the fire-maker, the religious elite believing that the spark of life, hope, and power had to be controlled turned Easter into an apolitical gratitude ritual. The elite wanted the fire-maker’s followers to feel grateful for what the fire-maker had done. The fire-maker had given his life. The fire-maker had given his life for their lives. The fire-maker had come back from the dead to prove it. The followers should always remember this and be grateful. And hopefully they’d forget how to make fire.

The Eucharistic meal, Holy Communion, was also subverted, turning it into a remembrance of Jesus’ forgiving love rather than as a challenge to take up the task of breaking open prison doors. The political status quo is quite happy to tolerate a religion of forgiving love. However a religion that is bent on literally setting captives free is both a problem and a threat.

In the parable of the fire-maker there are two villages with very different perspectives on the world. They have different understandings of fire, religion, and governance. In my experience of the Church there are two rivers. One is a river of life that flows through me, sustaining me, and challenging me to love and to liberate. That river has as one of its sources the resurrected spirit of Jesus. The other river is a river of guilt, cleansed by the blood of Jesus. People are warned that if they don’t drink from this river they will not have life.

Two villages. Two rivers. Two theologies. Our choice.

What the Church did to Easter - Part 2

“I’ve got a river of life flowing out through me…” goes the song, “opens prison doors sets the captives free…” The tune gets inside one’s head, and the theology isn’t too bad either. The truth of the resurrection is found not so much in a historic time and place but in the present reality of breaking open prison doors and setting captives free. Jesus is risen when we break the chains of oppression. Jesus stays dead when life and liberty are locked up.

In Anthony De Mello’s parable, the fire-maker is the Christ figure bringing light and warmth to those without. He is not concerned about personal glory but simply wants to share what he knows with others. In the first village, once he has taught the art of fire, he disappears. He does not want to patent it, profit from it, or use it to exercise power. Such was Jesus’ approach.

However in the second village the leaders know about power. They think everyone is competing for it, and therefore the stranger is a competitor. The knowledge the fire-maker has fuels his popularity and threatens their own. So, in the time-honoured tradition of weak people in leadership they turn on the stranger and dispose of him. The leaders then create a new religion out of his memory, while making sure people forget the radical way that could bring light and warmth to all.

De Mello’s parable is a critique of religion’s propensity to protect itself from new insights, especially those outside the elite’s control. Bad religion spins the stranger into a sinner or a saviour rather than takes seriously anything revolutionary the stranger did or said. Bad religion is not good news for the powerless.

What the Church did to Easter - Part 1

The Parable of the Fire-Maker by Anthony De Mello

After many years of labour an inventor discovered the art of making fire. He took his tools to the snow-clad northern regions and initiated a tribe into the art – and the advantages – of making fire. The people became so absorbed in this novelty that it did not occur to them to thank the inventor who one day quietly slipped away. Being one of those rare human beings endowed with greatness, he had no desire to be remembered or revered; all he sought was the satisfaction of knowing that someone had benefited from his discovery.

The next he went to was just as eager to learn as the first. But the local priests, jealous of the stranger’s hold on the people, had him assassinated. To allay any suspicion of the crime, they had a portrait of the Great Inventor enthroned upon the main altar of the temple; and a liturgy designed so that his name would be revered and his memory kept alive. The greatest care was taken that not a single rubric of the liturgy was altered or omitted. The tools for making fire were enshrined within a casket and were said to bring healing to all who laid their hands on them with faith.

The High Priest himself undertook the task of compiling a Life of the Inventor. This became the Holy book in which his loving kindness was offered as an example for all to emulate, his glorious deeds were eulogized, his superhuman nature made an article of faith. The priests saw to it that the Book was handed down to future generations, while they authoritatively interpreted the meaning of his words and the significance of his holy life and death.

Caught up as they were in these religious tasks, the people completely forgot the art of making fire.

Entombed Theology

The seduction of living in the tomb is that the conventional God is there too. You can sit in your comfortable grave clothes and talk to the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. You can sing “Our God reigns”, soak up the acoustics, and feel all holy. You can memorise verses that affirm that God as the way, the truth and the life. It’s all very nice in the tomb.

Out of the tomb however it is not nice. The God of liberation is not a pleasant puppet you can sing to and feel all holy with. God, like truth, is bigger than our experiences and projections. Even our convictions are tempered by the disturbing thought that maybe God isn’t on our side. Out of the tomb we discover that people are complex, life is complex, and God, like love, manifests itself in a variety of forms and relationships. God is out of our control.

Trapped in the grave, the churches have invented all sorts of theological nonsense. In the desire to keep God small, predictable and safe, a plethora of so-called miracles have been manufactured to suit the pre-modernism of the entombed mind. There’s a windup literal devil - he’s the bad guy. There’s a literal seven-day creation – nothing is impossible when you create your own truth. There’s a literal virgin birth - fairyland doesn’t have to follow any biological rules. Here supernatural miracles happen in the wink of the eye, without even using a wand. Even the dead literally come back to life depending on what’s on the barbeque.

When churches only talk to themselves, those who agree with them, and their marionette God, it’s not long before tomb reality becomes the only reality.

The God of the Risen Jesus however is very different. This is a God of whom we need to be afraid. This God breaks open our tombs. This God disturbs our thinking. This God allows niggly questions to visit us in the small hours of the night. This God drives prayer from our lips and peace from our soul. This God blows us into the furnace of unrest, change, and freedom. This God compels us to shred the trappings of death and break free of the grave.

This is the God we celebrate at Easter.

Escaping From The Tomb

We live in a time in the history of the Church when a great deal of entombed thinking, and its accompanying solidified structures, are being broken open by people who want to be free.

A photograph taken of the Auckland Synod in the 1950s, compared with a photograph of that body today, is remarkable for two things – the number of ties, and the total absence of women. Those were the days when old white men were in charge. Autocracy was the norm, paternalism was expected, and accountability was negligible. In many parts of Anglicanism, let alone other denominations or religions, this pattern continues. It is a pattern of oppression.

Since the 1970s in Aotearoa New Zealand we have been trying to exhibit a form of leadership where women and men, laity and clergy, form partnerships; where power is both transparent and accountable; and where those without power have avenues of redress. This is a journey. It doesn’t happen overnight. Mistakes are made. Systems can easily turn sour. But we have travelled a significant distance from the oppressive structures and thinking of the past.

I once told my children that it wasn’t so long ago that teachers caned pupils. They looked at me incredulously. ‘Oh Dad you’re making up stories again!’ My children have no experience of the violence that was endemic in New Zealand High Schools. Similarly when we come into contact with the hierarchies of the English or Central African Anglican churches we are incredulous. We can’t believe that ecclesiastical feudalism is still alive.

The walls of the tomb are solid rock. They have been there for generations and have the word ‘immovable’ scrawled upon them.

Of course the political and social structures affect, for better or for worse, the theology. Where the male is God, God is male. Where the hierarchy is God, God is hierarchical. Where the all-powerful are God, God is all-powerful. ‘Convention, comfort and civility’ disguise autocracy, sexism, and oppression.

On the other hand however where God is more below than above, more feminine than masculine, more dirty than clean, more uncontained and surprising than restrained and boring… there is hope, change, and justice to be found. The tomb-breaking God chooses the foolish, the weak, the rebels, and outsiders. Truth is not the sole preserve of powerful men, nor the wisdom of what’s always been.

Are our prayers, worship, preaching, and theology entombing us in yesteryear or inviting us to break free? Is worship emancipating? Or are we slowly being seduced by the formulas of old, pickled and placed with the other preserves on the shelf, there to collect dust and wait? Are we cementing convention or stimulating change?