Bouncing back

I recently bought a pillow.  It turns out that normal pillows are very bad for me, and I need something a bit different; so now I have a memory foam pillow.  Memory foam is funny stuff.  The pillow came screwed up into a tiny box, and when it was taken out looked frankly pathetic.  Far too thin to be a useful pillow; no discernible shape to it.  The instruction was to leave it for up to 72 hours before use, to allow it to regain its shape.  With no previous experience of memory foam, I was a bit sceptical, and wondered if I'd been scammed.  But lo and behold, a couple of days later the pillow looked just as it was meant to, and I have slept better and had less neck pain ever since.

So, in case you've not already worked out where this parable is going, and perhaps think I'm just telling you an anecdote about a pillow for no reason, let's assume that being in lockdown has been a bit like being shoved into a small box for quite a long time.  We are all naturally bigger than this, but we've compressed, shrunk down, adapted to a more confined way of life.  And now we're being gradually let out of the box, and there is some pressure to bounce back, to get back to normal as much as possible, to get everything restarted.

But for some of us - certainly for me - we still feel flat, thin, unshaped.  It's going to take some time to decompress.  It is, hopefully, possible to recover our former shape, but we're not there yet.

Sleeping on the pillow before it was properly decompressed, according to the instruction booklet (and I have to say, I've never had a pillow that came with instructions before!), would have resulted in it never recovering its right shape.  My pillow would have been flat and useless forever because I was impatient.

You see where this is going.

We need to take this slowly and allow ourselves (and others) the time needed to grow back into shape.  We need to recognise this will happen more slowly for some than others.  Patience will be needed all round.  We should probably also take the time to just check ourselves for damage - maybe we're not just going to recover naturally, even over a long time, but have taken spiritual, emotional, even physical hurt during this period which will need attention.  (I think at this point the pillow analogy has broken down, as all good analogies must at some point).

Anyway, take it easy.  You are more valuable than many pillows.

Resting and Running

Here is a normal Christian narrative about legalism: if you're relying on your own works to establish your righteousness, you'll be continually aware of your shortcomings, always anxious about whether you've done enough.  You'll have to work harder and harder to make sure that you're okay, without ever knowing for sure if you've made it or not.  But then, when you become a Christian and realise that the gospel offers you a righteousness that is not dependent on your own efforts, you'll find rest.  You won't have to be constantly striving.  You can just receive God's gift.

There is a lot of truth in this narrative.

But preaching from Philippians 3 over the last couple of weeks, I notice this isn't the story Paul tells.  Back when Paul was relying on a righteousness of his own, from the law, he seems to have been happy and confident.  "Blameless" is his own verdict on himself in that era.  Pre-conversion Paul was undoubtedly a busy guy - church ain't gonna persecute itself - but he doesn't seem to have been driven by anxiety about his status.  He was secure and apparently at peace.

It is actually post-conversion Paul who describes himself as not having obtained, as not being complete, as straining forward, making every effort to take hold, pressing on like an athlete in a race.  I don't think there is anxiety here, either, but there certainly is effort, running, striving and straining.  There has to be, for Paul.  He now knows that what matters is only Jesus.  Being performatively righteous is no longer the big concern.  Being in and with Jesus - that is the thing.  And Paul is very aware that he does not yet know Jesus as he wants to know him, that he is not with Jesus (and indeed, it would be far better from his perspective to die in order to get to him).

I imagine different people have different stories, pre-conversion.  Relying on the flesh, on your own efforts, could make you confident, or it could make you anxious, depending perhaps on how high you set your standards and how close you came to meeting them.  But post-conversion, the story is always Christ Jesus, the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.  And whilst that certainly means resting from both anxiety and boasting, it also means running.  Running like someone who wants the prize.

Running like Jesus is waiting for us on the finishing line.

Righteousness, received and lived

I preached from the first half of Philippians 3 on Sunday, with its absolutely glorious statement of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.  Compared to that value, compared to the greatness of knowing Christ, everything else is rubbish.  Whatever we might have placed our confidence in, whatever we might have seen as our identity and security - all rubbish.  Even the good stuff is junk, by comparison to Jesus.

In Philippians the apostle Paul is making this argument against those who are advocating circumcision for Gentile Christians.  They don't seem to have been a present threat in Philippi, but since they seem to have turned up in all Paul's churches after a while it is not surprising that he warns the Philippian Christians to be on their guard.  Specifically, they are to be on their guard by rejoicing in the Lord.  By remembering that they worship by the Spirit and that they are able to boast in Jesus Christ, the Christians will be able to rebuff any temptations to put confidence in the flesh - that is to say, they will not be tempted to rest their identity, their security, their righteousness, in anything merely human, but will look solely to Christ and the huge privilege of knowing him.

Of course the folks advocating circumcision would probably not have seen themselves the way Paul saw them.  They almost certainly didn't think that they were seeking to put their confidence in the flesh!  They surely maintained, at least in their teaching, that righteousness was received by faith in Christ and not otherwise; had they not done so, it is hardly likely that they would have won a hearing amongst Paul's converts.  So what were they saying?  Here's my best guess at a reconstruction.

I think the circumcision guys would have agreed that righteousness - understood to mean a righteous status before God - was received by faith, on the basis of the work of Christ and particularly his death and resurrection.  But then there arises another question - how does that received righteousness translate into a pattern of life?  For the circumcision guys, the answer is circumcision - and presumably observance of other aspects of the Mosaic Law.  Righteous status received by faith translates into a righteous walk shaped by law.

And that is not absurd.  Couldn't they have pointed to the Old Testament for examples of this sort of shape?  Israel was rescued from Egypt - they received liberation.  But then they went to Sinai - the Law told them what a liberated life looked like.  You can - and from an OT perspective, you should - keep both these moments in mind, receiving liberty from God alone, and yet diligently seeking to live out that liberty via the Law.  So what's wrong with it?

You won't get the full story from Philippians 3 - you'd have to go to Galatians to see why that the unfolding of salvation history has made this understanding obsolete.  But in Phil 3 we get one aspect of it: Paul doesn't think they can do what they are doing.  In point of fact, those who require circumcision for 'lived out righteousness' will end up placing their confidence for 'received righteousness' in fleshly things.  Paul sees that underneath their apparent zeal to see a righteous behaviour (lived out) that corresponds to a righteous status (received), there is the desire to possess righteousness, for it to be something that belongs to me.  Paul does not have a righteousness of his own; it is all Christ's - whether righteousness received or righteousness lived out, all is Christ.  That is why conformity to the cross and suffering of Christ is so important for Paul.  Lived out righteousness does not look like achievement or possession; it looks, in fact, like shame and poverty.  It looks like that because this is the way of Jesus.  Righteous living is following in his footsteps.

But the circumcision party want something that belongs to them, a righteousness of their very own.  What could imply possession more fully than carving righteousness into your own body?  But having done so, how could you avoid placing confidence in the flesh - see righteous status as dependent on that fleshly work?  And that would mean losing Christ.

No, far better to admit that we will never possess righteousness, to ditch as junk every possible source of confidence, and to have only Jesus.

History and revelation, or Wright and Barth

I hugely appreciate the work of N.T. Wright, and particularly the first three volumes* of his Christian Origins and the Question of God.  I've written before about the importance of volume 3 - The Resurrection of the Son of God - to my own faith.  Wright's work is all about locating the New Testament witness within its historical context, and interrogating it using historical tools.  The emphasis is on the fact that this stuff really happened and is therefore in principle open to all.  I like that.

On the other hand, I am a great fan of Karl Barth, whose methodology is often thought to be the exact opposite.  For Barth, although the events to which the New Testament bears witness did indeed occur in history#, in their character as revelation they are emphatically not available to all.  Revelation, for Barth, is always God's action.  He talks about it as a door, which can only be opened from the other side - i.e., God's side.  The historian, qua historian, has no access whatsoever to this.

Polar opposites?

Well, actually, no.  Wright does take fairly regular pops at Barthians in TRotSoG, but he is usually wisely careful to blame the followers and not the master.  Some followers of Barth have certainly ended up in what is basically a Christianised existentialism, where the history of Jesus is basically inaccessible and we just have to take a leap of faith into the (hopefully) waiting arms of revelation - but that isn't Barth's position.

In three paragraphs (Church Dogmatics IV/2, 149-150), Barth summarises his position on the historical accessibility of knowledge of God through Christ.  "Is there", he asks, "a 'historical' knowledge of this event" - he is speaking of the event of revelation, by which he means specifically the life, death, and resurrection of Christ - "which can be maintained neutrally and with complete objectivity?"  The first answer is 'no', not if we're talking about real knowledge of God, which necessarily overflows in love.  That sort of knowledge - we might call it relational knowledge - can of course never be objective in that sense, nor is it in any way neutral.  And for Barth knowledge of God is necessarily relational knowledge.  So, no, if we're talking about "knowledge in this decisive sense", there is no generally available historical revelation.

But...  "neutral and objective - 'historical' - knowledge is its presupposition".

In other words, historical knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient, for relational knowledge.

He offers two clarifying statements.  Firstly, this historical knowledge will mean "the most impartial and painstaking investigation of the texts which speak of this event."  To try to go around the New Testament and its witness is not to seek historical knowledge of these events, but to import one's own understanding.  To seek historical knowledge of an event without reading the texts which witness to this event - well, its sufficiently nonsensical to call into question the motives.

Second, the historical investigation "must really be impartial."  That is to say, it is no use if the historian has already decided what can and can't happen in history, or what is to qualify as historical knowledge.  Impartiality means at the very least hearing the texts on their own terms.  (And not, for example, ruling out their witness to the resurrection because resurrections don't happen, or designating such witness as beyond the scope of historical enquiry because dealing with matters of faith rather than history).

I think Barth is absolutely in agreement with Wright here; the difference of emphasis between them is complementary and not contradictory.  In TRotSoG Wright effectively endorses this perspective.  Historical investigation can lead us to the conclusion that the most reasonable explanation for the rise of the church is the empty tomb and the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  It cannot get us from there to God.  But surely knowing historically that Jesus rose is the essential presupposition for seeing in him the revelation of God.

Some 'Barthians' I know would object that this is to put the Word of God on trial.  If God has spoken to us, then we should receive his Word and not question.  I agree, but it seems to me that what God has said, he has said in history.  His Word is the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  To hear that Word in faith is more than, but it is absolutely not less than, to hear it in history.

* I don't think the enormous fourth volume, on Paul, is quite so good, although there's a lot of valuable stuff in there if you have the time to search for it and the strength in your arms to lift the book.

# If you have ever been told that Barth did not believe in the historicity of, say, the resurrection of Jesus - well, that is just plain wrong. It can only be maintained through either ignorance or reading and reasoning in very bad faith. But that's another topic for another day.

Thoughts about Barmen

On worship and being good witnesses

There has been a debate in church circles about whether we ought to be pushing for permission to gather again for worship.  As we move to a point where 'non-essential retail' is allowed to open up, you can see why there are more voices pushing for a quicker pace for churches.  On the other hand, the activities of a church are different from the activities undertaken in a department store; there is a reasonable case to be made that gathering for worship carries more risk of spreading disease than popping to the shops.  Hence the debate.

I don't particularly want to engage in that debate now, although obviously I have opinions.  Instead I want to try to see what's happening behind it.  There are lots of motives one way and the other, but I think the strongest advocates on both sides of the debate are talking about (amongst other things) how we can best bear witness to Christ.  Do we best bear witness to Christ and his kingdom by being good citizens, not scandalising our neighbours by returning to activities they would regard as unsafe (and relatively unimportant), staying at home, staying safe?  A case can be made.  It is loving to make sacrifices for the good of others.  It is right that believers should think about the safety of society.  But on the other hand, might we not best bear witness to Christ and his kingdom by showing that we are ultimately citizens of another country, a heavenly one?  That we don't see safety as the ultimate value?  Again, a case can be made.  Christians ought to have different priorities from the world.  We should be demonstrating that our hopes are not primarily in this life.

So apart from all other considerations - and there are plenty of others which would have to be taken into consideration - thinking only about witness, a case can be made either way.

I regularly come back to these words from the 2nd century letter to Diognetus: "But while they live in Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. (Christians) live in their own countries, but only as non-residents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners."  Christians participate as citizens, but endure as foreigners.  Which is to be stressed in the current crisis - the participation, or the enduring?  Our standing alongside and with our fellow human beings, or our union with Christ which makes us foreigners wherever we are in the world?

I don't know the answer, but I'll tell you the risk I see whilst we're not gathering.  Corporate worship is the particular event in which we celebrate and remember that the kingdom of God has come in Christ Jesus.  As we together lift up our hearts and minds to heaven by the Holy Spirit within us, we recall that we can do this because heaven came down to us in Christ.  We remember that the kingdoms of this world are passing away, and that the kingdom of God which came in Jesus is also coming with Jesus when he returns.  We nourish ourselves on worship, on the Word, on the body-bread and blood-wine, because we reject the nourishment that this fallen world has to offer - its ideologies, its plans, its spiritualities.  We will take Jesus over them all, because he is Lord over them all.  And because his kingdom is better, his presence is sweeter, his life is life indeed.  So when it comes to witness, our gathered worship is already a testimony that we don't belong here, aren't ultimately invested here, expect nothing good from the setup of this world but all our good from Christ.

Whilst we're not gathering, there is a danger that we will forget this.  It is so easy for Christians to forget the immanent-yet-transcendent kingdom of the enthroned Lamb, and start to identify the kingdom of God with something happening on the plane of this world.  When well-meaning Christians point to all the good works which the church is up to at this time and say 'look, that's the real church', implying that the food banks and the justice ministries are the heart of the matter rather than worship, we are on the very brink of that terrible danger.  The kingdom of God is not to be identified with any social or political movement in this world.  It is not to be identified with governments or protesters against governments; it is not to be identified with the works of the church or the prophetic utterances of her leaders.  (In fact, every truly prophetic utterance will acknowledge and show this).  The kingdom of God is in Christ the King, in heaven, and surely coming quickly.  We need to remember this, and without corporate worship we lose our best reminder.

Don't read this as me arguing for a hasty reopening of the churches.  That's not what it is.  It is a reflection on how quickly and easily we subside from being those crazy people who show by their behaviour that they're really banking on there being a real God, a real resurrection, a genuine eternity - and become instead good citizens, practising our politics (progressive or conservative), doing good works, speaking into society.  In short, we become sane in the eyes of the world, with just a little bit of religion in our morality to which nobody but the hardest humanist could object.  We must be good citizens, of course, but only as foreigners.  Without gathered worship, we need to work extra hard to recall just how much we don't belong.

The odour of sanctity

The last few months have been hugely challenging, and for most of us I would guess very draining in different ways.  The stresses and strains thrown up by pandemic and lockdown have been varied, but I guess there are very few people who have not found themselves under pressure in one way or another.  If nothing else, the general background anxiety has been exhausting.  We're tired, aren't we?

Which is unfortunate, because I think the next bit is going to be hard and draining in different ways.  At least going into lockdown there was a sense that we were all pulling together, that it was a response to an emergency in which we were all involved.  That sense has largely dissipated now.  Partly I think that's just a natural thing; as lockdown has dragged on beyond what many were expecting, the goals have become less clear and frustration has set in.  Then again, our leaders don't seem to have set shining examples in every case, which undermines the sense of being all in it together.  And of course, we ourselves have begun to divide into those who have been applying rules and guidelines more rigorously, those who like to think they've been maintaining the spirit of the law whilst using their own judgement as to the details, and those who have just given up being locked down altogether.  Since all three groups tend to look down on the others, an increasing sense of division is probably inevitable.  Added to that, as we gradually emerge from lockdown there will be those who want to move faster (and those who de facto do move faster, whatever the official line) and those who are still too anxious to leave the house.  Then again, as the sense of immediate crisis passes, and the analysis of what has happened takes over, there will be differing views on what was done right or wrong, ranging right from a sense that lockdown was pointless and damaging through to lockdown was too late and insufficiently rigorous.

All this is going on, and I am anticipating more difficult and tiring times ahead.

Now, we can't control the times, but we can control to some extent our reactions to them.  I am not in the business of political or social punditry, so I don't have to offer opinions on everything, thankfully.  But I do have some observations on how Christians have been reacting and ought to react.  I advance them somewhat hesitantly, and with a genuine sense that I have not myself worked out what an adequate reaction would look like in practice; nor have I fully lived up to what I do know to be right.  But I also feel these things increasingly as an urgent burden.

Firstly, Christian responses should be characterised at every stage by humility.  There should be humility at every stage.  We should be humble about our own knowledge - do we really know and understand the full story in any given case?  Have we got a grasp of the details?  Our culture is quick to react, and tends to react emotionally.  Humility demands a brake on my reactions, a refusal to allow my immediate emotional response to determine my overall approach.  That doesn't mean being unemotional, or suppressing our emotional responses.  It just means recognising that our first response may not be the best response, because we may not - indeed, we probably do not - see the full picture at first.

Then again, humility is necessary as we think about other people.  Whether they are people in government, the neighbours who we see breaking the rules, or the friends who won't move as quickly back to normality as we would like, we need to react humbly.  With people in power, in particular, where there is a civic duty to hold them to account for their use of power, it is easy to act with pride.  Can I be honest and say I see that in a lot of responses from Christians to government in particular?  It is not that we should never be angry, but our anger should be tempered by the fact that we know we are not dealing here with monsters or demons, but that more tricky class of being: fallible and sinful human beings.  It might be worth asking ourselves how certain we are that we would have done better in the circumstances.  Would I definitely have been more competent?  Would I definitely have been more righteous?  I don't feel that I can tread with confidence here.  Certainly I don't feel I can react only with anger towards those who have tried and failed, or even towards those who haven't really tried.

Second, alongside humility we need to show hope.  How does it come across in our response that we have an ultimate hope that God is working everything - everything! - together for good?  In our response, does it look like we believe in the resurrection?  The unique Christian hope ought to enable a unique Christian response here.  The world swings back and forth between shallow hope on the one hand, and grief and anger on the other.  Christians are called to grieve as those with hope, to be angry as those who know that underneath are the everlasting arms.  This is not meant to be a background hope, against which we carry on much as everyone else.  It is meant to be transformative.  We are Easter people.  Our hopes are not in this world, but in the resurrected Christ.  But that hope, securely grounded in heaven, is meant to transform our response to what happens on earth.  I'm not seeing that, in me or in others, to the extent that I think the gospel demands.

Third, and this one is a bit more vague and sadly doesn't begin with 'h', we need some better content to our responses.  Not all, but a lot, of the response I've seen from Christians has been in content identical with the response of  (particular sectors of) society.  To be very blunt, if the content of our response to this crisis reads like a Guardian editorial, it is a political and not a specifically Christian response.  I am not here making a party political point; nor am I saying that Christians shouldn't be engaged in politics.  But I worry that our response is indistinguishable from that of the world.  We don't seem to have anything more to say than can be said by any 'progressive' person; and it seems to me that Christians who don't subscribe to 'progressive politics' have nothing whatsoever to say.  I am glad this isn't universal - I'm glad that there are responses looking for hope in a Covid world - but I feel the lack of distinctively Christian shape to my own responses and thoughts.

Distinctively Christian shape.  That's what I miss in myself and in much of what I see online.  I feel that we - that I - have failed to communicate into this crisis the weighty, solemn, joy of the gospel.  I don't think that people would look at me, and see someone who is set apart from the world, someone whose hope is in heaven.  I worry that the church doesn't have the odour of sanctity, that we don't reek of Christ in this crisis as we ought to do.  I don't think anyone would look at us and think that we actually live in a different world from them - and I think that ought to be the case, even as we work hard to get alongside people and to prove that we are committed to serving this world which we share.  The paradox of the gospel - that we are separate from the world and therefore committed to the world in Christ - I don't think that is coming across.  We're not strange enough right now.

As we approach Pentecost, I want to properly pray, that in the midst of the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual weariness of this time, we would be refreshed by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit of God, bringing the presence of Christ to us, giving the reality of the gospel to us, making us - making me - different.  Veni, Creator Spiritus.