Lent 2021

The season of Lent begins today, marking the period leading up to Easter.  Lent is 40 days (plus Sundays, which aren't counted), reflecting the 40 days the Lord Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism.  The themes of the season are communicated powerfully in the words spoken to each worshipper at a traditional Ash Wednesday service:

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

Lent is a time to particularly reflect on our mortality and frailty - we are dust, we are weak, our time is passing.  And Lent is a time to particularly reflect on our sinfulness in the light of our mortality - we will die and stand before Christ, therefore we should repent now.

This year, Lent feels strange.  For starters, at some level I feel like we never really got out of Lent 2020!  Of course we celebrated Easter as well as we were able in the circumstances, but the year since last spring has felt, to me at least, like one long reminder of the Ash Wednesday liturgy: you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Look how frail we are.  See how limited we are, how vulnerable.  These are not bad things to be reminded of - one of the reasons we observe Lent is to remind ourselves of them - but boy, it's been a long year of reminder.

Are we really going to do Lent all over again?

My suggestion is that Lent 2021 is a good time to lean hard into the second theme of Lent: that we are sinners, that we need to repent, that we are clinging to Christ for forgiveness, that we are dependent on his Spirit to live in faithfulness.  I think there is a danger that in the midst of the pandemic, with its accompanying loss of freedoms and pleasures, we could recognise our frailty and seek God for help, but forget our sinfulness and neglect to seek God for mercy.  What I mean is that the big problem right now seems to be disease, and the big need seems to be deliverance from disease (and the painful precautionary measures taken to prevent the spread of disease).  But Lent could be a good reminder to us that the Big Problem - the problem that is really insurmountable for us as human beings - is sin and guilt.  There are no vaccine programmes or treatments for this one.  Only the Lord in his mercy can help us here.

Customarily, Christians have observed Lent by fasting and self-examination.  Fasting means temporarily giving up something which is good and lawful, in order to pursue that which is better.  Perhaps you want to fast this year - perhaps in particular it would be good to remind ourselves that we can voluntarily give up good things because Christ is our Great Good Thing.  But perhaps this has felt like a year long fast and giving up something else now feels like too much.  I can understand that.  So maybe this is a time for self-examination.  To ask ourselves - and perhaps each other - some hard questions about what we really value, what we're really trusting, where our hope is.  At CCC, our preaching series will take us through the Ten Commandments as a way of helping with that.

All that being said, let's not forget Christian liberty.  None of us is under any obligation to do anything for Lent, except the ongoing and joyful obligations to trust the Lord and love one another.  Maybe the way you need to mark Lent 2021 is by simply allowing yourself to rest in the grace of the Lord Jesus after a hard year.  And that, too, will be a good preparation for celebrating the resurrection at Easter.

Don't grumble

 This morning the Lord has been gently rebuking me from 1 Corinthians 10:10:

And don't grumble as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer.

The context is the apostle Paul's reflection on the history of Israel as a type of Christian experience.  The Israelites were (typologically) baptised at the Red Sea; they ate (typologically) spiritual food in the manna and drank (typologically) spiritual drink from the rock.  They were fully initiated, and fully provided for - "nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them,  since they were struck down in the wilderness."

In the context of Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians, the primary application is to avoid idolatry and immorality.  And yet in the midst of the warnings against idol worship and moral laxity is this verse about grumbling.  Don't grumble; the grumblers were destroyed.

But how can I avoid grumbling in circumstances like these?

Well, "God is faithful".  He will not allow more temptation than you can bear.  He will provide a way out (v 13) - not, to be sure, from the circumstances, but from the temptation to sin which comes with the circumstances.  The Israelites were in the wilderness, and no doubt felt they had plenty to complain about.  But their grumbling was their destruction.  Because in the midst of the wilderness, God was their faithful provider, if only they had opened their eyes to see it.  Sure, they wandered in a desert; but in that desert, the Rock followed them and provided them with drink - and that Rock was Christ.  An intriguing identification, which there is no need to explore here.  The point is that though I wander through a seemingly interminable lockdown, the Rock follows me; there is living water constantly on tap.

Stop grumbling, Daniel.  The Lord is at hand.

Heresy

It is interesting to see how the Covid situation has resurrected the concept of heresy in a secular guise.  I see increasingly strong reactions against anyone who suggests a different interpretation of the information from that offered through official channels.  Indeed, even to question whether HMG's current course of action is wise and humane is enough to get you told that you have blood on your hands - irrespective of whether you have been carefully keeping to the regulations personally!  Why is this?  Because ideas have consequences.  In this case, it is felt that certain ideas will lead to people taking actions which will result in more people losing their lives.

I am not going to dive into the debates around lockdown (not again, anyway).  Rather I wanted to flag that this is a useful illustration of the theological notion of heresy.  Heresy is not just wrong opinion, but the advancement of ideas which are likely to have devastating consequences for individuals and for the church.  Primarily, heresy encourages people to trust wrongly: to put their trust in things that cannot bear that trust, or not to trust those things which they ought to trust.  The Arian heresy encourages people to trust a creature rather than the Creator for salvation.  The Pelagian heresy encourages people to put confidence in their own abilities rather than in God's grace.  And there are consequences.  Only God is able to bear our confidence; only he is trustworthy.  To put the weight of our need on anything else is deadly, eternally deadly, because it prevents us from seeking salvation in the one place where it is available - in God through Christ.

So just as misinformation about Covid could lead to people acting in a way that endangers themselves and others, so misinformation about God could lead to people trusting or failing to trust in a way that imperils themselves and others eternally.

I think the Covid situation does also highlight one of the dangers of the concept of the heresy.  Some of the anti-sceptical folks have reached the point where there are things which are doubtless true, but which may not be said for fear of consequences.  For example, I read an article over the weekend which castigated the lockdown sceptics for talking about the adverse effects of lockdown on mental health.  There was no suggestion that lockdown is not bad for mental health - I don't think that would be plausible - but that whether it is bad or not, one ought not to say so, because of the potential consequences.

In theological circles, sometimes it becomes impossible to ask valid questions, or to explore genuine issues, because they are very quickly linked to heresy.  The heresy flag is waved early in order to halt discussion.  That is not helpful.  There has to be space, even within the most tightly confessional circles, for investigation of theological issues; there has to always be the possibility that even the definition of heresy has to change under the pressure of renewed reading of Scripture.

Crisis?

The word 'crisis' has been thrown around a lot in the last year, including by yours truly.  But what is a crisis?  A crisis is really a moment of decision, a moment when circumstances and pressures and potential outcomes load this decision with more than ordinary significance.  The crisis is not really the moment to be doing any deep thinking; rather it is the moment that your foundations are exposed and your past thinking (or lack thereof) is brought into the light.  Often the crisis is the moment when the world is shown - and perhaps you are shown - that you don't believe or value the things you seemed to believe or value.  The crisis is the moment when the rubber hits the road.  The crisis is also the point at which a direction is determined, or perhaps the point at which it might be possible to change direction.  The crisis is the moment you look back to when asking the question 'how did we get here?'

2020 surely did present us with a crisis on lots of levels.  Societally, for example, it raised the question of what (and who!) we really value.  But I, and others, have been mainly thinking about the crisis in the church.  The situation in which the Government outlawed corporate worship seemed to ask deep questions of us: how much do we value worship, preaching, the sacraments?  To what extent ought we to go along with the presuppositions of a government and society which are non- and to an extent anti-Christian?  How should we respond?

It sure seemed like a crisis.

And yet in recent weeks I've been wondering if it was.  The thing is, there is definitely part of me that really wants a crisis.  A crisis is awful, in terms of the pressure, and this particular crisis had the potential to put me and others in a really awkward place.  But on the other hand, the crisis is decisive.  Having discerned what seems to be the right decision, you count the cost and you take it.  The crisis, you hope, sets you on the right road.  It is the crossroads at which, if you choose wisely, you will determine your arrival at the right destination.  Then again, there is something individually satisfying about responding to a crisis.  Perhaps it's just me, but there is an attraction to the last stand, the forlorn hope, the death-or-glory charge.

And there are other reasons to be on the lookout for the crisis.  I've done a fair bit of work on Bonhoeffer and the German church of the 1930s, and one of the things you notice is that because many people refused to contemplate the possibility that this might be the crisis, the time when it was necessary to take a stand, the church as a whole ended up sleepwalking into complicity with, and sometimes active support for, Nazism.  It ought to be an established rule of discourse that nothing else is quite like 1930s Germany, but still.  You don't want to miss the moment.  Many of those moments didn't look so serious to lots of people as they did to someone like Bonhoeffer, and the church as a whole was unwilling to elevate them to the level of crisis.  And yet in retrospect all of those small and seemingly insignificant decisions paved the way for a betrayal of the church's being and mission.

For those of you who are impatient with those of us who tend to see a crisis everywhere: please consider that we just really, really don't want to miss the crucial stand that we are called to make.  No doubt we sometimes over-analyse the issue and make it more significant than it really is.  If we're annoying you, just think of us as canaries in the mine; maybe we're hypersensitive, but it might be helpful to have someone hypersensitive down here with you.

But was it - and to the extent that it continues, is it - a crisis?  Re-reading Impossible People by Os Guinness I've been reminded of his description of our cultural issues: it's less like the boy with his finger in the dyke, and more like a mudslide.  That is to say, everything is on the move.  A heroic stand won't work here.  There are myriad ways in which we could betray the Lord every day, myriad little crises.  Maybe everything is a crisis.  The point is: I wonder whether I've been looking for one big decision, when it actually comes down to lots of little decisions.  Not one bold act of defiance of the world, but the resolution to keep on believing unpopular things, to keep on living for things that the majority think are myths, to keep on pursuing a vision of life which is shaped by invisible realities.

2020 in review

This is just my personal reflection on some of the themes that have characterised 2020 for me.  It's obviously been a big year.  A lot has changed.  I think mostly the extreme situation has put a spotlight on things that were already there, and has probably accelerated some cultural trends inside and outside the church.  I imagine different people will have picked up on different things; it has certainly been true that whilst we have all externally gone through the same situation this year, our actual experience of that situation has been very different indeed.

So here are the themes that I'm taking away to think about.

Safetyism

I'm guessing all of us as individuals tend to structure our ethical views around one or two dominant values.  The same is no doubt true of communities and societies.  The values which lie at the heart of our ethics flow out of, and probably also inform, the stories that we tell about the world, the examples that we admire, and the aspirations that we hold.  What 2020 has revealed - and I think it was already true - is that safety is the major value of our culture.  Safety is multi-dimensional and complex in the way that it gets applied.  It can mean 'safety in my identity', which is to say that I must be able to autonomously construct my sense of who I am without reference to, or critique or question from, anyone else.  By boiling it down to the most basic meaning - physical safety - I think 2020 has just shown how utterly dominant safety is in our thinking.  'Stay safe' has become the most common sign-off.  A life without risk seems to be the ideal.  I wonder how and when this particular vision of human flourishing gripped us?  Suffice to say, I find it stifling and grim.

The coercive power of the state

For me, 2020 represented my first real experience of the coercive power of the state.  I've never really wanted to do anything illegal in the past.  This year the state has intruded itself massively into family and community life, making both nigh on impossible.  The state has closed churches.  The state has criminalised normal social interactions.  It's all been quite a shock.  When I've attempted to raise concerns about this, I've often been shot down: the motives behind all this are good, it's about saving lives, etc.  Aside from the fact that some of this line of argument reflects the safetyism noted above, I do find it all a bit naive.  The point is that if the state can do this now, it can do it whenever.  There will always be an emergency to justify this.  And the more safety becomes our main value, the more justifiable it will seem.  And the minority who object will be painted as dangerous, and silenced.  Even if you think this lockdown has been justified - and I think some measures have been, but not all by a long shot - you ought to be concerned for liberty.  I really do call it naivety if you're not.

Church government questions

I've always been an independent in church government matters.  That is to say, I think Scripture lays down a normative scheme for the running of a church, by elders within a local church who are approved by and answerable to that local congregation.  In 2020, a number of things have made me rethink this.  The Timmis affair seems to demonstrate how easily a dominant personality can hold sway over an eldership and a congregation.  The lack of formal structures facilitated this dominance in this case.  If independency is broadly right - and I still think it is - how are we to mitigate the risk here?  I think stronger, and formal, links between congregations are going to be crucial.  I think we probably need to build up proper local associations.  Pastors from different churches should feel like colleagues.  Coupled to this concern, the pandemic has raised questions of who is authorised to represent the churches at a regional or national level.  I've regularly felt more in line with Presbyterians and even Roman Catholics than those who have been speaking for Independent churches.  It is probably the nature of our very loose groupings - held together only by a wafer thin confession of basic evangelical truths - that we would struggle to put forward anyone who could speak for the whole slate.  What's to be done?  Not sure on this one at this stage!

Being physical

The experience of trying to do church on Zoom has been miserable.  I hate it.  I know most people hate Zoom, but it's more than just the extremely negative experience.  It's that it doesn't work.  Worship and community are physical things.  The sacraments prove that.  And the sacraments are not incidental to Christian worship but central and vital.  (Incidentally, I wrote a thing early in the pandemic arguing for the possibility of online communion.  I think that piece was theologically correct and would stand by it, and yet we only attempted it once.  Why?  Because as I said then, this could never be normative; only, in a sense, parasitical on our real physical gatherings.  And so I judged it to be unwise to get used to doing it this way).  I've been thinking that for evangelicals we've been so used to thinking of the faith as something that happens mostly in the mind - at the level of ideas and worldviews and doctrines - or perhaps in the heart - at the level of desires and affections - that we have forgotten that it is also something that involves the body.  To sit, to stand, to sing, to deliver the amen, to light candles, to lift hands, to eat and drink, to hug...  All this is not incidental but integral to worship, because the body is integral to human being.  I also wonder how much we depend on a model of discipleship that is 100% top down - i.e., from the head/thinking - when bodily actions and physical habits are just as capable of adjusting our thinking as vice versa.  To put it another way: having a correct eucharistic doctrine is important for shaping your faith, but taking the eucharist is much more important.

Against the tide

I've never personally felt more out of step with the generality of society than I have in 2020.  No doubt some of that is just down to me being an awkward so-and-so, and probably in a good deal of it I'm wrong.  That's okay.  I've tried not to let my personal dismay at everything overflow too much into my ministry, but it has made me think: shouldn't I feel like this more often?  The crisis of the year has made me examine things like my beliefs about death, and the potential for idolatry in my life, in a way that I don't normally have to do.  When I thought about it, I found I didn't agree with the world around me (or much of the church); but how often do I think about it?  I suspect I go with the flow much more than I should.

Perspectives

When the dust settles on this crisis, we will all have had really different experiences.  One of the things I keep having to remind myself is that my experience of this year - having known nobody first-hand who has been seriously ill with Covid, let alone died, and very few people second-hand - is very different from those who are grieving losses.  My view is inevitably different from that of a doctor slogging away in terrible conditions.  How we deal with those differences is going to be important.  The culture in general tends to prioritise experience over objectivity; but I know that my reaction to that can be to prioritise the abstract over the personal.  Neither is helpful.  Integration will have to happen, and hopefully some of that will occur as we swap stories in the pub or cafe over the summer.

Perseverance

At various points in the year I've had useful chats with people who have pointed out that quite often the goal of the Christian life according to the NT is just to keep going.  Endure.  Persevere to the end.  That's it.  It's not a grand project, which is good because all our grand projects rather fell apart this year.  If we can keep going, keep trusting, keep our eyes up on the Lord Jesus: that's enough.  That's everything!  The whole ball game, as I believe they say.  And most of us are still on the race track, still headed to the finish line.  And that will do.  Thank you, Jesus.

Outstanding questions

 As the Covid crisis enters what I guess we all hope will be its final act, I have various outstanding questions which I think need answering or at least exploring fairly urgently.  Here are some of the questions relating to churches and Christians in particular.

1. How should we think of our relationship with the state?  The big question is to what extent the state has a right to intervene in various areas of life, including the corporate worship of the church.  The acute version of the question is about when it becomes right to disobey or actively resist the instructions of the state.  To my mind, a great deal of the interaction on the big question has been naive about the state and its role, assuming that the state is basically and normally a force for good.  I am no libertarian - I believe in the necessity of a strong state - but biblically and theologically I think we need to consider the vision of the beastly state in Revelation 13, or the animalistic states of Daniel, or just the basic fact that the climactic encounter between God and the human state ends up with a weak Pilate signing off on the execution of the Messiah.  It is no coincidence, incidentally, that many passages to do with the state belong to the apocalyptic genre, where the human world is unmasked and its deeper spiritual dynamics are exposed (and is not Pilate the very picture of the unmasked state as he stands face to face with the Lord?)  In the big picture, the state is at best an ambiguous force.

How we answer the big-picture version of the question has, of course, an impact on how we view the acute version.  It has been depressing to me to see how often Christian leaders have reached instantly to Romans 13 as if the few verses there on obedience to the state constituted everything that Holy Scripture had to say on the subject; as if thinking theologically about the role of government just meant reiterating the content of these verses.  It isn't so.  Of course it has been generally recognised that there are instances where we ought to disobey: the two most commonly cited would be if the state asks us to sin, and if the state becomes a persecutor of the church.  But this is so narrow.  To me this represents the interests of a sect, not of a group of people who see themselves as the firstfruits of a new humanity.  It basically winds up being 'I'm all right, Jack', on a grand ecclesiastical scale.  The church should always stand up for the human over against the merely political.

2. What is gathered worship all about?  The general impression I've got is that the majority of us don't know.  We can get sermons online, we can meet up with fellow Christians for encouragement in the park; what are we really missing?  It seems clear that for the majority of Christians in the UK right now there is a view of the Christian life which begins with the individual, and sees church as a helpful add on.  This is not the historic Christian vision.  For historic Christianity (whether Roman, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Reformed) the corporate and sacramental life of the church comes first, and the individual enters into that life.  Viewed from that perspective, the suspension of corporate worship and of the sacraments becomes rather more tragic.  I wonder whether opposition to lockdown - especially the prolongation of lockdown - has been stiffer amongst those who hold to the historic Christian orthodoxy than it has amongst the majority of evangelicals.  I think so.

Coupled to this, I've noticed that Christians who disapprove of churches meeting illegally (on which, see question 3) often start their criticism with some variation of the phrase 'I'm looking forward to being with my church community as much as the next person...' as if church were essentially about human community.  Don't get me wrong, clearly a church is a human community, and the relational aspect is important.  But do we really just gather on a Sunday to be with people, to share common interests, to participate in shared traditions on a purely human level?  The vertical dimension in all this seems to have gone missing completely, and instead of the church, where Christ is offered from pulpit and table and his people are lifted up in the Spirit to be together with him as they offer their praises, we're left with a club, the Jesus Club.  I am not keen to be a member.

3. How can we disagree well?  I realise I've been rather strident above, and that might cut against my third point.  Oh well.  I am not one of those who thinks that disagreeing well means endless fudge and a desperate effort not to offend anyone.  There are those who can speak in mild tones about things they think are crucially important; I'm afraid I am not one of those people.  But there is one particular instance of disagreement which I have in mind: the public critique of people who are trying to follow their Lord.  If a church in good conscience, and after due consideration, thinks that the dominical command to gather together trumps the current regulations from HMG - by all means argue with them, by all means say they are wrong.  But at the same time, you ought to be saying: I commend these brothers and sisters for seeking to be faithful.  Rather too much of the response I have seen seems to have been intended to distance ourselves from those we fear the world may look on with disapprobation.  That's not right, surely?  Shouldn't we disagree robustly with orthodox believers whilst still being clear that we are with them, even if it damages our reputation in the eyes of the world?

4.  Speaking of reputation, I believe there is an ongoing question along the lines of: how do we bear witness?  My suspicion is that we have got used to a model of commending the gospel by being good neighbours and good citizens; I think that lies behind a lot of the critique levelled against churches meeting despite regulation to the contrary.  And of course, this is a genuine strand in the New Testament.  We are to be good neighbours and good citizens.  But the NT also points to the fact that no matter how good we are in this regard, we will still have a poor reputation, because we follow Christ.  It wasn't possible in the ancient world to decline to worship the pagan gods and still be regarded as a good citizen.  You had to choose.  I think the time of choice is upon us.  You can't be regarded as a good neighbour or good citizen and hold orthodox Christian teaching on sexuality, for example, or a host of other ethical issues.  But more fundamentally than that, you can't bear witness without being weird, without pointing to a whole different value system.  I was trying to express something about that in this post about worship.  I've tried to sum it up on Twitter: the difference between reputation management and witness is that the former requires us to do what the world expects, whilst the latter requires us to expect a new world.

Those are my big four questions.  I don't think we've collectively got answers to them.  As Covid-tide draws to a close over the next six months, I wonder whether we shouldn't pay some attention before the next crisis hits.

Standing on our own ground

There has been a bit of mostly good-natured debate amongst Christians around how churches ought to react to lockdown restrictions recently.  There are those who feel very strongly that churches should be open, and have lobbied for this; there are those who feel very strongly that churches should be acting for the common good and closing for the sake of public health.  I guess I've made it clear I'm with the former, but that's not what this particular post is about.  I want to make some wider observations about how we make these sorts of arguments and what that means for our engagement with the world.

A line which I've seen a number of variations on is this: 'of course, I believe that church services are more important than pubs or shops, but I don't expect the Government or society at large to agree with me'.  Sometimes this line comes from a place of resignation - we simply cannot expect people who do not acknowledge Christ to take Christian positions, so why bother?  But more often I think it is driven by strategy - it doesn't make sense, strategically, to advance arguments and positions which are so thoroughly grounded in a uniquely Christian perspective that they will simply be rejected out of hand by those who don't share that perspective.

Evidence that this strategy is being pursued can be found in the sorts of public presentations church leaders make.  In general, there is a great effort to persuade people that we are good for society - that we do a lot of social work, that we are essential to support people's spiritual and emotional health, and even that we contribute indirectly to the economy.  This is all a strategic effort to set out the worth of churches and Christianity in terms which the non-Christian world is more likely to understand and accept.

I have two concerns about this approach.  The first is that I think it is disingenuous.  The reason Christians value churches and Christianity is not because these things are beneficial to society.  We value Christianity because we think it is the absolute truth about the universe and the way of redemption.  We value church because here is the gathered community of the redeemed, here is the preached Word which gives us life, and here is the Table at which we feed on Christ.  I think we are in danger of presenting an untruth, or at least performing a bait and switch: trying to persuade society to let us meet or whatever on the grounds that we run food banks, and then when given freedom putting most of our efforts into preaching sermons.

The second, and deeper, concern is that we divide ourselves.  In general, people think they're just moving on to this ground - this perceived shared ground of common values - in order to make a strategic argument, whilst in our hearts maintaining the priority of Christian truth.  But I don't think we can internally stand on the ground of the gospel whilst externally occupying a different position for strategic reasons - or at least I don't think we can keep it up.  A stance taken up for reasons of strategic engagement is likely to become our ultimate stance before long.  It seems to me, for example, that we can trace the descent of someone like Steve Chalke into heresy from an initial commitment to a place of strategic engagement - certainly the first hint I saw of his declension revolved around changing our doctrine of sin to fit better with an understanding of human nature which played better in development circles.

I think we are better to stand on our own ground, even if it means not being understood; better to lose the argument than to lose our souls.  This is not an argument for obscurantism - we ought to try to translate and contextualise our message, but at the end of the day we still need to be sure that it still is our message.  In the public sphere, we ought not to be scrambling to occupy come sort of common ground; we ought to be saying with the Psalmist 'pay homage to the Son or he will be angry'.

Divine mandates and the present crisis

In the tragically unfinished Ethics manuscript entitled The Concrete Commandment and the Divine Mandates, Dietrich Bonhoeffer begins to investigate what a well-ordered human society might look like.  The first thing he wants to be clear on is that in a well-ordered society we are always faced with the one concrete commandment of God "as it is revealed in Jesus Christ".  There can be no neutrality on this point; Christ Jesus rules in every sphere of life.  (Bonhoeffer pushes back here against the Lutheran understanding of the two kingdoms; indeed, he does not consider this to be authentically Lutheran teaching at all).  But the one commandment encounters us in particular circumstances, particular spheres.  Bonhoeffer talks about the four divine mandates of church, marriage and family, culture (or sometimes 'work'), and government.

In each of these four mandates we come up against the concrete commandment of God; each is ordered from above, from heaven, and is not merely an outgrowth or development of human history.  The four mandates are envisaged as co-existing: "None of these mandates exists self-sufficiently, nor can any one of them claim to replace all the others."  They are with-one-another, for-one-another, and over-against-one-another; that is to say, they are limited by one another even as they exist to support one another.  The obvious target here for Bonhoeffer is the encroaching Nazi totalitarianism, which wants to subordinate all spheres of life to the state.  In fact, each of the divine mandates finds itself limited in two key ways in a well-ordered society: from above, because it is constrained to serve God's commandment and not its own ends, and from all sides, because it cannot arbitrarily encroach on the territory of the other mandates.

This is Bonhoeffer's version of a theory which has been commonplace in Christian thinking about politics and society.  Whether it is the high mediæval assertion of the church's liberties against the crown (think Beckett), or the Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine, or the Barmen Declaration railing against totalitarianism in the 1930s, the goal is the same: to understand, on the basis of God's creation and Christ's universal Lordship, what it means for human institutions to exercise legitimate authority within their particular spheres.

This is a peculiarly Christian approach.  Because God sits above every sphere, and because each of the mandates finds it authorisation in him and his providential arrangement, it is not possible for any to usurp the place of the others.  Family is not dependent on the state for its authorisation; the church is not dependent on the culture for its authorisation; etc. etc.  Each mandate operates with divine authorisation within its own sphere.  The mandates are oriented towards each other - they are not hermetically sealed against each other - but they cannot arbitrarily claim an authority to interfere in other spheres.  If the church is to interfere in the state, it must not be to usurp the state, but to establish the state in its independence within its own sphere.  If the state wishes to be involved in regulating family life, that can only be for the sake of the independence of family life from the state.

To my mind, this is what has been missing from a lot of Christian debate about the response to Covid from Her Majesty's Government.  Many of the responses I've seen have relied on a biblicist citing of Romans 13 to suggest that we must always submit to the Government's whims.  Most have jumped straight to the practical question 'when should we disobey?'  But the background questions which urgently need working through are: is the state currently operating within its legitimate sphere, or has it usurped the place of other mandates; and, where the state has impinged on other mandates, has it done so with the legitimate aim of strengthening those mandates in their independence?  These are the questions which are raised by the historic Christian tradition of political and social thought.  I'd like to see some more work done on them.  We ought not to take it for granted that the state has the authority which it claims for itself, nor should we short-circuit the theo-political thinking that needs to happen here by a quick appeal to a Pauline proof-text.

The church is uniquely well placed to offer constructive critique here.  This sense of a divine division of powers has largely faded in our society; we are ripe for totalitarianism, even if it does turn out to be democratic totalitarianism.  The church, though, is still able to see Christ on his throne above it all, limiting but also authorising the various human institutions in their particular spheres.  The church can and should speak out - not only when her own sphere is threatened, but also to speak up for the rights of family, and of culture, and, yes, even of the state where those rights are threatened.  Because we see each sphere as established by God, we cannot be content to see them dissolved into one another.

The present crisis is the time to think this through, to work out what we are called to say and do.  Crisis is always the time when institutions threaten to overflow their banks.  Legitimate crisis response easily becomes illegitimate accumulation of powers.  We should not take it for granted that when the crisis passes things will return to 'normal'; it is far more likely, I think, that the crisis reveals what has been really going on for years.

The dangers of under- and over-analysing

One of the things which has been thrust upon pastors in particular by the arrival of Covid-19 has been an increased urgency in trying to read our situation.  What is going on in our culture?  How are people thinking?  Granted that the Word we need to speak never changes, how do we speak that Word into this particular 'here and now'?  It has always been part of the job to try to answer these questions, but the present moment has made it more pressing; no longer are we asking about long-term trends, but instead we are asking what is happening now, right now in these tumultuous weeks and months.

I think there are two dangers we need to avoid as we go about this task.

On the one hand, there is a danger of under-analysis.  At its worst, this is naivety - taking everything at face value and declining to look below the surface at all.  If the Government says it is doing something, that must be what it's doing.  But it needn't be that extreme.  Sometimes it is just viewing the particulars without any context.  Pursuing a cure and/or vaccine for the virus must be good.  Sure.  But if we don't look at the context, we'll miss bigger points about our society's approach to health, and the conceptualisation of death which is common amongst those around us.  Why do they talk like this?  What is revealed by the particular response to this threat to our health about our underlying habits of thought?  I think if we don't do this work we'll end up like the bull, chasing the red cloth around without ever coming within touching distance of the real target.

The danger of over-analysis, on the other hand, is at its most extreme the conspiracy theory.  Nothing is taken at face value; everything conceals a hidden pattern, which only those with the key can see.  (Paradoxically, this is often accompanied by scorn for all those who have not been enlightened and cannot see what is 'really going on').  But it needn't go that far.  Some of us naturally see patterns, naturally integrate things into a bigger whole - and there is a danger in so doing that we impose a conceptual scheme rather than perceiving the facts.  In particular, we can end up telling people that they really believe one thing even though they say they believe something else.

All of us would like to think we hit the happy medium here.  My guess is that all of us are wrong, and we all naturally lean to one side or the other.  (I am an instinctive over-analyser, for what it's worth).  I think the task at the moment is made more difficult by a cloud which hangs over the whole situation, something which I tend to analyse (!) as a spiritual attack.  But the task is vital if we're to speak the gospel into the here and now - which is to say, to the real people in the world around us.  Perhaps knowing our natural tendency might help us to correct it.  Certainly listening carefully to others will help.  Above all, prayer and being soaked in Scripture must be the key.

A letter I signed

 Last week I was asked to sign a letter to the Prime Minister and First Ministers of the devolved administrations offering a Christian reflection on the current governmental response to Covid-19.  I was glad to sign.  You can read the full text of the letter here.  Since the letter itself, and the media reporting of it over the weekend, has aroused a little controversy, I wanted to offer my own thoughts - an apologia pro signatura mea if you like.

What does the letter say?

To me, there seem to be two points to the letter.  One is the negative consequences of lockdown and other restrictions which we have seen on families, on lonely people, and on society more generally.  These are concerns which I think are broadly shared within and beyond the Christian church, and they are concerns which ministers of the gospel ought to voice.  The logic in the letter - that Christ came to give fulness of life, and therefore we cannot settle for a course which preserves bare existence at the expense of the very things that give life value and enjoyment - seems sound.  It is biblical and gospel-grounded, but has the potential also to appeal to those who do not accept the presupposition.  If you don't believe that Christ came to give life in its fulness, you may still think that bare existence is not much worth preserving.  As I say, many people are making this point, but we Christians ought also to make it, and louder; we ought to take a stand for the common societal good.

The second point is narrower, and stresses the crucial importance for our society of Christian worship.  This, of course, is unlikely to appeal beyond the church, but it bears saying anyway.  Life cannot be lived to the full without the gathered worship of the Triune God.  The corporate worship of God's people is what everything exists for.  This should be uncontroversial in the church, and if the world at large can't understand it, so be it.  We ought not to yield to a perspective that is not rooted in Holy Scripture.

So what does it mean?

The Sunday Times reported the letter under the headline Churches vow to stay open this time.  This is a silly headline.  I certainly didn't make any sort of vow when signing, nor am I committed to the idea that as a church we would not comply with any further restrictions.  As a point of fact, I don't have the power or authority to make that decision!  Logistically, CCC meets in a community centre, and if they close then de facto so do we, at least as far as public worship goes.  More importantly, within our church that sort of decision would not be mine alone to make; the elders would have to agree, and in fact it would be such a momentous step that I think we would need a congregational vote.  How I would advise the congregation to vote in that case I don't yet know; it would depend on the circumstances.

As I read the letter, what the signatories are asking is that we not be put in the position of having to make such a decision.  We do not want to have to ask our churches to choose between obedience to God and obedience to the secular authority.  This is not a threat of disobedience - it is a request that we not be moved in a direction where disobedience might be necessary.  Personally, I would have worded it somewhat more strongly.  I think the government is operating outside its legitimate sphere of operations in restricting individuals, families, and churches as it has done for so long - on which more later in the week.  But that is not what is at issue here.  The letter is simply an appeal that the harms done by lockdown be recognised, and that the importance of Christian worship be recognised in any future decision making.  I guess we will have a more ready audience for the former point, but the latter could not go unmade if we are to be faithful to the gospel.

I imagine that amongst signatories to the letter there is a broad spectrum of approach.  I know that some - as reported over the weekend - are already ignoring guidelines related to singing, for example.  I am not doing that, nor will I be in the near future.  Others are content that current restrictions are sensible and legitimate, but don't want to see anything further.  I personally can't see that they are either sensible or legitimate.  There is a range of opinion - I know from speaking to a few people - but we should be able to agree on the two key points: lockdown has been harmful in many ways (and this is not to prejudge whether it has also been essential); and Christian worship is essential.

Where do we go from here?

It seems clear to me that we need some more robust theological work on the place of the state.  A fair amount of the commentary seems to be biblicist in its quick jump to Romans 13 as if that settled all issues.  We have a couple of millennia of thought on this topic which we ought to be bringing to bear.  We also perhaps need a clearer view of the value of corporate worship; many people seem to think we're not missing much by streaming or being on Zoom.  I think Zoom church is church on life support.  Now is the time to do this theological work - the best theology always emerges under the pressure of events.

We need to continue to speak into issues that go beyond the immediate rights and concerns of the church.  If I'd been writing the letter, I might have put more stress on the first point, or at least developed it more.  We don't just speak out when they come for us - we should have learnt this at least from the Confessing Church.  But - and again we should have learnt this from the Barmen Declaration - we must speak on our own ground, on gospel ground.  We don't disconnect the societal needs from the gospel need.

Perhaps above all, we need to avoid making our opinions on Covid or on Her Majesty's Government a mark of righteousness.  Personally, I haven't been singing in church and have worn a mask as required - but I am not thereby justified.  On the other hand, I have signed this letter, and have written somewhat critically of the restriction regime - but I am not thereby justified.  We can and should disagree well on these things, both within our churches and between them.  A stress on the centrality of the gospel, a willingness to go slower (and faster) than we are personally comfortable with in order to show love to others, and a willingness to hear other sides empathetically and sympathetically ought to mark our approach.  We should do everything we can to avoid distancing ourselves from brothers and sisters who hold the gospel, even whilst clearly expressing our disagreements as necessary.

I was glad to sign the letter.  I was encouraged to see so many others sign it.  I hope that many who didn't feel able to sign it still feel able to speak into the legitimate concerns expressed.  I hope this represents the beginning of a new boldness and engagement for the church in the UK.

Fog of War

Chatting through the general situation yesterday, the image of fog pressed itself powerfully on my mind.  It does seem as if everyone, from government downwards, is blundering about in a thick murk.  Objectives are unclear.  The very situation is unclear.  What is really happening?  What are we trying to do?

The Government prolongs a state in which normal human activity is criminalised.  There is growing evidence that this is doing great harm to society and to the health of individuals, and yet we press on with it.  Does anyone know why?  The stated reasons for introducing restrictions way back were to do with 'flattening the curve', ensuring the health service is not overwhelmed.  Those reasons seem to have gone by the wayside.  What are our objectives now?  It's all been swallowed up by fog.  It is hard to avoid the conclusion that HMG is lost in the cloud.

Of more desperate concern, for me at least, is that our Christian witness seems to have got lost in the fog.  We - who believe in a hope that goes beyond this life, who trust in a sovereign God - surely we ought to have something powerful to say in this situation?  But we proceed with such uncertainty.  I don't hear people speaking with assurance and authority on behalf of Christ.  it's like we're just not quite sure where we are or where we need to go.

I'm not talking about other people.  It's in my mind, the fog.  I wander through my days in a state of distraction, wondering what is really going on and where we really are.  I get stuff done, I talk to people, I write sermons.  But am I saying the right things?  What's the word for the moment?

I'm sure there are lots of potential causes for this feeling of being lost in a fog.  I am sure that at least one of them is spiritual.  We are in a spiritual battle, and I am quite sure that keeping us muddled is one of Satan's key ploys.  It's relatively easy right now.  We lack the key thing which allows us to see clearly: gathered worship.  When we come together as God's people, one of the things that happens is that we together lift up our hearts to the throne of heaven, where Christ is seated.  From that vantage point we see what is really going on.  The fog disperses as we sing the truth, as we pray the truth.  Taking the Holy Supper together orients us on the most important reality: that Christ has died and risen, that sin and death are vanquished.  We orient ourselves, locate ourselves in God's great plan of salvation.

In the absence of gathered worship - or even in the practice of gathered worship that is weakened and attenuated by restrictions and regulations - we are lost.

Send your light and your truth; let them lead me.
Let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to your dwelling place.
Then I will come to the altar of God,
to God, my greatest joy.
I will praise you with the lyre,
God, my God.

Liberty as a human good

I know lots of people are vexed over current restrictions on our lives.  For myself, the frustrations fall into a number of categories: that the rules seem arbitrary; that there seems very little evidence base for many of them; that they show a basic misunderstanding of most of the elements of life they are intended to regulate; that they change in unpredictable fashion for no very obvious reason; that they are inconsistent; that they have been imposed without due scrutiny in Parliament...

I could go on, but I guess that makes it clear where I stand.

I know that we will all have different perspectives on this, and many people will feel that the rules are basically justified even if the detail isn't great; others will feel there should be no rules at all, or perhaps just voluntary guidelines.  I get it.  I have to keep reminding myself that although I try to be informed I am really no expert.  Probably neither are most of you.  So my opinion is just that, and there is no reason it should carry a huge amount of weight, and I won't offer any further comment on it.

Where I do want to comment is at the intersection of church and society, and therefore of theology and politics.  Like many people, pastors have been scrambling to understand the new regulations (and given the constantly moving target, this is an ongoing task).  We've been asking each other questions about how the 'rule of six' affects people arriving at worship services; we've been looking for loopholes that would enable our homegroups to meet for fellowship.  On the whole, what we've found is that the regs make it extremely difficult for us to do anything approaching 'normal church'.

So here's the thing: what is a homegroup?  Well, it's an attempt to create community, to share life, in the particular context of the church.  But community and life-sharing are not activities unique to the church.  In fact, in its community and fellowship the church, in so far as it understands itself, will be aware that it is just being human.  Christ is the Creator, and the Lord of the Church.  In the church, he brings his human creation back to itself, back to normality.  So the church's activities are, in the specific context of the community of faith, just being human.  Which means that we need to realise that if we're being restricted from running our homegroups - and assuming we're not being particularly targeted, which we're not - then something fundamentally human is being restricted.  I think our response then needs to be not looking for loopholes to try to maintain our particular activities, but speaking up for the common human need for community and togetherness.  We need to think more broadly than 'government is getting in the way of our programmes and structures' to see that government is getting in the way of being human.  The liberty to come together as people is a human good.

None of this is to prejudge the question of whether and to what extent government is currently justified in restricting that liberty.  People will have different views on that.  I get it.  I just think we need to consider those views in the broader context.

Theologically, I've seen a lot of people rolling out Romans 13 to argue that we must submit to the state - until or unless the state particularly targets Christians to prevent their witness (in which case, Acts 4:19 kicks in).  I think that represents a truncated view of the biblical stance on the state - it is, perhaps, biblicism, in the sense that it does not take into account the whole of God's revelation in Holy Scripture or the way in which the church has wrestled with the question of the state over the centuries.  In this context, I want to point out that it tends to limit the church's interventions on questions of liberty to those which directly affect us and our activities.  What about a wider, creational concern for humankind?  Does Romans 13 mean we can never protest an unjust decree?  Our theological forebears thought it just to part a king from his head over the question of liberty - and whilst I'm not sure they were right, I don't think we can just quote Romans 13 to say they were wrong.

Again, I want to stress that I'm not saying you ought to come down on one side or the other in terms of the particular justice of the current regulations.  I guess my view is clear, but I know my limitations and I don't expect everyone to agree with me.  All I'm really asking is that we have the conversation in an expanded context.

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.

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.

Going to heaven

One effect of lockdown has been to make me much more acutely aware of location.  I am, as I have mostly been for the last couple of months, at home.  Location has been revealed as one of those things which has much more effect on my life than I had ever realised.  Being perpetually in my house makes work and rest more difficult.  It shrinks the world of my experience.  It restricts my access to others.  (And as I write this I am very aware that this is the reality all the time for many people: those justly or unjustly imprisoned, those who are housebound or hospital-bound through illness and disability...)  I am currently unusually conscious of where I am and what that means for me and my life.

As the pastor of a church I'm also particularly conscious of what is not happening: the church is not gathering together for worship.  Given that corporate worship is what the whole of creation is actually for, this is a big deal.  We are seeing each other, digitally, and hearing the word of God through our screens; but it makes the world of difference that we are located in our lounges (actually I get banished to the kitchen for preaching purposes) and not in the same place.  With the greatest respect to those who would love this digital interaction to be a part of our 'new normal' post-Covid, it is not the same thing as a physical gathering.  It must never become the norm, even if we might consider how greater use of technology might be made to ameliorate the cases of those who simply cannot gather.  Location matters.

But today is Ascension Day, and that also has a great deal to do with location.  Where is Jesus?  He has gone 'to heaven'.  That is to say, he has gone to the place of God's immediate presence and power.  Biblically, heaven is the place from which God hears prayer, sends help and judgement, acts and reveals himself.  Each act and intervention of God is a movement from heaven to earth.  The ascension of Christ is a movement from earth to heaven only because it completes an earlier movement from heaven to earth; in that sense, it is the counterpart to the moment of incarnation.

Jesus is in heaven.  But because Jesus' people are united with him, we can also be said to be in heaven - seated in the heavens, our lives hidden in heaven with Christ.  We are in heaven, in terms of our identity, our status, because Jesus is in heaven and we are in Jesus.  (Worth pondering, in terms of location, the regular address to Christians in the NT as those who are 'in Christ' - because this is often paired with a city, e.g., the saints who are in Christ in Philippi.  Both are location terms.  Of course, for the NT being in Christ is a far more significant location than being in Philippi.)

But this is also described in another way.  In the Letter to the Hebrews, which is all about the priestly movement into God's presence, we are urged to take advantage of the blood of Christ shed for us and to enter the sanctuary - not meaning any earthly sanctuary, but the very heavenly sanctuary which is the original of all earthly sanctity.  (And it is not coincidental but important that this is at once linked to the importance of meeting together, for this entry into the sanctuary - accomplished by Christ and received by faith - is symbolised and therefore to some extent experienced when believers come together in worship).

What do we come to when we draw near?  According to Hebrews 12 it is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, the place where Jesus is.  It is heaven.

We are in heaven, because we are in Jesus.  We come to heaven when we pray, when we meditate, particularly when we come together in corporate worship.  We do well to hold on to both perspectives: we are there, static, immovable, because that is the status Jesus has; but in our experience we draw near, we approach, we enter.  Lose sight of the former and anxiety will set in - how can we approach God in his heaven?  Lose sight of the latter and all sense of relationship with God will disappear - just accept salvation and then get on with your life without reference to God.

So this is a striking thing.  Wherever we are located on earth - and as noted above, this is not an entirely insignificant factor; far from it! - we are able to go to heaven.  Going to heaven is not something that happens when you die; it is something that happens when you pray, when you believe, when you worship.  Let's draw near with faith.

The new religion

According to this article in the NYT, the National Health Service is "the new Church of England" - indeed, it is "almost holy".  "We all have respect for nurses, who are ‘angels,’ and doctors, who are ‘gods’", says John Appleby.  I don't think this is an entirely new thing.  There have been dogmas surrounding the NHS for some time, and corresponding heresies and heterodoxies.  The air of sanctity has been attached to the idea of the NHS for years, even if the reality has sometimes fallen short.  What has most noticeably changed in the wake of Covid-19 is the move towards unconcealed worship, both of the institution ("Thank you NHS!") and its human avatars ("Clap for carers").

And that all makes a lot of sense.

The Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, in his book For the Life of the World, points out that "Secularism is a religion because it has a faith, it has its own eschatology and ethics.  And it 'works' and it 'helps'.  Quite frankly, if 'help' were the criterion, one would have to admit that life-centred secularism helps actually more than [traditionally conceived] religion."  He sees the modern hospital as the epitome of the secular world: "Hospitals and medicine are among its best achievements."  Here is a religion that gets us along, that is unequivocally devoted to helping humanity, and moreover succeeds very well at doing that.

What does Christianity have to offer in comparison with that?

Schmemann maintains that Christianity is different.  "For Christianity, help is not the criterion.  Truth is the criterion."  Where the church allows itself to be drawn into the grand secular project of helping, it will either find itself dropping all the 'God stuff' in favour of social work and counselling (and therefore, frankly, becoming redundant, because secularism can do this at least as well as the church), or it will adopt a sort of chaplaincy role, helping people at the point where secularism can no longer help - that is to say, helping them to be reconciled to the idea of death.  This, Schmemann thinks, is the adaptation of the traditional role of religion to the present age.

But Christianity is here to provide salvation, and salvation "is not only not identical with help, but is in fact opposed to it."  The church is not there to give a helping hand with modern society's various projects, nor is it there to provide a sort of backstop service, to domesticate death.  In fact, it is only in the Christian gospel that death is revealed for what it is: the great enemy which makes a mockery of all humanity's helping and working.

Unlike the NHS, the Christian church and the Christian gospel are no help.  If anything they problematise life and death in a way which we might think we could do without.  We don't have any help to offer - although of course incidentally the church and Christians will and should assist in different ways, as members of society and moreover as servants of all.  But fundamentally it is not help, it is nothing that works, that we have to offer.

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus has an encounter with a paralysed man.  Faced with the fellow, lowered through the roof in front of him, Jesus pronounces his sins forgiven.  And only secondarily, to show his authority to forgive, he also heals him of his paralysis.  It is clear which of the two acts is helpful, and it is also clear which Jesus regards as more important.  The healing is an appropriate sign of salvation, an appropriate accompaniment to it, because salvation is indeed about life and wholeness; it is not about a rejection of this world and of human life, but of its redemption.  But forgiveness is the reality of salvation, since to be saved is fundamentally to be reconciled to God.  But what help is such reconciliation?  From Luke's perspective it is clear that salvation would have come to the man even if he had been left unmoving on his bed...

All of which is to say, Christianity is not helpful, and if we're looking for religion of help we'd be better off worshipping the health service.  But Christianity is salvation, a new life beyond the life we know, the life that works.  Terribly impractical.  No use.  But salvation for all that.

Blessing

Lots of people have shared this fantastic video, in which Christians from across the churches of the UK sing a blessing over the nation as it struggles with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  I watched it and I was deeply moved; shed a couple of tears even.  To see the church together is beautiful.  To realise the unity there is in Christ is wonderful.  But...

But?  How much of a party-pooper do you have to be to put a 'but' at the end of that intro?  Turns out, this much of a party-pooper.

I'm a Pastor.  Pronouncing a blessing is part of my job - whether it's the Aaronic blessing on children welcomed into the world, or the blessing of the Trinity on the gathered congregation, or the blessing on the eucharistic food which we take to remember Christ.  I like to bless.  But I worry, oh I worry.  I worry that maybe we're missing what's going on.  I worry that we're missing the moment.

The thing is, I don't have the power to pronounce a blessing, not unilaterally.  I can only bless where God blesses.  And I worry.  Is this the moment for a blessing?  Can we pronounce a blessing over an apostate and unrepentant nation?  Can we pronounce the blessings of Israel over a people who will not have the God of Israel?

What if this country were to be blessed?  I suspect that the first fruit of real blessing would not be peace but a deep grief over who we are and what we've done.  If God turned his face towards us, of necessity much of what we value would shrivel up and die.  Maybe I misread the situation, but I don't see the UK as ripe for blessing.  Mercy.  Mercy is what we need.  And perhaps a church which is more ready to get back up the mountain and fast and plead rather than pronounce a blessing.

Oh, I don't know.  Maybe I'm just the Grumpy Pastor.  I want to bless.  God knows I want to bless.  But the only blessing I have to pronounce is the death of the sinner in the death of Christ, and I don't think many people want to hear that.

A lament for Holy Week 2020

We hang up our harps on garden bushes;
held at home,
how can we sing our familiar songs?

Strange to think this place, so well known,
these four walls,
become our exile; we are strangers here.

I remember how we came, hosanna shouts,
palm crosses,
to celebrate your Triumph; praise your lowly Majesty.
And now from dining rooms
we squint into our screens
and try to hear an echo of the past.

You came to your own, and yet were not at home;
your Father's house
a den, and others led you from the place;

the place where you had made your name to dwell.
Weight of cross
and pain of scourge, and all the time a stranger.

Online Communion?

This one is really just by way of clearing my head and getting my own thoughts straight.  There are a good few articles out there at the moment addressing the question of whether we can celebrate Holy Communion 'together', and if so how we ought to do it, when the present crisis prevents us from physically gathering (for example, this from an Anglican perspective, and a pair of articles with different conclusions from TGC).  I can completely understand the caution around attempting this - novelty in liturgy, like novelty in theology, is always dangerous even when warranted and essential.  But I think I'm in favour of celebrating the Supper online, and this is my attempt to clarify (to myself primarily, and secondarily to anyone else interested) why that is.

To qualify this initially, I should describe our church situation and some presuppositions.  Our church is small, which means that for us meeting online means a Zoom meeting, in which we can all see each other and (at points when we don't have everyone except the preacher muted, hear each other).  We're not talking a livestream or anything like that.  Nor is anything pre-recorded (although I do record the sermon audio during the meeting for posterity!) - it feels as much like being together as is possible when we can't be together.

My theological presupposition around the Supper is that it is intended to be a community meal, albeit a very small one, taken together in remembrance of Christ; and that as it is taken together in faith, the Holy Spirit communicates the spiritual benefits of Christ's body and blood to the church and its individual members.  This understanding rules out entirely the idea that a minister could hold a Communion service apart from a congregation; there is no value in the liturgical act in and of itself without the collective meal.  So a livestream from an empty church of a clergyman reading the words of institution (or some more developed liturgical form) and eating and drinking is not Holy Communion in my reckoning, whatever else it may be.

What is essential, then, to a celebration of the Lord's Supper?  I take it the following elements:

1. The remembrance of the Lord's death.  In a normal meeting for corporate worship, where the gospel has (hopefully!) already been rehearsed in the liturgy and preached in the sermon, this might mean nothing more than the reading of the words of institution, to link the act of eating and drinking in to the gospel story.  In another context it might require something more extensive to ensure that what is done is understood, and is not a mere ritual.
2. Bread and wine being consumed together.  The elements are not there just to be looked at; the eating is an essential part of Communion.  It symbolises the gospel truth that Christ does not stand apart from us, but promises to dwell in us, to unite us to himself and thus communicate to us all the benefits of his death, resurrection, and ascension.  So there must be eating and drinking.
3. Recognition of the body of Christ.  The critique that the Apostle makes of the celebration of the Supper in Corinth is that it is not truly corporate, just everyone doing their own thing.  In particular, this has the effect that the rich feast whilst the poor go without; it is anti-gospel.  There is a necessary corporate element to the Supper, because there is a necessary corporate aspect to the gospel.  To take Communion as if it were merely about me and my spiritual state, and not about the church, is a denial of Christ's work.

Behind these three things, there are two essentials which are impossible to capture liturgically, although they may be alluded to - specifically:

1. Faith on the part of those who eat and drink.  Without faith, the celebration is of no benefit to the individual.  Just as a sermon heard without faith will not benefit the hearer, so a sacrament partaken without faith will be of no benefit.  (Albeit God in his mercy may use the sacrament to awaken and elicit faith).
2. The work of the Holy Spirit.  Only the Spirit can really communicate the benefits of Christ's victory to us, his people.  The Spirit unites us to Jesus (and also therefore to one another), doing really and spiritually what is done symbolically by the act of eating and drinking,.  The Spirit is not bound to the sacrament - but he is promised to those who look to Christ in faith.

So what does all that mean for online Communion?

Firstly, it must mean that any online celebration that did not involve the participants actually eating and drinking would not be Communion.  So we would all need to get our own bread and wine.  Can it be a shared meal, when we're not taking from the one loaf and cup?  I think so.  I presume we would all recognise that sometimes more than one loaf would be used in Communion - for example, in a very large church.  This does not impair the shared nature of the meal.  For the Apostle Paul, every Communion meal is "this bread" - a participation in the 'one loaf' which is Christ.  I see no reason why the bread which each person brings to the online gathering and eats in the context of the memorial of the Lord cannot be 'this bread'.

Second, I'd be anxious about taking Communion online if people weren't able to experience the body of Christ - that is, the church community.  Zoom is great for us in terms of creating a genuine togetherness even in our separation.  I wouldn't do online Communion through a livestream or any other setup where I couldn't see the others eating just as they could see me.

Third, the sheer physicality of Communion speaks to the importance of physical presence with one another.  Therefore online Communion could only ever be a stop-gap measure, which would be grounded in real physical celebration together in the past, and taken in anticipation of real physical celebration together in the future.  (I would reserve Communion and take it to the sick with a similar justification).  The Communion meal is always rooted in past celebration ("on the night he was betrayed") and always looks forward to future celebration (when we eat in the kingdom of God), so this weirdly strained version of Communion emphasises that.  All of which is to say, online Communion can never be normative.

Fourth, we need to remember that there is always another location involved in a Communion celebration - namely, heaven.  Lift up your hearts!  As Calvin emphasised (and there is a great essay on this in Sinclair Ferguson's book on pastoring, which I happen to be reading at the moment), the reality of the Supper is grounded in the ascended humanity of Christ.  We are to be lifted up faith to receive him in the Supper by the Spirit.  I would add that our unity as a body is also to be found in heaven; our little congregation on earth is just a foretaste of the great heavenly community still to be revealed.  Perhaps our separated Communion can bring out that emphasis clearly.

Given the positive command to celebrate the Supper, and given that we now have the technology to make something like an online Communion possible, I think we can do it.  I plan to do it on Maundy Thursday.  So if you think this is desperately wrong, please let me know ASAP!