Tom Ambrose

On holiday this summer Gill and I visited the magnificent church at Vezelay. Its chief treasure is a Romanesque carving over the west door which features the risen Christ with arms outstretched, dressed in swirling robes. It is unique, and surprisingly the artist responsible, Giselbertus who signed his work, had previously produced another carving, for the doorway of Autun Cathedral, and this one presented the familiar scene of the last judgement.
Vezelay, a place where pilgrims gathered, had been chosen as the location for preaching the crusades. The soldiers who gathered here had included Richard the Lionheart and the King of France. And the carving over the West front of Vezelay portrays the Day of Pentecost as the moment when a holy war is begun. The swirling robes of Christ show the ‘rushing mighty wind’ of the day, and people of all nations are represented. In place of a Last Judgement, with people ascending to heaven or descending to hell the two groups are Christians and non-Christians. The latter depicted as monsters, some with dogs’ heads, are no doubt intended to inspire hatred of the Muslims against whom the crusades would be directed.
In 1215, Pope Innocent called for the Fifth Crusade and in the spring of 1217 the armies from all across Europe slowly gathered and headed for Egypt. The Muslim and Christian armies camped across the Nile. As the war raged on over the next two years, thousands were killed on both sides. And, into this war zone, came St. Francis of Assisi.
Francis was the privileged son of a wealthy Italian merchant. He had been something of a tearaway, and joined a war against the neighbouring town of Perugia, where he found himself imprisoned. The experience led to his conversion. He gave up his possessions and adopted a life of peace, poverty, compassion and nonviolence. While praying on his knees before a crucifix in 1205, Jesus spoke to him from the image on the cross: “Francis! go, repair my house which is falling completely to ruin.” Francis saw this as a request to transform the entire Christian church. He was reborn as a peacemaker and was convinced that God wanted him to bring the world a message of peace.
He adopted the signature greeting “May the Lord give you peace” and constantly opposed warfare, arrogance and the violent culture of his day. While men slaughtered one another in God’s name beside the waters of the Nile, Francis gathered his community of brothers in Italy. Francis had always dreamed of preaching the Christian faith peacefully to the Muslims and yearned for an audience with a Muslim leader. Now his moment had arrived and he was going to forbid war and be a peacemaker.
In June 1219, Francis took a few brothers with him and sailed on a perilous journey across the Mediterranean to the war zone. He began to preach vigorously against the war, forbidding it and threatening disaster but was faced with foulmouthed jeers and taunts; to the Christian soldiers the barefoot little holy man was a heretic. Despite this, Francis continued his opposition to war but all of his efforts were to no avail.
Finally, Francis decided that he would act and he and brother Illuminato would venture out to meet the Muslims in their own camp. Francis understood the risks; death or imprisonment were the likely outcomes of his plan to cross the enemy lines during wartime. But Francis had a bold idea to prevent bloodbath. If the Crusade leaders would not seek peace, he would.
Sultan Malik al-Kamil, ruler of Egypt and a nephew of the great Kurd warrior Saladin, repeatedly tried to negotiate peace by returning Jerusalem to the Crusaders but the pope rejected the offer each time. Francis crossed the enemy lines and was taken to the Sultan. stood before al-Kamil. The sultan looked over the barefoot monks dressed in coarse, patched down tunics.
“May the Lord give you peace.” Francis surprised the sultan with his standard greeting. It perplexed the sultan. He noticed the similarity between Francis’ greeting and the familiar Muslim greeting of peace, “Assalam o alaikum” or “peace be upon you.”
The Quran urges to be courteous to those who use a greeting of peace: Say not to those who greet you with peace, “You are not a believer.” (The Quran: Women 4:94) and When you are greeted with a greeting, greet in return with what is better than it, or (at least) return it equally. (The Quran: Women 4:86)
Uncertain about his visitors’ intentions, the sultan asked if they had come as representatives of the pope’s army. “We are ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ”, Francis responded, asserting that he was God’s ambassador, not the pope’s.
This daring little man and his companion intrigued Sultan al-Kamil – they even resembled the similarly dressed Sufi men the sultan revered for their mystical insight into Islam.
Whatever Francis said, the sultan became very attentive to and listened closely. It was an amazing scene of a monk preaching the Christian faith to a Muslim monarch in the middle of a war.
The sultan’s religious advisers were rushed into his tent. Once they found out that al-Kamil was going to let Francis preach, they warned him that this would violate Islamic law.
Influenced by Sufism, al-Kamil believed he was acting within Islamic law in listening to Francis and Illuminato. The Quran does not prescribe or even refer to the death penalty for blasphemy. Indeed, the Quran suggests tolerance in the situation faced by the sultan: And you shall certainly hear much that will insult you from those who received the Scripture before you and from the polytheists. But if you persevere patiently and guard against evil, this will be the best course with which to determine your affairs. (The Quran: The House of Imran 3:186)
Al-Kamil had a prominent Sufi as his religious adviser and he saw Francis in the light of Sufism and the Muslim tradition calling for respect for Christian monks.
The Muslims’ relations with the Christians are determined for them by the Quran, which says: And you will find nearer to the friendship of the believers those men who call themselves Christians. This is because among them are learned men and monks, and because they are not arrogant. (The Quran: The Repast 5:82)
In their rough, patched up tunics Francis and Illuminato looked like Sufis, since the very name of Sufis came from the Arabic word for wool, the scratchy material used to make their robes. Like Francis, they also wore a cord rather than a belt.
Francis was a dynamic preacher. He preached from the heart and the sultan and his court listened to Francis attentively. The discussions went on for several days and had multiple participants. It was a peaceful exchange of ideas about the two competing religions. Francis and Illuminato were treated as honoured guests in the Muslim camp.
Francis was deeply impressed by the Muslim religious practices, especially the call to prayer.
The sultan offered Francis many gifts but Francis turned them down. Francis did, however, agreed to accept a token of their meeting; an ivory horn used to make the Muslim call for prayer, which is now displayed in a room of relics at the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Francis used it to call people to hear him preach on his return to Italy.
Although Francis was disappointed not to have converted the sultan, he had shown Sultan al-Kamil what it meant to be a true Christian. He and al-Kamil had found a way of talking peacefully during a gruesome war. Sultan then sent Francis and Illuminato back to the Christian camp under his protection.
The encounter between Francis and the sultan provided the foundation for the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi in 1986. St. Francis’s encounter with Sultan al-Kamil in 1219 can be an antidote, a reminder that responding to violence through violence cannot succeed, that goodness and respect can really change hearts.
The dynamic of stirring a populace to war has not changed over time; it still begins with demonizing the enemy, as with the poprtrayal of non-Christians as monsters at Vezelay. Francis saw through that. Gill and I had gone to Vezelay to admire the Romanesque carving over the west door. It is unique, and a signed work by the artist, Giselbertus, who had just completed a scene of the last judgement for Autun Cathedral. Vezelay is unique: the scene, to promote the crusades features the day of Pentecost. It is about making the whole world Christian. But it proposes a war, and the enemy is demonised. Our admiration of the work of art turned to revulsion against what it represented, and the distorted view of conversion seen in the unholy wars of the crusaders.
Today is St. Francis’ Day.
The road to peace is for all of us, on individual basis, at personal level. Francis took matters into his own hands by bravely seeking out a personal relationship with the sultan. And al-Kamil went deeper into his own religious tradition to retrieve the theme of respect for holy Christians, even though he was under attack by the pope’s army.
Hostility is more likely when one people is distanced from another and demonized. Peace gets a chance when the divide between people is bridged through personal relationships.
Pray especially today for Pope Francis, the first pope to choose that name, which a name untainted by warmongering predecessors. Pray that he, and we, may follow Francis in promoting peace.

1       The problem of ‘The wrath of God’

My problem with Paul’s letter to the Romans is based on ‘the wrath of God’. In Paul’s letters to the Corinthians the word ‘wrath’ is never mentioned, and though Paul criticises the church in Corinth, he is never angry. Indeed, the most memorable chapter, on love, is 1 Corinthians 13. But wrath is mentioned 10 times in Romans, and this means that many readers, and I include myself in this, have not actually found Paul likeable, though the accounts of his life in the Acts of the Apostles are inspiring. The contrast with the letters to the Corinthians is so great that I almost have to ask whether the writer to the Romans was the same person. The most difficult passage comes in Romans chapter 1.16-18.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,  for in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.

I have highlighted the words which appear so incongruous when they are together. Paul frequently refers to ‘my gospel’ in his letters, and here is the very word closely followed by ‘the wrath of God’. Although verse 18 is separated in most bibles from the earlier verses, starts a new sentence and is often given a new heading, the fact that it begins ‘for….’ implies a continuation from the previous sentence. Could this be the same person as the man who wrote so eloquently about love in 1 Corinthians 13?

This comes as part of a lifetime aversion to ‘the wrath of God’. I went to church from birth, loved singing, and was a choirboy by the age of seven. But even then the words of the Venite appalled me.

Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, * It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways:
Unto whom I sware in my wrath, * that they should not enter into my rest.

This was not the God whom I knew and loved. God’s wrath has no part in the gospel of Jesus.

I had not attempted to address the issue, but it arose last year when Jane Williams, in giving the ‘Early Good Friday’ lectures referred to the ‘righteous anger of God’. My view, which I shared with her, is that God does not do wrath: it is one of the deadly sins, not a divine attribute. Her reply was that God has every right to be angry and, to cut matters short, St. Paul says so.

René Girard

My study and admiration of the work of René Girard, which began almost 20 years ago, had quite reassured me that ‘the wrath of God’ was not part of anyone’s gospel. James Alison, whose book The Joy of Being Wrong (1998) uses Girard as a basis for his case, has difficulties with ‘Romans’. He uses Girard’s insights to solve the problem of the wrath in Romans. He says ‘In the Johannine witness …. we have a later stage of the development where the anthropological working out of the insight is clearer, as is the clarification of the understanding of God from elements of discourse formed within human violence.’ Alison acknowledges a debt to Robert Hamerton Kelly’s Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross (1992 Fortress Press). My brief reply to Jane Williams was basically that I agreed with Girard and Alison, not her.

So my reading of Romans really followed from the way that I have treated much of the Old Testament. It is a ‘text in travail’ with some utterly inspiring passages, and quite a lot which is savage, primitive and diabolical. What is remarkable about the OT is

1. The realisation from the covenant with Abraham, that God is good, loving, and gives life, rather than wrathful, bloodthirsty and requiring sacrifice or death to appease his anger. The central story is the NON-sacrifice of Isaac
2. This understanding inspired a re-writing of Babylonian creation myths, in a way that God creates from nothing and loves what he has made. The rainbow after the Noah story reverses the message of the original myth.
3. The story of Joseph, who, instead of being a scapegoat, driven out or murdered, becomes the saviour of his entire family.
4. The writings of the prophets in exile.

So, with such a lot of anger and sacrifice in the OT, it is amazing that the evangelist managed to shake so much of it off. A lot of wrath remains in the Old Testament. But no-one tried to formulate a Christian doctrine around it.

‘The Deliverance of God’

Through discussions of the work of René Girard on the internet I was pleased to find a reference to the work of Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God – an Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Eerdmans, 2009). Campbell appeared to have a way of dealing with ‘wrath’ in Romans. With 900 pages of close argument about the Greek text of Romans and 300 pages of references this is not a book for the faint-hearted. It took 15 years to write. However, for those who can follow the case which he builds, it is a bombshell.

About the time I used his work for the sermon based on Romans I emailed Campbell to tell him how much I appreciated it. He referred me to Chris Tilling at St. Mellitus College, and King’s London. Chris had edited discussions of Campbell’s work at King’s London, where Campbell had started the project, and a later conference at Duke University in the USA where Campbell is Professor of New Testament. The report of the conference clarifies and simplifies Campbell’s thinking.

From this I learned that one of the starting points had been James Torrance’s interest in Scottish religion in the 17^th century, and the contribution of John McLeod Campbell who was expelled by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for heresy in 1831. His ‘crime’ was preaching ‘universal atonement’ and ‘assurance of faith’ which the General Assembly said were contrary to Holy Scripture. McCloud Campbell had been a devoted pastor and preacher who was concerned that his flock did not feel worthy or good enough to be loved by God. Eventually the Church realised that their hard Calvinist doctrine was a mistake, and that their scheme, which prioritised justice over love, was wrong. (‘Christ died for us whilst we were yet sinners’ one might argue.) The controversy which Torrance, a Professor at Aberdeen University, had uncovered convinced Douglas Campbell that the issue was important, and his study was to take 15 years, first at King’s London and finally at Duke University in the USA.

Deliverance produced a storm of criticism and hostile reviews when it appeared, largely from evangelicals and people wedded to justification theory. But a greater problem was that many of those who were hostile clearly couldn’t follow the argument about the Greek text. Besides, a book which is so many years in gestation is not going to be read in a weekend. It demanded careful study. So two conferences were planned, at King’s London and at Duke University, to try to identify the main issues.

The edited conference discussions by Chris Tilling are collected in Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul – Reflections on the Work of Douglas Campbell (2014). The papers are rather more readable than Deliverance as I will call the book. Here the main issues turn from my limited concern that Paul appears in Romans 1 – 4 as an unpleasant character going on about wrath, to the bigger question, that people have regarded these words as central to what Paul describes as his gospel, and thus they have framed Christian theology. Quite simply, like McCloud Campbell’s parishioners, people can read Romans 1 – 4 and feel condemned rather than loved by God.

E P Sanders 1977 – Palestinian Judaism p 99

I did not know, because I had completed the tripos just before, that Sanders had begun to unravel Romans. The scholarship of the day appeared very anti-Jewish and, after the holocaust, this kind of opinion looked unfair to Judaism. Perhaps what Paul criticised was not the Jews so much as over legalistic Christians, Sanders argued. Ordinary Judaism wasn’t like this caricature, and he provided evidence, including reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls, to support this opinion. Sanders’ views form part of what are now regarded as ‘new perspectives’ on Paul, and they have been embraced by many scholars including Tom Wright. Those who have studied Romans more recently than I may know all this. However, these new perspectives leave my original difficulty with ‘the wrath’ untouched. Is wrath part of what Paul calls his ‘gospel’?

Campbell’s case for a new reading of Romans

It is time to examine the evidence which Campbell amasses to permit a new reading of Romans 1.18-32. (See Deliverance p. 356) The style of this passage is significantly different from Paul’s other writing. He says

1. There are five clusters of unusual stylistic indicators, which don’t sound like the rest of Paul’s writing. Because of this, several commentators have gone so far as to suggest that the passage is a later insertion by someone else.

1. Romans 1.18-32 is a carefully constructed complete argument in its own right and is marked by emphatic alliteration. Seven words beginning with ‘alpha’ in verse 18 are matched by 5 negative words starting with ‘alpha’ at the end. My brother who lives in Athens notes that when someone interrupts and wants to speak in Greek today, they will often begin ‘papapapapapa’, a kind of stuttering wanting to get a word in edgeways. The repetition of lists of sins and foolishness is also noticeable.
2. There are no fewer than 17 negatives beginning with ‘alpha’ listing things the speaker condemns. The letter ‘a’ at the start of a word means a negative, as in amoral, asexual, atypical. The ‘a’ typically signifies something bad.
3. There is a dense concentration of third person plurals. The accusing words ‘they’ and ‘them’ appear 27 times!
4. 21 separate vices are listed – surely this is over the top even by Paul’s standard.So it looks as though the entire passage is cast in a deliberate style. Campbell remarks that ‘Modern readers tend not to notice this; their competence in ancient Greek is usually not advanced enough to detect stylistic shifts intuitively, so the differences must be laboriously reconstructed.’

Campbell now describes this speech as a kind of parody of a speech by and angry hard line Teacher. On page 547 he says that Paul’s audience ‘would have had as little trouble recognising him as a modern TV watcher would have in recognising a speech containing the words “hi-diddly-ho” as spoken by Ned Flanders’, the telly evangelist in “the Simpsons.”

1. The main emphasis seems to be on pagan culpability with God’s wrath being visited on sinners NOW (verse 18). But surely this can only happen after they are judged?
2. The charges are collective, not about one individual.
3. The charges appear to be derived from the Wisdom of Solomon.
4. There is a crude attack on a learned Jew in ch. 2 21-22. Has Paul got someone in mind?
5. Who are the righteous pagans in Paul’s argument?

After this passage, Paul appears to address an individual directly. 2.17 has ‘But if you call yourself a Jew and (verses 21 – 22) you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal?’ So is Paul replying to the hard line Jewish teacher, now a Christian in Rome, who interrupted Paul in chapter 1 verse 18? This is what Campbell argues. If so, the ‘difficult’ passages in Romans chapters 1 to 4, with all their angry accusations and wrath might be what Paul is arguing against, rather than his ‘gospel’. And if this is so, then the issue is far bigger than my question about why Paul appears angry, because Christian doctrine has been based on this.

Opposition to Campbell’s view

Not surprisingly, many people who have written about Romans didn’t like this new idea. It attacked conservative evangelicals in particular, including Douglas J Moo. Tom Wright cannot quite endorse the book and says ‘even those of us who remain unconvinced by his bold and provocative proposals will have our breath taken away by the scale, the scope and, above all, the sheer surprise of this historical, exegetical and theological tour de force’.

But, to my mind, all this wrath in Romans always sounded wrong. It ISN’T the gospel. SOMEONE had to try to explain it. This is the best attempt I’ve seen.

Justification theory is demolished

Campbell’s demolition job is extremely comprehensive. Since justification theory requires these angry passages to be regarded as part of Paul’s gospel, the entire notion will be demolished. (Page 380). Cameron has bigger fish to fry than the references to ‘the wrath of God’.

Campbell will go on to point out that Paul’s ‘gospel’ is always proclaimed with reference to Christ. It is Christ’s revelation which is being declared, and, as such Campbell will argue that this is ‘Athanasian’. That is to say, it proclaims a faith founded on Christ as God. And everything in the rant of Romans 1.18 – 25 is just a generalised diatribe about what humanity thinks, so it is by definition ‘Arian’ – precisely the heresy that opposed the Christian Creeds in the 4^th century and not a fun accusation to make of conservative Lutherans and evangelicals! J Warren Smith in the discussion, Beyond Old and New Perspectives p. 78 et seq. clarifies some of this.

James Torrance (p.39) saw with peculiar clarity that an especially popular way to introduce foundationalism into any modern account of the gospel in the west has been through the reinterpretation of salvation as a contract.  He says ‘A contract is prevalent… since the development of capitalism… But it supplies a fundamentally different account of the relationship between God and humanity mediated by Christ from an Athanasian one. It is basically a classic Arian subversion of the orthodox gospel.’

‘Contractualism builds the foundation for its truth claims on an account of the general problem facing humanity… God is fundamentally just: good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds punished.’

‘The genius of the Western contractual reading of Paul’s gospel is the way it develops a second, softer, and specifically Christian contract. It is a tale of two contracts. Everyone breaks the first.’

‘Following Melanchthon salvation is offered ‘sola fide’. Punishment is directed the Christ on the cross. But people must hear this through preaching. And people without this are doomed. T. F. Torrance called it ‘the Latin heresy’ as it is present in Augustine’.

The atonement rescues, like the Exodus. In dying and rising Christ judges the sinful situation, shoulders it and deals with it. This is not a penal act. God is not punishing Christ.

Page 48  All this is a single problem, and is larger than most people imagine. The problem is Paul’s interpretation in terms of contractual foundationalism (Lutheran justification theory)

Reading all of Romans with one voice, as though it is all Paul’s gospel, creates the problem.

Intrinsic difficulties in Justification theory – ch 2 of Deliverance

1. Epistemology. It is part founded on ‘natural theology’ of a kind and part on revelation and scripture, producing a muddle.
2. Natural revelation Links theism > monotheism > divine transcendence > divine retributive justice > divine concern for human heterosexuality > etc. So, who says we are all supposed to think this?
3. Law. Justification theory asserts two sets of law within one soteriology. It looks unfair.
4. Anthropology. JT presupposes that people will know how to behave but will behave badly.
5. Theodicy. God is supposed to be strict, and holding people to an impossibly high standard. This is unjust.
6. Christology. JT does not explain why Christ must atone. The monetary image is offensive. How do you ‘pay’ the creator of everything?
7. Faith. Is this going to be Arminian or Calvinist? These two cancel each other out.

Systematic difficulties to Justification theory

If we only had Romans 5 – 8 we would have a different, but completely coherent salvation story, based on Christ, the Holy Spirit…  Details are on pages 72-3 of Deliverance.

The final problem – Romans 1.17-8

There is no new speaker indicated at verse 18, even though it is easy to see that ch 1.18-32 reads as a single unit, in a distinct style.

However, the dialogue form is clear in chapter 2. Paul replies to the Teacher

Do you reckon, O man, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgement of God?

And then

Do you reckon, O man, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgement of God?

This is clearly part of a dialogue and the Teacher answers. Paul goes on the attack

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of your relation to God 18 and know his will and determine what is best because you are instructed in the law, 19 and if you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself?

I have used the phrase ‘O man’ rather than something gender-neutral because it appears that Paul has a particular Jewish male individual in mind. However, I appreciate the fact that the ordinary reader will find it more helpful if they see the phrase ‘whoever you are’ or something like that, to steer them away from what Paul criticises.

Then, internal dialogue is familiar from other letters Paul writes. And it is clear that Romans, like the letters to Corinth, is written in answer to particular problems. Everyone will know 1 Corinthians 15.35-6

But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’
Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

The coup de grace – Douglas Moo answered in Beyond Old and New page 140

Sanders had rightly protested about the caricature of legalistic Judaism in Romans 1.18-32, but then the generic Jew and pagan both fail, because as legalists they have to admit that no-one is without sin. This entire scheme is a dead end. Campbell argues that until 1500 commentators never read this story as having led to salvation sola fide (on faith alone). Moo is singled out for criticism when Campbell quotes him as saying (p.140)

We must consider 1.18-32 as a preparation for, rather than part of Paul’s exposition of the gospel of God’s righteousness. But it is a necessary preparation if what Paul wants to emphasis about this righteousness is to be acceptable to the Romans. For only if sin is seen to be the dominating, ruling force that Paul presents it to be in this section will it become clear that God’s righteousness can be experienced only by humbly receiving it as a gift – in a word, by faith. (emphases are from Campbell)

Campbell says ‘Moo endorses other constructs as well, but the result then is just a conceptual mess.’ I would add that to base one’s story of salvation on what is evidently a tirade from a parody of a ‘telly evangelist’ (my Greek is just good enough to recognise the tone of Romans 1.18-32) turns the idea of using this into a joke. There is always a danger in an over literalist reading of scripture, and it doesn’t end after Genesis, or even the Old Testament.

Tom Wright 2013

Unsurprisingly, Tom Wright in his latest fat book refutes Campbell (page 764-). He argues that Romans 1.17-18 are a single sentence and part of the same thought.

My first question is ‘Why is the wrath of God the starting point for Paul’s ‘gospel’? Wright asserts that Campbell’s view is ‘the exegetical equivalent of the marathon runner who jumps on a bus in the middle of a race to get out of the hard slog and go straight to the finish.’ I find this kind of argument childish and devoid of reasoned content. My reply in similar vein would be to quote the silly story ‘How do you get to Dublin?’ and the classic Irishman’s reply, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.’ In other words, if you are trying to expound the gospel, why begin with a concept which is not the basis of the good news in any of the gospels, nor in Paul’s letters to the Church in Corinth? No-one starts a proclamation of the Christian gospel with wrath, and certainly not with ‘the wrath of God.’ It doesn’t make sense.

My more serious answer is that wrath is one of the seven deadly sins, and if ‘wrath’ was not God’s response to the crucifixion (Luke 23.34) nor Stephen’s at his stoning (Acts 7.60) we are always wrong either to preach or threaten any ‘wrath to come’ because in the last resort Paul tells the Romans in 12.19 ‘Brothers, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for wrath’ (and note, this is not God’s wrath)

Wright then attacks the standard ‘standard-plight argument’ which appears from Luther onward, and insists that instead something new has been ‘unveiled, disclosed, made known in a new dramatic and unexpected fashion. For the standard western understanding of 1.18-32 there is nothing much new about the sinful state of humankind and the divine response. Paul seems to think there is’ (Wright’s italics) However, Paul doesn’t enlarge on this, and it is manifestly clear that naughtiness always was and always will be naughty. So what is supposed to be new?

Wright also rejects Barrett, Dodd, and Ed Sanders. However, to my mind he comes unstuck when he says of Sanders ‘here Paul simply repeats a standard Jewish critique of humankind, and then throws into the mix what amounts to a kind of synagogue sermon (2.1-16) which does not really cohere with what he says elsewhere.’ But this is precisely the point: the style is a parody of a sermon delivered by a hard line Jewish convert to Christianity who is a member of the Roman church; one who is both judgemental and a Jew, but exposed as being as much of a sinner as anyone else.

Wright disagrees, largely on the grounds that no-one appears to have spotted the change of voice at 1.18 before Campbell. I would disagree. It is very obvious that someone familiar with Paul’s letters to Corinth would find a strikingly different tone in what is unleased at 1.18, and it may be that only the original recipients were able to deduce the object of the parody. Whilst one could argue that the gospel writers, and John in particular might have been conscious of composing something to be received as scripture and handed on, Paul would appear to be writing to address the current situations of the churches with which he was in touch.

I’m not sure what comfort I am supposed to take from Wright’s claim that the ‘wrath’ is the righteous judgement at the end of the age. If this is supposed to make Christians gloat over the fate of the great unwashed, then that would appear to be a sin rather than a matter for rejoicing. I agree (page 768) that 2.1 is Paul’s ‘rhetorical sting’ but it is against the hard-line Ned Flanders as Campbell calls him (p 547).

Campbell’s reply – Paul – An Apostle’s Journey 2018

As I was pursuing this topic, a new readable paperback appeared from Douglas Campbell. It is a reconstruction of Paul’s entire life and mission. What I find is that the Paul revealed here is altogether more likeable than most portraits have depicted him. The critical issue appears in chapter ten, entitled ‘Enemies’.

We know from the Acts of the Apostles that the argument about whether pagan converts to Christianity was resolved. Peter accepts Cornelius and family (Acts 10) after the vision in which all foods are declared clean, and Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit.

Later ‘a new conflict threatened to split the entire early church apart… A report reached Paul’s ears in Ephesus of a major problem in the church in Syrian Antioch, the cradle of Paul’s mission’ (Campbell, page 127). Peter, Barnabas and some emissaries from Jerusalem were insisting that pagans had to convert fully to Judaism. This undermined Paul’s missionary breakthrough. An agreement was made (Acts 15) but about a year and a half later the enemies travelled through Paul’s communities in 51 AD exhorting everyone to convert fully to Judaism as the only path to salvation.

Paul couldn’t be everywhere at once, so he wrote letters. ‘Paul wrote a storming letter to his churches up in Galatia – the letter that Martin Luther loved so much’! (page 131) He wrote an equally strong letter to the Philippians. Philippians contains an Anti-Enemy section from a previous, lost, letter in Phil. 3.2 – 4.3. Galatians would have been read by Ephesus, Hierapolis, Laodicea and Colossae on the Way and Philippians by Christians in Athens, Bereans, and Thessalonians. The ‘Enemies’ as Campbell describes them, were zealots, as Saul had been, and prepared to kill, so they tried to put Paul on trial in Corinth. Paul calls them ‘enemies of the cross (Phil 3.18) and ‘dogs, evildoers and mutilators’ (Phil 3.2). Fortunately, Paul’s judge, Gallio, refused to be drawn into the fight. There is a beautiful fragment of an inscription at Delphi, which says Gallio’s tenure as governor began on 1^st July 51 A.D. Campbell argues that Romans 13.1-7, about being subject to authorities, is a recognition of Gallio’s judgement. Paul has then to return to Jerusalem (with money for the widows) and defend his views. This means he can’t get to Rome where the Enemies are already at work, so he writes a letter. Romans 5 to 8 ‘contains the fullest account we find in Paul of the resurrected ethic that undergirds Christian behaviour.’ (p.134)

Campbell now says p 136-7

We are going to spend a bit of time unpacking these two neighbouring clumps of material – Paul’s famous opposition between justification through works of the law and justification through faith, and the stories he tells about Israel’s past, present and future… We might learn some key things about the handling of the Old Testament in our Bibles…The Christian city is built on Jewish foundations.
But there is another reason… Much interpretation of Paul has gone disastrously astray at this moment…. Shipwrecked and destroyed (Romans 9.6)
At its centre it is, as the Book of Revelation sees so profoundly, ruled by a lamb who has been slain. (Rev.5.6) It is ruled by a victim, not a perpetrator of violence. However, if we deviate from our course on the hazard that awaits us in these passages in Galatians, Philippians and Romans, we will wall our city in and install a new ruler. Moreover, this new ruler is not characterised by compassion, inclusion and healing but by retribution, exclusion and punishment. Our city will be ruled by a lion, not a lamb.

Campbell ch. 13 – Covenant versus Contract pages 139 – 149

This Chapter goes over the issues first raised by James Torrance, harking back to the strict Calvinism of 17^th Century Scotland and John McCloud Campbell who felt that his people did not feel loved by God.

In short, Paul’s gospel is of God’s love and generosity, first expressed in the covenant with his people, and described as a family relationship. God always loves his children, as a parent always loves theirs. This, Paul feels, is being replaced by regarding God’s love as conditional on maintaining a contract by perfect observance to the Torah. A critical issue is Galatians 3.11, from Habakkuk 2.4 ‘The Righteous One through fidelity will live’. This, Campbell says, is a prophecy about the Messiah, not a statement that good people go to heaven.

So, does everyone go to Heaven? Campbell’s conclusion is that Paul affirms that God’s covenant with his people means that all Jews are saved, even if they don’t accept the Messiah, and if so, then there is no getting away from the idea that God loves everyone. Campbell admits that it makes him a universalist, but then, who are we to judge God?

 

 

Trinity 1

We start with a gospel story about the Sabbath, and with an Old Testament reference to the command. In looking at the detail, it is easy to avoid the bigger picture, and the context of the laws. For when we recite the commandments, we miss the introduction.

‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.’ And here, in the second version of the commandments, the command about the Sabbath has a reminder of slavery. Even your SLAVE must be allowed a day of rest. It is not a command to keep yourself ritually pure by employing someone else to work for you on the Sabbath. We all need a rest, and these days a paid day of rest which is enshrined in law, is being eroded away by unscrupulous employers, by no hours contracts, by Uber, which refuses to give employment rights, delivery firms which contract workers rather than employing them and so on. The command says you don’t exploit people to get the job done more cheaply. The employer has a responsibility towards everyone in the organisation – don’t contract it out and forget your responsibilities, which even John Lewis and parts of the NHS and local councils do. If even your slave has a day of rest in 1500 BC, it is a disgrace that many employers won’t do the same for everyone today.

The bigger picture, the summary of the law, is vital.  ‘The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, and love your neighbour as yourself.’ Don’t exploit people – remember you were slaves in Egypt, as the psalm and the commandment remind us.

Now, to the gospel. The reason the disciples are picking grain and eating it is because they are hungry. It’s the Sabbath. No-one is going to feed them because that would be work, so they will all just have to go hungry. Excuse me, if you’re going to be that nit picking about it, why do you pick up a fork and shovel food into your own mouth?

In the story which follows, the restoring of a withered hand actually becomes secondary to a bigger story about the abuse of power. The lesson is made very prominent, as the trap is set. ‘They watched Jesus to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.’ So before doing anything, Jesus puts the question. What is the law? Is it about loving God and your neighbour or is it about enslaving people in regulations? It’s the current government crisis in the wake of the Irish vote on abortion. It puts the spotlight on the DUP, and on the entire Conservative government here which relies on their vote in order to survive. It’s about power. They are now seen as hanging on to power by refusing compassion to women in Northern Ireland. Power says the law must be upheld at all costs. ‘The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against Jesus, how to destroy him.’

Anyone who challenges authority must be eliminated. People in power silence their victims. It’s happened in the Church, it’s happened in Hollywood. Putin does it. The Israeli government does it. Even aid workers have been doing it and a report on 2002 was hushed up until this year.

The power of the state, in Jesus’ day as today, is used to silence the voice of truth, of compassion, of justice, and ultimately the voice of God. It is the voice of God which cries out for his enslaved people, whether in Egypt thousands of years ago, or in the world today. Jesus is angered and saddened by such hardness of heart.

When St. John tells the story of the man born blind, whilst the theme is the same about the murderous intentions of those in power, he adds so much more. Challenged about healing on the Sabbath, Jesus replies ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ Put this with the opening of St. John’s gospel, that all creation is through the Word of God and you have an understanding of all creation which is totally at odds with the myth of a six day wonder. ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ Trust a geologist to pick on this, you might say. Of course. Jesus the Son of God, knows that he is engaged in continuing his work in creation which has never ceased since the dawn of time 14 billion years ago. This entire work is sustained by his love and has been sustained every day. God does not say, I’ve done enough loving, I’ll have a day off. This is the power of love.

Maybe you’ve heard someone preach recently at a wedding about the power of love. I heard Michael Currie preach at a national conference is Chicago, and 18 years on I still thrill to recall the awesome power of his oratory. As Michael Curry reminded us, love is not something insignificant and puny and soppy. Love is a fire.

And, starting with Teilhard de Chardin, he noted that the harnessing of fire was the ultimate point in the evolution of humanity. Fire enabled the human race to survive the ice ages, but, more than that, the harnessing of fire allowed food to be cooked, and become more richly nourishing that anything which had ever gone before. The final stages of the evolution of the human brain required a rich diet of cooked food, from the harnessing of fire.

Love is a fire. Not something weak, wishy washy and sentimental, but with a transforming power to change the world. Love’s fire is the engine of all creation. Michael Curry again, referred in his sermon to the harnessing of fire, especially in the industrial revolution. Nothing to me epitomises and illustrates the beauty and the power of fire than a steam locomotive in all its glory, where you actually see the fire, and see the work it does in driving 500 tons of a laden train at up to 100 miles an hour. And all this, from one sweating fireman, feeding the coal into the firebox. The drama of such an engine is palpable. We see the release of a creative energy to do work. Love is such a creative energy at work. And the whole story of creation is of the harnessing of such an energy. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God.’ Or, as the psalmist put it, ‘I heard a voice.’ God said: ‘I eased their shoulder from the burden; their hands were set free from bearing the load.’ The voice of the Lord frees the slaves.

Jesus restores the man’s withered hand because he, the creator, can harness all the love with which he has made and sustained the world. With a love so intense it is like the heat of the sun, a love so intense it had a force like a steam engine, a love so intense it could harness all the energy of creation, to heal the sick, to restore the broken, raise up the fallen, cleanse the leper and raise the dead. In Jesus we see that God’s love is actualised in his sharing our life, showing us how to live as our creator intended, a life to be given away in a life of loving that we might share in the love which never comes to an end. But in that act of love, he signs his death warrant at the hands of those who wield earthly power. Paul shares in this ‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.’ Love, God’s love, will triumph. Paul says, ‘The God who said “Let light shine our of darkness” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

Trinity Sunday

I wonder if you have recently heard a preacher, one like no other? I will tell you the reason why I watched the royal wedding on TV was because Gill and I had heard Michael Currie preach 16 years ago at a conference in Chicago, and he was astounding. Now, older and maybe toned down from those days for the occasion, he was still great.

He started with a reading about love.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.

If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned.

Now there is a text for a wedding in the pomp, the splendour and the magnificence of Windsor Castle. ‘If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned.’

Here is the substance of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness when ‘the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” ’ Yes, all that wealth, utterly scorned.

And then, Michael Curry reminded is, love is a fire, and, starting with Teilhard de Chardin, he noted that the harnessing of fire was the ultimate point in the evolution of humanity. Fire enabled the human race to survive the ice ages, but, more than that, the harnessing of fire allowed food to be cooked, and become more richly nourishing that anything which had ever gone before. The final stages of the evolution of the human brain required a rich diet of cooked food.

Love is a fire. Not something weak, wishy washy and sentimental, but with a transforming power to change the world. Love is the engine of all creation. Michael Curry again, referred in his sermon to the harnessing of fire, especially in the industrial revolution. Nothing to me epitomises and illustrates the beauty and the power of fire than a steam locomotive in all its glory, where you actually see the fire, and see the work it does in driving 500 tons of a laden train at up to 100 miles an hour. And all this, from one sweating fireman, feeding the coal on into the firebox. The drama of such an engine is palpable. We see the release of a creative energy to do work. Love is such a creative energy at work. And the whole story of creation is of the release of such an energy. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God.’ Or, as the psalmist put it, ‘The voice of the Lord is a glorious voice’. The gospel writer’s news is that the creator has come to us, is one with us in Jesus who came to affirm that God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.

Isaiah gives us a picture of that fire of love.

‘One of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ This fire of perfect love is forgiveness, sin blotted out. ‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’

The story of the Holy Trinity is a story that God is love, God reveals himself as love through Jesus Christ. God shares that love with us through his Holy Spirit who enables us to recognise and respond to him. This is the struggle which is played out throughout the pages of scripture. For God is not an angry despot, who is vengeful and whose wrath must be appeased by sacrifice. God is not that bloodthirsty monster. Humanity has, throughout the ages, made that mistake about God, and has carried out the most terrible slaughter and unspeakable horrors in the name of honouring the deity, and it has been utterly wrong. The entire notion of making a sacrifice to honour God is a misuse of all the good that God has given. Taking a life does not honour the giver of all life. No, god is love, and all he asks is our love in return.

The rabbi, Nicodemus, came to Jesus by night, wanting to know how Jesus performed the miracles, and was answered with a kind of riddle which he couldn’t fathom. How can you be born from above? How can you see everything afresh, as though never seen before? We might just have a glimpse of that when we fall in love. The world IS different. The may blossom in the hedgerows sparkles as never before, the rain drop on the new roses draws us in to experience their scent. Everything bursting to life in springtime sings the glory of its creator and awakens our hearts to respond in love. How did Jesus perform those miracles? With a love so intense it was like a fire, a love so intense it had a force like a steam engine, a love so intense it could harness all the energy of creation, to heal the sick, to restore the broken, raise up the fallen, cleanse the leper and raise the dead. In Jesus we see that God’s love is actualised in his sharing our life, showing us how to live as our creator intended, a life to be given away in a life of loving that we might share in the love which never comes to an end, a love greater than faith, than hope, or the imaginings of Nicodemus.

The image of kindling a living flame gives us a picture of the awakening of love, at first small, insignificant, barely able to survive, but then it catches, and everything is revealed by its light, we are warmed by its heat. How amazing that at the dawn of creation the energy was there to sustain all that God had made to sustain and develop for 14 billion years. God loved the world so much, that he gave and gave and gave everything, even himself.

And if we see it, if we just catch a glimpse of his love, then we might respond in recognition, crying out ‘Abba, Father! I am your child, your beloved child.’ And when we do that ‘it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.’

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not a dry credal formula, but is the very source of life,  the fullness of God’s love, the love that is a fire, the fire in the preaching of Michael Curry, the fire of love that we pray is present in every loving partnership, the love that is our response to God’s love, and the love which we celebrate today in bread and wine, the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.

 

The creation stories of Genesis, as treated by modern biblical literalists, can give Christianity a bad name. As scientific fact, creation in six days, being thrown out of the garden of Eden and Noah’s flood defy everything I learned as a child and practised as a professional geologist. So I’ve had a lifetime of wondering about creation. Fortunately scripture has much more to say about creation than we find in Genesis, as today’s readings make clear. We are challenged, as every thinking person is challenged, to wonder at creation. ‘Does not wisdom call?’ asks the writer of Proverbs, ‘and does not understanding raise her voice’?
It is this sense of wonder at creation which unites scientists and religious believers in a common quest for truth and the meaning of our existence. St. Anselm, writing nearly a thousand years ago wrote of ‘faith seeking understanding’ as he tried to prove the existence of God. Today in this parish we have in the Faraday Institute based at St. Edmund’s College one of the foremost organisations in the world dedicated to this joint enterprise by scientists who are believers. ‘Faith seeking understanding’ will never go out of fashion.
The more we as scientists investigate creation, the more wonderful and mysterious it appears. Each question answered and each puzzle solved reveals another layer of questions, and possibilities.

Modern ideas about the age of the earth, and the evolution of life started to emerge in the 19th century, but the discoveries in my lifetime seem even greater. One of the most amazing must be the so-called ‘Goldilocks principle’ that everything which emerged from the big bang which began time and space happened to be just right, like Goldilocks’ porage.
Too big, and the universe flies apart and there will be no stars and galaxies. Too small, and after the bang everything collapses again in a big crunch. Mathematicians have calculated just how precarious ‘just right’ is in the ‘big bang’ which began time and space.
The mean density of matter in the universe at the big bang has to be within 1 part in 1060 of the so-called ‘critical density’. Either way you have a boring universe with no possibility of life. Just right – to an accuracy of 1 part in 1060 is that required to aim a gun at a coin 14 billion light years away at the opposite end of the universe and hit it! Do you think that happens by chance?
Secondly, it turns out that the universe needs to be the vast size it is in order for humans to exist. A universe with just one galaxy would have finished in a month. But our universe of millions of galaxies has lasted the 14,000 million years which it takes to evolve human beings.
Thirdly, there must be an incredibly precise amount of order at the Big Bang. Mathematicians have calculated that there aren’t enough atoms in the universe to equal the number of possibilities of getting this sum wrong. And physicists have been struck by these coincidences. As Freeman Dyson puts it: ‘The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.’ At the dawn of time and space, conditions were just right to allow the possibility of the evolution of life, and ultimately, us.

Now, to geology. The idea that things evolve by chance is not the whole story. The Cambridge professor of evolutionary biology, Simon Conway Morris has written a book entitled ‘Life’s solution: inevitable humans in a lonely universe.’ His argument is that once evolution starts, certain things are bound to evolve. It is easy to appreciate that being able to move is useful to animals, and if we move, then some means of knowing our way, sight, hearing, even echo-location might evolve to direct the movement. A circulatory system with red blood cells to bring oxygen to every part of the animal will increase efficiency. Breathing air and moving on land are obvious advantages which will arise through evolution. Then when you can move, a brain is needed to tell the organism which way to go.
Evolution is convergent, that is, the same things evolve again and again because they are valuable to survival. Similarly, creatures with some kind of social organisation will outperform individuals. Last week’s TV programme about big cats showed how the kings of the jungle, lions, had a superior blend of both intelligence and social organisation than other big cats. They kill giraffe, buffalo and even elephants by teamwork, not by simple strength. Ants and bees succeed by teamwork. Dolphins work together to harvest shoals of fish. And in the primates, the triumph of the human race has come about not through superior strength, speed or size, but through the evolution of greater social organisation and intellect. There is more to evolution than chance, says Conway Morris, it is inevitable the creatures will evolve that might ultimately question their own existence, and wonder how they came to be. But, he says ‘Inevitable humans in a lonely universe.’ He thinks we are unique.
So, if evolution is essential, then death, which is as old as life itself, is also essential. It is not a mistake, and death is not the result of some primordial catastrophe. It is not a punishment meted out by an angry deity because of human disobedience. Unless life dies, there can be no evolution of higher, more complex species. Death has been built in from the beginning of life. There is no original perfection, for it is only with the inaccurate replication of DNA, through what appear to be mistakes, that evolution proceeds, and these mistakes are essential.
It is only in the last generation that scientists have dared to investigate this area, which has seemed to be forbidden territory, and actually named this process of deliberate cell death (Apoptosis. For two speakers on life and death see presentations by John Wyatt and Andrew Wyllie at http://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/Speakers.php ). But our bodies are constantly making new cells and breaking down old ones, and if there were no mechanism for destroying the cells which are faulty we should be overcome by diseases, by cancers, by poisons and all the rest. Old cells are put to death and their matter is re-used in every creature.
This is not a fallen world in contrast to some original perfection. This is the creation God made and nurtured over 14 thousand million years, to the point where creatures made in the very image of God might inevitably emerge and start to question.
Who made me?
Why do I exist?
Why do we die?
Is there a god?
What is God like?
Reading through ancient myths, both pagan and those within scripture, we find many mistakes on the journey. Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ though beautiful, is based on a mistaken idea of what God and creation are like. But ultimately our claim is that the unseen creator of all that exists formed a plan before the dawn of time and space.
Wisdom says ‘The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.’
St. John says ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being’.
And Paul, writing to the Colossians, says ‘Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created.’
At last the purpose of creation is revealed by the creator. ‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
God loves his creation so much that the creatures made in his image, given an awareness of their creator, will not perish, but be raised like Christ to eternal life. As we celebrate the creation with the help of today’s readings, let us add one more element, the praise of Creation in St. Francis of Assisi’s ‘Hymn of the Sun’.  In it we dare to sing
And thou most kind and gentle Death,
Waiting to hush our latest breath,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
And Christ our Lord the way hath trod.
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Amen!

The Bible readings for this are those for Principal Service at
http://almanac.oremus.org/2018-02-04

What follows relies heavily on ‘Don’t follow Jonah’.
Ten days after a 64 year old heavily armed man in a Las Vegas hotel rained down death on a crowd at a music festival, reports still indicate that people are baffled to understand the killer’s motives. The reason may be that, with several of the deadly sins, we appreciate that what is wrong is a perverted desire for something good. Gluttony, lust, avarice, or luxury focus on temptations by things which are ‘naughty but nice’ whether it is cream cakes or sex. We laugh at our own fallibility as in the story of the lady who bought a hat, who claimed, ‘I said “Get thee behind me, Satan.” And he replied, “It looks even better from the back”’.
The killer’s motives were much darker than this. It would therefore appear that his sin was akin to almost the oldest one in the Book, namely Cain’s envy of his brother Abel which led to murder. Stories of such events, like the equally mythical story of Romulus and Remus, when told by the victor, justify his own actions. This self-justification is argued in Genesis 4 when we are told that ‘the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.’ But in scripture the familiar myth is subverted. The victim is proclaimed throughout history to have been innocent, as Jesus declares in Matthew 23.35 ‘’all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah…’ The murderous rivalry is exposed.
Remarkably, in one of the most ancient stories of all scripture, God’s justice and mercy are proclaimed in equal measure. God warns Cain that ‘sin is lurking at the door’, but God does not take Cain’s life in revenge for his own crime. And whereas Rome is named after Romulus its murderous founder, the ancestry of God’s people will be traced not to Cain, but to Adam’s third son, Seth (as in Luke 3.38).
But no story of self-justification emerges from Las Vegas. All we have is a record of the consuming power of the killer’s malice. The story of Jonah provides an illustration of the self-destructive force of envy. Of course, this is not a historical event. The prophet has invented a character to illustrate his theme, a man who is ‘angry enough to die’ because God is merciful and doesn’t destroy the people of Nineveh.
Behind the unforgettable story and the ridiculous character whom the prophet has invented is a serious message. During the exile the prophets of Israel, rather than abandoning their faith in the face of the strength of pagan nations, developed true monotheism. This prophet realises that the implications of this faith need to be addressed. For, if there is one God who created everything and formed all of humanity from one stock, then all are made in God’s image and salvation is for all. In the Book of Jonah, this is told as a calling to convert the most powerful nation of the day, a nation envied for its prosperity. The prophet has seen that, with the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, Israel has hoarded its spiritual legacy rather than sharing the good news of God’s love. His final assertion is put into God’s mouth – ‘And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left?’ (Jonah 4.11.)
When Jonah (the man in the story) realises that God does not intend to destroy Nineveh, but is ‘a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love’ he is ‘angry enough to die’. The phrase, in Jonah 4.9, appears close to what must have been the feelings of the Las Vegas murderer, a deadly blend of envy and wrath. It seems the gunman had previously booked rooms overlooking similar festivals, with the aim not of enjoying the music, but of stoking his own resentment against the joy of all the participants. He was jealous because he could not find a way to experience the pleasure they had clearly found. If he could not be happy, he was determined to ruin their happiness, for he was angry enough to die.
What the author of the Book of Jonah proclaims, against the character whom he portrays, is that God does not share human feelings of wrath, resentment or jealousy. God loves every person made in the divine image and wants to save all. Indeed, the prophet mocks Jonah’s feelings as he describes how God ‘appointed a worm that attacked the bush’. In this ultimately silly story the prophet ridicules our envy and small-minded resentments, our sulking and the way we nurse our wrath. In this most memorable of all books of prophecy we are called to remember Jonah and not let ourselves be overcome by his selfishness and envy.
The prophet also exposes the self-righteous feelings of Jonah, when God asks, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ Jonah 4.4. What is often described as ‘righteous anger’ is rejected. As such, the Book of Jonah is a powerful attack on any who believe in ‘the wrath of God’. God does not share in that most deadly of sins. Jonah, consumed by his own sense of the justice of his anger, fails to see the justice of God towards the many infants (who do not know their right hand from their left) in Nineveh.
In many other violent events today we find the perpetrators claiming to act in the name of a God of wrath. Against this, the Book of Jonah reveals the true nature of God, and that the wrath is only a projection of a wicked violent nature which seeks to justify itself.

Haggai and Herod 28^th September

Today’s tiny fragments of scripture, the opening of Haggai’s prophecy and a sentence about Herod, give a hint of great political events. After Cyrus, king of Persia, conquered Babylon he allowed the peoples who had been taken into captivity to return to their former homes. Naturally they wanted to restore the walls of Jerusalem and the Temple. What we heard from the opening of Haggai suggests that this prophet launched the project for the rebuilding of the Temple some 18 years later, after the returned exiles had begun to build up their own prosperity. Today we see many peoples facing displacement and wonder if they have a future. Yet look a generation on. The Ugandan Asians, expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin a generation ago have made an enormous contribution to the wealth of Britain which welcomed these penniless refugees.

Haggai calls the returned exiles from Babylon not only to rebuild their own prosperity but to rebuild their religious identity, and assert their own faith. However, what Haggai asks for is as it were, re-establishing the cultus, the sacrifices in the Temple, rather than, as the prophets did during the exile, re-imagining the heart of their faith. They, rather than turning to foreign gods, maintained that their god whom they worshipped was the only god. Their ordeal brought them to develop true monotheism. There is little of this vision in Haggai. However, to his credit, we have today’s psalm, and a number of others, which are the work of Haggai, rejoicing

O sing to the Lord a new song; sing his praise in the congregation of the faithful. Let Israel rejoice in their maker; let the children of Zion be joyful in their king.

It is a rejoicing with a moral conscience – ‘the Lord has pleasure in his people and adorns the poor with salvation.’

Haggai, then re-establishes the cult, he gives the faith its shell, rather than enriching the kernel of the nut. Yes, the shell is needed, but the seed is actually the heart of the faith.

I make this point because in Herod, in today’s gospel, we see a fabulously wealthy individual who has, to curry favour among the Jews, rebuilt the shell of the Temple in Jerusalem on a world class scale. It rivals any of the wonders of the ancient world. But in so doing it has lost its mission, and when Jesus appears his simple existence shakes Herod to the core. Herod said, ‘John I beheaded; but who is this about whom I hear such things?’ Who indeed? Here is one greater than Herod’s Temple, who represents the heart, which is missing from the Temple. The money changers have to be driven out.

To complete my story, allow me to remind you of last Sunday’s gospel in the Book of Jonah. That’s what I called it. The silly story of Jonah’s whale and the plant which grows in a night and withers is actually a story about the mission of the Jewish people. Jonah is told to go and convert the people of Nineveh who are gentiles, and he first runs away from it. But that is the real job. Not to build up the Jewish cult with a great temple in Jerusalem, but to bring their monotheistic faith to fullness. For if there is one god, and all people are made in god’s image, then god’s salvation is for everyone. So, whist building temples and churches provides and external visible sign of the presence of faith, the heart of it is in the message it gives.

Herod forgot what the faith demanded. Being political again, what did it do for ordinary people? We are in the political season.

What have years of austerity done for ordinary people? We have the Shard and temples to mammon, but people in council tower blocks suffer. The burnt out shell is a reproach. Millions of people have high rents and no security of tenure. The very shell of society looks rotten.

 

Being utterly simplistic, the shell may be the building of St. Giles. But what does it say? Perhaps that banner outside, proclaiming the God loves and welcomes everyone says more of what we believe than the stones proclaim. How many people, lots of visitors to Cambridge, have come in to worship, not because of the building, but because of the invitation to everyone, no matter who, pinned to the church wall.

 

Proper 17 There is NO wrath in God

In these past weeks we have read slowly through Paul’s letter to the Romans and today we come to one of his most beautiful passages. ‘Let love be genuine’ he says. Paul is possibly the earliest of the New Testament writers, and had no model, even a gospel, to guide what he might write, but what we have heard has clear similarities to Jesus’ words in Matthew’s version of the sermon on the Mount. What is so distinctive is the instruction about loving enemies. Matthew 5:44: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” For Paul and for Matthew a central theme of Jesus’ teaching is this command to love even one’s enemies, thereby overcoming evil with good. It also quotes Proverbs 25:21-22: “If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink”.

What Paul says could be the model for the life of St. Giles, our patron saint whom we commemorate this weekend, who lived in great humility and gentleness and seems to have begun a monastic community. Years ago I was at a church dedicated to St. Aiden, whose feast day is the 1^st September, who also lived a peaceful life and founded a community on Lindisfarne. ‘Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.’

In this beautiful picture in the epistle I find one note which jars, and it shouldn’t be there. Our translation says ‘Leave room for the wrath of God’. This is, to my mind, a deliberate falsification of scripture. Paul did not write ‘wrath of God’. It is not there in the Greek original and if you look at the King James Bible, it isn’t there either. It says ‘Give place unto wrath.’ It does not say ‘Wrath of God’ and this is very deliberate. It says ‘Give place’, get out of its way, don’t make it worse, don’t get involved in wrath, stand aside, don’t get corrupted by it.

We know the dangers. Wrath is the red rag to the bull. It is President Trump’s reaction to the missile launch from North Korea. You can afford to do that from the USA, thousands of miles away. But the reaction of North Korea’s neighbours, all of whom could be hurt if the conflict escalates, is far more measured. They get their resolution through the UN but they aren’t going to stir things up any further.

St. Paul has said a lot about wrath in writing to the Romans, and he has just said ‘never avenge yourselves’. Hot anger is like a burning fire, and it can consume all who approach too closely, or those who add coals to it. But the point is, it consumes itself. The fire burns everything, including the firebrand which began it. This is not God’s wrath. Rather it is evil and it is to be left alone to burn itself out. Follow the way of our patron, St. Giles, living in simplicity and humility, founding a monastic community for people to live in peace.

The whole wrong understanding we see so much of today in misplaced violence is based on a wrong understanding of the words ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ Hot headed people think they are acting for God when they are being violent. But the instruction is NOT to be violent. Leave it to God, and God lets the violence destroy itself. God doesn’t get involved.

In today’s gospel, Peter has yet to learn this lesson. Jesus is going the way of non resistance. It is Peter, in John’s gospel, who when Jesus is arrested, takes a sword and cuts of the ear of the high priest’s servant. And Jesus replies ‘Put up your sword, for those who take up the sword perish by it.’ Here, Jesus’ rebuke is even more emphatic. ‘‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me”. Peter is both the very devil and a scandal, a stumbling block. He has been caught up into the culture of violence that is always around. He could be the terrorist on Westminster Bridge, in Barcelona, in Paris. His reaction is that of Trump to the provocative missile launch from North Korea, whereas what Trump should be doing is sending the most daring bombing raid ever, scattering a million tiny packets of rice over the starving population as a sign of goodwill. ‘Never avenge yourselves, no, if your enemies are hungry, feed them.’

When surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, Peter is caught up in the hostility of the mob. He imitates their rage, ultimately, as Pilate and Herod would. And yet, I think, the Gospels do not seek to stigmatize Peter, or the crowd as a whole, or the Jews as a people, but to reveal the enormous power of the contagion of mob violence — a revelation valid for the entire chain of murders stretching from the Passion back to “the foundation of the world.” The Gospels have an immensely powerful reason for their constant reference to these murders, and it concerns two essential and yet strangely neglected words, skandalon and Satan. The Greek skandalon designates an unavoidable obstacle that somehow becomes more attractive (as well as repulsive) each time we stumble against it. The first time Jesus predicts his violent death (Matthew 16:21-23), his resignation appals Peter, who tries to instil some worldly ambition in his master: Instead of imitating Jesus, Peter wants Jesus to imitate him. If two friends imitate each other’s desire, they both desire the same object. And if they cannot share this object, they will compete for it, each becoming simultaneously a model and an obstacle to the other. The competing desires intensify as model and obstacle reinforce each other, and an escalation of rivalry follows; admiration gives way to indignation, jealousy, envy, hatred, and, at last, violence and vengeance. Had Jesus imitated Peter’s ambition, the two thereby would have begun competing for the leadership of some politicized “Jesus movement.” Sensing the danger, Jesus vehemently interrupts Peter: “Get behind me, Satan, you are a skandalon to me.” Satan is the stumbling block personified.

But there is truth in what Peter says; ‘This must never happen to you.’ No, it shouldn’t. Because it will be what has happened to good people from the foundation of the world, from the death of Abel, people thinking they are doing good by sacrificing scapegoat out of envy, sacrificing a scapegoat to the blood lust of the mob. No, it shouldn’t happen. The wrongness in the cross is precisely what Jesus aims to oppose and overcome in bearing it. If Jesus’ death can oppose that evil, then that is why he will do it. But that injustice is also the strongest possible argument why he should not accept it. For all the wrong reasons, Peter has hit on the weakest point of Jesus’ resolve, and played Satan’s strongest card: to go through with this trip to Jerusalem is to implicitly cooperate in the most unjust in the long line of unjust sacrifices. Why would Jesus want to do Satan’s business for him? Precisely because Jesus is innocent, the strongest temptation to deflect him from his path is the simple truth. This injustice ought not happen. It ‘ought’ to happen only if it can be unlike all the others from the foundation of the world, if it can reverse the practice. We can hardly blame Peter for not seeing how that might be. It requires resurrection, and a new spirit.

The vindication is that the Son of Man will come with his angels, and come for every innocent victim. Our faith is founded on this. We follow in the footsteps of humble, peaceful followers of Jesus, our patron St. Giles, St Aiden of Lindisfarne celebrated the day before. They are the models for all who are truly followers of Christ, the models for us and for all who would call themselves Christian today.

Proper 20 Sept 24 2017 Jonah

If I were to tell you that Jonah is amongst the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, you would probably laugh. At St. Giles’ Church Keith was generous enough to oblige. So I’ll start with two reasons why you might agree with me.

First, he is far and away the best story teller of any of the prophets.  Everyone knows the story of Jonah. I’d go as far as to say that apart from Noah’s Ark, it must be one of the most memorable stories in the entire Old Testament. Jonah is absolutely hilarious. He’s the man who, when given a command by God, runs hard in the opposite direction, and goes to sea to try to get away from God. Ridiculous stories are easy to remember.

That’s the easy bit. He is the best story teller. His message, and I would go so far as to say the prophet’s gospel, is even greater. Jonah is called to bring the good news of repentance and forgiveness to gentiles. No other prophet does this so clearly. When Jonah sulks under his shrivelled bush, God mocks him and then says ‘Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left?’

This is Jonah’s message. The author, uniquely amongst the Old Testament prophets, has a message of salvation not just for Jews, but for the whole of humanity. Yes, I know there are passages from Isaiah which contain a gospel addressed to gentiles, and this is quoted in the stories of John the Baptist’s preaching. But Isaiah’s words were not heeded. The greatest prophetic writing came out of the captivity of the Israelites in Babylon. First the northern kingdom, Israel, was defeated, and then Judah and Jerusalem later. And it was in captivity that the prophets proclaimed that god was not only THEIR God, but the only God. Real monotheism only developed during this period of exile, when the captives might have been most likely to give up their faith and start worshipping the gods of those who put them in slavery. The captivity lasted 70 years and the many people returned to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, bringing not only the ancient books of Moses and their history in the Books of the Kings and Chronicles, but also the prophetic writings which had sustained their identity in Babylon. Instead of giving up their faith, the prophets strengthened it.

But those who returned became exclusivist. Indeed, they rejected many of their fellow countrymen who had not been taken captive and might have married foreigners. They re-established the Temple, and made it the holy place where only Jews could offer sacrifice. But the story of Jonah is of God’s command ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’ As we heard today, Jonah knew what God is like, that ‘God forgives.’  Jonah cries out to God ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.’ But, instead of rejoicing in God’s mercy, this caricature of a prophet behaves like the worst of the Jews back in Jerusalem.

I do hope you appreciate that the real prophet is not the cartoon figure he portrays, but someone with a serious message. Of course people say ‘This isn’t real, the Jews never went to try to convert Nineveh, it didn’t happen.’ That is precisely the point. That is what they should have been doing. Once you realise that there is only one god of the whole earth, once you have complete monotheism, you need to realise that salvation is not just for you. It’s for everyone made in God’s image.

The parable which Jesus tells is addressed precisely to this kind of issue. Remember that Matthew’s gospel is written for an audience of Jewish Christians who know the Old Testament inside out. But what they will also appreciate is how exclusivist the Jews had been about their faith. They had behaved as though God was just their God and no-one else could be saved. They had worshipped God all their lives, and now here is God welcoming in these people five minutes before the last trump and letting them in to the kingdom of God with people who had prayed morning and night for a whole lifetime. And they might be thinking that it’s not fair. They might want to have a good sulk like Jonah. Jesus says ‘Are you envious?’ Here we go back to the second oldest sin in the Book. Cain murders his brother Abel out of envy.

The real difficulty with envy is that the person who commits this sin deludes himself into believing that he is RIGHT to be angry like Jonah. The person who sulks wants to make those around, usually the nearest and dearest, feel bad. The caricature whom Jonah has invented tries this on God.

The ancient sin of Genesis 4 is there. ‘The Lord said to Cain, ’Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen?…. sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you’

Envy is all around in public life. David Cameron’s closest colleagues turned against him to support Brexit to take over as leader. Having toppled him they fell out among themselves, leaving the only person who hadn’t entered this conflict to take over as Prime Minister. Now the battle for the leadership is on again with Boris Johnson’s article in The Telegraph and the aftermath. Still, there appears to be no plan for Brexit, just envy of other players, and increasingly envy of what the rest of Europe appears to have which Britain will be losing.

To see the silly side of envy, we find that women are spending thousands on plastic surgery to look like Melania Trump. Or we may see it in a family squabble headlined as ‘Queen adviser’s downfall ‘linked to snub’ for Prince Andrew’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie’.

In the aftermath of the latest terrorist incident we have to ask why people given safety and a home in Britain, as well as disaffected nationals, turn against society. Could the motive simply be envy of those who appear to have a comfortable lifestyle by people who realise that achieving it is actually very hard?

At the same time life IS hard, and workers, like those in the parable, may feel there is just cause to be aggrieved.

• For public sector workers whose pay has not kept pace with inflation for many years
• For people on zero hours contracts. Their lot is worse than that of the people standing in the market place, because they can’t take a new job offer as it will make them lose the chance of the zero hours job.
• For former students paying back loans who feel ripped off by the government. Their debt increases at a high rate of interest when the bank rate is practically zero.
• For people here told that the pension age will have to rise, and people in France demonstrating against a similar reduction in what the government sees as an unsustainable benefits package.

Feeling resentment is all too easy.

Treating the story of Jonah as though it were a historical event misses the whole point of this wonderfully instructive parable. Envy is a deadly sin. Resentment at the universality of God’s love, and sulking because we don’t get exactly what we want are the pitfalls which the story reveals. We learn and remember because we laugh at Jonah, and we must learn to laugh at ourselves when we see ourselves tempted to imitate him. It is a great story for children. The line ‘God appointed a worm’ is priceless!

Like many parables, Jonah’s story seems to remain unfinished. After his first mistake, he repents (Jonah 2). But we don’t know whether he stopped sulking under his dead bush. After the prodigal son returns in Luke’s gospel we don’t know whether the older brother will join the feast, or whether he sulks like Jonah. The stories are unfinished, because the story is not about Jonah, or about two sons, or about labourers in the vineyard.  The story, and the  question are posed to you and to me. Will you, will I, be resentful, sulky and miserable because God welcomes everyone. Remember Jonah. And if necessary, laugh at your stupidity.