A kind of madness

What do you do when you find out the great Suggs is going to be in the studio when you go in to do Pause for Thought on the the great Chris Evans Show on the great BBC Radio 2? And how do you do justice to the great Bradford City cup final at Wembley (on Sunday) at the same time as recognising the shocking child poverty realities I referred to yesterday… when Liverpool have just gone out of the Europa League on an away goal… and Suggs is in the studio?

No idea. So, here’s what I said this morning – including sixteen Madness song titles:

It’s a bit of a strange experience living in Bradford at the moment. Believe me, it was a grey day when I left yesterday, but whatever the weather this weekend, nothing will dampen the spirits as Bradford City go to Wembley for their first ever cup final. If Liverpool could bang in five against Swansea last week, anything is possible. What an embarrassment!

Isn’t it great when the underdog threatens the top dog? No shadow of fear – just the sheer madness of enjoying what most people thought was one step beyond possibility. You can take it or leave it, but in the middle of the night, when Bradfordians wake up in a cold sweat thinking of the glory ahead, nothing will take away the joy of celebration.

Now, there’s lots of serious stuff going on in the world – I know that. Oscar Pistarius. Syria tearing itself apart. In this country we are still finding it hard to wake up to the appalling statistics of child poverty – forgetting that poverty doesn’t just make life a little bit miserable for a child now; it affects the whole of their life, their physical growth, their education, aspiration and life opportunities. It is bad for children, families, schools and society.

But this runs alongside the excitement of good stuff that goes on. Life is always a mixture of the grim and the great. Our house might be a place of weeping, while next door is a house of fun. As the Old Testament Ecclesiastes put it, “there is a time for everything.” Honest, if not always comfortable.

It’s a crying shame, but I will miss the final at Wembley cos I’ll be driving in my car to Cambridge. But my heart will lift on Saturday night, Sunday morning in anticipation of the joy to come. Wonderful? Absolutely! Or, as the song puts it: “Oui oui si si ja ja da da.”

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Falling off the ladder

I know it sounds weird, but I always have this feeling as 31 December motors on towards midnight that we have climbed a long, high ladder… only to fall off and have to start again on the bottom rung. So, 2012 ends as 2013 appears over the horizon. The Sound of Music is on the telly, Harry Hill's Livin' the Dreem is on my lap, the world continues, but some things never change.

The Bradford Telegraph & Argus, our excellent local paper, consistently gets one thing wrong. The proposals that three dioceses in West Yorkshire should be dissolved and a single, new diocese created in 2013 presents a fantastic and creative opportunity to re-imagine and re-shape the Church of England's mission in this part of the country. Yet, despite numerous explanations and careful use of language, the T&A persists in stating that “Bradford will be subsumed into the Diocese of Leeds” and that the Bishop of Bradford will “lose his job”. This just feeds the local prejudices about Leeds and misrepresents what is proposed.

First, there is no 'Diocese of Leeds' into which the Diocese of Bradford can be 'subsumed'. Secondly, the proposal sees the dissolution of three dioceses: Bradford, Wakefield and Ripon & Leeds – all three on the same terms. Thirdly, a completely new Diocese of Leeds – to be known as the Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales – would then be created: a new entity and not a simple 'merger' or 'amalgamation' of three. Fourthly, I won't “lose my job”; rather, the post of (Diocesan) Bishop of Bradford would go, paving the way for a more focused (Area) Bishop of Bradford to be appointed. What happens to me is irrelevant to this; the Church is not to be held hostage to the role, 'career prospects' or security of bishops when re-shaping its organisation and ministry.

Right, got that out of my system. It isn't that hard to grasp, is it?

Anyway, 2013 remains as unknown and unpredictable as every other year, every other month, very other day in history. We live as if the past was ordered and coherent when, in fact, it never has been. We largely make it up as we go along. Assumptions that everything should continue as before should by now be seen to be a fantasy. The banking crisis caused the disappearance of pensions that people had paid into for decades; jobs with 'tenure' simply disappeared in a moment; business that looked permanent simply broke down. A contingent world inhabited by mortal human beings can change in an instant.

I am not being miserable or encouraging short-termism here. I am simply commending a reality check on our perspectives and expectations.

So, 2013 beckons. As poverty worsens and the government seems increasingly impervious to an understanding (I am avoiding the 'soft' word empathy) of how most people live, the gambling industry grows in ubiquity by the day. Might there just be the merest hint of a link between increasing poverty and the desperate illusion of instant unearned financial salvation… even against both all the odds and all experience? The new year holds no prospects of an Olympics or a Diamond Jubilee – although the prospect of Liverpool re-building under Brendan Rodgers keeps some of us going with some degree of optimism – and there doesn't seem to be a prospect of any repeat of the national celebration we saw in 2012.

What does lie ahead? Continuing inhumanity in Syria, endless suffering of Christian communities in places like Nigeria and Pakistan, relentless tribal conflict hiding behind identities labeled by race, religion or political creed. Economic austerity at home will bring challenges that can only be ignored by wilful blindness. The world will continue to face new challenges and opportunities – as it has done in every other generation. With a bit of humility, a developing sense of history (and what can be learned from it), some creative ambition and a renewed love of God and neighbour, we might just face some of these challenges with renewed ambition, creative imagination, generous humility and solidarity.

And what does the Christian gospel offer? I suggest the following:

1. Hope – rooted in a community of ordinary people who have been grasped by a refusal to consent to the assumption that death, violence and destruction have the final word in this world: God does, and it sounds something like 'resurrection'.

2. Commitment – followers of Jesus (however often we fail) cannot do other than get stuck in to the real world we inhabit: the good news is that God has, in Christ, opted into the contingent, contradictory and vulnerable messiness of the world… and refused to exempt himself from it. Christians inescapably commit themselves not only to worship and the building of the church, but to sacrificial service of their local community and the wider world.

3. Confidence – even when ridiculed or lazily dismissed by the effortlessly superior commentariat: the Christian church doesn't confuse repeated mantras of 'weakness' or 'irrelevance' with 'reality'. Whatever else happens, we won't either give up or go away. Confidence is not arrogance – it is grounded in reality coloured by hope.

So, having long ago rejected inventing soon-to-be-moved-on-from New Year Resolutions, I face the new year with the words of some largely anonymous Palestinians from two millennia ago. Mark 10 contrasts the blindness of those close to Jesus (James and John, in particular, who think godliness is all about personal status and security) with the vision of a blind man, Bartimaeus. The former see it as their job to keep Jesus from being disturbed or distracted – away from people like Bartimaeus; but, Jesus confounds their narrow little world and tells them to bring the blind man to him. So, they go to him… and these are the words that hang in my consciousness at a time of uncertainty:

Take heart, get up, he is calling you.

In other words: be encouraged and stop colluding with the fatalism and defeatism hanging in the air; don't be bound by the miserable prejudices of those who see themselves as the guardians of mercy. Now, get up, do something about it: faith is never merely notional, but has to be worked out and lived in choices and priorities and action. And don't think this is for others: he is inescapably calling me/us/you to commitment to this community of motivated people who dance to a different tune in this world – a tune that is an echo of another world.

Happy new year!

(And now back to the Sound of Music…)

 

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HPtFtU

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest Caliban retorts to Prospero:

You taught me language, and my profit on ‘t
Is I know how to curse. (Act 1, Scene 2: 437-438)

What is it about us that seems hell-bent on turning anything good into something bad? Words are wonderful, but they can be used to kill. Science progresses with techniques for curing and healing, but the same technology gets diverted into ways of killing ever more efficiently. Why? What is wrong with us?

Well, none of this is new if you are remotely familiar with any Christian theology… or basic human experience. But, in relation to current news stories, I make two rather simply observations: first re the Jimmy Savile horror story, and second re racism in football.

Various churches have had to pay heavily for allowing the systemic abuse of children and vulnerable people over decades. Quite right, too. Yet there has been a hint of a suspicion in some quarters that those doing the gloating about the nasty churches might one day need to defend themselves and their own institutions on similar terms. No schadenfreude here – just a fear that the problems experienced in the churches have less to do with the churches’ theology and more to do with common human propensities.

The BBC is now under scrutiny and certain newspapers scream at the BBC in judgement – seemingly oblivious to the moral questions hanging over their own treatment of vulnerable people. The BBC faces serious scrutiny and it clearly needs it. For Savile to have been able to exploit its culture for so many decades raises serious questions that must be (and will be) addressed.

But, those pointing the fingers now might need to be a little cautious in their judgements. They might be next. For the basic truth about all this stuff is that human beings have a tendency to turn goodness into badness, to exploit weakness and power, to put self-preservation before truth, and to pervert what began beautiful.

This applies to the banks, businesses that pay no taxes, media organs that treat people like commodities for the entertainment of others, clergy who abuse trust and abase the ‘good news’ they are supposed to represent. As we keep having to remind those who uncritically (and sometimes mindlessly) accuse religion for all the world’s ills, the worst abuses of human life in the twentieth century came from anti-religionists such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot. These are human problems, not just problems to be nailed to people we don’t like.

In other words, this stuff goes right back to being human and not just part way to what humans say motivates them.

This is another reason why people like me get fed up with accusations that Christians are escapists, whilst humanists are people who ‘take responsibility’ for themselves. Christianity is rooted firmly in this world, in facing reality and taking direct responsibility for the whole shebang. The cross of calvary involves God and us looking the sad reality of the human condition in the eye and naming it for what it is. No romantic escapism; no fantasising that if we just tried harder everything would be OK; no wishful thinking about ‘myths of progress’ that seem somehow to end up lying in pools of other people’s blood dripping from the altar of someone else’s tribal ego.

Francis Spufford calls this “the human propensity to fuck things up” (HPtFtU). The Bible calls it ‘sin’. Take your pick, but the former spells out what the latter means after we have drained it of all the negative associations piled onto it as the shorthand that means all Christians are miserable self-haters. No, we are lovers whose experience cries out for some explanation, if not excuse. Read Spufford’s wonderful Unapologetic to see how he deals with this universal feature of human being. (And read Stephen Cherry for a reflection on the book.)

This is where the racism stuff comes in. I am writing this while Liverpool are giving away a two-goal lead against Everton – football being the game that houses racism (leaving match fixing to cricket, doping to cycling and competitive-dadness to Monopoly). Yes, we must do all we can to expose racism wherever it comes to light. Yes, we must legislate against behaviours and language that represent a curse within our society, blighting lives and scarring all of us with sheer nastiness. But, no, we shouldn’t be surprised that these things go on and will not be eradicated by all our best efforts.

As I once said to a neighbour in a General Synod debate on something or other: it is easy to win a vote – but winning the vote does not mean we have won the hearts and minds.

Unless HPtFtU is taken seriously – and the alternative is escapism, romanticism, fantasy, wishful thinking, etc – we will continue to bow at the altar of the sort of relativism that we see in our press: assuming that the best guide to moral goodness is merely that we know we are better than [insert chosen 'monsters']. (Which, of course, means that we might be well down the moral pecking order, but at least we are not as low as…)

Ferdinand (not Rio or Anton) bleats to Prospero in The Tempest:

I warrant you sir;
The white cold virgin snow upon my heart
Abates the ardour of my liver.

Says it all, really.

(And, Christianity doesn’t stop at realism or diagnosing the problem of the human condition; it offers a response that takes the human condition seriously. Start with Easter…)

 

Imagination (again)

I did Pause for Thought on BBC's Radio 2 Chris Evans Show this morning.

I wanted to think about the importance of imagination – for good or ill. Having been in Eisenach, I wanted to contrast the imagination of Johann Sebastian Bach and Martin Luther with the horrors of Hitler's boys – birthed in the same place. But, the tone wasn't right for the particular medium of the Breakfast Show. S, I re-wrote it on the train to London yesterday evening. And this is how it ended up this morning:

Don't ask me why – cos I can't stand the thing – but I can't get John Lennon's Imagine out of my head. I have to forgive him a bit, though, because when Liverpool were rubbish at the beginning of last season, the line “Above us only sky” etched into his statue at John Lennon Airport was added to with the words “and below us only Wolves and West Ham”.

But, the reason I can't get the song out of my head has to do not with Lennon or his fantasies, but rather with the importance of imagination in shaping our lives and our society. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I've just got back from Germany where I was preaching in the church in Eisenach where Johann Sebastian Bach was baptised and where Martin Luther preached.

Now we're talking! Johann Sebastian was one of many Bachs, but his vision of God, the world and what human life is all about fired his creative imagination to write some of the most sublime music in history – he saw behind the mundane and the music soared.

Luther, too, rebelled against powers and authorities that turned people's eyes down into the muck of human failure instead of up into the sheer generous freedom of forgiveness and a new start. What's more, he did a bit of a Bach and wrote loads of songs to celebrate it all.

Of course, the place of Bach and Luther was later the place where unspeakable things took place – as happens when our imagination goes bad. Yet, with Bach and Luther, the Old Testament prophets provoke our imagination to see beyond the present reality and be held by a vision of a better, more just and merciful future. Jesus does the same by teasing our curiosity with images of a different way of being and loving and living.

I want to keep my imagination fired up. Like Bach and Luther. And even John Lennon.

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What really matters

Members of the Meissen Commission worked hard on educational and musical matters all this morning before going up to the Wartburg this afternoon. This is the castle where Martin Luther spent many months being protected after his excommunication by the Pope. Not only did we do the tour, but we also joined in worship in the Kapelle and heard a superb sermon – pointed, brave, sharp, engaging – by the pastor, Martina Berlich. (I hope to get a text and will say more about one particular story, if I get it.)

You can't help but be impressed by the courage of Martin Luther, even if you don't agree with his theology or way of expressing it. To stand out and risk everything is not something we all do every day. Over dinner we were talking about how the churches in this part of Germany handled the Nazizeit…

When I got back after the visit to the Wartburg, with Telemann's cantata and Luther's courage playing around my mind, I discovered a load of emails and tweets about a story I knew nothing about – my 'enthusiastic support' for the churchads.net Christmas advert campaign.

For the record, I don't like it. And I said that when asked about the original concept. But, what I like isn't the point. The advert is aimed at getting people to notice it and talk about it. It is aimed not at those already in the club, but those outside. If it upsets Christians, we have to ask if this is, in fact, what the Jesus of the Gospels did, too. It was the religious people who nailed Jesus because they thought he was 'tacky' and 'blasphemous'. Christians get upset regularly by anything that pushes the implications of God truly becoming human – and, therefore, doing human things.

As I said in my quote, this advert will upset some people. So what? Everyone gets upset by something, and upsetting the Daily Mail is not exactly hard. I couldn't see the Daily Mail in Jerusalem of the first century defending the Jesus of the Gospels. This is just posturing.

I feel a bit cut off from the discussion because here in Germany there are more important things to think about than an ad campaign upsetting people. Also, I just heard on Twitter that Malcolm Wicks MP (Croydon North) has died: a great man, a great MP, great company, and a great servant of his constituency. Very sad and I wish I had known he was so ill.

Just to conclude with some Lutheran perspective: I picked up the following Martin Luther quotes on cards at the Wartburg:

Das ist der Teufel in uns, dass niemand genug hat! (The devil in us is that no one ever has enough!)

Für die Toten Wein, Wasser für die Lebenden – das ist eine Vorschrift für Fische. (Wine for the dead, water for the living – that is a recipe for fish.)

And perhaps the briefest and best wisdom at times of pressure:

Lang ist nicht ewig. (Long time is not eternity.)

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Incorporating history

This morning we went with the Meissen Commission to visit the Martin-Luther-Gymnasium in Eisenach. The building tells a story.

Originally a Dominican monastery, it has engaged in education for a thousand years. Apart from a guided tour in which we saw how the building itself has developed and incorporated the philosophies and cultures of its various epochs, we also sat in English and Religious Education lessons in order to get a feel for how these things are taught in a German church school.

The bit that grabbed me was the painting in the assembly hall. During the GDR the painting of Prometheus was underwritten by Karl Marx's ruminations on human value:

“Prometheus, the epitome of a fighter for the happiness of humankind.”

Well, make your own mind up about Marx's limited vision. What interested me was that the church school was not allowed to remove this piece of art on the grounds that it forms part of the 'story' that has formed the children who study here and must be somehow incorporated into their understanding of how they have come to be where they are. Clearly, even though it doesn't immediately strike one as the epitome of Christian iconography, it seems to me right that it has been retained.

I remember the first time I went into the Humboldt University in Berlin and was confronted by the staircase fronted with Marx and his statement from the Communist Manifesto: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point, however, is to change it.” A bit pointed, don't you think… in the entrance hall to a renowned university?

The lecture hall we went to was lined with busts of great Communist thinkers, writers or political leaders – or, at least, those thinkers of the past whom Honecker's boys wanted to retrospectively claim as proto-Marxist-Leninists. I wondered why, sixteen years after the GDR experiment had been discarded, they didn't take away the tacky cultural symbols that epitomised it. I am glad they didn't.

This then fed into the then raging debate in Berlin about whether or not to demolish the grotesque Palast der Republik – the brutalist cultural centre of Socialist Berlin, located opposite the Dom and close to the Museuminsel. In this case the argument was lost and the building came down.

What is going in here is how far we lose something which, however ugly or inconvenient, reminds us of our story. The built environment incorporates memory and ridding ourselves of it is not always the best course of action – even when it is entirely understandable.

I am familiar with two churches in south London which were seriously damaged by fires. In both cases fire-damaged stones and other elements were incorporated in the design of the new church – in order to let the building itself tell an honest story of a community living and worshiping at a particular time in history. I picked up this theme (badly and in a rather rambling way) in a sermon in Hull a few days ago: go around the church where I was a vicar in the 1990s (Rothley, Leicestershire) and the building itself tells a story of change, adaptation, development, suffering, celebration and all the stuff of life there during 1200 years. Baptise in a Norman font and you can't help but be caught up in the mystery of the people who, over a period of 1000 years, were baptised in or witnessed baptism in that same font in that same building.

'Stuff' matters. Christians who spiritualise or dematerialise faith have – literally – lost the plot. Christianity is always materialist – incarnation goes to the heart of it. In Genesis 3 it is God who comes to humanity, seeking him and her out in the Garden; in Jesus God comes to us as one of us; in the colourful and coded imagination of Revelation it is the heavenly city that comes down to earth and not the other way round. Christianity is rooted in stuff and memory and realism: it means not running away from the world or the inconvenient bits of the story that has formed us. It is never escapism, but engagement.

I think Marx actually had a limited view of human value – contrary to the humane passion that drove his economic thinking. Suspicious of fantasy or myth, he went for Prometheus. Maybe the students at the Martin-Luther-Gymnasium will learn to think deeply about an anthropology that does justice to the philosophies that have shaped the world they are growing into, giving them the critical competence to construct a world view that will hold water in a changing and challenging world.

Before spending this afternoon in the wonderful Bachhaus in Eisenach, I noticed this quotation on leaving the school: “Das Geheimnis der Versöhnung ist Erinnerung” (the secret of reconciliation is memory). Discuss…

 

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A life more ordinary

Encouraged by the news this morning that the great BBC comedy series Rev is to have a third coming (in 2014), it seems unremarkable that it is such an account of ordinary life that struck such a chord with people. It is funny because it is real.

Yet, we are in the midst of that great celebration of extraordinary prowess and achievement that is the 2012 Olympics in London (and elsewhere). Every minute of the day we witness the best, the most powerful, the most excellent, the strongest, the most enduring, the most courageous. Sitting in the chair with a beer can’t help but make us feel a bit weak and feeble. A bit silly, really, as to compare oneself (in my case a 54 year old bloke who is off to the osteopath again in an hour) with the most physically fit and trained athletes of a generation is ridiculous. I wouldn’t dare to wear lycra – even for a laugh.

Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence, then, that the running down of workload for the ‘summer’ month is allowing the space to read a few books that have been sitting on my desk for months – or that one of them is about ordinariness in Ordinary Time.

Everyday God: The Spirit of the Ordinary is the latest publication by Dr Paula Gooder. Anything by Paula is worth getting and reading. She is one of those rare people who can do the academic stuff – and comfortably use the academic language – and also communicate with us ordinary mortals in ways that fire the mind and spirit. Not surprising, then, that she is in heavy demand as a speaker and lecturer around the world.

Everyday God simply reflects on biblical passages and episodes to draw out the importance and facility of living in the moment, embracing the ordinary, and not missing the obvious whilst searching for the spectacular. Paula points out early in the book the need to find (and work at) a rhythm for ordinary life – a way of shaping life rather than simply drifting through it. She writes (p.9):

The challenge for each one of us is to find a rhythm that works with our personality, our home life and our working pattern… When you have found the rhythm that works for you and you have done it for long enough, then the rhythm carries you… It is a little like steering into the current of a river. Once there the rhythm does the rest, pulling you closer and deeper into the presence of God. The problem is getting into the rhythm in the first place. It takes discipline, practice and sometimes pure grim determination to get over the hump of boredom, distraction and busyness into the rhythm beyond.

She goes on in the book to illustrate what it looks like to ‘see differently’, recognising that familiar biblical passages can be read afresh in ways that encourage and not simply challenge. The structure is simple and clear: ‘Ordinary people’, ‘Ordinary God’, ‘Living extraordinary ordinary lives’.

This is the third in a series of books that take us through the rhythm of the year: The Meaning is in the Waiting: The Spirit of Advent and This Risen Existence: The Spirit of Easter are also excellent.

 

Keeping it brief

Last week I interviewed fourteen ordinands prior to their ordination as priest (yesterday evening) or deacon (this morning) in Bradford Cathedral. Since Thursday they have been on retreat at the gorgeous Parcevall Hall.

One of the questions I asked them (apart from: “Why should we ordain you?”) was how they might summarise the gospel – or the biblical story – in a single sentence. It wasn't easy. But, I still remain convinced that if the church and its ministers are to communicate into a sound bite and visual culture, we must work harder at the words we use – especially when put on the spot by people who have no idea about Christian faith (even if they think they do).

One good one came after some discussion and is the sort of line that opens up, rather than shutting down, further inquisition: “You can't pin God down… but we did nail him.”

I still come back to something I once said on the radio when unexpectedly asked what was the point of the church. I simply blagged: “The job of the church is to create the space in which people can find that they have been found by God.”

I am open to other creative suggestions! But the point is that we need to work hard at finding and shaping language, then using it repeatedly to see how it works and if it resonates.

In similar vein, I was watching a DVD of a film about the great Leonard Cohen – my daughter and son-in-law gave it to me recently. Towards the end Cohen said with a smile: “For many years I was known as a monk. I shaved my head and wore robes and got up very early. I hated everyone, but I acted generously and no one found me out.”

Discuss.

 

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I can’t stop loving you

I’ve just been doing Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2′s Chris Evans Show. I had a tip-off that Engelbert Humperdinck would be the special guest on the show. Bereft of any other inspiration, I recalled some of his song titles and ended up with this (with six titles embedded):

Did you know that 200 years ago today Spencer Perceval was assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons? How could you possibly have forgotten that? He was the Prime Minister! He must be turning in his grave, wondering ‘am I that easy to forget?’

Amazing, isn’t it? Tell them in the pub that Spencer Perceval is dead and they’ll wonder what all the fuss is about.

You know, I think one of the things we fear most is being forgotten. It really matters to us that our place in the world is marked – or, at least, noticed. So, we fear being forgotten, lost to the memory of those whom we love and who we hope love us.

And maybe that’s the key. However anonymous we might be to the vast majority of humanity, it matters that someone loves us and will remember us when we slip from sight or shuffle off our mortal coil. ‘A man without love’ is a terrible fate – even if it is a great Engelbert song.

We all need love, don’t we, but it comes with an inescapable logic: if you’ve received love, then give love. You can’t say you love God while not giving flesh-and-blood expression to that love by loving your neighbour. That’s the deal. And Jesus unashamedly commended the freedom and relief that comes from letting go of our selfish narcissism and finding that, as someone sang recently, ‘Love will set you free…’

So, this morning my plea is dead simple: please release me from the fears and doubts that crave love and affection, and set us free to open up to the loving of those who love us simply for who we are. It’s a great starting point. And when it comes to the last waltz in this world, at least we will know that we will never be forgotten.

Or, if all else fails, we can always hear the last words of God: I can’t stop loving you…

 

 

Norwegian Wood

Talk about mixed feelings. I was back in Liverpool for my mum’s 80th birthday great-big-family bash on Friday and listened on the car radio to the harrowing accounts of Anders Behring Breivik‘s cold-blooded murdering of 77 people in Norway last year. I know our minds do weird things sometimes, but while this was happening I had the Beatles going through my head. Norwegian Wood. But for those (mostly) young people on the Norwegian island, the woods were no place of sanctuary, but of agony.

It has been interesting listening to the commentaries and reading the commentariat on this appalling massacre – which cannot be easily attended to while the killer is given so much air time to describe his activities. Some commentators seem to think that he must be insane to have done these things – that a normal, rational person could not have done them, let alone contemplated them. This, of course, is nonsense. Breivik had a perfectly rational construction to his ideology – but to speak in terms of ‘moral evil’ is too inconvenient for some world views.

Fifteen years ago I half-wrote a book on the pastoral care of people bereaved through suicide. One of the things I found interesting (before I ditched the project) was the response of too many people: that anyone who commits suicide must be (literally) out of their mind. Perish the thought that this might be an act consistent with a particular world view that sees life as painful and pointless.

This is also on my mind because yesterday I returned to the parish where I became vicar twenty years ago. We moved to Rothley, Leicestershire, in April 1992 and left in April 2000 when I became Archdeacon of Lambeth in the Diocese of Southwark. It had been (for us, at least) a wonderful eight years, and I wept when it came to the leaving. I was asked to preach this morning on the parish’s text for 2012, taken from Jeremiah 29:11, and all about ‘a hope and a future’.

My problem in preparing to preach was twofold: (a) the text is neither bland nor obvious; (b) I know too many of the people listening to it – I have buried their husbands, walked with them through their traumas, celebrated their triumphs and wept through their griefs. So, I didn’t know if I could ask the obvious question provoked by the text: what do you do when your world falls apart? To cut a long story short, I managed to overcome the emotional poignancy and say what I think needed to be said from that text.

Jeremiah 29 sees the people exiled to Babylon being offered hope instead of ear-pleasing fantasy. Another prophet has told them what they want to hear; but, Jeremiah – never a populist – tells them the truth. Sitting on the banks of the Evil Empire’s rivers and being mocked as defeated fantasists, how do we keep ‘singing the Lord’s song’ – when all the evidence of our eyes and experience tell us a different story? Jeremiah simply tells the truth. Which is?

• No one is exempted from all that the world can throw at us – especially not those who claim to see through God’s eyes and try to live his way. As we see in Jesus, God opts in to the stuff – the muck and bullets – of the world and does not exempt himself from it. His people should learn from this.
• Hope has always to be vested in the person of God and not in any formula for ‘making everything better’. And why trust God? Think ‘resurrection’…
• God will not be rushed (as Asian theologian Kosuke Koyama constantly reminds us). We live in time, and time takes time. We need to learn to wait and be faithful during the waiting. (We also need to be honest with God and one another and scream when we need to; there is no place for pretence with God. Look at the searing honesty of the Psalms.)

Underlying all this is the simple stuff: God’s grasp of us is more important than our grasp of God. So, relax and take the pressure off. A future with hope is not the same as a hope for a particular future. As Timothy Keller has written: “Christianity is not advice, but news.” Christians should never be embarrassed to announce the news that God has not abandoned us – learn to wait and be faithful, even if you will be long dead before the deliverance comes. And God’s not abandoning us must compel us to demonstrate this by us not abandoning anyone else – which goes well beyond the Christian community itself and into the wider world.

I recall Jürgen Moltmann’s great lines: “God is our happiness. God is our torment. God is the wide space of our hope.”

Life is sometimes total rubbish and we cannot simply escape it. Indeed, being Christian might actually be the cause of it sometimes. But, we can learn to help each other by creating the space in which the suffering can be lived with and not rushed. And the church can learn to provide its people in worship with a vocabulary for those times of complaint, lament, argument, questioning and pleading… as well as for those times of resolution, praise and celebration.

I miss being part of a community like Rothley.

(And I have come home to Liverpool’s latest home defeat. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…)