There is an inherent inner tension that consumes many followers of the way. So many feel the conviction in their beliefs about Jesus but are unsure of how to articulate them to a quizzical world. Surely there must be an easy way to justify our deeply held beliefs? It must be possible to reduce the Christian faith into a suitably strong concentrated form that we can keep in the cupboard like stock cubes. Everyone is looking for something beefy that they can easily unwrap when they need it.
Here Tom Wright subtly reframes the questions people are keen to ask.
Instead of the formulaic reductionism that people seek, Wright frames “the gospel” in the context of something much bigger; the whole story. He sets the life of the Christian within the ongoing narrative of God’s interaction with humanity focussing on the person of Jesus Christ. Can you live with the unending quest for that illusive superficial “cure all”? The easily unwrapped gospel flavouring? Or would you rather focus on something much deeper and richer?
I’ve been reliving my primary school years this evening. Heading back to the tender age of ten when Skid Row released their first album. I went to see them last night and they were awesome! Skid Row aren’t the only reason I’m trawling back through the annals of my primary school memories. This week, all I knew in those early years died.
We are currently listening to reports on the news of women being underrepresented in the FTSI 100 boardrooms. My first memories are of the most powerful person in my life. Margaret Thatcher. I was born in 1978 and for the whole of my childhood we had but one prime minister. She was all-powerful. She could decide whether I drank milk or water. OK, maybe that’s not all powerful, but it is nearly as powerful as my mum. My mum knitted me a jumper using scraps of wool with a He-man sword on the back and baked us a gingerbread house cake! Margaret Thatcher was nearly that powerful!
For the last three days I have been in a strange and uncharted world. I see the a family grieving for Mrs T and I feel for them. I see the press deifying her in none stop rolling coverage. I also see a church that is divided in its opinions of her and unsure of what it is supposed to do in this situation. I don’t know what to do in this situation. I am torn. I write this post with one question throbbing in the heartland of my cerebral cortex. “What am I supposed to say?” Heck, I’m ‘the vicar’ so surely I should have ‘something’ to say.
Actually, I’m at a loss for words. I’m stuck between the rock and the hard place. I’m a [luxury*] miner’s lad! I come from a pit village in the heart of God’s Country, Yorkshire. I lived through the miners strike. At five years old I watched people sharing everything on the kitchen table and working out who needed the money most. I played kerbie outside whilst they decided who could eat this week. Liver and onions. Or cheese pie, a dish my gran invented by layering everything that everyone had in a casserole dish. Tinned tomatoes, mashed potato and grated cheese then placed under the grill. My mum made that for me about four weeks ago as a nostalgia kick. And I still love eating liver! Nom!
Every one of my male relatives was put out of work except one. My dad had moved to potash mining which continues to this day at Boulby in the North Yorkshire Moors. It was purely down to a decision my parents made to move to North Yorkshire. but everyone else remained in the pit village. Everyone lost their job. Some never worked again. A village, a town, a community was ripped apart. The community had its heart ripped out. No paramedics were called. No hospital treatment was offered. No transplant was given. Just the body left lying on the floor bleeding out.
Two years ago as part of a our ongoing ministerial education, I and three other priests had to present the socio-political factors in our respective parishes. We had to compare and contrast the different areas around our region. One of these priests comes from the same pit village as my family. He was then ministering just down the road in the village next door. What were our discoveries? Just by being born in an area your average life expectancy reduces by six years. 1 in 4 are suffering from long term illness. More than 50% of the population have no qualifications. At all. 1 in 3 have a job.
But I’m the vicar. So I have kept a rather undignified silence. There are people watching. The press are watching. Waiting for that chance to single someone out and make an example of them. And so I’m “not allowed” to remember those experiences I’ve lived through. Certainly couldn’t put them on Facebook. Couldn’t blog about them. What if the Daily Mail saw it? I’d get in trouble. It is as if someone has taken my voice. This week something died… inside me. And I’m not allowed to mention it. So I won’t. I will maintain my undignified silence. I’ll leave it to a bishop.
“Where the pit head once stood, with thousands of people working to produce more coal faster and more efficiently that at most other pits, there is smooth level grass. Empty to the eye, but pregnant with bereavement. All around, despite the heroic efforts of local leaders, there are signs of postindustrial blight, with all the fallout of other people’s power games. And that sight stands in my mind as a symbol… What hope is there for communities that have lost their way, their way of life, their coherence, their hope?” – NT Wright, Surprised by Hope p5
*My dad always reminds me that he’s “an electrician who worked down the pit. A luxury miner”.
Earlier this year our Parochial Church Council decided to back the IF Campaign. Members of the congregation brought it to the wider church because they believed it is something we should be doing to make our voices heard. This is something people at Holy Nativity care about passionately .
As a community we read the bible each week and find that the author of our faith is challenging us. From the sermon on the mount where Jesus calls us to a kingdom where the lowest are raised up and the poor shall be filled (Luke 6:20-21) to the things that we do “for the least of these” in Matthew 25:34-36, Jesus calls us to bring Justice. Justice for the poor. Justice for the hungry. Justice for the oppressed. At the Churches Together Lent Course this week we had a scientist talking about “God’s divine love revealed through science”. As John spoke these words struck me: “We live in a world that produces enough resources for everyone. Sadly there are people who don’t like sharing”.
We’ve seen rhetoric for years about how the world is full of inequality. We’ve seen other similar campaigns to bring an end to world hunger. We remember Jubilee 2000. We remember Live 8. We remember Dawn French’s impassioned plea as Revd Geraldine Boadicea Granger.
In the UK we live lives where people feel disconnected. We live in lives where people feel powerless. We live lives where we assume that there is someone else going to make the decisions for us and we don’t have a say in that process. A faceless “suit” who is going to make these inequalities happen anyway. The way we begin living in a society that operates like this is by losing our voice. By refusing to speak out. By allowing the distractions that those in power want to throw at us to become the most important priority in our lives.
Tonight we raise money once again for Comic Relief. So much of what we do is a response to the symptoms of poverty not to the root causes of poverty. We raise money to fix problems that are often caused by the systems we perpetuate. We don’t even realise they are there because they are under the surface. If we’re honest, it is only in the last six months that anyone has thought twice about buying a Starbucks coffee because we didn’t know that there was a problem with corporate tax avoidance. A member of the Halifax Food Drop in spoke to our Deanery Synod last week. She said “this was never supposed to be a long-term solution”. The few raising money to feed the hungry on a global scale was never supposed to be a long-term solution.
This is not how it should be. In God’s kingdom, this is not how it should be. You have a voice. We all have a voice. It is only by giving up our voice that we allow the few “suits” to make decisions for the many. Join the campaign. Publish it wide. Write to your MP. Tell your friends. Tweet about it. Put it on Facebook. I don’t want to find myself posting a video of Geraldine Granger again in 8 years time.
