Reflections on the Gospel

 For a third week we are facing and being challenged by Mark’s Gospel and Peter’s memories of his time with Jesus and again the Gospel offers a challenge to preachers: exorcisms, hard sayings, incoherence, even outrageousness in the text.

 This week we are challenged to disable ourselves to be sure of entering the kingdom, hands, feet, eyes all become disposable if we are to enter the kingdom rather than hell. If one suffering gangrene, whether of body or of soul, pretends to be healthy, the outcome is hell, Gehenna. 

 

Gehenna was a ravine south of Jerusalem notorious for pagan infanticide envisioned by later Jews as the place of the wicked’s final judgment 

 

In the first of the three phases of the gospel along with the disciples we are challenged to accept that anyone whose actions conform to Jesus’ character should be welcomed and encouraged. For us the biggest challenge is the rise of humanism in our society but which is often more evidently christian than some of what we find ministered by the churches.

 

Jesus continues to prepare his disciples to understand the complexity of what it means to follow him. Two powerful images of cups of water and Millstones.

 

At my house in the Cathedral Close in Bradford there was often a knock at the door. Usually at an inconvenient moment sometimes an older woman would be there. I came to recognise her, and think of this passage in Mark’s Gospel, because she would ask for a cup of water and a blessing. Both of which I was only too glad to offer.

 

 In the second phase of the gospel Jesus challenges his disciples about attitudes of power and status and warns them, “if any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea” 

 

Last week Jesus produced a child and I referred to the Diocesan safeguarding officer. Here in this passage is the beginning of a theology of safeguarding. There is a huge level of responsibility here; the revelations of child sexual abuse have made clear how welcoming children can become something much more sinister. 

Yet we have to avoid marginalisation of children.  Marginalisation is itself a form of abuse. A community that closes its heart against children is closing its heart against Christ.

A theology of safe guarding says children in our midst are not the danger; they are a litmus test for the quality of our communities.  When children are safe our communities are healthy. A community with children at the centre is one that reflects the fruit of the spirit.

The final phase of today’s Gospel tells us to be salty. Saltiness is good, to much salt less so.

Jesus speaks in parables and the parable of salt speaks of cross-bearing discipleship, the yoke of the week before last, a sacrificial preservative prevents the church from becoming insipid. Salt, self-sacrifice for the gospel, promotes communal peace and quells self-centredness and one-upmanship.

 

Clay, salted with fire, becomes glazed and our glazing reflects the light of our deep love of Christ and our christian fellowship, we are clay no more, we can shine as in a Graham Kendrick hymn.

 

Some thoughts on Sunday's Gospel

 

Gethsemane

A long night ahead, I fear the dark

But as the darkness descends

I sense the possibilities of light

Coming with the dawn rising

Sense and sensibility streaming

Across our distances as we stand

Apart hoping for contact, renewal

Engagement a coming together

Relationships renewed despite

Ending in apparent failure stress

Is the engine of failure redeemed

By the simple expression of love

Love is ultimately redemptive

The past is behind us, we are renewed

Made new, reborn, we become the new

People we are born to become

Here we are again facing and challenged by Mark’s Gospel and Peter’s memories of his time with Jesus.

 

This week we are taken aside, along with the disciples, as Jesus’ prepares them for what lies ahead, that he will die and be raised again.

 

His mission as attracting attention and he is clear how it will end Jesus own family has already known death, his cousin John was killed for speaking truth to power.

 

Jesus is preparing his disciples so that they will understand the complexity of what it means to follow him. But sadly they are so dense that light bends around them as the gospel says they did not understand and were afraid to ask. 

 

Instead they started to argue about who was the greatest amongst them in their group and you can almost hear the sigh in Peter’s breath as he shares with Mark his memories of that day and that time because of course now he does understand.

 

But Jesus question continues to echo through history, it echoes down the ages of the Christian story, it echoes through formation and reformation and of course it echoes here in Shotley in 2021.

 

What were you arguing about on the way? 

 

Jesus doesn’t need to google he had this kind of knowledge because of a finely honed intuition, he had no need for divinely ordained eavesdropping technology. After all it’s never too difficult to tell when your friends have been arguing.

 

You can feel it, you can often hear it in the silence as you approach them.

What were you arguing about on the way?

Jesus challenges them obliquely. 

 

 

Just as a magician produces a rabbit out of a hat he produces a child. I’m sure that the Diocesan safeguarding officer would be the first to raise her concerns.

 

One commentary I read speculated that it might have been his child an interesting speculation after all he embraces the child and speaks of hospitality.

 

As last week we have to focus on a Greek word, paidion, “little child” which has the double meaning of “immediate offspring” and “slave.” Jesus’ rejoinder to the disciples bickering over rank parallels last week’s lection: just as the saving of one’s life requires its sacrifice for the gospel’s sake, so too does primacy in discipleship demand taking the last place of all.  

 

Becoming everyone’s servant.

 

As we rise to the challenge of discipleship in our communities and in our church life we have to ask ‘What are we arguing about’?

 

Then we have to reflect on the face of the child from Afghanistan that we saw on the news asking for peace and a hopeful future after his father was killed by the Taliban.

 

We have to reflect on the face of the child queueing with her mother at the foodbank so that she might be fed from the crumbs that fall from rich folks tables in the fifth richest economy in the world.

 

We have to reflect on the face of the child lying in a hospital bed because no place of safety or care can be found for him in our society.

Conviviality and Covid

 Conviviality in a time of Covid

 

My initial experience of Covid was in the main academic and based largely on rumours of what was happening in Wuhan, China which I heard on the local news and read in my daily newspaper.

 

Initially in the UK the TV News was debating ‘Herd Immunity’ a means of controlling the disease by allowing it to spread throughout the population thereby allowing individuals affected to build immunity by developing anti-bodies. 

 

However the spread of the Virus was dramatic mainly as a result of it being so infectious. The message from the Government was based on three statements:

 

Hands – Face – Space

 

A slogan which encouraged everyone to wash their hands thoroughly and frequently and to use sanitizer. To be aware of the need to keep their breathing away from others to prevent infection and to wear a mask and to maintain a ‘social distancing’. It was this phrase that I personally found most challenging especially when viewed through the lens of conviviality, suddenly social relationships were curtailed, hugging, embracing, the visit to the pub, dancing with friends or strangers, live music were all strictly limited and before long Churches were closed and congregations scattered.

 

Covid 19 is a highly contagious respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, Hubei province, China.

Since December 2019, cases have been identified in a growing number of countries. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are known to cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

 

My conflict in respect of Covid is the disastrous management of the disease by the Government which has resulted in more than a 150,000, avoidable deaths. Delays at the start of the pandemic, failure to equip hospital staff and care workers with PPE, patients transferred from hospital to care homes without proper testing.

 

The impact on health and wellbeing is extraordinarily high and there is little or no doubt that when friends and families are separated, elders left to die alone and children not hugged there is little or no evidence of conviviality or Shalom.

 

The fruit of human salvation is Shalom.

 

Often in English we think of Shalom as ‘peace’ but the meaning of the word is more profound and much deeper than simply ‘peace’.

 

Gerhard Von Rad defines shalom as ‘a state where things are balanced out, where the claims of a society are satisfied, a state …… which can only be made effective when protected by a society governed by justice’.

 

In this definition shalom can be seen as describing relationships between people, between communities and between humanity and God. In the Old Testament Shalom is communal rather than personal and the community is the proper setting for it.

 

Both Isaiah (48.22 & 57.21) and Jeremiah (6 14 & 8 11) remind us that Shalom cannot be taken for granted and does not come to us automatically and neither can the affluent buy a disproportionately larger share of Shalom.

 

Shalom is always a gift from God and does not come from our own efforts however it is always the case that human disobedience to the Divine will can create conditions in which shalom cannot take root and prosper.

 

In Psalm 85 10 we read that ‘Righteousness and Shalom will kiss each other’ the two aspects of righteousness and peace are inseparable companions, elsewhere in Psalm 72.7 where Shalom is described as the fruit of just Government.

 

It is hardly surprising that throughout the bible, throughout history and in our contemporary times the rich pray for the continuation of  their existing peace while the poor pray for the establishment of and long for justice.

 

As the social activist observed when, during the depression he saw a course advertised on how to make fish head soup, ‘Who got the rest of the fish’?

 

In the conflicts that I am placing at the centre of my learning with interdiac I observe that in the context of the UK the Covid pandemic has created conditions in which Shalom has neither rooted or prospered.

 

If Shalom means, for the individual a totally integrated life with health of body, heart and mind, attuned to nature, open to others in joy with God, allowing individuals to share mutuality and love, then again Covid has challenged that understanding of Shalom.

 

Indeed the many theories that have been developed suggest that our natural relationship or shalom with nature has been neglected to the extent that cross species transfer lies at the heart of the introduction of Covid. We have it seems abandoned our God given responsibility as caring trustees of creation.

 

Church aid groups have accused the European Union of neglecting social justice and child poverty in its far-reaching coronavirus recovery package, agreed last week by the EU Council, and urged MEPs to demand changes.

“Today, one in four children in the EU grow up at risk of poverty and social exclusion — Covid-19 and its socio-economic consequences are worryingly expected to escalate this figure exponentially”, the EU Alliance for Investing in Children said its members include Caritas-Europa and the mostly Protestant Eurodiaconia, as well as UNICEF and Save the Children.

“This is a historic moment to champion the rights of children within the EU and ensure the next generation grows up in inclusive, healthy, equitable and prosperous societies.”

The challenge of conviviality and Shalom: A prophetic church is a Godly Church.

 

conviviality and personal history .......

  There are many synonyms: friendliness, geniality, affability, amiability, congeniality, good humour, cordiality, warmth, warm-heartedness, good nature, sociability, gregariousness, clubbability, companionability, cheerfulness, cheeriness, good cheer, joviality, jollity, gaiety, liveliness, festivity, bonhomie. And one rather sad antonym: unfriendliness.

 

In interdiac the definition of conviviality has three elements drawn from an understanding of the social and community aspects of life in the Iberian Peninsula where Moslems were able to live freely and openly with their Jewish and Christian neighbours.

 

The conviviality of life in 19^th Century Paris with its free and unconstrained conversation.

 

The work and writings of Ivan Illich in which he described the transformation of relationships between people and their environment and technology.

 

In Manchester in the early 1970’s I worked in an inner-city environment which was scheduled for demolition to make way for an urban motorway. 

 

In my time in this community I undertook a variety of activities working with unemployed and homeless young people. I established a workplace environment teaching young people skills, Workpiece, together with a hostel offering accommodation, Nightcap.

 

The essence of the work was established on the basis of neighbourliness, responding to Jesus’ radical question to the lawyer, who is neighbour to him? To which the answer is clearly your neighbour is anyone whose need lays a claim on your love.

 

It was also based on an understanding of justice and human rights. These young people were rejected not only by society, having left school at 16 without qualifications or jobs to go to, their families unable to feed, or clothe or house them they drifted, surfed friends sofas, or as one young man explained when my brother is inside then I get the sofa and if both my brothers are in prison I get the bed, otherwise I’m out. Drugs, thieving, violence were part and parcel of their lives.

 

Our main definition of what we were about in this work especially in the establishment of Nightcap the hostel, came from Bob Dylan’s Balled of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest:

 

‘What kind of house is this,” he said

‘Where I have come to roam?”

‘It’s not a house,’ said Judas Priest

“it’s not a house, it’s a home”

 

So how does this work in the broader context of interdiac and the definition of Conviviality.

 

My reflection at the time and now is that these young people were a ‘litmus’ test of the fairness and simple lack of justice that lay at the heart of society. They were invisible, as I realised when talking to Church Groups who had no sense of what lay beneath the surface of their comfortable community life.

 

As Tony Addy writes: there were new insights, sparkling moments, change happened. But there were empty moments too when nothing could be said.

Ten Covid Cantos ......

 I have been writing poems and posting them on Facebook.

 

10 Covid Cantos : Geoff Smith

 

1

 

Dare we unmask our futures?

Or will we remain disguised

Avoiding transmission, hoping

Against hope for release 

 

As this night draws to a conclusion 

Sky falls, Sun sets, the night sky

Glows with stars followed by Kings

This year we had a hard time burying 

 

Our dead. Embalming bodies, with

Myrrh. Smoke rising as prayers

Sweet scented as incense clouding

Our vision. A golden glow of riches 

 

So we draw masks across faces

Protecting futures praying as we do

That futures will be convivial,

Persuasive, alive, acting, building 

 

A better more tolerable life in years

Ahead, friends, friendships, embracing

A future of promise, possibility

Greater normality, a hopeful future

 

2

 

Our yesterday’s call us back

To myths of our own making

 

Memories of life captured almost

As an L S Lowry painting or singing

 

From a fairground organ. Returning

Home with goldfish swimming in a 

 

Plastic bag won by tossing a table

Tennis ball into a globe. Luck celebrated

 

As skill. Every year a family trip on Good

Friday to our Easter Fair at Daisy Nook

 

 

Stalls piled high with candy floss, toffee

Apples, hot dogs and ketchup, ice

 

Cream cones, vanilla, scents of chocolate

Cheese and deep fried chips wrapped

 

In old newspaper The Manchester 

Evening News soaked with beef dripping 

 

Laced with vinegar. Above a Manchester

Sky, sun setting at day’s end. So well

 

Named, Good Friday no better day

Imaginable as we followed the tow path

 

Home, past Medlock Mill to Crossland Road

Under a darkening skies’ hazy colouring

 

Reaching for distant memories of people

All long gone now after these long years

 

3

 

Days lengthen

Just moments past

Each dawn each later dusk

 

In an evening sky

Against blue shadows 

A Red Kite glides to nest

 

Out of eye shadows 

Along our fallow edge

Young deer move towards

 

Summer grazing

On our pastures regreened

As spring announces warmth

 

To come cautious 

Optimism is our theme

In these fag end days of winter

 

4

 

What’s that worth, nerve shredding 

Sounds of birth, new ages breeched

 

We imagine futures stretching ahead

Distances shrinking as I head to bed

 

I can only imagine the limits of what might

Arrive if I hold my breath very, very tight

 

Covid makes breathing tough leaves you

Feeling rough stresses our well-being

 

Planning emphasises optimism, as though

Ahead there is a future, a prism of opportunity 

 

But all we can anticipate is fate, unyielding 

My opportunities frankly receding quite fast 

 

So I bequeath my future to those who come

After, praying for them, joy and laughter

 

5

 

So it’s all change innit

Can’t stay the same

No ones to blame

Just to need to be with it

 

So I get my stuff together

I aim for a solution 

We don’t need pollution

So stop your blether

 

I’m just hoping for the best

Raising a glass to your wealth

Toasting your health

Hoping that you get some rest

 

The finale will be chorused

The singers in tune

We will soar the balloon

Our joys will be focused

 

6

 

Spring revealing
Beneath snow covered paths
Aconite yellow

 

7

 

Passing along past a garden

Gate, saw a sign announcing 

Garage sale, clearly a moving 

Experience, heading west, coastward 

 

 

Detritus of a life well lived not

Needed in phase two So we 

Call in to check out bargains

Finding treasures to go 

 

So new lives beckon us forward

Hopes, possibilities, dreams, new

Dawns, tomorrow’s possibility 

Announces today’s impossiblity

 

Reaching out towards a new life

Re-imagining myself in an un-

discovered future beyond pan-

demic, life rediscovered imaginatively

 

8

 

From Psalm 45

 

My tongue is the pen of a ready 

Writer, my heart is astir with

Gracious words fashioned 

 

As maybe into songs

The rhythms of the day pulse

As heartbeats against

 

Drum tight skin stretched

Like echoes’ reverb of nation

So we exit the company of those

 

Who make common cause

Who together break bread

At the tables of success

 

In the sorrow of going it

Alone we find that love

Is hard edged so we gesture 

 

With patterns of silent grief

Sacrificing prosperity whilst 

Denying truth and humility 

 

Embracing self righteousness

Choosing exit over experience

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9

 

Against sky, blue, White

Windmills turn generating

Life’s electric currents

 

Spinning slowly, angels

Wings thrumming music

For the dance of time

 

Balancing on thermals

Above Hammermill Plantation 

A Red Kite shimmers

 

In a low sun, light reflected

On feathers that sing

Of what may yet come

 

On January’s last days 

As months turn snowdrops 

Offer a forecast, Seasons

 

Turning as turbines turn

Dancing as kites dance

Singing as birds sing

 

10

 

Sodium glare beneath

Setting sun, trash cans

Stacked kerbside reflecting 

A warm days heat

 

Feral dogs hunting noses

Pressed into garbage

Scenting leftover chorizo 

As my headlights reflected

 

On the trashcans dogs

Feral snarling echoed 

Across silent meza

Sacks of half torn pizza

 

Paella plates of garbage

Trashcans scenting night

Airs as my headlights caught

Dogs turntailed to darkness

 

 

 

Conviviality and the four nations ........

 The United Kingdom is made up of four quite different states each reflecting both a unity and a difference.

 

Wales on the extreme western coast was the place where ancient British people were driven by the invading Angles and Vikings. Scotland was a fiercely independent nation as reflected in the film Braveheart, which ultimately became subsumed into England in the reign of King James. The north of Ireland was separated from the southern part of the Island after the Easter Rising and the subsequent winning of independence under the Taoiseach Eamon de Valera.

 

I had occasion to visit all four nations on a holiday some years ago driving from my home in the English Midlands through Wales to take a ferry to Ireland before heading into Northern Ireland to take a ferry to Scotland and eventually driving south again into England.

 

It is clear that if you are visiting Wales for example that you are experiencing a very different and quite individual part of the United Kingdom, the British Isles, than if you are visiting Scotland and the differences go deeper than the signs in the Welsh language or, in Scotland in Gaelic which can come as a shock to someone who is used to and is expecting English to be the lingua franca.

 

Over the past few years the nations that make up the United Kingdom have flexed not only their linguistic muscles but their political muscles also. Currently Wales is the only country in the United Kingdom still voting for and electing a Labour Government, a Government that remains subject to the limitations and restrictions imposed by the Governing party in England. Meanwhile the Scottish National Party is the dominant political party in Scotland, again whilst subject to the political colour of the Tory Party in England.

 

Northern Ireland continues to have strained relationships with its immediate neighbour in the south which is not only independent but a strong member of the European Union. Brexit has created a tension between North and South and the English Government with the possible re-introduction of a hard border causing an escalation of conflict and threatening the Good Friday Peace Agreement by the introduction of a border in the Irish Sea.

 

Exploring the potential for a ‘convivial relationship’ between these different nations will require a considerable exploration of not only the potential for further devolvement of political reponsibilities but the possible introduction of a federal relationship. This carries an implicit challenge to the Tory Party the official title of which is the Conservative and Unionist Party. This challenge will be deeper and stronger if as some are suggesting that the English Regions should also be further devolved.

 

Pauline Bryan a Labour peer and convener of the Red Paper Collective, writing in the Morning Star (June 23^rd 2021) wrote:

Devolved administrations, elected mayors and council leaders need to combine to resist the imposition of unacceptable policies and mobilise alongside the trade unions and campaigning groups to build solidarity across borders. This should prefigure a federal approach laying the ground for a radical restructuring of the British state.

In the article Lady Bryan commented further:

Across Britain there have been renewed discussions within and between the nations and regions.

In Wales in January 2021 there was the launch of We the People: The case for Radical Federalism. Supported by the Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, it made the case for the shared governance of the UK.

It argued that radical constitutional reform is a necessity. It stated that the people of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England should be offered the opportunity to make a positive choice to envision, and contribute to the creation of a modern, collaborative, distributed and open democracy.

In Scotland the Red Paper Collective has continued to make the case for progressive federalism. It argues that any constitutional arrangement must ensure the redistribution of wealth throughout the UK, be built on democratic control of the economy — as without that real power is not devolved — and be based on the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.

 

Alongside this radical review of the relationships of the four nations there is a recognition that the hereditary and unelected House of Lords, described by one Bishop, himself a member, as ‘The best club in Town (London)’ but which neither reflects nor represents the ‘four nations’.

 

Equally its relevance to the major connurbations of the UK now represented by Labour Party elected Mayors is key.

 

The general view is that elected Mayors such as the Mayors of Manchester and North of the Tyne are reccognising that their areas have much more in common and will have even more in common, with the devolved regions, the most interesting aspect of Brexit is not simply the separation of the UK from Europe but the potential breaking up of the UK. Hopefully this will be achieved with the sound of Ballot Papers being dropped into Ballot Boxes than the sound of gunfire.

 

The United Kingdom is essentially ‘Londoncentric’ and it is possible to see how the further from London which is the seat of Government, the economic driver, the financial centre and the centre of Art and Culture for the nation(s) as a whole, the more marginalised the regions and the devolved states might feel.

 

The argument for a federal relationship with local centres for governance such as the Welsh and Scottish devolved governments extended to regions, the North East, the Midlands, the North West, the South West, the South East electing a Senate to hold together the federation is an argument that might well lead to greater conviviality, to a more convivial national conversation.

 

If our understanding of ‘conviviality’ can be applied to nation states and devolved regions it might be possible to demonstrate how nation states can become more democratic, more convivial and agents of human well being and flourishing.