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…or book of the living?
As a child I was fascinated by the rites and rituals of ancient Egypt. At one time I could have ‘picked out’ any one of a catalogue of gods from their pictures and told you about their particular roles. Like many little boys, I relished the details of the whole mummifying process, and my eyes shone when I went to visit the Tutankhamen exhibition at the British Museum with all its breathtaking treasure. Today ancient Egypt has come to London again, with a spectacular exhibition at the British Museum entitled: Journey through the afterlife: ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. John Taylor, curator of the exhibition, writes “The Book of the Dead isn’t a finite text – it’s not like the Bible, it’s not a collection of doctrine or a statement of faith or anything like that – it’s a practical guide to the next world, with spells that would help you on your journey.”
As a ‘practical guide to the next world’, there is a kind of painful irony to all this. Whilst the few undisturbed ancient remains lie sleeping under desert sands, not far away the streets of modern Egypt are in ferment. A practical guide for the next world would seem like something of an indulgence when the current one is in such a state. The ancient civilisation which brought us chariots of gold and masks of lapis lazuli has turned into a modern one where police officers fire live rounds on angry protesters, and fighter jets swoop low over the city making the windows rattle. For many in Egypt, a year which started with the unimaginable violence of worshippers murdered at church has only got worse.
So, if the Bible is not a ‘practical guide to the next world’ like the Book of the Dead – what is it? Is it maybe a ‘practical guide’ to this world instead? Certainly the creative and imaginative ways that radio, television, printed media and churches are marking its 400th anniversary for Biblefresh year would make you think so. We must beware, though, of treating the Bible like a recipe book. If Christians in Egypt could have turned to the relevant verse and found a ready solution for their nation’s ills they would have done it by now, I’m sure. It has to be studied, contemplated, explained and absorbed – none of which is a quick process.
Maybe one thing which makes it a book of the living, rather than a book of the dead, is that God provides people to interpret it. In Isaiah 30 there is a verse which is either deeply heartening or extremely intimidating for preachers, depending on your state of confidence:
Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity
and the water of affliction
your teachers will be hidden no more (v.6)
The Bible is undoubtedly intended to act as a ‘guide for this world’ but preachers, the Spirit who inspires them, and the people who listen to them with discernment are all part of the deal.
Image: British Museum
So why worry?
Inspired by @revtrev’s quote from Turner “Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere”, I have remembered this little talk, supposedly from an old Irish priest. Whether that is apocryphal or not I don’t know – but I do know that there are few children’s talks more remembered by adults than this one.
Take a HUGE piece of paper and write the word “worry” on it, as big as you like. With each numbered point below, tear the paper in half and discard half of it.
- There are only two things to worry about – today & tomorrow. Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet, so that only leaves today.
- If you’re going to worry about today, there are only two things to worry about – whether you’re ill or whether you’re well. If you’re well, you have nothing to worry, about, so that only leaves being ill.
- If you’re ill, there’s only two things to worry about – whether you’ll get better or whether you’ll die. If you’re going to get better, that only leaves dying to worry about.
- If you’re going to die, there’s only two things to worry about – whether you’re going to heaven or whether you’re going to hell. If you’re going to heaven, you’ve nothing to worry about.
By this stage the piece of paper will be so small that you can scrumple it up and put it in a breast pocket where God can be left to worry about it.
As Alexsandr Orlov would say – simples!
Image:a0twimg.com
Beyond the podcast
When writing my chapter on ‘preaching in the digital future’ for The Future of Preaching last year, I joked that the day may come when you stay at home with a holographic preacher for company instead of going to church. For many, myself included, that would be a nightmare rather than a blessing. As expressed in yesterday’s post, Christian fellowship is intended to be messy and gritty, and to shape us all by colliding with each other’s personalities.
However, it would seem that this technological possibility has moved a step closer this week. Yesterday Manchester airport revealed their holographic representations of staff members John Walsh and Julie Capper. These holographic staff will welcome people to the security check in area and explain the procedures to them. Trials so far have been extremely succesful.
Image: news.sky.com
Here’s the really scary thing, though. Apparently some passengers have been so convinced by the holograms that they have tried to hand in passports to them. I don’t know about you, but I would be ever so slightly depressed if a holographic representation of me preaching was mistaken for the real thing. Not only that, but I have sneaking suspicion that some people might be looking for the ‘off’ switch!
Digital input & 360 degree preaching
Some of you may feel that you are all too familiar with circular preaching – it goes round and round like an angry bee trapped under a jam jar, until at last it wears itself out. Thankfully, that it not what I am describing here. Rather, following on from a highly creative conversation with@kimtownsend and @watfordgap, I want to develop my ideas of digital fellowship a little further. It might run something like this:
- Tuesday – the preacher lets people know via social media what she or he is working on for the coming Sunday’s sermon. Insights on the particular topic are welcomed, and also suggestions for the music and worship.
- Thursday – as a result of all this, a sermon shape is beginning to emerge, and a related prayer request goes out, together with a request for clarification on an elusive illustration or two.
- Saturday – an outline of the sermon is posted online, accessible to those who prayed and contributed at a distance, as well as those who will hear it the following day
- Sunday – the sermon is preached, and the podcast is made available online, as outlined before.
- Monday – a blog post outlining the sermon and questions raised by it is posted by someone who heard the sermon, rather than the person who preached it.
- Wednesday – questions arising from the sermon, and from Monday’s post, are fed into the church’s homegroups for further discussion
For preachers who are prima donnas, and who enjoy the mystique surrounding the pulpit, this is all profoundly threatening – since there are stages of this process over which they may have little control. Furthermore, it disenfranchises those members of the church who have neither the facility nor the inclination to engage in social media. Not only that, but we must guard against exchanging the messy business of real fellowship for its cleaner digital alternative. In real fellowship I must sit alongside people whose views offend me and whose problems make demands on me. Through the abrasion of our different personalities the likeness of Christ is fashioned in both of us. In digital fellowship I always have the ‘off’ switch which enables me to opt out.
Consider, though, the benefits. I am a great believer in the place of the sermon as traditionally understood. God has hard-wired us so that we are captivated and moved by human speech. That said, every pedagogical expert from Twickenham to Timbuktu will tell you that we retain things better when we engage with them. When we handle theological truths rather than simply being shown them from a distant pulpit, we begin to internalise them and graft them onto our very souls. Discussion of a sermon before and after in the way described above can only be good for preacher and people, surely?
There are risks associated with the approach outlined above, and we should not embark upon it lightly. However, the benefits might just outweigh them.
What do you think?
Image: meadowfield.org
Like this:
Christians abroad in a digital landscape
Much has been written elsewhere about Pope Benedict XVI’s message for World Day of Social Communications on January 24th, and I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that his call to embrace the possibilities and recognise the dangers of the digital landscape is timely for those of us who spend much our time living in it. As he points out, we must find a way to be authentically Christian and wonderfully human in this new territory. Mind you, as a forty-comething I’m not too sure about his call to ‘young people to make good use of their presence in the digital world’ . Am I too late?
Over the past few days I have been gleaning insights from a number of friends online about their ’3 golden rules’ for communicating on social media. Responses have been limited so far, but even from those I have received, an interesting pattern is emerging, as you can see from the wordle below.
Some of the things which strike me are:
- be- we are defined by our being more than our doing in virtual life as in real life
- engage – we must truly engage with these media if we are to have an impact – which means time and effort
- you – communication on these platforms needs personality, or it is dull and insipid
What strikes you? Your insights on this, or your further contributions to the list of “3 golden rules” would be hugely appreciated.
…and missing the door
I have written before on here about my uneasy relationship with navigation, and shown German artist Gavin Nolte’s views on the dangers of sat navs. I can only speculate about what Nolte would say regarding yesterday’s story of pensioners Hilda and Eric Davies. They were apparently concentrating so hard on their sat nav’s three-dimensional display of the route to Oberallgau’s historic church that they smashed straight into it. There is now a car-shaped hole in the church’s wall, and extensive interior damage.Newspapers around the world, from Austria to India, Croatia to Florida, have picked up on the story and accompanied it with dubious headlines about ‘the road to heaven’.
Some years ago we had a couple arrive late here for a service, as their sat nav had sent them to Teddington Methodist Church instead of Teddington Baptist church. I suppose we can’t really expect such a device to be sensitive to the niceties of denominational differences!
What has struck me most about the coverage of this story, though, is the lack of rancour. Neither the local police in Oberallgau nor the priest in charge of the church have been quoted as saying anything beyond that this was an unfortunate accident and that they were concerned for the couple’s well-being. How refreshing! Years ago I worked in a church where there was still a yellowing notice in the church hall declaring that “ball games should not be played – by order of the Deacon’s Court”. Once in a while it was knocked down by a low-flying football, but always replaced for old-time’s sake!
Church buildings are a blessed and sacred resource, but we should be careful not to over-emphasise their importance.
Image of Oberallgau: www.hauskneppler.de
…everybody wins
Some years ago, a mum walked into my church for a ‘parade service’. Her son was carrying the flag for the Beaver Cubs, and she felt obliged to attend. To her amazement, she found the service relevant, catchy and interesting. This proved to be the first step on a journey which led to her discovering her own Christian faith.
Many people have nurtured that faith, and along the way she has been encouraged to discover and develop her gifts. A couple of summers ago she attended a four-week preaching workshop at the church, and now preaches regularly. Wherever possible I have taken notes and fed back to her on the preaching. Last night I sat and listened as she tackled one of the more quirky passages of Revelation – and I was blessed by the insight and application which I heard.
Can anybody (apart from God himself) take credit for this? Absolutely not! Were lots of people involved in it? Absolutely yes! When gifts in the church are developed,the line between who teaches who and who encourages who becomes ever more blurred. Rather like Escher’s puzzling picture below, it becomes harder and harder to tell which way round it works. God recycles age, experience, mistakes and insights in some kind of glorious process which fertilizes the church and makes it grow.
I occasionally get told off for my recycling. I get narky notes left in my bins because I have inserted the wrong kind of plastic or an unacceptable drinks box. Thankfully, God’s view of the whole process seems rather less narrow – and when people learn through trying their gifts all are blessed.
Image:www.worldofescher.com
A moment of joy
As a preacher, I find the prospect of ever losing my voice pretty terrifying. Maybe that’s why Zechariah’s story grabs my imagination so much. Some years ago, in a sermon entitled “the sound of silence”, I tried to capture the moment when he rediscovered his voice:
As he handed the tablet back, so it began. At first it was like the distant rumble of an underground river, strength hidden deep below the surface. Then it grew stronger, like molten lava pounding on the doors of the earth, waiting to be released. Finally it was like the thunder of a hundred horses’ hooves, all churning up the dusty ground in unison. Zechariah spoke. Doubt was replaced with certainty. Disbelief with faith. Sadness with joy. And his old cracked voice found its depths again. Like a bird long asleep, it spread its wings, shook them and took to the skies. Every other babbling sound in the house was hushed as his deep and beautiful voice scaled the heights of praise. In a song that seemed as old as Moses the lawgiver and as new as tomorrow’s unformed dew, he told of the goodness of God. “The tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven”
The rest of the sermon can be found in my book Stale Bread.
Earlier this week, news broke of Brenda Jensen’s story. During surgery in 1999 her larynx was irreparably damaged during surgery. It was not until a radical new procedure involving the insertion of a voice box and trachea from a donor body that she found her voice again. When at last they came, her words were surprisingly ordinary: ‘Good morning, I want to go home.’ Since then she has been building up her repertoire of speech, training her new muscles to work and form the necessary sounds. ‘Every day is a new beginning for me’, she says.
To those of us reluctant to open our mouths today, lest what we say is flawed or imperfect - her words come as a rebuke. The perfect sermon was never yet preached by any of us and our mistakes abound. Like Brenda, though, every opportunity to speak is a gift, and we should seize it.
…not cloying uniformity
A couple of years ago it was my turn to conduct the local service for the Week Of Prayer for Christian unity. The centrepiece of the service was a sermon illustrated by the video below. Quite apart from the fact that it is great fun, its celebration of colour seemed to me to be ideal for such an occasion. If we use the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity to wring our hands and hang our heads and say how shameful it is that there are differences between us, surely we have missed the point? This is an opportunity, rather, to celebrate the light, colour and diversity of the churches we represent. As I said in a previous discussion, it may be that Chevreul, Seurat and Pollock have some lessons to teach us here.
Fallon, who made the advert above, have things to teach us too. It took:
- 70,000 litres of paint
- 622 bottle bombs
- 455 mortars
- 57 km of wire
- 1700 detonators
- to make the film.
Beauty from diversity takes some doing – but it is certainly worth it!
Rediscovering connection
In 1929 Hungarian playwright and journalist Frigyes Karinthy published a volume of short stories entitled Everything is different. One of the stories, Chains, speculated about how the world was shrinking. In it Karinthy described a parlour game whereby any one of the world’s population (much smaller then) could be shown to be linked through a chain to any other. Karinthy suggested that it would be possible to find a connection between that person and one of those playing the game via no more than five connections of the ‘friend of a friend’ variety. Thus ‘six degrees of separation’ was born.
image: www.irasmuvek.hu
In the era of the mighty Google, with games like five clicks to Jesus no more than a few mouse clicks away, Karinthy’s game has lost its appeal. The connections he described are as easy as searching for your groceries on the shelf of a virtual supermarket. Does this actually mean that we are more connected, though?
Physically and literally it might, but we may not understand those connections any better than Karinthy and his fictitious friends. When I teach about preaching on the news, one of the points I raise is that we may know more about what is happening the other side of the world than our forebears did, but we do not necessarily know what it means. In an era of greater connectivity, it is up to us to demonstrate biblically what that connection implies about our humanity. If a man the other side of the world can connect with me instantly and tell me that his life is in danger because of flood, famine, or religious persecution – how am I responsible for that knowledge? What am I obliged to do with it? In an age of connectivity, ignorance is no longer bliss.
There is a whole extra dimension here, too. The fact that we can connect easily does not necessarily mean that we connect well. Do we need to start thinking about digital ethics, and not just digital etiquette? There is surely more to Christian behaviour online than how you should go about “unfriending” someone? The kind of things we have been saying for years about honesty, integrity, openness and Christian virtue in physical congregations need to be translated into the virtual world.
Challenge: can we devise a set of social media beatitudes?
preachersa2z
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