Article
- Date:
- Sunday 16th November 2008
The Third Sunday before Advent - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Cuckfield
- Service:
- BCP Evensong
- Readings:
- Revelation 1:4-18
For modernists like ourselves, there is nothing more daunting in the whole of The Bible than the Book of Revelation of Saint John The Divine. In this context let me refer to Steve Hollinghurst's definition of modernists as people who live in a book culture, believe in grand theories, experts, and logic (encapsulated in Descartes' famous aphorism "cogito ergo sum"), as opposed to postmodernists who assign importance to personal experience, are sceptical, if not cynical, and are consumers (encapsulated in Graham Cray's aphorism "Tesco ergo sum"). Even for Biblical literalists this last book of all presents a serious challenge; but perhaps its time is coming. When I first read Garcia Marquez and then Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, I thought of Revelation; Rushdie is supposed to be one of the great pioneers of a literary genre known as "Magical realism" and perhaps we might think of Revelation as "Spiritual realism"; for just as there is no doubt about the magic in Rushdie and the Spiritual in Revelation, there is no denying the realism in both. Rushdie is grappling with a world where there is no logic and Revelation is grappling with a world where there is no security. In spite of the apparent stability of the Roman Empire the Seven Churches are living in a state of turmoil and perhaps even persecution; and what this book provides is a panoply of resources for an emergency: encouragement for the weak, advice for leaders, awesome liturgies to confirm and encourage and, above all, the reassurance that God is in control, that Babylon (in this case The Roman Empire) will fall.
It is in this rather bewildering context for the modernist that I want to discuss, this week and next, the twin ideas of Church and Mission. So let me start with the most startling idea of all in the hope that after that things will become easier: we can infer from what Hollinghurst says about theories and authority figures that the age of doctrine (the grand theory) proclaimed by clergy (the great experts) is over. If we think that we have faced serious decline in the last half century, we aint seen nothing yet. The Christian denominations are still afloat because of the number of us who were in contact with churches in our childhood; but as the 20th Century wore on, the number of children making such contact radically dropped. The decline will become ever steeper; and I doubt that 40 years from now there will be any viable churches outside major towns; indeed, rather than fighting a rearguard action, largely on behalf of the heritage industry and nostalgia societies, I think we should cut our architectural losses and concentrate our energy on working out what we are to do to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ because, as we all say, this is only a building whereas We Are Church.
Having got all the bad news out of the way: here is the good news, news that rings out in every page of Revelation: God is with us, we will not be abandoned, we will succeed; even against global capitalism, we will succeed. But to do this we will have to abandon our easy habits most graphically exemplified in the Church of Laodicea which John The Divine castigates for "neither being too hot nor too cold". In view of the horrible things Christians have done to each other over doctrine, it might sound strange, but doctrine is tepid, it is what makes us neither too hot nor too cold. How many of us have felt any kind of extreme emotion when reciting The Creed? I doubt it; for doctrine is to theology what legislation is to philosophy: at the 'high' end there is intense struggle and passion but over centuries it becomes distilled into formulae for lawyers, civil or ecclesiastical; just to take one instance, it was more than 200 years before the maelstrom of theological struggle in Paul, John and Revelation became doctrine at the Council of Nicea in 321. That quasi-legalistic process has to be called into question for three reasons:
- First, theories or doctrines, no matter how good, elegant, or satisfying, are only the best formulations so far - all paradigms are provisional - but their advocates tend to forget this;
- Secondly, and much worse, some doctrines are just plain wrong;
- Thirdly, doctrine should not be seen as an end in itself but as the means to the end of a closer personal relationship with God.
What we are called upon to be is what the Laodiceans were called upon to be, namely, theologians. This may sound daunting but I suggest we look at it like this. Racing drivers like Lewis Hamilton work at the very edge of possibility between glory and disintegration; this is also true of athletes who push themselves to the absolute limit to win gold but at the same time run the immense risk of breaking down, which is what happened to Paula Radcliffe in Athens in 2004. Precisely the same process goes on in theology: in trying to find better words to encapsulate the human understanding of the mystery of God, theologians push the language to its limits and take risks.
I hope, therefore, it is obvious that the imperative of the personal relationship with God and the theological imperative of risk-taking fit together; and their implication for mission connects with the earlier observation from Steve Hollinghurst about post modernism. We can no longer think of mission as a set of doctrinal propositions; people are now much more in tune with personal experience than theory; so what we must do in mission is exacting in two ways:
- First, we must work as theologians at the limit of our capacity to develop our personal relationship with God; and then;
- Secondly, we must work with people to help them develop their personal relationship with God, each of which will be different.
This change in our culture explains the success of contemporary 'born again' Evangelism; it is not that its doctrinal propositions are attractive but that they concentrate on the personal statement, on the way in which the individual has been 'saved' or has 'found' Jesus. From a doctrinal standpoint this may seem trite but it is in tune with the culture that values personal experience.
Throughout the history of Christianity, reformers have ducked the issue of progressive interpretation, usually claiming that they are not reformers at all but are, rather, trying to take us back to the 'good old days' or the 'golden age' or the days when Christianity was 'pure and simple'. If there is such a period - and the turbulence in St. Paul's Epistles would seem to contradict this - then it is the period between the death of Jesus and the absorption of Christianity by the Byzantine Empire under The Emperor Constantine; and there is much that we can learn from the way Christianity grew in a largely doctrine-free environment; but the problem with comparisons of this sort is that the differences are greater than the similarities and so they become an obstacle rather than a tool for understanding.
In this sense, then - and not in the sense in which he originally meant it - Francis Fukuyama might have been right when he wrote about the "End of history". It seems that people today can only genuinely learn from their own experience; and this may define the real gulf between modernists and postmodernists. I say that Jesus had two natures in one person; she says that her experience of Jesus is of utter safety; and if that is what she thinks she is so right that what I say does not really matter.
There is one final point I want to make: if there is one virtue in doctrine it is that it holds together large and potentially disparate organisations; so the larger the organisation, the more rules it thinks it needs; and it is precisely that form of modernist organisation which postmodernists call 'red tape'. We will soon reach the point when Christianity crosses the organisational threshold where it no longer needs any red tape; and that might be the precise point of its nadir from which it can grow; but next time, let us pray that growth does not involve re-packaging us in the red tape from which we will have escaped at so high a price.
Prayers
Can: Lord of our lives
Res: Help us to know you.
- Lord of our lives, we worship and thank you for your creation of us in love that we might freely choose to please you with our love in direct response to your self communication and through the love of all humanity. Help us to strengthen our personal relationship with you, responding to your eternal call.
Can: Lord of our lives
Res: Help us to know you. - 1. Lord of our lives, help us to know your son who, entering into our space and time: affirmed your concrete love in his incarnation; defied our worst excesses in his crucifixion; and under-wrote our salvation in his Resurrection. Help us to be living images of his life as well as human images of your love.
Can: Lord of our lives
Res: Help us to know you. - Lord of our lives, we worship and thank you for The Holy Spirit living corporately in Christ's church and in each one of us: infusing us with wonder at your creation; illumining our Incarnational perception; and informing our response to your self-communication. Help us to be faithful to The Spirit and not just the letter of your church.
Can: Lord of our lives
Res: Help us to know you. - Lord of our lives, we worship and thank you for your Church which is Christ's monument and the home of The spirit: for its mission in the world; for its witness in Word and Sacrament; and for its pastoral care. Help us to use the means of our corporate spiritual life so that we may each try to find you in our own way, at the horizon of our speech and imagination.
Can: Lord of our lives
Res: Help us to know you. - Lord of our lives, we venerate and thank you for your saints who have dedicated themselves to Your Kingdom on earth: for Exegetes and theologians; for missionaries and preachers; for The Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, and for the unknown lives of the faithful. Help us to see You in everyone so that we may never be far from you in thought, word and action.
Can: Lord of our lives
Res: Help us to know you.