mission & ministry | practical theology | priesthood

I have recently re-read Gordon Lynch’s Losing my Religion [I'll be reviewing this else where] in which he describes his own move away from evangelicalism.  There is a huge implicit assumption throughout the book that everyone involved in evangelicalism will want to move away and continue their journey elsewhere: whether that be within a Christian context or not.  There are a number of issues I want to engage with from this book but it is the idea of journeys, spiritual journeys, that I want to start with here.  But first, what are Zombie Categories?

Ulrich Beck, a professor of Sociology teaching in Munich and London, has this idea of Zombie Categories: categories that are dead and still alive.  Ulrich believes that “because of individualisation we are living with a lot of zombie categories…”  His ready example is ‘family’.

Ask yourself what actually is a family nowadays?  What does it mean?  Of course there are your children, my children, our children.  But even parenthood, the core of family life, is beginning to disintegrate under conditions of divorce.  Families can be constellations of very different relationships.  Take, for example, the way grandmothers and grandfathers are being multiplied by divorce and remarriage.  They get included and excluded without any means of participating themselves in the decisions of their sons and daughters.  From the point of view of the grandchildren the meaning of grandparents has to be determined by individual decisions and choices.  Individuals must choose who is my main father, my main mother and who is my grandma and grandpa.  We are getting into optional relationships inside families which are very difficult to identify in an objective, empirical way because they are a matter of subjective perspectives and decisions.  And these can change between life phases.

So a zombie category is a social concept which is still in use but which has lost the content, or substance, of its original or intended use.  It is still in use because we have romantic ideas about restoring or getting back to a place of substance, or because we actually have not noticed this change has taken place.  I don’t think Ulrich is saying that we should be performing resuscitation on these categories, it is not necessarily about trying to restore these categories to former glory.  Instead, it is more about facing the reality that we no longer mean what we think we mean when we reference these categories.  We therefore have the option of redefining our category, or recognising that we do in fact work with a redefined category, or stop using it for what it is not.

I would like to suggest that journeys, discipleship journeys, spiritual journeys are a zombie category.  It is not at all that spiritual things don’t happen in our lives, or that we don’t grow as a disciple.  My point is that the category ‘journey’ is not helpful.

Most of our physical journeys today are over very quickly.  We could be the other side of the world, in a different culture with a different language, climate and landscape within 24 hours.  Even our very short journeys, into town or to a friend’s place, are generally over in minutes rather than hours.  Personally I have very little patience for these everyday journeys: I leave at the last minute and I drive too fast.  And I have too little patience for my spiritual disciplines!

When the category of ‘journey’ was used in relation to discipleship the actual physical journeys that people undertook where much more gruelling.  Walking to the next town, although a common occurrence, would nevertheless be measured in hours not minutes and in pain not comfort.  Travelling to a different part of the country would not have been undertaken lightly by ordinary folk like you and I.  A short look at some writing like Pilgrims Progress by John Bynam, will bring these categories of spiritual and journey together.

Again I need to point out that I am not saying that our spiritual life, our following Jesus, is not at time gruelling, difficult and drawn-out.  My own testimony will stand as an example of that.  I am saying that maybe the category of journey is not as helpful as it used to be.  We still use this category prolifically; it is still alive, but also somewhat dead.

If our category of journey has been empty of its substance and it is indeed a zombie, then continuing to use it as a framing concept for our discipleship might have adverse affects on that discipleship: our discipleship.  Today journeys are all about A-to-B and little about the path.  Journeys are about the ‘fastest route’ selected on the sat-nav.  Journeys are about air-conditioned cocoons removed from the elements, isolated from encounters with the environment through which one passes.  Journeys are to and not via, they are uninterrupted movements without the space for another.  Journeys need drive-through tactics for fuel and convenience only.  Journeys are too long and so need a thick layer of headset entertainment to ensure that it is not wasted time.

Discipleship, following Jesus, is all about the path and little about destination, choosing the narrow route along which we notice and listen, seeking encounters with others as we travel via their lives, willing turning aside for their convenience ensuring that each moment is not wasted but is filled with Presence.

The idea and concept of journey offers little substance for us when thinking about our discipleship and spirituality.  It is nevertheless used both casually in conversation, from pulpits and platforms in church services and by reflective and academic minded writers as a framing metaphor for containing and understanding our call to follow Jesus.  I wonder whether the time has come to put it out of its misery and shoot it dead.

This reflection is based on the BCP gospel reading for Sunday 7 Feb 2010

This story has been heard so many times and it is difficult to come to it and expect to get anything else from it. It is over-familiar to us, but bear with me for a moment. In the middle of this gospel reading Jesus days “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

When we began to follow Jesus we had to learn, like a baby and child, how to recognise the Jesus’ voice. How to discern the voice of the creator in and amongst the chatter of life. Perhaps as time has gone on this voice has blended into the background once again. Just like the parable, the voice has become over-familiar and we don’t expect to hear much from it. Life has settled into the rut of discipleship: going to church, reading the scripture and praying for our needs; and we no longer expect the challenging, encouraging, life-giving encounters with Jesus.

Perhaps as we listen to this familiar parable expecting to hear very little, we might be challenged to pay more attention to listening to the One who speaks and become once again one who hears.

This coming Sunday is the last Sunday after Trinity and we are hurtling towards Christmas.  Before we get there we will glory in All Saints Day, remember those fallen in the wars, we will celebrate Christ the King and prepare ourselves during Advent.  As we come to the end of our long Trinity season the Gospel reading for Sunday has a little similarity to those signs on the motorway that count-down to a junction.  The 3 / 2 / 1 signs.

When I was younger, and in fact still occasionally today, I got fixated on working out whether these signs are correctly spaced out, whether there really do represent a correct count-down to the actual slip-road.  And I wonder to where they are measuring? Is it the beginning of the slip-road, where the white line begins to peal off?  Or is it to the centre of the slip-road?  I was concerned about all kinds of things about the signs, but of course, this is to completely miss the purpose of the sign, which is to tell you about something coming up, something ahead of you that you need warning about.  It does, in the end, matter too much whether they are correctly spaced out.

Our Gospel reading on Sunday is one of these signs.  There is still a way to go, but get ready.

Blind Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside doing what he normally does, begging.  He hears that it is Jesus who is coming and begins to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Some people told him not to be so silly, but this did not deter him and he shouted all the more.
Jesus hears him and calls him over.  Some people help him over and Jesus asks what he wants of him.  Bartimaeus asks for his sight back and Jesus, stating that it is his faith that has made him well, gives his sight back to him.  Bartimaeus, as you might imagine, begins to follow Jesus.
It is like God the Father is saying to us today, get ready, just as it was with Bartimaeus, Jesus is about to pass by.  Just as it was with Bartimaeus, we are begging for life to the full.  Just as it was with Bartimaeus, if we are prepared to shout it out, and call upon Jesus for who he is, the King, then we will be heard.

You know that feeling when you miss the junction?  When just too late you pass it by and then you become painfully aware of the distance to the next junction and what a right pain this will be?  Don’t miss this junction in your life of calling out to Jesus as he passes by in the coming season.  Here is the first count down sign in Sunday’s reading, get ready.

If this is what it is like for you, you who know the sign, know what it means, and can get ready for the junction, for Jesus coming down the road.  What is it like for those who don’t know about the sign?  What is it like for those who are also begging for life to the full, but don’t know Jesus is coming and won’t call out because they will be distracted by other things and will miss the junction where their life crosses the path of Jesus?  What is it like for those people?

As we begin to think about getting ready for the coming season, begin to get ready for Jesus as he passes through town, let us be prepared to warn other people.  It is so easy to join in with conversations that paint Advent as time to shop and Christmas as a time for gifts, lots of food and wine and good programs on the tv.  Joining in those conversations is easy.  But we are called to say, get ready, Jesus is coming.
This Sunday, in our reading is the first sign on the path we are on.  You today, have noticed it and will be getting ready.  Please, as the opportunity arises, talk about the coming of Jesus in this season to others who don’t know, who don’t even know that we have passed the first get ready sign.  Don’t get sucked into Christmas talk, without mentioning it’s Jesus who is coming!  What are you going to ask for this year?

I went to see many of the headliners at greenbelt this year. Athlete were great, Martyn Joseph with Stuart Anderson was brilliant and then there was Rob Bell.

It is not at all that Rob was not good, he was, as expected, engaging, funny, full of compassion and very clear, but two things disturbed me. The first, which I guess I’ll have to live with, is the celebratory status that the crowd afford to this human being. Ok, so Jesus had crowds too and I in fact participate in crowds as well; most notably at a U2 360 concert this summer. So maybe I should just get over this. The second disturbance, which I find sad that we are living with, was captured at the type of questions that the crowd asked this super-christian.

One of Rob’s hour long sessions was titled ‘In Conversation with Rob Bell’ which was essentially an open Q&A time. Questioners were pulled from the crowd with easy questions, hard questions, funny and interesting questions etc. It seemed to me that the questions, while extremely difficult for the person involved, were of a very basic discipleship nature.

Now, on the one hand there is nothing basic about discipleship. Re-orientating one’s life towards Christ and then following as a disciple is enormously energising and draining. “I have just met Jesus and now I wonder what I need to do in my life to follow?” Such a question can and should have great impact on one’s life. What flows out of such a question is almost certainly a range of difficult decisions and situations. If following Jesus were easy, then there might be more people in church and the world might be worse of for it. However, the place for such difficult questions and life-giving support through such situations is amongst the community of believers, where the next basic theological questions gets asked. “We a community of believers, what does it mean to be the Body of Christ in this time and place?” How do we live faithfully and authentically together as disciples of Jesus. As well as addressing internal matters of nurture and support of disciples and life together as community, it is this group and only this group that can begin to think about how to relate to those not yet part of them: “How do we as the community of disciples communicate the love of God to those who have not heard?” Yes of course individual disciples are at the coal-face of being in relationship with on-disciples, but they can only do so out of their community of believers: theologically, emotionally and practically. This layering of theological questions, this ‘how do we talk about God’ conversation, is, or at least should be it seems to me, at the heart of ecclesial theology; by which I mean church based theology. So perhaps it is now easier to see my second disturbance in context. How come these attendees at a Christian festival asking this super-Christian who has been flown in from the states basic discipleship questions?

Perhaps it is because they were just testing him out. A whole group of festival attendants got together to form a list of questions which would essentially test out Rob Bell’s authenticity to be called a ’speaker’! If this is the case, I wonder whether he passed? Perhaps those who asked questions were not in fact active members of a local community of believers and so in effect GB becomes their community and this is where you can ask the visiting preacher these type of questions. I’m sure this is the case for a whole heap of people who attend GB. They are either disaffected church-goers or never in fact went to church but found faith in the festival circuit and never made a connection with their local church.

Thirdly, and this is where this article has been leading up to, perhaps it is because these questions aren’t being answered in the local communities of believers, the local church. The preaching and teaching in local churches is not up to addressing these discipleship questions or local preachers and teachers are not brave enough to address them. Talking about non-believers who need converting strongly implies that we have it right and they have it wrong; talking about parents and partners who don’t believe who as a result face separation from God [assuming that we still have a lost and found theology], these are hard things and you can’t blame teachers and preachers for a little self-preservation. However, these are the questions that our people are asking.

This second disturbance of mine does cause me sadness. Not because we don’t have answers for these questions, or because it is so hard, but because I don’t think we talk about these questions enough. There are no easy answers to these and other difficult situations but the best chance we have is to have an ongoing space within the community of believers of support, care, prayer, love and wisdom seeking. Which we are probably not going to find in the hour session of a paratrooper preacher in a field a GB.

I was particular interested in listening to Rob Bell, primarily to here the questions he was asked rather than his answers, because I am convinced that on the whole we have a very low discipleship agenda in our churches. By discipleship I mean just asking those type questions that I outlined above; what does it mean for me to become and be a follower of Jesus; as a community of believers how show we life our lives together and how do we as a community engage with those who have not heard?

Common Worship reading for this coming Sunday: Mark 7:24-end

Here is this woman… who is desperate to see her child released from the pain and anguish she lives in day after day.  Some of you will be able to sympathise with her, knowing members of your own family who likewise struggle with some affliction day after day.  Such anguish, watching someone you love, in daily pain and misery, is very hard to bear.

This woman comes to Jesus, willing to endure insult and embarrassment and humiliation; crossing all kinds of social convention and expectations; to come to the only place where she knew to go.  The only place worth going to.  The only place to find peace: Jesus.
Things are very different for us today.  We have a health service that helps us to patch up our bodies and manage our pain.  We have an organised church to help us encounter Jesus in the security of social conventions and practices.  Our situation is very different from this Syrophoenician woman.

And yet on Monday evening I sat in a concert at Greenbelt weeping in public waiting for Jesus to do something for someone I love.

I guess things aren’t so different.  We still struggle with things we can’t explain and pain we can’t bear to live with.  Still the only place to go is Jesus, to find peace, healing, comfort, strength, grace, mercy…  And we still get desperate enough to humiliate ourselves in public, to ignore social conventions, risk insult and embarrassment in order to get to a place where Jesus will hear us.