Thinkabout for our regular gathering of the Campfire Church on Facebook, on the last Sunday of the month

This time it was our Grace on the thinkabout. The reading was this.

So here is the thinkabout:

and here's the transcript:

It’s election season. In the UK, in less than a week, we will hold a General Election. In the USA, the campaign is underway for a presidential election this November, which of course affects us globally, American or not. You are probably, like me, surrounded by debate and discussion, and you may not find the decision of who to vote for an easy one to make. I met someone the other day who believes, as many do, that faith and politics should be kept separate; I would direct any Christians among that group to today’s reading (among others). It is incumbent upon us as followers of Christ to put our money where our mouth is, and to show our faith through our actions. Politics is the stuff of our daily lives, and there is no better field for practical witness than the political arena. So, today, I want to think about decision-making and praxis – how we enact our theology. 

In our constituency, we have seven different parties represented at this election. Some of my friends feel overwhelmed by choice, and some feel there are no good choices among them. When the way forward in life is unclear, we can use the ethical principles given to us by our faith to help with decision-making and to hold ourselves to account.

Having rules, counter-intuitively, creates a certain freedom of behaviour. We know that children playing alongside a road can play more freely if their playing-field is fenced; they don’t have to worry about a ball rolling into the road, or minding where they’re running in a game of chase. In creative writing, while the limitless blank page can be paralysing, the introduction of a limitation gives us a direction of travel.

But when it comes to Scripture and a rule for life, you may immediately think – as I did – about Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law, and our release from what St Paul called the Law of sin and death through Christ’s death and resurrection. Our gospel is one of freedom. So we need to understand the difference between a law and a principle. The word ‘rule’ can be used interchangeably for both, but they aren’t the same. A law derives from a principle. For example, if you have the principle that killing people is wrong, you may have a law against murder and another against manslaughter – and you may decide against capital punishment. (Something for the state of Louisiana to consider, perhaps, as they put up the Ten Commandments in their courthouses.) If you live somewhere that doesn’t have these laws, you can still operate the principle that killing people is wrong in your daily choices! So, a principle can guide you and your behaviour, as well as being the source of a law.

Of course, we may need laws where we cannot trust people to apply a principle for themselves. If the law does not require water companies to avoid polluting our waterways with raw sewage, will they do that for themselves? If the law allows non-domiciled status for tax, will a billionaire still contribute tax proportionally to their means? If the law allows wage slavery, will employers pay more than the minimum?

Under the Law of Leviticus, Jews had complex rules around ritual purity and blood sacrifice, requiring expert Teachers of the Law and inspiring the assiduousness of groups such as the Pharisees and Sadducees. Following and applying these laws could be a source of considerable anxiety and resource drain. This is the law from which Christ grants us freedom. I remember once, when Mum was a minister in the Bromley circuit, we had cause to get a taxi to church so she could lead the service. One of the ladies at that church, a self-appointed Angel of Wrath, disapproved of our causing the taxi driver to work on the Sabbath, but concluded that it was acceptable, as it constituted “digging our donkey out of a ditch”, which the Scriptures allow. In responding to this, I noted my mother exercised the love, and not judgement, which fulfils the need for any such law to be applied under the New Covenant of the gospel!

Christ has set us free by showing us a new, living way of connection with God through grace, and giving us a new covenant in this. Through relationship with God by the Spirit, we can learn to understand the principle of love, and apply that as our guide in every situation. We have no need of a complex law, because the one law from which all the others stem will do the same job, and better. Instead of being bound by ritual purity, we are bound by our relationship with God as new creations in Her grace, and our knowledge of Her mercy. The ability to follow the principle instead of the law that stems from it assumes a connection with the heart of God.

Jesus makes it clear, in the passage we heard today from his sermon, that if our actions do not reflect our principles, then our lip service to those principles is meaningless. By their fruits shall ye know them. If we do not enact the word, it is as though we have never heard it. Jesus, as the Word of God, is defined within the Trinity by physically existing in time and space – he is God clothed in flesh. The Word is also the Action of God: it comes to be with us; it teaches, commands and heals; it confronts the powerful, liberates the oppressed and saves the sinner; it creates life; it dies and harrows Hell and is re-spoken in the resurrection and again and again in the life of every believer. Christ is the Word in Action.

Faith without works is dead (James 2:14). If I speak without love, I am like a sounding brass (1 Corinthians 13:1). Saying, “Lord, Lord!” won’t get you into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 7:21). But this isn’t a threat; it’s simple truth. When we rely on God’s Word – Christ – to guide us, he becomes the cornerstone of the building we make of our life. Following the law of love will guide us to safety, justice and peace.

At times how to do this may be obvious, and at others may require discernment. Before the Gospel passage we heard, Jesus gave his teaching about judgement, and paying mind to the plank in our own eye before the speck in our brother’s. Because we use the word judgement in more than one way, that can feel confusing. We do exercise our judgement in choosing how to act, but we don’t sit as judge over others, deciding whether or not they’re OK with God. Prudence, yes, but condemnation, no; and remember that the only person you truly have governance over is yourself.

I think following the law of love can also be difficult to do, and even scary sometimes. That’s why the way into the Kingdom is a strait and narrow one. (By the way, it’s strait without a gh – as in a closely bound and compressing passage, perhaps without any possibility of changing path once you’ve committed to it.) Good News to the poor is great if you are poor, but probably scary if you’re rich; because you are being asked to give up the stability of money and rely on the invisible foundation of God, who seems to be OK with us suffering in the ways that a nice cushion of money prevents. Of course, money can run away like sand.

The actor Michael Sheen, among the many things he does, is heavily involved in an endeavour called the Homeless World Cup. It’s a football tournament for homeless people, that restores self-belief and purpose, creates human connection and acts as a relief to the hard lives of homeless people and, for some, perhaps an eventual route out of homelessness. One year, funding suddenly fell through, and the event faced cancellation; so Michael Sheen sold his properties and put all his £2 million into the charity so that the event could continue. He has since declared himself a not-for-profit actor, and continues to feed his earnings into his local community and the charities he supports. That is a powerful level of commitment to what he believes in.

I don’t have £2 million, and I don’t imagine you do either. More and more of us are finding ourselves moved steadily further into the category of the financially poor. But we are rich in other ways. The love of God cannot be taken from us; and its power to transform, heal and save cannot be removed. We are called to enact the Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven, and one of the ways we can do that is to cast our vote according to its principles.

There is no law telling us that God wants us to vote for a certain party. So we must look at their manifestos, how their members have voted, what they have done when in power, what sort of environment they have created in government and in the country. Have they helped the poor, improved the lives of disabled people, supported women and children, created ways for prisoners to become functional members of society, educated the ignorant, housed the homeless? When I vote, rather than considering what will get me the most money, or who sounds clever and who the establishment approves of, let me look at who is speaking for the minorities, the disabled, the oppressed, the children, the earth and its creatures. And let me see who pays more than lip service: who has policies that outline how they will act to reflect these Gospel concerns, not just statements that they will look into it? 

We are called to a pathway of witness. The light that we have received should shine from us, so that other people can also see. We are called to commit to the law of love, to act accordingly and so bring good with us wherever there is suffering. In following Jesus, we strive to do like Jesus, and to prioritise his concerns. Then, we can rest free and easy, however hard life might be: because Christ is our cornerstone, the Gospel our handbook to right living, and the Kingdom of Heaven our home.

Our Lantern Group meeting for June

We started off as usual by everyone in our circle sharing what's been on their mind lately — with the usual diverse and interesting answers.

Then we sang together. Our songs this time were:

Blessed assurance

Who would true valour see

Will your anchor hold

My faith it is an oaken staff (slightly different words)

I am weak but thou art strong (equally delightful here)

After that we watched this video together.

Then we discussed the questions on this handout sheet.

At the end we finished with this vesper.

We had such a happy, interesting, inspiring evening.

Our mantra to take away this time was the graphic (by Kayleigh W) from the handout sheet that says "Everything is going to be okay".

I got this graphic from the excellent online store Redbubble, as stickers and postcards, so people could choose either or both, depending where they wanted to put it at home so they would keep coming across it and remind them to say it as a mantra.

I wish you'd been with us, but I hope this helps you share something of what we did.  x Pen

Thinkabout from the Parish Mass from St John's, Pevensey Road on Sunday June 23rd

Rather than record separately at home, I'm giving you the full service from our parish Mass, because the text of the readings and the song we had before the thinkabout was very much part of the thought here.

The thinkabout starts almost exactly 20 minutes in.

Here follows the text of the thinkabout.

This word, noumenon, is brought to our attention by the 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant.

The word is originally classical Greek, and expresses the concept of a thing in itself, something of reality unsullied by anyone’s take on it or views about it   projected onto it. It’s a reality that lies behind or beyond the world of the senses. As soon as we think about it or try to get our heads round it or say what it is, we lose part of it, we muddy the water by getting mixed up in it ourselves.

In Kant’s philosophy, he makes a distinction between noumena and phenomena — both are realities, but phenomena are real in the sense that a red umbrella is real; yes, it’s there, you can touch it and use it, but it’s boundaried by the limitations of time and space and definition, and anyway everyone sees a different shade of red.

A noumenon is not like that. The noumenon has not been, and cannot be, limited by definition and perception. It can be encountered, we can be aware of it, but it is what it is, we cannot appropriate it. The noumenon can lie behind phenomena that we can see and touch, but it cannot be reduced to a phenomenon.

In Taoist thought, it seems to me that this is exactly what the Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu meant when he wrote:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth. 

In Judaeo-Christian thought, I think we encounter something similar when God says to Moses, “I Am that I Am”.  So, God can be met, one can be in the presence of God — in fact you can’t get out of the presence of God, try as you might — but you cannot annex or define or encapsulate God. Your best bet is to start with reality, because that’s what God is. God, like a noumenon, is unbounded by our projected opinions. As C.S. Lewis put it, Aslan is not a tame lion.

In its classical Greek origin, the etymology of the word noumenon shows a root connection with the word my Yorkshire family always pronounced as nous.

“Oh, use your nous!” somebody would say in a circumstance where some practical common sense was what was required. It’s the innate, intuitive, appropriate feeling your way to what is needed in the moment. I love it that this earthy common sense, this instinctive informal knowing, is linguistically related to the being of a thing-in-itself that cannot be grasped or defined or pinned down. Common sense can touch what eludes definition.

Now, today, as every week, we had three readings — Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel.

Let’s see if we can discern the presence of the noumenon. So, use your nous, and let’s look at them.

The Old Testament lesson most likely makes you feel a bit uneasy. Poor old Job, eh?

He’s just lost everything. His property, his children, his health — everything. He is distraught. He’s driven mad by his friends trying to make sense of it with the religious and moral wisdom that under normal circumstances make absolute sense but in this instance totally fail to meet the case. And his wife, living with the same loss and grief, seeing her husband sitting in the dust, scraping his sores silently, says bitterly, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die”

Then, in the passage we heard today, the Bible says God spoke to Job out of the storm.

And the reading we heard makes it sound as if God absolutely gave Job what for. Told him off in no uncertain terms. It reads like the most excoriating and unreasonable mother of all divine rants. 

But we must be wary of turning the noumenon into a phenomenon, of projecting onto the great I Am That I Am   the tone of voice and attitude of mind that this looks like to us at first sight.    I’ll come back to that.

Then we come to our epistle. The most glorious translation for this, in my opinion, is that of the New English Bible: 

“As God’s servants, we try to recommend ourselves in all circumstances by our steadfast endurance: in hardships and dire straits; flogged, imprisoned, mobbed; over-worked, sleepless, starving. …  we are the imposters who seek the truth, the unknown men whom all men know; dying we still live on; disciplined by suffering, we are not done to death; in our sorrows we always have cause for joy; poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless we own the world.”

This is the way the prophet Zechariah recommended when he said, “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.” 

It’s about reaching beyond the world of phenomena to touch the noumenon, the steadfast, unchanging, causal reality from which life proceeds. It’s about having the insight and the audacity to see that behind and beneath anything and everything life can throw at us is a tremendous and creative mystery, more real than anything found in this world.

Talking this through with Grace the other day, I remarked that it reminds me of Kirsty Allsop in Love it or List It, if you’ve ever seen that on the telly, where she comes into a family’s house with grand plans for renovation. There’s that moment when their kitchen has been ripped out and their sitting room wall is in rubble and the ceiling is held up by acrow props, and she stands in the middle of complete demolition in a cloud of cement dust, seized by excitement at what is coming into being.

And Grace said, “Yes! It’s about holding the vision! About seeing beyond the present devastation to the new reality that will emerge from it!”

I don’t suppose the apostles enjoyed being flogged and derided any more than the rest of us would, but they had enough of Kirsty Allsop in their inner make-up to hold the vision of the way life could be, conditioned by the undefined but unconquerable absolute reality of the I Am That I Am, the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead.

And then we come to the Gospel. Jesus, as the storm raged about them: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he spoke  into the phenomenon of the storm   the intrinsic reality, the I Am That I Am, that he brought into their circumstances — “Peace, be still.”

There’s a teacher called Helen Hamilton, who said, “We can notice that we are not using our mind or our senses to tune into the Noumenon. We must check and check again until it is obvious. When we come to know we are already looking FROM the Noumenon it will begin to dissolve the idea that we were ever a separate being.”

Jesus is looking, acting, responding from the Noumenon. He is aligned with, held by, within the Father. Think of it like a joey surveying the world from the context of the mother kangaroo’s pouch. He is held by God. That is his outlook. 

And the Gospel reading — only Mark’s gospel puts it like this — says “They took Jesus into the boat just as he was.”

That’s the key. It is the grace to involve ourselves with the whole, unadulterated, unrefined power and presence of God. It is when, instead of projecting onto Jesus all the churchy things he’s supposed to be, “gentle Jesus meek and mild” — and macho Jesus setting up an exclusive club — when we leave all that behind and take him into the boat just as he is, then all heaven is let loose.

Now look back at the Old Testament reading and God’s words to Job. What if God, the ground of our being, the I Am That I Am, is not scolding or lecturing Job, but bringing him absolute affirmation and reassurance, a kangaroo pouch to climb into, a Kirsty Allsop view on the world?

What if God’s saying, “I am bigger than your circumstances. I was here at the foundation of the world, before any of this. I can bring hope and magnificence out of Ground Zero. From this present devastation you can absolutely trust me to bring life and hope and a new beginning. Everything is going to be okay. We’ve got this.”

What the apostles in our epistle were doing, what Jesus in the storm on Galilee was doing, what God is showing Job how to do, is looking from the Noumenon, the determinant reality, at the changing circumstances of life with all its sorrow and disintegration and loss. When the phenomena of life are beyond discouraging, like those in our readings — massive bereavement, punishing sickness, cruel persecution, wild weather — of course we’re going to feel rough, that was true of even Jesus; but if we learn how to look from the Noumenon, the I Am That I Am, the steady determining reality that stands while the world revolves, then we attain mastery.

It’s when we locate ourselves in the I Am That I Am, when we hold the vision and act not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit of God, that we find:

“You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains

You raise me up to walk on stormy seas

And I am strong when I am on your shoulders

You raise me up to more than I can be.”