Rowan Williams: three lectures on Narnia

This year, Rowan Williams' Holy Week Lectures were devoted to the Narnia stories of C. S. Lewis. The lectures are available online:

Lecture 1: 'Not a tame lion'
Lecture 2: 'I only tell you your own story'
Lecture 3: 'Bigger inside than outside'

When my daughter and I sat down to listen to the first lecture, she turned to me, wide-eyed, and said: 'He even sounds like a character from Narnia!'

Good Friday sermon: lose your faith

A sermon by Kim Fabricius (reposted from Holy Week 2008)

There is a lot of twaddle and guff talked during Holy Week. A few years ago I heard a Good Friday sermon – some of you heard it too – in which it was suggested that Jesus, being a carpenter, in order to distract his attention and ease his pain on the cross, may well have admired the quality of its wood. As if our Lord was thinking, “Nice bit of teak this. It’d make a great desk for the study.” It was positively Pythonesque.

No guff and twaddle today. Today I’m going to try to speak shocking, scandalous, scalding truth, say outrageous, even sacrilegious things. You will probably be too polite to heckle or jeer me, but if you walk out on me I shall consider it the highest compliment. I thought of having the elders hand out eggs for to you to throw at me, but pitied the poor cleaners. But eggs are nothing compared to the darts I’m going to fire at you. It’s time to attack your faith, wound it, leave it bleeding, dying, dead – just like the guy on the cross.

Let’s start with some cherished beliefs. For example: that our redemption was achieved by Jesus suffering more horribly than anyone else. But how could we possibly know that? Crucifixion? Yes, a terrible, terrible form of torture and execution. But Jesus’ was only one among thousands and thousands of crucifixions carried out under the so-called Pax Romana – the Roman Peace – when gibbets would stretch for miles down the Apian Way. And the death of Jesus – mercifully swift it was, he expired by mid-afternoon, most usually languished for days. Besides, after the Inquisition, after Auschwitz and the Gulags, after the killing fields in southeast Asia, the tribal slaughter in Rwanda, the mass graves in the Balkans, how can anyone possibly presume to compare national atrocities and personal tragedies, let alone grade them according to some calculus of pain?

For example: that our redemption was achieved by Jesus facing his death more courageously than anyone else. But clearly this is special pleading. And didn’t the first Christians know it – which is why they were hesitant about sensationalising the death of Jesus in terms of martyrdom. As pagans were quick to point out, rather smugly, Jesus sweating blood in Gethsemane, and crying out in agony on Calvary, compares rather unfavourably with the great philosopher Socrates on death row, calmly drinking the hemlock as he reminds a friend – his last words – to remember to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius, the god of heath. For Socrates death was the moment of release, for Jesus a time of despair.

And for example: that our redemption was achieved by Jesus dying at the hands of evil men, particularly “the Jews”. What self-serving propaganda! And what a perverse fillip to the church’s long and shameful history of anti-semitism. No, it was not the bestial but the best that killed Jesus. The state in all its glory and religion at its most awesome killed Jesus: not the mob but the upholders of public order, not the wicked but the standard-bearers of morality. Yes, the trial was conducted with unseemly haste and the evidence was selectively marshalled, but the defendant incriminated himself, confessed even, so (if you like) there were no grounds for appeal. For Jesus did undermine a religious system based on law and cult, and Jesus did threaten a political regime based on violence and retribution. Jesus acted with freedom and broke the rules, embracing the dirty, the deviant, and the dangerous. And Jesus prophetically unmasked the mighty pretensions of the local procurator and publicly subverted Caesar’s claim to lordship. Jesus really did force the hands of Caiaphas and Pilate and leave them no choice but to get rid of him. Better that one man die than that the entire social order be at risk – the tried and trusted scapegoat principle. No doubt about it, this peasant troublemaker from up north profoundly threatened the status quo. He had to go.

So: for one Holy Week forget about the suffering of Jesus, the courage of Jesus, the wickedness of it all. Forget even about the dying of Jesus: it is not to the crucifix, or even to the deposition, that I would direct you – no! Rather look at the man – dead – gaze upon the corpse of Christ, fix your eyes on his cold and rigid body, laid out on a slab, already showing signs of decomposition. I am thinking of Hans Holbein’s painting “Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb”. The Russian author Dostoevsky saw the painting, in a museum in Basel, stopping on his way to Geneva, and forever after it haunted him like a nightmare. He describes it in his great novel The Idiot. The character Prince Myshkin says: “Why some people may lose their faith by looking at that picture!”

This sermon doesn’t have three points, it’s got three words: Lose your faith! (I warned you I would be sacrilegious.) Yes, lose your faith. Lose your faith in God. For as the French mystic Simone Weil insisted, there is a kind of atheism that is purifying, cleansing us of idols. Lose your faith in the god that the cross exposes as a no-god, a sham god. Lose your faith in the god who is but the product of your projections, fantasies, wishes, and needs, a security blanket or good-luck charm god. Lose your faith in the god who is there to hold your hand, solve your problems, rescue you from your trials and tribulations, the deus ex machina, literally the “machine god”, wheeled out onto the stage in ancient Greek drama, introduced to the plot artificially to resolve its complications and secure a happy ending. Lose your faith in the god who confers upon you a privileged status that is safe and secure. Lose your faith in the god who promises you health, wealth, fulfilment, and success, who pulls rabbits out of hats. Lose your faith in the god with whom your conscience can be at ease with itself. Lose your faith in the god who, in Dennis Potter’s words, is the bandage, not the wound. Lose your faith in the god who always answers when you pray and comes when you call. Lose your faith in the god who is never hidden, absent, dead, entombed. For the “Father who art in heaven” – this week he is to be found in hell – with his Son.

No one puts it more starkly – or more honestly and truthfully – than Bonhoeffer. We must recognize, he wrote from prison, “that we have to learn to live in the world ‘as if God were not here’. And this is just what we do recognize – before God! God himself compels us to recognize it… God would have us know that we must live as men and women who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us… Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross” – and then down from the cross and into the grave. “He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.” God a Super-Power? That god is a demon, the Devil. If that god is your Lord, this week is a call for “regime change” (Walter Brueggemann).

So, yes, lose your faith! For as with life, so with faith: only those who lose it will find it. Or rather may find it. Faith is a risk, and discipleship demands that we learn to live with insecurity and uncertainty, setting out on a journey without a map, with companions who are as lost as we are, following a leader who is always way ahead of us, beckoning mysteriously, “Follow me!”, and then vanishing just as we arrive. God is mystery, ineffable mystery, naming a reality that we know, but the more we know, the more we are forced to un-know and rethink everything we thought we knew.

But hang on, Kim, frankly you’ve lost us. We don’t know what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, it sounds crazy, foolish. You’ve accomplished the remarkable achievement of making someone like Rowan Williams sound lucid, simple, straightforward. And you’re supposed to be a preacher, and isn’t the whole point of the sermon to make it easier to understand God, to increase our faith, so that we can go back to the world feeling edified, uplifted, and ready to share the Good News? Not today it’s not. Today I can’t help you. This week no one can help you. Come Friday, not even God – especially not God – can help you. And come Saturday, God himself is lying in a tomb. Emptiness. Zero. Nothing. But might it be a pregnant emptiness, a significant zero, a silent nothing that yet says everything? (after Alan E. Lewis). We shall have to wait till Easter. Only then shall we learn that this Week is Holy, and its Friday Good. Only then may we just find a new faith rising from the old faith that I pray you will lose today.

ER: an Easter sermon

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

ER – Easter Resurrection, of course! But ER also refers to something else – the “Emergency Room” – which is what Americans call your “Casualty Ward”. It also refers to the award-winning American hospital drama ER which concluded in April last year.

For me one of the most memorable episodes is the one in which Carter flies from Chicago to the civil war-torn Congo to fetch the body of his Croatian friend and colleague Kovaç. Kovaç has been out in the African bush doing voluntary medical work, but he has now been reported killed in the fighting. In fact, Kovaç is still alive. Flashback: it shows a group of men captured by irregulars, kneeling in a clearing, their arms thrown back over their heads, their wrists tied together. One by one they are being dragged by soldiers into a hut and summarily executed. A close-up shows Kovaç talking to the terrified man next to him about how he lost his belief in God. It had happened during the recent bloody ethnic conflict in the Balkans: Kovaç’s devout Catholic faith died as a result of the genocidal atrocities he had witnessed. And then motioning his head towards the hut and the atrocity they are now witnessing, Kovaç says, “It is hard to believe in the reality of God amidst such suffering and death.”

“It is hard to believe in the reality of God amidst such suffering and death.” It is indeed. Kovaç speaks for all of us. For ask yourself: What, in fact, act as triggers for, or a confirmation of, popular belief in the reality of God?

Nature for one: a stunning sunset, a star-lit sky, a snow-covered mountain, or just a glorious summer day. Or, more philosophically, the sheer existence of the world, the fact that there is “something” rather than “nothing”; more specifically, the exquisite “design” of the universe, its order, beauty, and variety.

Then there is worship and prayer – here too people say they know the reality of God. There is the Bible and (for some!) the sermon, and also the sacrament. There are stirring hymns. And there is prayer, spoken or silent, “the peace of God that passes all understanding”.

Then there is music, art, and literature. In a symphony by Beethoven or an opera by Mozart, in a sculpture by Michelangelo or a painting by Rembrandt, in a sonnet or play by Shakespeare or a novel by Tolstoy – there too people say they sense the reality of God.

And, of course, in human relationships – in romantic and conjugal love, in the birth of a baby, in the bond between parents and children, in close friendships – here also people see God at work.

But “amidst suffering and death”? How often have you heard someone say they found faith amidst suffering and death? No, amidst suffering and death people don’t find faith, rather, like Kovaç, they lose it. The question “How can one believe in God after Auschwitz?” haunts the post-Holocaust religious imagination and continues to beggar contemporary belief. And the answer is: “Only if one can believe in God in Auschwitz.”

Which takes us to a graveyard in Jerusalem on the first Easter Sunday morning. Jesus of Nazareth, who attested to the reality of God in his ministry, is dead, murdered by judicial execution, taken out and, not shot, but crucified, a much worse fate. His mangled body now lies in a tomb in the early stages of putrefaction. On the large stone that covers the tomb might well be written the graffiti “God is dead”. God certainly does not seem to be present. The disciples have scattered in fear, the women have gathered to mourn, but they do not feel that God is there with them. They feel only the gaping hole of God’s absence.

We moderns – we think that the question raised by the crucifixion of Jesus, and answered by the resurrection of Jesus, is: Is there life after death? But that was not the burning question on the minds of the first friends of Jesus. The Sadducees did not believe in life after death, but most of first century Judaism did. So too did almost all the pagan world. Socrates could drink the hemlock with a smile, knowing that his soul was escaping the tomb of the body and returning to the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty. But Jesus died on the cross in agony and doubt. The God he claimed to represent did not save him. Had Jesus been deluded, or borne false witness? Had God, by his silence, dissociated himself from Jesus and consented to his death? Indeed, did the execution of Jesus signify God’s judgement and curse on Jesus? These questions about the reality of the God of Jesus – questions not about life after death but questions, indeed, of life and death – these were the questions of the first friends of Jesus. For, with Dr. Kovaç, they would have agreed that it is hard to believe in the reality of God in the midst of such suffering and death.

Can you see, then, the really radical content of the Easter message that the crucified Jesus is risen and reigns? That his coronation has taken place not on a throne but on a cross, and that his regalia were a crown of thorns, not jewels? That his reign begins not in a royal palace but in a wretched graveyard? That even now he wears the scars of his torment, and that he will wear them for all eternity? It is hard to believe in the reality of God amidst such suffering and death? On the contrary, Good Friday and Easter proclaim that one can only – ultimately – believe in the reality of God amidst such suffering and death, that such suffering and death are the acid test of authentic faith.

You might say that Easter relocates the reality of God and redefines the holy, taking us off the sacred path of spiritual highs and into the wilderness of desolation. Easter tells us that God is precisely in those places where you would never expect to find him. Easter confirms that Jesus was not deceitful or deluded, confirms that God was with Jesus in his ministry, confirms that his practices of forgiveness in the face of vengeance, truthfulness in the face of lies, and non-violence in the face of intimidation are the practices of God himself; but, further still, Easter asserts that the places such practices lead – the witness box of Caiaphas, the judgement hall of Pilate, the torturer’s cell and the executioner’s block, and, finally, the graveyard – that these seemingly most unholy of places are, in fact, the holiest of grounds.

Not apart from suffering and death and only in those pleasant places of nature, worship, art, and family and friends, but in suffering and death God, God experiencing it, absorbing it, transforming it into a new kind of life – that is the message of today’s ER. And it turns out to be the message of the telly ER too. For even as Kovaç, the last man left, awaits his execution, he suddenly begins to pray. Not the atheist’s prayer of desperation, a prayer for deliverance with nothing left to lose. No, it is a prayer of communion with the God Kovaç suddenly senses is real in the midst of such suffering and death. His former faith was truly dead and buried, but a new faith has risen from its grave. As the poet W. H. Auden would put it, he doesn’t believe still, he believes again. My friends, it’s a new day: like Kovaç, may we all experience “a joy whose historical form is integrity in darkness” (Nicholas Lash) – and believe again.

Execution: a Good Friday sermon

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

It was fifty years ago, a day in May in 1960 (May 2, to be exact) – and I’ll never forget it. I was eleven, in the sixth grade, and we were sitting in Mrs. Turner’s class. And we were all watching the clock. For the end of the lesson, or lunch-break, or the final bell of the day? No, for the striking of the hour. Because when the hour struck, some pellets containing lethal gas would drop into the chamber in which a condemned man sat strapped to a chair in San Quentin Prison on the other side of the country, and in a few minutes Caryl Chessman would be dead.

The case was a cause célèbre. Chessman was a twenty-seven year-old parolee who had spent the better part of his adult life in and out of prison, when, in 1948, he was arrested in Los Angeles, allegedly as the notorious Red-Light Bandit. The Bandit would approach women parked in isolated places, flash a red light resembling one used by the police, rob them, and then, after forcing them to another location, rape them. Chessman signed a confession – which, however, he later retracted, claiming police brutality – but the confession, along with eye witness testimony, led to Chessman’s conviction on seventeen counts, including kidnapping. Under California’s “Little Lindbergh” Law, kidnapping was a capital crime. The jury did not recommend the mercy of a life sentence.

Thus began a twelve-year struggle for Chessman to escape the gas chamber. Chessman himself wrote four books in his defence, which were translated into several languages. Pleas on his behalf came in from around the world, and from some very famous people: Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Frost, Pablo Cassals, Aldous Huxley, even Billy Graham. There were eight stays of execution. The Governor of California Edmund Brown was himself an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, but he said that the law had tied his hands. The execution finally went ahead.

And as the seconds ticked by on the clock that we all watched in Mrs. Turner’s class, I wondered what it must be like. The last night, the final meal, the ultimate good-byes, the preparations, the walk to the gas chamber – step, step, step – the sitting-down, the strapping-in, the waiting-for the pellets to fall and release their fatal fumes – stay calm, breathe easy, die with dignity – but then the poison pounds your lungs, you feel the fire, you gasp and choke, and mercifully you finally lose consciousness... At least that’s the way I pictured it.

Unable to produce a reasoned argument, but viscerally convinced of the sheer barbarity of what I had just mentally witnessed, at that moment, at the age of eleven, I became an arch opponent of capital punishment.

And yet, I confess, I have also always been fascinated by the perverse genius that imagines, creates, and deploys the engines of execution – and by these deadly engines themselves. I remember coming across a picture of a guillotine in The World Book encyclopaedia that my parents had just bought me – such an exquisitely ghoulish machine. And beside it a picture of the execution of Louis XVI, with the executioner waving the severed head before the tumultuous Parisian crowd. I remember the first time I saw the classic film The Oxbow Incident, starring Henry Fonda, with its dramatic conclusion, a lynching, in a clearing, at an oak tree, the rope thrown over the branch, the innocent yet condemned man sitting on a horse, and then hanging, kicking. And I remember coming across my first proper gallows in an old photograph of the execution of those who plotted the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And then a photograph of “Old Sparky”, the electric chair in the New York Prison Sing-Sing. And that famous footage of the summary shooting, caught at the moment of the pistol-fire, of a Viet Cong suspect by a South Vietnamese officer. And, latterly, both clinical and eyewitness accounts of death by lethal injection. And on, and on, right up, to Michael Moore’s brilliant film Fahrenheit 9/11, where I saw my first public beheading-by-sword in a Saudi Arabian sports stadium of all places, “Dispatch of the Day”. And then the freak-show of the hanging of Saddam Hussein. And I would – do – always think what does the condemned man experience approaching his execution – calm resignation, petrifying fear, total despair? And the death itself – what does it feel like, the slice of the blade, the snap of the neck, the killer chemicals kicking in? And the onlookers – what on earth are they doing there? Are they not a more savage spectacle than the execution itself?

And then I become a Christian and – behold – I am introduced to the most exquisite method of execution ever devised by the perverse and sadistic mind of man: crucifixion. Invented by the ancient Persians, discovered and brought back to the Mediterranean world by Alexander the Great, passed on to the Carthaginians, and finally picked up by the Romans, who innovated, modified, and perfected the form. If you want to see the whole grizzly process done in lurid colour and with all the latest digital technology, I would refer you to Mel Gibson’s abattoir of a film The Passion of the Christ.

But the whole point of crucifixion is not just to kill, and certainly, in contrast to the “progress” of more modern forms of execution, not to kill quickly: the whole point is the torture, relentless, prolonged torture, exploring new vistas of pain, extracting every drop of blood, and supplementing the agony with degradation and humiliation: tied to a post, scourging by flagellum, a whip of several heavy leather thongs with two small balls of lead attached near the ends, that break the skin, attack the tissue, and finally lead to massive arterial bleeding; the crown of thorns, not tiny pricks but massive spikes, forced into the scalp, one of the most vascular areas of the body; the exhausting final journey from prison courtyard to the place aptly called The Skull, bearing the cross-piece known as the patibulum, strapped to the shoulders, weighing in at over a hundred pounds, the local folk shouting abuse along the via dolorosa; and then at the site of execution, the wrought-iron nails, stakes, two driven not into the palms but the wrists, and, feet pressed together, another driven through the arch of each; and then the raising of the cross; and then, amidst searing heat, buzzing flies, mocking soldiers, and jeering crowds, the long, slow torment of dying – nail against nerve and bone, body fixed but contorted, cramp and paralysis, the struggle for breath, the final, doleful cry – death by exhaustion and asphyxiation.

Interestingly, however, quite unlike Gibson, Mark shows little interest in the physical agony of Jesus. Nor does the second evangelist share my morbid fascination with the psychology of execution. And, of course, his passion narrative is hardly a protest against capital punishment itself. No, Mark’s interest lies neither in the agony of the violence nor in the purveying of propaganda, but in the awful enigma of the cry of dereliction – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (15:34) – from the one who had always called God Abba, Father.

Throughout the 15th chapter of the gospel there are many allusions to Psalm 22, which begins with a pious poet crying out to God in pain, but ends with an exclamation of praise. And no doubt you have heard preachers claiming that it is in this context that we must understand Christ’s cry of dereliction: Jesus cannot really have felt abandoned by God, and a fortiori, he cannot really have been abandoned by God, rather he was citing the psalmist to cheer himself up, to bolster his confidence in a happy ending.

But, no! This is special pleading, as even Calvin recognised. Indeed it was Calvin’s deep insight into the cry of dereliction that it represents nothing less than Christ’s decent into hell itself, the place of ultimate, hopeless godlessness. Jesus does feel godforsaken, because indeed he is godforsaken. And why? Because of his complete identification and solidarity with those who themselves have forsaken God, i.e. with the godless, i.e. with his enemies and executioners. That is, Christ’s godforsakenness and human godlessness are but two sides of the same coin, as Jesus hangs in the place where the godless should be and willingly accepts godforsakenness as God’s just judgement on sin on our behalf. In other words, the utter depths of Christ’s godforsakenness are but the flipside of the sublime depths of his love for the godless, for the world, for the executed and for the executioner, for you and me. The Father loves us so much that he goes to this extreme: let my only Son die and go to hell, let a gulf, a chasm, an abyss open up in our relationship, let death itself be taken into my very being, into the very being of God.

But – to conclude – so what? The Son is dead. The Father grieves. The Spirit, the bond of their love, is broken. For us? For everyone? Do we really believe that? Perhaps we should just stick to a grim fascination with the execution, this execution of all executions, one that makes the gassing of Chessman, and the guillotining, hanging, electrocuting, shooting, injecting of countless other condemned people, guilty and innocent, seem like just another day at the office. And, of course, even a deicide has not stopped, for most of the world, the baleful work of business as usual.

So let’s stop there. Here endeth the sermon. But one thing. Humour me with a thought-experiment. For today ponder this execution in the light of all executions – and ponder all executions in the light of this execution. (And remember, Jesus was guilty as charged – sedition – and got what he deserved.) See what it does for you, see what it means to you, see if it may even change you, what you think about capital punishment, what you think about God and salvation. In any case, let Easter be not yet.

Good Friday in the media

For a special Good Friday broadcast, I was interviewed on ABC's Radio National – talking about Richard Dawkins, the death of Christ, and the meaning of atonement. You can listen to the programme here (my segment starts around 25:20). Alas, I can now add radio to the long list of things that I'm not very good at!

But elsewhere (and more eloquently) in the ABC, Scott Stephens offers a powerful critique of the recent Global Atheist Convention: Hillsong for the unbelievers.

Stations of the cross in Sydney

Yesterday I went to see the Stations of the Cross exhibition at St Ives Uniting Church in Sydney. It features 15 commissioned works (the 14 traditional stations, plus the resurrection) by some of Australia's leading visual artists. If you're in Sydney, you might like to go along and check it out – Easter Sunday is the last day of the exhibition.

My favourites (click to enlarge) include this triptych by Kevin McKay – this is the 13th station, where Jesus is taken down from the cross. The middle canvas is torn open:

After we viewed the exhibition yesterday, I gave a short impromptu reflection on this work. The outstretched hand of God has become the lifeless hand of Adam. A little ladder leans against the cross. The ladder, like the cross – and like the painting itself – is our own handiwork. Silent and bereft, we wait to receive the dead god into our arms. And at the heart of all things is a gaping wound. As the spear rends Christ's side, the very fabric of creation is torn open. This wound is the world's healing. It is the opening through which God's glory shines into the world. As Leonard Cohen sings: "There is a crack, a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in."

Here's another triptych from the exhibition. This is Euan McLeod's depiction of the 9th station, where Jesus falls:

An empty tomb hymn

John Hartley posted this playful hymn as a comment – it’s so good, I can’t resist posting it here as well:

Easter’s dawning day reveals
a tomb, once filled, now empty!
All in vain were Pilate’s seals,
and questions rise aplenty!

Did he swoon and then revive,
to push enormous boulders?
Could he really be alive
though pierced by testing soldiers?

Did the women all forget
the tomb’s exact location?
Is he maybe buried yet
awaiting exhumation?

Did some robbers come and hump
his body off for profit?
Surely they would not just dump
the linen wrappings off it?

Did authorities remove
the body for protection?
They’d produce it! That would prove
there’d been no resurrection!

In a Godless universe
the dead stay dead forever.
If he rose, then here’s the worst:
this God exists! Oh, bother!

One more Easter sermon: early on the first day of the week

A sermon by Douglas Harink

Text: Matt. 28:1-10; 2 Cor. 5:11-6:2

The arch of the sun’s journey is now noticeably higher and longer. We step into its path and feel its warm renewing power as it passes over. The lawn, only last week heavily burdened with its white winter coat, now wears a lighter green. In that sunny patch of soil on the south side of the house the first shoots of crocuses and daffodils push out from their dark habitation. The robin – even if she is just plain annoying at 4:00 in the morning – joyfully and incessantly announces that she will soon steal four perfect blue ovals from the sky and put them in her nest. A jogger in a tank top and a cyclist in shorts pull on the near fringes of the reluctant season. And all over again we thrill to the very same story: the lamb of spring will slay the lion of winter, and all will be well.

We may be forgiven for thinking that spring is the season of resurrection. Yes, we may be forgiven. But it is forgiveness that we would need. Think for a moment: if you were to travel on this very Easter day to New Zealand perhaps, or the southern tips of Chile or Argentina, another season altogether would be making itself felt, with ever shorter days, and a chill in the air, and leaves falling, and sweaters and jackets being donned rather than doffed. The birds would be flying to warmer climes. The natural rhythm would be tending toward the cold and the dark and the dormant.

Easter is not a season in nature’s cycle. Resurrection is not a stage in the circle of life. The kingdom of God is not a hidden potential in this world. There is no power within us that will bring about the new creation.

In fact, there is nothing natural in any of the events of these days. On Good Friday all of Jesus’ natural human powers – and at the age of about 30 years those would be at their peak – all of his natural human powers are abruptly interrupted, halted, snuffed out: he is arrested, tried, and brutally executed. He is truly dead and buried. On the next day, the Sabbath, Jesus is not resting, as a faithful Jew should. No, he is dead, lifeless, empty – a corpse. His life has come to an end; he has no inner resources of renewal, there is no vital force of nature that can bring him back.

And so Easter is in no sense an awakening; it is not a rejuvenation; it is not a resuscitation, it is not even a miraculous reversal of death. Resurrection is not simply the next thing that Jesus does, or the next thing that happens to him in the natural course of things. No. Resurrection is something else altogether, something wholly other, something from beyond, something purely unnatural. Resurrection is God.

“All of this is from God,” Paul declares in our text. If Good Friday is about Jesus’ life being brutally interrupted, captured and destroyed by the powers of sin and death, Easter is about Jesus’ death being even more brutally interrupted, captured, and destroyed by God. Resurrection is the unimaginable power of God’s very own eternal life coming upon the lifeless, empty body of Jesus. Life swallows death. Think on that image for a moment. God’s life swallows the death of God’s Son, destroying death by consuming it. Easter is about Jesus’ dead body being taken up into the indestructible life of God, and being given back to us as the transfigured body of his living glory. Resurrection is the Father’s eternally living YES spoken over the faithful life and death of his only Son in the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. Resurrection is Jesus’ death swallowed up in divine victory. Easter is God.

And that is why Paul must speak of a new creation. Jesus Christ lives because God has called forth a new reality from the nothingness of death. The powers of this age cannot bring about a new world. No amount of effort on our part can generate a new humanity. Trying harder, planning strategically, employing best practices, gaining more control, moving the agenda forward, being purpose-driven, taking out the competition, defeating the enemy – those are the ways that we get from here to there, from today to tomorrow, from failure to success, from defeat to victory, in our various worlds of family, work, community and nation. They are driven by the fear that there is never enough life to go around, that it is a scarce commodity, that death finally wins. And so we desire and acquire and hoard and defend the means of life for ourselves: water and land, crops and cattle, gas and oil, gold and uranium, drugs and hospitals, weapons and warships – mine, all mine, because there is never enough of life to go around, and I must survive even if no-one else does. Everyone else is potentially an enemy of my life. Does even God want his share? Forget about it!

But the new creation and the resurrection life of God can never be acquired by winning the competition over the scarce resources of life, nor even more gently, by trying harder, planning strategically, employing best practices, gaining more control, moving the agenda forward, being purpose-driven. There is no way from here to the new creation. There is no way from here to the kingdom of resurrection. The kingdom can only come. The new creation can only be given.

And the kingdom does come from God. The new creation is given by God. It pours forth from God’s own inexhaustible excess of life. While we are trying desperately to grasp after life, as much of it as possible – and don’t let anyone get in my way, or have any of what I’ve got – while we are doing that, God is pouring life out freely upon everyone – no limits, no stinginess.

“All of this is from God,” declares Paul. And it is all from God through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It comes to us from God, only because God has made all of us, the whole of humanity, sharers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ we have already died. When Christ died, we died with him. “One has died for all; therefore all have died,” says Paul.

We have to grant that this is a strange thought. What can it mean? It at least means this: not even death can separate us from Christ. He himself was truly dead, and we ourselves have already truly shared in his death. The death which will still inevitably come upon us has already come upon Jesus – and yet it could not hold him. We have already died with Christ. How can death hold us in fear and bondage, if we have already been to hell and back with Jesus? Death is still real, but it has no real power, no power to bind, no power to destroy finally, and therefore no power to terrify. For Jesus Christ himself, once dead, has been raised up and now lives eternally with the very life of God. Death cannot hold us, not now, not ever. “He died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”

Easter is God’s life poured out on the crucified and buried Jesus; and poured out also on us, because our life, like our death, happens first in Jesus. A whole new human reality comes into being when Jesus is raised from the dead. He himself is the Human One, the very reality of human being fully alive with the life of God, living for God. If you want to know human being in all its truth, look to Christ. He is the new creation. If you want to know your friends or your neighbours or your fellow citizens or your enemies in all their truth, look to Christ. In him they are created anew. “From now on,” Paul declares, “all of the old standards of judgment are gone. If anyone is in Christ the new creation has already dawned; the old no longer has power; the new is all there is.”

Christ alone is the measure not only of what we see, but also of how we see. There is no human being who has not already died in Christ; there is no human being who is not already being called to life in Christ. That is how we are to know and live with every person whom we now encounter. We are not in a fierce competition with either friend or enemy for resurrection life as a scarce commodity. Easter inaugurates the economy of God’s life in abundance. Even if I share all that I think I have with another, I have not made a dent in the supply. The root of reconciliation with God, and reconciliation with my neighbour, is sunk deep in the inexhaustible soil of resurrection life.

Easter calls us to life, to be alive in that very power of divine life which raised Jesus from the dead. In him we live; for him we live; to him we live. Do I need to spell out in detail what that life looks like? I don’t think so. Would it not look like life lived according to the vision of the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus tells us? Would it not look like life bearing the fruits of the Spirit, as Paul tells us? Would it not look like the life of holy love and practical care that we read about in the letters of John and James? Would it not look like a life of patient suffering in the face of persecution of which Peter writes? But before all, and above all, and in all, would it not look like the very life which Jesus Christ himself lived from the day of his baptism to the day of his crucifixion? He is the way, the truth and life; and this is the life given for us and to us; this is the life we are called into; this is life beyond the reach of death.

Each of the four gospels records that the risen Jesus appeared at dawn, early on the first day of the week. I believe that is much more than a note about the calendar. In those three days of Easter – the sixth day of the week, Good Friday; the seventh or Sabbath day, Holy Saturday; and the first day of the week, Resurrection Day – in those three days we find ourselves on the very hinge of creation, time and history. In the first creation, on the first day of the week the light shines in the darkness and the story of creation moves out from there. The whole week of creation finds its culmination in the seventh day, in the Sabbath of God’s delight. But through human sin and cosmic catastrophe that first creation is now in bondage to decay and death. The cross of Christ now stands as the emblem of the whole week of creation in bondage. The Sabbath is no longer the emblem of divine rest and delight, but of the deathly silence of the Word made flesh, who takes his place among the dead.

Will God abandon his Holy One to the grave, and in him all the work of his hands from the very beginning until now?

No! “Early on the first day of the week,” God renders judgment. This one who was crucified shall live with the very life of God. All of creation in its bondage to death, and all of humanity in its bondage to sin, shall be gathered up into this one human body. Nothing shall be left behind. All things, contracted to this span, shall in him now explode with the light and life of God himself. Early on the first day of the week, this day, the day of resurrection – early on the first day of the week, creation begins again, humanity begins again, life begins again. “All this is from God.” We do not live toward this day, as we once lived toward the Sabbath. We live from this day. Or rather, we live in this day. “Look,” says Paul, “now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation!”

Early on the first day of the week, the day of resurrection, the day of new creation, the day of the LORD – that’s today! Live in it.

ET and the resurrection: an Easter sermon

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

His initials are E.T., but he wasn’t that ET. He was an earthling, and his name was Ernst Troeltsch. And he’s a good way in to understanding misunderstanding the resurrection of Jesus – which gets us about as close as we can to understanding it! Confused? That’s the point! Let me explain.

Troeltsch was a German sociologist of religion who taught in Heidelberg during the early part of last century. Top of the theological agenda at the time was the relation between faith and history. For a century-and-a-half historians had been fine-tuning their methods over matters of research, evidence, probability, facts, interpretation, and so on, and, inevitably, they had begun to ask questions about the historical accuracy and reliability of the Bible. How can we be sure that the events recorded in the Bible actually happened, particularly when miracles are involved? How much confidence can we place in reports that had been handed down by word of mouth and, when finally written down, were far removed from the first eyewitnesses? And what about the inconsistencies that become apparent when comparing different gospel passages about the same incident? Can we base our faith on things so open to question? And even if our doubts could be allayed, how can so-called universal religious truth be based on historical events? And, further, how can what happened way back then and there, in a remote Mediterranean backwater, be relevant to us folk here and now in Swansea?

All these questions came to a head in the resurrection of Jesus, and ET – Ernst Troeltsch – was, as it were, one of the chief consultants to operate on the body in question. And what’s the saying? The surgery was successful – but the patient was lost, cut to pieces with the scalpel of the historical method itself.

But we must give ET his due: Troeltsch grasped that the real issue here for faith is not so much the findings of historical research, rather the real problem is the presuppositions of historical research, the way the whole project works. Because it turns out that the very methods with which historians ply their trade rule out in advance the claims that the church makes about the resurrection of Jesus. Look, Troeltsch said, this is how historians work, how they have to work: they can talk only about probabilities; they must locate events along chains of cause and effect; and events must always relate to other events, they must have analogies.

And it all sounds very reasonable. And it certainly works pretty well when you’re writing a history of the Reformation in Wales, or the rise of the English working class, or the origins of the First World War. But when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, what do you get? You get zilch, that’s what you get. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. On Troeltsch’s terms it is ruled out in principle. For faith claims that the resurrection of Jesus is unique, a one-off; that it happened out of nothing, it has no “previous”; and that, in faith, we know that out Redeemer lives.

But, yes, we must be grateful to old ET, for what he did was to sharpen the resurrection-question for Christians to the point where it tests our fundamental attitude to the modern world. The question is this: Are we to interpret the Easter event in the light of secular convictions about what constitutes “reality”, or are we to interpret secular convictions about what constitutes “reality” in the light of the Easter event? To put it most sharply: Are we going to determine what God can and cannot do on the basis of a given script, written by the Enlightenment, or are we going to allow God to determine what he can and cannot do even if it means rewriting the script? Who is in charge here? Who, in a word, is Lord?

Sceptics who argue that the tomb was empty because Jesus hadn’t actually died, or because the disciples had stolen the body, but also liberal Christians who argue that there probably was no tomb, that the body of Jesus was dumped in a common grave, and that even if there were a tomb it surely decomposed there, but not to worry, the important thing is the awesome visions the disciples had – sceptic and liberal alike view the resurrection of Jesus under the constraints of the historical method, about what can and cannot happen. And even evangelical Christians who try to explain away the inconsistencies and meld the different gospel accounts of Easter morning into a single coherent narrative, while against the sceptics and the liberals they affirm that God raised the dead Jesus, nevertheless in the very way they feel compelled to marshal the evidence, to out-argue the sceptics, they demonstrate that they too are bewitched by the constraints of modern historiography.

But as Dean Inge once famously said, if you wed yourself to the spirit of the age, it won’t be long before you are widowed. So let’s be clear. The church’s Scriptures witness to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. No, no one observed the raising of Jesus. And yes, there are different accounts of the seeing of Jesus. And no, a consistent harmonised account cannot be constructed from them. But that is precisely the point! If a totally history-friendly account could be constructed, then it most certainly would not be a witness to this event.

Of course everything that happened on Easter morning doesn’t fit together. Of course what has been called the “testimonies of the overwhelmed” (Helmut Thielicke) do not conform to the normal canons of evidence. Talk about astonishment, awe – and confusion! What else when you’re confronted by a reality that exceeds the limits of experience, reason and even imagination, a reality that is, in the strictest sense, indescribable, leaving language in a heap, its speakers tongue-tied. What else when you are hit by an earthquake that shatters the very foundations of human knowing, leaving scraps and fragments, and whose shock waves continue to reverberate and disturb.

The resurrection of Jesus – one can only try and fail to talk about it – one cannot be silent – one can only pray that the failure is a fortunate failure – the resurrection of Jesus is an event in history but not of history, an event with no “before”, a rupture, a fracture, an explosion, a big, bigger, biggest bang. As a new creation it can only be compared – as Paul compares it – with creation itself: “from the dead” with “out of nothing”. It certainly cannot be circumscribed by our so-called plausibility structures, or understood within our everyday frames of reference, rather it subverts these structures and frames and compels us to revise reality itself. Because, in short, as Karl Barth superbly and accurately put it, resurrection, finally, is “a paraphrase for God”, and God is ultimate and irreducible mystery, and the mystery of God is the hidden mystery of history, of the world itself.

“Getting inside the miracle” is a poem by Luci Shaw on the resurrection (the poets are always our best bet here):

        No, he is too quick. We never
        catch him at it. He is there
        sooner than our thought or prayer.
        Searching backwards, we cannot discover
        how, or get inside the miracle.
        …
        Enough. Refrain. Observe
        a finished work…

As sure as (Easter!) eggs is eggs, the resurrection happened, but that it happened is disclosed – Jesus makes his presence known – and it can be known only in faith, which does not answer to historical method but is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

So thanks, ET, for the clarification. And thank you, God, for the revelation, transcending time and space, for meeting us here and now in the risen Christ, with the word – because we are so afraid – “Shalom! Peace be with you.” Yes, and thank you that, if still with lingering doubt and confusion, nevertheless without apology, with boldness and joy, we can say this morning: “The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!”

An Easter icon

A guest-post by Ann Chapin (click the image to enlarge)

The trial of Jesus: a Maundy Thursday sermon

A sermon by Douglas Harink

Text: John 18-19

In the real world, in the big scheme of scheme of things, what did Jesus achieve, really? Think about it.

If we scan over Jesus’ life and deeds from the time of his baptism to the day of his crucifixion what real change in history did he bring about. The people he healed from diseases sooner or later became ill or old, and died. Even Lazarus whom he raised from the dead was at some later time dead and buried again, and his decaying body began to stink again. Those crowds to whom Jesus gave bread and fish to eat – what good was it to them? They became hungry again the very next day. The huxters and profiteers which he drove out of the temple one day – they just returned the next day to continue exploiting the poor. Where is the new economic order? Those who were rulers in Jerusalem and those who were rulers in Rome were not shaken from their seats of power. The systems they put in place and promoted and protected remained unchanged, despite his criticism of them. Where is the new world order of justice and peace for all?

There was in fact a moment when Jesus could have made a “real” difference, a brief moment when history was on his side, or he was on the side of history, and maybe everything might have been different. One day he rode into the royal city of Jerusalem, the city of the great king, and was royally hailed and hosannahed by the crowds as the one who would change everything, at least for the Jews who suffered under the Romans, but maybe for the whole world too. The power to overthrow the oppressor was at that moment his. The power to deliver his people from bondage was at that moment his. The power to bring about a just social and economic order was at that moment his. History was his for the making. He needed only to take control of its reins, to steer it to the glorious goal for which his people yearned – for which he himself yearned.

But he didn’t. Not even close! No sooner was Jesus crowned the Coming Great Messiah by a massive democratic upsurge, than he began to do everything he should not have done if he truly was the Coming One. He seems to have set himself up for the violent opposition; he seems to have just handed himself over to the powers; he seems to have simply given up control to those who really should not have it at all – because look, after all, at the destructive and oppressive mess they have made of it.

And so, Jesus is arrested, and put on trial – and who knows the end that all of that will come to? Well… we do, don’t we. And so, in the real world, in the big scheme of things, in terms of bringing about health and welfare and justice and peace for all, Jesus’ mediocre messianic mission comes a miserable end. What, really, did he achieve anyway?

But wait a minute! Why does Jesus step forward without hesitation when the police and soldiers come to ask for him and arrest him, and boldly declare, “I am he”? Why do the armed men fall to the ground, and not he? And why does he stand without fear before the high priest and hide nothing of what he has been up to from him? Why does he not flinch when one of the officers of the peace strikes him hard on the face? And the crown of thorns and the purple robe and the wooden sceptre that the soldiers dress Jesus up in – why is that he in fact looks strangely and truly royal in them? And why is it so obvious that the joke is really on the mocking soldiers, and not on him?

And why does Jesus face the governing authority as an equal, or more than an equal, and put the governor’s questions right back to him? Why does Jesus claim to possess an authority and sovereignty and government in himself which the real-world governor seems to know nothing about – an authority which is not established and maintained by swords and guns and tanks and bombs? After all, doesn’t this governor, this Pilate, represent the only power and sovereignty that matters in the real world of economics and politics and law, the supreme power to control history and its outcomes, the power to decide who gets bread and who doesn’t, the power to bind and free, the power to determine who lives and who dies. Pilate himself declares to Jesus, “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?”

Why is it that Jesus utters no demand for justice, no plea that his cause be heard, no call for witnesses to testify on his behalf? And why does he so not look or act like a victim? Who is this man – in reality? Everything is not as it seems.

Wait a minute! What if nothing is as it seems?

What if health is not finally about a balanced diet and lots of exercise, one bowel movement per day, and a regular visit to the doctor? What if it looks like sickness?

And what if life is not finally about getting a few more pain-free years added to my short time, whether through a good drug plan, or a medical miracle, or even a temporary resurrection by Jesus himself? What if it looks like death?

And what if truth is not finally about facts and claims and arguments and justifications and trumping and winning? What if it looks like silence?

And what if justice is not finally about making sure everyone gets an equal share of the goods, even though there’s barely enough to go around, and no-one comes out ahead? What if it looks like giving away everything I have?

And what if making history is not the ability to bring about the great and glorious kingdom of justice, liberty and peace for all, even if it requires that, through my power, one, or a few, or even very many have to sacrifice themselves or be sacrificed to get to that goal, which we all desire? What if making history looks like stripping to the waist, kneeling down, and scraping sod and mud and blood from someone’s feet?

And what if power is not the right to determine who eats and who doesn’t, who stays in prison and who goes free, who is executed and who gets to live? What if power looks like mercy all the way down?

Wait a minute! What if nothing is as it seems? The so-called “real world” is starting to spin. Am I crazy? Is there something I don’t know? Is the Real World anything but what I thought it was?

What if nothing is as it seems? What if Jesus is not on trial at all? What if those crying out “Crucify him!” are the ones on trial? What if those who are hitting him, and flogging him, and mocking him, and driving in the nails are the ones on trial? What if the high priest of the Jews is on trial? What if the Roman governor is on trial? What if I am on trial? What if you are on trial?

Wait a minute! What if … What if the Real is that bloody, suffocating body of human flesh now hanging there, nailed to a cross? What if the Real is that water and that blood spilling out there from his wounded side, being soaked up by the ground?

OH MY GOD!

Alfred Hitchcock, the Church, and the silence of Jesus

A post by Scott Stephens (a longer version of a piece published this week in Eureka Street)

The films of Alfred Hitchcock are often regarded as a master class on the grotesqueries of Western society. To be sure, The Birds (1963), Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960), not to mention the lesser known Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Rope (1948) and even Marnie (1964), all point to a kind of monstrous underbelly that disrupts the tranquility of everyday life. But it was with his first attempt at cinematic realism, in an attempt to depict the true story of a wrongfully accused man, that Hitchcock managed to create a horror far worse than any Norman Bates.

In The Wrong Man (1956), Manny Balestrero (played by Henry Fonda) is arrested in an unfortunate instance of mistaken identity, and, with little or no explanation, is quickly arraigned on charges of armed robbery. The central sequence of the film follows Manny as he is led through the opaque, impersonal legal apparatus that will determine his fate.

In a particularly poignant moment, Manny, his face still fixed in a look of terrified bewilderment, clutches a silver crucifix and silently prays. All the while, lawyers spew their jargon-laden bile at one another, as the disinterested jury talk among themselves. The entire courtroom scene appears to Manny as simultaneously all-powerful and completely impersonal. It is in control of his life, and it couldn’t care less. And that’s the obscenity of the entire ordeal. There is no slick dialogue or high courtroom drama in The Wrong Man – just the brutal enactment of an insane system that is convinced of its own rectitude.

While it might seem a little strange to invoke Hitchcock at Easter, I’d nevertheless suggest that we can see a similar horror at work in the trial of Jesus. The Gospel narratives depict Jesus as being paraded, like some freak at a carnival, before Pilate and then Herod, both of whom taunt and goad Jesus to accept their supposed power over him and thus to join in their insanity. They want Jesus to be part of their world, to quiver before them, or at least to rage against them. But instead, Jesus remains silent. And like Manny Balestrero’s bewildered innocence, Jesus’ silence has the effect of throwing the madness of his would-be judges into the sharpest relief. His refusal to join in their grotesque chirade creates the space, the possibility of a freedom that was unimaginable to all those freedom-fighters who tried to oppose violence with violence.

In his remarkable book, Christ on Trial, Rowan Williams suggests that what we mean when we speak of God’s transcendence ought thus to be refracted through what he calls the ‘obstinate uselessness’ of Jesus’ silence before his accusers.

‘If we are really to have our language about the transcendence – the sheer, unimaginable differentness – of God recreated, it must be by the emptying out of all we thought we knew about it, the emptying out of practically all we normally mean by greatness. No more about the lofty distance of God, the sovereignty that involves control over all circumstances: God’s “I am” can only be heard for what it really is when it has no trace of human power left to it.’

It is in this way that Jesus’ silence could begin shaping the practice of the Church. To participate in Jesus’ silence would mean to commit ourselves afresh to an alternative, non-instrumental mode of communal life. It would require that we abandon that perverse moral calculus that implicitly – and, at times, even explicitly – determines what is worthwhile and useful and constructive in Western society.

That is how I understand Stanley Hauerwas’ oft cited axiom: that the first task of the Church is not to make the world a better place, but to make the world the world. In other words, the sheer difference of the Church’s common life – what one might call our sacramentality – represents a kind of refusal to convey upon our given social, political and economic structures any moral legitimacy. It stands for the refusal to resign itself to the soulless Realpolitik that now structures and defines our societal sanity.

I doubt that there has ever been a more important time for the Church’s practice to be marked by a kind of sacred uselessness, or, to give it its more biblical designation, by charity. For charity, as the very ethical substance of the Church, would demand that the Church doesn’t ‘function’ in the way that the myriad of our state apparatuses ‘function’. Above all, it would prevent it from succumbing to the temptation to gain a place among the other state-sanctioned service providers, and thereby be required to sell its soul in exchange for recognition and federal funding. I’d contend that any such a Faustian pact with the state would constitute buying into the insanity, the pervasive nihilism that has progressively emptied our civil institutions of their capacity to act with compassion and to achieve the Good.

Like Jesus’ silence, the Church’s refusal to participate in the state’s normalized madness would go a long way toward removing the quasi-moral veneer, the unquestioned confidence in its own rectitude, whereby the state confers upon itself and its functionaries the power to pronounce any alternative as ‘mad’, abusive, extreme, impractical, or (worst of all) not conforming to ‘best practice’. Thus confronted by the sheer difference, the ‘obstinate uselessness’ of the Church’s charity, the monstrous character of our state and civil institutions might finally become clear: from the institutionalized ennui and decrepitude of federally funded disability services, to the sterile self-righteousness of the Family Law Court; from the banal instrumentalization of higher education, to the cynical politicization of indigenous affairs.

And all this in the hope that the God who vindicated Jesus’ silence, who raised the Crucified from death, would breath fresh life into a world obsessed with its own nullification.

Easter sermon: no payback!

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

Two numbers forever etched in our memories of infamy: 9/11. Reflecting back on the event a year later, one commentator (Stanley Hauerwas) wrote: It was “an apocalyptic moment Christians in America cannot ignore. Surely something like how we felt as we survived the days after September 11, 2001, is how the followers of Jesus felt after the crucifixion”: disbelief, confusion, grief, anger – and fear. We were all afraid of further acts of terror. The disciples too were afraid of further acts of terror – the state terror – of imperial Rome. What happened next?

For the followers of Jesus, there were two days of total eclipse, and then – resurrection! – an even more apocalyptic moment than the crucifixion: in Jewish thought resurrection belonged to the scenario of the end-times, when God would bring the old world of suffering and death to a dramatic conclusion and begin a new world of justice and joy. Surely a cause for celebration, you might think. But – observe – the immediate reaction of the disciples to the presence of the risen Christ is not joy – but, again, fear. A different kind of fear, the commentators tell us, than frightened fear, rather “awe” in the presence of the holy. But I wonder if there isn’t a bit of special pleading here. I wonder if there wasn’t that same fear-as-fright about their reaction, except now with a different object: not Caiaphas and Pilate but Jesus himself. For had not the cowardly disciples denied, betrayed, abandoned their leader to his fate? In other words, hadn’t they behaved in such a way as to invite and expect some sort of payback? Indeed, isn’t it that the most astonishing thing of all about the resurrection of Jesus: there was no payback!

Think of 9/11 again. On the third day, as it were, America rises from the dead, from the ashes of Ground Zero. What is the immediate reaction of the nation, embodied in the melodramatic speeches, soon to become military policy, of George Bush? What else but payback? First the easy pickings of Afghanistan, then the full-scale invasion of Iraq; and now here we are, five years later, with George Bush unbowed and unrepentant, in defiance of reason and evidence still speaking the empty rhetoric of freedom and democracy, still claiming that he did the right thing, and, notwithstanding the current anarchy and slaughter, eyes wide shut in denial, still declaring that he’d do it again: bring the superior firepower of the US, its swift and righteous sword, to bear on the evil and cowardly terrorists.

But after Easter, what does the crucified and risen Jesus do? Does he respond to his execution by marshalling that legion of angels he refused to deploy on Golgotha, smashing his way into the imperial palace with shock and awe, overwhelming the hopelessly outgunned royal guard, and exacting a righteous and terrible revenge on Pilate, who, of course, had form as a ruthless tyrant long before his showdown with the rebel from Galilee? Does he storm the Temple in a way that makes the disruptive demonstration the Sunday before look like the piece of street theatre that, in fact, it was, then advance beyond the court of Gentiles and invade the court of priests, seize the hapless Caiaphas and – how ironically apt – cast him from the spire he had once stood atop with the devil himself? Does he round up those reprehensible disciples, perhaps hood and humiliate them, or take them down to the pool of Bethesda for a bit of waterboarding, which, after all, isn’t really torture, or, at the very least, give them a tongue-lashing they’ll never forget and send them away in guilt and despair? None of the above. No violence, no vengeance – no payback!

So what does the crucified and risen Jesus do? He ignores Pilate and Caiaphas, his judges and executioners, completely. And when he meets his followers – who would believe it! – he says things like, “Do not be afraid,” and “Peace be with you.” He shows them his wounds to reassure them, and to demonstrate that even in his regnant glory his decorations will always be scars. And he commissions them to carry on his ministry – how? As avenging furies, agents of retribution? (“I’ll be back, through you, my shock troops, and this time it’s personal.”) No, no payback! Indeed the mission impossible he gives them is a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation.

But why should this surprise us? Hadn’t the crucified One already disarmed his disciples in the garden, and forgiven his killers on Calvary? Will the risen One now change his mind? In John’s gospel Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on the disciples as he gives them the gift of peace (John 20:21-22). This is John’s version of Luke’s Pentecost. But the peace of Christ is not for them alone. The man for others (Bonhoeffer) commissions a church for others. The peace they receive they must share, declare, and effect. And this peace takes the form of – forgiveness! Jesus says: “If you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven” (John 20:23). And though the construction looks like a conditional, as if forgiveness were discretionary – as if the disciples might grant forgiveness to this one but withhold it from that one – the key to Jesus’ command is its gracious sweep and urgency. Forgiveness itself is God’s judgement on sin, and forgiveness itself is the condition that makes justice possible. Wrath – whatever that might mean – must be left to the Father. This is John’s version of Matthew’s Great Commission.

Am I suggesting that forgiveness become the central plank of the West’s ethical foreign policy against terrorism? A counter-question: why the absolute astonishment, indeed repugnance, with which Christian themselves react to such a suggestion? Does it not, in fact, demonstrate – in the sense of “what difference does it make to our discipleship?” – that we do not live the truth that Jesus is the risen Lord, that we ignore the events of Holy and Easter week, as well as his life and teaching, that we honour the seventh beatitude more in the breach than the observance; rather we live as if Caesar (in whatever guise) were Lord, as if the events recorded in our tabloids rather than the stories of Jesus in the Bible define the “real” world, as if violence rather than peace were the origin, goal, and very grain of the universe? If being Christian trumped being American, British, or whatever, and if the church itself practiced a politics of peace, then at least we would have something to say to government that wasn’t the mere echo of its own loud voice.

It is a commonplace to say that the autumn of 2001 changed everything. In fact, 9/11 and its six-year wake has changed nothing. No, it was a spring weekend in the year 33, when there was a most rude interruption to the way the world does its business – a gruesome gibbet, an empty tomb, an unarmed man passing through barricades, waging peace – that is what changed everything. Though you wouldn’t know it. And why on earth should anyone, governments included, believe it when even the church doesn’t?

The American theologian Stanley Hauerwas was once asked, in his dissent from the war on terrorism: “Well, what alternative foreign policy do you have to bombing Afghanistan [and invading Iraq]?” Hauerwas replied: “My only response is [that] I do not have a foreign policy. I have something better – a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill.” People who believe in a saviour who would rather die than kill, who did die rather than kill, and who lives and rules the world – no payback! – with truth and grace, because God is non-violent, and in him there is no violence at all.

Easter: the one true day

“Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.”

—George Herbert, “Easter” (1633)

Good Friday

“Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.”

—George Herbert, “The Agonie” (1633).

Maundy Thursday hymn: Jesus kneels down, Peter reels round

A hymn by Kim Fabricius (see also Kim’s sermon for Maundy Thursday)

(Tune: Infant holy)

        Jesus kneels down,
        Peter reels round
as he’s told to take a seat.
        Jesus hushes,
        Peter blushes
at the Lord who washes feet.
        Role reversal,
        a unique play,
        dress rehearsal
        for the Friday:
Praise the God of bowl and cross!
Praise the God of bowl and cross!

        Back at table,
        still unstable,
friends of Jesus reconstrue.
        Reprimanded,
        now commanded,
“Do what I have done for you!”
        Love’s portrayal
        while they’re eating;
        Christ’s betrayal –
        self-defeating:
Reigns the God of bowl and cross!
Reigns the God of bowl and cross!

Palm Sunday sermon: lose your faith!

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

There is a lot of twaddle and guff talked during Holy Week. A few years ago I heard a Good Friday sermon – some of you heard it too – in which it was suggested that Jesus, being a carpenter, in order to distract his attention and ease his pain on the cross, may well have admired the quality of its wood. As if our Lord was thinking, “Nice bit of teak this. It’d make a great desk for the study.” It was positively Pythonesque.

No guff and twaddle today. Today I’m going to try to speak shocking, scandalous, scalding truth, say outrageous, even sacrilegious things. You will probably be too polite to heckle or jeer me, but if you walk out on me I shall consider it the highest compliment. I thought of having the elders hand out eggs for to you to throw at me, but pitied the poor cleaners. But eggs are nothing compared to the darts I’m going to fire at you. It’s time to attack your faith, wound it, leave it bleeding, dying, dead – just like the guy on the cross.

Let’s start with some cherished beliefs. For example: that our redemption was achieved by Jesus suffering more horribly than anyone else. But how could we possibly know that? Crucifixion? Yes, a terrible, terrible form of torture and execution. But Jesus’ was only one among thousands and thousands of crucifixions carried out under the so-called Pax Romana – the Roman Peace – when gibbets would stretch for miles down the Apian Way. And the death of Jesus – mercifully swift it was, he expired by mid-afternoon, most usually languished for days. Besides, after the Inquisition, after Auschwitz and the Gulags, after the killing fields in southeast Asia, the tribal slaughter in Rwanda, the mass graves in the Balkans, how can anyone possibly presume to compare national atrocities and personal tragedies, let alone grade them according to some calculus of pain?

For example: that our redemption was achieved by Jesus facing his death more courageously than anyone else. But clearly this is special pleading. And didn’t the first Christians know it – which is why they were hesitant about sensationalising the death of Jesus in terms of martyrdom. As pagans were quick to point out, rather smugly, Jesus sweating blood in Gethsemane, and crying out in agony on Calvary, compares rather unfavourably with the great philosopher Socrates on death row, calmly drinking the hemlock as he reminds a friend – his last words – to remember to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius, the god of heath. For Socrates death was the moment of release, for Jesus a time of despair.

And for example: that our redemption was achieved by Jesus dying at the hands of evil men, particularly “the Jews”. What self-serving propaganda! And what a perverse fillip to the church’s long and shameful history of anti-semitism. No, it was not the bestial but the best that killed Jesus. The state in all its glory and religion at its most awesome killed Jesus: not the mob but the upholders of public order, not the wicked but the standard-bearers of morality. Yes, the trial was conducted with unseemly haste and the evidence was selectively marshalled, but the defendant incriminated himself, confessed even, so (if you like) there were no grounds for appeal. For Jesus did undermine a religious system based on law and cult, and Jesus did threaten a political regime based on violence and retribution. Jesus acted with freedom and broke the rules, embracing the dirty, the deviant, and the dangerous. And Jesus prophetically unmasked the mighty pretensions of the local procurator and publicly subverted Caesar’s claim to lordship. Jesus really did force the hands of Caiaphas and Pilate and leave them no choice but to get rid of him. Better that one man die than that the entire social order be at risk – the tried and trusted scapegoat principle. No doubt about it, this peasant troublemaker from up north profoundly threatened the status quo. He had to go.

So: for one Holy Week forget about the suffering of Jesus, the courage of Jesus, the wickedness of it all. Forget even about the dying of Jesus: it is not to the crucifix, or even to the deposition, that I would direct you – no! Rather look at the man – dead – gaze upon the corpse of Christ, fix your eyes on his cold and rigid body, laid out on a slab, already showing signs of decomposition. I am thinking of Hans Holbein’s painting “Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb”. The Russian author Dostoevsky saw the painting, in a museum in Basel, stopping on his way to Geneva, and forever after it haunted him like a nightmare. He describes it in his great novel The Idiot. The character Prince Myshkin says: “Why some people may lose their faith by looking at that picture!”

This sermon doesn’t have three points, it’s got three words: Lose your faith! (I warned you I would be sacrilegious.) Yes, lose your faith. Lose your faith in God. For as the French mystic Simone Weil insisted, there is a kind of atheism that is purifying, cleansing us of idols. Lose your faith in the god that the cross exposes as a no-god, a sham god. Lose your faith in the god who is but the product of your projections, fantasies, wishes, and needs, a security blanket or good-luck charm god. Lose your faith in the god who is there to hold your hand, solve your problems, rescue you from your trials and tribulations, the deus ex machina, literally the “machine god”, wheeled out onto the stage in ancient Greek drama, introduced to the plot artificially to resolve its complications and secure a happy ending. Lose your faith in the god who confers upon you a privileged status that is safe and secure. Lose your faith in the god who promises you health, wealth, fulfilment, and success, who pulls rabbits out of hats. Lose your faith in the god with whom your conscience can be at ease with itself. Lose your faith in the god who, in Dennis Potter’s words, is the bandage, not the wound. Lose your faith in the god who always answers when you pray and comes when you call. Lose your faith in the god who is never hidden, absent, dead, entombed. For the “Father who art in heaven” – this week he is to be found in hell – with his Son.

No one puts it more starkly – or more honestly and truthfully – than Bonhoeffer. We must recognize, he wrote from prison, “that we have to learn to live in the world ‘as if God were not here’. And this is just what we do recognize – before God! God himself compels us to recognize it… God would have us know that we must live as men and women who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us… Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross” – and then down from the cross and into the grave. “He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.” God a Super-Power? That god is a demon, the Devil. If that god is your Lord, this week is a call for “regime change” (Walter Brueggemann).

So, yes, lose your faith! For as with life, so with faith: only those who lose it will find it. Or rather may find it. Faith is a risk, and discipleship demands that we learn to live with insecurity and uncertainty, setting out on a journey without a map, with companions who are as lost as we are, following a leader who is always way ahead of us, beckoning mysteriously, “Follow me!”, and then vanishing just as we arrive. God is mystery, ineffable mystery, naming a reality that we know, but the more we know, the more we are forced to un-know and rethink everything we thought we knew.

But hang on, Kim, frankly you’ve lost us. We don’t know what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, it sounds crazy, foolish. You’ve accomplished the remarkable achievement of making someone like Rowan Williams sound lucid, simple, straightforward. And you’re supposed to be a preacher, and isn’t the whole point of the sermon to make it easier to understand God, to increase our faith, so that we can go back to the world feeling edified, uplifted, and ready to share the Good News? Not today it’s not. Today I can’t help you. This week no one can help you. Come Friday, not even God – especially not God – can help you. And come Saturday, God himself is lying in a tomb. Emptiness. Zero. Nothing. But might it be a pregnant emptiness, a significant zero, a silent nothing that yet says everything? (after Alan E. Lewis). We shall have to wait till Easter. Only then shall we learn that this Week is Holy, and its Friday Good. Only then may we just find a new faith rising from the old faith that I pray you will lose today.

Rowan Williams' Easter sermon

In this year’s Easter Day Sermon, Rowan Williams spoke of the revelation of sin and grace in the death of Jesus: God brings us healing, and so reveals our deep need for healing. Here’s an excerpt:

“If the purpose of Jesus dying was that all might be made whole, the implication is that all have been sick. So that Good Friday tells all of us, those who think they’re good and those who know they’re bad, all alike, to look inside and ask what part we would have played in the drama of the Lord’s death.… In some way, however small, we have already contributed to the death of Jesus. He is there on the cross because we are the way we are.

“But on Easter Day, this bleak recognition is turned on its head. We were all involved; yet the combined weight of every human failure and wrongness, however small or great, all of that could not extinguish the creative love of God. We share one human story in which we are all caught up in one sad tangle of selfishness and fear and so on. But God has entered that human story; he has lived a life of divine and unconditional love in a human life of flesh and blood…. The vortex of error and failure that affects everybody in the world draws Jesus into its darkness and seems to destroy him body and soul. That, says Good Friday, is the kind of world this is, and we are all part of it.

“Yet there is more than the world to think about. If that love is really what it claims to be, eternal and unconditional, it will not be destroyed. What’s more, the human embodiment of that love, the flesh and blood of Jesus, cannot be destroyed…. So: if we can accept the unwelcome picture of us and our world that Good Friday offers, we are, in the strangest way, set free to hear what Easter says.”

Easter

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sun arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.

—George Herbert, from “Easter” (1633).

Holy Saturday

          He leaves no room
For his own hand; you shall be history,
You shall build heaven, you shall quarry hell,
No one shall say you have (or not) made well.
And, bored and pious, talk of mystery,
When weeds are choking up his tomb.

We make, he sleeps. Only his bloody dreams
Tell him the works of freedom on the earth.
Your liberty his flight, your future and his death.
He dreams your hell for you to draw your breath,
Out of his emptiness he lets your birth,
It is his silence echoes back the screams.

—Rowan Williams, from “Great Sabbath,” in The Poems of Rowan Williams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 43.