Addicted to sin & selfishness

Here is my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

If there was a common theme to the past weekend for me, it involved addiction. There were encounters at both churches with those who were influenced by their addictions, including an attempted theft and incidents of dealing. The lives and behaviour of those involved were clearly governed by their substance abuse making interaction with them difficult and meaning that they tended to reject the sources of support offered to them.

Then on Sunday, in the annual service celebrating the Arts organised by commission4mission, the art group of which I am part which will exhibit here in September, we heard poems, songs and stories for one of our artists, Anthony Hodgson, who has found release from his addictions through faith in Christ. As a result, his art explores the themes of addiction and release.

The effects of severe substance addictions are very clear and can be seen around us daily. It can be easy for those of us who are not in that situation to condemn those who are and to believe that we are not affected by addictions ourselves.

However, that is not what scripture says about our situation. Scripture regularly, as in our Epistle today (Romans 6. 19 - 23), uses the imagery of addiction about our sinfulness as human beings. We see it here in the references to our having been slaves to sin. Essentially, what is being claimed is that we are addicted to selfishness and independence. Until we turn to Christ, we are separated from God because our lives are turned in on ourselves; oriented around our needs, wants and wishes. In our day and time this is a reality which has been used as the basis for our consumerist culture, where we are continually persuaded to buy stuff we don't actually need in order to assuage our sense of inadequacy and boost our sense of ego. Those who manage large or unsustainable levels of personal debt will readily acknowledge the overwhelming nature of the pressures which cause us to spend, spend, spend.

As with any addiction, it is vital that we reach a point in our lives where we acknowledge that we are actually powerless in the grip of powerful forces which control us - slaves to sin, as we have acknowledged that St Paul expresses it - and need to recognise that we need outside help. That, of course, is where God comes into the picture, as it is only when we can look outside ourselves that our addiction to selfishness can begin to be broken.

Looking to God firstly addresses the insecurities and fears which underpin our focus on protecting and benefiting ourselves. God's unconditional love means that we can be sure that we are loved absolutely and can therefore look outside ourselves, our fears and anxieties. Looking to God also involves acknowledging the claim that others have on our lives and gives us a frame of reference beyond ourselves. Jesus speaks of this in terms of love for God, for neighbours and for ourselves.

Our reality, whether this is visibly apparent or hidden, is that each of us is gripped by forces beyond our control and that it is only as we become open to God and others that the addiction to selfishness can be managed and mitigated.

Alcoholics Anonymous teaches its users that they are always recovering alcoholics. Christianity teaches that we are all recovering sinners. Just as those who go to AA have a 12 step programme which enables them to be a recovering alcoholic rather than an alcoholic, I wonder whether we have the equivalent in place to deal with our own personal addictions. The 12 steps of AA are actually as relevant to all other addictions as they are to alcoholism. The starting point is to admit that we have been powerless in relation to our actions and that our lives had become unmanageable. Then to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity and to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

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The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work.

Peter Howson: Redemption in life's struggles

Peter Howson is one of 14 artists whose work is profiled in the final chapter - 'A Vibrant Contemporary Scene' - of Richard Harries' The Image of Christ in Modern Art. Howson's is one of the briefer profiles in this chapter, with Harries finding his depiction of Christ in Ecce Homo "troubled and troubling" and suggesting that Legion has a "disturbing effect" because "it reflects something of Howson's own fragility and torment." Throughout his career Howson has "concentrated on tough, working-class figures and those on the edge of society;" an approach, which when combined with his own "long battle against abuse and addiction," enables him to see aspects of the Gospel stories "that most of us prefer to gloss over."

The accuracy of these perceptions can be assessed currently as Flowers Cork Street has a survey exhibition of Howson's work which presents "a visual journey of Howson’s altogether fascinating life, with works that are both extraordinary and intriguing."

Titled A Life, this exhibition and the descriptions of it from the Flowers Gallery highlight the extent to which Howson has become an artist whose work is no longer viewed independently of his life. For much art, and for many artists, an attempt is made to view the artwork as an object in its own right with a life that is independent of the artist who made it. No such attempt is made here. The Gallery state that the "exhibition offers the opportunity to become a direct witness to a diverse range of varying incidents and torments he [Howson] has endured and encapsulated." The works shown can be described in terms of the chronology of his life: the dossers, boxers and misfits from the streets of Glasgow where he was raised, his battle with various addictions and personal demons, his work as a war artist, and his conversion to Christian faith.

The press notice concludes by again bringing life and work together:

"The theme of life’s struggles permeates the exhibition, as indeed it does Howson’s life, yet there’s a heroic strength in the works that lead one to admire not only him as a person, but his ability to capture this through a medium that arrests and inspires you."
 

Clearly, the drama and angst of Howson's life lends itself to this approach in a way that may not be the case with other artists. As in this respect, Howson's approach to his work takes issue with many of the central assumptions of the mainstream art world of which he is part. His is an essentially redemptive art which looks to convey instant messages and finds beauty in ugliness.  

 

What does it do though to his specifically religious images? On the one hand there is an element of personal testimony, as in the series of paintings inspired by the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The first of these is included in this exhibition and this image of a central figure lurching on carrying a rowdy band of figures on his back while striding on in a field of bottles and debris mirrors Howson’s own struggle and ultimate determination to continue as an artist.

 

In scenes from the life of Christ, Howson thrillingly depicts a vigorous, decisive Jesus in settings of external and internal struggle such as the stilling of the storm and his prayer at Gethsemene. At times, however, as in Alpha and Omega, Howson seems to depict a Christ who is, as Harries states, "troubled and troubling." In this instance, where Howson is depicting the Christ seen in St John's vision on Patmos, he seems to have transposed the fear felt by John at this vision onto the wild features of the Christ he sees in the vision.

Howson's faith, however, isn't simply expressed in his imagery but also in his painting process and the balance of idea, message and technique that he aims to achieve in his work. As he explains in a recent interview for Studio International this is based on the Trinity theory. Howson is, therefore, a significant example of a Christian artist using traditional Christian iconography and enjoying mainstream success while acting in opposition to several of the central assumptions found in the contemporary art scene.
 

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The Relatives - Let Your Light Shine.

Elmore Leonard RIP

Elmore Leonard wrote dialogue so well "you’d think it’s transcribed from real conversations, and he knows more about how to craft a living, breathing character out of thin air than God."

Leonard wrote that: "I grew up Catholic, went to Mass every day in grade school and high school; was taught by the Jesuits; spent two and a half years in the Navy during the war; returned, and was graduated from another Jesuit school, the University of Detroit. I even taught catechism in the ’60s, although I just told stories for the most part. "

He said in one interview: "I haven’t been to mass in probably 20 years. But I was in AA, you see. I’m still part of that because it worked. I haven’t had a drink since ’77 ... Higher power. That’s what keeps you straight. The higher power isn’t defined necessarily as God, but because I was brought up Catholic, it’s easy for me to do it that way."

Bandits and Pagan Babies both have a focus on issues of Catholicism and organized religion with more invested in their questions of doctrine and faith. Touch provides a wry take on fame and the miraculous when Juvenal, a former brother of a Catholic order in Brazil who now helps alcoholics in a Detroit rehabilitation centre, performs a miracle cure on a woman who has been beaten by her husband. The story contrasts the love Juvenal finds with the business and church zealots who seek to exploit his gift.

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Dave Grohl - Touch.

Church of England: Complex structures

In a Guardian article published on Good Friday, Andrew Brown quoted Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham as saying, "The longer I go on with this, the more I realise that the Church of England is not an organisation in any recognisable sense." In the article, Welby is quoted as expanding on this statement as follows:
"Any sort of concept of top-down direction is much more complicated than it looks. Part of it is illusion: because bishops are dressed up in funny clothes, with funny hats and special sticks it's assumed that if they say to a bunch of parish clergy 'do something', they will do it. But that's not how it works and never has been. Each part of the church has its own competence."
Welby is, as Brown notes, a bishop who "worked for 12 years in the oil industry before becoming a priest, so he knows something about the outside world." What he seems to be saying is that the structure of the Church of England doesn't look or function anything like the organisations he knew before ordination.

To the extent that I understand its structures it seems to me that the Church of England combines three different structures - a network of autonomous charities (parishes) covering the entire country; a regional framework (dioceses) which primarily supports the parishes; and a central structure delivering services to both dioceses and parishes while also undertaking national initiatives for the Church as a whole.

Within these three different structures there is rarely any direct line managerial responsibility for those whose ministries are enabled by some combination of these three structures. For clergy, this has presumably stemmed from our legal status as ministers of God rather than employees of a human institution. Clergy are centrally selected and trained but are appointed by a combination of external patrons, Diocese, and parish. We require a licence from the Diocese to minister but, once this has been granted, have considerable security and autonomy in parish ministry combined with minimal supervision (this situation is changing to a limited extent as a result of common tenure). Clergy generally chair the PCC (or varient) but it is the PCC as a whole which has overall responsibility for the charity that is the parish. As a result, the parish is essentially independent of the diocese and national church, although reliant on both for ordained ministers. The overlaps and complexities of these relationships extend throughout the three different structures and mean that, as Welby notes, the usual line management arrangements do not operate in anything like the same way in the Church of England as they do in other organisations.

All this has massive implications for the future of the Church of England because it means that there is no quick or simple mechanism for making the changes which are needed to respond to the changed mission context in which we minister. For example, Transforming Presence, the strategic document issued recently by Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Chelmsford, notes that, while deaneries have been asked to think about cutting stipendiary posts because of the ticking time bomb of clergy retirements, many deaneries have simply planned ahead on the basis of who is going to retire next. What the document doesn't acknowledge however is that, because of the complexities noted above, the Church of England has no mechanisms for doing anything else.

None of this will change quickly so, as well as thinking about possible future structural changes, we need to make the best of the structures we have and recognise that in some respects what have is a structure which is focussed on the local parish but doesn't make that structure work very effectively (partly because of the inbuilt complexities).

In his article, Andrew Brown also quoted Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham, as saying, "The church of the future may be less a civil service or conventional business, and more a movement like Alcoholics Anonymous, the ultimate locally delivered, life-changing non-profit organisation. The job of the hierarchy will be to enable this, not to represent it or control it."

But as we have said the Church of England is not structured like the civil service or conventional business and we are actually structured for local delivery. The problem is the difficulty of ensuring that the three different structures work together cohesively and changing attitudes of independence and autonomy within each of the structures which do not prioritise cohesion and collaborative working. 

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Switchfoot - Dare You To Move.