Start:Stop - Be the resurrection and the life

Bible reading

Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. (Luke 24. 25 – 27)

Meditation

In Risen, the latest Jesus film to be released, “Roman military tribune Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) remains set in his ways after serving 25 years in the army. He arrives at a crossroad when he's tasked to investigate the mystery of what happened to Jesus following the Crucifixion. Accompanied by trusted aide Lucius, his quest to disprove rumours of a risen Messiah makes him question his own beliefs and spirituality. As his journey takes him to places never dreamed of, Clavius discovers the truth that he's been seeking.”

Alister McGrath has described the conversion of C.S. Lewis as occurring in a similar fashion: “It is like a scientist who, confronted with many seemingly unconnected observations, wakes up in the middle of the night having discovered a theory which accounts for them ... It is like a literary detective, confronted with a series of clues, who realises how things must have happened, allowing every clue to be positioned within a greater narrative. In every case, we find the same pattern – a realisation that, if this was true, everything else falls into place naturally, without being forced or strained. And by its nature, it demands assent from the lover of truth. Lewis found himself compelled to accept a vision of reality that he did not wish to be true, and certainly did not cause to be true ...

Lewis finally bowed to what he now recognised as inevitable. “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Lewis ... realised that if Christianity was true, it resolved the intellectual and imaginative riddles that had puzzled him since his youth ... he began to realise that there was a deeper order, grounded in the nature of God, which could be discerned – and which, once grasped, made sense of culture, history, science, and above all the acts of literary creation that he valued so highly and made his life’s study.’ (Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis: A Life)

When Jesus unpacked the scriptures to his disciples on the Emmaus Road, they must have felt something similar. What he said made sense of a situation that seemed beyond their understanding.

As a Cambridge physicist Professor John Polkinghorne might be expected to disbelieve such an extraordinary miracle as resurrection, which appears to contravene the laws of nature. But in fact, it is the cornerstone of his faith. Reflecting on the remarkable rise of the early Church, he has concluded: ‘Something happened to bring it about. Whatever it was it must have been of a magnitude commensurate with the effect it produced. I believe that was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.’

Perhaps as “Sherlock Holmes once remarked to Dr Watson … ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

Prayer

Risen Lord, speak into our foolishness and slowness of heart in believing all that the prophets have declared! Help us realise it was necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory. Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interpret to us, through your Spirit, the things about yourself in all the scriptures.

Risen Lord, be to us the victory, the end of strife; be the resurrection and the life.

Risen Lord, help us see and sense the deeper order, grounded in the nature of God, which we can discern – and which, once grasped, makes sense of culture, history, science resolving the intellectual and imaginative riddles that have puzzled us until know. May we see that if your story is true, everything else falls into place naturally, without being forced or strained.

Risen Lord, be to us the victory, the end of strife; be the resurrection and the life.

Risen Lord, help us by beginning in you to let you read our riddles and teach us truths your Spirit will defend. You are the End who meets us in the middle, the new Beginning hidden in the End. You are the victory, the end of strife. You are the resurrection and the life.

Risen Lord, be to us the victory, the end of strife; be the resurrection and the life.

Blessing

Sensing a deeper order grounded in the nature of God, making sense of culture, history and science, resolving intellectual and imaginative riddles, things falling into place, victory, the end of strife, resurrection and new life. May those blessings of almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and remain with you always. Amen.

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Risen soundtrack.

Jesus novels & films: The Greatest Story Ever Told

Stuart Kelly reviews the latest Jesus novel - The Tongues of Men or Angels by Jonathan Trigell - in today's Guardian and, in the process, provides a neat little summary of the genre:

'Given it has been called The Greatest Story Ever Told, the temptation to retell it is understandable. Except under special circumstances, it also ought to be resisted strenuously. For every Paradise Regained by John Milton, The Monarch by Sir David Lyndsay or Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock, there are misconceived works such as Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son, Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord books and even Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (Pullman was so much better at untelling the Bible than retelling it). There have been a remarkable number of fictional Jesuses in recent years – from Colm Toíbín, Naomi Alderman, Michel Faber, JM Coetzee, Jim Crace, Richard Beard (whose Lazarus Is Dead was remarkable). But that’s not so surprising given that Robert Graves, Gore Vidal, Anthony Burgess, José Saramago, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov and even Jeffrey Archer have all had a crack of this particular whip.'

Jordan Hoffman says of the latest Jesus movie, Last Days in the Desert starring Ewan McGregor as both Jesus and the shadowy personification of a taunting Satan, 'is a smart and beautiful meditation of fathers and sons (and the Father and Son) that is slow but never boring':

'On the spectrum of Jesus movies this belongs closer to Pasolini’s Gospel According to Matthew than, say, Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings, at least in its ascetic aesthetic. Certainly more than the recent wretched Mark Burnett and Roma Downey production Son of God. The off-book exploration will, I think, be of value to believers, but that’s an issue for the film’s marketing department. As an artwork about a man with a calling, the rich, hazy time spent in the desert certainly inspires.'

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Larry Norman - The Outlaw.

A renewed interest in Biblical epics

The Guardian has been exploring the current phenomenon of a significant number of Biblical films:

'Boxing Day sees the UK release of [Ridley] Scott’s epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, with Christian Bale as Moses. While the Observer called it a “half triumph”, Variety extolled it as “a work of massive, David Lean-like scale – with battle scenes that rival or eclipse Scott’s Gladiator”.'

Exodus follows Noah to which audiences flocked earlier this year with Darren Aronofsky's film taking $320m worldwide and there are a biblical flood of films inspired by the Old and New Testaments coming. 'We may live in a more secular age, but at least a dozen dramas on the epic scale which the Bible – or perhaps producers – seems to demand are in various stages of development':

'British producer David Heyman is developing a film based on Reza Aslan’s bestselling book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, while Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director, has been working on an adaptation of his own book, Jesus of Nazareth, for five years.

[Ridley Scott] is now planning another biblical drama – a big-budget film about David’s slaying of Goliath.

Warner Bros is also developing a King David project and a third version has cast Jerry Sokoloski, Canada’s tallest man – at 7ft 8in – as the giant. Director Tim Chey was apparently wary of creating a CGI imitation like The Incredible Hulk.

Other films include a version of the hit stage musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ... Other productions feature some of Britain’s foremost actors. Joseph Fiennes will be seen in Clavius as a centurion ordered by Pontius Pilate to find the missing body of Jesus, and Ben Kingsley will appear as the tyrannical Herod in Mary Mother of Christ, a story of Mary and Joseph as young parents living in precarious times.

Jeffrey Caine, who wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Constant Gardener, was one of four writers on Scott’s Exodus. Asked about the popularity of biblical stories for film-makers, he said: “It’s largely because they’re terrific stories. They’re perennially popular, like the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood. You know there’s always going to be an audience for them … Plus they make money.”'

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Sydney Wayser - Belfast Child.

Perhaps the most underrated band ever

"Rock'n'roll is a vehicle to express the emotions you are not allowed to use in everyday life. We shouldn't waste rock and roll. Rock should be looking at some of the big questions. At its best, it's an art form that inspires, sometimes teaches, sometimes threatens. Its only crime is when it bores." Michael Been

Michael Been, The Call's singer/songwriter, was born in Oklahoma City but migrated to California before forming The Call with Scott Musik. Sin and salvation were staples of the diet that The Call served up. Been thought "that every fault in the world is within him" and said that he had had "hundreds of born-again experiences" needing them because he is dead a lot of the time. "I believe in truth. Whatever is necessary for a person to experience to find the rock bottom, to know the darkness of his life, that's right. A lot of our music is confrontational, it deals with the dark side of life because that teaches us something."

Been’s focus on the dark side of life led to the band being labelled as negative and may have restricted their overall impact – their greatest success was with the deliberately life-affirming single 'Let the Day Begin' which reached number three in the American charts. Another limiting factor, in the UK at least, was that they were perceived as playing the ‘Big Music’ when the likes of U2, Simple Minds and The Waterboys had fallen out of critical fashion. The fact that Bono and Jim Kerr contributed to their albums didn’t help dispel this perception. In reality, though, the band that the Call most resembled (never more so than on Red Moon) was The Band, and both Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson contributed to their albums. Support was also lost among American Christians (something Been had been at pains to build up – he sent copies of the single 'I Still Believe (Great Design)' to Christian radio stations together with a signed copy of the Apostles Creed) when Been appeared as the apostle John in the Martin Scorcese film The Last Temptation of Christ. He was asked to take part as a friend of Scorcese – The Call were reputedly Scorcese’s favourite band – and got involved because he “wanted to show something of the struggle Christ had”. However a lot of people wrote to him saying, “Your records helped me when I was down. But now you’re involved in this film I can’t listen to them anymore.”

The Call’s original career may have ended with Red Moon but it ended on a high, that album together with 1986’s Reconciled representing the peak of their work. Combining literate lyrics with powerful anthems and genuinely encompassing despair, ecstasy and the stages in between, The Call are "perhaps the most underrated band ever".

"A preacher and a teacher, Michael was always much more than your usual 'ten-a-penny' careerist '80s rock star. As driven as he was with his beliefs, he was far from sanctimonious and always a hoot to be around. He had a similar soul that one perceives in true American greats such as Robbie Robertson, but he also had the wickedly spirited comedy of John Belushi draped all around him." Jim Kerr

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The Call - Let The Day Begin.

The Nativity

BBC1's The Nativity was, in my immediate view, one of the very best biblical dramatisations that I have seen because it didn't simply reproduce, in the manner of most Nativity plays, the familiar elements of the story in the forms with which we have become familiar (although it did reproduce these). Instead, because screenwriter Tony Jordan understood both what the story meant in human terms for those caught up in it and what it has come to mean for many of us in terms of salvation history, Jordan was able to movingly dramatise the human cost and challenge of the incarnation.

The changes which Jordan made to the chronology of the stories told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the additions to those stories in terms of fleshing out the back stories and personalities of the central characters worked, not because they were literally true to the way the stories are told in those Gospels, but because they were emotionally and symbolically true to the meaning of the stories. The final stable scene with Mary, Joseph, Jesus, Shepherds and Magi is not accurate biblically and is the stereotypical end to most Nativity plays and yet was deeply moving, in a way that most Nativity plays are not, because we had travelled emotionally with these characters and so shared the impulses which led them to worship this child.

The quality of the writing, characterisation, and acting was exceptionally high in the production, with Tatiana Maslany's portrayal of Mary being the standout performance, but it was Jordan's understanding of the emotional and symbolic heart of the story which made the familiar story with its familiar elements profound and moving all over again.

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John Coltrane - Psalm.

Lent film evenings

Tomorrow evening we will begin the first of five Lent film evenings at the St John's Vicarage at which we will show four controversial Jesus films before having a discussion about all four films on the final evening:

The Gospel According To St Matthew

“[Pier Paulo] Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew was made in 1964 by a Marxist who was frequently accused of blasphemy by the Catholic church and whose attitude to religion was ambivalent.

Its portrait of the Messiah - played by Enrique Irazoqui, a young Spanish economics student with a scraggy beard - is far harsher than the usual soft saint that passes for Jesus. He is, as screenwriter and director Paul Mayersberg has suggested, "a procurer for God". The actor wears no make-up and nor does the rest of the cast. Judas is played by a truck-driver from Rome (Otello Sestili), and Pasolini's own mother is the Virgin Mary. They are all amateurs, and the close-ups of their faces make the story seem more real than usual. The bleak hillside scenery of Calabria, where the film was made, gives the film a primitive feel that is augmented by grainy cinematography. The soundtrack - Prokofiev, Bach, Mozart and even Billie Holiday - surprises us … What Pasolini clearly wanted was a believable gospel, armed with real people … He did say … that he was not interested in deconsecrating: "That is a fashion I hate. I want to 'reconsecrate' as much as possible."

It is a stark film (someone has described it as one-dimensional), but with clear-headed interpretative qualities that avoid the usual cliches. This Christ was a political animal, angry at social injustice. The silent cry from the cross is believable and the miracles avoid any kind of underlining comment - they just happen, with not a special effect in sight.” (The Guardian, November 2000)

The Last Temptation of Christ

“This is a life-of-Christ story unlike any other … In adapting this epic tale, [Martin] Scorsese has stripped away the familiar epic trappings to concentrate on the human dimension, and except for the central character and the basic outline of the story, the film has nothing in common with the more conventional accounts.

The most radical departure is Jesus Himself. There is no plaster saintliness here. When we first see Him, Christ is a cross-maker, collaborating with the Romans in their persecution of the rebellious Israelites. His reason for this, He says, is to make God hate Him: "God loves Me and I can't stand the pain." And He goes as far in His efforts to alienate His Father as to hold the feet of the rebels as the nails are driven in and their blood spurts into His face.

Scorsese takes a huge risk in these early moments. He succeeds in conveying Christ's pain, but at the same time he alienates us from his hero. Scorsese's specialty is souls in torment. In ‘Mean Streets,’ his protagonist stuck his finger in an open flame and speculated on the pain of Hell. In ‘Taxi Driver,’ Travis Bickle's Hell was the streets of New York, and for Jake La Motta in ‘Raging Bull,’ it was a boxing ring.

The Saviour here is on a direct line with these characters. But these men were outside God's circle. Being chosen by God and having His divinity within Him are the cause of Christ's suffering. This Christ is wracked with doubt over his destiny. He can't be certain if the voices He hears are those of God or the Devil. Hating His own weakness and cowardice and susceptibility to temptation, Jesus excoriates His flesh, wearing a nail-studded belt around His waist.

It is this conflict - the struggle between the spirit and the flesh - that Scorsese and his screen writer, Paul Schrader (who wrote ‘Taxi Driver’ and co-wrote ‘Raging Bull’), take as their subject. In this they attempt to strike a universal chord -- to place Christ not above us, and above our weaknesses, but on a level with us, and prone to the same doubts and temptations.” (Washington Post, 1988)

Jesus of Montreal

“The action of this movie is set in motion by a theatre-loving priest who decides to commission a contemporary Passion Play. He engages Daniel, a young actor played by the androgynously ethereal Lothaire Bluteau, who conscripts a group of unemployed Montréal actors to carry out this commission. Their performance, which makes use of Mount Royal as an outdoor theatre, dazzles the audience even while it offends the priest …

Jesus of Montreal has the audacity to take institutional religion and spiritual questing seriously and still call itself a comedy. The device of history as a play within a film permits Denys Arcand to move seamlessly from one line of narrative continuity to another, so that eventually the film moves towards a unifying and credible answer to the implicit question: what would Jesus look like if he walked among us today? Daniel becomes so identified with the character of Jesus that the line between ancient narrative and the contemporary life in which he is deeply immersed becomes deliberately blurred. Daniel rails against crass corporate culture like Christ among the money-changers, cultivates a sublime asceticism and ultimately transforms the material world through his struggle and suffering. So it is that we see how life among troubled and searching actors in modern-day Montréal might be marked by halo-traces of a time-honoured story of death and rebirth. Arcand has created a brilliantly witty allegory for a commercial age in which doubt is not merely conceived as an antithesis to faith; it is the permanent fact of our postmodern condition.” (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

The Passion of the Christ

“Well before the commercial release of his film, Mel Gibson had organized private showings for important journalists and religious leaders. If he was counting on assuring the goodwill of those he invited, he badly miscalculated; or perhaps he instead manifested a superior Machiavellianism.

The commentaries quickly followed, and far from praising the film or reassuring the public, there were only terrified vituperations and anguished cries of alarm concerning the anti-Semitic violence that might erupt at the cinema exits ... Nothing justifies these accusations. For Mel Gibson, the death of Christ is a burden born by all humanity, starting with Mel Gibson himself. When his film strays a bit from the Gospel text, which happens only rarely, it is not to demonize the Jews but to emphasize the pity that Jesus inspires in some of them: in Simon of Cyrene for example, whose role is amplified, or in Veronica, the woman who, according to an ancient tradition, offered a cloth to Jesus during the ascent to Golgotha on which the features of his face became imprinted.

The more things calm down, the more it becomes clear in retrospect that the film precipitated a veritable tantrum in the world’s most influential media that more or less contaminated the entire atmosphere in its wake. The public had nothing to do with the controversy, since it had not seen the film. It wondered with evident curiosity what was it in this Passion that could create such a panic among those who are normally so difficult to shock. What ensued was easy to predict: instead of the 2600 screens originally planned, The Passion of the Christ opened on more than 4000 screens on Ash Wednesday - a day evidently chosen for its penitential symbolism.

The charge of anti-Semitism has receded somewhat since the film’s release. But the film’s detractors have rallied around a second complaint, the excessive violence that they see in the film. There is indeed great violence, but it does not exceed, it seems to me, that of many other films that Gibson’s critics would not dream of condemning. This Passion has shaken up (no doubt only provisionally) the chessboard of media reactions concerning violence in the movies. All those who are normally accustomed to spectacular violence, or even see in its constant evolution so many victories of freedom over tyranny, find themselves condemning it in Gibson’s film with extraordinary vehemence. On the other side, all those who see it as their duty to denounce cinematic violence (without their criticisms ever having the slightest impact) not only tolerate this film, but frequently admire it.” (René Girard, Anthropoetics 10, no. 1, Spring / Summer 2004)

We will be using the following questions on the final evening of the series when we will be discussing the four films:

1. What surprised you about the depictions of Jesus seen in these films?
2. Did you find any aspects of the films particularly moving? What and why?
3. Was your understanding of who Jesus is and what he did challenged in any way by seeing these films? What and why?
4. Several of these films were controversial when released, why do you think that was the case? Do you think people were right to protest against the making or distribution of these films?

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Peter Gabriel - Passion.

SKFC Lent Courses 2009

These three … Faith, Hope and Love is the title of this year’s Lent Course chosen by the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches. The course is based on the three great qualities celebrated in 1 Corinthians 13. This famous passage begins and ends in majestic prose but the middle passage is practical and demanding. St Paul’s thirteen verses take us to the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

The five sessions of this course take us through: Believing and Trusting; The Peace of God; Faith into Love; The Greatest of these; and All shall be well. As we reflect on these topics we will be guided by the participants on the course CD who, this year, are Bishop Tom Wright, Anne Atkins, and Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth Abbey. Dr. David Hope introduces the course and Professor Frances Young provides the Closing Reflections.

There are plenty of opportunities to study this course with others in the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches as there are four different course venues (at which all are welcome):

• St Teresa’s Newbury Park – Mondays 10.00am (2, 9, 16, 23, 30 March)
• St Peter’s Aldborough Hatch – Wednesdays 10.45am & 8.00pm (4, 11, 18, 25 March & 1 April)
• St John’s Seven Kings – Wednesdays 10.45am (4, 11, 18, 25 March & 1 April)
• St John's Seven Kings – Wednesdays 8.00pm (4, 11, 18, 25 March & 1 April)

The Church Times review of this course said: “This course is very good indeed. Written by John Young, it is the latest in the excellent series of York Courses designed for groups and individuals.”

This year there is also an alternative to the Lent course which may suit film buffs. There will be a series of Lent Film evenings at St John’s Vicarage (2 Regent Gardens IG3 8UL) on Tuesdays at 7.30pm. On these evenings we will watch four controversial portrayals of Jesus’ life and death - ‘The Gospel According to Matthew’ (U) on 3/3; ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (15) 10/3; ‘Jesus of Montreal’, (18) 17/3; ‘The Passion of the Christ’ (18) 24/3 - before discussing all four films on 31/3.

Film is a very powerful medium for telling the Jesus story and as we reflect on the differing ways in which these films tell that story we are guaranteed to be moved, challenged and uplifted. Whether you choose to watch these Lent films or study the Lent course I pray that that will be your experience as we prepare during Lent to relive and celebrate Jesus’ passion and resurrection at Easter.

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Groove Armada Feat. Candi Staton - Love Sweet Sound.