Jubilee - The work of releasing others from sin and debt

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Catherine’s Wickford:

When we have a General or Local Election, I wonder whether you read the manifestos of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often, they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them.

The political parties know this, as is demonstrated by this quote from a post entitled Why manifestos still matter (even if nobody reads them) from Labour List:

“Given the amount of time and effort that goes into producing election manifestos, the number of people who actually read them is frighteningly small. Every campaign, parties make determined efforts to get them onto shelves but their sales hardly threaten JK Rowling or even the authors of well-known political diaries (still available in all good book shops) ….

But for the millions of voters who decide the election outcome … well for the overwhelming majority, life’s too short.” (http://labourlist.org/2013/02/why-manifestos-still-matter-even-if-nobody-reads-them/)

The passage that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth the morning we have just heard about (Luke 4: 16 - 24) was the manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God. We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here, he actually did in the course of his ministry. He did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes.

Jesus’ manifesto is taken from Isaiah 61 and is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, blindness and oppression. What Jesus is proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty throughout the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another.

The people listening to Jesus knew about Jubilee but had never heard anything like his statement before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 61:1–2.

Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). That is the year of jubilee and so Jesus proclaimed his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he had created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways, we do not do away with gods altogether instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This isn’t something that is just for us as individuals however. It is also something which can impact all of society. After all, the Old Testament Jubilee was intended for the nation of Israel, not simply individuals within it. A contemporary example of this happening in practice is Debt Justice, formerly the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is part of a global movement demanding freedom from the slavery of unjust debts and a new financial system that puts people first. Originally inspired by the ancient concept of ‘jubilee’, Debt Justice works for a world where debt is no longer used as a form of power by which the rich exploit the poor. Freedom from debt slavery is a necessary step towards a world in which our common resources are used to realise equality, justice and human dignity.

We can see from all this that, in order to understand what our release means, we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4, he defended himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he used the Bible to tell the Devil what he will not be like and here, in the synagogue, he used the Bible to tell everyone what he will be like. We can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Will it be the cynicism or distrust that some feel towards campaigns like Debt Justice? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us and involvement in his work of releasing others from sin and from debt? Amen.

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Bruce Cockburn - Call It Democracy.

Manifestos do matter

Here's the sermon I preached yesterday at St Catherine’s Wickford:

When we have a General or Local Election I wonder whether you read the manifestos of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them. 

The political parties know this, as is demonstrated by this quote from a post entitled Why manifestos still matter (even if nobody reads them) from Labour List: 

“Given the amount of time and effort that goes into producing election manifestos, the number of people who actually read them is frighteningly small. Every campaign, parties make determined efforts to get them onto shelves but their sales hardly threaten JK Rowling or even the authors of well-known political diaries (still available in all good book shops) ….

But for the millions of voters who decide the election outcome … well for the overwhelming majority, life’s too short.” 

However, manifestos do matter, as has been proved this week when Suella Braverman’s resignation letter stating: “I have concerns about the direction of this government. Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this Government's commitment to honouring manifesto commitments” was one of several factors leading to the resignation of Liz Truss as Prime Minister.

The passage from Isaiah that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth, as we heard in our Gospel reading (Luke 4: 16 - 24), was the manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God. We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here, he actually did in the course of his ministry. In contrast to many, or perhaps most, politicians, he did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes.

Jesus’ manifesto was taken from Isaiah 61 and is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, the inability to see clearly, and oppression. What Jesus was proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty throughout the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another. In other words, the whole of society had a restart and those who had lost out in the previous 49 were enable to begin again with a clean slate and their lost resources.

The people listening to Jesus knew about Jubilee but had never heard anything like his statement before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). That is the year of jubilee in practice and so Jesus proclaimed his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways, we do not do away with God or gods altogether, instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This isn’t something that is just for us as individuals however. It is also something which can impact all of society. After all, the Old Testament Jubilee was intended for the nation of Israel, not simply individuals within it. One example of this happening in practice was the Jubilee 2000 campaign which was a movement that took the issue of debt to the forefront of mainstream politics in the years leading up to the millennium and after. Inspired by the ancient concept of ‘jubilee’, Jubilee 2000 worked for a world where debt is no longer used as a form of power by which the rich exploit the poor. Freedom from debt slavery is a necessary step towards a world in which our common resources are used to realise equality, justice and human dignity. The global Jubilee 2000 campaign won $130 billion of debt cancellation for lower income countries which led to significant improvements to public services such as healthcare and education. Though this was an important victory, the structural causes that keep debt crises happening again and again, remained in place and so Debt Justice continue to campaign for systemic change today.

We can see from all this that, in order to understand what our release means, we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4, he defended himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he used the Bible to tell the Devil what he would not be like and here, in the synagogue, he used the Bible to tell everyone what he would be like. This Bible Sunday we can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible, both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people, they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Will it be the cynicism or distrust that some feel towards campaigns like that for Debt Justice? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us and involvement in his work of releasing others from sin and from debt?

Last Wednesday the Church remembered Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures. Born in Truro in 1781, Henry Martyn went up to Cambridge at the age of sixteen. He became an avowed evangelical and his friendship with Charles Simeon led to his interest in missionary work. In 1805, he left for Calcutta as a chaplain to the East India Company. The expectation was that he would minister to the British expatriate community, not to the indigenous peoples; in fact, there was a constant fear of insurrection and even the recitation of Magnificat at Evensong was forbidden, lest 'putting down the mighty from their seats' should incite the indigenous peoples. Henry set about learning the local languages and then supervised the translation of the New Testament first into Hindi and then into Persian and Arabic, as well as preaching and teaching in mission schools. He understood that Jesus’ manifesto, like the Magnificat, meant freedom and release for all people everywhere. May we realise and live out that same truth too. Amen.  

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Iain Archer - Everything I've Got.

Discover & explore: Leisure

The recent announcement in the Budget of plans to allow larger stores to open for longer on Sundays by giving local authorities powers to relax national law on Sunday trading has reignited debate about the place of rest in what has become a 24-7 society.

Witold Rybczynski suggests, in his book Waiting for the Weekend, that there is conceptual confusion in our society about what leisure is. ‘Leisure,’ he suggests, is the most misunderstood word in our vocabulary. Kathleen Norris has said that we are ‘free,’ it seems, to have anything but a nurturing leisure. We know this because ‘I have so little time,’ is our frequently heard lament.

Paul Heintzman, in his book on Leisure and Spirituality, has described how: ‘In preindustrial societies, time was viewed cyclically; that is, time was rooted in the rhythms of the natural world. People’s lives revolved around sunrise and sunset, the change of seasons, and the planting and harvesting of crops. They were unlikely to separate work and leisure within their daily life, and the demands of work were often lightened by songs and storytelling … As a result, notions of work and leisure blended together.

The Industrial Revolution (1760–1830), however, changed everything … Work was situated in space at the factory and structured in time as the worker had to be at the work place at a certain time to perform work duties. Facilitated by the development of clocks, work could be assigned to specific times, and work time could be measured precisely. Time began to be viewed mechanically, and this linear notion of time began to influence and change people’s understanding of leisure. Time away from work was free of the often unpleasant demands of the workspace, so it was called “free time.”’

The Guildhall Art Gallery’s Guide to its Collection adds to this picture that ‘Prior to the nineteenth century, the concept of leisure had been reserved for the aristocracy.’ The Victorian period ‘saw an unprecedented upsurge in leisure pursuits among all classes of society. This ‘Leisure Revolution’ was possible due to the increased availability of some disposable income and free time.’ Paintings in the Guildhall Art Gallery depict some of these newly accessible activities such as pubs, music hall, public parks, sports clubs, museums, day trip to the seaside and boating plus country walking expeditions.

Giles Fraser, in a piece responding to the Budget announcement, argues that these developments have resulted in shopping having now become our leisure experience par excellence and, more than that, our religion. In counteracting that development he suggests going back to Biblical understandings of rest. Paul Heintzman agrees and quotes a textbook of leisure education which notes that ‘the church has many thousands of years’ experience in helping people from all social strata find life and find it more abundantly.’

Our reading from Hebrews states that ‘a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labours as God did from his.’ While Psalm 23 promises the restoration our soul in green pastures and beside still waters leading to our dwelling in the house of the Lord our whole life long. The principle of Sabbath rest is reflective of the Old Testament idea of a rhythm to life which supports a view of leisure as non-work time or activity that refreshes and restores, while the concept of rest as being reflective of the quality of life offered in Jesus Christ provides support for the view of leisure as a state-of-being. Josef Pieper, a twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher has defined leisure as “a mental and spiritual attitude . . . a condition of the soul . . . a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude” in his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture.

However, we also need to consider Biblical understandings of rest in relation to society and not just as individuals. Giles Fraser explains that in the Bible ‘the seventh day of the week corresponded to the seventh day of creation, when God rested – and from this derives: 1) rest on the seventh day; 2) rest for the land on the seventh year …; and 3) the forgiveness of all debts – the jubilee – on the seventh times seventh year.’ This last is the big one, he writes, ‘the so-called “year of the Lord’s favour”. It’s what the Jubilee Debt Campaign referred back to when it called for the eradication of developing-world debt. It’s also what Jesus refers to in his very first sermon: “I come to bring good news to the poor, freedom to the captive … and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

‘The jubilee is not debt-restructuring. It’s out-and-out, full-on debt forgiveness.’ Jesus appropriates this concept to himself and his ministry, saying that it is fulfilled through his life, ministry, death and resurrection. He gives us a vision of a world in which the forgiveness and rest which he makes available extends across the whole of human society. This is the Sabbath rest which is still to come and connects to the Isaiah vision of a future society that we explored in relation to the theme of Home.

In the meantime, Leland Ryken has helpfully written in Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure, that ‘All leisure . . . is a gift from God that, when used wisely, “provides rest, relaxation, enjoyment, and physical and psychic health. It allows people to recover the distinctly human values, to build relationships, to strengthen family ties, and to put themselves in touch with the world and nature. Leisure can lead to wholeness, gratitude, self-expression, self-fulfilment, creativity, personal growth, and a sense of achievement. So leisure should be valued and not despised.’

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W.H. Davies - Leisure.

The Year of Jubilee

When we have a General or Local Election I wonder whether you read the manifesto’s of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them.

The political parties know this, as is demonstrated by this quote from a post entitled Why manifestos still matter (even if nobody reads them) from Labour List:

“Given the amount of time and effort that goes into producing election manifestos, the number of people who actually read them is frighteningly small. Every campaign, parties make determined efforts to get them onto shelves but their sales hardly threaten JK Rowling or even the authors of well-known political diaries (still available in all good book shops) ….

But for the millions of voters who decide the election outcome … well for the overwhelming majority, life’s too short.”

The passage that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4. 16 - 24) was the manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God. We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here he actually did in the course of his ministry. He did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes. 

Jesus’ manifesto was taken from Isaiah 61 and is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, blindness and oppression. What Jesus is proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty throughout the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another.

The people listening to Jesus knew about Jubilee but had never heard anything like his statement before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 61:1–2.

Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). That is the year of jubilee and so Jesus proclaimed his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he had created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways we do not do away with gods altogether instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This isn’t something that is just for us as individuals however. It is also something which can impact all of society. After all, the Old Testament Jubilee was intended for the nation of Israel, not simply individuals within it. A contemporary example of this happening in practice is the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is part of a global movement demanding freedom from the slavery of unjust debts and a new financial system that puts people first. Inspired by the ancient concept of ‘jubilee’, the Jubilee Debt Campaign works for a world where debt is no longer used as a form of power by which the rich exploit the poor. Freedom from debt slavery is a necessary step towards a world in which our common resources are used to realise equality, justice and human dignity. It is particularly important that we think about such things at the end of One World Week where people from diverse backgrounds have been coming together to learn about global justice, to spread that learning and to use it to take action for justice locally and globally.

We can see from all this that, in order to understand what our release means, we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4 he defended himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he used the Bible to tell the Devil what he will not be like and here, in the synagogue, he used the Bible to tell everyone what he will be like. We can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.     

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Will it be the cynicism or distrust that some feel towards events like One World Week? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us and involvement in his work of releasing others from sin and from debt?

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U2 - Beautiful Day. 

Mixing Church & Politics (2)

Yesterday the Bishop of Barking (with Anglican and Ecumenical partners) hosted a seminar for church leaders on encouraging vocations to public life and political office entitled Mixing Church and Politics.

This was a well attended event at Westminster which saw politicians and political activists from each of the main parties speak passionately about the faith motivations for their political careers. These ranged from the influence of Catholic social teaching to Evangelical urban missions.

Stephen Timms equated Wilberforce’s campaign for the abolition of slavery with the Church’s involvement in the Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History campaigns. Jon Cruddas commended the attempts by Rowan Williams and Vincent Nicholls to change the language of political discourse and to re-emphasise the significance of ‘virtue’. In addition to contributions from Simon Hughes and David Burrowes, Caroline Alabi and Sister Josephine Caddy spoke about their involvements in the Hope not Hate and London Citizens campaigns respectively.

Bishop David has said, "After the past eighteen months confidence in political life in our country has reached an all time low. The Christian community needs to take responsibility in calling out vocations to public life and supporting politicians in this high Christian calling."

The evening saw my continued engagement with local politics as, together with Tom Platt of Living Streets, I presented the Community Street Audit report prepared by the Seven Kings and Newbury Park Resident's Association to the Area 7 Committee in the London Borough of Redbridge.

Our report highlights issues of traffic speeds, pavement parking, damaged paving, renewal of signage, litter, and seating in public areas along Aldborough Road South. We are calling for greater enforcement of the 20mph speed limit; traffic calming measures; a review of parking in the whole area; and additional signage to local amenities. Alongside these requests, we are offering to help fund new public seating and to organise community events to clean up the area and promote pride in the upkeep of front gardens.

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Runrig - City Of Lights / Dance Called America.

Choose Together

“This place has known magic, very dark, very powerful. This time I cannot hope to destroy it alone. Times like these, dark times, they can bring people together but they can tear them apart. Evil will pass through from their world into our own – these are mad times we live in, mad – and the darkest hour is upon us all. In my life I’ve seen things that are truly horrific, now I know that you will see worse. You have no choice. You must not fail.”

These are words taken from the trailer for the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; a film and a series which are about a battle between forces of darkness and light described in words and images that are not so dissimilar from those we heard today in each of our Bible readings:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” (Ephesians 6. 12-13)

“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24. 15)

"Does this make you want to give up? What gives life is God’s spirit; human power is of no use at all. The words I have spoken to you bring God’s life-giving Spirit. Yet some of you do not believe." (John 6. 61-64)

Does this mean that as Christians we are actually living in the equivalent of a Harry Potter film? Life generally, although it is often a real struggle, doesn’t look or feel like that! Fantasy books and films can be a means of exploring the dark forces in life and the sense of a cosmic conflict in our world but they can also be a reason for dismissing, as fantasy, this Biblical sense of there being a cosmic conflict in which we are all in some way engaged.

The most helpful writer I have found on these themes to date is Stephen Verney, a former Bishop of Repton. His commentary on John’s Gospel, Water into Wine, begins by noting the way in which this Gospel consistently speaks about there being two different levels or orders to reality. What he means by this are different patterns of society, each with a different centre or ruling power. He gives as an example, the difference between a fascist order and a democratic order:

“In the fascist order there is a dictator, and round him subservient people who raise their hands in salute, and are thrown into concentration camps if they disobey. In the democratic order … there is an elected government, and round it persons who are interdependent, who share initiatives and ideas.”

So, what are the two orders that he sees described in John’s Gospel? In the first, “the ruling principle is the dictator ME, my ego-centric ego, and the pattern of society is people competing with, manipulating and trying to control each other.” In the second, “the ruling principle is the Spirit of Love, and the pattern of society is one of compassion – people giving to each other what they really are, and accepting what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability.”

I see these two different orders clearly defined when Jesus comes before Pilate, as I have described in the first of a series of meditations I have written on the Stations of the Cross:

Jesus and Pilate
head-to-head
in a clash of cultures.
Pilate is
angular, aggressive, threatening
representing
the oppressive, controlling
Empire of dominating power,
with its strength in numbers
and weaponry,
which can crucify
but cannot
set free.
Jesus is
curves and crosses,
love and sacrifice,
representing
the kingdom of God;
a kingdom of love,
service and self-sacrifice
birthing men and women
into the freedom
to love one another.
The way of compassion
or the way of domination;
the way of self-sacrifice
or the way of self;
the way of powerlessness
or the way of power;
the way of serving
or the way of grasping;
the kingdom of God
or the empires of Man.

These two orders or patterns for society are at war with each other and it is this struggle, against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil, of which we are a part.

Now, in today’s readings, we are consistently asked to choose our side in this struggle. Verney writes of this being the key question for us as human beings, the question being “so urgent that our survival depending on finding the answer. He writes that:

“we can see in our world order the terrible consequences of our ego-centricity. We have projected it into our institutions, where it has swollen up into a positive force of evil. Human beings have set up prison camps where they torture each other for pleasure. We are all imprisoned together, in a system of competing nation states, on the edge of a catastrophe which could destroy all life on our planet.”

And so, as Colin Buchanan writes in his commentary on Ephesians:

“… the major battle in which we are called to engage is among the principalities and powers, in the structures of society, in the liberation of the oppressed, in the conserving of the environment, in the provision of housing and jobs, and in the protection of the helpless and innocent, such as the unborn foetus, and abused children.”

It is at this point that we often draw back and say what people often say about engagement in politics i.e. what different can I make? What different can my vote or my voice or my actions make? Aren’t we talking here about global order and forces that can’t be influenced or affected by individuals, so what possible difference can I make on my own?

But individual action is not what Joshua, Jesus or Paul were primarily talking about. Joshua was challenging a whole nation about whether they would choose to follow God corporately. Jesus was talking to the disciples who would go on to form the bedrock of the Church. And Paul, who had already written in Ephesians 3. 10 that “[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God, should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms”, when he writes about the armour of God writes not in the singular but the plural. The armour of God is armour for us to put on and use together in the cosmic conflict.

Colin Buchanan writes that:

“Our being ‘drawn together’ by Jesus Christ, as denominations, church fellowships and individuals within those fellowships, is crucial to the fight … Paul may be telling us how to become a single army under the hand of God … So let the church identify the enemy and, as a single force – the body of Christ, go for the jugular. We have … God’s kingdom to bring in. We can only do it … together.”

We have seen this happen in practice in the various non-violent revolutions of the twentieth century; Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jubilee 2000 and other campaigns show what is possible when people of faith and people of peace come together in sufficient numbers to make a difference. Together we can engage the principalities and powers, the structures of society, to liberate the oppressed, conserve the environment, provide housing and jobs, and protect the helpless and innocent.

Together; we can only do it together. Joshua challenged the people of Israel, Jesus challenged the disciples, Paul challenged the Church:

‘Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the ego-centric ego, where people compete with, manipulate and try to control each other or the Spirit of Love, where people give to each other what they really are, and accept what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Spirit of Love.’

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John Lennon - Come Together.

Tryin' to throw your arms around the world (2)

And I Have No Compass

On both counts – the running and the falling down – movement is essentially improvisatory.

“”There’s a line in, I think, the New Testament,” Bono told Joe Jackson of Hot Press before Zooropa was released, “which says that the spirit moves and no one knows where it comes from or where it's going. It's like a wind. I’ve always felt that way about my faith. That’s why on Zooropa I say I’ve got no religion. Because I believe that religion is the enemy of God. Because it denies the spontaneity of the spirit and the almost anarchistic nature of the spirit.”” This embodies itself in lines such as “And I have no compass/And I have no map” from Zooropa and in U2’s improvisatory approach to creating music and writing lyrics:

“On the road, U2 are constantly working informally on new ideas. As a matter of course, rehearsals and sound-checks are recorded. Frequently the germ of something new will emerge as the band improvise their way through a series of rhythm patterns and chord changes … U2 songs often proceed along parallel tracks. On the one side, a set of musical ideas is taking shape. On the other, Bono and The Edge are developing bits of titles, lyrics, choruses and whatever other scraps of ideas have suggested themselves. The real heartache starts when they begin the process of bringing these different elements together.”

A Sort of Homecoming

Improvisation leads to two further characteristics of their spirituality, allusiveness and reconciliation. U2 have been vociferously criticised at times for didactic preaching and yet this has always been an approach they have tried to avoid. There can, of course, be a big gap between what people say and what people do. U2 did not always stick to their good intentions but, they did have good intentions, did generally acknowledge when they had fallen down and did get up, dust themselves down and try again.

There were also times when they did succeed, both in their songs and in performance. The best U2 songs are either impressionist sketches or aphoristic paradoxes. ‘A Sort of Homecoming’ is an example of the former while ‘The Fly’ is an example of the latter. Niall Stokes has described ‘A Sort of Homecoming’ as an “impressionistic reverie … written in a dreamy, cinematic style” but with a “constant sense of movement propelling the song” through the intermingling of sex, spirituality, death and resurrection. There is, he says, “a sense in the lyrics that things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold" but also a sense of reassurance from the control that the writer has over the poetry and ideas.

Conversely, ‘The Fly’ has a specific sense of place – Hell – and a much sharper and wittier, but ultimately no less enigmatic, turn of phrase:

“I became very interested in these single-line aphorisms,” Bono states. “I’d been writing them. So I got this character [The Fly] to say them all, from ‘A liar won’t believe anybody else’ to ‘A friend is someone who lets you down’. And that’s where ‘The Fly’ was coming from … It was written like a phone call from hell, but the guy liked it there,” Bono told David Fricke of Rolling Stone. “It was this guy running away – ‘Hi honey, it’s hot but I like it here’.”

This same allusiveness can also be seen in performance through a use of symbolic gesture. For part of their ZooTV tour U2 included live broadcasts from war engulfed Sarajevo in the show. This brought accusations of bad taste from some critics but for others it was a means of realisation:

"The fact that it felt so awkward, that the thing sat so badly in the show, is a way of saying to this huge audience, 'There are things that can't be accommodated easily, and that are painful and awkward and you can't homogenise them into the rest of the world'. I thought exactly the awkwardness of it, the ill-fittingness, was what made it memorable. I've never been made in a rock and roll show, to feel the pain of the world before".

This allusive language both lyrically and in performance has resonances with the novelist Nicholas Mosley’s suggestion that society needs to develop a language or style “by which apparent contradictions might be held … [being] elusive, allusive, not didactic”. It may be that U2 have moved from proclaiming truth to testing the style, substance and patterning of truth. That they may be, in however limited a fashion, exploring the message of standing back, coincidence and growing tenderness from the acceptance of complexities.

That this is so, may also be seen in their reconciliatory intent and practice. ‘New Years Day’, for example, contains the line, “Though torn in two we can be one”. This is reconciliation in a lyric that - through images of separated lovers returning home and of a united crowd at a Solidarity rally - links public and private in the injunction to be one. War, the album from which ‘New Years Day’ comes, is, paradoxically, about surrender.

War was the outcome of internal conflicts between individual members of the band and the demands of their Christian faith, as they understood it at the time. Their reconciliation of these conflicts came, in part, from the understanding that Christianity did not divide body from spirit or sacred from secular. Instead these were, at best, reconciled and, at least, held together in tension.

Reconciliation is also embodied in their activism and working methods. U2 do not simply sing about the world’s woes they also take practical actions to address them, whether this is contributing to concerts/records to raise charitable funds, symbolic actions such as their Sellafield protest for Greenpeace, or, most significantly, Bono’s campaigning for debt relief through Jubilee 2000.

In their working method, scraps or fragments of music and lyrics are combined to create something that is larger than the sum of the parts. Adam Clayton describes this as being "not just a playing thing - it's a whole supportive role within the commune". John Waters has identified this sense of unity as a key feature in the impact of U2:

"As in no other band that I am aware of it, the music of U2 is a unity of all its parts. There is no sense that the music can be divided into its constituent elements - into voice, guitar, rhythm section, backing, accompaniment. It comes to you whole, maybe because that is the way it is imagined. The Edge plays the guitar, as Bono sings, Larry hits the drums or Adam plays the bass, not as an end in itself, but in order to serve the song. Voice and instruments are united in a single purpose: they tell the story".

U2’s spirituality, their language of reconciliation is not just about words - the lyrics are allusive containing hints and glimpses - but is also about the friendship between the four band members, their approach to composition and performance, the relationships and approach of their organisation. Their spirituality then, is a combination of words and actions and of on-stage and off-stage, characterised by movement, allusion, symbolism and action, aiming to express honesty, integrity and wholeness.

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U2 - Zoo Station.