'Because the Christmas story has been told so often for so long, it’s easy even for Christians to forget how revolutionary Jesus’ birth was. The idea that God would become human and dwell among us, in circumstances both humble and humiliating, shattered previous assumptions. It was through this story of divine enfleshment that much of our humanistic tradition was born ...
We Christians would do well to remind ourselves of the true meaning of the incarnation. We are part of a great drama that God has chosen to be a participant in, not in the role of a conquering king but as a suffering servant, not with the intention to condemn the world but to redeem it. He saw the inestimable worth of human life, regardless of social status, wealth and worldly achievements, intelligence or national origin. So should we.' (Peter Wehner, NY Times)
For more on the revolutionary nature of the Christmas story, see my sermon on 'The Revolutionary Magnificat'.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Cockburn, with Lou Reed & Roseanne Cash - Cry Of A Tiny Babe.
Showing posts with label revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revolution. Show all posts
Saturday, 26 December 2015
Sunday, 20 December 2015
The Revolutionary Magnificat
This is the sermon I preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields this morning:
At my
first training weekend as a curate the then Bishop of Barking, David Hawkins,
performed a handstand to demonstrate the way in which Jesus, through his
teaching in the beatitudes, turns our understanding of life upside down. He was
thinking of the way in which Jesus startles us as paradox, irony and surprise
permeate his teachings flipping our expectations upside down: the least are the
greatest; adults become like children; the religious miss the heavenly banquet;
the immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Bishop David's action turned our
expectations, as curates, of Bishops and their behaviour upside-down at the
same time that it perfectly illustrated his point.
Donald Kraybill wrote a classic book on the kingdom of God which used this same
imagery as its title and defining metaphor. ‘The Upside-Down Kingdom’ shows how the kingdom of God announced by
Jesus appeared upside-down in first-century Palestine and continues to look
upside-down as it breaks into diverse cultures around the world today. That
image and the visual metaphor of Bishop David’s handstand can just as easily be
applied to the Magnificat, the song sung by Mary following her meeting with
Elizabeth (about which we heard in today’s Gospel reading) with all of the
great reversals contained within it; ‘He has brought down the powerful from
their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good
things, and sent the rich away empty.’ Turning upside-down, as in a handstand,
involves a revolution and, because of its great reversals, the Magnificat has
been called ‘the most beautiful and revolutionary hymn in the world’; one that
‘is redolent of theologically and politically destabilizing realities.’
In a
Holy Week meditation I wrote a few years ago based on Jesus’ meeting with Pilate
I explored similar revolutions to those articulated in the Magnificat by seeing
Pilate as “representing / the oppressive, controlling / Empire of dominating
power, / with its strength in numbers / and weaponry, / which can crucify / but
cannot / set free” while Jesus represents “the kingdom of God; / a kingdom of
love, / service and self-sacrifice / birthing men and women / into the freedom
/to love one another.” Our choice is then: “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.”
Today,
though, I want to focus briefly on relational revolutions deriving from this
story. The first is that the Magnificat was sung by an obscure young Jewish
girl who has become one of the most important figures in the global faith that
is Christianity. This example of expectations being turned upside down is
captured well by Malcolm Guite in his Sonnet for the Feast of the Visitation:
Here
is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of
lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From
quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And
in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two
women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed
and unknown to men of power
But
in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And
in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And
Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth
with all called ‘past their prime’
They
sing today for all the great unsung
Women
who turned eternity to time
Favoured
of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets
who bring the best in us to birth.
Mary
has been given many titles down the ages but ‘the earliest ‘title’, agreed
throughout the church in the first centuries of our faith, before the divisions
of East and West, Catholic and Protestant, was Theotokos, which means
God-Bearer. Mary is the prime God-Bearer, bearing for us in time the One who
was begotten in eternity, bringing Jesus to us and, therefore, as woman and
mother, the one who has been closest to God. Every Christian after her should
“seek to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means
that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our
daily lives, is born and given to another” (https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/mary/).
Mary’s role, as Theotokos, challenges the patriarchy of the society in which
she lived, as well as that of the Church throughout much of its history.
Patriarchy
is also challenged by another revolutionary aspect of Mary’s story and that is
the Virgin Birth. The primary purpose of patriarchy is to assure the man of the
legitimacy of his offspring. “Patriarchy's
investment in systems that ensure proof of authorial possession results from
the necessity of overcoming male anxiety over the ultimate uncertainty of
biological paternity. Although the woman always knows she is the mother -
through her physical connection with the developing foetus - the man never
knows for sure that he is the father, and thus has a high stake in maintaining
a system by which he can claim paternal ‘ownership’.” (Amelia Jones, quoted in
‘Re-Enchantment’ - http://www.jameselkins.com/index.php/academic-books/234-the-art-seminar-series)
But,
as we know, in the Nativity story Joseph is not the father of Jesus and does
not know whether Mary has slept with another man or not. A different role is
asked of Joseph from that of the Patriarch; that of being the guardian and
foster-father of Jesus. So, Jesus' birth occurs outside of or at a tangent to
patriarchal systems or structures. Jesus, himself, is a man who doesn’t marry
and who has no physical offspring - the furtherance of his 'seed' is of no
interest to him. His emphasis is on his followers as his family, rather than
his blood and adoptive relatives. His death is for the entire family of God -
all people everywhere – and he teaches that after the resurrection people will
neither marry or be given in marriage.
As a
result, the philosopher Thierry De Duve has suggested that the: “great
invention, the great coup of Christianity”, resulting from the Virgin Birth,
“is to short-circuit” patriarchal ownership and a “production line that
fabricates sons” (‘Re-Enchantment’). Robert Song has argued that the advent of
Christ changes our understandings of sexuality because there is a “fundamental
shift in horizons brought about the resurrection.” In the resurrection life
there will be no marrying or giving in marriage, Jesus says, and behind his
thinking is the idea that where there is no death, there will be no need for
birth or marriage. Subverting the patriarchal system through the Virgin Birth
and removing the necessity for procreation through the resurrection opens up
space in which to reimagine marriage, including the possibility of a greater
diversity of relational and family structures in society characterised by
faithfulness, permanence and fruitfulness. Robert Song calls these “faithful
covenanted relationships”; committed relationships which are sexually active
but non-procreative (https://durhamabbeyhouse.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/book-launch-robert-songs-new-book-on-same-sex-relationships/).
The
anthropologist Daniel Miller in quoted in the current edition of ‘The Big Issue’ as saying that “Christmas is a festival that aims to make the family not
just sacred but an idiom for society more generally, including the local
community or neighbourhood but also the national family.” In Britain, he
suggests, “we place considerable emphasis on re-establishing a version of the
domestic at Christmas time, rediscovering a certain sentimentality for this
idealised version of family life.” The article then notes that, of course,
“this rose-tinted vision is a world away from the reality many people live
through at Christmas” because we do not enjoy “such an idealised family
festival.”
However,
if we were to grasp the unconventional and non-idealised
relationships which God chose to reveal himself and be incarnated through the
birth of Jesus – a conception outside of marriage, a relationship on the brink
of divorce, a foster-father, a birth in cramped and crowded circumstances, an
immediate threat to life followed by refugee status – we might then understand
the reality of incarnation; of God with us in the reality, not the ideality, of
our lives.
For
Mary and Elizabeth to be caught up in events with such revolutionary
implications - events which turn our understanding of societal norms for
relationships upside down – was far from easy. “Behind Elizabeth and
Zechariah's joy at the birth of their son John was the knowledge that they had
lost an inconsolably long number of years to enjoy watching him grow up.” “At
the edge of Gabriel's annunciation was the social stress that Mary would endure
in a society where it was all about your embedded role in the community.” She
was not believed, either by those closest to her and those who didn’t really
know her. Engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred, as she was found to
be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her
quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but,
if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic
intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding
characterised the response to Mary wherever she went. And “lurking over
Joseph's shoulder was the gossip that would nag him all his life, that he is
merely the putative father of Jesus.” (W. David O. Taylor -
http://artspastor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-annunciation-really-weird-story.html)
Bearing
all this in mind, we can imagine how much Mary needed the moment of empathy and
inspiration described in today’s Gospel reading because the experience of being
the God-bearer involved such difficulty. We can imagine how important it was to
her to be with a relative who not only believed her but was also partway
through her own miraculous pregnancy. The relief that she would have felt at
being believed and understood would have been immense and then there is the
shared moment of divine inspiration when the Holy Spirit comes on them, the
babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, and as Elizabeth blesses Mary, Mary is
inspired to sing the Magnificat. In the face of so much disbelief and lack of
support, this confirmation that they were both following God’s will, would have
been overwhelming.
We
can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of
disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. We can also learn from this
moment when God gives her both human empathy through Elizabeth and divine
inspiration through the Holy Spirit to be a support and strengthening in the
difficulties which she faced as God-bearer. Our own experience in times of trouble
and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks to trust and
preserve while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and
strengthening.
As we
have already heard Malcolm Guite suggesting, every Christian after Mary should
“seek to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means
that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our
daily lives, is born and given to another.” Mary bore Jesus into the
revolutions of her day and time; revolutions which began with her bearing of
Jesus and continued in and through his ministry, death and resurrection. We are
called to bear Jesus into the revolutions of our own day and time; even bearing
him in such a way that new revolutions begin.
Christ
is born in each one of us as we open our lives to him and we then bear, carry
or take him to others as our daily lives reveal aspects of his character and
love to others. As Teresa of Avila said: “Christ has no body but yours, / No
hands, no feet on earth but yours, / Yours are the eyes with which he looks / Compassion
on this world, /Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, / Yours are
the hands, with which he blesses all the world. / Yours are the hands, yours
are the feet, / Yours are the eyes, you are his body. / Christ has no body now
but yours, / No hands, no feet on earth but yours, / Yours are the eyes with
which he looks / compassion on this world. / Christ has no body now on earth
but yours.” In this way, we bear him to others.
Malcolm
Guite’s poem ‘Theotokos’ sums up some of the different ways in which Mary’s
experience can speak to us and inspire us in the challenges we face as we go
through life. In its final lines, it also suggests a possible response to those
challenges and experiences:
You
bore for me the One who came to bless
And
bear for all and make the broken whole.
You
heard His call and in your open ‘yes’
You
spoke aloud for every living soul.
Oh
gracious Lady, child of your own child,
Whose
mother-love still calls the child in me,
Call
me again, for I am lost, and wild
Waves
surround me now. On this dark sea
Shine
as a star and call me to the shore.
Open
the door that all my sins would close
And
hold me in your garden. Let me share
The prayer
that folds the petals of the Rose.
Enfold
me too in Love’s last mystery
And
bring me to the One you bore for me.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Herbert Sumsion - Magnificat.
Thursday, 6 August 2015
Joe Machine: derivations from narrative icons
I recently met the Stuckist artist, Joe Machine. Edward Lucie-Smith writes of Joe:
'Like many of the most remarkable artists of the Modern and Post Modern epoch, Joe Machine is self-taught. As it happens, being self-taught is also very much part of the English – or should I be politically correct and call it the ‘British’ - tradition. Francis Bacon, notoriously, had no professional formation as a painter. William Blake, in many ways a precursor of Joe Machine, as some of the illustrations in this book amply demonstrate, spent six years studying at the Royal Academy, but the instruction he received seems to have bounced off him. All it did was to instill in him a profound disrespect for academic ways of thinking, at least as these were understood in the England of his time ...
'Like many of the most remarkable artists of the Modern and Post Modern epoch, Joe Machine is self-taught. As it happens, being self-taught is also very much part of the English – or should I be politically correct and call it the ‘British’ - tradition. Francis Bacon, notoriously, had no professional formation as a painter. William Blake, in many ways a precursor of Joe Machine, as some of the illustrations in this book amply demonstrate, spent six years studying at the Royal Academy, but the instruction he received seems to have bounced off him. All it did was to instill in him a profound disrespect for academic ways of thinking, at least as these were understood in the England of his time ...
He participated in the first major Stuckist exhibition, held in Shoreditch in 2000, and was prominent in the Stuckist show held at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool 2004, which marked a certain measure of reluctant official acceptance for the group, whose activities are still excoriated by many critics ...
Throughout ... the early 2000s, Joe Machine was studying intensively – his chosen subjects being psychoanalysis and social science, socialist politics and nature.
The result has been a considerable blossoming and broadening of subject matter. One new series, called Failure of the Russian Revolution, is about radical politics, and in particular the politics of violence. These paintings have a much stronger element of direct social commentary than previous work, but always combined with fantasy. In no sense are they attempts at social or socialist realism. In fact, one might even go so far as to think of them as derivations from narrative icons, used by Byzantine and Russian artist to recount the lives of Christ and the saints.
Another series, The First Revolution, is openly concerned with religion. It employs Old Testament symbolisms, material taken from the Book of Genesis, but only in a heterodox fashion. The theme is the Fall of Man. Joe Machine hints that some of the content of these works comes from studies of the Kabbalah. If this is the case, one needs to consider that one of the aims of those who study the Kabbalah is to understand and describe the divine realm. Another is to achieve ecstatic union with the godhead.
Throughout ... the early 2000s, Joe Machine was studying intensively – his chosen subjects being psychoanalysis and social science, socialist politics and nature.
The result has been a considerable blossoming and broadening of subject matter. One new series, called Failure of the Russian Revolution, is about radical politics, and in particular the politics of violence. These paintings have a much stronger element of direct social commentary than previous work, but always combined with fantasy. In no sense are they attempts at social or socialist realism. In fact, one might even go so far as to think of them as derivations from narrative icons, used by Byzantine and Russian artist to recount the lives of Christ and the saints.
Another series, The First Revolution, is openly concerned with religion. It employs Old Testament symbolisms, material taken from the Book of Genesis, but only in a heterodox fashion. The theme is the Fall of Man. Joe Machine hints that some of the content of these works comes from studies of the Kabbalah. If this is the case, one needs to consider that one of the aims of those who study the Kabbalah is to understand and describe the divine realm. Another is to achieve ecstatic union with the godhead.
What these images inevitably bring to mind are the things we find in the Prophetic Books of William Blake.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The La's - Son Of A Gun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The La's - Son Of A Gun.
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Art and Protest: Resistance is fertile
Interesting show at the Daniel Libeskind Space (166-220 Holloway Road, Islington N7 8DB) but you'll have to be quick to catch it, as it is only on from 3rd to 5th April. Evenings from 18:00 to 20:00 when booking is required. No booking required for day-time entry (11.30am - 4.30am).
Art and Protest: Resistance is fertile is a Guerilla Galleries show. Guerilla Galleries seek to engineer, produce and curate an annual series of exclusive shows, exhibitions and events. They provide a platform for emerging artists and talented creatives to showcase and bring their work to new audiences.
Pouka, a commission4mission member, is contributing work to the show which documents and celebrates the passion, pain, and power of protest through film, photography, fine art and more exponents than you can wave a placard at. Exploring scenes and re-examining snapshots of demonstrations and protest actions from living memory captured, re-told and innovatively delivered by a carefully selected band of artists and creatives in true Guerilla Galleries style.
This three-day show offers candid insight, fresh perspectives and levels of honesty previously unseen in themed shows of this nature. Art and Protest is not about choosing or taking sides, it's about artists telling tales and allowing an audience to decide.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Ohio.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Bob, God 'n' blood
The current issue of Third Way has an interesting article by Stephen Tomkins exploring the way in which Bob Dylan has consistently linked religion and violence throughout his career.
Tomkins briefly surveys the religious references in Dylan's work from the religious politics of 'With God On Our Side' through "a quiet, persistent interest in spirituality" from Blonde on Blonde to Blood on the Tracks followed by the "Jesus is returning and you're in for it" message of Slow Train Coming before in his most recent work, most particularly Love and Theft, considering "the relationship between love, faith and violence, repeatedly bringing them together in an often incongruous ménage, and often at the most incongruous moments."
Tomkins concludes that the movement in Dylan's work is of the "politics of the earlier records" giving way to personal understanding; "religion, bloodshed and sex not as phenomena of the world out there, but first and above all as part of every human nature, things that we all carry around all the time." The realization found in the work, Tomkins suggests, is "that the line between Us and Them runs through me" and that perhaps "we stand a better chance of getting somewhere with changin' our times if we start by knowing ourselves."
I'm not sure though that this really gets to the heart of why Dylan links religion and violence. It's an important issue because many who are not religious link religion with violence and view the link as a reason to reject religion. Dylan doesn't do that despite clearly linking both, so exploring this theme in his work could potentially open up contemporary and universal debates. It is interesting too to compare Dylan's linking of the two with that of fellow rock star Nick Cave. Cave seems to view love as involving extreme emotion and therefore either inevitably involving violence or at least being inclined towards violence. Love of God, seems to be for him, the deepest emotion and therefore the most likely to result in violence and this is what attracted him to the language and imagery of the Bible, and the Psalms in particular. Cave's linking of religion and violence seems to me to be a better fit with the conclusion that Tomkins draws in his article than are the links which Dylan makes.
Cave argues for a personal link to do with the deepest emotion that each of us can feel, while Dylan essentially doesn't do personal in his songs because his songs are observational rather than confessional. This, it seems to me, is the trap into which many Dylan critics fall and one which Dylan himself has regularly criticised in those who seek to analyse his songs.
Dylan comes from the tradition of hobo singers (Woody Guthrie) and beat poets (Jack Kerouac) for whom the journey and the documenting of their experience is life itself. Dylan as journeyman, as traveller, is the key insight of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs where Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:
"He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey."
Dylan's manifesto for his work is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'; a song about walking through a world which is surreal and unjust and singing what he sees:
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' ..."
This is a song which has been interpreted as dealing with events that were contemporary to the time such as the Cuban missile crisis and, more generally, the threat of a nuclear holocaust. That maybe so, but I think a more straightforward interpretation and one that is closer to what the lyrics actually say is to see it as a statement by Dylan of what he is trying to do in and through his work. In the song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm and he resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees:
"... 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
This then is the other key element to Dylan's journey and work; the idea of journeying in face of the coming apocalypse. What we have in the best of Dylan is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture.
This is where religion and violence are linked in Dylan's work because apocalyptic imagery and themes run throughout his work and often require Biblical images and stories for their expression. Tomkins uses 'When The Ship Comes In' as a key song in his thesis arguing that it, like 'The Times They Are A-Changin', is about "the whole sixties social revolution, young versus old, freedom versus rules" and he picks up on Dylan's need when "rousing the righteous rabble" to use the "language of biblical violence." He sees this as an inconsistency in Dylan's early work, criticising religious politics while also appropriating its language.
But, while both songs can be understood in terms of the sixties revolution, neither need be understood in that way and the lyrics of neither song specifically make that connection. Instead both deal with rapidly approaching change described in apocalyptic terms - "admit that the waters/Around you have grown/And accept it that soon/You'll be drenched to the bone", "There's battle outside/And it is ragin'./It'll soon shake your windows/And rattle your walls", "Oh the time will stop ... 'Fore the hurricane begins/The hour when the ship comes in", "And like Pharoah's tribe,/They'll be drownded in the tide,/And like Goliath, they'll be conquered" - and when the apocalyptic moment arrives some will be on the positive side of the change and others not. Dylan may well be speaking, as Tomkins suggests, about "young versus old, freedom versus rules" but, on the basis of the lyrics themselves, it is not possible to be definitive because the language Dylan uses is deliberately unspecific. In neither song does he identify the specific nature of the change that is to come and it is this generality which gives these songs universality and continuing relevance because they can be applied to different circumstances at different times. What can definitively be said about both songs however is that they are warnings about a coming apocalyptic change and the warning is to do with which side of that change we will be on.
Understood in this way, these songs then have startling consistency with the songs which Dylan wrote in the wake of his 1978 conversion and which Tomkins describes as 'Jesus is returning and you're for it' songs. In my post Bob Dylan: Pilgrim, Dante and Rimbaud, I describe how from Slow Train Coming onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is "comin' up around the bend" and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Similarly, in 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', he sees the apocalypse coming ("Curtain risin' on a new age") but not yet here while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he again calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: "Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes" ('Dead Man, Dead Man'). In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems to me to be consistent to read 'Jokerman', from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. We are the jokermen who laugh, dance and fly but only in the dark of the night (equated with sin and judgement) afraid to come into the revealing light of the Sun/Son.
For much of his career though, Dylan, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational confict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message throughout is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.
In Bob Dylan: Pilgrim, Dante and Rimbaud I described through his songs where Dylan's pilgrim journey in the eye of the apocalypse had taken him:
"He travels the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: sees "seven breezes a-blowin'" all around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); sees lightning flashing "For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse" ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveys 'Desolation Road'; talks truth with a thief as the wind begins to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); takes shelter from a woman "With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair" ('Shelter from the Storm'); feels the Idiot Wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognises himself as an idiot and feels so sorry ('Idiot Wind'); finds a pathway to the stars and can't believe he's survived and is still alive ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rides the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); is driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); hears the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); feels the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrays his commitment, feels the breath of the storm and goes searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but:
"The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven')."
For me the link that Dylan makes between religion and violence is firstly external to us because it is about a coming apocalyptic crisis or change which will be violent. Where it then becomes personal is in how we choose to respond. Dylan's response was:
"I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest ...
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan Ferry - A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall.
Tomkins briefly surveys the religious references in Dylan's work from the religious politics of 'With God On Our Side' through "a quiet, persistent interest in spirituality" from Blonde on Blonde to Blood on the Tracks followed by the "Jesus is returning and you're in for it" message of Slow Train Coming before in his most recent work, most particularly Love and Theft, considering "the relationship between love, faith and violence, repeatedly bringing them together in an often incongruous ménage, and often at the most incongruous moments."
Tomkins concludes that the movement in Dylan's work is of the "politics of the earlier records" giving way to personal understanding; "religion, bloodshed and sex not as phenomena of the world out there, but first and above all as part of every human nature, things that we all carry around all the time." The realization found in the work, Tomkins suggests, is "that the line between Us and Them runs through me" and that perhaps "we stand a better chance of getting somewhere with changin' our times if we start by knowing ourselves."
I'm not sure though that this really gets to the heart of why Dylan links religion and violence. It's an important issue because many who are not religious link religion with violence and view the link as a reason to reject religion. Dylan doesn't do that despite clearly linking both, so exploring this theme in his work could potentially open up contemporary and universal debates. It is interesting too to compare Dylan's linking of the two with that of fellow rock star Nick Cave. Cave seems to view love as involving extreme emotion and therefore either inevitably involving violence or at least being inclined towards violence. Love of God, seems to be for him, the deepest emotion and therefore the most likely to result in violence and this is what attracted him to the language and imagery of the Bible, and the Psalms in particular. Cave's linking of religion and violence seems to me to be a better fit with the conclusion that Tomkins draws in his article than are the links which Dylan makes.
Cave argues for a personal link to do with the deepest emotion that each of us can feel, while Dylan essentially doesn't do personal in his songs because his songs are observational rather than confessional. This, it seems to me, is the trap into which many Dylan critics fall and one which Dylan himself has regularly criticised in those who seek to analyse his songs.
Dylan comes from the tradition of hobo singers (Woody Guthrie) and beat poets (Jack Kerouac) for whom the journey and the documenting of their experience is life itself. Dylan as journeyman, as traveller, is the key insight of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs where Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:
"He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey."
Dylan's manifesto for his work is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'; a song about walking through a world which is surreal and unjust and singing what he sees:
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' ..."
This is a song which has been interpreted as dealing with events that were contemporary to the time such as the Cuban missile crisis and, more generally, the threat of a nuclear holocaust. That maybe so, but I think a more straightforward interpretation and one that is closer to what the lyrics actually say is to see it as a statement by Dylan of what he is trying to do in and through his work. In the song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm and he resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees:
"... 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
This then is the other key element to Dylan's journey and work; the idea of journeying in face of the coming apocalypse. What we have in the best of Dylan is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture.
This is where religion and violence are linked in Dylan's work because apocalyptic imagery and themes run throughout his work and often require Biblical images and stories for their expression. Tomkins uses 'When The Ship Comes In' as a key song in his thesis arguing that it, like 'The Times They Are A-Changin', is about "the whole sixties social revolution, young versus old, freedom versus rules" and he picks up on Dylan's need when "rousing the righteous rabble" to use the "language of biblical violence." He sees this as an inconsistency in Dylan's early work, criticising religious politics while also appropriating its language.
But, while both songs can be understood in terms of the sixties revolution, neither need be understood in that way and the lyrics of neither song specifically make that connection. Instead both deal with rapidly approaching change described in apocalyptic terms - "admit that the waters/Around you have grown/And accept it that soon/You'll be drenched to the bone", "There's battle outside/And it is ragin'./It'll soon shake your windows/And rattle your walls", "Oh the time will stop ... 'Fore the hurricane begins/The hour when the ship comes in", "And like Pharoah's tribe,/They'll be drownded in the tide,/And like Goliath, they'll be conquered" - and when the apocalyptic moment arrives some will be on the positive side of the change and others not. Dylan may well be speaking, as Tomkins suggests, about "young versus old, freedom versus rules" but, on the basis of the lyrics themselves, it is not possible to be definitive because the language Dylan uses is deliberately unspecific. In neither song does he identify the specific nature of the change that is to come and it is this generality which gives these songs universality and continuing relevance because they can be applied to different circumstances at different times. What can definitively be said about both songs however is that they are warnings about a coming apocalyptic change and the warning is to do with which side of that change we will be on.
Understood in this way, these songs then have startling consistency with the songs which Dylan wrote in the wake of his 1978 conversion and which Tomkins describes as 'Jesus is returning and you're for it' songs. In my post Bob Dylan: Pilgrim, Dante and Rimbaud, I describe how from Slow Train Coming onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is "comin' up around the bend" and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Similarly, in 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', he sees the apocalypse coming ("Curtain risin' on a new age") but not yet here while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he again calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: "Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes" ('Dead Man, Dead Man'). In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems to me to be consistent to read 'Jokerman', from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. We are the jokermen who laugh, dance and fly but only in the dark of the night (equated with sin and judgement) afraid to come into the revealing light of the Sun/Son.
For much of his career though, Dylan, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational confict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message throughout is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.
In Bob Dylan: Pilgrim, Dante and Rimbaud I described through his songs where Dylan's pilgrim journey in the eye of the apocalypse had taken him:
"He travels the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: sees "seven breezes a-blowin'" all around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); sees lightning flashing "For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse" ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveys 'Desolation Road'; talks truth with a thief as the wind begins to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); takes shelter from a woman "With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair" ('Shelter from the Storm'); feels the Idiot Wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognises himself as an idiot and feels so sorry ('Idiot Wind'); finds a pathway to the stars and can't believe he's survived and is still alive ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rides the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); is driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); hears the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); feels the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrays his commitment, feels the breath of the storm and goes searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but:
"The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven')."
For me the link that Dylan makes between religion and violence is firstly external to us because it is about a coming apocalyptic crisis or change which will be violent. Where it then becomes personal is in how we choose to respond. Dylan's response was:
"I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest ...
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan Ferry - A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Guidance for future ministry
This morning I preached at St Albans Ilford, at the invitation of Fr. Stuart Halstead with whom I trained at NTMTC. It is good, having shared aspects of training together, to then be able to share aspects of ministry together within the same Deanery:
Am I in the right place? Following the right path? In the right work? What is God’s will for my life? What is my vocation? These are just some of the questions prompted by Matthew 4. 12-23, as we read of Jesus, those who heard him, and his first disciples all making key decisions about their future direction of travel. Hopefully, we shall see some of the factors which play a part in their decision making.
Jesus hears that John the Baptist is no longer able to continue his public ministry because he has been imprisoned. As John was his predecessor, the one who was preparing the way for Jesus' own ministry, Jesus judges that the time is now right for his ministry to begin. So circumstances seem to provide the trigger or opportunity for Jesus’ ministry to begin and can play a part in our lives too. Jesus seemed able to read circumstances well, we not always able to do that as well as he did and sometimes only understand what was happening to us at the time when we look back.
As a teenager, I didn’t get the grades needed to get into University and felt like dropping out of education altogether. I was persuaded to go through clearing however and got a place at Middlesex Polytechnic, so came to London instead of Leicester, where I’d been intending to study. As I was applying late, there was no accommodation available in Halls and so I had to find somewhere to live off site. Once I’d settled in, I started going to the Parish Church which was where I met Christine, who became my wife. I thought at the time that doing less well in my A levels was a disaster, but without that happening I would not have had the marriage and family that I now have. I was being led through circumstances to something wonderful but had no idea that that was the case at the time.
While circumstances played a part, Jesus also allowed scripture to shape the form that his ministry would take. The Gospel writer includes a quote from Isaiah 9, a passage which is often read at Christmas, to explain what Jesus was doing. A key theme of the prophecies collected in Isaiah is that of Israel as God’s servant. Jesus takes this servant role assigned to Israel in prophecy as his ministry template or job description and so, guided by scripture, he chose to begin his ministry in Galilee.
We can also base our lives and ministry on a template or job description. Our template is Jesus himself - so, for example, the letter to the Philippians talks about knowing Christ in order to become like him. Christlikeness should be our goal as Christians; not that we ever attain in this life. Our job description is essentially Jesus’ own manifesto taken from the Book of Isaiah and read at Nazareth near the beginning of his ministry: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to … bring good news to the poor … proclaim liberty to the captives … recovery of sight to the blind … set free the oppressed … and announce that the time for salvation has come.
Jesus’ message to those who listened to his preaching was that Israel was on the wrong path and must turn around and move in the opposite direction. Tom Wright writes that, “Jesus believed that his contemporaries were going in the wrong direction. They were bent on revolution of the standard kind: military resistance to occupying forces, leading to a takeover of power … The problem with all these movements was that they were fighting darkness with darkness, and Israel was called - and Jesus was called - to bring God’s light into the world. That’s why Matthew hooks up Jesus’ early preaching with the prophecy of Isaiah that spoke about people in the dark being dazzled by a sudden light … Jesus could see that the standard kind of revolution, fighting and killing in order to put an end to … fighting and killing, was a nonsense. Doing it in God’s name was a blasphemous nonsense.
But the trouble was that many of his contemporaries were eager to get on with the fight. His message of repentance was not, therefore, that they should feel sorry for personal and private sins (though he would of course want that as well), but that as a nation they should stop rushing towards the cliff edge of violent revolution, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness, for themselves and for the world.”
What do we as a nation need to turn away from in order to turn towards God? William Butler, chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, has been quoted as saying that we have lived beyond our means year after year and the nation collectively has to consume less while Janice Turner has argued that consumerism has become like a religion to us leading us to believe that living standards would keep being upgraded like mobile phones. Can we as a nation stop rushing towards the cliff edge of consumerism, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness?
Maybe, if we catch once again a vision of Jesus as he really is, we can. The integration of Jesus' message with his personality and actions was so attractive for his first disciples that they left their livelihoods to be with him doing the things that he did and becoming part of his mission bringing the rule of love in the kingdom of God. Why did they give up the security which they had to follow a wandering preacher? “The answer can only be in Jesus himself, and in the astonishing magnetism of his presence and personality. This can be known and felt today, as we meditate on the stories about him and pray to know him better, just as the first disciples knew and felt his presence 2,000 years ago.”
So, are we able to demonstrate in some way the kingdom of God where we work or live? Is what we do currently contributing to the coming of Jesus' revolution of love? Do we need to turn around and leave what we are currently engaged with in order that we might be engaged with the kingdom of God or do we need to listen to circumstances and scripture in order to understand how to live under the rule of love in the place where we are right now?
These are just some the questions which arise from the varying ways in which see Jesus, his disciples, and those who heard his preaching, making decisions about their future direction in life. Lead us, Lord, in your ways that we may live under your rule of love revealing your kingdom where we live and work. Amen.
An edited version of this sermon can also be found on the website of Mission in London's Economy as the Gospel Reflection for Sunday 23rd January 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
King's X - Send A Message.
Am I in the right place? Following the right path? In the right work? What is God’s will for my life? What is my vocation? These are just some of the questions prompted by Matthew 4. 12-23, as we read of Jesus, those who heard him, and his first disciples all making key decisions about their future direction of travel. Hopefully, we shall see some of the factors which play a part in their decision making.
Jesus hears that John the Baptist is no longer able to continue his public ministry because he has been imprisoned. As John was his predecessor, the one who was preparing the way for Jesus' own ministry, Jesus judges that the time is now right for his ministry to begin. So circumstances seem to provide the trigger or opportunity for Jesus’ ministry to begin and can play a part in our lives too. Jesus seemed able to read circumstances well, we not always able to do that as well as he did and sometimes only understand what was happening to us at the time when we look back.
As a teenager, I didn’t get the grades needed to get into University and felt like dropping out of education altogether. I was persuaded to go through clearing however and got a place at Middlesex Polytechnic, so came to London instead of Leicester, where I’d been intending to study. As I was applying late, there was no accommodation available in Halls and so I had to find somewhere to live off site. Once I’d settled in, I started going to the Parish Church which was where I met Christine, who became my wife. I thought at the time that doing less well in my A levels was a disaster, but without that happening I would not have had the marriage and family that I now have. I was being led through circumstances to something wonderful but had no idea that that was the case at the time.
While circumstances played a part, Jesus also allowed scripture to shape the form that his ministry would take. The Gospel writer includes a quote from Isaiah 9, a passage which is often read at Christmas, to explain what Jesus was doing. A key theme of the prophecies collected in Isaiah is that of Israel as God’s servant. Jesus takes this servant role assigned to Israel in prophecy as his ministry template or job description and so, guided by scripture, he chose to begin his ministry in Galilee.
We can also base our lives and ministry on a template or job description. Our template is Jesus himself - so, for example, the letter to the Philippians talks about knowing Christ in order to become like him. Christlikeness should be our goal as Christians; not that we ever attain in this life. Our job description is essentially Jesus’ own manifesto taken from the Book of Isaiah and read at Nazareth near the beginning of his ministry: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to … bring good news to the poor … proclaim liberty to the captives … recovery of sight to the blind … set free the oppressed … and announce that the time for salvation has come.
Jesus’ message to those who listened to his preaching was that Israel was on the wrong path and must turn around and move in the opposite direction. Tom Wright writes that, “Jesus believed that his contemporaries were going in the wrong direction. They were bent on revolution of the standard kind: military resistance to occupying forces, leading to a takeover of power … The problem with all these movements was that they were fighting darkness with darkness, and Israel was called - and Jesus was called - to bring God’s light into the world. That’s why Matthew hooks up Jesus’ early preaching with the prophecy of Isaiah that spoke about people in the dark being dazzled by a sudden light … Jesus could see that the standard kind of revolution, fighting and killing in order to put an end to … fighting and killing, was a nonsense. Doing it in God’s name was a blasphemous nonsense.
But the trouble was that many of his contemporaries were eager to get on with the fight. His message of repentance was not, therefore, that they should feel sorry for personal and private sins (though he would of course want that as well), but that as a nation they should stop rushing towards the cliff edge of violent revolution, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness, for themselves and for the world.”
What do we as a nation need to turn away from in order to turn towards God? William Butler, chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, has been quoted as saying that we have lived beyond our means year after year and the nation collectively has to consume less while Janice Turner has argued that consumerism has become like a religion to us leading us to believe that living standards would keep being upgraded like mobile phones. Can we as a nation stop rushing towards the cliff edge of consumerism, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness?
Maybe, if we catch once again a vision of Jesus as he really is, we can. The integration of Jesus' message with his personality and actions was so attractive for his first disciples that they left their livelihoods to be with him doing the things that he did and becoming part of his mission bringing the rule of love in the kingdom of God. Why did they give up the security which they had to follow a wandering preacher? “The answer can only be in Jesus himself, and in the astonishing magnetism of his presence and personality. This can be known and felt today, as we meditate on the stories about him and pray to know him better, just as the first disciples knew and felt his presence 2,000 years ago.”
So, are we able to demonstrate in some way the kingdom of God where we work or live? Is what we do currently contributing to the coming of Jesus' revolution of love? Do we need to turn around and leave what we are currently engaged with in order that we might be engaged with the kingdom of God or do we need to listen to circumstances and scripture in order to understand how to live under the rule of love in the place where we are right now?
These are just some the questions which arise from the varying ways in which see Jesus, his disciples, and those who heard his preaching, making decisions about their future direction in life. Lead us, Lord, in your ways that we may live under your rule of love revealing your kingdom where we live and work. Amen.
An edited version of this sermon can also be found on the website of Mission in London's Economy as the Gospel Reflection for Sunday 23rd January 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
King's X - Send A Message.
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Let us be human
A small group of us from St John's Seven Kings spent the day on Mersea Island today with Sam Norton. Sam challenged us with his thinking about Christian responses to contemporary crises during the morning, we then enjoyed visiting the beach and harbour on what was a beautifully sunny day before returning to a St Peter & St Paul West Mersea which was attractively decorated for Harvest in order to share communion together as Christ commanded and as the formative act for us as Christians.
Much of what Sam had to say is summed up in this quote from his most recent post:
"The solution to our predicament does not lie in any scheme which has as its final purpose the preservation of the environment. Rather, our foremost task is to learn again what it means to live as a human being, by following the example of the one who lived a fully human life (hence 'Let us be Human'). The most important contribution that the church can make is to name the powers that are destroying us, to identify all the ways in which our civilisation has become disordered and which prevent us becoming fully human. In other words, it is discipleship that is lacking, not a particular program for planetary preservation. This has what might seem a surprising conclusion, but one that I mean with all seriousness: the God-given way to 'save the planet' is by celebrating the eucharist, and allowing it to form us. If we repent and return to faithful living then the environmental problems will resolve themselves (“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” - 2 Chronicles 7.14)."
Similarly, this Thomas Merton quote which Sam used in his talk:
"The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution. Christianity, by its very nature, demands such a revolution. If Christians would all live up to what they profess to believe, the revolution would happen." (From: Ascent to Truth)
For more extensive notes of material that Sam summarised and shared with us, click here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leonard Cohen - The Future.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)