Between: scapegoat

Showing posts with label scapegoat. Show all posts

Tuesday, 4 November 2025

Seen and Unseen: Can we stop killing each other?

My latest article for Seen and Unseen based on the exhibition series 'Can We Stop Killing Each Other?' at the Sainsbury Centre. In it I explore how art, theology, and moral imagination confront our oldest instinct:

'What more important question can there be for humanity, Jago Cooper, Executive Director of the Sainsbury Centre, asks than ‘Can we stop killing each other?’ The Sainsbury Centre’s radical exhibition programme explores the big issues in contemporary society (see my article ‘Life Is more important than art’) so has rapidly arrived at the point where it is exploring what has wrong with the world when killing occurs and how can we put it right.

Cooper sets out the ground that this series of exhibitions seeks to cover: ‘From interpersonal violence to state level conflict, killing has spread its devastating impact throughout all human cultures across the centuries. Why does this violence occur? And can it be better prevented at a time when increased societal pressures of population growth, resource scarcity, human migration and rapid environmental change make the risk of conflict higher? Every day we read about horrifying acts playing out locally and internationally, but what is the answer to stopping them?’'

For more on this exhibition series see here for my Artlyst review and on the Sainsbury Centre's radical exhibition programme see here. For my International Times interview with Jago Cooper see here.

My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.

My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.

My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.

My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.

My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.

My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.

My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.

My 15th article was entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explored some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history

My 16th article was entitled 'Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d' and reviewed the ways in which artist Richard Kenton Webb is conversing with the blind poet in his former home (Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles).

My 17th article was entitled 'Controversial art: how can the critic love their neighbour?'. It makes suggestions of what to do when confronted with contentious culture.

My 18th article was an interview entitled 'Art, AI and apocalypse: Michael Takeo Magruder addresses our fears and questions'. In the interview the digital artist talks about the possibilities and challenges of artificial intelligence.

My 19th article was entitled 'Dark, sweet and subtle: recovered music orientates us'. In the article I highlight alt-folk music seeking inspiration from forgotten hymns.

My 20th article was entitled 'Revisiting Amazing Grace inspires new songs'. In the article I highlight folk musicians capturing both the barbaric and the beautiful in the hymn Amazing Grace and Christianity's entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade more generally.

My 21st article was entitled 'James MacMillan’s music of tranquility and discord'. In the article I noted that the composer’s music contends both the secular and sacred.

My 22nd article was a book review on Nobody's Empire by Stuart Murdoch. 'Nobody's Empire: A Novel is the fictionalised account of how ... Murdoch, lead singer of indie band Belle and Sebastian, transfigured his experience of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) through faith and music.'

My 23rd article was entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion'. The article explores how popular music conjures sacred space.

My 24th article was an interview with Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention which explores why the overlooked and everyday capture the creative gaze.

My 25th article was about Stanley Spencer’s seen and unseen world and the artist’s child-like sense of wonder as he saw heaven everywhere.

My 26th article was entitled 'The biblical undercurrent that the Bob Dylan biopics missed' and in it I argue that the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey.

My 27th article was entitled 'Heading Home: a pilgrimage that breaks out beauty along the way' and focuses on a film called 'Heading Home' which explores how we can learn a new language together as we travel.

My 28th article was entitled 'Annie Caldwell: “My family is my band”' and showcased a force of nature voice that comes from the soul.

My 29th article was entitled 'Why sculpt the face of Christ?' and explored how, in Nic Fiddian Green’s work, we feel pain, strength, fear and wisdom.

My 30th article was entitled 'How Mumford and friends explore life's instability' and explored how Mumford and Sons, together with similar bands, commune on fallibility, fear, grace, and love.

My 31st article was entitled 'The late Pope Francis was right – Antoni Gaudi truly was God’s architect' and explored how sanctity can indeed be found amongst scaffolding, as Gaudi’s Barcelona beauties amply demonstrate.

My 32nd article was entitled 'This gallery refresh adds drama to the story of art' and explored how rehanging the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery revives the emotion of great art.

My 33rd article was an interview with Jonathan A. Anderson about the themes of his latest book 'The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art'.

My 34th article was an interview with 'Emily Young: the sculptor listening as the still stones speak'.

My 35th article was a profile of New York's expressionist devotional artist, 'Genesis Tramaine: the painter whose faces catch the spirit'.

My 36th article was a concert review of Natalie Bergman at Union Chapel - a soul-soaked set turned personal tragedy into communal celebration.

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Wednesday, 26 March 2025

Artlyst - Arpita Singh Social Observations Serpentine North

My latest exhibition review for Artlyst is on ‘Arpita Singh: Remembering’ at Serpentine North:

"The’ Golden Deer’ and ‘Searching Sita through Torn Papers, Paper Strips and Labels’ bring all these strands together in images which, as Geeta Kapur writes, explode with warfare in “planetary wars that will annihilate the universe” and which leave “armies of kith and kin slaughtered on home ground”. The search for unattainable desires, as symbolised in The Golden Deer, is the catalyst for the violence covering the text-based maps that form the torn and dismembered worlds depicted in these works. These large works are major statements about mimetic desire and our human tendency to create and punish scapegoats."

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

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Watkins Family Praise - Grief And Praise.

Sunday, 16 March 2025

On the third day I finish my work

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

The singer-songwriter Bill Fay died recently aged 81. A very private man, he rarely performed in public, but his songs nevertheless touched the hearts of many people.

This was despite a long period, from the mid-1970s to the 2000s, where he was without a recording contract. Such setbacks didn't seem to phase him and he found other work while continuing to record his songs. Eventually, the strength of his early work, which had been overlooked at the time, brought attention back to him and he recorded three well-received albums before he died.

His life mirrored the faith and belief that he poured out in his songs. Songs which are laments for the violence and lack of care often seen in our world together with celebration of the everyday acts of love and care undertaken by ordinary people. The latter reveal God's love in the midst of difficulty and point towards a future day when love will reshape the world in the image of Jesus Christ.

In today's Gospel reading (Luke 13:31-35), Jesus, himself, is facing the forces of violence as Herod is seeking to kill him in the context of a conquered nation ruled by the Roman oppressors. His response is to continue working in the face of the threats around him and to lament the effect the oppressive forces have on the people around him.

He longs to gather those around him and shelter them from the storms of life as a mother hen does with her chicks by bringing them under her wing for warmth. In this way, he shows us the mother heart of God, which is overflowing with love towards us. Lovingly, Jesus is saying he wants to be like the mother hen gathering God’s people to him where they will then experience safety and love. At the same time that he makes this specific statement to the people of Jerusalem, he is also paying a wonderful tribute to motherhood itself by equating the love which God shows towards us to the love that mothers show towards their offspring.

This is one of several passages in scripture where God is described in feminine terms. Given the patriarchal nature of the society in which the Bible was formed, it is surprising to find any references to God as feminine and it is particularly significant to find this reference on the lips of Jesus.

The Bible tells us that God is Spirit and therefore not male or female. When human beings enter the story of creation, it is as beings made in the image of God, both male and female. So, God is ultimately not gendered in the way that we are and it is important for us to understand and celebrate the way God expresses his love through both genders.

Jesus laments here over the patterns of response in our world which see those who are different from us and have a message of change being scapegoated and killed. Scapegoating others is the way in which we consistently act as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel.

That is what Jesus knew he was facing and his response was to double down on his work of healing and care until such time as his death came when the people would then say 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’

That change would come about because on the third day his work would be finished; the third day being the day he rose from the dead. The scapegoating and crucifixion of God is the ultimate demonstration of God's love for humanity but it is the resurrection that then changes the arc of human history away from oppression and towards peace. Jesus is resurrected as the first-fruits of a new way of life wholly characterised by love and where there is no more mourning or crying or pain.

In rising from the dead, he has gone ahead of us into the new risen body and existence that we shall experience in future when Jesus returns to this earth to fully bring God’s Kingdom into existence here. When Jesus walked the earth, he looked ahead to that future time when the Kingdom of God will be made perfect, and all suffering will come to an end. But he also announced that, because of him, there is a sense in which that Kingdom has already begun. When he healed sick people and brought good news to the poor it was a sign that the Kingdom had come. In the same way, when he overcame death by rising from the dead he became the first fruits of the Kingdom, an example of what we will all become in future.

All of this is also to be found in the songs of Bill Fay. In ‘There is a valley’ he sings:

“There is a hill near Jerusalem that wild flowers grow upon
Flowers don't speak, but they speak to each other of a crucifixion
Just because he said he was the son of God
And the fury of the moment they felt they could only silently look upon
Every city bar brawl, every fist-fight, every bullet from a gun
It's written upon the palms of the Holy One
Every city bar brawl, every fist-fight, every bullet from a gun
It's written in the palms, in the palms of the Holy One”

In ‘Still some light’ he encourages us to go on in the face of this world’s troubles because we have seen the light:

“Still some light for this frail mankind, still some hope, some end in sight
Still some light for this frail mankind, still some grace in troubled times
When this world seems like a market place, where souls are bought and sold
And it’s all to easy, for a soul to grow cold
When this world seems like a market place, where souls are bought and sold
God knows it ain’t easy, don’t give up on it all, still some light”

The light that we have seen is ‘The Healing Day’ that is still to come:

“It'll be okay
On the healing day
No more goin' astray
On the healing day
Yeah we'll find our way
On the healing day
To where the children play
On the healing day

When the tyrant is bound
And the tortured freed from his pain
And the lofty brought to the ground
And the lonely rage

Ain't so far away
That healin' day
Comin' to stay
The healing day”

In the face of violence and oppression, Jesus doubled down on his ministry of healing and his acts of love and transformation. Following in Jesus' footsteps, Bill Fay continued to sing of this world's transformation into the image of Christ despite being ignored and overlooked for many years. In a changing world where hatred of others is on the rise and where authoritarian figures are increasingly being given power to oppress, we are challenged by their examples to continue to act in the ways of love as a sign of the coming kingdom of love. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Bill Fay - Still Some Light.

Sunday, 14 July 2024

Lord, disarm violence and begin with me

Here's the sermon I shared in the 9.30 am service at St Mary Magdalene Great Burstead:

In 2014, a poster for the children’s Horrible Histories stage tour attracted protests from parents. Horrible Histories, as many of you will know, describes itself as 'history with the nasty bits left in.' It is a series which has inspired millions of children to discover history because the books have ‘got ALL the yucky bits and foul facts that other books leave out.’

The posters, advertising the 'Barmy Britain' tour, featured a big picture of an executioner holding an axe and a bloody head and were labelled as being in 'shockingly bad taste' by furious parents in the wake of the beheading of Western hostages by ISIS militants. A father-of-two from Chelmsford, said: 'The posters are shocking in light of the recent events in the news and in really bad taste. The pictures are meant to be showing events in history, but sadly beheadings are still going on and are all too real.’ Neal Foster, director and producer of the show, said: 'It is unfortunate and we are sympathetic to anyone who is offended by the poster, but it was designed in July 2013, a long time before these recent incidents came to attention.’

These responses were interesting because they seem to suggest that as long as the nasty events of history are kept firmly in the past, we can enjoy history with all the foul facts left in but as soon as those same events feature in our present, we have a problem with showing and viewing them.

I wonder whether the same holds true for similarly violent Biblical stories such as today’s Gospel reading about the beheading of John the Baptist (Mark 6.14-29). How do we understand such passages? Should they be censored, as happened to the ‘Barmy Britain’ posters? Do we find the blood and gore attractive, repulsive, or are we immune to it?

The first thing I want to say in the light of all this is that the Bible does not give us a sanitised version of violence. If anything, the reverse is the case and the Bible can easily be seen, like the Horrible Histories, as full of blood and gore. There is realism in our Scriptures about nature, and human nature in particular, being red in tooth and claw. This realism sees each one of us as having the potential for violence, whether we ascribe that to sin or the survival of the fittest. As studies examining complicity in the Holocaust tend to show, those involved were not monsters, ‘beasts or aliens’ and the overwhelming brutality involved appeared to arise easily ‘in the context of 1930s Germany, with its background of economic depression, political disenchantment and frustrated nationalist sentiment’. This suggests that we are all actually at different points on the same continuum between peace and violence and the saying, 'there, but for the grace of God, go I' carries a profound truth about which we need to be honest and repentant.

Our complicity with violence often leads us to make God over in our own violent image. Bob Dylan described this tendency well in the song ‘With God on our Side’. We begin with the belief that the land that we live in has God on its side and from there we interpret every change and challenge in our history as indicating that God is truly on our side. This, as Dylan notes in the 5th verse, can lead to the confusions of changing sides in war and peace. So, during the Second World War we believed that the German nation did not have God on their side but once the War ended and there was reconstruction with the German nation becoming our allies that changed and they now had God on their side, despite all that had previously occurred during the war.

Our human tendency to believe that God is on our side pervades the Old Testament and can be described as the core testimony about God. As this core testimony sees God as being on our side, it legitimizes and justifies our national interests. In this way of thinking our enemies are God's enemies and we petition him in prayer to smite and destroy those who are our and, therefore, also his enemies.

Also found in the Old Testament, however, is a counter testimony which, at times, can seem overwhelmed or submerged by the core testimony but which is, nevertheless, a thread running throughout scripture. The counter testimony says that God, rather than being about power and rather than being on the side of those in power, is actually most concerned about those who are crushed by the power-mongers of this world; those who are victims, those who are poor, those who are powerless, those who are excluded, those who are scapegoats.

These two testimonies about God are both present throughout the Bible with the core testimony often appearing dominant. But, we believe, at a particular point in human history God himself entered human history in the person of Jesus in order to show us in actions and words just what God is actually like. In Jesus, the counter testimony becomes prominent as Jesus lives, teaches, dies and rises not only as an example of compassion toward those who are victims, excluded and scapegoated but also becomes a victim, becomes excluded, becomes a scapegoat himself. When God is revealed in human history it is as a victim of violence, not as a perpetrator of violence.

God's revelation in Jesus continues a subversion of the human story of violence that actually began in the Old Testament. René Girard suggests that the story of Cain and Abel reveals the way in which we consistently act as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel.

That is what we see acted out in the story of Herodias and Salome. The privileges that Herodias and Salome enjoy seem to be threatened and they identify John the Baptist as the threat to their continued enjoyment of their desires. John is therefore scapegoated and killed to remove their sense of threat.

This pattern becomes expressed in religions involving human sacrifices as scapegoats to appease their gods. It is out of such religions that Abraham is called to form a people who do not sacrifice other human beings, but instead use animals as their scapegoats and sacrifices. Jesus is later born into this people who have subverted the existing practice of scapegoating and he further subverts this practice because, as he is crucified, God becomes the scapegoat that is killed.

The crucifixion is, therefore, the logical outcome of the incarnation. To use the language of Sam Well's, Nazareth Manifesto, God is not simply for victims. God is with victims, because God is a victim. God is not simply for the excluded. God is with the excluded, because God is excluded. God is not simply for those who are scapegoated. God is with scapegoats, because God is a scapegoat. When God is scapegoated, there is no longer any god to appease and the necessity for scapegoating is superceded, subverted and eradicated.

This is the reality in which Christianity calls us to live. A world beyond Horrible Histories, beyond scapegoating, beyond victimisation and beyond exclusion. A world in which the mechanisms for justifying and acting out our violent desires have been dismantled and rendered null and void. A world, as Barbara Brown Taylor has said, in which we ‘keep deciding not to hate the haters, … keep risking the fatal wound of love and teaching others to do the same — because that is how we prepare the ground around us to receive the seeds of heaven when they come’.

‘Violence did not surprise Jesus. He was prepared for it, and he tried to prepare his followers as well but few of them had ears to hear.’ ‘Even before the violent had come for him, he knew what had happened to God’s messengers in the past: silenced, exiled, outlawed, killed …Then King Herod threw John the Baptist in prison … and Jesus had to say it all over again: expect violence; prepare for it; never underestimate the harm it can do.’

Are we similarly prepared? Do we know ‘the power to resist the deadly force of violence’ by doing what Jesus taught and practised: ‘turn the cheek, pray for the persecutor, love the enemy, welcome the stranger. In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.’ Are we willing, like John the Baptist and Jesus, to be prophets who can see and name what does not belong with us and can shine the light of God’s truth in the night-time of fear and oppression?

If we do then our prayer must be: Lord, disarm violence and begin with me. As Barbara Brown Taylor has noted, ‘Sometimes [the power to resist the deadly force of violence] actually works to disarm the violence in others, which is why we know the names of Gandhi, Tutu, and King. But that is not its main purpose. Its main purpose is to disarm the violence in us, so that we do not join the other team.’

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Bruce Cockburn - Orders.

Monday, 25 March 2024

Subverting the scapegoat mechanism

Here's the talk I gave this lunchtime at Billericay Methodist Church's Holy Week Midday Meditation Service:

Isaiah speaks of new things declared before they spring forth (Isaiah 42:1-9). They involve God’s servant on whom God’s Spirit is put and who will faithfully bring forth justice. God’s servant is given as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners who sit in darkness in the dungeon. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth. Although originally spoken about Israel and its divine commission to be a light to the nations, Christians have often seen parallels with the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, who saw his mission as that of fulfilling the commission originally given to Israel.

At the beginning of Holy Week, I hope to provide a big picture view of what it was that Jesus was doing as he walked towards the cross and the empty tomb. I want to suggest that the insights of the French anthropologist René Girard explain how Jesus achieves the things mentioned in Isaiah’s prophecy and then suggest a way of responding to all that Jesus has done, through our reading from John’s Gospel (John 12:1-11).

Girard suggested that, as human beings, we all act on the basis of mimetic desire leading to conflict and violence which we resolve by the expulsion or sacrifice of scapegoats [R. Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening (NY: Orbis Books, 2001)]. Mimetic desire is basically a kind of jealousy, but with a twist as we learn what is desirable by observing what others find desirable. Having ‘caught’ our desires from others in a context of scarcity where everyone wants what only some can have (i.e. the survival of the fittest), this results in a struggle to obtain what we want. This, in turn, produces a generalised antagonism towards the individual or group that seems to be responsible for this disappointment. That person or group become our victim as the vicious riddance of the victim has the potential to reduce our eagerness for violence. The removal of the victim or victims – the lambs to the slaughter - gives a temporary re-assurance of the crisis disappearing, and the sensation of renewed possibility. This is a description of cheap solidarity and cheap hope.

Girard claims that, as a result, societies and cultures are originally based on founding murders where this victim or scapegoating mechanism is in operation. He points to Cain’s murder of Abel as being the Biblical story which reveals this basis to human culture: “What has happened since the foundation of the world, that is, since the violent foundations of the first culture, is a series of murders like the Crucifixion. These are murders founded on violent contagion, and consequently they are murders occurring because of the collective error regarding the victim, a misunderstanding caused by violent contagion” [R. Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening (NY: Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 85 & 86].

The story of Cain and Abel reveals the way in which we consistently act, as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel. Over time, Girard argues, this mimetic process is disciplined by ritual into sacrificial systems which repeat the founding murder. So, this pattern becomes expressed in religions involving human sacrifices as scapegoats to appease their gods. It is out of such religions that Abraham was called to form a people who do not sacrifice other human beings, but instead use animals as their scapegoats and sacrifices.

After the Fall, God wished to communicate his love to us, human beings intent on personal or group survival. As he had given us free will, he had to communicate in and through the social and cultural structures which we had now created (i.e. sacrificial systems Girard writes about) but, in order to reveal his loving self, had to do so in a way that engaged in an internal dialogue and critique of these same systems. Accordingly, he gave his chosen people, who had recent and personal experience of being scapegoats and victims, a founding story - the story of the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22. 1-19) - in which human sacrifice is emphatically rejected in favour of animal sacrifice.

The legacy of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, Girard suggests, is that Israel developed a system of animal sacrifice that continued until shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus was later born into this people who had subverted the existing practice of scapegoating and he further subverts this practice because, as he is crucified, God becomes the scapegoat that is killed. Jesus’ crucifixion, Girard suggests, was both about God identifying himself with all victims – the scapegoats – who have been sacrificed down through the centuries and also, because in Jesus God himself was scapegoated and sacrificed, the ultimate demonstration of the reality that, as Hosea first stated and Jesus then repeated, God requires mercy, not sacrifice.

As a result, Girard traces a movement away from the dynamic of scapegoating through the Old into the New Testaments. This was something he identified through his anthropological and literary analysis of scapegoating in Judeo-Christian texts and it was this that contributed to his own conversion to the Christian faith. His analysis of the Bible led him to conclude that: Jesus is the final scapegoat; the New Testament is on the side of Jesus, the scapegoat; the scapegoat in the Gospels refuses to let death be the final word and rises again triumphant; and the followers of the scapegoat re-enact the seizing of the scapegoat and the scapegoat’s triumph over death in Eucharistic celebration.

The Gospels are unusual as literature because they encourage people to see the world through the eyes of the scapegoat. The Bible can then be seen as the record of a conversation between God and a human race which has, as a whole, rejected this conversation but which, in a remnant (mainly Israel and the Church), continues to oscillate between dialogue and independent rejection.

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is so decisive, Girard writes, because “Jesus’ ‘strategy’ as the ambassador from a loving, non-violent Father is to expose and render ineffective the scapegoat process so that the true face of God may be known … in the scapegoat, or Lamb of God, not the face of a persecuting deity.” So, at the Last Supper, Christ calls us to follow him in serving others, while his Crucifixion reveals the foolishness of scapegoating others and the necessity of concern for all who are victims.

The crucifixion is also the logical outcome of the incarnation. Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has explored in his book ‘The Nazareth Manifesto’ that God is not simply 'for' victims. Instead, God is 'with' victims, because God is a victim. God is not simply 'for' the excluded. God is 'with' the excluded, because God is excluded. God is not simply 'for' those who are scapegoated. God is 'with' scapegoats, because God is a scapegoat. When God is scapegoated, there is no longer any god to appease and the necessity for scapegoating at all is superseded, subverted and eradicated.

This is the reality into which Christianity calls us to live; a world beyond scapegoating, beyond victimisation and beyond exclusion. A world in which the mechanisms for justifying and acting out our violent desires has been dismantled and rendered null and void. A world, as Barbara Brown Taylor has said, in which we ‘keep deciding not to hate the haters, … keep risking the fatal wound of love and teaching others to do the same — because that is how we prepare the ground around us to receive the seeds of heaven when they come.’

Girard has described this radical reversal in terms of God first taking the side of the victim and then, in Christ, becoming the victim: “The desire that lives through imitation almost always leads to conflict, and this conflict frequently leads to violence. The Bible unveils this process of imitative desire leading to conflict, and its distinctive narratives reveal at the same time that God takes the part of victims. In the Gospels the process of unveiling or revelation is radicalized: God himself, the Word become flesh in Jesus, becomes the victim … The New Testament Gospels are the starting point for a new science or knowledge of humanity. This new knowledge begins with faith in Christ the innocent victim, and it becomes the leaven that will work itself out and expand to the point that the concern for victims becomes the absolute value in all societies moulded or affected by the spread of Christianity” (J. G. Williams, ‘Foreword’ in R. Girard, I see Satan fall like lightning, Orbis Books, 2001).

So, "Girard brings our attention to three facts without which we will never make sense of our lives, our world or our faith, namely: the role violence has played in cultural life, the role mimesis plays in psychological and social life, and the role the Bible plays in revealing both of these things and showing us how to deal with them." Girard reveals how the developing dialogue and narrative of scripture can critique, deconstruct and expose societal norms such as the scapegoat mechanism. In this way, Girard's thesis gives us an understanding of the way in which the narrative of scripture can speak to our world today.

How should we respond to God’s dismantling of the scapegoating mechanism by taking the side of victims and by becoming a victim for us? I want to suggest that we should respond as Mary did in our Gospel reading. Mary poured ointment over Jesus’ feet and dried his feet with her hair. Giving in this way involved giving generously from her possessions because the ointment that she used was expensive (imported from countries such as India) and extravagant (half a litre was an enormous amount to use in this way). It also involved giving generously of herself as Jewish women traditionally kept their hair tied up in public and only unloosened their hair in the presence of their husbands. What Mary did in wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair was the ultimate sign of her love for and commitment to Jesus. She did all this, not with regret or out of a sense of duty, but gladly and generously.

Her gift to Jesus was also a response to the love that Jesus had shown towards her. She gave because Jesus had first given extravagantly and generously to her. That is the pattern that we see repeated in God’s dealings with human beings throughout scripture and which is summed up in the most famous verse of scripture, John 3: 16: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.” God so loved, that he gave. Love is the reason for giving; not duty, not regret, but love. In Jesus’ life, death and resurrection God gave everything he had for us. Philippians 2 tells us that, of his own free will, Jesus “gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant. He became like a human being and appeared in human likeness. He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death – his death on the cross.” This is the extravagant nature of Jesus’ love for us that he would give up all he had in order to walk the path of obedience all the way to his death on the cross.

‘This is what Mary saw in Jesus and is why she responded by giving extravagantly and generously to him. Jesus then astonished the disciples by giving Mary the highest commendation anyone receives in the pages of the Gospels: “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (Mark 14:6 -9)’

In reflecting on this story, the artist Makoto Fujimura has said that he prays that, “there will be a new aroma in the air: an aroma of Mary of Bethany, who in response to Jesus’ tears in John 11 and 12 brought her most precious belonging, her most gratuitous, expensive nard. I pray that in the days to come, this aroma will fill the air whenever the words of the Gospel are spoken, that outsiders to faith will sense this extravagant air and feel it, particularly for them. I pray that when our children speak of faith, this gratuitous, intuitive aroma of the love of Christ will be made manifest in their lives.” May that be our prayer this day and throughout our lives.

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Julie Miller - How Could You Say No.

Wednesday, 31 January 2024

No strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet

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

A central aspect of God's experience as a human being in the person of Jesus Christ was that of rejection. Jesus was, in the words of Isaiah 53, ‘despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account’ (Isaiah 53. 3). We see that rejection here, in this story (Mark 6. 1 – 6), set in his home town at the beginning of his ministry, just as we see it more violently worked out at the end of his ministry when he is crucified.

Rejection is a human experience which we all understand because each us will have experienced rejection at one time or another. It is an experience that God has also shared and therefore understands as we go through our personal experiences of rejection.

But rejection is a human experience which we all understand because it is also something to which each of us is party. As in this story, we find it easy, as human beings, to find reasons to reject other people. It is not so long ago in the history of this country that there were appalling signs in windows saying, 'No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs'. In our lifetime we have seen whole societies built around the separation of people on the basis of colour, with the Civil Rights and anti-apartheid movements, thankfully, having brought some significant change to those situations of rejection.

Yet, although we have seen change, we continue to see particular groups of people in society demonised, scapegoated and rejected. In the Church today, it is the LGBTI community who have that experience while in society generally, it is migrants, whether refugees or asylum seekers, that are the focus of significant rejection.

When Jesus is rejected, as in our Gospel reading, God is rejected. God, in Jesus, enters in to our experience, as human beings, of rejection. He does so in order to bring to light our constant scapegoating and rejection of others by exposing us to the futility of that way of life. Rejection of others ties us into a cycle of revenge and recrimination locking us in to spirals of violence.

Yet, when we have, as human beings, scapegoated and rejected God himself, what more can we do by way of rejection? The way to free ourselves from these negative cycles is by rejecting the impulse to reject or scapegoat others, in other words by following in the footsteps of Jesus who freely laid down his life for others. It is this to which Christ’s death as a scapegoat on the cross calls us.

Today, while we may not literally see signs saying 'No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs', similar signs are nevertheless still there is our words and actions although applied to different groups of people at this different time. 'No economic migrants,' even 'No migrants', would seem to be the current cry, while in the Anglican Communion we persist in rejecting people on the basis of their sexuality. For those who follow a God who was scapegoated, reviled and rejected, there can be no scapegoating of others. For those who follow a God who laid down this own life for love of others, there must be a similar breaking of cycles of rejection through our own attitudes, speech and actions.

Instead of being those who reject, we need to become those who invite. The opposite of rejection is not simple acceptance, but active engagement; the invitation to participate in community. The goal of those who are great inviters is “to have everyone participating, giving and receiving gifts.” Abundant community involves welcoming “those on the margins”, “which is the heart of hospitality.” As William Butler Yeats was credited with saying, “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet.” May it be so with each one of us. Amen.

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Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Prayer.

Sunday, 23 July 2023

Weeds, Wheat, Fruitfulness and Messy Spirituality

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Mary's Runwell:

This story (Matthew 13. 24-30, 36-43) divides people into weeds and wheat. So, who are the weeds and who are the wheat? Our natural tendency as human beings is to want to know and to assume that we are in the wheat camp rather than the weeds camp.

More worryingly, our natural tendency as human beings is probably to try to identify those who are different from us and attempt to weed them out of our community. That is what we call scapegoating and, interestingly, it is a human tendency that the French cultural critic, Rene Girard, suggests is gradually unmasked and exposed by the Bible. Firstly, because the people of Israel sacrifice animals as scapegoats instead of other human beings (as happened in the nations around them at that time) and then as God himself, in Jesus, becomes the ultimate scapegoat bringing an end to the need for any further scapegoating. “Jesus’ ‘strategy’ as the ambassador from a loving, non-violent Father is to expose and render ineffective the scapegoat process so that the true face of God may be known … in the scapegoat, or Lamb of God, not the face of a persecuting deity.”

It’s not difficult to think of times and places in our society where scapegoating occurs. Whether it’s the scapegoating of refugees that characterises the Government’s Illegal Migration Law or the way we view travellers as different from us or, in the Church, the ways in which the LGBTQIA+ have historically been excluded from leadership and some sacraments. Whichever side of those issues we stand on, we need to beware of arguments often made by those at the extremes which would seek to rid us of those who don’t agree with their position because Jesus, in this story, says that it is not our job to pull up the weeds from the field.

It is not our job partly because, if we were to try, we would pull up the wheat with the weeds. In other words, we do not know, as we look around our church, the Anglican Communion, or our society, who are the wheat and who are the weeds. It is God who “searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” we are told in 1 Chronicles 28. 9 can see what goes on in our hearts, he knows “the secrets of our hearts,” says Psalm 44 and this is because it is God who created our inmost beings and formed us in our mothers’ wombs, as Psalm 139 tell us.

Therefore, it is for God, not us, to make that judgement in his way and in his time. Jesus warns us that it we judge others, we ourselves will be judged by the same measure we use on others (Matthew 7. 1&2). Again, he is saying that it is God’s place to judge, not ours, and, even, that we are likely to be surprised by the judgements that God makes at the end of time. Sometimes, Jesus says, as in Matthew 7. 21-23, that those who appear to be the most religious are actually those who are among the weeds.

So, it is not our job to judge, but God’s, and he will do so in his way and his time. What we need to do is to trust that that is so and we do this by allowing the weeds to grow together with the wheat. In other words, Jesus is commending here the aspect of Anglicanism that, it seems to me, has always been its great strength and glory; its holding together from its inception of ‘catholics’ (with a small ‘c’) and protestants and in more recent centuries its holding together of the diverse streams that have developed within those traditions – anglo-catholicism, evangelicalism, liberalism, the charismatic movement and so on. To hold these things together is, it seems to me, to show absolute trust in God’s ultimate judgement because we are allowing the wheat and the weeds to grow together.

Rowan Williams, in the opening session of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, encouraged the bishops and archbishops present to “find the trust in God and one another that will give us the energy to change in the way God wants us to change.” That is, he said, “the most important thing we can pray for, the energy to change as God wants us to change individually and as a Communion.” But it is trust in God and one another, he says, that will give us this energy.

Why is that? Well, if all our energy is going into pulling up what we think are weeds then our energies are not going into what makes for fruitfulness. Our responsibility is not to be monitors and judges of others but to allow our energies to flow into developing the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This won’t happen if we are forever distracted by try to spot and root out weeds but if we trust God to sort out the weeds in his way and time then we can focus on the things that contribute to fruitfulness.

This means that we need to accept what the author Mike Yaconelli called Messy Spirituality. This is the reality “that all of us are in some condition of not-togetherness, even those of us who are trying to be godly.” We’re all a mess, he says, “not only sinful messy, but inconsistent messy, up-and-down messy, in-and-out messy, now-I-believe-now-I-don’t messy, I-get-it-now-I-don’t-get-it messy, I-understand-uh-now-I-don’t understand messy.” Can you identify with that? I know I can.

Yaconelli goes on to claim that Christianity is a messy spirituality for people like us who lead messy lives: “What landed Jesus on the cross, was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed-up people could be godly! What drove Jesus’ enemies’ crazy was his criticism of the ‘perfect’ religious people and his acceptance of the imperfect, non-religious people. The shocking implication of Jesus’ ministry is that anyone can be spiritual.” To prove his point, he suggests we look at the Bible where we will see that its “pages overflow with messy people” because “the biblical writers didn’t edit out the flaws of its heroes.”

Just look at today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 28.10-22), where Jacob dreams of angels ascending and descending a ladder from earth to heaven. From the time of his birth, Jacob was associated with trickery and deception. His most notorious acts of trickery were committed against his twin brother Esau. Jacob offered his “famished” brother a bowl of soup in exchange for his birthright as the firstborn son, which was a double portion of his father Isaac’s inheritance. Moreover, Jacob robbed Esau of their father’s blessing, which had been Esau’s right to receive. Nevertheless, Jacob ends up receiving a vision of angels and heaven. That’s nothing if not very messy.

Those who follow God in the pages of scripture are not perfect, far from it, and yet they strive for the perfection of God the Father. We need to be the same, humbly recognising our own fallibilities and therefore bearing with the failings of others yet seeking to change ourselves and supporting others in the changes that they are also able to make.

So, let us do what Rowan Williams has suggested and pray for the energy to change as God wants us to change, individually and as a church, even as the Anglican Communion:

Pour down upon us, O God, the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that we may be filled with wisdom and understanding. May we know at work within us that creative energy and vision which belong to our humanity, made in your image and redeemed by your love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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M Ward - Epistemology.