Bring us to life - transforming society

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

Imagine a bed surrounded by the debris of a week’s illness, soiled sheets and slashed pillows, pills and vodka bottles, used condoms and tissues. This is ‘My Bed’ an installation by Tracy Emin was first exhibited in 1999. You’ll probably remember reading about it in the press at the time as it prompted the usual “call that art, my two-year old could have done better” kind of articles. A bed is a powerful symbol of birth and death, sex and intimacy but this controversial installation was perhaps an image of our culture’s sickness and dis-ease surrounded by the remnants of those things through which we seek a cure; sex, alcohol, drugs, tears, aggression. And the bed, like many lives, was empty. The morning after the cure that never came.

Sometimes our lives feel like that installation. Our relationships may have broken down, we may have been abused, we may be anxious, stressed or worried, our work might be under threat or have ended. For all these reasons and many others we can feel as though our lives have closed down becoming barren or dry or dead. Our communities and culture can feel like that too. Many years ago now, at the end of the 1970’s, The Sex Pistols sang about there being no future in England’s dreaming. And many people still think that our society is changing for the worse. When I had a holiday in Spain a few years ago I stayed on a street that was mainly occupied by British people who had left because they didn’t like the changes that they saw in British society. Such people think of Britain as being diseased and dead with no future for them. Being in the Church it is also easy to feel the same. We are regularly told in the press that the Church is in decline and the Church of England continues to deal with major conflicts that threaten to pull it apart. Again, it is easy to feel as though the Church is washed up, dried out and dying.

Whatever we think of those issues and views, the God that we worship is in the resurrection business. And that is where we need to be too. In our Gospel reading (John 11: 1-45) Jesus said that he is the resurrection and the life and demonstrated this by bringing Lazarus back to life. Through his ministry, Jesus resurrected a society and culture transforming the entire world as he did so. He calls us to follow in his footsteps by looking for the places where our society and culture is dried up or dying and working for its transformation and resurrection. Each of us can do the same as Jesus through our work and community involvements and we need to be asking ourselves how God wants to use us, through those involvements, to transform parts of our society and culture.

Raising Lazarus from death was a sign of what would happen after Jesus’ own death on the cross. By rising from death himself, Jesus conquered death for all people enabling us to enter in to eternal life after our physical death. This is good news for us to share with other people around us wherever we are - in our families and among our friends, neighbours and work colleagues.

Jesus also resurrected lives before physical death came. Look for a moment at John 11 with me. In the first section of that chapter from verses 1 to 16 we see the disciples struggling to understand what Jesus was saying and doing. He wanted them to see how God was at work in Lazarus’ illness and death. They kept looking only at their physical and material circumstances - if Jesus went back to Judea then he would be killed, if Lazarus was asleep then he would get better, and so on. Jesus wanted them to see that God can work even through death and in verse 16 he drew out of them the commitment to go with him even though they might die with him.

Then in verses 17 to 27, Jesus helped Martha move beyond her theoretical belief in the resurrection to a belief that Jesus himself is the promised Messiah. Finally, in verses 38 to 45, he helped all those present to move beyond their focus on physical realities to believe in God’s ability to do the supernatural. Throughout, Jesus was challenging all the people he encountered to move beyond their comfort zones, to step out in faith, to encounter and trust God in new ways. He wants to do the same with each one of us. Wherever our lives have got stuck, have become dried up or closed down or have died he wants to challenge and encourage us to move out of our comfort zones and to encounter him and other people in new and risky ways. He wants us to come alive to God, to the world, to other people and to life itself in new ways.

Jesus is in the resurrection business. Whether it is transforming society, sharing the good news of eternal life or encouraging us to step out in faith, Jesus wants to bring us to life. How will you respond to Jesus this afternoon? Is there an area of your life that he can bring back to life? Will you commit yourself to join in sharing the good news of eternal life with others and transforming society where you are? 

As you think about that challenge let us pray together briefly, using the words of a song by Evanescence: Lord Jesus, we are frozen inside without your touch, without your love. You are the life among the dead, so wake us up inside. Call our names and save us from the dark. Bid our blood to run before we come undone, save us from the nothing we’ve become. Bring us to life. Amen.

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Evanescence - Bring Me To Life.

Sóller: Miro, Picasso, Rubió & Can Prunera Museu Modernista

The town of Sóller is located on the northwest coast of the island of Mallorca and has two buildings by the architect Joan Rubió i Bellver.

Rubió was a keen disciple of Antoni Gaudí collaborating with him until 1905 on such works as the restoration of La Seu (the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca). Rubió went to Mallorca to collaborate with Gaudí on the Cathedral but his contacts with the curia provided him with other works on the island. Rector Sebastià Maymó, a good friend of Bishop Campins who commissioned Gaudí to work on the Cathedral, hired Rubió to design the façade for the parish church in Sóller, which had yet to be finished. He designed a traditional Gothic façade, but gave it what could be considered a Modernista interpretation. Work began in 1904 and ended in 1913 because of a lack of funding, and it was not completed until 1946. Rubió also designed the Banc de Sóller (1909-1912), a large grey ashlar building with asymmetrical windows covered by semicircular arches and a double semicircular overhanging corner gallery. The Banco de Sóller is remarkable for its intricate ironwork (wrought iron).

Can Prunera Museu Modernista is located in an old art nouveau mansion built in the early 20th century. Can Prunera, together with other buildings such as the Grand Hotel, Can Forteza Rey and Can Casasayas, the three of them in Palma, belongs to a large set of buildings erected in the early 20th century following the models of Catalan Modernisme and French Art-nouveau.

The visit starts in the ground and main floor rooms, containing some of the original furniture (tables, chairs, beds, wardrobes and showcases with a clear ornamental richness). In those same rooms, paintings and sculptures are shown. Most of the works displayed at Can Prunera Museu Modernista belong to the Serra Art Collection and this collection’s masterpieces encompass works by important artists from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Joan Miró, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger and Maurice Vlaminck; painters who were either born in Mallorca or have some link to the island and have reached international recognition are also included. These include Santiago Rusiñol, Joaquim Mir, Joan Fuster, Eliseu Meifrén, Ritch Miller and Miquel Barceló. Another important section of the Serra Art Collection is to be found in the paintings of the permanent collection, by Juli Ramis,

In the basement, there are the rooms popularly known as botigues: the old room containing a kitchen stove, an olive oil tank, a sink and a well, which can still be seen; a refectory for the domestic service –which nowadays hosts temporary exhibitions– and the storage rooms –today devoted to Juli Ramis, where works from three of the most characteristic periods of this painter from Sóller are shown: early years, Cubism and abstract works. In the garden, visitors can contemplate the inner façade of the house and the collection of sculptures displayed.

Biblically themed works on show included a bronze by Arnaldo Pomorodo dedicated to Pere A. Serra, an image of the Miracle at Cana by Calvo Carridôn plus a collection of drawings by Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar.

There are currently two temporary exhibitions. The Incarnate Spirits by Pep Girbent (Sóller, 1969) presents seven painting based on images from iconic films which introduce several overlapping discourses. The task I have set myself is none other than to untangle these interlocking blocks of thought, out of which, like the tips of icebergs, the seven paintings that comprise this exhibition emerge. The other is Joan Ramon Bonet. The photographer’s vision; in which photographs by Bonet of various artists are shown alongside examples of each artist's work.

The station and ticket office building at Sóller house a permanent exhibition of two of Spain's most famous modern artists, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. Aptly housed together because the two artists enjoyed a long friendship until the death of Picasso in 1973, the collection contains ceramics by Picasso and lithographs and paintings by Miro, as well as several photographs of the pair together. The Miro gallery includes his interpretation of Francesc d'Assis: Càntic del Sol, 1975.

 

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Brother Sun, Sister Moon.

Humanising Work: Co-operatives, credit unions and the challenge of mass unemployment

Humanising Work: Co-operatives, credit unions and the challenge of mass unemployment is a new book by Chris Beales (Rainmaker Books, published October 2014. ISBN 978-1-909863-02-6 E-book £2.49 Paperback £5.99 (+ £2 p & p) 83 pages. Available from Amazon and Kobo).

Does the search for meaning in work matter? – and is it even possible to ask such a question against a backdrop of mass youth unemployment, widespread poverty and growing inequality? Drawing on the experience of the Mondragon co-operatives in Spain and other innovative models of employment and enterprise from around the world - and the visions and values derived from his faith - Chris explores how ‘work’ might be humanised and education and employment made not only responsive to what the Economy needs but also purposeful, satisfying and rewarding for people.

Also by Chris Beales: Practising Jesus. Rainmaker Books, ISBN 978-1-909863-00-2 Now available from info@rainmakerbooks.co.uk for £5.00 (+£2 p&p) pb 170 pages.

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The Clash - Clampdown.

Two sides to Benidorm

I recently spent the weekend in Benidorm as part of my future son-in-law's stag weekend and was fascinated to be able to view the two sides to Benidorm.

For the most part, Benidorm is a typical Spanish resort with sweeping bays, beautiful beaches and wide promenades designed for paseo, yet it is best known for the 'British Square'; a plaza with a collection of pubs and clubs, supplemented by takeaways, which makes up the main strip and is filled nightly with English tourists, generally in groups, generally celebrating (whether stag or hen weekends, birthdays or some other milestone), and generally in fancy dress or t-shirts proclaiming what is being celebrated by means of a pub crawl. All the stereotypes of drink, drugs, hardcore house & cheesy pop, sun, sea, sand and sex have their basis in reality. Free shots, cheap deals on booze, and table dancers are the main means used to entice groups into specific pubs and clubs but little leeway is afforded when the plentiful supply of alcohol results in throwing up or aggressive behaviour. The strip is perimetre policed and those stepping over the line are swiftly dispatched from the Square. Possibly as a result, the general atmosphere in the Square was merry but calm with no sense of latent threat.

There appeared to be much good natured banter between the different groups to be found in the Square. One group, in t-shirts proclaiming themselves to be 'Vicar's off duty', were amazed and pleased to find that what they had imagined to be an anomalous joke was actually a reality. One of their group offered to bring friends with him if we were to hold a service in our hotel and passed on contact details to keep in touch. A group of women from Birmingham who spoke to us at the same time talked about the positive impact their local Vicar had made at the local school and in taking the funeral of a friend's father. They thanked us because they said the work which we do - being with others at moments of crisis - is under appreciated.

Conversations like these highlighted the opportunities that would exist were a ministry like that of Street Pastors to exist on the British Square. Throughout the weekend, several of us were asking ourselves where would Jesus be in this place. While there I read these words in Peter Rollins' the orthodox heretic which provide some kind of answer:

"... what if Jesus had an infinitely more radical message ...? What if Jesus taught an impossible forgiveness, a forgiveness without conditions, a forgiveness that would forgive before some condition was met? Now, that kind of forgiveness can really annoy people, and might help to explain why Jesus got a reputation for hanging out with drunkards and prostitutes rather than with ex-drunkards and ex-prostitutes!"

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The Phantoms - Benidorm Nights.

Costa Blancan scenes

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Brian Kennedy - The Reason We Are Here.