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Will we faint with fear and foreboding?

I wrote this post just before my precious dad died. He was an inspiration; passionate about justice and a brilliant gardener. Here he is with his magnificent onion harvest.

Luke 21:25-28 ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’

When I read this passage this morning, I couldn’t help noticing the parallels with our current situation. Although this passage is part of the ‘mini-apocalypse’, which refers to the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, it resonates today in its description of a world falling apart and people’s reactions to it. In addition to the seas roaring, the sun, moon and stars, whose patterns are so reliable that they were used for calculating the calendar and for navigation, would be shaken. People’s distress over these environmental convulsions and fear for the future would lead to paralysis.

If we take the data seriously, what is coming upon the world over 2000 years later is to be feared. The description of people ‘fainting with fear’ rings true in our time and I am sure is a factor in the mental health crisis amongst the young. But Christ calls us to ‘stand up and raise [y]our heads’, standing up is contrasted with fainting, it implies action to be taken, an engagement with the situation, facing into what is to come rather than retreating from it.

Of course, there are more possible responses than the two mentioned here, and a multitude of motivating factors, but we cannot hope for the continued ‘success’ of consumer capitalism, which is built on injustice, extraction and oppression. Our ultimate hope cannot be in calm seas and predictable waves, we are far too far along for that.

So where will we find strength to stand up and face what is coming? We are to ‘raise our heads’, a symbolic looking to ‘heaven’ where God is, which we might understand as seeking union with the Divine. We are to do this because our ‘redemption is drawing near’ – I understand this as the moment of full union with God in Christ as we leave the physical body at our death. This is no pie in the sky when you die, no escapism from everyday reality, rather, with this as our ultimate destination, we draw strength to live our daily lives as Christ as calls us to, being engaged for the good of others: animal, vegetable and mineral.

Excitedly looking forward to the end of the world because this is when Christ will return (‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’) is a twisted way of reading this. Any end of the world that we might envisage is going to come at a terrible cost to the whole of creation, and is something to be grieved (blessed are those who mourn, Matthew 5:4) and alleviated as far as possible (for I was hungry and you gave me food, Matthew 25:31-46).

In any case, if we look a bit more carefully, the son of Man is coming with power and great glory, and when was Christ glorified? On the cross (John 12:20-26)! This is not power and glory as usual. I don’t know what ‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’ means but, at the very least, it sounds like Christ hasn’t forgotten us, that somehow he is still with us, and that through his suffering on the cross will be with us even in our very darkest moments.

We are facing the end of the world as we know it
And we are terrified.
This is the moment to look to God
Resisting paralysis, by standing up to act
Strengthened by our hope of union with God.
Let us follow Christ in compassion, justice and peace
The rest we leave in God’s hands.
Great is the mystery of faith.
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How to survive Easter Saturday

A splash of colour on a not-so-recent walk.

I recently gave a reflection at a weekend retreat, the theme of which was Jeremiah 29:11: ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope’. The passage for the day was Mark 15:42-47, the women watching as Joseph of Arimathea takes Jesus’ dead body and places it in a tomb. With thanks to Ched Myers for his interpretation of the text.

On this second day of your retreat, you will journey with the disciples through Easter Saturday. This is not an easy day to manage well, as somehow we must hold together the horror of Good Friday with the joyful hope to come on Easter Sunday. For us, this is a time for expectant waiting, but for the women in the reading we just heard, there was no sense of waiting or hoping at all; for them it was just grief, confusion and disappointment.

They had just witnessed one of the most barbaric methods of torture ever devised. Their dear friend Jesus had been subject to mockery, brutality, humiliation and death. They had hoped he was going to set their people free from their Roman oppressors – but Rome, in collaboration with the Jewish ruling elite, seemed to have had the last word.

There was, at least, one mercy: Jesus died rapidly. Crucifixions could last for several days, but as the centurion confirmed, Jesus died after just six hours. But now the clock was ticking – there were only three hours until the beginning of sabbath, three short hours until no more work could be done. Three hours to pay Jesus’ body the proper respect and to give it a decent burial.

We don’t know what the women were planning to do or hoping would happen, but I’m sure that at least one of them must have given some thought to how to care for the body. And then Joseph of Arimathea steps in. He was a member of the council, one of those who were complicit in Jesus’s death. The gospel writer Mark fills in some detail about him being respected and waiting for the kingdom, but as far as the women were concerned, he was probably an enemy.

Whatever tentative plans they may have made were dashed to pieces when Joseph took control of Jesus’ body. He was in a position of sufficient power to make the request of Pilate, while the women could only look on.

However, despite their lack of power, the women weren’t mere bystanders, they took the initiative and did what they could. They watched what Joseph was doing, and they had the courage and stamina to follow behind him and discover the final resting place of Jesus’ body.

Rather than properly preparing Jesus’s body for burial, Joseph hastily bundled him up in linen cloth and deposited him in a tomb. We know the process was inadequate, because the women came back on the third day to attend to the body properly.

Perhaps the burial was rushed because time was running out before the sabbath. Or perhaps this council member wasn’t interested in giving Jesus the proper last rites – he just wanted the body safely out of the way. Mark leaves this ambiguous.

Whatever the reason, he then rolled a stone over the entrance, dusk fell and that was it. There was no hope, no triumph. Jesus, their leader, teacher and friend was dead and buried. The women must have been both devastated and confused; despite Jesus’s warnings, this was unexpected. It must have felt like the end of their world.

I wonder what they would have said at this point about our theme for the weekend ‘”For I know the plans that I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope”’? In that moment these words would probably have felt empty.

And I wonder about us? How do we respond to this promise when we go through dark times. When our hope seems gone, life is too hard and God feels absent. Because, as we all know, baptism doesn’t grant us immunity from the struggles of life.

We know this was not the end of the story, but the women had no idea that there would be another chapter. Yet in that dark moment, they were not entirely defenceless, they had at least three things that helped them.

First of all, they took the initiative and did what they could. They located Jesus’s body and prepared to tend to it properly on the third day. There was no grand plan, they just kept going, putting one foot in front of another. In times when we risk becoming completely overwhelmed by a situation, sometimes we too must content ourselves with just taking the next step, one thing at a time.

Secondly, they had each other. This tragedy did not tear them apart, instead the women and the other disciples met together in the dark hours that followed the crucifixion to support each other. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews (10:25) encourages us to keep on meeting together when times get hard, because this is an important part of our faith; wider culture is driving us to ever greater individuality and isolation, but the truth is that we need each other. When we are feeling strong, Christ calls us to encourage others, and in turn He calls others to encourage us when we need it.

And finally, the women had their trust in God. They knew that Jesus had a special relationship with God the father, and that surely helped them to trust in God, despite the facts of their circumstances. The future God had in store for the early church was both amazing and difficult, and we too, can expect our futures to be a mixed bag of experiences.

Like the women, may we trust God for who he is, rather than for what he might do for us.

Even in the darkest, almost unbearable moments, there is hope for a future with God.

Keep going, support each other, and trust in God.

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The Day of the Lord

This used to be a Hügelkultur bed, but that didn’t really work, so I’ve taken it apart and turned it inside out. I imagine this is what a Hobbit’s vegetable patch might look like.

This is a reflection on the readings for the penultimate Sunday before Advent: Hebrews 10:11-25, Mark 13:1-8 and Daniel 12:1-3.

I confess to having something of a morbid fascination with post-apocalyptic fiction. I think it has to do with growing up in the shadow of the cold war fearful of nuclear annihilation, and then there was the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain and now climate change. Perhaps a subconscious part of me needs to face the worst possible outcomes in a safe, contained way in order for me to feel able to cope with an uncertain future.

Our three readings for today fit nicely into the apocalyptic genre. The prophet Daniel describes a time of great anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. Then in the Gospel, Jesus talks of the destruction of the temple, of wars and rumours of wars, of famines and earthquakes. The passage from Hebrews ends with a cryptic comment about the Day (with a capital D) which is approaching. It is this concept of the Day, the Day of the Lord, that can help us find meaning in these passages and seek a constructive way forward.

In the Jewish imagination, in Biblical times, the Day of the Lord was the moment when God would break into history and take charge, bringing justice and restoring God’s chosen people to their proper place in the world. But before that Day, there would be a time of terror and trouble when the world would be shaken to its foundations and judgment would come.

The Old Testament prophets warned about this great suffering, we’ve already heard from Daniel, so let’s hear from Isaiah, who is no less terrifying:

See, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation, and to destroy its sinners from it.

This so-called apocalyptic literature, is a blend of terror and ultimate hope, driven along by God’s purposes.

Probably the most famous apocalyptic writing in the Bible is the book of Revelation, found at the very end of the New Testament. As with the rest of the genre, its imagery is not meant to be taken literally, it is symbolic language that gives hope that suffering isn’t entirely pointless, that somehow, something good will come out of it.

Our gospel reading today is part of what has been called the mini apocalypse, which takes up most of the rest of Mark 13. It makes for disturbing and perplexing reading. Jesus uses the familiar apocalyptic style to warn his disciples against being led astray by false teachers, he tells them not to be alarmed but to be patient until the end.

He warns that there will be wars and rumours of wars, that nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; that there will be earthquakes in various places and famines. And not only that, but this is just the beginning of the birth pangs. The disciples would have understood this as the build up to the glorious Day of the Lord and the defeat of their enemies. But Jesus subverts this idea by talking about birth pangs – this is an image not of vengeance and victory, but of the hope of new birth!

I wonder how you feel when you hear these words about liars rising to prominence and leading many astray? About wars and rumours of wars, conflict, earthquakes and famines? Does this seem pertinent to you? It certainly does to me, and why not add droughts, floods, hurricanes and forest fires to the mix. I find it interesting that Jesus promised us such terrible things and then counselled us not to be alarmed about them.

Let’s rewind a minute and look back at what prompted Jesus to speak these words. The disciples had been admiring the temple and trying to get Jesus to share in their wonder. The temple was a vast structure, with some of the stones being as big as 40 by 12 by 18 feet, no wonder the disciples were impressed by them. This incredibly imposing structure was not only the focus of religious ritual, but held the Holy Scriptures, the highest court of Jewish law and the presence of God himself.

But rather than join in their admiration of the temple, Jesus prophesies its destruction, and, in less than 50 years, this astonishing prophecy came tragically true. The temple was destroyed during the siege of Jerusalem in which over a million people perished by famine and the sword, and between 60 and 100 thousand people were enslaved, taken to Rome and forced to build the Colosseum – that theater of terror where as many as 400,000 people died in bloody spectacles.

The catastrophic collapse of the city and its temple must have felt like the end of the world. And yet, somehow, life went on. It was an end, but not the end, it was but the beginning of the birth pangs that Jesus talked about.

Zooming outwards, we can see that other ends of the world have happened throughout history, for example, the fall of the Roman empire which plunged Western Europe into turmoil, the industrial revolution, which despite its many advantages has wrought untold ecological damage, and the discovery of the ‘New World’, which was a total catastrophe for the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

These experiences of political, social and ecological collapse are so painful and difficult, it’s as if the body of history has been wracked with waves of intense pain over and over again. These are the birth pangs.

Since the end of 2nd world war, those of us in the global north have had something of a reprieve, and we can be incredibly grateful for the peace, prosperity and security and that we have known in our time, but we cannot imagine that it will last forever. Our status quo is declining and falling. Another birth pang.

Like all good midwives, Jesus tells us not to be alarmed when the birth pangs come – don’t panic, just breathe. Like a labouring mother who is driven along by forces within her body that she cannot control – we are living within systems and structures that we cannot control. Like an expectant mother, perhaps the best thing we can do is decide to keep breathing, to not be alarmed, but to be islands of peace in a world reeling from the pain.

When alarming news comes in from all over the globe and when the things we thought were as stable and certain as the Jerusalem temple start to unravel, how are we to respond?

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews has some clear advice.

His readers were living through persecution and trials, and he encourages them not to give up – he tells them (and us) to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. He doesn’t tell us to keep going because everything will be OK in the end, but encourages us to keep faith in God because of who God is. He talks of a true heart in full assurance of faith, this speaks to our attitude – that we don’t let ourselves be destroyed by the awfulness of what is going on around us, that we don’t become cynical and depressed, but rather we choose to keep believing in the goodness of God.

He challenges us to consider how we might provoke each another to love and good deeds, it makes me think back to our auction the other week, where we drove up the prices by bidding against each other. I wonder who has inspired you to grow in your faith, to live better or simply to keep going when things are difficult?

The author recognises that in the face of the pressures of life, some had given up and stopped meeting together, but he stresses how important it is for us to keep meeting up to encourage each other, and all the more as we see the Day approaching. We are part of each other, and we cannot afford to give up on our community. The worse things get on a social, economic and ecological level, the more important it will be to draw together, not drift apart.

Birth pangs start off gently, a minor irritation, but soon build in strength and frequency until the body is overwhelmed by waves of increasingly unbearable pain. And yet, the pain is just about bearable because you know it won’t last and that there will new life at the end of it.

But what will the labour of our suffering world bring to birth?

There’s no easy answer to this, we might just have to refer back to the Hebrews passage that encourages us to trust that God is faithful. Or we might look to Romans 8, which talks about creation groaning in the pain of labour, and points towards a time of future redemption.

But we can’t afford to let that make us complacent. Christ calls us to love our neighbour, to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit those in prison.

In the face of calamity, we are to respond with neither paralysing despair nor a false hope that relieves us of the responsibility to act, but with a virtuous cycle of meeting together to encourage and provoke each other to love and good deeds. By following the way of Christ, we will impact our collective well-being as well as the well-being of those around us, bringing positive change in a myriad of small and not so small ways. And for those things beyond the scope of our influence, we will just have to learn to leave them in the hands of our faithful God.

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Green tomatoes and mutual encouragement

Compare these to the tomatoes of a few weeks ago back, click here

The slugs in my garden have had a spectacularly good year, so good that even the tomatoes, which usually get away unscathed, have suffered their assault, and so I eventually decided to salvage the remaining green ones and bring them inside. I am not a fan of fried green tomatoes and had a bad experience with an over-heated green tomato curry last year, so I was determined to get them to ripen indoors this time around.

Tomato ripening is triggered by the gas ethene, which causes the conversion of starches into sugar and the generation of the red pigment lycopene. This happens naturally on the vine, and as the green tomatoes begin to ripen, they too give off ethene, encouraging their neighbours to ripen in a virtuous cycle of increasing deliciousness.

To mimic this process in the safety of my slug-free kitchen, I popped some ripe tomatoes on a tray along with my green ones and, sure enough, a few weeks later, my green tomato harvest was almost entirely red. As I contemplated these mutually ripening tomatoes, I was reminded of the words at the end of our passage for this Sunday:

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10: 24-25)

As the green tomatoes are encouraged to ripen by their slightly redder neighbours, we can encourage each other to greater ‘love and good deeds’ – but for that to happen, just like the tomatoes, we need to be in close proximity, ‘not neglecting to meet each other’. See you on Sunday?!

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How do we feel God’s love?

I think it looks like a graveyard, now that the sunflowers have been harvested.

People talk about feeling the love of God, but how are we supposed to do that? Is it some sort of mystical experience only available to the spiritual elite? Or only to people graced with a particular sensitivity? Personally, I think that God’s love is much more accessible to us than that. In fact, God’s love is expressed any time we love others or others love us. I believe we can learn to take that experience of God’s love mediated through other people (and animals) and use it to tap into a sense of God’s unmediated love for us. How about trying the following exercise?

Settle into your seat, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Rest calmly in silence for as long as you are comfortable. Then bring to mind a moment when you felt loved. If this is difficult for you, bring to mind a moment when you felt great love for somebody else. Dwell in this feeling. Revel in the warmth. Notice how it feels in your body, how it feels in your whole being. Imprint this feeling strongly in your mind, body and spirit.

Mark 10:13-16
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Imagine yourself as a small child, out for a walk with a parental figure. It’s a warm sunny day, and you are feeling happy and relaxed. You come across a crowd of children gathered around Jesus. You separate from your parent and approach the crowd. Jesus is smiling and laughing with the children. He speaks words of blessing over them and the children go away happy. How do you react to that? Now it’s your turn to receive a blessing – go up to Jesus and let him give you a big bear hug. Now bring back to mind that experience of love you just recalled and feel it now. Experience it as God’s love being directly shared with you in the present moment. Rest there for a while.

What does Jesus say to you, if anything?

Now talk with God about this experience. Were you able to sense God’s love? Perhaps it was difficult. Be honest with God, and ask for more love for yourself and for the whole world.

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But what happened to the slave-girl of Acts 16?

Autumn in all her glory!

I found myself quite angry this morning as I read the story of Paul’s encounter with a demonised, fortune-telling slave-girl in Philippi (Acts 16:16-40). It’s the start of a longer narrative that focusses on the consequences of this action for the protagonists.

This girl was doubly possessed – both by a spirit of divination and by her slave master. As Paul was going about his work, she was being a nuisance, following him around and shouting disruptively. Paul ignored her for several days, but his patience finally ran out and, in a burst of temper, he commanded the spirit to leave her.

Yes, the girl was freed from the spirit, but this was not a compassionate deliverance from evil, it was more like swatting an irritating fly. At least with a lucrative talent she was guaranteed some degree of security – what would happen to her now? I don’t get the slightest impression that the slave girl was seen for the precious human being she was – only for the force that controlled her.

Her slave-owners certainly didn’t value her humanity either, for them she was a way to make money, and once her special talent was gone, she was practically worthless.

I feel that Paul bears some responsibility for what happened to her next. My hope is that she was welcomed into the Christian community, perhaps by Lydia the dealer in purple cloth we read about in the verses before, but from the few words about her in the text, my fear is that she was collateral damage of Paul’s adventures in Philippi. Paul paid for the incident with beatings and imprisonment, but his prison stay was short, and his story moved on.

For what it’s worth, slave-girl of Philippi, I see you!

But that’s an easy thing to say from the comfort of my own home, with two thousand years between us. I hope I can see you when I next meet you in one of your 21st century sisters.

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How does your (inner) garden grow?

If you are in the mood for a little ‘spiritual gardening’ you might like to try to following exercise, in which you consider your life as a garden and see what emerges.

Start by becoming still and calm in the presence of God. Perhaps do a body scan or a breathing exercise.

Now review what is happening in your life right now, using whichever of the following questions you find helpful:

Where is there growth? What is blossoming? Where is there fruit?

What is fading or dying? What is on the compost heap? What needs to be put on the compost heap?

What needs to be pruned? Does anything need to be trained?

Are any areas overrun with weeds or under attack by pests?

What parts of your life need to be fed with fertiliser?

Have you sown any seeds recently?

Are there completely new areas you’d like to dig over?

Talk to God about what has come up in this time of reflection and entrust your garden to him.

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Value and identity

A perfect spinach seedling.

The other morning, I was reading the beautiful passage Philippians 2:1-11 about how Christ:

did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

However, I got a bit stuck on the words ‘in humility regard others as better than yourselves’. As someone who tends towards low self-esteem, it’s not very helpful to hear this. My default position is to feel inferior to other people, but this has nothing to do with humility and everything to do with an unhealthy place in my being. How can I regard other people as ‘better’ than myself in a way that isn’t damaging?

The writer of Philippians also says ‘let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’. Christ knew who he was, and whose he was, he knew his value and his identity. From this secure place, he was able to give everything up and serve others, even to the point of death.

Having good self-worth isn’t about dragging other people down in my mind or pushing myself up above them; it has nothing to do with comparison. It’s about my, and everyone else’s, intrinsic value as earth-creatures loved by God.

I need to keep connecting with that part of me that knows my value and identity, so that I can act from a sense of inner security and confidence, rather than stumbling down the well-trodden path to self-effacement. From that safe place, I can make a genuinely humble choice to take the last place without feeling devalued or that I’d have no right to the first place, were I to decide to take it.

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Detachment and the rich young ruler

Amethyst deceivers + puff balls, autumn chanterelles + hedgehog mushrooms, and inkcaps, collected in a nearby forest.

This is a reflection I wrote in May this year on Mark 10:17-22

I wonder how you feel about this passage? I know that this is one of those difficult encounters with Jesus that we cannot ignore, but that can leave us feeling rather uncomfortable. In this story, Jesus seems very demanding – he asks the rich man to sell all his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, is he asking the same of us? Since only a few actually take that path, does this mean that the rest of us are failing in our Christian vocation?

How we read these words depends on our image of God, what we really believe God is like. If he is punitive, demanding and a killjoy, then the message we hear is that we must try and earn God’s love by doing difficult things and denying ourselves. However, in this passage, we read that Jesus looked at the rich man and loved him. The Bible is peppered with verses that tell us how much God loves us and wants what’s best for us, and so this reading can’t be about doing hard things to earn God’s love – that love is already given. If we can believe that God is love and has our best interests at heart, then this passage has another message for us.

Let’s take a moment to consider what was going on in the rich man’s life. He was deeply religious and conscientiously followed the religious laws. He worked hard at doing the right thing and was committed to seeking eternal life, what we might call ‘salvation’. He sensed that there was something more to the spiritual life, but seemed to have come to the end of this resources. He had heard that the Rabbi Jesus had come to town – perhaps he could show him the way? Since he was a wealthy man, he could be fairly confident that he was on the right track, because wealth was understood as a reward from God for good behaviour. So he was hopeful, looking forward to a positive interaction with this teacher who would surely recognise his virtue. He believed himself willing to do whatever was required of him in the search for God. So, in his enthusiasm, he ran to Jesus and knelt down before him, asking the question, ‘What can I do to be saved?’ Now, there are two problematic words in this question, I and do. He believed he needed to work at getting God to accept him, and believed that he effectively could save himself this way. The focus was squarely on him and what he could do.

Jesus initially appears to go along with this assumption, listing various laws that must be kept – as if that was all that was needed – perhaps this was his way to find out how serious the rich man was. Only when pressed by this earnest young man, does Jesus give his unthinkable instruction to sell what he owns, and give the money to the poor.

his wealth was a blessing from God, it made no sense to give it all up – that would be like ungratefully returning a gift to the one who gave it, and so the rich man reacted with shock and grief. He was, perhaps, looking for a new way of praying or another religious practise, but Jesus didn’t tell him to take something new on, but to let go of what he already had. Jesus made it sound easy, but it wasn’t, and wasn’t just about the money, Jesus was also asking him to give up his status, security and even his family, as there’s no way that his relatives would have remained in contact with him if he had embraced a life of poverty.

It makes me think of Jesus’ words in John 12, where he says:

24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Jesus says what he does because he knows what the rich man really needs, he knows what will set him free and bring him abundant life. Giving up his wealth wouldn’t have earnt the rich man his salvation, as that is the gift of God, but it would have set him free to follow Jesus. The rich man’s life is under control, safe, he lives within comfortable limits. Jesus invites him beyond these limits, he challenges the rich man to let go of the control of his life and trust that God will catch him, but the rich man isn’t ready for that leap of faith. I also wonder whether Jesus asked the man to do the almost impossible partly to show him that he could not save himself?

Jesus’ challenge is followed by a promise and an invitation:

you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me

This invitation to ‘come follow me’ is the same as the invitation he extended to the first disciples. He called Andrew, Peter, James and John to leave their life as fishermen, but perhaps since they had less to lose it was easier for them to give up the little they had? But then Matthew left his job as a tax collector, which was a lucrative profession; in his case perhaps the fact that most people would have hated him for colluding with the occupying Romans, would have made him more willing to give it up that life? The man in our story is both rich and respectable, he has everything to lose and is too attached to his lifestyle and possessions to let go and follow Jesus. He doesn’t realise that his wealth has him trapped and is afraid of what would happen if he lost it. He isn’t free to pursue the deeper spiritual life that he desires.

Now, I just said that the rich man was too ‘attached’ to his wealth, and that was a deliberate choice of word. I want to say a just few words about the opposite: detachment. Unlike the rich man, the 12 disciples were sufficiently detached from their previous occupations to be able to leave them behind and follow Jesus. Ignatian spirituality understands detachment as a healthy impartiality, a distancing, an indifference. If we can be detached from things and habits, we are freer to choose those things and attitudes that lead to God. That isn’t to say that things are necessarily bad, quite the contrary, they can be a great blessing, but if they become too important to us, they entrap us and so hinder our growth towards God.

For the rich man, there was a call to be free from his possessions and a call to be free of the lie that there was something he could do to save himself. The rich man’s unhealthy attachments were brought to light by an encounter with Jesus; we can discover our unhealthy attachments by an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

These attachments can come in many guises, they might be material possessions or money, as in this passage, they might also be feelings and thoughts that bind us, cravings and addictions, or unhelpful thought patterns. For example, I struggle with an attachment to perfectionism. My tendency is to believe that if something I’ve done is not perfect, then it’s practically worthless. This puts the focus on me and my achievements, rather than on trusting God to use my, inevitably imperfect, efforts.

One way to test whether we are unhealthily attached to something, is to ask ourselves how we would feel if God asked us to let go of it. Our response will give us an indication of how attached we are, because, when we are free, letting go doesn’t feel difficult. Depending on what the attachment is, God may or may not ask us to let go of it, but we are invited to hold lightly even the good gifts in our lives.

The encounter in this story feels rather final. The rich man is presented with an ultimatum and declines Jesus’s invitation, albeit regretfully, as we read that he grieved as he walked away. I wonder whether the rich man might have changed his mind later on? Having had his unhealthy attachments revealed to him, perhaps, in time, he came to the point of being able to let go of them? After all, detaching from the things that keep us from a closer walk with God is a lifelong process.

To follow Jesus, the rich man needed to let go of his possessions. What are the things that limit our freedom to follow Christ? How might God be calling us into a more abundant life? Perhaps we can ask God to set us free to take risks with our time, talent and treasures for the purposes of God’s kingdom. I invite us to place all we are and have before God, giving thanks for all our blessings, and may God help us loosen our grip on whatever hinders us from serving him, confident that He won’t loosen his grip of love on us.

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Life after doom?

The cracks are where the light shines through.

I am so grateful to Brian Maclaren for writing his most recent book ‘Life after doom‘. He tackles what most of us can’t quite bear to face with wisdom and compassion, and offers ways to navigate a path through whatever scenario lies ahead of humanity. He describes four possible futures: collapse avoidance (which is really just delaying the inevitable), collapse rebirth, collapse survival, and collapse extinction.

I finished this book more at peace than when I started, and re-energised to do what I can. This is not a book that I would recommend for everyone, but if you feel ready to face the end of the world as we know it, then this might be a good place to start.

Here is a link to an interview with the author on the excellent Nomad podcast.