Miracles: What are they and do they happen?

I have been sharing a number of theological papers that I have written. This is a copy of my notes for a discussion that I took part in recently on the award-winning BBC radio programme ‘All Things Considered’.

What is a miracle?

The real difficulty in considering the possibility of miracles occurring is the difficulty of defining precisely what they are. The philosopher David Hume famously defined miracles as an event that breaks the laws of nature. But more things are possible and more things occur than our present understanding of the regularities of nature allows. After all, our experience of the laws of nature are regularly being revised. Developments in quantum physics, for example, have brought this sharply to mind. Quantum physics is showing scientists a world that is more unusual, indeterminate, and organic. It has even been argued that quantum physics is revealing a world that is more spiritual than we previously realised.

So, instead of breaking the laws of nature, perhaps we could define a miracle as something remarkable or spectacular. Some liberal theologians, such as Marcus Borg, actually refuse to use the word miracles and simply talk about “the spectacular”. Borg rejects supernatural interventions by God who is “out there” and instead talks about the God at the heart of spectacular in the world. The problem with that, though, is that there are many occurrences that we wouldn’t define as miracles, but they are still remarkable and spectacular – the birth of a child, medical procedures (like radiotherapy), and the sun rising up each morning.

So, defining what is a miracle is not as simple as it may first appear, and philosophers, theologians, and biblical scholars have long recognised the complexity of that seemingly basic question.

What about the miracles in the Bible?

The biblical world was a time when accounts of the remarkable and miraculous were far more common than they are today and many things that would have been considered miracles in the past may no longer seen that way today. But we certainly can’t dismiss or explain away the numerous miracles in the Bible by asserting that fact.

A number of the Old Testament miracles hold their own particular problems and difficulties in that they call into question God’s own character. For example, in the book of Exodus the great miracle known as the parting of the Red Sea– why would God perform a miracle that meant the drowning hundreds of Egyptian people? In response to such miracles, some theologians talk about “divine consistency”, a phrase made famous by Jean Dominic Crossan. Divine consistency affirms that we can only accept miracles if it is consistent with God’s loving nature.

In the New Testament, the gospels record 37 miracles of Jesus. Of these, 28 of them are miracles of healing, with God making people whole in mind and body. These miracles flow from Jesus’s compassion and love. Many theologians, whether liberal or more traditional, have little problem accepting that Jesus performed paranormal healings. He was certainly known as a great healer and exorcist, and so his healing cannot simply be explained in psychosomatic terms. But nine miracles involved Jesus has power over nature. So, what about walking on the water? Or silencing the storm? Or multiplying loaves and fish? Or changing water into the wine? It is not as easy to decide on the historicity of these miracles.

Some theologians would suggest that the miracle stories are metaphorical or symbolic. Even Jesus himself, of course, would have recognised that his miraculous deeds were symbolic – John’s gospel even refers to miracles as “signs”. In other words, there is deep meaning in the stories of Jesus’s miracles. So, the water into wine at the beginning of his ministry is symbolic of the new life he brings, while the calming of the storm is symbolic of God’s power over the waters of chaos and how he can calm the storms of our lives. The reality is, though, that we don’t know whether the nature miracles are literal or purely symbolic – or indeed a combination of both. What we do know, though, is that God’s power was recognised as present in Jesus in remarkable ways and God’s presence was identified in both his words and actions.

What about the miracles of St David, the Patron Saint of Wales?

St David lived in the sixth century, but most of the stories of his life or taken from Buchedd Dewi, written by Rhygafarch in the 11th century. So, that’s over 500 years after David’s death. It would be as if I was writing a history of Henry VIII with nothing but word-of-mouth and a few dusty documents found in a Cathedral archive. Many modern historians believe Rhygafarch exaggerated many of his stories, as he was trying to argue for some independence for the Welsh church.

The best known miracle of St David was when he was preaching in the middle of a crowd in the village of Llandewi Brefi. The ground beneath his feet rose up as he preached, allowing everyone to hear him, and a white dove flew down onto his shoulder. Perhaps this may have happened exactly as it was recorded, but perhaps people 1500 years ago simply had a very different way of describing things. Perhaps they were so inspired by this saintly man’s words that those present were saying things like “and it was as if the ground rose up beneath him and his words touched my soul and it was as if God settled on this man like a white dove”. Over the centuries that may have become “the ground did rise up beneath him and a white dove did land on his shoulder”. Either way, such descriptions are actually saying are that David was an inspirational and spiritual man, whether the miracle happened literally or not, and so our belief in the historicity of the miracle shouldn’t take away from what this remarkable man represents to us as Christians today or, indeed, as a nation.

Do miracles still occur?

The question of whether miracles still occur today brings us back to the question of what a miracle actually is. The theologian Keith Ward offers a useful definition of a miracle: “an extraordinary manifestation of spiritual power”. The reality is that unusual and extraordinary occurrences do happen in our world and there are sometimes no scientific explanation for those. If, as Christians, we believe in the Holy Spirit, then it follows that the Spirit can exert some influence on the world. After all, God is a personal reality to Christians and so he manifests himself in unique and distinctly personal ways.

So, Keith Ward suggests that we don’t view the universe as a machine, but rather we view it more like a body. Bodies, after all, do have reliable regularities, but we can also make decisions to do things and thus bodies are subject to personal action. Following this reasoning, the universe also has rigid definite laws, but, for reasons often unknown to us, God’s personal actions break into our world in some way or other. In other words, spectacular and extraordinary events can occur and, when they do, there are times when we may have to revise our understanding of the laws of nature. Miracles, then, could be seen as redefinitions of the laws of nature, rather than transgressions of it.

Is it possible or desirable to prove miracles?

I’ve always loved mystery. As a child I was obsessed with a book I had which detailed great unsolved mysteries such as the Loch Ness monster, the Bermuda triangle, the yeti, and UFOs. When I was a child, I thought like a child, but when I grew up, I left the mystery of conspiracy theories behind. I’m now more interested in the general mystery and miracle of life. In the breath-taking world in which we live we understand some things so well, but other things completely elude us. I’m not talking about the God of the gaps, as Fredrich Nietzche put it, where God is inserted wherever we don’t understand things. I’m talking about something far more spectacular and mysterious than that – questions of existence, wonder, sacrifice, truth, beauty, and love. And, however we define miracles, it is here where the miraculous resides – the spectacular, the extraordinary, the spiritual. As such, proving miracles is less important than welcoming the great mystery of life and showing openness and gratitude for how God’s power works in the everyday and ultimately transforms lives.

How do you respond to those who doubt miracles?

From a theological point of view, Christians do not regard God as a controlling, dictatorial superbeing, who makes arbitrary decisions about when and where not to intervene in our affairs. But neither do we hold that he is detached from humankind or dispassionate about our suffering. Rather, he is involved with the world and is able to transform it powerfully.

How God transforms the world, though, is a question that theologians have discussed for many centuries. For me, God transforms the world subtly – he leads, coaxes, inspires, persuades, and cajoles. This means his miracles happen every day in all sorts of ways. It’s not always huge spectacular things – sometimes it’s simply a smile or a kind word that lifts someone’s heart and sometimes it’s that deep sense of hope and peace that breaks into our troubled lives. As Jewish theologian Harold Kushner put it: “God’s job is not to make sick people healthy – that’s the doctor’s job. God’s job is to make sick people brave”.

And so God is not some dictator or superman who imposes his will from outside the world, but God is already in the world, inhabiting every atom of the universe, interacting into mingling with the laws and patterns of nature.

What about when people pray for miracles that don’t occur?

In the film Lourdes [2009], a wheelchair-bound young woman experiences a magnificent healing at Lourdes, a place famous for its miracles. She worships God and celebrates with joy. The problem is that all the other people with disabilities who are on the same pilgrimage question why this happened to her and not them. This starts to cause all kinds of difficulties and arguments within the group. Why did my miracle not occur? Why did her miracle occur because she’s clearly less pious and devout than I am?

At the centre of the Christian response to this is the great unknown. When we face the great unknown, then we have to really think about what we do know. Do we know God is in a healing miracle? Not for certain, but with God all things are possible, so possibly. Do we know God is in the suffering? Absolutely. After all, miracles aren’t God’s superpower. Love is God’s superpower. God’s love is far more powerful for transformation than random supernatural interventions. I’ve seen evidence of God’s love completely transforming people, events, and circumstances. That, in itself, could be seen as miraculous.

And so I have an open mind about supernatural, unexplained events, and I have an open mind about God’s involvement in those happenings. But what I do know that I have seen the miraculous happen in people’s lives through love, compassion, care, justice, peace, and hope. God is fully immersed in this world and, because we know he knows what it’s like to suffer on the cross, he’s also fully immersed in our pains and suffering. He breathes hope, life, and light into the most awful and traumatic situations. As one of my favourite sayings puts it: “sometimes God calms the storm, sometimes God calms the sailor”.

The Christian View of Suffering (Ministry Blog Series – 8)

I have been sharing a number of theological papers on ministry that I have written. This paper was given during the pandemic at an international seminar organised by Canadian global think tank ‘Alternative Perspectives on Global Challenges’. Academics from different faiths were invited to present their faith’s perspective on suffering.

Christianity has always taken suffering seriously. In the Jewish scriptures, the Christian Old Testament, the history of Israel is one of struggle and pain, from the tribulations of the patriarchs, through to slavery in Egypt and exile in Babylon. The wisdom tradition of the Old Testament voices questions of justice in this context, as it ponders our daily struggles in relation to an omnipotent God. The desolation of a good person, for example, is the principal theme of the book of Job – if God is all-powerful, then why doesn’t he end the suffering of this faithful person? The psalmist, on the other hand, describes the silence of God in times of human challenge and difficulty.

In the New Testament, Jesus shows himself to be sensitive to the groans of a hurting world, as he offers healing and solidarity to the outcast and the oppressed. The anguish of Gethsemane and the blood and pain of Calvary then place suffering at the centre of the Christian faith. Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 film The Passion of the Christ shockingly brings home to us the gruesome agonies of the Good Friday story. Another film, Martin Scorsese’s 1988 adaptation of Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, suggests, quite plausibly, that Jesus, who, we are told in the letter to the Hebrews (4:15), was tempted like us in every way, would have faced one final temptation – the temptation to resist the tortured death on the cross. So, one of Jesus’s great victories was in accepting the agony of the crucifixion and in overcoming the temptation to become a Messiah without suffering.

This, consequently, has always given Christians courage to take up their own crosses, as Jesus himself put it (Matthew 16:24), and accept their own suffering. Not that suffering should be celebrated or perversely enjoyed. Nor is suffering some test from God. It’s clear from the New Testament and from many centuries of Christian theological writing that, for Christians, God does not use suffering to punish, mock, belittle, or impart some sort of message to his people. The Christian faith does, though, teach that God meets people in their afflictions, bringing profound meaning, light, and hope at the most unlikely times.

St Paul, not a stranger to suffering, described his own personal torment as his ‘thorn in the flesh’, and he suggested to the church in Corinth that those who are strongest are those who find meaning in the apparent meaninglessness of affliction. He wrote these words: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take [my suffering] away from me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.  For when you are weak, then you are strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). For the Christian, then, it is through discovering the presence of God’s love in suffering that renewed strength, hope, and meaning is discovered.

And so, from a Christian perspective, God is not an executioner or a tyrant. But neither is he a mere spectator, looking on as his children succumb to despair and disaster. Rather, as the Old Testament shows, God shares the pains of His beloved sons and daughters, as he suffers alongside the persecuted, imprisoned, and victimised. As Isaiah 63:9 tells us: ‘in all their distress, He too was distressed’.

In the New Testament, though, God not only shares our misery, but also dwells within our suffering, helping to redeem and transform it. In the words of theologian Jurgen Moltmann, ”the crucified God” takes on the role of the “suffering, poor, defenceless Christ”. Some early Christian groups claimed Jesus had escaped the crucifixion, but these ideas were quickly denounced as heretical. It’s paramount for Christians that Jesus himself experienced the rejection, torture, and pain of crucifixion and death. Through this fact, God is shown to be no stranger to suffering, and he continues to stand with those who take up their own crosses and encounter their own crucifixions. This, then, underlies the paradox that many Christians recount – that when they are stripped bare, when they touch the bottom of the abyss, when they experience death while living, it is then they encounter God in a vivid way and grow closer to him.

The former Dean of Westminster Abbey, Michael Mayne, while dying of throat cancer, wrote that God was, in a very real way, dwelling in the midst of his painful battle. He wrote: “The darkness will not overwhelm us and do us harm. Yes, I find God in the evil of my cancer. Not that he sent it, but that he is found in it and through it”. Mayne even refers to his terrible journey to the grave as God’s “dark glory”.

The great paradox for Christians is that the very real presence of God in suffering stands as a comforting reassurance. Yet, the practical reality is that, even to people of faith, God can seem distant, sometimes even absent, during our times of affliction. Christ’s impassioned cry from the cross, taken from Psalm 22, encapsulates the pain and frustration that can be felt: “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!”

Despite this, Christian tradition has always pointed to ways where we can actively search out and recognise God’s voice in our suffering. From John Cassian and the desert fathers, through Meister Eckhardt, Julian of Norwich, and St John of the Cross, through to Thomas Merton and Rowan Williams, the teaching is the same: that God does not want people to suffer, but, when they do, he can meet people in their affliction. As philosopher Simone Weil suggested, the Christian faith offers “no supernatural remedy for suffering”, but it does strive for “a supernatural use for it”. Like the risen Jesus, Christians believe they will always bear the scars of their suffering, the nail-marks of their own crucifixions, but they believe they can still emerge from their darkness transformed and redeemed. Followers of Jesus do not take up crosses of meaninglessness, but, rather, they learn to affirm life by equating their own suffering with the cross and its promise of resurrection.

The sixteenth-century metaphysical poet John Donne wrote that his periods of sharpest suffering were the times when his spiritual life developed most. A great picture, after all, has shades, shadows, and dark corners, alongside the bright colours and light. By recognising this fact, while pain holds the potential to dehumanise and destroy, Christians have to hold on to the truth that it can also be transformed and redeemed. It is, therefore, the way we approach our dark times that brings light to our lives. As the Jewish holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl put it, employing Christian imagery: “The way in which a person accepts their fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which they take up their cross, gives them ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to their life”.

What is the theology of safeguarding? Building welcoming communities of love and grace (Ministry Blog Series – 4)

In a change from my normal blog posts, I have been sharing a number of theological papers on ministry that I have written down the years, including for the Doctrinal Commission of the Church in Wales . This post was written as a blog post for the Diocese of Llandaff in the Church in Wales.

Safeguarding. It’s a word that, to some people, brings to mind another seminar we are made to attend and just another box to tick. When it comes down to it, we sometimes feel we have better things to do than sit through another safeguarding course or read yet another email or article on the subject.

The reality is, though, that safeguarding is absolutely integral to our faith. It’s part of our calling and should be central to our discipleship, ministry, and mission. As Christians, each of us has an important role to play in promoting welfare of children and vulnerable adults. Paying attention to interpersonal boundaries and power imbalances is far from being an inconvenience, but is intrinsic to a life-giving, compassion-filled faith.

Perhaps understanding the theological and biblical roots of safeguarding can inspire and challenge us to a fresh vision of the importance of fostering a culture of safety in our churches. After all, as theologian Krish Kandiah puts it, in the Bible there is “a clear mandate, motivation and mission to ensure that those who are or may be vulnerable are heard, defended, and treated appropriately, effectively, fairly and compassionately”.

The theological foundation for safeguarding stems from our creation in the image of God. Who we know God is, and how we know he acts, sets the precedent to how we should relate to each other. Jewish theologian Martin Buber wrote: “in the beginning was relationship”. In other words, God is relationship and the concept of the loving Trinity, God as ‘three in one’, brings that home to us. So, our call as Christians is to reflect the relationship that God is – loving, affirming, welcoming, caring, and protecting.

After all, in Psalm 121, God himself is described as our “keeper” and the Hebrew word used there (somereka) can be translated as “safeguard”. In fact, even the theological concept of “salvation” relates to this, as the root of the word “salvation” in Greek (soteria) implies safekeeping. So, care and compassion are at the core of God’s very being. As a result, we ourselves are challenged to live out God’s radical care and love, ensuring we advocate for the lowly, the lost, and the least in our communities. As the book of Proverbs puts it (31:8): we “speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves and protect the rights of all who are helpless and defenceless”.

And, of course, this relates to the cross, which stands at the very centre of our faith. By acknowledging the horror and pain of the cross and God’s presence in Jesus’s cries of agony, we are compelled to challenge all forms of manipulation, violence, and suffering. The cross is, as theologian Elaine Brown Crawford puts it, “an eternal statement that humans should not be abused”.

The agony of the cross then leads to the resurrection, which further affirms our commitment to fostering safety for those who are under threat, ushering in transformation, new life, and hope for individuals and communities. And, just as the resurrected Jesus had scars on his body, so we also stand alongside those who bear their own hidden scars, not least those who have been ignored and failed by the Church in the past.

So, churches are mandated to become places that embody a kingdom where the dignity and ultimate worth of all is championed. While the structures and processes of safeguarding may seem inconvenient on occasion, they are an essential part of this mandate. They can become instruments of God’s kingdom, whereupon children and vulnerable people can be helped to flourish and can be provided with the safe places they desire and deserve. As such, safeguarding is not only at the heart of God’s being and will, but is at the heart of our own identity as Christians, underpinning everything we do, everything we stand for, and everything we are. It is through championing the absolute centrality of care and safety in our churches that we can truly build welcoming, hopeful, compassionate communities of love and grace.

Thought for the Day: The Beatles, the Beatitudes, and the God of the Unexpected

In the style of my Lent Book Opening our Lives and Advent Book Real God in the Real World, I will be sharing occasional “thoughts for the day” on various subjects on this blog. Hope you enjoy.

Recently, Peter Jackson, most famous as director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, edited footage of the three weeks in 1969 when the Beatles recorded their final album. It’s a marathon of a documentary, almost 9 hours long, but it’s also fascinating. It reveals how the creativity of the Beatles was fuelled by marmalade on toast and it shows how, in their final months as a band, the sometimes-fractious relationships between the Fab Four inspired them to compose some of their most timeless tunes, including “Let it Be” and “Get Back”. Their plan was to end the three weeks by performing in an ancient auditorium in Tripoli. Eventually, though, they simply decide to climb up to the rooftop of their studio in London and play a concert to the astounded people walking past.

As the police desperately try to gain access to the rooftop to put a stop to the concert, the filmmakers interview people on the streets below. Some are unhappy at the music blasting out, while others are excited by the final time the Beatles would ever perform in public. The interviewers then come to an ageing vicar. We might expect him to side with the greying businessmen condemning the loud music. Refreshingly, though, he doesn’t play into the stereotype of the grumpy Christian bemoaning noisy youths. Instead, he looks up to the roof, smiles warmly, and says that rarely do people get anything for free and how wonderful it was that the young people were enjoying it so much!

As I watched that joyful, unpredictable vicar, I was reminded somewhat of the God that he was following. The Bible reveals to us that our God is the God of the unexpected. Jesus’s teaching reveals a God who topples our predictions and confounds our expectations. In particular, he doesn’t side with the people who we think might deserve it. Instead, he embraces the people that our society believes should be side-lined or ignored. This God of ours brings the people on the edges of life to the centre stage – all the lonely people, as the Beatles put it, but also the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the grieving, the depressed, the anxious, the struggling, the lowly, the gentle, the marginalised, the powerless, the hated, the outsider, and the unwanted.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus astonishingly refers to these people as “blessed” (Luke 6:20-26) – or even “happy” as the Greek word used (makarios) can be translated. In God’s eyes, it is the struggling people on the edges of our society who are blessed and happy. This sharply contradicts how our world seems to work – where the rich, the capable, the successful, the powerful, and the famous are glorified, while others are viewed as expendable consumers, to sell things to or to be discarded as unprofitable or useless.

The Beatles famously sang that “all you need is love”. Whatever they meant by that, our faith reminds us that Christian love is something radically different from saccharin-sweet Valentine’s Day love. God’s love destroys the dominant worldview and ushers in a strange kingdom that has dramatic implications on our lives. It demands that we ask ourselves some searching questions. Who do we glorify in our world? Who do we demonise? How do we view certain people and groups? Are we truly living out our upside-down, downside-up, topsy-turvy, flipped-around faith? Or are we simply standing around, like the predictable people in the Beatles documentary, complaining about the noise and looking down with disdain on those who are not like us? And are we too quickly slipping into our comfort zones and descending into the stereotype of how we think a “normal” Christian should behave and react?

One thing is clear – there’s nothing normal about our faith, and neither is there anything comfortable, snug, or predictable. Instead, Jesus introduces us to the God of the unexpected and, by doing so, he rips up and tears apart all the world teaches about human nature. In our faith is a radical, revolutionary call to sacrifice, love, and compassion. Through our faith, and with our help, God can and will transform our broken world.

Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word – An Appeal to White Majority Churches

This is a tale of two photos. Two photos that show the difference between what following Jesus has too often become and what following Jesus should be. One a photo of the so-called “leader of the Free World”, after having ordered tear gas on peaceful protesters, holding the bible aloft in front of a church. The other a photo of tearful white Christians kneeling in front of grieving black Christians in the hometown of the murdered George Floyd, asking for forgiveness for many decades of bigotry and racism. One a photo that encapsulates dominance, force, abuse of power, arrogance, and injustice. The other a photo of humility, contrition, equality, compassion, and love.

The world has recognised the photo of the US President for what it is – a shameless and shameful hijacking of the spiritual. The other photograph is taken from a video of a prayer service that was shared widely on social media. It has been described by Piers Morgan as the one powerful moment during the past few days that gives us hope that the present situation differs from many past protests. Not that all commentators have viewed the incident so positively. A British journalist in Russia Today, who also writes for The Sun newspaper, describes the moment as a “cringeworthy and ostentatious display of self-flagellation”. The article even quotes from the Bible (Deuteronomy 24:16) in criticising this group for apologising for the sins of the past. “They will not help heal racial divisions,” the author concludes, “they only serve to heighten them”.

As a church leader in a white majority church in the UK, though, I believe apology and contrition is the only place we must start in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd and to the racism and bigotry that still blights our world. Make no mistake about it, the burden of guilt is on all our shoulders. Speaking out against arrogant politicians or corrupt law keepers is imperative, but this must not hide our own culpability or blind us from our own propensity to bigotry, prejudice, and hatred. Not that our contrition should incarcerate us in self-reproach and shame. It must be, instead, a step towards recognising our common humanity with all and towards the promise of new beginnings and new life.

Rather than contradicting Scripture, as the Russia Today journalist maintains, this is what our faith demands of us. It is not by accident that Jesus taught us to pray ‘forgive us our sins’. Sin is not merely a personal and private problem. There is corporality and communality in our transgressions. In Romans 3:23, St Paul maintains that “all have sinned and fall short”, using a Greek aorist tense which implies everybody’s cumulative past and employing a Greek phrase (‘fall short’) which suggests a continuing present. In other words, our personal wrongdoings are linked to the entirety of humankind’s sinful history, and so we are called to confession and repentance for the deafening silence of both our country and our church on so many atrocities and hurts, as well as for the hate-filled and dehumanizing rhetoric that groups of innocent people have faced, whether those of a different race, faith, sexuality, gender, physical ability, or nationality.

However, when it comes to acknowledging our complicity in acts of exploitation, injustice, hatred, and cruelty, sorry seems to be the hardest word. It is costly and painful for us to look at the perpetrators of historical crimes and see our own faces reflecting back. Our history, though, is littered with the evils of our ancestors. Our compatriots have been involved in dreadful atrocities, and our faith has so much for which to be remorseful. Humility, empathy, and compassion lead us to confess our own part in driving the nail into Christ’s hand, thrusting the sword into the so-called ‘infidel’ in the crusades, screaming for death to young girls accused of witchcraft, fervently applauding the charismatic Führer of the Third Reich, burning crosses on lawns in 1960s Alabama, preaching hate against our gay neighbours, and signing contracts to destroy swathes of rain forest.

But contrition alone is not enough. Asking for forgiveness for the past holds pressing implications on both the present and the future. Repentance is not simply a case of saying sorry – we need to act out our sorry. In the Old Testament, Nehemiah did not simply confess the sins of his ancestors, he committed himself to rectifying those transgressions. By saying sorry for the sins of the past, we commit ourselves to standing alongside the oppressed, to repairing relationships, to giving voice to the hurting voiceless, to championing love, service, and justice in our own lives, and to imploring God to keep us from descending again into prejudice, hatred, or abuse.

So, we ask for forgiveness for years of mistreatment of his wonderful creation and we shed tears for the treatment of numerous groups of people in the past and present – black people, women, the disabled, gay people, transgender people, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, aboriginal people, native Americans, and many other groups. By repenting of the transgressions of all people at all times, we enter a place of healing, hope, and new life. In this place, we commit to identifying where prejudice, inequality, violence, exploitation, greed and abuse still occur in our communities, society, and world, and we commit to playing our part in birthing a future of equality, compassion, and love. And it all starts with standing with those in George Floyd’s hometown and, with our tears mingling with those running down the cheeks of both black and white, repeating the prayer that they prayed:

“Father God, we humble ourselves before you and we ask for forgiveness from our black brothers and sisters for years and years of systematic racism, of bigotry, of hate. We pray for our white, black and brown brothers and sisters who have had the courage to expose the blatant racism in our own hearts. We pray that black men and women be free from fear and hopelessness. We take a knee as a sign that we honour them, we love them; as a sign that You love them. In Jesus’s name, Amen”

Our Challenge this Christmas – Prophet not Profit

This is my first guest blogger on the “Finding Hope, Meaning, Faith, and Compassion” blog. The writer, Gareth Erlandson, is a young Masters student who is training for Anglican ordained ministry. I heard him give the talk below last week and I was personally moved and inspired by it (and not, rest assured, because it namechecks me!). I, therefore, asked him to adapt it into a blog post for publication on this blog. I hope it also inspires you in these weeks running up to Christmas:

When I started teaching about twelve years ago, I shared a house with an old school mate who would drink coffee from a mug emblazoned with the words “Jesus is Coming – Look Busy!” I often think of that mug during Advent – the four weeks running-up to Christmas. We tend to be so busy this time of year, as we supposedly wait in hopeful anticipation for Jesus’ coming – racing around buying presents, eating ourselves to bursting at Christmas meals, rushing from concert to concert. Last week I lost three hours driving around Cardiff on the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree, only for it not to fit in our lounge after all that!

The prophets of the Bible knew what it meant to look forward with hopeful anticipation. In light of their message, we can view the busy run-up to Christmas in a very different way. Rather than preparing materially for Christmas, we can try to take time to prepare ourselves. By doing so, Jesus can challenge us – challenge us to make the old new, to fix the broken, to dispel darkness with light.

But what does it mean to be prophetic? Well, it is certainly nothing to do with crystal balls, wizards, or seeing into the future. Rather, the words and actions of both the Old Testament prophets and John the Baptist in the New Testament encourage us to get right personally with God as we await for his arrival, and a large part of that includes our actions. In other words, there is a political and social edge to our call to be prophetic. After all, being a prophet is to call out against everything that is broken in the world. This can be brokenness within ourselves, in our relationships with others, in the community and wider society, and of the environment. The Bible encourages us to recognise this prophetic voice within us (Rom. 12:6) and tells us that, when we use our spiritual gifts to strengthen, encourage, and comfort others (1 Cor. 14:3), we are doing God’s work (1 Pet. 4:10).

I recently heard blogger and author, Trystan Owain Hughes, challenge a group with these “Questions of Love”:

“How do we share God’s love with people?”

“How are we compassionate and kind to the suffering?”

“Are we at peace with others?”

“How do we care for the environment?”

These, to me, could be summarized in one question: “Do we take our political and social responsibilities seriously?” Asking such a question is the start of prophecy, but we also need to listen for God’s answers and this demands time and space. John the Baptist himself is referred to as one “calling in the wilderness”. He takes time out of the hustle and bustle of everyday living to listen to God’s voice and, by doing so, it is God’s message that he proclaims.

Similarly, for us, we must listen out for God’s voice and then proclaim it. Some Christian traditions refer to five basic signs that God is speaking – through scripture, pictures, emotions, physical reactions, or everyday “words of wisdom”. Such signs can appear in our “mind’s eye” but can equally crop up in our everyday lives. But time and space is needed to recognise these signs. We need, in other words, to follow John the Baptist’s example by stepping back from the humdrum in order to hear God’s voice. In doing so, though, we also need to be careful. We only truly know if we’re hearing from God if what we perceive is compatible with God as revealed in Scripture. In other words, are the messages we are hearing leading us to loving actions? After all, “God is love” (1 John 4:16).

We can see numerous examples of prophetic responses to God’s call. One fictional example is in a book of which many of us will be watching filmic versions over the next few weeks. Scrooge’s ghostly visitors in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol act as prophets, leading the miserable miser to transform his own relationships and the lives of the poorest in his society. A more recent and real life example is that of my wife, who was disturbed on a shopping trip by the increasing number of homeless people sleeping on the streets of Cardiff (Wales, UK). Taking some time to reflect on this experience, three words of wisdom came to her – “Greggs the Bakers”. On her next trip into town, Greggs was her first port of call, where she bought a stack of gift cards which she now distributes to the rough sleepers in the city whenever she pops in for a bit of Christmas shopping.

Advent is certainly a time we should be getting excited for Christmas and so that naturally means we are busy – don’t feel guilty about that! But we could also commit to taking just a few extra moments each day to ask God to show us where and how the broken world needs healing. Then, we can take time and space to listen as he answers us. This is how we, like the prophets of the Bible, can help bring light into the world, just as Jesus did 2000 years ago at the first Christmas.

Compassion and Refugees

As I sat in my local doctor’s surgery last week, a young boy started staring at me. He was of middle-eastern origin and was not much older than the age of the Syrian child in the photographs that have recently shocked the world. I smiled at him and said “hello”, but he simply kept on staring with inquisitive eyes. Noticing this one-sided conversation, his father nodded his head towards me, smiled, and said in a strong accent to his reticent child: “come on now – say hello to your uncle”. A smile broke across the hitherto unresponsive little face and a big cheerful “hello” followed.

To be called an “uncle” by a complete stranger got me thinking of our response to those coming to Europe and those attempting to cross the channel to make a home in our “green and pleasant land”. A number of commentators have challenged us to see beyond labels that are placed on such people. They are certainly not “scroungers”, “criminals”, and “benefit cheats”, but we are also urged to see beyond their labels as “refugees”, “immigrants”, or “migrants”. We are challenged to see them instead as “people”, just like you and me. As Christians, though, our call is to go even further than this. After all, Christ did not simply see “people”, and to see the kingdom of God as a kingdom of “people” is to miss how radical a call we have on our lives.

Politicians of all sides of the political spectrum have used the word “compassion” on many of occasions in recent weeks. There seems to be a consensus that compassion is essential when treating those fleeing from war, conflict, and turmoil. Yet “compassion” is not simply a buzzword to be used when convenient and it is essential that we do not miss the profound depth of the challenge of “compassion”. The English word derives from the Latin words cum and pati, meaning ‘to suffer with’. In other words, when we feel compassion towards others, we suffer with them. We don’t make judgements on their backgrounds or motives, but we put ourselves in their shoes and truly feel their suffering.

The Hebrew word for compassion is even more revealing. In the Old Testament, the most frequent word that can be translated “compassion” is the word rachamim. ‘The Lord Almighty said: “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion [rachamim] to one another”’ (Zechariah 7.9). The word is related to the Hebrew term for womb, rechem, indicating that our compassion for those around us should reflect family bonds. The same link with the word womb (rahem) can be made with Arabic word for compassion/mercy (rahmah), which is found frequently in the Qur’an. In other words, compassion is about treating others as if they were in the same family as us, as if they were our own flesh and blood, as if they had shared the same womb as we did.

The French Cistercian monk Charles de Foucauld referred to this concept as the “universal brotherhood” – that we treat everyone as our brothers and sisters. If we are to interpret compassion in this way, as the great monotheistic religions do, this is a huge challenge to our lives and our politics. How many politicians treat so-called “immigrants” as if they were related to them? The most wonderful thing about the widely-reported response to the present crisis in Germany is that many are actually welcoming refugees into their own homes. Through an “Air B’n’B” website, many hundreds of Germans, including students, single-mothers, and retired couples, offered their homes to refugees from countries such as Syria, Somalia, and Burkina Faso. That is compassion. That is truly treating others as family.

After all, when we see others as our kin, all their labels will peel away. The Jesuit contemplative Anthony de Mello used an analogy of a menu in a restaurant. However much we might salivate while considering the list of food, not one of us will decide to eat the actual menu. It is the food that we want to eat, not the words about the food! As far as possible we must attempt to experience people themselves, rather than experience the labels that we or other people put on them. As soon as we slap a label like “immigrant” and “refugee” on a person, our understanding of that individual becomes distorted. We start to see the label rather than the person, and every label, of course, has undertones of approval or disapproval. My wife is German. When I look at her lovingly over a romantic meal, I do not stare into her eyes and say, “darling, you are such a beautiful immigrant”. Likewise, in our church community we have individuals from across the globe who are active in the congregation. None of us see them as “immigrants”. Once we know a person, they cease to be a label and they simply become family.

As I sat in that doctor’s surgery, it made perfect sense to be called “uncle” by that little boy. If God is our father, as we pray in the prayer Jesus himself taught, then we are compelled to treat each other as if we are brothers and sisters. As Christians, there is no opt-out clause in Christ’s invitation to view others as “family”. Instead, it’s at the very heart of our faith and is fundamental to our radical call to live out the compassionate kingdom. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it: “I hope we can accept a wonderful truth – we are family! We are family! If we could get to believe this we would realise that care about ‘the other’ is not really altruistic, but it is the best form of self-interest”.

For more on this theme, see chapter 5 “Radical Compassion” in The Compassion Quest.

Related articles

• Does being a Christian make us any more loving and compassionate?
• Compassion and the General Election
• “It could have been be”: Some thoughts on Prison and Compassion
• “Jesus, do you hate me?” Gay Marriage, the Church and Compassion
• Crime and Compassion: Does Mick Philpott deserve any compassion?
• “Everything terrible is something that needs our love”: Some thoughts on Margaret Thatcher and compassion
• “Get down off the cross Jesus, we could use the wood!”: Speaking for those with no voice

 

 

Compassion and the General Election

On the morning of Friday 8 May 2015, after his party’s triumph at the general election, David Cameron gave his victory speech on the steps of 10 Downing Street. His final words, replayed endlessly on TV and radio, referred to the United Kingdom as a country with “such great compassion” and with the potential to build a proud future. “Together, we can make Great Britain greater”, he concluded.

That the Prime Minister chose to use the word “compassion” at this point is not surprising, as he has used the word on numerous occasions over the past five years in referring to the policies that he is espousing. Yet the word should not be treated lightly. The root of the English word is from the Latin compassio, meaning “to suffer with”. In other words, when someone suffers, we suffer with them and somehow feel their pain. It is, in a nutshell, love-in-action. In the New Testament, Jesus is described as being “moved to his guts with compassion” (splanchnizomai) for those suffering. While in the Old Testament, the word for compassion, rachamim, is related to the Hebrew term for womb (rechem). The Arabic language has the same link between compassion (rahmah) and womb (rahem). In other words, compassion means we treat others as if we shared the same womb with them, as if they were our brothers and sisters.

Compassion is not just a buzzword to be used when it is convenient for politicians and political commentators to try to show how much they care. Instead, compassion is a challenge to each and every one of us to treat others, whoever they are, as if they are related to us – as if they are, quite literally, our brothers and sisters. For Christians, it is at the heart of how we should be treating each other and how we should be act towards the world around us. And yet, while entrepreneurial skills are taught in schools to children as young as six and seven, compassion is rarely seen as an important aspect of educational policy. And while successive governments talk about compassion in the NHS, nurses and doctors feel that they are forced to sideline a truly compassionate attitude in favour of finance and targets. And while our hearts go out to the migrants who lose their lives in the bid to reach our country, compassion is certainly lacking in some of the anti-immigration rhetoric we have heard recently.

The reality is that true compassion (compassio, rachamim, splanchnitzomai) is not championed in Westminster, just as it is not championed in Fleet Street, or the City, or the Old Bailey, or Eton or Oxford or Cambridge. Unfortunately, the establishment – the people that run our country, the institutions that hold sway in our land – are far more interested in finance, profit, and power than in reaching out to the marginalised and disadvantaged. As a society, we have been peddled a lie that our priorities should be individualistic, materialistic, and self-serving. Worse still, we have been made to believe that it is weak and naïve to champion love, kindness, and compassion over material prosperity, egotism, and competition.

Yet, as a Christian, I believe we need not be disheartened. Much has been made of the recent general election being an election of negativity and fear – we are told that many voted out of fear of what the future might hold. Christians, though, are not people of fear – we’re people of hope. And that hope doesn’t start in the Houses of Parliament, it doesn’t start in the media or the press, it doesn’t even start in church buildings. Hope starts in our hearts. It starts in our hearts because that’s where compassion begins to flower. And once the buds of compassion break through, then communities start to be reinvigorated, and those communities, in turn, can transform society.

“The kingdom of God is within you”, Jesus declared (Luke 17:21). Once we realise that God’s Kingdom starts inside and then grows outwards, then we’ll start to recognise signs of that kingdom. It’s like throwing a pebble into water. God’s kingdom is the kingdom of ever-increasing circles – compassion starts in our heart, and then grows outwards, impacting on more and more people, bringing hope and transforming futures.

After all, Jesus didn’t start his revolution by toppling governments and worldly kingdoms. Many of his followers wanted exactly that. The zealots were opposed to Roman rule, and scholars believe many of them followed Jesus expecting him to instigate such a revolution. His revolution, though, was a very different uprising. The comedian Russell Brand wears a T-shirt with the word “revolution” on it, but with the second, third, fourth, and fifth letters in a different colour – “r-E-V-O-L-u-t-i-o-n”. If we read those four letters backwards, it spells the word “L-O-V-E”. And that’s how Jesus started his revolution – simply by telling his followers to love one another.

Revolution starts with love; it starts with love-in-action. It starts with compassio – suffering with other people. It starts with splanchnitzomai – being so moved to our guts with compassion that we simply have to act. It starts with rachemim – treating everyone as if they had shared the same womb as us… the immigrant, the carer, the school teacher, the nurse, the food bank user, the disabled person on benefits, the homeless person, the prisoner, the unemployed person, the substance abuser, the sick in hospital, the terrified pregnant teenager, the young man struggling on minimum wage, the elderly person in a care home with no visitors for many months. Compassion asks – do we really think of them, and treat them, as if they were our own brothers and sisters?

Compassion should be the only currency that really matters, not the pound or the dollar. Some may think that’s naïve and unrealistic. Sometimes I think that even Christians think that Jesus himself was just a little bit naïve, impractical, or utopian. If Jesus were around now, we might quietly speculate that he’d conclude that things are actually far more complex that he first realised. Things are, in fact, far less complex than we ourselves realise. Jesus knew exactly what human nature was about. On the very night that he was tortured and murdered, he simply said: “my command is this: love each other as I have loved you”.

As a Christian, as a person of hope, I am quiet certain that change will come, that transformation will take place. But this change will not start in Westminster, or in the City, or on Fleet Street. Change starts in our hearts, and then grow outwards. If we live out compassion in our daily lives, the kingdom of God cannot fail to break through into our communities and, as a consequence, that will transform our society – bringing light to places of darkness, bringing love to those who suffer prejudice or disadvantage, bringing hope to those who think they have no future. “My command is this: love each other as I have loved you”.

Advent and the Weight for Christmas

At the moment, I’m fascinated in books about words, and letters and languages. I’m finding out all sorts of intriguing facts – did you know, for example, that sixteenth-century printers used to keep their capital letters in one case and the other letters in another case, which is why letters became known as Upper Case and Lower Case?! I’ve also discovered all about homophones – words that sound the same but have no relation whatsoever to one another. Take, for example, the word “weight”, meaning a heaviness or a heavy load or object, and the word “wait”, meaning an inactivity until a future expectation happens. Clearly they are very different words.

Advent is a time of “waiting” for that future expectation – waiting for the birth of Christ, waiting for the celebration of Christmas Day. Most of us don’t enjoy having to wait for things, and, in our instantaneous and speedy world, we have all sorts of ways of hurrying things up. As the comedian Steve Wright quipped, ‘I put my instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back in time’!

With this is mind, perhaps the word “wait” is not so different to its homophone-partner “weight”. Someone sent me an email this week that described how a teacher picked up a glass of water and asked a group of students how heavy it was. All sorts of answers were called out, ranging from 5 ounces to 30 ounces. The teacher then informed them that the absolute weight has no bearing on our own experience of the weight: “The weight depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s no problem at all. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have a slight ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, then my whole arm will start to feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes”.

Sometimes, when we are waiting for something or someone, it can be rather frustrating and wearisome, like an ache in the arm. It can be a somewhat unpleasant experience when we are waiting in a queue in a supermarket or we’re waiting for a friend who’s late once again. But waiting can also be far more serious and severe. Ultimately, waiting can weigh us down. It can be like carrying a heavy load for a long period. It can numb us and paralyze us when we are waiting for recovery from illness, waiting for depression to lift, waiting for light to break through grief, waiting for test results, or waiting for the hurt of broken relationships to heal.

Nothing can completely take away the darkness of some of our waiting. But in all our waiting, Christ can make a difference. To use another homophone, he can make the darkness lighter and he can make the heavy load lighter. In this sense, waiting doesn’t have to always be so frustrating or painful. After all, there are two times of waiting in church calendar – advent and lent – and both have something in common. Both end in new life and joy. It is, therefore, no surprise that almost all the verses in the Bible that mention “waiting” do not relate it to heaviness, pain, and oppression. Instead, they imply that we have a choice to view our waiting in a different way – as a gift where we are invited to treasure each moment. As Isaiah 40:31 puts it: “but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint”.

Whatever kind of waiting we are experiencing, then, we can choose to actively appreciate and cherish. Sometimes our waiting is looking forward in anticipation to a good event. This should be fun and fulfilling, but it can also lead us to live our lives in the future, rather than enjoy the gift of waiting. Over the past year, I have found myself sitting with my one-year-old son and thinking how much I’m looking forward to the next stage of his development – at first it was when he crawls, then when he walks, then when he talks. I was looking at photos of him recently and I realised how much I had missed of the stages he was at by looking to the future. I now challenge myself to appreciate where he is now – you could call it “the waiting for the next stage” – rather than wishing the next stage would come quickly.

There are other times, though, when our waiting is not to do with anticipation, but rather we are forced to wait, due to illness or to a traumatic event. Again, while it may well be difficult, we can wait actively in these moments. During the intense period of my own back injury, before my operation, I had almost 12 months where I was laid up in bed for most of the day. I would venture out for very short daily strolls. But I taught myself to truly appreciate those walks – the beauty of nature, the conversation of friends who visited to walk with me, the silence when I walked alone, the uplifting music when I took my ipod. This was all God at work, and, in spite of my continuing pain, I could not help but celebrate His wonderful, mysterious, and holy gift of life.

‘Active waiting’ is about finding God’s light in your journeys, however long and difficult your wait, however heavy and burdensome your weight. The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson asked the question: “how much of human life is lost in waiting?” And he’s right – how much of life is wasted, waiting for the future to happen? Our time is precious, and active waiting helps us to connect with God and appreciate our time fully. In the words of the author Sharlande Sledge, it helps us to “transform our in-the-meantime into God’s time”.

Sharlande Sledge: Prayer on Waiting

Look upon us gently, Lord, for waiting is not our forte. So many things are… things like moving ahead, fixing what is wrong, planning what is next, diagnosing the problem, cramming more into one day than one person can possibly do before the sun goes down.

But waiting… when we are waiting for the light to shine, when we are waiting for the Word, when we are waiting for a wound to heal, nothing in all the world is harder than waiting.

So in your mercy, Lord, wait with us.

Be very present in waiting.  Heal our frenzy. Calm our fears. Comfort those who at this very minute are with every anxious breath and thought waiting for they know-not-what.

Transform our in-the-meantime into your time, while we wait with each other, sit with each other, pray each other into hope, surrounded by your presence, even in the darkness. Especially in the darkness. Amen

 See also:

Unto us a Child is Born: A new baby at Christmas

Things-with-wings: A Christmas Reflection

Are you sitting comfortably? Christmas and the wonder of story

Worry may not kill you, but it can stop you living

It’s been a busy summer of giving talks, sermons, and radio thoughts-for-the-day. This hectic time is not over, as I am due to visit London in a few weeks time to speak at St Paul’s Cathedral (1pm Sunday 5 October), St Mary’s Ealing (6pm 5 October), and on Premier Christian Radio (11.10am Monday 6 October). Time has not allowed me to write many blog posts recently, so I thought I’d share some of the talks I’ve given, in churches, conferences, and on radio. The first talk is on fear and worry:

 

Two weeks ago, my eight-month old son did something that I hadn’t done until I was 25 years old – he flew in an aeroplane for the very first time, as we visited his grandma in Germany. Perhaps it’s because I had not flown as a child, but I’m not a good passenger on an aeroplane. I can just about cope once we’re in the air, but during take-off I am a nightmare. I remember once travelling to Malta with my sister and the take-off was so bumpy that my nail marks remained in her hand for days afterwards. A few years later, I was travelling to Lourdes in France with a friend of mine. He still recounts the story, describing me praying the Lord’s Prayer as we took off. The problem was that I was praying it out loud. And, to top it off, I was wearing my dog collar at the time, so all the other passengers started panicking, seeing a vicar sweating buckets and loudly praying as we took off! But two weeks ago, as the fear started building up in me during take-off, I looked across at my baby son who was on his mum’s lap. He didn’t know what was happening, and so had no fear in him whatsoever – he was smiling away, chewing the seat belt and flirting with the woman who was sitting next to him. At that moment it suddenly dawned on me that my fear was stopping me being fully alive, it was stopping me really enjoying the moment.

The experience also led me to reflect on how I have in the past allowed fear to rule my life. When I wrote my book Finding Hope and Meaning in Suffering, most people presumed that it was about coping with pain, because of the degenerate back condition that I have. It was, however, actually about the suffering that we all go through in our minds when things go wrong – when we are ill, when we are grieving, when we are lonely, and we are depressed, when we are anxious. Fear is like a worm that gets in your mind and stays there wriggling around. Of course fear doesn’t kill you, but it certainly can stop you living. And the real irony is that our worries most often never come to fruition. ‘Who says worry doesn’t help?’ I once overheard someone quip, ‘It certainly does help – every time I worry about something it doesn’t happen!’ A recent film called About Time put it another way: “the real troubles in your life will always be the things that never crossed your worried mind”. And isn’t that just true – we’ve got enough to worry about in real life without worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. The problem is, of course, that letting our fears and worries go is not an easy thing.

But, as a Christian, I know there’s good news in all this. That good news is that my faith, and my God, is not in the business of stopping people living, but is rather in the business of bringing life, of bringing joy, of bringing love into our lives. I picked up my Bible yesterday and read the story of Elijah searching for God when his life was threatened and he faced fear and hopelessness. When he finds God (1 Kings 19:11-13), it is not in a powerful earthquake or the swirling wind, as we might expect to find an almighty, transcendent being, but rather in stillness and in the “sound of sheer silence”. In other words, when we’re facing fear and worry, God can seem distant, but we’re challenged to listen for him in the very ordinariness of our everyday lives.

Perhaps like Elijah, we need stillness and calm to help us connect with God and combat our worries and fears. But God can come and touch our hearts in all sorts of ways in our day-to-day lives – meeting up with a friend, listening to music, spending time in prayer, reading a good novel, a walk in the beautiful countryside, doing a good deed for somebody, and so on. When we connect with God in any of these ways, our hearts can be lifted, if only for a brief moment, and then slowly but surely he helps us let go of our worries and he carries us through our anxieties.