Marriage today

WWJS

What would Jesus say?

From earlier blogs it will be clear that I take a critical view of the current marriage proposals.
And I am very happy for my views to be known and indeed would teach them in a church context.

However, what would Jesus say?

His critique was mostly of the religious (I must beware) and he would extend a welcome to the non-religious even if he would want them to change (eg the woman caught in adultery)

What I have not heard much of in the religious response eg from the Anglican Bishops, is Good News. Most of it, however worthy, will be heard as legalism.

What Good News have we to share with the wider world? What is the good news of the kingdom in this context?

Quote for the Day

"Of the great who assembled in Paris to settle the affairs of mankind, how many we're there who we able to see much of the Europe about the,, rather than their commitments about Europe". - Walter Lippmann, quoted in The Age of the Unhinkable, p 116, Joshua Cooper Ramo.

Coming across these words on the way home from holiday, they strike a chord with the various crises of the news. I wonder how seriously we are really taking all this. In the UK, where adage incomes have doubled in the period since the Queen's Silver Jubilee, we are not willing to raise taxes to safeguard justice, care for the elderly, the Armed Forces, and much besides. We are addicted to selfishness and greed.

Across the seas, the crises of Europe historically reminiscent of the period before the First World War and between the Wars. Massive interference by treaties and economic shock waves.

Ramo points up how complex our world now is. No-one can make safe predictions. It reminds me of the Airbus I am flying in. I read somewhere that the aerodynamics are so complicated that they are impossible to fly except by computer.

Except that there is no computer that can "fly"none world. Indeed, they are part of the problem.

Maybe it is fear that prevents us from seeing the seriousness of the situation.

More on Marriage

These are my notes of the input I gave to a Conversation last Saturday between local churches, together with our MP Robert Halfon. We were delighted to have both him and the Labour candidate Suzy Stride with us. It was a high quality discussion with excellent contributions from many people.

When I was a boy I used to enjoy visits to my cousin to play Lego.

Marriage is like the Lego building block for our life as a community.

Is is an amazing idea. Whether anyone had thought of it before the Jewish tradition adopted it, I don't know. Certainly for me it is within the Jewish and Christian traditions that I see it's rationale.

A woman and a man commit themselves in trust to one another for life. There is no security apart from their trust in each other. "It is a place to learn forgiveness, compassion, and much besides.

I guess we all know the changes that go on in someone's life when they marry. Other priorities are put aside. It is one another that come first. Where the Jewish and Christian traditions are followed this then provides a bedrock for children.

This is spelt out in the story of Adam and Eve. It is found in the Christian literature, eg Ephesians 5 - where marriage is a symbol of Christ's love of the church.

Marriage is a place where we learn as adults and as children what it is to live in trust and love. And as such it is over against both the capitalistic culture and also an all embracing state. It is an alternative society.

This is not a private institution but a public one. In the west we focus on the private but in India there is a focus on the public. And we too have this tradition, when a young man might ask his beloved's father for her hand in marriage.

1. It is part of the fabric of Public Life
A place for children to be born and nurtured, where traditions and aspirations are passed on. It is the foundation of the next generation .
It creates extended family.. It knits society together
And society in turn upholds marriage. It is made in public.

2. It is part of the Fabric of Creation. Ties of blood run very deep. You discover this say at a funeral, when family rallies together in support. Love for children works at the very heart of who you are. The sexual bond is part of this. Children who are physically related to both parents have a security that ours do not.
I am not denying the need or desirability for adoption or indeed some other interventions. However, we intervene when something is less than the best it might be.

3. It is part of the Fabric of Hope. Israel set up a community where debts were remitted from time to time, where slavery was limited. It signalled a hope for a better world. Marriage was part of that. The Christian community looks to a new heaven and a new earth.

In this, I am not arguing against other relationships. My views on those are not relevant to my argument. Rather I am saying that marriage is different and needs to be treated as such. To equate with civil partnerships is to deny what marriage is. We lose marriage at our peril. To do so would be to privatise trust, to undermine the very institution which speaks hope, trust and love into the very fabric of daily life.

Quote for the Day

It is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world - Chris Wright, Truth with a Mission

Why go to church?

A recent Sunday I was on holiday in the north-west and went to the local Anglican church. It happened to be a first rate All Age service with a baptism, communion and some excellent theology.
The greetings reminded us that as we are drawn into God's love we are drawn into all that it good in this world. The whole service then became for me an invitation to live my life for what is good, not least in the service of others. The congregation were warm and welcoming.
I couldn't but help compare this with the car boot sale we passed on our way to church. People gathered round boots of cars waiting for buyers. What is his compared to the community experience of worship with others, whilst enjoined to serve others?
I can remember services of yesteryear when it felt cold and impersonal in church. But this was totally different.
I remember those who have said, I don't need to go to church. I worship God in my garden.
Well, the beautiful countryside of the Peak District has much that reminds of God the creator. But that week in church I knew why God had become man; true worship means touching and being touched by others. That can only happen in community focused on God.

Good Friday Walking

Today, many hundreds will be walking through Harlow Town Centre, following a large wooden cross. This year the cross will be carried by some of the leaders of churches in Harlow, symbolic of our unity in Christ

Why do we walk in witness - as so many will do so today across the world?

For one, it is anticipation of the day when the work of the cross and the resurrection will be completed - when Christ returns and all heaven and earth shall be renewed. We live in anticipation of that day, and as we do so, it brings the day nearer. Nelson Mandela lived towards the future, which enabled the future he hoped for to come.

It also brings us together in unity. I love the recent post by Bishop Nick Baines:
And here we come, I think, to the heart of Christian discipleship, once we have stripped away some of the million things we find with which to complicate it all. The nature of Christian witness is not to be found in our unanimity, but in our unity. That is to say, we are together whether we like it or not, whether we like each other or not, whether we agree with each other or not, and whether we find it comfortable or not. We simply cannot walk away from each other any more than we can walk away from Jesus.


Unity, not unanimity. The world, and we, often bemoan the church's lack of agreement. And, yes, we need to strive towards this. But it cannot be totally achieved this side of a new heaven and a new earth. Our is the unity of a family. Families are always pulling this way and that. It is an important part of family. There are often disagreements, but there can be totally unity.


Finally, we walk that the world may see Christ. A large community needs large symbols. This is self-evident in architecture. I think it is also true of witness. There is real gain in real visibility. Not a visibility for the sake of power, but so that, in the large context, Christ may really be lifted up - and so draw all to himself. Amen.

Nick Baines writes on his latest blog: "Poetry learned and absorbed now gives us a language later when we do experience the things represented in memorable and imaginative language."

This morning I had been struck by Micheal O'Siadhail's 'Hostel'

Stations of ease for the broken or frail.

A tear in an ocean. And yet that welcome

At face value, a roof and warmth, a meal.

Vague signs of angeldom.

So little, So short of grand revolution

We'll always want to dream of.

If only dreams could scoop or fill an ocean...

Thimbled gestures of a love...

These words gave me a way of praying and thinking about the day ahead. Nick Baines is right.  I realise that the meetings, planned and chance encounters of this day, all the efforts do sometimes seem like tears trying to fill an ocean. 

But Holy Week speaks of the significance of the tears. The literal tears that were wept. Then the metaphorical 'tears' trying to fill an ocean: words of bravado by Peter, a towel offered by Jesus, speaking about swords, coins, gambling... All small ways in which people rightly or wrongly tried to mould, find or make significance in the big events swarming around them.

Yet each one, each small tear, finds its place in the story that we tell, in the story that God tells us, in the Good News. Nothing is insignificant. Each act in its own way find redemption as it is caught up in God's plan, whether the players wanted it or not.

This day may all my acts, though they seem like tears compared to the ocean that is needed, be done in loving trust and confidence in the one who is the Master Story Teller and does not overlook anything.  It is very easy to be discouraged from shedding tears - literal or metaphorical - through a sense of inutility. ("What use my words or small act for this homeless man when the need is so great?"). For the story of Holy Week and Easter is the story of the Ordinary becoming Extraordinary - all in God's grace to us in Christ.