Just like a Friday night in Bromley

The Hikkaduwa beach festival - the second since the tsunami - happened while we were staying at the Supercorals. As a result our hotel, which was deserted when we arrived, filled up with two Sri Lankan families and a host of young people from Colombo.

Two particular memories linger about the festivities.

The first was that on the Friday evening, as we were walking through the town on our way to a restaurant, we saw large numbers of heavily armed paramilitary police, some toting Uzi machine pistols, others with AK47s. You have to wonder what kind of trouble they were expecting!

When we saw the chief of police the following morning, he said that there'd been very little trouble, 'just lots of teenagers being naughty,' he observed. 'mainly drunk and disorderly.' It sounded like Bromley on a Friday night.

The second was the behaviour of the young people staying in our hotel. In common with young people the world over, it seems, a good time is equated with heavy drinking. The haul of bottles removed by cleaners of the rooms after the weekend would have kept a medium-sized recycling plant in business for a month. The drink of choice appeared to be vodka with a variety of mixers but there was also a brewery's worth of beer bottles and a fair haul of empty wine bottles.

Linda observed that she felt like she'd woken up in the middle of a Club 18-30 holiday - incessant noise, doors banging all night!

Alcohol is a problem on the island, like it is everywhere. The Government looks forward to the day when liquor along with cigarettes is a thing of the past. But that is a long way off. It isn't only well-healed young people getting tanked up for a weekend of partying; the poor are also prone to drink. Many of the fathers of the kids at the Hanbamtota project had problems with alcohol - a way of numbing the pain of unemployment and crushing poverty.

Often we risk having an idealised picture of the places we visit. Sri Lanka is a needy country because of poverty and natural disaster but it's needs are exacerbated by human sin and greed, fecklessness, poor government and oppressive religion that makes huge demands on the poor but offers precious little grace.

It's why the country needs a strong church that has grasped what it means to be missional communities, living for and sharing the good news about Jesus at all levels of society. It's why I'll continue to pray for my students at LBC, for the pastors I've met and worked with and the believers struggling to embody Kingdom values in their everyday lives. In fact, I'm praying for them exactly what I'm praying for myself and believers in the UK.

An encounter with law enforcement

I'm catching up with stuff and I was reminded yesterday that I hadn't blogged about the last part of our trip to Sri Lanka and especially a couple of episodes that I referred to in passing and promised to elaborate on later.

The first concerns my meeting with the chief of police at Hikkaduwa.

On the Friday we went to Hambantota to visit the Smile school, I left my British mobile phone in my hotel room and it disappeared. Assuming that it wasn't spirited away by aliens, I concluded that it had been stolen. I told the hotel manager as much but he thought it unlikely and wasn't fabulously helpful - though he did allow me to use his phone to ring my operator to report my phone's loss and get it blocked (later he tried to charge me 450 rupees for doing so but waived it when we complained).

For insurance purposes we decided that we would have to go to the police station to report its loss so that we got a crime number to make a claim once we get home.

So we found a tuk tuk driver -Nimal who I blogged about earlier - and went to the relatively newly built, three storey police station on the edge of the town. A man in a smart brown uniform was just getting out of white patrol car with his family and asked what we needed. He turned out to be the chief of police for the area.

He invited us up to his office and showed us to seats in front of his desk. Lifting his jacket, he removed his automatic pistol from his belt and put it on the desk and sat down. It turned out that not only did he speak very good English, but he'd also taken part in exchange trips to police forces in Harrow, Leicester, Cambridge and one or two other places in the UK. Since I come from Leicester and Linda from Harrow, this gave us quite a bit to talk about.

It was the time of the Hikkaduwa beach festival and the police chief lamented the lack of sleep he'd had over the previous 48 hours. 'I don't how I'm supposed to make good decisions when I'm so tired,' he said in between barking orders to various junior officers who came and went from his office.

Turning to the reason for our visit, he asked me to write down what had happened - 'but not in much in detail,' he stressed. I duly complied and in exchange he gave me a signed piece of paper confirming that I had reported the theft of my phone. It was clear that was all the attention its loss was going to get!

Suddenly, he looked down at the gun on his desk and up and me with a hint of embarrassment on his face and then picked the pistol up, apologised for leaving it out in the open and put it in the draw of his filing cabinet. Then he returned to signing the document and handed it to me.

Commiserating with us that we'd suffered such a horrible experience during our holiday, he wished us a pleasant stay and ushered us out of his office - probably keen to get some sleep before the night's festivities demanded his full attention.

Summers are for reading

Finished the wonderful Buechner's Telling the Truth. Get it and read it - especially if you are involved in any kind of ministry.

I have returned to Michael Gorman's rather harder but extremely stimulating new book on Paul's theology.

I am also reading Christopher Bryan's Render to Caesar: Jesus, the Early Church and the Roman superpower which I got half-price in the Oxford University Press summer sale (which is nice!).

It's well written, considerably 'lighter' than Gorman and offers a nuanced interaction with a plethora of studies on Jesus and empire and in particular the work of William Horsley. Mid-way through chapter, I'd say it's pretty good.

I'm also trying to plan the autumn programme and finding myself unable to make anything work but I'll keep prodding away.

Laughing with God

I think when I first read Buechner, I didn't get it. Oh I thought it was good in an earnest, po-faced kind of a way. I think was too young, I came to it at a time when I knew everything and had a system that I was able to slot everything into and neatly file away for future recall.

Well, I'm older now. And I've just read the chapter on the gospel as comedy, sitting the garden in the afternoon sunshine and laughed and laughed - and cried - and thought that for the first time I've seen things about God that I've known to be true in theory but have never felt rumbling in the depths of my oh so serious and sorted soul.

What a joker God is! And how blessed I am that he is. because the biggest joke is that I can join him at his table, share his food and laugh along with him.

There's no point quoting any of the chapter. You need to get this book and consume it, feast on it, relish every morsel of it and find your soul nourished by it like nothing you've experienced for such a long time.

His retelling of parables - especially the prodigal son - is like hearing them for the first time and in a way that makes you realise that they are telling you your life story, including the moment when God accepts and embraces you, welcomes you into his kitchen and shares what he's just cooked for himself.

The meanings of words

I've been reflecting on John 1 for Sunday. I came across this great quote by Eugene Peterson:

'Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meaning of words.'
(Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p103)

I am thinking about how we are formed by the Word, spoken into existence, transformed from one degree of glory into another by God's creative, powerful Word.

John tells us that this Word became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, a man who chats with us, sits and eats and drinks at our tables, tells stories, dances at weddings, laughs and cries - and always defines what it is to be human. More than that, the Word became flesh so that we might join the conversation he wants to have with us and be transformed.

So Peterson reminds us that 'Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meaning of words. When we look up the glory in Jesus we find - are we ready for this? - obscurity, rejection and humiliation, incomprehension and misapprehension, a sacrificial life and an obedient death: the bright presence of God backlighting what the world despises or ignores.'

It is, of course, what Jesus himself says in john 12: 20-26 (especially 23b-24) when Greeks want to make him a tourist attraction - a perenial temptation the church faces in every generation! It's a powerful reminder of the upside down values of Jesus' kingship and power.

Finding reasons to be a preacher

Thanks for Jim Gordon over at Living Wittily - one of the most consistently thought-provoking and spirit-lifting blogs around - I've started re-reading Frederick Buechner's Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale.

I'd forgotten just how good it is. Buechner's prose is sublime. His portrait of Pilate in the first chapter is breath-taking and his reflection of Pilate's question to Jesus - 'what is truth'? - dazzling and unsettling and just right.

Having the sielnce that greeted Pilate's question from the lips of Jesus, Buechner says: 'What is truth? Life is truth, the life of the world, your own life, and the life inside the world you are. The task of the preacher is to hold up life to us; by whatever gifts he or she has of imagination, eloquence, simple candour, to create images of life through which we can somehow see into the wordless truth of our lives. Before the Gospel is good news, it is simply news that that's the way it is, whatever day it is of whatever year.' (p17)

Suddenly I am aware of wanting to be a preacher again. Not a purveyor of finely crafted spiritual homilies but someone who allows the truth to take shape on my lips. Buechner's book is is his Beecher Lectures on preaching delivered at Yale in the mid-70s. And yet they could have been written yesterday, such is their prescience.

Of the preacher, he says, concluding his first chapter, 'So let him use words, but, in addition to using them to explain, expound, exhort, let him use them to evoke, to set us dreaming as well as thinking, to use words as at their most prophetic and truthful, the prophets used them to stir in us memories and longings and intuitions that we starve for without knowing that we starve. Let him use words which do not only try to give answers to the questions that we ask or ought to ask but which help us to hear the questions that we do not have words for asking and to hear the silence that those questions rise out of and the silence that is the answer to those questions.'

Yes please!

Making connections

We had three encounters during our holiday in Hikkaduwa that have set me thinking about what it means to be a missional disciple. These are the stories that I'll reflect on over the coming weeks.

We were on holiday, staying in a hotel that I'll blog about separately, using the pool, going out to restaurants in the evenings, doing a bit of site-seeing during the day when we could drag ourselves away from the pool and our books (I read Tim Winton's Breath - wonderful - and am halfway through Marilynne Robinson's Gilead - completely stunningly brilliant).

In the course of our idling, we met three people and began to forge a relationship with each of them that threw up for me questions about how sharing our lives is a sharing of our faith, since that's what drives the way we live.


The last guy we met is called Nimal. He runs a turtle farm and we went as punters to see what he does. There are lots of turtle farms but his was the nearest - and hence the cheapest to get to by tuk tuk.

As he showed us round, it was clear that we were in the presence of a man of vision and passion and we connected. Our conversation strayed to his family and why he runs the farm, how he's funded and whether we could keep in touch. Having exchanged emails, we left feeling we had done more than visit a tourist attraction.

Our tuk tuk driver that morning was by a strange coincidence also called Nimal. We'd met him the previous day when we'd come out of our hotel needing a trishaw to take us to the police station to report a theft (more on that later). There were lots of tuk tuk drivers vying for trade, Nimal's red trishaw was on the opposite side of the road, facing the wrong way and yet it was eye that I caught.

This quickly turned out to be a good thing since he spoke really good English. Having got us to and from the police station, we agreed to have him come in the morning to take us to a couple of attractions beyond walking distance (a temple and the turtle farm).

Again, we connected as we chatted about our lives. One question we often asked people in Hikkaduwa is whether they were around during the tsunami time and what happened to them. For Nimal the turtle farm owner, it meant the loss of significant parts of his family, though he himself was in Colombo on the fateful day.

For Nimal our tuk tuk driver, it meant anxious hours searing for his wife and her mother who'd been at the market. He says that God spared them - interesting language from a Sri Lankan Buddhist who technically doesn't believe in an interventionist God. We chatted about how he saw things, including his faith - we were standing on the shore at a Buddhist temple that has a prayer house on a tiny island about 100 metres off shore that many people were going to in a small boat.

Our conversation led to an invitation to go back to his house to meet his family and see how he's getting his life back together. Driving his tuk tuk means he's earning money that he's investing in developing his property. Now he has a house that he can rent out - he showed us round it and it's pretty decent, only lacking air conditioning. We'd seriously consider staying there next time we go - it would cost a seventh of the cost of our hotel!


As we drank tea and chatted with his daughter who's also learning English, looked round his rental property, made suggestions about how it could be more attractive to English tourists, I was aware that this was not the kind of transaction I normally have with a cab driver.


Finally, we reconnected with a seamstress called Kandy. We met her last time we were in Hikkaduwa and she was delighted to see us again. She and her husband had been injured in the tsunami and still need treatment on damaged limbs five years on. Their business was washed away and they've been building it back up ever since. We bought a few things - she insisted on giving a couple of items.


Then she invited us for tea and bananas at her home. So we went. She's living on the top floor of a rented house with virtually no furniture and no windows or doors. We chatted about business, the lack of tourists, the trauma of the tsunami time, the difficulty that the poor and ordinary people (as she called them) have faced in the years since rebuilding their lives with very little outside help.


We were invited for dinner - fish curry, rice, vegetables - and continued the conversation, listening to Kandy tell her story and share her concerns. She has a son, who we also met, who works at an outdoor pursuits centre on the lake behind Hikkaduwa, particularly teaching people to kite surf. This is a family struggling to get on, facing all the pressures that families the world over face making ends meet, staying safe, trying to improve their lot and their lifestyle.


Not once with any of these people did we tell them we were Christians, try to share the gospel with them or suggest they go to church. We spent time - all too brief - listening to them tell their stories, offer hospitality, introduce their families and even share a little of their dreams for the future.


So what's missional about all this?

I don't have any answers about this beyond the really obvious observation that you can only share what's on your heart with someone that you have made a genuine connection with. Otherwise you sound like a double glazing salesman or the purveyor of one more bright idea to file alongside all the other information flooding into people's lives. Mission begins with entering another person's world, connecting with what they think and feel and inviting them to step into your world so they have a similar experience.

The question is why we can't make similar connections with our neighbours, people we see more often than those we meet on holiday?

A hand for the drowning

In the midst of our languishing by the pool in Hikkaduwa last week, we had the opportunity to visit a project in Hambantota on the south coast of the island.

It's a pre-school and after school club run by a UK-based organisation that I don't normally have much time for. But this scheme is truly inspiring, fabulously well run and meeting a real need among some of the poorest children in the town.

Hambantota is where the current president hails from and the Chinese are there building a huge new port. Their workers live in a beautifully constructed temporary village with plant lined roads and air conditioning on the edge of the town (at the end of a new road they've also built which will join up with the toll highway under construction - also by the Chinese - that goes from Hambantota to Colombo).

The school serves the needs of a community of poor families who live behind the dunes on the shoreline. Those dunes saved the community from the worst effects of the tsunami; many others in the city, especially those at the Sunday market, weren't so lucky - the devastation was truly apocalyptic.

Fifty or so three to fives gather each day of the week for breakfast, structured play and learning, ending with lunch before going home. For most of them, it's the only really decent food they get. The workers say that when the kids arrive for breakfast on Monday, they are constantly emptying their plates and asking for more.

Having seen the end of the morning programme and helped to serve lunch, we went off to see the area they come from. There is an effort underway to replace their mud and wood houses with brick built ones but it's going off at half-cock. Terraces of houses (6-8 in a line) are being built by local builders who lack the skill and resources to do a decent job. Many of the would-be homes languish half finished because no one has the money to complete them. They are meant to be two-storey so they all have stairways leading to a hole in what is currently the roof, so none of them are water tight. They also lack windows and doors - though they are supposed to be coming.

But the real issue is water. The local authority owns the land the homes are on and they will supply a tap with a water meter for 15000 rupees (that's £78.23 at today's exchange rate). The authority will pay half that cost for each tap, leaving these abjectly poor people to find 7,500 rupees to make up the balance. You might as well ask them to deposit a million dollars in person on the moon!

So there are squabbles over water and people are left with the indignity of washing outside with their neighbours watching.

The authority has also said that no one can have an indoor kitchen. So most cook on open fires outside their wooden shacks. Some have begun to construct wooden lean-tos against their designated brick house to serve as a kitchen - with an open fire - as and when they move in.

The kids are lively, wide-eyed, craving attention. When they arrived at the project in January, they were all under-weight, averaging just 10 kilos, somewhat less than a well-fed three year old should weigh. The project aims to build them up physically as well as providing a grounding in education - maths, Sinhala and English, social skills and friendship. In many ways the project is a mirror of the pepe projects run by BMS in various places.

I came back to my relatively luxurious hotel full of awe and despair. This little project is a tiny boat in a rough sea of need. What made the despair deepen was seeing rich, sassy Sri Lankan young people, down from Colombo for the Hikkaduwa beach festival, drinking, smoking, playing with their mobiles and camcorders: it was hard to believe we were still in the same country.

Touchdown

Back in blighty after 24 hours of travel yesterday. Knackered but in good heart!

I'll catch up with some final Sri Lanka reflections over the next couple of days.

Final day

Final day in Sri Lanka. I've got lots to catch you up with but that will have to wait our my arrival back in the UK.

For now, we're off to the Galle Face Hotel for high tea - very civilised. As I said in an earlier post, my mother used to dance and drink G+ts when she was stationed here during the war. So I go in memory of her.

Then tomorrow our flight is early and gets back to Heathrow late the same day - though we lose five and a half hours along the way, so it'll be a bit of a marathon

Reflections on the state of things

We had a lovely evening last Friday with the principal and his wife. It was interesting and inspiring to hear his testimony and his take on the college and the state of theological education here. He's keen to improve what the college is doing for its students which he believes this in turn will strengthen the Sri Lankan church at a time when it really needs strengthening.

He was sharing that having come to faith in the assemblies of God, a church that he still serves, he has found the spirituality of the churches here generally here to be thin. This particularly came home to him when he spent a year at St John’s College, Nottingham and was introduced to other forms of spirituality and liturgical traditions.

It reminded me of a conversation that I had had with a Swiss guy who studied with me both weeks – a glutton for punishment! He’d been asking me whether I thought it appropriate to introduce western theological ideas that could undermine or unsettle people’s faith in the simple scriptures. I can see his point – up to a point.

But Sri Lanka (like most developing nations) is actually awash with ideas and ‘theologies’ from the western church that are no more appropriate here than they are anywhere. So Hillsongs is where it’s at in terms of worship, theological and spiritual support for the state of Israel is a given (odd in a country that is politically seeking alliances with the gulf states and Iran!), and charismatic ministry and prayer styles derived from South Korea are de rigueur.

So the question is not shall we bring ‘western’ ideas – they are here whether we want them or not. And every month one international ministry or another pitches its tent announcing that it is introducing the next wave we've all got to ride. The question is what kind of thinking will strengthen and build the Sri Lankan church? Answering that is a much more subtle affair.

One of the answers I gave my Swiss friend was that I see a huge need for a church leadership that is able to think, to discern what is right and what is wrong, what will help their church and what won’t. My hope is that in a tiny way what I was teaching about the New Testament might help students to see that there are other biblical ways of approaching these issues that might just help them to reflect on their situations and what the scripture is saying about them.

Just like the UK church, the church here is prone to leap on whatever bandwagon is passing. Undoubtedly some churches are growing. But it's worth asking whether current approaches to worship and mission will make significant inroads into the Buddhist community - the evidence seems to suggest not yet.

Unlike the UK church there seems to be a correlation between theology and the funding of work over here. Support for Israel could be a product of the fact that American fundamentalists spend a lot of dollars keeping things going here. And he who pays the piper picks the tune.

Independence of thought and genuinely contextualised theology and church structures are vital for the Christian community if it's going to make Jesus known in ways that appeal to all sections of Sri Lankan society.

And a really cool thing to finish with: One of my students last week is the coach of the Sri Lankan rugby union team. No, I didn’t know they had one either. Apparently, they play in the Asian Five Nations and everything. He's a South African who played his club rugby at Richmond and in the Irish republic. He’s a really nice guy, taking the course to improve his knowledge. Let’s hope it works - though I'm not sure it'll improve his team's performance on the field!

Mixing with the chic and the fancy

Just got back from shopping at Paradise Road and Odel - these are the two coolest retail places in Colombo. But, my, how they've changed.

I remember going to both in 1999 on my first visit here. Paradise Road sold locally-made arts and crafts, fabrics and candles and smelly things (a bit like the Pier only more authentically Sri Lankan), while Odel sold over-runs of clothes made here for the likes of Gap, M&S, Tommy Hilfiger and others.

Now both stores are brands in their own right. Paradise Road still sells Sri Lankan-made arts and crafts, ceramics, cloth and pictures, but it also has complete kitchen ranges and dinner services in lovely pure white porcelain. It's the kind of place where you'd have your wedding list - and I suspect one or two of the young couples I saw in there this morning were putting one of those together.

Odel has become a mall selling clothes, jewelry, shoes and accessories -many of them at prices that wouldn't be out of place in Harrods. It's busy with chic Sri Lankans and tourists but it's lost something of its character.

I guess both places indicate something of Sri Lanka's development over the past decade. Despite the war, it has been doing OK with garment making for many major brands as well as tourist industry that, judging by the number of new hotels going up in Colombo alone, can't doing that badly.

We'll see what effect the recent granting of an IMF loan will have. Chances are that stringent enforcement of market mechanisms by the IMF will send the cost of basics - like fuel oil, grains, especially rice - through the roof. At the same time the rupee will fall on the open market - assuming the IMF insists that the Government can no longer artificially peg it to the dollar.

The chic in Odel might be OK. The rest of the population could feel quite a pinch.

The difference in Colombo

Back in Colombo. As you drive down from Peredeniya, which is only a couple of kilometers from Kandy, to Colombo, you feel the temperature rising. By the time you hit the Colombo suburbs, it's a good 10 degrees Celsius hotter than up country.

Colombo is also noticeable for three other things: the traffic, security and Chinese road builders.

The Colombo traffic is permanently heavy, as though anyone who has a car just loves to be out in it, sitting in the semi-chaos, sounding their horns. Trishaws, buses, lorries and vans compete with cars and bikes and a new phenomenon - 4x4s: there seem many more of these leviathans on Colombo's roads than even three years ago when I was last here. Maybe it's a sign of rising prosperity for some.

Security is much more noticeable in Colombo than elsewhere in the country. On many street corners heavily armed soldiers stand and watch, various buildings have guards posted, some in sand-bagged constructed machine gun posts. Some roads around government buildings are closed; others have been made one way. Occasionally the checkpoints on the edge of the city pull you over to check your identity - though vehicles with foreigners tend not to be stopped.

The Chinese are here are building all sorts of things. The road coming in from Kandy is being widened by gangs of Chinese workers with sparkling new equipment. This is part of China's investment in the country, which includes a new port near Galle. Again, this is a sign of rising prosperity for some.

Around the Galle Face Hotel, complexes of apartments and hotels, with restaurants and leisure clubs, as well as the ubiquitous shopping malls are going up faster than in the gulf states. The skyline in this part of the city will resemble Dubai in no time at all. The question is: who is all this building for? How many of Colombo's current residences can afford to live in such places? As we sat in an Italian restaurant last night, eating reasonable versions of Italian dishes, all the diners, bar one couple, appeared to be foreign, many eating alone on a Sunday evening, indicating that they were business people staying upstairs, here for meetings and deals.

This country feels that is on the cusp of something. Let's pray that it'll be good for all its people.

A meeting over the tracks

At the end of my second of week of teaching, I'm feeling a little knackered!

We've been at Perandeniya this week. I say we because Linda and Liv joined me on Tuesday which is great. Their train was delayed by two hours - which wasn't!

The week has been generally good but hard. The students on BTh course are not as competent in English as the MDiv students which makes teaching more challenging. Even more of a challenge is grading papers. I have 25 exam papers to mark this afternoon - blogging is a welcome relief!

Today we went to the elephant orphanage at peniwalla which was fabulous. It was our second visit but Liv's not been before. It's great to large numbers of these amazing animals up close.

While waiting for Linda and Liv's train on Tuesday, a man from another delayed train – one that had been shunted into a siding and all-but abandoned there – came across the tracks to ask what was happening. He looked up from the tracks and asked in Sinhala. I apologised for not speaking his language, so he spoke mine. I explained what was going on as far as I understood it – there had been no announcements over the public address system, no word shouted by station staff to the stranded passengers.

We then got talking about Sri Lanka. He was in the hotel business – as far as I could make out, his family owned a hotel – and he was worried about the world economy and the effect of the war on tourism. He kept asking whether I liked his country. It felt as though he thought I might be the key to its economic turnaround, my tourist rupees alone would cause an upturn! It was an interesting conversation. There was something desperate in his tone, as if he wanted to see his country’s fortunes restored but despaired of them having the wherewithal to do it.

This place is full of such chance meetings.

Completing the first stage

My first week of teaching yesterday afternoon. I bade a tearful farewell to all my students and then went off to meet an old friend. The students seemed to appreciate the course. They worked pretty hard and joined in class discussion. All the first assignments were way beyond what I was expecting and indicated wide reading, good thinking and the desire to reflect on how this applied personally and to their ministries.

The old friend I met yesterday runs a micro finance project here that now has 4000 project holders and has contributed seven billion rupees to Sri Lanka's GDP. As he says 'not bad for something that started with 200 rupees and faith'!

He spells faith r-i-s-k and is continually putting himself on the line so that the poor on this island get a shot at living. He's one the most inspiring people I know,

Today I'm off to buy a motor bike for another friend who's current bike is clapped out and unroadworthy. I've never bought a motor bike before, so this should be fun.

Tomorrow, it's off to Kandy. Not sure what the internet access will be like up there, so blogging might become a bit light.

Trouble with the air con has me camping out

Yesterday evening disappeared in a blur, I'm afraid. It was a busy day and I think I was feeling tired. So here we are - Thursday and that's almost over (at least for me!)

Today opened with torrential rain turning travel round Colombo into chaos. So lots of students were late and dripping when they did get here. But one had stopped off to buy me fruit - how sweet is that? people here are like that.

It was the day of the class photo which was a wonderfully shambolic affair with one of the college handy men standing on a chair taking three pictures on each of about ten different types of digital cameras. Not surprisingly, it took an age to get through - prolonged by lots of fooling around and gales of laughter from all round the room - and no one felt like being photographed by the end.

The rain affected the air conditioning in my room which means I can't sleep in it tonight as it's stiflingly hot. So I am camping out in the faculty office where the air con is so fierce I might need to sleep in a coat! Unlikely. It just makes it very much more comfortable.

So, my nightly routine will be a bit different tonight. But it will end as it has most evenings this week with the final few tracks of Leonard Cohen’s wonderfully uplifting live at the O2 album. It has become my lights out music – two prayers, great playing, the Webb sisters and his voice like angel wings brushing against granite filling the darkness with a sublime wonder. You can't ask for more really!

Tomorrow I'll be catching up with an old Sri Lankan friend and seeing his new office which will be great fun. It's also the last day of lectures with this group - though I discovered that one of them, a Swiss guy who's studying over here, is coming to Kandy to do my course next week. Now he is some glutton for punishment! I'll be sorry to see them go - though I have their assignments to look forward to - because they've been a good group, lively, engaging, wanting to talk, full of questions, keen to learn and aching to be useful to God.

One guy - who really struggles with his English and was deeply apologetic about that - works in the East of the island with displaced people, bringing them aid and the gospel. He spends three months at a time literally camping out, with no air con or creature comforts, sharing God's love and what practical support he can with the people worst affected by the war, those who've lost absolutely everything. He's the reason I'm here. If I can encourage him half as much as hearing his story has encouraged me, then that's worth the air fare - and camping out in the faculty office.

Healing wounds

Another full day of teaching. The students were fairly responsive, which is good. Some of the assignments I read last night were very good indeed – much better than I was expecting. It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised by things!

I visited the health centre where one of my students works and am going back in the morning to lead their devotions at 8:30am.

It's a place where a friend of worked for some time and which we visited three years ago. It continues to be an amazing place, offering primary health care to all kinds of people, some of whom can pay something and some of whom can pay nothing. It has Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Tamil and Sinhala people all receiving the same standard of care.

Steve, the director, explained to me that, following the experience of the tsunami, where they went out to people in need, the staff are very keen to do more outreach work, taking medical care to where the people who need it are and not just waiting for them to come to the clinic.

After all, he says, most of the word God is go!

They already run a medical outreach programme in the North East, a spin-off of their tsunami response. There are lots of places where such work is still needed in Sri Lanka.

The recession means that finances are stretched, however. The Sri Lankan rupee is linked to the dollar but most of the clinic's donations come in sterling which has fallen against the dollar. Added to that, Sri Lankan inflation is running at 25%. It all means that a pound doesn’t go anything like as far as it did a couple of years ago.

Sri Lanka is in the throes of agreeing an IMF loan. One of the conditions for that loan will probably be that the rupee is allowed to float free of the dollar. In purely financial terms that probably makes sense. But it will be catastrophic for inflation in the country as the rupee will plummet and prices of imports, especially oil and other essential raw materials will go up. That means bus fares will rise and other basic costs for already hard-pressed people.

Added to that, the recession in the West has cost about 100,000 jobs in the garment industry. Because we are not buying as much from Marks & Spencer, Gap, Top Shop and other high street names who source a lot of clothes from this country, people are losing their jobs. Recessions always bite hardest on the poorest. Tightening our belts – by not buying new trousers or belts – means families here often lose their single wage earner.

And who says they don’t believe in structural sin, in systems that unravel and hurt the least able to cope?

The challenge for the church on this island is growing by the day. But if the students I have in my class are anything to go by, there are lots of people in the churches able to rise to this challenge and make a tangible difference to the real lives of thousands of people here.

The health centre is in the throes of redoing its publicity. Everything it produces is in three languages – Sinhala, Tamil and English. I have noticed that around the college here too – signs in the toilets asking you to leave them clean for the next user, the sign announcing the opening times of the library and other notices are all in three languages.

Sadly this is rare these days in Sri Lanka. Many places have signs in just one language. For instance, many doctors serve either the Tamil or the Sinhala communities and all their signage is in one language only – this despite the two communities living cheek by jowl with one another. In the state hospitals, signs are increasingly in Sinhala and English only.

Is this a symptom of a society coming together after the war or of the continuing division between the two peoples that populate this beautiful place?

And the real work begins

First day of lectures. I was apprehensive but the group was a manageable size – 14 students, a mixture of men and women, a good number of lay people, including two doctors. After introductions we got down to business. I think most of them appreciated what we are doing. Certainly a number joined in the discussion in the afternoon. This is a step up from my group last year.

I was teaching from 9am to 4pm with some breaks (see below). it felt a bit gruelling!

One of my students is a doctor from a medical centre that a friend of mine used to work at and I have discovered that it is literally two doors down the road. This is why the junction near the college seemed vaguely familiar – I have been here before!

It runs from 4pm-7pm offering services mainly to poorer people who can't pay for medical treatment. So I’m going to visit tomorrow afternoon after classes.

The system here is slightly odd. Each class has a monitor appointed who’s job is to help the lecturer. They will get hand outs from the office and distribute them to the class. Mine has decided that I need help remembering when the breaks are due and so has got a bell which he pings loudly, grinning broadly, when I need to stop.

Another thing I’m struggling to remember is that when a Sri Lankan agrees with you, they shake their head from side-to-side. To move the head up and down means disagreement. So when I nod and say ‘yes’ people get confused. Body language is so culture specific!

I went for a walk along the Galle Road after class in search of a supermarket. I was determined to buy my own cornflakes (I’ve run out). About half a mile or so down the busy drag I duly found one and got bread, milk and cornflakes for just over 500 rupees (a bit under £3). I think things are more expensive here than they were. But I walked back in the sunshine (pretty hot) feeling really chuffed that I'd managed to negotiate such a complex task!!

Tonight I have eight assignments to read. Most of the students were completely daunted by what I set them, an assignment I thought was fairly straight-forward. I asked them to write too many words (2,500 – is that unreasonable for a post-grad assignment? Not in England but probably it is when English is your second or third language!) and – apparently – the reading was hard. But the hardest bit was that I asked them to reflect on their own experience and how what they were reading – on the supper in 1 Corinthians 11 – might make them think differently about the way they do meals at their church. Ah well. We’ll see what they make of it.

What a great job for a boy!

Two posts today as it's Sunday (to make up for no posting yesterday!)

I had lunch at the Galle Face Hotel today. This is one of the most civilised experiences to be had on planet earth. The atmosphere is distinctly old colonial, the service is friendly and unassuming – and completely wonderful. The food is great and the view is to die for. 50 feet from our table the rollers crashed on the beach in the bright sunshine.

My mother danced and drank G+ts here during the war. Her memories of it right up to her death were fond and vivid. I always visit when I'm here.

I was hosted by a charming couple and the family matriarch, a dominant force in Sri Lankan Baptist life who is also a vice president of BWA. She is lovely, great company, full of conversation – even waxed lyrical about how amazing Michael Jackson was having watched his memorial service on CNN – but I imagine she is not someone to mess with.

He spoke of his parents coming to dances here at the Galle Face in the 1940s - who knows maybe they met my mum. The couple also had their wedding reception here many years ago.

At the Galle Face they employ a boy (he looked no older than 16), dressed in waiter’s uniform, complete with bow tie and starched shirt, who’s sole job is keep the crows off the guests. To do this, he is armed with a sturdy catapult and he spends his time patrolling the grass by the veranda aiming at crows and occasionally letting off whatever ammunition it is he fires. What a great job for a boy of a certain age! I have to say, he didn’t look too happy – the task is hot and somewhat unrewarding.

This evening I spoke at a seminar at William's church for young couples on family life. I spoke for 40 minutes (William took half that time translating) and then was questioned for an hour and a half. They asked some pretty searching questions. It was a hot and stimulating evening - once again rounded off with great food.

I got back to the college thinking I have a pretty great assignment at the moment (as people keep calling it here). It's a huge privilege to share the lives of these lovely people and have a modest input into their development as disciples. Tomorrow the assignment begins in earnest - 17 MDiv students for a week immersing ourselves in the social history of the New Testament. How cool is that!

Lessons in hospitality and endurance

As I walked by the sea yesterday afternoon, passing rows of broken buildings, a woman hailed me. People often shout hello as you pass by – it’s all the English they know. But this woman called me over asking ‘how are you? Do you live here or visit our country?’ She asked whether I liked Sri Lanka, how long I was staying, what I had come to do, had I been before. She understood all I said in response. She offered me food but I declined because I had to get back to the college (and didn’t want to contract anything, frankly).

But we started talking about tsunami time and I asked whether she’d been in her home when it came. They had run. And lived – all of them, even their small children (one a dot in nothing but her pants was running in and out of what’s left of the back of their home.

She invited me to look round. There wasn’t much to see. Two rooms still had something approaching a roof on it (that's where all the family slept), the rest are open to the elements save for a bit of plastic sheeting tied to the jagged top of the brick work – where the original roof had been torn off in the storm.

I asked why she’s had no assistance from the government. ‘because they been fighting the war, against the tigers. But now we won, help will come. It take long time cause we poor country.’ She is fiercely loyal to her government; their victory is her victory, proud, no doubt, of the banners flying not far away from her home lauding the triumph of the government forces over the terrorist tigers.

But what kind of government keeps it’s loyal people hanging on so long? And how long will she have to wait for the government to finally act on her behalf? And will it insist that she move the other side of the railway line, away from the sea, where her husband ekes out a meagre living as a fisherman?

The 500 rupees I gave her toddler ‘for milk’ (about £2.50) seemed more insult than charity or act of good will. He kid’s face lit up and she beamed a thank you before running off behind a wall where another family member was washing clothes.

If I lived here (grand gesture time…), I think I’d be wanting my church to visit, to assess what could usefully and helpfully be done for these people with them setting the agenda for the kind of assistance they want. I’d like to take William and Gary to visit. I’ve no doubt they’ll tell me that there are hundreds like this family and this little community on the other side of the tracks from relatively prosperous-seeming Dehiwala.

I feel helpless and guilty in the face of such need. I wouldn’t last a night in that house. And having had the sea come and attack me, rip the heart out of my community, tear the roof off my home, how could I lie awake at night and listen to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach 20 feet away from where my head was?

She asked me what I liked about Sri Lanka ‘is it the always smiling people?’ she asked. That’s certainly a big part of it. I left her on the step thanking me for stopping by, hoping I’ll visit again and smiling broadly as I went off along the beach. I’m not sure how or what I feel.

Sweating over discipleship

Spoke at a seminar for Baptist Christians this morning on discipleship. About 60 or so came and listened, joined in with questions and then had lunch together.

It went well. William was translating for me and did an excellent job. I found myself slipping into a rhythm of speaking in sentences without sub-clauses. And while it felt a little stilted, I did feel myself able to focus better and not stray from the point buoyed along by my oratory or flights of fancy.

I do feel sheepish about teaching Sri Lankans about discipleship, however. it seems to me we've a lot to learn from their grasp of the Gospel and commitment to Jesus. I found the question and answer time very challenging and have come away with a lot to process.

What I was reminded of, however, is that there is a lot of nominalism in the church over here. There are still good numbers of people who go to church because it's the thing to do, what their family has always done, where they meet their friends, etc.

Time and again I was asked about how we help, encourage or cajole people to take Jesus more seriously. I said all the obvious things in answer but came away thinking that exactly the same issues beset us in the UK; our churches are awash with Sunday Christians who seemingly want nothing to do with Jesus during the rest of the week.

John was right in his letters to the seven churches in Revelation to stress that apathy was a bigger killer of Christian commitment than persecution. It was then. It is now. And it is no respecter of national boundaries or cultures.

Day 2 in the Sri Lanka house

Just been for a mid-afternoon stroll to the very hot sunshine to the sea. It’s about a quarter of a mile and half a world away. Down the commercial street with shops at the top, a Dutch reformed church midway down, a couple of banks, rows of buses and tuk-tuks (trishaws – the main taxi) and you reach Dehiwala station – a raised concrete platform with a sign in the middle of the railway tracks. There’s a building in the centre of it where the staff sit and people can buy tickets.

There are groups of mainly men and gaggles of young people walking each way on the tracks. Then on the other side of the tracks between the station and breaking rollers is a fishing community, living in the still-broken remnants of homes smashed in the boxing day tsunami of 2004.

Bright blue signs in Sinhalese, Tamil and English with a bold graphic indicate one’s evacuation route should the sea come again with the ferocity it did on that day. That’s all the evidence there is down here of the government having spent any cash; all except a rather oddly-placed, barbed-wire surrounded outpost of the military with a couple of young soldiers passing the time with a group of equally young men on the other side of the wire.

The people live in homes that look as if they’ve gone the distance with Godzilla and King Kong. Tiled areas indicate where there was once a brick house. Some structures have part of the brick work in tack, the rest of the home being made of sheets of plastic, discarded advertising hoardings promoting fashionable menswear.

Families sit on plastic furniture, half in and half out of these structures. Here, a woman sorts laundry that’s hanging between walls made of pallets; there, a man washing through some clothes; in the distance another tends to his boat’s out-board engine; and everywhere, children play, jumping, hiding and giggling.

It’s hard not to feel a furious rage at the indifference of a government that seems able to man endless checkpoints around the city and pay for vast numbers of billboards everywhere lauding it’s victory in the recent war. In a bid to be fair, it is a poor country and it has been ravaged by a cruel and senseless war (aren’t they all? This one more than most, fuelled by the desire to atomise an already tiny living space, along ethnic, cultural and religious lines, pluralism in action, some might say; human sinfulness and the arrogance of power, some might reply; and so the argument goes on).

Surely somewhere the pittance can be found that would give these people decent hovels in which to live, where they can be near the sea that is their livelihood and rail track that takes their catch to markets along the lines. Surely somewhere the will raise these people’s lives above this level of destitution in a country that is showing signs of prosperity in other places can be found.

I was with my friend, William, earlier today. He’s been involved with a similar fishing village down the coast, near his church, since the tsunami (interestingly, Sri Lankans speak of the tsunami time; sentences often contain the phrase ‘in the tsunami time’). The reconstruction, which was still going on last we visited, has now finished. He’s promised to take me, which will be great. He’s done a wonderful job bringing this community together, helping them to rebuild as they wanted to, offering support with local officials, still there after the aid caravan has long since rolled on. Not surprisingly, some of the families have started coming to his church.

Just behind the beach community, on the other side of the railway track, a 122 appartment block is being built. I can see it from my room at the college, a concrete colossus, wrapped in blue plastic sheeting. It boasts parking and a rooftop swimming pool. It's owners will be able to look down on the shattered fishing community atthe end of a busy day.

Touch down

Arrived safely and have been welcomed by folk at the college. Internet access is good and plentiful at the moment. So, here's an account of my trip....

Uneventful departure from a wet heathrow. Good if noisy flight to Doha. Lots of extended middle eastern families running riot in economy. Food OK. Service good. Watched 2001: a space odyssey and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Lion. Both good – seen them before, of course but not for a long time. Did a little reading.

Not much time at Doha because our flight was slightly late. Rushing to get through the door to the bus and the Qatar Airways man asked me to wait. I asked him why and he replied it was because I was flying Business Class to Colombo. Woohoo! I’ve never been upgraded before.

Anyway I couldn’t travel on the coach that was there because it wasn’t a Business Class coach. When that arrived, it had seats rather than making everyone stand.

I’m not sure it’s worth the money, but the service and food and the space, the acres of space after being crammed between large people on the first leg of the journey, was just fabulous.

So I had a glass or two of nicely chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, served with a selection of salted nuts. Followed by my appetizer of mezee (however you spell it!!) and an entre of chicken and green beans and a desert of custard tart and fresh fruit. The coffee wasn’t very good but the chocolate and extra glass or two of sauvignon blanc were just the ticket.

Then I slept for a couple of hours on a seat that went flat at the touch of a button. Who could ask for more?!

Met at a rainy Colombo airport by Chrishnan, the LBC administrator for a long drive to the college through Colombo’s riotous traffic. A melee of vehicles compete for space on the roads, no one gives way and no one waits and seemingly no one gets killed.

Lots of soldiers with Kalashnikov’s, lots of checkpoints – more than last time. That added to the congestion with trishaws being pulled over and passengers asked for papers, lorries being searched and some buses being stopped, all the passengers told to get off while it was searched and they were questioned. One gets a slight impression of needless oppression.

There are lots of pictures of the PM, smiling and waving, with slogans in Sinhalese that I can’t read no doubt lauding him as a hero, victor in the nation’s 25 year civil war.

And now I’m here at the LBC campus in Dehiwala in a well-appointed, if basic, air-conditioned room with a veranda that has a view of the sea in the distance over the roof tops. The sun is shining and, despite my kip in business class, I’m feeling a bit knackered - but very pleased to be here. There’s just the small detail of a course to teach next week!

Off to Sri Lanka

I'm off to Sri Lanka tomorrow to teach New Testament at the Lanka Bible College in both the Colombo and Kandy campuses and do some ministry among our baptist family over there.

I'm really looking forward to going. I always find the LBC students challenging and hugely encouraging. I know I will hear stories and testimonies of God's goodness and provision that will make my spirit soar as well as stories of hardship and conflict that will bring me to tears. I'm sure I learn so much more about being a follower of Jesus from my students than i teach them.

I'll also be joined by my wife and youngest daughter for the latter stages of the trip - we'll be getting a few days in a hotel in the south and catching up with friends.

So blogging will infrequent for the next month - Internet access will be at best intermittent.

Just how hard is the Christian faith?

I think my anonymous dialogue partner makes a good point about Christianity being for everyone and not just intellectuals in his comment on my recent post on Michael Gorman's new book. I think the challenge for Christian teachers is simple: how do we grasp the depth and breadth, height and length of God's word to us and pass it on so everyone can respond to it.

The Christian faith is both disarmingly simple - as Karl Barth famously said: 'Jesus loves me this I know for the the Bible tells me so' - and mind-stretchingly complex and intricate.

I actually think that what Gorman is saying is fairly straight-forward - he speaks, of course, as a theologian and New Testament scholar and as with all branches of knowledge, this discipline has its own language (jargon, if you like) and ways of expressing ideas that can appear opaque to those unfamiliar with them. Again, it's the job of the teachers in the church to take what is opaque and try to make it clearer - without dumbing down.

The simple idea at the heart of Gorman's book seems to me to be that Jesus calls us to die to self and live to God; he calls us to stop running our lives according to our agenda - the what's-in-it-for-me approach to life - and start listening to what God says and living it out at home and work, in politics and in our relationships with one another.

The New Testament, says Gorman, uses a number of pictures for this of which 'becoming like God/sharing the divine nature' (theosis) is one central one.

The question that immediately arises is 'how does this happen?' There are lots of people who want to lead less self-centred lives that pay attention to the needs of others, especially those who haven't landed on their feet the way we have, but who struggle to do so because the impulse to look after number one is so strong.

Gorman's answer is that God pours himself out for us (that's what kenosis is all about) in Christ, so that we can be empowered through forgiveness and receiving new life (his life through his Spirit being poured into us) to live as Jesus lived (this is what he means by justification - being put right; this is one of Gorman's distinctive and more controversial suggestions).

One central idea he uses - based on Galatians 2 and Romans 6 - is of co-crucifixion, that by faith, we share the cross of Christ so that we might share his resurrection. I will blog on the detail of this later - once I've finished and digested the chapter dealing with these two texts.

Finding grace in Hyde Park

I was at a wonderful, uplifting gathering in Hyde Park yesterday. A racially and culturally mixed group of thousands sang and raised their arms, pointing excitedly at the sky, joining in with the songs they knew, smiling and shouting affirmation when something good or that they agreed with happened. The music was varied, even Amazing Grace on an old church organ.

The event was Neil Young's blistering set at Hard Rock Calling, a two hour energy filled finale to a day that included Fleet Foxes, Seasick Steve, Ben Harper and the Pretenders.

It was great, but it held no lessons for the church except one, I think. And that was not that we need to erect stages in fields and ape the world's greatest music form (rock and roll) at big gatherings. It was a much smaller thought. Simply this: we need to be people who are far more life-affirming than we traditionally are, much more aware of the grace washing around the world in all sorts of unexpected places.

I saw this particularly in the set from Fleet Foxes where the soaring music and tight harmonies are wedded to lyrics that are full of wonder at the world we live in, open to experience, curious and inquiring. When was the last time you experienced that in church?

Thoughts on Michael Jackson

I awoke this morning to the Today programme playing Michael Jackson's Thriller. So I knew he had died. He was taken ill during Newsnight last night and one had the sense that it was serious. Radio 4's flagship news show, normally awash with grey men talking about affairs of state, rang with the sounds of Jackson's back catalogue and a slightly awkward James Naughtie interviewing a range of people from the world of pop.

And how do I feel about all this? And where do I put him in the pop pantheon? I only ask that second question because someone asked me earlier this morning.

I feel that Jackson's death is truly tragic, the end to a life that has been lived in three stages - as Paul Gambaccini said on Today - the child star, the megastar and the freak show. The third part would be swiftly forgotten, he said, leaving only the memory of the electrifying performer at the height of his powers in the trilogy of albums he recorded with Quincy Jones.

I wasn't a fan of Jackson's music - though I sat up into the wee small hours to see the world premier of the Thriller video (all 17 minutes of it) on Channel 4 - but I recognise his talent. Beat It, Billie Jean and Thriller are great pop songs, superbly crafted and produced.

But I do find it hard to disentangle that from the freak show Jackson became - his eccentric behaviour, changing facial appearance, his family life, allegations of abuse - both to him in his childhood and by him at his Neverland ranch.

When he launched his come-back tour - 50 consecutive nights at the O2 - I thought 'who's he trying to kid?' He looked frail, wild-eyed, unable to string sentences together. Surely this waif wasn't going to manage ten nights, let alone 50. It seemed a surreal final fling in an increasingly bizarre drama. And so, tragically, it turned out. His close friend Yuri Geller (that says something about his judgement) seemed to suggest it was the stress of the impending tour that killed him!

I suspect it'll be wall-to-wall Thriller, Billy Jean, some of the Jackson 5 hits over the next few days, pages of obituaries and memories of his 'friends in show business' and then the dust will settle. Like Elvis the myth makers will get to work, the cult of Jackson will arise, wacko will live on in a sub-stratum of the wacko celebrity world he inhabited.

But the music will stand. The Thriller album is probably one of the ten best pop records of all time (for all that I don't really like it) with it's strong tunes, infectious, machine-driven rhythms and crisp, clear vocal track. It has been hugely influential on the development of pop in the 25 years since it was released.

The tragedy is that Jackson never seemed to find the peace and friendship he so obviously craved. In that he is a true icon of celebrity culture.

Next year's Assembly takes shape

Just back from an Assembly Project Team meeting in a very sunny Plymouth.

The excellent news is that next year's Assembly will run from Friday to Monday (that's four days). This has happened because the Assembly organisers have listened to Assembly goers which in these days is a good thing to hear.

Themes are being worked on and there'll be news about that ahead of the summer lay-off.

So, now I have to put a team together to run Prism. Because we want the Assembly to be more deliberative, I am keen to have a smaller crew, so that delegates have more involvement in creating the programme as we travel through the weekend, with lots of space for people to be working together discerning what God is saying to us about our mission where we are and across the world.

I'm also minded to have no sung worship but rather a liturgist, a poet and a solo musician (who don't necessarily have to be three separate people) gathering our thoughts and reflecting back to us where our journey is taking us.

What do people think?

Imitating our extraordinary God

The great thing about the NAM's conference is hearing the stories of ministers finding their feet in the wacky world of the pastorate. There was a good mix of ages this year plus more women than I remember from three years ago when I was last involved and more black ministers too.

The stories are pretty diverse, as you can imagine, with some new ministers being pitched into chronically unhealthy churches and having to try to sort things out, while others are parts of well-functioning teams and are able to put what they've learned into practice in a supportive environment. I have to say that the latter is less common than the former, sadly.

I've been reading Michael Gorman's new book that luxuriates in the title Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology. However, it's a lot more readable than that mouthful would suggest!

So far, I've read the first of the four chunky chapters that form the the kernel of the book. It's on what Gorman describes as Paul's master story, Philippians 2:6-11. And it's wonderful. He argues that this story tells us as much about God as it does about Christ, suggesting that God has always been kenotic and cruciform and that Jesus is just the most perfect and accessible image of that.

He argues that the narrative arc of Philippians 2:6-11 follows the pattern 'although 'x', not 'y' but 'z' where 'x' is Jesus as the form of God; 'y' is the human expectation of what that will mean, how it will play out; and 'z' is how it actually works. So, although Jesus is God he doesn't consider this as something to exploit for his own advantage, but empties himself (using 'empties' in the sense of emptying a liquid from a bottle to a glass).

So, here's a flavour:

'God, we must now say, is essentially kenotic, and indeed essentially cruciform. Kenosis, therefore, does not mean Christ's emptying himself of his divinity (or of anything else), but rather Christ's exercising his divinity, his equality with God.' (p28). In a lengthy footnote, Gorman points out that saying God is cruciform does not mean that God is constrained in his being by a particular form of Roman execution but that because the perfect revelation of the divine kenosis for Paul was in the cross and especially 'in the voluntary rejection of power/ privilege and humble self-giving' (p28 fn 67).

This leads to Paul's understanding of the shape of discipleship and leadership. 'We see, then, that Paul believes that in his decisions not to use or exploit his apostolic power and rights, he does not renounce his apostleship or divest himself of his apostleship but in fact exercises true apostleship because he thereby acts in ways that are in conformity to Christ. That is to say, as an apostle - an ambassador (2 Cor 5:20) of the self-emptying, crucified Lord - Paul acts kenotically and cruciformly.' (p24).

As ministers we are called similarly to lives of kenotic and cruciform discipleship so that, like Paul, we can be models and examples, calling others to follow our lead (Phil 3:12-17). That's a tough call but it's what it means to have the same mind that Jesus had (Phil 2:5). It is only leadership modelling such a lifestyle that will lead to the creation of missional disciples which is essential if we are to embody and communicate the good news of this kenotic and cruciform God to our neighbours and colleagues, families and friends.

Explaining the hiatus

I've been at the Baptist Union Newly Accredited Ministers' Conference this week - hence the lack of blogging. It was pretty good. There's a good crop of new ministers working their way through the system who'll do fruitful things in the years to come.

The input - from Ian Coffey and Karen Smith - was first class and John Rackley proved to be an excellent chaplain.

All-in-all, four days well spent. But because it was busy, it means I haven't been able to do as much as I'd hoped. So I'll have to catch up tomorrow and Saturday.

I'll post some reflections on stuff I've been thinking about later

Lessons from the widow at the temple

One of the stories in this evening's chunk of Mark (12:18-44) is the one about the widow in the temple.

I've always found this a complex and fascinating episode. Traditionally, she's seen simply as a model of self-sacrificing generosity. And that's how Jesus commends her to us. But just a couple of sentences before, he's drawn our attention to the scribes getting rich because 'they devour widows' houses' (12:40), leaving them in the state exemplified by the widow in this scene.

So, here's a picture of this devout woman dropping her last two coins into the treasury to pay for the upkeep of the scribes' power base and relieve the poor of Jerusalem. It's a somewhat more nuanced scene than we often see.

I think it serves both a negative and positive example.

She is an example of a widow being ripped by a system built on religious hucksterism. She's the victim of the worst kind of telly evangelist-style exploitation; the sort that says if you send a dollar, God will bless and heal you; a victim of the devouring of widow's houses that Jesus has just condemned.

But she is also an example of self-sacrifice, a picture of Jesus in giving her all for the good of others - even others who do not deserve it. Jesus is about to offer his body as a sacrifice on behalf of sinners - like the scribes, like the temple authorities who hound him to death, like this widow, like you and me.

We assume the audience of the teaching in v38-44 is primarily the disciples. Jesus is telling his friends not to be like the scribes, motivated by money, using religion as a means of making a fast buck at the expense of the vulnerable. Sadly it's a lesson we need to learn in each generation.

The lesson probably ripples wider to those in any kind of public service. After all, the scribes were among the political elite and rulers in Jerusalem. The widow is a lesson for all who enter politics - that it's about serving not being served.

And it's a lesson for us who are privileged to live in a system where we're allowed a say in who governs in our country. Are we looking for people who live lives of self sacrifice, seeking the welfare of their communities, paying particular attention to the poorest, the most vulnerable, the marginalised and weak?

Judging by the results of our recent round of elections, that doesn't seem to be the case. we still vote only for those who offer us the best deal, promise to protect our standard of living. We who have enough ought to be looking at the poor widows giving everything they have to keep their communities alive, get alongside them and share our fortune

All my ducks in a row

I've spent the morning sorting out my New Testament Theology course for Sri Lanka and then sending papers and articles for distribution to the students. Hopefully, it'll work ok. I have to sort out and send papers for my New Testament Social History course and then I'm all set - apart from jotting a few notes and aide memoires for the lectures themselves.

I am also trying to finish the notes on our church's series on Mark and the next episode of Approaching the Apocalypse. So life's full and challenging, interesting and stimulating. Can't ask for more than that, can you?

God creeping in at the edges

We had an excellent Pentecost Later Service last night. It worked really well despite being deceptively simple in structure.

We started with an explanation and then listened to three songs that in various ways explore what it means to be human in today's world - U2's Magnificent, the Killers Human (my favourite single of recent months) and Brett Dennen's Aint No Reason. People were invited to chat about how they felt about the songs as they played (they had lyric sheets to help them).

For further exploration we had three zones - one with the newspapers, one with notes on the section of Mark's Gospel we'd reached by yesterday and an art zone. In each of these people were invited to explore how we express our humanity in the worlds of work and politics, arts and culture.

The same questions were displayed in each zone - What does it mean to be human? What’s our calling as humans? What’s my calling? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with this? - plus some more specific ones.

Having meandered between zones for half an hour, we came back together for some liturgy and simple illustrative rituals - washing our hands to symbolise the cleansing that comes through the Spirit, drinking water as a symbol of refreshment and being anointed with oil as a sign of being filled with the Spirit to live as the people God calls us to be.

It was all very simple. yet it was a very profound evening. One reason for this was that we'd learned of the death of a regular member of our later service and the format gave space for those particularly affected by the news.

But I think something else was going on which is that when people are given freedom to explore a fairly well focused subject, that's what they do. And while they do that in a variety of ways, God is able to creep in around the edges and surprise us.

So, it was a good, simple and in many ways profound evening where lots of us encountered God in ways that aren't often possible in church.

Squaring the Assembly circle

Great to have lots of comments on the posts about the Assembly. I'm happy to be a conduit of comment into the planning process (and I shall be bundling up the comments I've had and sending them to the project team). Even better, however, would be if those commenting here would also email their thoughts to Baptist House (probably to Mike Quantick, the ever excellent Assembly administrator).

Apart from the good things said about Prism (for which I'm grateful as I am really pleased that in four years it seems to have become an essential part of some people's Assembly), it does seem that one of the key reasons why people go to the Assembly is to catch up with mates. This means that the organised programme is only a part of the reason why people attend.

Now, of course, except by planning less of a programme or scheduling far more free-time within the programme, this attraction of the Assembly is beyond the remit of the project team that puts the programme together. But I think it is a common observation that the programme is too full. And a shorter Assembly will certainly not help with this.

As to the comments on deliberation sessions and AGMs, I suspect that it's here that it is hardest to square the Assembly circle. Some avoid these sessions, preferring to drink coffee and chat with mates while they are on; others come to the Assembly precisely to attend these sessions - everything else being a bonus.

Then, of course, there are those who go to the Assembly to receive a major injection of challenge and teaching. For them the evening celebrations (whether in Prism or the other place) and the Bible studies are the key part of the event. The seminars and special interest groups might also help.

All this suggests to me that the assembly is actually too short at the moment. There is not enough time to catch up with friends, to deliberate properly (after all, we'd need a number of sessions for a debate to lead to a resolution that might then be applied locally to our practice in churches of various styles and hues), to learn about new things happening in the family across the nation - as well as being challenged to live up to our calling as followers of Jesus in the context of celebrations that facilitate encounter and learning.

And while some would say that it's not feasible to think about extending the run of the event - to a week, say - the alternative might be to watch it whither on the weekend vine as we try to cram in too much and leave people increasingly dissatisfied.

So, how about merging the Assembly and Leading Edge and holding the event somewhere in the centre of the country, accessible to a majority of Baptists, where there was both good camping and caravaning (for those inclined) and access to hotels and guest houses? Does such a place exist? Would anyone come? I'm not sure of the answer to either of those questions but it seems to me to be somcthing worth considering if we think the Assembly is worth developing.

And is it worth asking why more Baptists currently go to Spring Harvest and New Wine than the Assembly? Is there anything we can learn from why they choose those events that will help us to plan an Assembly that will attract more people?

Random thoughts about this and that

Getting ready for Sunday has been like pulling teeth this week. Finally finished the morning sermon half an hour ago (that's 7pm on Saturday - I'm usually done by close of play on Friday!) Not sure what that's about - hopefully they're both blinders!

Assembly discussion shaping up nicely but it'd be good to have more voices. There'll be something coming from Baptist House about the timing of next year's Assembly. I think there is a genuine desire to make the experience as positive as possible.

Otherwise, I've been listening to the live Leonard Cohen album, Foals Antidotes and the new Dylan, Together Through Life - all lovely. The Cohen in particular is one of the most life-affirming, uplifting live albums I've ever heard.

And I'm reading lots of stuff for my Sri Lanka trip and new writing project

More thoughts on the Baptist Assembly

We had a good meeting yesterday with a full and frank exchange of views on issues relating to the Assembly. More will be said about that in due course.

I was I think on reflection fairly called to account for expecting too much of David and Jonathan. So I apologise (publicly as my whinge was public) to them for being unfair. I think they have an almost impossible job balancing all the competing demands and expectations surrounding the Assembly. So let's pray for them and their respective teams.

Andy's comment to yesterday's post is interesting. I think we have three sessions at the assembly that could be described as business - the BUGB and BMS AGMs and the public resolutions session. Now these might not be what Andy means by deliberation but I can't see there being a huge vote among delegates for more of the same. indeed, I spoke to a number of this year's delegates who were asking for less of the same. 'Why can't we have one morning devoted to the AGMs,' said one mate; 'two short ones with coffee in the middle.'

I think this comment and Andy's throws up the need for a debate about what the Assembly is for. At the moment only a tiny proportion of Baptists come - 2,000 out of our 200,000 (not sure about that last figure; no doubt someone will correct me). Given the venues and style of assembly we hold, only a small proportion can come. So that does raise questions about the kind of deliberation we could undertake at an Assembly and what its status would be among the majority of baptists not present to deliberate.

I have long thought the public resolutions session is an exercise in motherhood and apple pie and that no one except the tiny proportion of attendees who take part actually think what we're talking about matters or will change anything. Editors around the country are not holding the front page ahead of Baptists expressing their view on the use of 'mosquitoes' to disperse young people!

So, I'm not sure what kind of deliberation we would sensibly undertake. But let's talk about it.

I think there is probably some value in encouraging the troops for another year. I can only speak about Prism in this regard but I reckon those who came to this year's programme were encouraged to think about their Baptist identity - loosely hung on the five core values - and challenged to think about how knowing who they are will help them to live as disciples of Jesus in their day-to-day contexts. I don't think that's a bad aim and if the outcome is that more churches grasp what it is to be missional communities, then that's a result.

There are limits to what can be achieved in a weekend (does that mean we should have a debate about the length of the gathering), so we need to cut our cloth accordingly and focus on the things that really matter. So, what are they?

Does the future have a Baptist Assembly

I'm off to Didcot for a meeting to talk about the Baptist Assembly. Nothing new there. I've done this on odd days for the past five years. But this promises to be something different.

I think the Assembly is at a cross-roads and possibly doesn't have a future in its current form. The suggestion for next year is an assembly that lasts from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon in Plymouth. Will people from Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, even Leicester, Birmingham and London spend upwards of £250 and risk the weekend traffic jams on the M5 for barely 48 hours worth of Assembling?

I doubt it.

But there's a deeper issue. Why are we inviting people to come at all? The shorter the event, the more dominated it is by business meetings. And my admittedly completely unscientific straw poll among delegates this year and friends who haven't been to the Assembly for a while suggests no one will be travelling great distances for such fare.

And then there's the reason why I'm invited along - Prism, the alternative strand of the Assembly. The question is: can you have an alternative to an assembly that barely lasts two days and is dominated by the business meetings for which we do not offer an alternative (perhaps we should)?

So, I think Baptists need to have a proper debate about the Assembly - what it is, how long it should it be, where we should meet. I wonder if anyone has the energy for such a debate. I wonder if we are really up for a change that will breathe fresh life into this annual gathering of English Baptists.

Moderating comments

Rather usefully, I've learned how to delete comments that are fabulously unhelpful. The anonymous comment left on the post about our U2charist which seemed to be an inordinately long ramble about nothing at all has gone.

I've decided not to moderate comments on this blog because I want people to comment freely. But I reserve the right to delete anything that is against the spirit of the free exchange of views. So if you're passing, please leave a comment but please try not to comment at a greater length than the post you're commenting on.

After all blogs are meant to be conversations not monologues...

Ministry in exile

My article 'The Half-Life of Exiles:Reflections on ministry from the margins' published in Ministry Today is on-line here. I think it reads OK, but I'd be interested to know what others think. So feel free to comment.

Celebrating the faith with Bono

Last night's U2charist was a blast! Ben's right that notwithstanding a couple of technical hitches, the evening went really well.

I'd wondered whether the format would work but about 15 minutes in, I realised it did. I felt myself being caught up in an act of worship, not just enjoying some of my favourite U2 songs. I saw and heard things in familiar U2 tracks that I hadn't really been aware of before because of the context in which I was now hearing them. When it came to breaking bread, I felt I'd been really well prepared to remember and reflect on Jesus' sacrifice for us.

Nearly everyone from our church who came - and that included quite a few retired people - said how much they'd enjoyed it even if U2 wasn't quite their cup of tea. One or two older ladies were even seen swaying their hips and moving to the groove - something they don't usually do in church!

I think Ben's point about putting the words up for all the songs (we only displayed them for some) is a good one. A number of people expressed similar sentiments. I think using concert footage as well as CD tracks and song videos helped to capture something of the immediacy and excitement of a U2 gig. And on Bullet the Blue Sky the 'message' of the song was greatly enhanced by footage of the US gun lobby played on the big screens ahead of Edge's guitar intro. But we do need to put the words up and select which live tracks we use because, as Ben rightly notes, some are quite long.

So all-in-all, I think the format really works. I'd certainly do it again.

Catching up

I've been on blogging lite recently as I'm still catching up on stuff post Spring Harvest and the Baptist Assembly. Why do they happen within a couple of weeks of each other?

I have finally caught up with the study notes for Mark. So this week's should actually be posted this week. I've also begun to think about the two courses I'll be teaching in Sri Lanka in July. News from that troubled island continues to be grim - whether the war is over or not, there'll be fall-out for Tamils for many months.

This morning I'll be reflecting on Psalm 104 in the first of a brief series running up to Pentecost and our church anniversary looking at the work of the Holy Spirit. Today, I'm looking at the role of the Spirit in creation. This is the Sunday version of the material that I'll be using at our next Alternative Wednesday gathering looking at God and Darwin where I'll be reflecting more fully on how we might read scripture in the light of evolutionary science.

We also have our long awaited U2charist this evening. I'm really looking forward to it because I'm intrigued to see whether the format actually works. In preparing for it, I have been struck again by how much theology there is in Bono's lyrics. His biblical allusions are well-known but they are not just scattered randomly in songs, they are part of a quite mature reflection on the way of the world and the call of Christ to a life of discipleship within it.

Now, I'm off to messy church for breakfast and fun, stories and songs - and the chance to see half my leadership pogo-ing with toddlers!

St Arbucks takes flight

We've just had our first St Arbucks Thursday this evening. And it went really well.

The Starbuck's staff were really hospitable - even offering taster samples and nibbles - and made us very welcome.

we had a rolling PowerPoint featuring five contemporary songs that was accompanied by sheets of lyrics and cards saying who we were and why we were there.

we had a couple of guys who came because of the music and a load of others who came because they were asked by others.

For a first outing, it went really well. We had a great chilled atmosphere and good conversation. I'm looking forward to next month when we're hoping to have live music and more coffee tasting.

Assembly moments

There were lots of highlights for me at the Baptist Assembly this year.

I think chief among them was the way the team that led Prism, who hadn't really worked together in this way before, gelled and produced some really good sessions. It's been gratifying to have some positive feedback as well.

Another highlight was undoubtedly Keith Judson, regional minister in the Midlands, and his two boys playing Keith's song The White Slaves of England. In rehearsal it pretty much moved me to tears; it's a cracking song - it ought to be on a CD and soon (hope you're reading this, Keith).

It was also wonderful to meet and work - as well as dance - with Luran Bethel. She's a thoroughly lovely person, with a great ministry.

One of the curious things about leading Prism is that I have no real sense of what else happened in the BIC over the weekend. I heard snippets about how sessions were going from friends I bumped into and at the 7am ELT breakfast (not one of the highlights!).

I wonder if there still has to be more iuntegration between Prism and what happens in the other place in terms of guests. One thing that disappoints me still is that Jonathan and David didn't just drop in, didn't make it a priority to be at one Prism session. But, I appreciate, Assembly's a busy tiome for them. And perhaps we are not gathering by the seaside to see them.

It was great to catch up with people between sessions, share a beer or lunch with old friends and see how their lives and ministries are going.

All in all, it was a great weekend - one of the best Assemblies I've been to. Now, the question is, will we do it all again next year? Let's sleep on that one for a while...

Just before I close my eyes

Back from the Assembly and we had a great time. Prism got more visitors than ever, the programme rocked and everyone did an amazing job.

reflections to come but I've a week of sleep to catch up on.

More than a name on a yoghurt carton

Those of you who thought that Oncken was just the name on a rather posh yoghurt, should check out Johann Oncken. There's a whole chapter on him in Ian Randall's excellent history of European Baptists that's being launched at the assembly. So buy the book and be amazed!

Johan Oncken, born at the start of the Nineteenth Century, was a German pastor. But he can lay claim to being every bit as significant as Spurgeon - if not more so. Countless European Baptist groups owe their origins to this tireless disciple-maker.

Starting out in Hamburg in the teeth of much opposition from the locals, Oncken preached and planted churches among the urban poor and working population and especially the migrants who came through that great port city. Three quarters of his first baptised converts in the 1830s went off to start churches and preach the gospel somewhere else.

His motto was 'jeder baptist ein missionar' (every baptist a missionary) and all his teaching and discipling was geared towards moulding missionary disciples. And his efforts seem to have paid off. By the time of his death, the German Baptist movement had grown from virtually nothing to 16,000 members in 96 churches. But even more significantly, many of those had planted churches and begun Baptist associations in Russia, Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, the Baltic States, Austria, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, France and Poland. Even further afield Oncken-inspired disciples went to Australia and west Africa and through his American partners, started ministries in Brazil.

What a guy! We'll be telling his story in Prism (at this weekend's Baptist Assembly in Bournemouth) as he's one of our heroes from our past who inspires our mission in the present.

Words and their opposites

When you get disillusioned, does it mean that when you felt everything was going just fine, you were 'illusioned'?

I was talking to someone yesterday who's become pretty disillusioned with church. But as he described his experiences in various places, at big and small churches, in and out of various streams, I wondered whether his entire journey was one of 'illusion-ment'.

Perhaps the only way to avoid being disillusioned with church - and let's face it, there's lots more to cause disillusion than hope - is to stay put and build a community of people who share their lives, shout at each other, comfort and support each other, commit to stick with each other come what may.

This seems to me to be the only way to pierce the illusion and arrive at something other than disillusionment.

Getting ready for Bournemouth

The Baptist assembly is looming - three days away and still quite a bit to prepare. But I'm sure it'll all go well - we've a really good team involved in Prism this year, so I have every confidence that it'll be all right on the night.

I've been preparing stuff for our history zone on John Bunyan and William Carey - great baptists who represent something about the core values we're exploring, Bunyan on sacrifice and Carey on inclusion.

Writing the stuff on Bunyan made me want to dust off my copy of The Pilgrim's Progress and read it again. I had not realised just how much he had written in later life or what a sacrifice he had made - he spent a third of his life in prison because he refused to tell the court that he wouldn't preach the gospel.

I hope his and other stories from our Baptist past inspire us over the weekend to live up to their example.

Spare a dime for a poor rich kid

No doubt about it - the budget confirms we're in a big mess. The superlatives that have littered our front pages ram the point home: life's going to be tough and tough for a good while.

But in the midst of all the hand-ringing and talk of going to hell in a handbasket, I have found myself with an uneasy feeling. All the commentary has been about how we, we who have lived beyond our means for the past generation, we who have believed free markets hold the keys to the Kingdom for 30 years, we who have watched our asset values mushroom beyond the dreams of Ozymandias, are going to have to tighten our belts a notch - and it's not fair and someone must be blamed (providing it isn't us).

We are even being asked to feel sorry for those on £150,000 a year or more who will have to pay a touch more tax. Apparently, Kate Moss' tax bill could rise by half a million and Wayne Rooney's by £450,000. I don't begrudge these undoubtedly talented and beautiful people their wedge. But I do wonder what planet some editors and commentators inhabit.

While the super-rich struggle by on £410 a day (if they earn £150,000 a year), a billion people every bit as talented, beautiful and hardworking as Moss and Rooney luxuriate on the princely sum of $1 (about 68p at today's exchange rate).

One had hoped that the credit crunch might function as a wake-up call to us all to take a fresh look at what we value and how we value it. Perhaps it might have prompted us to ask whether there's a better, fairer, more just and equitable, more sustainable way to run the world than we've tried in the past 30 years.

But apparently not. All the talk is about how we get out of this as quickly and as unscathed as possible so we can resume business as normal. and certainly we should do nothing to disturb the fragile rich who apparently will be scared away from our shores if they are asked to contribute just a tiny bit more to the general well-being of everyone.

Yes, the budget was a missed opportunity. But the commentary on it has been as morally vacuous and empty as the statement itself.

Getting to grips with Darwin

We gathered to delve into God and Darwin last night, in the first of two evenings devoted to exploring issues of creation and evolution and the various ways Christians approach these matters.

It was a good natured gathering with all views being expressed. What was interesting (though I guess not really unexpected) was that a majority of participants were less concerned with the means by which God has created than with what an acceptance of Darwin's theory would do the way we read scripture.

So next time, we'll be looking at what the Bible says about God and the world, how we read Genesis 1-3 and (equally importantly) how we read the wealth of other material in the Old and New Testaments that fleshes out the picture of creation we are given in the first chapters of the Bible.

In particular, next time we'll explore how we understand the Fall and the goodness of God if we live in a world where life has evolved.

Personally, I've found this all fascinating. I think I have never really thought through the implications of one view over another. So, if nothing else, this has been a journey of discovery for me. I've found a whole load of helpful resources out there by scholars and theologians I've not read before - people like Sam Berry, Christopher Southgate, John Haught, Denis Edwards and Denis Alexander. Fab, stimulating stuff.

The other personally satisfying aspect of this is that I have returned to my Msc studies in the structure and organisation of science and technology and in particular the way science develops and how scientific models work. I have found it fascinating to explore the early nineteenth century landscape that darwin inhabited with its fresh questions arising from amateur fossil hunters and geologists, leading to Darwin's elegant, beautifully-written account of the origin of life.

Once I've got them together, I'll post my handouts.

Back home

Back from a busy but pretty good Spring Harvest - hence the silence! I'll be reflecting on the experience later in the week.

This week I need to sort out the Prism programme for the Baptist Assembly (just two weeks away) and the first session of our look at God and Darwin (part of our Alternative Wednesday programme), as well as catching up with what's been going on at church in my absence.

It's good to be back home after a week in a Butlin's chalet on a Butlin's diet!

Seeing in the dark of Good Friday.

One service down five to go!

We had a really nice Thursday break this lunch time. Good number, great hymns and good atmosphere. I was reflecting on the fact that virtually everyone found the first Good Friday a bit of puzzle - Pilate, the priests, the disciples. Only Jesus knew what was happening and why - and he wasn't saying much on the day itself.

This lunch time I reflected particularly on the shock of the Centurion. We don't often talk about him except to lament the fact that he was once played by John Wayne in a Hollywood life of Christ (was it The Greatest Story Ever Told?)

This guy was a battle hardened Roman soldier, possibly at the end of his career, posted in the armpit of the empire and given this ghastly job to do in the foul weather of the first Good Friday. Nothing much had happened really. The prisoner on the middle cross had screamed for aid in the midst of the storm but in a language the Roman didn't speak. it's only what you'd expect; everyone breaks eventually and goes whimpering into the dark.

Imagine his shock then, when this same prisoner shouts out and meets death with a cry of triumph. Commenting on this verse in Mark (15:39a), Walter Wangerin says 'then suddenly he dies...That's what rivets the centurion. It is as if this man chose to go fully conscious straight to the wall of death and there to strike it with all his might and, in the striking, die. Aware of absolutely everything...One thing strikes the centurion: how can a crucified criminal act so convincingly like the victor.'

Little wonder that, open mouthed, this hardened servant of Caesar who no doubt often called his commander-in-chief son of god, looked up at the cross and says 'truly this man was the Son of God.' That is to say, this strangely victorious prisoner rather than Caesar rightly claims that title.

If he saw it, can we?