A million souls struggling for the light

Been busy and unwell - hence the absence.

However, I thought I'd post my latest contribution to the church magazine - for those of my congregation who don't read the print version and anyone who's interested.

Recently I had an epiphany. It occurred during an ad for Davidoff men's fragrance. It wasn’t that I suddenly wanted to smell like ocean waves crashing on rocks or silk shimmering against a sunset sky (whatever that might smell like!). It was that I was surprisingly aware of God’s voice leaking into my ears through the TV speakers in the ad’s soundtrack: the fragile voice of Joseph Arthur, borne aloft on gentle acoustic guitar, sang:

I pictured you in the sun wondering what went wrong

And falling down on your knees asking for sympathy

And being caught in between all you wish for and all you seen

And trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in

May God's love be with you

Always....

May God's love be with you

Quite what this has to do with selling perfume is lost on me. But I’ve loved the song since I first heard it and sensed a sensitive soul groping for the light. I am inclined to take such songs at face value and frequently find myself pondering what experience has led the writer to involve God in his search for peace or love or a sense that life might amount to something.

I don't know anymore what it's for

I'm not even sure if there is anyone who is in the sun;

Will you help me to understand
'Cause i been caught in between all I wish for and all I need
Maybe you're not even sure what it's for any more than me
May God's love be with you
Always...

Nothing is certain – except perhaps God’s love.

I listen to a lot of pop and rock music and frequently find myself hearing God in my iPod headphones in truly unexpected ways. On our Big Welcome Sunday at the end of September, I shared my love of David Bowie’s 1976 album Station to Station and got a hugely unexpected response from people who don’t listen to or like David Bowie but who similarly heard God speaking to them that morning through the thin white duke’s anguish:

Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing
And I'm trying hard to fit among your scheme of things
It's safer than a strange land, but I still care for myself

And I don't stand in my own light

Lord, lord, my prayer flies like a word on a wing

My prayer flies like a word on a wing

Does my prayer fit in with your scheme of things?

Bowie knows we live in an ‘age of grand illusion’ where nothing is certain and where glamour and fame does nothing to nourish the soul. His voice is part of a chorus line from contemporary music all giving melody to the emptiness behind the glitz. The tragedy, of course, is that so many people look in from the outside and think that the celebrity life is one of unalloyed joy and fulfilment and crave it like mad.

I think God speaks to me through this music because he wants me to hear what people who don’t come to church are saying about life and more importantly about him. Bowie’s Word on a Wing longs for a place of belonging: ‘I'm trying hard to fit among your scheme of things… Does my prayer fit in with your scheme of things?’

When Nathanael was brought to Jesus by his friend Philip in John 1:43-51, he received a welcome that he probably wasn’t expecting. Jesus affirms the good things in his life and accepts him as part of his team. All the important stuff about what he believes about God can be sorted out as they eat and travel together.

What a world of popular music tells me is that we need welcome people like Jesus welcomed Nathanael. In so many of the tunes I listen to I hear God saying ‘are you getting this? Are you feeling the pain in this music? Are you ready to welcome the people who feel and speak this way, affirm the good in them and travel with them as they find out more about me?’

We’re often quick to write off such people – and their legions of fans – as merely hostile to the things of God and not really people like us. Well, they aren’t people like us, but they are people loved by God, people he is urging us to welcome into our community and so we can help them with the deep questions they are asking about life and God.

Joseph Arthur wonders ‘if there is anyone who is in the sun/will you help me to understand…?’ Are we a community where people with similar struggles can come and find support as they wrestle with their questions? It’s the kind of community that Jesus was building at the beginning of John’s gospel with the likes of Andrew, Philip and Nathanael. So it might be the kind of community he’d like us to build here in Bromley. How about it?

Being church in a harsh economic climate

One of the things the church has a chance to be is a community that models a different approach to life. For many years it's been popular to describe this as 'counter-cultural'. The trouble is that this term has been frustratingly vague and often informed as much by cultural factors as by Biblical thinking.

Trevor, commenting on a previous post about social solidarity, lamented the fact that churches aren't really talking about what's happening in our country. Part of the reason for this, I guess (rather obviously), is that within our churches are people who voted for most of the options on offer in May's election; there are people who want to pay less tax and so support public spending cuts and those who think the state has a responsibility to protect the poorest in our community. Because of these divisions of opinion, we tend to steer clear of talking about these issues in church.

Trevor reminds us of Jeremiah 29 - a text that called me into ministry 30 years ago - and suggests that 'our churches aren’t going to be able to prosper if the communities around them are being ravaged by cutbacks and redundancies.' That's food for thought, isn't it?

What does it mean, in the context of impending spending cuts and the general fragility of our economy, the squeeze on household incomes and general gloom about our economic prospects following years of boom, to 'seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.'? How will we 'pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper'?

The word rendered 'peace and prosperity' is the Hebrew word shalom that offers a picture of wholeness, well-being, the welfare of everyone in the community. Church, according to Jeremiah, is a gathering, a collection, a community of people who embody the values pre-supposed by this rich Hebrew word. What does that look like?

Peter reflects on this passage in Jeremiah in his first letter and one of his observations is that 'as foreigners and exiles, [we] abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.' (1 Peter 2:11-12).

Perhaps if we see sinful desires as referring less to sex and more to our economic lives (greed, for example; the use of our cash only to satisfy our wants and desires and not the needs of those around us), we could begin to reflect on how this call to godly living might resource counter-communal living in today's harsh economic reality.

So, exactly what is church, then?

We had a great time with one of our Urban Expression teams yesterday evening - reflecting on the stories from the past year, reviewing progress, setting some goals. In the course of it, all kinds of thoughts started buzzing round my mind.

The biggest was the one that's been there for years: exactly what is church, then? How do you know when you stumble into it? What marks it out from other gatherings?

Time was when church planters were working with a blueprint. They had been sent by their church to reproduce it in a new location. So a group of the willing set off to find a venue in a place where there wasn't a church like the one they'd come from, and they started one. They brought musicians, screens, projectors, hymn books, bibles, chairs, lecterns, an urn to boil water for coffee; they invited people from the neighbourhood; and hey presto - church!

Maybe that still works in some places. But it doesn't actually answer the question at the top of this post.

One of the things I'm discovering as I talk with people involved in UE is that answering that question is nothing like as easy as we thought for two reasons.

The first is that all the religious trappings of a gathering don't make it church. As the young son of one of team from last night observed 'church isn't the building, it's the people, silly.' Quite right. But which people?

The second is that Paul planted churches all over the Greek Roman empire with none of the trappings noted above in evidence. No special hall, no musicians, no projector, screen, chairs, books, etc, etc.

We don't doubt that his gathering in a workshop or an upstairs room was church, despite the absence of anything we seem to think is essential. So, what made it church? And how did he know when he'd planted one? And would his answer help us in the situations in which we're trying to do mission and plant churches?

Answers on a post card, please...

The gossamer threads of social solidarity

I've hung back over recent days from commenting on what's happening politically - largely due to a mixture of disbelief and incandescent rage that means my fingers don't kiss the keyboard properly! But following the publication of the Browne review into higher education, a thought that has been taking shape over the past couple of weeks finally became expressible.

It's not the hypocrisy of Vince Cable accepting a proposal to more than double tuition fees barely six months after signing a pledge to oppose any rise in fees. It's not the mantra of the government saying they have no choice because they didn't know how bad the deficit was until they took office, despite the fact the size of the deficit hasn't changed since last autumn's pre-budget report (as the Insttitute for Fiscal Studies keeps pointing out). Sadly, such things are just par for the course from politicians. And we can forgive that.

What has struck me is that the debate about benefits, tuition fees and public services is couched in entirely consumerist terms. It's all about 'what's in it for me?' and 'what am I as a tax payer prepared to spend on other people?' (as though we are preparing a Christmas list and totting up how much uncile Bill is worth against cousin Eileen).

There is precious little sense of society (so maybe Mrs Thatcher was right!), barely any notion of our solidarity with one another.

Child benefit is universal because it reminds us all that we are collectively responsible for raising the next generation - the benefit is merely a token of our solidarity in that task; it says that as a society we think raising children matters more than anything else and we'll all poull together to ensure parents are supported in it. We invest in education because it is good for the country to have a literate and skilled citizenry not just in economic terms but in cultural and social terms as well.

There was a great example of this in last week's Sunday Times. Eleanor Mills wrote a think piece in the News Review section headlined 'without God, culture is lost'. Now this was not a rant by a Christian feeling marginalised, wanting a return to the good old days when we told everyone how to live their lives rather than Richard Dawkins. It was rather a piece based on the simple observation that without some knowledge of the Bible and Christian tradition, vast amounts of our cultural heritage are simply incomprehensible. Can you read Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, our great poetic and literary tradition without knowing the broad Christian culture in which their talents flowered? Can you 'see' the art on the walls of the National Gallery and other great institutions without some understanding of the theological palette of the artist?

I think Ms Mills answer was that we need to educate people so they understand this or something very important about our culture will be lost and we will the poorer in all sorts of ways - and not just economically, though it will have economic effects. And who pays for this? We all do because we all think our culture is worth investing in. And that's best done out of general taxation, managed by those people we have elected to be guardians of the things we value.

Well, it struck me listening to Vince Cable yesterday, that this argument applies across the piece. Our society is knitted together on gossamer threads of obligation and common interest. It's not for nothing that we talk about the body politic; and if society is a body, then when one part is unhealthy, the whole body suffers. It's a notion derived as much from Pauline theology as it is from Plato and Aristotle.

It's easy to cut spending - though as Mrs Thatcher and all who've attempted to slash and burn in her wake discovered, not as easy as talking about it on party platforms; it's much harder to repair the torn ligaments, ruptured muscles and broken bones that can result if it's done without care for the fragility of our social solidarity.

Those wonderful Smoke Fairies

Finally got to listen to the new Smoke Fairies album Through low Light and Trees. And it's really pretty wonderful. The surprising thing is that it hasn't really registered on reviewers radars. This is a shame as this is English eerie folk at its best - like Tom Waites channelling Sandy Denny (or vice versa). Check it out.

Busy but bursting with brilliance

Life's been pretty full-on over the past few days. but excellent.

On Saturday, Robin and Sarah got married and it was lovely to conduct their wedding and share in the celebrations afterwards.

On Sunday morning, we had a storming baptismal service. three young people were baptised in a packed church. Their testimonies were amazing - each one of them has clearly had a profound encounter with God and want to live their lives as followers of Jesus.

There were a lot of people there who don't usually go to church and afterwards a number of them said that if they'd known church was like that, they'd have taken it more seriously. So, we'll see if any make a return visit sometime soon. It will mean that we'll have to make some changes - which is a good thing!

One of the things I take away from the service is that something fast-moving, lively, with many people involved and nothing lasting more than five minutes, does seem to scratch where lots of people itch.

We also had a good later service with a number of visitors and returnees and a good atmosphere as we reflected on prayer and broke bread together.

And then today, I started teaching New Testament at Spurgeon's College. Well, to be strictly accurate, the college's  full-time NT lecturer has gone to Durham and they've asked a couple of local ministers to help out. So, I'll be teaching two hours a week for this year on Monday mornings from 8:30am. And today's session went really well. A good class of 15 alert students, who asked good questions and made intelligent contributions. So, I'm looking to sharing the journey through 1 Corinthians and the life and though of Paul with them.

Tomorrow, I think, I'll need a lie-down!

Soaking up the beauty and mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau

A footnote to our recent French holiday.

On one of the hottest days - it was 35 degrees according to the car's thermometer (though I wasn't sure that could be accurate) - we walked up to the tiny hilltop village of Rennes-le-Chateau. This unprepossessing, if moderately attractive village, was propelled to international stardom of a kind by the Da Vinci Code. What surprised me was that the village bore few marks of this international notoriety.

The reason for the interest of the conspiracy theorists in this little place is the extraordinary ministry of the priest Berenger Sauniere who arrived in 1885. Through his ministry he renovated the church, built a substantial villa and commissioned art to grace the grounds of these buildings.

The mystery is where the money came from to do all this. The myth makers think he found ancient cathar texts that led him to a treasure hoard or that he discovered the truth about Mary Magdalene and Jesus and was handsomely paid off by the Catholic hierarchy to keep quiet (he certainly never revealed his secret). Others suggest that his largess was the result of fraud on a significant scale.

What is undeniable is that the the building work he carried out magnificent (if occasionally bordering on folly). But his artistic taste suggests a fierce Catholic orthodoxy and not the work of a man who had discovered that Mary Magdalene pitched up in this village to preserve the bloodline of Jesus that led to the rise of the Merovingian kings.

The priest himself spoke modestly of his aims for the his work. He wanted to turn the hilltop fortified, though by the time he got there, significantly run-down town, into a place of peace, tranquility and spiritual enlightenment. 'The hordes of warriors have been replaced by peaceful warriors. They come here to admire, within this incomparable setting, the marvels of art...these works of art have taken the place of the murderous architecture of the past. The turrets and crenelations now serve for contemplating, close to heaven, the magnificent panorama strtching away on every side as far as the eye can see.'

Swift to judge

It's interesting listening to the reaction to Ed Miliband's speech.

Every word is being seized on, every phrase chewed over for what it tells us about the man, his history, his thinking, his values.

Yeah, it was an important speech. But it's not the be-all and end-all of Ed Miliband; not the last word on what the opposition will stand for in the coming months.

His speech reads very well - and you can read it here. The advantage of reading a speech of this kind is that you look at and think about the words without the distractions of the audience response or the commentators opinions.

Part of it talks about the need for a new politics, a new way of talking about the issues we face. So let's begin to have that conversation and not write each other off on the basis of a sound bite or a speech. We need everyone joining the task of bringing ideas to make our big society a good, equal, fair and just society.

It seems it's not only the church that rushes to judgement, after all...

Building on the Big Welcome

We had a good morning yesterday. I had a very interesting and overwhelmingly positive reaction to my musings on Bowie and Nathanael (see my previous post) and the church had a large number of visitors. Intriguingly, many of those were visitors from overseas, including Lithuania and Holland. It says something significant about the way Bromley is changing.

It was, of course, the Big Welcome (or Back to Church Sunday as others call it), so it was great to have a number of visitors in our congregation (though I'm not sure many of them were there because of the efforts of the church inviting them!) I suspect the visitors pitched up because of our location - in the town centre, close to bus routes and recognisably ecclesiastical - and, I'd like to think, because of the welcome we offer once those people come close.

We've been having a conversation about welcome recently, pondering how we can capitalise on what we're already doing, how we make people feel at home among us.

A key part of this has been how we can help people to belong at the level they want to. We have tended to operate a 'one-size fits all' policy: everyone coming to church is looking to be actively involved in the church's programme, certainly wants to join a home group and is probably keen to volunteer in Sunday School, youth work or the women's meeting.

But recent experience suggests that this is not the case. we have a number of people who 'belong' to our church - in that they attend weekly without fail (often more regularly than long-standing committed members) but do not want to become members and certainly don't see volunteering in the church's programme as the path to fulfilment. They are even pretty iffy about the hone groups as they are currently constituted.

I suspect other churches are facing these issues. I'd be interested to know how others tackle it. Our conversations continue. I'll keep you posted.

Finding God in the groove

I'm listening to David Bowie's seminal Station to Station. I'm doing this because it's fab and a new deluxe version is coming out next week with the much bootlegged Nassau gig all digitally tidied up and packaged along with it. I'm also doing it as a displacement activity from sermon preparation. But what do you know if God's not there in the groove saying 'how about reflecting on this...?'

Got to keep searching and searching

Oh, what will I be believing and who will connect me with love?
Wonder who, wonder who, wonder when

Bowie sings on the title track - having mentioned Hebrew symbols that he's pictured drawing on the CD sleeve, in passing. Then on Word on a Wing, he sings
 
Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing
And I'm trying hard to fit among your scheme of things
It's safer than a strange land, but I still care for myself
And I don't stand in my own light
Lord, lord, my prayer flies like a word on a wing
My prayer flies like a word on a wing
Does my prayer fit in with your scheme of things?

suggesting that maybe the person who's walked into his life out of his dreams in the verse isn't a lover but a divine presence. Of course, Bowie's praying in the midst of his cocaine addiction and living the fast life, his gaunt frame draped in a white suit and swirl of cigarette smoke.

Bowie knows everything he's achieved - and he's at the height of his fame and creativity in 1976 when this record is almost thrown together in LA - is a puff of smoke, 'an age of grand illusion'; the golden years cannot last and even in the midst of them 'there's my baby, lost that's all/once I'm begging you save her little soul...i believe, O Lord, I believe all the way.' The glare of the neon and celebrity makes him long to 'run for the shadows in these golden years'

In short, this is an album of spiritual longing set to some of the greatest tunes ever committed to vinyl.

And suddenly, my half-formed reflections on Nathanael begin to take shape. As Jesus collects disciples, he invites people to come and see what's going on around him; Philip fetches his mate Nathanael. It's possible that the way Jesus refers to him indicates that he's a bit of a zealot, an Israelite who's looking for a better world which certainly isn't going to be found anywhere in Galilee where he grew up. Bowie sings what Nathanael might have been thinking: 'Just because I believe don't mean I don't think as well'.

But Jesus invites him to see if that new world might be found in him.

The great thing about this story in John 1 is that Jesus isn't inviting any of these folk to join an institution or come to a meeting. Andrew and John(?) ask where Jesus is going and he says 'come and see'. He's on a journey and he invites people to walk with him and discover stuff along the way. This is the essence of mission - inviting people to come and see.

Have we found anything worth inviting our mates to look at?

Lessons in the stunning beauty of Monsegur

Coming down the steep path from the stunningly beautiful ruined castle at Monsegur, one passes a stone memorial to the 220 cathars who, following the overthrow of this seemingly impenetrable fortress, chose not to submit to the power of Rome. They were burned at the stake in the field at the foot of the hill. It's hard to square such horror with the staggering beauty of the surroundings.

Monsegur was the last stronghold of the Cathars overthrown in 1244. It was the end of a fifty year crusade against the heretical movement that had cost thousands of lives and extended the writ of the French king southwards to the Languedoc and Carcasonne (the key city of the region).

The cathars were a heretical sect, a dualistic blend of gnosticism and Christianity, which was embraced by the leading families of the region probably because it set them apart from growing French state to the north. It is undoubtedly the case that the crusade launched against the movement in the late twelfth century was as much about that state extending its powers over the fertile areas around Toulouse and Carcasonne.

The early leader of the crusade was Simon De Montfort. Growing up in Leicester, I had known De Montfort as a pioneer of democracy, one of the barons that forced King John to Runnymede to sign Magna Carta. Streets and halls, even a university are named after him in my home city. It was only when I when I first went to southern France about 15 years ago that a different picture of De Montfort emerged, a man who cut a bloody swathe through the region, a crusader of stupendous brutality.

As I stood on the low rising hill before the steep climb to Monsegur, I reflected on the fact that people should be allowed to be wrong. No one should die just because they choose to worship in a different way from their neighbours. Perhaps a key aspect of being a follower of Jesus is that we accept that some will get what he's about and others won't. One of the great insights of the Baptist pioneer, Thomas Helwys, was that everyone had the right to be wrong, that everyone had the right to choose what religion or philosophy they would follow and the state had no right to enforce one option over another.

Monsegur is testimony to what happens when that insight gets forgotten as it has so frequently through our bloody history

Back from a great holiday

Well, we're back from a great holiday in Mirepoix in a part of France we've not visited before.

Mirepoix is a great bastide town with a fabulously preserved central square and a cathedral with the widest nave of any church in France. It's a wonderful place. We spent mornings sitting in the square drinking coffee and watching people come and go.

Afternoons were spent touring great historical sites - the area is dripping with history as it was the centre of Catharism in the twelfth century (more on that later) - or swimming in the local lake.

Evenings were spent eating either in our gite or in one of the numerous local restaurants.

All-in-all it was everything a French holiday should be.

We stayed in a place called l'ancienne pharmacie. It's the first year that the owners have been letting it out, I gather, and it's a great three-storey town house just off Mirepoix's main square. It's very well equipped and decorated and even has a small roof terrace. You can check out the website here.

More when I've recovered!

Breaking the back of my dissertation

I've put the final full stop at the end of the final sentence of the third substantial chapter of my dissertation. So my supervisor now has 37,715 words to chew over (though the first chapter will need recasting and will probably come out a little longer).

All that remains is topping and tailing with an introduction and conclusion plus the slightly tedious compiling of the bibliography (hopefully in alphabetical order) and it's done.

And as if that's not good news enough ahead of a holiday... today I heard that John Drane has written a lovely endorsement of my forthcoming Lion book to join the one that Peter Oakes has already written.

I can lay back in the warm glow of achievement until work rears its ugly (or do I mean lovely?) head again in a fortnight...

The slippery, scintilating sound of eels

Went to see Eels last night at my favourite rock venue, Brixton Academy. It was a cracking evening - though it started slightly bizarrely with a ventriloquist!

E's band, however, were tight and loud (much louder than I was expecting!). I gather E is not a big fan of live performance and it shows a little in his awkward manner when speaking to the audience and a lot in his tendency to play everything slightly faster than on record. But there were some great moments, terrific versions of tracks for the new record (which I think could be seen to be a classic Eels album), great selections from the back catalogue (one of the most impression in recent  rock) and a blinding cover of Summer in the City.

E writes beautifully, his lyrics are often simple but profound and suffused with a world-weary wit. Sometimes last night the subtlety was squashed by the speed of delivery but it was still possible to appreciate the light and shade in his songs. A great gig.

Lessons from the workshops of Corinth

So, I'm pondering the second half of my chapter on the social location of the Pauline communities (while listening to Chacago Transit Authority) and formulating a thesis (as you do when writing a dissertation - though some might think I should have formulated a thesis already, but let's not go there!) and it strikes me that it might have implications for how we understand church today.

The thesis is simple (and not very original - but I'm doing a review dissertation, so originality is not expected): Paul was a craft worker - a tentmaker, probably a worker in leather rather than a weaver of cloth - who worked from sunrise to sunset in a workshop with others in the same trade. He probably slept at the back of the workshop or on a mezzanine floor above his bench; maybe in a first floor room. He would have eaten there or in the popina (the Roman equivalent of a fast food outlet) on the corner of the street, where for a few pennies he'd have picked a chunck of bread and vegetable stew.

So, where did church and mission happen? In the workshop. As he worked, he talked; his audience was his fellow workers, customers, passers-by drawn by a vigorous conversation. Nearly everyone who heard him speak would have been craft workers or slaves from customers houses come to place or collect orders. This explains why the Pauline communities were dominated by artisans and why there's such a stress on working for a living and sharing what you've made with those who haven't had such a good day or week as you.

It possibly has implications for how we read 1 Corinthians 11-14. Scholars generally agree that this teaching refers to the gathering of believers around a meal for what we now call 'worship' (Paul wouldn't have called it that, however). The apostle envisages prayer and prophecy, teaching and learning all in the context of a meal, at the heart of which was a remembering of Jesus and the cross. Many reckon it was loosely based on the Graeco-Roman symposium (and they are probably right).

But what if, instead of taking place in a family home or appartment, Paul envisages the Corinthians gathered in a workshop, eating together at the end of the working day? In fact, it wouldn't have been like this for all the communities in Corinth because it's clear that one of the problems in some gatherings was that some started eating before others arrived. This implies that some didn't need to work until sunset, suggesting a degree of wealth (though not at all suggesting membership of the tiny social elite as some have argued). But it would almost certainly have been like this in Thessalonica where, from Paul's letters, we get the flavout of a small gathering that is very workshop-based.

It all leads me to the conclusion that Paul's communities were socially located in craft workers shops and appartments and therefore consisted overwhelmingly of poor to moderately ok working people. The typical member of a Pauline community was someone who had to work each day to ensure they got to eat, who worked long hours with their hands, who lived in a space not much bigger than a modern British garage and who were drawn to the faith of Paul by his stress on grace and forgiveness, sharing and economic mutuality.

And what does it tell us about church today? Possibly that it needs few of the trappings that we think are essential. Where a small group of people meet to eat, remember Jesus, pray for and support one another, there is church. So, why can't it be happening in pubs and restaurants, cafes and workplace meeting areas?

I've changed the music to Bowie's Station to Station as I return to dissertation writing wondering what this picture of the chruch says about the role of full-time paid ministers...

Taking a break before the final stretch

Just back from a lovely weekend in Reims with friends - lots of good food, champagne, walking and laughter. The cathedral boasts three truly amazing Marc Chagall windows - absolutely stunning: wonderful colours and shapes telling a variety of stories from the Christian tradition and Old Testament.

This week I am hoping to finish the chapter on the social location of the early Pauline communities which will complete the rough outline of the thesis. I have to revisit the economic material to make the argument I am making somewhat sharper (assuming I can still find it among the welter of statistics).

We're off to see Eels on Wednesday which will be the week's cultural highlight.

Soundtrack to fresh thoughts about history and mission

Do listen to the new Eels album. You can hear the whole of Tomorrow Morning here. But it's worth acquiring for your iPod, car CD player, etc because it's simply lovely.

Great tunes, sharp lyrics, imaginative arrangements, the talented Mr E is feeling at peace with himself and it oozes through the whole album. It could the best thing he's done since Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.

It forms a suitable backdrop to much thinking about social status, place, relations in the Roman Empire and the early Christian groups. Two and half thousand words down so far, just 10,000 more to go (so it probably won't be written by close of play today!)

In the course of my reading yesterday evening I ended up in the Seventeenth Century dipping into a couple of Christopher Hill's books. It was good to be reminded what a great writer he was. But in the course of chasing down an argument about imposing present understanding and frameworks on past events, I came across this:

'In mid-seventeenth century England there were no buildings labelled "Baptist church", "Leveller party", "Society of Friends." There were individual groups gathered around a charismatic preacher or leader. From this milieu of free discussion Baptists, Muggletonians and Quakers ultimately emerged, after many disputes. We can see them as sects, retrospectively, because they survived. Ranters, like Levellers, Diggers and Fifth Monarchists, were suppressed because they were thought dangerous. They never achieved the degree of organisation which was forced on Baptists, Muggletonians and Quakers later in the century.' (A Nation of Change and Novelty p173-174)

He argues that in those turbulent years of revolution in the mid-seventeenth century, new ideas were emerging, taking wing or crashing in flames. There was no certainty that any of the groups generating those ideas would last long.

'It is perhaps misleading to differentiate too sharply between politics, religion and general scepticism. We know as a result of hindsight that some groups - Baptists and Quakers - will survive as religious sects...In consequence we unconsciously tend to impose too clear outlines on the early history of the English sects, to read back later beliefs into the 1640s and 50s. One of the aims of this book will be to suggest that things were much more blurred.' (The World Turned Upside Down p14).

This resonates in all sorts of ways with what I'm pondering in relation to the emergence of communities of Jesus followers across the empire in the middle years of the first century AD. It also resonates with my thinking on how the heirs of those groups are navigating today's choppy waters as they seek to embody the same values as their ancestors in such a different world.

What's the point of studying?

It's been a busy week. I've written the chapter on the physical location of the Pauline communities for my MA - an examination of what archaeology, especially in Pompeii, Rome and Corinth, tells us about where people lived and what kind of accommodation best fits the evidence we have from the NT. I'm fairly pleased with the 12,500 I've written.

I've also been reading the second version of the page proofs for my forthcoming Lion book. I am really pleased with the way it looks and reads. The cover is great and the back features an endorsement from friend and rising New Testament scholar Peter Oakes about which I am hugely chuffed!

It's also been Holiday at Home at church this week, our annual outreach to senior citizens. It's been going really well as far as I can see - I've been in to do a couple of midday thoughts and will be taking part in the musical finale this afternoon.

Last night we were celebrating with our next door neighbours. Their daughter got her A Level results yesterday and did very well. She was having a party and we went in to help serve food and keep order. I have to say that it was great to be with 50 or so good mannered and pleasant young people. Many of them are getting ready to go off to university, others are planning to take a year out to travel and boost their CVs.

It strikes me that there's huge pressure on these young people to perform - as there has been throughout their school career. Education seems to be more and more about landing a high paid job. Only once in yesterday's extensive and over-heated coverage of the story on radio and TV, did I hear that universities were about training people think analytically. And not once did I hear anyone say that knowledge was good in itself.

My fear is that if just see a degree as a ticket to a higher paid job, there'll be a lot of disappointed young people graduating over the next few years. Isn't tertiary level education about something more than a meal ticket?

My MA is not going to raise my salary; land me a dream job; that's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I have burning questions about the shape of the New Testament communities that I want to answer for myself and maybe for others through what I read and write. I want to add - albeit in a small way - to the pool of knowledge about the communities that gathered around the worship of Jesus in the cities at the eastern end of the Roman empire in the middle years of the first century.

Catching God's rhythm

Today I'll be reflecting on Psalm 4 at our afternoon and evening gatherings.

It's one of those psalms we tend not to notice but which is foundational for the spirituality of the book as a whole. It forms a pair with Psalm 5, the latter being a morning Psalm, while Psalm 4 is an evening psalm. Together they draw us into God's time zone.

They put prayer into the rhythm of Genesis 1 with its refrain of 'evening and morning' as it counts the symbolic days of creation. They are rooted in God's core principle that we work from rest and not vice versa - hence the evening coming before the morning in God's time zone (this is why the Jewish sabbath starts on Friday evening and ends at sunset on Saturday).

We see it in the fact that human beings were made in God's image to carry out his mandate of managing creation on day 6, then on day 7, their first full day on the planet, everyone rests: we work from a place of resting in our relationship with God.

And that's what this psalm is calling us to at the end of the day, before we go to sleep to be refreshed for the adventure of the coming day.

And as it does, it reminds us that without our relationship with God, without his Spirit at work in us, his word giving our lives shape and meaning, we are, like the earth at the start of Genesis 1, formless and void. Hence the psalm starts with anxious asking - playing out the anxieties the day has so often left us with - but ends in quiet trust in the one who gives our lives shape and hope.

In between verses 1 and 8, in a framework of trust and gratitude for all that God has given, it commends an evening dialogue with ourselves as we settle into bed that reviews the day, lays open its disappointments and failures and offers ourselves afresh our lives as living sacrifices to the God who calls us through sleep into the working day ahead (v5).

This psalm (along with its close partner) is God's gift of a rhythm of life built on trust and partnership with the creator who shapes our days according to his grand design. Why not weave it into your daily devotional pattern?

A good year for music

I've now been listening to the new Arcade Fire album, the Suburbs for the past fortnight and I can report that it's almost certainly the best album that will be released this year. It's an hour of exciting, sublime music, packing intelligent and funny lyrics musing on what makes us the people we are.

It's been a good year for music so far - great albums already from the National, Cherry Ghost and Tracy Thorn - and there's still the debut album of the wonderful Smoke Fairies to come later this month or early next.

So, come the end of year charts, there'll be lots of good music vying for a place but I'd be surprised if anything knocks Arcade Fire off the top spot between now and then.