Once more with feeling, only please don't sing

I lost count of the number of people who asked me yesterday evening whether I'd watched Songs of Praise. I hadn't. I don't. One conversation morphed into a more general chat about singing in church. It's given rise to these preliminary reflections on music in church.

Now I'm writing as one who leads music in church. More importantly, I write as a lover of music (of a certain kind, of course - isn't that true of all of us? As I write this I'm listen to the blistering new Neil Young album). So I am aware that I might sound slightly hypocritical in what follows. So be it.

One of the people I was talking to last night said that they thought that Christians always want to get together and sing. I was gently disagreeing with him. I can think of a number of Christians who hate singing with others and avoid it wherever possible; and I can think of a range of new emerging church groups where singing is not the focus of what they do.

During the conversation I found myself wondering why I think this matters. Part of the reason is undoubtedly that almost everything we sing in church is on a spectrum from mediocre to truly ghastly. But this has been tackled by better minds than mine - read the books by Pete Ward and Nick Page for chapter and verse on this. The title of Nick's book nails this part of the issue succinctly. It's called And Now Let's Move into a Time of Nonsense: Why Worship Songs are failing the church.

But for me, it's not just that what we sing is sub-Cold Play and lyrically vacuous, it's that the very act of singing imposes a structure on our gathering that distorts the purpose for our being there. Events are put together round music - whether our service is a hymn-prayer sandwich or loose flow of songs punctuated by prayer and scripture. The whole thing is an exercise in passivity on the part of everyone there - except the musician(s) and person leading the service (be that a minister or worship leader). No one else is allowed to contribute to the structure; they just join in (or not) when invited.

And, of course, this act of passivity leads up to a single individual speaking for half an hour with no interruptions and rarely an opportunity to ask questions, let alone suggest alternative insights.

I wonder whether this has given rise to a church of those who sit and watch (and occasionally, stand and sing), a church where only a single voice is heard and where a form of the Christian life that is lived by experts and delivered to everyone else is modelled. It's little wonder that so many people are in church on a Sunday who have so little 'Christian' to contribute in their work places and homes during the week. We do not learn to be disciples by being passive learners in the hope that we'll be active doers when we're on our own in the world.

I wonder if, just as mission gives rise to the church (and never vice versa), so relationships should give rise to organisation (and not vice versa). We so often put organisation - making sure everything we do is well-planned and led, ticks all the boxes - so far ahead of relationships that it's no surprise that people come and go from our services without really connecting with anyone else beyond the blandly superficial.

If we put relationships first and allowed how we organise ourselves to grow out of them, then maybe we would sing - when someone found a song that expressed something that builds our relationships with God and one another - or maybe someone would sing to us - because a song best expressed what they want to communicate. But singing would not determine the shape of our gathering.

And perhaps that would help us to discover what church actually is and how we can be it rather more effectively than we are at the moment. It would, of course, bring us closer to what happened in the gatherings of the Jesus movement in its first 150 years but that's possibly the subject for a future reflection.

If Paul travelled back east...

Having made a few remarks about the style of 2 Timothy in my previous post, here I want to suggest where it fits into the life of Paul (as far as we can reconstruct that life).

There are two possible answers to this – one more satisfactory than the other. One of the problems is the fact that scholars tend to treat the so-called pastoral letters as though they were joined at the hip which is not entirely helpful (though the three do have a lot in common).

The first idea suggests that the Pastorals fit into a gap in Luke's account of Paul's ministry in Acts. The problem is determining where. John Robinson, for example, in his wonderful book Redating the New Testament, suggests that 1 Timothy was written in the autumn of 55 soon after 1 Corinthians, Titus in 57 soon after Romans and 2 Timothy a couple of months after the other so-called prison epistles in the autumn of 58. 

But this has all kinds of problems, the most serious of which is that it is hard to envisage Paul fitting in the travel itinerary envisaged by the pastoral letters. In particular, when would he have gone to Crete? 

So, the second answer argues that after Paul's two year captivity in Rome (Acts 28:30), he is released and able to travel or possibly he is expelled from Rome and forced into some kind of exile – a bit like the expulsion of some Jews following disturbances in 49AD. 

The question is where does he go? In Romans 15:28 he announced his firm intention to go to Spain from Rome – not that he was anticipating arriving in Rome a prisoner. Later tradition has it that he did go to Spain. So, Clement writing in the mid-90s says that Paul did 'reach the farthest limits of the west.' Later writers agree.

But three things count against this hypothesis. The first is that in Philippians 1:25f; 2:24, in a letter written while in prison and almost certainly from Rome (though some place the writing in Ephesus or Caesarea), Paul expresses his hope that he will be released and when he is, he'll travel to Philippi. Ahead of his visit he is intending to send Timothy. Philemon 22 also written from prison in Rome, also anticipates that upon release Paul will go East – this time to Colossae. We don't know if he made it. What this indicates that his Spanish ambitions appear to have been abandoned.

The second is that the Pastoral letters themselves make no mention of Spanish travel plans – they give no indication either that he has been or is planning to go to Spain. And finally, 2 Timothy 4:13-14 suggests that Paul was re-arrested in Troas – midway between Ephesus and Philippi. This suggests that for all the wishful thinking of later writers that Paul fulfilled his ambition to travel west, Paul in fact went back to the Eastern end of the empire when he was released. 

The problem, of course, is that we really have no idea of what he did. But if he was released from the imprisonment that Luke tells about at the end of Acts - and there are very strong, early traditions that he was - he may have settled in Corinth to direct operations among the troubled congregations at that end of the empire, arriving sometime in late 64AD. This would allow him to have fitted in a short Spanish trip if he was released from prison 12 months earlier – but why so short a visit? Perhaps it hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped and he abandoned it to return to the more familiar culture of Roman east. 

The pastoral letters certainly suggest he travelled widely – Macedonia (Philippi? 1 Timothy 1:3), Crete (Titus 1:5), Nicopolis (Timothy 3:12), Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20) and, of course, Ephesus (1 Timothy 1:3; 3:14; 4:13; 2 Timothy 1:15-18 – indicating that he faced personal difficulties in Ephesus, perhaps from the false teachers, especially Alexander – and 4:19 which might indicate a recent stay with his old friends Prisca and Aquila, but certainly tells us that they were now apparently settled back in Ephesus; perhaps Rome became too difficult a place for Jewish Christians at the time of Paul's imprisonment or in the early days of Nero's reign).

If Paul arrived back at the eastern end of the empire in late 64, he could have fitted in a mission trip to Crete, leaving Titus to get things established in the town where churches had been started (but the wording of Titus 1:5 doesn’t absolutely imply that Paul went to Crete, only that he sent Titus there and told him to remain until his task was finished), and a visit to Ephesus. He wintered in Nicopolis on the western side of Achaia – perhaps planting churches (Timothy 3:12) – in either 65/6 or 66/7. In between had he been to Corinth? If so, did he write from there to his co-workers in Ephesus and Crete sometime in the middle of 65? It’s possible.

In the late spring of 66 or 67 he travelled to Miletus and to Troas – since these two places are separated by Ephesus, did Paul sneak a visit there as well? He left essential stuff in Troas – including winter clothes and books – indicating that he either intended to return but was prevented or he left unexpectedly because he'd been arrested. 2 Timothy 4:20 suggests the latter. 

If he had been released from Roman imprisonment and told to stop doing what he'd been doing, then Alexander's informing on him could suggest that the silversmith told the local Roman officials that Paul was a bailed prisoner or one who'd been banished from Rome for doing precisely what he'd started doing in their city. If it was late 66, then the great fire of Rome had burned and Nero, blaming the Christians because they were a convenient scapegoat, had launched his wave of persecution against the church. Roman officials in other parts of the empire would soon have caught on – especially if it meant getting so prominent a figure as Paul.

Back in Rome – his citizenship almost certainly meaning that he would have appealed to Caesar in the hope of getting to preach once again in that city – Paul's prospects were bleak as Nero seemed to be out of control. So, he wrote 2 Timothy a few weeks before he met his death probably in the autumn of 67 – a few months before Nero himself took his own life.

Such a reconstruction of the possible setting of these letters is entirely plausible (though unprovable) and possibly serves to rescue them from being seen merely as manuals for running a church. They are so much more than that.

Today's New Testament dilemma...

So today's dilemma - who wrote 2 Timothy? The simple answer is Paul, dilemma resolved...

It's a dilemma for me today as over the next fortnight I have to write some material for a worship resource where the brief is that 2 Timothy represents second generation Christianity, the followers of Paul seeking to keep his version of the faith alive in the hearts of those who miss him. I hadn't realised how much of a dilemma this was for me until I saw the brief in black and white.

2 Timothy is part of the larger problem of the so-called pastoral letters. These three writings (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) seem very different in language and style from other letters of Paul (Romans, Galatians, Philippians, etc), they seem to presuppose a church structure very different from that in 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians and they talk about journeys that cannot be fitted into the narrative framework of Acts.

But... Having just read 2 Timothy to check this is right, I find there is absolutely nothing about church organisation in this letter. It is a very personal defence of a life lived as a follower of Jesus, a life that stands on the brink of being snuffed out. It is shot through with a pathos you'd expect if the author was facing his imminent demise following the (legal) trial he is currently enduring.

There are turns of phrase that do not sound like the Paul of Romans and Galatians. But equally there are moments when that Paul is heard loud and clear. For example, when he says 'remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel...' (2:8) we are firmly in the introduction to Romans (1:3-4) where similarly Paul's gospel is about God's messiah (Christ), descended from David and raised from death. And the stress on following his example strongly echoes the same advice he gave the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:17; 11:1), interestingly citing Timothy as the one who will remind them of his teaching and way of life. And the anger he expresses in chapter 2 about false teachers is redolent of Galatians and 2 Corinthians.

Perhaps the difference of style is accounted for by two factors. The first is that 2 Timothy is the only genuinely personal letter of Paul's that we have. The letter to Philemon (plus 1 Timothy and Titus assuming those two are by Paul) were intended for public as well as private consumption. The second is that Luke could well have had a hand in the writing of the letter, acting as Paul's scribe. There has been a strong case made for the similarity of language between Acts and 2 Timothy suggesting the involvement of Luke in the composition of both. Luke is clearly with the author as he writes (2 Tim 4:11)

There could also be a third factor at play here. Paul knows he's at the end of his life, possibly days or weeks away from being executed. While there is a firm faith and confidence in God, there is an air of sombre regret about the letter, regret that he's not going to enjoy more times of fruitful mission. It is different in tone from Philippians where he was confident of being released from prison (see Phil 1:20-26). He knows that there will be no release for him this time, that he will only leave his cell to meet his death. That's bound to affect the way you express yourself - even for Paul.

That just leaves where 2 Timothy might fit into any chronology of Paul's life. That'll be the subject of a later post; suffice to say, I think there is a plausible way of understanding Paul's later life that finds room for 2 Timothy.

Going way beyond any mandate?

Increasingly staking out a claim to be the go-to commentator on political economy, Aditya Chakrabortty in today's Guardian (here) is right on the money. Using IMF numbers he shows that the UK government has embarked on a policy to shrink the state to the size of the US by 2017.

It means that it is policy that we as a country spend less on pensions, education, healthcare, care of the elderly, social services, welfare, etc. Now I'm sure lots of people voted for a reduction in the deficit expecting that things would return to the pot-war norm in a few years time. But this goes beyond that.

Chakrabortty claims that the government has embarked on something much more radical and far-reaching. It wants to shrink the state so that it takes 40% or less of GDP. This is a massive reduction over a short space of time that will change the shape of the country in ways that I suspect no one voted for.

He points to David Cameron's conference speech that spoke us needing to emulate the rising economies like India and Nigeria rather than being 'fat, sclerotic, over-regulated' like we are. I assume he does want us returning to hunger levels currently on offer in India or levels of infant mortality in that country or deaths from easily treatable infections at the levels enjoyed by Nigeria.

The truth is that we cannot emulate such countries - even if we wanted to - because we have developed way beyond them and part of that development has been the creation of systems of social welfare and support that is part of being a citizen of an advanced capitalist country.

When you look across the Atlantic at the private sector welfare provision that is being overwhelmed by the rising numbers of those out of work, disabled and in other ways disadvantaged, I think you need to ask whether shrinking the state is a good thing. I've just come from our foodbank where I was involved in helping two families who have been overwhelmed by life's circumstances and are unable to buy food this week.

After they had gone, we sat around talking about the depths of the problems that these families faced. They will not be solved by our hand-out, but neither will they be solved by rhetoric about cutting welfare budgets to encourage people to find jobs.

Both these people have seen the help they were receiving cut because of budget cuts in both local and national government; the agencies who used to be there for them are no longer there. They do not have family who can help them (for a whole variety reasons that will be reproduced in countless thousands of households across the country - and the rhetoric that calls on families to do more is little short of a cruel joke). Neither of these were in a position to work even if there were jobs locally that were open to them.

Cutting the size of the state in a democracy is something that needs to be debated properly not introduced behind a veil of deficit reduction. Let the government come forward with properly costed policies that promote this idea so that we the electorate can assess them on their merits. Debate, of course, is in short supply in our country. A supine press does not debate ideas at all and movements like Occupy - who have a really important contribution to make - appear incoherent and for that reason tend to be dismissed as irrelevant and unworkable (they also frighten people a bit because of their approach).

What Chakrabortty has highlighted is just how much happens without the people affected by massive changes being consulted in any meaningful way. I'm not sure this is to anyone's long term benefit, is it?

Time for a little dialogue

I've been wondering on and off today what I would have done if protesters had chained themselves to my platform as I was about to deliver a sermon. This happened to the dean of St Paul's yesterday. As David Ison rose to deliver his sermon at evensong, four protesters from Occupy Faith chained themselves to the pulpit and shouted about the folly of welcoming the money changers into the church (a reference to the fact that bankers are part of the Institute that reflects on Christian approaches to key issues in society).

It seems to have been a good natured affair and a missed opportunity. After shouting a little, the four protesters remained quiet while Ison delivered his prepared text. It's not a bad sermon; it recognises that mistakes were made last year and that there is a need for dialogue to solve the major issues of injustice and division that we face.

But there was precious little dialogue last night. Invitations have been issued for the group to come and meet with the cathedral authorities. But why did Ison not abandon his script, leave the pulpit and have a conversation with his 'captive audience', chew over some of the issues that occupy has raised for the past year?

Even the Economist - not a journal known for its left-leaning inclinations - has a major report this week arguing that something urgently needs to be done about inequality in the major western economies. Occupy raised this issue a year ago and it will not go away. It demands the attention of politicians and community leaders. And it demands the attention of church leaders which is why yesterday evening was maybe a missed opportunity. Action begins with dialogue and where better to foster dialogue than in the church?

marginalising the centre

We started a new series at church today looking at 1 Thessalonians and pondering some of the basics of the Christian faith. It was a good start - people were very positive about the message and there was a good atmosphere. So I have high hopes that God will use this letter to lead us into fresh encounters with him.

It was good after the service to talk to a church leader from another south London baptist church who are embarking on a neighbourhood groups policy like the one we've been considering, but who are much further along than we are. Indeed, in the new year they are hoping that their Sunday gathering will happen in a variety of places in small groups with a monthly central gathering to tell stories and encourage one another. Sounds great to me.

We joked about what 'central' means in this context. It seems to me that central to following Jesus is sharing his story where we are. So a small group of Christians and others out for a bike ride and pub lunch are at the centre of mission; as is a group organising a BBQ in their road; and another group doing the gardens of older people in the community who aren't as nimble as they used to be; as is a group of families gathered in Starbucks for brunch, conversation and mutual support. If each group exists to share the good news in some way, then it is the centre of 'church'. The centre is on the margins of the large group, at that place where faith is being experienced by those who don't yet believe.

A while back we had a Baptist Assembly on the subject of centring the margins. It was about creating inclusive communities where everyone had a voice. It was a good assembly (the first one with Prism!). But I wonder whether we ought to be thinking in terms of marginalising the centre, recognising that Jesus does his best work on and just beyond the edges of the community of faith.

Talking about church

Tony rightly observes 'Surely what you did over lunch was also 'church' and probably more accessible than a formal service' (see the previous post). I agree with everything in that sentence except the use of the word 'also'.

I am increasingly feeling that what we did over lunch is church, whereas what we did earlier is something else. As I read Paul in the context of the world of workshops and struggling to make a living in which he lived, I am more and more persuaded that sharing a meal with friends and talking about Jesus was church for him. There wasn't anything else.

This morning I was asked how we can be sure that people would have picked up Paul's allusions to and echoes of the Old Testament (as well as his direct quotes). 

It seems to me that part of the answer is that in an oral culture people retain more of the information that we hide away in books and on laptops. But another part of the answer is that the context in which Paul's letters were heard was a conversational one. Someone - probably the letter carrier would read (maybe he was the only person who could read it) - and everyone else would talk about it, asking questions, making suggestions about what it meant. In a conversation, everyone gets to contribute something to the understanding of the whole group.

I wonder what our churches would be like if this is what happened in them...

Feeding the soul

Back in church this morning; good to catch up with people; and excellent to go out unexpectedly for lunch with a bunch of people from the service to chew the fat and laugh together. I wondered over pizza and peronis which of the morning gatherings was more spiritually useful....

I'm now listening to the new Dylan album - Tempest - and reckoning it's the best thing he's done for more than a decade. He'll never make albums of the game-changing kind he made in the sixties and early seventies (the world is a different place now). But Tempest has lyrical edge and musical verve and is worth paying attention to. There's not much music you can say that of.

So, I reckon lunch fed my soul more than the morning gathering to sing and listen (which had lots of good bits). Conversation is essential, everything else seems optional.

I'm reading Paul Auster's New York Trilogy at the moment. The writing is brilliant but the stories are strange and possibly too clever by half. The first seems to be a laboured reflection on authorial presence and the truthfulness of stories. But I didn't find myself empathising with any of the characters and when Auster himself turns up as a character, I felt I was being manipulated, however good the writing is.

As we talked about books over lunch, there was agreement that stories really engage us when we can empathise with a character, when we care about what happens to them and those that matter to them. I read Conrad's Shadow Line and Heart of Darkness while I was away and was yet again drawn into narrative worlds where people made choices (good or bad) that had consequences for them and those around them that I cared about. Heart of Darkness always leaves me wrung out and on the edge of despair about the human condition - except for Marlow's world-weary concern for the feelings of others; he reminds me that for all his outward cynicism, like so many of us, he has a heart that beats with compassion for those caught up in life's trials and mishaps, a heart of shadows and light rather than impenetrable darkness.

So, as we shared about books and our reactions to stuff happening in the world around us - near and far - I was touched by the compassion of my lunch companions and strengthened to be more empathetic in the week ahead. It wasn't just my waistline that expanded over lunch; my soul was filled and fattened to - and that always needs to gain weight.

Last thoughts

It's our last day in Sri Lanka and we're back in Dehiwalla having spent the last six days in one of the best hotels I've ever stayed in. And the hotel staff were right - the taxi from there to here took exactly 45 minutes and not the hour and half we were expecting!

And now hot-foot from Lanka Hands, we've done all our shopping, caught up with friends and said goodbye and are getting ready for our final evening meal in this lovely, busy, complex, heart-breaking country.

Life at college carries on (quietly in the library where I am) and out in the streets the horns sound, the traffic grinds its way slowly to destinations, the pavements hum with activity and the occasional train clatters by heaving with commuters.

We have had a whole heap of good experiences on this trip, not least with the countless church leaders we have talked with, taught, leaned from and laughed alongside. I am coming away with plenty to think about and a reasonable tan (for me - which means I'm off-white with red streaks!)

Glad I'm not on a cricket tour

Day two of the gruelling holiday regime finds us sheltering from the rain in the hotel lounge sipping coffee and updating Facebook and blogs. There are number of distraught England cricket fans nursing post-match bewilderment at such a shambling performance. And there are a number of German guests baffled by the feelings we Brits have about our national game.

I think I might be feeling a little miffed if I'd paid a large sum to be here to watch the twenty20 but hopefully England's fortunes will revive as they head to Kandy for the super 8 part of the tournament. England are looking anything but super now!

Hopefully, the sun will shine a bit later. I got burned yesterday under mainly cloudy skies - as did many of the guests of all nationalities - which serves as a warning to apply factor 50 even when it looks like rain!

Anyway, I think I need a swim to work up an appetite for lunch...

Spending time in traffic queues

We are now on holiday at a wonderfully appointed hotel that we found through the Agoda website. If this hotel is anything to go by, then I thoroughly recommend checking out the good people there if you are looking for accommodation in Asia.

One thing we have noticed since our visit in 2009 is that the amount of traffic on Sri Lanka's already crowded roads has risen exponentially. The result is that many parts of Columbo are all-but grid-locked often doubling journey times.

I've also seen a lot more accidents. Just yesterday on the A2 from Kandy to Colombo we passed the debris and aftermath of three serious crashes involving four or more vehicles. Judging by the driving, it's a wonde the aren't more. But the rapidly rising number of vehicles - especially 4x4s driven by the newly wealthy - isn't helping.

That journey - distance of 100kms - takes on average three hours; usually more because your exhausted driver needs a break and you need a cup of tea for your nerves!

The  problem has made the pages of today's Sunday Times (Sri Lanka version!) and is leading to a fairly major road building programme (done mainly by the Chinese who are doing a lot of development projects in the country in return fro being allowed to develop the port at Hamabntota as a refuelling stop for its navy). New roads will undoubtedly help.

In the meantime we are taking with a pinch of salt the hotel staff's suggestion that it would take 45 minutes to get from here to Dehiwalla, where we're spending our last night, and are reckoning we need to leave at least an hour and half for the trip.

Entering the last lap

One of my students reads Frank Viola and trawls post-evangelical blogs, another is a very conservative AOG pastor and still another works with addicts in Sri Lanka's prison system. They are a wonderfully mixed bag and it's been great fun teaching them.

This afternoons we deal with our final subject - 1 Peter. It's a pity we can't devote a whole week to this excellent letter. But even at Spurgeon's it comes and goes in two hours. There's no justice.

Anyway looking forward to a stimulating final session....

Standing in tthe light

Listening to Charlie Peacock, watching the campus come alive with early morning activity... This is my last day of teaching. It has been a good, stimulating, challenging week. This crop of undergraduates has worked hard and produced good assignments so far which is pleasing for their teacher.

As Charlie sings 'I want to be in the light as you are in the light' I have been pondering the purpose of what we do here - small thoughts for a Thursday morning! And I think it boils down to helping to equip my students to stand in the light, work in the light and shine that light through their ministries to their neighbours.

This must be the goal of theological education. The light will banish the darkness of half-truth and junk ideas that seem all-too prevalent here as they are back home; the light will encourage greater partnership working as we stand in the light together; the light will dispell the darkness of competing with each other, of building empires and not God's Kingdom; the light will shine in our lives and remind us that 'I'm just a man in need of a saviour'

So, here's to a final productive day of teaching and learning...

Good and bad news on the climate

Just back from a good time catching up with the peerless Clarence Mendis, social entrepreneur, Christian evangelist and guiding light of Farms Lanka for the last 39 years.

The course is going well, I think - though it is always difficult to tell how things are being received as  Sri Lankans generally do not interact in class until they know their teacher very well, something impossible if you're only with them for a week!

Tomorrow I shall be outlining what I'll be expecting from their assignment. Hopefully, there'll be lots of questions!

We had a lovely walk this afternoon round the mount Lavinia hotel and along the beach in the very warm sunshine. It is - depending on who you talk to here - the rainy season. But it hasn'tt rained since Sunday during the day. Clarence reckons the island is being affected by climate change with the rains less pdictable now than at any time through the past 50 years. This is affecting agricultural production and people's livelihoods.

So good sunny days for us (and we certainly don't want it to rain on our holiday!) are maybe not such good news for Sri Lanka's poor farmers. They are, however, good for the tourist industry, still on its knees and needing more foreign vistors spending their money in the shops and restaurants. It's a complex world...

A land of stark contrasts

This week has been pretty full-on. The group of MDiv students I have is small - just 7 - and reasonably well-engaged. Their English is generally good and they seem very diligent. But teaching is still pretty demanding.

After classes we have been meeting various people, some old friends, some new contacts, hearing stories that hearten and fill us with despair.

Yesterday evening we walked down the Galle Road into Mount Lavinia for dinner. I never cease to amazed at the noise of the streets - car horns, engine noise, people shouting - that make holding a conversation all but impossible!

Three years ago I walked on the beach just the other side of Dehiwalla station and found a fisihing community that five years after the tsunami was still living in the wreckage of their homes. I met a mother stoically waiting for the government to win the war over the LTTE. Then she said, they will come and help us. The war was just finishing then.

Linda and I walked on the beach on Monday afternoon. The people are still waiting. We met a man selling crisps to raise money to put food on his family's table. His house is still a shell; no help has come from any quarter.

It makes you weep to see people 8 years after the tsunami, in a city where the number of four-by-fours has risen exponentially, where condos are going up all over the place, including one overlooking this beach which boasts a gym and a swimming pool, still living in the debris of houses that had once been their homes.

It makes you realise what a place of contrasts this country is and how many still suffer the effects of those contrasts.

Fruitful and fruitless use of time

So an eventful first working day in Sri Lanka...

We were involved in a road traffic accident, a shunt involving two cars and a motorcycle. No one was hurt and our van was not badly damaged, though the car that drove into us looked like a write-off.

We were on our way back from Rathnapura Baptist Church, a two hour drive from Colombo, where I was preaching yesterday morning. After we'd all come to a halt and got out of our cars, no one shouted at anyone; no one called anyone a plonker; no one doubted the parentage of any of the people involved. Instead, all parties calmly tried to account for what had happened and why; bystanders and passers-by - and even people arriving by three-wheeler who had been nowhere the accident when it happened - also gave their firm views on the ins and outs of events.

This went on for a good half and hour before a policeman arrived on a motorcycle, took off his helmet and set about asking anyone with a view what had happened. This took some time. Having made copious notes, he left.

We waited. It transpired that we had to wait for the insurance representative of the company that insured the car we were in because William, who was driving, is not the owner. It is Gary's car (and very robust it is too!). He had to come because although William was driving with Gary's approval and permission, he was not the insured person and so was not able to tell the insurance company what had happened.

It also transpired that the man in the sporty coupe that had crumpled on impact was not the owner and our insurance man had to produce a report for that car's owner too. The insurance man duly arrived, took photographs, made notes, nodded a lot, took more photographs and then left.

All that had to happen now was that we go to the police station so the paperwork could be filed. That done we set off for Colombo, a two hour journey stretched to five with a lot of hassle for William.

It was worth the trip (though not the hassle) as the church as Rathnapura turned out to be a revelation. William had told me that last time he was there, about 25 were gathering and a new young pastor had recently started work there. That was about four years ago. Well yesterday 75+ crowded into the tiny Victorian edifice for a service that was lively, interactive, involving and full of life. I really wondered what I had to contribute. Afterwards, people came for payer, wanting the minister but also Linda and I to pray with them, wanting to be blessed, touched by God, moved on in their faith. I wanted to bottle their spirit and bring it home!

They are poor people - tea pickers mainly, working long hours, living in modest homes - but they were full of faith and glad to see us, glad that we'd continue to pray for them when we got back home.

Interestingly, Rathnapura is where BMS established a base, housed some missionaries and founded a high school (now part of the state system) that is still there. The work of those early missionaries, it seems, continues to bear fruit.

God makes all things new while we seek the city’s welfare

So here's my piece for this month's church magazine...
Familiar territory for me but always revisiting:

Clarence Mendis is the energetic founder-director of Farms Lanka. It’s a project that offers micro-finance and ideas – along with heaps of motivation – to people with skills and ideas but no money. It makes small loans to help people set up in their chosen line of business – anything from agriculture, animal husbandry, batik printing, pottery making, etc – and gives advice to get up and running and then watches them grow.

Once they’ve reached a certain size, the project holders pay back the stake with a little interest and that money can be used for another person with an idea. Farms currently has 4000 projects across the island and has contributed some 7bn rupees to the nation’s GDP. Not bad for a project that started 39 years ago with 200 rupees and faith, as Clarence puts it. He is a remarkable visionary guy, bold to the point of recklessness, but fabulously blessed and used by God. He’s larger-than-life and curiously down to earth.

I thought of him over the summer as we were exploring Jeremiah’s call to the exiles and I was preparing to return to Sri Lanka. He seems to embody Jeremiah 29:7 more than anyone else I’ve met. He looks around at his desperately poor and divided country and asks how he can help to bring prosperity to his neighbours. And he does it in a way that brings dignity and independence to people struggling to make ends meet.

Jeremiah 29:7 is part of a letter written by Jeremiah to people from Judah who have been taken into exile in Babylon. Many of them were hoping to be home by Christmas but he tells them to settle down and dig in for the long haul; most of them would never see home again.

Although many of us are still living in the town where were born, it has in recent years become an unfamiliar place; social changes, the erosion of the church’s place in our culture and the arrival of people of different classes and races all mean that the world in which we grew up has changed forever. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we feel in exile and would like to go home.

But there’s no going back; this is the world we live in and I believe Jeremiah 29:7 has something really important to say to us about how we live in this strange new world. The prophet tells his first hearers to make a living (29:5-6): that’s obvious enough but it’s what God wants us to be doing. He calls us to be active and productive citizens of this place: working, paying taxes, joining in with our neighbours, even playing our part in politics at a local or national level.

And while we’re getting on with daily life, God calls us to seek good things for our neighbours. The word the prophet uses here is ‘shalom’ (v7) which means wholeness, welfare, peace, prosperity; God wants this for everyone. And this is where Clarence comes to mind; he has been actively seeking the shalom of his neighbours across Sri Lanka for the best part of 40 years. And as I think of him, I wonder what we could be doing that does something similar where we live.

So that leads me to do the third thing Jeremiah told the exiles to be doing: simply to pray for the community in which we find ourselves, to ask God to bless and equip each one of our neighbours for their God-given work, asking God to bring them peace, prosperity and welfare – and sometimes to tell them that we are doing so! And in praying, we are offering ourselves to God to be the answer to our prayers.

It’s easy to feel disheartened and disoriented by the place in which we find ourselves. We sometimes find this strange new world of shopping and mobile phones, reality TV and lack of respect for the church profoundly unsettling. And we ask ‘how can God be here?’ That is what the exiles asked and some of their leaders said that God wasn’t with them but would rescue them soon. Jeremiah, on the other hand, said that while he wouldn’t be bringing them home anytime soon, God is with them in the exile. And he will be bringing prosperity and a future to these people here and now, where they are as they got on with the task of seeking those things for their neighbours. And we see here one of God’s great ways of working: he makes things new as we get on with seeking the city’s welfare.

In 31:31-34 the prophet talks about God making all things new in words taken up across the New Testament. He talks about old ways being ditched and replaced with something more wonderful:  a new covenant, a new relationship, based not on where you live and worship, but on a direct encounter with the living God, so that his Law, which had been written on tablets of stone, would now be written on our hearts. It’s what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 3 and the author of Hebrews (directly quoting these verses) in chapter 8.

If we want to encounter God today, we’ll do so as we seek the welfare of our neighbours; if we want his prosperity and future for us, we’ll stumble across it as we are trying to ensure that our neighbours enjoy prosperity and hope for the future. So, let’s work on ways that we can seek the welfare of where we live. Let’s be creative and bold.

Who among us is going to be like Clarence Mendis and rise to the challenge of helping our neighbours to find their way into the prosperity we enjoy but they can only dream of?

Grabbing our attention

A while ago, during a series on Luke's gospel, I produced the following meditation to get people thinking about the impact of Jesus' manifesto on his audience. I was reminded of it the other day as someone asked if they could have a copy. So I thought I'd share it for a wider audience.

It's the introduction to some reflections on Luke 6 and seem to resonate on this day of debate about wealth taxes and kick-starting the economy...

You can imagine the crowd turning up – a right mixed bag:

poor folk and rich ones;

people in fine clothes who have breakfasted well

and people in work-wear who haven’t eaten yet today;

people able to take a morning off,

others who risk not earning what they need to eat today…

They’ve all come because they’re interested; they’re keen to know what this Jesus is all about; perhaps they even crave a spiritual experience – some might even have received one already.

Jesus’ words would have left each of them spluttering, like they do us – if we’re paying attention:

blessed are you when your benefits are cut

and the damp’s rising in the wall of your temporary accommodation…

blessed are you when you can’t afford your five-a-day

and the payday loan is due…

blessed are you when people call you scrounger and cheat…

woe to you if your salary is 80 times that of your workers

and your table’s heaving with enough food

to feed a small Malian village…

woe to you when people say how well you’re doing…

The lucky people are not the healed and healthy, the well-healed and wealthy, but those who know they’re bankrupt and busted and only God can help them.

I imagine that by v26 he either had their attention or could see them turning and walking away – which was his intention. This is not Robbie Williams saying ‘let me entertain you…’ This is God’s Son grabbing his audience’s attention; calling us to a life of discipleship: do we stay or do we go?

For those with nothing, the choice is easier than it is for those laden with stuff; but for both there’s a sense of disbelief to overcome – does he mean it?

·         Is there good news for the likes of us; those the world looks down on; those who feel their poverty and ill-health to be God’s punishment? It sounds like there is…shall we hang around to hear more?

·         Is there good news for the likes of us; we who’ve worked hard and saved, got an education, bought a stake in the race and are reaping the rewards? Sounds like there isn’t… Should we hang around to hear more?

Yes 

Jesus is speaking to disciples (17b, 20a), to those who are listening (27; 7:1): this is good news for everyone: a radical shake-up that changes everything and from which everyone emerges a winner… No wonder there’s singing at the back!