Mark 5
He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!" For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"

"Fear God", screeched the preacher-man, "or else he will torture you for all eternity!"

It is possible that my blog entries recently might suggest that I am a re-constituted conservative - one who has experienced the excesses of liberal Christianity and is now in fear retreating into a nice safe conservative hole. Far from it, gentle reader. Let me correct
any misconceptions you might have.

I am liberal enough that I cannot bring myself to believe that God's 'default' approach to creation is the agony of all that exists in it. I try my hardest... but I can't. There is nothing about Jesus that would back up this theology. Heck, he even has mercy on the evil spirit of a strong man (but not, perhaps, the poor porkers). The kind of God Jesus introduces us to is holy and just and powerful but also (and far more importantly) gracious and forgiving and ultimately loving. So I part company with my hardnut conservative friends when it comes to the hellish fate of all who avoid intellectual assent to a five step dogma.

It is scary how often the words of the evil spirit come out of the mouths of believers. 'Dear Jesus, swear to me you won't torture me! Let's make a deal so that I will not have to suffer. Let me sell my soul to the devil... er, I mean Jesus; so that my power and comfort is secure.' Though it pops up in evangelising crusades and finds its particularility in the question 'if you die tonight do you know that you are going to heaven?', in truth it is the language of evil spirits. It recognises that Jesus holds God's power and authority, but is incapable of seeing God's grace and forgiveness. It cries out for mercy, but only because Jesus refuses to make a deal.

Let's not be so arrogant as to assume we can 'make a deal' with God. Let's not be so self-centred as to believe that God is 'just like us' and wants us to suffer because we annoy him. Most importantly, let's not get so worried about what happens when we die that we forget to follow Jesus while we are alive. For eternal life begins now.

My first O(rientation) Week as chaplain has now come to a close. Because of it I haven’t posted anything for a while. But now I’m back! Went to a Brian McLaren (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_McLaren) conference yesterday which was quite helpful – helpful enough, in fact to prompt me to buy a couple of his books. I hope to say more about it in future posts – but not today.

Today I want to talk a little bit about the groundedness of (Christian) faith and practice which is inextricably woven into lives of leaders and followers. Recently I talked about the inadequacy of trying to distil an timeless ‘essence’ of Jesus’ person and ministry out from the Gospel accounts. And I think we tend to try and do the same thing with contemporary ‘heroes’ in our world. Take for example Martin Luther King Junior, Mother Theresa, Archbishop Romero and Archbishop Tutu. The actions and change these people brought about is almost universally acclaimed amongst those who hold justice and equality dear, Christian or not. These were great people who did great things.

Unfortunately many admirers fail to make the connection between an ‘orthodox’ (or even conservative) and deeply personal faith that inspired and undergirded the actions of these people. The four saints were not regarded as heretical or super-liberal in theology. Though they annoyed political and religious authorities, this was not because their God-words were heretical. It was rather that they truly tried to put the Gospel into practice. These guys were not Spongs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spong), nor Foxes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fox_%28priest%29)

nor even Funks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Funk).

And so I get a bit narky when I come upon the idea that the next great transformers of the world will certainly be secular or spiritual humanists – people who have ‘progressed’ from primitive and pre-modern faith. There are some wonderful people in this boat who do wonderful things – but I do not think they have a stranglehold on the future of the world. And for us Christians: rather than finding a ‘new’ Gospel let's work a bit harder on being a people of the ‘old’ one.

I have three CDs on which Dave Brubeck and his quartet play their signature tune ‘Take Five’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Five). Two of them have exactly the same version, but the third is a live account at almost double time. Being familiar with the music and a big Brubeck fan, the first time I heard this ‘Take Five’ I was surprised and inspired – but I really wasn’t sure why. Was it the cognitive harmony (if you’ll excuse the pun) of recognising something familiar in something strange? Was it some evolutionary resonance with the faster, almost jungle-esque beat? Or was it just the idea that I now had another titbit of interesting trivia to slip into a conversation somehow, somewhen? I mean there was nothing intrinsically ‘new’ or ‘better’ about the quick ‘Take Five’. Its solos were different I suppose, but the instrumentation and structure were almost identical to the original. This was no scatty interpretation by Al Jarreau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jarreau) but simply a new version of an old thing.

The fact that interpretation is so central to jazz – that the new ‘Take Five’ works – is one of the things that fascinates me about it. Though some pop/rock bands (U2 springs to mind) make a mint by re-recording previously released songs, for the most part this doesn’t do it for me. And though I love the novelty value of covers, it is rare for a cover to become a ‘classic’(the notable exceptions would be covers which are supremely though subjectively ‘better’ than the original; like ‘Superman’ by REM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rem). But jazz is different. In jazz a cover band is often superior to the original composer. In jazz the sugary sweet show-tune can become multi-faceted and sophisticated expedition (Rodgers and Hammerstein versus John Coltrane and their Favorite Things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Favorite_Things_%28song%29). In jazz the art of creating is frenetically and frantically immediate.

At least I think so.

Which is why I enjoy jazz.

Classical purists be damned!

Matt 24

At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

Is it possible for the great historical mainline of Christianity to reclaim the apocalypse? We have so de-mythologised the content of the Gospels that it now seems to belong to the fundamentalists and right wing nut jobs. We are so educated and wed to modern historiography that we consign the apocalypse, and indeed most unmediated revelation, to the bin of crackpots and idiots. Bugger me, we can be arrogant sometimes!

I wonder whether the Church’s centrality in Christendom for so many centuries has contributed to our failure to embrace the rough edges of the Gospel? Having elegant, systematic notions of God, where consistency and beauty are paramount means that the urgency and immediacy and inelegance of the good news has been pared away. The existentialists (perhaps beginning as early as Kierkegaard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard?) began to show that forever seeking the ‘essence’ of reality could only ever be an ivory tower enterprise.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that we sit with our numeracy tables and timelines calculating the day or the hour or the order of things come judgement time. I think Tim LaHaye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Lahaye) is a bit of a dick. Yet there is an unsubtle, urgent, chaotic, unsettling, disturbing and amazingly hopeful thing about the second coming. There is something humbling and uplifting about the fact that the future of history has been placed in Christ’s hands. As my brother Murray quotes, “Jesus is coming, look busy!”