Not Just a Conjuring Trick

"And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 

While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 

They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them." (Luke 24:40-43)

The arguments always rage over the nature of the Resurrection. It's more than 30 years since David Jenkins said that the Resurrection wasn't just a conjuring trick with old bones. And everybody suspected what he really meant was that it wasn't even a conjuring trick with old bones. And everybody still remembers it. But the trouble is, some people insist on believing that Jesus's body was resurrected. And some - the more spiritual - think it's more spiritual.

But the Gospel writers weren't that spiritual, apparently. Three of the Gospel writers go to a lot of trouble to tell us that Jesus, after the Resurrection, was physically all there. John tells us about Jesus on the beach, cooking a fish barbecue. Matthew has the women that found Jesus outside the empty tomb grabbing onto his feet. And here Luke has him eating fish.

To a good Jew, this is really important. Jesus isn't just a ghost, a spirit, a lovely spiritual extract of Resurrection. He's the same physical Jesus that has walked the roads and hills of Galilee and Judea. Who was physically dead on the cross - dead of shock and blood loss and exhaustion. And here he is raised - with holes in his hands and side - living, and speaking, and eating.

And if it's really important to Matthew and Luke and John, then it's important to us as well. We are not made up of a spiritual and a bodily side, with one just the vehicle for the other. We are whole beings - spirit and body.

The Portugese have a great range of foods, I always think. Being a vegan in Portugal would be no fun. They just seem to eat fish and meat, and eggs. And their egg cookery is great. Their most famous dish was on the Great British Bake Off the other week - Pastéis de Nata, an egg custard tart. They had a lot of yolks to use, you see. The Portuguese are still more religious than the English, but once upon a time they were far more so than now. They had lots of nuns, and therefore they had lots of whimples. And whimples needed lots of starch - which they produced from egg white. With the result that they had lots of yolks left over - because to produce lots of egg white they needed lots of chickens. And so they specialised in cooking with yolks. The Portuguese production of eggs perfectly combined the spiritual with the body - the yolks looked after the body, and the whites looked after the spirit!

The English, of course, don't have great egg-custard tarts. We have the hymn-writing of George Herbert. One of  his more famous hymns has the remarkable line:

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
         Makes that and th' action fine. 

And yes, it does tempt you to make jokes about "sweep the floor for Jesus". Well, it does me, at any rate. But the point Herbert is making is that you can't separate the spiritual and the physical. The beauty and terror of the world in which we live is shot through with the beauty and terror of God. The pains we suffer in our bodies matter to God - because our names are written in the points of nails in God's hands.

Christian religion has never been great when it's raised the spiritual above the physical. If it floats around, regarding God and ignoring the world, then it's not much use to anyone. But when we focus on the crucified, physically alive God - then we can remember our own neighbours, not just to wish them well, but physically to attend to their needs. To open up a church as a night shelter, to gather food for those that need it - these are spiritual acts just as much as physical ones. St James tells us how these things go together:

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

The combining of spirit and body builds us up as human beings as a body. So take marriage as a metaphor - in a wedding, two will be united as one. Spiritually they learn to dependent upon and support each other, and physically they are one. Humans aren't divided up - we're whole. This is an image of how we are - as human individuals, and as society. As spirit and body, we're one. As wives and husband, one. As the Church - we're one. When we see suffering across the world and people in need, we know those that suffer are one with us - made of the same flesh, bearing near-identical DNA, loving and caring and fearing and suffering like us.

Jesus, raised from the dead - not just spiritually but physically - is a promise to us all. It tells us our whole selves will be one with God. It tells us that God cares about our physical state as well as our spiritual one. It promises us a greater life in the future than one we can even imagine. The Bible describes a future world as one that is full of life, and sounds, and smell. Where there is a river running through the New Jerusalem. Where the Tree of Life has leaves that are for the healing of the nations. Where there's a feast to eat and wine to drink and we are wholly, thoroughly, fully, forever alive with God.

And it starts with just that one man. Raised to full life. Raised body and spirit. Totally human, and yet totally God. And totally alive forever.

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Worship in the Swedish Lutheran Style

I have to say, I quite enjoyed our Swedish Lutheran Worship today.

In keeping with the tradition, only 2% of the Beaker Folk attended.

Which was me.

But I got to charge everybody else for the privilege. No arguments, no stress, no tricky pastoral situations afterwards. Just a nice plain worship environment, me and God. And even God was optional.

I reckon I could learn to live with this.

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Humanistism

I'm concerned at this post in the Guardian about the lead chaplain - a humanist - at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

Not at her appointment, or her being in charge. Atheists have spiritual needs as well. And it's very important, when you're struggling with serious illness, to have someone to discuss with you how your life - including this illness - is effectively without lasting purpose but on the bright side, if your illness is terminal, at least you won't exist soon.

No, that's fine. I guess that's how atheists get through life, and good for them.

It was more the definition of "humanist" . The Guardian says humanists "do not believe in an afterlife".

The most famous person to be called a humanist is probably the "Prince of Humanists", Erasmus. Author of many fine books of which I once read one sentence but also, like the man who proposed the Big Bang Theory, a Catholic Priest.

The word humanism was coined by a Lutheran theologian and meant a concept of human progress, and civil responsibility. In that sense I am not a humanist - I believe the world's going to hell in a handcart.  But many liberal and Protestant Christians could be defined thus.

Let's try to  let words mean what they mean. Stoke Mandeville has an atheist chaplin. There's nothing wrong with that. Heaven knows she's  going to be better than at least one of the former helpers  in that hospital. And he called himself a Christian. But at least, if I ever have a serious back condition, I won't be confused into calling the wrong chaplain if I need to know how "In Praise of Folly" ended up.

Personally I reckon the butler did it.

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Liturgy of Liverpool Fans on a Big European Evening

Archdruid: We have had a week to gloat.

All: And gloat we did.

Archdruid: Beat Man City 3-0. Best team in England ever? Don't think so.

All: Not as good as the Gunners' "Invincibles".

Archdruid: Not as successful as Liverpool in the 70s and 80s.

All: Not as effective as Fergie's treble-winning....

Archdruid: SHUT UP!

All: Sorry. But you know....

Archdruid: I'm picking up the cricket bat now.

All: Not even as good as Jose Mourinho's Chelsea.

Archdruid: Ah, Jose. Where are you now? Some 2nd rate club that's not even in the Champion's League any more this season...

All: Seen better days? Living off past glories?

Archdruid: Oh, I don't know. Still a bit of life in me yet.

All: Not you. Mourinho.

Archdruid: OK. Moving on. Let's get to the Prayer of Hope.

All: Oh God, who gave David the victory over Goliath, and the Maccabees victory over the Greeks, who gave the Israelites victory over Egypt even after he'd pumped all that money into his side, give us victory over two legs over the City. Even if that's 4-4 on away goals. And should we lose, don't let it be 5-0. Amen.

Heart Skipped a Beat

The excellent Law and Religion UK blogs on legal implications for the fitting and use respectively of defibrillators.

This was caused by the rather odd tweet from the CofE account about where to look for wifi, post offices and defibrillators. (Please note spelling, CofE Comms).


Now, A Church Near You is a useful website. But not one I'd use if I were in a hurry for treatment for cardiac arrest. I'll be honest, if there was a decent chance of me going into cardiac arrest, I'd be looking at other methods of prolonging life than going to the correctly equipped church.  But like the church it serves, it's quirky, a bit eccentric, and will nearly give you something that is not quite what you were looking for. Unless you're Bono. In which case, no chance.

Like all SocMed it's also only as good as what is put into it. But its usability issues on tablet mean they need to fix a few glitches before you'd work too hard at that.

And of course, you get the usual C of E issue that facilities are rich in towns and scattered in the countryside. So if you're in Central London, there's a church with a defibrillator in Battersea. Not brilliant if you're actually wanting to worship at All Saints Margaret St. But you know, you can get there. But if you're in the wilds of Somerset, there's no defibrillator (or even defibrilator) in sight - you may search in vain in Seavington St Mary. St Michael and all the Angels are all the help you're gonna get at Haselbury Plucknett. And heaven help us all when the Common Market leaves Stanton Drew.

Shouldn't that be "defibrillator"?

Usability and liability issues feature highly in the Law and Religion  piece. I was really worried about the implications of someone using a defibrillator, who doesn't know a cardiac arrest from a heart attack or hay fever. But it turns out that the automatic versions are capable of distinguishing between the right and wrong kinds of heart problems. Which means you won't have the problem of Doris the Warden accidentally making Ernest's condition worse with a hastily-cobbled-together Van der Graaf generator. But does give us the image of the choirboys playing Russian Roulette with it.

Also please note that, if using an automatic defibrillator, you should remove all bodily piercings and underwired bras. The former of which did for poor Ernest. Honestly, his wife told him he should have taken that stud and chain out before going to church. He never smiled again.

But the best of Law and Religion is that it also covers the plannng implications. I look forward to the next snooty missive from a Diocesan Registrar on the subject:

"Although we are all no doubt grateful that Granny Dryden saved the life of Revd Timms, the fitting of the defibrillation device onto the North Wall, underneath the 18th Century "Mellstock Memorial", was carried out without permission. The church is requested to desist from saving any more vicars until a faculty is granted."

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

The Feast of the Annunciation - 2 Weeks Late

Mary: I've got something to tell you.....

Joseph: But this all happened on 25th March! Why have you left it so long to tell me?

Mary: The Pope said I had to wait a fortnight.

Luke: And so celebrating the most important moment in human history - when God became a human being - was delayed because the powers-that-be thought ordinary people couldn't cope with a bit of liturgical confusion.

Gabriel: Here, that's not in the original.

Luke: Never thought the Church would make it this complicated, did I?

Benefice Profile: Trim Valley

Reverend Nathan has written a Profile for Trim Valley Benefice. He thinks he may be able to "help" when he's gone.

I have my doubts.

Spiritual But Not Religious

And so another of our "Spiritual But Not Religious" weekends has ended with the delegates demanding their money back.

We really thought this was a winner. Everybody's getting into this "Spiritual But not Religious" idea. Even the BBC.  I mean, what an attractive idea. No hierarchy. No rules, Nobody to tell you what God wants from you. In fact, no worries about whether God, gods or even Great Cthulu exist. Just get out, feel good, and sense your own meaning in a time of mindfulness, meditation or a gin and tonic the size of an aquarium.

Least, I suppose the giant G&T counts as being "Spiritual Bit Not Religious". Although, to be fair, if it's a regular one at 5 pm you could argue that's being pretty religious.

Anyway. Back to our weekend course. They're saying it was a shambles. That we hadn't prepared Apparently they expected a "programme" for the weekend. Some kind of "structure". Some "seminars" or "acts of worship".

Instead of which we gave them a bag of pebbles and pointed outside to the glories of nature. Told them to buzz off and be spiritual. We wouldn't want to impose.

You know what, I don't think they'd thought this through. We gave them the chance to be Spiritual. But they wanted to be Religious all along.

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Go to Church, Have a Cardiac Arrest

Big news. The prize for Most Surreal Use of Social Media in a Religious Purpose has not gone to Mark Driscoll.

Instead, well done to the C of E media team for this awesome plug.

Did you know that hundreds of our churches have free wifi, defibrillators, post offices or a cafe? Find your nearest to visit this week by visiting https://t.co/R8wMSECoM5 pic.twitter.com/cK02ChOrQg

— The Church of England (@c_of_e) April 6, 2018

I mean, what thought process are they considering?  In marketing terms, these are called "missions" - which is quite appropriate I suppose. The "missions" this tweet might cover include:

"Where is a cold building where I can stream Netflix while people fail to chant a psalm in tune or time?"

"I've run out of warfarin. Which building that only opens one hour a week can I go and stand outside, to be on the safe side?"

"I want to buy a stamp, and sing the Te Deum. But I only have the petrol for one journey."

"I really want to go to Cafe church." Oh no. Hang on, that works, doesn't it.

I'm impressed really with the optimism here. There are about 12,000 parishes in the Church of England. And  "hundreds" have one or more of these facilities, apparently. Let's suppose "hundreds" is 500 - which is roughly average for "hundreds". And let's suppose no church has more than one of these facilities. In which case your chance of finding that any given church has the facility you want is roughly 1%. Given the area of England is 50,000 square miles, which is roughly one church every four square miles - on average you will find what you need somewhere in a 20x20 mile box around you*.

Which is a long way to go for a stamp. And if you suddenly need a defibrillator, you're not going to make it. Best to find somewhere to go and pray. I'm sure there are some buildings knocking around for doing that.

* Your mileage may vary if you're Welsh or Scottish. Or Methodist. Or Catholic.

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Getting Ready for Low Sunday

In her cottage in Little Tremlett, Doreen the Reader scratches her head, removes the word "surprise" and replaces it with "shock" in the spiral bound notepad she uses as a sermon book.

Doreen's covering the Morning Prayer tomorrow at "Great", in the absence of the vicar (who's on his post-Easter coma fortnight). She's also taking the 10 past 6 evensong at Woodby Chapel next Sunday. This will be a shock to the retired priest, Vyvyan Westcliffe, who thinks he's got that gig. Doreen smiles, and looks across at the sack that will unexpectedly go over the good Canon's head next week.

Those that mutter about the "riches" of the Church of England don't reckon with the Doreens of this world. When the vicar leaves at the end of the month, she's going to have at least 6 months of services to lead. Which she'll do for nothing. It's gonna take a lot of time. And she doesn't get paid. In fact, she'll have so much to do that she probably won't want to "accidentally" push Revd Vyvyan into holes in the ground, tie him to trees, superglue his locks or all the other methods she uses to get him out the way when she normally wants to take a service. She and he will have their work cut out.

The Wardens will have enough to do as well. They already spend hours and hours a week on the maintenance of the church buildings. But now they'll have to negotiate visiting ministers. They'll have to work out who to let down out of the five churches when they can't all get a retired priest, or Revd Vyyan, and they have to get Doreen in - or get the congregation to knock something up themselves.

And all the time, Doreen and the Wardens and all the worshippers won't be pulling money out of these alleged "riches" - which are mostly reserved for the pensions of the priests, who themselves earn so little and work so hard that they are often technically below the minimum wage. Although Anglicans aren't renowned for high levels of financial giving, nonetheless they're still putting their money in, ever week or every month, to keep the show on the road, keep the priests paid, keep roofs on the buildings that the villagers love so much, even if they never go in there except if they want a posh wedding or a new arrival to be blessed or baptised.

So it's Low Sunday. And after the excitement of last week, the Church of England carries on. And somewhere in among the scrubbing of floors, the scribbling of sermons, fundraising and bad coffee, the arguing of choirs or the grumbling of vergers, somewhere in there - in Gospel and bread and wine, in the bodies of the worshippers and in those they serve -  Christ shows his wounds, and reveals he is alive.

Doreen opens the desk drawer, notices the chloroform bottle and the rag, and smiles slightly. Maybe she'll take Evensong tomorrow as well...

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Want to support the Beaker Folk? Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

Man Reportedly Drives Car

The BBC breaks with journalistic convention with its story today: "Man, 73, Smashes Porsche 911 through Wall in Colchester".

You see, that's not how these stories go. Normally it's more like "Lorry smashes into Bridge near Southampton". Or "'It was like a bomb going off' - residents react after lorry smashes into bridge". No mention of the driver's agency at all. I think it's the Oxford Mail that reached the apogee of this kind of reporting, with the remarkable "Passengers escape after car overturns on bypass". At no point in that article was a driver referred to at all. The "passengers" escaped. Also we're told the "occupants" got away.We are never told about a driver. An alien landing from another planet or someone coming back from the year Google would presume, in the case of this news report, that the car was completely self driving. After all, did a spokesman not tell us that the car "seemed to have rolled over".

Well, they're like horses, really, cars. Or dogs. Sometimes when the mood takes them - I don't know, maybe they've got an itch on the sun roof, or they just want a bit on sun on the undercarriage. So they just randomly roll over. Maybe the plan is to have a nice scratch, and then they'll roll back. Except cars are like tortoises and sheep. Turns out that if they do roll over, they can't get back. They lie there, useless, needing a friendly hand to put them the right way up.

I'm sarcastic. Of course. And maybe unfair. Because sometimes news reports are all too clear about the human being in charge of the vehicle. For instance: "Shocking moment lorry collides with cyclist" in the Daily Mail. Or "Everything we know so far after cyclist and lorry collide".  Or "cyclist in collision with lorry at Blackfriars Bridge".

It seems to be a thing to do with the way that motor vehicles wrap themselves round their human occupants. Maybe a Toyota Prius is a kind of cyborg. The human personality is lost in the comfy seats and detailed efficient driving instructions. The driver is one with the machine - to the point that there is no such thing as "driver" or "vehicle". There is merely the vehicle.

Maybe the vehicle takes over the driver's mind. Already dehumanised by being shielded in their aluminium armour, maybe the driver actually gives in and lets the vehicle do the thinking. Maybe, just maybe, I'm thinking, maybe the vehicle takes over the Twitter account of some drivers and does the tweeting for them. That would explain why "Nigel", who tells us he's "fun to be around" (although he does have problems with using apostrophes), and Ann, who's a dog-loving philosopher, respectively hate having to wait for safe places to overtake, and think all cyclists are middle-aged children.

Yep. Go down some country roads and some single track roads and cyclists can be a real problem. They won't get out of the way even if there is a queue of traffic behind them.

Too many have earphones covering their ears whilst listening to music.

— Nigel Greenwood (@NigelGreenwood6) April 6, 2018

This!! cyclists riding side by side are a danger to themselves and a menace to other road users particularly on country lanes pic.twitter.com/fdO10IUJ9D

— Ann Sheridan #FBPE Backs Rees-Mogg (@bernerlap) March 28, 2018

Actually, there's something else about those Twitter users. If only I could work out what it is.... Maybe that's the cars speaking as well.

So we have to accept that the causes of accidents are motor vehicles, not their drivers. Except for one unfortunate 73-year-old. It was definitely him driving. Not the Porsche. And it seems that the cars, in between colliding with cyclists (not the cycles, notice) are taking over their unwitting owners' Twitter accounts.

There's only one answer.

We're going to have to educate the cars.

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Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you. From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.