These Latter Days

 

No, I’m not going on an ‘end-times’ kick, but merely reflecting on how these ‘latter days’ of the pandemic are playing out. Ironically, as the vaccine begins to be rolled out in Britain, depression returns. Through most of the year, I had remained generally positive, responding to the emergency, with determined action. This was easy, because there were low expectations, nothing to justify. But underlying it, I suppose the perpetual darkness of the soul had persisted; what US singer Bill Mallonee calls our ‘blister soul’. 

Virus & Vaccine - Luke 2.8-12 (a sermon)

(This is the notes for a sermon I preached on 20th Dec 2020, addressing some of the concerns people have about the Covid vaccine. You can watch it on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kingscrossbaptist/videos/149894860248562)

Here’s my link to preaching the Sunday before Christmas about the virus! The angels say: Do not be afraid. Meant for Christmas, but valid for Covid. Politically, they faced Roman military occupation. Socially, the shepherds were among the most marginalised, poorest groups. I want to address the fear people experience today, about the virus, and now about the vaccine. I’m nervous about doing so, because it is controversial, and people in the church have different views. 

Surprised by Fidelity

“How can you plan for a new reality when you don’t even have the remotest idea what it would be like?” Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue 

This quote is from a 1984 feminist scifi novel. I’ve noted before that planning has been difficult this year, because we’ve had to adapt to constant changes. Preparing for 2021, we must again be tactically nimble, while remaining faithful to our strategic goals; combining plans and purpose,  flexibility with fidelity. Gabriel Marcel, the Christian existentialist philosopher, developed his notion of “creative fidelity”, in response to his experiences during the French resistance in World War Two. Such fidelity demands supple openness, alongside stubborn determination. 

Against (Theological) Method

Paul Feyerabend’s book, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, questioned the notion of a singular scientific method. This countered the concerns we students had about ‘methodology’ in our subjects (mine was history). Looking back we were interested, not so much in the nuts-and-bolts of how to do history, as the overarching philosophical worldview employed to understand it.

When I came to teach theology (a short-lived disastrous enterprise), I was surprised to discover an infatuation with ‘method’. Deriving from Third World Liberation Theology, this approach was designed to promote action, rather than abstract academic debate. Perhaps the most influential instance, in Britain, is Laurie Green’s ‘Spiral’ (in Let’s Do Theology. Resources for Contextual Theology):  a circular process involving stages of Experience, Exploration, Reflection, and Response; which then spirals off into fresh experience for later reflection, in a continuing process of action-learning.

An Exercise in Practical Theology

If this Blog was ever to be turned into a book, I think it should follow the pattern of Slavoj Žižek’s Pandemic!: Covid-19 shakes the World. A series of rambling articles, originally posted online, gathered together into a ramshackle collection of relatively early responses to the emergency. This, it seems to me, is the model for the engaged intellectual (if I’m worthy of such a title), immersed in the situation, bringing out of their treasure things old and new (Mt. 13.52). 

Meditation on 'Normal'

“Vaccines mean a potential return to normalisation.” So said a business pundit on the radio. There is a widespread desire for return to normal. Even while people recognise it will have to be a ‘new’ or ‘novel’ normal, they are desperate for stability, for a style of life, that is familiar, similar to what they have lost: shopping, pubs, socialising. 

Apologetics and Action

Recently I read three Christian books responding to the Corona pandemic: John Lennox, Where is God in a Coronavirus World?; John Piper, Coronavirus and Christ; Tom Wright, God and the pandemic. Here are my thoughts.

Pioneering and Planning in the Pandemic

There is an old Jewish joke: how do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans! Certainly true of this year. How many churches in January toyed with the cliché of ’20:20 vision’? How many of those ambitions now lie in tatters? Even as believers our presumption has been exposed by circumstances. We need to submit again to God’s sovereignty (Jas. 4.13-16).

Moving through the pandemic

The pandemic has proceeded through several phases and cycles. This is bewildering to the everyday pastor, trying to adapt to rapidly-changing medical prognoses and governmental pronouncements. However, much of the religious whining about our new lockdown is merely special pleading, with arguments similar to businesses who want exemptions, because their particular premises haven’t sparked outbreaks. Government though has to take account of where they may occur. But pastors’ dismay is exemplified in the oft-repeated joke, that they never got trained at seminary about how to deal with a pandemic. 

Pastoral Conversations

Christians are not immune, from Covid or the anxieties it provokes. As the pandemic’s second wave worsens, fears are emerging among believers, provoking questions. So, my pastoral conversations have sharpened up: a kind of pastoral apologetics.

 

The Invisible Covid Church

Much of what we have done as leaders during Covid has been invisible to our membership. Our outreach – street evangelism, working with the local senior citizens centre – is not seen by them. Even the pastoral care, and small groups, all happen online, and so are invisible to those not actually involved in each activity. Our physical services, back in the building, although witnessed by some through livestreaming, are not experienced by many of even our supposedly ‘regular’ congregation, from pre-Covid days. The church is therefore fractured, and in its fragmentation therefore invisible to most people. 

Transition, Contingency, and the Revelation of God

 

Just as we are successfully re-opening our church building for services, respecting social distancing and cleaning regulations, comes the possibility that we may have to close down again. The government scheme of Tier 2 and Tier 3 rules will not mean places of worship shutting again, as happened during the lockdown. But it appears that they are considering a short-term ‘circuit breaker’ for a couple of weeks; and if this follows the example of the Welsh government, it could involve prohibiting services in church buildings again.

Action, Man....

Last Sunday, our youth worker, Rochelle, preached her first sermon, since re-opening our church building for worship. She noted that, afterwards, several young people approached her to talk; and she concluded that this demonstrated the importance of relationship, being seen and heard. She has actually had the most difficult job in our church, because two weeks after she began work, lockdown started – and so she had to somehow do ministry with people she had never met. She did really well. But her observation on Sunday reveals how crucial physical presence matters.   

The Creativity of Covid

Throughout the pandemic, especially during Lockdown, it was recognised that the isolation could cause loneliness. So there were many suggestions for ways to maintain our mental health. These ranged from sports and exercise, through quiz nights online, to arts and crafts. And this concern has continued as the crisis looks set to continue into the winter. 

Grayson Perry, the ceramicist, for example, did a TV programme, in which he recruited his celebrity friends, to do something artistic, as a way to encourage viewers to emulate them. When he encountered some who were anxious about getting it ‘right’, he said something that is remarkably freeing: “Your mistakes are your style.”

Contemplation and Combat

When I arrived in the inner city for ministry, it was common to recommend contemplative spirituality, the cultivation of silence, as a spiritual discipline. Digging into the works of Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, would offer greater deeper resources for dealing with the stresses of urban mission. So, I built a practice, in my 20s and 30s, of regular retreats, and personal meditation. 

Discovering a Different Church

Church is different. Today, we had our first service after lockdown. Numbers were limited, to comply with social distancing regulations, we all wore masks, and there was no singing – a real sadness for a multiracial, urban, charismatic and Baptist, congregation, used to singing their heads off on Sunday mornings, in praise to our King! 

Critiquing Black Lives Matter

I’ve heard Christians criticise BLM for several reasons:

 

 

 

 

1. It’s political.

2. Not only ‘black’ lives matter: white lives, and those of other minorities, also matter.

3. It supports other ideas, besides racial justice, which Christians shouldn’t support.

4. It is a Marxist, or terrorist, organisation.

5. It is violent. 

Living with Uncertainty

Yesterday I spoke to some local shopkeepers oppposite our church building. They were worried about the loss of customers, and fearful because their landlord was still demanding high rents. One of our church leaders, who runs a web-design company, told me that many of his clients are experiencing uncertainty, because they don’t know how to plan for their businesses.

Whole Lotta (eschatological) shakin'

I was cycling yesterday past the university bookshop, where I have spent many happy hours, since I arrived in London years ago. I stopped at the lights and glanced over to the windows, and saw they were selling everything with a ‘green sticker’ for a pound.

It occurred to me that this is another sign of the crisis facing our retail industry generally, including bookstores, during the pandemic. This is intensifying the problems they faced previously from internet shopping. But how many physical stores will keep going? 

Filling the Religious Vacuum

We met them while we were recording our worship songs in the church garden.  They had heard the sound and come over to investigate – largely I suspect because, during lockdown, there was little else going on. A young couple in their twenties, they explained their interest in spirituality, the laws of attraction and such like. They realise there was something missing in our pre-Covid society, with its hollowed-out materialism and consumerism. Instead, they hoped, the crisis, through disrupting patterns of shopping and working from home, would enable people to realise the true inner values. As we discussed where people might find these spiritual values, while they pinned their hopes on this amorphous non-specific spirituality, I was able to suggest it could only be through Christ.

Humanity, Humanism, and the Pandemic

The initial response from our government to Covid-19 seems to have been uncaring. Whether due to incompetence or deliberate policy should be uncovered by a public inquiry. Early talk of developing ‘herd immunity’ really amounted to letting vulnerable groups die. Decanting elderly patients from hospitals, into care homes, appears to have spread the disease. And failure to stock enough Personal Protective Equipment, despite a previous government report, was inexcusable. All these instances betray shocking disregard for human lives. 

Covid and the Problem of Evil

Covid-19 presents us again with the ‘problem of evil’: why does God permit evil? For some this question leads away from faith, into atheism. It’s a quandary which John Lennox, our best British apologist attempts to answer in his book, Where is God in a Coronoavirus world?

My own feeling is that there is no need for the existence of evil, or suffering, to undermine faith. It’s been said that hanging onto belief, faced with indescribable evil, is an emotional response, holding onto a crutch because one cannot face the meaninglessness of the universe. But the rejection of faith is also an emotional response, not a logically necessary one. 

Back to Life. Back to Virtuality.

I was woken up at 4am last night, by a party outside our house. The relaxation of lockdown is bringing people out into the streets and parks. Recently, several beaches were crowded by hordes of holidaymakers, completely ignoring social distancing. And pubs overflow their seating on our pavements. That it is mainly the young doing this reflects the state of their hormones, and their innate desire to mix and mingle. It also instantiates Mikhail Bahktin’s concept of the “carnivalesue”: that people occasionally need to let rip.

The Dangers of Digital

Imagine if Covid had happened pre-internet. We have maintained relationships and connection through video calls and social media. Without them, the isolation could have been much worse. Church too has flourished through virtualisation. Small prayer groups and Bible studies occur via video calls. Church services are also shared through this clunky means, or through pre-recorded, heavily-edited productions, on social media, which demand intensive volunteer labour.

Assemblage Theory and the Virus

A few weeks ago, I had a bit of a meltdown (I am rather administratively and managerially challenged), as I was trying to work out our Church’s risk assessment, with a view to possibly returning to our church building in July, the date our government had declared safe for churches to reopen. Discovering the amount of detail needed to ensure safety for everyone made us delay any reoccupation until September. Reading the (justifiably) complex Baptist union Guidelines this month caused us to establish a task group to plan restarting services in the building, perhaps not until October.

Dispatches from Lockdown

I thought I had an idea for a book. I would call it “Corona Theology: Dispatches from Lockdown”. It would examine my own personal and theological responses to the crisis, and draw out themes for reflection. It would be an example of Contextual Theology: a contextual theology of Covid-19 and also a model of how to do any contextual theology. As such it would be a blend of the theoretical and practical. Consequently, like Jacques Ellul’s work, the finished product would embody a dialectical oscillation, and draw on writings from my column, “Edgenotes”, for The Prisma (an online multicultural newspaper), and this blog, “Jeremiad”. The former contains notes on society and culture, leaving aside my own faith commitments, as I try to analyse what’s going on. The latter expresses my own personal faith convictions much more explicitly.

Flourishing and Fragmentation. Ministry in all seasons – including Covid

Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun, in their book For the Life of the World. Theology that makes a difference, articulate a vision for a relevant Gospel-centred theology in this century. Written before Coronavirus, it nevertheless contains much that is applicable to our situation. For them, theology must be measured by its ability to promote “human flourishing”, in a holistic sense, in all areas of life.

However, realistic about our fallen world, and the as-yet unconsummated nature of God’s kingdom, Volf and Croasmun recognise that every empirical realisation of the gospel is also “fragmented”. In this half-time, this overlap, of the ages, our attempts at living out the new creation will be flawed, inadequate, and partial (1 Co.13.9-12) - although no less significant for all that.

The Mysticism of Covid

This week, I cycled through the deserted streets and squares of London’s central university district. The recently opening stores, with their queues, had made me forget how abandoned the city still is. I talked with one coffee shop worker, fearing closure; with their usual clientele absent – professors, students and office workers.

White Consciousness and Black Lives Matter

(My friend Nathan McGuire asked me to write this for his blog. You can see the article there - https://www.nathanlmcguire.com/blog/white-consciousness-and-black-lives-matter)

It could have been expected that the worldwide Covid pandemic would produce worldwide socio-political convulsions. The health crisis has brought to the surface deep underlying inequalities and injustices. In particular, of course, we see this in the unrest and uprisings sparked by the killing of a black man in Minneapolis. In one sense, nothing unusual; we’ve seen many of these. But coming during the tensions caused by inefficient and unjust responses to Coronavirus, it exploded into a global reaction.

Guilt

I feel guilty. I am not organising food banks or supplies for people during the Covid crisis. Am I reverting to type – my fundamentalist conversion during the tail-end of the Jesus movement overflow in Lancashire? Other churches seem to be doing so much – large ones like KXC starting up a brand new food bank, and smaller churches like Angel Baptist, and Notting Hill Community Church, feeding over 200 people every day with hot meals.

Dreaming with no future

The uncertainty of these days makes life feel like a dream. We drift through the empty streets of the city, floating in an air of unreality. London’s deserted avenues resemble De Chrico’s depopulated Italian squares, skirted by forsaken modernist-classical buildings.

One friend spends his days walking through unexplored areas of London, past unfinished housing developments, redolent of J. G. Ballard’s Drowned World. His is a singular expression of our collective pilgrimage - a postmodern Childe Harold; our own peripatetic, Anglo-Saxon, aboriginal, dreamtime.

Kierkegaardian Covid Christianity

We are beginning to consider how we might structure our return to the church building after lockdown. It’s possible the government may allow “public gatherings” in July. So, we’re thinking through social distancing and hygiene, with reduced numbers at multiple services. But while there is an economic pressure, pushing people to return to work as soon as possible, church has a different ethos. We can afford to take our time, to be safe, caring for people not profits.

Roofworks

‘Roofworks’, in a church context, usually means repairing leaky roofs. But under conditions of quarantine, it sometimes takes a more creative turn.

Sacrifice!

Jesus often asked, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of heaven?” It’s a common task of theology, apologetics and preaching, to search out new metaphors, analogies, to explain Christian truth, in ways that communicate to cultures far-removed from the first century.

One notion, unpopular these days, is ‘sacrifice’: the idea of someone dying for another, an innocent person assuming someone else’s suffering. It seems unfair, a case of cosmic child abuse, which has been used to justify oppression and exploitation, political and personal.

The Trees. The Trees.

The government permits one hour a day for outside exercise. But it sometimes feels more like a compulsory command. Nevertheless, it guarantees that I leave the house each day. Otherwise, on a Sunday afternoon, like today, when the weather turns cold, I might be tempted to stay inside all the time. And I do need that head-clearing, mind-refreshing, wind-blowing, it brings.

Pastoral Theology for the Pandemic

I’ve talked with a few pastors about how they’re coping with the lockdown. For some they’ve had a crisis of faith, finding it hard to even believe in Christ, because of the pressure. Others experience the pain of physical separation from their members, and wonder how to do evangelism when you can’t talk to people. 

A Covid Revival? (This should come with a health warning to whoever reads it!)

Apparently there is an upsurge in British people reporting that they’ve prayed during the epidemic. Others have joined online-services. The trend has even been noticed by secularist, left-wing, media, like New Statesman and The Guardian. Among Christians, there is consequently much rejoicing, as they/we seem to identify signs of an impending revival, a nation returning to God.

Dark Energy: The Psychology of Ministry in the Time of Covid

The surprising thing, for me, is that the Covid crisis hasn’t made me depressed. Stressed, yes. But that’s a different feeling, with an obvious cause. However, while I pretend to copy Paul in his concern for the church (2 Co. 11.28), there is a danger of burnout. According to John Sanford, ministry burnout occurs when we use up our ‘fuel’, the spiritual and emotional resources, needed for pastoral activity. But where to find new fuel? My spiritual director recommended once that I look for where I find ‘energy’ during the day, suggesting this would be a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence in my life.

Prayer and the Present Moment

It’s become a cliché to say that this crisis is ‘unprecedented’. Of course, it is. The initial response for many of us was frantic activism, trying to devise our immediate pastoral response. For me, this involved: setting up a pastoral care system, organising online small groups, uploading regular Bible devotionals on YouTube, feeding homeless people, and supporting my leaders. Inevitably, despite encouraging my leaders to take a day-off, I failed to do so myself! Eventually, I ‘hit the wall’ (to illlicitly use a marathon runner’s metaphor, because I’m not a runner), and had to stop. Spirituality is also about rest.

Proliferation in the Pandemic

Many have noted the increased uptake of small groups online in the Corona crisis. Might this be a glimpse of an opening, a rent, in the direction of the future? Is God breaking us out of our stultifying churchiness? Probably many will stop attending once they don’t need support during lockdown. Plus those who now have time, because they’re furloughed, may return to their previous busy lives.

Holy Corona Communion, Batman!

I got embroiled in a Twitter brawl by accident, when I happened upon a Tweet, by someone I didn’t know, and responded. He complained he was not able to take Communion, in his home, because there was no authorised person. I asked, why he didn’t do it himself? I shouldn’t have said it. I felt like an internet troll. And the thread eventually involved famous theologian John Milbank no less. A High Anglican, he defended needing a priest to officiate at Communion.

For me, this re-opened debates from when I taught at Spurgeon’s College – could we have sacraments online? Are they not necessarily physical events? I’ve seen, for example, baptisms in a MUD site, where people’s avatars are ‘dunked’ in virtual water. Is this a valid baptism? What about Communion, with virtual bread-and-wine, in “Second Life”? It seems to me, nevertheless, that sacraments do need physical embodiment. As Woody Allen said: “80% of life is turning up”. While I sympathise with those wounded by their church experience, that’s what the incarnation teaches: the essential bodied nature of Christian life.

The Electronic Corona Church

Will current changes in church life be positive or negative? Will our online measures enrich, or distract, us? Are they helpful contextualisations, to a pandemic, which may help us recover important features of ecclesiology? Or, do they betray the essence of church? Moreover, are they permanent, or only temporary adaptations? Will everything go back to ‘business-as-usua’l: what Paul Virilio called ‘’polar inertia”?

The Possbililty of Radical Church Renewal

Many pastors are wrestling pragmatically with questions arising from lockdown, as we focus on maintaining some kind of community, usually conceived conservatively as ‘running services’. The potential theological implications of our decisions are left unexplored; but besides personal or denominational, explicit or formal, articulations of belief or liturgy, lie implicit theologies. 

Perhaps, latent behind our immediate responses, there are resources for a renewal of our faith? Some pastors, wedded to a personalist model of ministry, simply attempt to do it all themselves. But this is also an opportunity to mobilise God’s people, a manifestation of what Ray Stedman long-ago termed “Body Life”: something I’ve believed in since my conversion in the 1970s.

Redeeming Rainbows at Covid Easter

Someone made a suggestion, at the start of the Coronavirus, that families should get their kids to display paintings of rainbows in their windows, during the lead up to Easter. It was a way to sensitively demonstrate hope; and also, a delightful attempt to encourage children in getting creative with craft – actually I think there’s been a real, and welcome, revival in junk modelling during our enforced in-house lockdown. Still, during our daily exercise walks, we’ve had fun identifying the middle class households, in our area of gentrified Islington, by the cute rainbows in windowpanes en route.

Our Covid Easter

The Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald, is one of my favourite depictions of Christ’s death and resurrection. It has, I believe, especial relevance during this season of Coronavirus.

The piece hung originally in a mediaeval German hospital chapel, where patients could meditate on the central image. The Christ figure is twisted, writhing in agony. But particularly important were his green, putrefying, puss-filled, feet, which illustrated the symptoms of the skin diseases these inmates experienced. Here they could really sense that Christ had borne all things for them (Isa. 53.4-5).

A Theology of Corona-Time

I realise I’ve been ‘doing theology’ during this crisis, though not all of it has found expression in written form. Theology is reflecting on life in the light of God. And there is certainly much to think about now.

As such, I am engaged in what’s called ‘Contextual Theology’, i.e. reflection from within and about my own situation. It can, therefore, only be ‘a’ theology of Corona Time, one particular Christian response, since everyone’s context differs.

Ministry in this Viral Spring

In January we held a Week of Prayer and Fasting for 2020. Little did we know what this year held in store for us. During our daily prayer meetings, people shared several words of prophecy. One was that spiritual gifts would be released, like seeds, which would grow and flower in our church. What do we make of these words now, in April, after Covid? Was it all just naïve spiritual optimism?

Another word, which my wife received recently, is that this is a ‘strange spring’. Certainly so. But in that spring, I can already see signs of spiritual gifts growing. Before the crisis, we struggled to get people into small groups. Now, we have gone from four to fourteen small groups, all online – some large (12), some small (4).

Plague and Providence

I had two dreams last week. In one, I was with my son in France, trying to find our way by train with a map. In the other, I was interviewing a comedian on why he got into comedy, but he wasn’t interested in exploring his origins. In both, my subconscious was searching for answers to ‘Where?’ and ‘Why?’ No wonder, given the days we’re living in.

Crying over Corona

I have seen some Christian preachers online, who are calling this Covid-19 epidemic a sign of God’s judgment on the world. Another group, among which I suspect I sometimes fall, don’t go that far. They just say it’s a sowing and reaping of what we have produced in our way of life.

The problem is that, whether true or not, there is a gleeful delight in many of these commentators; an apparent pleasure in the disaster, a satisfaction that sinners are getting their comeuppance. But the proper stance of the prophet is to weep.

Prophecy and the Virus

What is the calling of a prophet in times like these? Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann suggests the prophetic ministry has two facets: criticising and energising. When the regime is most stable and prosperous, the prophet’s vocation was to point out the rot within the system, the injustice and oppression, which went on, often in the name of the religion. However, when times were hard, and the nation was in exile, it was prophet’s task to articulate hope, and the sense of the future, to indicate God’s new beginning, his new creation, for the nation.