Our Common(s) Lot

Thanks to Nigel Hopper of LICC for this well thought out view of the matter of MPs' expenses:

'I think it is a dreadful example of the House of Commons as a whole - which as a whole is responsible for the mess we are in - trying to scapegoat one man who was trying to represent what he thought were their views on what should be done.'

Frank Dobson certainly isn't alone in detecting a whiff of hypocrisy in this week's tumultuous and historic events at Westminster, which saw Michael Martin become the first Speaker of the House of Commons in more than 300 years to be effectively forced out of office.

There is, however, another scapegoat in the current crisis over MPs' expenses, one on which everyone seems eager to lay their hands: the system. The applause that greeted Speaker Martin's later (and longer) statement to the Commons last Tuesday, in which he outlined interim changes to the parliamentary expenses claims system, is indicative of the honourable members' conviction that the system needs to change.

There is now cross-party agreement that MPs should no longer be able to claim for, among other things: mortgages that don't exist, homes they do not live in, and houses in which their ducks do.

This is tragic.
It is tragic because such things shouldn't have to be spelt out. The system, designed to ensure MPs aren't left out of pocket for legitimate expenses incurred in the course of their work, isn't the problem. The creation of such a system is good, very good. The problem is the selfishness and greed of those who abuse the system in order to fill their pockets. Justifying their actions with reference to the letter of the law, they wilfully disregard the spirit of the law.

In other words, the real problem here is what the Bible calls sin.

To cast the present scandal in terms of the words of Jesus, it is from within, out of the heart, that greedy expenses claims come (Mark 7:20-23). Making a scapegoat of the system may be to join the Pharisees in cleaning 'the outside of the cup and dish', but inside remaining 'full of greed and self-indulgence' (Matthew 23:25). The system, like the Daily Telegraph, can expose sin, but it can't do anything about it. Only Christ can do that. Ultimately, there is no solution to the scandal of MPs' expenses apart from the scandal of the cross.

Not that we should sit in judgement. The current crisis begs the question of our own integrity. Be it in regard to our own work expenses, or anything else, we must all contend with the truth that our actions betray our allegiance. As we do so, we might find we have more in common with the Commons than we thought.

Learning from Football

Without wishing to turn off all those who detest football, I have to say that I think the church can learn a great deal from the way a successful football team operates. It is fascinating to watch the post-match analysis and to see how the losing team’s defense has been torn to shreds by a well organized, well disciplined, attacking team. Defenders are left stranded in no-man’s land as attackers run into yawning gaps in the penalty area and pounce on the ball, slotting it home with precision accuracy.

Well it’s not just football teams that operate like this. Any athlete has to be focused, disciplined and in top shape if they are going to compete with their rivals. But with a team game like football, the secret is that every player knows what job they are there to do, they have trained tirelessly to perfect their particular skill and are totally focused upon the game plan for the match.

It is just as St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12 where he likens the church to a body. Each member of the body has specific gifts and each member relies on the others. The eye and the ear have different functions, as do the hand and the foot and the body simply won’t operate as a body if that were not so. The likes of Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez could not achieve their high goal-scoring records if they didn’t receive good support from their midfielders. No team would win matches if their defense was consistently weak.

Knowing your strengths
So, what does this say to the church? Again, with reference to St. Paul’s teaching, everyone in the church needs to know their strengths. They need to know what part God has called them to play in the work of the kingdom. Too often Christians look with envy at other high-profile colleagues and say, “if only I could be like them”. Take time with God and close friends to discover your own special calling.

Relying on others
We also need to learn how to rely on one another more. Too many Christian leaders suffer from stress because they take too much onto their own shoulders instead of allowing others to share that load. There are many willing volunteers in our churches who, if asked to take on a small role, would gladly agree – and probably do it far better than expected.

Having a Game Plan
Every church needs to review its mission in this rapidly changing society in which we live. If the church simply turns up on a Sunday to do the same things as it did 50 years ago, it soon loses touch with the community around it. We need to regularly look afresh at the needs of our communities, investigate mission opportunities, and to re-evaluate our strengths in terms of the people who are part of the church. I notice that a number of Fresh Expressions of Church, both in this district and further a field, have re-invented themselves. They have learnt lessons from the early years, adapted to the changing situation as new people have joined and redefined their goals accordingly. If a church remains static, it can vegetate.

Training
Just like the top footballers, every Christian plays a specific role and needs to work hard to hone their particular skills. God has not assigned each one of us gifts on a random basis. But we will only operate at peak efficiency if we practice our skills and make the most of who we are. Ambition can be unhealthy if it is pursued at the cost of those around us. But if we are ambitious to fulfill God’s calling, then everyone profits.

So, where is your church in all of this? Are you languishing in the lower leagues, turning up on a Sunday just to play the game? Or are you always seeking to make the most of the opportunities around you and re-shaping your mission in order to meet the challenges before you?

Roger Johnson
District Evangelism Enabler
Nottingham & Derby District of the Methodist Church

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How I Caused the Credit Crunch

It was me. That's what a bright, young, Eton- and Oxford-educated former banker called Tetsuya Ishikawa, who spent seven years at the forefront of the credit markets, admits about himself. During a banking career within some of the world's major banks, he structured and sold subprime securities to global investors. Now he confesses all in the form of a novel that is taking the bestseller lists by storm.

The title of his book, How I Caused the Credit Crunch, is as intriguing as its contents. Too often during the current financial crisis the emphasis has been on technical problems of risk management, and on what technical fixes now need to be imposed. Ishikawa's book provides, in contrast, a vivid reminder that financial markets are not the workings of cold mechanical forces, but of warm flesh and blood. Reflecting human choices, they have innate moral dimensions.

What is true of financial markets holds true for the rest of the economy. The attempt to understand and to operate in markets through the suspension of moral judgement forces economics and business into a moral vacuum that eventually suffocates them. Because they are essentially about relationships, markets require sound morals to survive. The credit crunch is as much a wake up call to the destructiveness that can occur when morals go wrong as 9/11 was to the destructiveness that can occur when religion goes wrong.

But attempts to use bad morals as an excuse to eliminate moral responsibility from markets - whether through the imposition of secular worldviews or of mechanical fixes - will be as misguided and counterproductive as the attempt to use examples of bad religion as an excuse to banish religion from public. For most people in the world, religion is the magnetic field in which they set their moral compass. It is the context in which they perceive and pursue visions of the common good, stimulated by the sense of personal moral responsibility that religion tends to engender.

This is what inspired Mel Gibson to ask the camera crew of his blockbuster The Passion to film his hand as that of the centurion holding the nails that were driven through Jesus' wrists. Gibson's act reflects a mindset Ishikawa's book can help stimulate. For while his spotlight is on bankers, Ishikawa insists that 'we are all responsible in our small way' and that 'the arrogance of the [banking] industry has gone out. There is a greater sense of humility'. Were we all to embrace such humility, the green shoots of recovery would be sooner to appear.

Peter Heslam (LICC)

It was Good

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

Genesis 1:31

Good.
There can be no mistaking how God evaluates his creation. The affirmation comes six times - to make sure we don't miss it. The repetition makes it clear that each part is good, climaxing a seventh time with the statement that the sum of the parts is 'very good'. God doesn't just create the world; he creates the world good - very good.

That the word is applied to stars and seas and trees and turtles suggests that something more than moral good is in mind. Think good in the sense that Genesis 1 itself implies: a well-ordered, beneficial, fitting, beautiful, teeming-with-life, everything-in-its-place goodness - from the intricate parts to the immense parts - all of it good.

Nor is the goodness of creation to be limited to 'nature'. Human society and culture are also embraced, with the goodness of work and marriage affirmed as spheres in which we may serve God - the architect at her desk, the baker in his kitchen, the mother in her home, the teacher in his class, the husband and wife in their bed. All of it good.

Alas, things don't stay good. But the evil that comes later is not an inevitable or necessary part of the fabric of the world, or of human beings, and the Bible anticipates a time when evil will be removed. Meanwhile, we have a strong clue that salvation is not about being released from an evil body for a non-material existence. We may expect that the salvation Christ brings is not from the world but a salvation for which the world was made in the first place. A new creation no less.

For Christians, it is a reminder on the first page of the Bible that our faith is world-affirming, that we may delight in the goodness of God's created order. And it should come as no surprise when God wants to show up in areas of our lives from which he has sometimes been excluded - our careers, our friendships, our studies - since it has all been designed with our well-being in mind, as a place of blessing for us.

Much more than a claim about the process by which life came into being, a biblical perspective on creation involves a response of praise to the God on whom the whole of life depends, and who is the source of all things good.

Antony Billington(LICC)

Death and the Language of Life

Unusually for stiff-upper-lipped, euphemistic Britain, lately our nation has been ringing with discussions of death. From our coffee shops right up to the corridors of power, the normally unspeakable is being spoken of. And how could it not be when everywhere you turn, it seems, there are headlines or photographs diligently documenting the latest stage of Jade Goody’s tragic terminal decline? As she herself acknowledges: ‘I’ve lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I’ll die in front of them. And I know some people don’t like what I’m doing but at this point I don’t really care… it’s about what I want.’ Love her or loath her, you have to admire the candid way she has unmasked a cultural taboo, stared it straight in the eye and forced us to do the same.

The media’s reporting of Jade’s plight has been increasingly permeated with religious language – double-page spreads containing references to Jesus, angels, heaven, new stars in the night sky, and the like. At first glance this may look like the best advert Christianity’s had in years; but it’s also an indication of the extent to which biblical theology has been usurped by a kind of ‘folk theology’ in our culture. Such language is, of course, the vocabulary of people’s best intentions; but all too often it’s a wholly inaccurate translation of Christian belief. And unless we can sensitively articulate a corrective when the opportunity arises, misinformation and misunderstanding will perpetuate.

Being disciples of Christ and his gospel, we have a mandate to probe through the haze of sentimental ‘folk-theology’ as we respond to the questions it provokes from our children, our colleagues and our friends. If we are too quick to welcome the naming of God in the public arena without due consideration to the context, we can become complicit in his domestication as an impotent spectator to the human predicament – a far cry from the suffering servant and risen Lord and King revealed in Scripture.

We must be prepared to unpack the glorious good news about Jesus with tact and integrity, lest the News of the World be taken as the gospel truth. When it comes to expressing our Christian faith, we rightly speak of the need to ‘walk the talk’, but sometimes it’s important to ‘talk the talk’. It is therefore imperative that we know who and what we’re talking about, in order that our language reveal truth and not conceal it.

Naomi Skinner (LICC)

modern proverbs

“When your outgo exceeds your income, the upshot may be your downfall.” - American broadcasting legend Paul Harvey, who died at an Arizona hospital on Feb. 28, 2009

“Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” - Coretta Scott King

“Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” - English proverb

Paul: Of Mice and Men

Since I have been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to visit you while passing through, and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while. Romans 15:23-24

The best laid plans o’ Mice and Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy
wrote Robert Burns. And most of us – although we might not know the exact meaning of the Scots word agley – know what he meant. In spite of believing in God’s providence and guidance, our best-laid plans frequently go agley. We might assume that Paul – that great man of God – had no such problems. But we’d be wrong.

The churches in Macedonia and Achaia had made generous gifts, which Paul was taking for the relief of the believers in Jerusalem. But thinking ahead to his next journey, he confidently planned to go to Rome and then on to Spain. Even as he travelled towards Jerusalem, however, the omens were not good. In every city, he told the Ephesians, the Spirit warned him of imprisonment and hardship (Eph.20:23), and prophetic voices reinforced these warnings. So it was hardly a surprise when, on reaching Jerusalem, he was arrested, and handed over into the custody of the Romans.

What, then, of his plans - plans, no doubt, made in faith and with prayer?

Paul did reach Rome – though not in the way he expected. As far as we know, he never got to Spain. But towards the end of his life he was able to claim that he had ‘finished the course’ (2 Tim.4:7).

How liberating it is to know that we can amply fulfil our calling even when things turn out differently from our hopes and expectations. Disappointment, failure, tragedy – everything from revolution to a broken ankle – may make our plans go agley, and sometimes change the whole course of our lives. But the Lord, who can see so far beyond our horizons, is constantly at work to achieve his purposes in other ways and through other people.

And even in redundancy and disability…(and I would add 'retirement'...Mike)no Christian is redundant in God’s economy, and no Christian is disabled from blessing others.

Helen Parry (LICC)

A timely word

(The Message)

But God's not finished. He's waiting around to be gracious to you.
He's gathering strength to show mercy to you.
God takes the time to do everything right—everything.
Those who wait around for him are the lucky ones.
Oh yes, people of Zion, citizens of Jerusalem, your time of tears is over. Cry for help and you'll find it's grace and more grace. The moment he hears, he'll answer. Just as the Master kept you alive during the hard times, he'll keep your teacher alive and present among you. Your teacher will be right there, local and on the job, urging you on whenever you wander left or right: "This is the right road. Walk down this road." You'll scrap your expensive and fashionable god-images. You'll throw them in the trash as so much garbage, saying, "Good riddance!"
God will provide rain for the seeds you sow. The grain that grows will be abundant. Isaiah 30: 18-23a (from 'The Message')

Honouring inheritance

Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. Exodus 20:12

Margaret Killingray (LICC) writes:

All the new discoveries in DNA and genetic inheritance* have given me some sense of the continuities from parents and grandparents right back to human origins, of genetic parameters within which we function as human beings. But our wider cultural and social inheritance comes from our wider social upbringing, and our parents whether linked to us genetically or not.

These thoughts have brought a new focus to the final clause of this command. The call to respect and esteem our parents is linked to long life, to land and place and therefore, by extension, to the inheritance of cultural and social patterns of behaviour and the handing down of these to children and children’s children. When the majority of sons and daughters in any society take the command seriously, then they are contributing to stable social structures that encourage human flourishing. Healthy relationships between the generations are a crucial source of stability, especially in a time of accelerating change.

My father and mother are long dead; the obligations have been discharged. Apart from still having a momentary flash on Mothering Sunday that I have forgotten to send her a card, I am at peace about them. I am grateful for a warm and easy-going pattern of upbringing, for security and affirmation, for support and for their letting go. It is only now that I have become fully conscious of that gratitude, realising that I have to some extent honoured them by incorporating what I learnt from them into my own patterns of parenting.

The word used is honour, not obey. Honouring doesn’t carry overtones of blind obedience. Honouring our inheritance involves assessing and reconsidering the patterns of living we have inherited before we pass them on. Sometimes it involves repudiating, and, indeed, seeking to redeem, destructive patterns of parenting and socialisation. We may honour our parents and yet act in different ways. We inherit a mixed bag – genes we can’t change (yet) – but we can seek the Spirit’s power to understand and transform, and, in the process, honour all that has been handed down to us.