Matthew's Journal

The BBC recently broadcast a 3-episode mini-series on the life of Muhammad, presented by Rageh Omaar (himself a Muslim). I gather this is something of a first for Western television (which seems a shame to me). In any case, on the whole I was pretty impressed, coming from a position of relative ignorance. They seemed to cover the Prophet's life in some detail, and provided a range of viewpoints on the controversial issues that have risen up around Muhammad's life, ministry, and the religion he founded.

What I would have liked, however, was a bit more of an idea of what the consensus opinion was on some of these controversies - if I walked into a Mosque in Coventry, and spoke to some people there, what would they likely think about the issues raised? It felt a bit like opposing viewpoints were both mentioned (typically by some pretty eloquent speakers), but there wasn't much dialogue between them.

Did anyone else see it? I'd be interested to hear some more views. Sadly, I don't think there are many (any?) Muslims on my fiends list.

Bishops have been in the news a bit recently. Firstly, it is reported that Jeffrey John is being considered for Southwark. Secondly, Synod is going to debate how women should become bishops, including a last-minute amendment proposed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Firstly, it's pretty clear to me that if Dr John is the best man for the job, his sexuality should not be a reason to block him from the post. It's not like he's the first gay CofE bishop - the current Bishop of Edmonton is gay, for example. Jeffrey John abides by the church's teaching, and was shoddily treated seven years ago when he nearly became Bishop of Reading. LBGT people still face discrimination and even violence in our society, and so it's important that the church doesn't succumb to homophobia about Dr John again.

Secondly, we are (hopefully soon) going to see female bishops in the CofE. The revision committee has proposed that parishes that don't want a female bishop be able to ask her to get a male bishop to perform episcopal functions (confirmations and the like) for them, and that this process will be enshrined as a statutory code of practice. As Watch point out, this is still discriminatory, although the Archbishops' amendment is even more so. Elsewhere (e.g. in Canada), Anglicans have more straightforwardly just made women bishops; I read a piece by one in the Church Crimes the other week, where she talked about dealing with the anti-women parishes in her diocese - she visits them for services without communion, and has found that it's been a way for relationships to develop. Synod should avoid enshrining discrimination against women into law - surely our example to a society that continues not to treat both genders equally should be that women and men are equal in the sight of God?

What ties both issues together, to me, is the need for the church to stand up and show that discrimination just won't do.

This year, I thought getting a Lent book might be a good idea - it'll help me to carve a bit of lent-time out of what looks like being a very busy time. After looking at some reviews, I bought Why Go to Church? The Drama of the Eucharist, by Timothy Radcliffe. It's the ABC's Lent book, and he wrote a foreword.

I've not started it yet, but I hope to finish before Easter :-)

Yesterday was the Fresh Expressions National Pilgrimage, which was about "forming fresh expressions of the church in a sacramental and contemplative tradition", as well as the feast of the conception of the BVM. Conveniently, it was held at Coventry Cathedral, so I thought I'd go along. I wasn't really quite sure what to expect...

( So, what happened? ) As I turned to leave, I looked back and the entire void of the cathedral was filled with incense smoke - that should surely happen more often! :-)

At the graduate discussion group this week, we were talking about the process of law-making. We discussed whether, as Christians, we should seek to make laws based upon Christianity (which might well be close to a theocracy). It's an interesting question, and I'm not sure I have a good answer. So, I'm hoping the following poll will inspire discussion.

I'm less interested in the practicalities here - I'm well aware that banning alcohol (for example) doesn't work in practice, but I'm interested in the theory.

For the following two questions, I'd like you to assume that Christianity states that murder and gambling are wrong. If you really can't stomach that assumption (or if you disagree with it sufficiently strongly), then fair enough; that will rather miss the point of the poll, though!

[Poll #859501]

If you have other comments on the subject, please fire away. I'd particulary like to know *why* you think what you do about the process of making laws.

ETA: I seem to be asking a lot of "why" questions in the comments; I'm not trying to be combatitive, but trying to understand your position...

On Tuesday, I gave another microsermon (three minutes or less / around 300 words); I doubt I'll do that again in Selwyn for a very long time, and possibly no-where ever again...

The readings were Ezekiel 33: 1-20 and John 13: 12-20. I found this harder to write than some of my previous efforts, but it seems to have been well-received. Joe (the chaplain) particularly liked it. Below the cut is the text I wrote, which will have been roughly what I said...

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This evening, I gave another micro-sermon (3 minutes/300 words). The lections were 2 Chronicles 28 and Romans 4 13-end.

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I still have a wedding write-up to do, but I wanted to scribble this down before I forgot too much of it.

( Selwyn lunchtime discussion )

An interesting and stimulating hour or so, even if it did have another one of those moments.

I preached at Selwyn last tuesday - 3 minutes on Isaiah 49:1-13 and Acts 22:3-16.
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Our passage this evening was John 4:1-42, which is the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

Joe started with a rather straw-man "typical" exegesis of this passage, talking about Jesus' radical inclusion of the Samaritan woman. There's an element of that, but it rather misses the point. The story starts with Jesus demanding water from the woman (actually, it doesn't, I interjected, it starts with Jesus resting by Jacob's well, thus linking the story with the Jewish heritage; that aspect we rather neglected, as Jim pointed out), which would have been a pretty shocking thing for the woman - here is a man, speaking to her openly. Worse, he was a Jew. The initial conversation must have been very confusing for her - he was offering to give her living water (~=running clean water)??? Was he greater than Jacob?. Then the abrupt change of conversation, and he shows that he knows about her previous five men. That must have been pretty shocking; indeed, she changes the subject hastily.

We side-tracked hugely at about this point. We will all eventually worship in Spirit and in Truth - yes, the Jews have it right for now, but that's relative to True Worship which will happen when the Kingdom comes. Jim took this theme and ran with it - he thinks that we as a church should put worship far more centrally to our life - if we put worship at the heart of our deliberations about issues that affect the church, then we'd be much more likely to have the Spirit involved in our deliberations. The woman goes and takes up an apostolic ministry; we aren't told anything about whether she improves her life or not. Worship should be coming first, not discipline. Christ doesn't say to her "You must marry your partner", nor "you should ditch this man and go back to one of your previous husbands". We shouldn't be saying to people "you're an evil sinner. Oh, by the way, God loves you", but more "God loves you. Come, worship Him, and repent of your sins". There's tension here, though - Christ is radically including the Samaritan woman, but is also saying "actually, you need to sort your life out; 6 husbands isn't acceptable behaviour". Similarly, there are some things that really are not acceptable for people to do (and, slightly differently, for priests to do), but we as a church lack a mechanism for drawing lines in the sand; in some senses, this is a virtue. [Discussion of heresy here, which I'll update later, once I have the facts to hand].

It's also interesting, in that here again Christ is using a woman to proclaim his good news; also that the men can't quite accept it - they start back-tracking towards the end of the passage.

There was more we covered, but these seem to be the things that stuck in my mind.