Benedictus

I have been puzzling over a metrical Benedictus written by Timothy Dudley Smith Our God has turned to his people, which I found almost un-singable. I started tinkering with it, and ended up rewriting it to a different metre. This offered for comment, correction, suggestion, improvement etc. It is now in the metre 88 88 D, and has been written to be sung to the hymn tune Schmücke dich

God has turned to us, his people,

freeing us from sin and evil;

raising up a mighty saviour,

Victor, with his flock for ever.

Monarch in the house of David

as foretold by holy sages.

God has plentif’lly redeemed us

He has poured his blessings o’er us.

God has bowed down to restore us,

faithful to his ancient promise,

rescues us from all who harm us,

from the hands of those who hate us.

This, the oath to Fathers given

freed from foes, at peace with heaven,

we would give to him our praises

evermore through all the ages.

Child of God, great prophet, making,

straight the path for the world’s true king,

showing us God’s loving kindness,

proclaiming God’s great forgiveness.

So shall dawn out of our darkness

heavens morning,  glorious brightness,

guiding us out of the shadows

peaceful paths our feet to follow.

Glory be to God the Father;

Glory to his Son our Saviour,

Dying, risen, ascended for us,

who has heav’nly realms won for us;

Glory be to God the Spirit;

may we all your life inherit;

glory both in earth and heaven,
be for endless ages given. Amen.

Looking for love in Lent

Third Sunday of Lent 2017

John 4

Most of the women from the village would go and gather water in the cool of the morning, when the exhausting work of lugging heavy waterpots didn’t exhaust you all that much. But there was always one woman who waited until the middle of the scorching Samarian day to make the journey to the well. That way, she could be sure that she wouldn’t be disturbed, she could be sure that tongues wouldn’t wag.

But this day, she was disturbed. Not by the gossipy women of the village, but by an exhausted Jewish traveller, who asks her for a drink. Now here is the first strange thing. Jews do not speak to Samaritans. Samaritans had a long history of corrupting the Jewish faith. Most Jews wouldn’t even speak to a Samaritan, let alone risk contaminating themselves by drinking from one of their cups. But this Jewish man knows that he has been sent to gather all people to himself, to give them living water, and to make them true worshippers of the Father. And so he asks this woman for a drink. He comes to her, not immediately offering to transform her life, but humbly asking her to transform his, just a little, by quenching his thirst. Jesus, the one who offers abundant life, first meets this woman on the simple level of their shared humanity, ‘Please, give me a drink’.

As Jesus and the woman speak, he tells her of the gift he comes to bring, living water, an inexhaustible supply of spiritual life. The woman scarcely knows what to think of this. Is he offering a better water supply that their ancestor, Jacob? How can he give her water, when he doesn’t have a bucket? Still Jesus says, ‘if you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ And here is Jesus breathtaking offer. He doesn’t offer living water in exchange for selling everything she has and following him, or for joining a monastery, or by reading the bible and praying every day. He simply says, ‘if you ask, I’ll give you a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life.’

We don’t receive the blessings of God’s life in us because we have worked ever so hard. We don’t receive God’s life because we have the faith of a saint. We receive God’s life simply for asking, for having the tiniest amount of faith it is possible to imagine. Perhaps you don’t think you have strong enough faith to call yourself a Christian, or to come to receive the gift of God’s life shared with us in Holy Communion. Perhaps you’ve come to church for many years, but feel a bit of a fraud because your faith isn’t strong, or you don’t understand very much. Faith as thin as a thread of spiders web is enough to bind us in love to God, not because of the strength of our belief, but because of the strength of the one believed in. 

This woman, like us, certainly has a mixed up faith. There are lots of questions she has, and it is important to ask questions. There is much she needs to learn, and it is important to learn. There are aspects of her life which need to change, and God knows, we all stand in need of change. But she doesn’t have to pass an exam before the gift is given to her. She simply asks, in a muddled sort of way, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t have to keep coming back here.’ And Jesus gives her a gift beyond price.

And just as she doesn’t need to change for the gift to be given. So too when the gift has been given, she cannot but change. He asks her to bring her husband to the well, knowing that she isn’t married to the man she currently lives with and had been married five times before. I don’t think we are meant to think of this woman as terribly immoral. In the patriarchal first century, women couldn’t divorce their husbands, but men could fairly straightforwardly get rid of their wives. It is more than likely that this woman had been abandoned by five consecutive husbands, and no longer able to trust that any man truly loved her, is currently in a non specific relationship with a man not committed enough to her to make her is wife. Here is a woman with a broken self-image, who perhaps feels that no-one could truly love her, truly accept her, truly nurture and care for her. Perhaps this is why she risks the scorching midday heat.

Except that, on this particular day, in the scorching Samarian heat, she doesn't meet mockers, she meets Jesus at Jacob’s well. In the Old Testament wells are important: Abraham sent his servant to look for a wife for his son, Isaac, at a well. The first woman to offer him and his camels a drink was the lucky gal. And then there was Isaac’s son, Jacob, who built the very well they were standing at. It was there that he found his wife, Rebecca. This well was the first century equivalent of e-harmony for holy men, and here is Jesus... talking with a samaritan woman... no wonder the disciples were shocked , they all knew what happened at wells! Here is Jesus, talking to a woman who’s dreams had been shattered, and he asks her about her husband. Not to blame her, or judge her, or shame her, but to expose the deepest, most painful need in her life, to be loved dependably, and to says ‘I will be that person for you’. Not a husband, but much more, a saviour, a friend, a brother.

As we often remind ourselves, we live in such beautiful villages, and we are pretty good at covering up our deepest hurts, disappointments and wounds. We cover them up with as smile, with displays of our prosperity, with enthusiastic leisure pursuits, with being the life and soul of the party. But we all know that the brokenness is still there, however convincing a job we do at hiding it. Like this Samaritan woman, Jesus says, ‘simply ask’. As we open our lives to him, as we let him see our deepest vulnerabilities and needs, he fills those deepest needs with the fulness of inexhaustible life and love, the life and love of the God who made us. A great teacher of the Church once said:

“O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

The Samaritan woman’s restless heart found peace when she asked Jesus for the water of life. May our restless hearts likewise find this this peace, this love, and this life.

Why I am not too worried about church recession

The Church of England is obsessively concerned with 'Church Growth' these days, by which is meant numerical growth. It is why we are all supposed to embrace some kind of Process Evangelism course, force our Parent and Toddler groups to sing praise choruses, and otherwise preach at anything which moves.

While I want to see more people embracing faith in Jesus Christ, I can't quite bring myself to be too disheartened by the news that the CofE as an institution is in terminal decline. These words from a youthful Fr. Ratzinger, delivered in 1969 and published here, do more to explain why I am not too perturbed by church recession than anything I could say:

“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century.

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”

Wasting time this Christmas

You have probably seen the Mulberry handbag advert. A young couple who have just moved into their new home sit in front of an open fire, surrounded by their yet to be unpacked belongings. The young man turns from his wife saying, "I know we weren't going to do presents, but here' ... he presents his wife with a box... 'Oh Joe', she pulls a bright red Mulberry handbag from the box which glows and illuminates her face with holy splendour. 'It's the most beautiful thing I ave ever seen'. There is a knock at the door and round the corner comes a farmer: 'evenin'' he says, 'I 'eard you 'ad a new bag.' hand he comes in and gazes at its resplendent beauty cradling it as though a small child. In comes another farmer with sheep in toe as angelic choirs sing in the background. Finally in come three friends, who had been stuck in traffic. Resplendent in paper crowns they bring gifts and kneel before the handbag, 'This is truly marvellous', says, one, 'It smells amazing', the second, while the third simply looks longingly at the bag and says 'it's a thing of wonder'. By this point Joe is looking a bit perplexed says... 'guys, its just a bag' and they all laugh, and settle back into admiring its beauty.

It's a bit of fun, and a very clever advert which reminds us of our tendency perhaps to make a little more of gift giving at Christmas than is entirely healthy! But there is something profound about gift giving. It is an act of love, of kindness, of selflessness. Generosity is in many ways one of the noblest qualities of humanity. A virtue we would all want to foster.

What is the greatest gift you can give this Christmas? Whether or not we have the means, we all have a tendency to measure the value of the gifts we give by their label or their price tag. A new pair of socks... thanks so much?!? A Mulberry Bayswater handbag! WOW!

But there is one commodity which we all chronically lack in twenty-first century Britain. It is something which you can't get more of by working harder, or networking better. An impressive stock portfolio won't give it to you, and it can't be found through getting to know the right people. The thing we all seem to lack these days is time. We tend to be frantically busy. Always trying to fit more into the finite span of our waking hours.

Perhaps the greatest gift we can give this Christmas is the gift of time. But not productive time. Idle time. Lazy time. Wasted time. Time in which nothing of any use is achieved.

A parishioner who I won't name once told me that he thought the definition of a Vicar was someone who didn't know the meaning of the phrase, 'a waste of time'. I am certain that this was a complement! It is a real challenge, something you have to work really hard at, to see no conversation, no encounter, no contact with people as a waste of time. And I think this is something which shouldn't just be the preserve of vicars.  We all need to learn to be idle with other people again.

Wasting time with people, people we love, certainly, but also wasting time with people we don't love yet. Wasting time with no hope of outcome or achievement. Simply being with others. This is the greatest gift we can give this Christmas, because it reflects the gift of gifts, given to the human race by God: that God being born as a human baby, as one of us, was a divine decision to waste time with us. To give himself to us in the knowledge that we could never give anything back that would add to God, or make God more happy, or content. God chose to give himself to us with no expectation of return. 

So this Christmas, may we all find time to waste time, to waste time with each other, to wast time with God.

O Lord and Saviour, true and kind

Here is a slightly reworked hymn by former Bishop of Durham, Handley Moule. Its original 77.77 metre made it sound a little sparse (perhaps better as a gradual hymn), and despite rich themes of service and dedication, a bit childish. With a bit of reworking it fits a L.M. tune quite well, and sounds much grander, particularly when sung to Orlando Gibbons' wonderful tune Song 34 (usually the tune for 'Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go" – I also missed out an odd verse about plying the scholars task (I think it started life as a school hymn).

Let me know what you think.

O Lord and Saviour, true and kind,

Be thou the Master of my mind;

   O bless, and guide, and strengthen still

   my humble pow’rs of thought and will.

Here now I train for life’s swift race;

O let me do it in Thy grace;

   here do I arm me for life’s fight;

   O let me do it in Thy might.

Thou, Lord, hast made me mind and soul;

I for Thee choose to use the whole;

   for thou hast died that I might live;

   and all my pow’rs to Thee I give.

I, striving, thinking, learning, still,

O let me follow thus Thy will,

   until my whole glad nature be

   prepared for duty and for Thee.

The Whip

Many people find Jesus’ antics in the temple a little embarrassing; after all, isn’t Christianity supposed to be a religion which eschews violence? That disowns those lower instincts which cause us to take a whip and turn over tables and send things flying? When the person having a tantrum with a whip is the Son of God, well, that can be something we find hard to reconcile ourselves with. Perhaps it is because I have watched far to many movies where a tough guy with a thirst for justice beats up scores of people in his righteous anger, that far from being embarrassed, this is one of my favourite stories in the New Testament. Goodness alone knows what that says about any flaws in my personality!

And the story isn’t just fascinating because of its explosive drama. There are lots of details that make it especially interesting. I won’t go into when exactly the event took place, except to point out that Matthew, Mark and Luke have it taking place just before Jesus’ Crucifixion, but John has it right at the beginning of Jesus ministry, years before his death. Who is right? Nobody knows. But there is one very interesting comparison between the four versions of this event recorded in the four gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke all hint that the money changers and animal sellers were up to no good. Maybe they were being exploitative. Perhaps they were fiddling the first century equivalent to the Libor rate. Whatever they were doing, Jesus condemned them as turing God’s house into a den of thieves. But John doesn’t. No mention of theft, or extortion or corruption. Simply that these people had turned God’s house into a marketplace.

Now, if we are very literalistic, we might be quite sympathetic with this. We wouldn’t like our church turned into a marketplace, would we? With animals, along with the many gifts the bring, being bought and money changed while we were trying to pray? Surely the temple was supposed to be a place of quiet contemplation, not this noisy, unpleasant, dare I say it, unholy place. But that is where we need to sharpen our understanding of the Jewish faith, and particularly the temple. Because the temple wasn’t serene and tranquil. It was a place of pilgrimage and sacrifice. It would have been noisy, bloody and hot. And the traders at the temple were carrying out a vital service. If you were going to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover, when you arrived at the temple you would need to provide an unblemished sacrificial animal. If you had walked hundreds of miles to Jerusalem, providing an animal without blemish would have been hard. Much easier to set out from your home without an animal, but with a purse, and purchase an acceptable animal once you arrived at Jerusalem. Hence the need for animal sellers at the temple. 

And what about those money changers. I’ve never trusted Thomas Cook, surely their first century counterparts were up to no good. But their place in the temple was vital too. The Jewish law required a tax to be payed at the temple (Ex. 30.13). But what money would you use? Standard Roman coins had, to Jewish eyes, idolatrous inscriptions and images on them, proclaiming Cesar to be a God. You couldn’t bring money like that into the temple. So it was agreed that the only money acceptable within the temple was Tyrian silver, which didn’t have any idolatrous images or inscriptions. The merchants weren’t wicked, according to John, their presence was essential to the proper observation of Passover in the temple. Without them the temple as the place where people go to seek the presence of God would have ceased to exist.

And that is I think, exactly John’s point. Jesus was not judging the temple in Jerusalem as corrupt, but was declaring it to be obsolete. Jesus is not just pronouncing judgement on corrupt religion, but on organised religion altogether. I think that the difficulty all organised religion faces (and I say this conscious of my position), is that to an extent, it commodifies God. Pay your dues, come to this place, seek the advice of this holy man or holy woman and you will be able to have a relationship with the almighty, inner peace, forgiveness of sins, or whatever it is that we seek to get out of religion. Jesus stands resolutely against this. “My Father’s house”, the entire idea of being in the presence of and, in communion with God, should not be turned into a marketplace, it should not be turned into a product which we buy into. Partly this is because whenever we turn God into a product, we always ultimately turn God into an idol: we pick the bits of God which we find acceptable and therapeutic and comforting and buy into those. But the ultimate reason that turing God into a product is so reprehensible is that it fails to recognise the one place where God is truly present, in the person of Jesus Christ. That is why when the temple officials ask Jesus for a sign of his authority to clear out the temple, he says ‘destroy this temple, and I will raise it in three days’, speaking, as John reminds us, of the temple of his body, the place where God now dwells with his people, in their midst, walking among them. Jesus wasn’t the only person in the first century to speak against the temple. But he was the only person to claim that the temple as the place where God’s presence can be found had been replaced by him, the living presence of almighty God.

On Wednesday, The Archbishop of Canterbury launched a new series of “Lambeth Lectures” and gave inaugural lecture himself. He started his lecture with this statement:

“I want to start by saying just two simple sentences about the church. First, the church exists to worship God in Jesus Christ. Second, the Church exists to make new disciples of Jesus Christ. Everything else is decoration. Some of it may be very necessary, useful, or wonderful decoration – but it’s decoration.”

In essence, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple teaches us to be very careful about our religion, even when we have the best motives, because to all of us, me included, the decoration matters a great deal. I love the church. I love the ritual and the hymns and the liturgy. But if any of those things become a religious product which I buy into, which draws my focus from worshiping the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ and following him with every ounce of my energy, then I have to ask myself: If Jesus came into church today, would he be appearing with a whip of cords?

Baptism Hymn

I scribbled this metrical version of Mark 10.14-16 because I couldn't find a short processional hymn for the baptism of an infant within the context of a Sunday Eucharist. It's metre is 77.77 and works reasonably well to the tune "Buckland", to which "Loving shepherd of thy sheep" is usually sung.

It is short enough to not overly extend the liturgy. I struggled with the third line of the first verse when I first wrote it. The first draft had "For God's kingdom doth belong", which I really disliked. I'm not a fan of archaic language in new hymns, but "does" didn't seem right. This morning I had another look at it and thought that, while eschatologically inferior, "For God's kingdom shall belong" was a better choice.

The hymn is offered here for improvement if you have any ideas, or for you to use if you are looking for a short hymn for a baptism service.

Let the little children come,

do not hold them back from me.

For God's kingdom shall belong

only to such ones as these.

Very truly, hear my word:

Childlike must you also be;

trusting in your Father's care,

if you would his kingdom see.

Praise, O God to you be given!

Praise on earth and praise in heaven.

Father, Son and Spirit praise

throughout everlasting days. Amen.

Hymn for the feast of Ss Peter and Paul

For the poetic out there. I am struggling to find a decent hymn for the feast of St Peter and St Paul, so I thought I would have a go at translating the Latin Decora lux aeternitatis auream into metre (I really don't like the version in the New English Hymnal, just so that you know).

Below is (a) the translated text from Connelly's 'Hymns of the Roman Liturgy' and (b) my dodgy first draft of a hymn based on it. I have omitted from my translation the bits the go on about Rome for obvious reason. If you have any thoughts which would make it work better, please let me know.

(a) Fairly literal translation from Latin

A beauteous light streams down

from the eternal God

to grace with happiness the golden day

that brought reward to the Princes of the Apostles

and gave sinners a clear road to heaven.

Earth's teacher and heaven's doorkeeper,

Founders of Rome and judges of the world,

they take their place, laurel-crowned,

in heavens assembly —

the one triumphant through being beheaded,

the other through being crucified.

Peter, blessed shepherd, mercifully receive

your suppliants prayers

and with a word undo the chains of sin,

for to you was entrusted the power of opening heaven to men

and of shutting the open gate of heaven.

Paul, teacher without equal,

fashion our lives aright

and carry off our hearts with yours to heaven till faith,

whose vision is now veiled,

beholds the noonday glory,

and love, sun-like, is sole master of our hearts.

How happy, Rome, your fortune

in being dedicated to God in the Princes' noble blood;

for clad in your robe dyed purple with their blood

you far outstrip in beauty all else the world can show.

To God in essence one, in persons three,

the ruler of the universe,

be eternal glory, power and acclamation

through all the ages of ages.

Amen.

(b) My poetic (???) translation

O glorious light, eternal ray,

Whose love and peace to us abound,

You make to shine the glorious day

The Princes of the church were crowned.

The great apostles by their lives

And teaching show us Christ the Lord,

Whose death and resurrection brings 

Pardon of sin and heaven’s reward.

O Peter, heaven’s keys you bear

O Paul, you teach the grace of God.

By sword and cross you came to share

The laurel crown and heaven’s laud. 

Blessed Peter, pray for us, your flock,

That loosed from chains of sin we may

By following the path you walked

share in the great, eternal day.

Saint Paul, unequalled teacher, pray,

teach us to live by faith, not sight

So may our hearts, transposed on high

Worship the uncreated light.

Unto the Blessed Trinity

Perpetual praise and glory be.

All power to the unity

Which reigns through all eternity.

Amen.

Anxiety...

Matthew 6.25–34

People in advertising know that fear sells. Have you seen advert for the latest kitchen hygiene product from Detol? The Detol no touch hand-wash system! The idea behind it is that the thousands of germs which may be on the end of your liquid soap pump might hurt you, so now you can buy an automatic soap dispenser, recommended retail price £9.99, which means we never have to touch a germy nozzle again! Great idea… but completely pointless… So I get bacteria on my hands from my soap dispenser, but what do I do next? I wash my hands! Foiled again, pesky bacteria! The thing is, we’re all terribly afraid of bacteria these days, unless of course it’s L. Casei Immunitas or lactobacillus casei shirota, and advertisers know they can use our fear to sell us pointless things. Fear causes us to act irrationally.

In the gospel reading which we heard earlier, Jesus tells us how to live a life which isn’t dominated by fear and anxiety. But to some of us his words might not quite hit home. Jesus lived in a largely rural world. It might have just about made sense back then to tell people to trust God not to worry. But he didn’t have school fees or a mortgage to pay; he didn’t know the strain and stress of modern life, particularly during the economic squeeze. And what about all the people who do look to God and who do seek his kingdom and righteousness, but are still cold, hungry and thirsty, who suffer form preventable illness, who don’t have nice clothes to wear and who live in poor accommodation? Should we really take Jesus advice seriously? His words might seem a little hard to swallow.

Well I think we should. In fact, I think that Jesus teaching liberates us from the fear and anxiety which, far from making life better, makes it considerably worse. There are two things that Jesus says can liberate us from being ground down by anxiety:

The liberating love of the Father

The truth is that, rich or poor, we worry. You worry about getting more (or even enough) if you’re poor, or you worry about hanging onto what you have got if you’re rich, and you worry about a whole raft of things in between. This tells us one thing and one thing only. Getting more doesn’t free us from worry. Having little or nothing is a source of great misery and stress, but you can’t make your life less miserable and stressful simply by having more. So worrying about how much we have is useless, it turns us in on ourselves. It is completely unproductive, except, maybe of stomach ulcers. As Jesus said, you can’t add another moment to you life through worrying. Far from it! You may shorten it. 

Worry grinds us down into the ground, but Jesus wants to raise us up to live lives of hope and joy, and so he reminds us that although our troubles make us feel unimportant, our lives is of great value to God. Jesus points us to the natural world, to birds and flowers. If God cares enough for birds that he feeds them, and cares enough for ‘grass of the field’ (which lives and dies in a matter of days) that he clothes them with beautiful flowers, won’t he also supply the needs of his people? Jesus wants us to realise just how important human beings are to God. Much more important than flowers and birds. If God loves us so much, he will give us what we need.

Now Jesus isn’t saying that we don’t need to work, or that we can be lazy. Martin Luther, the German reformer said that some people think that Jesus’ teaching means that we can sit back and wait for God to drop a roasted goose into our mouth. But that really isn’t what Jesus has in mind. Anyone who knows birds knows that they are actually quite industrious – God feeds them by providing in nature the means by which they can feed themselves. Gardeners, likewise, know that plants expend a great deal of energy in producing flowers. They are not ‘Lazy’ (if you can refer to a non-rational organism in that way), they work incredibly hard. Both birds and flowers cooperate with God. In both cases what they lack is not industry but anxiety.

So we too should work hard, we do what we need to do, but we’re not to worry about things which lie completely outside of our control. That really is the folly of worry – we end up making ourselves responsible for things which human beings could never really be responsibility for – and we forget that there is a God.

The liberating desire for God’s Kingdom and righteousness

This phrase ‘strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these will be given to you as well’ really is the key to understanding Jesus’ radical call to live a life without fear for tomorrow. The Kingdom of God isn’t a static territory like the United Kingdom. God’s Kingdom is a dynamic reality. Neither does striving for God’s Kingdom mean striving to get into heaven when we die. That is far to individualistic a view of religion for Jesus. To strive for the kingdom of God is to strive to see God’s reign as King, which is already a present reality, become more and more apparent. 

God’s righteous kingdom is one in which there is no poverty, hunger or thirst, where there is no trouble or war but only peace. It is a kingdom of perfect justice and fairness. So if we are to strive for these things, we make them priorities in our own lives as individual Christians: in the way we are with our families, in the way we behave to each other in church, in the way we spend our time and money. But we are also to strive for these things in the life of our community, to pray for the day when the kingdom of God is made known in all its fulness. The question we always need to ask is this, ‘how are the values of God’s Kingdom reflected in the life of our Church?’ 

This is why, despite there being people throughout the world who have little or nothing, who experience much trouble in life and little comfort, that we can still say, with confidence, that God provides for his beloved children. In fact, he provides abundantly. He provides abundantly by asking those who have received much to be the means by which he provides for those who have little. As we seek to live the life of God’s kingdom, we will necessarily seek to bring people out of poverty. We will try to alleviate suffering, sickness and trouble wherever it is found. And if the Kingdom of God really becomes our primary ambition, if living under God’s righteous reign becomes what we value most highly, then we will have a faith which can face trouble and still remain firm, because whilst churches come and go, whilst money comes and goes, whilst people come and go, the kingdom of God comes and grows and will one day fill the whole earth with justice, mercy and peace.

love is a place...

                                                             love is a place
                                                             & through this place of
                                                             love move
                                                             (with brightness of peace)
                                                             all places

                                                             yes is a world
                                                             in this world of
                                                             yes live
                                                             (skilfully curled)
                                                             all worlds

                                                                                                           e.e. cummings

Divine humility...

Mal. 3.1–5

Luke 2.22–40

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

For many of us, these words of Simeon which we have just heard, “Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”, signal a blessed departure from Evensong. I remember once being at a particularly tedious Evensong where we had a very long reading from the book of Genesis. The reader went on and on and eventually concluded, quite properly with ‘Here endeth the lesson’, to which one of the congregation humourously replied, ‘Thanks be to God’.  Here though, the departure in mind is Simeon’s departure from this life, having beheld God’s promised salvation. A fulfilled promise which brings to an end Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth and reminds us of the strange way God fulfils his promises. To appreciate this though, we need to step back and look at the rest of the story Luke tells about the coming of the Messiah.

Luke’s story begins and ends in the temple, the symbol of God’s living presence among his people. In the first chapter we find a priest called Zechariah on the duty rota to offer incense to God in the temple. He had probably done it a hundred times before. He’d get his charcoal going and put some incense on it and wave it about, nothing out of the ordinary about this fairly mundane ritual. Except this time was different. This time, as Zechariah was waving his censer and the people were praying outside, an angle appeared. Zechariah, was understandably terrified. But the angel calmed his nerves and gave him a message. He was told that he and his wife, Elizabeth, who were both very old would have a son, a son who would make Israel ready for God’s return to them. In the words of Malachi, the Lord they sought would suddenly come to his temple, and Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist, would be the one to prepare his way.

Now, at the end of Luke’s story about the birth of Jesus, we return to the temple. Here, another elderly man receives a message from God. Not this time in the form of an angel coming from heaven, but as the fulfilment of a promise which God had made many years before. Simeon could depart this world in peace knowing that in the baby he held in his arms, he had seen salvation. At this moment, the Lord had returned to his house as Malachi had prophesied. But look at the way in which he comes into his temple. 

Many expected the Lord to come as a warrior to occupy that which was his by right. But he comes as a child. ‘Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?’, but none had realised that they would fall, not beneath the might of a conquering war-lord, but would be silenced by a baby that needed to be carried. So often we want to see shock and awe, for our enemies to fall beneath incontrovertible force, whether intellectually or politically. We respect strong leaders who get things done, whatever the cost. And so often the church looks little different to the world. We want to have our way, on general synod, even perhaps in this church. We can be tempted to use coercion to win the day. But though we might win the battle, it will be at the expense of our soul. If we are Christians then we are followers of Jesus, and the manner of Jesus’ coming turns our conceptions of power and influence on their head.

Yes the Lord is like a refining fire, he purifies his people. But how does the Lord purify? Not violently and destructively, but by bringing them light. Yes, the Lord will restore the glory of his people. Not by destroying his enemies though, but by making this child a light for the enlightenment of the gentiles, allowing those who were his enemies to become his friends. The outcasts are to be admitted to his holy nation and this will be the glory of Israel. This wasn’t the revelation the world was expecting, and it certainly wasn’t the sort of glory Israel had wanted and prayed for. But it was what God had intended, and it was, in reality, more truthful and glorious than they could have ever expected. Perhaps sometimes, we need to be open to God leading us into better future than we could have imagined by ourselves?

The Lord comes to Judge. But how does he judge? Notice that we often talk about “the rise and fall” of people, nations, empires. But not here. With Jesus the order is reversed. He will cause the falling and rising of many in Israel. He will cause us to stumble and to be seen for what we truly are, but he will also lift us back up back up to new life in him. No one will be immune from falling under this judgement and restoration, not even Jesus’ mother. His sword of judgement would pierce here own soul too, as she came to realise that her relationship with her son was not to be one of a mother but of a disciple. Yes, Mary had to learn this like the rest of us; we all come to Jesus the same way. And it would be by his hand that she would also be raised back up too.

When the Lord comes to his temple, he surprises us with his lowliness, with his willingness to step down and become weak, and this not only judges our attempts to find our worth in strength and power over others, but frees us from the burden of having to mask our own failings and weakness. 

St Augustine of Hippo wrote,

Human pride pressed us down so low, that divine humility alone could lift us up.” (Sermon 188)

And so when we embrace divine humility, when we embrace the God who shows his power and glory through weakness, we are transformed and raised up. The salvation Simeon saw was a baby, the saving presence of a God who gently changes the world, who refuses to fight fire with fire, who refuses to save by violence or coercion, a God who chooses to identify with humanity, not in its pride and aggression, but in its weakness and vulnerability. Simeon and Anna had waited a lifetime to arrive at this moment of seeing God’s salvation, of holding it in their hands. But for Mary and Joseph, this was going to be the beginning of a much longer story. And it is a story which we are caught up into as well. We must learn to follow Jesus into the deepest darkness, to the places where human life is regarded as dispensable and cheap, to put aside our pride and status and to raise up those who have fallen. And in doing this we will be showing Christ’s light to the world, we will become mirrors which reflect the light of the world into the gloom, we will become people who lead others into liberty.

Into obscurity...

Mat. 4.12–23

When I was a child back in the 1980s, the milk marketing board had an advertisement in which two Liverpudlian boys, fresh from a game of soccer come into the kitchen. One boy asks for some lemonade and duly gets passed the bottle while the other boy pours a glass of milk. ‘Milk’, the lomonade drinker says, ‘yuck’. ‘It’s what Ian Rush drinks,’ says the milk drinker, ‘and he says that If I don’t drink enough milk when I grow up I’ll only be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley.’ ‘Accrington Stanley’, says the other boy, ‘who are they?’, ‘Exactly’ the milk drinker replies. Well, in Jesus day, you might very well have heard two boys talking about their future career as Rabbis and one boy saying to the other ‘If you don’t pay enough attention in Torah class when you’re older you’ll only be good enough to be a Rabbi in Capurnaum’, ‘Capurnaum, where’s that?’ ‘Exactly’. Capurnaum was a small Galileean town of about a thousand people on the fringes of Jewish culture and religion. It really wasn’t the place to begin a great public ministry. It was an ordinary sort of place. A boring sort of place. A place of no consequence. And so as we continue to  think about the Epiphany of the Lord, the making clear to all who will see that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, we come to this reading in which Jesus divinity is made manifest, not through traveling stars and heavenly voices, but in the mundane, in the smallness of and obscurity of life in first century Galilee.

The first thing to notice about Jesus’ glory being revealed in the ordinary is that this is the path that he consciously chooses. When John the Baptist, the forerunner was arrested and Jesus knew that he would now take centre stage, he retreats. He takes a step into obscurity. And this isn’t just any old obscurity. Galilee, the tribal lands of Zebulun and Naphtali were the first parts of Israel to be subjugated to foreign rule when they were conquered by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 723BC. This was the region of Israel which first descended into the darkness of foreign occupation. These territories, deep in darkness, would be the first to have the light of the Kingdom of God dawn on them. And so Jesus glory is clearly seen in his going not merely into obscurity, but stepping into to the darkest region to start his ministry. This is, after all, going to be the path that Jesus the Messiah follows. He walks into deeper and deeper darkness until it finally takes him to a Roman Gibbet, and from that Gibbet, he sines the light of the kingdom of God into all human darkness.

The second thing we should notice is how Jesus shines in the darkness in the message he proclaims. He doesn’t come up with a novel, exciting, new message. He says exactly the same thing that John the Baptist has been saying. Jesus first sermon in the gospel of Matthew is borrowed material, a great comfort to every preacher who reads his sermon and thinks, ‘there isn’t an original idea on that page!’ Jesus was there long before. But more significantly, the message that Jesus borrows from John the Baptist is the message which has just earned John a place in jail! Jesus doesn’t choose to soothe with kind words, but to echo the same words which, on John’s lips had caused such offence. Words of the approach of another kingdom; heaven’s kingdom, which will look radically different to the kingdoms people like Herod preside over. So Jesus shows forth his glory by choosing an unpopular, risky message. A message which could make his career every bit as short John’s. But a message of profound importance, which calls us all to prepare for the day when God will get involved with every aspect of human life, from our money to our relationships. ‘Turn’, says Jesus, ‘start living the kind of life that will find approval when God’s kingdom comes.’

The final way manifests his glory in our gospel reading, is by calling. Again, the people he calls are only remarkable for how unremarkable they are. They are fishermen, blue collar workers. Not the super wealthy, the learned or the powerful. These workmen are the people Jesus calls to follow him in bringing light to the world. So just as Jesus’ glory is revealed in his journeying into the far country, it is also made manifest in the humdrum traveling companions he chooses. And the disciples follow. They catch a glimpse of Jesus’ glory and they cannot help but follow. And that following involves great sacrifice –the leaving of a stable income, and even scandal –it was religiously disgraceful to leave your father and wander off on an adventure. Responding to Jesus’ call and following him was risky business. But follow they do, and in following they teach us perhaps the greatest truth about how Jesus’ glory is made manifest. Just as Jesus’ makes his glory clear in the ordinary place he chooses to exercise his ministry and the ordinary people he chooses to  follow him, so to the disciples most clearly glimpse the vision of his glory in the ordinary, every day business of accompanying him, of listening to him and learning from him. Jesus is most clearly seen as the incarnate God, not by assembling evidence, or reading books, but by becoming his friend, his companion, his follower. It is in becoming a companion of this extraordinary man, in his vulnerability and his humanity that we most clearly see his divinity. And in beholding his light, we become radiant with it ourselves, attracting others like fishers of people to Jesus Christ, the source of all goodness, beauty and truth. So may we take seriously, the call to turn from all which keeps us from following Jesus, to live the sort of life that finds approval in God’s kingdom, and to devote our lives to the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.

Jesus calls us...

For those preaching Matthew 4.12–22 this Sunday, here is some Herbert McCabe on the necessity of discipleship in experiencing the manifestation of Jesus' divine nature:

"So long as we are asking historical questions about what Jesus was like, we shall, according to the traditional doctrine of the incarnation, come up with answers to the effect that he was a man; not, therefore, an angel or a 'supernatural visitant', but a human being like ourselves except in not deceiving himself or playing at being superhuman when we do when we sin. But, of course, we do not simply examine Jesus historically to see what he was like; we listen to him, he established communication and friendship with us, and it is in this rapport with Jesus that we explore a different dimension of his existence – rather as when we say that the world is created we are considering a different dimension of it from the one we look at as physicists. 

  The insight that Jesus is uncreated, that he his divine, is available only to those in whom this rapport is established, to those 'who have faith in his name'. That is why the Church alone, the community founded on this rapport, is able to pronounce on the divinity of Jesus, as she has done (I would maintain) implicitly in the New Testament (especially in John) and later more explicitly in the conciliar pronouncements. It would, I think, be absurd for a man to say: 'I am not a Christian myself, but I do see that Jesus must have been the Son of God'. 

   It is in the contact with the person who is Jesus, in this personal communication between who he is and who I am, that his divinity is revealed in his humanity, not in any, as it were, clinical, objective examination of him. Any such examination will simply reveal correctly that he is splendidly and vulnerably human."

(Herbert McCabe, God Matters, 71) 

On sharing bath water...

Matthew 3.13–17

It had to be an i-pad. The parcel was the right size, the right weight, and you’d been dropping hints like mad for the last twelve months. You pick up the package every day, and gently squeeze the box… that’s good packaging. That’s Apple packaging. That’s ‘made in California from sustainable card stock’ packaging. It had to be an i-pad. Then eventually the day comes, the family gather around the tree, hand out the presents and you all begin unwrapping. Just to appear humble, you open the boring presents first, the socks, the jumper, the book. You want to save this one till you have almost exhausted your pile of gifts. And there it is. You slowly unpick the wrapping paper and peer inside… a cheese knife and board… a cheese knife and board! “Well we know how much you like cheese, and with this you can eat it in style”, says your mother. I’m sure you’ve had moments like that, where you have built up a sense of great excitement about something, a gift, a new job, and it doesn’t turn out quite as you had expected or hoped.

Poor old John the Baptist probably felt much the same way as his encounter with Jesus unfolded. John had been proclaiming to anyone that would hear that the people of Israel desperately needed to turn from sin and to turn to God again. And as a powerful symbol of this repentance, John called people to be baptised, to be washed, to be cleansed in preparation for the coming of God’s Kingdom. So here is John, raising everyone’s sense of expectation, everyone’e excitement at the coming of the Messiah: “I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Mat. 3.11–12). The one John prepared the way for was powerful and righteous and just, he would clean up Israel and clean up the world. John proclaimed loud and clear to all who came to hear him that when the Messiah comes, you better make sure that you are on the right side of the track. Repent, cleanse yourselves, get ready because he is coming, and when he does he will clear out God’s barn so that only the good wheat is left.

And then the moment arrives. Here he is. The long awaited gift is about to be unwrapped. Everyone waits with bated breath. But wait. How strange. This isn’t what we’d been expecting. He doesn’t sweep through the crowd with fire and judgement. He doesn’t come and condemn those sinners who haven’t repented, and pour God’s Spirit on those who have. He gets in line with them to go down into the murky waters of the Jordan. He stands shoulder to shoulder with the unrighteous, and presents himself to John and asks for baptism. You can imagine John’s surprise, his alarm. “You want me to baptise you?” he says. “I want to receive what you have to offer, I wan’t you to baptise me with God’s Spirit.” “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?” (Mat. 3.13).

Here, for the first time, John wonders whether he has got the cheese board rather than the i-pad. And I suppose John has a point. He already knows that Jesus doesn’t look like the Messiah people had expected. He had come from Nazareth for starters, and his birth was far from uncontroversial. How easy it would be for Jesus’ detractors to pour scorn on him: “The Saviour? Really? You did know that he went to the Jordan with all the other spiritual losers to get baptised by John, don’t you? How can he save us? He’s as rotten as the rest of us.” But Jesus baptism wasn’t the outworking of a guilty conscience, it was to fulfil God’s righteous plan for our salvation.

In his baptism, Jesus identifies with sinners, he joins them in the waters of repentance, and in doing that, he transforms those waters. He sanctifies them so that they no longer merely remind us of the pressing need to repent, they are now the waters which declare our adoption as daughters and sons of God. Jesus joined himself to us in his baptism, and now, through our baptism we are joined to him, and we hear those same words, “you are my beloved daughter, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.” We who are unrighteous, who however much we try to hide from it know the wrong we have done, the people we have hurt, the times we have failed, we hear those words, ‘you are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter’, and we learn that God’s approval comes to us not as our just deserts, but as a gift, completely unwarranted, but given freely and entirely without reservation. Given in person by one who made God’s glory and love known by standing with us in the grime of life. As we follow him, who will he call us to stand alongside? Whose bath water will he ask us to share?

Let's not get too pompous about the (proposed) new baptism texts...

The brouhaha over the Liturgical Commission’s document “Christian Initiation: Additional Texts in Accessible Language” has intrigued me. First and foremost, I have been amazed at how many evangelicals (sorry to my many evangelical friends who haven't got involved with this) are now passionate supporters of the Common Worship project! When it comes to the Eucharist, the only liturgical fight is whether it is necessary to use it at all, it being so wordy and boring and all. But when it comes to baptism, the liturgical gloves are off. Suddenly the Church is full of ardent Cranmerian purists who loath any prospect of “dumbing down”. I find it interesting that some of those who have spoken against the proposed new texts seem not to appreciate that, if these were ever approved, they would be an additional provision, not a replacement. It would, I presume, be possible to keep a fairly traditional Common Worship format with one of the proposed prayers over the water in place of one of the existing ones? In essence, if this was formally accepted by Synod (I assume it is Synod that has to accept it?) it would merely enlarge the ‘Supplementary Texts’ section of the current Christian Initiation volume. So why get so worried?

I actually don’t mind the current baptism service all that much. While there are a few bits which are overly wordy and are uncharacteristically lacking classic Anglican economy of expression, but it does provide a theologically rich backbone to infant baptism. It is regretful that Common Worship has expunged baptismal regeneration from the Church of England’s liturgy —as far as I am aware, there is no modernised equivalent of the BCP’s “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate”— but it is still present enough in the liturgy to preserve this tradition within the Church of England.

Nevertheless, I do see the need for some additional texts. The current Common Worship prayers over the water are a good example of this need for addition. The prayers are, I think, too wordy and too theologically dense, and dare I say it, a touch pompous. I was pleased to see the two sensible additional suggestions, but would have liked to see more, picking up some (though not all) of the themes in the current prayers.

Looking through the sample service further down the document, I found it to be merely a lesson in how the current rubrics could be creatively and pastorally read. With the exception of the decision (I really don’t like the new offering) the prayer over the water, and the presentation (the existing rubrics for this are very confusing. Can it be omitted???) it doesn’t, as far as I can see, do anything that one couldn’t already do. The Commission is a good case in point. The new suggestions just make it clear that the unfortunately prosaic provision which Common Worship currently has needn’t be slavishly followed, but that ‘similar words’ may also be used.

All in all, the flap about ‘dumbing down' has, I feel, brought out an excessive amount of rather uncharitable pernicketiness, particularly when you consider that no one is proposing a wholesale change to the baptismal liturgy, which the introduction to the document makes quite clear. Yes, the suggested additional provision isn’t perfect, but neither is the current liturgy, neither is any liturgy for that matter. We should all just get over it.

God in man made manifest...

Matt. 2.1–12

"Let no one be found among you… who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God." (Deuteronomy 18.10–13)

So says the book of Deuteronomy. Stern stuff! And it is certain that first century Jews and Christians didn't viewed astrologers as jovial Russell Grant types. They were morally dubious people who worshipped the stars as gods, and looked to them for guidance, rather than looking to the creator of the universe and the Law he had given. Isn’t it strange then that three of the most popular, most memorable, most mysterious and enigmatic characters in the Christmas story are these Magi: astrologers, soothsayers, diviners, interpreters of omens, magicians. These are the first non-Jewish people to fall at the feet Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, and it is their extraordinary journey which we remember today as we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany. And they teach us something about the search that we all make to find God.

Perhaps the strangest thing about this story is the way that God guides the Magi. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Magi had decided to look for the new born King because they had read some prophecy from the Old Testament about the birth of the Messiah, and had dedicated themselves to searching for him. But no. That isn’t how this journey started. God used their idol, a star, to lead the Magi to his Son. And whilst that is unusual it is actually quite beautiful. People are led to Christ many different ways. Some are led through reading scripture, or through the nurture of a Christian home or Christian friends, or maybe through an Alpha course or something like that. But others may come to Christ through less orthodox routes: through New Age Spirituality perhaps, through a twelve step support group, through belonging to the Free Masons. If the journey of the Magi tells us anything, it is that God really isn’t too worried about the method he uses to draw people to his Son. Why? Because every desire and expectation it is possible to have, is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Every desire for companionship or love is fulfilled in him. Every expectation of justice is met in him. Every yearning for goodness truth and beauty finds its source and goal in him. So don’t be surprised when people, following a star, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, are still led by God to worship at the feet of Jesus Christ.

But here is the irony of this story. God leads these morally dubious characters, by means of their idol to his son. But those who have the Law and Prophets don't join them in pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Perhaps they fear that this moment of Epiphany will challenge the status quo, or will undermine their power and authority, perhaps they are just afraid of change. For what ever reason the religious leaders choose not to look for the Messiah with the Magi, “After they had shown the fountain of life to others, they themselves perished of thirst”, in the words of St Augustine. And the king! Herod's heart is filled with even more darkness still. He knows that the coming of the Messiah means one thing and one thing only for tin-pot dictators like him. And in a desperate attempt to cling on to power, he plots murder of the vilest kind. Those who were the guardians of the oracles of God, who stood in the great line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the leaders of the people of God had become so accustomed to hearing God’s word, that it had become almost meaningless to them. They had become deaf to its cadences, fearful of its promises. And a group of unclean, idolatrous, star-gazing outsiders, proclaimed the good news of the birth of Christ to them. The outsider becomes the teacher. The first will be last, and the last will be first. 

So this new year, may we never become so accustomed to the things of God that we fail to seek the one who is born king of all. May we welcome the insights which God brings to the church through unlikely people, led by strange means, but still led to the crib and cross of Jesus. And may we be willing to lay everything at his feet, knowing that our deepest desires are all fulfilled in him.

Poppies...

I'll admit my bias: I've never been a fan of the use of white poppies on Remembrance Sunday. For staters, the work of the Royal British Legion is something I am happy to support, and I would imagine anyone, even the most ardent pacifist would feel the same. The British Legion don't buy guns or tanks or bombs. They don't promote or campaign for war. They support victims of war, victims who have worn a uniform and fought, but victims none the less. They support the families of service personnel. They offer help and care for vulnerable people. That is why I am proud to buy and wear a red poppy every year.

White poppies on Remembrance Sunday on the other hand have always struck me as a rather self-righteous and somewhat cynical bourgeoisie statement of moral superiority. As far as I can work out from the website of the Peace Pledge Union who organise the distribution of white poppies, the money you spend on your statement poppy does not help the victims of war. The money you spend on your poppy is used politically. It is used to promote the pacifist agenda. "A noble cause",  you may say, and it certainly is, but I would contend that care for the welfare of actual human beings trumps any ideological commitment, however noble. So if you want to support the PPU, then wear their poppy next to a poppy appeal poppy, but don't substitute red for white, unless you care more about politics than people.

However, my dislike of the white poppy statement turned into righteous indignation this evening when I saw this on the PPU's website:

The historical naïveté of this an attack on Bomber Command is incredible. But I don't really want to get into a discussion over the ethics of aerial bombardment. What I find more incredible is that the message of peace clearly doesn't translate in the PPU's rhetoric. Physical war originates in hatred, anger and violent attitudes. Perhaps the PPU could find a more effective way of promoting peace.