Month: August 2022

Rizpah

2 Samuel 21

 

Say what you will of that man’s sin but my

sons, these sons of Israel will not go

to Sheol ungrieved. I know our hunger, yes,

I know how we haven’t seen any rain, I know

it all. It’s all the same to me, I will

lay this, my sackcloth, here – on this rock – and

here I will keep my watch. My sons will have

their funeral.

                          And Sheol will not have them ungrieved.

 

They came and said: it’s time to pay. For there’s

a debt that’s hidden somewhere in the pit

of the Earth, or the waters deep. A count

is kept, beyond the dome of heaven. And

it’s blood they want, lives are asked. Such things

are not my worry. All I know is that

I had two sons who are now dead and gone.

 

A hidden cause, His will or theirs, it’s all

the same to me. They can say what they want

and keep on saying, call me scornful, think

me irreverent – so be it: my sons

are dead, is all I know. So they can keep

their talk and I will keep my watch.

 

Not that I wish to quarrel with the Lord

Almighty. Truly, I know that he’s no man,

his ways above ours, plans beyond our wit,

and mortals, mere, his secrets won’t reveal.

I’ve heard these things, I know these words. I, too,

did see the festivals and heard the songs

they sang: he holds his court in the heavens,

the darkness covers him, and storm and fire

go ahead of him. The Lord’s his name, I know.

 

And it’s not justice I deny. But I’m

of earth, a woman made of flesh, from dust

to dust returning: it’s his justice not

mine. So, I will keep my watch here, on this

rock I’ll remain, come who or what.

 

                                                             Let me

say this as well while you are listening:

my mother bore him children. Chosen, not

choosing, given and taken, bore her lot.

I never saw him much, that strange man who

always seemed so afraid, as if he thought

the ground itself might swallow him up. None

could give him peace, no oath of loyalty,

nor riches or power. When he died, we fled

like others did. New king in town, we had

to go, like birds we fled and then we were

forgotten, free.

                            It’s all the same to me

for I’m no poet nor priest, and I’ve no gift

for prophecy, I’m just a woman, and

no more, and none of this matters. Their plots,

intrigues and cunnings won’t matter. Power

is still the same. But now my sons are dead.

 

So, judge me or revile me. So, come rain,

come wind, or heat without mercy, you will

still find me keeping watch right here. For as

long as I, dust and all, still breath on this

sorry Earth, my sons, these sons of Aiah,

will not go down to Sheol unwatched, ungrieved.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. Rm. 12.2

In response to various shifts in culture – shifts in the way we perceive human relationships, especially romantic and sexual relationships, gender issues, shifts in broader values, etc. – the church, like much of society, is being pulled into two different directions, liberal and conservative, left and right. At times it feels like the middle won’t hold much longer. Beliefs that were once considered simply Christian now carry with them the additional weight of tribalistic identity: to say x is no longer to simply say x but to signify belonging to a certain tribe or faction. This also means that beliefs, more and more, come in packages: to say x is to also – implicitly – choose to say y, z, and not-q. So, for example, caring deeply about environmental issues or social justice means that you cannot also care about preserving the traditional social teaching of the church.

Since my background is in the more conservative type of Christianity, I’ve noticed how conservative churches are pushed, by these changes in the culture and the resulting polarisation, more and more towards reactionary conservatism: towards a Christian faith that is defined by what it is against, a spirituality that is a series of reactions to what is perceived as being a threat to authentic Christian life and values, a spirituality which therefore lacks a centre. This lack of centre is quite important, I believe: there is this distinctive sense in which highly polarised, politized and reactionary conservativism seems to lack a kind of steady, inner stability. It is, so it appears at times, a spirituality that is lived entirely on the level of what Thomas Aquinas called ‘passions’ – instinctive reactions to what is perceived either as good or evil: fighting whatever threat appears most urgent at the moment, whatever latest liberal heresy needs rebutting, or whatever cultural phenomenon commentary. It is spirituality fuelled by the passions of distress, fear, and anger – as is often pointed out – but also, I would like to suggest, by certain misguided hope (that we can go back to the “good old days” of ‘truly Christian society’) and audacity (many right-wing conservatives seem to take pleasure in upsetting “the liberal establishment”, in “saying things as they are” regardless of who they might offend: the audacity to offend with straight-talk is “courage to stand for the truth”). Passions themselves aren’t a bad thing. They are, rather, the raw energy of human flourishing: passions and affections are needed for virtuous living because they push us to pursue what is good and avoid what is evil. But in order to be integrated into a life of flourishing, passions do need to be guided and ordered by the virtues. Few, perhaps, stop to ask what is truly good and how the zeal – the passion – for the good could be rightly, wisely, and virtuously ordered.

In some countries polarisation is quite deeply and widely felt and in others – such as Finland – perhaps less so, although I can sense that in Finland, too, further polarisation is the direction Christians are headed towards. My main issue with reactionary conservativism is that with its focus away from the centre towards outside threats, it will distract us from discerning what truly faithful Christian living in our current context might actually mean. It hollows-out the rich, nuanced, dynamic life of discipleship we are all called to as Christians. It allows us to pick and choose our favourite cultural grievances and ignore the full ethical call of Christian life. It substitutes ecclesiological belonging for ideological belonging (as a pastor once pointed out: “I’ve seen a lot of people change churches because the teaching of the church did not match they political beliefs, but I’ve never seen anyone change their political beliefs because they didn’t match the teaching of the church”).

As a pastor and a theologian myself, these developments bother me quite a bit: I would like to see non-reactionary Christianity that nevertheless remains faithful to the Scriptures and tradition survive the transition from ‘Christendom’ to post-Christian, pluralistic society. I don’t have a complete answer to how that could be done, but I would like suggest a sketch of an alternative for reactionary conservativism: two spiritual practices – liturgical daily prayer and immersion in the Scriptures – that fuel faithful witness to the truth of the Gospel by allowing us to become transformed by the Gospel. The last part of this sentence is very important: faithful witness to the truth of the Gospel requires that we ourselves are first transformed, from within, by the Gospel. And this process is not once for all: rather a constant conversion of life is required, a constant renewal from within. The question of faithfulness is therefore not simply a question of having the right doctrine or the right kinds of beliefs: it is a matter of being and becoming the right kind of person. It is a matter of living a life that is in accordance with the Gospel.

Merely stating the truth against competing views – merely defending it like a debater would defend a proposition they’ve been given – is not sufficient for preserving the truth. Merely engaging in polemics is not enough. We must become the kinds of persons who are able to faithfully witness to the Gospel. It’s a matter of formation. Let me just take one example of the disconnect between belief and formation in certain type – I would suggest, reactionary – conservatism: the blatant refusal of several U.S. Republican politicians to support policies that would give additional and much needed support for families while the same politicians also rejoice in the revoking of Roe v. Wade. There can be no consistent pro-life stance that does not care for the well-being of families on the whole – especially the poorest, most vulnerable of them. We cannot consistently witness to the truth that all human life is intrinsically valuable, if we refuse to care for the children of the families whose lives are made dangerously precarious by lack. With their refusal to support such policies, these politicians betray their true concerns: they care about abortion not because they truly care about the intrinsic value of human life but because it is a tribalistic identity marker that allows them to signal their political conservativism.

Belief can be cheap, but becoming is hard. What we need, therefore, is not mere belief but formation. This necessary becoming, this formation, begins not by focusing to perceived outside threats but by turning towards the centre. And the centre – the beating heart of Christian life – is prayer and the Scriptures. These will allow us to become the kinds of persons we must be to not just say but live the truth of the Gospel. It is the hard, mundane, constant work of prayer and discipline that will slowly form us in our discipleship. Through formation, slow and daily, we begin to acquire wisdom and understanding: we become able to discern “what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect”.

This transformation through the truth of the Gospel, leads into fresh and dynamic faithfulness that might go against both the tenets of our secular culture but also, sometimes, that of Christian culture. It does not allow us to rest easy in our contentment that we already have the truth, that we’ve already acquired all the right opinions, but calls us into a life of constant renewal, ever deepening understanding of what is required of us as the disciples of Christ.

In order to flesh this out, let me now specify the two kinds of central prayerful practices – two kinds of spiritual disciplines – that I promised as an alternative to reactionary conservatism: daily, liturgical prayer and immersion in the Scriptures. I think these are vital to formation, because they are practices that allow us to reach inner silence despite the clamour of the world. First, liturgical prayer: praying the daily office plants us firmly within historical, Christian tradition.[1] It roots us in history, allowing us to perceive the distractions and polemics of our time from the steadier vantage point of the communion of the saints, stretching back in time for centuries and centuries. It gives us perspective and liberates our spiritualities from the tyranny of the present. It teaches us to live by a different rhythm to that of scandals and controversies, the 24-hour-news-cycle: a rhythm of prayer that invites us to hear the call of Christ, over and over again, against the noise of the world. It is an alternative constant to endless feeds of TikTok videos, the daily barrage of social media posts that suggest their own version of the good life: it is a constant that will call us out of ourselves, to know a life that is truly holy and happy. Rooted in tradition and the communion of saints, liturgical prayer will challenge the individualistic tendencies of our spirituality and teach to pray for things we didn’t know we should pray about. It will offer us the grace of somebody else’s perspective. It will call us to submit ourselves to tradition, to others who are on the same journey, teaching humility: that we and our personal prayers are not sufficient to ourselves, that we lack something, something that we need others – those who’ve prayed before us – to give us. Through all this, we will be transformed from within: we can become the kinds of persons we need to be in order to faithfully witness to the Gospel.

Second, immersion in the Scriptures: a commitment to not simply use the Scriptures, but to truly hear them. To use the Scriptures is to come to them with a pre-determined agenda: a question that needs answering, a dispute that needs settling, a belief that needs proof. To hear the Scriptures is to learn the difficult practice of setting our own agendas, questions and desires aside momentarily and simply listen. Listen and hear even those passages that do not make immediate sense, even those commandments that seem too demanding, almost impossible, to follow (“love your enemies”).  Instead of immediately watering down these difficult demands into some approachable practical application, by learning the attitude of listening we can let ourselves simply sit with the word, letting the word be what it is. This kind of practice can help us to hear not simply what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. Instead of conforming the Scriptures to ourselves, we can – slowly, increasingly – conform ourselves to the Scriptures; to become immersed in them, soaked in the language of the Scriptures, completely at home in their world so that eventually, through constant exposure, the word becomes part of the very fabric of our being. This is transformation from within that will fuel faithful witness, faithful discipleship. It is the centre from which will flow truth and justice, mercy and kindness, wisdom and love.

Turning back to the centre – to prayer and Scripture, discipline, and tradition – means that instead of quick soundbites, easy slogans, and instant opinions, truth becomes a matter of discernment. It is something that will dawn on us in a manner that is piecemeal. “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” Discernment as a spiritual practice and virtue would deserve not just its own post, but rather its own book. For now, I simply wish to draw your attention to it: that knowing how live out the truth in real world situations is a difficult matter that requires wisdom, prudence, discernment. And that there is no easy, quick way to these: to wisdom there are no shortcuts. It might be that there isn’t a simple one-size-fits-all principle that will allow us to always know what do and say in any given situation, what faithful witness to the Gospel means in each situation. This is a difficulty we must learn to live with, hoping that turning back to the centre from which our life of discipleship flows – prayer, the Scriptures, tradition – will eventually result in us gaining hearts of wisdom.

Discernment could perhaps also heal some of those divisions that we now see in the church: by acknowledging that neither “side” has the complete truth and by recognizing others – even those who we do not see as members of our preferred tribe – as persons who are also concerned with the truth, who also wish to prayerfully discern, we can join them in a mutual process of discernment, a shared seeking after the truth. Or at least we can be open towards recognizing the fact that those “on the other side” might also have something valuable to contribute. That they, too, might be motivated by deeply felt ethical convictions. Instead of digging more deeply into our trenches and shooting at each other with arguments and accusations, we can begin to take some steps towards truly hearing each other. Or so I hope. 

So, then, here is my alternative to reactionary conservatism: liturgical, daily prayer and immersion in the Scriptures. This sounds perhaps too thin a solution to too enormous a problem. But I truly believe that these slowly subversive practices can transform our lives and our world. For what I’d like to see in the church would be a pause: let us stop, for a moment. Stop our political and moral posturing, stop trying to situate ourselves in a divided, polarized cultural field. Let us shut the door and leave the clamour of the world out, for a moment. Let us hear the Master speak. Let us be transformed by his words.

 

[1] Different denominations have their own versions of the daily office that all, more or less, follow a similar pattern. Personally, I use the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and/or Common Worship. In addition to the old-school book format, these are available online and as apps (Daily Prayer, Time to Pray, Lectionary).