On ‘Doomism’, Sentimentality and the Cross

The April – June 2021 50th Edition of VOX magazine is out in a nifty new smaller printed format designed to make it easier to read on tablet, phone or computer.

You can read it online or download a PDF for free – can’t getter a better deal than that for what is an excellent magazine.

This edition has a particular focus on Ireland’s past, specifically the legacy of abuse formally made public via recent reports in the Mother and Baby homes. I’ll come back to articles on this in later blog posts. It also continues a series on racism in Ireland as well as an excellent article by Karen Huber on the Ravi Zacharias scandal and how it should

“light a fire under all Christians to hold our teachers, our church, and even our doctrines accountable. We should test the actions of those in authority against the standards set in Scripture, and we must pay heed to the spirit of discernment.”

My musings column had an Easter theme and is below. It raises questions, especially in light of the injustices and evil just mentioned above. Questions like:

• What does it look like to be people of hope in a broken world?

• What is our response to injustice and suffering?

• How is the church to embody a different way – a way of justice and mercy for the oppressed and marginalised?

Doomism, Sentimentality and the Cross

Information Overload

The age of Information Technology has certainly lived up to its name; we have instantaneous access to information about pretty well anything we care to think of. Despite lockdown the world remains at our fingertips – there’s no 5km limit if you have a broadband connection. One thing I’ve discovered over the last few months is joining live safaris in the African bush. It’s been a wonderful way to ‘travel’, immerse yourself in another world and learn lots all at the same time. (I’m watching a leopard hunt impalas as I write this!)

But the net is also the gateway to all sorts of other information. There is little that we can’t read or see for ourselves about what’s going on in the world. Because billions of people now carry smartphones, photographs and videos are being taken daily on a vast scale. Even events that authoritarian governments try to hide tend to hit the news. Two examples as I’m writing are the abduction, imprisonment and now disappearance of Princess Latifa in Dubai (only made known through secret videos she took) and ethnic cleansing being carried out by the Chinese government against the Uighur population in Xinjiang (despite denials satellite pictures and videos are damning). But to these we could add countless others.

And then there’s information hidden away for so long, but now exposed to the light of day. In this edition of VOX are stories about injustices experienced by children in an Irish mother and baby home and revelations about Ravi Zacharias exploiting and using women for his own sexual gratification. And this is even before mentioning social media and billions of individuals sharing their lives and opinions on everything from funny cat videos to #FreeBritney to saving the planet from environmental destruction.

Such a vast amount of information has never been available to any human beings before. I wonder sometimes do we know too much? We’ve always known that the world was broken, but now we can watch it unfold livestreamed.

I’ve been musing about this new world – what it does to us and how are disciples of Jesus best to navigate its unfamiliar terrain. It seems to me that there are at least two dead-ends we can go down.

Two Dead Ends

One is ‘doomism’. All too easily, we can become news junkies, overwhelmed with bad news and in a constant state of fear or depression about our world and where it’s going.

Another is ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ – we literally switch off, close our eyes and ears and pretend the world isn’t like it is. We just retreat into a safe bubble of sentimental optimism. A Christian form of this sort of denial is to celebrate the love, forgiveness and presence of God while rarely, if ever, talking about the reality and power of sin and evil (including our own).

Hopeful Realism

But Easter speaks of a third, deeper, and more mysterious way of understanding our world. The way of the cross is neither ‘doomism’ nor optimistic sentimentality, it is, rather, the way of ‘hopeful realism’.

By ‘realism’ I mean that Christians should be the last people to be surprised by bad news, even the bad news of a Christian leader being unmasked. This is because the Bible has a stark diagnosis of what’s wrong with this world. It is Sin with a capital ‘S’. This is not just your wrong actions and mine (personal sins), though it includes them for sure. But Sin as a malign, destructive power that leads to death. A power that we have no way of overcoming on our own: not through better education, or self-esteem, or economics, or human ingenuity, or scientific progress or more information, or good life choices. Humanly speaking, we have absolutely no grounds for optimism about ourselves or our world.

By ‘hopeful’ I mean that our hope is God alone – and that is a great, big, wondrous sort of hope. This is the mystery of Easter. The stronger our understanding of Sin, the deeper is the good news of the cross. The cross

“is the scene of God’s climatic battle against the power of a malignant and implacable Enemy” (Fleming Rutledge).

No human has the ability to break the power of Sin and death – only God can. And, out of love, he has done just that.

Christus ist auferstanden!

This is an Easter reflection I did for our church a year ago. Re-posting it this Easter day. A ‘Coronavirus year’ has passed. The resurrection of Jesus continues to proclaim the victory of God over the powers of Sin and Death.

If we were physically in church this morning, retired German teacher Ian Stanton, with a mischievous smile on his face, would likely come my way and say “Christus ist auferstanden!” (Christ is risen!). I say ‘mischievous’ because he knows I will be panicking trying to remember the few words of German that he expects me to know one day a year. For the record they are “Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!” (He is risen indeed!).

These are days of deep uncertainty and loss. Walking around Maynooth it’s heart-breaking to read sign after sign of businesses closed. Behind those notices are stories of lost jobs, debt and fear for the future. One talks honestly about the owner’s ‘trepidation’ over the ‘big and scary’ decision to shut. I find myself praying for her and make a promise that, hopefully, when that café reopens, I’ll go and give her some business.

Walking along the canal parallel to the railway, empty trains go past. I wonder how long this is going to go on, aware there is no easy fix and multiple lockdowns could come and go for over a year or more. I think of health-care workers in MCC like Andy and Susanne on the front-line. I think of friends who have suddenly no work and no income. I wonder how many in MCC are in a similar situation. I think of other friends at high risk and pray they can stay free of infection. I think of my dad in his 90s and living at home alone and find myself strangely grateful that my mother died over a year ago and is not now stuck in a nursing home, confused, with no-one able to visit her. And if I’m honest, I also wonder about my own job.

And yet, as I enjoy the Spring air and blue sky, I know I’m deeply privileged. I have health, family, a home to live in, access to technology and food to eat. I wonder if this pandemic has caused such angst because it has hit the rich West. It has shown us to be far less safe and in control than we thought. It has made us face the possibility of sudden death. Yet millions of people in the world are only all too familiar with disease, famine and war. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone there are over 400,000 deaths annually of malaria and over 2 million new infections.

And so I think of countless Christians in the past and today who have never known the safety nets of stable employment, fair pay, a home, access to health care, physical security, food and clean water or the expectation of a long life.

And I start to wonder if this pandemic, awful as it is, is bringing more sharply into focus just how relevant and important it is that Christus ist auferstanden.

For if Christ is raised, then we can trust that our futures are in the hands of the risen Lord.

If Christ is raised, then, those in Christ through faith already have resurrection life.

If Christ is raised, then God has already won the victory over death and evil powers and that therefore Christians can rest assured that

“… neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

And if Christ is raised, we can have a sure and certain hope that, regardless of when we die, we will share one day in Christ’s resurrection to a new life within a renewed world – one that will be gloriously free of viruses, disease and death itself.

Thoughts on the Vaccine, Gratitude and Ingratitude

[This post also appears on the Jesus Creed blog at Christianity Today]

2021 looks like a pretty dark year ahead Pandemic wise. It sure is beginning that way.

Just for the record….  In Ireland record levels of new cases of Covid-19 continue to rise. Only people with symptoms are being tested, not close contacts due to limitations in testing capacity. Testing centres are working expanded hours at full capacity. ICUs expect the peak in the next few weeks to be higher than back in March/April 2020. The new variant may increase the surge and perhaps the current Level 5 lockdown will not be enough to stop cases rising.

The vaccines are coming, but it is going to be a long road back to anything like ‘normal’ – and I suspect a longer road than we’re hoping.

And if you live in Northern Ireland, most of Britain, Europe or the USA, it is worse still.

So what’s the point in recapping this tale of woe that we are all too familiar with? Well, I want to think a little about gratitude.

GRATITUDE

‘Thankfulness’ or ‘appreciation’ are probably the closest words to gratitude.

I’m not thinking about ‘counting our blessings’ – although that can be a very good thing to do.

Nor I am thinking of all the ‘good’ spin-offs from the Pandemic – like time with family, time to read, enjoy nature, learn a new skill and the like. Seems to me those spin-offs are mostly for the privileged who have kept jobs, have financial security and have a nice home & garden and such like and haven’t been too effected at all, except having holiday plans disrupted and having to work from home.

I’m thinking of a more specific sort of gratitude – gratitude for science.

Now science is a pretty broad term. To be specific I mean by it the discipline of scientific enquiry that has the knowledge, self-critical rigour, professionalism, expertise and sheer determination and hard work to research, devise, create, test, mass produce and distribute a vaccine in a matter of months.

I am only dimly aware of what that has meant in practice. I’m also aware that there big questions within science about the desperate rush to vaccination – dubious claims, wasted money, duplication of research and entire areas of science being ‘Covidised’.

So this isn’t a naive paean to saintly scientists. But from hearing and reading the stories, ‘science’ here means real people working 90 hour weeks for months to do something unprecedented in the history of medical research. And that work has global beneficial implications.

It’s a story that I hope will be told and celebrated because it makes a post-Pandemic world imaginable.

I’m also grateful for the doctors, nurses and volunteers working hard to get that vaccine out to the general population. I’m grateful for the institutional and political structures that makes all of this possible.

But that remarkable achievement has got pretty lost in all the in-fighting, arguments, politics and differences of opinion about the right strategy for the roll-out of the vaccines.

We hear about little else except administrative failures in get started early enough (eg The Netherlands), decisions to delay the second jab so as to give more people the first jab (UK), the failure to vaccinate health-care workers fast enough, arguments over who should be eligible for vaccination, scepticism over the efficacy of vaccines, anger at the anti-vaxxers, the failure of capacity to deliver vaccines to the right places, suspicion over deals done by governments with the drug companies  … and very legitimate concerns about the inequality of access to the vaccine between rich and poor countries globally.

In all the noise, there is precious little gratitude about.

Which leads me to ingratitude.

INGRATITUDE

The Pandemic has only highlighted the fact that ingratitude is an intrinsic characteristic of modern life in the West.

In the secular disenchantment of the West, all we have left is ourselves. And when life goes wrong there has to be someone to blame. And there is a lot of blame about.

Since this is a theology blog, let’s think about ingratitude as a spiritual issue. Why? Well because it goes to the heart of character and virtue.

And I’ll go as far to say that ingratitude is antithetical to Christian faith.

• Ingratitude flows from a sense of entitlement – I have a right to what I am due.
• Ingratitude is a symptom of judgmentalism – I am not getting good enough service. Others don’t live up to my standards.
• Ingratitude is a form of selfishness – I am obsessed about my own rights, my own needs, my own opinions to a degree that I don’t appreciate or even see the work and good intentions of others.
• Ingratitude is a close cousin of cynicism – I choose to focus on and complain about ‘the bad’: the perceived failures of others.

Entitlement, judgmentalism, selfishness and cynicism aren’t a very attractive quartet of anti-virtues are they?

I don’t know about you but I confess that I can all too easily lapse into a ‘glass half-empty’ pessimism that sees only what is wrong and not what is right and good. So I need regular reminders to practice the virtue of gratitude!

THE PRACTICE OF GRATITUDE

Gratitude affirms that there is goodness in the world and actively appreciates its presence.

Gratitude is hopeful. It sees evidence that the world can be a better place.

Gratitude is thankful: it recognises that I am a recipient of undeserved benefits and goods. Being loved by others is the greatest gift of all.

Gratitude is other-orientated: it recognises others and the good they do. It affirms and encourages others. It deepens relationship.

Gratitude fosters community and acknowledges that ‘I’ only flourish in relationship with others (which brings us back to the vaccine as a fantastic corporate scientific enterprise that benefits all of us)

This is why gratitude is a profoundly Christian virtue.

For, fundamentally, a Christian is simply someone who has received an undeserved gift.

Every Christian – regardless of money, intelligence, possessions, achievements, social standing, gender, or skin colour – are recipients of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. And that grace leads to being adopted, forgiven, restored, empowered, and reconciled to God and to one another to be people of hope in the world.

That’s a lot to be thankful for.

So for 2021, why not set about practicing the virtue of gratitude?

– Look for good in the world and in others

– Focus on reasons for hope

– List things to be thankful for

– Encourage others, say thanks

– Appreciate that your life only flourishes in relationship with others

Advent Reflection: Jesus versus Covid-19

Romans 5:15-17

¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. ¹⁶ And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. ¹⁷ If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

‘The gift is not like the trespass’ is a profoundly important phrase within Paul’s comparison of Jesus and Adam in Romans 5.

We see what Adam and Jesus share in common: both are men (vs 15); both are representatives of humanity.

It is from an emphasis on shared humanity that Paul develops an argument ‘from the lesser to the greater’. Both are human, but Jesus is a far superior human figure to that of Adam.

Adam’s trespass results in sin, death, judgment and condemnation.

God’s gift in Jesus Christ brings justification, grace, righteousness and life.

In other words, what Adam did, Jesus un-does to excess. Jesus confronts and overcomes the destructive effects of Adam’s sin due to the surpassing provision of God’s grace.

This is why that little phrase – ‘the gift is not like the trespass’ – is actually a wonderful way of describing the limitless, self-giving love of God in Jesus Christ.

So, as we celebrate Christmas 2020, we are reminded of the astonishing fact of the incarnation. Jesus is a truly human saviour. There is an indissolvable bond between Christ and humanity – he is one of us.

The Nicene Creed (381AD) puts it this way:

“Who for us and our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man.’

But these verses remind us that Jesus is in crucial respects, a human unlike any other.

All of humanity is ‘in Adam’ – we are under the reign of death (vs 17). Death is a ‘dark lord’ of destruction from whom we have no ability to escape.

This Christmas 2020 death crowds in on us, compounding memories of absent loved ones. Daily coronavirus fatalities flash across our news screens. Death, usually kept in the background in rich Western nations, has rudely taken centre stage.

BBC News – candles lit in Bern for those who have died of Covid-19

Images of death colonise our imaginations. Who could have imagined at the beginning of this year that the success or failure of governments globally now revolves around the management of death?

We grasp on to hopes of a vaccine, literally as a life-saver. We long for life to go back to the way it was – with death pushed back into the shadows – for as long as possible.

And this is right and good. Life is a gift to be lived well. We are made to live in relationship, not locked up staring at screens.

But vaccine or not, the rule of death unleashed by Adam still reigns.

And so the gospel is powerful good news.

But through the ‘one man, Jesus Christ’ (vs 17), all in him are freed from the reign of death and are ushered into a new realm – the reign of life.

God is a God of life, not death. His agenda for humanity is freedom from death. The Spirit is the life-giver. Jesus is the human Lord of life who has been raised from the dead.

This is why Christians celebrate the incarnation at Christmas.

First Sunday in Advent: A Reflection

This is a reflection I was asked to write for our local church on this first Sunday of Advent.

WAITING IN THE DARKNESS

Did you know that historically, within Church tradition, Advent is not primarily about the birth of Jesus at Christmas? Rather, for centuries it has been practiced more as a time of waiting in darkness for Jesus’ second coming, the final ‘day of the Lord’. In other words, if Jesus comes first as a saviour, Advent looks forward to his return as judge.

Mmural by Adam Kossowski of the heavenly new Jerusalem descending to earth (Rev. 21

Now, you might be saying ‘Hang on, judgment doesn’t sound like something to look forward to. I thought Advent was a time of joy and anticipation.’ 

Well, Advent is a time of joy and anticipation. But it begins, to paraphrase Joseph Conrad, by gazing ‘into the heart of darkness’ – looking at our world as it truly is. This is why an authentically Christian Advent is a million miles away from the popular sentimentalism of modern Christmas with its soft-focus images of baby Jesus and his young mother, surrounded by cute animals.

Sentimentalism pretends all is right with the world. Advent tells the truth.

As we’re well aware, darkness is all around us. Destructive forces far bigger than us, do their worst. This year will be forever marked by the Coronavirus pandemic that has claimed millions of lives and cost millions more their livelihoods. Multiple wars continue to rage around the world, proponents often armed by Western nations like the USA, the UK, Germany and others. In Yemen over 24 million people are in dire need of aid, 3.6 million have fled their home and c. 200,000 killed. In Syria over 13 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, 6.7 million have been displaced and over 350,000 killed. These are just two conflicts of hundreds of smaller ones around the world. As 2020 comes to a close, globally there are 80 million people forcibly displaced people as a result of persecution, violence, human rights violations and war. Such people are extremely vulnerable to further injustices, Covid-19 and other diseases. Environmentally, wildlife globally has declined by over two-thirds since 1970. This catastrophic loss continues downward with implications for all life on earth. Global warming is already here – unprecedented fires in Australia, the Amazon and California show that the earth is literally burning.

And then there is the darkness in our own neighbourhoods and lives. Many of us will grieve the loss of family and friends this Christmas. Death is still an enemy. As we look back over 2020, we know that we have often chosen to go with darkness rather than light.

But Advent is not only about naming the darkness – that would indeed be hopeless. It looks forward to the good news of God’s judgment.

If you’re wondering how judgment can be good news, perhaps it’s because when we hear the word ‘judgment’ we tend to think of words like ‘condemnation’ and ‘judgmental’.

But there is no condemnation for those in Christ (Rom. 8:1). Jesus’ future arrival as judge is best understood as ‘putting all things right’. It will be when all the powers of sin, evil and injustice that so disfigure God’s beloved world will be vanquished once and for all. Light will drive out the darkness. Creation itself will be remade. Death will be undone. Resurrection life will burst forth. Love will rule. God will be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor. 15:28)

And so, this Advent, as we wait in the darkness, let’s pray in hope with the Apostle Paul: ‘Marana tha. Come O Lord!’ (1 Cor. 16:22).

The insignificance of the US election

Just out of a class this evening on ‘gospel. We played this Bible Project video – an outstanding explanation of the good news in terms of the Bible story.

Towards the end they say this

While it might look like the rulers of our world are in charge and can do whatever they want the good news is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the true Lord of the world, the real king of all creation

And that is very good news indeed.

This is not to say what happens in America tonight is unimportant. It is to say that Christian hope does not at all depend on who sits in the Oval Office.

By co-incidence I’ve also been reading a book about early Christianity and the Roman empire. It sits in the vein of ’empire studies’ – a branch of NT studies that sees NT writers, particularly Paul, as deliberately confronting the power of Caesar / Rome. So Romans is re-read in a dramatically different way as a polemic against Rome and a call for believers there to subvert Rome in all they do.

I remain unconvinced by this thesis. It reads too much into the text and sees ‘Rome’ behind every bush in Paul’s thinking.

I’m more convinced by NT scholar John Barclay’s take on empire studies. He says (paraphrasing here) that Paul has much bigger fish to fry. The real opponents in view are sin, death, evil powers in the cosmic conflict between God and all the forces that distort and destroy his good creation. God has won the victory in Christ.

The most counter-imperial thing Paul does is not even bother to name Caesar or the Roman empire. They are insignificant in the bigger story.

And so are Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

The Age of Disappointment

There is much excellent writing by talented authors on the cultural, social and political challenges of our times. This is one of the best.

David Brooks in The Atlantic on ‘America is Having a Moral Convulsion’

It could also be called ‘The Age of Disappointment’ or ‘What Happens When Trust Disappears’ or ‘Why Trump is in power’ or even ‘The Disintegration of America’.

Some clips below – but well worth a read in full.

And for followers of Jesus, Brooks’ forensic analysis raises all sorts of questions. And not only in the USA – many of the trends he talks about are present throughout the West, and are certainly here in Ireland.

Christians are to be people of the gospel – of good news. The story Brooks tells is an unremitting tale of bad news. Societal fragmentation, injustice, fear, despair, depression, insecurity, anxiety, familial breakdown, rage, violence, selfishness, individualism, the collapse of a civic commons and institutional decay.

A tragedy for the church, it seems to me, is when it mirrors the distrust, fears and hopelessness of the world. Brooks’ comment about (some) American evangelicals is telling

Evangelicalism has gone from the open evangelism of Billy Graham to the siege mentality of Franklin Graham.

Any Christian leader reading this article and especially Brooks’ final paragraph, should, I think, be asking ‘How can I, how can our church, embody Christian virtues of trust, faithfulness, kindness, justice, love of God, neighbour and even enemy?

Not in order to ‘save’ America, but to fulfil the Christian calling of being people of the gospel, people of hope, faith and love.

From David Brooks

Trump is the final instrument of this crisis, but the conditions that brought him to power and make him so dangerous at this moment were decades in the making, and those conditions will not disappear if he is defeated.

… The emerging generations today … grew up in a world in which institutions failed, financial systems collapsed, and families were fragile. Children can now expect to have a lower quality of life than their parents, the pandemic rages, climate change looms, and social media is vicious. Their worldview is predicated on threat, not safety.

Unsurprisingly, the groups with the lowest social trust in America are among the most marginalized …

Black Americans have been one of the most ill-treated groups in American history; their distrust is earned distrust …

The second disenfranchised low-trust group includes the lower-middle class and the working poor…

This brings us to the third marginalized group that scores extremely high on social distrust: young adults. These are people who grew up in the age of disappointment. It’s the only world they know … In the age of disappointment, our sense of safety went away. Some of this is physical insecurity: school shootings, terrorist attacks, police brutality, and overprotective parenting at home that leaves young people incapable of handling real-world stress. But the true insecurity is financial, social, and emotional.

… In this world, nothing seems safe; everything feels like chaos.

… When people feel naked and alone, they revert to tribe. Their radius of trust shrinks, and they only trust their own kind. Donald Trump is the great emblem of an age of distrust—a man unable to love, unable to trust.

… By 2020, people had stopped seeing institutions as places they entered to be morally formed, Levin argued. Instead, they see institutions as stages on which they can perform, can display their splendid selves. People run for Congress not so they can legislate, but so they can get on TV. People work in companies so they can build their personal brand. The result is a world in which institutions not only fail to serve their social function and keep us safe, they also fail to form trustworthy people. The rot in our structures spreads to a rot in ourselves.

The culture that is emerging, and which will dominate American life over the next decades, is a response to a prevailing sense of threat … We’re seeing a few key shifts.

From risk to security

From achievement to equality

From self to society

From global to local

From liberalism to activism

For centuries, America was the greatest success story on earth, a nation of steady progress, dazzling achievement, and growing international power. That story threatens to end on our watch, crushed by the collapse of our institutions and the implosion of social trust. But trust can be rebuilt through the accumulation of small heroic acts—by the outrageous gesture of extending vulnerability in a world that is mean, by proffering faith in other people when that faith may not be returned. Sometimes trust blooms when somebody holds you against all logic, when you expected to be dropped. It ripples across society as multiplying moments of beauty in a storm.

Tim Page: reflections on a great character and a wonderful life

I haven’t had the heart to post for a few weeks now. Towards the end of June my oldest and dear friend Tim Page died after a final three year battle with cancer.

There is a fitting tribute in the Irish News that gives a glimpse of a remarkable and lovable man.

Below is what I said at his funeral. It seems appropriate to post it here since Tim was one of the most regular readers of this blog and we had many related conversations over the years. There is a post from Tim on this blog linking to his telling of his one year post stem-cell transplant journey. It’s very hard to read today but the character talked about below shines through.

Rev Fiona McCrea gave a lovely tribute telling the rich story of Tim’s life and Rev Alex Wimberly of the Corrymeela Community, of which Tim and Ruth were members, also participated, praying in thanksgiving for a life well-lived and for Tim’s grieving family and friends.

When in the isolation Burkitt Ward of St James’ hospital Dublin for his donor stem cell transplant in December 2017 Tim asked me to speak at his funeral if he didn’t make it out the other side. And there was a high chance he wouldn’t.

I was humbled to be asked but said it was a task that I never wanted to take up. It turned out to be 2 ½ years later and here we are. None of us want to be, but here we are.

He also said he’d given me advance time to prepare! And you would think I would be, especially after sitting with Ruth around his bed last Saturday and saying goodbye. But I suspect all of us feel utterly unprepared for today. We are still trying to come to terms with the reality that he didn’t make it out of that last battle. His body had finally had enough.

We don’t want to be here because, as St Paul puts it in his first letter to the Corinthians, death is the great enemy. Tim talked about this. He didn’t have much time for platitudes, even if well meaning, that death is a friend to be welcomed, like a hospitable host ushering you in to the next life.

No, he knew well that death is a destroyer of life and Tim fought it with all his might. Not just over the last 2 ½ years of course, but on and off for over the last 30.  He was incredibly resilient and I’ll come back to that resilience in a moment.

We grieve today for that loss of life. But not just life in general, the loss of a particular life. A truly wonderful life – to quote the name of one of his favourite films played on his 50^th birthday.

I don’t say that lightly. I’ve known Tim for over 50 years. He’s been my closest friend and I can’t think of a better person or a better friend. And I’m sure Ruth would say here that there couldn’t be a better husband, and Downey and Christopher a better dad … and Primrose a better son, and Rosalind a better brother .. and we could go on I am sure ..Maurice, Jane, Page, Iris, Marigold, Janet, Steven ..

We grieve for the loss of a great character. And I don’t mean that in an Irish way, where to call someone a ‘character’ tends not to be a compliment! I mean it quite literally.

Character is formed over the course of a life, through thousands of choices made every day. It doesn’t happen by accident. Good character is reflected  in virtues, bad character in vices. And Tim is deeply loved by so many because of his character – who he was as a person – in those choices for the good that he made throughout his life

And so what I’d like to share for a few minutes are some reflections on Tim’s character. There is so much I could say but 6 particular virtues come to mind as I think about Tim.

These are just my way of thinking about Tim – I am sure that all of us could add many many more …

1. LOVE

The first and greatest virtue is love.  As I’ve mentioned, Tim was a life-long friend. But not just to me – to others and I think of Craig and Brian especially. And many others in BT, in Corrymeela and elsewhere. He shaped his life around commitments to others and projects and organisations that he saw made a difference.

And of course most of all he shaped his life around his love and loyalty to his great friend, partner and love of his life, Ruth. And then later to Christopher and Downey, his beloved sons.

I joked once that Ruth is far too good for him. He landed on his feet when he met her – and of course he instantly agreed. And one of the mostly lovely things about Tim is that he never stopped praising his wife. He knew he was deeply loved and how blessed he was to have someone so unselfishly orientated to another’s good – for that is what love is.

But that joke was not really true. It is better to say that they have been so wonderfully suited together as a couple who have loved one another through good times (and thankfully so much of Tim’s life was not defined by illness) and hard times as they vowed to do in Coleraine just over 26 years ago

“for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”

That’s what love is about – a relentless commitment to the other’s good. Tim and Ruth lived it out together. Right to our very last zoom call, Tim’s concern was not for himself, it was for Ruth, his family and his friends.

And this brings me back to that remarkable resilience. It wasn’t I think primarily about himself – it was primarily for Ruth and for Downey and Christopher.

He was so bursting with pride and love for you both as I’m sure you know. To see you make your own way in life. For Downey with IBM and Christopher being accepted to the PhD programme.

But of course that love was not based on your achievements: he loved you unconditionally – as a parent, as a father, who only wanted the best for his children – to see you flourish.  

2. HONESTY

A second virtue is honesty. Or truthtelling.

A Christian theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, says truth is all that Christians have. We need to be able to tell the truth about ourselves and our world. Neither are the way they are supposed to be.

And Tim would be the last person to say he was this perfect virtuous person – he had his weaknesses and failings.

But while most of us try to cover up those failings, and put on a good face, Tim was probably one of the most honest and vulnerable people I’ve ever met.

Honesty takes courage – an extra virtue I’m smuggling in here. All through his illnesses, he was always brutally honest. He shared his joys and his fears. Sometimes he raged at God. And how many times it was just painful hell and he wanted nothing else but switch off reality and go play computer games.

And Tim’s antennae for truth had its downside! He had an unerring knack of detecting bluff. When you were with Tim you never had a safe dull conversation. You knew you would be lovingly interrogated as to what was really going on!

That honesty was a form of love – he wanted authenticity, realness, deep relationship.

3. JOYFULNESS

The third virtue is joyfulness. I mean by that a joy in life, that is infectious.

I remember when were probably around 12 Tim exclaiming with great conviction “Mitch, computers are the future!”. I didn’t know what a computer was of course. Vaguely aware they were the size of warehouses and did things for governments.

But of course Tim was right. And his love of innovation, early adopting of technology and computing led him to his degree and career in BT.

Another more recent memory is Tim escaping from the Doctors and taking the Enterprise to Dublin for a day out on his own. It was some time after the first stem cell transplant in Belfast … we met for lunch in Trinity College and he went shopping to get something special for Ruth . He really shouldn’t have been there but his mischievous side delighted in doing what he shouldn’t. 

He loved life: he was curious, a student of ideas; business and management. Always open to hear what interested you.

Heck he was even willing to listen to a bit of Bob Dylan in the last few months – but I don’t think I sold him on that one …

I learnt a huge amount from him on dealing with change and how think about organisations. He loved thinking about how to improve people’s experience and make work not only more efficient but also more human.

I recall him saying when the cancer came back once again and he to retire from BT, one of his great losses was missing that team of talented people. That was Tim – he loved working with others, seeing the best in others, and as a leader – encouraging others to flourish. And this is why psychology and coaching was such a big part of his life

This links very closely to the next virtue which is humility.

4. HUMILITY

If you know it all you have nothing to learn. Arrogance is the opposite of humility and the last thing that described Tim was arrogance.

He was always ready with a witty self-depreciation when he knew he got too serious or intense. I will so miss his big laugh, his poking fun at himself, even in pain, his lack of self-pity, his dignity in all the indignities of being so ill for so long, his dry wit.

You saw his humility in how he got uncomfortable with people saying he was inspirational. He’d say I’m just someone who’s sick and doesn’t want to be and who’s trying to get through one day at a time …

Marva Dawn is a theologian we talked about at one point, she wrote a powerful book ‘Being Well When Ill’. Her suffering through multiple illnesses shaped her spirituality – and it also did with Tim.

By that I mean he was keenly aware of how fragile and short life was, and the foolishness of thinking he was in control, or could control things. And how empty so much human rhetoric of control and solutions are – especially around medicine.

He knew, however great the medical treatment gets, we don’t get out of life alive. We all face death.

But rather than lead to despair, that led him to prayer and trust in the loving kindness of God. Prayer is a form of humility and Tim was a person of prayer.

It is also linked to the next virtue – kindness

5. KINDNESS

At the core of Tim’s life was his love for God and being a follower of Jesus. His was what I call a generous orthodoxy – he had no time for meanness and drawing tight lines.

Tim was shaped within the Methodist tradition that, going back to John Wesley, places great value on the social implications of the gospel. That disciples of Jesus are called to imitate him in their love and concern for others.

You saw that in Tim’s life in a 100 different wys. Two immediately come to mind

You saw it in his taking up Park Running after the first transplant and completing all the Park Runs in NI and raising many £1000s for cancer research – and inspiring so many others in the process.

You saw it how he treated people. Ruth said the other day in hospital how Tim knew everyone’s names: from Professors to care assistants to drs and nurses to cleaners: And he knew about families and lives, and he kept a list.

That was Tim – its linked to humility. He was always so deeply appreciative of the unearned blessing of an accident of birth resulting in having free access to first world treatment by highly qualified professionals.

There is a humility needed to be kind.

Tim had every excuse to be consumed with his own troubles, but I suspect that if you interviewed all the hundreds of care workers who looked after Tim (and they were fantastic) – you would come away with hundreds of stories of Tim’s kindness and thoughtfulness – of his appreciation and thankfulness for their care.

Kindness is miles away from weakness – it takes strength to love and to be kind.

6. HOPE

The last virtue I want to mention is hope. Hope is a virtue in that it affirms life, it blesses others, and it gives tremendous strength to endure difficulty and hardship. It looks forward to a better future

We often talked about hope and the love of God. And if both can make sense in a world so marred by suffering and death.

Now I don’t think we came up with the answer! There isn’t a nice neat one. But Tim knew for himself the love of God, he knew the goodness of God – and he knew his life was in God’s hands.  

And he died – as we had often talked about – in the sure hope that God has done something about that world of suffering and death. That he’s confronted it head-on at the cross, and defeated that enemy in the resurrection of the Son

Tim died in that resurrection hope. He looked forward, as Christians do – to a new life, a new creation and a new body, free of sickness and disease. Where death will be no more, and the God of life will be all in all.

You can see it in the songs and readings he’s chosen today

And so as we experience today at the deep loss of his presence among us, I think he would say to us,

“Yes its right to lament, to weep, to grieve – for death is not a friend. But death will not have the last word.”

In the meantime, like everyone else here, I’ll miss you terribly brother.

Judgment as both necessary and good

The latest edition of VOX is out. With the lockdown there are real challenges in distribution. Do consider taking up the offer below.

My ‘Musings’ column was titled ‘Facebook, Judgment and Easter’ and is below. It came from reading this article in the Irish Times

‘This is what my job has taught me. People are largely awful and I’m there behind my desk doing my best to save the world.’

These are the words of an Irish ex-Facebook moderator who is taking legal action against the company for psychological trauma experienced as a result of his work.

Reading about his job makes you think alright. Every day moderators like him review a never-ending stream of images reported by users from all over the world. These range from the foolish (petty arguments) to indecent (nudity) to potential hate speech, to illegal trade in animals, all the way to child abuse and videos of groups of terrified people being executed somewhere in the Middle East (and this is only reported content remember).

Apparently Facebook provides detailed lists of rules to moderators for making judgments. These document are tens of thousands of words long and keep expanding in length and complexity. The moderator is faced with between 100 and 250 possible decisions on any given piece of content. Such is the volume there is limited time for evaluation and the moderators are expected to meet a target of 98% accuracy in their decision making. No wonder they are stressed; I don’t envy them their (unfortunately necessary) job.

There was a popular illustration used in evangelistic talks when I was younger. The speaker invited you to imagine a video of your life – all your secret thoughts and sins – being shown publicly to everyone you knew. The point was to bring home how none of us live up to our own standards let alone God’s. We would be ashamed if others really knew what we were like. The idea was to make listeners aware of their need for God’s grace and forgiveness.

I haven’t heard that illustration in a long time (and I’m not saying it’s necessarily a good one). But my impression is that Christians don’t talk too much about shame, sin and guilt these days. Maybe it’s because they seem to be outdated and repressive ideas, especially given recent Irish history. So we rightly emphasise the limitless nature of God’s love, but quietly downplay how much the Bible talks of his wrath and judgment. Today, to be ‘judgmental’ is socially unacceptable and smacks of intolerance – and who wants to be thought of as intolerant?

But the story of the Facebook moderator shows us that, when we think about it, judgment is actually both necessary and good.

Judgment as Necessary

It’s necessary because while the moderator isn’t a pastor or theologian, he looked into the ‘heart of darkness’ and concluded that ‘people are largely awful’. This echoes Paul in Ephesians saying that we are ‘by nature deserving of wrath’ (2:3). The moderator was doing his ‘best to save the world’ by trying to discern between good and evil. Out of compassion and a sense of justice he tried to put things right. But of course he couldn’t – none of us can. The depth of sin and the power of evil are too strong and the moderator, a mere man, was nearly destroyed in the process.

Judgment as Good

Judgment is good because the moderator’s experience shows the importance of naming and resisting evil.

This brings us to Easter and to another saviour and judge. The wonder of the cross is that ‘because of his great love for us’ (Eph 2:4) God freely chose to take his own judgment upon himself in Jesus Christ so that all in him share in Jesus’ resurrection victory over the power of death and sin.

While those destructive forces still stalk our world and God’s people are to battle against them, we can look forward to the goodness of God’s final judgment. We can thank God that there is no impunity for all the innumerable horrors humans perpetrate on each other and over our despoliation of God’s creation.

On that day justice will be done and this broken world will be put right for good. That’s why Christians today can say with the first believers

“Maranatha. Come, O Lord!” (1 Cor 16:22).

Easter Sunday Reflection: Christus ist auferstanden!

And here is my reflection for this Easter Sunday to finish a series written during Lent by members of our church in Maynooth. Easter greetings to one and all.

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Christus ist auferstanden!

If we were physically in church this morning, retired German teacher Ian Stanton, with a mischievous smile on his face, would likely come my way and say “Christus ist auferstanden!” (Christ is risen!). I say ‘mischievous’ because he knows I will be panicking trying to remember the few words of German that he expects me to know one day a year. For the record they are “Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!” (He is risen indeed!).

These are days of deep uncertainty and loss. Walking around Maynooth it’s heart-breaking to read sign after sign of businesses closed. Behind those notices are stories of lost jobs, debt and fear for the future. One talks honestly about the owner’s ‘trepidation’ over the ‘big and scary’ decision to shut. I find myself praying for her and make a promise that, hopefully, when that café reopens, I’ll go and give her some business.

Walking along the canal parallel to the railway, empty trains go past. I wonder how long this is going to go on, aware there is no easy fix and multiple lockdowns could come and go for over a year or more. I think of health-care workers in MCC like Andy and Susanne on the front-line. I think of friends who have suddenly no work and no income. I wonder how many in MCC are in a similar situation. I think of other friends at high risk and pray they can stay free of infection. I think of my dad in his 90s and living at home alone and find myself strangely grateful that my mother died over a year ago and is not now stuck in a nursing home, confused, with no-one able to visit her. And if I’m honest, I also wonder about my own job.

And yet, as I enjoy the Spring air and blue sky, I know I’m deeply privileged. I have health, family, a home to live in, access to technology and food to eat. I wonder if this pandemic has caused such angst because it has hit the rich West. It has shown us to be far less safe and in control than we thought. It has made us face the possibility of sudden death. Yet millions of people in the world are only all too familiar with disease, famine and war. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone there are over 400,000 deaths annually of malaria and over 2 million new infections.

And so I think of countless Christians in the past and today who have never known the safety nets of stable employment, fair pay, a home, access to health care, physical security, food and clean water or the expectation of a long life.

And I start to wonder if this pandemic, awful as it is, is bringing more sharply into focus just how relevant and important it is that Christus ist auferstanden.

For if Christ is raised, then we can trust that our futures are in the hands of the risen Lord.

If Christ is raised, then, those in Christ through faith already have resurrection life.

If Christ is raised, then God has already won the victory over death and evil powers and that therefore Christians can rest assured that

“… neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

And if Christ is raised, we can have a sure and certain hope that, regardless of when we die, we will share one day in Christ’s resurrection to a new life within a renewed world – one that will be gloriously free of viruses, disease and death itself.