Month: March 2024

The Resurrections of Jesus

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

The shunned, the unloved, the bleeding – the despised and the dead – were all brought back into life by Jesus. In a culture of separation and holiness-by-isolation, the Nazarite Rabbi stepped over boundaries again, and again, and again. When that culminated in the raising of a man from the dead, Lazarus of Bethany, the authorities decided enough was enough. It was time for Jesus to go away. Better that one man should die than the nation perish. Utilitarian arguments often win the day, they are beguilingly simple and often easy to implement. Focused on what is obvious and immediate, they frequently omit or deny wider truths and bigger themes that are, perhaps, simply too inconvenient to contemplate.

Like the sower’s seed, or the prodigal’s father already upon the road, the resurrections of Jesus are strewn across the Gospels. He calls back to life those who have been taught to be dead. To the contamination of a bleeding woman who dares to touch him, a wretched life is made whole. Many are healed and the doubting are allowed to walk away. At a meal with his disciples a woman dares to waste the fragrance of rich perfume; anointing the feet beside which the barren branches bring forth blossom. Here is bread and water; body and blood, the words whispered to the unworthy and the hopeless: you are alive.

The picture at the head of this blog is called ‘Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery‘ (1565) and was painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The painting uses a technique called grisaille, meaning that it appears to be monochrome; everything is a neutral shade – sepia-like. It is hard to imagine any depiction which conveys a stronger sense of life drained away. In the crowded painting the head of Jesus is lowest of all. He writes. I have always believed that in this story, at this point, Jesus is incandescent with rage. He knows that the purpose of this moral tale is to trap him and condemn him. Did the Pharisees just happen to catch this woman in the very moment of committing adultery? Or did the lawyers’ question come first, and a cunning plan evolve to create the drama? She is caught in the act – and they know at that moment exactly where to find Jesus. He knows that those who bring her care neither for her sin nor her salvation. She is a prop. It is little wonder that this is one of very few Gospel stories where Jesus pauses and takes his time, perhaps to marshal his feelings before speaking.

“The stone-throwers walk away, one by one, according to age. Until the kneeling Christ and the standing woman remain, in an awkward reversal of their established sexual status. He tells her to go, to sin no more, to pass from this narrative, and out of our knowledge”.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/sep/30/picture-this-iain-sinclair-bruegel?CMP=share_btn_url

The teachers and the crowd are dismissed by their recognition that no one is without sin. In this dismal tale of exploitation the one whom Christians claim has no sin does not pick up a stone. Violence is interrupted and a word of resurrection love is spoken: I do not condemn you. Like the woman at the well, she stands with Jesus alone. Another woman made the recipient of easy male judgement. The choreography of sin and punishment is cut short by someone who has no interest in this kind of dance. It is time for it all to stop.

On Good Friday we are supposed to think about the agony and suffering of Jesus, and so we should. But the resurrections continue, even on the cross. For the criminal who puts his faith in Jesus, the promise of the life to come: today. Slowly, the light of the world is extinguished. Its remains are planted in the darkness of the sealed tomb: and we wait. Today, at Easter, resurrection triumphs over death. The task of the church is to live this resurrection and set free people so quickly judged by those keen to weigh some sins more than others. To punish those whom it is easy to judge, and hide much greater sin in the folds of wealth. The resurrections of Jesus are not good news for everyone.

Photo credit: The Courtauld

The Flappers

Chris Swift1 Comment

In the weird and wonderful world of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift described servants who performed a particular occupation encountered by Gulliver on his third journey. These servants were called ‘flappers’ and their job was to accompany their master or mistress and make sure they were paying attention to what was going on. They did this with the aid of an inflated bladder on a short stick which, when they deemed it important for the person to be alert and listening, was used to flap them on the ear with the bladder. Equally, if it was something they needed to look at carefully, to flap their employer – gently – upon the eyes, thereby preventing them falling down a cliff.

This rather dramatic premonition of contemporary mindfulness was Swift’s satire on the distractedness and self-absorption of philosophers. These 18th century thinkers are portrayed by Swift as disconnected from the world around them, requiring a ‘flap’ or, I would suggest, a slap, to reawaken them to reality. Gulliver was unimpressed by the aristocratic figures who needed flapping, and spent more time conversing with the flappers themselves who, of course, had to pay attention to the world on behalf of others. Swift would be aware that his description is reminiscent of the role played by court jesters, who also used inflated bladders, and were sometimes the only people who could speak truth to power.

Photo by John Nail on Pexels.com

It is not easy to see the world with clarity. Often our gaze is overlaid with memories and interpretations that make our observations conform to views we hold already. This can mean that we fail to discern new patterns or new dangers, in a context where we pull reality towards the norms of our own expectation. I have written before about the value of stringent seeing and speaking, when we try to strip away the layers we impose and see something afresh. It is not easy. Perhaps we all need a flap to the head now and then.

Until I began preparing a sermon for Palm Sunday I hadn’t noticed a comment toward the end of the appointed Gospel reading. St Mark tells us that on entering the Temple, Jesus remained there until ‘he had looked around at everything’. Not preaching; not teaching; not healing or anything else: simply looking. Further research led me to discover that the Greek word used here, περιβλεψάμενος, occurs only seven times in the gospels with all but one of these found in Mark. Why is the evangelist so keen to make this point about the behaviour of Jesus?

Referring to an earlier use of this word in Marks’ Gospel, one suggestion is that the pause for observation “helps to intensify what Jesus is about to do” (Christal, J. 2011). This could be interpreted as a word used to convey dramatic effect: something major is about to happen. That would fit with Jesus’ Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem and the impending denouement of his mission. Equally, it is possible that Mark’s presentation of the passion captures a growing disparity between what Jesus was realising about the coming days, and a world unaware of events that would come to change history. It reminds me a little of the 2011 film Margin Call about the 2007-8 financial crash. A young financier, working for a large company, had calculated that the world was on the eve of a commercial meltdown. As he is driven across the city he gazes out on a world he knows is about to change, where everyone he sees is oblivious to how their lives will be altered. The character ‘looked around at everything’ because nothing would ever be quite the same again.

I am not convinced that having a flapper around to bop my eyes or ears would necessarily help me to see the world any more clearly. Like the ping of a message on my mobile phone, it would probably lead to irritation. Nevertheless, the point Swift is making is entirely valid. We are parochial and complacent creatures, wrapped up in our own concerns and often lacking the will to shake up our way of seeing the world. In a church where there is often an emphasis to ‘make disciples’ and to be incurious about a theology that questions our way of looking, it might help to remember that Jesus took the time to simply pay attention to the world. At the start of Holy Week it is a helpful reminder to us to ‘look around at everything’. To allow the narratives of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to jolt our compassion into life, and to look forward with hope to the day of resurrection.

Nothings Monstered

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

I find being praised an uncomfortable experience. There are possibly several reasons for this, such as the inevitable injustice of elevating any one person’s efforts when so much excellent work goes unacknowledged and unseen. There is also the danger that praise is a tool of patronage and amounts to little more than a loan which will one day be called in. Lastly, the words used in praise inevitably fail to fully capture the deeds they describe: they are either too capacious or too perfunctory. Among other writers, Shakespeare is notable for his exploration of the ‘precarious correspondence between words and meanings’ (Sicherman, C. M. 1972. Coriolanus: the failure of words. ELH, 39(2), 189-207). Of course, praise can be genuine and well-intentioned – but I would much prefer not to be subjected to it.

Recently I watched a film adaptation of Coriolanus. The character of the play’s title is not a sympathetic figure. He is a stubborn, able and determined fighter, admired greatly by his troops. But he has very little time for ordinary people – the plebs – or their leaders. When he is seeking to become consul, encouraged by his mother, the Senate meets to recount the many worthy deeds which substantiate his appointment, Coriolanus moves to leave the chamber:

Your Honors, pardon.
I had rather have my wounds to heal again
Than hear say how I got them.

Coriolanus Act 2 scene 2

Despite attempting to persuade him to stay, Coriolanus eventually leaves the Senate. Perhaps he finds it impossible to remain when words sound so hollow compared with the deeds they describe. Warfare is a reality that none can imagine who have not stood within it, or know what it is to be such a danger to the lives of others. Oratory risks tidying away complex affairs and obliterating the wounds they leave. Before departing Coriolanus adds:

I had rather have one scratch my head i’ th’ sun
When the alarum were struck than idly sit
To hear my nothings monstered.

Ibid.

Perhaps surviving appears to be a nothing in the context of war. Many people caught up in the chance nature of conflicts, know that a decision to turn left, rather than right, is the difference between life and death. When I heard the remarkable Arek Hersh speaking about his time in a concentration camp, while standing in Auschwitz next to one of the kind of cattle trucks in which he was forced to travel decades before, it was a powerful testament to the apparent arbitrariness of survival.

USSR – CIRCA 1980: Postcard shows Italian Majolica from Hermitage Plate “Coriolanus’s mother and wife implore Coriolanus to spare Rome”, Faenza, 1523, workshop of Casa Priora, circa 1980

Shakespeare appears to have been very interested in ‘nothing’. The title of Much Ado is a play on the word, and ‘nothing’ occurs 34 times in King Lear. In Coriolanus’ bitter sense of rejection as he is sent away from Rome, he undergoes a fundamental crisis of identity. He has been a loyal and outstanding warrior for the Republic – his decision to cross into the camp of his enemy is a ‘Damascus Road’ transformation. His former commanding officer, Cominius, goes to entreat him to be at peace with Rome – and is rejected. Returning to the capital, Cominius describes the state in which he found his late deputy:

“Coriolanus”
He would not answer to, forbade all names.
He was a kind of nothing, titleless,
Till he had forged himself a name o’ th’ fire
Of burning Rome.

Shakespeare, W. Coriolanus Act 5 scene 1.

Forging a name in battle is a long-standing tradition in many cultures. As a result of his service in WWII Montgomery’s most senior title was ‘1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein’. For Marcius it is the heat of battle that creates for him a title earned in combat, and takes a form of the name of the city where the battle occurred: Corioli. There appears to be genuine modesty in the response of Coriolanus to the gifts that are showered upon him in the moment of victory. He refuses the offer of a tithe of all the treasure in the city, and instead wants to receive the same portion as every other soldier. As he says: ‘I have done as you have done – that’s what I can’. However, refusing to play the game of reward and gratitude can be a dangerous course of action, as Coriolanus comes to discover. He is banished.

Renouncing his past titles and honours, walking away from his citizenship, leaves the resigned general in extreme isolation. I’m not sure that I agree with Ibsen that, “The strongest man upon the earth is he who stands most alone.” Nevertheless, Coriolanus sacrifices an enormity of rank and resources when he sides with his former enemy. As his mother tells him at one point: ‘You are too absolute’. In Shakespeare’s lifetime, people who took an absolute view about religion and the state could find themselves losing titles and property, not to mention their lives. The playwright was familiar with those who could, in a moment, become ‘a kind of nothing’. A state of loss which is perhaps the precursor of a wisdom that comes to us, all too often, far too late:

For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living …


William Butler Yeats, “Blood and Moon”

Refreshment

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

Today passes by all sorts of names: Mothering Sunday; Mothers’ Day; Mid-Lent Sunday; Rose Sunday; Laetare Sunday; Simnel Sunday and Refreshment Sunday. Despite the differences, there is a kinship between them, laying emphasis on different aspects of this waypoint through the long sojourn of Lent. For the vast majority of people, who aren’t making any particular commitment to the season, Mother’s Day will be the most recognisable name.

Refreshment seldom seems a bad idea. When we embark upon any long project, or simply feel weighed down with the routine tasks of daily life, pausing to be refreshed sounds a positive step. In some churches, after the weeks of purple, the vestments and hangings on this Sunday will be a vibrant pink. Colour refreshes the dullness of abstinence, flowers will be given and received, and family dinners will be eaten. In gardens and parks in the northern hemisphere this moment in Lent is accompanied by the emerging colours of spring and, hopefully, some slightly drier and warmer days.

In some traditions and ways of living, the idea of refreshment might be regarded as an indulgence. The consequences of this can be seen all too plainly in Hard Times. Dickens locates the exclusion of play, childlike wonder and a lively imagination, in the pattern of life imposed by a father:

“You have been so careful of me that I never had a child’s heart. You have trained me so well that I never dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, Father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s belief or a child’s fear”.

Dickens, C., Hard Times, 1854.

Dickens may have exaggerated several aspects of Victorian England in his novels, or placed together less common experiences in a single story, but it all flowed out of a reality with which he was familiar. Allowing space for refreshment in the 19th century could be a dangerous step. People might begin to think; to feel; to dream. Better to do your duty, however bleak the prospects, than imagine a life of being ‘fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon’. In that era few were wealthy and many were poor, and finding any kind of middle way between the two was not in the interests of the powerful. ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’.

Rather than being simply a pleasant 5 minutes pausing on a bench, or walking through a wood, refreshment can mean the moment we begin to see life anew, and wonder how to live the lives we are given. It might be the time we decide that change is needed, and that bobbing along as we are isn’t how we are meant to use this one, precious, opportunity we have to be here. Pulling the levers and turning the handles of our part of existence can fill the time – but it should never stop us pausing and lifting our eyes to the horizon.

Refreshment can be dangerous. It can lead to revolution. It may resolve our heart to pursue a different path. It is never time wasted – but the space in which a different future might be imagined.

What Shapes Us

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

I probably shouldn’t be allowed in bookshops – perhaps, especially, the second hand variety. It’s not that I steal from them, but I am mesmerised by so many tantalising titles that whisper: ‘read me – come and see the world from where I’m standing’. All too often I succumb to the siren call of these exciting doors into new worlds of information; history; narrative and imagination. I am at a particular risk living where we are now, as the excellent Minster Gate Bookshop (pictured) stands less than a 3 minute walk away on the other side of the cathedral.

“A bookshop is an idea in time”

Carlos Pascual quoted in Carrión, J. (2016). Bookshops. Hachette UK.

Growing up there were few books in our house. These consisted of map books, a Bible, some children’s books, cookery tomes and a Readers’ Digest three volume ‘Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary’ (the latter now a mere £5 on Abebooks.com: I found it very helpful on many occasions). At my grandparents it was a different story. Bessie, my grandmother, had been a primary school teacher before her marriage to Robert. The small bookcase in the sitting room was crammed with novels by Walter Scott; Dickens and Thackeray. There was also an atlas with a remarkable number of countries shaded in red. It was here that my love of literature began, but its development and maturity came via a charismatic English teacher at secondary school. Before the first years’ long summer holiday Mrs Boll handed round a list of books. Apparently we were supposed to choose one to read: I misheard, and read them all (and I’m a slow reader).

When I look around the study where I am sitting, the books are a record of my evolving interests and passions. There are a few books from undergraduate studies in English Literature and Theology. A selection of novels and poetry titles. More books linked to my PhD research and subsequent publications. A Bible in Spanish. Copies of journals for which I’ve been an editor and a host of miscellaneous and probably ill-advised further purchases. Nevertheless, they are very good company and sometimes I’ll wander about looking for a title (which I know is somewhere) and become distracted picking up these old friends and reminding myself of their contents.

Some years ago I was given a copy of Jorge Carrión’s Bookshops. This recounts the author’s visits to bookshops in many different parts of the world. It has been described as an extended essay and ‘a vital manifesto for the future of the traditional bookshop’. Some of these bookshops are ancient; others are works of art in their own right, employing the skills of local carpenters to fashion the shelving. For Carrión such places are about more than the retail of print, they are the context for people to meet, debate, share new ideas and inspire one another. After all, books have always – to some degree – been dangerous. There is a reason that despotic regimes burn them. No doubt, today, the internet has provided another forum to share ideas and this can be shut down when authorities feel threatened. It’s much harder to track-down and deactivate inked paper.

My most recent visit to Minster Gate Bookshop saw me give in to temptation (twice). I could hide behind a facade of professional interest for one title, an exploration of Jeanette Winterson’s writing and its relationship to religion. I’ve always loved Winterson’s novels. The other is justifiable (I protest too much?) because it concerns Laurence Sterne, and his work is my current hobbyhorse. Incidentally, I have found on occasion that another advantage of second hand books is that they sometimes contain material from a previous owner. In one case this was a typed letter in which the author told a librarian that all his children had turned out to be nincompoops. Reflecting on the chronology, I suspect that they’re probably now all in high-powered jobs.

On the wall of my study is a work of art by Wilkinson. It contains a block of acetate pages printed with a novel, written by the artist: ‘The Alabaster Child’. The work appeals to me for a number of reasons. It gives physical expression to the fact that reading is not simply linear. Later chapters of a novel are in dialogue with earlier sections, or certain words, as they weave towards a particular conclusion. In the case of ‘The Alabaster Child: A Novel’, the sheen of the acetate captures the reflection of my bookshelves on the other side of the room. Books speak to books and the relationship is both constant and dynamic. All my reading, what I remember and what has shaped my unconscious imagination, is in dialogue. As Doris Lessing put it in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us – for good and for ill”.