Lent 2016 - Not in control

As I walk the fields around my house on this clear, cold and stunningly beautiful afternoon, I am reminded that God promises to those who love him something like the joy I am experiencing. I also know, as I watch the doggish joy of our Labradoodle who is hurtling towards the bushes at the far end of the field, where squirrels are bound to be, that this joy is universal. Somehow, the dog, in his doggishness, experiences the joy implicit in the promise made to those who love God; ‘what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived’ (1Cor.2:9)

I also know that others walking these fields may have quite different feelings, feelings which have nothing to do with joy. This knowledge concerns me, because the situation seems unfair. Loving God is, after all, a gift in itself, and God, we are told, does not have favourites. So how is it that some can soar to such heights of joy in the seeming ordinariness of walking a dog while others may remain indifferent to the moment, or are simply burdened by sadness? I have known such sadness myself when walking the fields, sadness attributable to life, the state of the world, or to nothing in particular. I have tried to be joyful in these moments and failed. Mindful of the suffering of millions, I have also tried to be less joyful in those other moments. Again, I have failed.

All of this pertains to the way we think about Lent. Is Lent a season which permits joy? Or is it one for moderating our response to the blessings of life? Many of us tend to do the latter for much of the time, because we like to be taken seriously and serious people do not run down hills exulting in the joy of the moment.

I think there is something almost blasphemous in refusing joy, and in the idea that joy is somehow unseemly in Lent, because joy is of God himself. To be joyful is to allow ourselves to be taken out of the emotional straight jacket we wear for much of the time so that our constricted selves can be blessed by the love of God. To refuse such moments amounts to telling God that we know what is best for us better than God does.  Such knowledge, and the will to implement it, amounts to what used to be known as pride, another of the cardinal sins, for which see a previous blog post.

Pride is about control, the control of other people or animals, and the unforgiving self control which tells us that we can manage our own salvation. The salvation offered to us by God in Christ consists in the freedom to be joyful. It is almost a condition for salvation itself. We are to ‘rejoice in the Lord always’ (Phil.4:4). Rejoicing in the Lord will inevitably involve loss of control, or the surrendering of what we think will make others, including God, take us seriously.

Here, there is a paradox. It lies in the Cross, which was the most serious event in all time but which consisted in God allowing himself to be shamed, to be not taken seriously. In the Cross and in its shame, we are taken seriously as the flawed and fragile human beings that we really are, human beings who believe that their fragility and imperfection can be strengthened or remedied through the kind of self control which makes us resistant to forgiveness.

The need to control stems from the fear of being forgiven. Forgiveness brings freedom from old ways of thinking about life, about other human beings and about God. It frees us into new and wide open spaces, in which we see the world and creation in a new way. It is a cause for joy. 

Breaking the Rules

I don’t usually blog on a Sunday. I try, usually unsuccessfully, to have a Sabbath break from the computer. It is a difficult rule because, like millions of other users of the internet, the computer has accustomed me to a fast staccato rhythm of life. Slowing down the rhythm and easing the tempo brings withdrawal symptoms, including physical ones, because, like most people, I am in some measure addicted to this keyboard and the particular freedom it brings.

Not checking the internet or writing blog posts on a Sunday is both a liberation and a constraint. It liberates me for other things, like gardening and being fully present to other people, but it also constrains by denying the immediate satisfaction of a certain hunger. But today, as I break this self-imposed rule, because the coming week will be busy and afford little time for blogging, I feel liberated. Is this because writers have to write, so that breaking the ‘no computer’, and hence ‘no writing’, rule releases pent up creative energy, and hence stress? Or is it because self-imposed rules, or any other rules which are mindlessly adhered to, seldom fulfil their purpose? I think it is a little of both.

 Breaking rules is not just a matter of reclaiming freedom, however that is conceived. It is also a matter of discerning truth. This begs two further questions: How do rules help us to come to terms with who we are? And how can we know that a rule is self-defeating and ought therefore to be changed or abolished?

The second question really takes precedence over the first. Yesterday, I attended a very moving First Communion Mass in a Catholic church. There were about 300 people there. Being an Anglican who was once a Roman Catholic, and so not by nature a rule breaker, I spent the first part of the Mass trying to come to terms with the fact that there are regulations which forbid me to receive communion in a Catholic church. I felt like a person invited to a banquet who is shown all the civilities but not served any of the food, until I noticed that everyone was moving up to the front to receive communion, including a number of people known to me who were not Catholics. Everyone, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, were just helping themselves to the food which they knew they needed. I breathed a prayer of relief, feeling somewhat silly in doing so, and melded into the queue.

 The whole situation reminded me of a remark once made by an Anglican bishop, “No Church can keep a good God down”. Forbidding the reception of communion by people who are not of a particular denomination is a rule which is self-defeating, and so devoid of purpose, as are so many rules which forbid and exclude people from experiencing God’s love in whatever way they can.

Breaking the wrong rules in the right way can be as tough as keeping the wrong rules for the wrong reasons and that is why I addressed the second question before the first. So, to return to the first question, it is when we step over the boundaries of misconceived notions about tradition, the Church and certain kinds of loveless ‘morality’, and recognise our overriding hunger for God that we really come up against the truth about ourselves. Recognising this truth about ourselves frees us into creativity because it gives us permission to own our hunger for something more than the material and the mundane.

Being human means being hungry for something more than bread, as Jesus himself taught. He taught this because he knew that our humanity is sustained and informed by our hunger for truth. Our hunger for truth, as Saint Augustine found, along with a number of later philosophers who came at it from an entirely different direction, is the passion which makes us fully human. It is inextricably bound up with who we are and with all our other partially admitted longings. Together, they make up our need and hunger for truth which is also a hunger for God.

Once we recognise our hunger for God, it becomes easier to discern which of the rules we set ourselves need to be kept without question and which are in fact obstacles or impediments to satisfying this hunger. Some of the best rules need to be broken from time to time, or dispensed with altogether. If they are not, then the rules simply add to existing layers of guilt and neurosis rather than freeing us from them. The same holds for rules which contain, clip or limit real creativity. These need to be constantly kept under review, and broken as an when needed, as I am finding in writing this blog post on a Sunday.

Ultimately, all life is about creativity.  We are only fully human when we are being creative, but being creative is not the same as being ‘productive’.  Creativity is not a currency. It is life itself. This is what Jesus is talking about when he says that he is the way, the truth and the life. He is talking about the recognition of something necessary and familiar and yet entirely new and strange, the voice of the shepherd which the sheep know and recognise, offering them a way in to the place where they will find real food, where they will find the kind of truth which liberates.

He is not saying that only people who recognise his voice in a particular way, by adhering to certain terms and conditions, can be part of his flock. Rather, he is telling them how to recognise what is counterfeit and destructive. He is inviting those who are prepared to trust him to walk with him and, in so doing, to break quite a few ill-considered or self-imposed rules. He is also teaching them that the truth which is of God never stands still. It grows and shapes itself around the needs of the times, so it requires new rules, or boundaries, boundaries which allow it to flow unimpeded into the hearts and minds of those who hunger for it, which is all of us.