Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Cameron's Challenge
There is no guarantee that David Cameron will walk into Downing St next year as Prime Minister – and he knows it.
This is not like 1997 when visions of a New Britain had intoxicated the chatterati.
The only voices who believe that the UK’s journey to the brink of economic collapse has created a golden moment of opportunity for social and economic reform are on Labour’s radical fringe.
Voters will go into the polling booth and decide which party they want in charge of a programme of swingeing cuts.
As electoral experts have noted, winning an outright Conservative majority will involve holding every seat won in 2005 – and then turning another 117 blue.
This is at a time when memories of moat-cleaning expenses shenanigans are still bright.
Many MPs will be quitting, so fresh-faced Conservative candidates will have to pace the streets persuading people to embrace a Tory future and resist overtures from nationalists, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Ukip, zesty independents and unsavoury alternatives.
These factors bring two immediate possibilities into play. One is that there will be a hung parliament and we will see days (weeks?) of horse-trading. In such a scenario the LibDems could be kingmakers, or we could see the SNP and Plaid Cymru successfully negotiate as one and agree to keep a party in power in return for new fiscal powers for Scotland and Wales.
There is also the real chance England will narrowly go Conservative but not win a UK majority if the party fails to make inroads in the Celtic nations.
Any lingering attachment to unionism in the Tory party could be torched in such a scenario – especially if they have to cut a deal with the SNP and Plaid.
You can imagine the conversation: “You want a parliament in Wales and greater independence in Scotland? Fine! But I’m sure you won’t mind if we take a scythe to the number of MPs your nations send to Westminster.”
The Tories will have to labour for a real victory, but the election is still theirs to lose. And if Labour is ousted from Westminster, the First Minster of Wales is likely to be the most senior elected official of the party of Blair and Bevan.
In such circumstances, he or she will have mighty challenges ahead as they try to do more with much less in this era of austerity (and the 2011 Assembly elections will loom over each day in office).
But Wales will be an alternative vision of Britain – a laboratory where left-of-centre politics will either flare of fizzle before a watching Britain.
Even with the Conservatives in Westminster, it is unlikely that British socialists will identify Cardiff as the New Jerusalem. But as the winter of cuts descends, it may be seen as the warmest home they have got.
This is not like 1997 when visions of a New Britain had intoxicated the chatterati.
The only voices who believe that the UK’s journey to the brink of economic collapse has created a golden moment of opportunity for social and economic reform are on Labour’s radical fringe.
Voters will go into the polling booth and decide which party they want in charge of a programme of swingeing cuts.
As electoral experts have noted, winning an outright Conservative majority will involve holding every seat won in 2005 – and then turning another 117 blue.
This is at a time when memories of moat-cleaning expenses shenanigans are still bright.
Many MPs will be quitting, so fresh-faced Conservative candidates will have to pace the streets persuading people to embrace a Tory future and resist overtures from nationalists, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Ukip, zesty independents and unsavoury alternatives.
These factors bring two immediate possibilities into play. One is that there will be a hung parliament and we will see days (weeks?) of horse-trading. In such a scenario the LibDems could be kingmakers, or we could see the SNP and Plaid Cymru successfully negotiate as one and agree to keep a party in power in return for new fiscal powers for Scotland and Wales.
There is also the real chance England will narrowly go Conservative but not win a UK majority if the party fails to make inroads in the Celtic nations.
Any lingering attachment to unionism in the Tory party could be torched in such a scenario – especially if they have to cut a deal with the SNP and Plaid.
You can imagine the conversation: “You want a parliament in Wales and greater independence in Scotland? Fine! But I’m sure you won’t mind if we take a scythe to the number of MPs your nations send to Westminster.”
The Tories will have to labour for a real victory, but the election is still theirs to lose. And if Labour is ousted from Westminster, the First Minster of Wales is likely to be the most senior elected official of the party of Blair and Bevan.
In such circumstances, he or she will have mighty challenges ahead as they try to do more with much less in this era of austerity (and the 2011 Assembly elections will loom over each day in office).
But Wales will be an alternative vision of Britain – a laboratory where left-of-centre politics will either flare of fizzle before a watching Britain.
Even with the Conservatives in Westminster, it is unlikely that British socialists will identify Cardiff as the New Jerusalem. But as the winter of cuts descends, it may be seen as the warmest home they have got.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The Fragile Treasure
Philosophers and theologians like to have fun.
This is why crowds of academics flock to hear a shaggy-bearded, jumper-wearing Slovenian psychoanalyst called Slavoj Žižek who serves up an intoxicating cocktail of resurrected Marxism, pop culture references and gleefully rude jokes.
If the DNA of Eddie Izzard, Lenny Bruce and an Old Testament prophet were fused by renegade geneticists, someone like Žižek might emerge in the test tube.
Curious, I downloaded a few of his presentations; I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what his “point” was, but one insight is bouncing around my brain.
He said when a society argues about when it is acceptable to torture someone, that culture has already moved to a place where it is corrupted.
This pollution of western politics can be seen through a quick surf through news-sites and blogs. The debate in the United States has shifted from whether it is ever right to torture someone, but whether this “works”.
The concept is no longer anathema. It is up for debate; politicians do not consider it self-evident that simulating drowning a man 183 times in one month is not wrong.
This is exactly what happened to senior Al-Qaeda suspect Khalid Shaykh Muhammad in March 2003.
The odious acts of terrorism and barbarity carried out by Islamist extremists have shocked and frightened the West. They have taken beheading – something we thought was locked in the history books – and hauled it into the realm of news headlines.
But we also thought that torture was a medieval monstrosity, that the only people in modern times who sanctioned it were loose cannons or Nazis.
It was simply beyond the pale, and now it is not. Now that images of ticking bombs are easy to imagine, senior figures contemplate legally acceptable ways of causing excruciating pain or blinding terror.
The extent of the UK’s acquiescence during the War on Terror should be dragged into the daylight if Gordon Brown wants to leave Downing St with his moral compass intact.
But it is especially disappointing that the defence of torture is being articulated so forcefully in the United States, where it is a founding principle that moral instincts and impulses should be revered.
The Declaration of Independence begins with the words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”.
Good souls in Britain are in anguish about whether representatives of far-right parties should be invited onto mainstream current affairs shows.
Just as “torture” (or “enhanced interrogation”) is now part of the mainstream lexicon, what other ideas we once considered banished will cease to be taboo?
We knew that our predecessors had fought hard for the values of civilisation. But we never appreciated how fragile and perhaps fleeting these accomplishments would prove.
This is why crowds of academics flock to hear a shaggy-bearded, jumper-wearing Slovenian psychoanalyst called Slavoj Žižek who serves up an intoxicating cocktail of resurrected Marxism, pop culture references and gleefully rude jokes.
If the DNA of Eddie Izzard, Lenny Bruce and an Old Testament prophet were fused by renegade geneticists, someone like Žižek might emerge in the test tube.
Curious, I downloaded a few of his presentations; I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what his “point” was, but one insight is bouncing around my brain.
He said when a society argues about when it is acceptable to torture someone, that culture has already moved to a place where it is corrupted.
This pollution of western politics can be seen through a quick surf through news-sites and blogs. The debate in the United States has shifted from whether it is ever right to torture someone, but whether this “works”.
The concept is no longer anathema. It is up for debate; politicians do not consider it self-evident that simulating drowning a man 183 times in one month is not wrong.
This is exactly what happened to senior Al-Qaeda suspect Khalid Shaykh Muhammad in March 2003.
The odious acts of terrorism and barbarity carried out by Islamist extremists have shocked and frightened the West. They have taken beheading – something we thought was locked in the history books – and hauled it into the realm of news headlines.
But we also thought that torture was a medieval monstrosity, that the only people in modern times who sanctioned it were loose cannons or Nazis.
It was simply beyond the pale, and now it is not. Now that images of ticking bombs are easy to imagine, senior figures contemplate legally acceptable ways of causing excruciating pain or blinding terror.
The extent of the UK’s acquiescence during the War on Terror should be dragged into the daylight if Gordon Brown wants to leave Downing St with his moral compass intact.
But it is especially disappointing that the defence of torture is being articulated so forcefully in the United States, where it is a founding principle that moral instincts and impulses should be revered.
The Declaration of Independence begins with the words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”.
Good souls in Britain are in anguish about whether representatives of far-right parties should be invited onto mainstream current affairs shows.
Just as “torture” (or “enhanced interrogation”) is now part of the mainstream lexicon, what other ideas we once considered banished will cease to be taboo?
We knew that our predecessors had fought hard for the values of civilisation. But we never appreciated how fragile and perhaps fleeting these accomplishments would prove.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Say it Loud and Say it Proud
Ambitious politicians pledge that if power is thrust upon them they will steer clear of spin and pursue consensus in forging policies that will improve our lives.
But when a Prime Minister or a President loses a mania for communication and appears to lack a defining vision, then voters rightly wonder if he or she is firing on all cylinders.
This irony will not be lost on President Obama as he seeks to regain the initiative in the debate on the future of healthcare.
His leadership on this issue has managed to re-excite the fringes of the American Right who just months earlier were in despair at the end of the Bush era. He has simultaneously dismayed legions of his supporters who believed he would end of the great scandals of the superpower.
Democrats and Republicans should be falling over each other in the race to ensure the United States has the best healthcare system in the world.
Surely any politician – from either the Left or the Right – desperate for a prominent place in history textbooks, would fight to reform a system under which 45m Americans lack insurance and 25m do not have full coverage?
Half a century after Britain sought to sever the link between poverty and ill-health by instituting the NHS, millions of US citizens fear that unemployment plus sickness will equal bankruptcy.
The message this sends out to the rest of the world is that embracing democracy and capitalism do not automatically been that basic issues of social justice will be addressed. In fact, members of democratic institutions are seen to be working to thwart efforts to provide a Government-run insurance scheme.
If an enthusiastically elected president with a whopping majority in both Houses of Congress cannot impose his will, what can he do?
In seeking to build consensus, Obama – a campaigner extraordinaire – has stepped out of the limelight and let congressional politicians thrash out legislation. This is like letting a herd of bobcats loose in your kitchen and being surprised when you return an hour later and find they have not prepared a cordon bleu dinner.
In Britain, the frustration with politicians is not about an excess of soundbites but the lack of communication. Where is the detailed vision for how hurricane-wrecked public finances can be restored?
A surgeon who refused to tell patients where he would make an incision would be quickly sacked. Such ambiguity about where fiscal cuts will fall is equally maddening.
If a person wants to be at the heart of government but has no appetite for passionate and public argument they should join the civil service.
Anyone who does not have the imagination and brains to come up with policies to protect the vulnerable – and who lacks the conviction and compulsion to fight from the front – should not be in politics
But when a Prime Minister or a President loses a mania for communication and appears to lack a defining vision, then voters rightly wonder if he or she is firing on all cylinders.
This irony will not be lost on President Obama as he seeks to regain the initiative in the debate on the future of healthcare.
His leadership on this issue has managed to re-excite the fringes of the American Right who just months earlier were in despair at the end of the Bush era. He has simultaneously dismayed legions of his supporters who believed he would end of the great scandals of the superpower.
Democrats and Republicans should be falling over each other in the race to ensure the United States has the best healthcare system in the world.
Surely any politician – from either the Left or the Right – desperate for a prominent place in history textbooks, would fight to reform a system under which 45m Americans lack insurance and 25m do not have full coverage?
Half a century after Britain sought to sever the link between poverty and ill-health by instituting the NHS, millions of US citizens fear that unemployment plus sickness will equal bankruptcy.
The message this sends out to the rest of the world is that embracing democracy and capitalism do not automatically been that basic issues of social justice will be addressed. In fact, members of democratic institutions are seen to be working to thwart efforts to provide a Government-run insurance scheme.
If an enthusiastically elected president with a whopping majority in both Houses of Congress cannot impose his will, what can he do?
In seeking to build consensus, Obama – a campaigner extraordinaire – has stepped out of the limelight and let congressional politicians thrash out legislation. This is like letting a herd of bobcats loose in your kitchen and being surprised when you return an hour later and find they have not prepared a cordon bleu dinner.
In Britain, the frustration with politicians is not about an excess of soundbites but the lack of communication. Where is the detailed vision for how hurricane-wrecked public finances can be restored?
A surgeon who refused to tell patients where he would make an incision would be quickly sacked. Such ambiguity about where fiscal cuts will fall is equally maddening.
If a person wants to be at the heart of government but has no appetite for passionate and public argument they should join the civil service.
Anyone who does not have the imagination and brains to come up with policies to protect the vulnerable – and who lacks the conviction and compulsion to fight from the front – should not be in politics
Sunday, September 06, 2009
The Kingdom of the Free God
The God of the Bible is not an idol you can place on a kitchen shelf to bring blessing to a house. Yahweh is a God who cannot be owned, tamed, controlled or contained.
A husband can love his wife for half a century and study her ways, thoughts and manners but she will always possess the power to surprise him.
And God is just as alive as a loved one. He is closer to us than the passenger in the next seat, the sibling across the table, or the worshipper in the pew. He is as ready to inspire today as he was when talking with Moses; his desire for justice and his readiness to love are just as urgent.
It is an audacious thing to ever presume to speak on God’s behalf. When someone sets him or herself up as a religious authority the danger of disaster is only seconds away. A human leader will never urge followers to love to the extremes which God has shown. He or she will never display mercy of the magnificence of Yahweh. Our dream of the perfect kingdom will never compete with the glory of the vision God spurs us towards.
Imagine if Jesus Christ paid a visit to our church meetings or wandered into our theological faculties, or sat down at Sunday lunch. When he listened to us describing his character and will for the world, I hope he would be amused rather than outraged at the inanity of our ideas and the poverty of our ambition.
In fact, the Bible does record such an incident. The incredible story is told in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke:
He drove the theocapitalist sacrifice-selling salesmen and the wheeler-dealers out with the words: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
The Temple was the house where God was believed to dwell. Jesus, the Son of God, had come to his family home on earth. On this day of noise and scuffles, God was present - but who recognised him?
The Gospel-writer Matthew tells us:
The next time he entered the Temple they were ready for him. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” they asked.
Jesus could as easily asked them the same question. Judaea in Jesus’ time was ruled as a client state of Rome by a corrupt aristocracy in collaboration with the religious elite. Jesus had direct experience of the cruelty of this sordid regime. His cousin, John the Baptist, had been beheaded after condemning the scandalous marriage of Herod Antipas and his half-brother’s wife.
The land Jesus inhabited was a gross distortion of the kingdom God had commanded his people to build. But this was nothing new. Even before successive empires turned the territory into a puppet state, corrupt kings had looted the nation and angered God.
We read in the third chapter of the prophet Isaiah:
With the words of Isaiah no doubt ringing in his ears, Jesus turned to chief priests and elders and said:
Jesus signalled his own death in this story. He knew these men would conspire to have him crucified by the Roman forces. But Jesus’ killing would be much more than the latest in the long line of prophets who condemned corruption and then met a violent death. God was about to do bring this dreadful, sinful system crashing down.
He continued: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”
These few verses are like a zip file which contains billions of pages of information about the purposes of God, the identity of Jesus and our destiny.
God has not given up on his dream of a kingdom where his love, justice and mercy shine. The vision is much more glorious than a nation-state which can be drawn in a map and managed by politicians. Instead, the kingdom will exist where people produce its fruits.
It is not the case that God is making the best of a bad deal. He is not like a retailer who can no longer afford to keep his high street store open so switches to an internet-only operation. God’s vision of a truly righteous kingdom in which all people can dwell has burned throughout history.
The first Hebrew kings were only appointed after the people badgered God into giving them a human ruler so they would be like the neighbouring nations. He had warned them it would go horribly wrong. And at one of the lowest moments in Israel’s history, when the kingdom had been conquered by the Babylonian empire, God provided a vision of redemption.
In a splendid demonstration of his sovereignty, God chose to give this picture of the future to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Five centuries later, debating in the Temple, Jesus draws a direct link between the events unfolding in his life and the king’s dream.
Nebuchadnezzar saw a giant image which represented different empires which would spread across the earth. Its head was of gold but its feet were a mesh of iron and clay. Then a stone “cut out by no human hand” crashed into the feet and toppled the entire structure which crumbled and was carried away in the wind. The stone then “filled the whole earth”.
A Hebrew captive named Daniel had the task of interpreting the dream. He told Nebuchadnezzar:
Many Jews were waiting for a Messiah - an embodiment of this stone - who would end the reign of the latest empire to occupy Jerusalem and establish an independent kingdom. But Jesus knew that just as the authorities killed his cousin John, they would arrange his death. Even though his teaching and his life, death and resurrection will be the cornerstone of the coming kingdom, he is a stone who will be rejected.
Two thousand years later, Jesus still stands among us. He still gives us the opportunity to enter his kingdom. We can either reject him and try to use the few years we have on earth to amass as much cash, power and bling as a coffin can hold, or we can join a revolution of love. Tyrants hang onto power by dividing people and feeding hatred. Jesus gives us the power of his Holy Spirit to bring people into a new family which transcends tribe and colour.
The apostle Paul, who had once been on the fast-track to the top of the religious establishment, wrote in the second chapter of his letter to the first Christians in Ephesus:
Have we grasped the true thrill of this kingdom? Do we understand what it means to be members of the household of God? Are we daring to live by God’s values in the present day? Do we confront injustice and show mercy when we get the chance? Or are we so worried by our own weaknesses and neuroses that we fail to see that God has not rejected us but is using us as bricks for his own dwelling?
Yes, the kingdoms of the world are collapsing but darkness and chaos is not the destiny which awaits. Instead, the justice of which the prophets dreamed will shine. God’s dream of a kingdom is the reality into which we will one day awake.
A husband can love his wife for half a century and study her ways, thoughts and manners but she will always possess the power to surprise him.
And God is just as alive as a loved one. He is closer to us than the passenger in the next seat, the sibling across the table, or the worshipper in the pew. He is as ready to inspire today as he was when talking with Moses; his desire for justice and his readiness to love are just as urgent.
It is an audacious thing to ever presume to speak on God’s behalf. When someone sets him or herself up as a religious authority the danger of disaster is only seconds away. A human leader will never urge followers to love to the extremes which God has shown. He or she will never display mercy of the magnificence of Yahweh. Our dream of the perfect kingdom will never compete with the glory of the vision God spurs us towards.
Imagine if Jesus Christ paid a visit to our church meetings or wandered into our theological faculties, or sat down at Sunday lunch. When he listened to us describing his character and will for the world, I hope he would be amused rather than outraged at the inanity of our ideas and the poverty of our ambition.
In fact, the Bible does record such an incident. The incredible story is told in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke:
Now [Jesus’] parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group they went a day's journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?”This is one of the moments in the Bible when we wish we had a fuller transcript of the conversation. What had Jesus said to these men? And how would they have remembered those strange few days of interrogation and debate? Did they wonder what had happened to the young man? And did any of them recognise him 21 years later when he strode back into the Temple and overturned the tables of the money-changers who had taken up residence there?
He drove the theocapitalist sacrifice-selling salesmen and the wheeler-dealers out with the words: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
The Temple was the house where God was believed to dwell. Jesus, the Son of God, had come to his family home on earth. On this day of noise and scuffles, God was present - but who recognised him?
The Gospel-writer Matthew tells us:
[The] blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,The very people who were paid to provide correct answers about God and his law were unable to recognise the Son of God when he walked in their midst. Instead, they were upset he was on their turf.
“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”
The next time he entered the Temple they were ready for him. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” they asked.
Jesus could as easily asked them the same question. Judaea in Jesus’ time was ruled as a client state of Rome by a corrupt aristocracy in collaboration with the religious elite. Jesus had direct experience of the cruelty of this sordid regime. His cousin, John the Baptist, had been beheaded after condemning the scandalous marriage of Herod Antipas and his half-brother’s wife.
The land Jesus inhabited was a gross distortion of the kingdom God had commanded his people to build. But this was nothing new. Even before successive empires turned the territory into a puppet state, corrupt kings had looted the nation and angered God.
We read in the third chapter of the prophet Isaiah:
The Lord will enter into judgementTwo chapters later, the prophet again declares God’s wrath at the oppression of the poor by the rulers who are charged with enforcing his justice. In a flood of passionate poetry, he compares the nation to a vineyard that God tended but which produced worthless fruit.
With the elders and princes of his people:
“It is you who have devoured the vineyard,
The spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people.
By grinding the face of the poor?”
Declares the Lord of hosts.
Let me sing for my belovedIn his 33 years on earth, Jesus had seen injustice and bloodshed, and by challenging this he caused an outcry.
My love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
On a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
And planted it with choice vines;
He built a watchtower in the midst of it,
And hewed out a wine vat in it;
And he looked for it to yield grapes,
But it yielded wild grapes.
And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem
And men of Judah,
Judge between me and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
Than I have not done in it?
When I looked for it yield grapes,
Why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you
What I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge.
And it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
And it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
It shall not be pruned or hoed,
And briers and thorns shall grow up;
I will also command the clouds
They they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
Is the house of Israel
And the men of Judah
Are his pleasant planting;
And he looked for justice,
But behold, bloodshed;
For righteousness,
But behold, an outcry!
With the words of Isaiah no doubt ringing in his ears, Jesus turned to chief priests and elders and said:
Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.The meaning was clear. God’s patience with the corrupt authorities was about to run out. The religious rulers had refused to obey John the Baptist’s call to repentance and their patron, Herod Antipas, had murdered him.
Jesus signalled his own death in this story. He knew these men would conspire to have him crucified by the Roman forces. But Jesus’ killing would be much more than the latest in the long line of prophets who condemned corruption and then met a violent death. God was about to do bring this dreadful, sinful system crashing down.
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:This is a direct quotation from Psalm 118 - the chapter slap-bang in the middle of most Bibles. Just as the psalmist David went from being an outcast to become the unifier of Israel, so Jesus - a preacher with no place in the religious establishment - would bring Jew and Gentile together in a new kingdom.
“‘The stone that the builders rejected
Has become the cornerstone;
This was the Lord's doing,
And it is marvellous in our eyes’?”
He continued: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”
These few verses are like a zip file which contains billions of pages of information about the purposes of God, the identity of Jesus and our destiny.
God has not given up on his dream of a kingdom where his love, justice and mercy shine. The vision is much more glorious than a nation-state which can be drawn in a map and managed by politicians. Instead, the kingdom will exist where people produce its fruits.
It is not the case that God is making the best of a bad deal. He is not like a retailer who can no longer afford to keep his high street store open so switches to an internet-only operation. God’s vision of a truly righteous kingdom in which all people can dwell has burned throughout history.
The first Hebrew kings were only appointed after the people badgered God into giving them a human ruler so they would be like the neighbouring nations. He had warned them it would go horribly wrong. And at one of the lowest moments in Israel’s history, when the kingdom had been conquered by the Babylonian empire, God provided a vision of redemption.
In a splendid demonstration of his sovereignty, God chose to give this picture of the future to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Five centuries later, debating in the Temple, Jesus draws a direct link between the events unfolding in his life and the king’s dream.
Nebuchadnezzar saw a giant image which represented different empires which would spread across the earth. Its head was of gold but its feet were a mesh of iron and clay. Then a stone “cut out by no human hand” crashed into the feet and toppled the entire structure which crumbled and was carried away in the wind. The stone then “filled the whole earth”.
A Hebrew captive named Daniel had the task of interpreting the dream. He told Nebuchadnezzar:
In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.So, when Jesus talked of a new kingdom and a stone that would demolish all that came in its path, these religious experts would immediately think of the Babylon vision.
Many Jews were waiting for a Messiah - an embodiment of this stone - who would end the reign of the latest empire to occupy Jerusalem and establish an independent kingdom. But Jesus knew that just as the authorities killed his cousin John, they would arrange his death. Even though his teaching and his life, death and resurrection will be the cornerstone of the coming kingdom, he is a stone who will be rejected.
Two thousand years later, Jesus still stands among us. He still gives us the opportunity to enter his kingdom. We can either reject him and try to use the few years we have on earth to amass as much cash, power and bling as a coffin can hold, or we can join a revolution of love. Tyrants hang onto power by dividing people and feeding hatred. Jesus gives us the power of his Holy Spirit to bring people into a new family which transcends tribe and colour.
The apostle Paul, who had once been on the fast-track to the top of the religious establishment, wrote in the second chapter of his letter to the first Christians in Ephesus:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ... [He] came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.The challenges of Jesus are as real today as in the Temple in Jerusalem. Will we recognise him, like the children who cried “Hosanna!” or do we stand with the religious leaders who refused to acknowledge his authority? Do we respond to the living God who calls us into his presence, or can we only cope with a mental image of an impersonal deity incapable or bringing true disruption, comfort or joy into our lives?
Have we grasped the true thrill of this kingdom? Do we understand what it means to be members of the household of God? Are we daring to live by God’s values in the present day? Do we confront injustice and show mercy when we get the chance? Or are we so worried by our own weaknesses and neuroses that we fail to see that God has not rejected us but is using us as bricks for his own dwelling?
Yes, the kingdoms of the world are collapsing but darkness and chaos is not the destiny which awaits. Instead, the justice of which the prophets dreamed will shine. God’s dream of a kingdom is the reality into which we will one day awake.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
The Making of a President
Were Simon Cowell commissioned to choose as head of state someone with a blend of discretion and flair who could charm a multifaceted nation, it would not come as a surprise if the winner was an 83-year-old horse enthusiast who today divides her time between Buckingham Palace and Balmoral.
Republicans have been thwarted in their efforts to advance the compelling intellectual case for a more democratically palatable alternative because the incumbent plays the role of the Queen with dogged brilliance.
The notion of replacing her with a veteran of Westminster like Margaret Beckett or Ann Widdecombe would trigger teapot-throwing riots – even though the monarch has an expense account for multiple homes which eclipses the spending of even the most grandiose MP.
When a key part of the job description involves hosting garden parties, supporting unglamorous charities and saluting the bravery of young soldiers, the Queen has carved out a unique persona as grandmother-in-chief.
Anti-monarchists need to present the UK with a vision less ghastly that the anachronisms of the hereditary principle. If even self-reliant Australians are horrified by the alternatives to Elizabeth II, what chance is there that the loyal subjects of the Home Counties will turn republican?
But last weekend I glimpsed a different vision of presidency.
At my great-aunt’s 100th birthday celebrations in Northern Ireland, a card from the Queen sat on display beside a letter from Belfast-born Mary McAleese, the eighth president of Ireland.
The two messages seemed to represent a choice of paths facing the Northern Irish.
The Republic of Ireland has dropped its explicit constitutional claim over the British province. But the expression of goodwill the president is making to its oldest citizens will do more to make people think positively about a one-Ireland future than any hectoring nationalist rhetoric.
The message from the card from the Queen said she was “so pleased to know” about the birthday, which was pretty nice.
But Ms McAleese concluded her letter with the words: “May you be surrounded today by the warmth of happy memories and secure in the knowledge that you continue to make this world a better place for all who love you. I am delighted to send my warmest personal congratulations and most sincere good wishes, along with the enclosed centenarian payment.”
Those three last words made eyebrows around the room arch higher than any architectural flourish at Notre Dame. A cheque for more than 2,500 euros is welcome at any age – but especially when you turn a century.
If a president is a man or woman who can personify the most generous aspects of a culture on the world stage and in a letter to an aunt, the true successor to the Queen may not be a member of the royal family.
Republicans have been thwarted in their efforts to advance the compelling intellectual case for a more democratically palatable alternative because the incumbent plays the role of the Queen with dogged brilliance.
The notion of replacing her with a veteran of Westminster like Margaret Beckett or Ann Widdecombe would trigger teapot-throwing riots – even though the monarch has an expense account for multiple homes which eclipses the spending of even the most grandiose MP.
When a key part of the job description involves hosting garden parties, supporting unglamorous charities and saluting the bravery of young soldiers, the Queen has carved out a unique persona as grandmother-in-chief.
Anti-monarchists need to present the UK with a vision less ghastly that the anachronisms of the hereditary principle. If even self-reliant Australians are horrified by the alternatives to Elizabeth II, what chance is there that the loyal subjects of the Home Counties will turn republican?
But last weekend I glimpsed a different vision of presidency.
At my great-aunt’s 100th birthday celebrations in Northern Ireland, a card from the Queen sat on display beside a letter from Belfast-born Mary McAleese, the eighth president of Ireland.
The two messages seemed to represent a choice of paths facing the Northern Irish.
The Republic of Ireland has dropped its explicit constitutional claim over the British province. But the expression of goodwill the president is making to its oldest citizens will do more to make people think positively about a one-Ireland future than any hectoring nationalist rhetoric.
The message from the card from the Queen said she was “so pleased to know” about the birthday, which was pretty nice.
But Ms McAleese concluded her letter with the words: “May you be surrounded today by the warmth of happy memories and secure in the knowledge that you continue to make this world a better place for all who love you. I am delighted to send my warmest personal congratulations and most sincere good wishes, along with the enclosed centenarian payment.”
Those three last words made eyebrows around the room arch higher than any architectural flourish at Notre Dame. A cheque for more than 2,500 euros is welcome at any age – but especially when you turn a century.
If a president is a man or woman who can personify the most generous aspects of a culture on the world stage and in a letter to an aunt, the true successor to the Queen may not be a member of the royal family.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
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