Kester Brewin – The Complex Christ 'Advent'
Chapter 2 of Kester Brewin’s book is titled ‘Advent’ and draws attention to the spiritual practice of waiting. (I’ve written about this previously here). There is a paradox inherent in the chapter. The church is in an emergency room, facing major surgery, yet the call is to waiting. Brewin invites is to see evolution as the mode of real change and not revolution, though given the critical state of health it must be I guess, a form of urgent evolution. It seems almost too obvious to remark on it, but he writes, ‘the only way to consider whether our structures are serving us is to stop and reflect on them’ (p28). There. He said it. Simple isn’t it.
I spoke with a Presbyterian minister recently who is no longer serving in parish ministry. He spoke of the draining hours given to trying to lead people and meet people at the critical points in their lives, and then having to carry the secrecy of those times. I reminded him that today, many of their congregational members are working equally long hours, often with less flexibility and greater accountability, and then are expected by church leaders to ‘volunteer’ their spare time to the ministries of the local congregation. It’s clear to me that the structures are killing us. We find ourselves, ordained and lay members, to be in the service of the institution, enslaved to it with no notion that it doesn’t have to be this way. Thus does the institution perpetuate itself through human sacrifice. Brewin writes,
“To stop people in their tracks, to stop yourself, and suggest that the way to the higher peaks is actually to return to the valleys, is a brave act of true leadership. It is an admission that the way we have been has reached a dead end; it is thus a daring statement renouncing power, and declaring that leadership will no longer exercise it, but serve by empowering.” (p28)
The biblical paradigm he offers is that of the 9 months of Mary’s pregnancy during which Jesus is being formed in the world. This waiting may look like inaction (and how we hate the unproductive use of time), but it is, paradoxically, pregnant with possibility. We are called to live somewhere in uncharted territory between doing nothing and frantic activity, a place which we imagine to be populated by dragons ready to consume us, rather than Messiah, ready to give new life.
Drawing on the works of Walter Brueggemann, Brewin points us to how the prophets helped Israel embrace the newness of God in the world. He writes of the ‘spectacular lack of grief in our churches’ contrasting it with the task of prophets like Jeremiah to help prepare Israel to embrace newness by first of all grieving for the loss of the old.
“Grief and repentance are the proper antidote for the culture of denial and cover-up which has so permeated our Church and wider society’. (p34)
The challenge for us I think, as it was for the prophets, is to give voice to the language of grief and lamentation and thus to subvert the culture of easy triumph and struggle-less victory. But the deeper we are embedded in the structures the harder this is to do.
After grieving comes an even deeper challenge. We need to grasp the realisation that God is no longer involved in that for which we have sacrificed so much of our lives. We need to grasp the reality of divine departure. This is hardest of all: to admit to ourselves that this way no longer works and that what has given me so much of my self-identtity is devoid of the power of God. Shocking.
But this should not surprise us if we have read our Scriptures carefully. Isaiah 58 describes a situation in which the places of worship are full, the honest intention of the people is to seek God’s will and ways, yet their religious performance is suffused with disappointment. There is abundant pyrotechnical display, but an unmentioned emptiness at the core.
The paradox of admitting the possible departure of God is to admit the possibility of hope. If God can move on then hope is possible. And hope emerges not through a change in tactics but through transformation. It seems to me that we invest far too much in technique and form and off-the-shelf solutions, all of which ensures that we don’t have to be honest with ourselves. As long as we keep shifting the pieces around on the board, giving the semblance of change then that will satisfy. It doesn’t. The emperor is standing stark naked in the street, but nobody from inside the royal court has the courage to draw attention to it. Maybe because we’re trying to hard to cover our own embarrassment.
Grieve, admit that God is free to do as God pleases and wait to see what emerges. And what emerges will be cast from the raw materials of our memory and imagination. Brewin writes,
“Our problem today: the space for imagination to expand and take shape is inversely proportional to the speed at which we live. Driven hard and fast, we lack the time to allow alternate worlds and possibilities to form, careering past small turnings and exits, bound to follow the obvious straight paths of the present arrangement. Yet if we stop and wait, and close our eyes to the ‘buy now, take me now’ images and rest our weary retinas, we will begin to remember, new worlds will form, new exits will become apparent. Only the exercise of memory will allow this possibility.” (p38)
The fact that I cannot imagine the congregation of which I am a member stopping in such a way, never mind the whole denomination, is symptomatic of the problem. Without time to pause and reflect I, along with many others who turn up Sunday by Sunday and keep the thing functioning will continue to be eaten alive.
Annie Dillard in her book ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’ has a startling description of waiting by the creek and watching this frog float in the water. Slowly but surely it begins to implode and fold in on itself.
“..just as I watched he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. He was shrinking before my eyes like a deflating football. I was watching the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, and rumple, and fall. Soon, part of his skin, formless as a pricked balloon, laying in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing” (p8)
What she has been watching is the work of the giant water bug which injects enzymes to paralyse the frog, then liquefy its insides so it can slowly consume it from the inside out. The outside still has the glister and shine of a healthy frog until the very last minute. Then it’s dead.