Littorally Speaking

I tend to take things literally. If you meet me and ask how I am, you won't get a polite 'fine, thank you' but the low-down on my current state of social physical or mental health.

The other day I received an email that had me going - I just HAD to reply. The originator of it was gracious when replying to my rant in pointing out that he had liberally spread his email with irony and sarcasm, and so trying to dig myself out of the hole I suggested that at least I don't make the mistake of taking the Bible too literally. His reply was that at times we ought indeed to read the Bible so.

I wonder if that stands for the liturgy too? What I have in mind is Holy Communion.

I had the privilege yesterday of hearing the words of consecration given over the additional wine poured because I had run out while assisting (a miracle!). I don't believe in transubstantiation, so when I'm handing someone the chalice and saying 'the blood of Christ, shed for you' or some variation I am not in my mind handing my Saviour's blood around.

However I do find it a joyful act. I smile, if only inwardly, as I take part in the act. It is for me a sacrament of love, shared with people I may not know but with whom I have come together in representation of Jesus' last meal. And it represents the great gift given freely, which just makes my humble part in it so much more fantastic.

So too the Peace which precedes the sharing of the bread and wine. It is for me rather more than a quick shake of the hands and move on quickly. If I happen to have found myself thinking rather poorly of someone and they are in the congregation, then for me their's is the first and most important peace to share. Further, the down side of serving at Communion is that I seldom get to share the Peace with everyone before I have to join the priest in preparing the elements.

Love is ever present in Holy Communion. And God is Love. So maybe transubstantiation is literally true after all.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?

The day after the end of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP15, I stumbled across the end of a radio adaptation of L Frank Baum’s classic “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Our heroes the lion, tin man, scarecrow, Dorothy and Toto have reached the end of the yellow brick road and found Emerald City in search of courage, heart, brains, a way home and some doggy chews respectively. Of course just as they arrive full of hope, the machinery of power begins to crumble and the wizard is discovered to be no wizard after all but worse than a politician: a humbug. His response when thus revealed is “But how can I not be a humbug, when people always want me to do things that everyone knows can’t be done?”

Of course the lion is found to have courage after all in his response; the tin man does have compassion by the bucketful; the scarecrow is endowed with reason; and Dorothy when she realizes exactly what she wants to find back home in Kansas gets there in the end. I suppose Toto finds some delight too, but my point is: just what did we ever expect COP15 to achieve?

The Book of Genesis was written at a time when exiled Israel’s own yellow brick road seemed to have led them nowhere. The allegory of Adam’s fall is surely not about pinning blame on wayward woman or slippery serpent, but to peg out for all to see that sin is ever before us and we are always having forbidden fruit handed to us. We cannot blame others, be they politicians or wizards, for turning out to be snake-oil salesmen. The way home is there for all of us, and courage heart and brains enough to see us through the journey. But it is our journey, for we not them are stewards of creation. The dark satanic mills of some remote industrial wasteland are not the cause of climate change: our desire for their shiny plastic output is to blame. Just click your heals together …

Chestnut Roasting

Two pieces of paper caught my eye today, bundled as they were in periodicals. The first was a parish magazine in which it was observed among other things that two years ago the UK Post Office’s Christmas stamps didn’t portray a biblical theme. A litany of actions to take included not buying un-Biblical stamps and asking the Archbishop of Canterbury to show some leadership. The second paper was wrapped up in that old faithful HBR (Harvard Business Review) and carried an article called ‘Let the Response Fit the Scandal: A step-by-step guide to tailoring your crisis response’.

Normally I groan at the old chestnut that the Post Office is deliberately avoiding Christian themes, as for many years their well published policy has been to alternate Christian and secular designs. But since this year’s offering includes stained glass windows, one from nearby Upavon, I thought I’d check (the wonder of the Internet). Lo and behold, the theme two years ago was angels: Biblical enough, I’d say.

Tybout and Roehm’s HBR article, which also frankly tends to make a mountain out of a molehill-sized idea, is as follows. One-size-fits-all responses will not work on a scandal, the dimensions to which may be manifold. Therefore you must tailor your response according to what it is you’re actually marketing – the brand. They suggest: look at the issue from the outside; recognize the problem, rather than lurching straight to solutions; decide a proportional response, looking at the cost to the brand; and then get on with treating the customers as adults.

What if the ‘scandal’ of non-Christian Christmas stamps was true: what ought we to do about it? Looking at it from the outside, I’d say fewer than half (a lot fewer!) of the cards I send at Christmas go to believers. Believers or not, probably 1 in 50 notice the stamp and then only because for the overseas recipients the design may be unfamiliar and therefore interesting. Actually, I guess more recipients would notice if I used an ordinary stamp, so maybe not buying Christmas stamps would make a point after all. I think the problem is, if our response to Christmas, as Christians, is to drag a Christmas tree and its pagan baubles into church, have candle-lit services to remind people of the good old days before electricity and concern for people’s eyesight, and offer crib services that mangle the Gospel reportage, then we’ve already devalued the brand. If we turn an angry face to the secular world, we betray the blood of Christ who died so that we could learn to love not hate.

I don’t mean we should meekly steal away from problems. But we are as imperfect as the world at large, and maybe we ought to care first about how we reflect the light of Christ in it before complaining of the taste a few stamps leave in our mouths.