Keith’s Blog

Discovering what it means to be Catholic

Road trips have been an integral part of life here in MCC ever since the beginning of our church. Over the past four years we’ve done almost a dozen of them and I have enjoyed every one. Basically, a ‘road trip’ is when a number of us head off together to take a service or speak at an event somewhere else in Ireland (usually far away!) as part of our role in the wider Presbyterian Church. A few weeks ago fifteen of us headed up to New Row congregation in Coleraine, Co. Derry, and last night four of us went to a special event held in Annalong, Co Down.

Whilst the format is usually the same – we do some interviews, sing some songs we use in worship, share a bit about what’s going on here in Maynooth and try to encourage folks to get more involved in mission – we never know in advance how people will respond to us or what their response might have to teach us. Very often we have been surprised by the amazing warmth of welcome we have received from those our society would tell us are ‘different to us.’ Very often we have been just as surprised by the depth of insight and breadth of understanding we have been able to glean from meeting up with these ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ in distant places and listening to their story about what following Jesus has meant. Many of the very best discussions and learnings we have ever had in MCC have come in the aftermath of these trips.

Sometimes we go to huge churches who seem to have every resource imaginable. Other times, like last night, we go to smaller churches who, like ourselves, are still having to work hard to get themselves established and find the resources they need for the task. In every setting, in whatever political or social environment we have found ourselves in, it has been a tremendous privilege to be able to share something of what God has been teaching us in MCC and to hear something of what He has been doing there. There really is something incredibly powerful about looking at your own activities, beliefs and understandings in the light of a context totally different to your own. Its why experiencing, as well as professing our belief in, the church catholic is so important.

These ‘road trips’ provide a living reminder to us of what it means to be part of the wider ‘Body of Christ.’ If you haven’t yet been on one of them, let me say that you don’t know what you have been missing! And let me encourage you to try and come along to one in the near future. Who knows? It could easily lead you to an insight or understanding that might radically change the way you live the rest of your life. I kid you not!

True love Doesn't Wait

Many of us are all too familiar with unrequited love. The sense of sorrow, the searing anguish, the downright hurt and pain of giving ourselves in love for another but never knowing what it feels like for that love to be returned.

I’ve known it in my own life on several occasions and in different spheres. I’ve also watched its terrible consequences in the lives of many of my friends and congregational members. Particularly in our teens and twenties, such unreflected, unreciprocated love can ruin many an evening and interrupt many a good night’s sleep. Our whole bodies, never mind our hearts, can ache and reel when we love but are not loved in return.

This week I’ve been thinking about how easily God’s love is unrequited in our lives. We are his children, his delight. It was for us that Jesus left the comfortable intimacy of the Father’s side and suffered so awfully in the Easter passion. It is to us that his death and resurrection now proclaim his favour, his victory and his love. And yet, how many of us go through life, are going through life right now, without ever even realising, never mind responding to how much we are loved by the God who created us?

Jesus’ great parable of the two lost sons in Luke 15 makes it clear to us that we can hide from God just as effectively in the church as we can outside of it. For centuries, of course, we have totally missed the point of this most famous of bible passages by contenting ourselves with calling it the parable of the lost or prodigal son. But Jesus simply begins, ‘A man had two sons.’ And both are equally lost.

Like most of us, Jesus’ audience that day were mainly ‘church-going’ people and, for such, the younger’s flight from his Father’s affection was naturally easy to compute. In open rebellion, he has demanded his share, fled the coup to immorality, and has sadly reaped the consequences of his own self-centredness and pride. As Jesus’ religious hearers listened in, it was easy for them (and us) to see how the Father’s compassion and mercy was needed by this wayward son who for some strange reason, seemed not to want it

It is the second part of the story that caused them, and causes us, all the problems. For, just as we murmur our approval of the younger brother’s need for repentance and restoration, Jesus comes at us out of the sun and hits us with our own need for the same.

Like us, the older brother has stayed. The older brother has served and obeyed. And yet, as Jesus’ ending makes so clear, he has fled just as determinedly from his Father’s affection and has become just as certainly and even more entrenchedly lost! Rebellion, Jesus says, can just as devastatingly be into religion and self-righteousness as it can into immorality and self-centredness. We can flee just as hurriedly and foolishly from our Father’s affection while staying put at home all the time.

But judgement is not the purpose of the parable. Jesus is not revealing the sin of either brother in order to demonstrate how much they deserve to be condemned. His point is that they are both lost and yet they are both still wholeheartedly loved.

Where are we in the story? Whether our rebellion has been in immorality or in religion, in self-centredness or in self-righteousness, the Easter message proclaims the most startling and liberated truth we can ever hear… We are loved! We are accepted! And we need only to requite, to receive what is so powerfully offered in the cross of Christ, to discover what this true love we have always been seeking is actually about.

Why would we wait any longer?

Escaping the Gutter

There have been relatively few moments in my life when I have felt utterly shaken to my core – either positively or negatively. One was a Thursday afternoon standing in the car park of my local supermarket as I realised that the pieces of meat lying all around me were all that was left of the two young men who had, moments before, been carrying a bomb into the store. The device had prematurely detonated not long before I had arrived at the scene. I think I was nine. Another, much more positive one, was the moment at that small bible class in Derry when I first understood what the message of Jesus was all about and how it called me to an absolute surrender of my heart and life to the God who had created me and who, on an ancient, brutal cross, had sacrificed himself so that I could be free. That was pretty great.

The one I’ve been thinking about this week, though, as I’ve begun my preparation for our Easter Sunday Morning service here in MCC, occurred whilst sitting in a class room in the United Theological College of the West Indies in Kingstown, Jamaica. It was September 1989. I don’t even remember the person’s name any more, but he was a white South African who had travelled to the Caribbean to collect a peace award on behalf of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the famous Bishop of Johannesburg.

Archbishop Tutu had already received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his outspoken role in challenging the government of South Africa on Apartheid. Over the next few years, he would have several other awards added in addition to this. However, since his passport had been revoked, and he was thus unable to travel to Jamaica to collect this particular one for himself, my lecturer for the day had come on his behalf. We had been studying the Kairos document in class, a theological response to Apartheid first issued in 1985, and it was therefore great to have the opportunity to hear about the South African situation from someone who actually lived and ministered there.

We were all expecting his lecture to address Archbishop Tutu and his community’s role in the ongoing struggle against the oppression there but his very first point in explaining their fierce opposition to Apartheid caught us all completely by surprise. It has never yet lost its magnificent impact on my personal thinking. “Let me begin by stating,’ he said, ‘that one of the primary reasons black South Africans feel they must oppose this terrible sanction on human existence that exits within their nation, is so that their white brothers and sisters can be freed from the tyranny of Apartheid.’ I was in a class of about thirty students where I was the token Caucasian. As I did my own double take, I could see it echoed in the faces of every single student around me. Had he really meant what he had just said? It was not the whites who needed to be freed from Apartheid. They were the beneficiaries of it! It was the blacks who needed to be freed! And just as we were all gearing up to raise our hands and correct him, he quickly followed by saying, ‘You see, the gospel proclaims to us that you cannot hold someone in the gutter without being there yourself. Thus the liberation we are advocating in South Africa is a liberation needed by us all. It is out of love that we call white South Africans to dismantle and free themselves, as well as black South Africans, from the Apartheid regime.’

For ten years I had been struggling with how to respond as a Christian to the sectarianism that was rampant within my own land. Because of my own experiences growing up in Derry, I was all too aware of the impact of the troubles. I so wanted to see peace, to know freedom for my brothers and sisters who had suffered so terribly in my country. But what was I to say as a Christian? How should those in positions of influence and power be responding in the face of such brutal killings and ongoing community strife? What did the gospel have to say in the midst of our three decades of division and pain? It seemed all too clear to me that in Ireland it was every tribe for themselves. Protestants were advocating the rights of Protestants. Catholics were advocating the rights of Catholics. Unionists were fighting on behalf of Unionists. Nationalists were doing the same. But how could we, as followers of Christ, think and speak, act and respond to this systemic alienation that was tearing our nation apart in a way that would adequately bear witness to the gospel and to the Kingdom it points us to? Well, right there, and then, I knew that I now had an answer to my questions. I remember almost nothing about the rest of what my lecturer had to say but I will never forget how God spoke to me in those few opening sentences.

This was what I had been missing about the heart of the gospel! This is what I had failed to realise Jesus was offering himself for as he breathed his last on that forsaken hill. This is what these words on the cross were all about, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’ I had always wrestled with what Jesus had said. What did he mean? How could Jesus be so naïve? Of course they knew what they were doing! The Jewish leaders knew exactly what they had done. The Roman soldiers knew exactly what they were doing. For goodness sake, they were sneering and mocking and laughing as they condemned and brutalised and killed the only sinless person ever to have walked this earth! How on earth could Jesus say they did not know what they were doing?

But sitting in that corrugated, tin-clad class room in downtown Jamaica, that day, I finally understood. The gospel was truly about liberation for everyone! For the first time I could see it clearly that oppressors are captive to their own oppression; those brutalising others are, themselves, brutalised; those filled with hate are ravaged by that same hate; those fighting against the ‘other’ side are in fact fighting against themselves! It is just that they do not realise it. I finally understood that standing against those who perpetrated tyranny and murder, racism and sectarianism could actually be, in fact needs to be, an act of love. And furthermore, I could finally see that what we are called to advocate as followers of Jesus can never be limited to the well-being or freedom of any single group or tribe or nation – even our own. Those who would follow after the Son of God must set their course, as he did, to the freeing of all – to Jew as well as Gentile, to white as well as black, to rich as well as poor, to men as well as women, to Catholics as well as Protestants. We can never settle as emissaries of the Kingdom of God for anything less than the establishment of peace and freedom for all. For as Jesus saw so clearly, and as his followers in South Africa advocated so courageously, none of us can ever truly be free until we all are. This is part of what praying that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven is all about. We cannot hold anyone in the gutter without remaining there ourselves.

In the Church but not OF it.

In two week’s time, I am hoping to preach on the subject of ‘In the Palace – but not of it’ as we wrap up our short sermon series on the book of Esther. As usual, I’ve found preparing for this deeply challenging, as well as highly stimulating, and hopefully by then I’ll even be able make sense of it to others!! But, as I’ve been reading and thinking about the latter chapters in this strange Old Testament book that doesn’t even mention God once in its text, I’ve sadly been reminded of this other, similar phrase that has haunted me for years now. I joke about it, of course. I’m often smiling when it comes from my lips. But for me, its use is definitely one of those times when ‘many a true thing has been said in jest.’

If I had to pick one specific moment when my newly-come-to-faith, childlike confidence in the Church was sacked and shattered it would be the first time I ever talked about it with my sister. She was, and still is, a wonderful, fun-loving, caring and generous person; the sort of person that is usually quite open to exploring the message of Jesus since much of what He has to say resonates easily within her own views and philosophy of life. We had grown up not going to any church so when I first came face to face with the truth about who Jesus is and what he has done for all of us, it was truly great news for me. Cringy as it may sound, over those first few years, I increasingly came to experience a freedom and joy in my life that I had never known before, nor had even been able to imagine. Telling others about God’s love for them was, therefore, not really much of a challenge for me, at least then. Just about everybody knew I had done the ‘God’ thing and, thus, when I went to England where my big sister had moved some years before, I was very glad to have the opportunity to tell her, too. I was very hopeful that she would quickly embrace this same faith that had so impacted my life. I was mistaken.

What shocked me, after our eventual hour long conversation, was not that she failed to become a Christian right there and then. Even then I had a small modicum of understanding about how life is. (No comments, please!) What shocked me was her reason for not wanting to know more, her basis for not feeling any need to explore this gospel any further. As I went to bed that night, what had shattered my newly found confidence and certainty about the message of Jesus was that the reason she could not accept this message for herself was that she had met Christians already, she knew what being a Christian meant, and her experience of them had led her to want to be a better person than that, a better person than those who were in the church!

Despite my having been born at an early age, and having been baptised twice shortly thereafter (they were clearly taking no chances with me!), my upbringing was essentially unchurched and I always imagined that the rest of my family knew as little about the Bible’s message as I did. We lived in a pretty tough place and had little in the way of comfort, luxury or even fun for much of our lives. So when my sister found the man of her dreams, and when the day finally came when he popped the question, it was one of the greatest moments in her life thus far. We all shared her excitement especially as her husband-to-be was such a great guy. But, as I discovered that day, when she went to her place of work, and shared her good news with her ‘born-again’ , twice-at-church on Sunday, always-leaving-Christian-tracts-around-in-the-office, supervisor, because her fiancée was a Catholic – we were very nominally non-Catholic- this is what she was told in reply: “You are marrying vermin and you will breed vermin!”

To this day, I can still hear the crack in her voice and see the pain in her eyes as she recalled her encounter with one of ‘Jesus’ people’. She had other stories to recount as well and each of them pointed her with great validity to a completely different conclusion about Christianity than the one I had reached. Not knowing anything about other followers of the faith, it turned out, had made my journey so much easier than hers. It was thinking about that rather sobering reality, that eventually led me to realise that despite the vital role and place of local communities of faith, despite our calling as a church to be signposts of the kingdom and windows through which people can glimpse that Kingdom, sometimes we do indeed need to be in the church but not of it.

As part of the ‘evangelical’ wing of the church, we pride ourselves on our knowledge and enthusiasm for the Gospel. We spend much time trying to figure out how to help other people discover the same glorious truths that we have found in it. “If only they would take the time to learn what Jesus’ life was all about, if only they could see that Christianity is not about becoming religious but is about another way altogether, then surely many of them would be glad to become followers of Jesus, just as we ourselves were glad.” What we fail to realise is that our families, friends and work colleagues have already been students of our faith for years. They have already been studying it. They have already been gathering information on which to make their own choices of faith. They have been watching and listening to us.

People are, and always will be, made right with God and released to live in His kingdom, through grace and grace alone. But grace cannot be advocated in its absence. People are genuinely watching those of us who claim to know this carpenter from Nazareth and in us they need to see this Word made flesh once more. In our behaviour, in our conversations, in our actions and reactions, in the way we respond to those different to and differing from us, they need to see something that points them to the truth of our claims about Jesus and which raises for them a question mark about what God could do in their own lives.

What my sister needs, and maybe yours too, is to meet some people who will share the gospel with her long before they have opened their mouths to speak of it. St Francis said to his community long ago, “Preach always! Preach always! And, if you have to, use words.” This is the advice we, too, need to follow. That way, we will be seen to be in the world and not of it.

Whose are we?

Over the last few years, I have been wholly persuaded that knowing who we are is not nearly so important as knowing whose we are. If Maslow was right in his latter reflections, that our greatest need is not for self-actualization but rather transcendence, then above all else we need to regularly be reminded of the God we pursue in our faith. Otherwise, as I said in my last entry, we will inevitably reduce him, belittle Him, feel that we’ve got a handle on him – only to one day realise that that its not God we are holding to at all but merely an idol of our own creation.

Transcendence always comes when we are drawn beyond ourselves and led to encounter the one who is present but always ‘other’ to even the best that we can imagine. And only as we grow to understand Him do we ever truly come to understand ourselves. It is why John Calvin began his catechism of 1560 with the question, ‘What is the chief end of human life?’ and answered it with, ‘To know God.’

I came across this today and thought I’d put it up for you to have a read over. I hope it will help in answering this most important of questions.

The God of the Bible

In Genesis, He is the Source of life; in Exodus, He is the Passover Lamb; in Leviticus, He is the High Priest; in Numbers, He is the City of Refuge; in Deuteronomy, He is the Promise of Liberation; in Joshua, He is the Captain of Salvation; in Judges, He is the Deliverer; in Esther, He is our Mordecai; in Job, He is our True Comforter; in Psalms, He is our Shepherd; in Proverbs, He is our Wisdom; in Song of Songs, He is our Bridegroom; in Isaiah, He is the Prince of Peace; in Jeremiah, He is the Righteous Branch; in Lamentations, He is the One who Weeps over us; In Habakkuk , He is the Reviver; in Zephaniah, He is the Saviour;, in Haggai, He is the Restorer; in Zechariah, he is the Opened Fountain; in Malachi, He is the Son of Righteousness; And throughout the Bible, He is the one who invites us to know him as Father.

(Adapted from Living Well, edited by Rev Frank Sellar)