Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Atheism and Christianity

Atheism and Christianity: travelling companions.
This is a sermon I preached at the Civic Service
for the Rt Hon Lord Mayor of York, Labour councillor Janet Looker
on Sunday 17 April 2005
in the College Chapel at York St John.

Readings Micah 6.6-8 and Luke 1.46-55

I was telling my dad about today’s Civic Service: he told me that he never goes to such things because they are inappropriate to both the nature of Church and of Civic life. I think what I can surmise from his view is that such events smack of theocracy, an unfortunate fusion of Church and State, which isn’t something I imagine my father, or any of us for that matter might be into. So, I want to thank my dad for the salutary warning about such events, I want to thank him for having stood his ground over the years in not attending, and also thank him for coming along today, in any case – hi dad!

There’s someone else I especially want to thank for coming along to today’s service, and that’s the Right Honorable Lord Mayor herself, she must have one of the highest number of attendances in church in a twelve month period for any adult atheist in the City of York (I say adult since I guess the Dean may know of a good number of atheist choristers who are in church everyday). Respect to you Lord Mayor for managing to maintain your principled beliefs and sit through hours and hours of church at the same time. I recall from childhood presentations of bibles for good attendance so I thought, Lord Mayor, I would present you with good attendance prize for you, it’s a new version – it’s called the contemporary english version, I hope you enjoy it.

The Rt Hon Lord Mayor has done her public travelling companionship with the Church with good heart and spirits and for that we are grateful, I only hope that as so many have been inspired by the shared journey with her, that there will be new hope and new happiness for her in what has been revealed of truth of love through her year in office, and her year of church-going.

There is another thing I am grateful for in relation to the Lord Mayor, and that is that she said yes to me when I asked her to speak against the government about the then impending attack on Iraq back in March 2003. We stood together in another sacred space back then on the steps outside York Minster at the end of the biggest march York has seen since the Chartist movement. It was arising out of that shared concern that Councillor Janet Looker decided that she could probably put up with having a Chaplain, if it were me. Thank you!

Through doing a very few very tiny things for the Lord Mayor and Sherriff over the year I have been given to thinking afresh about the relationship between the secular humanism of civic life and the place of Christianity within post-Christian society. And what has grown in me is a sense that atheism and Christianity are good travelling companions. I am not going to attempt a full lecture on the topic, I’d rather refer those who interested to Paul Avis’s book, Faith in the Fires of Criticism – I think its a good book for its title alone. Another good book title comes from Bloch ‘Atheism in Christianity’: Bloch’s conclusion is that ‘only an atheist can be a good Christian’ and Moltmann’s response to that is ‘only a Christian can be a good atheist’. I would recommend studying the dialogue that developed between Bloch and Moltmann on the atheistic roots of Christian faith, you can find it on a Google search by typing ‘atheism christianity’.

I say atheistic roots of Christian faith since this movement of the followers of Jesus was committed to the notion of believing a Galileean peasant to be God: this could be said to be doing what Marx did, only 1800 years before him – deliberately and explicitly making God into a human construct – a very human construct – well as fully human as you can get – a man called Jesus. And in fact I think that’s where atheism and Christian faith come closest; in these three ways

1 the message of Jesus is the call to put to death redundant ways of being religious.
2 And not just that the heart of the gospel contains a second death, the death of God.
3 At the heart of Christ’s message too is that the kingdom of God is something within us, that it is made from interior, not constructed like a Temple on a Mountain. And this is so close to Marx’s own comprehension of the power of religion and the location where it is constructed – within. The difference is how we choose to view the value of constructing a religious identity.

This journey towards a new construction of believing and belonging is evident within the readings we have heard today – Micah speaking a few centuries before Jesus, talks not of religious enthusiasm being key, rather commitment to justice, humility and mercy as being at the centre of worship. And the song of Mary speaks right into this space we occupy, and this moment – ‘he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly’ – all these robes and glad rags are no evidence of proximity to heaven or to God, or being in the right – rather our robes remind us that our status is more likely an obstacle than an aid to encountering the truth of love. For God’s option is with those who know they are sick and need help, not with those who are confident of their special place already being secure.

I saw tangible evidence of the outworking of these readings in Whitehall at midnight this Friday just gone – I was opposite Downing Street with 25,000 others, many from the churches, we were shouting for Tony Blair to wake up and make poverty history. The crowd kept breaking out into roaring and cheering – I could hear the Song of Mary ringing across Whitehall, amongst the faces of people of all ages. There was in that action a practical demonstration of a clear solidarity between secular human values and Christian values, companions travelling on a road of freedom together – a road to freedom which is about winning freedom for others not just for ourselves, and doing it across all social divides.

Now I can see that in many ways there has been a divide made between the world of Christian and atheistic though, I have wanted though today to emphasize the relationship between the two. That is because I believe that it is in part through this relationship between atheism and Christianity that there has been a reconstruction of Christian thought about religious identity and about God. This subjecting faith to the fire of criticism has been a powerful force for the Church – having critical friends as travelling companions is always a great help. In addition to that, the cry of desolation that has arisen from the violence of the last century including its two world wars has put the faith of the church through a deeper fire still.

We can see the physical and tangible results of the shift that has taken place in Christian thought right here in our own City by looking this side and the other side of the City Wall. When we look at York Minster, just across the wall from us here, we see in that structure an articulation about God which is a far remove from what is communicated in this post-war construction we are gathered in now on the other side of the wall. Where the Minster has an East Window of the most magnificent proportions, and the most magnificent of costs for it to be maintained and restored (please give generously to the 30 million appeal) – here we have an East Wall which is a blank flat brick wall. There, the cruciform shape has been so gloriously embellished that the wonder of the cross has come close to overwhelming its tragedy – here though we have a stark iron-work cross hanging in front of the wall which speaks of the brutalism of state execution.

And it is that brutality of state execution which is where Christian faith, slowly and gingerly began, amongst the followers of Jesus. Those who had lost hoped in both the organized religion, and hope as well in their new leader. The death of Jesus was accompanied by betrayal, denials and fleeing. It is from that place, the desolation of the death of God that Easter faith arises.

When we know we have lost our certainty of being the right person with the right beliefs in the right place then we can become good travelling companions. I believe that Easter faith begins when we walk on a road of bewilderment, away from the rejections the betrayals and the denials of Good Friday and set off down an Emmaus road of faith – walking, talking, wondering, with travelling companions who are both critical and kind. I know that for me at least it is in that wondering, that talking that I catch glimpses of a risen Jesus, it is in that travelling that God is revealed to me in a brand new way. It is in the journey where I dare to mourn God's death as well as his glorious resurrection that I can see how life is both very frail and very beautiful.
Amen.

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