Easter 2024: The Matrix Resurrection

The Joy of the Risen One be with you! Welcome to Easter at Between The Stools 2024 – a birthday, for us, and our topic today.

This day – 31^st March – marks the 25^th anniversary of the US release of cult sci-fi film, The Matrix. In 1999 it was also Easter, which seemed not to be an accident, for the film and its follow ups have many christological elements (and coded messages).

https://play.acast.com/s/between-the-stools/

Tthe recording transfer made it faster, so slowing is recommended

Our title comes from the 4th movie. Today we think of THE Resurrection through the lens of this universe.

Even if you’re not that into science fiction, or even movies, you’ll likely have heard of the Matrix films and also of the central challenge: whether to take the red or blue pill. The red pill will awaken you to a shocking reality, but you can begin to publicly uncover it and fight it; whereas swallowing the blue will keep you in unknowing servitude. As I watched the first film in a concrete Odeon in Norwich, a companion said, “Why didn’t he take the blue pill, then we could all have gone huum [home]”!!

Even with such un-engaged co-watchers, I sensed that The Matrix had something real to say.

The films were near the truth for many in the New Age, Ascensionist circles. There is a still active website of that ilk called “How To Exit The Matrix” listing most aspects of our world as ways The Unseen Powers manipulate us, from tax to institutions, and yes, movies. One 2018 article begins: “Among those who have already woken up, the movie The Matrix has become like an icon. As a movie it is a fictional story, but as a myth it shows exactly what is, and reflects the changes that are going on with humanity’s consciousness and its connection to the Earth energy grids.”

There’s more than one YouTube video called “The Matrix was a documentary” – misunderstanding docs once again, which is a filmmaking genre and style, not truth – but I take their intended point. I’ve heard from more than once source that The Matrix is oft discussed in churches; I’ve read online Christian forums on it – this isn’t the first sermon on it. That Theology Teacher has a video subtitled “How the Matrix is a modern retelling of the Gospel”, referencing the 2003 book The Gospel Reloaded by Chris Seay. It is not the only such tome. But one Christian videographer sees it as Satanic and Gnostic (the same in his eyes); other evangelicals are critical of the Eastern philosophy.

I am disappointed in that; I hope we’re a community that doesn’t sweepingly dismiss and see things that are strange or opposite as being evil, especially before we’ve taken time to understand them.

The Matrix is also understood in secular circles as referencing societal truth. Popular philosophy book series quickly chose the franchise for its own; one was entitled “Taking the Red Pill”. The Huffington Post had an article in 2016 about The Matrix and the capitalist work rat race. Reviewers said of the 2010 book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism that author Ha-Joon Chang “has likened free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality.”

Comedian JP Sears made a sketch in 2020 about “Blue Pill People” regarding covid. In March that year, just as shops closed, I sought out these films as intuitively, as they felt apposite to whatever was really happening. Indeed, with rise of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and talk of transhumanism (being part machine, and remotely controllable), The Matrix felt as apt to me as the Wachowskis’ later work V For Vendetta did (hence I preached on it).

There is huge analysis of the canon which includes a computer game and Animatrix prequel series; clearly it is a rich topic, and one I hope we can enjoy exploring together and feel is relevant to now.

SPOILER ALERT

PRAYER AND MUSIC: opening theme of The Matrix by Don Davis (as is all music today)

Some of you might feel a leap of heart at those now iconic brass dissonant chords; I’ve even heard them analysed musically (although I think wrongly) but it’s interesting that some claim that message and symbolism begins whilst still on the film studio’s emblem. I hear those horns like storm warnings: two realities signified in the pairs of chords. The ensuing rush of strings sounds like resurrection; the lines of code show it visually.

It repays close (re)watching, with colours of rooms and clothing reflecting the two famous pills, the green of the Matrix and its code (also referenced in rain) and the as yet uninitiated ‘copper tops’; the names of people, places and space ships infer underlying motifs and philosophies, as do numbers.

I’m noting the numerology in the dates of the release of the 1st film, 31.3.1999 (reduces to 8), the 4^th film (22.12.2021 reduces to 3) and when I saw it (6/6/2022 = 666, reduces to 9).

The screenplays have some beautiful ‘black stuff’ – the industry word for the descriptions between dialogue. The Wachowskis find ways to make even a screen of computer code come to life:

“A blinding cursor pulses in the electric darkness like a heart coursing with phosphorous light, burning beneath the derma of black-neon glass”. Later, they describe black clouds as “obsidian” and speak of Neo’s victory as “a brilliant cacophony of light” using one sense to explain another.

I recognise the love and respect for these films and that some listeners may know them far better than I. I hope I won’t alienate and disappoint when I admit that I struggled whilst preparing this, and I don’t mean intellectually.

What had appealed to me when I made not just Easter but the whole of this year based on a theme set by this quarter century anniversary?

I did so on intuition two years ago, but (like in the 2^nd film), it was a choice that I didn’t yet understand but felt that I should stay committed to. Some of that choice and draw, connected to the date of the anniversary, is a personal matter, and not all of that will be revealed here; but I’m trusting that my guidance to The Matrix at this time will be.

I’ll be honest that this isn’t often the kind of film I see: I’m not wowed by action or effects, don’t find sunglasses and flying fights cool, but do find the high octane antics and horror hard to watch. (Recall what I said in Lent about how movies make us feel). I realised too that the Matrix world view didn’t really fit with mine, and that I feel more limited preaching on it on Easter Sunday.

I found myself asking: what truly is Easter about? What should be its message? What is appropriate for this high holy day? I even found myself asking why I defended the notion of the One Saviour, against the prevalent tide that we are our own and should not give our power away to external Others. Why is death and sacrifice so important to any story, but especially to the Christian one?

Will you take a deep dive to uncode these with me?

——

There are many philosophies in The Matrix, but there is a 1981 book which is explicitly referenced twice [in scenes 12 and 39], and is rumoured to have been required reading for those on set. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Paul Baudrillard – which I read – is based on nihilism, and felt convoluted assertions that conveyed little meaning for me, in either sense. I wonder if The Matrix is trying to be the new kind of science fiction of pages p119-24? Hence I soon realised that if this book was so integral to the Matrix films, that I was going to not acquiesce.

——-

What is the human condition?

Do the Matrix films literally try to tell us we’re enslaved by machines – or could be? Or is it the ‘programming’ and being unaware and the invisible slavery and manipulation by others?

The Matrix for the New Age is about conscience, not computers, but eons old clandestine control. Their tenets clash with Christian teaching and scripture: that we’ve been taken over by alien entities, seemingly leaving any God and angels helpless. I don’t like where this idea of aliens leaves God as Creator, for that’s a huge part of my theology and understanding of my self: that I was deliberately and lovingly created by a loving and powerful and good God.

I soon saw that there are difficulties in paralleling this film with the life and work of Jesus:

-No fall of humanity; rather, the rise of the machines; the human-built entities rebel against us

I don’t think The Matrix series explains where life on Earth came from: that Creator is missing

-Neo, the hero of The Matrix is grown by machines, whilst Jesus was born of God and a woman

-Neo is told and needs persuading that he’s the One; whilst Jesus knew…possibly even as a boy

-Jesus, unlike Neo, is never ‘asleep’. He doesn’t need a mentor to find, rescue and train him

-Jesus calls disciples to him; but Neo is called to an existing group headed by another

-Christ rescues and awakens Mary Magdalene, but in The Matrix, she (as Trinity) finds and awakens him, removing the ‘demon’ of the embedded tracer [a horrific couple of scenes]

-The Prophesied One in The Matrix was a foretold reincarnation of a human born inside the Matrix; he is in fact the 6^th ‘One’. Some posit Jesus in a line of the dying and rising saviour trope, but traditional Christian theology is that Jesus is unique. There is a Christian exploration of the pre-existence of Christ; this can simply mean that his spirit had already come into being, but some say he was in Melchizedek, Enoch and Elijah of the Old Testament, while he is more conventionally seen as being foreshadowed by Moses, Boaz, perhaps David, and even in Job.

-Much of what Neo does is inside a computer simulation, swinging unconscious in a hammock!

-Neo doesn’t do miracles which benefit the public, as Jesus did

-Neo fights physically, although Jesus is not recorded to have done a single kung fu move

-Jesus overcomes the world is through seeming submission to violence; Neo battles literally

However, I did wonder if the philosophy behind The Matrix’s signature “Bullet Time” – bending away from attack rather than returning it – was closer to the way in which Jesus overcame

-Neo has a mission to awaken the world after he’s resurrected (the first time) – Jesus teaches before

-There is a betrayer in The Matrix – Cypher; in the 4^th instalment, there’s a Jude. But Cypher betrays Morpheus, the awakener, anointer, father-ish figure, not Neo the Christed one.

-Judas betrays the One with a kiss; Trinity resurrects him (but see my Judas piece of 3 years ago)

-Can The Matrix main 3 characters be a trinity: Morpheus, Neo and Trinity, rather than just the last?

That Theology Teacher video I mentioned calls her the Holy Spirit, which is feminine in Greek; she does enter Neo as the Spirit enters Jesus and us, but I see Carrie-Anne Moss’s character as more Mary Magdalene, but not the Church’s view! I have more to say on Carrie-Anne’s character.

-No-one in The Matrix fits the Christian God: Morpheus, who is clearly mortal, is mistaken (regarding his power to create ones by anointing them); the ‘mother’ Oracle is a program who is swallowed by an evil character; and the Analyst and Architect are cold, egotistical, and ultimately malevolent: the first is proudly ‘efficient’ at destroying his creation, and the second manipulates humans for misery and energy. The Deus Ex Machina is huge, trying to overwhelm with its presence, speaking in capitals, spewing rage, and telling Neo “WE DON’T NEED YOU!”, recalling traditional Christian theology teaching that God is not contingent on humans for anything. These are the typically bad gods of prevalent understanding, which also appear in The Brand New Testament and Good Omens

-Neo’s work isn’t about bringing the world back to God, or out of sin, overcoming death and the devil. There is no fear of eternal punishment for not believing in the Matrix and following Neo; only a human life cycle in a pod, followed by recycling your remains.

One may point out that the Gospels don’t spell this out of Jesus: this is how he’s understood later.

I want us to pause here: Both narratives involve horror, but only in traditional Christianity does the Creator God inflict it on humanity as punishment. I’d like you to think on how strange that teaching is: that Jesus isn’t saving us from malevolent machinations, but his own Father, our father…doesn’t that sound like a trick of an Agent in Machine City?

-Could forgiveness – so central to Christianity – even be said to feature in The Matrix?

-Neo isn’t publicly executed on false charges

He’s only dead for moments (the first time) and then preserved comatose for over 60 years at the behest of a malevolent character in IV, via machines; Jesus was raised on the 3^rd day by God’s power

-Neo doesn’t die fully in the first film; I have rejected that about Jesus (see a post on Sylvia Browne)

-Neo becomes the One when he is rebooted. Jesus’ teaching and miracles indicate he was Christed before crucifixion….but might there be something to consider about the New, pre-ascension Jesus?

-I did see a parallel between the final city in Matrix Revolution and that of Revelation 22; but all futuristic cities I’ve seen are ugly and high rise (cf my Pom Poko post) and lacking in nature. I’d like to think the New Jerusalem has more in common with old cities.

I decided that it was more comfortable to see the Matrix as a superhero myth, informed by various philosophies (in names alone, there’s Hindu, ancient Greek, Egypt as well as the Bible and early European kings). The makers are purposefully silent on their work and wish to allow discussion without imposition.

I note that Matrix green is close to the colour of grass. Here, in spring, it’s lush and verdant, embodying the new life of Easter. And green is for growth; and the Matrix is about personal growth.

It’s also like the green screen technology that the cast will have spent a long time in front of. They have to hold in their heads a vision of something as yet unseen, or perhaps to act without full understanding, in trust. Is there any lesson there?

That green is The Green Lantern’s titular lamp and Superman’s kryptonite. The Green Lantern is told by other guardians that it’s the colour of will, which is key to his story. Isn’t The Matrix also about will?…will and the mind. We hear little about will in Christianity except God’s, and subduing ours. Can we seek God’s will and strengthen our own?

—-

When I looked at the first film as a myth, it felt classical more than original.

I noted the use of horror shock to awaken Neo in real world – is that fair or necessary in ours?

I was shocked to take in that the much lauded red pill is merely “a tracing program”. That hardly felt like what SARK might call an ‘alive choice’, or a call to adventure or taking up the gauntlet.

I am alarmed by the amount of tracing being done in our world!

Note that the manumission involves making the machines work against themselves (is that like The Art of War?)

Central to all the film is discerning who is true and truth telling.

Neo is told – especially regarding the Oracle – that’s he’s told what he needs to hear. That phrase is usually regarding tough love (which I’ve critiqued), but in The Matrix, it is the information that drives you to the next post and to fulfil your mission…which ultimately Neo and Trinity do.

In the fourth instalment, they meet old friends and foes in different formats, as if their soul’s development needs to encounter them again. The yin to his mission is separated and obfuscated, yet there was a draw to each other that went beyond ordinary sense.

It was that point which most interested me

I have spoken before of Twin Flames. I see Trinity and Neo as fitting this concept. Jesus and Mary can be viewed thus, although I have issues with Jesus being part of a couple. My understanding is that twin relationships don’t have to be conventionally romantic.

I have heard the male-energy unawakened twin called the “matrix twin”. Neo, the biological male, is literally asleep at the beginning of the first film, and the female (with much male energy) is integral to his awakening: she writes the message on his computer and talks to him at the party she persuades him to; she is also the enabler of his fulfilment.

I believe that like the parts actors play, we’re drawn to stories at particular times to help us heal things and learn things. Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays Trinity, said this in an interview (with Lewis Hows, posted Jan 2022). She said she looks at life ‘as an ongoing exploration of my soul’…and the things which get in the way. She accepted that The Matrix role would be hers if it was her destiny, and not if it was someone else’s. Carrie-Anne is clearly a spiritual, grounded person, and who facilitates others on their spiritual journey.

I noted how much her all black leather costumes recall that of Sarah Douglas as Ursa in the 70s/80s Superman movies (we’ll be with those in December). Ursa (who is part of a triad) and Trinity both have the same powers as the hero. Ursa is pure villain. Yet, twenty years on, the same outfit is that of a heroine.

I note how much Neo’s outfit looks like a priest’s cassock. Doesn’t this picture recall a priest, doing the ‘magic’ over mass? And yet many would suggest that organised religion, especially big chain churches, are all about keeping masses in the Matrix…in fact, the capital C churches probably designed it!

In the Matrix, characters emerge as grey from the second movie; unlike code, they are not binary. But there are still those who are evil, posing as helpers and confidantes. They appear when Trinity and Neo get near the truth or each other, pretending to rescue when it actually sabotages. Neo is fed blue pills and told he is mentally ill whilst Trinity is wrapped in a family life too busy for her to ask many questions. (I think the analyst is the husband). It’s revealed that Trinity and Neo have been kept alive to balance and power a new Matrix, and that their suffering and yearning but not sating is useful energy. Hence they may meet, even recognise each other – although both are given different faces – but not able to connect. The powers that be are frightened of what will happen if they do.

I wondered about this translating to our world. It’s not that I think we’re often steered with malicious intent. I believe that we have multiple important people in our lives, and not just one supreme beloved. But I have sat with the possible implications of the above.

I’d foreseen that Trinity is an ‘anomaly’ and thus jointly The One; at the very start, she can use a kind of bullet time in fighting that Neo learns to attain. She fuses with Neo by the end of the franchise, and breaks out of the controlling illusion put upon her via flying. The threat (of a helicopter trying to kill them on the roof of a tall building) actually facilitates Trinity and Neo learning to fly in the Real World, ascending as Jesus did, building a new Heaven and Earth.

I want us to spend some moments with that scene in Resurrections: in a world where the sun has been scorched into permanent darkness, Trinity witnesses a sun rise. It’s that sun rise that helps them have power; the power to turn the helicopter’s attack back on itself – is that what Easter victory is?

MUSIC from that scene

Play from 2.22m – no horror        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H4tIwIo1uU

(I don’t like signposting to YouTube)

from 56 sec

——-

The Easter Eggs of the Matrix

The first gift of The Matrix was making me reconsider what I actually believe and what its basis is, and whether the traditional teaching of the Gospel is good news. This is valuable and ongoing: I would love to be about to discuss this over a meal with you. (Write and tell me, until we meet).

My usual idea of an Easter message is one of hope and victory that we can relate to our world. It is about a unique, superlative long-expected saviour overcoming an evil enemy; a singular event and life that affects all life, including ours now. It is a story about freedom. It is about awakening, being called, living apart, spreading a message – although that all fits both The Matrix and Christianity, can The Matrix fit with Christianity?

I’m left with the question regarding the clash of the traditional Easter message, and the very different terminology and focus of other circles that I at least partly move in. I literally find myself between the stools.

What are we being saved from and awakened to?

Is salvation about personal growth and freedom?

I love that love is so central to fulfilment and salvation in the Matrix

and that in order to conquer, you have to break the rules; rules hamper

The popularity of the Matrix series means that people are thinking about deeper issues, and even if Neo isn’t exactly Christlike, it can point to the One who Is.

I’m intrigued by those of varying beliefs who see the film series as messages from the divine to us. Movies can be like mirrors in the film, a way to see and break out. I think that God has been sending us several quite similar mirrors – we may look at some this year together.

The films encourage us to exit the Matrix, to question, to support others living outside, to rebuild.

Might we consider to what extent we live in the Matrix, controlled by others, and how we might unplug and live differently? The Matrix as a real world concept resonates. Faith isn’t the full journey to being awake; there are, in my opinion and experience, other layers. I believe with many others that it is true that all aspects of our society are designed to control and numb us. I hope I help raise awareness of that here. I believe that energy is essential and can be used to power others. This is not in the Bible…but could that too be compromised? I also wonder if the films have been, and the pro-machine message worries me. I consider that AI is like the atomic bomb and I do not support the use of either.

For Neo, who talks to camera at the end of the first film (as much as us as the machines):

“I can’t tell you how to get there, but if you free your mind you’ll find the way”.

I’ll put his full speech below.

That’s quite different from orthodox Christianity, but I too don’t feel I can tell you; like the Wachowskis, I don’t want to dictate. I am still assimilating some new ideas.

I can say that there is need to awaken and be free. Unlike in The Matrix, it’s not too late, you’re not too old, nor is there only one chance (in fact he has two, the second in his mature years).

It might seem that with Jesus too, the accomplishment was short lived: why is the world at least as bad since his death and victory? Yet it has inspired working towards a greater, permanent time of peace.

I do think that is descriptive of these extraordinary times.

Despite efforts to stop them, Trinity and Neo do ‘remember us’ and complete their work.

I’d like to leave you with the words that they do. It’s clearly an invitation to a joint and corporate (and  I don’t mean company but concerted) rebuilding effort.

Free your mind – but also body, heart and soul

We’re back on April 26^th with Shakespeare in Love

Do let me know where you are, who you are and what you think

Blessings and love to you

and thank you for joining me

Elspeth betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

Neo’s words at end of 1^st Matrix:

Hi. It’s me. I know you’re out there. I can feel you now.

I imagine you can also feel me
You won’t have to search for me anymore. I’m done running. Done hiding. Whether I’m done fighting, I suppose, is up to you

I believe deep down, we both want this world to change. I believe that the Matrix can remain our cage or it can become our chrysalis, that’s what you helped me to understand.

That to be free, you cannot change your cage.
You have to change yourself. I DON’T AGREE
When I used to look out at this world, all I could see was its edges, its boundaries, its rules and controls, its leaders and laws.

But now, I see another world. A different world where all things are possible.

A world of hope. Of peace.
I can’t tell you how to get there,
but I know if you can free your mind, you’ll find the way.

Good Friday 2024

Usually, today is a crunch point in a story we’ve been following for some time.

We’ve perhaps, like Anna and Simeon, been watching for signs of the prophesies in the Scriptures. We’ve celebrated Jesus’ birth, his avoidance of the slaughter of infants, fast forwarded to the snippet of his childhood at the temple, and jumped twice as long again to the start of his ministry. We’ve witnessed him be baptised, begin preaching, calling disciples, doing miracles. We’ve seen him slowly reveal who he is and waited for the disciples to catch up. Meanwhile, a plot against Jesus begins. What is the turning point that made the so-called authorities come after him? And then, this week, Holy Week, has almost daily incidents. We waved palms at Jesus’s entry to Jerusalem, knowing that his public lauding will soon turn. We’ve eaten a final supper with him and our friends. We’ve seen Judas sneak out and receive payment. We kept watch last night in the garden and witnessed that insidious kiss and the arrest. And some of us have followed Jesus’ final day, almost in real time. We may have enacted it in a public square. We may have sat at the foot of the cross this afternoon, or even lain at one, literally, until Jesus’ final breath – for now.

And now it is eventide, and the Son goes down with the sun, and so here is my 7 Sayings.

In Between The Stools, now celebrating our 5th Easter, we’ve looked at that fulcrum of our faith through the lens of a worldly story. In my first Easter sermon, I mentioned Xena Warrior Princess: that Holy Week, I gorged on the 4th season where there are flashes of Roman soldiers putting our heroines on crosses, and we didn’t know if this would come to pass. Would they actually die thus? Was this the end? Or could they be resurrected? It was the most moving and deepest drama I’d seen.

It was also set against the first lockdowns, and includes material also relevant to this year’s theme.

All through our first Lent in 2021, we took bites of Chocolat, so that when Easter weekend came, it was the high point of a 7 week old story culminating at that festival, with the clash of freedom and a dark man’s attempts to control. Men in black feature again in this year’s Easter. Chocolat had different controlling codes – not source codes of computers, but moral ones.

Both Chocolat and Xena involve acts of forgiveness at the climax

I began the Titanic journey with you in January the next year, casting it as a fable with similar hidden forces, so that we watched with those on board overnight in 2022 as she sank on the 110th anniversary.

Last year, our History Year, we spent Lent with Henry VIII’s wives, ending with Anne Boleyn. Thus we also had someone to watch with, alongside Jesus, as we thought of their impending execution, but also what their life and death meant.

This Year of Wonders we’re with film and television as our theme, but not a single story.

I led into Holy Week with another mind-bending Keanu Reeves film. I knew that I felt should do The Matrix this year with you (I’ll explain why on Sunday) but I didn’t feel that there was enough relevant run up material to fill Holy Week, let alone Lent. But Sunday is the wonderful final act of a series we’re supposed to have been watching for 3 or 4 months at least. Sunday’s power comes from this week’s episodes especially, and so I need to set The Matrix up with you to be able to enjoy Sunday and make my, our, Easter service meaningful.

The Matrix is about a man who is The One; it is the story of how he learns this, learns the hidden truth about the world, and how he saves it, risking his own life to do so, and comes back to life.

Thomas Anderson, aka Neo, is a computer whizz with a secret second job. He’s had a feeling his whole life that something’s not right about the world. And in the shadowy world of computer hacking, he’s being watched by fellow hackers who do something and know something more extraordinary. He’s about to be invited to join them.

The world as he knows it has been enslaved with the majority never realising that their ‘real life’ is a computer simulation, whilst they asleep lie in pods, being drained of energy to power their self serving keepers.

As The One’s time comes to its first climax, he’s told that to save the world, he will need to choose between sacrificing his life or another’s. In a dramatic scene, a betrayer among them (I mistyped and the spell checker suggested ‘cyberthreat’!) who delivers into the enemy’s hands.

This One faces death twice during the four film franchise. In part 1, a kiss from a loved one will have a contrasting effect to that which Judas gave Jesus. In part 3, the visual above clearly invokes a cross. The hero, the son of man, has told a god that he will singlehandedly take on a mission and be willing to die to save the world.

In the movies, it was left open as to whether this son of man would return: it was more likely to be a second coming, rather than a resurrection, although resurrection there was – almost 20 years later for us, but 60 for him. As Christians we wait 3 days for the resurrection, which has already happened.

Friday is oft a day for reflection, for being; for music and silence; perhaps a few reflective words may be offered. Today, here, is the latter. There’ll be many more words on Sunday evening.

You may wonder why we’re not following Easter through one of the many biblically inspired films; it’s a valid question, but I find the crucifixion hard to watch, and felt drawn to this. It’s also a question I’ve wondered myself during my preparations. I also asked:

What is suitable for Easter? What would we expect a sermon or service to include?

Why is today so important?

Why do so many heroes need death and sacrifice to be worthy of the title?

Why do so many stories about invented heroes also follow this theme?

You may wish to just sit with these; to watch Gospel movies to help your devotions at this time; and if able or inclined, to revisit the Matrix series (since Sunday will involve spoilers). I recommend the 4the.

I trust that however you spend today, that it will be meaningful and God will draw nigh

and that we likewise experience that as we draw nigh to each other again on Sunday at 8pm BST

(note the clock change and that it’s not live due to practical issues – I so wish it were! So just look at this blog on Sunday)

I’ll take you deeper into that story and critique it, analyse how well this christologically themed franchise does in fact match with Jesus, and how it’s relevant to us on Sunday

The typeface I wrote this in is called Liberation!

O Death, Rock Me Asleep – Maundy Thursday Watchnight

Easter 2023

Thursday 6^th April 9.30pm

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/o-death-rock-me-asleep

Welcome to Between The Stools Maundy Thursday watchnight with Jesus and Anne Boleyn, the prism through whom we’ll be seeing the Easter story this year. There won’t be many words but there will be a little music.

We’re following a history theme this year and have spent Lent with the wives of Henry VIII. I saved Anne B until last. There is a parallel between Jesus and Anne’s swiftly organised arrests, sham trials and deaths – along with others. And the others matter too. We don’t know the men with Jesus’ names but Anne died with her brother George, Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton, William Brereton and Henry Norris.

Those in precarious power abuse it against those who bring a new order which threatens theirs – not by military might, but words. I am not saying that Anne is Jesus (I did wonder about who else’s spirit she embodies), but she and several others we have or will speak of can also be included in our watchnight… Mary Stuart, Jane Grey, Katherine Howard, Elizabeth Barton The Nun of Kent, and our Magdalene Sunday lady. This isn’t about depressing ourselves or dwelling on horror. I actually wish to speak against that, and the vlogger who criticised a television channel for not showing a gory execution. What value is there in wallowing in such details and making the cast and crew re-enact it, and us as viewers enter their energy?

Tonight, I want us to be like Job’s comforters – at the start of that book we explored in January – just sitting quietly and being with one who is suffering and faces great trials. I want us to hold hands with, pray with, presence with. I’m not asking you to go over the details of what will happen to Anne and Jesus tomorrow. I am asking you to think on their lives, and where tomorrow’s act will send them (Heaven), and what became of their story after that. We will take that up in Sunday’s sermon.

I also want us to sit with those who are suffering, afraid, and face the end of their lives. That could be you. Do reach out to me if that’s the case (to betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk). Let us reach out – and energy knows no bounds – and hold those, pray with them, to take away fear and discomfort.

After our long silence, with short snatches of music, I will play you a full song, then have a few more words to comfort and send us out in hope

I felt Jesus, Anne and the others say: sit with us because we’d like to sit with you so you feel the loving presence of God and those that have gone before

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This song is by Katy Rose; she’s set to music Anne Boleyn’s final poem which she wrote on the eve of her death. I will speak again after briefly

O Death Rock Me Asleep (you heard flashes of the Tudor style music, seemingly anonymous (or by Jordan), published in 1611, transcribed Arnold Dolmetsch in 1898, performed by Rosemary Standley & Helstroffer’s Band, Lumina Vocal Emsemble, Anna Dennis & Voices of Music….note this version misses out several verses below.)

O Death, rock me asleep,
Bring me to quiet rest,
Let pass my weary guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast.
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

My pains who can express?
Alas, they are so strong;
My dolour will not suffer strength
My life for to prolong.
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

Alone in prison strong
I wait my destiny.
Woe worth this cruel hap that I
Should taste this misery!
Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;
Let thy sound my death tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy.

Farewell, my pleasures past,
Welcome, my present pain!
I feel my torments so increase
That life cannot remain.
Cease now, thou passing bell;
Rung is my doleful knell;
For the sound my death doth tell.
Death doth draw nigh;
There is no remedy

For now I die, I die, I die. attributed to Queen Anne Boleyn d. 19^th May 1536

That poem and song ends rather starkly…‘there is no remedy’. I believe there is – he came 1500 years before Anne. I think that rather than forgetting or renouncing her faith – and for that reason I query if this poem is really Anne’s – she laments that, like Jesus, this is her chosen exit strategy. She knows that won’t change, and she may have had honest human feelings about that, as he did. This was her ‘take the cup from me’ moment. But not taking the cup away was an important part of history playing out – not submitting to unstoppable fate or an ogrous potentate’s will…but choosing a life path, focussing on a spiritual perspective. Jesus and Anne knew with Mary, Katherine, Jane and Elizabeth that their end was their beginning.

What happened to them may not happen to you: we are in new times now

We we be thinking about that on Sunday evening, 8pm my time (BST)

Thank you for joining me and I hope to see you again

Please email me by the end of tomorrow if you’d like to come live

Note in the coming music the rise and change to major key in the final chords

 

GOOD FRIDAY 2022: SACRIFICE, OR WHY I’M CROSS WITH THE CROSS

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/sacrifice-or-why-im-cross-with

Introit: Nearer My God To Thee composed by Lowell Mason (words by Sarah Flower Adams), played and arranged by me

This is our Sundown service – hence the funny time, as I hope I’ll end as the sun sets here. It’s our birthday – Between The Stools came into being two Easters ago.

There will be two parts to my speech tonight. I’m not offering my 7 Sayings this year, but I give the link incase you’d like to hear it.

Instead, I am taking on a central precept of Christianity and society. I will warn that some of what I say might seem a little outrageous; but, whilst being aware of the feelings which some listeners might have, I feel that truth and honouring my own feelings mean that this needs to be said. We are an independent, alternative and free thinking community – our sermons are not aiming to be conventional or comfortable. I do hope you’ll feel able to stay for the journey.

HOLD A MOMENT OF QUIET/PRAYER BEFORE PART 1

This Lent, and before, we have been following the Titanic towards its launch, a week ago, and that of my novel. Last night, we stayed up late in solidarity as it sank, and with Jesus in the Garden.

There is a major theme that links Good Friday, the Titanic, and recent history: sacrifice.

This will involve some plot spoiling, but in each of the Titanic films I can think of, someone dies to give someone else their place. And isn’t that what we understand Jesus as having done for us this day? Jesus, according to the substitutional atonement theory, took our place in punishment; on the Titanic, it’s giving up a limited place in a lifeboat, or some other craft – most memorably a wardrobe door, which I have seen at a museum – seemingly for one.

Jack in that version – I refer to the 1997 leviathan blockbuster – gives Rose the space on the wreckage that allows her to keep out of the freezing water. Due to his ice fishing, he already knows that he won’t survive the temperature and bows out, exhorting her to keep her spirits up and live the life she wants, whilst the life ebbs from him.

In the 1953 movie with Barbara Stanwyck, the men in her family serenade the escaping women, again with fortitude. Her son earns his long trousers by taking his place among the doomed males for whom there was no room in the boats. He shows courage in not taking up a woman’s place, or sitting on his mother’s lap. Being a man is to face death and let another live – even if you are barely into puberty. His erring father shows that he has become a good man and husband because he too opts to face the watery deep. He starts the film estranged from Julia – that’s Barbara – and now, having fallen back in love and been reconciled, he is to be estranged permanently by a strange consent. This film says: Good men stay behind.

In the Britannic – a movie about Titanic’s younger sister – the baddie is made good by facing a horrible end bravely – involving propellers – as if that atones for his being the spy that sank that ship. The goodies look on with awe, verbalising their admiration.

Sacrifice is about doing something you don’t want, or giving up a pleasure or freedom, or something important: an opportunity – like Gilbert Blythe giving his teaching post to Anne of Green Gables, who we thought of last month; a body part, such as those who donate organs or who lose body parts in trying to save others. It can be saying goodbye to that body; it can be saying goodbye to someone else’s, which is equally as hard, as Julia and her daughter or Rose in Titanic films can attest. It is not going out, it is forfeiting a holiday, a hope, a livelihood, because someone else may get ill via your actions, despite the cost to your own wellbeing. Or so we have been told for the last two years.

We have become well drilled in the art of sacrifice – in the last century alone: in two multi country wars and countless smaller ones; sacrifice in rations of food; two years of rationed interaction, work and travel, even air; and now we’re asked to make sacrifices for the planet.

And we have seen many people show that they care, that they are willing to consider the needs of others. It is why the manipulation is all the more deplorable, for it appeals to what is best in us, and twists it.

Who benefits from sacrifice? We do not choose to be the recipients of someone else’s sacrifice. The people in the lifeboats in Titanic were unlikely to have asked, even implicitly, for others to have stayed behind to drown or freeze. The only ones actually doing so – enforcing it with gunshots – were officers. The most senior one to survive got into a boat after turfing out other men whom he called cowards. Yes, I am making that point for a second time.

We might argue that we didn’t ask Jesus to come to Earth and to die for us. Perhaps we would have accepted God’s punishment – if that is what today, Good Friday, is really about. It is a theology which I no longer countenance.

Thus I resist the debt and guilt – entwined concepts – created from the sacrifice of others. What we really need to ask is: who asked this other being to sacrifice, and what do they get out of it? What does the sacrificer gain? Glory? Eternal renown? Can their sacrifice be used to the benefit of a third party?

God, king and country are a powerful triad when used as a rationale for sacrifice.

Would you allow me to read from my book about this, before I shift gear a little?

Although about the Titanic, we could apply much of that to any pestilence or hostility.

[I have shared my thoughts on the latest pestilence on here several times: the pinned open letter to Christians may be a good starting point]

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As Good Friday is a central and certain part of each Christian year, and still very much part of mine, I feel wary of sweeping up too many thoughts in one service. Sally B Purvis speaks of deconstructing and reconstructing: for now we are in intense stages of DEconstruction; perhaps in future years, we will focus on building anew, and my critique of the cross, at least to listeners of this community, will be less pertinent.

I said that I would call this service both Sacrifice and Why I’m Cross With the Cross. There is much to delve into in both, although of course, they overlap.

I begun writing this a couple of years ago, having already spoken publicly about the pitfalls of sacrifice, and how much it is used to manipulate. I did not know that we would be about to live through such an example of it.

I am aware that the cross is sacred and deeply emotive, and I am not insensitive to that. But I am also aware of its use in abuse. Sally B Purvis’ book, The Power of the Cross, was an important milestone in my faith journey. She spoke, thirty years ago, about the work of feminist theologians discovering ever deeper layers of oppression. The excavation has continued, and as I re-read her book this week, I felt that it was true of the world now, and the one a century ago, in which the Titanic sank.

For instance, as Sally describes medieval manuals on witchcraft – on how to spot and capture witches – her points about the authorities’ control of reality and behaviour are true of today and of the society on board the Titanic. And I suspect a link between who is behind them.

Power and obedience, hierarchy and censorship, penalty and reward are encoded in traditional Christian teachings – far from Jesus’ real message – as much as they are in the rest of society. I had not hitherto seen how much that axis of two lines had become a symbol of not just stark desolation, but as Sally calls it, power as control: power over, domination by design.

I had noticed its prevalence, and that of the imagery of its effects. How often do we see this instrument of execution, and Jesus dying or dead? The graphic story of Jesus’ demise is not reserved only for the Lenten period, but The Stations of The Cross stay up year round in higher churches; in comparison, Easter gardens appear only around this weekend, soon to be disassembled; and how many pictures of the risen Christ or empty tomb have you seen?

In evangelical circles, the cross’s prevalence is via word: sermons, prayers and hymns. Although the gore of Julian of Norwich is reserved for youth drama outreach events, the revelling in the cross is in favourite hymns old and new. The Old Rugged Cross talks about the dearness of that instrument of execution, “the emblem of suffering and shame”, and our part in what happened on it.

I’d like to play a little medley of modern hymns, ending with an earlier one of my own; although I’ll not sing, they all include words about sacrifice. Some of these might be dear to you, and I respect that, but I feel passionately about what these are saying.

THE SERVANT KING BY GRAHAM KENDRICK; COME AND SEE BY GRAHAM KENDRICK; HOW DEEP THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR US BY STUARD TOWNEND; MY LORD… (AMAZING LOVE) BY GRAHAM KENDRICK AND MISSION COMPLETED (INSTRUMENTAL) BY ELSPETH RUSHBROOK

ALL PLAYED AND ARRANGED BY ME

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A deconstruction of hymns would take at least a service in itself, but the familiar motifs of guilt due to causation of Jesus’ passion; of God’s might and right to judge, his re-routed wrath at our heinous sin, and our gratitude for his Son’s willingness to be slain for us, are in the ones I played, and many others – all of which I challenge, and no longer feel I can sing. 

I take issue with Kendrick’s line in The Servant King “Each other’s needs to prefer” – and then, to justify it, that it is Christ we’re serving. It recalls Sally Purvis’ deconstruction of Ephesians 5, the passage about wives submitting to husbands, and putting that in a theologically grounded very un-equilateral triangle. I’ve come to see that our own needs are equal to that of others: there is no weather clock – one need not be in if the other is out. It is not a see-saw choice between my wellbeing, wishes and yours. We can both sit, reaching the ground – neither has to be in the air at the mercy of the other or crashing onto the floor.

Perhaps this will need revisiting for another year, but I have concerns – no, I’ll be honest: I recoil over the notion that ultimate love is shown through death and suffering, and sacrifice. “What kind of love is this?” ask many hymn writers. Julian of Norwich’s 10^th vision showed Jesus in technicoloured agony, which she seemed to almost enjoy, and as Jesus is abased and abused, he looks on her and said: “Lo, how I love you.” Lo – look on this, if you can – I usually can’t – and know in my bruises and showing entrails and nearly public nudity that herein is ultimate regard.

I was offered to go to a passion play, and I’m not sure. I don’t want to watch Jesus die so horribly and publicly, in the middle of a modern market place. Is this our witness, as Christians to those who see Easter only as a long holiday weekend to consume….the arrest, false trial, and then execution of our Lord? Dramatic, memorable, moving – and yes, easily relatable to in our deeply unjust world. But have you ever been invited to a Resurrection play?

So much of Easter as Christians is about real time re-enactment and I’ve been doing so to the Titanic, but I do not wish to only focus on the end. There is a longer story, both before this day of death, and it continues well after… as will we.

For many high church Anglicans and Catholics, today – Good Friday – is more important than Sunday. Sunday didn’t have to happen for some Christians: today is enough. For today is Christ’s demonstration not only of his love for us, but his obedience unto death. Note that biblical phrase. It is the sacrifice for them that matters; he need not rise. Like Jesus Christ Superstar, the curtain falls here. But that is not my show. There is another act to come.

There is one other thought, for now, from Titanic and Easter. Titanic was built to control and keep in your place; sliding locking grilles kept the classes apart as much as a prison. White Star Line intended that the three classes of passenger should be segregated in every part of the journey – they even were on the rescue ship, Carpathia. But the sinking burst through much of that. Although it’s alleged that these gates were discovered still locked on the ocean floor, proving the reports that lower classes were kept back from lifeboats, people did break down those gates. They stood up to stewards who continued to give and obey orders, when it was clear that the rules were not in anyone’s interest, who kept people prisoner in the name of protocol and safety.

I believe there is an inquiry they will have to answer to. It will not be presided over by Baron Mersey, but another Lord. I’ll have more to say on that in the summer.

Today we remember Jesus bursting through gates created by men, that had hitherto created a sequence where increasingly few could go; it wasn’t just about privilege but access to God.

The sinking, although by no means equally affecting all, was a great leveller. I think it’s SOS Titanic that ends with that sentiment: that all were bedraggled and only had what they were wearing; the grief was universal as were feelings of trauma, relief, and perhaps guilt. Titanic was a loss of an era; the emancipation of women, the breaking down of the class system began at this time. We may feel that class is once more evident with a huge gap between rich and poor, and that emancipation is again much needed. It will come – as will Sunday.

That 1979 film ended with the words: ‘God went down with the ship’. But he did not: not only did he absolutely care, but he returned, as will we.

I play you out with my Titanic theme: note that there’s an unfinishedness, a hope.

There is another movement.

I’ll also have some written thoughts to share tomorrow evening, a little video on Sunday at breakfast, and a service you can join me for at 8pm British Summer Time on Easter day.

Thank you for joining me, blessings and love… and hope to see you again.

The rest of Easter 2022 on Between The Stools:

TOMORROW EVENING, A BLOG POST WILL APPEAR

ON SUNDAY MORNING, A BREAKFAST POST WILL APPEAR

ON SUNDAY NIGHT, 8PM BST, IS OUR EASTER SERVICE

TO JOIN ME LIVE:

Meeting link: https://meet.zoho.eu/RR1fL5oW56

Meeting ID: 1294525879

Password: x5BGDX

OR LISTEN TO THE RECORDING LATER

Easter 2020 sermon

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/easter-sermon-2020

‘Early in the morning, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and others came to the tomb while it was still dark’ and every year for over twenty years, I have risen at daybreak – not a natural act for me – and gone outside to a special place to commemorate those women’s silent bravery and the first hope of Easter. This year I am on hill overlooking my city.

Usually, I replay my 7 Sayings compositions for Good Friday and add my Easter Day piece, and then later join with other Christians. But of course, I can’t attend worship with others this year – and it seems incredible that churches have been told not to open on their most holy day, the fulcrum of our faith.

This year, more than ever, I felt the need to speak about the meaning of Easter, and this year it will be physically, visibly felt. We are still in the tomb, for most of us round the world can’t meet to celebrate this feast, but we can prepare for the bursting forth in subversive victory by planning for it in our collective cocoon, doing the inner work until the outer can physically manifest.

I’m proud that there are Particular Baptists and Priestesses listening to this, and I’m glad to have brought you together, for this is a common purpose that we need to work towards.

Whether we recognise the phrase, we are all Lightworkers, here to usher in a new kingdom.

God has especially intervened in his – or her – relationship with humans three times: when he first made us; when he sent Jesus; and…now. The New Age isn’t a ducky hippy fantasy – it is here. I believe there are three covenants that God made with us: one with a particular people, although I think God has always been broader than that; and then he opened to the door to the Gentiles in the new testament, so that inclusion was through belief in Jesus… and now I think God is saying: open the door.

Perhaps the Particulars will particularly flinch at the suggestion, or I think assertion, that there is but one God; and whatever we call Her, that we are using different dialling codes to the same exchange.

I have come to understand that God’s essence isn’t judgement and exclusion. His prime attribute isn’t holiness, or even power… it’s love, Love with a capital L. And today we don’t proclaim good news because you have to accept serious bad news first. It’s not – believe or else; feel guilty and let that dictate your acceptance of God’s gift with not just strings attached, but thick cords. That cannot be grace – or a healthy relationship.

Today, the temple curtain in our sadly empty churches is rent in two: God isn’t held in the Holy of Holies for priests – or priestesses – alone. She’s not even in buildings, beautiful as they often are, which can be shows of strength and privilege, and doors that can exclude as well as give sanctuary. God is out in the world, within our walls and yet beyond them.

And God is birthing, through us, not 5G – the next level of technological connectivity, which very much concerns me – but 5D, the 5th dimension. For me, higher D is about living in a consciously soulful place, seeing one’s story arc from an authorial point of view, more and more in tune with what SARK calls “your inner wise self”, or Spirit, and not what traditional Christians would call ‘worldly values.’ It is a greater focus on the unseen and immeasurable.

Events over the last year have started to push me out of the 3D world, the ‘lower energies’ as those card carriers of the woo woo community (like me) would say. I’ve discovered that even having a lifelong faith doesn’t mean you’re always living at a higher level, just as those who don’t consciously have a faith, especially not my faith, can walk a higher path.

I believe, with many others, that this is the time when our old structures will fall, to be replaced by ones which are rooted in different values.

I was asking myself what I would do if I was tasked with responding to the virus. And my first thought was: breathe, then pray. I don’t know how many world leaders did that, but it’s something we’re not encouraged to talk about. We’re also not expected to talk about feelings, especially not love, in politics or business or education or health. We disregard the nonquantitive, non empirical, the non corporeal. And I think this is where we have gone wrong.

I was first drawn to the Green Party – of which I now consider myself ‘a candid friend’ – because the first policy document of theirs I read 10 years ago hinted at spirituality, and it also began by asserting the equality and value of all living things.

We’re so used to systems where not everyone matters and not everyone wins. We are run by wanting money in one way or the other, by what we own and who owns us.

This time has brought up the issue of personal sovereignty versus the executive powers of the state – even to close the churches on this most holy holiday. Although it is largely voluntarily to stop the spread of the virus, I am mindful that there are times when churches have been closed on government orders purely because they were disapproved of. I am not advocating selfishness and lack of responsibility, but I vociferously believe in our own agency especially over our own bodies, homes, and the healthcare we choose, and our right to worship, our right to think for ourselves, and I do advocate doubting until personally satisfied.

I think it’s vital that we remain aware and that what emerges out of this cocoon time is not a new normal where we no longer meet in person, mingle in groups or crowds, that everything we do is electronic which can be traced, with even greater reliance on technologies that are harmful to our health; that we remain compliant out of fear, and even begin to fear each other.

I want there to be an openness to ancient ways as well as new, to diversity and divergence. I’m reminded of that film and book trilogy by Veronica Roth about a dystopian post traumatic city which is divided into factions, according to personal traits. The leaders are desperate to keep everyone in their factions, and despise and fear those who live outside the neat systems put in place by the city fathers. But – plot spoiler alert – our heroine, who is one of the dreaded Divergents who don’t fit, discovers that the city fathers designed this system so that society matured when it realised that Divergents were the key, not the enemy.

Those who didn’t fit the system didn’t threaten it, they completed it.

I think this is a lesson our world needs, for it is in the throes of hoiking out our divergents for fear of the new world that they especially might midwife. But we need to celebrate those we formerly thought of as aberrations, not fix and suppress them.

In traditional Easter theology, this is a time for overcoming the Enemy, and this year, more than ever, it’s a time to remember that our God has overcome death, fear, illness, and evil.

In Tom Robbins’ novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, he says that the enemy is not all the ‘others’ – other nations and ethnicities, the other sex, the other class, the other sexualities, the other faiths, and whatever else we may divide ourselves into and want to blame and set ourselves against. He says ‘the enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind’.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote of ‘the banality of evil’ – that the ultimate darkness is not often charismatic or potent, but simply dull conformity. For her, it was the inability to think which made the execution of evil possible. And I would argue, to feel…. Outrage at injustice, but also love, a love that can’t allow injustice but that can still love those who do it, and have so much love that it pulls perpetrators out of their actions into wholeness, out of our own dullness into awareness.

I began by mentioning Mary Magdalene – and I’m almost done. Mary has become more and more important to me over the years, especially when I began embracing the Priestess path along side the Christian one. Elayne Kalila Doughty calls the priestess path ‘the vow to walk as love’. I have taken that, and realise I can live that without a dog collar or a torque.

I’ve learned, or am learning, that the telos of love is to love without needing a response; that love can take many forms, and at this time of ascension, that we are especially called to expand our expressions of love beyond the factions laid out for us by old paradigms – for perhaps those who laid them out also had the notion that the ultimate maturity was when we learned to live beyond them. Much of our love, like our law, is possessive, exclusive, right and wrong, win and lose; it requires permission, it has territories, it’s proprietary.

I believe that today we celebrate the rising of the One who burst all that. I think his relationship with Mary Magdalene was one that defied categories. Jesus isn’t to me just the Christ Conscious one; for me, he is God, who rose in physical form, and what he embodied and taught is something we can share in, as Mary did – for she best understood him and preached his message. I see her as a special messenger, perhaps being to the Trinity what the RAC claimed to be to the emergency services. (Yes I did just say that the Trinity is a 4 leaf clover).

I’ve been watching Xena: Warrior Princess. I see myself as Warrior Priestess. Xena and her companion Gabrielle – whose love also defies categorisation – commit to following the Way of love and light, overcoming darkness in the world and themselves. They knowingly go to their crucifixon, followed by an incredible act of love and forgiveness, transformation and resurrection – just as we remember at Easter. I’m more convinced than ever that death is not the end and that and Love goes on, not just for Jesus, but all of us.

The Easter sermon that I best remember is from Durham Cathedral in 2005: that when Mary asked Jesus if he was the gardener, she was kind of right. Jesus is making a new creation and asking us to be part of landscaping, planting, weeding, watering and hoeing… for soon we shall be picking. I know I’ve barely quoted the Bible – and I enjoy biblical exposition – but I’m seeing that we’re called now to a faith beyond just the Book, beyond the words we call God. So as we awaken this Easter Day 2020, let us awaken in all senses, and have clear vision, and courage to love, to be the change in the world we seek, and with Jesus and Mary, be bringers of a new age.

 

7 Sayings – new music and words for Good Friday

Between The Stools launches here

This year we remember that not only will Sunday come for us in all senses, but that it has already come

Here are links to the service. Imagine me on a hill overlooking a city….

My own painting of Norwich

There’ll be another link early on Sunday morning

Elspeth’s Easter message 2019

Why we should have Table Turning Tuesday

When Christians – especially of a more Catholic bent – celebrate Easter, the focus is on the cross. Yet if Holy Week is about recalling and re-enacting the run up to Easter events in real time, why do we spend nearly all the week on the being crucified part?

I’ve seen Palm Sunday processions – even with a donkey. And I’ve seen Passion plays – even in shopping centres. Yet have you ever heard of an al fresco Stone Rolling enactment? Ever seen those angels or those terrified guards? The Emmaus Road couple, or the Upper Room? We think of the Last Supper – every day, if you’re high church – but not the next gathering of the disciples with the Risen Jesus.

I also noted that the traditional events of Holy Week involve turning of temple tables, and much preaching and speaking out. Before he’s arrested, Jesus is busy in the capital.

I note some call the Weds Spy Wednesday, but we don’t have Table Monday or Temple Tuesday.

Why do we miss the parts which question structures, the bits not so passion orientated – but they are of, course. These are as much part of the message as the dying part – plenty of passion here! His ire at the temple’s abuses. Healing. He also spent his not quite last week telling parables, predicting his return, and outwitting Pharisees.

There is often much about suffering – Christ’s and our own – and the whole week can feel a dour one. Lots of prostration, kneeling – and repetition. But less about justice – and that doesn’t count your church’s lent appeal.  And less about joy.

My reason for having a faith isn’t to wallow in sorrow, pain, guilt…

Today, Easter day, is one of joy. It’s celebrating the turning point of history, the reason for being. Jesus came ‘so that we may have life to the full’. But I hear that proclaimed far too seldom.  As well as the Resurrection, I’d like to see more of a focus on Jesus’ response to the temple authorities, and for that to be appropriated to modern times.

Another year, I want to see those doves scattered…

 

Hail, Caesar – he is Risen

This week I saw two new films, each featuring a Fiennes brother, about a Roman tribune (senior soldier) who encounters Jesus at the end of his life.

I bet I’m one of few to have seen both, because Risen, starring Joseph Fiennes, hardly got any theatrical release. In my city, only one cinema had it, for one week, only twice a day at awkward times, pulling it before the Easter weekend it is all about. Thus its low audience numbers were self fulfilled. And it’s gone before, like the disciples at the tomb, I could go and tell anyone else to come and see it.

I am also one of the few drawing a comparison between these films, because the subtitle of the film within film, Hail Caesar, is not mentioned in any cinema brochure I’ve read. Along with other inaccuracies, it is called “a sword and sandal” epic. But there’s no sword fights and no George Clooney is not Caesar – he encounters a more paradoxical alien leader. There’s a scene where the religious leaders whom the studio is trying to placate discuss the nature of the incarnation (interesting for Jewish film makers), a beautiful closing speech at the foot of the cross (for which scene the crucified actors received “hardship pay”) and confusingly, a section featuring Saul of Tarsus with a title card “Divine Intervention to Be Inserted”.

Risen also consulted with Christians to avoid upsets, and likewise, found them happy – though I was not at the depiction of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. This is not in the Bible and even Catholics – who pretended she was – have officially un-tarted her now. Hasn’t the writers heard of even the Di Vinci Code and who Mary is believed to be by many? She’s Jesus’ no 2, covered up by Peter ‘I want the Keys just for Me’ and friends.

Both films had powerful and profound moments, but the tones were very different. Hail Caesar was often funny, though most of my laughs were at the points described above; the studio debacles often did little for me. I am not a proponent of the multiple storyline and so I wished we spent more time with Rome and Jerusalem, and less (or none) in aquariums, deserts, drawing rooms and bars filled with sailors who sang about the lack of dames at sea, but by their antics (some dance moves were suggestive of a number just before 70) they were not sorry. Not all the characters really fitted together, and were by some rather conspicuous sewing.

Risen had no humour and was for the first part often brutal, opening as a high budget and adrenaline thriller, just incase you thought this was for church halls. I think it is a film for church halls, though not for families or sensitive people of any age. The usually doe eyed, gentle and sensitive Joseph Fiennes is harsh, interrogative and even murderous as Tribune Clavius. I found it hard to watch him being so unjust and bullying. He is one of a few well known actors in the film, such as Peter Firth from Spooks as Pilate, who pushes Clavius to find Jesus’ missing body because Pilate fears the next tier of the chain – his emperor.

The brutality in the Coen’s film – some of which was verbal threat – was from film studio producer Eddie Mannix, fixer of any legal and publicity embarrassments. I hated Eddie (Josh Brolin) for hitting Baird (that’s Clooney) and silencing his communist sympathies. Eddie becomes the tribune, the old kind of God – telling people what to do, what to think, and what they can know; judging by narrow standards, being non-negotiable and using perceived virtue to guide those in his care; and of course, money.

Both tribunes alter at the experience of Jesus, yet Joseph’s conversion feels more like a Christian Union mission film. I am trying to work out why. Did the disciples seem too spacey and squeaky good? Was I angry that they never fought back? Was it the snippets of their sermons on the beach? But wouldn’t frightened, crushed followers feel exonerated and empowered and impervious to threat if they thought their leader was truly alive again?

The Coen brothers leave us, as so many Jesus films and plays, with him on the cross – yet for George’s tribune, even then, it is enough to change him. The makers of Risen (and Waterworld) let us see Jesus to the end of his earthly life (I was going to say, off the premises), but the ascension is more of a disappearance into the sunset – ET had a more memorable and convincing take off. They obviously didn’t have the budget to show us what the guards at the tomb saw either – shame as modern film is wonderful for bringing such stories to us visually.

The Coen’s Jesus is a back of a rather strawberry blond head and a pair of feet on a maximum comfort cross. Risen features Cliff Curtis – is this the first Maori Christ? – whose face has have the expected unnerving quality, but his less conventional Messiah looks and Tears For Fears hairstyle also slightly beguile and unsettle. However, he behaved like we like to think of Jesus – in the imaginary last miracle where he truly saw and loved the person he healed.

What was hardest for me was reconciling the kind of Jesus we want to believe in – like this – to the one who actually appears to be in the gospel. I’ve been at a study group where we heard that one writer thinks that Jesus snorts in fury at his healees; a Jesus whose first line in John’s gospel is a snap at would-be followers; a Jesus who is incredibly rude to that Gentile lady seeking healing for her son… Commentators let him off by saying, he must have meant…ah, but really he knew…   Is this disciples and early church fathers scribbling in, or…? I’ve written an article on this before. I nearly entitled it “Going off Jesus.” It doesn’t affect my relationship with God, but this is the central person who makes Christians distinct. So where does that take me…?

It’s a search I continue. Meanwhile, I found these films as worthwhile as any church service and yet not exclusive of those not seeking a spiritual message this Easter.

Good Friday

As we’re close to the Easter season, I’d like to share what I wrote last year on my new take on this day

http://relijournal.com/christianity/good-friday-2/