Lockdown has given us time to think. Our old friend Ecclesiastes had a clever list of what is proper, a time for this and a time for that. And that is beyond criticism. Well, not quite. He did not have endless leisure for his compiling. Strangely, one thing he omitted was time to think.
Most of us brought up in the European tradition take it as axiomatic that we should learn to think for ourselves. That is what the classical Greek writers thought. They argued about the rights and wrongs of types of government, of writing history, of imaginative literature, of codes of behaviour. It did not occur to them to let sleeping dogs lie and to accept whatever came their way as a gift from the gods with no questions asked.
When we come to the words and works of Jesus (to use a phrase coined by a Scottish New Testament scholar), we find that he was adept (if we can use such a term) at prodding the thoughtless. His parables were not intended to provide definitive answers. They were intended to let in the daylight, to compel thought, to upset prevailing assumptions. The story of the job-hunters in the market-place, for example, must have stopped his hearers in their tracks. ‘Does he mean what he’s saying?’ they might well have asked. Like Aesop’s fables, Jesus’s stories had an edge; sometimes they were laced with humour.
It comes down to imagination. This is not just a matter of ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. It is about how we react to what on the face of it is scatty, absurd, undefinable. Imagination lets us into territory otherwise locked and barred against visitors. The Gospels do this. Not all the biblical documents are of this kind. We do not bring our imagination to an understanding of Leviticus. We do, however, bring it to the Sermon on the Mount, which is, if you like, a spur to imaginative goodness. And we are all much in need of such a spur.
That spur has actually come along. There is nothing so greatly in need of the exercise of the imagination as on-line worship. Often it is remarkable how those responsible for it are rising to the task. There may be problems with half-empty churches and reserved places. There may be inadequate equipment (though one church after another manages to get over this hurdle). There may be gruelling demands on preachers and intercessors but we have seen enough to know that imagination is at work in bringing about new worship-styles that had previously been unexplored.
EPHESUS
Ephesus, a magnificent city in the ancient world, went out of business as the harbour silted up. It attracted this comment from one visitor: ‘Though unlike the Ephesians, we’re not ignorant of the effects of increasing populations, we still have economic and social systems which encourage conspicuous consumption.’ Unsustainable, says HP, writing in the newsletter of Christ Church, Duns, Scottish Episcopal Church.
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