“He needed to be brought down to earth…”

We might find ourselves uttering such words on occasions, often in reference to some unlucky fool whose ego has
been dramatically deflated, or whose ethically-questionable fortunes have turned in a moment. “It was coming to him,” we sometimes say.

But what if all of us could do with being brought down to earth?
Brought right down to earth, to the reality that one day we will return to this earth from which we came.

Dust to Dust

“For dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Those are words taken from the judgment issued to Adam in Genesis 3:19. And they’re words traditionally repeated on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, a day where we intentionally remember that our future is death.

To be honest, I’ve not really gone in for Lent in a big way over the years. The whole ‘giving stuff up’ thing can seem to focus the spotlight on ourselves, rather than lifting Jesus up.

But if we buy into the Christian calendar when it comes to Christmas, Easter, and even Advent, then why not Lent?

Yes, for the Christian every day is to be a ‘remember the cross’ day, just as every day is a ‘resurrection day’ and a ‘Jesus will come back’ day. But perhaps these annual rhythms provide an opportunity us to re-focus our hearts. Chuck Colson explains the ‘Christian calendar’ by saying that, “during these seasons, we encourage certain theological emphases, spiritual practices, and corresponding emotions to instruct and train the church in godliness.”

Not obligatory, of course. Ash Wednesday isn’t in the Bible. But how will you choose to remember your mortality in a culture whose default mode is to assume we’re immortal?

As Mike Cosper has put it,

“While I certainly don’t think [Ash Wednesday] is mandatory for Christians or churches, I would simply want to ask the critics, “What’s your strategy? How are you preparing for your encounter with death?”

Life in the Shadow

Because, for most of us, death needs to be brought back into the picture.

Not all of us, of course. For some of us, death’s grip on our lives will feel all too firm. For some of us our mortality is hardly far from our minds right now.

Maybe it’s the debilitation of illness. Maybe it’s the persistent and aching presence of grief. Maybe it’s a general and/or personal sense of life as we know it unravelling before our eyes. However we feel it, the cold shadow of death lingers over us. The tree of life couldn’t be further from our reach.

But for many of us, we need to be brought down to the earth, our cradle and our grave.

Because we’ve become pretty adept at hiding death.

Adept at packaging up its presence and keeping it at arm’s length, away from the daily rhythms of our lives: a rise in care homes; the conversational taboo; the media-infatuation with youth. Often the best our culture can do is to ‘honour’ an individual’s life. ‘Death is nothing at all’, we recite, hoping, wishing. The funeral becomes a ‘celebration’, the wake a party.

Voyeurs of Death

But we can’t keep it at bay forever. One day the eulogy will be about us. One day our Facebook status won’t be updated again. If you’re one of the lucky ones, then the obituary will try and capture your years in a few paragraphs of black ink. Past tense, of course.

And isn’t that denial why we’ve seen the emergence of the Death Cafe movement? And if we cast our minds back to the striking response to the horrific missile attack on an international passenger flight, MH17, in 2014, isn’t our culture of assumed immortality actually breeding voyeurs of death?

But deep down, don’t we know how helpless and hopeless we are? And so in a culture where so much pressure is placed on people to achieve, to maximise one’s experiences, and to control one’s life, we find ourselves not really knowing what to do with death. 

In short, our avoidance-tactics aren’t just negligent; they’re dissatisfying too.

The Way To Live Is To Know You’ll Die

The book of Ecclesiastes gets a bit of stick for being a depressing book. But actually it’s full of life and joy. Far from being about the meaninglessness of life, I’m convinced it actually teaches us how to really live.

But the way to live is to know you’ll die:

“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

The final chapter of Ecclesiastes paints a graphic illustration of death as a slow and painful de-creation. Actually talk to someone who knows they’re in their final years and they’ll tell you all about it.

But when you know you’re dying, then you’re reminded of the gift of life.

Life begins when we see we are all creatures, born into a world where life is fleeting and fragile. Life can be found when we see we are all sinners, born into a race that lives under the consequences of our turning from God.

Remember Your Name And The One Who Named You

The clue’s in the name: Adam.

When God creates man, adam, he names him after the ground, adamah. Like a child understanding their name for the first time, Ash Wednesday is about helping us to re-learn our name. It is about remembering who we are.

And if anything, that should cause our gaze to be turned to the One who gave us that name. As Ecclesiastes puts it, to “remember your Creator” (12:1). He is the One who scooped up that dust and first made man. He is the One who breathed into our nostrils the breath of life. He is the One against whom we staged a revolution that led to being banished from the place of life.

And so He is the only One who can provide a way back.

What can you do to remember that?

Maybe you’ll partake in an ‘Ashing’ service, where a cross is marked with ashes on the hand or forehead? Maybe you’ll gather the family and light a match, before blowing it out and rubbing its ash between your fingers? Maybe you’ll spend some time prayerfully reading through Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8, whilst streaming this album?

Of course, it’s got to be more than a day. I read recently of a church that had been built in the shape of a coffin in order to remind the congregation of their mortality. Likewise, the skulls that often decorated the insides of older churches were a reminder of that mortality.

But will we remember our name?

Glorious Dust

But by turning our eyes to our Creator, Ash Wednesday also reminds us where our hope is.

In the gospel of Christ crucified and risen, God promises to take the perishable and clothe us with what is imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:52).

If God can take adamah and fashion Adam, why can’t that same Creator take our dust and re-make us after the likeness of the ‘man of heaven’, the second Adam, the risen Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:22,44-48)?

We are dust, but in Christ our future is glory.

We walk towards our grave, but the tomb is empty.

Ashes for Life, Not Just for Wednesday

Death is real. Death is coming. Death is an enemy.

Ash Wednesday asks us whether we realise that. It asks us whether we’re ready. It asks us whether we’ve turned to the One who can bring life in the face of death.

And as we find our place amidst the dust and ashes, it’s only then that we learn to cry out, ‘Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Corinthians 15:57).

As Mike Cosper has put it,

“To those critics, I’ll agree: Ash Wednesday isn’t required. But preparing for our encounter with death is a gospel priority. We live in a culture loaded with death-denying strategies. How are we, as the church, refusing the blinders they offer, staring death in its face, and saying all the more boldly, “Where is your sting?”

Yes Kon-do or No Kon-do

Ok, I have to admit, I’m a fan.

Marie Kondo is probably the first person to become famous for tidying up, which is admittedly a slightly odd accolade. (Ok, maybe the second person if you’re counting Mary Poppins, but then again she had magic and Dick van Dyck.)

But despite the less than glamorous subject matter, her ruthlessly intentional approach to ‘life at home’ is, well, infectious. Two best-selling books, a trademarked tidying method (‘KonMari‘), and now a much-discussed Netflix series are all indicators that Kondo and her favourite phrase (“does it spark joy?”) are scratching at a cultural itch. Personally, I find it hard to watch an episode of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo without then immediately throwing myself into at least half an hour of tidying of my own.

By the way, no idea what I’m talking about? Here’s the trailer…

Order From Chaos

But this desire to put our lives into order should hardly be a surprise.

As Becca Whittaker has said, it’s not as if bringing harmony to chaos was something Kondo came up with. It seems wired into us – and Christians claim that’s by virtue of being made in the image of a God who creates an ordered world from chaos.

Spending time in Genesis 1 these past few weeks with Grace Church Barrow, it’s hard not to be struck by the carefully crafted nature of the Bible’s opening chapter. Take the way the six ‘days’ mirror each other: the first three describe God forming his world, followed by another three where God fills what he’s just formed. There’s the way the narrative gradually builds, each day getting more airtime, until a crescendo as humanity is created and the accompanying observation that all is now complete and ‘very good’. Or take the repeated descriptions of God ‘separating’: light from darkness, water from sky, day from night; or the way in which animal and fauna are both told to bear fruit ‘according to their kinds’.

Simply put, you can’t avoid the conclusion that the God who made the world is a God who also orders his world. Even those areas of our world we tend to see as scary or chaotic – the darkness and the waters of the deep – are also ordered by Him. He brings rhythm and pattern and boundaries to what he has created.

And as I read Genesis 1 afresh, I know that’s what I want in my life. Someone who will bring order to my chaos.

The Pull of Kondo

And isn’t that why we’re drawn to Kondo so much?

Whilst she’s often mistaken for being an advocate of not owning anything, that’s not quite right. According to Kondo, you can own as much as your want, as long as each possession brings you joy. As long as you can look at it in its rightful place and say, ‘that is good’. Sound familiar?

In fact when Kondo’s team launched a formal training programme for her KonMari method, the accompanying hashtag was #organizetheworld. About that.

Don’t we all want someone who will bring order to our chaos? Our lives are chaotic, disorientating, and exhausting, perhaps more so than ever before. Financial pressures, family expectations, societal fragility, the endless nature of hyper-connected online interaction and engagement.

There’s just drama.

And so we want someone to make sense of it all. As Kondo often says, tidying up is the act of confronting yourself.

Beneath All The Stuff

But few have evaluated the Kondo phenomenon as perceptively as NY Times magazine writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

“Once we’ve divided all the drawers and eliminated that which does not bring us joy and categorized ourselves within an inch of our lives, we’ll find that the person lying beneath all the stuff was still just plain old us. We are all a mess, even when we’re done tidying.”

Marie can bring some measure of orderliness – even in the inner sanctum of our own homes, but she can’t deal with the totality of our chaos.

And whilst we’re at it, neither can the promise of productivity tools or carefully choreographed social media profiles or hours sculpting ourselves at the gym.

That’s because the mess of our hearts is nothing less than the repercussions of a creation torn apart at the seams. Genesis 1 is soon followed by Genesis 3 and with it the diagnosis that if you turn away from your Creator, you don’t find a ‘new you’, but a de-created you.

Now, that’s a challenge even Kondo can’t meet.

Going with the Grain of the Maker

Of course, if God made everything, life will never make sense if it’s lived disconnected from Him.

Whether it’s the way we parent, the way we love, the way we work, the way we live. He is the one who defines and designs and determines goodness. There’s no point living life going against the grain of the God who made us.

That said, entrusting our lives to the one who brings order out of chaos doesn’t mean our lives will suddenly all be ‘straightened out’. If our world is fractured and broken to the core, then we can clean up and get everything in its place, but life will remain intrinsically messy and frustrating, spilling out of whatever cupboards and drawers we try and contain it in.

Hope for the Mess

But amidst the mess and chaos, there is hope. Christianity claims a Light has entered the darkness of this unravelling world, in order to renew and recreate it.

Kondo’s signature pose is reserved for when her clients have realised which of their possessions ‘sparks joy’ and which can be disposed of: she daintily points upward, one foot lifted, emitting her distinctive ‘ting!’ sound.

But the shock of the gospel is that God’s hand pointed down – down into our mess and chaos, deep down into the depths of our hearts. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Certainly, tidiness gurus who enter our lives and sort through our disorder can give us a glimpse of the goodness of the God of Order.

But far more wonderful is a God who doesn’t re-order his world by discarding us, but by taking our darkness upon Himself.

Not only do we have a God who can order our chaos, but we have a God who finds His joy in choosing us, despite us being the cause of that very chaos.

Now that sparks joy.

Wow, fancy that. The big talking point from Saturday’s Royal Wedding seems to have been the sermon. Yup, double-take right there: the sermon. When was the last time you heard a ‘preach’ – or perhaps a preacher – make international headlines?!

But it’s a sermon that has also divided. Some were quick to pour praise on Bishop Michael Curry’s thirteen-minute address: engaging, refreshing, attractive. Others not so much: either too long (8 minutes longer than the 5-minute brief apparently!), or too-showy, or more significantly, offering a “Christianity-lite”.

I’ve been preaching fairly regularly for about eight years – not too long in the grand scheme of things, but long enough to care about preaching. Ok, it’s all too easy to have Roast Preacher for lunch every Sunday, but given I’ve never heard a sermon so widely discussed in the UK, and given it’s been a big talking point amongst friends, both online and at church, here are 9 observations as part of the conversation:

1. First off, to preach to 1.9 billion people (and how many more afterwards) – and then to have your words and manner analysed worldwide… Well, yikes.

So my first thought is: Rather someone else than me. There’s a sense in which whoever was tasked with the job should get a bit of respect from the rest of us – and a bit of slack, perhaps. You’re never gonna please everyone.

2. But, that said: to be a preacher of the gospel is a high calling, one that brings with it responsibilities.

You are not simply an orator or an entertainer; you are nothing less than a herald of Christ. So, whilst as sermon-listeners we should never duck what God’s word might be saying to us, that doesn’t mean we don’t also hold our preachers to account and seek to weigh up their words. 1.9 billion people is a tough gig, but it’s also 1.9 billion people hearing words from a Christian pulpit, in the context of opening up the Bible. Just like me last Sunday, just like every Christian preacher across the land, it matters how Curry preached. We want to hear God’s word to us, but it’s ok to consider, critique and discuss too. I remember an old pastor telling us to be like the Bereans in Acts 17:10-12, who, after hearing the apostle Paul, “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what he said was true.”

3. The passion.

Ah yes, the passion. Probably the most-used word in describing Saturday’s sermon. Oh, to have sermons preached with passion. As one self-confessed atheist – and former leader of the Labour Party – tweeted:

The sad thing here is how surprising this was for so many people. (Ok, yes, it was also pretty funny seeing some of the Royal faces not quite knowing how to handle it). As ABC Australia put it,

“From the outset, it was clear that this was not going to be a standard Church of England sermon, which tradition dictates should be delivered in the tone of a very shy person asking the way to the train station.“

Ouch.

If I’m honest, all I can remember about William & Kate’s wedding sermon in 2011 is that it was a non-event. And by the way, I’m sure the same could be said about many of my own sermons. If only all ministers/pastors/vicars – and bishops – showed such passion!

And it wasn’t simply enthusiasm. This was a passionate persuasion. Curry engaged people: the eye-contact, the pauses, the connection – did you see the smile he got from David Beckham?! He knew his material and where he was going. He had crafted his words and rhetoric carefully (Ian Paul details some of this helpfully). So preachers, what have we been doing that people are so surprised by passion?

4. This was a preacher who had found his own voice.

One of the things we’re often told at ‘preaching class’ is to be yourself. Don’t try and be someone else. So for starters, that means the rest of us shouldn’t all try and preach exactly like Michael Curry next Sunday. Ok, yes, maybe we’d do well to take a leaf out of his passion book. But we’re all different, and so, for example, passion won’t look the same in everyone. But as Michael Sadgrove pointed out, I think it was clear that this guy was comfortable in his own skin. As a preacher, there’s something I envy about that.

5. To quote my friend Hugh Bourne, “it vindicated preaching as a highly effective means of communication.”

So often we’re told that preaching is old hat: people just can’t concentrate anymore. They want conversation, not one-way monologues. “To reach x, you need to quit preaching (x of course can be substituted for just about anyone: millennials/the working class/men, etc).” I think those 13 minutes have blown that out of the water. If people do decide they might just set foot in a church in the hope of hearing an engaging sermon, then let’s give thanks to God in his sovereignty for that. And God forbid that we stop working on our sermons.

6. Love is glorious.

Curry was big on love. The Times‘ even quoted Curry for their front-page wedding headline the next day: “There is power in love”.

Ok, so maybe we kind of expect that at a wedding. Indeed, a few people have pointed out that Curry hasn’t said anything “unusual” in that regard.

But to give his words credit, it was more than just saying “love matters”. It painted a beautiful and compelling vision of human life shaped by love. There is a lack of love across a world – in our commerce, our institutions, our families – we know that and feel that, and so we connect with Curry’s desire for something more. As someone said, “It captured doubters with a vision of hope. It gave a glimpse of the world we long for.”

7. But did Curry’s vision of love really showcase the glorious love of the gospel?

Now, here’s where someone starts to say, “Yeah, but you can’t expect him to say absolutely everything in just 13 minutes.” Sure, but I wonder if that’s ducking the question. Shouldn’t preachers be masters at deciding what to include and what not to include. (By the way, it seems remarkable that despite forty years of ministry, Curry says he was surprised to go over his official time limit by 200% !). One of the best preaching exercises someone set me was to get me to turn a 25-minute sermon into both a 10-minute sermon and a 2-minute ‘elevator pitch’. What do you cut – and how do you retain the heartbeat of your message? The idea is that time should never be an excuse for missing the heart of our message.

And then you see what Curry didn’t say. He was big on love, but it was chiefly a call for us to love. This sounds ‘Christian’ – but for all that it is glorious and noble and the aspiration of the Christian life, it isn’t the Christian good news. As Tim Keller puts it, we need good news, not just good advice. Because what happens when we fail to keep on loving? This, as I always tell couples, may seem a strange thought when you’re staring into each others’ eyes and the skies are metaphorically blue (and which wedding day isn’t like that?), but what happens when the clouds gather, a few years down the line? What happens when feelings change? When lovers ‘fall out of love’? When selfishness wages war in our hearts?

As Stephen McAlpine said, every wedding needs a cross. Even Royal Weddings, as anyone who has seen The Crown or read the papers over the last thirty-seven years knows. And not just a Jesus who dies on the cross as an example of sacrifice, not even a vague sacrifice “for the good of others,” but a Jesus who died to rescue sinners and to win forgiveness. Every bride and groom – and every human – needs to be faced with the reality of our own sin – yes, in a gentle and appropriate way – and to be shown that we have a Royal Bridegroom who gives his life to love the unlovable.

To those who think this is wanting to have our cake and eat it, maybe it’s helpful to see the concern is not so much that Curry just made a few poor choices about what to leave on the cutting room floor, but that the gospel of forgiveness of sin through faith and repentance was probably never was on his radar. And that takes us to the question of what’s going on below the bonnet in Curry’s theology…

8. Sermons never stand alone.

The preacher and ‘the preach’ are inextricably linked. That’s just a Bible principle. We’re not professionals performing an act. The person – their conduct and lifestyle – matters, and this is important for understanding some of the pushback against Curry’s sermon. Curry is the leading Bishop in The Episcopal Church (TEC), the American branch of the worldwide Anglican communion. More significantly, TEC has effectively been under sanctions since 2016, following its “fundamental departure” from Christian teaching when it changed its doctrine on marriage. Not just that, but TEC – under Curry – have been taking to court those churches who have stood up to those changes. Churches holding to historical Christianity have been stripped of their buildings and assets. Over the weekend I heard the leader of one such church wondering how exactly that fits with the “power of love” referenced in Curry’s sermon.

Therefore it’s no surprise that many have taken the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to Curry to preach in England – and at a wedding, no less – as making a mockery of those sanctions. Curry then partook in a Thy Kingdom Come Beacon event at St Albans’ Cathedral. If you hold to an orthodox position on sexuality, it’s hard not to interpret this as a clever step towards normalising TEC’s teaching within the Church of England, which is currently at logger-heads on the issue.

Now, the most common response to this goes something like: “The sermon wasn’t about sex, so what’s with the big deal – and wasn’t he great!” But I wonder if that’s exactly the point. The normalising has occurred. In a sense, it doesn’t matter what he said. His position in the pulpit establishes his theology’s place at the table.

9. Lastly then, how do we talk about the sermon?

It’s very interesting to see how this sermon has divided people. Glen Scrivener parallels it to the Yanny or Laurel debate that raged online last week.

It’s complex, because many of the responses have not just been responses to the sermon, but responses to the responses to the sermon. Still following? In other words, you seemed to like it, so I need to show you why you’re being naive. Or, you seemed to write it off as heresy, so I need to show you’re why you’re a cold, heartless fundamentalist.

And part of the complication is that we’re just not used to having Christian sermons being broadcast on national TV – and then discussed unceasingly on social media. The only time we get remotely close to that is The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast, Hugh Palmer’s slot on The One Show, or someone grabbing a live mic to share their testimony.

So there’s a sense in which many of us want to celebrate it – as well as use it as an opportunity to get others thinking about Christianity, rather than simply bemoaning it. Of course, part of that opportunity may be expressing that a world full of love would be incredible, but that you feel Curry could have done more to showcase how God’s love makes that possible. And yet, we also need to allow that space for winsome conversation and critique – rare in a social media age – which is particularly pertinent given Curry’s role as leading a branch of the Church that has departed from orthodox, historical Christianity.

But the dress was nice, wasn’t it?

Now, for something a bit different…