PCN Newsletter 7th May 2020

Thursday 7th May 2020

In our seventh newsletter we feature contributions from others.

I live in the Diocese of Worcester where, for the last thirteen years or so, the diocesan focus has been on our identity as Kingdom People. I have found and still find find this language unhelpful if we wish to communicate with people who are not biblically literate. Although we live in the United Kingdom, our monarch is merely constitutional. There are very few countries in the world which still have a real king or queen. The canonical gospels are of a time of kings and emperors and in three of them Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God/heaven. Given that he proclaims the kingdom of God as opposed to the kingdom of Caesar, my question is: What would Jesus be proclaiming in our day, these more democratic times? From what principalities and powers do people need to be liberated? In his mercifully short born-again Christian phase, Bob Dylan wrote a powerful song entitled “You’ve gotta serve somebody.” It’s a litany of all the false contenders for the throne of our lives. I find myself wondering about this now because, during Easter week, I watched and listened to the English Touring Opera’s production of Bach’s St John Passion. I was arrested by the words which are John 19:15b-16: Pilate said to [the crowd], “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” So he delivered him over to be crucified. The chief priests, of all people, say, “We have no king but Caesar.” They have really lost their way. It seems to me that, in their praise of President Trump, the American Christian Right, whether evangelical or Catholic, and anyone following their example, on either side of the pond, is saying, “We have no king but Caesar.” Like the chief priests and scribes, they are deaf to the prophets, who declare that God says that religion without social justice is bankrupt, and deaf to Jesus, who calls us to walk with him in the way of the cross, the costly way of loving our neighbours as ourselves. Jesus and the prophets call us to a revolutionary form of service, not of the powerful or of what they promise, but of one another, with the throne of our lives occupied by no one other than Love, the One who is universally and inexhaustibly gracious and compassionate. As in the parable of the Good Samaritan, we are called not to be more religious but to be more human. So I conclude with the words of a French Jesuit, the late Teilhard de Chardin: We are not human beings learning to be spiritual. We are spiritual beings learning to be human. Peter Knight, PCN member Evesham

Ben Whitney has shared with us a powerpoint presentation (with audio) on his website (www.ben-whitney.org.uk) on the topic, ‘Who wrote the Bible? This is the presentation that Ben would have been giving at the East Shropshire PCN group meeting on May 18th. Feedback to Ben via his website is always welcome and you are even invited to set up your own Zoom (or similar) meeting and ask him to join once you’ve listened to it.