Imagine yourself a cloned child created from the DNA of a wealthy person who wants to have your organs available for transplant, when he later needs them. The only life you know as a child is as one of a large number of other clones who are kept in the setting of an isolated English boarding school, Hailsham, where none of you has any contact with the outside world. Initially, you have no idea of your intended destiny, as an organ donor.

At age 18, you leave Hailsham for other supervised accommodation, where you will live until you become an organ “donor,” usually in a sequence of “retrieval operations,” finally being killed when an unpaired vital organ is taken.

In the film of Kazuo Ishiguro’s book, Never Let Me Go, which is playing in Canada, we watch this dystopic and unethical example of a rapidly developing field called “regenerative medicine” (which, used ethically, offers great hope), being played out against a tragic love story that involves three of these young people. Through this love story, we understand how fully human they are, in contrast to the immense dehumanization to which they are subjected.

Reviewers have commented that the film is unusual in being a science-fiction story set in the past, the 1950s and ’60s. But what makes it so spine-chilling is that we come to realize that our present world is the future Ishiguro describes. Many scenarios it portrays, such as organ transplantation, and genetic and reproductive technologies, which were unknown in the ’50s and ’60s, are now science-fact. The film delivers a powerful message that we need to become much more sensitive than we currently are to the ethics issues 21st-century technoscience raises.

Here are some of the lessons we can take from it.

The cloned children are regarded by the people who run their school as repositories of organs rather than as individual persons, as objects, not human subjects. This dehumanization is inflicted both through the way in which the children are treated and language.

They are constantly monitored with electronic bracelets, like animals are with computer chips. One supervisor, obviously meaning to be empathetic, remarks, “you poor creatures.” Creatures is a word we use to refer to animals, usually when we are differentiating them from humans. And someone queries whether they have a soul. What is clear is that in dehumanizing the children, these people dehumanize themselves more.

A major current example of dehumanization through language involves human embryos and fetuses. Human embryo research is justified by describing the embryos as “just a bunch of cells” and, in abortion, fetuses are characterized as “just unwanted tissue, part of the woman’s body, not a child.”

The physicians and nurses responsible for keeping the children healthy, so later their organs can be used, also dehumanize them. In medically examining them, they act as though they are mechanics making sure a car is in good running order, not health-care professionals caring for patients. Most horrific in this regard, is the scene showing surgeons undertaking a vital-organ-retrieval-operation that kills the “donor.” They carefully take the organ, then instantly “pull the plug” on both the life support technology and any engagement with the “patient,” simply walking out leaving the dead body on the operating table, bleeding, not even bothering to suture the wound. Even in death the person is not respected as human.

Who were these physicians and nurses? How could they be in involved in such evil, such appalling violation of medical ethics? That same question has often been asked by scholars in relation to the Nazi doctors in the death camps. Are comparable unethical operations taking place in some countries today, for instance, using prisoners as “donors”? Might some Canadians be recipients of these organs?

How could society allow this to happen? Why wasn’t it prohibited and severely punished? Or was society complicit in the evil by funding the technoscience that made it possible, without ensuring that technoscience was used only ethically?

Who were the scientists who made the clones and what ethical requirements should have governed them?

And where were society’s watchdogs, the medical and scientific bodies responsible for ensuring ethics in the professions? Or was it a situation where the legislated safeguards were inoperative.

It’s clear in the book that “farming” these children is a lucrative commercial industry. This brings to mind the “fertility industry” that markets assisted reproductive technologies, bringing in $3.3 billion annually, in the United States alone. It’s an area that needs very close ethical supervision, yet it’s common to hear it referred to as the “Wild West of human reproduction.” Note also the unethical international organ transplant industry that the recent Declaration of Istanbul seeks to eliminate.

Another warning comes from the intentional use of euphemistic or obfuscating language by those involved in the “cloning-transplant project.” Euphemisms can skew our perceptions about ethics, probably by suppressing moral intuitions that clear language would elicit and which would function as ethical red alerts.

The person cloned, is referred to simply as the clone’s “original.” The clones go looking for their “originals.” They describe sighting a person, who might be such, as seeing a “possible.” Especially in the book, Ishiguro captures, exactly as I’ve personally heard donor-conceived people express it, their anguish at not knowing, but longing to know, their biological antecedents.

The word “kill” is never used and even the word “death” is avoided, as is often true of pro-euthanasia advocates. Rather, the final fatal surgery is referred to as a “completion.” A nurse remarks that “some donors look forward to completion,” which is not surprising seeing the immensely debilitated state of the young people, who have already made multiple donations. Towards the end of the film, the former headmistress of Hailsham, now retired and in a wheelchair, remarks, philosophically, “that we all have to complete sometime.” That’s true, but how we “complete” is the critical ethical issue, as we can see in the present euthanasia debate.

That brings us to convergence, which refers to interventions that become possible only through the combination of separate technologies. Never Let Me Go is a story of the convergence of genetic and reproductive technologies — cloning, in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood — and organ transplant technologies.

Each technology, taken alone, raises serious ethical issues, but combined they raise ethical issues of a different order, as we see in Never Let Me Go. And such issues might be closer to us, than most of us realize.

Is it ethical for people who are euthanized, in countries where this is legal, to become organ donors? There have been recent reports of this at transplantation conferences and in the medical literature.

And here’s another presently possible scenario of convergence, the only element of which is illegal in Canada would be cloning the embryo, which advocates of human embryo research have argued should be allowed for “therapeutic purposes”: Create an in vitro embryo and take one cell, when all cells are still totipotential (can form another embryo) to make a second embryo. Transfer the first embryo to a woman’s uterus and freeze the second embryo. When, as a born child or adult, the first embryo needs an organ transplant, transfer the second embryo to a surrogate mother, abort the fetus at a late stage and use its organs.

Finally, a statement from the wheel-chair-bound ex-head mistress of Hailsham merits noting with respect to the philosophy and values on which we should base our ethics. It shows her exclusively rational approach to the horror of what she helped to inflict on the children in her charge.

Two of them, who are now adults and in love, come to her seeking a deferral of the “completion” organ retrieval surgery on the young man, so they can have some time together before he is killed. She tells them that is not possible and enquires, rhetorically, “Would you ask people to return to lung cancer, heart failure and other terrible diseases?”

Never Let Me Go is a searing lesson about the “ethics outcomes” that can result from pure utilitarianism and moral relativism, when they are used to govern the new technoscience by people without a moral conscience or moral intuition.

Margaret Somerville DCL, LL.D, is the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University.

Printed with permission of the author.

This article was first published in the Ottawa Citizen

I have an actor friend, Joe Abbey-Colborne, who worked with me in campus evangelism nearly twenty years ago. When I first suggested a collaboration to him, he was nervous. He had had too many experiences of doing dramatic sketches, then having a preacher stand up and say, “Now, I hope you understand that this character represents Jesus, and that the lesson the sketch holds for us is the following.” I promised I would never do anything of the sort.

C.S.Lewis had similar worries about The Chronicles of Narnia. He was emphatic that the Narnia stories are not an allegory, like Pilgrim’s Progress, or even his own Pilgrim’s Regress, where a is meant to represent b, and c to represent d. They are rather, he suggested, a “supposal.” Suppose that the God who created our world created life on other planets, and suppose that this God chose to communicate with them, what that communication look like? Naturally, there would be similarities to our experience of God in our world—we might recognise something of the same flavour—the same style if you will—of God as we know God in Jesus Christ. And yet it would be distinctive.

As a result, with the exception of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first (and, I would argue, the weakest—he got better as he went along) of the books, while we may recognise Christian themes in Aslan’s dealings with the Narnian world (his loving strength, his demand for trust, his willingness to be intimate with his creatures), there are few one-to-one correspondences with the story of God as we know it.

His goal, he told his friend George Sayer, was “a sort of pre-baptism of the child’s imagination.” Sayer comments, “His hope was that when, at an older age, the child came into contact with the real truths of Christianity, he or she would find these truths easier to accept because of reading with pleasure and accepting stories with similar themes years before.” [1]

In a sense, Lewis is giving his readers the opportunity to follow the course of his own spiritual journey: raised in the Anglican church, but finding it lifeless, and turning instead to atheism; having experiences of “joy” through reading pagan mythology; and finally returning to Christian faith (and Anglicanism) by realising (with the help of his friend Tolkien) that the mythology he had loved was really pointing him beyond itself to a depth in Christianity—the true joy—that he had never known as a child.  The Chronicles seek to circumvent the “watchful dragons”[2] too often associated with “religion.”

Naturally, there are few hints in the Chronicles themselves that this is Lewis’ goal. That would be to subvert his intention—not to say ruin a perfectly good story. But in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he gives two very strong hints of what he is about.

One takes place when Lucy is in the magician’s house on the Island of the Voices, reading through the book of spells. She comes across a story “for the refreshment of the spirit,” which takes up three pages and tells “about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill.” She says, “That is the loveliest story I’ve read or ever shall read in my whole life.” Yet as soon as the story is done, she cannot recall it, nor can she turn the pages back. She asks Aslan, “Will you tell it to me, Aslan?” And he says, “Indeed, yes. I will tell it to you for years and years.”[3] For the thoughtful reader, it raises the question of where Lucy might find such a story in our world. Christian readers already know.

The other place is right at the end of the book, when the children are about to return to their own world, and Lucy weeps because (she thinks) they will never see Aslan again. Aslan says, “But you shall meet me, dear one.” Edmund doesn’t understand: “Are—are you there too, sir?” To which Aslan replies:

“I am . . . But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. That was the very reason you were brought into Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”[4]

Again, Lewis is putting a grain of sand into the oyster of the reader’s mind: what on earth is Aslan’s “other name” in our world? How can we possibly know the fictional Aslan in our own world? How can there have been a this-worldly “purpose” to our reading about Narnia? Lewis is not going to tell us: but he wants us to think about it, and (with the help of the Spirit) to discover the answer.

Lewis is a good evangelist—clear about The Story but respectful, winsome and imaginative in how he presents it, seeking a response and yet encouraging us to figure it out for ourselves. We could do worse than to follow his example. And maybe the movie—if it as faithful to the book as it is supposed to be—will be helpful to us in our own evangelism.

[2] Lewis, C.S. “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said”, in Of This and Other Worlds (London: Collins Fount Paperbacks, 1984), 72.

[3] Lewis, C.S. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, 1965), 134, 137.

[4] Ibid., 209.

…what consolation have we in this human society, so replete with mistaken notions and distressing anxieties, except the unfeigned faith and mutual affections of genuine, loyal friends? ~ St. Augustine, City of God, XIX.8

St. Augustine knew that friendship was a gift from God—that true joy in life was not to be found without friends and the gift of their love and company.  In fact, for Augustine, God’s grace of salvation is not something that is had in isolation but only had in the chorus of friendship.

Adam Eliot, the Australian director behind the 2003 Oscar-winning animated short, Harvey Krumpet, has made his full-length debut with Mary & Max, a claymation tale about two archetypal ‘outsiders’ who strike up a rare and deep, although unlikely friendship.

Mary Daisy Dinkle (voiced by Toni Collette) is a lonely, friendless eight year old growing up in suburban Melbourne with an alcoholic mother and a taxidermy-obsessed and neglectful father in the late 1970’s who spends her days eating chocolate and drinking condensed milk.  In her youthful curiosity, she finds a name and an address in a New York phone book.  On the other end of that address we find Max Jerry Horowitz (voiced brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman, doing his best New York Yiddish accent), an obese 44 year old Jewish man with undiagnosed Asperger’s whose only human contact is with his Overeater’s Anonymous group or his blind elderly Chinese neighbour.

Their improbable pen-pal friendship develops over a host of letters sent back and forth (letters which send Max into an anxiety attack each time he gets one).  The story follows their friendship over two decades as it expands and contracts with the joys of life (love, dreams, accomplishments) and with its sometimes dark realities (anxiety, broken relationships, depression, suicide).  As each of them try to struggle to feel their way to some sense of connection—to some sense of normalcy—their friendship grows and in fact, their salvation is found in their bond of mutual affection.  

The film is a visual treat as it beautifully breathes and moves in hues of browns and greys.  The handcrafted claymation, from the suburbs of Melbourne to the streets of New York, softens the depth to which this movie plunges the viewer (though animated, it is not for children).  In any other medium, the film would have failed to hold the viewer.  After watching the movie, if you’re like me, you’ll feel as if you’ve been given a gift, as if you’ve been allowed, for a few hours, to eavesdrop on the beauty of a friendship that knows not the boundaries of conventional relationships.  This is a movie about friendship at its most raw—deep, dark, and dazzling at once and it sticks to your ribs long after it’s over.

After Mary has wronged Max, he recognizes that true friendship includes forgiveness, so he writes to her:

The hurt felt like when I accidentally stapled my lips together. The reason I forgive you is because you are not perfect. You are imperfect, and so am I. All humans are imperfect, even the man outside my apartment who litters. When I was young I wanted to be anybody but myself. Dr. Benard Hazelhof said if I was on a desert island, then I would have to get used to my own company. Just me and the coconuts. He said I would have to accept myself, my warts and all. And that we don’t get to choose our warts, they are a part of us and we have to live with them. We can, however, choose our friends. And I am glad I have chosen you. Dr. Hazelhof also said that everyone’s lives are like a very long sidewalk. Some are well paved. Others, like mine, have cracks, banana skins and cigarette butts. Your sidewalk is like mine, but probably not as many cracks. Hopefully one day our sidewalks will meet and we can share a can of condensed milk. You are my best friend. You are my only friend.

I think I’d be hard pressed to find a better definition of the church than this (and St. Augustine, I think, would agree!): a community of friends whose sidewalks—cracks, banana peels, and cigarette butts—meet and share in the joy of God’s covenanted friendship with us, warts and all.

Well it’s got to be a chocolate Jesus

Make me feel good inside

Got to be a chocolate Jesus

Keep me satisfied…

When the weather gets rough

Its best to wrap your saviour

Up in cellophane

A sweet, user-friendly, emotionally sensitive Jesus, that’s what we want!  I had this song in mind as I watched the recent film, Henry Poole is Here.

It stars Luke Wilson as Henry Poole and a hodge-podge cast including George Lopez as Father Salazar, a Roman Catholic priest and Adrianna Barraza (of Babel fame where she played Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett’s Mexican nanny) as Esperanza, Mr. Poole’s nosy but well intentioned neighbour.

We meet Henry Poole as a miserable and disillusioned man who goes into hiding in the docile middleclass suburbs where he grew up, seeking anonymity and the bottom of many bottles.   He reluctantly buys a blue stucco house across the street from the home in which he was raised (reluctantly because as much as he wants to buy his old home, the family that now lives there won’t sell it to him).  And so, he’s consigned himself to a life of seclusion, resentment, and hostility in a house that he is entirely disconnected from.

His isolation is interrupted by Esperanza, his pious Roman Catholic neighbour, who drops by to find out just who it is who moved into the house next door.  During her initial visit, Esperanza discovers a water stain on Henry’s outside stucco wall in the likeness of the face of Christ.  This discovery quickly, and in some of the most moving scenes of the picture, beautifully and sublimely becomes saturated with claims of miraculous power.  This ironically leads to Henry’s eleventh-hour hideout turning into a community shrine.

Henry’s deep cynicism plays out in a series of efforts to rid the wall of the stain and to rid himself of his new ‘friends’ and their faith in this miracle.  In fact, for most of the film, Henry is at pains to rid himself of this stucco Jesus as this is a Jesus that Henry definitely doesn’t want.  This is not a do-it-yourself Jesus, or a sweet, sensitive, emotionally nurturing Chocolate Jesus but a persistent, relentless, and unyielding Stucco Jesus who completely maddens Henry with his presence.

I won’t give away anymore of the film, but I do want to underscore what this film gets.  It gets that God’s grace is often a messy and unexpected thing that interrupts our plans and transforms us in spite of ourselves, especially in spite of our cynicism.  The whole gospel message of death and resurrection, of repentance and forgiveness, and of transformation and reconciliation is all played out in this film in and through the face of Christ—which is a rarity indeed.

What else to look for: a stunning performance by one of the supporting cast, Rachel Seiferth as the dorky and inquisitive grocery clerk aptly named Patience.

I’m not a big video-gamer.  With that said, I need to make a confession: it’s not because I’m anti-video game but because my parents knew full well that my addictive personality would have attached itself to video games and would never have let go.  So, I was never allowed to own a game system growing up; although my brother and I were allowed to rent them over a weekend once in a while which would turn into sleep-starved days of video game binging that only served to underscore my parents’ point!

I went through university and graduate studies never owning one, but I was really too busy to notice.  Either that, or I was too poor to buy one, I’m not sure which.  Now, I’ve got my own family and life is much too hectic to even find the time to sit down and play video games.  This is all to say that video game culture has never become a part of my life, until now.

My father-in-law recently purchased a PS3 (that’s a “Sony PlayStation 3”, for those of you who are not down with the lingo) to go with his new High Definition TV.  We visited a few weeks ago and our four year old son was quickly introduced to this culture.  Watching him clutch the game controller was like watching a smuggler holding onto his cherished contraband as a smile of wild hilarity mixed with mischievousness gripped his face.   A racing game with intense graphics and pounding music promptly became his favourite.  I should admit, partly because my wife reads this column and partly because I’m honest, that I got hooked too (now, two in the morning isn’t that crazy a time to be sitting alone giddily driving a rally car across the desert is it?).

What really took me by surprise was how proficient my son became at this game.  After only a few tries, he was keeping his vehicle on course, passing other cars and making good time around the track.  Not only that, driving home down the highway he was giving me lessons from the back seat on exactly how to pass other cars at high rates of speed!

Regardless, what I took from this little foray into the alternative reality of “Video Game Land” was how quickly and thoroughly our children are shaped and formed by what we put in front of them.  Not only that, I’m amazed at how skilled and adept, at how well versed a four year old can become in the habits and skills of this culture.

While I’m aware and convinced of the potential dangers of video-game addiction and the abhorrent nature of some of these games that make Quentin Tarantino look like a younger, edgier Walt Disney, I’m not overly interested in weighing in on this.  What I am interested in is the simply fact that these ‘alternative’ realities so deeply and completely capture the imagination of our children and young people (and sometimes even a husband or two!).

Our imaginations, especially those of children, are apprehended and formed by what’s around us.  What the church often forgets and neglects is that it is in the imagination business, as deeply and completely as something like the video game industry is.  We don’t often think of the church in this way, but it’s imperative that we re-capture this sense of ecclesial imagination if we are to be, in any way, a witness to God’s action in our world.

At a very basic level, the church imagines a different world, not because it’s in the business of making stuff up, but because it follows Jesus who, in himself, brings God’s imagination to bear on all things.  When the church gathers as followers of this Jesus, it can’t help but imagine that everything is different because this Jesus showed up on the stage of history and imagined God’s very kingdom into existence.

Much as our imagination is trained and shaped by what we spend time with—be it videogames, movies, television, the internet, or the ever-beloved IPod (a word which, by the way, my spellchecker recognizes!)—the church’s imagination is shaped and trained in its worship and in its life together.  It’s in this life together, in our liturgy, where we learn to inhabit and act out this kingdom among us.  Our communal reading of Scripture, our prayers, our table fellowship, and our peace-sharing are some of the habits that shape us; they are some of the spiritual disciplines that form us and ought to form our children.

But our church has often failed children and young people at the fundamental level of capturing their imaginations and worlds with the amazing and exhilarating adventure of the kingdom of God.  We continually make the same mistake the disciples did—we assume that this kingdom of God stuff is grown-up and important business.

I’m fully conscious that it’s not easy for the church to keep the attention of children and young people these days.  Maybe it’s because we live in a world where there is so much sheer competition vying for the attention of our children that the church is fatally doomed from the start, or maybe, just maybe, it’s because we ourselves aren’t sufficiently hooked.

Let’s start with the first single “Get On Your Boots” (GOYB), released a month before the album No Line On The Horizon (NLOTH). While panned by some critics, GOYB served the role that U2 seems to look for in a first single—revealing the band’s new musical and thematic direction (and getting folks excited that “U2 is back!”). GOYB offers a different sound from previous albums, but the lyrics also deserve some attention. Bono singing of “love and community” how “the future needs a big kiss”, and not wanting “to talk about wars between nations” makes one thing clear—on this album U2 won’t be dealing with the familiar issue of social injustice (in concert is another story though). GOYB’s repeating phrase “let me in the sound” is also intriguing. Is it frivolous or does it have some meaning? We’ll return to that point shortly. What is clear is that something new is afoot for U2 on this album.

No Line on the Horizon, the album, begins in an unusual spot for U2. While the band’s past few albums start in a broken world but lead the listener to spiritual safety (see album-closing songs like “Grace” and “Yahweh”), NLOTH turns this approach upside down. The title track bursts open the album with a mix of heavy guitar, drums and Dr. Who-like sonic effects that conjure a sense of racing over a body of water—fitting, given the album’s cover art of merging sea and sky. Bono’s wavering vocals express how “infinity is a great place to start” and “time is irrelevant, not linear.” Bono has described “No Line on the Horizon” as that place where the earth meets the sky, and possibilities seem infinite. U2 drew near to this space in songs like “Gloria” (from the album October) and “Where the Streets Have No Name” (from The Joshua Tree), but here they’ve gone deeper, crossed a line (no pun intended) and reached an altogether different place.

Hints of that somewhere different can be found in Bono’s recent comparison of NLOTH to The Beatles’ White Album. With closer inspection, the comparison is fitting. While The Beatles went to India on pilgrimage to meet the Maharishi and write music for the White Album, U2 went to Fez, Morocco, to attend the World Festival of Sacred Music and work on NLOTH.  While there, members of U2 seem to have taken inspiration from the faith expression of Sufism, a sect of Islam found in North Africa, whose members seek ecstatic communion with God through physical, emotional, and vocal expression—a form of faith that three members of U2 are familiar with from their early days as members of a charismatic Christian group named “Shalom.” While The Beatles’ White Album was a double album, and “No Line on the Horizon” a single CD, U2 have recently mentioned a “companion disc.” Scheduled for release in late 2009 or early 2010, the new disc is to be named “Songs of Ascent” and is described by Bono as a “ghost album of hymns and Sufi singing . . . a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflexive piece of work”.

One need not wait for the next album to ascend though. The heavenly direction of NLOTH continues with “Magnificent,” a song carried by a powerful drum rhythm that will no doubt shake stadium audiences and rally them to singing. Lyrics about making “a joyful noise,” being “justified until we die,” and “you and I will magnify, oh, the magnificent,” take the album deeper into the unusual territory of unbridled expression of faith and hope, unhindered by the earthly challenges previously encountered in U2′s music. What U2 has been reaching for throughout their career seems finally within reach here. Bono told Rolling Stone magazine that “The Magnificent” was inspired by “The Magnificat,” the gospel passage where Mary expresses joy at being chosen to be the mother of Jesus. By choosing the term “The Magnificent,” one of Islam’s 99 names of God, and shooting a creatively spiritual music video for the song in Fez, Morocco, U2 also extend an olive branch and find common ground with Muslims.

“Moment of Surrender” is a slow gospel tune that stands out with its moving vocals and evocative imagery. The line about “love believing in me” may ring a bit over the top for some, particularly Christians familiar with such language, but the lines, “I did not notice the passers-by, and they did not notice me,” and “a vision over visibility,” describe a scene of spiritual conversion or renewal at its most tender and intimate.

Opening with an exquisite “sunshine” harmony, “Unknown Caller” picks up the pace while carrying on the theme of renewal found in “Moment of Surrender.”  U2 guitarist The Edge described the song’s narrator as being “in an altered state, and his phone starts talking to him.” The lyrics “cease to speak, that I may speak” echo Psalm 46:10—“Be still and know that I am God.” While the language of entering passwords and rebooting yourself initially sound awkward, the power of `this song grows and will no doubt stir stadiums to sing along. Observant fans will note how “Unknown Caller” uses a reference to 3:33 on a clock, which U2 also used as an airport gate (J33-3) on the cover art of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. During press for that album, Bono told Rolling Stone that it refers to Jeremiah 33:3 (“Call to me and I will answer you”) and described it as “God’s phone number.

Bono speeds up his phrasing and applies his falsetto skills in “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.” While the lyrics in “Crazy” seem random at times, lines such as, “Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear” and “a change of heart comes slowly,” are intriguing, if not familiar. When added to others such as “it’s not a hill it’s a mountain” and “we’re going to make it, all the way to the light,” one can hear echoes of Martin Luther King’s famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. It is tempting to wonder if Obama’s historic election inspired Bono to write this song, one of the album’s stronger tracks.

While the US reference may be subtle, there are Canadian connections to NLOTH worth mentioning. First, there is Daniel Lanois, the musician and producer who, along with English artist and producer Brian Eno, worked on this and many other U2 albums. Then there is Lori Anna Reid, a talented Canadian singer who receives a mention in the CD liner notes. Daniel Lanois explained to the National Post (March 11^th 2009) how U2 were looking for hymns to draw inspiration from while they attempted to create “future spirituals.” One of the ones Lori Anna suggested was “O Come, O Come Emanuel,” which U2 ended up working with when writing “White As Snow”. Finally, there is a connection to Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn. The line “shouting to the darkness, squeeze out sparks of light” from “I’ll Go Crazy” is a paraphrase of Cockburn’s lyrics on “Lovers in A Dangerous Time.” U2 referenced those lyrics more directly twenty years ago in the song “God Part II” from the album Rattle & Hum (“I heard a singer on the radio…say he’s gonna kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight”). “Cedars of Lebanon” also has a very Cockburn-style travel monologue that his fans will recognize and appreciate.

Let’s return now to that phrase “let me in the sound”. Bono sings it repeatedly in “Get On Your Boots”, and it echoes quietly at the start of “Fez Being Born”. It appears a third time on “Breathe” near the end of the album. Anything repeated on a U2 album is a concept with real currency. So what is this about? The answer may again lie in U2′s “pilgrimage” to Morocco. This repeating concept of entering the sound echoes the Sufi approach to finding union with God through music and dance. To this end we hear Bono calling out “meet me in the sound” in “Get On Your Boots”. Later in the song “Breathe,” Bono sings of being “people born of sound” and finding “grace inside a sound”. Who is being met here? U2 often leave much open to interpretation in their music, but the source of grace in this context rings most true when understood as God.

If the trajectory of recent U2 albums was an arc of challenge and adversity ending in hope, that journey is reversed on “No Line”. In fact Bono has said that you could call this album, “The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress.” It bears true, for while U2 start out elevated, magnifying “The Magnificent,” they descend into the earth’s atmosphere from that place in the heavens. Along the way they teach over-sensitive Christians a thing or two on “Stand Up Comedy” (“Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady”) while rallying them to live their faith in a “dizzy world.” Midway through the album songs deal with rebirth, and by the end, it lands in the middle of life’s challenges with “Cedars of Lebanon”, where a war journalist struggles with a “shitty world” that “sometimes produces a rose.”

It is fair to say that U2 have been seeking “grace inside a sound” their entire career. Bruce Springsteen may have described U2 best when inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, calling them “a band that wanted to lay claim to not only this world, but had their eyes on the next one as well.” U2 prove Springsteen true on No Line on the Horizon. Grabbing hold of the sky right from the start, U2 refuse to let go, pulling the power of heaven down into the heart of earth’s challenges. Bridging divisions and erasing boundaries, whether between the stage and audience, between east and west, or between heaven and earth, is what U2 has been all about for some 30 years now. With this new tour, concertgoers have the chance to join them in that journey, and find grace inside a sound. Many will lose themselves for the evening in U2’s fantastic light and sound show. Some will be found in the sound as well.

Henry is also author of Faith, hope and U2: the language of love in the music of U2 a booklet in the Institute of Evangelism’s Dare series.

We all know what Jesus did to the herd of swine in the gospel story when he allowed the demons who were harassing the demoniac to enter into the herd grazing nearby. Not a PETA poster moment, for sure.

Three weeks ago in Egypt, the government there began a pig slaughter on a slightly bigger scale: some 350,000 pigs were led to the slaughter for fear of the dreaded “swine” flu. Countries all over the world began to ban pork imports from North America and we saw news clips of well-intentioned people (usually in the grocery store, mid-shopping) telling the reporters that they were eliminating pork from their diet, “just in case.”

What these stories intimately share is the fact of possession, of being possessed. In the gospel story, the demonic possession of the pigs leads to their plunging death off the cliff. In our more recent dealings with swine (which extends far beyond Egypt’s rash reaction), it is us, as a culture that is possessed. We are a society that is possessed by fear and being possessed by fear always ends in death.

The days following the swine flu outbreak from Mexico were a newsmaker’s dream and an opportunity for our culture of fear to kick it into high gear. A new, hybrid flu that was unheard of with a catchy name, and an increasing death count—what more could the networks ask for? We were then all witnesses and participants in a quickly escalating panic.

Why did alarm spread so fast even though this flu turned out to be nowhere near as fatal as a regular seasonal flu? Why were we so quick to panic? I think Frank Furedi, in his book Culture of Fear, hints at why when he reminds us that “the risks that kill you are not necessarily the ones that provoke and frighten you.” What does he mean by that? He simply means that while we are afraid of what statistically usually kills us (cancer, heart disease, and stroke) we are, as a culture, more pointedly afraid of terrorism, school shootings, pedophiles, serial killers and these new killer viruses (which, statistically, come nowhere near to the risk of the big three above).

So, again, why did panic spread so quickly over a flu that we now know was overblown? I think the answer is that, as a culture, we’ve transformed fear, like everything else, into a commodity that is bought and sold and we’ve become proficient peddlers and consumers of fear. In other words, just like sex, fear sells. And just like selling sex, marketers, advertisers and producers hold a vested interest in shaping our collective imagination and influencing our desires to line up with what they’re selling—and we’re buying.

In his book, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, Scott-Bader Saye makes the observation that in Scripture when we meet an angel from God, they begin their message with “fear not”. Why is that? He says he always thought that it was because angels must be such imposing and frightening figures. But there’s more to it than that. He thinks the reason they tell us to not be afraid is that the quieting of fear is required in order to hear and do what God asks of us. And I think he’s right.

Thomas Aquinas taught, eons ago, that disordered fear is a result of disordered desire. Simply put, we fear in deformed and distorted ways because our imaginations, and consequently, our desires are screwed up—which is another way of saying that we are a sinful people who can’t imagine a world of quieted fear and so we act, think, and speak accordingly.

You see, this culture of fear is all about shaping our imaginations through the various rituals that make up this culture from the ways and forms our news is disseminated to the methods with which producers market their products as the ‘safe’ alternative to their competitor’s. This is an embodied cultural reality that is practiced over and over again in order to intentionally form us to be a certain kind of people—in this case, scared.

As followers of Jesus in this culture, we are called to be a living alternative to it. Jesus, like God’s angels, told his disciples over and over again, “fear not”. As the church, our liturgy is all about shaping our imaginations through the rituals that make up this alternative culture of the church. Nowhere is this more clearly, visibly and physically true than in our practice of the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is an embodied reality that is practiced over and over again in order to intentionally form us to be a certain kind of people. It is the act of the church whereby it remembers who she is as follower of a crucified and risen Lord. So, it is in the ritual practice of the Eucharist that we learn that death is not the worst thing that can happen to us—which puts us deeply at odds with this predominant culture of fear which feeds off this fear of death.

As Bader-Saye notes, this isn’t about telling ourselves not to fear. Our fears are primal, overwhelming and overpowering. We can’t just tell ourselves to feel less fear—that would be disingenuous. What we need is for our desires and our fears to be re-ordered, or rather, rightly ordered. In other words, our overwhelming fears need themselves to be overwhelmed by something bigger and better. That is what we recognize and practice in the Eucharist. In consuming Jesus we are consumed into the body of Christ; we are consumed into a wonderful adventure where our fears are rightly ordered because we know this story to be ultimately hopeful and not tragic.

So what, in the end, of the pigs? It is our task, as those people whose imaginations are shaped and formed in the Eucharist to embody that imagination in our world through practices that upend the culture of fear. Being a people that don’t buy into the consumerism of fear is a good first step and is part and parcel of our commission as followers of Jesus in our world. We ought to be God’s disciplined people in a scared world—a people who practice hospitality to strangers, who love enemies, who bring gentleness to violence, a people who, in our day to day lives, are dispossessed of the demons of fear and filled with God’s Spirit of peace.

IKEA North York presents…SENSTATIONAL SUNDAY MORNINGS!!

Sunday Mornings are a great time for family, big breakfasts and coming to IKEA! Starting on February 22nd and running on

March 1st, 8th and 15th. IKEA North York will have another great reason to come to IKEA. We will have 2 crazy offers on great products.

From 10am-12pm the Sales team will reduce 2 good products at 50% off!

There will also be a great reason to bring the kids…

From 10:30am to 11:30am kids can enjoy a fun activity in the restaurant!

This advertisement was flanked by a picture of a happy nuclear family full of joy, optimism and looking so über-cool with their new IKEA gear. So there it was: “Sunday mornings at IKEA”-what every family is looking for! Drop the kids off at the activity center, eat good, inexpensive food and funkify (please excuse my creative vocabulary) your life at unbeatable prices all in one Sunday morning!

Now the reason that IKEA (bless its soul for where else could I find a lint roller for that price?) represents a challenge to the church is because it’s out-narrating the church; it’s beating the church at its own game of narrating and embodying a story about what life is all about. It’s not IKEA alone that’s successful here but it’s a good representative of the whole culture of commerce and consumption and its ideals. In fact, the whole industry of advertising is based on successfully narrating a way of life-a way of life that you can’t help but want to be a part of.

Do you know why IKEA is so successful? I mean, we’re in the middle of a recession and the place was packed with people with their carts full of stuff (ours included). The reason IKEA is thriving is because it knows its story, it knows how to tell and embody its story of consumption at fair prices. It knows its end goal, its reason for being. In other words, IKEA knows how to do its IKEA thing, and it performs it well. In fact, walking the halls, you can read the narrative about how IKEA came into being. They sure know how to tell a story.

“Church” names a story, it names a people, it names a certain performance; simply put, it names a way of life. Being a part of the church means being a part of this performance, embodying this way of life. The church tells and lives out a story about what life is all about. In doing so, it narrates an alternative story to the one our culture, so effectively told by IKEA, does. What does this mean? It means, simply, that the church tells a different story than our world does. This ought not to come as a surprise, since the Jesus we follow embodied an immeasurably different story than did the world of his day.

But it’s when the church forgets who she is-when she forgets what her story is-that the church misses the whole point of this following Jesus thing. It’s then that the church starts to listen and buy into the stories that are told around it; stories like the myth of redemptive violence, or the story of unlimited consumption of resources, or the story of homeland safety and security at all costs, or the story of self-concern over the concern of those on the edge of society. Maybe it’s as simple as the story of “the best bang for your buck”-a story told without narrating anything about the condition of the production or the producers of our goods. The stories told around us are legion and often very attractive. When the church forgets to do its church thing, it loses its way.

Remember what happened to Israel when Israel forgot to do its Israel thing? Babylonian captivity, period. So, when we bemoan the state of the church, or when we contemplate the nature of cultural shifts and what role the church should play in them, we need, above all things, to remember that the malaise the church finds itself in (call it whatever you like, “ecclesial recession” is one of my favourites!) is first of all a loss of identity, which is a long way of saying that we find ourselves in our own Babylonian captivity.

Answers? Well, I get asked a lot, probably because I’m a young priest, about how the church is going to move forward into the future. And right now many Dioceses in our church are working with strategic plans as they look to that future. Let me add something that’s seemingly obvious but that gets lost ‘on the ground’ as it were: no amount of strategic planning, no number of core values, no measure of problem solving will secure the future of the Anglican Church in Canada if we are not willing to radically re-think what it means to be a church in a culture that has by-and-large forgotten about the church! Before we crunch the numbers, before we throw solutions at our problems, what this Babylonian captivity ought to engender and create is a penitential community-a community that can acknowledge our collective failure to embody the gospel call to live out the Kingdom of God in our world.

Answers?  I only have one.  Only God rescues. Only God takes unfaithful Israel back. Only God can rescue his people. I’m writing this on the tail end of Lent as we approach the celebration of resurrection. At Easter we tell and embody the story in our services, in our pageants, and in our choir choruses, of a God who rescues, and in the resurrection rescue of love that raised our Lord from the grave, rescues us as well. That’s good news; and, it’s incomparably better news-and a much better story!-than Sensational Sunday Mornings at IKEA.

Slumdog Millionaire

If you are not familiar with the film the synopsis can be found on Wikipedia. I want to restrict my review to the film as a context for raising Gospel issues with friends.

Firstly, the film presents us with opportunities to talk about child exploitation, not only in India but globally.  Deliberately acquiring orphans to maim them for begging or to groom them for sexual abuse is a subject we might find abhorrent but nothing is beyond the degradation of sinful humanity.  In a post-modern society we need to engage with a public who are still interested in the concept of “evil”.

Secondly, the film deals with a “worldview” that embraces destiny (kismet) that engenders fatalism.  As all the central characters in the film (apparently not in the book) are Muslim; Jamal, Salim, and Latika, this destiny is within the context of Islam.  The very end screen has the words, D: It is written (translated from the Arabic “maktuub”).  The meaning of life is not a very popular subject in the West but as cultures collide in our multi-cultural pluralistic societies we need to address the subject, if not for our own reflection certainly for our dialogue with others.

Thirdly, the two characters of Jamal and Salim seem to represent good and evil.  Following the failure of torture to find out how Jamal is cheating (the opening film’s sequence), his “innocence” is unpacked during his subsequent interrogation by the police inspector.  During the cross-examination the naive ability of Jamal to answer the quiz questions is revealed as his “destiny”.  Several of his life experiences provide the exact answers.  When there has been no such experience Jamal trustingly chooses the correct answers.  Thieving is either sanitized as justifiable for the two boys’ survival, e.g., duping wealthy tourists at the Taj Mahal, or Jamal is the blameless bystander of violence, e.g., the shooting of Maman by Salim.  His gentle compassion towards Latika from the beginning speaks of “purity” and “protection”.  Even his adult job as a “chai-wallah” (tea boy) in a telephone call centre (very contemporary) enhances his “virtuousness”.

On the other hand his older brother, Salim, could be interpreted to represent evil.  He is the one who shoots Maman, who joins a protection racket run by Javed and eventually gets killed.  The final scene in Javed’s safe house is of Salim lying in a bath that is filled with paper money.  One cannot help thinking that here is a symbolic representation of the words, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).  In spite of Salim’s propensity for violence, brotherly love prevails at the most critical moments.  And others may propose that Salim, in liberating Latika and dying in the process, has a redemptive role.

Fourthly, the film is a good Bollywood sampler for the Western viewer.  Simply the Eastern exposure that it provides the Westerner is a good reason for seeing the film.  It is a love story.  Across the some 20 years that the flashbacks cover the pursuit of Latika is the thread.  The climax of the film is not so much the winning of the 20 million rupees but their uniting.  Reunited at Mumbai’s main train station the film credits begin to roll as they dance together in truly Bollywood style with a choreographed troop of dancers.

In the Indian context of relative poverty, exploitation and degradation, it is also a victory of the underdog (the slumdog) to overcome every attempt by the social context to subjugate and destroy the human spirit.  This is depicted in the film through the rising public interest of the masses in the TV programme.  It is the Bollywood happy ending of love conquering all.

Like all award-winning films there are many other themes and sub-texts running through the story that can be discerned but concentrating on these four will give the Christian opportunities to talk of the eternal truths of the Gospel; sin, the purpose of life, the God of creation, redemption, love, hope, and justice.

Last year’s Oscars were all about the dark and the tragic with No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood going home with some of the top nods (two of my favorite movies last year, by the way).  This year’s Oscars were more light-hearted—there wasn’t much of the tragic with Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button or with the runaway indie hit, and Oscar’s little darling Slumdog Millionaire.  There was, however, one nomination this year for best actor that, if you weren’t paying attention, was easy to overlook.

Richard Jenkins, who played the dead father in HBO’s Six Feet Under, stars in one of last year’s best films, The Visitor. This is Jenkins’ first major lead as he’s been playing supporting or character TV roles for the last thirty or so years (most recently as the gym manager in Burn After Reading).  Jenkins plays Professor Walter Vale, a quiet, self-loathing, and eminently bored economics professor who’s entirely dissatisfied with his life.  Widowed, Vale spends his down time trying to learn the piano in an effort to emulate his late wife, a classical concert pianist.  He’s been giving the same lectures for years on end, just changing the date on them so that nobody catches on.   

By a turn of events, his department head forces him to go to an academic conference to read a paper he nominally co-authored (which he hadn’t even read!) when the primary author backs out.  When Walter arrives at the apartment he maintains in Manhattan, he’s startled to discover a young couple living there.  The young man Tarek, a Syrian djembe drum player and his girlfriend Zainab, a Senegalese jewelry maker were conned into subletting his apartment and were equally surprised by this intrusion!  In an act that shocks Walter as much as it does Tarek and Zainab, he asks them to stay while they figure things out. 

A friendship ensues between Walter and Tarek over the next few days.  Tarek teaches Walter to play the djembe drum and, in one of the most poignant scenes of the film, they both join a drum circle in Central Park.  On one occasion as the pair travel the subway with their drums in hand, Tarek is mistakenly charged (profiled?) with turnstile jumping (not paying for the subway) and is arrested.  The thing is, Tarek along with Zainab (and as we learn later, Tarek’s mother, Mouna) is an illegal immigrant.  He is held in a detention center downtown and Walter finds a new energy in his life as he advocates for Tarek, hires an immigration lawyer and befriends Tarek’s mother.  Walter and Mouna being to develop a deep friendship as together they await Tarek’s fate.  

While this movie deals with the larger realities of immigration, identity, and cross-cultural communication, it is, at bottom, a movie about radical hospitality.  Walter learns the truth of his life when he steps into somebody else’s, or rather, when they step into his.  As the church, in our geo-political, post-9/11 reality, we hear much about the immigration “problem”.  Tersely, these so-called problems—an increase in crime, an increase in job losses, an increase in language barriers (to name a few)—are said to accompany the rise in immigration.  Tom McCarthy, the writer and director of the film, doesn’t tip-toe around this, but rather puts the issue right into the space that Walter rightfully ought to occupy—his own apartment!—and so throws the issue of the ‘other’ into sharp relief, bringing it right to our doorstep. 

Walter has two options available to him: security or the vulnerability of hospitality.  He can call the police; he can secure his home against the otherness and all the difference that accompanies the intrusion.  Or he can embrace the difference; he can accept the otherness of the intrusion and so witness the transformation of the other into a neighbour, into a friend.  Indeed this is what happens and Walter learns that this transformation is not only objective—that these people have turned into his neighbours—but entirely subjective as well, as he realizes that he has become a neighbour; he himself transforms into a friend to these strangers.  That’s what the practice of hospitality does.

Christ’s call to neighbour-love is a call to radical hospitality in all its messiness; it’s a call to welcome the stranger to our table, to Christ’s table, no matter what the barrier might be.  Now this might sound cliché and somewhat overstated, but when we have an analogy of the church in the figure of Walter Vale played out for us on the screen, this cliché gets some traction. 

The church, in its everyday existence—the church of parking lots and potluck suppers (to borrow a phrase from Stanley Hauerwas)—continually wavers between extending hospitality and an illegitimate concern over its own security.  The church, with its narcissistic tendencies, tries again and again to protect itself against the intrusion of the stranger, against the presence of the different.  We tend to circle the wagons, as it were, around our little corner of the truth.  When we do this we obscure our witness; when we sit in self-concern, we block out the presence of the crucified Christ—we simply deny that the Kingdom of God is come.  Yet, when the church opens itself to the messiness of hospitality, the Kingdom is played out in the middle of our messes.  This movie embodies that openness and so is a wonderful analogy of God’s reign among us. 

Our oldest son started JK this year which, amongst other things, has freed up some of my time in the morning. So, instead of working on my dissertation, or preparing a sermon, or doing anything productive at all, the other morning I decided to enter the world of the morning talk show (cartoons have long overtaken the morning prime-time slot in our house).  So, I tuned into Live with Regis and Kelly so that they could transmit their positive TV vibes to me and invigorate my morning.  What did I get?  I got a pep talk from Regis about “feelin’ fine in ’09!”—their slogan for the first week of January.      

Apparently, 2009 is going to be a stellar year—at least if your only source of information is the morning talk show circuit!  However, if you’ve been paying any attention at all in the last few months, the slogan “feelin’ fine in ‘09” ought to ring about as hollow to you as it does me.  It strikes me that Regis telling me that we’re “gonna be fine in 09” is about as trustworthy as that cowboy hat wearing jewelry salesman on TV telling you he’s going to give you reams of cash for your used jewels.  It’s such a thin veneer!  As I’m writing this, Canada’s premiers are trying to agree on an economic stimulus package, the American economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, and we’re looking at record job losses all over the Western hemisphere.  All is not well, it seems, after all. 

It’s not that I don’t like Regis—I’m sure he’s a great guy.  It’s just that Regis, at least for me on this morning,  funneled the whole artificiality that our culture (especially our commercial and consumerist culture) brings to bear on the social and political realities of our time.  Our culture, it seems, is constantly putting on the Emperor’s new clothes and walking around as if everything’s ok.  As long as we’ve got our entertainment (I, for one, am waiting impatiently for the new season of LOST!) and all our other little distractions, we can try—in the end, always in vain—to coat the reality that we’re not doing fine. 

Of course, this realization is nothing new for the church, or, at least it shouldn’t be.  The church is the place where we come together to admit that we aren’t fine, that everything is not ok.  The reality that all is not well is nothing new for the church and this puts us in a rather unique position.  We live in a world that is in constant denial of brokenness.  We try to deny our pain, be it emotional, physical, spiritual or mental.  We deny our fallibility and our finitude; we deny our limits, with death being the big one.  This is all to say that, in short, we try to deny our humanity by covering it up with an artificial smile and a spurious “everything’s ok!” thumbs up. 

Within this culture of denial the church is reminded weekly in its confession that something’s amiss, something more than a faltering economy.  In fact, the church confesses that the entire economy of our lives—the why and how of it all, all the way down—is broken.  The Lenten season, which is around the corner, is the time that the church takes to remind itself of this and in doing so, bears witness to this reality for the whole world.  Lent, it should strike us, is a deeply counter cultural and entirely subversive practice.   

This is why the world needs the church—to tell it the truth about itself.  We bear witness then, not with the plastic smiles of a thin veneer, but with the joy, that in our brokenness, in the very fissures of the fabric of our existence, we find the cheerfulness and optimism that only the cross engenders because it is there that we find, or rather are found by the God who came all the way down.  In fact, this is why the whole world—or at the very least Regis Philbin—needs the lessons and practice of the Lenten season.   

Usually at this time of year Bing Crosby is crooning out his rendition of “Jingle Bells” to anyone within earshot as they walk through their local mall. In fact, it was the day after Halloween this year that my wife and I were walking through the mall and we were surrounded by the sounds of your run-of-the-mill Christmas carol whose sole purpose of wafting down into your ears in the first place is to lull you into a retail reverie of impulse buying.

This is what the Christmas carol has been reduced to in our consumer culture: a safe, trite, and effective marketing tool. But then along comes a collection of Christmas songs, that at least for me, has the ability to rescue the Christmas carol from this Babylonian captivity.

Sufjan (pronounced Soof-yawn) Stevens’ Songs for Christmas, a 5 CD box set of traditional and original Christmas songs from one of our best contemporary troubadours of indie folk-pop, entreats us throughout to remember who it is we are singing about with time-honored carols like “Once in David’s Royal City” and manages at the same time to cut through the sentimentality of the season with the hilarious “Get Behind me Santa!”.

However, it’s Sufjan’s orchestration of the songs—that is at once so simple and at times even haunting—that makes this album what it is. It’s a Christmas album to be certain (and a fun one at that, with the ebullient “Come on, Let’s Boogy to the Elf Dance”) but it’s one that protests the warm and fuzzy harbour that Christmas has become in our time. The reason for this is that for Sufjan the singing of Christmas carols is not a harmless or innocuous business but a rather dangerous one.

Sufjan’s ability to get to the theological heart of what it is we ‘celebrate’ at this time of year is rare to find in the church, let alone in a musician. But Sufjan is unrelenting. In the liner notes to the album, Sufjan asks:

What did the angels renounce in the wake of the shepherd’s trepidation? ‘Have no fear,’ they petitioned with trumpet blasts and a garish display of constellations. But that’s like waving a gun in a bank lobby and demanding: ‘Everybody stay calm!’

What Sufjan gets is that Christmas is an apocalyptic event; it’s about the terrifying coming of God. Further along he confesses that “Christmas music poses a cosmological conundrum in requiring us to sing so sweetly and sentimentally about something so terrifying and tragic.” That’s Christmas; that’s the demand made of the church: sing about the coming of God, the coming of the One who will unsettle everything.

I’m reminded about Karl Barth’s observation about theological speech: “We ought to speak of God…. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give God the glory.”

This is the same obligation and inability that the prophet Isaiah faced in the presence of God: “I am lost, my lips are not clean, I cannot speak, but my eyes have seen the King!” And what happens? God touches his lips, and Isaiah answers the call of the King, “send me!” Singing Christmas carols is possible because God has touched our lips. Like Isaiah we have seen the glory of the King, we’ve been touched by God in Christ and we are obligated to sing about it, not with sentimentality but with urgency!

And so, this album is Sufjan’s way of recognizing both his obligation and his inability; his own attempt, while waving his gun around, to tell us to stay calm. So steady yourself in this season as you sing your carols and as you await the coming of God, and by all means STAY CALM!

I came across an article in TimesOnline about a month ago now. It was a top twenty list of the most religiously offensive cultural moments of the last thirty or so years. The article, “The Blasphemy Collection” listed one of my personal favorites. Monty Python’s Life of Brian was there with its infamous protagonist, Brian Cohen, who, being born in the stable next to Jesus’, spends the rest of his life mistaken for the Messiah. Especially offensive in this one is the final crucifixion scene where those being executed burst into song, “Always look on the bright side of life” with Eric Idle playing the lead singer crucifee. What I didn’t realize was that this film wasn’t officially shown in some countries for years after it was made (in Ireland it took 8 years, in Italy 11 years!) because of the offence it caused to some Christian groups.

There were some other more arcane moments in this top twenty, like the artist Cosimo Cavallaro’s My Sweet Lord, a 200lb figure of the crucified Christ carved entirely out of chocolate, which was pulled from a New York art gallery after protest from the Catholic League during Holy Week earlier this year.

Now there were also some whose vulgarity even shocked me (which, I must admit, takes a bit of work), but I’ll save you from those (just follow the link, if you’d like). What I want to get at is that it’s easy to be offended when we feel as if our faith is being ridiculed, or when we feel as if the profane is encroaching too close to the sacred. It’s sort of a natural reaction. St. Paul, though, had a different idea. For St. Paul, the cross is an offence; the sacred is profaned in the reality of the cross of Jesus. Here’s Paul, writing to the congregation at Corinth:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…. we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are…

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that the church has domesticated the message of the cross, but I’ll say it anyways. Imagine for a moment, if you will, that this coming Sunday, instead of a cross sitting atop the steeple of your church as you’re walking in, there was, in its place, an electric chair. Digest that for a minute. Then, when you walk inside, this common symbol of execution is all over the place, even hanging around the necks of some of the people inside. How many of you would voluntarily associate yourselves with such an offensive place and with people like this? Well, given that you’re reading this, you probably do so on a weekly basis. Maybe now you can appreciate a little better this “foolishness” the apostle is talking about.

Perhaps it takes some of our artists, poets, writers, and film makers—the best of religion’s cultured despisers—to remind us, as St. Paul reminded the believers at Corinth, that what we’re all about is, at first, second, and maybe even third glance, foolish. And why foolishness? Why does Paul use this language? Not because, it seems to me, he wanted to delight in the absurd (after all, he was a fairly reasonable person), or even because he wanted to confound conventional wisdom, but because, for Paul the God who is revealed at the cross, the God who is revealed in weakness and death, is, by all appearances, a fool (how’s that for offensive?)!

And we’re called to follow this God, this Jesus in this way, in a way that seems to be a fool’s game, at least according to the rules of this world. This crucified God is an offence. This God offends our sense of what we ought to value, of what’s up and of what’s down. Power, strength, security, and success are the goals of the game according to our pervasive culture of entitlement. But this God has changed the rules, upended our game, and has showed us, from the darkness and offence of the cross, the true bright side of life.

Lately, I’ve also been reading Michel Foucault’s History of Madness and early on, Foucault talks at length about leprosy and how medieval Europe, especially the church, shunned and relegated all lepers to the outside of the city gates (a scapegoating role the mentally ill-the mad-would come to fulfill after leprosy disappeared from Europe).

This liturgy of exclusion would carry over into the eighteenth century as society became less and less hospitable to madness, controlling it by labeling it, corralling it, and ‘solving’ it with institutions and the systematic treatment of ‘unreason’.

What struck me in this movie, is how Lars’ family and community (yes, even his church!) came alongside him and didn’t expel him or scapegoat him.  However, the most compelling aspect, in my opinion, is how the therapist works with Lars. We never get the sense that she’s treating a problem.  In one scene, Lars’ brother wants an answer, he wants a solution to this problem as quickly as possible. The therapist tells him, in probably the most subversive scene of the film, that this delusion isn’t a problem, in fact, it can be a gift for Lars and for those around him, which in fact, it turns out to be.

Now, I realize that labeling this delusion ‘a gift’, especially for those who have lived through or live with mental health issues, is a tenuous description but one that is, at least here, quite apt.  In fact this ‘gift’ has its own dignity-Lars is allowed to live in a community without being ‘powered’ over, without being confined and expelled from society.  As St. Paul tells us, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise”.  In the end, Lars reminds us of those unsuspecting Christ-like figures like Dostoyevsky’s idiot who, in shaming the wise (or here, the healthy), actually become their salvation.

The church is often shamed by these fringe figures and it desperately needs to discover how to behave like Lars’ community, learning to live with and even within the delusions of life.  If we can learn that, we can also learn how to accept the gift of difference that mental and emotional health issues bring with them into our communities and so bear witness to salvation, our own included.

From New York City to Los Angeles, the teens explore themes including love, justice, unity, and spiritual gifts. Upping the relevance factor are visits with Ralph Winter, producer of the X-Men movies, and with Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission, who confronts the group with some of the harshest realities teens around the world face, such as sexual slavery.

Youth leaders can have a hard time finding ways to make Bible study “non-boring.” And attempts to be cool, whether from adults or from pre-packaged studies, are often and rightly met with rolling eyes or accusations of cheesiness. The 24/7 Experience isn’t perfect (the opening credits regularly induced a chorus of groans), but it did keep my youth group’s attention, and led to great discussions. 

“It’s good, it’s short, it sort of gives you a taste of real issues. And it backs up what it says by showing you people who are living it out,” says Rachel, 16. And Corrine, 15, said the series showed her that the Church can be an exciting place. “It’s like when the Church first started, it was all these rebels, breaking the rules. But these days, people worry about breaking the Church’s rules. I think we should go back to the way it was at first.”

Since each episode is just 16-20 minutes long, watching this DVD doesn’t have to take over a whole evening’s program. And for those who want the help, one of the DVD’s special features is a discussion guide.

Canadian youth groups may have trouble relating to certain aspects of this American resource, such as the instructions on how to write to Congress. But these are overshadowed by the bigger points of connection, namely the peer-to-peer sharing of experiences. The “cast” of teens are believable and likeable, and my group felt quite bonded to them by the end of the series. When the study was over, they felt like they had to say goodbye to some new friends.

If you’re thinking this sounds good but want to know more about where it came from, here’s what the Evangelical Covenant Church has to say about itself:

The Evangelical Covenant Church is a rapidly growing multiethnic denomination of more than 750 congregations in the United States and Canada, with ministries on five continents. Founded in 1885 by Swedish Immigrants, the ECC values the Bible as the Word of God, the gift of God’s grace and ever-deepening spiritual life that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, the importance of extending God’s love and compassion to a hurting world, and strength that comes from unity within diversity.

Available from Zondervan (www.zondervan.com) and Youth Specialties (www.youthspecialties.com), The 24/7 Experience costs about $20 and is easy to order. Some local Christian bookstores may have it too; I found mine by accident while browsing in Muskoka!

If you can’t take your youth on a road trip of their own, The 24/7 Experience may just be the next best thing.

~ Rev. Kelly Baetz
St. Thomas’ Anglican Church, Bracebridge ON

Robert Webber argues that the church is best equipped to meet the challenges of the postmodern era by recovering the resources of the ancient Christian tradition. 

Webber sketches the shift from modernity to postmodernity in science, philosophy and culture and describes how this affects the contemporary search for faith. He shows how Christians have always struggled to articulate the faith in their own historical and cultural contexts, and traces these attempts from the early church through the medieval era and the Reformation, to the rise of modernity after the Enlightenment.  In doing so, Webber argues that the modernist assumptions which characterize so much of Christian thought and practice today are not only discredited by postmodern thinking, but that they actually do a disservice to the faithful presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ.  When we reclaim the perspectives and practices of classical Christianity, we not only attract the postmodern seeker but we recover a robust and authentic Christian faith.

Classical Christianity appeals to the postmodern seeker because it is holistic, directed toward every aspect of life, not just an interior “spiritual” plane.  It is relational rather than individualistic, and communicates through images and symbols, not only through words. It incorporates mystery.  Yet classical Christianity diverges from postmodernity at a key point.  Where postmoderns distrust any claim to a universal truth, the Christian faith is based on the universal significance of Christ.  To his credit, Webber acknowledges that classical Christianity is at odds with postmodern relativism. 

Evangelism, according to Webber, is not directed to a mere assent to the articles of faith but to entry into a life lived under the Lordship of Christ in the context of the church community. His model of evangelism is based on the catechumenate of the early church, a process whereby seekers are gradually brought into a deeper understanding of and commitment to Jesus Christ as well as into the life of the Christian community.  Such a model sees evangelism less as a push for an immediate commitment and more as a natural process of drawing others to the life of faith.

As its subtitle suggests, Ancient-Future Faith is written with an evangelical readership in mind.  However, those in the Catholic Anglican tradition will find here a deep appreciation of the richness and theological integrity of liturgical expression, as well as confidence in what that tradition has to offer to the wider church and to the postmodern world. 

Editor’s note: A sequel to this book, Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community, by Robert E. Webber, is to be published by Baker Book House in November 2003.

This CD is a continuation of U2′s venture into the territory of faith in a way that few “secular” or contemporary Christian artists dare or are permitted. Bono once described himself as having a form of Tourette’s syndrome where he would always mention God in places where it was taboo. As if to confirm that, Bono recently confessed in Rolling Stone Magazine that the J33-3 on the cover of the album is a scripture reference. The verse is Jeremiah 33:3 and says “Call to me and I will answer you.” “It’s known as God’s phone number” says Bono. U2 have always seen it as a challenge to try and live “wide awake” to two realities, that of a broken, damaged world and that of a God who is known as Love incarnate. Their music often represents the creative working out of living in those two seemingly distant realities and on ATYCLB it is the latter that shines through.

The band was looking for an “invocation” to open the CD, and “Beautiful Day” is just that. Quiet lyrics with a somewhat eighties new wave beat, unlike anything U2 ever released in that decade, pull the listener in. Only when the wallop of a chorus hits with full guitar, drums and vocals does one discover U2. The space shuttle icon found beside the lyrics in the CD booklet is appropriate for U2 begin their journey here with a real lift-off. All the passion and spirit one might recall from the eighties U2 are found afresh. This is no repeat of an earlier sound or ideal though. “We advance towards simplicity” said Bono on the U2 fansite Interference.com. What they have been reaching for is the stripped down sound of just the four band members jamming in a room, a sound lead singer Bono has dubbed “titanium soul”.

If “titanium soul” seems too obscure then try the Psalms. U2′s early days saw them close their concerts with a song called “40″ inspired by the Psalm of the same name. Bono once called the Psalms an “early form of the blues” and recently even wrote an introduction to Scottish publisher Canongate’s pocket KJV edition of them. This inspiration comes through strongly in ATYCLB, as the album runs through with the familiar pattern of a Psalm. After the exultation of “Beautiful Day”, “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” closes in on the low place one finds oneself in, and ends like a blessing or a prayer. “Elevation”, with its whooping and joyful chorus, continues the rocket boost of passion, calling for Love to lift “me out of these blues”. From there, like King David on a rough day, there are songs expressing frustration and deep questions about the state of the world. As with the ending of a Psalm though, renewal seems to come with the closing song. It all bears taking a closer look through.

Moved by the state of the world, Bono has spent 1999 and 2000 extremely active in promoting Jubilee 2000′s campaign to forgive Third World debts. Similar convictions have seen U2 promote Amnesty International’s work on global human rights issues. It comes as no surprise then that Amnesty’s logo is found beside the lyrics to “Walk On”. Dedicated to Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the song is the cornerstone of the album. Ripe with travel imagery and rich in soul, it tells the listener “You’re packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been. A place that has to be believed to be seen.” Pressing on with faith is key here. The song’s closing lyrics tell the listener to leave behind “all that you make, all that you build”, a clear echo of Pink Floyd’s song “Eclipse”from their album “The Dark Side of the Moon”. Instead of the futility and alienation felt in Pink Floyd’s music, “Walk On” delivers a sense of release and freedom from letting go and clinging to “The only thing that you can bring…all that you can’t leave behind.” This “only thing” is something which “they can’t steal”, “sell” or “buy”. U2 are “locked on” to the soul and going deeper.

Where is deeper in the soul? “Kite” reveals that for U2 it is a vulnerable place, where one is very aware of how frail life is. Bono sings “Who’s to say where the wind will take you? Who’s to say what it is will break you?” Like Psalm 39:4, “Kite” reveals a consciousness of how life is fleeting and its days numbered. “In A Little While” taps deeper into this awareness with lyrics that are drenched with longing for release to life’s pain. The lyrics promise that soon “this hurt will hurt no more” and that something sweeter will come. “Wild Honey” seems to confirm this. Sounding like a Beatles chart-topper, it is a playful love song that resonates with something eternal. Bono asks his lover “Did I know you, Did I know you even then? Before the clocks kept time. Before the world was made.”

Until now the songs are soaring with passion and faith. “Peace On Earth” brings sharp a descent back to earth, and the realities of a world filled with pain. Written the day after the 1998 Omagh bombing that killed 29 people and left 370 injured, it echoes the Psalms’ familiar frustration at life’s ongoing trials. Bono is “sick of sorrow..of pain…of hearing…that there’s gonna be Peace on Earth”. In the midst of his despair though he reaches out, singing “Jesus could you take the time, to throw a drowning man a line”. Somehow there may be still be hope, but at this point he just can’t see it here on earth.

“When I Look At The World” continues the descent with deeper questioning.  Bono asks someone “What is it that you see?” when they look at the world. It isn’t clear who is being addressed though. Do the lines “Can’t see for the smoke, I think of you and your holy book, while the rest of us choke” refer to the listener, God, the Pope even, or perhaps the church in general? Or maybe the song is meant to connect on all of those levels. “New York” completes the trilogy of songs of descent with a touchdown in a city “hot as a hairdryer in your face”. In the midst of this harsh place though, there is a voice to be heard “a-whispering, Come away child”. It seems that there is still somewhere to go from here.

What is incredible is how deeply U2 imbue a sense of Spirit and faith in these songs with only minimal mention of God. While “Pop” contained more such references than any prior U2 CD, ATYCLB has only a single mention of Jesus in one song’s chorus. Despite this, most songs carry a joyful, passionate spirit of trust. If Bono was longing for his cup to be filled, as he sang in “Achtung Baby’s” “Acrobat”, here it is running over. The deepest longing and toughest questions are still present, but they are well directed, and like a familiar Psalm faith is renewed. When Bono sings in “Beautiful Day” of lending a hand “in return for grace” he is offering you his. When he cries out “Touch me. Take me to that other place” you might just go with him. With an awareness of your own frailty, you just might sing along to the chorus of “Peace On Earth” like it was your own: “Jesus can you take the time, to throw a drowning man a line.”

While U2 made touchdown in New York, it is the album’s final number that sees them finding their home. The icon of a dove descending, the classic image of the Holy Spirit, is especially appropriate placed beside these lyrics, for “Grace” gives wonderful expression to a profoundly Christian concept. If you took Bono’s hand, this is where you would be led, to the “thought that changed the world”, a person who “covers the stain, removes the shame” and “carries a pearl in perfect condition.” Like Psalm 23:5, “Grace” is U2′s “table” in the presence of a dark and damaged world. They aren’t afraid to sing about it, and even seem to invite you to it. If you do go, just be prepared. Have “the only thing that you can bring” safely packed. For this is one journey you will not want to miss.