The following is the text of a sermon given at the Chapel of the College of St Hild and St Bede, Durham in mid-2009:
Davey Moore was a boxer. On March 25th 1963 he was killed in a boxing match from a punch from his opponent, Sugar Ramos. Bob Dylan wrote a song about the death of Davey Moore in style of the nursery rhyme ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’, which asks the repeating question of the chorus: ‘Who killed Davey Moore? Why? And what’s the reason for?’
Dylan’s verses call upon five possible answers to the question from different candidates: the referee, the boxing writer, the angry crowd, his manager and ‘the man whose fist laid him low in a cloud of mist’. Each verse starts with the line “Not I!”, and finishes with “It wasn’t me that made him fall. You can’t blame me at all.” So we have the first witness – the referee:
"Not I," said the referee,
"Don't point your finger at me.
I could've stopped it in the eighth
An' maybe kept him from his fate,
But the crowd would've booed, I'm sure,
At not gettin' their money's worth.
It's too bad he had to go,
But there was a pressure on me too, you know.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."
The recurring theme of the song is, quite obviously, that the question of ‘Who killed Davey Moore?’ is a complex one, and one in which all parties protest their innocence – ‘it wasn’t me that made him fall, you can’t blame me at all.’
The world is facing rather uncertain times, not least on the back of the global financial meltdown that has entered our collective bloodstream so dramatically over recent months. The immense disparity in earnings between RBS’s executives and its sales clerks is only confounded when your and my tax dollars now pay these wages.
I live and work in London – not in banking, i might add! – and get off the tube every morning at Moorgate station. As i leave the station, i walk past a deep etching in one of the stairwells that reads ‘burn the bankers’, and i don’t know about you, but i didn’t shed a tear when Fred Goodwin’s car was vandalised earlier this year. Largely as a form of masochism i read The Guardian’s comment section most days, which always contains the next piece of vitriolic, tired drivel about how awful everyone else is. This anger is understandable, and i hope not to argue against it. Instead, i hope to offer some insights into the responses to the financial crisis from 60s folk singers, and also from the Easter story – suggesting that both may have something profound to say in our conversations and reflection in this area.
Dylan’s song charts two responses to a terrible situation: firstly, ‘it wasn’t me that made him fall’ – a denial of responsibility for oneself; and secondly, an affirmation of someone else’s guilt. ‘It wasn’t me that made him fall, but it was them’. There seems to be to be a certain amount of this going on in the recession also: the media blame the greed of the banks, who blame the lazy eye of the regulators, who blame the poor financial planning of the government, who blame rich people’s greed, who blame the aspirational who borrow more than they can afford, who blame the media for instilling consumerism in them..... And we’re back where we started. It is always somebody else’s fault.
Two pieces of work by Leonard Cohen will now be mingled with Easter themes in trying to comment on and fill out some of my comments above.
Leonard Cohen – a secular Jew – wrote a poem entitled ‘Everything There is to Know about Adolph Eichmann’, Eichmann being the member of Hitler’s cabinet responsible for engineering and delivering the final solution.
"EYES:..................................................Medium
HAIR:..................................................Medium
WEIGHT:................................................Medium
HEIGHT:................................................Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES:.................................None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:........................................Ten
NUMBER OF TOES:...........................................Ten
INTELLIGENCE:..........................................Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?"
Eichmann is surely one of the easiest people to scapegoat in the history of planet earth. Nobody denies his appalling acts, the wicked genocide of ‘the other’ in the Third Reich’s warped understanding of the world. But to scapegoat Eichmann is perhaps to miss the point – the fact that we neither have talons, oversize incisors or green saliva, but we too can be capable of great evil. I wonder if when we think that Fred Goodwin and his cohort of overpaid bankers as the root cause of the world’s financial problem we distance ourselves from our own greed and our own arrogance. One cannot help but feel that most people in the world would regard you and I as wealthy beyond belief on the grounds of sheer luck, with apparently no deserving reason. Scapegoating places distance between ourselves and those that we do not like – we assert that they are not like us.
The Easter story also has something to say about scapegoating. The sense of Christ becoming the one at whom anger is directed seems clear, and as a result of this Christ’s death exposes a vicious system of religious oppression, exclusive social ordering, and violent responses to quell the radical desires of life’s subversives. Christ’s resurrection transforms, rather than supplants, this experience – violence doesn’t triumph over goodness, women are still to be liberated as the first witnesses of the resurrection, and the prophets’ vision of a just and peaceful society continues to be fulfilled on the road to Emmaus.
Another of the great Easter paradoxes concerns the binding of immense pain and great joy into a single continuum. I can’t help but feel that any simplistic explanations of the financial crisis, in which blame is clearly laid at the doors of an easily distinguishable and clearly guilty party, is surely a crude and unproductive move, for life is just not that simple. If any answer can be provided to the question of who killed Davey Moore, it must surely be that all of the parties in the verses bear some responsibility. Further to this, it is all too easy to pretend that we don’t have huge power to change things – i wonder if what would happen if we all stopped blaming everyone else for the financial crisis and became the change that we wanted to see – whatever it was – that would restore justice to the system. In so doing we affirm both our complicity in the problem itself, rather than palming that off onto someone else; and also empower ourselves to change the things that we find unacceptable, rather than regarding everyone else as the core agents of better world.
In summary, i feel that the ambiguity of the current financial crisis resists easy answers, and that one easy answer – scapegoating – has rather unhelpful consequences, not least in that it pretends that we have nothing to do with causing the world’s problems, and that it disempowers us from changing the things we find unacceptable. On this note, the final verse of Leonard Cohen’s most famous song, ‘Hallelujah’ – which is tragically omitted in the Jeff Buckley version – captures some of the response the life’s ambiguity: the broken hallelujah of Good Friday and Easter Sunday; the broken hallelujah of global inequality, brought to the boil by the financial crisis; and the response of Christ in giving of himself, rather than blaming everyone else – of being the change that he wanted to see in the world, and showing the way of self-giving rather than shifting the blame. Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ finished with this verse:
"I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah."
Christ, the giver, became the world’s scapegoat, and showed a new way of responding to the pain and ambiguity of life through selfless giving. I wonder if this sense of giving, rather than ‘it wasn’t me that made him fall’, might be a better response to the global recession that most of those that i have seen so far – to transform the ambiguity, rather than explain it away through scapegoating.
Tuesday 26 January 2010
Putting faces to names
I have spent the last few days in hospital recovering from an operation. This has offered some time for reflection that, i am sorry to say, is all too rare these days. I thought that a celebratory blog would be worthwhile in response, noting a few observations.
Firstly, i reiterate how proud i am to live in a country as diverse as the UK. Far from Nick Griffin’s suggestion that the white race that i am a part of has been the victim of a ‘holocaust’ at the hands of multiculturalism and immigration, i feel that our country is enriched and sustained by our welcoming of those from different cultures to our own. I wrote some time ago about the pride that i felt when i saw Monty Panesar (England’s first Sikh cricketer) take a wicket and explode in rapturous celebration. Even cricket, the most white, middle-class of British sports, was not beyond the liberating energy of those different to ourselves.
In further response to Griffin, the role that immigrants play in staffing the NHS is both vital and enormous. The NHS and the BBC are the two British institutions that most of us are most proud of: they are the envy of the world. To a great extent, both, but particularly the NHS, embodies and enacts that central tenet of Britishness, diversity and multiculturalism, that give me immense pride as a quietly patriotic, proud Englishman.
Secondly, the notion of diversity, especially in relation to Britain’s relation to the rest of the world in general, and Africa (where the majority of the nurses that care for me are from) in particular, was extended to discussions of faith and the current state of the Anglican Communion.
We often speak of how nice it is to “put a face to the name”. That is, to recognise in person someone that we have hitherto known about only in words, and particularly by the chief words that bear their identity: their name.
I have been rather good in recent times of expressing my dissatisfaction and disagreement with people by writing them off, homogenising the group from which they come, and then labelling this homogenous as a convenient and negatively-construed ‘other’, who expresses in a neat fashion some particularly facet of who i am not. The best examples of this occur, as usual, with religion, and with the African church’s apparent unwillingness to accept the West’s moves towards the incorporation of homosexuality into its cultural mainstream, and willingness to sanction the mistreatment (in some cases, to the point of death) of gay people living in their proximity. My attitude towards those operating with similar beliefs in the UK has often been to suggest that they “fuck off to Africa”, or something similar – at least that way they would only spoil the churches of a single continent, and leave the West to bask in its social and theological liberalism. The implicit process of writing people off, homogenising them, and then labelling them has certainly occurred here.
One nurse that cared for me in a particularly gentle manner was Grace, who comes from Nigeria. She is a woman true to her name, with a beaming smile, a piercing laugh, a soothing voice and gentle hands with which she conducts her work with great skill and professionalism. She goes to church in Ealing, and i suspect has a rather conservative social morality (or, for the sake of argument, i will assume so, aware of the risk of homogenising another person into a stereotype in the process). The more time that i spent with Grace, the less i felt able to talk again of African Christianity in a negative manner: despite my presumed differences in belief with Grace, i was struck by her warmth of spirit, her joy with being alive, the excitement with which she spoke about her children, and her very profession of nursing, of caring for the sick.
I think a few things on the back of this:
• How wrong it was of me to label and stereotype. These things close the mind rather than opening and enriching it, and prevent the possibility that one’s experience of the world can be changed by someone that you think you disagree with.
• How important it is that we affirm our ability to learn something from everyone in the world, whether or not we like or agree with them. Grace and I may disagree on some matters of doctrine – but if i let this cloud my engagement with her then i am poorer as a result, as i will not learn about the gifts of compassion, care, gentleness and peace.
• How important it is to expose oneself to, and make friends with, those with whom one disagrees. When speaking negatively of ‘Africans’ in the future i will not be without an image to place on this label. When we are aware that our use of a label requires us to include someone we know and respect within the bounds of those being labelled, it makes us think twice about using it in the first place. Increased exposure to gay people is well evidenced to liberalise people’s views of homosexuality: people put Gary’s, or Megan’s, or Phil’s face to the name of ‘homosexual’, and we realise that behind the label are simply people like us.
Overall, i feel rather ashamed of my (i hope, former) labelling of those conservative (label-alert!) Christians (and another one) who oppose the steps taken by countries in the West towards the equalisation of rights between heterosexual and homosexual people, and those commending similar steps within the Church. The diversity that i prize in the UK as a whole must surely be replicated across the Church domestic and global, even (or especially) when it is difficult to do so. One way of doing this is to meet those that one labels, and to learn from them. Once we have put faces to the names we use about them, our embrace of diversity can only flourish.
Firstly, i reiterate how proud i am to live in a country as diverse as the UK. Far from Nick Griffin’s suggestion that the white race that i am a part of has been the victim of a ‘holocaust’ at the hands of multiculturalism and immigration, i feel that our country is enriched and sustained by our welcoming of those from different cultures to our own. I wrote some time ago about the pride that i felt when i saw Monty Panesar (England’s first Sikh cricketer) take a wicket and explode in rapturous celebration. Even cricket, the most white, middle-class of British sports, was not beyond the liberating energy of those different to ourselves.
In further response to Griffin, the role that immigrants play in staffing the NHS is both vital and enormous. The NHS and the BBC are the two British institutions that most of us are most proud of: they are the envy of the world. To a great extent, both, but particularly the NHS, embodies and enacts that central tenet of Britishness, diversity and multiculturalism, that give me immense pride as a quietly patriotic, proud Englishman.
Secondly, the notion of diversity, especially in relation to Britain’s relation to the rest of the world in general, and Africa (where the majority of the nurses that care for me are from) in particular, was extended to discussions of faith and the current state of the Anglican Communion.
We often speak of how nice it is to “put a face to the name”. That is, to recognise in person someone that we have hitherto known about only in words, and particularly by the chief words that bear their identity: their name.
I have been rather good in recent times of expressing my dissatisfaction and disagreement with people by writing them off, homogenising the group from which they come, and then labelling this homogenous as a convenient and negatively-construed ‘other’, who expresses in a neat fashion some particularly facet of who i am not. The best examples of this occur, as usual, with religion, and with the African church’s apparent unwillingness to accept the West’s moves towards the incorporation of homosexuality into its cultural mainstream, and willingness to sanction the mistreatment (in some cases, to the point of death) of gay people living in their proximity. My attitude towards those operating with similar beliefs in the UK has often been to suggest that they “fuck off to Africa”, or something similar – at least that way they would only spoil the churches of a single continent, and leave the West to bask in its social and theological liberalism. The implicit process of writing people off, homogenising them, and then labelling them has certainly occurred here.
One nurse that cared for me in a particularly gentle manner was Grace, who comes from Nigeria. She is a woman true to her name, with a beaming smile, a piercing laugh, a soothing voice and gentle hands with which she conducts her work with great skill and professionalism. She goes to church in Ealing, and i suspect has a rather conservative social morality (or, for the sake of argument, i will assume so, aware of the risk of homogenising another person into a stereotype in the process). The more time that i spent with Grace, the less i felt able to talk again of African Christianity in a negative manner: despite my presumed differences in belief with Grace, i was struck by her warmth of spirit, her joy with being alive, the excitement with which she spoke about her children, and her very profession of nursing, of caring for the sick.
I think a few things on the back of this:
• How wrong it was of me to label and stereotype. These things close the mind rather than opening and enriching it, and prevent the possibility that one’s experience of the world can be changed by someone that you think you disagree with.
• How important it is that we affirm our ability to learn something from everyone in the world, whether or not we like or agree with them. Grace and I may disagree on some matters of doctrine – but if i let this cloud my engagement with her then i am poorer as a result, as i will not learn about the gifts of compassion, care, gentleness and peace.
• How important it is to expose oneself to, and make friends with, those with whom one disagrees. When speaking negatively of ‘Africans’ in the future i will not be without an image to place on this label. When we are aware that our use of a label requires us to include someone we know and respect within the bounds of those being labelled, it makes us think twice about using it in the first place. Increased exposure to gay people is well evidenced to liberalise people’s views of homosexuality: people put Gary’s, or Megan’s, or Phil’s face to the name of ‘homosexual’, and we realise that behind the label are simply people like us.
Overall, i feel rather ashamed of my (i hope, former) labelling of those conservative (label-alert!) Christians (and another one) who oppose the steps taken by countries in the West towards the equalisation of rights between heterosexual and homosexual people, and those commending similar steps within the Church. The diversity that i prize in the UK as a whole must surely be replicated across the Church domestic and global, even (or especially) when it is difficult to do so. One way of doing this is to meet those that one labels, and to learn from them. Once we have put faces to the names we use about them, our embrace of diversity can only flourish.
Slumdog Easter
I saw Slumdog Millionnaire a couple of weeks ago. It’s a great film, beautifully made and wonderfully acted. Its message also shares rather a lot with the Christian season of Easter, i think.
The story is about a young boy, Jamal, who has had a troublesome life. Eventually he gets onto the Indian version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?’, and ends up winning the show’s top prize. Given his poor education, he is thought to have been cheating somehow, but the truth is that the answer to each question has come up at some point in his varied and challenging life as a poor orphan in the Indian slums. The film tells his story through the different questions asked to him in the gameshow, and how the appropriate nugget of information came to be known through various episodes.
The film’s vision of gaining immense triumph through a radical acceptance of one’s past is fascinating. Many people regard the past (and especially the bits of it that they don’t like) as something to be forgotten in search of a brighter future, or something to hide from for fear of reopening old wounds. I can’t help but feel that Slumdog is rather a call to affirm one’s past, for once we accept and validate the things that have happened in our life we achieve unity with ourselves, because – for good or ill – our past has made us who we are today, and who we will be in the future.
So why the Easter story? The sense of transforming our experience in the present through a radical acceptance of the past, and a hope for the future based on, rather than in spite of, the testing times of the past, seems critical to the witness of the early Church. Christ’s painful death was never denied, never covered up, and never apologised for, vicious and embarrassing though it was. But instead the early Christians knew that this pain and suffering had been transformed by the new life of resurrection. The past is not forgotten, but through radical acceptance of it the future is transformed.
Dealing with testing things in life is never easy. But i think that the Slumdog story and the Easter narrative give hope that out of even the most difficult things we experience can come hope, peace and joy. We don’t need have chosen our story, but we must affirm that our story is ours, and be hopeful that affirming and engaging with our story and the lessons that it has taught us gives hope when looking forward to those chapters in the story that have yet to be written.
The story is about a young boy, Jamal, who has had a troublesome life. Eventually he gets onto the Indian version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?’, and ends up winning the show’s top prize. Given his poor education, he is thought to have been cheating somehow, but the truth is that the answer to each question has come up at some point in his varied and challenging life as a poor orphan in the Indian slums. The film tells his story through the different questions asked to him in the gameshow, and how the appropriate nugget of information came to be known through various episodes.
The film’s vision of gaining immense triumph through a radical acceptance of one’s past is fascinating. Many people regard the past (and especially the bits of it that they don’t like) as something to be forgotten in search of a brighter future, or something to hide from for fear of reopening old wounds. I can’t help but feel that Slumdog is rather a call to affirm one’s past, for once we accept and validate the things that have happened in our life we achieve unity with ourselves, because – for good or ill – our past has made us who we are today, and who we will be in the future.
So why the Easter story? The sense of transforming our experience in the present through a radical acceptance of the past, and a hope for the future based on, rather than in spite of, the testing times of the past, seems critical to the witness of the early Church. Christ’s painful death was never denied, never covered up, and never apologised for, vicious and embarrassing though it was. But instead the early Christians knew that this pain and suffering had been transformed by the new life of resurrection. The past is not forgotten, but through radical acceptance of it the future is transformed.
Dealing with testing things in life is never easy. But i think that the Slumdog story and the Easter narrative give hope that out of even the most difficult things we experience can come hope, peace and joy. We don’t need have chosen our story, but we must affirm that our story is ours, and be hopeful that affirming and engaging with our story and the lessons that it has taught us gives hope when looking forward to those chapters in the story that have yet to be written.
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