Where are the Christians?

“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favour with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47)

For some Christians, this famous Bible quote from the Acts of the Apostles describes the early Church’s first love— and as someone wrote, sometimes the Church has to rediscover that first love. For other Bible commentators, this image of the early church in Jerusalem is only an ideal; unattainable during our earthly life. The evangelist Luke wrote these words with the eagerness of the Resurrection and Pentecost freshly in mind. Yet, the text has been and still is an inspiration for religious communities old and new: people living and praying together, sharing their gifts and skills to the praise of God; new and old monastic communities, Catholic Worker houses and other intentional communities alike.

Yet anyone who has spent some time in community will know that community life can be challenging as well! And while for some it is healing and empowering, others might wither away if they aren’t careful.

In our different Christian cultures, somehow we have adapted ourselves to accept that what we believe and preach, we cannot always live in our different Christian cultures, somehow we have adapted ourselves to accept that what we believe and preach, we cannot always live up to ourselves. We are not always proud of it, but who actually gives away his second coat to the poor? “Anyone who has two coats must share with the person who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.” Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Although some people do, and they do more.

But imagine now someone reading this passage for the first time, someone outside our Christian culture for whom just confessing Christ or simply being baptized means the risk of being jailed or condemned to death: these words probably sound like heaven. These Christians probably are forced to live in solidarity with each other as the first Christians in Jerusalem had to.

On my last visit to the refugee camps in Calais, I met a man like that. A rather small man—middle-aged I think—came to me, and asked if he could have a word. He spoke a bit of broken English and referred to himself as a ‘broken man’ and he ‘hadn’t always been like that’. It was almost miraculous how on that day his Google Translate fluently translated from Arabic to French and vice versa. And he added some English words he knew to the conversation. Now he was in the process of claiming asylum in France.

Ahmed was a Kurdish man who came from Iraq, at some time in his life he had converted to Christ and opened up to a relationship with GOD. He was obviously a man who prayed regularly, and he knew the early church in the New Testament. In confidence he said “in Christ we are all brothers” and “we are sheep of the same Shepherd, aren’t we?” I confirmed yes, but was thinking how he’s now expecting that I might be able to help him.

Ahmed challenged my faith with some of his questions and remarks. He was telling me about some of his current struggles. That GOD has always been there for him, but that now he didn’t understand where GOD was leading him. Looking for a safe country, he had been trying to get to the UK, but now decided to stay in France.

It puzzled him he had met no Christians. Where were they? Where is that Jerusalem community Luke writes about?

Although he is not living in Calais anymore, he had come down to the Catholic Day Centre a few times. He said “it is the first time I see you here, where have you been?” while pointing towards my cross and habit (my blue monk’s clothes). I had to explain I live in London, and try to come two days a month. Trying to engage local people, I called one of the Roman Catholic Sisters into the conversation. She proposed he could go to Mass on Sunday (as Catholics do) and speak with the priest after. I knew that wasn’t what Ahmed was looking for. He was looking for the incarnate day-to-day expression of the Eucharist: to gather together (around the table) to thank and praise GOD, to break and share what we have and who we are with each other, as Christ did for us. To be brothers and sisters of the same Good Shepherd. He was looking for Christian community.

It happened that that Sunday was the Sunday of the Good Shepherd, and I had to preach in my community. I didn’t need any inspiration anymore—my sermon on the Good Shepherd was made with this encounter. In my sermon I referred to Ahmed as he who is looking for the Shepherd who brings together people. The Shepherd, who makes the blind see, heals community and redeems. Ahmed was looking for other sheep to share his joys and pains, his faith and to figure out what GOD was calling him to in France. I seriously hope Ahmed finds answers to these meaningful and important questions in his life—and I hope he finds a Jerusalem community to be fully part of.

I love it when people challenge my faith like this, when I am reminded that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ and need to take care of each other.

Why is renunciation important?

From Issue 73, Summer 2023

In our daily lives we are buried beneath mountains of obligations, desires, ambitions. We are buried beneath other people’s ideas, emotions, beliefs. Who we are is lost in the vortex of forces; we are unable to take control of our lives, we are drowned in stress and anxiety, we are unable to know ourselves.

We are covered in the layers of the external world and become so habituated to these layers that they become indistinguishable from us. We believe them to be part of reality, a necessary facet of our lives. This is not to say that these layers are ‘false’ or ‘deceitful’ or ‘wrong’. They are just part of the experiential world. Nor is it to say there is some ‘true self’ which can only be discovered by renunciation – this is just a cliche. I do not see renunciation as some black and white path to ‘truth over falsehood’. Instead I see it as yin to yang; an opposite of participation, which makes up part of our totality. In other words, it is precisely over-participation that makes renunciation so relevant.

Renunciation is a state of cleansing, a stripping away of external layers to reveal to what is left when those layers are not dominant. That part of us that is buried can once more be revealed.

Once you have renunciated the experiential world you can remain in that state or follow the instinct to rebuild your life. But this time you can choose what layers you add with more care. Once you return to nothing, it is much easier to mindfully build back up to something.

Once you recognize that the layers are just layers, they lose their dominance over you; they become contingent, changeable. When you stop identifying so strongly with all of the things you are carrying, you are able to drop them and then only pick up what is actually good for you.

Renunciation can be a daunting process – shaving off the hair which gave you identity, leaving the job that gave you security, cutting off the friendships that you thought were forever, turning away from the promise of romance and love, reducing your power to consume goods, focusing less on pleasures of the world, abandoning the causes that you held to heart, giving up the path to ‘progress’. But is it more daunting than being devoured by externalities, without ever experiencing what you are at your most basic foundation?

Not everyone will follow the instinct to renunciate – not even for a short period of time. These people will find unhealthy ways to resume their destructive course, harming themselves and others. They might try to use therapy or medication to keep themselves ‘stable’ – this is like building a house in a swamp and spending your energy trying to keep it standing. Sometimes the house has to be left to collapse to the ground.

We only need to look at the sick capitalist society we are living in to see how far we have taken this fear of change. The ‘developed world’ drowns in its own meaninglessness, grows ever more unequal and corporate, pits everyone against everyone else, poisons and destroys the living world, burns people out in the workplace, turns spirituality into another commodity.

The path of renunciation is needed now more than ever. Not in the form of some corporate yoga session or ‘guaranteed-results, lifecoaching’ marketed at white professionals, but a real rebellion against that unsustainable life in the first place. This renunciation is a revolutionary act, but only as a side-effect. Striving for political change is, after all, nothing more than an external layer.

The aim of renunciation is to find yourself, in the domain of yourself. It is a place necessarily beyond the good and evil of common morality, beyond ‘progress’, beyond obligation, beyond everything but you. How could it be anything else?

A Reflection on the Elbit Protests

from Issue 73, Summer 2023

A few months ago, an old friend, Tom, messaged me complaining about the lack of good books at the police station. He’d been arrested. I asked what happened, and with characteristic understatement, he replied that he’d been ‘involved in the Elbit stuff.’

Elbit Systems are Israel’s largest private weapons manufacturer – and one with multiple factories in the UK and close relationship to the British state. Its UK factories, despite repeated denials by their spokespeople, manufacture drones that are then deployed by Israeli military. In May, their factory in Leicestershire became subject to a siege by Palestine Action activists – aiming to shut it down. Through targeting production and supply chains, Palestine Action hit Elbit where it hurts – in their stock prices. It comes at a cost: around fifty activists were arrested.

I asked Tom why he thought it was worthwhile braving arrest to take a stand against the arms industry. He said: ‘We have more power than we think, to stand up to the arms industry in our backyard. They are making obscene profits out of death, and resisting that just feels so urgent. But it’s a highly sensitive industry, and every disruption we cause cuts into those profit margins. And I think everyone who was there would say that the response from Elbit Systems showed that these companies are terrified of direct action like this.’

I have to wonder why I failed to be there. To make peace, as the Gospel calls us to do, is to strike out against the manufacture of death. It means making a serious attempt to stop the use of arms. In our society, if we seriously believe in peace, we need to resist the arms industry, an industry which reaps nearly $600 billion in sales from a global culture of war. To target Elbit Systems is the start of that.

My friend’s arrest reminded me that there is no belief outside of action. I might say all manner of very worthy things about the plight of Palestinians, the evils of war, and the British state’s complicity in the massacre of innocents. But if I am not willing to put my skin in the game, to suffer for the end of suffering, the words mean nothing.

It is easy, all too easy, to make excuses for ourselves – of course I have a busy white-collar job and of course I don’t want to lose it. But God did not call us to self-preservation; he called us to lay down our lives for each other and ultimately for Him. Rosa Luxemburg, a revolutionary socialist, was put on trial in February 1914, as she insisted that German workers must refuse to fight in a war against their French brothers. Someone asked her why she didn’t run away; she said: ‘I assure you that I would not flee even if I were threatened with the gallows… I consider it absolutely necessary to accustom our party to the idea that sacrifices are part of a socialist’s work in life.’

If sacrifice is desirable for socialists, it’s unavoidable for Christians. The Lord tells us to ‘take up your cross and follow me’ – and the early Christians knew this was no metaphor. Every time I fail to turn up, to bear witness to injustice and attempt to stop it, I am rejecting the Cross. The actions of those surrounding Elbit day after day reveal to me that an easy life is not a good one. May the Lord deliver me from my continued moral cowardice.