Above us only sky?

I somehow came to learn about Colin Heber-Percy's Tales of a Country Parish: From the Vicar of Savernacke Forest just in time to use download it on Audible for listening during a weekend getaway with my wife. Written during the first pandemic year, 2020, it is a remarkable book. One of my favorite features of the book, which is organized according to season, beginning with Spring, when the pandemic started, are the suggested musical compositions to listen to at the end of each section. These have been nothing short of revelatory for me.

Having taken today off because I didn't want to rush back to work after a weekend away, I listened to Tales of a Country Parish during my long walk this morning. Here along the Wasatch Front of the Rocky Mountains, it's a lovely Spring day. It now looks like rain, which we very much need. Predictably, my walk and listening were interrupted by a phone call I had to take. Boy, do I look forward to the day when, apart from people near and dear to me, family and friends, I won't have any urgent calls to take.

My reason for posting this, apart from the fact that I rarely just sit and write anything in my little cyberspace anymore- a stark contrast to my blogging of yesteryear!- is because in listening to his book, I heard Heber-Percy (he is the narrator of his audiobook) read something that threw me back to last Friday, writing about there being no heaven.

Commenting on "John Lennon's atheistical urging in his song 'Imagine' to abandon the notion of heaven" the author states this has never bugged him. This resonated with me. Besides, concocting such a place is a case-in-point of many critiques of Christianity, opening Christians to the charge of not really being concerned about the here-and-now or with what we now refer to as social justice. I agree with the good vicar when states that abandoning such a notion "might even be a good idea."

The lyric that bothers Heber-Percy is Lennon's assertion that above is only sky. He asks if Lennon ever bothered to look up. "The sky is an endless wonder," he continues, "our canopy and our context, a far-off boundary, and as close as our breath." Only sky, indeed!

Thinking about the here-and-now in this context, Saint Paul's Letter to Philemon comes to mind. Philemon, as I think at least one of my two readers will know, was an individual, not a community. Philemon, a Christian, owned slaves. Well, he owned at least one slave. The one slave we know he owned was named Onesimus. Onesimus, also a Christian, left Philemon to travel with Paul.

What occasioned Paul's Letter to Philemon was the need he felt to send Onesimus back to his master. Understandably, the idea of this hits our 21st-century consciences very hard. This makes it all the more important to read what Paul writes most carefully. Basically, his appeal to Philemon is that through Christ, he (Paul), Philemon, and Onesimus enjoy equality.

Paul begins this missive by calling himself "a prisoner for Jesus Christ." He refers to himself in this way another time in the short letter. He asks Philemon to receive Onesimus, who Paul calls "my own heart," not "as a slave but more than a slave, a brother."

Rather than being "pro-slavery," Paul here is pro-fraternity. He's being subversive in an affective and effective way. For Christians, the revolution looks more like an evolution. Being an evolution, there are mutations. While it certainly has political implications, the Christian revolution is not essentially political. Activism not only has its limits but reaches and seems to quickly spill over reasonable limits.

Being loved is true freedom. It is by loving the concrete, real person, the one whom we encounter, as opposed to the abstraction of humanity, that we set them free. Love is always revolutionary. Love is what makes God's kingdom a present reality as we await its fullness.