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I've preached a lot of sermons on or around the theme of love, love of God and love of neighbour. Love of God as God's initiative, God loves the creation, the world, the church and even me! Love of God as my love for creation, the world and the God who created and redeemed all that is, including me. But I've never preached on hate.

My friend Stuart Blythe raised this homiletical oddity on Facebook the other day. His comment raised for me several considerations. Given that love is such a central theme in Christian theology, ethics and spirituality, you would think that hate might also be worth substantial reflection, careful theological consideration, a long pondering about the origin, nature and anatomy of hate. But no. I've now looked in the index of a shelfload of books on Christian ethics and they are stuffed with references to love and in not one of the indices does the word hate or hatred feature as a topic worth indexing.

Then I thought about the kind of world we now live in where hate is a frequent component in compound nouns; hate language, hate crimes, hate mail. Indeed the prevalence of social media has both increased the incidence of hate exchanges and required laws to identify such postings and legal criteria to prosecute them. The past year or two has seen hate taken to new levels of public exposure. The psychopathic hatred of Isis, advertised through the propaganda of broadcast executions of the most brutal kind; the savagery and lack of mercy in the treatment of those who deviate in the slightest from the ideology, practices and goals of Isis; the shocking narrative still unfolding of the terrorist massacres in Paris, and the degree of hatred you have to presuppose in human beings behaving so inhumanely that vocabulary becomes exhausted of superlatives as people try to describe it.

But one of the most dangerous features of hate is its capacity to reproduce itself, often in the victims of hate inspired violence, who in turn hate the perpetrators and wish violence on them. Then there is the contagion that spreads through communities so that hatred mixes with fear, is reinforced by remembered suffering and violence, seeks a target and focus for the resentment and rage detonated by the violent hatred of the other, at which point a viscious circle is spinning wildly.

Once hate exists in the mind, the heart and the memory, it manufactures images and stereotypes, constructs caricatures and rehearses inwardly the hostility and violence urged and driven by those incidents, histories and experiences of those on the receiving end of hate. When Paul spoke of dividing walls of hostility he was speaking of ancient enmities, indomitable misunderstandings, bridges long broken and the masonry used to build walls of exclusion and willed mistrust. 

We have seen all of this and more in recent years, weeks, and these past few days since Friday 13 in Paris. And it's time Christian theology took on the narratives of hate and violence, the social disease of hate speech, the casual ignorance of those who demonise the other and turn them into scapegoats. Goodness, the week Rene Girard died we saw across the social media overwhelming evidence that his thesis on mimetic violence has the diagnostic elegance of a laser removing a cataract and restoring clear vision of what is happening in the real world.

So on Sunday I'll preach on hate. I'm a minister of the Gospel, the good news of God's love in Jesus Christ, but I'll preach on hate. What kind of love does it take to redeem hate? Are there forms and degrees of hatred that place the hearts and minds that contain them beyond redemption? If someone is possessed by hatred is reconciliation impossible, peace-making unattainable, forgiveness a waste of time and moral energy? What about hate and the cross of Christ? Surely some light can shine from that darkest of places into the darkest places of the human heart, after all God is light? And how do we respond to the person whose hatred has matured into murderous intent and seeks the harm or extinction of those "others" who are the cause of the hatred in the first place?

I finish this first post on hate with these words, which offer no easy answers and raise the kind of questions our world doesn't want to hear, and if we are honest, most of us Christians would rather not hear either.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

In 1971 I bought a budget LP, Big War Movie Themes. I was into big band music and I liked Geoff Love, especially under his other name of Manuel and the Music of the Moutains. It was on the War Movie Themes LP I discovered the soundtrack for "Is Paris Burning?", and around that time I also saw the film. The music remains a wistful, melodic defiance of the brutality that tries to crush the human spirit. Today I listened to the soundtrack again, on Youtube, accompanied by black and white film of the German occupation of Paris.Two years of French Studies at Glasgow University opened up French literature, politics, history and art provided deeper insight into the pivotal role of French culture in the formation of a European mind.

The cultural and historic importance of Paris as symbolic of European intellectual and political achievement, and of the European ideal itself is beyond serious dispute. The choice of Paris for a visitation of malignant violence and merciless malice was made by those who understand with chilling menace the political leverage, cultural foundations and the anatomy and mechanics of terror. The deluge of social media messages, images, exchanges and condolences confirms both the reality and impact of the atrocity itself. They also confirm the recognition that something deep in the roots of what makes us human revolts at the perverse rationality that argues that murder is good, that celebrates slaughter, and while killing all remorse in themselves, believe they are chosen and blessed agents of a radicalised God whose will they do.

Against such fatalistic ideology we now have architecture lit up with the tricolour, the Eiffel Tower as symbol of defiance and hope, flowers, candles, written messages, vigils and many other simple ways of saying no to violence, defying the terror, facing the fear, clinging to hope, holding on to community.

While thinking these thoughts I remembered reading some words of the Canadian astrophysicist Rebecca Elson, a remarkable human being, brilliant mind, sensitive writer and courageous woman who died of cancer aged 39. Her expertise was in the nature of dark matter, globular clusters, the birth of stars and other such mysteries and wonders of this vast at times pitiless universe. During one of her times of remission from her illness she visited Paris, and became unwell again. And she wrote this passage in her journal, while leaving Paris by train.

I end this piece here by quoting words of hope, realism and the genuine humility of someone who tried to live her life with wonder, facing her fears, and cherishing the utter miracle that is an individual life set abroad against the vast mysterious ocean of incalculable possibility. She writes lovingly of this great city, itself a metaphor for the many causes of gratitude in her life; and she writes lovingly of herself:

So much to look forward to, so many possibilities, places, people. The thing is to accept my life is an adventure, and any adventure has difficulties. But really its more fear than physical, With the right strategy, the right environment, why can't I keep my body in balance with itself.  No reason. Be gentle, be attentive, be understanding. Make life easy for yourself.

There is a kind of joy of movement, a moment almost like flying inside yourself, soaring with the sun, and the music, and the train moving out of Paris, leaving behind something so good, so solid to return to. I feel deeply capable of leaving you deeply free. A very beautiful moment on the train leaving Paris, of that energy which propels you through life. Places with fresh air, and sunshine, and the sea, and spring on its way.

She hangs on to the essential insight, that human life is miracle indeed, and miracle enough to nourish and nurture hope. And that insight was quickened in her again by her visit to Paris.   

While away on a short break earlier this week we went to Beauly, a small Highland town west of the Moray Firth. It was cold, windy and enough rain to make you cold within minutes of leaving the car. We were there to see the ruins of Beauly Priory, founded in 1230 by a strict offshoot of the Benedictine Order. It was one of three communities, the others in Oban and Pluscarden (which is still an active Benedictine community). 

It takes a feat of imagination to feel something of what it was like to be an order committed to prayer, contemplation and Scripture in a building like this, in the 13th Century, situated in a beautiful site but subject to a full Scottish winter and the vagaries of every other season in Scotland. Imagine – no central heating; no double glazing; no electric kettle for a quick cuppa; no Berghaus wind and water proof jackets; no microwave for fast food. Indeed fast meant something else to monks when it came to food. A daily routine of early (3am) rising, sung prayers, eucharist, the hours of prayer throughout the day, and the same faces day in and day out.

I mention all this as a reflection on how hard it must have been just to get through each day, and the discipline required to keep going, to not give up, to persevere in seeking God and living with each of the brothers as if they were Christ himself, which they believed in a deep and ineradicable sense they each were to each other. All that, for a life of prayer.

Which brings me to my own easily dislodged good intentions about prayer; my awareness of minor inconveniences that nudge prayer down the to do list; the clutter and clatter of things that get in the way of quietness and commitment to paying attention to God; the contemporary obsession with connectivity which while creating the illusion of social engagement and embeddedness is a form of digital distancing and often a source of anxiety and loneliness and unhappiness that our lives aren't as interesting as 'our friends'. Add to this the focal points of contemporary spirituality, at least on the broadly evangelical circles of my own Christian walk; of worship as experience intended to revify through praise and pervasively subjective music, of mission as yet another driver of activism and programmes and goals, of Scripture as a how to book instead of a here's who you are and here's who God is kind of book, and all this against a background of competing voices in the marketplace pitching for our time, money, energy and engagement. 

Prayer has never been easy, and never been more essential to spirituality and sanity. Monasteries are not the answer today, but by remembering why they came into being we are reminded of the questions we are required to ask, and answer. And the questions, the real questions are not posed by the market, the culture, our context or our life situation. These are constants, but constants that change and change us.

No. The real questions are posed by God. "I have placed before you today death and life, therefore choose life…" "Be still and know that I am God". "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly." "Take up your cross and follow me…" "He died that those who live should live no longer for themselves but for him who died and was raised…" These are all statements which force us to face the most significant questions in our entire lives. 

So somewhere in our own times there is a need for a radical re-orientation on the scale of the monastic communities. Not a new monasticism, but a renewed sense of urgency about God, a recovered sense of our humanity as invested in the redeeming love of God in Christ. And with that, a relativising of all those important, pervasive drivers that dictate how we live our lives, and a re-setting of our attention to focus more clearly on what matters, and on what matters most. Prayer, and time made and kept for prayer, may be one of the most radical forms of mission, worship and service a Christian can offer in our digitalised, globalised, economised, pluralised and atomised world.

All of this from walking in the cold, in cloisters no longder visible, but in the place where once, in the words of T S Eliot, "prayer was valid."

I've always wondered how Elijah went for forty days on the strength of some oatcakes baked by an angel. Food is one of the necessities of life, but also one of the recurring pleasures, and undoubtedly the right food at the right time is profound soul therapy.

So when I need a few hours on my own, or want to think, walk, pay attention to what's going on around me and inside me, a favourite place is the beach. And sometimes, not always, – occasionally not often, – I'll stop at my favourite cafe for an Elijah half hour. Being a good follower of Jahweh, Elijah didn't have the bacon roll, and wouldn't have milk with meat either. Still once the coffee and bacon roll arrive, there is the feeling that, once this is finished, I can walk in the strength of it for 40 minutes at least.

More seriously, walking by the sea is one of the places where the rhythms and steadiness of waves and tide, the wind whether breeze or gale, the sand soft or packed by the motion of the sea, combine in one of nature's most soothing orchestrations. The old scots word fankle, refers to what happens to wool once a cat gets a hold of it, or what happens to a silver chain taken off carelessly leaving it a recalcitrant clutter of knots. It's a good word, and sometimes it describes a particular state of mind. Walking with the wind in my face, the waves curling over and running for the shore, and with the sand smooth underfoot, is for me a way of unfankling my mind, disentangling trivial and crucial, restoring a sense of proportion to those worries that can undermine and overwhelm. Those rhythms of waves and walking work away at the soil of the soul until it's cultivated enough for new seeds of thought.

I'm not one for praying as I walk; unless walking is a kind of praying, which I suppose it is. After all following Jesus isn't mere metaphor, it has a referent in the real world of feet on the ground, even footprints in the sand! But the hymns I cherish and know by heart; the bible passages I've dwelt on so long they are part of my intellectrual breathing apparatus; memories and thoughts of people who are in my life, or have been and their memories remain as another kind of presence. Each of these makes for a well stored mind and an equally well stored heart. A long walk along the sea edge, preceded by a coffee and bacon roll. There is a spirituality of the favourite places, sounds and food!

The Christian Spiritual Tradition has its enduring classics, not all of which stand the tests of time, or postmodern-critique. The Imitation of Christ, so introspective, guilt inducing and Pelagian in its emphases towards self improvement; the Letters of Fenelon, patronising and patriarchal in their assumptions about feminine spirituality, yet written with an affected feminine tone which some 21st C women may well find irresistibly funny if not ioffensive; Teresa's Interior Castle, a kind of handbook on spiritual Grand Designs for a residence fit for a king; Julian's Revelations of Divine Love, an uncomfortable combination of morbid fascination with death and a level of denial about the reality and perhaps irrevocability of tragedy, evil and divine failure; The Cloud of Unknowing, that strange mixture of Dionysian mystical strategies and structures and The Dark Night of the Soul of John of the Cross, whicvh may be one of the most helpful guides for a culture utterly sated with its own desires and dying of its own surfeits.

I've read all of these, and taught them in classes as substantial building blocks in Christian spirituality, acknowledging all these weaknesses but still insisting that these are the legacy of souls who struggled with the cost and consequence of seeking God.

Each of those spiritual classics is the product of a life lived Godward, and a desire to leave a few footprints for others to follow. (The photo is of my 1831 edition of Fenelon's Lettres) And yes they can be shown to be limited, flawed, less relevant, even harmful in the way they can perpetuate oppressive ideologies and attitudes if read uncritically and without regoard to context. And yet. The wisdom of some of the Christian tradition's greatest thinkers and explorers of the spiritual life is that these classics of devotion are gold, albeit mixed with the dross of their own times and contexts and normative frameworks. So every now and again I go back to one or other of them and recalibrate my own spiritual sensitivities, push back my hermeneutical horizons, revisit landscapes which I remember but which on returning I find to have changed, or perhaps that I have changed and can never see things this way again.

For most of my intellectual life as a Christian I have found spiritual and intellectual sustenance, stimulus and enjoyment in another kind of reading altogether. The biblical commentary is a particular genre of biblical studies, itself a major discipline under the wider roof of theology, subsumed under the canopy of the humanities! In these later years of semi-retirement when there is time for more discretionary reading I confess to indulging in more of what I;ve always done – reading commentaries. Yes commentaries are for consulting, they are reference wqrks, they gather in one place as much of the relevant information needed for responsible intepretation of the text, and I use commentaries in that way. But I also read them; like a story, with a plot, characters, tensions, resolutions and ongoing questions about where this is all going.

Commentaries have always been my manuals of devotion, to be placed alongside the classic works of that genre, and often to be given more time, and in return they give more for the effort and time spent. One example. The story of Martha and Mary and Jesus occurs in St Bernard, in the Cloud of Unknowing and in Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton. Each of these treatments eventually commends the contemplative over the active. But pursuing this gospel story through several academic commentaries opens up other interpretive possibilities and perspectives. I haven't looked at so called devotional commentaries on Luke, whatever they might look like. Instead I spent a while with the scholars who have dug deep into the text, who know the layers of cultural and social signals, who are alert to the assumptions and constraints that can skew a text and load an intepretation. The result is a profound sense of gratitude for the residual ambiguities in the story; is Jesus rebuking or comforting Martha? Will Jesus refuse the bread Martha has baked in the hot and bothered kitchen? Can the church ever thrive on the false dichotomy of contemplative prayer versus hand dirtying service?

The Bible remains the primary text of the Christian Church. For two thousand years saints and scholars, readers and writers, prayers and preachers, have found there words that have become the Word of God to them. The immense learning and energy that has gone into the work of biblical interpretation is one of God's great gifts to the church. And while I fully recognise the market pressures and commercial advantages of publishers multiplying commentary series and finding increasingly flimsy justifications for yet another allegedly indispensable, authoritative, ground-breaking, innovative or whatever else seem plausible reasons, the work of biblical interpretation remains a vital and vitalising activity of the Christian Church.

Were I to reduce my library to a hundred volumes, I'd want more commentaries than classic manuals of devotion and systematic theologies put together.   

Franciscan Benediction

May God bless us with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that we may live from deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of God's creations
So that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with just enough foolishness
To believe that we can make a difference in the world,
So that we can do what others claim cannot be done:
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and all our neighbors who are poor.

Amen.

I came across this prayer attributed to St Francis. It sounds too modern, western, and reads too rhetorically tidy for me to have much confidence it came from the medieval monk and troubadour. But then again, someone who spent three weeks in dialogue and as a peacemaking envoy to the Sultan of Egypt may well have shown the inner dispositions for which this prayer asks. So there's a spiritual congruence of these prayer petitions for converted attitudes with what we know of what Francis was about. And there is a further alignment of the heart if this prayer is read alongside the more famous prayer attributed to Francis – Make me a channel of your peace.

In both prayers, the sentiments and ideas, the psychological insight and spiritual intelligence that gets to the heart of what is wrong in the world, and how God is seeking to make it right, show considerable family resemblance. So if the prayer isn't by St Francis – it could have been, indeed it should have been! In any case Christians seeking to follow faithfully after Jesus in the fluctuating flux that is our western cultural malaise, will find in this prayer important clues for living intelligently, faithfully and with inner integrity. Because we are called to witness to Christ the way, the truth and the life amongst the greed and injustice, the lies and deceit, the fear and anxiety, the hedonism and sadness, the individual uncertainties and collective confusion of a society so lost and blurred in vision that it gets harder to distinguish between a road and a cliff edge.