Living Wittily

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  • The Best Baptist Preacher of His Age – By Some Distance.

    DSC02696In 1855 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, aged 20, stepped into New Park Street pulpit and preached a sermon on the Immutability of God. The sermon shows Spurgeon the pastoral exegete, evangelical mystic and Calvinist preacher, each of them demonstrably present, and for the next three decades, gifts that would make him one the greatest preachers of any age in the English pulpit.

    I have an original 1878 bust of Spurgeon, a piece of genuine Victorian Evangelical celeb culture. It sits comfortably on the Church History bookcase surrounded by volumes on Puritanism – I guess it might explode if I placed it beside Newman on the Oxford Movement shelf. The first paragraphs of the sermon, despite his early years, are vintage Spurgeon. In the wide corpus of his sermons there are countless paragraphs that combine spiritual passion, biblical rootedness and homiletic gift to such effect.

    "There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.” No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God….

    But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe…. The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

    And, while humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore.

    Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning."

     

  • When Your Bible Becomes Disbound Don’t Throw It Away

    DSC02894This Bible is 60 years old. It has been read most days and has seen better days. It belongs to a very special friend, who used to read this Bible along with her late husband. It is a King James Version, and was published by the National Bible Society of Scotland just after the second world war. My friend was a missionary to India in the early 1960's, and she met her husband there. My friend had this Bible when she went out to India, and they have used it all their married lives, and it shows.

    This Bible has been around, and in book seller's discourse, the volume is now disbound. Which is a more gentle way of saying falling to bits, done. The binding is broken, pages are loose and torn, the marbled endpaper is ripped on one side and missing on the other. When it's opened it is quite likely to drop a few pages, and here and there an entire pamphlet is likely to fall out – these are called signatures, a large printed sheet, folded three times, and sewn into the spine. Hard now to use this Bible without having to hold it together, and reading it is a bit of a distraction if as well as meditation on the printed word there also has to be vigilance to prevent it falling apart!

    Yes we could have bought my fried a shiny new Bible. A full range available, in any amount of translations and a variety of bindings from leather to hardback, plastic to linen, restrained solemnity of the traditional or multi-coloured options from pink to golden to green, and there's even a camouflage Bible. I joke not. But this is her Bible, replete with memories of countless readings, handled till it feels as familiar as her own hands, opened and closed over a lifetime when it has brought comfort and solace, or questions and upset, read aloud by her or her husband and in the reading the memory of his voice and hers, reciting words that are both prayer and conversation.

    This isn't mere book, this is a living repository of a lifetime reading, listening, waiting, questioning, sharing and in all of this the discipline of faith in God who can be heard in these words, and argued with, trusted, and known.

    DSC02933Which is where the ancient craft of bookbinding comes in. Down at the University Bindery there are those who take old worn out books and make them live again. With an inbuilt love of the book as object, and a deep appreciation of the bonds that bind a person to a much loved and well used book, they take dilapidated pages and broken spines and bind them together again into a new usefulness.

    DSC02934Not a new book, a renewed book. And that's what has happened to my friend's Bible which we'll take to her tomorrow. The bookbinder is very busy – a waiting list of weeks to get a book done. But he knew this was a book used most days of the week and every week of every year. One week to the day he phoned to say it was ready.

    This post is to say thank you, not only for this Bible of the second chance, but for work that is utterly and gloriously counter-cultural. It's done; throw it away; replace it; get a new one. That's the pared down philosophy of hearts and minds accustomed to newness, novelty and stuff. It's called the consumer culture. No such concessions to built in obsolescence for the bookbinder, who specialises in taking that which is broken, cracked, past it, disbound, and restores it to strength, durability and usefulness again. A bit like God really!!

  • Becoming the Gospel 2: Participatory Mission and Missional Participation.

    GormanMichael Gorman chose the title of his book with some care. Becoming the Gospel is a programmatic title, not only for the book but for how Gorman understands the nature and role of each Christian and each Christian community. From the very first, Paul "wanted the communities he addressed not merely to believe the gospel but to become the gospel and in so doing to participate in the very life and mission of God." (2) In his earlier book on Inhabiting the Cruciform God, Gorman firmly set this trajectory. Looking to the consummation when "God will be all in all" (I Cor 15.28) Gorman concluded, "In the meantime, by the power of the Spirit of Father and Son, the new people, the new humanity bears witness in word and deed to that glorious future by participating now in the life and mission of the triune cruciform God."

    That word participation is fundamental in Gorman's understanding of Pauline spirituality and to Paul's view of mission. In 2 Corinthians 5.21 Gorman finds an astonishing promised exchange between the cruciform God and those communities responsive to the Gospel and therefore called to "faithful allegiance" and "trusting loyalty". "For our sake God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

    The cruciform shape of Christian faith, practice and mission is distilled by Gorman in the sentence, "The cross of Christ reveals a missional, justifying, justice making God and creates a missional, justifying, justice making  people." (9) This is a book about particpatory mission or missional particpation, and throughout Gorman expounds Paul's theology by taking with utmost seriousness Paul's vision of human life being caught up into the life of the cruciform triune God. In the power of the Spirit each Christian and each community participates in that life as agents of reconciliation, peacemaking peacemakers, persecuted for their faithfulness to the God of kenotic love and cruciform conciliation as they turn from the idols of the age and demonstrate deepest loyalty to God by their counter-cultural commitment to the new life in Christ.

    Quoting Morna Hooker, another pastorally alert Pauline scholar, Gorman spells out what he intends by his title, becoming the gospel. Referring to the "we" of 2 Cor. 5.21m sge argues: 

    "The we has particular significance for Paul's own understanding of discipleship and ministry, and becomes an invitation tyo others to share in the divine activity. What Christ is to us – righteousness, wisdom, sanctification, redemption – Christians must now be to the world." (6)

    What is God up to in the world, what is the missio dei? What happens if we read Paul's letters and interpret his life from the standpoint  of the church as a sent community? the answeras to these two questions will take up the next review post. Beyond that Gorman takes us deep into the texts and contexts of several of Paul's letters, exploring and confirming his overall thesis that Paul's view of the gospel assumes a people who, in response to the love of God and the faithfulness of Christ revealed on the cross, and given vital reality throughout creation by the resurrection, become themselves faithful communities. By the power of the Spirit, redeemed into a new creation which is cruciform in shape and energised by resurrection, Christian communities are called to faithfulness, love and hope, embodying the very reality of that cruciform reconciling and renewing love set free into human life, the life of the creation and indeed of the entire cosmos.

    YodaIf Gorman is right in his overall interpretation of a missional Paul in the service of a missional God, calling into being missional communities of faith and faithfulness, then he is providing a post-Christendom church with a theology of mission adequate to our condition. A church haemorraging confidence as quickly as members, which despite desperate attempts at cultural adjustment and accommodation is being  increasingly pushed to the peripheries of post-modern culture, and urgently needs to rediscover, and recover, its own raison d'etre. By focusing on God's purpose for the church, and embedding that in the biblical narrative of Christ crucified and risen, and affirming communities called into being to re-present and participate in that same cruciform, reconciling kenotic love – that is to begin to give the church back its true existence, and that is what Gorman aims to achieve. As participants in the divine nature, as those who through the astonishing exchange of redemptive love, each church recovers its own true value as created by God, its own mission which is essentially, and necessarily different from the cultural icons of 21st century Western society. That difference will inevitably lead to persecution, almost in proportion to a community's faithfulness to and faith in Christ. This book is about spelling out the nature of that difference as seen in some of the earliest communities in the New Testament.

  • The Exegetical Captivity of the Book of Ruth

     

    Ruth
    This is an interesting list of names.

    Athalya Brenner

    Kathryn Pfister Darr

    Tamara Eskenazi

    Kathleen Farmer

    Marjo Korpel

    Kirsten Nielsen

    Katherine Sakenfeld

    Karin M Saxegaard

    This is another interesting and longer list of names

    David Atkinson

    Daniel Block

    Frederic Bush

    Edward Campbell

    Robert Chisholm

    Iain Duguid

    Daniel Hawk

    Robert D Holmstead

    Robert Hubbard

    Andre Lacoque

    Tod Linafelt

    James McKeown

    Leon Morris

    Roland Murphy

    Jack M Sasson

    K Lawson Younger

    The first list comprises women biblical scholars who have written a commentary or monograph on the biblical book of Ruth. The second list comprises men who have written a commentary on Ruth – the number of monographs by men would lengthen the list considerably. And my point is? Well I have several points.

    1. Around half of the women writing on Ruth write from within the Jewish tradition, and all of them, Jewish and Christian, take cognisance of feminist and womanist perspectives. Question: Can a man write an adequate commentary on a book in which women's experience is definitive and central in the story? Is gender irrelevant to how a person approaches a narrative text like Ruth?

    2. The list of men commentators covers almost all the mainstream series of Old Testament Commentaries in English. The exceptions are Nielsen in the Old Testament Library, Farmer in the New Interpreter's Bible and Sakenfeld in Interpretation Commentary. Question: when editors commission scholars to write commentaries on biblical books, do they consider the advantages of having a woman write a commentary on a book so replete with women's experience in a patriarchal society?

    3. Is gender relevant when choosing someone to write on a biblical text? Like Ruth, or Esther, or Song of Songs? What would a woman bring as scholar, and as woman, and therefore as woman scholar, to the approach and interpretation of any biblical text; but especially a text telling a complex narrative of women's life experience?

    4. I have looked at the most recent commentaries and those forthcoming – they are still predominantly commissioned to men. James McKeown, Robert Chisholm, Lawson Younger and in a month's time Daniel Hawk in the Apollos series; these are all recent, and written by men and they are all appearing in series within the evangelical tradition.

    5. Of those forthcoming there is Marjo Korpel in the highly academic HCOT series and Kandy Queen-Sutherland in the more accessible Smyth and Helwys volume. All else is commissioned to men.

    I know – books like Ruth and Esther were most likely written by men, and reflect the social structures and mores of their time. But surely in trying to explore and expound the meaning of such texts for the original readers, and in seeking the contemporary appropriation of these texts as part of the Church's Bible, it would make sense to value and actively seek those whose own life experience gives access to the complexities and anomalies in a book such as Ruth? Or is that unreasonable, special pleading, patronising, or what? 

  • Becoming the Gospel 1:Missional God = Missional People

    Those who know me will be aware I have an aversion verging on allergy to the word missional used as a ubiquitous adjective to anoint the latest programmes and strategies with biblical merit and mandate. I am absolutely and overwhelmingly convinced that mission lies at the heart of the church. The rhythm of worship and witness compels the pracvtice of mission. Worship draws us centripetally to the centre of our life in Christ, and then we are thrust centrifugally outwards to bear witness to the grace, love, mercy and reconciling purposes of God in Christ.

    And therefore I am persuaded that an entire approach to Christian dogmatics could, and perhaps should, be founded on the mission of God. Such a Dogmatics would be constructively elegant in its use of fundamental doctrine s drawn from the classic Christian traditions, would be essentially centred on the graced nature and salvific purposes of God, and would be ecclesially innovative and pastorally evangelistic, as the eternal saving purposes of the Creator and Redeemer God are worked through in the context of our own times and our own calling under God, and applied in an exploration of the essential practices of the community of the Christlike God.

    GormanI am currently reading my way through Michael Gorman's new book, Becoming the Gospel. Paul Participation and MIssion. I've read Gorman's earlier books and he is now a go to writer I have personally found a valuable and trusted guide through the New testament texts, in particular the letters of Paul. A major emphasis in Gorman's interpretation of Paul up till now is a word he virtually coined, or at least established as a powerful interpretive key to the letters of Paul – it's the word cruciformity. His book Cruciformity. Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross is a careful and persuasive exposition of Paul's theology and practice in terms of the cross; all of Christian life is cruciform, formed and transformed through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. The existence of the church, and the life and lifestyle of individual Christians is cruciform, shaped and conformed to the image of Christ crucified and risen.

    From that starting point came a second book, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, in which Gorman developed further the conception of Christian existence as life liberated from sin and death through new creation in Christ. In that new creation the individual Christian and the community of the church are being shaped towards and come to embody the reconciling love and restorative forgiveness, and renewing grace and transformative justice and mercy of God. Once that quite dense sentence has been absorbed it is then easier to grasp the subtitle of this second book: Kenosis, Justification and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology. The theological content distilled into each of those words makes them potent with ideas and possibilities that enrich and expand our understanding of Paul's theology of Christian existence. I personally found this book profoundly helpful in the search for conceots that might aid my understanding and articulation of my own journey in Christ.

    It's no coincidence that Michael Gorman is a Methodist, who has deep roots in Wesleyan theology in which such notions as theosis, participation, kenosis and conformity to the image of Christ so deeply inform the understanding of justification and sanctification, and of anthropology and ecclesiology. Much of what Gorman is exploring and expressing is a Pauline justification for a particular understanding of the dynamic of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the revolutionary impact on the individual of the work of God in the human heart. I have to confess a deep affinity with much Wesleyan theology and spirituality, though not uncritically. So I have to confess also that much of Gorman's work is already congenial to me, takes me into familiar theological territory, provides substantial exegetical warrant for much that I already believe, and hope more and more to grow into.

    However what makes this third book so important, and worth a number of reflective review essays, is the word mission, and yes, the word missional, used theologically, carefully and always embedded in its exegetical and theological foundations in the biblicsal text. On page 9 is a succinct summary of what this book is about. In later posts I'll reflect on a chapter at a time, but for now here is Gorman's nutshell statement:

    "To put it simply: the cross of Christ reveal a missional, justifying, justice-making God and creates a missional, justified, justice-making people. Because the cross reveals a missional God, the church saved and shaped by the cross will be a missional people."  

     

  • Celebrating the Triune God 1. Blessed and Holy Three

    Trinity Sunday is for me one of the central Festivals of the Church.  In fact I think the doctrine of the Trinity is central to Christian thinking – dogmatics, ethics, spirituality and our dialogue with people of other faiths. This week we will have a daily theological reflection on the richly textured, revealing mystery, and renewing recovery of how we are caught up into the life of the Triune God through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 

    The most famous icon of the trinity is Andrei Rublev's 14th Century masterpiece. To explain the beauty and theological delicacy of this is like ruining a meal by insisting the guest, while eating, should hear a chemical analysis of the ingredients and a psycholohgically reductionist account of taste and smell. So I leave the painting to be considered. The hymn that follows is an example of what we might lose if in our fascination with the new accessible praise song, we relinquish the hymns that articulate our faith with depth and range of thought and feeling.

    Angelsatmamre-trinity-rublev-1410 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Thou, whose almighty word
    chaos and darkness heard,
    and took their flight;
    hear us, we humbly pray,
    and, where the Gospel day
    sheds not its glorious ray,
    let there be light!

    Thou who didst come to bring
    on thy redeeming wing
    healing and sight,
    health to the sick in mind,
    sight to the in-ly blind,
    now to all humankind,
    let there be light!

    Spirit of truth and love,
    life-giving holy Dove,
    speed forth thy flight!
    Move on the waters' face
    bearing the gifts of grace,
    and, in earth's darkest place,
    let there be light!

    Holy and blessèd Three,
    glorious Trinity,
    Wisdom, Love, Might;
    boundless as ocean's tide,
    rolling in fullest pride,
    through the world far and wide,
    let there be light!

  • Hymns for Pentecost 6: The Forwardness of the Ego in The Hymn Book Index

    OK, it isn't a scientific piece of qualitative research but it did make me wonder a wee bit. In the Complete Mission Praise  where I went looking for the hymn I wanted for this post, only one (that is 1) hymn begins in its first line with "Holy Spirit". The number of hymns that begin with "I" and cognates of the first person singular (I'm, I'll) is eighty (that is 80).

    OK, it isn't the way to do theology either, number counting, but it does make you wonder. In poetry, letters, speeches, sermons, the first words spoken have a particular rhetorical effect, they hold an important place and are significant pointers to what is to come. So what is this about an 80 to 1 ratio of hymns that begin with "I" compared with the one, solitary, lonely, single line entry for the Holy Spirit?

    But then I counted the hymns whose first word is Jesus. That's better, there are 50 of them. This is getting interesting; what about God, how well does God do in the rhetorical numerical stakes? So I counted the hymns that begin with the word God and found 25 of them. So, 25 + 50 + 1 comes to 76. Oh, what about Father, our favourite theistic metaphor, and I discover there are 20 that begin with that name for God that has Dominical precedent! That makes 96 hymns begin with the names of God whether Father, Son or Spirit. But wait a minute, what about hymns that begin with Spirit and clearly refer to the Holy Spirit. That's better, there are 6 of them.

    But I'm still bothered by the sheer preponderance of the first person singular, 80 of them, and on checking I discover there are 51 that have "We" and cognates, making a final score of "I / We"  131 – and Names for God, "102".

    Me 131  v  God   106

    If that were a basketball score it would be a convincing win, but also a respectable losing score. I can't help feeling though, that in the hymn score, the better side lost!

    I did say it wasn't a peer reviewed, independently validated piece of qualitative research. But it did confirm my personal discomfort at the forwardness of the ego in our diet of songs that are meant to be hymns of praise to God. And I leave it there……

    The last hymn for Pentecost week comes from Christopher Idle, and is one that celebrates the pedagogy of the Holy Spirit, according to the Gospel of John:

     

    Spirit of holiness,wisdom and faithfulness,

    wind of the Lord,blowing strongly and free.

    Strength of our serving and joy of our worshipping,

    Spirit of God, bring your fulness to me!

     

    You came to interpret and teach us effectively,

    all that the Saviour has spoken and done;

    to glorify Jesus is all your activity,

    promise and gift of the Father and Son.

     

    Spirit of holiness,wisdom and faithfulness,

    wind of the Lord, blowing strongly and free.

    Strength of our serving and joy of our worshipping,

    Spirit of God, bring your fulness to me!

     

    You came with your gifts to supply all our poverty,

    pouring your love on the church in her need;

    You came with your fruit for our growth to maturity,

    richly refreshing the souls that you feed.

     

    Spirit of holiness, wisdom and faithfulness,

    wind of the Lord, blowing strongly and free.

    Strength of our serving and joy of our worshipping,

    Spirit of God, bring your fulness to me!

  • Hymns for Pentecost 5. What Language Shall I Borrow?

      Wren bookOne of the most outspoken and brilliant books on the use of gender exclusive language was written by Brian Wren, the title, What Language Shall I Borrow? It is a sustained argument against male dominated language in discourse about God. Whereas today for many the worry is "the feminisation of the Church", Wren's concern has always been the "masculination of God". Words like King, Lord, Almighty, Father, Protector are words about power, strength, and are all masculine in their pronouns. Wren's complaint is, if God is spoken of in language which is gender exclusive or predominantly masculine, then it reinforces patriarchal discourse which in turn contributes to social structures which marginalise women. Equally unacceptable to Wren is that such masculine discourse and male reinforced privilege takes on biblical and theological rationalisations, which are then a completion of a circle of exclusion centred on a distorted discourse about God.This makes it absolutely crucial that the words we sing in our hymns should reflect the wholeness of human experience, male and female, young and old, in all our ethnic diversity and psychological uniqueness.

    Edwards_Ruth_200x200pxI will never forget the first sentence of a prophetic paper delivered by Ruth Edwards (pictured) at the Aberdeenshire Theological Club around 1990. Ruth was at the time Senior Lecturer in New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, and is a recognised authority on greek language and Johannine studies. She was also one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church. I was privileged as her friend to be invited to stand with her following ordination in the celebratory prayer. Her paper on the theology of God and gender stereotypes began with her observation that in the imaginations of many Christians, it seems the Holy Trinity consists of a dad, his boy and a pigeon!

    What followed was a carefully reasoned, biblically founded, exegetically persuasive and theologically combative exploration of the case for the ordination of women to Christian ministry. The foundation pillars of her argument were exegetical faithfulness to the biblical texts and a strong theological case for ensuring that our discourse about God was predicated on language which allowed for the full range of human experience. Metaphors we must have, but they must be rich and varied, faithful to the whole wide range of Scripture in their gender connotations. For that reason they must reflect the images not only of Father, King and Lord, but also of life-giving mother and self-giving birth, of protective tenderness and resilient resourceful parenting against all the odds and threats to her child. And much else. The prophets Hosea and Isaiah, the Genesis creation accounts, the example of Jesus in the Gospels and the contextual complexities of Paul's letters must all be weighed in to the exegetical and theological equations, and be allowed to contribute their metaphors, perspectives and diversities of discourse and context.

    The love that Christ revealed was no male macho toughness, nor was it the indulgent sentimentality that never challenges or confronts. It is a love that Christ revealed as living and working in our world. Brian Wren's hymn below plays with such ideas of living, active, creative love. And in that Divine Love we all recognise and acknowledge and depend upon, are all those other loves in our lives that nurture and steward creation, that nourish by self-giving, that defend and will die for love of the child. God loves like that, Christ said so, and showed so. The feeding of hungry children, the making of home and the welcome of stranger, these are not exclusively feminine actions and dispositions, but nor are they exclusively male. Brian Wren uses these and other metaphors to explore and explain the work of God the Holy Spirit. The result is this hymn.

     There's a spirit in the air,
    telling Christians everywhere:
    "Praise the love that Christ revealed,
    living, working in our world."

    Lose your shyness, find your tongue;
    tell the world what God has done:
    God in Christ has come to stay,
    we can see his power today.

    When believers break the bread
    when a hungry child is fed:
    praise the love that Christ revealed
    living, working in our world.

    Still his Spirit leads the fight,
    seeing wrong and setting right:
    God in Christ has come to stay,
    we can see his power today.

    When a stranger's not alone,
    where the homeless find a home,
    praise the love that Christ revealed,
    living, working in our world.

    May the Spirit fill our praise,
    guide our thoughts and change our ways:
    God in Christ has come to stay,
    we can see his power today.

    There's a Spirit in the air,
    calling people everywhere:
    praise the love that Christ revealed,
    living, working in our world.

  • Hymns for Pentecost 4. Is it Possible to Sing Condensed Milk?

     

    Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed
    His tender last farewell,
    A Guide, a Comforter bequeathed
    With us to dwell.

     

    He came in semblance of a dove,
    With sheltering wings outspread,
    The holy balm of peace and love
    On earth to shed.

     

    He came in tongues of living flame
    To teach, convince, subdue,
    All powerful as the wind He came
    As viewless too.

     

    He came sweet influence to impart,
    A gracious, willing Guest,
    While He can find one humble heart
    Wherein to rest.

     

    And His that gentle voice we hear,
    Soft as the breath of even,
    That checks each thought, that calms each fear,
    And speaks of heaven.

     

    And every virtue we possess,
    And every victory won,
    And every thought of holiness,
    Are His alone.

     

    Spirit of purity and grace,
    Our weakness, pitying, see:
    O make our hearts Thy dwelling place,
    And worthier Thee.

    Sometimes a hymn doesn't have to be a great hymn, or brilliant poetry, to do what a really good hymn does – which is enable praise, inspire devotion, become a conduit of prayer, remind and recall the heart to its centre in God. The first time I sang this I was a recently converted teenager who up till then loved and lived in the music of the Rolling Stones, The Who, The Beach Boys, The Hollies, and had been immersed in the dynamic diversity of 60's music, with its daring innuendo, unabashed celebration of sexuality as integral to love, and which moved to the persistent beat and rhythm of a culture in process of irreversible metamorphosis. 

    I've never forgotten the culture shock in those first weeks of going to a wee Lanarkshire Baptist Church, and of an organ playing slowly, a congregation singing fervently, and the discovery of a strange new world of music that did things to your head and heart that took you to quite different places of human experience. This is a sentimental hymn, the metaphors are soft and comforting, and in my experience nearer to Herman's Hermits than to Mick Jagger complaining in public with unambiguous body language that he couldn't "get no satisfaction". 

    This hymn was written by a woman who preferred seclusion and quietness to society and activity.This particular Guide and Comforter, of whom she writes, seems to go in for non-assertiveness, and gentle persuasion rather like a Quaker engaged in earnest well-meaning conversation with a pumped up tattooed biker about his language and drinking habits. The hymn is laced with the language of human sympathy – tender, sweet influence, gracious willing guest, sheltering, holy balm, gentle, soft, calm, weakness pitying. If you're not careful this could taste like condensed milk spooned straight from the tin. And where it could possibly resonate with 21st Century cultural idioms and musical lyrics, or how our far more unrestrained emotional and psychological patterns of communication could cope with this alien restraint and tentativeness, I don't know. 

    Holy-spirit-dove-clipart-MiL759piaAnd yet. Every now and then I go back to this hymn. One of the reasons is the recurring Johannine echoes. The tender last farewell refers to John 14-17, and the scared desolation of disciples who had no idea how to cope with an announcement of death. The word "bequeath" is the last loving gesture of Jesus to friends he whose hearts he was about to break. The rest of the hymn is an exposition of that word "Comforter", in an older version, "Paraclete", the one who comes alongside to strengthen and suppport and help. In our language, the One who will be there for us. It's a hymn you have to be in the mood for, and maybe that mood comes seldom, and maybe the opportunity to sing it with a congregation is now a memory, and should stay that way, for it isn't used much now. Is it? But now and again when I come across this, I read it, and recognise underneath all the layers of my critical qualifications, a hymn that when allowed to speak on its own terms, bears witness to something important about God the Holy Spirit.

     

  • Hymns for Pentecost 3. A Keswick Hymn by a Classical Lexicographer.

    Edwin_HatchOne of the magisterial publications  in biblical studies is the massive Hatch and Redpath Concordance of the Greek Septuagint. Edwin Hatch was probably thought too liberal for promotion beyond the obscurity of his Oxford study. In addition to the monumental Concordance, he delivered both the Bampton and the Hibbert Lectures on what may seem like obscure corners of Christian scholarship. The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity was an early and brilliant attempt to present a picture of Greek life, thought and culture in the first centuries after Christ, and it remains a landmark study, dated now of course, but having established the cruciality of context in tracing the historical development of Christian thought.

    Well, that's all well and good. Another side of this humble lexicographer, whose knowledge of Greek, Hebrew and other ancient languages was extensive and deep, was his devotion to God and the sensitivity and simplicity of his personal faith. It is a salutary fact that the writer of this simple, dependent prayer, "Breathe on me breath of God", with its unembarrassed longing for holiness and purity of love, was penned by a man soaked in scholarship, assiduous in research, meticulous in his tracing and translating of words. The hymn has long been a favourite of Evangelicals, and was for decades popular at the Keswick Convention.

    I love this hymn, and often use it in my own prayers. I admire the writer for the way he integrated academic brilliance, disciplined scholarship and the deep aspirations of a heart devoted to God. His hairstyle however is something else!

    Breathe on me, breath of God,
    Fill me with life anew,
    That I may love what Thou dost love,
    And do what Thou wouldst do.

    Breathe on me, breath of God,
    Until my heart is pure,
    Until with Thee I will one will,
    To do and to endure.

    Breathe on me, breath of God,
    Blend all my soul with Thine,
    Until this earthly part of me
    Glows with Thy fire divine.

    Breathe on me, breath of God,
    So shall I never die,
    But live with Thee the perfect life
    Of Thine eternity.