The persecution of Christians in China is seldom as overt and blatant as in this BBC news video. Of course the official line is about planning permission, safety concerns and other bureaucratic explanations. But…..
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake…."
Tonight I prayed for these brothers and sisters, grateful for their faith, courage and witness.
Following on from yesterday's post, about Wilfred Owen's passionate appeal for and understanding of Jesus' radical call to peace as a call to passivity rather than war, I came across this quotation from Nancey Murphy. It occurs at the end of her essay 'Agape and Non-violence', in Craig Boyd (ed.) Visions of Agape. Problems and Possibilities in Human and Divine Love, (Ashgate: 2008), 61-72.
Agape is said to be a kind of love that is without regard to status, beauty, relationship, kinship of the object of love. This essay has argued for a more radical (Radical) understanding, emphasizing the call to love particularly one's enemies, and to love without regard to the cost to oneself. God's paradoxical promise is that those who participate in this way in his unlimited and self-emptying love will not lose their very selves, but instead will find eternal life. page 72
In a previous book, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology and Ethics, Murphy and Ellis argued for noncoercive and self-sacrificial responses to threat, oppression and overt violence. This is not an argument for passivity but for non-violent direct action. Murphy's conversation partners in her essay are an interesting and eclectic gathering round the table – Simone Weil, John Howard Yoder, and Gustav Aulen amongst others, with considerable side comments from the Radical Reformation. In this essay as elsewhere Murphy is arguing for a 'kenotic view of human flourishing as a core thesis to be elaborated and tested in the social sciences'. This is both a courageous and radical position for a Christian moral philosopher, and it's no impractical idealism either, as she applies a kenotic ethic to economics, judicial practices and coercive social policies.
My interest in all of this is because my own theology and theological ethics are shaped by that same kenotic instinct, perhaps even conviction. Trinitarian theology can be articulated from numerous perspectives, but my own explorations have been about the relationship between kenosis and perichoresis as explanatory terms about the eternal movements of love and self-giving as these are revealed in the economic Trinity. Such a Trinitarian kenotic theology has ecclesial implications in that an understanding of the church as the Body of Christ, suggests that the Christian community is kenotic and perichoretic in its internal and external relations, in its ethical practices and in its bearing witness to Jesus Christ whose Body it re-presents to the world.
I'm well aware of the theological hesitations around the concept of kenosis, but I am equally aware, and more impressed by, the presence in the New Testament of ineradicable trajectories pointing to self-giving love, the pouring out of life for others, the cross-carrying practices of discipleship and the call to live, by the grace of God, towards the outrageous demands of the Sermon on the Mount. The intricacies of systematic theology notwithstanding, there are equally strong arguments which take with uncomfortable, and discomfiting seriousness, kenosis as the revealed disposition of the life of the Holy Trinity. I am therefore compelled to affirm one of Murphy's distilled sentences, itself a distillation of Yoder's vision of Christian existence as informed by Anabaptist thought and practices:
The moral character of God is revealed in Jesus' vulnerable enemy love and renunciation of dominion. Imitation of Jesus in this regard constitutes a social ethic.
Wilfred Owen remains one of the authentic human voices railing at catastrophe. The First World War was a cataclysm of military and political stupidity, pride, and power intoxication, whose cost was borne by millions of human beings, dehumanised into killing and being killed. This year of centenary remembrance, never celebration, brings Own back to mind. I remember reading Dulce et Decorum Est as a young teenager in Second Year and the rest of the day feeling the weight of sadness and bewilderment that poem so viscerally evokes – along with anger. In Seeing Salvation, by Neil MacGregor and Erika Langmuir, there is a thoughtful and unsettling chapter, 'From Vistory to Atonement'. It deals with the humiliation and suffering of Jesus, and the way First World War British soldiers responded to wayside crucifixes in Belgium. One of Owen's letters is quoted, and I hadn't come across this before:
Already I have comprehended a light which will never filter into the dogma of any national church: namely, that one of Christ's essential commands was, Passivity at any price! Suffer dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms. Be bullied, be outraged, be killed; but do not kill…
Christ is literally in no man's land. There men often hear his voice. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life – for a friend.
Is it spoken in English only and French? I do not believe so.
These are words of uncompromising pacifism, written by one who had witnessed the alternative demonstrated with unprecedented ferocity. They are utterly unreasonable words, leaving the human community dangerously open to abuse, claiming the authority of the crucified God, and therefore decisively subversive of all our rationalisations, justifications and qualifications. Could I do what Owen says Christ demands? Could I deflect his challenge by appealing to his inventive exegesis? Or should I hear these words, read the Passion Story once more, and ask, what does it mean, really mean, to take up my cross daily, and follow faithfully after Christ?
The photo was taken in Aberdeen Botanic Gardens.
Both for perplexity and dulled conscience the remedy is the same;
sincere and spiritual worship.
For worship is the submission of all our nature to God.
It is
the quickening of conscience by his holiness,
the nourishment of mind with his truth;
the purifying of the imagination by his beauty;
the opening of the heart to his love;
the surrender of the will to his purpose…
and all of this gathered up into adoration,
the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable….
Archbishop William Temple, Readings in John's Gospel.
Ever since I was introduced to these words by my own College Principal many a year ago, they have set the gold standard by which to measure what we mean when we use the noun to define worship, and the verb to refer to the act of worship. The submission of all our nature and the integration of all our life into adoration and self-giving love describes a deep rootedness of mind and soul in the love of God.
William temple was far too alert to the social and moral problems of society and church, the dangers and tensions of national and international politics, to ever be described as other-worldly, vaguely mystical or naive about human capacities for evil and destructive purpose. What I find interesting, and enduring in his words, is that they still identify the deficit of life meaning and the dissolving of moral imperatives which contribute decisively to our 21st Century malaise.
Readings in John's Gospel is a two volume series of meditations written between 1939 and completed in 1945; precisely the years when the world was confronted by dictators who demanded obedience of conscience, mind, imagination, heart and will, and ultimately self sacrifice in the name of the human will to power. These words of Temple are much more than a prose poem for devotional souls; they provide a set of criteria as specific as a barcode that enables us to critique and unmask those lesser, life diminishing, penultimate goals of human life too often presented to us as life's ultimates. Conscience, mind, imagination, emotion and will are precisely those aspects of our humanity which require to be dedicated to recognising, cherishing, healing, loving and enabling to flourish the very humanity in which such remarkable capacities exist.
A christian anthropology is open eyed about human sinfulness, and open hearted to the grace that renews, restores, enables and recreates the image of God in us. Temple knew this – here is the rest of the quotation, which balances the urgency of worship with the realism about human waywardness and a distorted sense of our own importance:
and all of this gathered up in adoration,
the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable,
and therefore the chief remedy of that self-centeredness
which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”
I wonder if a key part of the church's mission today is to demonstrate attractively, enact convincingly, perform persuasively, live credibly, witness faithfully, by worship which has the height, depth and length and breadth of the love of God, that immense gracious love drawing from us and answering adoration which distils into a new and radical discipleship.
I read this story and was moved to thankfulness for the faithful witness to Jesus of this good man. Amongst the most strategic gifts of the Holy Spirit, is the gift to the rest of us of the testimony and witness of a Christian life lived in sacrificial joyfulness and faithful compassion. .
Jason has a review of John De Gruchy's new book on John Calvin over at Per Crucem ad Lucem. De Gruchy is a Reformed theologian who in South Africa experienced the best and worst of reformed Christianity as both crtigue and implicate of the social and political history of that country.
His overall portrayal of Calvin as a Christian humanist reflects a growing consensus in Calvin studies which recognise the tranformative and constructive influence of humanism in the thought and work of Calvin. Jason quotes in full De Gruchy's conclusion of six affirmations which define the vision of mature Christian Humanism. Here they are – a searching checklist of what it means in practical, social and moral terms, for Christians to take the humanity of others, and themselves, with the faithful seriousness the Gospel of Jesus Christ demands.
First, Christian humanism is inclusive in its vision of humanity. It recognises that being human is our primary identity – coming before those of religion, race, culture, social class or gender.
Second, Christian humanism affirms both the God-given dignity of being human and the concomitant responsibility of being human. Given human brokenness, it understands the gospel as God’s way of restoring human dignity and awakening our responsibility for the world in which we live.
Third, Christian humanism is open to knowledge and insight from wherever truth is to be found, but it draws most deeply from the Christian Scriptures and the long history of their interpretation through the centuries, embodied in what is called ‘Christian tradition’.
Fourth, Christian humanism insists that love of God is inseparable from love for others; that faith and discipleship belong together; that theology and ethics are part of the same enterprise, and that the renewal of church life and public life are intrinsically connected.
Fifth, Christian humanism places justice, good governance, ecological responsibility and global well-being above national and sectional interests. It is concerned to ensure that scientific and technological development serve the common good and the well-being of the earth.
Sixth, Christian humanism encourages human creativity and cherishes beauty. It insists that goodness, truth and beauty are inseparable, though distinct. Just as it places a premium on moral values and the search for truth, it also regards the development of aesthetic values and sensitivity through the arts as essential for human well-being.
Last week a parcel arrived from my friend Rev Rebecca Maccini, all the way from Henniker NH, in the US.
A supply of Constant Comment tea, available only in US, a blend mixed with spices and citrus which with a wee half teaspoon of sugar, makes this tea my default beverage.
But.
Also.
Well.
A book.
Not just any book.
But a book of Brueggemann's sermons.
And.
Inside it is inscribed to me by the Prophet Emeritus of Columbia University himself 🙂
Yes I like an author's signature in a book, especially those given me by people I know. But then there are those one or two signed books by authors I've never met. One friend brought me back one of Moltmann's books on Jesus, duly signed.
Now I have Walter's signature and good wishes. To complete this more or less holy trinity, I did actually meet Eugene Peterson in Crieff a dozen years ago and he gave and signed for me, a copy of his wee books of prayers and reflections on the Psalms. I had missed the conference he was taking due to a family funeral; I'd phoned ahead to see if he was still there and found that if I got a move on, on my way back to Aberdeen he'd hang around and I could meet him at St Ninians. We had a blether, a stroll, a coffee and a book signing all inside an hour.
But this isn't only a quite outrageous name-dropping post. I think what I'm trying to say is how such encounters occasionally come as unlooked for blessing. A Brueggemann signature and greeting, and though we will almost certainly never meet, he yet wishes blessing on my ministry; a signature from Moltmann, one of the living theologians to whom I owe most in my mature theology, and inside the cover of a book entitled Jesus Christ for Today's World a greeting; and a wee Psalm prayer book which at different times Sheila and I have both used over the years, finding there words of orientation – a term I learned from Brueggemann's work on Psalms. Oh, and today I finally, at last, after a prolonged delay, got an email from a bookseller that Brueggemann's new commentary on Psalms is ready for collection. And is now duly collected and perused and is now being read daily.
Thank you Rebecca for a gift that is its own testimony to the communion of saints, that ultimate network of relatedness, connectedness and communication, held together in the Body of Christ, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, and gathered and scattered in the rhythms of worship and witness.
Grace is a hard word for Christians to take seriously. In the past couple of weeks I have heard that blessed word used and misused and even implied but absent. The problem seems to be the radical nature of grace, our too easily yielding to the temptation to put conditions on the unconditional, our inability to take a gift at its true value, let alone at its face value. Grace is a word that requires a humble heart to understand it. As soon as grace is critically analysed, coherently rationalised and carefully explained, we betray what P T Forsyth calls our 'lust for lucidity', and therefore give in to our all but irresistible attraction to name, control, comprehend and encircle mystery with our thoughts.
Grace isn't so easily domesticated. But in much that passes for evangelical spirituality there is an alarming absence of grace as the source and resource of all Christian living. Even the great slogan 'justification by faith' can be so triumphantly trumpeted that its champions forget it is condensed, compacted theological shorthand, which once it is allowed the expansiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is found to contain realities of much greater dimensions than a polemical formula has any right to hold – to merely begin with, love, grace, reconciliation, that trinity of divine attributes gathered into the true shorthand of the Gospel of the love affair of the Triune God – "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit", and that rich eternal life of God, overflowing in creation, redemption and renewal of a fallen world.
What brought this on? I think it might be the incipient pelagianism of what is sometimes called challenging preaching, or my awareness several times recently of good Christian folk, struggling with their own views of their own inadequate Christian lives. Sometimes in a heartfelt determination to do better, they say something like, 'We need to strive harder to follow Jesus….". I know what they mean, I feel it myself. To try harder, to pray more, to feel more deeply the affections of the Christian soul – gratitude, praise, repentance, surrender, joy, peace – as if we ever really could command our emotional lives, or perfect our moral selves.
Which brings me back to grace. Paul often enough warned about abusing the grace of God. What he had in mind was the disastrous complacency that might ever think that since God is gracious, and I am forgiven, sin is no longer a problem in my life because it's forgiven anyway. That kind of spiritual chancer will get their come-uppance seems to be Paul's answer to anyone who thinks they can continue in sin that grace may abound. But on the other side Paul would still insist, and this is the astonishing truth that seems to have stopped astonishing us – "Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound". No, we don't 'need to strive harder to follow Jesus' – more important is a recovery of the affections of the soul, kindled by trusting again the grace that saves, that grace which is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. That doesn't mean we don't strive – it means not in our own strength, not by ourselves. Ours is the call to faithfulness, God's grace is what enables, sustains, is sufficient.
I wonder if our difficulty is that we take our failures and inadequacies more seriously than God's sufficiency? That in a strange way we fail to trust the love of God to love us? Maybe that the inward curve of our self-importance acts like a concave mirror and makes our sins seem more prominent than the cross on which they are gathered, absorbed, redeemed and forgiven.
Old Samuel Rutherford, that Scottish pastor who was remorselessly critical of his own heart, nevertheless held to his own advice in a letter to someone making the mistake of thinking a Christian life is lived by trying harder. Speaking of taking up the cross he wrote:
"Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is as far removed Rutherford the cantankerous Scottish Puritan as to make a conversation between them all but inconceivable – or so you'd think. Here's Bonhoeffer's take on the mistake of substituting our own striving for God's grace:
"To be conformed to the image of Christ is not an ideal to be striven after. It is not as though we had to imitate him as well as we could. We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ which seeks to be formed in us (Gal 4.19) and to be manifested in us. Christ's work in us is not finished until he has perfected his own form in us. We must be assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarante, crucified and glorified." Testament of Freedom, page 321
So. To finish with Paul – "I am crucified with Christ. I live, yet not I. Christ lives within me, and the life I now live in my body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me".
Gave himself, made himself a gift, became what he ever is, Grace.
"The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all"
Six Haiku:“On Being Good to Your Self.”
Lists are false charge sheets,
conferring permanence on
sins of omission.
No!
Lists are promises
of rest, laughter, gifts, and time
we make for ourselves.
……………………………….
It isn’t a crime,
to be towards our own hearts,
gently generous.
So
Love your neighbour; yes,
but learn to love yourself too;
be your own heart’s friend.
……………………….
If caught beneath an
unexpected avalanche,
you can’t move mountains.
Thus
Being overwhelmed,
trust your friends; your personal
mountain rescue team.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
This is the kind of photo I like to take when I have time to look after myself
Captions please? This road sign is down at St Cyrus beach car park.