Author: admin

Monday

1 Corinthians 13. 13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

I’ve often wondered about that singling out of love as the greatest. Life without hope, without the capacity to trust, would be pretty bleak. But for Paul what enables trust, what fills with hope, is the love of God in Christ. That’s the start and finish of all hope, and the final foundation of our deepest trust – “God commends his love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” When Paul writes about love in 1 Cor. 13 he is writing first and foremost about the love of God in Christ – it is THAT love that is poured into our hearts, and that we then live out in practice.

Tuesday

1 Corinthians 13.1 “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

What’s more annoying than the loudest voice in the coffee shop, oblivious of the rest of us, clanging on about the holiday, or banging on about their latest grump about the boss? A Christian who makes it known they are Christian, who ‘witnesses’ to others about what they believe about Jesus, or ‘takes a stand’ on moral issues that are ‘traditionally Christian’ – can be just as annoying as that clanging cymbal at the next table, and just as hollow. Any careful, even cursory reading of the New Testament leaves us in no doubt – love is the criterion of Christian authenticity.

Wednesday

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Read that again, and think of how Jesus lived his life, treated and responded to others. Is there a better check-list on which to measure our own relational, emotional and spiritual health? Precisely because that description of love is way beyond any one of us, without enabling grace, each day we seek once more the renewal of the reality of the indwelling Christ – “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5.5)

Thursday

1 John 4.7 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”

Love is more than emotional affection – it is practical kindness, enacted goodness towards others, readiness to forgive, patience to understand, sharing the burdens and the laughter. When God’s love pours into the heart it issues in newness of life and becomes a spring of renewal irrigating the relationships around us. Knowing and experiencing the love of God brings about the deepest transformations of the ways we think, feel and act – God calls us to be the love of Christ personified, to be the Body of Christ. “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me…”

Friday

1 John 4.8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

There it is. As succinct and to the point as we could possibly want. God is love! Our love for God, love for others, love as the energising fuel of life, love of enemies, love for God’s creation, love for our church and every community of Christ; all are made possible by being drawn into the love of God, the grace of Christ, the communion of the Spirit. No wonder Paul said a loveless Christian is a clanging contradiction and a discordant embarrassment. Love is both gift and imperative, choice and ommand. 

Saturday

1 John 4.10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

A Christian understanding of love comes from experience. We love because He first loved us. We entrust ourselves to that love which reaches out from the cross in mercy and forgiveness; then our whole inner self is renewed by the inpouring of the great grace of God, which is uncontainable and so it naturally finds outflow as we in turn become conduits of the grace of God in Christ. “Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.” Once again, love is both gift and demand, visible evidence of an inner reality, proof positive of a life in living connection with Christ.

Sunday

1 John 4.11 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

We forgive because we have been forgiven; we love because we have been loved; we show mercy because mercy has been shown to us. There is an inescapably reciprocal movement of gift and response in our spiritual lives. We are blessed to become a blessing, and in blessing others we are further blessed. That phrase “Since God SO loved us” is an irresistible argument. God loved us so much, beyond what we could ever deserve or expect, without holding back and without prior conditions – God loves like that. And our love for God, others, neighbours, enemies, whoever and whenever? Every day grateful obedience demonstrates our answering love.

Yes, I’m old enough to remember Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ first time round! I’ve always loved bridges – their architecture, their usefulness, the way they help us on our journey.

One of my favourites is ‘the clatterin’ brig’ at the foot of Cairn o’ Mount. Last year I took a photo of the bridge, while standing on stones in the middle of the burn. It’s framed in gorse, and looking upstream through the arch it’s easy to imagine the importance of the bridge, and to be grateful for all bridge-builders.

Our world now urgently needs bridge-builders, those carefully constructive people Jesus called peacemakers. There are priority vacancies for bridge-builders between communities who work at healing divisions, for recruits who are willing to be conduits of goodwill, for imaginative creators and curators of trust, skilled craftsmen in the work of bringing people together in friendship.

A bridge is made of walls, but walls of friendship which enable each other to journey, to go from one side to another, passing or waiting for each other to pass, a long-term gift to each traveller, a place where multiple paths intersect.

A bridge is a monument to goodwill, a deposit paid towards journeys others will make. Bridges are reasons to be grateful to those who build such sturdy walls which carry the road we travel, and which carry us, from here to there, and back again.

Some of the most important words in the thesaurus of human relations are shown by experience to be the most durable stones for building bridges – listening, understanding, empathy, forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, co-operation, generosity, laughter and yes, humanity.

Monday

Psalm 45.1 “My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the King; my tongue is the pen of a skilful writer.”

Every poet needs inspiration to bring out the best that is in them. In coming before God the King, we already have the uplift of knowing we come before One whose love is beyond our words, whose mercy is broader than our imagination, and whose grace is indescribable. But we will try anyway. Prayer can be those moments when we are left speechless by God’s glory, but our heart will not be silent. Our most heartfelt words are penned by a grateful heart articulating our love for God.

Tuesday

Psalm 27.8 “My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face I will seek.”

The Psalm poet knows his own heart, and he has learned to listen to its urgency. That exclamation mark signals an imperative, when the heart knows what is needed. Seeking the presence of God is a deliberate inward turning of the mind and heart towards the One who is holy, and in whose light we find strength to live and guidance to live well. There are instinctive impulses that turn us towards God, those nudges of the Holy Spirit reminding us of God’s pervasive presence and attentive care. When the heart speaks we do well to listen, and seek the face of God.

Wednesday

Psalm 27.4 “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”

This verse is a confession of faith and a declaration of life’s first priorities. When Jesus said “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness”, he was calling for a heart that wills one thing as life’s first priority. Get that right, and everything else falls into its proper place. The Psalm poet was unlikely to want to be in the Temple for the rest of his life. He longed to live all the days of his life in glad obedience and grateful praise. That is his prayer. May God be the ever-present reality, a conscious daily presence, whose sustaining grace infuses and informs our life.

Thursday

Psalm 42.2-3 “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”

Jesus was referring to that same longing of the heart for home and the security of a welcoming love when he called “Blessed” those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” When we use the word ‘devotional’ to describe our times of prayer, or whatever we read and think about in our prayers, we are using a word laden with emotion. This is about the longing of love, the restless and homeless heart seeking the felt and known presence of the living God. When meeting up with someone we love, we might say, “I missed you!” That’s what the Psalm poet means about meeting with God. The anticipation of One we have missed, and the joy pf meeting again.

Friday

Psalm 119.103 “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”

When it comes to descriptive praise, our Psalm poet has no fear of exaggeration. In his day honey was the sweetest taste, though date syrup was the common sweetener (think sticky toffee pudding!). But God’s words are sweeter! God’s word is palatable, delicious, nourishing, a sheer delight, because in God’s presence there is fullness of joy. When we read, meditate and pray over the Scriptures we are putting ourselves intentionally in God’s presence, and so putting ourselves in the way of joy! Amongst the way we seek God’s face, is the habit of having some of the Bible for breakfast! And we know breakfast is the most important meal of the day.     

Saturday

Psalm 63.67 “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help I sing in the shadow of your wings.”

Lying awake in the middle of the night it’s often the anxieties we think about, rehearsing all the worst case scenarios of things going wrong. The Psalm poet knows better. Instead of putting his head under the duvet to shut out a worrying world, he already knows he is under the protective shade of God’s surrounding care. “O spread thy covering wings around / till all our wanderings cease; / and at our Father’s loved abode / our souls arrive in peace.” There is a healing wisdom underlying that practice of turning from our own anxieties to a rehearsal of God’s overshadowing mercy.

Sunday

Psalm 126.5-6 “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”

I have memories of my dad with a pitch fork throwing sheaves up to the stacker who built the corn stacks, and at the end of the day on late summer nights the tea and cake for all the workers made by the farmer’s wife! This verse recognises the rhythms of life, tears of sorrow and songs of joy, life’s gifts and losses, times of strength and weakness, disappointments and hopes fulfilled. All in the end is harvest, made up of God’s grace and blessing, the strength and comfort of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of the Scriptures and the love-gift of the community of Christ’s people.

(Photographs from a recent visit to Iona Abbey)

Sometimes it's fun to do some redaction and source criticism of our favourite writers. Yesterday I read an essay by Richard Hays, one of the most astute New Testament scholars of my generation. The essay was exploring the Gospel of Mark, and especially the significance of Mark's portrayal of the cross and discipleship in the narrative structure of Mark. The title is 'The Crucified One', and it can be found in Cruciform Scripture. Cross, Participation, and Mission, a volume of essays in honour of Michael Gorman.

 Hays displays all his characteristic precision in a close reading of Mark, analysing how the Cross is hinted at from the beginning, and then increasingly emphasised in more explicit words of Jesus. The disciples are not only slow to understand, they seem incapable at times of believing Jesus is serious about his destiny. That slowness of understanding linked to the call for disciples to bear the cross and follow after Jesus, drives the narrative towards its conclusion in the passion of Jesus, the resurrection, and the call to disciples to walk into an unknown future with all its risks and costs. 

The later part of the essay analyses Mark's use of the verb "to hand over", usually translated into English as to betray, particularly when Judas is either the agent or the one described. The word expresses the passivity of Jesus, a willingness to be "handed over". The resolute walk to Jerusalem, the anguished wrestling in prayer in Gethsemane, the matter of fact account of the trial and crucifixion are an enacted kenosis, the self-surrender of Jesus to the Father's will. The word that describes that surrender, that "handing over", is freighted with a profound theology of the passion as kenosis, expressed in obedient sacrifice and self-giving love.  

As I read the essay I recalled two books I had read as a young minister, a long time ago now – Following Jesus. Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark, by Ernest Best and The Stature of Waiting by W. H. Vanstone. I took Best's volume on a week long retreat, something I'm not sure the author would ever have envisaged given it was published as a scholarly monograph in the fledgling JSNT at Sheffield University Press. Twenty years later, at the British New testament Conference, I sat at breakfast with Professor Best and thanked him for a book that deepened my understanding of Mark, and challenged me at levels considerably deeper than exegetical learning.

To my knowledge, Best was amongst the first to focus on Mark's theme of the obtuse disciples presented as exemplars of how hard it is to take up the cross and follow. Here is a summary of Best's book, demonstrating how technical analysis yields practical interpretation:

They show many failures in understanding, but that is not the whole story, for they are on the road and it is to them that the task of mission and the task of cross-bearing are entrusted.

The cross and resurrection of Jesus are behind them, but their own cross (and resurrection?) is very much ahead of them or actually with them in the suffering to which they are called. The cross is always calling for the denial of self and the search to serve others; it is always calling for a community in which commitment and openness are not opposed to one another but two sides of the same fundamental challenge which is also an opportunity.

Jesus is not to be
imitated so much as obeyed and followed on the road which he alone has made possible by his act of ransoming in the giving of his life. (Prof. Robin Barbour, Scottish Journal of Theology, 1983, Vol.36 (1), p.107-109)

Vanstone's book, The Stature of Waiting, I read on the back of his still remarkable first book, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense (1977). It remains one of the most telling practical theologies of kenosis in pastoral life. The Stature of Waiting is a full pastoral exploration of "to hand over" as it is used of Jesus in the Gospel story. His exegesis highlights the kenotic significance of both the word itself, and the actions in the Gospel story that it signifies. His aim is to apply it to our all too human experiences of suffering, loss, and disappointment, using Jesus' acceptance of his own suffering as a lens through which to view our own human responses to those situations and circumstances that overtake all of us at some time or other. 

I find it intriguing to discover such parallels between a highly suggestive essay written a few years ago by a leading New Testament scholar, and two books from almost half a century ago. One was written by an obscure Anglican priest, the other by an Irish Presybterian minister also a NT Professor. What I know of Richard Hays from his books is that he was an alert listener to Scripture. Some of his most influential books are excavations of the text looking for precursors of thought, and listening closely to hear intra-textual echoes of Scripture, and using his sharp recall of the text and its world to identify allusions which might aid interpretation. 

The point of this post is to recognise that process of echoes and allusions, not only in written texts, but also in the intellectual and spiritual traditions that make up the atmosphere of biblical studies as they filter into our own theological thought and spirituality. I doubt Hays read Vanstone, and if he read Best it was probably decades ago. The common tradition of what we learn and live, what we retain and what had its time and then was gone, what still pulses with significance for us and drives us to dig deeper, think harder, and practise more faithfully – that shared environment of scholarship is one of the sustaining gifts entrusted to the church. I am grateful to those who keep adding to that tradition, bringing forth things old and new, for them let us give thanks – for me, that includes an appreciation of Richard Hays who taught us to appreciate the surprising complexity and contemporaneity of the text before us. It was good to remember him in the reading of his essay, 'The Crucified One.'      

Monday

Psalm 1.1 “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers…,”

Many governments are putting a lot of time and energy into regulating the content of social media. In a best case scenario, the policies that are eventually applied will aim at removing what is thought to be harmful or hateful. But there is also a clear Christian responsibility for self-regulation. As Christians we all have to find ways of processing what we read, watch, and listen to online. That means paying attention to what we ‘like’, the comments we make, the content we ourselves post, so that it’s neither harmful nor hateful. As a start I suggest regular reading of Psalm 1. It is about the company we keep, the ideas to which we give living space in our heads and hearts, how we speak and respond to others – remembering God, not Facebook, is our moderator!

Tuesday

Psalm 1.2 “…but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

The law of the Lord provided the conditions of God’s covenant relationship with his people. Loving obedience to God’s Torah (Instruction) would lead to a healthy community in which justice, honesty, fairness, mercy and kindness would flourish, and consequently so would the people. In our online world, at its worst populated by shameless self-promotion, avalanches of fake news, and anonymous nastiness, Christians living out the teaching of Jesus and the Gospel realities of the transforming Spirit of God, can be salt and light and agents of grace. Love faithfully contradicts hate, truthful words work at rebuilding trust, and habits of encouragement offer support to folk who are struggling. 

Wednesday

Psalm 1.3 “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither — whatever they do prospers.” 

A well irrigated tree stays healthy, fruitful and has deep roots. Likewise the person who delights in and meditates on ‘the law of the Lord.” And when that Scripture soaked mind applies itself to the keyboard or smartphone, those fruits become evident – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now that’s a set of filters that would revolutionise and regulate the content and impacts of social media!

Thursday

Psalm 1. 4 “Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.”

‘Wicked’ is a catch-all word that includes most of the ways we cause harm to others and to the world around us. The wicked have no interest in the common good, no felt obligation to care for others, use words as weapons and delight in anything that makes them bigger and others smaller, make up their own truth and couldn’t care less about the damage they cause around them so long as they are OK. They have no moral kernel, no grain of responsibility, no seed of goodness that contributes to a more just, kind and safe future. Christians cannot be keyboard warriors – we are called instead to “like and share” the teaching of Jesus and the hope of the Gospel!

Friday

Psalm 1.5 “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.”

The wicked, those who undermine community, damage the social fabric, who are the enemies of compassion, for whom God is irrelevant and God’s ways are a nuisance, – they won’t have a leg to stand on. Like every sinner we all stand self-condemned by the way we have walked the way of our lives. But to have found Jesus as “the Way, the Truth and the Life”, is to be renewed, forgiven and given a ministry of reconciliation. As Christians we belong to God in Christ by the power of the Spirit. Our presence online, and in fact our behaviour wherever we are, becomes a sharing of our renewed true self as we are in Christ.

Saturday

Psalm 1.6 “For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”

This is the classic contrast. The narrow way and the broad way, the wise man and the foolish man, right and wrong, truth and lies, righteous and wicked. There’s no room here for smug complacency that we are the one or the other. Our calling is to live worthy of our calling, to “shine as stars in a dark universe”, to follow faithfully after Jesus – and in our time that includes our online presence. Be a star in the night sky of whatever online platform you use – and in whichever encounters and conversations make up your daily life in family, neighbourhood and church, and as you try to walk the way of the righteous, remember the Lord watches over you. 

Sunday

Philippians 4.8 “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” 

If Paul was writing that today he might change only that last phrase, and urge Christians living in the digital age – “post about such things”!

Monday

Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son;
endless is the victory Thou o’er death hast won.
Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,
kept the folded grave-clothes where Thy body lay.

Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son;
endless is the victory Thou o’er death hast won.

BY Monday morning the Easter eggs are on sale and the boom in chocolate sales is passed. But Easter is forever. Jesus is risen! Death is defeated! The best hymns push us back into Scripture, and this hymn picks up the detail in John’s Gospel of angels left looking after carefully folded grave clothes. In John, Jesus speaks of being glorified in his death, and rising again. Easter glory blazes with life, and grave clothes are now redundant. Christian faith is a resurrection faith in the living Lord!

Tuesday

Lo, Jesus meets us, risen from the tomb.
Lovingly He greets us, scatters fear and gloom;
let the church with gladness hymns of triumph sing,
for her Lord now liveth; death hath lost its sting.

Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son;
endless is the victory Thou o’er death hast won.

I’m not sure any other Easter hymn has a stronger line declaring Christian comfort and hope in the risen Lord. Christian faith is an encounter with the living, risen Lord Jesus in which we are made alive in Him by the power of the Spirit. The hymn imagines that meeting of human hearts with the loving Presence and life-giving power of the resurrected Lord. The risen Christ calls together a church, a fellowship of believers, a company of the committed, an incendiary fellowship, ignited and united in Christ.

Wednesday

No more we doubt Thee, glorious Prince of life!
Life is naught without Thee; aid us in our strife;
make us more than conquerors, through Thy deathless love;
bring us safe through Jordan to Thy home above.

Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son;
endless is the victory Thou o’er death hast won.

The One who scatters fear and gloom brings to every Christian heart a deepening assurance that establishes faith and overcomes doubt. The glorious Prince of Life makes each life worthwhile, gives to life purpose and meaning, so that compared to life in and with Christ, living for ourselves becomes mere existence. “Make us more than conquerors, through thy deathless love” is a one line prayer any time we are struggling. Because the resurrection of Jesus is about life, and a love that will never give up on us, that cannot be extinguished, and that will bring us safely home to God.

Thursday

Love’s redeeming work is done. Hallelujah!

Fought the fight, the battle won. Hallelujah!

Vain the stones, the watch, the seal. Hallelujah!

Christ hath burst the gates of hell. Hallelujah! 

The word triumphalist is often used negatively to rebuke those who over-celebrate, or who taunt the losers. Fair enough. But when it is death that is defeated, the grave that is outmanoeuvred, the murderous intent of a world’s sins being borne and overcome, then to quote our earlier hymn, “Let the church with gladness, hymns of triumph sing, for her Lord now liveth, death has lost its sting!” Love’s redeeming work is fulfilled, completed. The world did its worst, and failed to silence the Word of Life. Even hell has no finality for its gates are burst, its locks broken.

Friday

King of glory! Soul of bliss! Hallelujah!

Everlasting life is this: Hallelujah!

Thee to know, Thy power to prove, Hallelujah

Thus to sing, and thus to love. Hallelujah

Wesley deliberately uses the longest word in the verse to convey its own meaning – everlasting. What is everlasting life now that we stand this side of the resurrection? First, to know Jesus in a personal relationship of trusting love. Second, to experience and rely on the power of the risen Jesus in the living of our own lives. Third, to rejoice and sing and live in the confidence that the world’s worst failed, and Christ has burst the gates of hell. Fourth, to love and serve the risen Lord, in grateful service, in glad obedience, and by loving as we have been loved.

Saturday

This joyful Eastertide, away with sin and sorrow.

My Love, the Crucified, has sprung to life this morrow.

Had Christ, who once was slain, not burst his three-day prison,

Our faith would be in vain, but now has Christ arisen!

This hymn deserves to be better known. Once again it pushes us into Scripture, this time Paul’s great argument about the resurrection as the central pillar of Christian hope. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead…” (1 Cor. 15.17, 20) The fatal consequences of sin and sorrow, away with them! Christ has burst his three day prison, and life is set loose to redeem and save and keep those who believe and trust and receive the life of the risen Lord. Because the ground of all hope is established in that last line, “But now has Christ arisen!” The hymn celebrates the love of God in Christ, and the gift of life in Christ. Then there is the answering love of the repentant, grateful heart of each believer, gladly sung and spoken  – “My Love, the Crucified, has sprung to life this morrow.”  

Sunday

One with the Father, Ancient of Days
Through the Spirit who clothes faith with certainty
Honour and blessing, glory and praise
To the King crowned with power and authority.

And we are raised with Him
Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered
And we shall reign with Him
For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead

“See what a morning” has become an Easter anthem for many of our churches. Some of its lines compare with the best hymn writers, making it hard to choose one verse. I chose the final verse because it sums up Easter and what an Easter way of living might look like. One or two spiritual writers make Easter into a verb – Eastering. It’s a way of describing the Christian life as a perpetual Easter journey, walking with Jesus the risen One, being raised with Him to newness of life. “And we are raised with Him, death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered.” That too can be a one line prayer in defiance of everything in our world that contradicts life and seeks to frustrate God’s redemptive purpose. A verb is a doing word, and Eastering is what Christians do! We are an Easter people, followers of the crucified and risen Lord.

Iona. I had never been there. It was one of those places I have had to imagine, so that Iona was an idea, not a place; at least not a place I knew by having been there and could revisit in memory. Yet I have read widely and sometimes deeply around the importance of Iona for Scottish history, culture and spirituality. 

George Macleod is one of the Scottish Christians I have admired most ever since I learned of him when I was a teenager still glowing in the aftermath of conversion to Christ. In that quite enclosed early Evangelical context, George Macleod was viewed with deep suspicion as a liberal to be avoided, not least because he was critical of the theology and practice of Billy Graham's form of evangelism.

But George Macleod was outspoken and actively protested against the creation, even the concept of nuclear weapons. He was one of the first notable Christians I had come across who applied his faith to the huge political issues of his time, and mine. I was wholeheartedly, almost instinctively with him in a shared revulsion that the fundaments of matter, the stuff of creation, was being exploited by military co-option towards indiscriminate destruction.

Which brings me back to Iona, and especially George Macleod. I have wanted to visit the abbey that was resurrected by the sheer thrawn persistence of George Macleod. The rebuilding of Iona Abbey was both a monumental achievement of one man's vision, and a process that gave birth to forms of Scottish spirituality that combine contemplative prayer, social activism, political protest, environmental care, and a prophetic and biblical tradition expressed in liturgy, hymn, music and art. Peace and justice lie at the heart of Iona's concern with and for the world. 

So on our recent visit to the West Coast, we spent a day on Iona, and in several occasional posts I will reflect on what I saw and felt, and discovered and rediscovered. The photograph is of the cross that is the theological core, and the theological engine that inspired and energised George Macleod as parish minister, and as founder of the Iona Community. He would have resisted being singled out, or being so dominant in the narrative that he got in the way of the real spiritual vision of Iona. So let me leave Lord Macleod of Fuinary to the side for now.

The forecast was rain with a following wind. The photograph shows why it is that Scottish west coast weather is not to be trusted. On a beautiful breezy and mostly blue sky day we sailed from Mull to Iona. There is no easy, quick, convenient way to reach Iona. That's as it should be for pilgrims. A pilgrimage was never meant to be an indulgent dawdle. We walked slowly, in company with others mostly unknown, up the brae towards the Abbey. I had seen programmes, read books, looked at photographs – the concrete reality was something else, both ordinary and extraordinary.

Ordinary because it is small, sits on a prominent raised setting, and is built in grey stone sympathetic to the surrounding landscape. Extraordinary because built in with those stones are the prayers and dreams, visions and activities, hopes and fears of generations of pilgrims who have come to this place for reasons of their own. And regularly all those inner longings are gathered and spoken in liturgy and song, and in prayer and action.

There's a small rocky hill fifty yards from the front door, from which you can look at the abbey and its entrance. I stood there, thankful and content that I had come. We all have our story, and carry within us memories and imaginings, longings and disappointments, our borne griefs and our heart-held gladness. This place called Iona is now part of that inner life.

As I was standing looking down at the other large stone cross dominating the entrance, I was aware that one of the reasons for my sense of spiritual affinity with George Macleod's political theology is my own experience of the cross as the place where I stand, theologically and existentially, head bowed in wonder. That other irascible Scottish theologian, P. T. Forsyth complained about the toil of mind and heart involved in theological writing about the cross of Christ: “Words are hard to stretch to the measure of eternal things without breaking under us somewhere.”       

So when words live up to their highest capacity to communicate our deepest experiences, they are still inadequate, but perhaps they are all that we have. Perhaps. Because there is always image, and place, and community, and all that can be conveyed by beauty, location, and relatedness to others. Iona facilitates that inner conversation with self and others, with the world around us and the Creator and Redeemer God who surrounds and pervades and besieges our lives. 

I'm writing this on Good Friday. Tonight I will lead the service, based on the the hymn "The Servant King." The key lines, according to Graham Kendrick, and supported by most who sing the hymn: 

Hands that flung stars into space,

to cruel nails surrendered.

This is our God, the servant king! 

Iona was a good place to prepare the heart for such taking, and blessing, and breaking, and sharing of the terrible and good news of Christ crucified. Because there is yet Saturday before Sunday. But Sunday is coming.  

Monday

Romans 5.1-2a “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”

At the start of Holy Week, when we remember the surrender and suffering of Jesus, the Son of God, we start with peace, and grace. Christ is our peace, through the cross. We are justified, made right before God, by grace, through faith in Jesus. And through that faithful trust in the faithful Christ, we stand upon, and are surrounded by, and kneel before, the grace, mercy and peace of God. The death of Jesus is what makes that dreadful last week of Jesus’ life a Holy Week; and the resurrection of Jesus is what makes Easter the pivotal event in the history and future of the universe.  

Tuesday

Romans 5.2b-4 “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

No, Paul is not glorifying suffering, he is showing how out of and beyond the deepest and darkest suffering of Jesus, God has brought hope, life and joy. Christian character grows through resistance, struggle, and our own walk, following faithfully after Jesus, bearing the cross of Christian witness. During Holy Week, in mind and imagination, we each follow in the steps of Jesus, remembering the One through whose death and suffering we have come face to face with the grace of God, “in which we now stand.”

Wednesday

Romans 5.5 “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

“Emptied himself, of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race! Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou my God should’st die for me.” Our hearts are like buckets under Niagara! God’s love is an inexhaustible deluge of grace, experienced and known through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the Christian heart. And all this rooted in eternal love, and revealed in human history at Bethlehem and Calvary, – and in a garden ‘just as the sun was rising’, – hope does not disappoint us!

Thursday

Romans 5.6 “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”

I’ve always paused in puzzlement that Christ accepted and walked the way to the place of powerlessness out of love for the powerless. Like every Christian since, Paul never found words adequate to that occasion. “The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” “He who knew no sin was made sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” “I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”  The power of God is seen in the weakness of Christ; the wisdom of God revealed in the foolishness of the cross.

Friday

Romans 5.7-8 “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

James Denney was one of Scotland’s greatest theologians of the cross. He once spoke of his envy of the Catholic priest with his crucifix. In a sermon he said he wanted to walk up and down the aisle with a crucifix, telling that Free Church congregation, “God loves like that!” Later in another sermon he wrote this: “What is revealed at the cross is redeeming love, and it is revealed as the last reality of the universe, the eternal truth of what God is…you wish to know the final truth about God; here it is, eternal love bearing sin’

Saturday

Romans 5.9-10 “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

Holy Saturday is that liminal in-between time between death and life, darkness and light, Friday and Sunday. Today reflect on those contrasts and that phrase so reminiscent of Jesus in his teaching: “How much more.” Reconciliation is always costly, and the willingness to take the first steps, to persuade and negotiate with goodwill, sincerity and compassion for the one who is alienated – if we would find that hard, “how much more” for God. “He who did not spare his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all, how will he not – along with him – freely give us all things?”

Sunday

Romans 5.11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

Rejoice! Rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Easter Sunday is the day of resurrection joy, and celebration of the reconciling love and power of God in Christ. As promised by the angels, “Peace on earth and good will to all the people.” And that word ‘now’ – reconciliation is in the present tense. Truly, hope does not disappoint us! Christ has died! Christ is risen! Hallelujah – “we have been saved through his life.”