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"He also showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. It seemed to me as round as a ball.

I gazed at it and thought, ‘What can this be?’

The answer came, ‘It is everything that is made.’

I marveled how this could be, for it was so small it seemed it might fall suddenly into nothingness.

Then I heard the answer, ‘It lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. All things have their being in this way by the grace of God.’"

The brilliant theologian, Julian of Norwich.

This is a weird painting, even by Gaugin's standards. I have a large high quality print of this framed and hanging in my study. As Old Testament stories go, the encounter of Jacob with a man, or an angel of the Lord, or the Lord, is amongst the spookiest stories in the Bible. Mystery, menace, ambiguity, human destiny and divine purpose, accumulated guilt and anxiety at critical point, can all legitimately be read into the picture; they are all rooted in the Jacob text narrative. And the agony goes on all night, and the outcome is uncertain, but when it comes is decisive, and leaves Jacob forever changed.

In this painting, called "Vision of the Sermon. Jacob Wrestling with the Angel", Gauguin captures the eerie dream world of spiritual vision, prayer and the human struggle for meaning, purpose, fulfilment. The vision is born of prayer, shown in the intense concentration of the faces in profile, the hands pressed together, and the central figure facing the relatively small figures in the distance, where Jacob is either enfolded by the angel wings or is caught in the talons of a bird of prey. The painting is psychological drama and spiritual crisis surrounded by a praying community. Gauguin's own inner torment is woven into the pigment of this painting.

Charles Wesley's hymn, "Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown" has 14 original verses, and is abbreviated in later Hymnals. The drama of spiritual conflict has turned into a personal argument. Jacob is no longer a victim but a protagonist; he knows perfectly well who he is, after all God gave him his name. But who is the visitor? In Wesley's hymn Jacob is the Christian struggling with all that baggage of guilt, anxiety and life's contingencies. He suspects, and is desperate to name the One who comes with the indescribable love of the crucified for the sinner. It is a hymn telling the narrative of Christian appropriation of a grace that comes to meet us at the point of ultimate crisis.

For Wesley the story of Jacob and the angel is one of theological discovery and life re-orientation. So in Wesley's verses the reader and singer are drawn into the psychological processes of a human heart and spirit and mind, wrestling with the reality of God and determined and desperate for an answer. Is God love or not? Can he expect mercy or judgement? It is one of Charles Wesley's reverent games to play with the reader; we know where this is going. The hymn is a catena of clues, but the tension builds.

In vain thou strugglest to get free;
I never will unloose my hold:
Art thou the Man that died for me
The secret of thy love unfold:
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name thy nature know.

In that eerie darkness at Jabbok, Jacob is encountering the crucified saviour, the presence of God embodied but beyond naming, until God himself declares it to the heart. Here, in a hymn based on one of the pardigmatic stories of the Bible, is a robust doctrine of Christian assurance, the distilled essence of Wesleyan Arminian theology. God is love. Pure, universal love. No more argument, now he knows!

I keep threatening to get a T shirt. One that has writing on it. You know how you come across something funny, profound, outrageous, even better if all three? You think you'd like to wear it, advertise your support for the sentiment, tell the world your wisdom, share your coolness with an uncool world.

I once promised a young friend I'd get a disgustingly green T shirt and have a picture of brussel sprouts printed on it with the strap line, in West of Scotland dialect if not accent, "Brussel Sprouts iz mingin". I still like the idea of that – what a T shirt to wear in the garden, or a Christmas party…..

And now and again, not often, just occasionally, I think a Bible verse seems just made for T shirt exegesis. A good image, and a few memorable words. So. Maybe a T shirt to be worn when preaching on the Letter of James. The verse in question, James 1.19, three imperatives, three dispositions towards peace, three wise cautions:  "quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger." In case you didn't get it

quick to listen

                                   slow to speak

                                                                         slow to anger.

Think of the most recent argument with your most significant other; revisit the latest cause of your being annoyed, hurt, offended or just plain put out; consider the usual triggers for your critically edged words or dismissive smirk, or way too inflated opinion of your viewpoint; or reflect on people you know you have hurt, offended, annoyed, whose day you have wasted; or, put positively, imagine a committee meeting where these were the standing orders – less said, more heard, and what is said is worth the hearing….by folk who are listening. These are not the big deal occasions of our lives, they are the day and daily outcomes and consequences of our words.

James suggests three deep breaths, pause points before we speak. He creates a mnemonic braking system for our juggernaut egos. If you have to respond immediately to what someone says or does, the be quick – to listen! Because words are like toothpaste, and can't be squeezed backwards into the tube, be slow to speak. And because what we think and fell colour what we say, listening and slowness of speech give time for anger to dissipate before words give it permanence.

So. A T shirt. Three phrases. But would I be entitled to wear it without those who know me best laughing most? Could I live this just for a day? I have had a customer complaint about the absence of Smudge from the blog – here she is, depicting existential nonchalance 🙂

Ever since those first encounters with moral philosophy, metaphysics and then philosophical theology I have wrestled like Jacob with the angel of the Lord, with the notion of divine impassibility. What is necessarily a question of philosophical and theological importance becomes a matter of pastoral significance and existential urgency when we encounter human suffering, our own, that of those we love, or of those other human beings in our world whose suffering demands response as well as explanation. It comes down to what we could possibly mean by the phrase, "the suffering of God".

Does God suffer? As recently as the 1970's, following the publication of Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God, which itself followed on the work of Kozah Kitamori, The Theology of the Pain of God, modern Western theology has been similarly wrestling with those urgent, existential questions about the nature of the Christian God. This is not the classic problem of theodicy, How can an all powerful and all loving God co-exist with evil and the suffering of His creation? Either he can change it but won't, in which case is he all loving? Or he cannot change it however much he desires to do so, in which case he is not all powerful. This is a subtle variation of the same dilemma, but one which is inescapable to one who offers himself in pastoral care to others within a Christian community. It is also one which cannot be evaded or ignored in a faithful preaching ministry about the love of God, the human condition, the reality of evil and the nature of the Christian Gospel of God incarnate, crucified and risen in Christ.

In other words the question of whether God suffers takes us to the Cross and what happened there, and to whom. Enter Frances Young, until retirement Henry Cadbury Professor of Theology at Birmingham University. (Yes you're right, THAT Cadbury, the dairy milk kind!) And just to say, Frances Young is a mother who for over 40 years has cared for her son Arthur who was born with cerebral palsy and has significant disabilities; she is a Methodist minister and preacher; she is a world class patristic scholar and leading authority on ancient Christianity. She knows about theology; she lives in a context where suffering and limitation are daily realities; she has preached when her own heart is breaking; and in her recent book, God's Presence, she argues passionately and with immensely persuasive honesty, for a view of God adequate to Christian theology and to the lived realities of our lives.

For we all suffer, and witness suffering. We all love and care and are anxious for others. We grieve and suffer catastrophic loss – but we also live and discover the joy and wholeness that can overcome brokenness. We discover in our suffering grace, understanding, strength and sheer unlooked for kindness, where and when we least expect it.  God's Presence is an expansion of the Bampton Lectures, and is an exploration of Christian theology as it developed in the first few centuries. But it is also a practical theology in which each substantive claim of Christian faith is road tested in the practicalities of the human journey; and each chapter includes sermon material she has preached, and finishes with a postlude, which is a prose poem of her own composition, soliloquy, prayer, reflection, all in one. This is a rich book, and one which challenges the sentimentalised pleading of those whose idea of God is one of hand-wringing anguish over evil and suffering in a world out of God's control; she also challenges the hard edged theology of divine sovereignty and providence which attributes every shrieking nerve of creation to a God impassive in omnipotence, and inscrutable of purpose. Between these two admittedly extreme caricatures, there exists a view of God shaped over centuries and founded on biblical revelation about 'all the nations of the earth being blessed', 'He was wounded for our transgressions', God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself', 'He is not here, he is risen', 'nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus', and 'behold I make all things new.'

In a day or two, I'll post more this book, which is the magnum opus of a remarkable mother, theologian, Christian and pastor. Meanwhile, if you want to hear her talking about the early Church Fathers and today's questions you can do so over here and if you want a really quick word from her about questions and thinking, go to minute 4.

It's been far too long since there was some poetry here. So below is a brief prayer poem from Wendell Berry.

The past couple of days I've been trying to turn a mossy patch of green into a lawn where grass can grow. Scarified, aerated with the fork, watered and fed. It's been a long dry winter in Aberdeen – hardly any rain now for several weeks, and this is the growing season at the start of Spring. 

Last night, watering the plants out the back, a blackbird performed virtuoso voice changes and musical improvisations, accompanied by the glinting concerto of water, and the hose which became a conductor's baton in my hand, celebrating the the water performing its own liturgical dance, of praise, gratitude and peace descending like those gentle life releasing drops of grace.

Moments like that are captured in the memory in ways more permanent, more precise, and more accessible to the heart than any photo or video clip. And what remains is the sense of time as gift, the co-incidence of bird song, arcing water, glinting light, and my own subservience to that which is around me. Because that is what receiving a gift requires, the humility to accept, the gladness to be grateful, the prescience to be ready for grace that is always prevenient, there waiting for us long before we turn the corner and meet the Giver of Blessing. Not many moments are full of God. Those that are come unlooked for, the surprise visit of God who comes to renew and repair and sustain our sense of belonging in God's world.

Teach me work that honors Thy work,

the true economies of goods and words,

to make my arts compatible

with the songs of the local birds.

 

Teach me patience beyond work

and, beyond patience, the blest

Sabbath of Thy unresting love

which lights all things and gives rest.

 

Yesterday I spent a satisfying morning with the jet wash, cleaning a few years grime from our patio. The whole area now looks lighter. Then the bottom fence likewise a pale green with several years stuff! A day or two earlier I scarified the lawn and removed several bags of moss from a modest area of grass. Then because I'm a good neighbour, and modest with it, I cut and edged our next door neigbour's grass. A couple of car loads of assorted debris for recycling, from garden and garage and it feels like Spring and a chance to declutter and impose order on our living environment.

Finding equilibrium and balance of the inner life is a wee bit more subtle than a jet wash, a scarifier and a local recycling plant. The Christian Spiritual tradition is studded with classics of the spiritual life that urge simplicity, discipline, focus, detachment, and a decluttering of the spirit. Such attentiveness to the essentials is brought about by focus on 'the one thing necessary', and on making the right call in the choice between life and death, and on not storing up treasure on earth, and therefore not being so self preserving that instead of holding on to our lives we lose it going after all the wrong things and for all the wrong reasons.

Moss suffocates grass; grime makes paving stones slippery; clutter is simply that, a distracting messiness that imperceptibly takes over until we can't see past it. Post-Easter is a good time for re-aligning our priorities. Those encounters in the Gospels with the Risen, crucified yet risen, are spare of details and replete with significance, vitality and the life changing energy of new possibility.

Peter was so in huff with life, so wracked and wretched with guilt, that he went back to fishing, where he was in control, he could remake his world. But he caught nothing, till the stranger on the shore shouted into his self-obsessing despair, and hauled him out of his safety boat back into the real world.

Thomas would have died for and with Jesus, but when push came to shove, he too was overcome by that strange paralysis that can sometimes drain us of moral courage and trust in life. So his demand for evidence may well have been a form of denial, until his demand is taken seriously, and literally, and he stares into the wounded side of the Saviour.

Mary Magdalene had all the courage of those whose hearts are overhwelmed by love, and whose new life goal is faithfulness. Grief like hers is told with a sparse accuracy, 'thinking he was the gardener…'; bloodshot eyes, a weeping heart, ears not attuned to hope and therefore unable to recognise the one voice she hoped to hear, and the desperate pleading to have one last look, one last hold and touch of Jesus body.

You can't read these stories without being drawn into them. Jesus comes to Peter whose guilt makes it impossible for him to face himself, and drags out of him finally, and restoratively, an admission of love; and he comes to Thomas, the one whose doubt and despair coalesce in posing an impossible question, and imposing apparently impossible standards of evidence; and he comes to Mary Magdalene, to the faithful follower who goes on following even when it seems the journey is over. And within all three he renews life, he infuses hopefulness, he restores energy, he opens up new horizons. He takes the broken hearts and confused minds and disconnected activities of the traumatised and gives back a love that will sustain, a faith that will endure, and a purpose that is its own meaning.

Reading these stories over the next week or two, is an exercise in scarifying out what suffocates love, jet washing the overlays of grime that obscure the path on which God calls us, and clearing out the clutter that just gets in the way. Kierkegaard famously said, "Purity of heart is to will one thing". Scarifying the lawn, jet-washing the paths, de-cluttering our living space. Meeting Jesus in these post-Easter stories might do the same for mind and heart.

I saw this Raphael Cartoon of Christ's renewed charge to Peter, in the V&A a few years ago. It is a beautiful thing.

This blog doesn't often jump on political band wagons. Because that particular form of transport goes places I don't usually like, and creates the kind of predictable self-promotoing music that has most interest to those who are playing it. A second disclaimer; I am not an apologist for the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. I have considerable ambivalence about Nationalism as a political vision, though that doesn't stop me applauding the good things achieved by a Scottish Government dominated by SNP MSPs. A third disclaimer; I watched only some of the debate last week, and like many others hoping to be given grounds for positive hopefulness, I was left disappointed and even concerned at the lack of political vision, intellectual integrity and informed weighing of argument, and these replaced by rhetorical blah de blah I expect to see in a slapstick theatre not in a debate about the future of our country.

But I do think Nicola Sturgeon sounded like a real person. The feedback was generally positive on her performance, her stated intentions, her claim to befriend those sick of austerity and the social injustices perpetrated in the name of this recently constructed idol of the rich. Still, I understand why the current coalition partners fear and hate the possibility that the SNP may provide a deadlock to those two parties being able to continue their austerity policies into a second term. I also understand why Labour can't afford to say publicly they would tolerate some of the painful compromises needed to get their hands on the key to 10 Downing Street. And I hope I'm not being naive in thinking that yes, social justice is still a vision to be pursued and a right of people in our society whether or not it suits the vested interests of big business, big institutions and the usual defenders of laissez faire.

So when a leaked memo with the dodgiest of provenance, content, and evidential integrity, suggests the First Minister of Scotland is on record as saying she would prefer Cameron to Miliband as Prime Minister, and therefore keep the Conservatives as a continuing foil to her Nationalist ambitions, I smell something that isn't only putrid, but toxic. Interesting that the two used to be big players, Conservative and Labour, become allies in character assassination, co-operate in supporting a risible lie, collaborate in their shared fear to smear a political rival with muck of their own making. The cynicism of the Westminster machine is nearly as bad as the patronising nonsense they expect the electorate to read and hear and accept like unintelligent plebs so many of them think us to be.

So with the media bandwagon rolling along throwing up the dust of misinformation, and sounding out its lines of lies and tunes of untruths, I find myself, for moral and socially responsible reasons asking, "Why should I vote for any party that uses lies and despises truth in its quest for power?" Wouldn't it be more responsible to vote for someone who at least sounds as if the truth is important, and who actually believes people who vote should be treated as intelligent participants? And wouldn't it be more socially creative to support a politician and a Government whose policies are at least an attempt to redress the obscene imbalances created in a society governed from Westminster for the past 5 years by a UK Government that dares to say with a straight face, "We are all in this together".

If other people are as sickened as I am by the recent smear campaign against our First Minister, then perhaps the phrase "protest vote" might mean protesting against such a crass lack of that essential probity required to gain public respect; and perhaps "tactical voting" should be on the basis not of party allegiance and party advantage, but perceived moral seriousness and strengthening of social capital in relation to honesty, respect and integrity.

Today is Holy Saturday. The Drama of God in Christ Incarnate and Crucified came to its tragic climax on Good Friday. And now "it is finished". There is no drama between the cross and the empty grave. Simply that stillness that is death, the endless patience that is waiting, the pervasive silence of finality, the end of unbearable pain in the elimination of life itself. "It is finished", may be read by those knowing the story as a cry of triumph, the satisfied completion of redemption by One conscious of its cost and its consequences for a broken and suffering Creation. But that is to short circuit the reality, and underestimate the cost and the consequeces of that suffering for the One who bore it, and for those who witnessed it, before they ever found the faith and power to witness to it.

One of my favourite images of the broken-heartedness of God and the broken-heartedness of Jesus' followers, is a masterpiece of art because it allows the deepest anguish to be spoken and imagined through the artist's portrayal of human grief in all its disabling bewilderment. "The Descent from the Cross" by Van Der Weyden is in several ways an impossible painting.

Impossible to contemplate without being drawn into the emotional agony of those impotent to reverse the death of One they love. Nothing is left to do but weep over the body of the absent Beloved.

Impossible to read without having our theological naivete challenged by the depiction of pain, despair and loss of meaning conveyed by contorted bodies and and faces of human beings like ourselves overwhelmed by catastrophe. And in this painting, the bodily form of Jesus in the repose of death, is reflected in the bodily form of Mary in her faint of utter loss. So the artist mirrors the Incarnate Son of God and Mary his mother in her utter humanity, and the same catstrophe has befallen both Mary and God, the death of their Son.

Impossible, because there is just too much pain, lostness, bewilderment and unassuaged sorrow for one picture to bear. The details of the faces trace lines of suffering that will remain forever on faces that have looked on the agony of God; the tears are jewelled testaments of the human capacity for empathy; and the implied silence of no one speaking out of that deep knowing that is so baffled by the enormity of human cruelty, and the mystery of divine love, that words fully and finally fail.

Oh you tears,

I'm thankful that you run.

Though you trickle in the darkness,

you shall glitter in the sun.

The rainbow could not shine if the rain refused to fall:

and the eyes that can not weep are the saddest eyes of all.

Holy Saturday is the day when we are confronted by our helplessness and inarticulacy before the brutal sophistication of human cruelty, the inexhaustible resourcefulness of evil and the human love affair with violence. The crucifixion of Jesus is finished; the body can be disposed of, and so is reclaimed by hands shaking with shock. The tears and weeping of everyone in Van Der Weyden's painting are the tears of the world; the bodies wilting with sorrow and wrung into postures of mourning, tell of love orphaned of the Beloved. Yet with trembling tenderness and the collaborative care of a community melded by anguish, they receive back the body of Jesus.

This painting knows nothing of resurrection. Its purpose is to portray the aching, empty void that is left when love incarnate is extinguished, when hope is eclipsed by the indisputable evidence of embodied death, and therefore when faith and trust in any future worth having are reduced to their opposites despair, guilt and emotional collapse. The third day is an eternity away from this second day; but van Der Weyden knew, and we know, that on the third day eternity will engulf a new creation, and the Resurrection will reverse those penultimate polarities of death, evil, hate and violence. This second day of emptiness, defeat and death is the middle act of a drama whose conclusion is Resurrection.

 

There are days when you feel needed, wanted, significant, have a place, belong. The problem is if every day has to feel that way, as if there could be no authentic sense of meaning and purpose without that inner feeling that I matter, and am needed. From there it is a short distance to weighing my significance by living a vicarious life, value, worth and esteem borrowed from other people's affection, dependence or say so.

These reflections come a few days after a day that was full, and perhaps too full to do justice to everything that is being fitted into the hours and minutes with more precision than is good for me or the others I encountered that day. Arrangements for a funeral serrvice of loved friend fitted around the many other things his family have to attend to. A visit to the school where as chaplain I have privileged access to a staff and over 200 children who are a wonderfully vibrant and noisy community where learning is about growing up into people who will make a difference around them. Two further visits to talk with folk who have ideas about how as a church we can grow towards being a vital community hub using our resources to bring love and life to our wider community. Then evening meal with our some of our younger family and a chance to catch up accompanied by nonsense, fun and laughter. Then the Church AGM and our review of how the year has been, and how we see our next year in this journey after Jesus, trying to keep up with him, following his footsteps, receiving and sharing his grace, embodying and practising his love.

So what to make of a day immersed in the lives of others, in a week on which other days were equally populated with people and rotating around meetings. It's hard to explain the privilege and contentment such friendships and encounters bring. Days like those only happen well if there are other days, when there is time to pray, and think, and recover equilibrium – not as self-indulgence but as a responsible stewardship of this instrument of God called by St Francis, brother body. And that's mostly what I've done yesterday and today.

The picture is of my friend who is a lover of jazz. Murray died last week, after a  number of years coping with the consequences of Alzheimer's. Today I will share his funeral service with his family and our church. Somewhere within that gentle gift of a man, there is music, which I choose to believe means heaven has just accepted another member of its jazz club, a place where improvisation prevents an eternity of monotonous angel choirs!

In the 1970's one of the daily spectacles at the University of Glasgow was academics wandering around, at times rushing around, wearing black academic gowns. In  the West of Scotland during September to May the worst of the weather played havoc with these least practical of uniforms. A regular sight around Trinity College and the Gilmorehill campus was Professor W H C Frend, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, that glad mixture of occasional eccentricity, acknowledged intellectual brilliance, and great enthusiasms about things few people knew much about, but of which he was impressively expert. Early Christian martyrdom and the catacombs, the Donatists and the Monophysites, Apollinaris and Theodore of Mopsuestia are not areas of intellectual enquiry over-populated by students, unless they happened to be in Frend's lecture rooms.

Frend's magnum opus, The Rise of Christianity was published in 1980. It is a comprehensive history of the first centuries of the Christian Church, explores the nature and origins of Christian civilisation, and of particular interest refuses to suppress the divergence of traditions and different tributaries which flow into the great stream of Christian history. One reviewer explains why this book is a great read – " how thoughtful its attention to both large historical currents and the little people and details that form the bed and force the eddying, of history's great stream."

I was asked recently about resources that support the historicity of the existence of Jesus. There remains a debate with more radical sceptics about whether Jesus ever lived at all, or whether he is a mythologised figure imposed on history. Sure there are apologetic works that show the obvious historical footprints of Jesus inside and outside the New Testament. But by far the most overwhelming evidence is provided in a book like this, written by a historian whose disciplined attention to facts combines with restrained and precise weighing of the evidence that enables the best probabilities of interpretation. Now of course it would be possible to claim still, that a Christian is hardly the most objective and sceptical of investigators into historical verisimilitude. But it would be a claim hard to substantiate.

First, Frend is an archaeologist, and this history is thoroughly sprinkled with archaeological evidence, from papyri to graffitti, and statues to mosaics, and ruins to maps, and receipts to manumission certificates. He was for a time Associate Director of the Egypt Exploration Society. Second, during the Second World War Frend served as Assistant Principal to the War Office, was on the liaison committee with the Free French and the Polish Resistance, worked in the Psychological Warfare Section, and later stood as a candidate for the Liberal Party. None of this guarantees a man is trustworthy, but it does demolish the assumption he was a clerical academic in an ivory tower.  Third, the sweep and range of this book, its detailed nailing down of historical data and interpretive caution, make this a fascinating education in the power of a cumulative argument.

We need humungous books, and need to read them – well, how about one a year, just choose them carefully. In the history of Christian origins there are four one volume attempts which immediately come to mind. Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society is by the doyen of early Christian history – his small volume, The Early Church, in the Pelican History of the Church is an elegant gem of a book. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom is a massive and erudite narrative from the leading historian of ancient Mediterranean history – his biography of Augustine is still the volume of choice on that infuriatingly complex theologian. R P C Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God is more historical theology, but it is theological development tightly woven with historical context, and is both authoritative and provocative.

Then there is Frend's book. No shortage of options, and if you can read only one, and want to read one, then my vote would be for Frend as readable, affordable, and well worth a long slow read – 10 pages a day for 3 months would do it 🙂