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The Bible has quite a lot to say about food, who has it and who hasn't, who deserves it and who doesn't.  The Bible, that most political collection of books, history, letters, speeches, prayers, prophetic oracles and stories is positively stuffed with food and people who need it. From Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau embodying the colliding interests of hunters and cultivators, from Pharaoh's feast and famine, boost and bust economics, to Moses with his hungry tribes with their mutterings and manna, from laws about clean and unclean to laws about land care, justice and compassion for the stranger, the widow and the orphan. Full of it.

And when the production and distribution of food is controlled by the powerful, and the poor increase and go hungry and the social machinery runs in the interests of the rich who are stuffed and sated and able to dismiss the hunger of the poor, then the Bible is even more political. Micah, Amos and Isaiah do not read like paid up members of the benefits sanctions culture, or the food bank society. When they talk the talk of austerity it isn't the poor and hungry, the vulnerable and the widows and orphans that they have in mind. It's the rich, the powerful, the well fed, those who are so full of themselves and food and money and importance, that they become dismissive and wilfully ignorant of what it means to be a human being dehumanised by power, government, systems and structures.

So I find myself reflecting on some prophetic phrases in the light of recent exchanges in the commons about benefit sanctions, food banks, death and suicide figures. Amos would have been brilliant in our House of Commons, "You sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. You trample on the heads of the poor." That's as good a description of ideological austerity consequences as you'll find. As for the self-righteous pomposity and uninformed argument that there is no connection between benefit sanctions and food banks, Micah reduces it to three criteria for good government, "act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God".

My problem with those who sepak for our Government and its DWP is that none of these criteria carry any political weight or moral authority. Instead I hear self-serving rhetoric about "doing the right thing", the mantra repetition of "fairness" as if life could ever be fair. A welfare system is precisely for those who have found life weighted against them, whose cirucmstances make life a struggle. The original welfare vision is of a society where welfare is a moral and mutual obligation, in which compassion and generosity have purchasing power, and where we accept there will be some who cheat and lie and don't pull their weight; but in which we do not hurt and harry all who need help, because some people play the system.

So when a straightforward question is asked in the House of Commons, an institution filled with people voted there by an electorate who want to know, about how many of those who have been sanctioned have since died, it should be able to be answered. Indeed it should be required that those in power answer it. And when a Government minister says 'there is no robust evidence' of the link between benefit sanctions and increased use of food banks I hear Amos again, "you deprive the poor of justice in the courts." To my knowledge no one has successfully overturned a benefits sanction through the courts – maybe because the courts are increasingly restricted to those who can pay for the legal help. When, though, did it become acceptable for a minister to so summarily, and arrogantly, dismiss widespread evidence from responsible charities who deal with hungry people every day?

Jesus told a parable about a rich man who walked out of the big house every day and din't notice, or wilfully ignored, Lazarus who was on the only kind of benefits on offer in his day. Power not only corrupts; it blinds; it desensitises; it gives the false impression that you deserve all you get and all you've got; power causes moral amnesia and social complacency. Power does all these things, unless it is constrained by other forces of social capital – compassion not blame, wisdom not bullying, generosity not ridicule, respect not demonising, care not caricature. A welfare state does not have to become steel wool in order to avoid being a sponge. Nor do Government spokes-persons, who are appointed by the people, have the right to avoid answering questions as the only way to sustain the manufactured credibility of their own claimed truth.

"Give us this day our daily bread" is not the privileged prayer of the well off; it is the prayer of the human heart, and it has no place for me, my, mine. Us, our, we, the pronouns of shared communal responsibility for and to each other.

 

Two paragraphs. Both true. So what is the significance of their juxtapoisition?

David Starkey CBE FSA FRHistS is a constitutional historian and a broadcaster. He is deemed an eminent historian, by which I assume is meant that he is a scholar, committed to academic integrity, and as such one who comments with authority, knowledge and that essential balance of ethical judgement which identifies the true public intellectual. As a CBE, he is publicly honoured for his services to historical research and the dissemination of scholarship that is accessible and trustworthy. As a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society he is recognised as one who meets exacting standards of intellectual enquiry, whose contribution to the scholarship of his discipline enhance the reputation of that august body, and whose public profile adds weight to an historic institution which values independence of thought, academic excellence and humane learning.

I am not a member of Scottish Nationalist Party. I have principled objections to nationalism, separatism, and political ambitions which focus on the self-interest of one country to the detriment of its existing relations, friendships and obligations. I have many friends who are members of the SNP, who voted Yes, who hope for a further referendum when as they see it the time is right. They fly the saltire, play the bagpipes, know their Scottish history, recognise the seriousness and far reaching consequences of the dismantling of the United Kingdom, and still press ahead. Not all SNP supporters are as responsible and thoughtful, like every political party it has its embarrassments, and at times its darker underside.

But the recent remarks of David Starkey, and his toxic comparison of the SNP with the Nazi party means that my two previous paragraphs should not be able to appear on the same page. Why? Because this is rogue mischief by a man who makes money out of controversy; who thrives on outrage; who spouts venom and toxin from behind the respectable facades of institutions which have honoured him. Because he may even believe that his distorted perceptions and wildly inane rhetoric are indeed accurate, wise, prescient insights which warn us of what we might be sleepwalking into. Or alternatively because he doesn't believe a word of it but boy does it get him headlines, contracts and money.

A constitutional historian in a fit of bile disenfranchises a swathe of voters who represent at least half of the Scottish nation by comparing their political goals, and the political process within which those goals are articulated, to pre-war Nazi Germany. Leaving aside the gratuitous obscenity of the comparison, the evidence adduced and argument developed demonstrates the kind of historical analysis that would require he resit a first year undergraduate essay on history. This man is FRHistS for goodness sake! So my modest question is this: what does a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society have to say or do to raise questions about his ongoing suitability to represent the values and aims of that institution? Or is such an honour irrevocable no matter what wild, weird and inflammatory nonsense a member utters as a recognised authority?

Becoming the Gospel means becoming like Jesus, in whom by the Spirit we are transformed and conformed to the image of Christ, who is the express image of the Father. Reconciled to God, we become agents of change, ministers of reconciliation, peacable peacemakers co-opted into God's mission of setting the creation right.

In a nutshell that is Gorman's thesis in this book. This transformative existence is condensed into that astounding exchange Paul describes, "He who knew no sin, became sin, that we might become in him the righteousness of God." To open that exegetical bank vault of a verse requires that we, in James Denney's phrase, "hear the plunge of lead into fathomless depths." But not fathomless in the sense of meaningless; fathomless in that, no matter how deeply we go, there is that which is beyond our grasp, which exhausts our spiritual and intellectual capacity, and reduces us, or better, raises us, to resigned adoration.

George Herbert's poetry is often a commentary on Paul's theology:

Philosophers have measur’d mountains,

Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,

Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:        

But there are two vast, spacious things,

The which to measure it doth more behove:

Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.

Chapter 3 of Gorman's book examines what it means to become the Gospel, by looking through the lens of 1 Thessalonians, 1.2-3. Paul commends their "work of faith, and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." By the time Paul wrote to them, the Thessalonian Christians had been through a tough time of persecution arising from their embrace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They had turned from idols to the true Gods – so were no longer attending the places of worship, or the activities of the trade guilds which had religious obligations, and refusing to call Caesar Lord. Paul of course had moved on and is anxious to let the new Christians know he hasn't forgotten and abandoned them. The letter is laced with encouragement, positive guidance and further explanation of a Gospel of faithfulness, love and hope. That they are already well known for these characteristics is encouraging for Paul, and he reinforces that sense of being caught up into the life of God, Father Son and Spirit. Chapter 1.1-8 traces this Trinitarian life and places it deeply into the missional nature of the God who comes in Jesus Christ, to fulfill the purposes of the Father in the power of the Spirit. "For Paul, Christ's faith and love are onseparable, and on the cross Christ;s faithfulness to God and love for humanity simultaneously reached their quintessential expression." (p.83).

In the core chapters Gorman makes a very important move, from missional God, to missional Apostle, whose theology in turn gives the foundations and resources for missional churches, communities of faithfulness, love and hope. And this is where as I understand him, Gorman's project leads to a strategic re-thinking of what the mission of the church is, and the respources and energy that enable local communities of Christ to become the Gospel wherever they are.

What is faith, faithfulness? The Thessalonians were citizens of an important Greek city under Roman governance. Paul's concern was to support and strnegthen their resolve in staying faithful to Jesus in the public square. Witness is precisely speaking and acting a testimony to the Gospel, and therefore becoming the Gospel in belief, commitments, virtues and practices, all derived from life in the crucified and risen Christ, graced and strengthened by the Spirit, lived in obedience to the Father. Such acts and words, lifestyle choices and behaviour patterns would make these new Christians stand out, and attract hostility, resentment, bewilderment and at times opposition ranging from ridicule to violence, even death. Faith is hard work, costly and expensive in social capital. "They are living in ways, or should be living in ways, that get them into trouble." There's a thought, a new criteria for the end of year audit of the church;s missional effectiveness – how much trouble have we been in?

But Gorman means more than that Christians are called to be faithful. They are called, and enabled, by a faithful God. In 5.23-4 the closing benediction is quite explicit – "he who calls you is faithful, and he will do this." Do what? Sanctify completely and keep securely. And for Christians persecuted for their faithfulness that is the basis of hope and the lived reality of divine love. The living, life giving, and life sustaining God is the one who keeps faith and enables faithfulness, who loves and pours love into faithful hearts, who faces loving faithful hearts towards the future in hope, because God is a God who is future oriented towards the fulfilment of his redeeming purpose of setting creation right.

 

This 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.

Which 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.

Not 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!!

Michael 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.

If 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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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!

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!

  One 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.

I 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.

 

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. 

And 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.

 

One 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.