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When someone states the obvious, and it comes as a surprise, it's time to pay attention. I was minding my own business, reading this commentary on Paul's letter to the Galatians, nodding my head in agreement with the author, Richard Hays. Then I read this:

"The connection between zeal and persecution is another theme worth pondering in this passage. Religious conviction and passion can have an ugly side. Paul sadly recognises in his own past that his zeal for the traditions of his ancestors led him to sanction and  commit act of violence…Those who take seriously  the holiness of the one God find it difficult to tolerate people who blasphemously deny that God or transgress God's revealed law." (p.219)  

I've been a Christian long enough to immediately recognise the truth of that. The connection is obvious between passionately held religious convictions and a dangerous hostility to those who contradict, mock or are indifferent to those convictions. What I found interesting was I both knew this, and needed to be reminded of it. Those who hold religious convictions as the certainties on which they build their lives are likely to feel threatened or outraged when others just as strongly deny the reality or relevance of such strongly held beliefs. 

In a world where there are now deep fault lines of division between religious traditions, ethnic diversities, cultural traditions, economic powers and freedoms, and political commitments, the same principle holds. Differences deeply felt as a threat provoke hostilities. These are often expressed in combative rhetoric, defensive postures, and eventually a hard to resist push towards confrontation. What I found interesting in Hays stating the obvious about potential connections between zeal and persecution, is the way that obvious danger has often been ignored in the ways we organise our communal, economic, cultural and social lives. Which raises the practical question of how Christians deal with plurality, diversity and differences in fundamental convictions.

How as a Christian do I avoid defending Christian convictions by methods, attitudes, words and actions that alienates those from whom I differ? Is zeal a bad thing? Is tolerance unfaithfulness and even betrayal of faith, if I attempt to understand those who differ from me at deep levels of life commitments? Does dialogue merely risk dangerous compromise? Here is Hays further down the page:

"In the case of the Christian gospel, the cross is the central symbol that short-circuits justifications of violence: God's way of dealing with dissenters and adversaries was not to destroy them, but to give his Son to die for them."

To those who name Jesus Christ as Lord, zeal for the truths, realities and convictions of our faith is converted and authenticated by following the way of the cross. That means loving our enemies, praying for those who "despitefully use you" which at the very least means those with whom we strongly disagree; it means doing good to those who would do us and our faith harm; and yes, it requires of us the prayer, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!" As Hays concludes, "Our responsibility is not to eradicate the enemies of God but to announce God's reconciling power in the world. (See 2 Cor. 5.17-20)"

I am so glad Hays planted this way of thinking in the deep soil of those later verses of Paul to the recalcitrant, fractious, Corinthians with their conflicting agendas, competitive spiritualities, cherished certainties of their own rightness, and need to be reminded in no uncertain terms that God's love is both powerfully constraining and expensively generous. As those who have been given the ministry of reconciliation, zeal has a new focus.

To be zealous in the love of God in Christ, to be zealous in conciliation and peace-making, to be zealous in love for neighbour, to be zealous in living as well as speaking the good news of Jesus – that is to be converted at the central core of our identity as followers of Christ. Or as Paul will write later to those same Galatians: "I am crucified with Christ; I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live, I live in the body, I live by faith in the son fo God who loved me, and gave himself for me."    

Monday

Psalm 24.1-2 “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;  for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.”

Stewardship is very different from ownership. Earth with all its diversity and potential for life belongs to God. It is not ours to do what we want with it. Humanity is entrusted by God with the care of the whole environment in which we live and move and have our being. “All who live in it” includes, along with humanity, all living creatures. Creation care is not a ‘green thing’, it’s a God thing. You cannot love the Artist and waste his masterpiece. This Psalm ends by telling us that human glory is transient and limited; God’s glory is ultimate, radiates authority, and invites worship.

Tuesday

Psalm 24.3 “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?”

Two questions about admission to worship. What makes us worthy to come anywhere near a holy God? We come in the name of Christ, and by the grace of God. Yes, but. The faith we profess, the Name we confess, call us to a life that is faithful and obedient, showing integrity of life and sincerity of heart. What we do, how we behave, the values that matter most, the character revealed in our behaviour, the inner life of thought, emotion and conscience – God knows and sees all that. What practical evidence do we have of a life made righteous in Christ? Well, we could start with asking how well we ourselves have looked after God’s creation!

Wednesday

Psalm 24.4a “He who has clean hands and a pure heart…,”

Clean hands are about actions, and a pure heart about motives. Together in practical terms they come pretty close to “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Clean hands negatively do no harm, and positively act in compassion, kindness and generosity. A pure heart is a heart with a single intent – “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Those who come to worship God do so as those who love God from first to last, and whose actions are consistent with the faithful mercy and steadfast love of God. Or, those who live on the assumption that, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all who live in it.”

Thursday

Psalm 24.4b “Who does not lift up his soul to an idol, or swear by what is false.”

Idolatry and lying go together. Both are an assault on truth. Whatever we make the most important and controlling thing in our lives is an idol, a usurper that takes the place of God. The three big idols are money, sex and power, and all of them have to do with our desire to possess. It turns out, what we think we own, actually owns us; what we think we control, eventually controls us. Whereas, true worship of the true God is what keeps us free, valued, and true to the purpose of our creation. Only when we lift up our soul, and give our very selves in love and service to God in Christ, does the heart find its true home.

Friday

Psalm 24.5-6 “They will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God their Saviour. Such is the generation of those who seek your face, God of Jacob.”

True worship is not self-seeking, it’s not about us at all. Worship is an opening up of our minds to God’s truth, and the seeking of our hearts to know and acknowledge God’s presence in God’s world, and in our lives. We don’t seek God for his blessing, but for Himself, and yet in seeking God we are blessed. It follows then, that by ‘standing in his holy place’, with clean hands and a pure heart, we are serving and loving God. So our lives are vindicated, and shown to be rightly directed, by God.

Saturday

Psalm 24.7-8 “Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”

The Psalm begins with the sovereignty of God over the earth and all who live in it. Now it ends in a blaze of royal glory in the presence of God Almighty. It would be wrong to think of God’s glory as being absolute, unconstrained power. When the glory of God passed Moses, God was described as “The LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Ex 34.6-7) God’s glory is not raw power, but the power to create, redeem, forgive and renew.

Sunday

Psalm 24.9-10 “Lift up your heads, you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is he, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty— he is the King of glory.”

Repeated for emphasis. Now go back to the first verse. God the Creator is none other than the Lord Almighty. Care of creation, stewardship of ‘the earth and all who live in it’ is not just a good idea, something we should maybe think about some time. Nor is care for the earth important only because our lives depend on this small, green planet. We care for our world as an act of reverence to the Creator, as evidence that our worship is more than words. Stewardship happens when we take responsibility before God for His beautiful world, and do so as the outworking of our worship.

If you know me, you'll know I am a committed footnote chaser! I don't mean those avalanches of tedium that sometimes serve as a disclaimer 'here's everything I read when writing this!" No, judicious footnotes, clear footprints on the scholars path, and where it's an extensive note, perhaps a signpost pointing back to how we got here, and pointing forward to other possible paths. Here's how this odd but happy exercise in scholarly serendipity works if you go chasing footnotes.

At the end of this seasonal festival, perhaps Good King Wenceslas gives good advice for footsteps, and footnotes! "Mark my footsteps, good my page; /Tread thou in them boldly."!

This particular jaunt began with re-reading a chapter of I (Still) Believe, a book in which 18 biblical scholars write about the relationship between their faith and their scholarship. The line-up is impressive including some of the best known biblical scholars of my generation – I mention only five – Walter Brueggemann, J. D. G. Dunn, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Richard Bauckham, John Goldingay. I've read books by all the contributors, and several of them I've read enough to know why what they are saying is well worth the reading. 

The chapter I re-read is the one by Andrew Lincoln: he chose the title 'Responding to and Searching for Truth.' In it he refers to one of his previous books which I had read, describing it as "probably the one with the most orientation to contemporary appropriation…" (p.151) I knew the book, and had much enjoyed reading the section he referred to in his clear exposition of the theology of Ephesians. I went looking for it to re-read it. It's still a brilliant summary and guide to the theological and practical appropriation of Ephesians.¹

Oh, then there was footnote 12 in which Lincoln left clear footprints showing where some of his ideas came from! Footnote 12 reads: cf. W. Brueggemann, 'Covenanting as Human Vocation'. This was first published in the journal Interpretation in 1979 – outside the dates for which the University has access. But wait a minute, I've read this. I knew I had it in one of Brueggemann's many volumes of collected essays so I went hunting. Sure enough, there it was in one of Brueggemann's most significant essay collections, The Psalms and the Life of Faith. I read it again and was astonished at how relevant Brueggemann's essay is for a world more sold on contract and competition than covenant and co-operation. 

Brueggemann does footnotes, and he does them with considerable diversity of sources across biblical studies, sociology, cultural criticism, philosophy and psychology. There it was again, a footnote that sent me further down the promising paths of possible discovery. Footnote 36 contains a telling quotation from  A. J. Heschel, from his 1963 lectures Who is Man. I've read Heschel for years, and that book more than once. But I took it down and read that final lecture on 'How to Live' as a human being in the presence of God in God's own world.

So there's the footnote circle that took about an hour to complete. A New Testament scholar sends me to another of his own books, which shoves me in the direction of an Old Testament scholar whose essays I consider hard wearing gold, and he in turn points to a Jewish philosopher whose thought remains seminal in my own understanding of what it is to be human before God. Ignore the footnotes and you miss so much.

^{1 The Theology of the Later Pauline Epistles. (CUP: 1993)}  

Monday

Psalm 103.2 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

This verse was used on our last Sunday service of 2024. It describes that hinge point from which we look back with thankfulness and look forward with trust. Certain kinds of forgetting are embarrassing, especially if it is someone’s birthday, or missing an important planned meeting. To forget suggests it didn’t figure high in our priorities. The Psalmist warns against such careless taking of God for granted. Don’t embarrass yourself by forgetting God whose blessings tumble regularly into our lives!

Tuesday

Colossians 3.3 “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

Paul starts by saying “You have been raised with Christ…” What that means is that our old self has died, and we are now a new creation in Christ. Not only that – but we are drawn into the life of Christ, and Christ dwells in us by faith. We are hidden, held and secure within the eternal love of God in Christ. ‘Hidden’ means protected, and it is in the perfect tense – which means what happened then, remains accomplished now, and will continue to be true. “Blessed assurance, all is at rest, I in my Saviour am happy and blessed….filled with his goodness, lost in His love.”

Wednesday

 John 3.21 “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be clearly seen that what he has done has been done through God.”

Truth in the Gospel of John combines what we believe with how we live. It involves believing the revelation of God in Jesus, and living in a way that demonstrates the reality of that faith. Faith is both the assent of heart and mind, and the obedience of a life lived in the light of what we believe. This verse emphasises that what we do shows who we are, and to whom we belong. As we come into the Light that is Christ, and open ourselves to the one who is full of grace and truth, the evidence will be there for all to see – our way of life is a walk with integrity and trust in the truth of Christ, so that by God’s grace we radiate the Light and Life that is Christ in us.

Thursday

John 2.11 “This, the first of his signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory and his disciples put their trust in him.”

Water into wine! An irrecoverably embarrassing social gaffe is avoided because Jesus quietly ‘revealed his glory’. This was no party trick. Wine, rivers full of it, streaming down mountain tributaries, was a sign of the Lord’s blessing and coming amongst his people. Amos, Joel, Isaiah and the Psalm-poets described the age of the Messiah as just such an age of joy, plenty and transformation. Water into wine was a sign for those who had eyes to see beyond the miracle, and behold the glory of the One who was present. The extravagance of the quality and quantity is a sign that “of his fullness we have all received, grace, after grace, after grace – one blessing after another!” John is saying, “God’s glory revealed in Christ is absolutely extraordinary!”

Friday

2 Thessalonians 2.16-17 “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

I don’t know, but maybe Paul became the apostle of encouragement because at the very beginning it was Barnabas, the son of encouragement, who stood up for him as guarantor of his good faith. Paul knew the importance of encouragement, words of reassurance, and building confidence. These words could be a good prayer to start your day – just change the pronouns to “our hearts” and “strengthen us.” So may God our Father who loved us gives us “eternal encouragement and good hope.”

Saturday

Matthew 7. 12 Jesus said, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.”

Those first three words, “So in everything.” Careful thought about how we treat others can’t be selective. If we are only kind, considerate, generous in judgement of those we already like, that won’t do. We would have people respect us, look out for us, forgive us, take time to understand us, listen to us – the list of our expectations is demanding and long. For followers of Jesus, every person we encounter should be able to expect the same. I know that’s idealistic. Of course it is! Because it means living and enacting those other words of Jesus: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Sunday

1 Peter 4.11b “If anyone serves, they should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”

Our service to God is always by God’s grace, in God’s strength and for God’s praise. God is never our debtor. What we give we were first given. Peter of all people knew that following Jesus could be hard going. But here he was, late in life, still following, still serving as best he could, and over the years had grown a chastened sense of his own importance. He could just as well have written Paul’s words: “Continue to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Phil 2.12) So, going into 2025, we continue to serve God by serving others, doing so with the strength God provides.

Monday

Eccl 1.9 “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

There are degrees of negativity, and different ways we express them. Moaning about things not going our way; complaining as a habit of the heart; realism that thinks this is all there is and nothing new can happen; then there’s cynicism, when we question the value of even what’s good and worthwhile. Ecclesiastes is the spiritual equivalent of hitting your thumb with a hammer! The whole book is a warning against reading God out of the script of our lives. “He has put eternity in our hearts.” That’s the horizon of our hopes. God does newness and transformation. Looking forward in faith to a new year, be prepared to be co-opted into God’s transformative ways.  

Tuesday

Matthew 9.17  ^“Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.”

Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God. God was on the move, and Jesus was the presence of God poured into a life to be given for the life of the world. What Jesus said, and how Jesus behaved, was upsetting for those who wanted things to stay the same. But the good news can’t be contained in the old, tired ideas. The good news is a transformative ferment, a wineskin-bursting energy and fizz that needs flexibility and space to mature. It’s hard for tired minds and complacent hearts to welcome or contain newness. May God renew our minds and hearts and make us fit and fitted to receive the treasure of God’s grace in these earthen vessels.   

Wednesday

Jeremiah 31.31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel…I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Newness is God’s doing, not ours. Whatever we plan and do it will be by the power of the Spirit, making our shared life in community, and our personal discipleship, a transformative influence around us. It starts with God’s promise and our response – a covenant of love and trust exchanged, and obedience as the practical outworking of belonging to God. A New Year, a fresh start, a new covenant of the heart, by God’s grace starting over in renewed determination to follow Christ.

Thursday

2 Cor 5.17 if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

Christians are born into newness as part of God’s redeeming grace in Jesus Christ. It’s strange that Christians of all people should be tempted to stay with what we know, and at times be resistant to change. At first Nicodemus lacked the imagination to understand the newness of the Kingdom of God. He needed to be born again, to see with new eyes. To come to Christ as the light and life is to open ourselves to the transforming love of God in Christ, to be drawn by grace into a new way of being.

Friday

Psalm 40.3 “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.”

Christians should never sound like a stuck record, or a track on endless repeat. Praise arises out of surprise, erupts from gratitude, is kept alive by indebtedness, and grows out of constantly experienced generosity from the hand of God. Since God’s mercies are new every morning, so are the words we say in response. God’s recurring and returning blessings provide the material from which we write a constant flow of new lyrics and create new compositions of praise.

Saturday

John 13.34 “A new commandment I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

The connection between newness and love isn’t hard to make. Forgiveness allows a new beginning in a relationship, and forgiveness presupposes love. To serve, help, support or care for someone allows space for them and us to grow – and growth is one of the processes of being made new, of renewing the core of who we are. That condition, “As I have loved you” means love can never be mere softness, or a matter of our own convenience, or a calculated commitment with limits. Love one another in the same way, to the same extent, at the same cost, as I have loved you. That’s about as absolute as any of Jesus’ demands. It is a call to live in a new way, guided by the new commandment, and enabled by the renewing power of the Spirit who pours God’s love into our hearts. God’s love in us looks for ways to renew the life in others. 

Sunday  

Rev 21.1 “I saw a new heaven and a new earth…Behold I make all things new.”

John is our tutor in seeing new possibilities, and envisioning the future God intends. He reminds us, it’s God who enacts the unexpected, God who brings about the unprecedented, who surprises, shocks and shatters our far too limited expectations of what God prepares, purposes, and performs. At the turning of the year, and as we pivot into a new year, against the apparent tyranny of sameness in our world, and in contradiction to the same old, same old tragedies of human waste, suffering and conflict, hear again God’s words through John – “Behold I make all things new!”

I'll get to the book eventually, but first the important context. I've read the poems of George Herbert, the 17th Century Anglican poet, for many, many years. I don't remember exactly when I first read Herbert's 'Love III', which I consider the finest devotional poem in the English language, but it has become for me a description of the love of God that is beyond description.

Apart from the Apostle John, the final poem in George Herbert's book of poems, comes nearest to an accurate description of the nature and meaning of divine love as I have experienced it ever since my conversion in 1967. Herbert's poem, 'Love Bade Me Welcome' is a poem I read and return to so often. I want to try explaining why.  

Let me start with the hinge point of my spiritual life. As far as the externals are concerned, conversion doesn't look that big a deal. Somebody changes their mind about things, makes a decision, and gets on with life. Looking back, I recall a confused and troubled teenager, kneeling in a dull church vestry, at 10 o'clock at night, and finally giving in to what I can only describe as a Love the likes of which I had never known.

It was more than a big deal. It was a surrender of the heart, a re-orientation of the will, a cleansing of the conscience, a renewing of the mind, a re-aligning of those fundamental loyalties that define who we are. It was a relinquishing of all that fankled mess of mistakes made, wrong decisions, stupid behaviour, destructive habits and messed up relationships that was accumulating into a life headed for serious trouble. I heard the gospel preached and don't remember now much of the words used, the arguments put forward or the persuasive rhetoric of a good preacher. But I do remember, vividly and still vivifyingly, a sense that the risen Jesus was saying to me, a 16 year old Lanarkshire lad, expelled from school, in serial trouble with the police, "I have come that you might have life; and have it more abundantly."

Those words of Jesus "life more abundant", I heard as if spoken from heaven to me. That night, at the end of a late after-church service, I had a sense that I had been found by Jesus himself. I heard a call to follow Him into a new and different future, and I said yes. Life was never the same. How could it be? I had been challenged to take a risk, to trust Jesus Christ the one who died for the sin of the world, and for my sin, and to seek the forgiveness of God. I did. I was challenged further to repent of my former life, and I did. Not only remorse and regret, though these were part of it. But repentance as a change of heart, a new direction, indeed a new Director of life, the risen Lord Jesus made real through the Spirit of God the Father. 

In one sense it's no one else's business what my early years were about, or what spiritual experiences I have had, or how I've lived my life since. In another and much more deliberate sense, it is my business to bear witness to the faithful love that welcomed me and renewed me, the goodness and mercy that forgave me, the grace that has guided and sustained me, the God who in Christ gave my life purpose, meaning and motive, such that it has sustained my faith for 58 years.

Over nearly six decades of Christian discipleship, however much I have grown and matured into who and what I am today, it is entirely by God's grace, and only because 'Love bade me welcome.' Through the shaping and nurturing of that Love I am a follower of Jesus, a member of a diverse Christian community, an ordained minister of our Baptist tradition, a theologian, and a lifelong student of the traditions of Christian faith. I have so many debts, intellectual, spiritual and relational. I reflect gratefully on those influences and people who have shaped my thought and practice, those who have guided and encouraged, those whose own struggles and wrestling have helped me to "work out my own salvation with dear and trembling, knowing it is God who is at work within me to bring about his good pleasure."

Though I didn't know it at the time, George Herbert's explanation of his poems exactly describes the ups and downs of Christian life, including my own. He described his collection of poems as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.” 

I read this poem and inevitably, and wonderingly, it takes me back to that evening in April 16, 1967, and describes exactly my experience of coming to know Jesus, of hear his call, and answering it by trusting the love that bade me welcome, and believing in the One who gently silenced my shame, guilt and sense of unworthiness. I can't be the only one who feels the echoes these sublime words set up in the soul, about the Love that bade, and bids us, welcome.  

 Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

Monday

Luke 2.10 “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”

We underline words for emphasis. It’s a way of paying attention to what’s really important. The Christmas story has its own vocabulary, words that chime with our own experience, and shape this story of God’s coming amongst us. The shining glory of the Lord is not to terrify but to reassure – don’t be afraid, this is good news and great joy for everyone. What is about to happen is the hinge point of human history, when God pushes open the door and comes amongst us. Whatever else the shepherds witnessed, they saw heaven pouring down, luminous with blessing.

Tuesday

Luke 2.11 “Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

It’s not as if there was no warning. For centuries prophets had said God would send the Christ to save his people. Those promises are now happening, here, now. Just as Isaiah said, “Unto us a child is born.” Born as a human baby, the Word became flesh and lived amongst us as one of us. The instincts that draw us to the midnight Christmas Eve service are because we know that the birth of Jesus is of momentous significance – as the angel said – “good news of great joy for all the people”, including us, and our neighbours, and our troubled world. There, 2,000 years ago, in Bethlehem, God kept his promise to his people, and to the nations, and to us.

Wednesday

Luke 2.11b “This will be a sign to you: You will find the child wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

You can’t have Christmas without a manger! Forget the sentimental Christmas card pictures. Jesus was born in the unheated downstairs level where the animals were kept overnight. The shepherds would be perfectly at home amongst the animals, looking in bemused wonder at a young woman nursing her new born child, there of all places. The hard part for them, and for us is making the link between this utterly dependent infant, and the Glastonbury lights and sounds on the hillside. God is here, not in trailing clouds of glory, but nestling in the security of a mother’s arms, amongst the household animals of the kind soul who said, “You’re welcome.”

Thursday

Luke 2.14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all on whom his favour rests.”

Glory to God in the highest. But glory is hidden in a hayrack, wrapped in a blanket, and held in a mother’s arms. This child is the Prince of Peace, God’s gift of shalom. ‘Shalom’ is a welfare word, containing the promise of wellbeing, harmony, human flourishing, a world of recovered fertility, and of human communities where power is used to enable and not disempower others. But not now, and not yet. Still, in Christ incarnate, crucified and risen, God has set in motion his final purposes for creation. Whatever else the Church is, it is the reflected light of the Light of the World, God’s fifth column of reconciled reconcilers, God’s peacemakers and good news agents.

Friday

Luke 2.15 “When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened…”

The ordinary, overlooked, sheep-smelling shepherds, and the resplendent luminous angels, and a small rural town called Bethlehem. Never lose the sense of Christmas as entirely incongruous, the real happening of an impossible story. Those shepherds were nobody’s fools. Like all hard-working folk trying to get by, they had modest expectations of life. Until the angels interrupted their nightshift! We need the shepherds, the angels, the little town, as we need Mary, Joseph and the baby – together they create the time and place when Immanuel happened, God with us.

Saturday

Luke 2.17 “When they had seen him they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed…”

There’s quite a lot of amazement goes on in the Christmas story. Mary’s annunciation; Joseph’s dream and the angel; shepherds ambushed by God’s choir; the shepherds’ gawking and gossip. And those who heard them were amazed. Why not? Angels and heavenly choirs, a baby supposed to be the Messiah, a young woman both scared and honoured above all women. The vocabulary of Christmas is full of big words – Jesus, Immanuel, Bethlehem, signs and prophets, child, manger, shepherds, glory, joy, peace, God’s favour, spreading the word. And it’s our story, and these words are our words, the vocabulary of God’s gift beyond all our telling. 

Sunday

Luke 2.19 “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

The modern carol, “Mary did you know?” seems to ignore this verse. Mary knew all right, in those deep places where a mother’s loves and hopes mingle with anxiety and determination to protect. Mary is taking in the significance of all that has happened to her. She holds them close to her heart in the secret intimacy of the risks she has taken. God knows what would happen next. Yes, God knows.

"To him who is able to strengthen you, in accordance with my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, in accordance with the revelation of the mystery concealed for long ages, but now made manifest through the prophetic scriptures, in accordance with the command of the eternal God, made known for the obedience of faith for all the nations, to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to him be glory for ever. Amen." (Romans 16.25-27)

"All we can say is that [this] doxology has summarized well some of the basic concerns of the letter. All begins and ends with God. His power alone is sufficient to sustain those who rely on him by faith. The gospel which made clear and with which Paul was entrusted, focused on Jesus Christ and contained the revelation of the mystery of the divine purpose for the salvation of humankind. That purpose was in full continuity with God's earlier revelation through the prophet and scripture.

But what had now been made clear, as God had always intended it should, was that God's saving purpose reached out to all the nations and that it was entered into through faith — a faith which was not different from nor opposed to the obedience God had always looked for in his people, but which in fact came to expression in the dependant submissiveness of the creature to its Creator. It is to this God, the one God, the God who is the source and measure of all real wisdom, now most fully understood and approached through Jesus Christ, that all the glory of the ages belongs. Amen and amen.

              (Word Biblical Commentary. Romans. Vol.2, James D. G. Dunn. (Dallas: Word Books, 1988) page 917.

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All my vocational life, from being a student in the early 1970s till now, J. D. G. Dunn has been a trusted voice amongst New Testament scholars. His earlier works such as Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Jesus and the Spirit, Christology in the Making and Unity and Diversity in the New Testament were ground-breaking, provocative, and forced those who disagreed to do a lot of homework – myself included. His Romans volumes comprise one of the most valued commentaries on my shelves. 

The final paragraph of Dunn's commentary are quoted above, a few days before Christmas. They are the culminating sentences of a huge effort of scholarship over some of the busiest years of his life – and as I read them they seem to presuppose Advent, and Easter, and beyond. Dunn is carefully summarising what he has argued throughout the commentary, that the central focus on Jesus Christ as the content of God's self-revelation is, in the person of Jesus, the final revelation of a mystery that has eternity in its planning. In Jesus Christ the very truth of God is revealed, seen and active in the salvation of humankind, a revelation that commands the obedience of faith. 

"Joyful all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies…Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings. Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die." So Charles Wesley, (and later editors).

Or as the Apostle Paul put it to the Christians in Rome, the hub of the Empire and meeting point of the nations: "the revelation of the mystery concealed for long ages, but now made manifest through the prophetic scriptures, in accordance with the command of the eternal God, made known for the obedience of faith for all the nations…"

As Dunn argued consistently throughout his long sojourn with Romans, Paul's vision spanned the long sweep of history, included God's promise to all the nations, the gospel to be received and lived through faith in the incarnate, crucified and risen Jesus, and in the power of the Spirit forming communities of worship and witness to "the God who is the source and measure of all real wisdom, now most fully understood and approached through Jesus Christ, and to whom all the glory of the ages belongs."

More than once in these Advent Book Endings essays there has been a coming together of Advent, mission, and the challenge for us to discover in our own time what "the obedience of faith" requires of us in our own times. That will take some working out, and it will be costly and disruptive for each Christian community that seeks to worship and bear witness to Jesus Christ, embracing and engaging with the mystery of Bethlehem, Calvary, an empty tomb, and the long wait for the final realisation of God's kingdom.

Advent is about that long wait. Faith in Jesus Christ is ultimately faith in the eternal wisdom and final purposes of God for creation, humanity and this God-loved world. And as we wait, we hold closely to the words Paul wrote to those small Christian communities in Rome, struggling to survive the pressures of Empire, not always seeing eye to eye with each other about the meaning of the gospel, needing a focal point for their own worship, witness, and community life in Christ:

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." (Rom. 15.13)    

"In the fifth chapter of Revelation the apostle tells us that as he looked through a door in heaven he glimpsed something of the triumphant outcome of God's overruling of the fearful events of world history. Two things riveted his attention: a scroll and a lamb. The scroll was the book of human destiny sealed and firmly held in the hand of God. When no one in heaven or earth was able to open the scroll and look inside, John wept bitterly. Then he was told that the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, had gained the power to break the seals and open the scroll. John turned to see the Lion, the mighty power of God, but what he saw standing in the midst of the throne of God was a Lamb with the marks of sacrifice upon him who took the scroll from the right hand of God, and when he did so a new song was heard to break out in heaven:

You are worthy to receive the scroll and break the seals, for you were slain and by your blood you have redeemed for God a people of every tribe and language a nation and race. You have made them a royal house of priests for our God, and they shall reign on earth. This was echoed by countless angels singing' Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches, wisdom and glory and praise.

This surely means that the atoning passion of Christ must for ever be allowed to govern our understanding of God in all his creative, providential and redemptive relations with us. Is that not why we cannot but think of passion and serenity, passibility and impassibility as interpenetrating one another in the ultimate nature of God? And is that not how we continue to worship him?

Just as the whole undivided Trinity was involved in redemption so the whole undivided Trinity is worshipped in our celebration of the Eucharist. The liturgy of the Church was aboriginally and intrinsically trinitarian, so that it is not surprising that it was out of the sacramental worship of the Church in Baptism and Eucharist shaped by the inspired witness of the apostles handed down to us in the Scriptures of the New Testament, that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, One God Three Persons, came into explicit formulation."

The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons. Thomas F. Torrance. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996) pages 255-56.

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The theology of Thomas F. Torrance is thoroughly trinitarian. This book, along with The Trinitarian Faith (1988) distilled a lifetime of dogmatic reflection into a mature statement of why the doctrine of the Trinity is of defining importance for Christian faith. The Christian Doctrine of God is both dogmatic and doxological theology, carefully argued from primary sources with doctrinal precision and considerable passion, and shaped from within his own experience of God in Christ as believer, minister and scholar. It's not an easy read, not much of Torrance is – nor was it intended to be. This is confessional theology from  within the academy, a summative statement by one of Scotland's greatest theologians whose dogmatic and ecumenical work spanned decades, and reached across the major divisions of Christian tradition.  

As Torrance confessed in the Preface, "the truth of the Holy Trinity is more to be adored than expressed." The last page of this book, quoted above, demonstrates this same fusion of doctrine and doxology was an unbroken thread running through the book; compelled to express what is inexpressible, analysis gives way to adoration, and dogmatic exertion merges with prayer and worship. That's how Torrance 'did' theology; he was a theologian for whom prayer was an essential predisposition to faith seeking understanding. 

Torrance lived through some of the most momentous historical events of his century. The Second World War, the Cold War and nuclear deterrence, a growing ecological crisis, and in the late 20th Century the confrontation of East and West completely realigned with the collapse of communism  in 1989 with all the instability and rebuilding that followed. Against a background of such anxiety and adjustment, late in his own life, Torrance completed the writing of The Christian Doctrine of God. He was providing for the Church a doctrine of God adequate to the multiple contemporary challenges facing an endangered world, and as continuing foundation and guide to the mission and future of the Church.

In 1959 Torrance published a book of sermons, The Apocalypse Today. The book of Revelation was a text that, throughout his vocational life, provided Torrance with a view of human history where God is always on the horizon. His closing words include a text that has Advent woven throughout. The Lion and the Lamb, the Root of David, the mystery of human history and God's ultimate purpose of redemption which would include people from "every tribe and language a nation and race."

The incarnation, life, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and glorification of Jesus is a chain reaction of divine purpose, a defining revelation of how God is to be encountered, thought and worshipped as the Triune God of grace. Torrance is surely right to insist on this story of God's atoning passion, revealed in Jesus Christ, as the governing reality of our deepest Christian reflections about God, leading inevitably to worship, and the singing of the new song.

Or, to put all that in Advent terms:

True God of true God,

Light of light eternal,

Lo, He abhors not the virgin's womb;

Son of the father,

Begotten not created

O Come, let us adore Him…