Wednesday August 28 is the 50th Anniversary of the greatest speech of the American Civil Rights Movement, and in my view the most powerful piece of oratory on behalf of justice, peace and human flourishing during my lifetime. There's plenty on the media on the significance of that speech, and the long echoes of the refrain, "I have a dream….."

My own comment is simple, and mostly in MLK's own words. One of my treasured books is a battered old fontana paperback of MLK's sermons, Strength to Love. (cost 35 pence net). From the sermon Transformed Nonconformists come these two quotations. Such wisdom, such prophetic wisdom, for our own time 50 years later.

Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be
well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there
are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be
maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men [and women] of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted!

And these words echo the wisdom of A J Heschel, one of MLK's supporters, and a radical religious leader in his own right,

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided man.

 

And then go here and listen to MLK in full flow, and give thanks for words and the power of the Word.

Apology for a Theological Reading Group.

For some time now I have been thinking about the point of
being a Christian. I don’t mean that it might be pointless. I mean, what is the
standpoint, the viewpoint, of the Christian mind as we encounter the
contemporary world, engage with surrounding culture, and work out what
Christian witness might sound like, look like and live like in a world such as
ours. There is a universe of difference between asking questions about world
peace, human suffering, consumer greed, climate change, human sexuality, macro-economics,
social justice, start and end of life questions, and all else that we live
with, think about, and encounter in the daily gift that is human life, our
life, – it makes a universe of difference when these issues are asked by a
Christian who believes their theology!

So what happens when we think of such issues as occurring in
a world which God created, where all people are loved by God, but a creation
broken by sin, into which God came in Christ as reconciling love, a world in
which resurrection and Pentecost are realities that shape the way we view
reality? In other words, the point of being a Christian, the viewpoint and
standpoint, is to bear witness to the
redemptive, renewing and reconciling love of God. The standpoint is beside the
manger, under the cross, beside the empty tomb. The viewpoint is to see the
world through the eyes of God who in Christ became flesh, dwelt amongst us,
died for our sins, rose again in the power of the Spirit, and is the one in whom
all things hold together.

So what difference does it make to believe our theology, to
live it, to breathe it, to think it, to confess it? It makes all the difference.  In a culture impatient of ideas, dismissive
of truth claims and well shaped words, fixated on novelty, emotionally exhausted
by the flickering images of communicative technology, there is now an
imperative for Christians to follow after the one who said ‘Learn of me’ in a
discipleship of the intellect. A discipleship of the intellect is a commitment
to lifelong learning in the school of Christ.

Theology is not a tedious pastime for impractical
Christians. Theological reflection is to see the world from the point of view
of the God who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of our world. Theology is
prayer thinking; Christian thought is never more useful than when Christian
minds look out on the world, and from a Christian standpoint bear witness to
other ways of being, other ways of seeing, and other ways of living out this
wonderful gift that is our life in Christ.

Believe it or not, all of that is a way of saying I’d like
to see our churches create opportunities for those who wonder what it would be like to really
believe their theology. For followers of Jesus to come together to talk about a well chosen book or
issue, and ask, “so what does it mean to look at the world, this part of the
world, this human experience, from the standpoint of those who believe we are
all loved by God, that the world is broken by sin, and in Jesus Christ through
the power of the Spirit this astonishing God is making all things new”?

So I'm hoping to get such a group started, and with their permission report occasionally on what we are about. We are going to start by grounding ourselves in the very fine one volume systematic theology, Faith Seeking Understanding, Daniel
Migliore (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Second Edition 2004).

As an interval during George Herbert week here are a couple of photos taken at opportune moments. The first is of a young Sparrow Hawk which collided at speed with our glass patio doors.

It came round from unconsciousness, got to its feet, swayed drunkenly for a minute, looked me straight in the eye and said, "Where the H*** did that come from?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And after this stunned adolescent learner flier recovered, and tidied up its language, it had a look at itself in the glass and thought, " Lookin' good – but won't do that again!"

Then early this morning I looked out the same patio windows and saw the biggest crane fly in the world flying over our house. (better known as daddy long legs)

 

By Ted Kooser from Flying at Night Poems, 1965-85, Pittsburgh Press.  

This daddy long legs wasn't walking on a basement floor – it was attached to the patio doors spreadeagled as if pinned by an entomologist. Such fragile transience.

 

 

 

Scolty Hill gives a panoramic view of Deeside, and now and then we go walking up there as a bit of wider horizon scanning. In other words it helps with life perspective when you stand on higher ground and pay attention to all that's around you.

 

Then there are the colours. A symphony in purple – heather, thistle, fox glove – with the cantus firmus of green. This is taken looking up the hill, and a panoramic photo would show the same vision of colours blending, contrasting and complementing.

And then two of my favourite things to look at, touch and smell – a Scotch Pine, covered in lichen. The smell part was about the exposed root, oozing pine sap, its smell sharp, clean, spicy and head clearing. Forget disinfectant – this is an aroma that for me is as satisfying and evocative as brewing coffee. And lichen the coplour of pale jade is one of the most beautifully crafted random patterns.

All of this adds up to a day when prayer is about paying attention, praise is having our eyes opened to the mystery of the ordinary and thanksgiving to wonder at the gift of moments and minutes simply to enjoy. The doctrine of creation in Genesis and the Psalms and Isaiah and the Sermon on the Mount is not a bone of scientific or theological controversy and contention; instead it is the theological framework within which we see the handwork of God, intimations of a presence not always obvious, and a recognition that we as human beings belong within the richer more humbling context of God's creative and redeeming love.

Amongst the most wonderful moments on a walk like this is when you come to a ditch, and amidst the profusion and extravagance of a Scottish moor covered in heather, thistles, ferns, bracken, trees in seedling and mature forms, there are amongst the generality, specific and particular displays of beauty there for the seeing. The photo is the right way up, the flower growing out horizontally. " Look at the flowers of the field…..they neither toil nor spin…but not even Solomon shopping on Fifth Avenue with limitless credit is clothed anything like this."

"The day will come …when people will once more  be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new language, perhaps quite non-religious language, but liberating and redeeming, like Jesus' language, so that people will be alarmed. and yet overcome by its power – the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God's kingdom is drawing near."

"The most important question for the future is how we are going to find a basis for living together with other people, what spiritual realities and rules we honour as the foundations for a meaningful Christian life."

These words were written by Bonhoeffer a year or so before Bonhoeffer was executed. They seem to me to be an important comment on the words of jesus, spoken a year or so before he was executed, "I have come that you might have life, and have life in all its fullness."

This identification with Jesus is spelt out further in another of Bonhoeffer's letters: "Our relationship to God is no  'religious' relationship to some highest, most powerful and best being imaginable – that is no genuine transcendence. Instead, our relationship to God is a new life in 'being there for others,' through participation in the being of Jesus."

"Liberating and redeeming like Jesus' language". If only Jesus' ambassadors could echo the tone and content of Jesus' language, words formed and gifted by grace to set free and make possible a new and renewed beginning. "The whole creation groans awaiting its redemption", and that was as clear to Bonhoeffer in his cell, when his life was forfeit, his family at risk, his nation embroiled in a fight to the death and its military responsible for mass death by blitz, Holocaust and the madness of power. His words were written and his thought shaped by concern for what the church would be, and need to be, in a post-war world.

As Clifford green comments, quoting Bonhoeffer further, "The overall emphasis is on service, not domination, on demonstrating by example  what new life in Christ means, of speaking with 'moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.'" The italics are mine, because these ten words provide a barcode for ecclesial speech, Christian witness, a discipleship that so shapes emotion, will, and thought, that what is articulated in words is recognisably, and startlingly reminiscent of Jesus.

They may be one of the vital clues to what disqualifies the church from the attention of a secular, post-modern culture. Speech that is self-excusing and self-defensive yet critical and judgemental of "the other", the world; on too many occasions words that are carefully chosen as if witness was a synonym for diplomacy; unchristian attitudes of moral superiority, betraying a profound unawareness that is itself sin at its most toxic; and pervasive in the language and apologetics of the church, a fear and anxiety of the world of culture and technology, an ambivalence about human progress and human crisis; and most tragic of all, the gradual disappearance over time of Jesus Christ as the living centre of the church and the dynamic source of Christian life, thought and action.

In a prison cell, facing his own death, looking to a future he would not see, Boinhoeffer wrote letters to his friend containing seeds and seedlings of some of the most crucial ideas required for the Church facing a world where assumptions of religious commitment could no longer hold, and in which the status quo of religious institutions and their influence and power would disappear. In  both senses his words were prophetic – speaking into the future, and speaking necessary truth inspired by the Spirit of God. 

Amongst the miracles of providence, was the relationship established between Bonhoeffer and Corporal Knobloch, a member of the guard detail in Tegel Interrogation Prison. But for Corporal Knobloch, the letters to Eberhard Bethge would not have survived, may not even have been written. By such coincidences of providence, the gates of Hell shall not prevail…..

When all the arguments are stated and heard, whether military, strategic, historic, or even moral, I am much more persuaded by the theological solemnity of the late George Macleod's contention that atomic warfare is a blasphemous abuse of God's creation and of nature's energy.

The photo is of a mother and children praying for surviving victims 68 years on from the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The only nation on earth that has been attacked with nuclear weapons speaks and acts with a different authority when addressing the problem of nuclear weapons, human fallibility and our capacity as humans to self destruct. Such voices can never be on the side of deterrence; they are on the side of peace.

For myself, I too want to place my hands together, and love this world with all its brokenness and possibility, and hold a wounded creation before the loving Creator, and align my hope and trust with my faith in the God of resurrection whose gift is life, and whose light is not the blinding flash of nuclear death, but the brilliance of love magnified by the splendour of holiness, earthing its energy and power in our world in the stable, the cross and the empty tomb.

And my favourite prophet points to an alternative reality:

Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that we may walk the
paths of the Most High. And we shall beat our swords into ploughshares
and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword
against nation – neither shall they learn war any more.
And none shall be afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken.

I'm reading Abraham Heschel again – and also working through Divine Pathos and Human Being. The Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel by Michael Chester, a Methodist scholar whose post-grad work was done on Heschel. Time and again I find Heschel writing in the 40.s, 50's and 60's saying things that have powerful resonance and uncanny relevance to some of the challenges and cultural pressures facing people of faith today. As a Christian I have a profound love, respect and I hope some humility when I explore the faith and traditions which give Christian thought and experience much of its shape and historic rootedness. Heschel's conviction that faith is to be lived, practiced, evidenced by action performed in obedience, given heart and motivation by piety as reverence for the One whose ultimate claim upon human life is grounded in the ineffability, holiness and loving mercy of God.

The Bible (by which Heschel meant the books of the Hebrew Scriptures) is a profound, uniquely rich and authentic text out of which comes the voice of God calling to obedience, seeking response rather than explanation, and demanding transformed living as well as, and indeed as more important than, full understanding. Here are two brief paragraphs from Heschel which would be provocative starting points in a class on hermeneutics and sacred text.

The surest way of misunderstanding revelation is to take it literally, to imagine that God spoke to the prophet on a long distance telephone. Yet most of us succumb to such a fancy, forgetting that the cardinal sin in thinking about ultimate issues is literal mindedness. The error of literal mindedness is in assuming  that things and words have only one meaning.

Man has often made a god out of dogma, a grav en image which he worshipped, to which he prayed. He would rather believe in dogmas that in God, serving them not for the sake of heaven but for the sake of creed, the diminutive of faith. Dogmas are the poor man's share in the divine.

Both quoted in Chester, page 58.

Heschel's reverence for Torah is not so much articulated in words and ideas; it glows throughout his writing, it imbues his words with passion and poetry, Torah represents the splendour and glory of God gifted in grace to human eyes, ears and hearts. He would have been moved deeply by this picture, and the story that goes with it here.

 

Today was our 41st wedding anniversary, a statistic that can easily be appealed to should Sheila ever require evidence of a miracle for her canonisation. It was a sunny day all along the Moray coast, one of our favourite haunts so we spent the day there. Lunch was at the Whitehills Galley which you can find out about here Jumbo haddock in breadcrumbs for me and Monkfish Scampi for Sheila. This is an excellent place to eat, and worth booking beforehand – we were lucky and got the last table before the rush. Then a wander along the coastal path before having the dessert, which was a double scoop 99 from Portsoy Ice Cream Shop.

After that a visit to Fordyce, a hidden gem conservation village which has a peaceful slowness about it that we love. There is an old church yard where if it was nearer I'd happily spend an hour now and again. Some of the stones go back 300 and more years, and the older stones have the brief story of the life of the person comemorated.These two photos are from inside the ruined church tower.

The harbour at Whitehills has been in operation for centuries and is owned and run by the village. It's a lovely place to sit and desult – that is, sit and enjoy the sea, feel the breeze, and think and thank in a desultory way.

Up the back of the harbour is a ruined gable end with a window. I like this photo; it will be on my profile page above for a while.

 

Along the single track road that leads to Forest of Birse you eventually come to the little Forest of Birse Church. This small chapel in the glen sits in a secluded fern covered field, behind and around it the hills which today were beginning to look purple with the early heather, encouraged by long sunny days. Inside is the size of a large living cum dining room, plainly decorated and with windows on only one side.

Behind the pulpit, lying on a chair was this old Pulpit Bible, which has seen better days. It would be easy to see it as a sign of days long past and never returning; to interpret its battered testimony as signaling the demise of the church and the Christian way of life; and my photo providing the kind of image to put on the cover of yet another book lamenting the loss of biblical literacy. A battered Bible, pages in disarray, torn and water stained, but still there, as if no one has the heart to remove it.

Looking at it yesterday, with what I can only call affection and admiration, I can well understand how such an object as a worn out copy of a sacred book should be treated with reverence, and perhaps buried with thanksgiving for all that it has given of truth and guidance to those who preached from it, and heard it, and tried to live it. The refusal of Jewish people to simply dispose of old scrolls of the Hebrew Bible at the recycling units, comes from a deep instinct for that which is holy, sacred, precious and indeed sacramental in significance. This old Bible as you see contains the comments of Matthew Henry and Thomas Scott; their multi-volume works were written as expositions which explained and applied each verse to the life situations of the reader. This pile of paper, torn, disarrayed, and 'disbound' as used book dealers would call it, is much, much more than a battered old relic.

Here for generations was the bread of life; here the lamp unto countless feet tramping up and down this glen; here the light to paths too easily missed; here the sharp two edged sword that pierced to the marrow and inspired love, drew forth praise, urged to repentance and changed ways, and comforted broken hearts. This old Bible should be placed in a prominent place, a glass case even, with a notice telling whoever comes into the church, what its life has been. We were numbers 6 and 7 who had signed the visitors' book yesterday by 3.00 pm – that's a lot of people for an isolated glen. But then, those who go looking for solitude, a long walk, Highland scenery, and communion with either God or God's creation, are likely to take time to go in and look at this simple sacred space, enriched with all its human stories of fellow travellers, and have a seat for a few minutes, and either speak to God, or listen for the quiet whisper that says "Be still, and know that I am God….."

Here are some other photos of the Church.

 

 

This interview has made my day, and will probably make my week. Sometimes our worst nightmares are real, and then end like this. Watch Min Jin Kym tell her story here

Cue for a track from Brahms!