Category: Uncategorised

Monday

John 1.1-2 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.”

“Use your imagination”, says John. Now expand the range of your thought. Sure, Matthew and Luke take us to Bethlehem, a borrowed manger, and a crying infant. But what happened at Bethlehem was no accident. From before the beginning, God has been Creator and Redeemer, and all our scaled down Christmas images of stables, stars and shepherds are against the vast cosmic background of God’s eternal, creative purposes. John is alerting us – this is the most stupendous of circumstances! The One who comes to be with us is the very Word and Wisdom of God. 

Tuesday

John 1.2 “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

Now stretch your imagination even further, well beyond the usual boundaries of what you think you understand. The Creator becomes the creature. The One who made all things becomes in Jesus a “child in the manger, infant of Mary; outcast and stranger, Lord of all.” Nothing exists without the Word which calls everything into existence. As Paul said, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col. 1.17) And yet, here he is, entering our humanity, “divinity dwindled to infancy”, the sustaining power of the universe made truly human, and entrusted to the care of a young mother. Advent eventually appeared at Bethlehem, but its origins lie deep in the heart of the Eternal, conceived by the faithful purposefulness of God.

Wednesday

John 1.4 “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity.”

Remember those grammar lessons when we learned how to write clearly and concisely? John uses the demonstrative pronoun, “that life”; specifically, particularly, uniquely, that life which was in the Word made flesh; that life and no other, is the light of life for all humanity. Indeed that life is the light of the world. Charles Wesley borrowed those metaphors: “Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings”. John’s whole gospel is like a composition through which the themes of light and life are woven into an intricate concerto titled “God so loved the world.”

Thursday

John 1.5. “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”

Darkness cannot understand light; cannot take it in; cannot encompass it. Darkness can never put light out. Advent is the season of light…and darkness. The darkness is real enough; we can feel and see its effects when darkness is the descriptor we use for evil, cruelty, oppression, lost-ness, despair, grief, and all the other words we employ to describe the absence of light on the horizons of those who suffer and long for life to be different. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”, says Isaiah, the herald of God’s coming. Advent is an anticipation and celebration of the great reversal, when light shines in defiance of the powers of darkness.

Friday.

John 1.9 “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.”

Truth is another of John’s recurring themes. The true light is the light that cannot be extinguished, and which is neither suppressed by darkness, nor obscured by deceit. Advent is the celebration of the arrival of that true light – truth that exposes lies, and reveals the realities of the human heart. John wrote, “Everyone who does evil hates the light.” Advent is a time for honest review of what matters most to us, where our deepest loves lie, what when push comes to shove, we will give our best energies to. If we live by the truth, there is no fear in being near the light, or of being known for who we are. The closer we are to Jesus the closer we are to the Truth, and the Light.

Saturday

John 1.14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst us.”

And there it is. The one liner that has provoked countless books on the incarnation of Jesus; all of them attempts to explain the inexplicable. The Eternal enters time, the Creator takes on creaturely form, Jesus lives and moves in our God-loved but fallen world, fully human and fully Divine. This wasn’t a flying visit, but the living of a human life in flesh and blood. John’s word ‘dwelling’ is about settling down, fully engaging with where a person is. This is God come amongst us in human form, with a name and a family. “Our God, heav’n cannot hold Him.” Advent flows from that!

Sunday

John 1.14b “We have seen his glory, the glory of the Only Begotten, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The glory of God is revealed in the One who is the most generous of gifts and who personifies the steadfast faithfulness of God to all His promises. The Word who became flesh comes as the promised presence of God with His people, and that presence radiates with a strange and beautiful glory. Advent is, for John, the dawn of a new creation, when He through whom all things have their being, becomes the One in whom life and light, and grace and truth, make possible the miracle of being born again by the Spirit. John’s great hymn to the Word, is the testimony of all who wait in faithful trust for the Advent of God’s glory in Christ, in our hearts, and i

"Those who belong to God participate in his Kingdom work. Therefore the church embodies and gives away the good news. And just as this good news of Jesus' coming shows us God's concern for is as the weak, the poor and the oppressed, so also the life of God in us will inevitably cause our hearts to burn with compassion for  all vestiges of weakness and poverty around us. God's impartiality makes him partial to the poor. In fairness he favours the fatherless and receives the rejected. They have a special place in his affections because God is not blind to the harsh inequalities of this world. The material world matters to God. When we forget this, we become blind to the fulness of redemption and the joy of our kingdom work."

"The kingdom of God comes to earth not to deny our physicality but to show us how to live by the Spirit in this physical world that God created and is redeeming. Those who belong to Christ thus reflect his heart, his mission and his work. We seek to set the captives free from sin through the finished work of Jesus on the cross; this we proclaim by the spiritual preaching of the Word, through the material administration of the sacraments, and through the physical application of aid to the circumstances of those in need. In this way, those in the kingdom find themselves following the way of the cross by service, sacrifice, and even suffering. Life and proclamation should always be tied together in the generosity of God's people who know that they belong to their Master. He has set us free to live as agents of grace, hope and love. Thus, we enter the story and participate in God's good news. For God so loved, he gave." 

The God Who Gives. How the Trinity Shapes the Christian Story, Kelly Kapic (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010) p. 263

So what kind of God do we believe in? This book argues all the way through that God is a generous God. Not a grudging judge; not an indulgent progressive; not a capricious interferer in the life of the world; and not any of the other distorted ideas and conceptions of God that are founded on our own fears, or desires or wishful thinking. The defining words in the Christian understanding of the Triune God of love are grace, gift, and generosity. 

All through this book Kapic argues for a reset in the way Christians think of God. That reset requires a revisiting of the biblical narrative of God's ways with his creation, this world, and our human history. He traces the story of God reclaiming his fallen creation; he reclaims all by giving all. The Son is the Gift of the Father. The Spirit is the gift of the Father and the Son. This circle of generosity and grace, the inner life of Love's exchange in the being of God, encircles God's whole creation in a renewed covenant sealed by God's gift of himself. 

It takes an entire book to argue that, and many of the chapters read as devotional theology at its best. Quoting Michael Gorman, another writer whose work is similarly rich and rewarding, Kapic condenses the burden of his book: "The cross is Christ's loving gift of himself for 'me,' for us, for all. His death for sins was not anything other than an act of love, a voluntary gift of the self."

The Christian life is an invitation to participate in the life of God in Christ, by the power of the Spirit. God's gift is not only generous, it is demanding, it is an invitation to that self-same generosity, self-giving and sacrifice that is summed up in the words of Jesus, to take up the cross and follow him – and to do so in the light of his risen life and by the power of the Spirit.

It isn't much of a leap from the vocabulary of grace, gift and generosity to the theology of Advent, Christmas and Easter. John 3.16 and John 1.14 are as close as John gets to the Christmas story. God so loved the world that he Gave his only Son…the Word became flesh and welt among us." Gift, from start to finish. Generosity that breaks all the limits and calculations of any cost / benefit analysis to the Giver. Grace best understood in language that struggles for articulation – "He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich…thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift." Those are theological distillations of the Christmas story, and the Easter story, and the story of God. 

As Kapic says earlier in the book: "God's grace does not consist in anything we can hold in our hands, but in whose hands we are held." Pure Advent that!

The Open Secret by Lesslie Newbigin still carries a theological punch, and sounds a wake-up call to the Church 46 years after it was published. My copy is one of the relatively few books I own that is heavily annotated and underlined (and would be really annoying if someone else now tried to read it!). I learned so much from this book. Here is the last couple of paragraphs, as he reflects on the parable of the talents, in particular the man who buried his boss's money for safekeeping, and the consequences for the church if it models its mission on similarly risk-averse playing safe with what it was given to invest.

"To invest the money with a view to a high rate of interest is to risk the capital. The church has often been afraid to do this, thinking that the faith once delivered to the saints is to be preserved inviolate and without the change of a comma. Verbal orthodoxy then becomes the supreme virtue and syncretism  becomes the most feared enemy. When this is the mood real dialogue becomes impossible. And so does real mission."

"If such a church is strong there can be a kind of proselytism but there is not that kind of mission which seriously expects the Holy Spirit to take what belongs to Christ and show it to the church thus leading the church to new truth. The mystery of the gospel is not entrusted to the church to be buried in the ground. It is entrusted to the church in order to be risked in the change and interchange of the spiritual commerce of humanity. It belongs not to the church but to the one who is both head of the church and head of the cosmos. It is within his power and grace to bring it to its full completion, that long hidden purpose, the secret of which has been entrusted to the church in order that it may become the open manifestation of the truth to all the nations." 

Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret. (London:SPCK,1978) pp.213-4.

…………………………….

Isaiah promised that the Servant would become "a light to the nations." John wrote of "the true light that gives light to all, was coming into the world…in his was life and the life was the light of all people." Mission is a direct implicate of Advent, and Advent is the recurring call to mission.

All those years ago Newbigin insisted that God call's the church to take risks, to hazard its life on the gospel, to trust the truth and the resilience of the good news of Christ in the risky business of dialogue, discussion, proclamation and persuasion of human exchange. More than that – his was the call to the late 20th Century church to demonstrate in its life and character, its words and actions, its priorities and strategies, the truth of Christ the Saviour. And to do this by being communities of compassion, gatherings of forgiven and therefore forgiving sinners, incendiary fellowships in which the power of the Holy Spirit in transformed lives was primary evidence of the presence and activity of the living God. 

The gospel is a light that should never be buried in the ground, kept safe as if it could be lost. It sits on the table and gives light to all in the house; it's a well lit city visible from the furthest distance of human longing and need. As Newbigin's title says, the gospel is an "open secret", a mystery to be lived as well as spoken, beyond our best rational explanations which always reduce the wonder of God's love in Christ, but a message so full of meaning that it transforms the lives of those who come to believe, trust and surrender to all the risks of following Jesus. 

Some years after reading The Open Secret, I read the most influential book on mission published during my lifetime, David Bosch Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Yes, in the intervening years Bosch's thesis has been critiqued, questioned, refined, and eclipsed by more recent approaches. My point in mentioning it is that I read it during Advent, and ever since then, mission and Advent have a mutual resonance in the way I understand both. The Christmas story is the historical hinge-point when God's redemptive, reconciling and renewing mission entered human history in the person of Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. Advent and mission, is the faith that 'the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." The open secret, is that God is on the move, that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.

Here is Newbigin earlier in his book, in provocative mode for emphasis, providing a good summary of the thrust of his argument:

"It is of the essence of the matter that Jesus was not concerned to leave as the fruit of his work a precise verbatim record of everything he said and did, but that he was concerned to create a community which would be bound to him in love and obedience, learn discipleship even in the midst of sin and error, and be his witnesses among all peoples."  (Page 176)  

 

"But love is the real substance of faith and hope. We cannot say, God is faith; we cannot say, God is hope, but we can say, God is love. That is what God is, and that is what faith and hope are about. But love in itself is not a mere " relation to "; love, agape, is the thing itself. It is his presence, it is himself here and now in us. It is his being as our new being, his presence as our own present. Inasmuch as we have him, we have love, and inasmuch as we have love, agape, we have him and we are " present." This presence manifests itself in our relation to our fellow men, but also in the state of our own mind and heart. It is joy and peace as God's being is joy and peace.

Peace and joy are what everyone craves. That is true of every human being. But it is also true of every human being that his craving is not satisfied. Peace and joy can come into our hearts only by Christ, by God's own presence in them. There is no peace, within ourselves or with our neighbours, apart from reconciliation in Christ, because only if we are at peace with God can we have real peace in ourselves and with our fellow men. And peace with God we can have only through his forgiveness, through his taking away the burden of our past in the cross of Christ. Peace is the realization of his presence as our presence.

And joy! Joy is the feeling we have when we really are ourselves. But we can be ourselves only by being what God has created us to be — truly human. What makes us truly human is not reason, as the Greeks said; nor is it genius, or talent, or power, or intellect. All these can be very inhuman. It is only love in the sense of agape that makes us truly human. It is not cultural creativity but this simplest and deepest thing, agape, which makes us truly human. Giving love, not desiring love — spontaneous, unmotivated, unconditional love. That is what makes man truly human.

That is why only by having this love can we know real joy. The three are so closely connected as to be almost identical; joy, peace, and love — the three go together. They cannot be taken away from us by any circumstance, not even by death. And that is real presence. The one who is in God's love is at peace; he has joy, he has love, and he is truly present.

This is eternal life as experienced already in this temporal life. Its source and reality are in God's love as already given to faith, as expectation to be completed by hope, as a beginning of presence in our own love. God's being with us is shared by our being with our fellow men. This, then, is the unity in diversity of faith, hope, and love."

………………………….

Emil Brunner lived too close to the shadow of Karl Barth to be fully appreciated as the brilliant theologian and faithful Christian thinker that he undoubtedly was. Like all major theologians of previous generations, we have to read him to day with critical appreciation and intellectual humility. And with an absence of that 'chronological snobbery' C. S. Lewis identified as the sign of contemporary narrow mindedness – and theological short sightedness.

This is Advent, and there are plenty of possibilities for appropriate readings from Brunner's rich legacy. I've chosen this short, and now hard to find book, which contains three lectures delivered in 1955 in the United States. This is Brunner when most of his constructive theology and dogmatic positions were established and published.

By the way, that first paragraph could be a paraphrase of serial verses from I John: "God is love/ Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in him." 

These three brief lectures (in published form under 80 pages) expound the spiritual and ethical fruits to be expected from his theological vision. The revelation of the love of God in Christ, incarnate, crucified, risen, has defining and transforming power that enables Christian life and existence, for each believer and for the community of the Church as the body of Christ.

This wee book is a treasure, containing the wisdom and faith of a theologian who takes time to ask and answer the question, "So what?" Faith, Hope, and Love, are the cardinal virtues. But to Brunner they are much more – they are hallmarks of grace. In digital terminology they are the barcode of discipleship, or QR codes for "Quick Recognition" of what Christian character and existence look like. 

I find it deeply moving that late in his life, and the year he suffered a debilitating stroke, we have these three theological reflections on faith as trustful encounter with the living God, love as the gift of God poured into human hearts, and the hope of the Gospel which is "Christ's ultimate, direct, and manifest victory, the fulfilment of God's world purpose which is announced in the cross of Jesus Christ." (p.48)

For Brunner, the Advent of God in Christ is a historic fact, the pivotal point in the unfolding drama of redemption. In Bethlehem, "the hopes and fears of all the years" are held together by this hinge point in the history of the cosmos. On Calvary "hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered. This is our God!"

Faith, hope and love, when expounded in the light of the Christian Gospel, are a threefold cord that holds together the tragedy of a fallen world and the eternal redemptive purpose revealed in the unique and decisive event, that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself."

Brunner's concluding paragraphs, quoted in full above, describe the implications and ultimate fulfilment of that Advent word, Immanuel, God with us. Brunner looks to a transformed future when "the dwelling of God is with humanity." Not yet, but on its way to fulfilment, because God is faithful, sovereign in love, and to be trusted to bring to fruition the loving wisdom of his promises and the true fulfilment of his eternal purpose.

These three lectures contain quite a lot on forgotten questions and discussions. And as in all his books, I frequently have quite large question marks in the margins! But the theological and ethical impetus of Brunner's thought remains urgent, spiritually relevant, and worth the patience it takes to read and learn from this too easily overlooked theologian. Late in life, Brunner is sharing his understanding of what it means to him to live in faith, hope and love. 

NB: Faith, Hope and Love is available online. You can access and download it over here.  

Monday

Christ whose glory fills the skies,

     Christ the true, the only light,

Sun of righteousness arise,

     Triumph o’er the shades of night:

Day-spring from on high be near;

Day-star in my heart appear.

All around us are signs of God active and moving by his Spirit. The first fingers of dawn announce every single day the light that God commands, and the light that is God’s gift in Christ. Charles Wesley plays the theme of light like a virtuoso. He knows his Bible inside out! “The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings.” (Malachi 4.2) Think about it. Advent is when we celebrate the healing of darkness, all kinds of darkness, by the coming of the Light that is Christ. That last line, is an Advent prayer that Christ will be light within us, glowing outward in faith, hope, and love.

Tuesday

 Our God, heaven cannot hold him,

     Nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away

     When he comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter

    A stable place sufficed

The Lord God almighty –

     Jesus Christ.

 

‘In the bleak midwinter’ remains for many of us the most evocative and poignant of carols. Tune and words combine to express the longing and wonder of human hearts. Why can’t heaven hold Almighty God, the Holy One? The answer is love. The stable is as humble as it gets. That’s where God in Christ goes, into the bleak midwinter of human sin, suffering and lost-ness. The coming of God’s Christ child, into the world’s bleakness for love’s sake. That is Advent. Not even heaven’s glory can hold Him back!

Wednesday

King is He, yet born a servant, Lord of all in humble guise,

Truly man, yet God revealing, God as love to mortal eyes;

God with man, He leads and feeds us, He the power and He the prize.

This is verse 2 of “Let all mortal flesh keep silence”, an ancient hymn about the world struck dumb with awe and wonder. The paradoxes tell us why; the servant king, the humble Lord, and this One who is truly human yet fully revealing God. In all the unavoidable trivialities of Christmas, this hymn insists we shut up! Just for once, silence the noise of our greed and need, and pay attention with fear and trembling to who God is. God is for us! God is with us! At cost beyond imagining or calculating, God comes amongst us in love, in the noisy presence of a human child. Advent is an invitation to awe! And awe is the signal to worship – He the power, and He the prize! 

Thursday

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!

Hail the Sun of Righteousness!

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;

Born to raise the sons of earth;

Born to give them second birth.

Hark! The herald angels sing

Glory to the new-born King.

This is a mosaic of biblical phrases from Isaiah, Malachi, the Gospel of John, Romans, Philippians, and of course, Luke’s choir of angels. The great Messianic titles come at the climax of the carol, drawing our eyes to behold his glory, full of grace and truth. The eternal glory of the Son is laid aside in obedience to God.  And notice, that word ‘risen’. It’s one of those trigger words for Christians. It refers to the rising of the sun of hope and the in-breaking light and life of God. But ‘risen’ also anticipates the resurrection when “Light and life to all He brings.” But first, Bethlehem. Advent is about a child being born; Wesley tells you why. Three times. Born! Glory indeed!

Friday

Lo, within a manger lies

He who built the starry skies,

He who throned in height sublime,

Sits amid the cherubim.

Hail thou ever-blessed morn!

Hail redemption’s happy dawn!

Sing through all Jerusalem

Christ is born in Bethlehem!

However simple we like to think the Christmas story, the Christmas gift comes wrapped in theological mystery and complexity. The One who constructs and commands the teeming galaxies is somehow “born for us on earth below”. One poet described this as “Infinity dwindled to infancy.” The loving condescension of God is revealed in the coming of the Christ-child, and it is that gracious self-giving act of God that turns up the volume of a four line refrain requiring three exclamation marks!!!

Saturday

Still the night, holy the night!

Son of God, O how bright!

Love is smiling from thy face!

Strikes for us now the hour of grace

Saviour since Thou art born.

 That middle line could have been written by John the Apostle. “For God so loved the world…” “God is love.” “Here is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son…” The coming of God amongst us in the incarnation is a mystery made accessible, and a miracle made believable, only because God in grace opens our minds to truth that is beyond us, and prepares our hearts to recognise and welcome God’s presence in Jesus. Advent is a season for adventurous imagination. Listen, and you will hear distinctly and clearly, filtered through the din of a noisy and clamorous world, the striking of the hour of grace, by the Son of God. Then look, with eyes that see in the bright light of divine revelation, God’s love smiling from the face of Christ.

Sunday

God of God,

Light of Light,
Lo, He abhors not the Virgin's womb’
Very God,
Begotten, not created.
       O come, let us adore Him

       Christ the Lord.

Advent is our annual call to hope, when we emphasise expectation and give words to the deep longings of our hearts for peace, and a more positive future. This whole hymn is an invitation to “Come, let us adore Him. Christ the Lord.” Adoration is the true spirit of worship, combining love, gratitude, wonder, awe, and a deep humbling of the heart. This verse explains why, with its insistent “O come…” Huge arguments about how Christ can be divine and human lie behind these words. But it is in words such as these that he Church proclaims its faith. Through prayer and wonder, and inadequate words, adoration is the heart’s welcome to Christ the Lord.

"A related and final question is, where is the ethical imperative in this universal horizon? Where is the incentive to behave? What good is the Gospel if people don't behave better?…In the gospel, God does not simply instruct and exhort. God releases humanity from its inability and, indeed, recreates humanity (2 Cor. 5.17; Gal. 6.15). This new creation is able to hear an admonition as people who have received an empowering gift (Rom. 12.1-2).Paul is fully aware that even this new creation is only the very beginning of what God will accomplish (Rom. 8.18-25). The numerous problems he addresses in his letters reveal that Christians are very much capable of sinning, but the admonitions carry with them the promise that God will not leave humanity to itself (as in Rom.15.6,13; 8.31-39)

These comments will likely provoke sharp dissent. Again I want to insist that I raise this question of the universal horizon of Romans not because I have an answer for it in just a few paragraphs. It is not at all clear that Paul was consciously addressing that question in Romans or elsewhere. Nor would I claim, even if I were certain I understood Paul's answer, that his answer is shared by other biblical witnesses. My reason for pressing this question is once again to put before us the vastness of the gospel. What we need to hear is that the gospel encompasses the cosmos, the whole of creation — all the way out and all the way down in each of us.

I hope this volume will prove useful to those who have had similar experiences. [Of finding the letter hard to follow, at times impenetrable]. I hope a real letter will come into view now, one over which we will linger. Beyond that, I hope that we catch a glimpse of God's vast love and longing and determination for all of us. I hope that, with Springsteen, we imagine a train capacious enough to hold us all."

(When in Romans. An invitation to Linger with the Gospel according to Paul. Beverley Roberts Gaventa. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016) Pages 127-8. 

This short book was a precursor to Professor Gaventa's major commentary on Romans, published earlier this year. That commentary had been eagerly awaited by fellow scholars, students and pastors as a highly significant treatment of Romans. Gaventa was seeking to provide a reading of Paul that takes seriously the apocalyptic element in Paul's gospel, a revelation of God and God's purpose in the person and mission of Jesus Christ that called all else into question, and reset the relation of God to creation and to humanity.

It is immediately evident in reading the commentary that Gaventa has wrestled long and hard with this text and its context. Out of such study comes a message of immense contemporary import for the Church which, especially in the West, is facing major crises of confidence in its gospel, its ways of expressing faith, and its capacity to bear witness to the transformational message revealed in and through Jesus Christ.

The final words of When in Romans, noted above, conclude her shorter 'invitation' to read Romans as a real letter, from one struggling Christian (Paul) to Christian communities (in Rome) facing their own struggles and issues. Romans is much more than, and indeed very different from, a hard to follow theological treatise with a hefty moral and ethical appendix. Gaventa argues that Romans is much bigger, its ideas far more expansive, and the gospel it seeks to explore much further reaching than any mere treatise on the theological mechanics of salvation or the norms and rules of ethics.

Why I chose this book ending for Advent is because it demonstrates Professor Gaventa's sense of the scale, and reach and scope of the gospel as the eternal purpose of God revealed by the historic inbreaking of divine love determined to redeem, renew and restore. The gospel is inherently transformative of God's creation: "What we need to hear is that the gospel encompasses the cosmos, the whole of creation — all the way out and all the way down in each of us."

Not only so, but her aim in exploring and explaining Romans as she does, is so that readers of Romans, that historic hinge-point in Paul's correspondence, will "catch a glimpse of God's vast love and longing and determination for all of us." Gaventa's Romans commentary is a full-on exposition of God's initiative of love in Christ, confronting the powers that have threatened and broken the relations of Creator, creation and human creatures, and overcoming them by reconciling power and self-expending love. Christ is the revelation of a love from which nothing can separate, nothing in all of creation. The pivotal verses of Romans 8.38-39 are more than the climax of an argument; they are the stated realities of God's ultimate purpose in Christ, revealed as "the power of God unto salvation."

To borrow from another of Paul's letters, Romans is a spelling out of the full consequences of saying, "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself", and "If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come." (2 Cor 5.17-19) Advent is the anticipation of all this, a reminder that in the very human birth of the Son of God, a new creation was underway, a healing of creation's brokenness, a reconciliation to God of all that frustrates, opposes, resists and seeks to spoil God's purposes of light, and life and that fullness of fellowship between God's creation and the eternal exchange of love that is Father, Son and Spirit, one God, world without end.

It may well be that Charles Wesley's much edited hymn which we now know as "Hark the Herald angels sing", is the best Advent tilted commentary on Paul's very personal and passionate letter to the small Christian communities in Rome, describing to them the apocalyptic inbreaking of God for the rescue of creation:

"Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled."

"Late in time, behold him come, offspring of a virgin's womb."

"Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate deity."

"Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die."

 

 

“Christians are Christians by virtue of certain acts of God which took place at a definite time in the past, but these acts of God have released a dynamic force which will never allow Christians to stick fast at any point short of that divine rest which in this life is always a goal to be aimed at and never a stage which has been reached. The faith once for all delivered to the saints is not something which can be caught and tamed; it continually leads the saints forth to new ventures in the cause of Christ, as God calls afresh…

To stay at the point at which some revered teacher of the past has brought us, out of a mistaken sense of loyalty to him; to continue to follow a certain pattern of religious activity or attitude just because it was good enough for our fathers and grandfathers – these and the like are temptations which make the message of Hebrews a necessary and salutary one for us to listen to. Every fresh movement of the Spirit of God tends to become stereotyped in the next generation, and what we have heard with our ears, what our fathers have told us, becomes a tenacious tradition encroaching on the allegiance which ought to be accorded only to the living and active Word of God.

As Christians survey the world today, they see very much land waiting to be possessed in the name of Christ; but to take possession of it calls for a generous measure of that forward-looking faith which is so earnestly urged upon the readers of this epistle. Those first readers were living at a time when the old, cherished order was breaking up. Attachment to venerable traditions could avail them nothing in this situation; only attachment to the unchanged and onward moving Christ could carry them forward and enable them to face a new order with confidence and power.

So in a day when everything can be shaken and is being shaken before our eyes and even beneath our feet, let us in our turn give thanks for the unshakeable kingdom which we have inherited, which endures forever when everything else to which men and women may pin their hopes disappears and leaves not a wrack behind.”

(F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), Rev. Ed.) p.392.) 

First published in 1963, I bought F. F. Bruce's commentary on Hebrews in 1976 with money I received for the Duncan B. Herriot Prize in Church History. I didn't know it then, but in 1984 I became minister in Crown Terrace Baptist, the home church Dr Herriot. I have used Bruce's Hebrews ever since, and while scholarship on Hebrews has moved on in the 60 years since Bruce wrote it, this commentary remains a personal favourite. All of Bruce's exegetical common-sense is on display, built on deep learning in historical knowledge and skills in textual and classical criticism, showing Bruce's characteristic sympathy with the theology and spiritual experience of the New Testament writers.

The particular copy I now have was one of several volumes given to me in 1996. It came from the library of Dr Eleanor Walker, a gift from Eleanor's father, the late Dr David Walker, one of the leading educationalists of his generation. So I received it as a precious gift in memory of one of the finest medical missionary doctors I've ever had the privilege of knowing. I was Eleanor's pastor, and her friend. For most of her professional life Eleanor was an anaesthetist who also specialised in psychiatry at Nazareth Hospital, in Israel, working in an inter-faith environment, often enough while under threat from the hostility and at times violence that erupted in the region.

In 1992 Eleanor had come home after over 25 years of service to do theological study at New College, Edinburgh, to prepare her for ordained in ministry. In 1996 she graduated B.D. Honours with Merit, and was awarded best student of the year, and licensed to preach. Throughout her course Eleanor had been fighting a losing battle with cancer, and she was unable to move into that next stage and completion of her remarkable life.

She had asked me to speak of her at her funeral because she knew I would be honest and not make her out to be a saint! Which she wasn't, except she was! Not knowing then that I would receive her own copy of F. F. Bruce on Hebrews, I finished with words from Hebrews 12, about running with patience, surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, and looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of her faith.

The last page of Bruce's commentary, quoted above, is such a clear and succinct summary of why the message of Hebrews remains of first relevance for 21st Century Christians. Bruce's own background in the Christian Brethren provided a further layer of attachment and insight into the warnings and encouragements of this text, it being a favourite source of Gospel exposition and exhortation within that spiritual tributary of the evangelical tradition.

As a piece of writing for Advent, Bruce's conclusion turns us forcefully to the future urging upon us "a generous measure of forward looking faith…our only attachment to the unchanged and onward moving Christ…" Faith looking forward, looking to Jesus as the pioneer, refusing to play safe by staying where we are, persevering as people of faith in an age where such commitments are dismissed – Hebrews is a call to perseverance in running the race, and trust in the One who pulls us forward into a future to us unknown, but where He is ahead of us.

The tradition from which F. F. Bruce came was steeped in that form of biblical study that sees types of Christ in the Old Testament texts, and for that reason loved the contrasts of old and new, then and now, and Christ as the fulfilment of all God's covenant promises. The first verses of Hebrews, in the language of King James are distilled essence of that spirituality:

"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high…"

          

"The Holy Spirit, like the flight of the wild goose in Celtic lore, longs to sweep over the waters yet again. It cries high above the place where the wild geese once soared…summoning the earth to a beauty forgotten, but not lost. In the haunting sound of that cry, says Mary Oliver, we fret at the mess that we've made of things. We embrace a harsh repentance, a new awareness, and a readiness to act. Meanwhile the world continues in its wild and glorious determination to sing, with or without us.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

The world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild gees, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Accepting our place in the family of things means doing everything necessary to assure our mutual delight and well-being. It comes ultimately as a gift, a shared longing, a consciousness that we all are one. We recognise it, at last, in the desire of the geese for exuberant song, the desire of the creek to flow unrestrainedly to the sea, and the desire of human beings to join in God's own deep longing for beauty. May it be so."

(Ravished by Beauty. The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality. Belden C. Lane. (Oxford, 2011) page 246) 

 This is one of those books that opens long shut doors in the mind. It is about Calvin, Puritans and Jonathan Edwards. It majors on desire, longing, beauty, and love of diversity in God and in human hearts. Lane is passionate about ecology and theology, love for the natural world and love for God, and especially insisting that these two ways of looking at the world absolutely must be held together in a robust conception of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all that is. 

Belden Lane's first book was similarly unusual, with the tile The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. It's a study of the desert and wilderness as places of encounter with God. I had an email exchange with Belden Lane 10 years ago about his books, and the importance of upholding a strong doctrine of creation as the anchor point of a balanced Christian spirituality that is at once BOTH passionately in love with God AND lovingly protective of all that God has made.

I've included Lane's conclusion to Ravished by Beauty in this Advent series because he offers a theologically informed argument for care of creation, and a passionate plea for a world in ecological crisis. His main resources for his argument on behalf of human curatorship of the natural world are Calvin and Jonathan Edwards – here is one of Calvin's celebratory remarks about the world as theatre and masterpiece of God:

Correctly then is this world called the mirror of divinity; not that there is sufficient clearness for man to gain a full knowledge of God, by looking at the world, but…the faithful to whom he has given eyes, see sparks of his glory, as it were, glittering in every created thing. The world was no doubt made, that it might be a theatre of divine glory. (Commentary on Hebrews 11.3, quoted in Lane, p. 71-2)

Advent is a season of hope and expectation in a world where hope seems at times overwhelmed by the volume and noise of bad news. Wars rooted in ancient enmities and a sense of grievance requiring lethal violence against others; a global climate in imminent danger of collapse with catastrophic consequences for all the world's inhabitants, including humans; and these two clear and present dangers fuelled by economic rapacity, myths of endless growth, and the consequent destruction of natural resources and world sustaining environments.

The problems are beyond our mere human ingenuity even if we were capable of collaborative and mutual unselfishness in fixing the brokenness we cause. Advent is not, however, a spiritual, intellectual or theological escape mechanism. It is a time when we look to the light that shines in the darkest corners of God's creation. God's investment in our world is full and final in the coming of Christ, the Light of the world – "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." That is Advent, hope, expectation, but with eyes wide open in the darkness.

Belden Lane's book, Ravished Beauty, is a healthy and important reminder that this earth belongs to God. Its beauty in diversity, its life-giving properties, its purpose as home of God's creatures, these are all in the sovereign gift of God. When Lane finishes his book with the image of the Holy Spirit brooding over the world, surprisingly that image can also pull us towards Bethlehem, where by the gift of that same brooding and creative Holy Spirit, "unto us a child is born." 

I don't suppose, left to the meditations and machinations of my own mind I would easily make the connection between Advent and climate change. But once hinted, it's hard to ignore, and surprising that I hadn't thought it before. As a final comment on this fine book, one of his brilliant excursuses is titled 'Biodiversity and the Holy Trinity.' 

In this essay Lane combines a sobering account of the breakdown of the biosphere, so much of it our own doing, and a plea that we model our behaviour on the Holy Trinity. No, he isn't saying the economic Trinity is the model of human social and political relations. He is arguing that the biodiversity of God's creation carries the fingerprints of the artist, or put another way, "if we are to survive as a family of species in this biosphere, we will have to imitate the exchange of love and reciprocity that characterizes God's own inner being." 

 

 "The story of the suppression of women in the Church is a sorry tale that still has repercussions today. Women have been silenced, marginalised, refused entry to theological discussion and blamed for it. As we have seen throughout this book, however, there is a wealth of evidence that tells us that in the earliest period of Christianity women were highly active as disciples and teachers, prophets, missionaries and midwives of the faith. Texts could later be edited or forgotten and memorials obliterated, but the fact is that the story of Jesus began with a woman who gave birth to him and ended with a woman who witnessed him alive after his death. Jesus was not one to follow social convention, and openly challenged social norms and regional authorities. Women disciples of Jesus were a vital part of his movement, and women spearheaded the growth of the mission in the decades that followed. 

Yet women were a liability as the faith spread around the world, at a time when any groups led by women would be ridiculed by (male) opponents. Stories about women in the Gospels and the letters of Paul could make certain men feel uncomfortable and leave the movement open to attack. Three centuries after Jesus, Christianity would be remade to sit comfortably with Roman imperial rule, as the religion of the rich and mighty, at home in the military. Perhaps the first step to unmasking some of the changes is by the power of memory. For this we need not only evidence, but also a firm grasp  of the ancient context, and a good dose if informed imagination. 

We hope we have set the women disciples of Jesus in their rightful place, close to Jesus in his mission in Galilee, and active in establishing, serving and leading Christian communities as the faith spread around the Mediterranean and the wider ancient world.

The question is: once these women are truly remembered, where will we go from here?"

Women Remembered. Jesus' Female Disciples, Joan Taylor & Helen Bond. (London: H&S, 2022) pages 183-4.

This is one of several recent books ¹ which examine closely the ancient social and cultural context within which Christianity emerged. The writers are both Professors of Christian Origins, and amongst the leading scholars of the New Testament world and the first centuries of the Christian Church. They closely examine the NT texts in which women are featured in the ministry of Jesus and the life of the early church. The result is a fascinating peeling back of the layers of interpretive presuppositions, miss-steps in historical detail and analysis, and offer plausible accounts of the real and decisive role of women in the origins, growth and development of the Christian movement and its mission.

In the context of Advent, this book is more than a mere reminder that women played some part in the Gospel story!  Luke tells of the annunciation, composes the Magnificat as a theological hymn of God's great reversals of power and privilege, and gives the fullest description of the birth at Bethlehem that moved heaven and earth. And yes, the chapter on Mary the mother of Jesus is a robust examination of the texts, their reception and possible interpretations.

But the point of this book, and why it matters as an Advent perspective, is to rehabilitate in our informed imaginations the active, responsive, initiating and game-changing roles played by women in the story of Jesus and beyond into the Christian mission. Matthew comments, "Mary kept and pondered these things in her heart." Perhaps, thirty years before Paul and all those other male witnesses, Mary is our first Christian theologian, working out the significance of the child she carried and bore, for the future of her people, and a new hope for the world. 

^{1. The other I would recommend is by Nijay Gupta, Tell Her Story. How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church (IVP Academic, 2023).}