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I've been doing some thinking. About stewardship. Wise stewardship. I dislike the expression "no brainer", but I'm guessing most Christians, Christian organisations and churches would, when push comes to shove, or when vision comes to cash, opt for responsible stewardship as the essential wisdom in dealing with money. Stewardship itself is a word replete with responsible thoughtfulness, careful use of resources for maximum effectiveness, and made more rigorous by qualifiers like "wise" and "responsible" the case seems unanswerable. There are even parables about it with their message of bad things happening to those who don't invest wisely, or spend responsibly.

But I've been doing some thinking, and that can be a dangerous thing for any of us. Especially if it begins as an annoying niggle, develops into a serious question and compels a complete rethink of a sacred "no brainer" questions and answers like responsible stewardship applied to the use of Christians' money and resources, individually and corporately.

What was responsible stewardship for the Macedonian Christians who out of their poverty gave to other Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters in that wonderful piece of irresponsible stewardship called The Collection which dominated the end of Paul's life?

What was responsible stewardship for the sower who went forth to sow and knew that 75% of the seed would be wasted or worse.

What was responsible stewardship for the woman who brought an alabaster jar of precious ointment and in an act of outrageous extravagance used it to anoint the feet of the Teacher who had helped her to a place where she could feel loved again? And, said Jesus, with not a hint of concession to responsible stewardship, "She has done a beautiful thing", that would echo round the world and be remembered long after all the budgets and cost cuttings and careful strategies for growth are consigned to that unmemorable place called the balance sheet.

In a consumer culture where choices of what we do with money are driven by recession, I'm left asking what it is Christians do that is radically different, outrageously generous, counter cultural in the positive sense of offering something that contradicts the worship of the bottom line. Against the current focus on getting and receiving, value for money and the buy one get one free approach to life, what it is that the Christian faith offers is precisely a lifestyle of offering, a way of enacting and embodying a love defined in giving.

Now I can think of a number of ways the the contemporary church has bought into the whole value for money mentality and I'm aware but not persuaded by the way we re-translate that bottom line spirit by calling it stewardship, wise or otherwise. You see I can't get away from the astonishing puzzle of how it could be that 'he was rich yet for our sakes became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich'. That is an approach to wealth redistribution that recognises no bottom line, cannot read barcodes, and fails to see the value of always wanting value for money.

As a Gospel people, Christians are called to that fundamental orientation away from self-interest to self giving, finding value in that which makes for the Kingdom of God which is justice and joy, forgiveness and peace, and a quite reckless generosity that questions careful stewardship as the default position for how we use God given resources. Now and again, and more often than we are prepared to think, we are called to sow seed at a 75% loss, we are moved to take that alabaster jar and waste it in an act of devotion that enriches the world, though some ask the tediously responsible question "why this waste?" We are stewards, not only of money, but of an extravagant Gospel that commits us to a life that is creatively and persistently and inconveniently generous and uncalculating. These are not budget criteria, they are attitudes that require a different calculus.

 

Apologies for an absence most of the week. Priorities compel choices. This week I've been a bit like the science teacher in my first year at Secondary School who used to pour some mercury on the work bench and push it around and then try to gather the globules together into one recapturable blob. I seem to have been running after fragments of time and trying to pull together too many different things into a coherent whole!

But it's national poetry day so here's a poem:

A Stranger here

Strange things doth meet, Strange treasures lodg'd in this fair

World appear;

Strange all, and New to me.

But that they mine should be, who nothing was,

That Strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

Thomas Traherne

 

 

  

 

This was the view from my window last Thursday morning. Whatever else a red sky in the morning foretells, it reminded me of something other than possible rain.

When morning gilds the skies,

My heart awaking cries,

May Jesus Christ be praised.

Or that glowing promise and affirmation of faith in the book of Lamentations, about the promised steadfast love of God being new every morning.

This morning in Glasgow it is pouring down in contrast to the south of England which is baking in Mediterranean sunshine. But rain and sun are also sacraments in creation of the love that shines on all, and the rain that falls on all- indiscriminate love is a scandal, as is the Gospel good news of the God revealed in Jesus.

Thge policy of indiscriminate love is not a postmodern insight after all.

Preaching at the on the Anniversary of a congregation, Frederick Buechner decided to preach on the theme of "Waiting".

Not future mission strategy, not church growth, not a call to more activity, not reflections on the piety or pragmatism of previous generations – but the unfashionable virtue of patience founded on trust.

 

 

Today and tomorrow, here is Buechner on the priority of waiting over impatience, and the wisdom of waiting over anxious activism.

"Look at the windows that burn like fire when the sun shines through them, and at the images of Christ and his saints, at the flowers and candles on the altar. Consider the silent space that these walls enclose and also the sounds that break the silence like the choir, the organ, the sounds of our own voices singing or praying, the voices of the men and women who stand up in this pulpit doing their best to proclaim the gospel. What does it all add up to?

What is it that we are essentially doing here in this building? The immediate answer is that we are worshipping God here. We are trying to speak to God here and to speak about God. We are trying to listen for God. We are searching for something of God's peace, trying somehow to take God into our lives the way we take the bread and wine into our mouths. But deep beneath all of this, in our innermost hearts, I think we are doing something else.

I think we are waiting. This is what is at the heart of it. Even when we don't know that we are waiting, I think we are waiting. Even when we can't find words for what we are waiting for, I think we are waiting. An ancient Advent prayer supplies us with the words, "Give us grace that we may cast off the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light."

We who live much of the time in the darkness are waiting not just at Advent, but at all times for the advent of light, of that ultimate light that is redemptive and terrifying at the same time. It is redemptive because it puts an end to the darkness, and that is also why it is terrifying, because for so long, for all our lives, the darkness has been home, and because to leave home is always cause for terror."

Tomorrow I'll post the next two paragraphs – and maybe there is something to be learned about waiting till tomorrow to learn from Buechner the theological, spiritual importance of waiting as our disposition towrds God.

If you didn't hear the Chief Rabbi on Thought for the Day this morning, then take time plater to listen to it on the IPlayer. This is vintage Jonathan Sacks, humane, religiously generous, passionate in conviction, reasoned but within the key principles of his own faith tradition. I listened to it on the way into College and a grey wet Wednesday suddenly didn't seem so grey.

His distinction between regret and remorse, and his understanding of what forgiveness and reconciliation cost and their value to the human future give what he says a moral decisiveness in a blame culture where responsibility is always placed on someone else.

This is religious broadcasting at its very best. Ever since his reith Lectures on The Persistence of Faith, I have admired, listened to and learned deeply from the Chief Rabbi. I guess he stands somewhere between the moral glow of Micah, the sense of the Transcendent God of Isaiah, and the questioning intellect of Qoheleth, but with the sub-stratum of trust that permeates the Psalms, all integrated in a life based on The Torah.

 

Amongst my favourite pastimes is walking on the cobbled beaches on the east coast of Scotland. I spent some time recently admiring, contemplating, enjoying, looking at, considering, wondering, imagining, as I looked at the cobbled beach in sunlight. The colours and textures, the thrown togetherness that looks like creative arrangement, the smooth roundedness surprisingly soft and warm, the hard durability of elemental substances of quiet understated beauty, the random oddity of millions of stones tumbled trillions of times and now available for exhibition to an audience of one, with a camera.

The following Haiku hint at the marvel that is a cobbled beach, with oblique glances in the direction of that relatedness that enriches our humanity – relatedness enriched and stimulated by similarity and difference, tone and shape, angle of repose and interconnectedness so that the whole is greater than the parts, nearness and distance and space, and the provisionality that is essential to avoid sterile sameness.

Stones in Sunlight.  

 

Remorseless friction,

waves lapidary tumbling,

the beauty of grey.

 

Cobbled together,

aeons of geology,

placed by time and tide.

 

Tones in harmony,

well rounded community

of shaped difference.

 

Pebbles of friendship,

in easy togetherness,

colour and contrast.

(copyright. Jim Gordon, 2011)

 

 

O God

you must make your own human word,

for that's the only kind I can comprehend.

Don't tell me everything that you are.

Dont tell me of your infinity.

Just say that you love me,

just tell me of your goodness to me.

But don't say this in your divine langauge,

in which your love also means

your inexorable justice and your crushing power.

Say it rather on MY language,

so I won't have to be afraid

that the word 'love' hides some significance

other than your goodness and your gentle mercy.

Karl Rahner, Encounter with Silence.

And they say rahner is a complex, difficult to read theologian who uses obscure or sophisticated philosophical categories. maybe so. But this is the prayer of someone who knows the limits of language, the constraints on concepts, and the deficiencies of discourse when it comes to describing God, let alone addressing God – and when it comes to God addressing us, all language breaks down and we are presented with Personal Presence, the Word made flesh, God who has spooken in his Son.

 Lead us, great teacher Paul, in wisdom's ways,

And lift our hearts with thine to heaven's high throne,

Till faith beholds the clear meridian blaze,

And, sun-like, in the soul reigns charity alone.

 

Elpis, wife of Boethius (480-524)

Paul has come in for his share of criticism and even calumny in some circles of NT study – his views on a number of issues challenged, contested, the target for a dismissive reductionism. But there is great wisdom, and remarkable  intellectual vision in his writings. I've just finished yet another slow reading of Ephesians, and there are passages there that are amongst the highest points in all Christian literature.

So the prayer of Elpis to St Paul – let's not get into the theological soundness or spiritual efficacy of praying to one of the saints, even if it is Paul. I'd rather just echo the prayer and discover that the blessing of God isn't so hemmed round by theological proprieties as we might think. The direction of the heart Godward seems more important.

 

The day thou gavest, Lord, has ended;
the darkness falls at thy behest;
to thee our morning hymns ascended;
thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. We thank thee that thy church, unsleeping
while earth rolls onward into light,
through all the world her watch is keeping,
and rests not now by day or night.

 

3. As o'er each continent and island
the dawn leads on another day,
the voice of prayer is never silent,
nor die the strains of praise away.

 

4. So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never,
like earth's proud empires, pass away.
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,
till all thy creatures own thy sway.

 

The North east of Scotland has some of the most spectacular sunsets in Scotland. I know about the West coast, from Machrahanish to Ullapool, and I've watched sunsets there too. These pictures were taken last night, one of the most spectacular sunsets we've seen up here for years. Impossible not to link them with this evocative Victorian evening hymn. By the way, Lesley Garrett sings this hymn on her album Amazing Grace, and it is one of the most resoundingly over the top and enjoyable versions I've ever heard!

Readers of Living Wittily will know I have a particular interest in and affinity with the Gospel of John. It was the Gospel I worked through in the Greek text in College, guided by R E O White, for whom the Greek New Testament was peerless literature. He was a classic exegete, training us to explore the text by establishing the basis of the text, working through the grammatical and syntactical issues, carefully reconstructing background in cultural, social and historical contexts, and finally writing out the theological and practical implications of the text so explored.

Amongst R E O White's exegetical resources of first rank was C K Barrett, whose commentary on John was the class textbook. I have it in its revised form, and am sorry that when I bought the new edition I gave away my first edition – the one with the terracota coloured dustwrapper, a book whose very appearance conjured up impressions of serious, sober scholarship wrapped in unfussy but serviceable dustrwaps.

Today we heard of the death of C K Barrett at the venerable age of 94. So I took my Barrett on John from the shelves and spent a wee while browsing, remembering and giving thanks for the scholarship and devotion to the text of C K Barrett. Pencil marks in the margin still mark places where I had my eyes opened by Barrett. Just one example –

John14.6 is the famous threefold I am the way the truth and the life. Barrett is quite sure the primary claim is "I am the way by which men and women come to God". And he is certain that Jesus refers to his coming passion – "the way which he himself is about to take is the road which his followers must also tread. He himself goes to the Father by way of crucifixion and resurrection; in future he is the means by which Christians die and rise….Because Jesus is the means of access to God who is the source of all truth and life, he is himself the truth and the life for men and women."

Page 458, The Gospel According to John, (SPCK, 1978 rev.ed.)

Barrett unabashedly acknowledged that even the 1978 revised commentary on John was then old fashioned. So it was, and is. But it is old fashioned in the same sense as any classic – that is, old fashioned does not mean irrelevant, unimportant, dispensable. On the contrary – a classic commentary remains relevant, important and indispensable! I have a shelf of commentaries on John, and some of them I have read through, others have been consulted times without number. It would be untrue to say Barrett is my favourite – I have several favourites for different purposes – and Raymond Brown's two volume commentary is my most used. But Barrett on John was the first Greek Text commentary I worked through with grammar and lexicon, and that habit, instilled by R E O White has never left me as my favourite form of lectio divina. R E O White used to quote Noel Davey, one of Barrett's close friends, who urged students to 'bury your head in a lexicon and you'll raise it in the presence of God".

C K Barrett now knows the full depth of those words, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life…" May he now, with gladness and gratitude, raise his head in the presence of God and know the fullness of truth and life. Thanks be to God.