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What’s the difference between hope and wishful thinking? When we want things to change for the better we can either sit around waiting for that to happen, or do something that might make our hopes more possible. Hope is active, wishful thinking is passive. Hope tries to face reality and works at changing the way things are, whereas wishful thinking just tries to ignore reality and day-dream.

Christian hope is the opposite of wishful thinking. Here’s why. Wishful thinking is that immature resentment that the world doesn’t work the way we want it to. Wishful thinking is the mentality of those who buy a Euro-lottery ticket and imagine a different life made possible by being the one in a 100 million who wins 100 million.

Unlike wishful thinking, Christian hope doesn’t reject the world as it is, Hopeful Christians see the world as God-created, God-loved and the place where God is actively present. So as Christians we hope in God, the God revealed in Jesus. God is light shining in the darkest corners of the world. God is love challenging the hate and fear that leaves human communities broken, jagged edged and at odds with each other.  

But Christian hope doesn’t just happen. Hope is God’s gift, stirred and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, who lifts our eyes beyond the way things are to the God whose purpose is to redeem, reconcile and make things new. We are called to live hopefully. How do we do that? It’s not as if you can give yourself a good talking to and decide to be more hopeful.

No, but you can give God a good talking to and pour out your heart before a faithful God and loving Father. That’s exactly what John Calvin, the great Reformer of Geneva, advised in one of his sermons. It’s good advice.

“We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.”

Calvin was light years away from the power of positive thinking, or those one liners that say happiness is a choice, or that control of positive or negative feelings is up to us. We are human, and low spirits, soul weariness, anxiety about the future or disappointment about the past are quite normal experiences.

Feeling down is not helped by feeling guilty about feeling down! In fact the Psalmist is very reassuring on this.

“The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust.” (Psalm 103.14)

And then there is this: “Why are you downcast O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.” (Psalm 42.

What Calvin is saying is that our hopefulness is vitally linked to prayer. We hope in God, and that makes all the difference. We learn to live hopefully not by wishful thinking, but by prayerful thinking to the Lord of all hopefulness. When we bring our anxieties and fears, our low spirits and weariness to God, we do so with assurance. Because whether we feel it or not, God’s compassion supports us, and God’s power surrounds us, and God’s purposes remain faithful and true to his promises.

All my hope on God is founded;
he doth still my trust renew,
me through change and chance he guideth,
only good and only true.
God unknown, he alone
calls my heart to be his own.

I’ve found that John Calvin’s words, with small adjustment, can be made into a prayer – try it, it goes something like this:

“Compassionate Father, and God of all hope,

increase our hope when it is small,

awaken it when it is dormant,

confirm it when it is wavering,

strengthen it when it is weak,

and raise it up when it is overthrown.”

That might not be a bad prayer with which to begin and end the day. Try it for a week – and hope for the best, God’s best, all of which is yours in Christ.

Sometimes loud, heartfelt singing makes all the difference. Wesley told congregational singers using the new Hymn Book for the People Called Methodists to sing "Lustily and with good courage."

Praise isn't about the sound of our own voice which we hear; it is the sound of our voices as God hears.

To sing of faith, confidence, hope, love, trust, and joy, is an exercise in worship where mumbling, hesitation and the constraints of self-consciousness are transformed into a new song. That happens when we begin to sing the reality behind words which break apart our resigned acceptance of our every day. 

That happened yesterday in church (Crown Terrace in Aberdeen). After the Benediction, we sang a song based on the brilliant poem of Isaiah 55.12. It helps that it's a personal favourite – here's the Isaianic text.

"You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands."

We sang lustily and with good courage. We sang a new song about the applause of creation for the Creator. It was loud and by the third repetition we were ready to go out with joy and be led forth in peace. 

Joy and peace don't just happen. We sing them into being. Hope is not based on fantasy, but grows out of a new way of seeing the world. Imagine, says Isaiah. Imagine the mountains as a flash-mob choir, and the trees as a cheering audience with standing ovation. That's your world.

On a personal note. I've thought long and deeply about joy and peace, because I've had to think long and deeply about grief and loss since our daughter Aileen died three years ago. The puzzle of love and loss co-existing in one heart remains unsolved. But the puzzle of hope and love and peace and joy still being possible in that same heart is an equal mystery.

Those words of Isaiah, sung with hand-clapping gusto, help to remake our vision of the world. The less than light-hearted Calvin described the world as "the theatre of God's glory." In that theatre mountains burst into song, trees clap their hands, and human hearts resonate to the music of God's creation, and join in the applause.

 

Zwingli. God’s Armed Prophet. (New Haven: Yale, 2021) 349 pages

Those who know Bruce Gordon’s work on the Swiss Reformation and on John Calvin will not be disappointed with this recently published biography of Zwingli. This is the first substantial biography of Zwingli since the 1976 biography by G R Potter. It is written with informed verve, and sufficient detail to allow nuance without losing the narrative flow. Gordon writes with the sympathetic evaluation of a writer who appreciates Zwingli’s great gifts and achievements without trying to minimise the dangers and consequences of politicised theology in Reformation Europe.

One strength of Gordon’s work is the attention he pays to how Zwingli combined in one charismatic central figure, a prophetic reforming theology drawn from the Word of God, with political goals achieved by persuasion, power and ultimately military conflict. In doing this, the book also brings Zwingli into historically plausible relationship with the other major Reformation figures.

There is Erasmus whom Zwingli admired as his mentor, and who inspired him as a humanist priest. Erasmus later broke with Zwingli over his attacks on the Mass, images, the saints and indeed the entire fabric of medieval Catholic piety. There is Luther, who throughout Zwingli’s life and time in Zurich was his nemesis, the two utterly irreconcilable not only in their views on the Lord’s Supper, but on the means of promoting reform, on the interpretation of the Word of God, and on  human and divine agency as they relate to predestination and ecclesiology.

Then there is Calvin, who came late in Zwingli’s life but who steadfastly opposed the Zurich prophet’s theological views and reforming methods. Johann Eck appears throughout the narrative as the Catholic inquisitor par excellence, formidable opponent of Luther and Zwingli, and one whose rhetorical and theological precision were weaponised in the struggle between the Reformers and the Papacy. Other significant players in Zwingli’s story include the much more reasonable Oecolampadius from Basel, the mediating Martin Bucer from Strasbourg, and Heinrich Bullinger who became Zwingli’s young successor as prophet preacher in Zurich.

The lives and relationships of all the major German and Swiss Reformers are placed by Gordon in the evolving context of late medieval and early modern Europe. And in the case of Zwingli, in the complicated and volatile political machinations of the Swiss Confederation and its awkward relations with surrounding nations and states. Gordon is the best kind of expert, a reliable guide through the complexities and dynamics of radical social and religious upheavals in the context of political flux.

It is clear from the narrative of Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation that there were multiple surges and streams of reform playing out across Europe. As well as the agendas of the reformers there were powerful political currents and collisions of interest involving the Holy Roman Empire, Germany, France, the Swiss Confederation and the Papacy. Emerging from Gordon’s lucid and convincing portrayal of these social forces, religious upheavals and political power plays, is a portrait of Zwingli as both major instigator of reform, and as a human being caught up in events and circumstances too powerful for any individual to control. The story reads like a Shakespearean tragedy, and with moments of high drama and almost comical intransigence.

Each of Zwingli’s major writings are examined, especially as Zwingli’s theology relates to Catholic and Lutheran doctrine. On the Lord’s Supper, Gordon gives careful attention both to what Zwingli both taught and wrote, and to the caricatures and distortions of his opponents, and his later (mistaken) supporters. What emerges is a much more robust view of ‘what happens’ in the gathering of the covenant community of Christian believers when bread is broken and wine is poured and all partake spiritually of the presence of the Lord. Zwingli’s irreconcilable difference with Luther is thoroughly explored in a chapter entitled ‘Broken Body’.

Other perspectives enhance and further clarify the inner springs and external influences that Zwingli by turns drove, or was driven by. These include Zwingli’s humanist education, his wide-ranging promotional epistolary network, regular prophetic preaching in the Grossmünster and sermon dissemination as both propaganda and edification. In addition Gordon explores Zwingli’s often overlooked work as skilled musician and liturgist, his relentless emphasis on social justice and care for the poor, his role as scourge of the Anabaptists and as virtual Chaplain to the Large and Small City Councils, and the spiritual paradox of one who moved from pacifism to sword carrying priest in defence of the Reformed faith.

The two final chapters are essential reading to understand the legacy and reputation of Zwingli. Gordon reviews the many biased and distorted versions of Zwingli’s motives, actions and the manner of his death. The conflicted factions within the movements for Reformation had their own reasons to vilify or praise the Zurich priest-soldier. Apologetics and polemics created a web of distorted narratives intended to fit the larger narrative of the interest groups; many were examples of unabashed verbal air brushing. Where possible Gordon separates myth from fact, and like a good archaeologist brushes away the layers of dust and accretions to expose something of the original.

Two further commendations of this book. 1. The 2019 film Zwingli is reviewed and placed at the end point of what is effectively a reception history of Zwingli biography. It’s not often a scholarly biography makes room for a film review; this one is enthusiastic though critical of occasional historical licence. Gordon is a shrewd reviewer, and sees clearly the film director’s intention to portray Zwingli in terms that resonate 21^st Century sensibilities. 2. The Index is immensely valuable. It is carefully constructed, it avoids the software catch-all that produces a sand storm of more or less relevant page references. The several times I used it I found exactly what I needed in jig time!

Why read this book. Let Bruce Gordon put the case:

“With their emphasis on the power of one person to conceive, initiate and prosecute, biographies are complicit in the attempt to make reformers part of our story. The early Reformation continues to be the lives of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin as recent anniversaries have underscored…the perspective remains firmly that of the dominant reformer.” (300)

One way or another, our contemporary Western world has to reckon with a religious history that is deeply problematic for modern sensitivities. A first step to understanding the nature of those problems is the search for truth and perspective that is the work of the best biographers. 

Jim Gordon        

IN the Introduction to Galatians, Wright takes some time to examine Luther’s world, Paul’s world, and our attempts to do justice to modern biblical scholarship by trying to understand how Paul’s part in the furore in Galatia forged arguments and concepts that still have currency in Christian theology and formation today. In these 40 pages or so Wright reiterates his views on justification, sanctification, works of the law, and the unity of the church across all ethnic, religious and gender barriers. Galatians, he insists, is vitally concerned with the coming together of Jewish and Gentile believers in the single Messiah family.

The situation in Galatia presupposes anxiety amongst some Jewish Christians that admission of Gentile converts on the basis of faith alone would send a signal of civil disobedience to Roman authorities, and call in question the provisions of the Abrahamic covenant for Israel. In addition, for Gentile believers to turn from idols was an act of social dissent, a self-exclusion from much of society, and a dangerous precedent. “What happens if people start to make the claim that Jesus is Lord but Caesar is not?” (31)

Paul’s answer is to root all believers, Jews and Gentiles, within God’s covenant and new creation. Much of the argumentation in Galatians is less about who is in or out and on what basis, and more about the new covenant through faith in Messiah Jesus. “Christian formation in Galatians is rooted in the declaration of new creation, bursting in upon the old world with rescuing power.” (34).

With this new creation and covenant come new demands and a new enabling to fulfil them. Through Christ's atoning death, the power of His resurrection and the coming of the indwelling Spirit, believers are caught up into the story of God’s new, transformed and changed creation. Crucifixion atonement, resurrection life, and Spirit-inspired living, constitute the true Gospel, than which there is no other for Christian believers. That is the argument at the heart of Galatians.

The Spirit is both transformative energy and advance gift. Through the Spirit, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free are brought into the one family of God, the God of Abraham, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Messiah. As one example of how this works in the letter itself, Wright argues forcefully that for Paul, shared meals at the same table are absolutely non-negotiable for Christian believers. Hence the confrontation with Peter, and Paul’s intransigence on this issue. Separation at the table (as Peter exemplified) on the basis of Jew / Gentile identity markers, is fatal to Paul’s vision of the community of those who are “crucified with Christ, yet who live because Christ lives in them, the Christ who loved them and gave himself for them.”

How Wright’s take on the Galatian situation and Paul’s response to it in this letter all works out, is demonstrated in the remaining 350 pages of verse by verse commentary. This is divided into 9 sections, each of which has a substantial conclusion drawing out the implications of the passage for Christian formation.

Galatians 2.11-21 is covered in fifty pages. Like the other sections Wright provides his own translation, a brief introduction that puts the text block in its literary and rhetorical context. The text breaks naturally into two sub sections, one on Peter and the Antioch incident, the other Paul’s theological argument for his own position. Wright is a good storyteller and his explanation of what exactly was going on between Peter and Paul is a fine piece of narrative exegesis in which Paul tells the Galatians what happened and why it matters. Along the way we learn the two apostles had a history, and that Paul had no option but to have a public showdown. In 2.14 Wright translates, “But when I saw that they weren’t walking down the line of gospel truth, I said to Cephas in front of them all…” That’s fighting talk, and Wright is an excellent guide to what the fight was about.

The argument of Paul is detailed, subtle and aims to establish once and for all the nature of the Gospel, the grounds of salvation as funded and founded in Christ, and as the basis of the new community of believers. Galatians 2.20 Wright sees as pivotal in the letter, indeed the heart of Paul’s theology and experience. Because of the faithfulness of Christ, fulfilled in crucifixion and vindicated in resurrection, believers in Messiah Jesus are part of a new life, and a new creation. They become a Spirit enlivened and driven community, risen in Christ and in which Christ lives, so that by their faith in the faithful Messiah, they embody and demonstrate the Gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah Jesus.  

I found Wright’s interpretation of this passage persuasive, non-polemical, exegetically thorough and theologically rich in suggestion. As a passage of commentary focusing on Christian formation, the conclusions on pages 160-168 are not of the “hints for how the text applies and can be used in preaching” type! Five core principles of spiritual theology emerge: The people of God are defined by their relation to Jesus Christ; faith and righteousness (pistis and dikaiosyne) describe exactly the basis of Christian community; Paul is not arguing the end of Jewish faith, but its fulfilment in Jesus Messiah; Galatians is an ecumenical document arguing passionately for the unity of all Jesus believers; to be crucified and risen in Christ is to live a new life, subversive of cultural norms and characterised by the practices of Jesus and the fruits of the Spirit. Each of these points is substantially argued.   

Perhaps a final quotation will give a flavour of commentary for Christian formation:

““The life I do still live in the flesh, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Whenever genuine Jesus-shaped preaching and pastoral work take place, the faithful self-giving of Jesus will be both the driving and guiding force. And the love outpoured on the cross, generating an answering love, remains at the heart of the formation both of Jesus-followers as individuals and, yet more demandingly of the common life that seeks to invoke and follow the Son of God.” (167)

Galatians is well served by good commentaries. These include De Silva (most recent, and alert to Paul’s rhetorical and theological strategies) Dunn (new perspective), Keener (rich in background), Longenecker (showing its age but solid traditional), Martyn, De Boer (both apocalyptic perspective), Matera (new perspective and Catholic), Moo (traditional Reformed), and Oakes (historical and social background).

This volume by Wright does seem to bring something beyond the historical and exegetical excellence in many of these commentaries. Wright is just as committed to excellence in those same disciplines, but in this commentary with additional reflection on how the text is to be embodied, lived and practiced in the life “now lived by the faithfulness of the Son of God.” The nearest equivalent in my view is Richard Hays’ luminous commentary, unfortunately hidden away in vol. XI of The New Interpreter’s Bible (2000). There too there’s an emphasis on historical exegesis, but with a separate section of application. Wright now supplements, but certainly doesn’t replace Hays as a commentary on Galatians for personal and community formation.

Is such a new series justified? Yes, if subsequent volumes maintain the quality of Wright’s initiating work on Galatians, and yes, if they are as spiritually and pastorally knowing. Does Wright fulfil his remit? Yes, though in his own way, and within the now well-known, and for some controversial, theological and exegetical matrix within which he does his work to the blessing of the wider church. This is a readable, stimulating and authoritative commentary. Tolle lege. 

Galatians. Commentaries for Christian Formation, N T Wright, Eerdmans, 2021. 420pp, (Currently available approx. £23)

Reviewing the first volume of a new commentary series forces two questions. Do we need another commentary series in a market awash with options? If so, what makes this new series distinctive enough to contribute something new, significant and worth the price?

Eerdmans explain at the outset why they think this series will make a valuable and distinctive contribution.

“Commentaries for Christian Formation interpret Scripture in ways aimed at ordering reader’s lives and worship in imitation of Christ, informing their understanding of God, and animating their participation in the church’s global mission with a deepened sense of calling.”

Some commentary series on the New Testament are historical-critical, intentionally academic in style, and strictly exegetical in content, like the International Critical Commentary, Yale Anchor Commentary and the New International Greek Testament Commentary. Others are mid-range and combine scholarly exegesis with more accessible exposition, like the New International Commentary on the New Testament and the Paideia series.

Then there are those that aim at application, though still grounded in scholarly engagement with the text, such as New International Version Application Commentary and the Story of God Commentary.

A recently burgeoning field is theological commentary in which attempts are made to explore and expound the theological content of the text, with more or less attention to detailed exegetical foundations. The Two Horizons Commentary, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible and Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible are now well established series in this genre.

Each of these series has their Editor’s or Publisher’s preface indicating the level of academic engagement and critical style, the target readership and the justification for their particular series in an admittedly (over) crowded field. Having read some of those prefaces again, and several review essays on recent commentary activity, it would seem this new series while combining several of these approaches, does so on the way to fulfilling its more specific goal and authors’ remit.

Critical scholarship, exegetical details of grammar, syntax, literary and lexical analysis, historical and social contextual study, are all drawn together in the service of a theological and formative explication of the text. “Exegesis is itself a way of doing theology”, the publishers claim. Italics for emphasis is in the original. So this new series aims at a partial reversal of the aims in other series. It isn’t so much what the commentator does with the text, as what the text does to the commentator / reader. Information is put into the service of formation, for the purposes of personal transformation as the reader engages with, and is engaged by, the sacred text.

So how well does this inaugural volume of N T Wright fulfil those prefatory promises? “Paul wrote Galatians out of political and theological concerns.”(6) The political issue is, who should be reckoned as part of the new community of Jesus Messiah? To answer this, Wright goes through what is now a familiar exposition of his own ‘fresh perspective’ on Paul, compared with the ‘new perspective’ (now showing its age) and ‘the old perspective’ which many continue to hold as the most valid and viable interpretation of Paul.

Part two of this review will try to answer that question – I'll post it tomorrow. 

I am still looking forward to a time when we can gather in church, without worrying about Covid, and sing our hearts out. Christians have been singing the Faith since the earliest communities began to form after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Music is one of God’s gifts that helps us express our deepest human emotions – praise and joy, longing and hope, devotion and love, sorrow and grief, repentance and forgiveness.

When it comes to our worship together, shared music-making is one of the ways we join our hearts and voices in ‘a sacrifice of praise.’ If you want to start a lively discussion ask someone what their favourite hymn is. If you want to start an argument, rubbish someone else’s choice. I still remember a new minister (no, it wasn’t me) holding up the church hymn book and telling the congregation “this needs to go!” It wasn’t a good start.

There are lines and verses from hymns that lodge in our minds and become part of our prayers, they stay inside as resources for those moments when we need God’s help, guidance and grace. Here are several that do it for me:

“Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of Thy peace…”

“My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

“Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see…”

You will have your own personal hymn-prayers; those lines that you know by heart, and which nourish, strengthen or energise you at those times when, for no obvious reason they pop into your mind. Clue – the Holy Spirit knows the hymns you know!

At the start of another year, I think we are still suffering from what could be called subdued hope, and long haul weariness. A low-grade anxiety affects how we see the world. We look at how life is through Covid tinted glasses.

Habits of the mind can quickly become the habits of the heart. Which is why it’s important for Christians to take off the negative tinted glasses and look at the world as people who actually believe that there is no shadow of turning with our faithful God. Instead of morning by morning having our mood, our minds and our view of the world shaped and coloured in the grey emulsion of media news, hum in your head “morning by morning new mercies I see,” or pray for “the beauty of thy peace.”

In other words look at the world through the lenses of “Amazing Grace”, or “the Lord’s my Shepherd”, or “Lord the light of your Love is shining”, or “Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea” Get the idea? Remember what Paul urged the Roman Christians in chapter 12? Here are his words in J B Philips translation:

“Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Romans 12.2)

Singing hymns is a process of re-setting our bearings, and changing the lenses through which we look at the world. Hymns are one way God “reclothes us in our rightful minds”, and “re-moulds our mind from within.”

Here’s a hymn often sung at the start of New Year. The first and last verse can become our prayer for 2022. It describes the mind-set that looks look at the world through the clear lens of faith in God’s faithfulness:

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord of the years, we bring our thanks today.

 Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us –
self on the cross and Christ upon the throne,
past put behind us, for the future take us:
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.

Singing our praise and prayers, alone, or when we are together, is a health giving spiritual exercise in Christian realism. We sing together to express our hopes and fears, to tell our love and devotion to the Triune God of love, to seek forgiveness for ourselves and others, to celebrate the faithfulness, goodness and mercy of God, and to give ourselves in love and service to God and others – all of these things. And every time we do we are refusing to let the world squeeze us into its mould. Instead we are allowing God to re-mould us from within to do God’s good, perfect and loving purpose for our lives.

As a boy I learned a lot from old Jimmy Welsh. (back row, centre) He was the stableman who looked after the last two Clydesdale horses on the farm, ploughman, fencer, dyke builder, ditch digger and all round one-man farm maintenance squad.

One day, I must have been about 7, I was standing watching him clearing the drains around the dung midden where the farm stored all that stuff later called more politely, farmyard manure. It was dirty work, which is about as descriptively inadequate as I can make understatement sound. 

Up to his ankles in slurry, using draining rods and a shovel, he just got on with it. At one point as the gurgling from the drain signalled success, he stood up, pushed his bunnet back and said something I'd heard him say before, and would hear often enough again. "Aye Jim, hard work's no' easy."

Two things about Jimmy Welsh. First, this gruff friendly giant, six foot of lean, weathered can-do and know-how, was kind and patient enough to let me go with him when he was working down the fields, up the woods, in the byre, barn or wherever his particular set of skills were needed. Second, the first bike I ever rode on my own was his huge framed bone shaker, which I could only ride by putting my leg through the frame, under the bar! That's another story, which ended remarkably well, given I still cycle so many decades later, in decent weather.

"Hard work's no easy." Jimmy Welsh could have written some of the shorter ripostes in the Book of Proverbs. Whether clearing midden drains, grooming a Clydesdale horse, repairing a drystane dyke, ploughing long straight furrows by the score, scything the edges of the cornfield after the binder had passed, Jimmy worked with an economy and efficiency that impresses me to this day. He got the job done. What we now call 'challenges' he took as part of the job. Patience wasn't so much a virtue as the word used to describe the determination of someone  whose job was to repair this particular part of the world, and to take great satisfaction in doing it. 

So what's the connection between Jimmy Welsh and a post which has Karl Barth in the title. This at least. Reading Karl Barth is hard work, and "hard work's no' easy." But like Jimmy Welsh's never-ending maintenance work around the farm, reading Karl Barth has that same mixture of tasks and demands, of challenge and achievement.

And yes, there are times when it's really hard going. Like when I have to wade through dense pages of smaller print, with long interminable sentences and names I've never heard of and may never again. It helps to think of the tolerance and kindness of Jimmy Welsh, and hear him saying, as a truth that is better accepted than resented, "Hard work's no easy."

So I read on.

Here is Barth in full flow on the grace of God.

"The only answer to Χάρις is εὐχαριστία. But how can it be doubted for a moment that this is asked of [each person.]  Χάρις always demands the answer of εὐχαριστία. Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like a voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning. Not by virtue of  any necessity in the concepts as such. But we are speaking of the grace of the God who is God for man, and the gratitude of man as his response to this grace." (CD IV.1, 41) 

 (The photo is of Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. Barth's controversy with Brunner was a painful episode, and an unnecessary breach of friendship. That Barth wrote a conciliatory note on hearing of Brunner's impending death was an act too little celebrated. The story of that is for another time.)      

In 1952, the Methodist New Testament scholar, Vincent Taylor, produced a commentary on the Gospel of Mark which became a benchmark for thorough exegesis, a model of the discipline. Taylor took account of all aspects of the text including lexical, textual, grammatical, syntactical, intra-textual and theological, and the result was a near encyclopaedic and detailed exposition of the Greek text of Mark's Gospel. It is still not fully past its use by date.

He was once asked how he had completed such a monumental project. He told the parable of the topsoil and the wheelbarrow. Having moved house, and a keen gardener, he had a large truck load of topsoil delivered, if I remember the story correctly, ten tons. The driver dumped all of it on his front driveway. The only way to move it to the back garden was shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. And that, said the good Dr Taylor, was also how he wrote his commentary – over the years, word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. 

Faced with any major task or project it's good advice. You get it done by doing it, the cumulative result of regular, disciplined work, bit by bit, day by day. Which brings me to Karl Barth and his Church Dogmatics. I want to read Volumes IV.1 and IV.2 – I've wanted to do this for years. That's 1620 pages. This too can be broken down to manageable proportions so long as they are regularly and faithfully completed. I've drawn up a reading schedule of 7 pages per day. So the first volume will be done by just after Easter. Both volumes will be completed by some time early August. After that I'll have a rest, I think. 

So, shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. By the way, Karl Barth also uses the wheelbarrow as a metaphor for how you tackle the gargantuan task of writing the Church Dogmatics, let alone reading them!

“The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at his trying to capture the truth about God in a book on dogmatics. They laugh, because volume follows volume, each thicker than the last, and as they laugh they say to each other: “Look! There he goes with his [wheel]barrow full of volumes on dogmatics.”

I'll check in at Easter and let you know how it goes – and perhaps a few posts with some reflection on what to make of sitting at the feet of the most influential theologian of the 20th Century. 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

We all have our strange ways and peculiar tastes. While walking in the woods I am known to wander off the path and stare for a wee while at something that used to be. I mean something that used to be a tree.

That's right. I am fascinated by old tree stumps. Especially those that have been weathered and wintered for years, the elements carving and forming their strange architecture, often overlaid by lichen, moss and last autumn's leaves.  

Take this one, which sits in a forest recently flattened by Storm Arwen. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see in its circular broken walls and jagged peaks an inspiration for one of those spectacular mythical ruins that made the film version of Lord of the Rings such a memorable experience.

That this too, used to be a tree, is a thought that I find strangely poignant, a feeling on the verge of mild melancholy of the kind that makes you smile, briefly. Perhaps a generation ago this tree was felled, its wood harvested and used. For what? Furniture, fencing, a house frame? 

In any case once a tree is gone the roots become superfluous, no longer needed to pump nourishment and water up into this no longer gigantic living organism. 

Slowly the stump begins to decay, and a process of slow formation takes place. The serendipitous play of wind and rain, sunshine and ice, bacteria and fungi, insects and moss and lichen may seem random, explicable only as the contingent activity of environmental forces. Nobody makes a tree stump – they just happen.

Or so it may seem. For myself, I've come to appreciate the biological statement that is a weathered and sculptured tree stump. Aesthetics comes into it too – I think there is beauty and form in these old remains of a tree.

During these two years (almost) of Covid restrictions and constraints, of life overshadowed by widespread social anxieties and recurring uncertainties, I have discovered the significance of paying attention to what is there, and what attracts me. That means taking time to ask what it is about a landscape, a tree, a flower, a cloud formation, and yes, a tree stump, that summons our attention and affection. 

It may be that one strategy for dealing with Covid, or at least its impact on our social and mental health, is to look for beauty where we least think to find it, to form the habit of seeing beyond our own noses and beneath the surface of things. 

That's what happened on yesterday's slow meandering through the woods. An unhurried walk was interrupted by sunlight on a tree stump, a summons to acknowledge the persistence of nature's creative impulse, in the midst of a decimated forest. As a person of faith I've learned to trust those interruptions, and to sense in them a nudge away from niggling negativity towards gratitude, appreciation, and a hopeful trust in God's creative and recreative activity in our world.

But to be clear – avoidance of negativity doesn't invalidate sadness, poignancy, that instinctively human, and humane sympathy, with a living world where nothing is forever, where things get broken, and we discover that part of our calling is to care, to repair and where possible, to heal.

And yet, there are glimpses of glory that surprise us, moments of epiphany when we truly see, interrupting summons to pay attention and love the world as it presents itself to us – often in something as easily missed as an ancient sunlit tree stump.

(The tapestry is an original of my own, based on a Hebrew script which means "Tikkun Olan – To Repair the World")