Blog

Monday

Philippians 2.14-15 “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.”

The mission of the church is to glow in the darkness as examples of light. In a dark world, if you want to know what light looks like, look at the church. The ministry of the church and its mission in the world is to be like stars in the night sky, lights that help travellers to navigate and are constant points of reference. That criterion helps us set our priorities in worship, mission, witness, prayer, social justice and services of compassion in and to God’s world. 

Tuesday

Matthew 28.18-20 “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The Great Commission starts with a statement of power and ends with a promise of presence. Not power to coerce, but power to commission, giving authority to act as the risen Jesus’ representatives, now authorised to act and speak in his name. We do this, not on our own, but accompanied by that same risen Lord, at all times and in all places. When we talk of the mission of the church, we are simply referring to the mission of God in Christ. We are bearers of the good news, couriers of the grace of God, conduits of a love that has come into the world to redeem and to reconcile.   

Wednesday

Matthew 28.18-20 “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The core commission is to go, make disciples, baptise and teach, and all of this done in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Gospel is news to be passed on, broadcast and demonstrated, lived and sung, embodied and enacted. Mission is to be so soaked in the teaching and truth of Jesus that it gives colour and flavour to the whole of our life, as individual followers of Jesus, as children of the Father, as a community of the Spirit. Whatever our strategies and programmes, our hopes and our prayers, they start and end with His words – go, make, baptise, teach.

Thursday

Thou, whose almighty word

chaos and darkness heard,
and took their flight;
hear us, we humbly pray,
and where the gospel-day
sheds not its glorious ray,
let there be light.

Interesting that one of the first missionary hymns starts at Genesis 1.1. The Creator God pushes back chaos and darkness to bring conditions for life. Likewise the Church looks for where there is the chaos and darkness of human life gone wrong and seeks to be the light God brings. All around us are places where there is no gospel daylight, or in Paul’s words there are people and communities looking for stars in a dark universe who give light and are trusted guides. This verse could easily be our start of day prayer, lifting our eyes to God whose almighty Word gives power to light the darkest places; and by that same grace powering us up to be the light of God there!  

Friday

Thou, who didst come to bring
on thy redeeming wing
healing and sight,
health to the sick in mind,
sight to the inly blind,
O now to all mankind
let there be light.

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Into a world fallen again into chaos and darkness, came Christ the Light of the world. All four Gospels tell of the healing miracles of Jesus, those pointers to the deeper healing of the fractured relationship between God and His broken creation. Sin is a disease deeply rooted in human life and affecting all of creation. Sin blinds the will, the mind and the conscience of every human being. We recognise it in hearts easily deceived, wills made plastic by wanting the wrong things, a conscience skilled in explaining away our guilt. All of this is in full show on the Cross, where sin is borne, its power defeated, and where the light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not win. There, once again God said, “Let there be light.” That light blazed with life-giving power across a dark universe on Easter morning – and it shines still.

Saturday

Spirit of truth and love,
life-giving, holy Dove,
speed forth thy flight;
move on the water's face,
bearing the lamp of grace,
and in earth's darkest place
let there be light.

Like the best hymns, there’s a whole tapestry of biblical allusions here. But it is the dove sent from the ark, then linked to the brooding of the Spirit of God over the waters in the Creation story that drives this verse. The prayer is made explicit: “May the Spirit of life move across the whole creation, shining the light of grace that illumines, and restores, and makes life possible.” This is a mission hymn-prayer that longs for a dark world to be illumined, a broken world to be healed, and a disordered world to learn once more the shalom of God. The church at the urging of the Spirit has its own role in all of this – go into the world, make disciples from all peoples, baptise in the name of the Triune God, and teach and live all that Jesus commands.

Sunday

Holy and blessèd Three,
glorious Trinity,
Wisdom, Love, Might;
boundless as ocean's tide
rolling in fullest pride,
through the earth far and wide
let there be light.

The Trinity is no mere abstraction. Jesus came to reconcile a world at enmity with God, in obedience to the will of the Father, in the power of the Spirit. The wisdom, love and might of God are all revealed in the birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself – He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us – God has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Cor. 5) What is revealed on the Cross is the Almighty Word of God spoken to the chaos and darkness of our world, and that word was love, blazing out in light, bearing with it the promise of new life and new creation in Christ.

It may well be that the Church, and that must mean each one of us, will become much more certain of the how of mission, when we immerse ourselves again in the why of mission. Then like Paul we will confess, “The love of Christ constrains us”, grace leaves us no choice, Christ has become our life’s imperative.

Not entirely true that wee ditty about Dostoevsky – but, for the avoidance of doubt, I've never read a Dostoevsky novel twice, and there are several I haven't read at all  I have, however, read more than one biography of Dostoevsky which explored the world of the novels. Often enough I've enjoyed a literary biography about someone as much as anything they may have written.

Currently I'm reading Anne Thwaite's biography of Philip Henry Gosse. I remember reading his son Edmund Gosse's memoir, 'Father and Son.' Thwaite's biography is a firm corrective to Edmund's distorted portrayal of his father Henry, the subject of Thwaite's book. Well researched biography is one of the more enjoyable ways of understanding historical context and what it is that makes a writer write, why they think as they do, what life was like for them.

Diarmid McCulloch's biography of Thomas Cranmer is essential reading to understand the life and times, and the mind, of the man behind The Book of Common Prayer. Roger Lipsey opened up the visionary but pragmatic mind, and the interrogative but persistently searching spirituality of Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations and author of 'Markings'. Bruce Gordon's biography of John Calvin puts paid to the wide of the mark caricatures of the Geneva reformer and presents a far more accurate portrait of Calvin's achievements and ongoing significance as a major constructive thinker and influential presence in western thought.

Denise Levertov, was a poet of protest and prayer and humane observation of human life, whose father was Jewish and became a Church of England priest, and who herself emigrated to America and later converted to the Catholic church. She has been the subject of three major biographies in recent years – together they help us understand her response to the Vietnam war, militarism and racism, environmental crisis and our capacity as a species for both cruelty and compassion. She is a good example of a poet best read with awareness of her life story. I read and learned from her for years before a good biography appeared. But until I read those biographies I had no idea of the personal impact of her American context of unrest about Vietnam, Civil Rights movements, and her own evolving political critique of late 20th Century western culture. Her conversion was slowly signalled in her later works before becoming quite explicit, though always with occasional and residual doubt about her own spiritual security.

Over a lifetime of preaching, countless thoughts and insights have percolated up from such reading. Not all theological reflection begins in theology books, and often enough our deepest insights into God, ourselves and the world around us, comes from those who know how to tell a good story, whether novel or biography. And for that matter, it is often the poet who enables us to see what otherwise we would miss, and to understand something of the mystery of who we are, or wish we were

Monday

1 Corinthians 13. 13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

I’ve often wondered about that singling out of love as the greatest. Life without hope, without the capacity to trust, would be pretty bleak. But for Paul what enables trust, what fills with hope, is the love of God in Christ. That’s the start and finish of all hope, and the final foundation of our deepest trust – “God commends his love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” When Paul writes about love in 1 Cor. 13 he is writing first and foremost about the love of God in Christ – it is THAT love that is poured into our hearts, and that we then live out in practice.

Tuesday

1 Corinthians 13.1 “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

What’s more annoying than the loudest voice in the coffee shop, oblivious of the rest of us, clanging on about the holiday, or banging on about their latest grump about the boss? A Christian who makes it known they are Christian, who ‘witnesses’ to others about what they believe about Jesus, or ‘takes a stand’ on moral issues that are ‘traditionally Christian’ – can be just as annoying as that clanging cymbal at the next table, and just as hollow. Any careful, even cursory reading of the New Testament leaves us in no doubt – love is the criterion of Christian authenticity.

Wednesday

1 Corinthians 13.4-8 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Read that again, and think of how Jesus lived his life, treated and responded to others. Is there a better check-list on which to measure our own relational, emotional and spiritual health? Precisely because that description of love is way beyond any one of us, without enabling grace, each day we seek once more the renewal of the reality of the indwelling Christ – “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5.5)

Thursday

1 John 4.7 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”

Love is more than emotional affection – it is practical kindness, enacted goodness towards others, readiness to forgive, patience to understand, sharing the burdens and the laughter. When God’s love pours into the heart it issues in newness of life and becomes a spring of renewal irrigating the relationships around us. Knowing and experiencing the love of God brings about the deepest transformations of the ways we think, feel and act – God calls us to be the love of Christ personified, to be the Body of Christ. “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me…”

Friday

1 John 4.8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

There it is. As succinct and to the point as we could possibly want. God is love! Our love for God, love for others, love as the energising fuel of life, love of enemies, love for God’s creation, love for our church and every community of Christ; all are made possible by being drawn into the love of God, the grace of Christ, the communion of the Spirit. No wonder Paul said a loveless Christian is a clanging contradiction and a discordant embarrassment. Love is both gift and imperative, choice and ommand. 

Saturday

1 John 4.10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

A Christian understanding of love comes from experience. We love because He first loved us. We entrust ourselves to that love which reaches out from the cross in mercy and forgiveness; then our whole inner self is renewed by the inpouring of the great grace of God, which is uncontainable and so it naturally finds outflow as we in turn become conduits of the grace of God in Christ. “Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.” Once again, love is both gift and demand, visible evidence of an inner reality, proof positive of a life in living connection with Christ.

Sunday

1 John 4.11 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

We forgive because we have been forgiven; we love because we have been loved; we show mercy because mercy has been shown to us. There is an inescapably reciprocal movement of gift and response in our spiritual lives. We are blessed to become a blessing, and in blessing others we are further blessed. That phrase “Since God SO loved us” is an irresistible argument. God loved us so much, beyond what we could ever deserve or expect, without holding back and without prior conditions – God loves like that. And our love for God, others, neighbours, enemies, whoever and whenever? Every day grateful obedience demonstrates our answering love.

Yes, I’m old enough to remember Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ first time round! I’ve always loved bridges – their architecture, their usefulness, the way they help us on our journey.

One of my favourites is ‘the clatterin’ brig’ at the foot of Cairn o’ Mount. Last year I took a photo of the bridge, while standing on stones in the middle of the burn. It’s framed in gorse, and looking upstream through the arch it’s easy to imagine the importance of the bridge, and to be grateful for all bridge-builders.

Our world now urgently needs bridge-builders, those carefully constructive people Jesus called peacemakers. There are priority vacancies for bridge-builders between communities who work at healing divisions, for recruits who are willing to be conduits of goodwill, for imaginative creators and curators of trust, skilled craftsmen in the work of bringing people together in friendship.

A bridge is made of walls, but walls of friendship which enable each other to journey, to go from one side to another, passing or waiting for each other to pass, a long-term gift to each traveller, a place where multiple paths intersect.

A bridge is a monument to goodwill, a deposit paid towards journeys others will make. Bridges are reasons to be grateful to those who build such sturdy walls which carry the road we travel, and which carry us, from here to there, and back again.

Some of the most important words in the thesaurus of human relations are shown by experience to be the most durable stones for building bridges – listening, understanding, empathy, forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, co-operation, generosity, laughter and yes, humanity.

Monday

Psalm 45.1 “My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the King; my tongue is the pen of a skilful writer.”

Every poet needs inspiration to bring out the best that is in them. In coming before God the King, we already have the uplift of knowing we come before One whose love is beyond our words, whose mercy is broader than our imagination, and whose grace is indescribable. But we will try anyway. Prayer can be those moments when we are left speechless by God’s glory, but our heart will not be silent. Our most heartfelt words are penned by a grateful heart articulating our love for God.

Tuesday

Psalm 27.8 “My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face I will seek.”

The Psalm poet knows his own heart, and he has learned to listen to its urgency. That exclamation mark signals an imperative, when the heart knows what is needed. Seeking the presence of God is a deliberate inward turning of the mind and heart towards the One who is holy, and in whose light we find strength to live and guidance to live well. There are instinctive impulses that turn us towards God, those nudges of the Holy Spirit reminding us of God’s pervasive presence and attentive care. When the heart speaks we do well to listen, and seek the face of God.

Wednesday

Psalm 27.4 “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”

This verse is a confession of faith and a declaration of life’s first priorities. When Jesus said “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness”, he was calling for a heart that wills one thing as life’s first priority. Get that right, and everything else falls into its proper place. The Psalm poet was unlikely to want to be in the Temple for the rest of his life. He longed to live all the days of his life in glad obedience and grateful praise. That is his prayer. May God be the ever-present reality, a conscious daily presence, whose sustaining grace infuses and informs our life.

Thursday

Psalm 42.2-3 “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”

Jesus was referring to that same longing of the heart for home and the security of a welcoming love when he called “Blessed” those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” When we use the word ‘devotional’ to describe our times of prayer, or whatever we read and think about in our prayers, we are using a word laden with emotion. This is about the longing of love, the restless and homeless heart seeking the felt and known presence of the living God. When meeting up with someone we love, we might say, “I missed you!” That’s what the Psalm poet means about meeting with God. The anticipation of One we have missed, and the joy pf meeting again.

Friday

Psalm 119.103 “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”

When it comes to descriptive praise, our Psalm poet has no fear of exaggeration. In his day honey was the sweetest taste, though date syrup was the common sweetener (think sticky toffee pudding!). But God’s words are sweeter! God’s word is palatable, delicious, nourishing, a sheer delight, because in God’s presence there is fullness of joy. When we read, meditate and pray over the Scriptures we are putting ourselves intentionally in God’s presence, and so putting ourselves in the way of joy! Amongst the way we seek God’s face, is the habit of having some of the Bible for breakfast! And we know breakfast is the most important meal of the day.     

Saturday

Psalm 63.67 “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help I sing in the shadow of your wings.”

Lying awake in the middle of the night it’s often the anxieties we think about, rehearsing all the worst case scenarios of things going wrong. The Psalm poet knows better. Instead of putting his head under the duvet to shut out a worrying world, he already knows he is under the protective shade of God’s surrounding care. “O spread thy covering wings around / till all our wanderings cease; / and at our Father’s loved abode / our souls arrive in peace.” There is a healing wisdom underlying that practice of turning from our own anxieties to a rehearsal of God’s overshadowing mercy.

Sunday

Psalm 126.5-6 “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”

I have memories of my dad with a pitch fork throwing sheaves up to the stacker who built the corn stacks, and at the end of the day on late summer nights the tea and cake for all the workers made by the farmer’s wife! This verse recognises the rhythms of life, tears of sorrow and songs of joy, life’s gifts and losses, times of strength and weakness, disappointments and hopes fulfilled. All in the end is harvest, made up of God’s grace and blessing, the strength and comfort of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of the Scriptures and the love-gift of the community of Christ’s people.

(Photographs from a recent visit to Iona Abbey)

Sometimes it's fun to do some redaction and source criticism of our favourite writers. Yesterday I read an essay by Richard Hays, one of the most astute New Testament scholars of my generation. The essay was exploring the Gospel of Mark, and especially the significance of Mark's portrayal of the cross and discipleship in the narrative structure of Mark. The title is 'The Crucified One', and it can be found in Cruciform Scripture. Cross, Participation, and Mission, a volume of essays in honour of Michael Gorman.

 Hays displays all his characteristic precision in a close reading of Mark, analysing how the Cross is hinted at from the beginning, and then increasingly emphasised in more explicit words of Jesus. The disciples are not only slow to understand, they seem incapable at times of believing Jesus is serious about his destiny. That slowness of understanding linked to the call for disciples to bear the cross and follow after Jesus, drives the narrative towards its conclusion in the passion of Jesus, the resurrection, and the call to disciples to walk into an unknown future with all its risks and costs. 

The later part of the essay analyses Mark's use of the verb "to hand over", usually translated into English as to betray, particularly when Judas is either the agent or the one described. The word expresses the passivity of Jesus, a willingness to be "handed over". The resolute walk to Jerusalem, the anguished wrestling in prayer in Gethsemane, the matter of fact account of the trial and crucifixion are an enacted kenosis, the self-surrender of Jesus to the Father's will. The word that describes that surrender, that "handing over", is freighted with a profound theology of the passion as kenosis, expressed in obedient sacrifice and self-giving love.  

As I read the essay I recalled two books I had read as a young minister, a long time ago now – Following Jesus. Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark, by Ernest Best and The Stature of Waiting by W. H. Vanstone. I took Best's volume on a week long retreat, something I'm not sure the author would ever have envisaged given it was published as a scholarly monograph in the fledgling JSNT at Sheffield University Press. Twenty years later, at the British New testament Conference, I sat at breakfast with Professor Best and thanked him for a book that deepened my understanding of Mark, and challenged me at levels considerably deeper than exegetical learning.

To my knowledge, Best was amongst the first to focus on Mark's theme of the obtuse disciples presented as exemplars of how hard it is to take up the cross and follow. Here is a summary of Best's book, demonstrating how technical analysis yields practical interpretation:

They show many failures in understanding, but that is not the whole story, for they are on the road and it is to them that the task of mission and the task of cross-bearing are entrusted.

The cross and resurrection of Jesus are behind them, but their own cross (and resurrection?) is very much ahead of them or actually with them in the suffering to which they are called. The cross is always calling for the denial of self and the search to serve others; it is always calling for a community in which commitment and openness are not opposed to one another but two sides of the same fundamental challenge which is also an opportunity.

Jesus is not to be
imitated so much as obeyed and followed on the road which he alone has made possible by his act of ransoming in the giving of his life. (Prof. Robin Barbour, Scottish Journal of Theology, 1983, Vol.36 (1), p.107-109)

Vanstone's book, The Stature of Waiting, I read on the back of his still remarkable first book, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense (1977). It remains one of the most telling practical theologies of kenosis in pastoral life. The Stature of Waiting is a full pastoral exploration of "to hand over" as it is used of Jesus in the Gospel story. His exegesis highlights the kenotic significance of both the word itself, and the actions in the Gospel story that it signifies. His aim is to apply it to our all too human experiences of suffering, loss, and disappointment, using Jesus' acceptance of his own suffering as a lens through which to view our own human responses to those situations and circumstances that overtake all of us at some time or other. 

I find it intriguing to discover such parallels between a highly suggestive essay written a few years ago by a leading New Testament scholar, and two books from almost half a century ago. One was written by an obscure Anglican priest, the other by an Irish Presybterian minister also a NT Professor. What I know of Richard Hays from his books is that he was an alert listener to Scripture. Some of his most influential books are excavations of the text looking for precursors of thought, and listening closely to hear intra-textual echoes of Scripture, and using his sharp recall of the text and its world to identify allusions which might aid interpretation. 

The point of this post is to recognise that process of echoes and allusions, not only in written texts, but also in the intellectual and spiritual traditions that make up the atmosphere of biblical studies as they filter into our own theological thought and spirituality. I doubt Hays read Vanstone, and if he read Best it was probably decades ago. The common tradition of what we learn and live, what we retain and what had its time and then was gone, what still pulses with significance for us and drives us to dig deeper, think harder, and practise more faithfully – that shared environment of scholarship is one of the sustaining gifts entrusted to the church. I am grateful to those who keep adding to that tradition, bringing forth things old and new, for them let us give thanks – for me, that includes an appreciation of Richard Hays who taught us to appreciate the surprising complexity and contemporaneity of the text before us. It was good to remember him in the reading of his essay, 'The Crucified One.'