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I spent a while yesterday browsing through the many books of Jurgen Moltmann. The first one I ever read was The Crucified God, published by SCM, London, an early softcover edition in a format they called Study Edition. I read this astonishing book during Lent in the late 1970's as a young minister freshly out of College and not long finished an arts degree in Glasgow which majored in moral philosophy. I was aware even then, that this was a book, and this was a theologian, from whom I would never recover. In every life there are moments of disclosure when we unexpectedly encounter truth at a different level, we hear a voice speaking a different theological dialect, with a strange accent, and for me in the case of Moltmann, speaking our language with imaginative force and with power and precision, informed by both passion and prayer.

The Crucified God is a theological classic, forged out of the high tensile steel of a man who faced death as a young soldier, and was rescued from nihilism and loss of soul as a young POW in Ayrshire, Scotland when he read a New Testament and encountered the living Christ, crucified and risen and present in the very depths of all the hells and all the suffering and dying he had lived through. The Gospel of Mark shattered the chains of hopelessness, despair and bewildered anguish that beset this 19 year old German soldier coming to terms with Nazism, Auschwitz and a shamed nation. Here is Moltmann's own reflection in 2006 on that encounter with the crucified God; few theological classics have such an authentic spiritual provenance, rooted in personal experience, and the title a soul conviction that fuels the rest of this person's life:

Then I read Mark's Gospel as a whole and came to the story of the passion: when I heard Jesus' death cry, "My God, why have you forsaken me?' I felt growing within me the conviction: this is someone who understands you completely, who is with you in your cry to God and has felt the same forsakenness you are living in now. I began to understand the assailed, forsaken Christ because I knew that he understood me. The divine brother in need, the companion on the way, who goes with you through this 'valley of the shadow of death', the fellow sufferer who carries you, with your suffering. I summoned up the courage to live again, and I was slowly but surely seized by a great hope for the resurrection into God's 'wide space where there is no more cramping.' This perception of Christ did not come all of a sudden and overnight, either, but it became more and more important for me, and I read the story of the passion again and agian for preference in the Gospel of Mark.

This early companionship with Jesus, the brother in suffering and the companion on the road, has never left me ever since, and I became more and more assured of it. I have never decided for Christ once and for all, as is often demanded of us. I have decided again and again in specific terms for the discipleship of Christ when  situations were serious and it was necessary. But right down to the present day, after almost 60 years, I am certain that then, in 1945, and there, in the Scottish prisoner of war camp, in the dark pit of my soul, Jesus sought me and found me. (from A Broad Place, Jurgen Moltmann, 2008, page 30)

Few world class theologians have written with such personal vulnerability about their own personal encounter with Jesus and their specific journey of discipleship. But some have, and Moltmann is one of that unashamed band of Christian theologians who never settled for the notion that theological thought should be pursued in an objective, detached, intellectual attitude of mind. He writes out of that testimony, and his first major book, Theology of Hope was a book that spoke with direct appeal into the Cold War chill of nuclear threat, international confrontation, and humanity desperate for a braking system that would halt the Gadarene stampede to mutual assured destruction (MAD). Some of the titles of his later books signal the deep theological convictions of the mature Moltman still deciding again and again for discipleship of the crucified God. Theology of Hope, The Future of Creation, Jesus Christ for Today's World, Ethics of Hope, In the End- the Beginning, and so on. And lest you think Moltmann is a heavy hearted prophet most at ease pronouncing the reasons for despair and anxiety, one of his slim masterpieces is called Theology and Joy. 

In celebration of Moltmann's contribution to modern theology, and to the lives of countless people who have read his books, heard his lectures, been taught by the deeply dyed discipleship of this German Christian professor, there will be regular blog posts on Moltmann from now till Trinity Sunday. His book The Trinity and the Kingdom of God stands in my library as one of the most provocative and faithful works of Christian theology I've read – and counting the times this book was discussed in classes on Trinitarian theology, I think my re-readings of it is now in double figures! 

 

 

 

 

 

The idea that our earliest Gospel should finish on a note of fear and silence is a scandal to any Christian reader who knows the other four canonical Gospels, and is familiar with the well rounded and carefully crafted endings. Matthew draws the reader towards the climactic saying about the Great Commission and Jesus ascension; Luke has his own version of the directions to the disciples, about waiting for the Holy Spirit and the enduement of power and the ascension, ; John has two endings both of them deeply satisfying tying up of loose ends and relational healings with Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Peter.

Then there is Mark – and this is how he finsishes his Gospel. 

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. ⁷ But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

⁸ Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Now where is the good news in that? How does the Gospel spread if people ar stunned into silence by fears that make them run away? Mark is like one of those films that leaves you hanging, wondering what happens next, aware of unresolved tensions, frustrated by unanswered questions, and feeling let down by a story that had all the makings of an artistic triumph.

That feeling of incompleteness, that lack of any sense of a real ending is why very early in the church's story, some reverent writers, scribes, copyists, who knows, wrote what we now call the longer ending, usually appended with a clear break and a footnote explanation. 

For myself I have never really had a problem with Mark 16.8 being the end of the Gospel. Mark is the Gospel as story, and it begins with an abrupt announcement of the good news of the Kingdom of God; it ends with the abrupt announcement of resurrection but with no proofs of that, just the order for the women to tell the men to go to Galilee. Did they tell? Did the disciples go? The track record of their obedience, trust and understanding isn't impressive throughout the Gospel. But Mark has just created in the reader that same dilemma; will the reader now go to Galilee, encounter the risen Jesus, take up their own cross, and follow in a life of cruciform discipleship, not so much a card carrying Nazarene as a cross carrying follower of the risen Messiah Jesus.

And why not fear, awe, trembling, instinctive running away? Apart from the psychological likeliehood of just such responses when faced with worldview shattering events, Mark is a highly skilled writer. The literary tension has built to a crescendo, most recently Gethsemane, betrayal, denial, trial, brutalisation and long drawn out execution, cry of dereliction and finally burial and a merciful sabbath when the world could rest from its dirty work. To anoint and care for the dead body was the least that could be done – even that is denied because the stone is rolled, the grave is open, the body is gone and there is some stranger talking about resurrection, and giving directions to Galilee where Jesus is ahead of them. Just hear the theological reverberations of that phrase – "he is going ahead of you to Galilee…" Not dead beyond all hope, not abandoned to the grave, not crushed and silenced by the machinery of power, but doing what he said he would, going before them, waiting to eat the bread and drink the wine of the kingdom with his followers.

The longer ending is a pastiche of words and ideas from the other three Gospels. Those verses have little of the power and purposefulness a and drive of Mark's Gospel as it hurtles towards its conclusion which is a brilliantly set up caption – "to be continued". And it will be continued by cross carrying disciples, those who know the fear of God, that combination of awe and love, excitement and risk, and who hear the question at the literary and theological centre of the Gospel of Mark, "Who do you say that I am?" The answer to that question is given as we enter the story, the continuing story, and as we head for Galilee to meet the risen Christ, and to take up the cross and follow the one who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

 

The Emmaus Supper

“Well, at least nobody died.”

That flippant life coaching quip sometimes works,

usually by minimising the trouble we’re in.

Trouble is, this time somebody did die.

We met Jesus a few years ago. He was a life changer.

The way he lived made us want to be near him,

the things he said turned all the politics and good manners upside down.

The last to be first, serve not be served, love enemies, lust the doorway to adultery,

Peace-making as family likeness to God, losing life to find it.

His laughter came from some well of living joy deep inside him;

He looked at people, not through them;

he listened, understood, and paid attention.

He gazed into the heart of who we are, and wasn’t put off,

And for all our fears and uncertainties, he never once walked away from us.

So yes, we were prepared to follow him.

To build the Kingdom of God, to take up the cross and follow,

To not be anxious about food and clothes and instead trust God.

We walked and learned and travelled and lived the way he showed us,

And when we failed and made mistakes, he understood.

Then we realised he was serious.

He was going to Jerusalem and he would be put to death.

Jesus had become scary, unpredictable, way too extreme for his own good.

That outburst in the Temple, riding into Jerusalem like some self-appointed prophet,

Arguing and criticising and judging and even publicly contradicting powerful people.

He knew perfectly well our Faith Leaders wouldn’t let it go,

And he knew that once Rome was involved,

it would need to be settled, one way or another.

So they crucified him. Finish. End.

Rome trades on finality, no one survives crucifixion.

“It’s finished!” Famous last words of Jesus.

And he wasn’t wrong. It was finished. It is finished

So what in heaven’s name were we to do next?

You give up your life and family, you go walkabout with Jesus,

You build your hopes on a new world of God’s Kingdom,

Of freedom, justice, peace and new beginnings.

And what have we left? Nothing.

Jerusalem wasn’t safe anymore.

So Cleopas and I decided to travel to Emmaus.

Walking might get life moving again,

Give us some impetus, direction, some idea of a way forward.

And Cleopas was usually clear headed and positive,

He’d know what to do .

But Cleopas was as shattered as the rest of us.

Confusion and fear, sadness and regret,

broken dreams and emotional pain,

minds closed to hopefulness by the trauma of already shattered hope.

We talked as we walked,  

because talking about things somehow eased the pressure of hurt,

by talking we recognise and gives in to that deep human need we all have,

to make sense of what messes up life,

to rewrite the pages torn from our story  

to put into words what we fear can't ever be fully described.

Maybe it’s just knowing another heart feels something similar,

that the loss and hurt aren't borne alone,

that by talking we might salvage some sense and purpose

out of what has wrecked a hoped for future.

And then as if heaven sent a stranger caught up with us.

We were glad of the company, and another voice.

Someone who could confirm the horror, share the shock,

Sympathise and understand and give us another perspective.

But he didn’t know what we were talking about.

So we explained about Jesus the prophet, (how could he not know?)

The chief priests and the Romans, the trials and the crucifixion,

And our sorrow, and our emptiness, and our despair,

and that mixture of resentful anger and lost love

that is grief at its most bewildering and fear at its most disabling.

About the burial and the waiting, and the women in denial

with their stupid fairy-tale endings.

But he said it was us, we were the stupid ones,

We were the ones in denial, we who couldn’t see and wouldn’t believe

He looked us in the face and said sadly but not unkindly,

“Foolish and slow of heart to believe all the prophets

Have said about the glory of the suffering Christ.”

And as he talked and explained, we began to feel strangely safe,

His words began to make sense of the whole, tragic holy mess.

Maybe there was more. Maybe it wasn’t all gone.

He seemed to know the heart of things; and to know the world by heart.

He sounded just like Jesus, the way he said the words,

The tough kindness, that faraway look that isn’t fantasy,

But is more real than even that aching, empty space

that used to be meaning and purpose and God help us, hope.

All hope needs is a promise, a gesture towards a different future.

By the time we got to Emmaus he stopped talking and began walking away.

We asked him to stay, we had to keep him talking.

His words flickered and flamed with truth,

We could feel the energy, see new possibility by their light,

They were words that reconstructed our world,

He told us our story as he told us God’s story,

And he told us the story of Jesus as only Jesus could have told it.

It’s getting dark we said, stay with us.

You must be tired we said, come, stay with us and rest.

You must be hungry and thirsty, stay and have supper with us.

It isn’t safe to travel alone, stay with us, your friends.

And he did. He was our guest, but he acted like the host.

And when we were seated at the table, he took the bread and broke it –

And once again like that broken loaf, our world fell apart,

But this time the pieces fell into place – It was Him!

He is Alive. The women were right. He kept his promise.

He lived his word because he lives and is life itself.

He had said we were foolish not to believe;

But how foolish we only just realised.

To the light of the World we said,

It’s getting dark we said, stay with us.

To the Good Shepherd and the One who says to the heavy laden Come unto me

You must be tired we said, come, stay with us and rest.

To the bread of life, the living bread, and to the living water,

You must be hungry and thirsty, we said stay and have supper with us.

To the one who is the Resurrection and the Life,

who laid down his life for sheer love of his friends,

who walked the darkest places of sin and judgement and suffering

we had said, It isn’t safe to travel alone, stay with us.

That blessed bread! That blessed bread broken

as only he ever broke it, given as only he could give!

NO wonder he knew the story of Jesus inside out

No wonder we felt ourselves understood, the old love rekindled.

And as soon as we knew it was him, he vanished!

But by then we knew. That broken bread

And the way it was broken, and the words that blessed it,

It was Him alright, and because it was him, all is right.

Copyright James M Gordon (c)

 

Amongst my most important possessions are three Stations of the Cross which were gifts from Sandy Stoddart the Scottish sculptor. The 13th Station is The Deposition, the taking down of Jesus from the cross. The reverent care of the hand holding the "sacred head, sore wounded", the upreaching embrace of Mary Jesus' mother, and the nakedness of Jesus with all the implied vulnerability, fill this image with pathos and unutterable loss. The rope suspending one arm of the dead Jesus, his arm drooped vertical and helpless even to help himself is eloquent of the kenosis of God, and the power of redemptive love.

In her Autobiography, The Joy of the Snow, the novelist Elizabeth Goudge writes movingly and honestly about her horror of Good Friday, and how when she was younger she wished that the sufferings of Jesus could be removed from the story. The urge to pass quickly from Good Friday to Easter Sunday seems natural, to skip past those year long hours of anguish and humiliation and dying and darkness to the sunlight and joy of resurrection morning, is understandable, and wrong.

Jesus prayed with all the passion of a heart large enough to embrace the world, "Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me." No escape from Good Friday, no fast forward past the pain, the abandonment and the revolt of holiness from the engulfing evil. "He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, that we might become in him the righteousness of God." No one has mapped the contours and fissures of sin that run through the whole creation and every human heart with more precision than Paul; and no one has worked out with a clearer, more passionate mind, what sin did to the heart of the Triune God. When Jesus cried, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?" that cry of dereliction reverberated into every verse in the New Testament that says "God was in Christ", "Christ died for us", "making peace by the blood of the Cross", the "mystery of the ages."

It took a poet of George Herbert's genius to parse the tragedy of the Cross. His poem The Agony is utterly Pauline in its combination of moral seriousness and theological wonder. The transition from Good Friday to Holy Saturday, with Easter Sunday not yet in view, is a compelling account of the suffering of God, the broken hearted emptiness of a heart poured out in a love which chooses to confront and enter into the places of deepest despair and most enduring darkness. This is the God whom Christians claim is with us in our darkest times and places; "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me…" Holy Saturday is for those times and places in our lives where hope has vanished, loss seems fixed and final, depression has settled with the dead weight of a future empty of joy. Oh Easter Sunday is coming; but we say that from this side of that first Good Friday and Holy Saturday. For now it is a sign of our human hunger for hope, that we wait with the hopeless, grieve with the sorrowful, weep with the bereaved, and like the two figures in the panel above, hold with reverent care and willing embrace, all those who suffer without hope of a different future.

Herbert, a 17th Century metaphysical poet, is one of the great New Testament theologians. Though he would hate the slippage of English style in the phrase, Herbert "gets it". The mystery of iniquity alongside the greater mystery of love, and both of them entangled in the fatal tragedy of Gethsemane and Calvary. 

The Agony

Philosophers have measur'd mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of the seas, of states, and kings,
Walk'd with a staff to heav'n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

Who would know SIn, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev'ry vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

My song is love unknown,
My Saviour’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend,
My Friend indeed,
Who at my need
His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!”
is all their breath,
And for His death
they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
Themselves displease,
and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He
to suffering goes,
That He His foes
from thence might free.

In life no house, no home,
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb,
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was his home;
But mine the tomb
Wherein he lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
in Whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.

It was Gerard Manley Hopkins who described a way of looking at the world Christologically. To see Christ everywhere, to celebrate the ubiquitous presence of Christ round every corner we turn, to see in common things the uncommon grace of God, and to have the wit, or the wisdom, to see what is revealed.

Epiphanies are of two kinds; the ones we discover, and the ones we are given. The ones we discover may simply be those everyday moments which, once we have lived through them, we realise come only every thousand days. The ones we are given are when we know, we just know, we have glimpsed the trailing clouds of glory, briefly sighted a truth both dazzling and elusive, but confirming a depth and texture to life which sustains those deep heart realities of hope, trust, love and joy.

But sometimes it's impossible to say which moment of recognition is which; our discovery, or unlooked for gift. The photo was taken at the sea front in Aberdeen. The old breakwaters had been exposed by stormy seas and I was walking along close to the sea edge. Waves, the play of sky on water, blue on grey in a symphony of colour, sound and movement in rhythm and with a timing that was both regular and varied by water that was restless in motion and restful to watch and hear.The sea is its own orchestra, its motions and sounds and its endless variations in orchestration and composition a 24/7 performance of inexhaustible creativity.

At precisely one angle of looking the old broken timbers opened in a cruciform window, and I was transfixed. I stood and looked, astonished and my eyes watering with something other than the cold wind and a longing in my heart that came from God knows where; and I'm glad God knows where. The contrast of aged timber against sea and sky, the window of the Cross opening out towards the horizon, a moment in my life when whatever else I was thinking or feeling was eclipsed by this glimpse of glory, and I was summoned to pay attention, to wait, and watch, and without conscious decision, to know this moment is one where the heart kneels and "prayer is valid".

Hopkins' poem is a revelling in grace, seeing Christ everywhere and in everything. "Christ plays in ten thousand places"; and one of those places was Aberdeen beach, on a cold January morning when, unasked and unexpected, Christ played, and I cried, "What I do is me: for that I came."  

 

Tapestry is one of the things I do. Regular visitors to this blog will know this. Birds, houses, stain glass windows, flowers, Greek and Hebrew scripted words are amongst the subjects designed and sewn over the years.

In recent years I've become more theological in some of my designs, using tapestry to explore and express the colour and forms of religious texts and symbols. This started as an experiment when I was studying and teaching Trinitarian theology, and I was intrigued by the possibility of using colour and form to explore the mystery at the heart of the Christian understanding of God.

The most recently completed tapestry is called Eucharist and Pentecost, and the small central panel focuses on the Cross, in the colours of the passion. The scale of the detail shown is 3cm.

An hour or so after posting yesterday's entry on Images of the Cross, the news broke of the bomb attacks on Brussels. Throughout the day the horror and anguish that befell ordinary folk unfolded with a frightening predictability as figures of casualties rose, and the cruelty and range of the injuries were described. As I watched I recalled again the words that go to the dark heart of human evil and brokenness, and illumine from within with the determined purpose of Eternal Love, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…"

We live in a world where it is becoming increasingly easy, perhaps even attractive, to hate the enemy, to wish vengeance, to make retaliatory violence our preferred modus operandi. I for one need a theology of the Cross that feels the full force of the evil we humans inflict on each other, and does not despair. One of the most lethal strains of despair is to give up on reconciliation, to educate our hearts in hatred, to train our emotions away from mercy and justice and to seek the elimination and destruction of the enemy. If we despair of reconciliation, give up on peace, refuse to even try to understand and listen to the reasons why we have been attacked, then we surrender hope and settle for a mutual exchange of deaths and inflicted suffering, which in turn fuels hate, fear and fury, that unholy trinity worshipped best with weapons and strategies of terror.

The Cross of Christ stands as God's decisive No to that despair which implies our preference for death, our own or those we wish to kill. Despair is never more dangerous than when we decide, choose, conclude, that hope has ceased to be an option. Centuries before Jesus was crucified Isaiah spoke more than he knew: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed."

I've spent the best part of 50 years gazing into the theological abyss which opens up beneath these words in Isaiah 53 – but it is not an abyss of despairing darkness or blank, bleak silence. The Cross is an abyss in which "we hear the plunge of lead into fathomless depths." And so today, at different times, I sit and will sit, before the Cross, and think of all that it means for Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God, to be crucified in a world like this.

O Cross that liftest up my head,

     I dare not ask to fly from thee;

I lay in dust life's glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

     Life that shall endless be.

 

 

 

 Amongst the anguish and debris of the Twin Towers, two broken girders stand in cruciform lament. This is the Cross emerging from the wreckage of human suffering, bearing witness to the destructive powers of a cosmos in chaos.

Holy Week is the time when sin can no longer be trivialised, when violence is confronted for what it is, and when hatred is seen to unleash the destructive anger whose end is death and whose means is the murder of the other. Christian theology sees in the Cross the mystery of iniquity and the greater mystery of an eternal love which renders all evil and all destructive powers penultimate. 

"In the cross of Christ I glory towr'ing oe'r the wrecks of time.." can never be a triumphalist escapism from the wreckage of human life and the wasting of Creation that are the realities of our global history and our economic, cultural, military and technological adventures. Instead, we glory in the Cross as those who know such evil, sin, iniquity, what Paul called the principalities and powers, to be defeated by the self-giving love and searing holiness in judgement of the God whose Creation is defaced and defiled by all our ancient hatreds, incurable covetousness, territorial and materialist empire building, and by the infused and cherished divisions and fears, hatreds and enmities of a grace-averse world.

We glory in the cross because "having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacke of them, triumphing over them by the cross." (Col 2.14) Earlier Paul explained, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things on earth or things in heaven,  by making peace through his blood shed on the cross." (Col 1.19-20)

Holy Week is the time to reflect on how violence spawns violence, hatred enacted provokes hatred as vengeance, in an upward spiral of destruction ever more creative in its lethal intent. The Cross is God's NO! The Cross is God's negation of all other negations of life. The Cross is, as Paul said elsewhere, the place where "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself."

 

The woodcut prints of Eric Gill are some of the most carefully crafted and imaginative pieces of religious art. The simplicity and contrast of black and white, dark and light make the image stark but then with a softness of line giving shape to the human body.

The presence of two young people walking behind is deeply resonant of discipleship and the wonder and curiosity that every disciple feels since those first words of Jesus to two earlier followers who asked Jesus "Where do you live?". And he said, "Come and see."

Gill made many different prints of the Passion, but this small early print has the kind of immediacy and uncomplicated appeal that is stripped down gospel. The Simon of Cyrene figure in the middle stands tallest but does not dominate; the bowed Christ under the heavy crossbeam, head radiated with cruciform light as cross is superimposed upon cross, seems nevertheless unbowed in purpose; the taller child with the staff is on a holy walk behind, and the smaller child obscures the hand of his friend; and at the exact centre of the image the hand of the Cyrenian lifting the weight from the back of Jesus. 

At the start of Holy Week, this picture is a contradiction of the tradition which has us sing in the first line of the great Passion hymn, Alone Thou goest forth O Lord. And yet. There is for Jesus, the Son of the Father, an encroaching loneliness that will eventually leave him alone and isolated, not only from the support and company of other people, but cut off from the source of life itself. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

The cry of dereliction is at times too painful to bear even the reading of it in the Gospel, too theologically devastating to be analysed or deconstructed. That great reverberating cry of the anguish of God will come later than the scene in Gill's print. To read Abelard's great hymn while contemplating Gill's more humane episode of the Passion, is to ponder what Paul meant; "He who knew no sin was made sin, that we might become the righteousness of God…."

1 Alone thou goest forth, O Lord,
in sacrifice to die;
is this thy sorrow naught to us
who pass unheeding by?

2 Our sins, not thine, thou bearest, Lord;
make us thy sorrow feel,
till through our pity and our shame
love answers love's appeal.

3 This is earth's darkest hour,
but thou dost light and life restore;
then let all praise be given thee
who livest evermore!

4 Give us compassion for thee, Lord,
that, as we share this hour,
thy cross may bring us to thy joy
and resurrection power.

Yesterday the haar made Westhill and Aberdeen cold, grey and decidedly unspringlike. So we headed inland towards the Highlands, through Banchory, Aboyne, Ballater and out to Braemar. By 11.00 the sun was breaking through at Braemar and then the skies cleared and they were a deep blue, by which I mean the kind of blue you feel you could fly into forever. On the way we saw a red kite patrolling its borders, two swans reflected on the water along with the snow brushed hills and silver birch drapery, and high in the sky a long trailing skein of geese heading home.

I have become very fond of my small Sony camera, now 5 years old, and a much used gift from Sheila for my 60th birthday. It doesn't do all the technically clever things more expensive and more up to date technology achieves. But I resist the latest camera, not as a luddite or technophobe, but because I enjoy capturing a good photograph with a good enough camera – and my wee sony is good enough. 

Yesterday I could have stopped the car and tried to get a photo of the red kite, the swan loch reflection, the geese against a blue sky. What I have is the memory of those moments of heart magic. To stop and take a photo would be to have merely the memory of losing the real gift of attentive joy in order to capture the digital image of those lost moments of true wonder, praise and gladness.

Yes – the swans on the loch, with snow draped mountains and elegantly drooping silver birch would have looked great on the computer screen, and on Facebook. But I would have chosen the self-congratulation of a good photo over the losing of the self in uncomplicated attentiveness and presence to the beauty that comes as gift that cannot be captured, and as summons which cannot be ignored; what C S Lewis called, surprised by joy. 

The last photo, of "swift rushing water cool and clear" was a reminder of the ever changing movement of God, reflecting light, refreshing the spirit and touching with the wound of grace those places within us crying out for renewal.