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"He also showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. It seemed to me as round as a ball.

I gazed at it and thought, ‘What can this be?’

The answer came, ‘It is everything that is made.’

I marveled how this could be, for it was so small it seemed it might fall suddenly into nothingness.

Then I heard the answer, ‘It lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. All things have their being in this way by the grace of God.’"

The brilliant theologian, Julian of Norwich.

This is a weird painting, even by Gaugin's standards. I have a large high quality print of this framed and hanging in my study. As Old Testament stories go, the encounter of Jacob with a man, or an angel of the Lord, or the Lord, is amongst the spookiest stories in the Bible. Mystery, menace, ambiguity, human destiny and divine purpose, accumulated guilt and anxiety at critical point, can all legitimately be read into the picture; they are all rooted in the Jacob text narrative. And the agony goes on all night, and the outcome is uncertain, but when it comes is decisive, and leaves Jacob forever changed.

In this painting, called "Vision of the Sermon. Jacob Wrestling with the Angel", Gauguin captures the eerie dream world of spiritual vision, prayer and the human struggle for meaning, purpose, fulfilment. The vision is born of prayer, shown in the intense concentration of the faces in profile, the hands pressed together, and the central figure facing the relatively small figures in the distance, where Jacob is either enfolded by the angel wings or is caught in the talons of a bird of prey. The painting is psychological drama and spiritual crisis surrounded by a praying community. Gauguin's own inner torment is woven into the pigment of this painting.

Charles Wesley's hymn, "Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown" has 14 original verses, and is abbreviated in later Hymnals. The drama of spiritual conflict has turned into a personal argument. Jacob is no longer a victim but a protagonist; he knows perfectly well who he is, after all God gave him his name. But who is the visitor? In Wesley's hymn Jacob is the Christian struggling with all that baggage of guilt, anxiety and life's contingencies. He suspects, and is desperate to name the One who comes with the indescribable love of the crucified for the sinner. It is a hymn telling the narrative of Christian appropriation of a grace that comes to meet us at the point of ultimate crisis.

For Wesley the story of Jacob and the angel is one of theological discovery and life re-orientation. So in Wesley's verses the reader and singer are drawn into the psychological processes of a human heart and spirit and mind, wrestling with the reality of God and determined and desperate for an answer. Is God love or not? Can he expect mercy or judgement? It is one of Charles Wesley's reverent games to play with the reader; we know where this is going. The hymn is a catena of clues, but the tension builds.

In vain thou strugglest to get free;
I never will unloose my hold:
Art thou the Man that died for me
The secret of thy love unfold:
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name thy nature know.

In that eerie darkness at Jabbok, Jacob is encountering the crucified saviour, the presence of God embodied but beyond naming, until God himself declares it to the heart. Here, in a hymn based on one of the pardigmatic stories of the Bible, is a robust doctrine of Christian assurance, the distilled essence of Wesleyan Arminian theology. God is love. Pure, universal love. No more argument, now he knows!

I keep threatening to get a T shirt. One that has writing on it. You know how you come across something funny, profound, outrageous, even better if all three? You think you'd like to wear it, advertise your support for the sentiment, tell the world your wisdom, share your coolness with an uncool world.

I once promised a young friend I'd get a disgustingly green T shirt and have a picture of brussel sprouts printed on it with the strap line, in West of Scotland dialect if not accent, "Brussel Sprouts iz mingin". I still like the idea of that – what a T shirt to wear in the garden, or a Christmas party…..

And now and again, not often, just occasionally, I think a Bible verse seems just made for T shirt exegesis. A good image, and a few memorable words. So. Maybe a T shirt to be worn when preaching on the Letter of James. The verse in question, James 1.19, three imperatives, three dispositions towards peace, three wise cautions:  "quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger." In case you didn't get it

quick to listen

                                   slow to speak

                                                                         slow to anger.

Think of the most recent argument with your most significant other; revisit the latest cause of your being annoyed, hurt, offended or just plain put out; consider the usual triggers for your critically edged words or dismissive smirk, or way too inflated opinion of your viewpoint; or reflect on people you know you have hurt, offended, annoyed, whose day you have wasted; or, put positively, imagine a committee meeting where these were the standing orders – less said, more heard, and what is said is worth the hearing….by folk who are listening. These are not the big deal occasions of our lives, they are the day and daily outcomes and consequences of our words.

James suggests three deep breaths, pause points before we speak. He creates a mnemonic braking system for our juggernaut egos. If you have to respond immediately to what someone says or does, the be quick – to listen! Because words are like toothpaste, and can't be squeezed backwards into the tube, be slow to speak. And because what we think and fell colour what we say, listening and slowness of speech give time for anger to dissipate before words give it permanence.

So. A T shirt. Three phrases. But would I be entitled to wear it without those who know me best laughing most? Could I live this just for a day? I have had a customer complaint about the absence of Smudge from the blog – here she is, depicting existential nonchalance 🙂

Ever since those first encounters with moral philosophy, metaphysics and then philosophical theology I have wrestled like Jacob with the angel of the Lord, with the notion of divine impassibility. What is necessarily a question of philosophical and theological importance becomes a matter of pastoral significance and existential urgency when we encounter human suffering, our own, that of those we love, or of those other human beings in our world whose suffering demands response as well as explanation. It comes down to what we could possibly mean by the phrase, "the suffering of God".

Does God suffer? As recently as the 1970's, following the publication of Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God, which itself followed on the work of Kozah Kitamori, The Theology of the Pain of God, modern Western theology has been similarly wrestling with those urgent, existential questions about the nature of the Christian God. This is not the classic problem of theodicy, How can an all powerful and all loving God co-exist with evil and the suffering of His creation? Either he can change it but won't, in which case is he all loving? Or he cannot change it however much he desires to do so, in which case he is not all powerful. This is a subtle variation of the same dilemma, but one which is inescapable to one who offers himself in pastoral care to others within a Christian community. It is also one which cannot be evaded or ignored in a faithful preaching ministry about the love of God, the human condition, the reality of evil and the nature of the Christian Gospel of God incarnate, crucified and risen in Christ.

In other words the question of whether God suffers takes us to the Cross and what happened there, and to whom. Enter Frances Young, until retirement Henry Cadbury Professor of Theology at Birmingham University. (Yes you're right, THAT Cadbury, the dairy milk kind!) And just to say, Frances Young is a mother who for over 40 years has cared for her son Arthur who was born with cerebral palsy and has significant disabilities; she is a Methodist minister and preacher; she is a world class patristic scholar and leading authority on ancient Christianity. She knows about theology; she lives in a context where suffering and limitation are daily realities; she has preached when her own heart is breaking; and in her recent book, God's Presence, she argues passionately and with immensely persuasive honesty, for a view of God adequate to Christian theology and to the lived realities of our lives.

For we all suffer, and witness suffering. We all love and care and are anxious for others. We grieve and suffer catastrophic loss – but we also live and discover the joy and wholeness that can overcome brokenness. We discover in our suffering grace, understanding, strength and sheer unlooked for kindness, where and when we least expect it.  God's Presence is an expansion of the Bampton Lectures, and is an exploration of Christian theology as it developed in the first few centuries. But it is also a practical theology in which each substantive claim of Christian faith is road tested in the practicalities of the human journey; and each chapter includes sermon material she has preached, and finishes with a postlude, which is a prose poem of her own composition, soliloquy, prayer, reflection, all in one. This is a rich book, and one which challenges the sentimentalised pleading of those whose idea of God is one of hand-wringing anguish over evil and suffering in a world out of God's control; she also challenges the hard edged theology of divine sovereignty and providence which attributes every shrieking nerve of creation to a God impassive in omnipotence, and inscrutable of purpose. Between these two admittedly extreme caricatures, there exists a view of God shaped over centuries and founded on biblical revelation about 'all the nations of the earth being blessed', 'He was wounded for our transgressions', God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself', 'He is not here, he is risen', 'nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus', and 'behold I make all things new.'

In a day or two, I'll post more this book, which is the magnum opus of a remarkable mother, theologian, Christian and pastor. Meanwhile, if you want to hear her talking about the early Church Fathers and today's questions you can do so over here and if you want a really quick word from her about questions and thinking, go to minute 4.

It's been far too long since there was some poetry here. So below is a brief prayer poem from Wendell Berry.

The past couple of days I've been trying to turn a mossy patch of green into a lawn where grass can grow. Scarified, aerated with the fork, watered and fed. It's been a long dry winter in Aberdeen – hardly any rain now for several weeks, and this is the growing season at the start of Spring. 

Last night, watering the plants out the back, a blackbird performed virtuoso voice changes and musical improvisations, accompanied by the glinting concerto of water, and the hose which became a conductor's baton in my hand, celebrating the the water performing its own liturgical dance, of praise, gratitude and peace descending like those gentle life releasing drops of grace.

Moments like that are captured in the memory in ways more permanent, more precise, and more accessible to the heart than any photo or video clip. And what remains is the sense of time as gift, the co-incidence of bird song, arcing water, glinting light, and my own subservience to that which is around me. Because that is what receiving a gift requires, the humility to accept, the gladness to be grateful, the prescience to be ready for grace that is always prevenient, there waiting for us long before we turn the corner and meet the Giver of Blessing. Not many moments are full of God. Those that are come unlooked for, the surprise visit of God who comes to renew and repair and sustain our sense of belonging in God's world.

Teach me work that honors Thy work,

the true economies of goods and words,

to make my arts compatible

with the songs of the local birds.

 

Teach me patience beyond work

and, beyond patience, the blest

Sabbath of Thy unresting love

which lights all things and gives rest.