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  • Sunrise, Sunset and the Faithfulness of God

    Sunset on the mearns
    I took this photo on an evening drive down to Glasgow. I was looking across the Mearns to the west and stopped at a layby for ten minutes to gaze. Then continued to drive, this time with more care and attentiveness to a world both fragile and durable, and to a rhythm whose regularity recurs in the Psalms as a metaphor of God's faithfulness and the dailiness of blessing. "From sunrise to sunset the Lord's name is to be praised."

    In the Fiddler on the Roof, the image of sunrise and sunset describes growth and maturity, as the love of parents for children begins to relinquish and set free while still acknowledging that the investment of our deepest feelings in those we love, and enlarging the circle of those we love, is life's high calling. And in the lyrics, the recognition that life is movement and change, happiness and tears, and what we hang on to, what hangs on to us, is that same rhythm of faithfulness and the recurring cycle of light and life, sunrise, sunset. 

    Sunrise, sunset

    Sunrise, sunset

    Swiftly flow the days

    Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

    Blossoming even as we gaze


    Sunrise, sunset

    Sunrise, sunset

    Swiftly fly the years

    One season following another

    Laden with happiness and tears

    "Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee…" Well, yes, that's true – though there are shadows, and sometimes it feels like they are cast by the back of God! And then you see a sunset, and our faith holds on for dear life to mystery, and we are smitten by a beauty redolent of love, gently revealing the goodness and mercy that surely follows us all the days of our lives, sunrise, sunset. 

  • The Christian Theologian, Nuclear Weapons, Strange Love, Original Sin, and the Sermon on the Mount


    300px-Christ_of_Saint_John_of_the_CrossI still remember the chill and existential angst as an impressionable if more than a little rebellious teenager watching Dr Strangelove. Two years after the Cuban crisis, and one year after the assassination of President Kennedy, the film dropped into a cultural worldview already distorted by fear, suspicion and the growing insanity of language that spoke of MAD, as mutual assured destruction. The mad antics and the terrifyingly implausibly plausible script did nothing to reassure, nor wat it meant to.

    I came across this clip here the other day and watched it with scared fascination. It isn't only the content, it's the jaunty optimism of the narrator describing the triumph of Britain dropping its first hydrogen bomb to explode in the atmosphere in 1957. At the time the fear was an icy terror, a remorselessly spreading glacial fear dubbed the cold war. Perhaps the upbeat BBC commentator was expressing relief that Britain was no longer defenceless against an evil and ambitious Russia. At the very least we could destroy cities of the perceived enemy in retaliation for any attack on our cities. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a million for a million, it's the same principle. It's called deterrence.

     



    MushroomThere has not been a nuclear exchange in the 56 years since that first successful atmospheric detonation of city killing bombs. Supporters of deterrence would say that's because deterrence works. Maybe. Opponents will argue that nuclear weapons are morally unjustifiable and pose an extinction level threat to human life, and indeed to the future of the planet. I don't know that the argument can be settled – by definition the proof would either never be forthcoming (in which case it worked, maybe) or there will be a catastrophic exchange in which case the argument becomes academic in a nihilistic sort of way.

    What's your point Jim? It isn't a global politicised point. I am not an expert in global security, military mind games, or defence strategy and policy. As a Christian theologian I have other concerns, a different perspective, alternative intellectual tools to think through the meaning of human existence and what makes for human flourishing. I watched the clip with a profound and solemn awareness that amongst the crucial components of a Christian worldview is an adequate doctrine of sin. The hydrogen bomb as it was then known carried a mushroom shaped shadow of ultimate menace for humanity's future – and the clip celebrates the success of British efforts to obtain this instrument of mass destruction. I use instrument deliberately – in the background of the clip it would have been entirely appropriate to play Holst's brutal and relentless Mars the Bringer of War to trumpet and announce the newly acquired capacity for orchestrated death on a symphonic scale.


    MacleodCelebrating the success of such a creation as nuclear weapon capacity is according to the late Lord Macleod, blasphemy, the original sin of creating from the foundation blocks of God's Creation, an instrument capable of global annihilation. I do not see that theological pronouncement as an overstatement. It is one of the most important prophetic denunciations of military and political power in the history of Scottish theology; theology, not politics. But it is theology effectively used to critique all intellectual accommodations to nuclear weapons as an option for the Christian mind. Of course not everyone agreed with Macleod; and not all will agree with what I'm writing here. But go back and look at the clip, listen to the narrative, and then read the Sermon on the Mount. How do the two inhabit the same moral, theological and political universe? 

    One further thought – the bomb lauded in the 1950's clip is a mere firework when compared with the destructive payload of current contemporary capacity. I recall Jesus argument from the lesser to the greater…how much more…?

  • The Psalms of Smudge 10: What are cats that you are mindful of them?

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    But their idols are…,
        made by human hands.

    They have mouths, but cannot speak,
        eyes, but cannot see.
     They have ears, but cannot hear,
        noses, but cannot smell.
     They have hands, but cannot feel,
        feet, but cannot walk,
        nor can they utter a sound with their throats…

        But I Praise you

        for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,

        your works are wonderful,I know that full well.

  • Atonement: to guide our feet into the way of peace.

    My Ordination Bible is a beautifully bound King James Version which remains always to hand, and is read for the soft draping comfort of holding such a lovely volume, and for the glory of the language and as a reminder of what my life, finally and gladly is about. There's something all but sacramental in the recurring act of holding that one Bible, handed to you at the time you make promises which will thereafter guide, undergird and sustain your life of faith.

    I went back to my Bible today after reading the last pages of F W Dillisone's old fashioned volume, The Christian Understanding of the Atonement. Old fashioned in this case is a positive term, an affirming and approving response to a book that is relaxedly learned, displaying elegant architectonics, broad in sympathy, precise in analysis and eschewing controversy and partisan posturing. Published 45 years ago it remains one of the finest treatments of the atonement for theologians; polemicists and partisan apologists for this or that theory of the atonement will be definition be impatient with it – and be the poorer for their quick all too narrow judgements. This is a book in which scholarship is in the service of faith, and the exposition of the living core of Christian faith is reverent, searching and sufficiently open to allow for mystery and intellectual humility that feels no discomfort in not knowing, and opting for wonder rather than cognitive closure.

    http://madamepickwickartblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/giotto13.jpg


    On the last page Dillistone quotes Luke 1.78-79, as follows:

    Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

    To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

    The last words of the book are from Auden's Christmas Oratorio, the words of Simeon:

    "Because of his visitation we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment  we pray that following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace."    page 422.

    The Giotto Deposition shows Jesus gazed upon from different perspectives and vantage points. And what each saw was cause for wonder, prayer, tears and thanksgiving. Worship always out-thinks and out-wonders controversy.

  • What’s the Difference Between Finding God’s Will and Good Decision Making?

    A bright sunlit path,

    blue door in summer shadow,

    walk through, see what’s next.

  • Psalms of Smudge 9: The Zoom Lens of God’s Mercy

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    I sit down and when I rise up you discern my thoughts from afar.

    (Psalm 139 v 3)

  • C H Spurgeon: A Baptist Mystic

    Last week I wrote about Bernard McGinn's series of encyclopedic works on Christian m ysticism, under the general title The Presence of God. So far five volumes are published with two more scheduled over the next few years. I was aware as I wrote it that the descriptors Mystic and Baptist don't seem to fit easily into each other's company. But that's to misunderstand both terms.

    Baptists are certainly resistant to esoteric spirituality, and dismissive of gnostic claims to special extra-biblical revelation. We are deeply committed to a biblically shaped faith and experience. We draw our understanding of Christian life from a faithful following after Jesus the risen Lord as revealed in Scripture, acknowledging the One who is the "sole and absolute authority in our faith and practice". But it is precisely that intetentionally Christocentric faith, rooted in the realities of the Triune God, that provides a source of deep and tranformative encounter with the God who draws us into the love and life of that eternal Triune relationship of creative, outflowing Love that is the source and fountain of Divine Grace.

    Christian Mysticism and Baptist identity don't trip of the tongue as two descriptors you would expect to use naturally. In fact chalk and cheese, apples and pears seem more logical pairings than Baptist mystic – you would think. And you'd be wrong. C H Spurgeon, whose bust sits on my bookshelf ( a Victorian one, not a 20th century repro!) was a Baptist Mystic, and his mysticism, was profoundly, exuberantly, Christological. He might have scowled at the comparison, but his best writing of the experience of rapture and vivid encounter with Jesus Christ compares with Bernard of Clairvaux's Christocentric rhapsodising, Teresa of Avila's joy in the Crucified and Charles Wesley's praise band approach to celebrating the Saviour and the Gospel of captivating overwhelming love, with words used as creatively and startlingly as Van Gogh's most life transcending juxtapositions of colour, image and human experience.

    The last hymn Spurgeon wrote (which can be sung to the tune Nottignham) is a remarkable text of Baptist Mysticism. It deserves a place in any anthology of mystical writings.

    "I will make the dry lands a spring of living water"

    The Drop that Grew into a Torrent
    A Personal Experience

         1. All my soul was dry and dead

             Till I learned that Jesus bled;

             Bled and suffered in my place,

             Bearing sin in matchless grace.


         2. Then a drop of Heavenly love

             Fell upon me from above,

             And by secret, mystic art

             Reached the center of my heart.


         3. Glad the story I recount,

             How that drop became a fount,

             Bubbled up a living well,

             Made my heart begin to swell.


         4. All within my soul was praise,

             Praise increasing all my days;

             Praise which could not silent be:

             Floods were struggling to be free.


         5. More and more the waters grew,

             Open wide the flood-gates flew,

             Leaping forth in streams of song

             Flowed my happy life along.


         6. Lo! A river clear and sweet

             Laved my glad, obedient feet!

             Soon it rose up to my knees,

             And I praised and prayed with ease.


         7. Now my soul in praises swims,

             Bathes in songs, and psalms and hymns;

             Plunges down into the deeps,

             All her powers in worship steeps.


         8. Hallelujah! O my Lord!

             Torrents from my soul are poured!

             I am carried clean away,

             Praising, praising all the day.


         9. In an ocean of delight,

             Praising God with all my might,

             Self is drowned; so let it be:

             Only Christ remains to me.

                —C.H. Spurgeon, 1890

     

     

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  • Psalms of Smudge 8: Feline Faith and Feeling Fear

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    When I am afraid I put my trust in you (Psalm 56.3)

  • Theology as Listening for the Voice of God from a Disposition of Adoration.

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    Good learning calls, no less than teaching does, for courtesy, respect, a kind of reverence; for facts and people, evidence and argument, for climates of speech and patterns of behaviour different from our own.

    Watchfulness is indeed in order, but endless suspicion and mistrust are not.

    There are affinities betwen the courtesy, the delicacy of attentiveness, required for friendship;

    the singleminded passionate disinterestedness without which no scholarly or scientific work is done;

    and the contemplativity which strains, without credulity, to listen for the voice of God – who does not shout.

    Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God, pages 10-11.

    That's as good a description of learning and teaching in an interactive class as I have ever come across. Theological Education at its best is training in conversation and courtesy, forming habits of enquiry and friendship, encouraging an intellect both passionate and contemplative, inviting on a journey in good company to new places, and doing so at the summons of the Eternal God, in the company of the often unrecognised stranger who comes alongside us as Risen Lord, and our hearts burning within us by the fire of a Holy Love whose presence both consumes and makes new.

    Such attitudes and dispositions don't come easily. They require a willingness to unlearn, to take the risk of relinquishing old certainties to make possible the discovery of new truth. They demand that we unclench our hold on unexamined assumptions and open our hands and heart and mind to the vast realities of God who cannot be tamed by our dogmas, nor contained in our theology be it ever so sound. In effect, such dispositions require faith not certainty, trust not defensive tactics lest truth unsettle us, a surrender of will and intellect to the One who leads us into all truth, who takes of the things of Jesus and teaches them to us, and a joyful freedom to dive into the depths of the grace and mercy and mystery of the unsearchable riches of Christ.

    Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb, despite the ambiguities of Renaissance ecclesial and patronage power games, infuses enquiry and contemplation with adoring prayer, focusing wonder and worship on 'the Lamb in the midst of the throne'. It is a powerful statement of the fundamental disposition of the theologian.

  • The Psalms of Smudge 7 : Purrfect Praise and Feline Faith

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    My Tongue will sing of your righteousness….(Psalm 51.14)

    My heart overflows with a good theme…My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. (Psalm 45.1)