Lord, let me not live to be useless.
(John Wesley)
Grant me to recognise in
other people, Lord God, the radiance of your own face.
(Teilhard de Chardin)
Lord give me work till my
life shall end, and life till my work is done.
(Based on Epitaph of writer, Winifred
Holtby)
Preaching this morning on the wisdom that comes from above. How to live the life we are given wisely, faithfully and with a discerning heart. I Kings chapter 3 and James chapter 3. The last hymn, 'God of Grace and God of Glory, by Harry Emerson Fosdick, is one I don't suppose is sung in many places now. (how many of you even know it? – the words are reproduced below). It doesn't fit the taste, appetite or idiom of much modern praise music, and it isn't guitar friendly. A couple of times it fails on the gender inclusive standards – though I've little doubt if Fosdick had been writing today he would have been entirely sensitive to the need to negotiate the tensions between gender inclusive language and theological and linguistic integrity.
Opposed by Fundamentalists (and by more moderate voices) as a Liberal, there's little doubt Fosdick was disturbingly progressive in theology, an advocate of a social gospel, and an active advocate for modernist restatements of Christian faith. It's an often told story that sometimes on a Sunday when he was being lambasted from the pulpit by outspoken opponents, he was in his own church praying for those ministries and churches.
At the end of our service this morning we will offer a responsive closing prayer using the last two lines of the second stanza: "Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days". The use throughout of the second person plural is crucial – this is a prayer of the Church. Several lines are one liner prayers, "Free our hearts to faith and praise", or brief petitions "Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore", and the two lines of our closing prayer. Fosdick's own autobiography, The Living of These Days, is a moving account of his spiritual pilgrimage.
What is unmistakable on any fair reading of his own telling of his story, is the faith he had in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the Gospel as good news for humanity. Expressed through his passionate care for humanity locally and globally, and his fear of the foolishness of the mid-20th century trend towards living in a menacing world without moral reference to God as revealed in Jesus. The hymn was written in the 1930's, during the rise of Fascism and National Socialism in Europe, the Great Depression as the backdrop, and Fosdick having turned pacifist following his experiences in the First World War. So the hymn is dated in its idiom and context – not though, in its underlying yearning for a more securely founded way of living responsibly and faithfully these days. Wisdom and courage we still need; weak resignation we still need saving from; we are still rich in things and poor in soul; and more than ever we require to pray, "Free our hearts to faith and praise".
God of grace and God of glory,
On Thy people pour Thy power.
Crown Thine ancient church’s story,
Bring her bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the facing of this hour
Lo! the hosts of evil ’round us,
Scorn Thy Christ, assail His ways.
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days.
Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.
Set our feet on lofty places,
Gird our lives that they may be,
Armored with all Christ-like graces,
In the fight to set men free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
That we fail not man nor Thee.
Save us from weak resignation,
To the evils we deplore.
Let the search for Thy salvation,
Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Serving Thee Whom we adore.
Sheila's reading Sisters of Sinai by Janet Soskice. More about her in an earlier post I did here. Part of the story of these two remarkable women brings them into contact with Professor William Robertson Smith, a young professor of biblical studies at the Free Church College, Aberdeen, in the 1870's. His critical approach to biblical studies (rejection of Moses' authoriship of Deuteronomy for example), led to his deposition in 1881 from his professorship, a tragedy that ranks high on the list of religious own goals in Scotland.
Smith eventually moved to Cambridge where he encountered these two sisters, pioneers in the discovery and transcription of important ancient biblical and extra-biblical manuscripts. Robertson Smith died relatively young (48 years) of tuberculosis. Once or twice I've visited his grave in the little graveyard in Keig, Aberdeenshire, a peaceful, shaded incline facing out across the shire. During his trial before the church courts he made a now famous affirmation of what he believed to be the nature and authority of Scripture. It didn't satisfy his examiners' and critics' much more conservative convictions on the nature and authority of the Bible, though what he says is deeply indebted to the Reformers' theology of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit as the sine qua non of biblical interpretation. But his defence remains one of the most eloquent and sincere statements of believing criticism in which faith and thought are held in a legitimate tension of spiritual integrity and intellectual honesty.
"If I am asked why I receive Scripture as the Word of God and the only
perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant
Church, because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God,
because in the Bible alone I find God drawing near to men in Christ Jesus and
declaring to us in Him His will for our salvation. And this record I know to be
true by the witness of His Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none
other than God Himself is able to speak such words to my soul."
W. R., Answer to the Form of Libel now
before the Free Church Presbytery of Aberdeen (Edinburgh
………………………………………..
You can find out more about Smith on this website devoted to him. It contains the full text of a recent Aberdeen PhD which was supervised by Prof. William Johnstone one of our leading authorities on Robertson Smith and editor of a fine collection of essays about him.
The year before he was killed in a crash in an experimental plane, I went to John Denver's concert in Edinburgh Usher Hall, 1996. Along with the Joan Baez concert in Glasgow around the same time, it remains one of the most memorable live music experiences of my life. One singer, two guitars and the best part of three hours of song, conversation, laughter and by a process of emotional assimilation a shared love of humanity, our world and all the possibilities of a life enriched by compassion, humour and eyes open to the gift that life is. Being there was a privilege, and if he had been there for more than one evening I'd have gone for a repeat performance – because he was a consummate performer who respected, liked and connected with his audiences.
Over the years I've patiently and heedlessly endured the raised eyebrows, knowing smirks, pitying shakes of the head and general dismissiveness of many who wondered about my idiosyncratic enthusiasm for a smiling bespectacled country singer with a page boy haircut and granny glasses. Don't care. John Denver's music has been a source of serious reflection, more or less innocent fun, and humanely conceived lyrics of political protest and articulate environmentalism since I was a teenager and his music was produced on that cutting edge technology called vinyl. And anyway, who else in the 1970's was singing about overharvesting the seas, the pollution of the oceans, (the track calypso is dedicated to Jacques Cousteau), the environmental impact of forest stripping, and the irreversible loss of birds, animals and flowers due to consummate consumer greed? Some others, but not many of them so persistently. Why tell you all this?
Just recovered three CD's that I was sure had simply vanished without trace into the CD warehouses of those who borrow on a permanent basis. One of them is my favourite album which I still have on vinyl – Windsong. Just spent an hour listening to it and thinking of music as an emotional holiday, a gift that takes us out of ourselves and yet can also take us deeper into ourselves. I suppose much of this album drew on early New Age imagery and discourse – but the wider application of lyrics about friendship as the gift that dispels loneliness, about the search for who we are and where in the world we fit in, and about that world as fragile, finite gift to be cherished. Denver was all but pantheist in his worldview; but much of what he sings calls us to a responsible cherishing of our earth, and an underlying optimism about the future that as a Christian I find more securely rooted in a doctrine of creation and a redemptive eschatology.
Denver was heavily involved in global humanitarian work, particularly on behalf of charities tackling world hunger; his song 'I want to live' became an anthem which expresses the human rights issues that underlie the economic imbalance between the developed world and the two thirds world. There isn't the hard edged rage of the prophet Amos, but there is passionate protest in the plea of the hungry as sung by Denver:
I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be, I want to live
Have you gazed out on the ocean
seen the breaching of a whale?
Have you watched the dolphins frolic in the foam?
Have you heard the song the humpback hears
five hundred miles away
Telling tales of ancient history
of passages and home
I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be, I want to live
For the worker and warrior, the lover and the liar
For the native and the wanderer in kind
For the maker and the user and the mother and her son
We are standing all together
face to face and arm in arm
We are standing on the treshold of a dream
No more hunger, no more killing
no more wasting life away
It is simply an idea
and I know its time has come
I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be…..
I learned that love was our Lord's meaning.
And I saw for certain, both here and elsewhere,
that before ever he made us, God loved us;
and that his love has never slackened,
nor ever shall.
In this love all his works have been done,
and in this love he has made everything serve us;
and in this love our life is everlasting.
Our beginning was when we were made,
but the love in which he made us
never had beginning.
In it we have our beginning.
All this we shall see in God forever.
May Jesus grant this.
(Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love. (1342-c.1416)
Julian's Revelations of Divine Love is amongst the half dozen or so classic texts of Christian Spirituality that I've read and pondered regularly for years. Call it my devotional canon. Such reading isn't informational but formational and transformational; these texts, along with Scripture, nourish the theological imagination, sustain spiritual passion, recall dissipated affections to a new focus, touch us in those deep recesses of love and hopefulness about ourselves, that only grace can galvanise and organise.
Sometimes folk ask how I get the time to do all the reading I do. Here's part of the answer. How we love God and follow faithfully after our Lord will be different for each of us, as different as we are from each other. Not everyone finds reading brings them closer to God – though I think more could. But I am persuaded (I love the AV rendering of Paul's certainties!) – that good pastoral care includes amongst its goals enabling and encouraging a community to think, reflect, read and learn together of the wisdom to live for Christ faithfully and well. Many don't read deeply and slowly because no one has ever helped them make the connection between such reading and the way they view the world, their faith and the essential connections between our understanding of the world, our knowledge of God, our prayers, and the quality of our Christian faithfulness.
Time for reading, time for work, time for the people at the heart of our lives, time for sleep, time for serving others, time for music, exercise, eating, TV, surfing – but in the end much of what we do with time comes down to choices, preferences, priorities and life circumstances. Some of the great Christian spiritual teachers had a fixed habit of 15 minutes a day for slow reading of classic spiritual texts. Forget The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and The Purpose Driven Life. I've often enough disparaged such culturally determined life management books – at times unfairly. They do what they do. But when it comes to the necessary deepening of our relationship to God, a surer less partial grasp of our faith, a more reflectively compassionate looking out on the world, a more cherishing attitude to the Body of Christ, a more penetrating analysis of our time and place in the purposes of God in a world like ours – when it comes to all that, such books don't do what needs to be done.
These Christian spiritual teachers approached their reading of classic texts with a 'give us this day our daily bread' urgency. They knew they needed nourishment, strength, energy, and they felt and befriended their hunger as a necessary inner reminder that they are not self-sustaining, or self-propelled or capable of growth without food. Food for the heart, the imagination, the conscience, the mind – food for thought, food for energy, food for strength, and thus, food to live. And for a quarter of an hour a day, week on week, month on month, year on year, they made time to slow down and wait in the company of Christ, learning from the cloud of witnesses what it is to be loved by God and to love God. And in that Love to understand more what it meant for them to be called to be part of God's mission to redeem and renew, to reconcile and restore a fallen but God-loved creation.
So, Julian again:
"In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size
of a hazelnut, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought "What may this be?" And it was generally answered thus:
"It is all that is made." I marvelled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have
sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: "It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it."
Recent visit to the People's Palace where we took some photos. A recent post became an essay on sectarianism, social justice and the coloured history of Glasgow. Here's a couple of the photos – it should be clear from the title of this post which refers to beauty……
Apart from the fact they were taken in the same place, the connection is my father's wide and eclectic horticultural skill. He grew cacti and succulents as a hobby, and introduced me to the beauty of the Himalayan Mountain flower, the Hibiscus. I enjoyed a meander around this mini-sub tropical garden and encountering both – brought back memories of helping to riddle leaf mould, peat, sand and soil in varied measure to make up the requisite compost for my dad – whose compost recipes involved quantity measurement as finely calibrated and as securely kept as the recipe for Irn Bru.
Me with cactus growing out of my head – deliberate pose adopted during an attack of childishness.
These are amongst the most beautiful flowers in the world – way ahead of orchids for me, though the flower only lasts a day or two.
My thanks to Jason who brought this quotation to my attention – it provides more than enough thought for the day.
Today I am making time to pray for Jack Waterhouse a fourteen year old pupil. And for Peter Harvey the teacher now charged with his attempted murder. And for their respective families. Whatever explanation emerges from police enquiries about what happened in that classroom, the reality of a boy seriously head injured and a teacher remanded in cusody for attempted murder, gives cause for very serious thought.
Fourteen year old pupils are legally children; teachers have a duty of care; inside a school classroom is in theory, and ought to be in practice one of the safest social environments for children and young adults. Violence by a teacher against a pupil should be unthinkable, an option so guarded round by management processes, professional ethics and prudence, human and institutional support resources, internalised and restraining social values, and high ideals of educational vocation, that long before violence erupts there are enough fail-safe and prevention systems in place. But obviously not.
Whatever the provocation (and we are yet to hear what that might have been), but whatever the provocation, such a violent assault on a pupil and at least two others is unacceptable, and absolutely requires the intervention of the law. What charges Peter Harvey eventually faces, any sentence he receives if found guilty, and how far his act of violence will affect Jack Waterhouse, his family and the class that witnessed what happended – who knows? But it is such questions that must now inform our prayers, for healing of people indelibly wounded by this tragic happening, for justice to be seen as more than due process of law but to include the making right of whatever it was that went so badly wrong, for pupils and parents, teacher and school staff, and local community to learn from what happened, and then to allow those lessons to be the basis of real changes more widely and deeply in school culture and political goals.
Parents say the teacher snapped. Previous pupils turned up at court with letters of support and character endorsements. Earlier reports suggested the teacher had previous underlying health issues. Maybe so. Such fragments need context in a more thoroughly investigated and more carefully told story. What happened was shocking, because it shouldn't have happened – ever. But such acts have a context, each person caught up in it lives in a community, that living community has its peculiar history, values, relationships and tensions – and so the task of interpreting what happened will require more than forensic expertise.
Like fragments of text, the evidence gathered requires a disciplined hermeneutic of human behaiviour, intellectual integrity and moral imagination, and a willingness to ask the kind of questions that interrogate not only victim, perpetrator and witnesses. There are questions for the school, for the education authority, for Government – about support for staff, about resources and budgets, about teacher's experience of fear and intimidation, about pressures on schools, staff and pupils to perform to externally imposed standards, about a culture of failure and success too closely tied to statistics, performance indicators and funding issues.
Because what happened in that pressure-cooker classroom is not likely to be a one-off meteorite in the back garden,but a particularly tragic example of human beings placed under intolerable strain. Eventually the courts will decide who is "to blame". Perhaps only a more public enquiry can answer the deeper question, "Why did this happen?"
And in the meantime, two people's lives are broken, others are traumatised, a community is angry, bewildered and demanding answers. So today would be a good day for Churches to pray for our schools, their pupils and teachers, and for that great human achievement that modern educational approaches don't use much in their documentation – wisdom.
Father in heaven!
Our thought is turned toward Thee; again it seeks Thee at this hour, not with the unsteady step of a lost traveller but with the sure flight of a bird homeward bound.
Grant then that our confidence in Thee be not a fugitive thought, a momentary leap, a mistaken appeasement of the heart and flesh.
Grant that our aspirations toward Thy Kingdom, our hopes for Thy glory, be not unproductive birth pangs or waterless clouds, but that from the fulness of our heart they will rise toward Thee, and that being heard they will quench our thirst like the refreshing dew and satisfy us forever like Thy heavenly manna.
P. D. LeFevre,(Ed.), Prayers of Kierkegaard, page 55
Didn't say in yesterday's post – Buechner is an ordained Presbyterian minister as well as a perceptive humane novelist and essayist. So quite a lot of his published work is sermons. In an age when publishers are no longer interested in the obsolete genre of the printed sermon, Buechner defies the odds. His sermons read like wisdom literature – at times gently sceptical like Ecclesiastes, or spiritual experience is shaped and Psalmed into praise, or reflected experience is distilled in Proverbs about the fear of the Lord and what makes for the good life, or again, human love is celebrated in unabashed enjoyment as in the Song of Songs. But all of them immersed in the Gospel, and opening up to those with enough faith to know they are desperate, the realities of mercy and judgement and love and forgiveness, the promise of new possibility through the call to enter the Kingdom, and a way of life shaped by cross-bearing and party going celebration.
Here's an example – an extract from a Church anniversary sermon, called "The Clown in the Belfry." :
That's the one and only thing I've been able to find out about Lyman Woodard, whoever he was, but it is enough. I love him for doing what he did. It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of New England practicality and prudence. It stood the whole world on its head just like Lyman himself standing upside down on his. And it was a magical and magnificent and Mozartian thing to do.
If the Lord is indeed our Shepherd, then everything goes topsy turvy. Losing becomes finding and crying becomes laughing. The last becomes first and the weak becomes strong. Instead of life being done in by death in the end, as we always supposed, death is done in finally by life in the end. If the Lord is our host at the great feast, then the sky is the limit.
That's why I read Buechner.
The photo above is of the Congregational Church in Henniker, New Hampshire where my friend Becky (pictured here) is minister. So far as I know she hasn't stood on her head in the belfry yet. Buechner lives in Vermont, just a wee bit up the road!