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Hymn to God the Father, John Donne

John Donne is one of the greatest English prose writers. He was also one of the most accomplished and metaphysical of Seventeenth Century poets. His sermons and poems are richly embroidered with imagery and allusions, classical and biblical, theological and philosophical, many of them obscure and at best enigmatic to those less familiar with Donne's cultural and intellectual worlds. He treated the big themes of human existence and the overwhelming questions posed to the guilty conscience by a God whose love and justice he saw as absolute, and therefore absolutely decisive for the destiny of each individual soul, including and especially his own.

Anguish and ecstasy, fear and joy, guilt and forgiveness, desolation and consolation; such are the poles of human experience between which Donne composed his sermons and poems. And when allowances are made for the rhetoric and discourse of Seventeenth Century divinity, many of the poems still speak with universal relevance to those deep inner turmoils of conscience and those serial disappointments that can so dishearten us when we would be better than we know we are.

The tortured uncertainties of Romans 7 describe Donne's oscillation between regretted sin and longed for holiness. "For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do….O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Few poets have faced death with such honest human terror balanced by a faith "troubled on every side but not distressed…perplexed but not in despair,…cast down but not destroyed…" And he often finished his most searching poems with recovered assurance resonant with Paul's great sigh of relief – "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord…."

Here is one of my favourite Donne poems – for those not familiar with it remember Donne's name was pronounced "Dun" – and so the wordplay becomes a playful dialogue with God in a prayer about Donne's ultimate concerns.

HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.
by John Donne

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;

And having done that, Thou hast done ;

I
fear no more.

1 April 2009
God’s mercy, Robert Herrick

This is one of my favourite wee books. Bound in soft green leather and published late 19th Century by Nelson of Edinburgh, it often goes in my pocket if I'm away and want to have something of substance to browse. The devotional poetry of the 17th Century is a theologically enriched vein of prayerful reflection. To be sure there are extravagances and conceits, and an impression of overdone cleverness and overwrought emotions. But much of that is because we live in a wildly different age, when we are likely to balk at the language of devotional intimacy and intensity, even when it is written in beautiful cadences and theological precision laden with metaphysical depth. We prefer the contemporary praise song with all its………………………(please fill in as appropriate).

But poets like George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, John Donne, Robert Herrick, Richard Crashaw, wrote their verse with devout seriousness and intensely stoked religious affections. And they wrote out of an instinctive sense of the soul's dependence on God, and with an unflinching honesty about human fallenness enountered by a love both infinite and holy. Leading up to Holy Week I'm going to post a 17th Century poem a day, offering a brief comment which alongside the poem, you can take or leave – but please take the poem. I'm leaving this one with its original spelling and punctuation – so all you incurable correctors of errant apostrophes, take it up with Herrick!

GOD'S MERCY

Gods boundlesse mercy is, to sinfull man,
Like to the ever wealthy ocean:
Which though it sends forth thousand streams, 'tis n'ere
Known,or els seen to be the emptier:
And though it takes all in, 'tis yet no more
Full, and fild-full, then when full-fild before.

31 March 2009
Sisters of Sinai – best lecture I’ve heard in years!

On Thursday night last, Janet Soskice was all that you want in a philosophical theologian delivering a public lecture which is the story of two Ayrshire Victorian women and their extraordinary contribution to NT textual criticism. In their fifties they visited Mt Sinai Monastery and discovered a palimpsest on which were the faded words of the four Gospels, dating back much earlier than previously known texts, and representing a crucial comparative landmark for textual critics.

My
childhood was spent in Ayrshire. One of my side-interests is the
history of NT Interpretation. Biography is a favourite genre and an
important theological resource in its own right. My own subject fields
are theology and history of Christianity, but this was a masterclass in controlled erudition laced with gentle but telling humour. Add to these Soskice's gift
for telling a story and building a rounded biographical portrait of these two remarkable women,
and the obvious sub-stratum of assiduous research behind this lecture –
and it was indeed a very satisfying evening.

Sheila and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I sent an email to say thank you to Dr Soskice for
telling this story, and recovering the contribution of two women to NT
scholarship. The work of excavating lives like these from a largely
male dominated history remains an important form of protest and balance
restoration in historiography, and perhaps particularly in the historiography of Church history. Even in the telling of the story of these two women, the academic jealousies of Victorian Cambridge, the in-fighting of male scholars claiming intellectual property rights over their original work, the appearance of Professor William Robertson Smith (one of the greatly wronged scholars in the collision of ideas that accompanied the demise of Victorian Scottish Calvinism thirled to the Westminster Confession) as their sponsor in establishing the importance of their find, all of it a tale of intrigue, amateur versus professional scholarship, and huge stakes. If this story is dramatised for TV it would be rivetting viewing – the book on which the lecture was based is now on sale. It's a dead cert holiday read for Sheila and I. The story of a key episode in NT scholarship that doesn't even get a footnote in the standard histories – unlike Tischendorff, they were women, and they didn't remove the codex – they photographed it onto glass slides and then returned to transcribe it. Oh, and by the way, these Irvine lassies (amateur scholars, indeed!), taught themselves Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Egyptian, Syriac – and the Syriac was mastered in 9 months!

29 March 2009
The cost of cost effective living

For a long time now we have registered our number to prevent cold-calls and the really annoying 6.00 p.m. invasion of privacy by tele-salespeople. Those faceless voices who say your name as if you were their next door neighbour and you speak on neighbourly terms every day.

But some still slip through. In the past couple of weeks I've had the offer of better deals on Gas, electricity, the central heating contract, and double glazing replacement. Tele-sales people have taken to the culture of switch your supplier as to a natural law, which allows them to assume everyone lives their lives pre-programmed to respond with a yes to the market mantras about saving you money and getting you the best deal; all you have to do is believe costs should reduce with the predictability of the law of gravity. Assumed customer greed is a great sales pitch. Undercutting the competition with introductory discounts, couched in hidden disclaimers and conditions, there is an assumption if they can get you talking, you'll soon chase after the too good to be true alternative deal.

So it comes as a surprise verging on shock when you cut in and say you are happy with the present supplier. "But we are offering a better value for money deal" is the early trump card. But what if you don't want to play energy switch whist – and the trump card is therefore irrelevant.

Obviously I (the slow on the uptake customer) didn't understand first time round – so paraphrased into words of one syllable, each word to be enunciated with conditioned patience for optimum effect.

"We – will – save- you – cash. This – phone – call – is – great news – for – you. Switch – to – us – now,- buy – from – us -, don't – be – daft -, you – will – have – more – to – spend – on – discretionary non-essentials and lifestyle peripherals"

Sorry the last phrase contains words of more than one syllable (and is a more literary paraphrase than the more to the point rejoinder, 'More to spend on yourself"). But what I am trying to convey here is the emotional and ethical distress of the tele-sales caller, encountering the non-greedy; the near incoherent disbelief verging on existential angst brought on by threatened worldview by someone who defies the "natural law" of market forces. How can the tele-sales caller explain this departure from a usually rock solid tele-sales script? And how can they deal with the low grade panic induced by the dawning realisation on one whose job is to sell stuff, that they are encountering a being from another planet where customer loyalty still counts, and where life has more important things to get energised about than a switch of energy supplier at someone else's not impartial behest.

Somewhere in the training course for tele-sales cold callers, there is a need for a seminar on "How to Deal with Customers Satisfied with the Service Offered by Your Market Competitiors", closely followed by another on "How to Deal With the Ungreedy". Then with a third honours level module "On Coping with Rejection Without Losing Face / Faith". In the meantime I treat such calls as ad hoc seminars on "How to be Courteous Through Gritted Teeth." Though I have wondered what might happen if I started to share my faith with such uninvited guests by quoting Jesus' words about the God who knows what I need before I even ask, and maybe doing a little tele-sales evangelism of my own…………….. :))

28 March 2009
Finally Comes the Poet: The poet in the moment of preaching.

"The event of preaching is an event in transformed imagination. Poets, in the moment of preaching, are permitted to perceive and voice the world differently, to dare a new phrase, a new picture, a fresh juxtaposition of matters long known. Poets are authorized to invite a new conversation, with new voices sounded, new hearings possible. The new conversation may end in freedom to trust and courage to relinquish. The new conversation, on which our very lives depend, requires a poet and not a moralist. Because finally church people are like other people; we are not changed by new rules. The deep places in our lives – places of resistance and embrace – are not ultimately reached by instruction. Those places of resistance and embrace are reached only by stories, by images, metaphors, and phrases that line out the world differently, apart from our fear and hurt. The reflection that comes from the poet requires playfulness, imagination and interpretation. The new conversation allows for ambiguity, probe, and daring hunch. It is only free people, in contexts of trust, who are able to walk close to the scandal, to be seen in its presence, to live by its gifts. (Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet, page 109-110)

……………………………..

More and more I'm discovering important connections between theology and poetry as two different forms of utterance that make possible an expressive construal of how we see the world and understand our experience within it. Brueggemann's point is that preaching and poetry are also related forms of speech, acts of utterance which change the way we or others see the world and ourselves in it. Brueggemann understands as few others do, that the gift of language makes it possible to conceive of alternative worlds, to build hope into the future, to configure a worldview that is not closed but open to the possibility of God's own speech being heard and action being discerned.

Brueggemann accords preaching a role and a seriousness in the life of the Christian community unmatched amongst other contemporary biblical scholars. And this book is where he gathers his most provocative and purposeful thoughts on what can and should happen when the preacher's words faithfully echo and question the Word.

27 March 2009
Wisdom for learners and teachers, from the Desert Fathers

Wisdom for learners and teachers, from the Desert Fathers:

A visitor came to the monastery looking for the purpose and meaning of life.

The Teacher said to the visitor, "If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else."

"I know", the visitor said. "To find Truth I must have an overhwelming passion for it."

"No", the Teacher said. "In order to find Truth you must have an unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong."

26 March 2009
Jesus Through the Centuries – “My Jesus, My Saviour….”

In College I'm teaching a course on Jesus Through the Centuries. So far we've been working through the course text book by Jaroslav Pelikan. In its illustrated edition it's a sumptuous collection of artistic representation accompanied by the kind of text only a ridiculously erudite church historian could have written. But it's getting us thinking, talking, disagreeing, suggesting, questioning and wondering.

As we've watched films, read poems and hymns, gazed at paintings and read our text book, what's become clear is the way the image of Jesus can be captured and skewed, exploited and distorted, manipulated and marketed (see the picture above, used in the 2001 US elections!). But also how that same image can be represented so differently by artist and sculptor, poet and film director, and portrayed with heartbreaking beauty or heart-rending anguish, with playfulness or poignancy, with festal joy or fearful suffering.
The fun and challenge of the class is in negotiating the differences of taste and subjective response, as one student's revulsion is another student's approval; or the surprises we give each other as we see what was there to be seen but we never noticed till it was pointed out; and then those 'aha' moments when for the first time we are confronted with an image and we 'get it' – or better, it gets us.

In this Victorian painting, the Returning Knight is embraced by the crucified Christ, whose loving embrace is only possible because he has broken free from the cross – it isn't nails that held him there anyway, but a love more piercing. The sword is surrendered, the hands are in prayer, the helmet that hides the face is removed, and the once proud warrior is embraced by One whose hands are torn, whose arms are open and whose feet are still nailed to that place where all human suffering converges in the pain and cost of atoning love. Of course you might read the picture differently – and that exposes the rich suggestiveness of artistic representation. It allows us to be content with ambiguity, to be responsive to those hints of beauty and transcendence that bypass our rational exclusion zones and touch us in the deep places of the soul.

Or the Ladybird style of idyllic picturebook theology, like this picture from the mid 20th Century illustrated bible often given in Sunday School prizes. Easy now to mock, dismiss it as sentimental kitsch, and turn to those grittier or more oblique images of postmodern culture, from the brutalised Christ of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, to the Black Crucifixion (see below), painted by the Mexican Jesuit protesting against the anguish of the black urban poor.

What is clear is that Jesus
continues to fascinate and disturb, as enigma or dogma, as global icon or personal saviour, and as one whose message and significance transcends the limitations and specific contexts of culture and religious claims. It's one of the challenges to the Church in our own time to find its own ways of embodying attractively and communicating faithfully the Gospel of Jesus.

A Christian community that lives the Gospel of redemption by actively engaging with situations which are going wrong; which practices reconciliation and peacemaking as non-negotiable imperatives for followers of Jesus; that goes against the grain of consumer driven anxiety by demonstrating irresponsible levels of generosity; that insists on the value and beauty of each human being because it has learned to look on the world with the eyes of God; that so believes in resurrection that hopefulness is no facile optimism but the set of the heart towards the future. Whatever representations of Jesus are produced in art and film, poem and icon, – the real and the actual representation of Jesus is the Body of Christ living in the world, acting in the name of Jesus, in ways persuasively reminiscent of that fourfold witness we call the Gospels. As Paul would say – this is a great mystery – but none the less true and real for that.

24 March 2009
Seeking God – Benedictine Spirituality for Baptists

I'm blogging over at

Hopeful Imagination today. One of the books that has been decisive and enriching in my understanding of pastoral faithfulness. Here's a sample of Benedict's idea of a good pastoral style! I particularly like his dig at those hollow greetings that lack intentional goodwill.

Your way of acting should be different from the world's way: the love of Christ must come before all else. You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit.Never give a hollow greeting of peace, or turn away when someone needs your love.

23 March 2009
The Doctor, the Prisoner, the Nun and the Hospice Director….. Dr Sheila Cassidy

I'm preparing a course for next year based on James McClendon's Biography as Theology. I read biography as frequently as novels. Indeed a well written biography can have the qualities of a good novel – character, plot, development, and a story that may or may not resolve as expected. Some of the best writing, and most enjoyable reading, can be found in biographies. And biography can be the best kind of story, and a rich source of theology as it has been lived, practised and embodied. And according to McClendon, that's the most important kind of theology, because only embodied theology makes a difference.

In 1976 a young idealistic female doctor went to work amongst the poor in Chile. She treated a young man with a bullet wound in the leg and found herself arrested by the secret police. Her name was Sheila Cassidy. The account of her subsequent interrogation, torture and imprisonment was written as an early autobiography called Audacity to Believe, and tells the story of her struggle to find a faith adequate to her experience. I remember a couple of summer afternoons reading that book, and sensing the thrill of what happens when you have the audacity to believe God isn't on the side of the powerful – and that to our personal cost, God may call us to say so. Cassidy's own sense of vocation to be a nun was tested in the years afterwards but she quickly acknowledged that hers would be a different life and she returned to medicine.

Her subsequent career as a doctor, Director of a Hospice in Plymouth, and Consultant in Palliative Care, enabled her to use her medical skills much more widely, and to explore and expand her Christian vocation. The account of her life, and her passionate commitment to enhancing life and accompanying those late on in their life's journey, provide a study of that practical compassion that draws energy from the love of God. I think the phrase "The love of God" should always be understood as a playfully ambiguous genitive – the love of God (for us) and the love (we have) of God. What we do, we do for the love of God and by the love of God.

One of Cassidy's prayers is one I use often. It sits in my mind alongside Van Gogh's Good Samaritan painting as a description of compassion as action arising from the love of God:

Lord of the Universe
look in love upon your people.
Pour the healing oil of your compassion
on a world that is wounded and dying.
Send us out in search of the lost,
to comfort the afflicted,
to bind up the broken,
and to free those trapped
under the rubble of their fallen dreams.

Sheila Cassidy

22 March 2009
J.W. Turner, Haiku and a Walk by the Firth of Clyde

Yesterday was a beautiful day. We enjoyed the hospitality of
Ardarden Walled Garden Tearoom, and then went further down and walked along the
Firth of Clyde for a while. The hazy Spring sunshine, crisply cold with enough
of a breeze to need the thick fleece, and the play of light on water and mist,
softened all the definitions of the further away scenery. The result was
magical. Tried to capture some of the beauty and mystery in a few Haiku – but
it's a bit like trying to describe a Turner seascape – using only one half of a
keyboard! No substitute for seeing it. Going to have a special day in Edinburgh soon to see the new Turner and Italy Exhibition. In preparation I'm going to
read some John Ruskin whose prose is as luminously vague and suggestively beautiful
to read as the best of Turner's work (which he championed) is to behold.

Walking by the Firth of Clyde

Eye-watering light

forms colour, shape and shadow;

misty, mystic Clyde.

…..

Yellow, white, ecru;

watercolour masterpiece,

nature paints Turner.

…..

Horizonless view,

palimpsest of filtered rays,

coalesce in gold.

…..

In cold light of March,

promised warmth behind the haze,

nature's optimism.

…..

Opaque crystal glass

charged with amber liquid.

God toasts early Spring.

21 March 2009