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The Agonie, George Herbert

There's a well previewed book due out in June, but carrying an intentionally mischievous title. You can read it for yourself! The sub-title helps to soften the murderous sentiment, and maybe the writer has a point. Even a devoted George Herbert fan like me would be hard pushed to defend Herbert's The Country Parson as a handbook for 21st Century pastoral ministry. (Of course Herbert was writing in his own context of time, place and ecclesial tradition – not his fault if later generations couldn't think out there own contextually valid models of pastoral care). Still, the ideals that informed Herbert's impossibly high vision of the Country Pastor as omni-competent guide in matters spiritual, medical, moral, horticultural (not kidding!), and social, now sound in our context of time place and ecclesial tradition, irredeemably patronising, paternalist and so rooted in a pre-industrial, pre-modern socially stratified society that they have little remaining purchasing power. That said, we are told this book is written to encourage those who still try to live up to expectations and styles of ministry that are simply impossible in our much more complex and hard to negotiate post-Christian culture. Maybe so – still don't like the title though!

But when it comes to Herbert's poetry, there is a different story to be told. In Seventeenth Century English poetry, master Herbert is the one whose utmost art enables him to be the secretary of praise. Yes the poems are soaked in biblical allusion, devotionally charged, admittedly metaphysical, theologically sophisticated and psychologically subtle – I see all these as entire positives. The Temple remains one of the genuine masterpieces of Western Christian Literature, as Herbert's life is one of the genuine masterpieces of pastoral devotion. The Temple is as personally revealing as Augustine's Confessions and just as autobiographical; as spiritually and morally serious as The Imitation of Christ, but without that disheartening moralism that is the preoccupation of a Kempis' devotions so single-mindedly concentrated on personal improvement. Herbert's poetry is much more diagnostic of human motives, more exploratory of the mystery and meaning of grace, more sympathetic with human sin and fallibility, more aware of the objective reality of Christ's person and work. He portrays Christ in richness and variety, in meekness and majesty, and without that pastoral hectoring that (to me at least) surfaces repeatedly in a Kempis. Ironically, compared to The Imitiation, the Christ encountered in The Temple is a much more attractive call to the Christ-like life, and to dependence on that grace and love revealed in Christ as the reality of who God is, to us and for us.

One good example of what I mean is Herbert's poem "Agonie", where the passion of the Christ is drawn with verbal precision and images redolent with suffering. "Sinne and Love" are seen as the baffling realities that have turned a good purposive creation into threatened eternal tragedy. Herbert finds the crux of all meaning, the central core of creation's purpose, in God's holy love, eternal love bearing sin. The Scottish theologian James Denney described the cross and the suffering love of the crucified God as "the last reality of the universe, the truth of who God is". Poems like "The Agonie" should be cherished and learned, not as museum pieces, but as artefacts of Christ-centred truth and authentic theology, which preserve and model that capacity for unselfish wonder and faith-filled surrender fast disappearing in our frantic pursuit of that cultural chimera, 21st Century Christianity.

Incidentally, we discussed this poem in class the other day and one of our students held to the view that the poem refers to Christ in Gethsemane and uses the image of the winepress. True enough of the second stanza, but by the final stanza Calvary is in the foreground, and just behind it the eucharistic table.

Agonie

Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe 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; Sinne and Love.

        Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
        His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.

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

2 April 2009
Send them home, to think again!

A surgeon who has to perform a delicate operation on someone's spine in a couple of days time spends an entire evening drinking with friends, and is still at it at 5.a.m. just two days before the scheduled surgery.

A defence lawyer needs to get on top of a complex and complicated brief in order to construct the defence of his client. He has recently lost a high profile case because he wasn't as fully prepared as he could have been. But two days before the court appearance he spends an entire evening drinking with friends, and is still at it at 5.a.m. just two days before the scheduled court appearance.

A young professional graphic artist has an interview and possible major contract opportunity, but she will have to deliver a coherent, persuasive and forward looking presentation and business plan to demonstrate her capacities to do her dream job. But two days before the biggest interview in her life she spends an entire evening
drinking with friends, and is still at it at 5.a.m., and now only two days
before her make or break interview.

Each of them stupid eh? Irresponsible? Arrogantly and self-indulgently self absorbed, no? And if found out you'd expect them to have to take the consequences, and these consequences decisive, eh?

So when the Scotland football team make consistency into a vice because they are consistently underperforming, and two senior and key player spend
an entire evening drinking with friends, and are still at it at 5.a.m.
just two days before a make or break World Cup Qualifying match – what happens. They are sent home – then they apologises – then they come back – and then are placed on the substitute bench. Why?

Apart from the total lack of professionalism, the lack of personal discipline, absence of respect for team mates and manager, there is worst of all their cavalier "stuff you" attitude to the fans who pay serious money to watch them. If we are going to lose, better to do so with a team of players for whom playing football for their country is worth more than the price of a night's boozing.

I'm writing this before the match in question – I so hope neither player is brought on. If they are, then hard to see what discipline and respect is left in a Scottish dressing room.

P.S. It's 22.09 p.m.

Scotland 2 – Iceland 1.

And they did it without the two brilliant irreplaceables – which means they weren't irreplaceable, and not brilliant either.

1 April 2009
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