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Sabbath Poem 10. 1979, Wendell Berry

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

Standing By Words. That was the title of the book, and the first essay I ever read by Wendell Berry. It becomes clear that this man cares for words, and understands the potency of speech and writing to move, inform, deceive, persuade, wound, renew, encourage, undermine and more generally influence the way human beings communicate and learn to live with each other – or not. The essay is about the abuse of language, the b aleful effects of rhetoric, propaganda, misinformation and the use of media to propagate and perpetuate lies. I may come back to that essay another time.

For now it is the positive, community building and humane constructiveness of Berry's work that is so clearly voiced in poems such as the harvest poem above. Berry's essays, novels and poems all come back to how we live more humanely, sustainably and generously all of which are captured in the ideas of neighbourliness. Except that for Berry neighbours are those who are both near us geographically, and near to us in a shared humanity bearing joint responsibility for the earth, its creatures and its future.

His Sabbath Poems are a category of writing that is deeply reflective, occasionally provocative, and range through the emotional responsiveness of a man who understands gratitude, regret, moral aspiration, love, the urge to dominance, the sin of waste and greed, the joy of growing things and letting things grow. He has a love for the land that is sacramental in its reverence, an outrage at war and mechanised technology as threats to both our human future and the wellbeing of the planet. He wants to beat swords into ploughshares, and combine harvesters after that.

Wendell Berry is that strange mixture of prophet and farmer – actually so was Amos from Tekoa. Few American poets and essayists have been as persistently articulate in arguing for a much more responsible curatorship of the earth and its resources, and in protesting the greed and waste of consumer capitalism as it lays waste the land and the lives of billions in the non-Western world. 

So when I read these Sabbath Poems I am at times re-educated in the syllabus of neighbourliness, attentiveness, and our responsibility to generosity in handling whatever I happen to own. The poem 'Whatever is foreseen in joy' leads us through our personal accomplishments and our work contribution to the necessity of grace, the reality of gift as that which we did not earn and did not make happen. "The field is tilled /' and left to grace…" 

The Genesis creation story lies like ploughed furrows throughout the poem. The sweat of the brow, ten thousand days of work, and the seventh day of Sabbath, and the verdict that "finds it is good." Yesterday, walking beside a centuries old, moss-covered, drystane dyke, looking past autumn berries to a barley field, and beyond the edge of the Scottish Highlands, it isn't hard to think and feel grateful, and wistful with that longing that such a beautiful world deserves much better of us.

It is God's world, not ours. We are stewards, not strip miners of all that we can hoard. If we do our work for ten thousand days, break sweat and feel the ache in our hands, we still need that which is beyond our effort; the gift of life, the grace that gives the growth, the mercy that sustains both us and our earth, God's earth. All of this, and more, from a poet whose voice has been for healing, of the heart, of the neighbour, and of the world. 

Just to be clear, I'm one who does like country music – Been to concerts of Mary Chapin Carpenter and Nanci Griffiths, I've had LPs and Cds with lyrics that shred the grammar and syntax of the language, I know at its sentimental worst it's like eating condensed milk, but I've also listened to words that easily slipped into prayers of praise, gratitude, lament and longing. Beth Nielsen Chapman can do that for me as can Carrie Newcomer.

Johnny Cash's Man in Black and San Quentin albums go back 50 years and some tracks still rebuke the nonsense of much of our politics. And for all his dreamy eyed and at times affected lyrics, John Denver was decades ahead on issues of environmental care, love of the animal world, and passion for a more just and peaceful world.

So, yes, I wouldn't like anyone to put me down. If they did I'd denigrate them for their musical snobbery.

Years ago, one of the finest Christians I have known, and one of the least typical, once made a suggestion at a Deacon's meeting guaranteed to  make our next Church Meeting problematic. "Why don't we allow the Church Meeting to decide on the colour scheme for the church redecoration?", he asked. The reasons why not were not slow in coming. But he persisted with that sweet reasonableness and reassuring smile that was his known modus operandi. 

So it was that at the next church meeting a range of sample colour schemes were presented to the gathered community, and all heaven broke loose! By which I mean, getting agreement in a church that prided itself in not isolating people by imposing a vote on matters of significance, proved to be harder than herding cats, or getting a camel through the eye of a needle, for that matter. 

The best outcome of the evening was that the meeting ended with everyone still friends, no decision made, and the matter remitted to the Fabric Committee! But. That first bit is important – everyone was still friends. Opinions were inevitably varied, in some cases polarised, and how could they not be? Colour is a deeply subjective form of perception. How do we know what we see is what we think we see? One person's pink is another person's lilac; and those who love green are a puzzle to those who think blue is God's colour – forgetting that grass is green and there's quite a lot of it, and the sky is blue and there's even more of that!

Pivotal in the original constitution of Crown Terrace Baptist Church, agreed in 1839, are words which were once described by a legal and historical expert on Scottish ecclesiastical documents, as uniquely lovely in their Christian spirit. Here is the Fourth and concluding clause that raised her legal and ecclesial eyebrows: 

IV

That it cannot be expected but that differences of opinion will arise upon some particular Church questions that require to be decided in some definite way, it is hereby understood that after an opportunity has been given for objections being stated, the minority shall peacefully yield to the majority, if the endeavours that may be made to procure unanimity shall prove unsuccessful.

Those sentiments were tested often enough in the history of this congregation, sometimes to the limit. The night of the paint sample charts was a further example of the Christian common sense and generosity of fellowship that enables a church to work through differences of far more moment than the colour of the paint. 

It's remarkable how much time the Apostle Paul spent on "endeavours that may be made to procure unanimity", to conserve, or create, or rebuild, or restore community. His letter to the Philippians is one long appeal and argument for "being of one mind, having the same love, being of one spirit…" 2 Corinthians is a distillation of Paul's fractious and sometimes fractured relationship with the Corinthians, laced with sarcasm, anger, regrets, defensiveness, grievance on both sides, and all of this in the same letter that says "we are ambassadors of Christ…", and insists that his ministry is one of reconciliation. 

What I learned from that early Victorian draft of a church constitution, is that the unity of a church fellowship is too essential to the Gospel for anything less important than the Gospel to threaten it. The credibility of any Christian community begins with how well they look after each other, how far the agenda is supported by the love of God poured into hearts by the Holy Spirit, and how open and generous they are to others in the name of Christ and as conduits of the love of God. That's how it begins – and it ends abruptly when a community defaults into division, selfishness, power games and unforgivingness.

Choosing colours is a matter of taste, and decisions all agree on happily don't have to be made. Choosing how we will be to each other, and to the neighbourhood within which God has placed us as a community of Christ-followers – that's on a different level of importance. For that too Paul has a Christological imperative – "Have this mind-set amongst you, which was also in Christ Jesus…" 

 

"We are reaching a time in the West when mission in a non-Christian environment is again the primary mission of the Church, and that's a time when the gap between the Gospel and human judgments of worth will become evident again.

The Good News is once again liberating in this sense of redeeming people from the false assumptions that if they are not good enough by some empty reckoning  of human success or some cultural token of worth, that they are literally worthless.

The Christian Good News is not embrace who you are, but be embraced by the unconditioned grace of God. But as we all know, saying it is one thing, living it is another….

We can all have the right words, but if the actions of our church say that racial difference, or social difference, really does matter, that Christianity doesn't really belong to people who are not like us, then we fail to communicate what grace is about.

It's a hard and costly thing to show people that they have worth in Christ and not just to tell them that. But the fact is that the amazing grace of God in Jesus Christ boils down all my assumptions about what is my own or other people's worth, in order to give me  the only worth that counts in Jesus Christ. 

To communicate that in a generation caught in the cross-fire of a cruelly judgmental world, and struggling from loss of self-esteem, would be to render the Good news good indeed." 

Transcribed from a lecture by Professor John G Barclay pn 'Paul, Grace and the Contemporary Crisis of Self-worth.' Delivered in Australia, 2018.

Full lecture, which is well worth your time, can be found on Youtube here

I was meeting a friend at the famous Horn Restaurant between Dundee and Perth. I arrived far too early and decided to have a good walk along the single track road that opens into the Tay valley. There were two hares in the recently harvested field, swallows line dancing on telephone wires, early morning sun feeling warm but a cool breeze hinting at autumn. I know, sounds idyllic.

It was, until a car appeared from behind me, creeping silently alongside, one of those electric vehicles that glide with a gentle hum. The driver rolled down his window and I apologised – I hadn’t heard him. No problem, he was used to pedestrians in a reverie! We talked, I told him I was having a walk to counter the substantial bacon roll I would soon be having with my friend. Given the legendary size of said bacon roll he suggested I might need to walk to Perth to be calorie neutral!

In a world that rushes and pushes, and can be abrasive and impatient, a quiet morning walk could have been wasted by an annoyed driver demonstrating the effectiveness of another kind of horn! Instead, a conversation, some humour, and all was still well with the world.

My point? Consideration of other folk is a low key form of loving our neighbour. There is a cumulative quality to such small acts of kindness. They become a mosaic that builds into the life we show to others, and that God sees. Jesus described such living artistry like this:  “Make sure your light shines before people, so that they will see the good things you do, and praise your Father in heaven.”

So what does Matt Dawson, TV and radio pundit and former English international rugby scrum half, have in common with George Eliot, England's greatest Victorian novelist, and Philip Davis, George Eliot's most recent biographer? I know. It's the kind of question that sounds so unlikely to have an interesting answer, that the person who formulated it needs to get a life, or at least more of a life!

I've just read Matt Dawson's comments on the England v Argentina game last night. Once again an English player was sent off for a tackle considered reckless and dangerous. In explaining the psychology of a physical contact sport played with ferocious intensity and for the highest stakes, Dawson said, "The presence of mind and that split-[second] decision thinking is missing."

With adrenaline pumping, early in a game played with controlled aggression, and in the immediacy of confrontation and collision, mistakes are made – and consequences can be both serious and last much longer than that split-second wrong call. Only if there is presence of mind and good decision making in split seconds, can the rugby player avoid the consequences of getting it wrong. The aftermath is regret, and consequences for the rest of the team. Now, hang on to that thought, and Dawson's advice about presence of mind, split-second decisions, and so making good choices, and avoiding costly mistakes.

Few people saw more clearly into the tangled connections of human motives, decisions, choices, mistakes and regrets, than George Eliot. Her novels provide some of the most morally astute, compassionate commentary on human behaviour and our tangled relationships in all of literature. Amongst the recurring themes is the tension created in our choices and decisions between what she called in one of her letters, "the immediacy of experience, and retrospective reflection."

In other words, every decision we make has consequences, and sometimes the consequences for a split second decision can be far-reaching, and unforgiving. It isn't that we meant to hurt, offend, cause to suffer, but nevertheless outcomes cannot always be foreseen, or controlled once set in motion.

Philip Davis has written an extraordinary study of how George Eliot the author has written her inner autobiography into her greatest novels. The chapter I read this morning coincided in insight with exactly what Matt Dawson was saying in the post-match analysis. What the English players lack, at times, is "The presence of mind and that split-[second] decision thinking."

What Davis points our about George Eliot's moral imagination is that she gets it; it is the very nature of moral life that we are all faced with situations that require presence of mind and split-second decision making, and sometimes we get it wrong. And when we do, in the moral discourse of George Eliot it is because in the "immediacy of experience" we make our move, and only afterwards is there time for "retrospective reflection." Followed by feelings of regret, guilt, and the need to live with the consequences.

I am currently writing a paper on the decline of the humanities in education, and asking what we are losing when those subjects that teach us to think reflectively, creatively, intuitively, imaginatively, are relegated to options rather than essentials in human education and formation. Story-telling is one of the ways we learn to imagine, to reflect, to empathise, to encounter alternative ways of seeing the world and of being in the world. Reading stories well is an exercise in moral formation and the opening up of the moral imagination.

That Matt Dawson's diagnosis of a malaise in an international rugby squad, echoes in significant ways the moral universe of George Eliot, I find deeply heartening! And you would think, wouldn't you, that with three red cards in 4 games, the coach will sort this out by re-telling the stories for "retrospective reflection." This followed by instructing those muscled giants in the need to harmonise "the immediacy of experience" (the decision to tackle) with the post-tackle "retrospective experience", (of a red card), and a weakened team.

And as revision before the next game, if they don't quite get what George Eliot was on about, then let the coach quote Matt Dawson, and point out the consequences when "The presence of mind and that split-[second] decision thinking is missing." 

     

Now and again a book comes along that deserves to have a long shelf life. That happened in 1982 when The Sermon on the Mount. A Foundation for Understanding was published. Written by Robert Guelich Professor of New Testament at Fuller Seminary, it was very warmly received, and described as exactly what readers of the Sermon were looking for.

It became clear as I worked through it, that this book was in a different league to anything else available 40 years ago. It quickly established itself for the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the exegesis, and for the refusal of the writer to dilute, evade or tame the text.

Blurb on the backs of books can be a minefield of exaggeration and over-praising, and often enough written by scholarly allies. Jimmy Dunn was well above that kind of academic mutual back scratching. Here's what he says about Guelich's book:

This is quite simply the most important full-scale study of the Sermon on the Mount to be written in any language, certainly in the past forty years, and most probably in the last hundred years. It is unsurpassed in the comprehensiveness of its treatment and in its breadth of sympathy, using as it does, all the tools of current New Testament research and taking full account of both the concerns of the man in the pew and the detailed discussions of modern scholarship. It sums up the debates of more recent studies with a sure touch, and its own findings are very balanced and most persuasive. Undoubtedly this volume will provide an invaluable starting point for future research in this area for at least another generation." 

As a stand alone commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Guelich was miles ahead of any other volume in the field, and by far the most useful guide to the topography and geology, the fauna and the flora, the semantics and syntax, the grammar and theology, and the dramatic contours of the textual mountain that is the Matthean Sermon on the Mount. It remains, as Dunn predicted, a standard study, joined now by various others who bring the exegesis up to date, explore new viewpoints and approaches, and develop further our understanding of Matthew, his community, and the social milieu out of which the Gospel of Matthew emerged.

Of the books I own on the Sermon, Guelich is still one of the first to consult, supplemented by several more recent additions to the literature that match it for considered conclusions and the rounded exegesis that are the quality hallmarks of Guelich's work. 

A quick roundup of significant treatments since Guelich would include:

In 1995 Hans Dieter Betz published his long anticipated volume, The Sermon on the Mount, the Hermeneia Commentary. It is a massive critical commentary that includes comprehensive analysis and comparison of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount and Luke's Sermon on the Plain. It has established itself as the standard critical treatment, with through and detailed exegetical work using the full range of hermeneutical approaches, and with careful attention to both Hellenistic and Jewish contexts. At over 700 pages it does make for hard work, difficulty in seeing the forest because of such concentration on trees, branches and twigs of interpretive interest. But it is indispensable, Though as Eugene Boring warns, (a writer I both respect and whose own commentaries I value): "Betz has only disdain for the "tourist" who wants to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a half-hour-" Quite so!

Preachers were delighted when Scot McKnight's Sermon on the Mount was published in The Story of God series in 2013. Based on the assumption that the Bible is the story of God and God's people living in God's world, This series, and McKnight's commentary work on three levels: Listen to the Story; Explain the Story; Live the Story. Similar to the NIVAC series, this stand alone treatment of Matthew's text of the Sermon is accessible, lucid, informative and vintage Scot McKnight. For example. There are 15 pages of exegetical, ethical and pastoral analysis of Matthew 5.31-32 where Jesus speaks of permissible and impermissible divorce. This is a hard saying of Jesus, and requires levels of exegetical care and pastoral sensitivity in interpreting such potent texts within a community where people will have very diverse experiences of marriage and divorce. I know of no better explication of the issues, nor a more pastorally careful examination of the experience of marriage failure, its consequences, and possible redemptive avenues for the individuals and the community. The whole volume reflects such excellence and I wouldn't be without it. 

2017 brought us The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, by Jonathan Pennington. This is a very different kind of commentary. The first half is called Orientation, and is where Pennington lays out his thesis, which is that the Sermon is best understood within the Wisdom Tradition and with firm connections to virtue ethics as a way of understanding human moral behaviour within the context of Christian discipleship and obedience. Only then is the text itself explored as a gathering of guidance intended to enable, facilitate and resource human flourishing. Again this is a fine work, original, erudite, informed by a range of hermeneutical approaches, and guiding the reader to an understanding of a text that is the moral guide for life in the Kingdom of God, centred in Christ, and looking forward to the culmination of God's good purposes for human life and community.

Guelich, Betz (for those up for exegetical mining and / or mountaineering), McKnight, and Pennington. There have been other important contributions, but together these are a good balance of current studies.

Only to add that several of the recent commentaries on Matthew contain valuable resources in their own right – Allison and Davies, ICC, Vol.1; France, NICNT; Hagner, Word Commentary, Vol.1; Bruner, Christbook and Churchbook, Vol1.; and most recently Culpepper, NTL Commentary.