Living Wittily

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  • Uncomfortable but comfortingly so?

    Weems_2 A couple of years ago I read the commentary on Song of Solomon, in the New Interpreter’s Bible. It is written by Renita Weems, an African American Pentecostal turned Methodist now married to a Baptist Pastor, and previously a Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University. The commentary is a wonderful corrective to those who approach the Song with all the inhibitions of Western culture, uncomfortable with the relationship between love, physicality and the human body. Written by a woman, taking seriously the sensuality and romance of these ancient love poems, the commentary is an unembarrassed affirmation of human love as God’s good gift, nothing to be ashamed of but to be celebrated, enjoyed and wondered at in all its life-enhancing mystery. But more of this another time.

    71c8pbrn38l__aa240_ I’ve just read another of her books, Listening for God. a Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt. This is spirituality that is honest, self-inquisitive, unafraid to own up to the hard journey that is our walk with God – Who if always present, is seldom obviously so. Here and there Weems comes close to self-pity – but even that, if we are half as honest as Renita Weems, is an attitude most of us fall into, and as quickly deny. But most of the time she writes out of a hard won faith, and describes the inner landscape of uncertainty, of missed opportunities, disappointed hopes, hurts and wounds that have very long half-lives; and she does so with an at times desperate determination to hold God to account. How can any human hold God to account – well that depends on the God. A God who is faithful, constant, there but not obviously so, a Sovereign Creator whose mercy can at times seem severe, that Other whose purposes are hidden behind our most feared scenarios, and whose presence makes such scenarios survivable.

    Here is just one excerpt, which can stand as a sample for the whole of this fine, brave and in the best sense en-couraging book:

    But what if God’s silence is not a ruse? What if God’s silence is precisely the way God speaks….Silence can also be an invitation, an invitation to communicate without words, without thunder, without burning bushes. In an age addicted to words, when memos, faxes, Post-its, E-mail, announcements, flash bulletins, cell-phones and news make talk cheap and easy it is frustrating to be told we must not rely on words – direct speech that is. The burning bush was an invitation to be weaned off burning bushes, to come closer, to stay awahile, to learn idiosyncracies, to commune.

    God speaks through burning bushes to get our attention so as never to have to speak again that way. Perhaps it’s when we confuse God’s intervention with God’s intention that we set ourselves up for years of fist-raising questions…… (pages 198-99).

    The whole book is uncomfortable reading, in a strangely comforting way.

  • Commemorating Ordination 2: And remembering F. F. Bruce

    There is neither rhyme nor reason to the books I’ve bought myself around my ordination date. Looks like it was whatever volume I fancied at the time or whatever area I was interested in, or preaching on….

    1981 – J Thompson, Jeremiah, (NICOT)

    This book proved to be a solid, unexciting and traditionally conservative treatment of Jeremiah, whose passion, anguish, anger and sheer persistent in your face protests against political and religious stupidity, needs a much more imaginative and passionate commentator. Thompson was concerned about history and historicity, and sure his commentary is full of important detail – but the prophet’s message isn’t in the details. It’s in his outrage and courage, in his strangeness and stridency, in the tension between theological vision and political realities. Brueggemann and Fretheim (along with Patrick Miller in the New Interpreter’s Bible), quarry the theological depths and measure the seismic disturbances triggered by Jeremiah’s prophecy – they are now my preferred guides in this ‘dark valley’ of a book.

    1982 Evelyn Underhill, The Mystics of the Church

    Long before Anglicans ordained women into ministry, people like Evelyn Underhill exemplified pastoral care as spiritual direction. This wise, likeable, well-off middle class scholar of mysticism was the real thing. This book introduces various key figures in Christian spirituality – and it’s written by one who was herself a key influence in 20th Century spirituality. Her book, Mysticism, and the later volume Worship, are now classics in their field. But her best writing is in her retreat addresses. The School of Charity is a beautifully written meditation on the Apostle’s Creed, that once ‘restored my soul’.

    1983 Gordon Rupp, The Righteousness of God

    I won a prize with an essay on Luther in 1984! It was entitled, "Luther’s Tower Experience; A Theological Evolution?" I’ve still got the laboriously type-written copy in the days before computer word documents made every essay look like publisher’s copy. I remember being captivated by Rupp’s account of Luther’s theological discoveries through his work as Bible expositor. It created an interest in Luther and Reformation spirituality that lasts to this day

    1984 F F Bruce, Galatians (New International Commentary on the Greek NT)

    Brucef No Evangelical biblical scholar did more to instil respect and gain a hearing for Evangelical biblical scholarship than Frederick Fyvie Bruce. From a north east Scotland Christian Brethren background, and a grounding in classics, he became a universally esteemed NT scholar, eventually Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism at Manchester. Bruce’s work was characterised by sober judgement, researched historical detail documented and fairly interpreted, and by an underlying faith commitment that ensured his tone was respectful of the text and aware of its spiritual significance. This commentary, along with his book Paul. Apostle of the Heart Set Free, and his classic commentary on Hebrews, are now dated, but are still revered and faithfully visited presences on my shelf.

    For an affectionate pen portrait of this attractive Christian scholar, written by David Clines, also Brethren, one time student under Bruce, now himself a global class OT scholar, see Clines’ tribute here. Any of you readers whose background is in the Bretheren should read this delightful but positive account of Brethren culture, its ‘Bible conferences’, ‘meetings’ and the dangers of ‘mixing’ with the world!

  • Arboreal accidents or tidily trimmed trees

    This weekend I gave our two 20 foot conifers at the front of the house, a haircut. Third time I’ve done this in five years and I think I now need to pay attention to my size and age, and make this my last major forestry project. When all due attention has been paid to health and safety –  stable ladders and no stretching or leaning, taking care of cables when operating trimmers around and above, protecting the eyes from flying and falling clippings – when all such attention is paid, the one thing impossible to avoid is the aching muscles, (all of them from calves, to thighs, to back, to neck, to arms) – and the shoulders that feel as if I’ve been dancing at a Scottish wedding reception where I was hurled around at Strip the Willow for two hours by people bigger and stronger than me!

    That said, I do enjoy getting stuck in to a job that’s more than whirling around with a flymo, garden hose or dutch hoe. And the trees do now look as if they are part of a garden instead of arboreal accidents. And I suppose that also says something about my own way of construing the world – trying to make at least some parts of it tidy, shaped – a way of pretending mere humans can control and shape the world around. Well of course we can…for a while. But at a cost – and for me, that will probably be paid in the next day or two when my shoulders refuse to allow my arms to go above my head. Might well ruin my personal praise and prayer time, being unable to raise my arms……

  • Commemorating Ordination 1

    Below are the titles of the books I bought to mark my ordination date, August 30, years 1976-1980. And some of the reasons I bought them.

    1976, W D Davies, Setting of the Sermon on the Mount.

    I’ve always taken an interest in the critical appropriation and existential demands of the Sermon on the Mount, and Davies’ massive study set the benchmark for exploring the background of the Sermon in 1st century Palestine. He went on to write with D C Allison the second best commentary on Matthew,[ in the International Critical Commentary (3 vols)] – I agree with Sean, Luz on Matthew is a masterpiece – also three volumes, but I don’t know a commentary like it.

    1977, Leslie Allen, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, (NICOT)

    This volume includes Allen’s take on Jonah as a short story, presenting a deeply ironical reading,  replete with theological insight. Some conservative minded folk took umbrage at his unconcern about historicity in Jonah. It’s still my preferred commentary on these books because it takes God seriously, and it allows the genre of this little masterpiece to fly beneath our self-righteous radars and realise that God’s mercy, and God’s ideas are bigger than ours – mercifully. I used the volume in 1978 when I took a week’s Bible Studies at WEC Kilcreggan on Mission and the Love of God.

    1978, Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, SPCK.

    I still remember reading this book chapter by chapter, aware that I was reading theological construction and reflection of a high order. Newbigin’s later stature as a leading missiologist and interpreter of the Gospel in a pluralist society, for me begins with this book. Details here and there are dated – but this is still a key text in understanding the why as well as the how of the church’s mission as God’s mission.

    1979, C E B Cranfield, Romans, Volume 2, ICC.

    I bought the first volume of Cranfield’s Romans, volume 1 in mint condition for 10 pence (That was 1/60th of its cover price then), in a University book-sale in 1976 – a review copy some blessed liberal didn’t want to keep. I say blessed because the book blessed me, and I’ve blessed the person who donated it, many a time. So in 1979 there was no discussion – the book to buy was the just released volume 2. Cranfield pre-dated the New Perspective on Paul, and so is now dated – but it remains a thorough, balanced, exegetical commentary in the classic enlightened Reformed tradition. The two volumes will be on my shortest short list of books to keep when life means downsizing my library.

    1980, R E O White, Christian Ethics, Volume Two. Changing Continuities.

    Again a second volume. The first was biblical, this second volume historical. They’ve since been combined in a chunky softback. They are dated now of course – but the attraction for me was that the books were based on lecture notes, and reading them I could hear the loved voice of a stern, authoritative teacher who had done his own thinking. Buying this book was a way of paying tribute to a former Principal of the College, one who’s influence went beyond what he taught.

  • How was I to know, eh?

    Went to the local library to get some light reading. came back with Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories. As I left I noticed a brown parcel lying on the floor at the entrance, slightly torn and showing a book inside. I assumed it had been dropped in for return or something. If I’d looked at the neatly printed label on what turned out to be a brown envelope wrapped round a book, I would have read ‘Doorstop – Please don’t Remove’.

    But I didn’t, did I? Like the responsible adult I claim to be I took it to the issue desk. And the librarian looked at me with what I am convinced was a hint of pity, and said, with thinly disguised courtesy, – ‘Aye juist put it back where ye goat it. Thanks’.

    Well?    How was I to know?    I don’t go around nosing into other people’s parcels, especially books in plain brown paper bags………I wonder how many times in a week some well meaning wee nyaff comes in to put the world right by handing in what, to all appearances, is a fugitive book??

  • Ordination date as a feast day…..?

    Being a Baptist minister is one of the defining commitments of my life as a follower of Jesus – along with being married to Sheila, caring for and being cared for by our two children, and serving God in my current vocational place in theological education within our Scottish Baptist community.

    There is a jejune fashionableness in some Christian circles today, not absent from our own Baptist tradition, to be dismissive of ordination to Christian ministry. This takes the form of talking down the importance of a ceremony of commitment where public promises are made to God, with a clear profession of faith and intent, and to which those who aspire to ministry can and should be held accountable. I find it interesting that often those who downgrade and devalue ordination, have nevertheless a high view of their own ministerial / pastoral / apostolic even! authority. Ordination far from being a ‘power statement’ is a public acknowledgement that it is God who is setting apart, it is God’s call through his Spirit that is being celebrated, and it is to the service of God in Christ, within the body of Christ, that this person is now set apart.

    This is by way of saying that the date of my ordination, August 30, is a personal feast day on the same level as August 2, 1972 when I was married, February 1951, my birthday (date witheld in case you think I’m soliciting presents), and April 16 1967 when I heard Jesus’ call and said ‘absolutely Lord!’. Every year since 1976, near the date of my ordination, I have bought myself a book to remind me Whose I am and what my life and energy are for, and to recall to Whom my gifts such as they are, and my core spiritual affections, are given. And to remind me of promises I made then which still shape and guide the way I try to follow Jesus and serve God’s people. Ordination for me was indeed about status, authority, and the special privilege of being set apart for ministry – but it was about Jesus’ status as Lord of the church, about the authority of Christ expressed in the living Christian community through the life of the Spirit. And the special privilege of ordination can never be a cause for self-congratulation, self concerned status guarding, nor can it ever, ever, be a basis for claiming authority over others. It is God’s call. In my view ordination shouldn’t be understated, dismissed as mere ceremony or irrelevant formality in an increasingly ad hoc culture, or shoulder-shruggingly put down as a mostly human acknowledgement of a ministry’s validity.

    Ordination (for me, at any rate) is a recognition of call to service, a statement of personal preparedness for that service through training and personal formation, and an enacted promise of faithfulness to Jesus Christ – Whom to follow is a life’s joy, Whom to serve is a lifestyle of self-donation to Christ as we meet Him in others, and to Whom we are accountable for what we do with who we are, as we serve the community of God’s people. So, each year, I buy a book to commemorate and to remind myself of the promises I made on a Saturday afternoon in August 1976. Looking at the list, and thinking back to the reasons I bought that book that year, is an interesting process of autobiographical review. Over the next month or so I’ll occasionally post on the books I’ve bought on my ordination feast day.

    Do Baptists have feast days? Are they Scriptural? Oh I’m sure I can find a few texts………..

  • Inexplicable and unimaginable…the murder of Rhys Jones.

    A_dying_11_year_old_boy_b2216394118 I used to play football in the local park, in the red ash playfield, on the tarmac of the school playground, in the farmer’s field, even on proper football pitches – the worst that ever happened was skint knees, and later torn ligaments because of a bad tackle. That an 11 year old boy, playing football in a pub car park, is shot with a handgun and killed by another young man riding on a BMX renders all the usual inner mechanisms of moral response stuck. I’ve no idea what to think, or feel, or write – pain, anger, sorrow, revulsion, compassion, – an entire spectrum of human response to inhuman behaviour seems redundant.

    But it wasn’t an inhuman person who did this – it was a young human being who acted out the ultimate violent fantasy of ending the life of another human being. As easy as the flick of a joystick – more fun than the limits of virtual violence – translating the familiar comic book violence of movie and computer game onto the streets where real people can die. The causal connection between a person’s preferred entertainment, and the patterns of their own behaviour is not established, researchers tell us. There is a lack of evidence-based documentation so we’re told.

    There is a longstanding way of viewing reality called the Scottish Commonsense School. One of its assumptions is that we can trust the evidence of the common experience of people. Human experience of the real world whether moral, intellectual, emotional or volitional, is to be seriously considered as itself having evidential value. The desensitising of a young mind, by exposure to regular pre-packaged violence in a virtual environment, or the pumped up messages of music that celebrates violence, is not, on any common sense reflection, irrelevant to patterns of behaviour where inexplicable and lethal violence result in dead people – in the real world.

    There are profound and disturbing changes taking place in the moral fabric of our culture. Now and again events such as Dunblane, the killing of Jamie Bulger, the knifing of Damilola Taylor, and….and….. You see, what was once unusual and unprecedented becomes a list, routine, a series of heinous crimes so that the word heinous becomes a regular adjective, its edge blunted by constant use.

    Whatever else I might want to try to say or think, as a Christian, I instinctively consider two theological truths that underlie such happenings like theological bedrock –

    1. Sin is a catastrophic reality in the human story and can always visit the inexplicable and unimaginable upon the innocent; and as evil it must never be explained away by finding more comfortable explanations in social determinism, psychological profiling or genetic programming. The killing of a boy playing football was an act of hellish indifference to the reality of a human life.

    2. Redemption is that action of God, creative and costly, in which the suffering and death of Christ demonstrate the inexplicable and unimaginable mercy of God, on creatures capable of that same hellish indifference to human suffering and death. I believe in sin; I believe in redemption through Christ even more. As my theological mentor and hero James Denney never tired of asserting – sin is not the last reality of the universe – here it is, eternal love, bearing sin.

    For this young boy, Rhys Jones, for his mother who held him as he died, and for all touched by this tragedy, I only offer words of perplexed intercession –Lord in your mercy.

  • On the sin of being greedily wasteful

    _42160484_bin203 I’ve been doing some thinking (and preaching) about following Jesus in a consumer society. You know the phrase, ‘marching to the sound of a different drummer’? Maybe the phrase for Christ-followers in a consumer driven culture is ‘we pay attention to a different bottom line’. But is that true? Are Christians less wasteful – are cutting down on waste, recycling, responsible purchasing, doing without, virtues more obvious in Christian lifestyle?

    Last night watched some of a programme about families who create most waste, and the ongoing debate about what we do with the amount of throwaway stuff we create – pay as you throw waste-bags, microchip bins where you pay by weight, for example.

    Reminded me of this wee poem by Norman McCaig

    Small Boy

    He picked up a pebble

    and threw it into the sea.

    And another, and another.

    He couldn’t stop.

    He wasn’t trying to fill the sea.

    He wasn’t trying to empty the beach

    he was just throwing away,

    nothing else but.

    Like a kitten playing

    he was practising for the future

    when there’ll be so many things

    he’ll want to throw away

    if only his fingers will unclench

    and let them go.

    We live in a world where we throw away too much, want too much, and find ourselves being both possessive (things we can’t do without) and wasteful (things we no longer want, let alone need). McCaig captures with fine irony the idea of practising being greedily wasteful, and he exposes that capacity we all have,- to hold on to, and to throw away, to possess and to waste – and so to lose a sense of the value of things, to obscure that humanising regard for a world that is too beautiful to be rubbished.

  • Entertaining angels unawares

    51qz4afx6xl__aa240_ Last week I posted on my first spiritual and pastoral mentor, Charlie Simpson. I mentioned his habit of reading reference books and announced my intention to remember this good man by reading a reference book, The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. So far I’ve read amongst other things, about Peter Abelard, Abortion, Abraham, Adam and Allegory. And just read the article on Angels. Some of our hymns assume the reality and activity of these messengers from God – Wesley tells us to Hark! the herald angels sing; in Newman’s ‘Praise to the Holiest in the Height’, it’s the angels who are left gobsmacked (my word, Newman one of the finest prose stylists in the English language would eschew such slovenly syntax) – left gobsmacked at the coming of the second Adam to the fight and to the rescue. And Wesley again is the earth’s cheerleader, celebrating the mercy of God, ‘Let earth adore’, and then he advises angel minds to enquire no more.

    The article clarified for me the status of angels, something I hadn’t thought much about –

    the angels are not divine, but fellow servants of God with humanity, integral even if invisible elements of the cosmos, mightily influencing, for good and ill, according to their primordial option, the stage upon which the  history of salvation unfolds.

    Beato25 In the Bible angels appear and act at key moments in the story – the three guests of Abraham turn out to be the angels unawares (and are immortalised in Rublev’s magnificent icon of the Holy Trinity); Jacob’s wrestling partner at the brook Jabbok is an angel who leaves jacob with the blessing of a limp(which triggered one of Charles Wesley’s greatest productions). They are protectors of God’s people and proclaimers of God’s purposes. Isaiah six gives a stunningly image-rich portrayal of the heavenly courts busy with the synchronised traffic of adoring praise at the speed of light. The Annunciation and the Nativity stories make sense only because God’s messengers interrupt the long slow history of human longing, with the ultimate news bulletin. And in the wilderness, and Gethsemane Jesus is strengthened, accompanied, supported, but then they withdraw and we are left to ponder the loneliness of the Son of God.

    The article finishes:

    ‘The angels serve God and humanity, and especially Christ, God incarnate, the sole mediator. They labour invisibly, throughout the cosmos, to further the final unity of all things, in heaven and on earth, in Him.

    I’m not sure how carefully I’ve considered a theology of angels before; I’m well impressed that Karl Barth and Karl Rahner both made significant space to expound the ministry and mystery of God’s messengers. And maybe now and again, when the good things happen, we should be more alert to the presence and action of God’s gophers.

  • Ethics of undercover journalism

    Emillerms1808_228x340 This is Emily Miller, aged 25. The attempt by the Daily Mirror (Labour’s most loyal fleet street paper) to plant Ms Miller, an investigative journalist, deep in the Conservative Party Election Campaign office is comical, cyncical and morally problematic. Opinions of right or wrong are divided depending on the polictical colour of the commentator. What kind of ethics could sensibly be applied across the board to regulate investigative and undercover journalism, which by definition succeeds by deceit, stealth and ultimately betrayal of those whose trust has been won? Some of the most important exposures of corporate wrongdoing, animal cruelty, human trafficking, human rights abuses, public risks linked to commerical activity, were possible because resourceful and at times very courageous reporters, went undercover to film, report and expose. In these cases it would seem that the acts of deceit required were morally justified in order to expose and perhaps end a far greater evil.

    But that is surely different from trying to infiltrate a political party, to access confidential information and expose private conversations, internal strategies, personal weaknesses of key individuals, as a way of undermining the credibility of a party preparing for election in a modern democracy. The democratic process itself is surely weakened by such party-biased activity. Those who think it is ok to do this, or attempt to, should at least ask the old Kantian question of whether they are prepared to universalise this behaviour – that is, is gaining employment and trust by deceit, in order to harm the election prospects of a legally established political party, a principle which can be morally countenanced in all situations?

    I’m uneasy with answering that question too dogmatically- the British National Party stands for policies many people (and I’m at the front of the opposition queue here) would call extreme, dangerous, and would oppose on deep ethical, social, and for me also theological grounds. Much of what we know about the inner psyche of such an organistaion only comes to light when exposed in its unguarded moments, when it’s members feel safe to reveal and speak the truth of who and what its members are. But doesn’t that too influence the outcome of the democratic process by targeting unpopular parties to publicise them at their worst? Yes it does – and again I’m not sure I want to condemn such journalism as morally unacceptable.

    But the Daily Mirror’s little ploy was nothing so morally courageous. If successful it would have been the equivalent of planting the best surveillance equipment possible at the centre of a mainstream political party, for the purposes of harming reputations, disabling leadership, discrediting stated intentions, stealing ideas, undermining strategies by publicising them, or internal hesitations about them. The Fleet Street editor on BBC news on Sunday morning, who thought it was a pity the young woman was ‘rumbled’, and praised the attempt, has no ethical qualms about such a tactic. But surely there is a difference between the journalist who infiltrates a racist organisation, or a dog-fighting culture, or the dangerous underworld of trafficking in vulnerable people, and a reporter whose intention is not to expose criminal behaviour in the interests of public safety and human compassion, but to weaken, undermine and inform on employers through systematic betrayal? Or am I naive?

    One further thought though. Supposing such a paper planted several of its reporters in various Christian churches, with the remit of establishing how genuinely we live the Gospel of reconciliation, live out the community of love rooted in the Triune Love of God, practice compassion for the poor,engage in prophetic critique of all that diminishes human life locally and globally? What would such a journalist be able to publish, to the embarrassment of the Name we honour, the one we follow and worship? Intriguing thought – undercover journalists seeing if these Christians are half as serious about the Kingdom of God as they want others to believe….and if so where’s the evidence? MMHHHMMM?