I suppose it depends on your view of the Bible, what it is, who it is for, where it is from, how it came to us, and what we are supposed to do with it. I'm not sure how many times I've read all of the Bible. I suppose there are stones left unturned in some of the darker corners of the Old Testament, but not many. But I've been reading the Bible every day for 56 years, and for most of those years preached every week once, twice, even three times a week for some of those years.

Not every day, but several hours a week I've taken spade and pickaxe, fork and rake, and I've worked the exegetical soil until most of the textual garden has a reasonable tilth. In other words, exegesis of a text is an exercise in cultivation, preparing and maintaining fertile soil, fertilised (with manure), supplemented with humus. Seeds of thought are sown, the harvest of the work is the fruit of the Spirit and the growth in whatever wisdom the grace of God can smuggle past our assumed cleverness, which is another phrase for pride!

Like everyone else I have favourite corners and patches of this large variegated garden. The more technical term for this dubious practice of having preferences for certain parts of a Bible we are supposed to think comprehensively authoritative, is having a canon within the canon – favourite verses, chapters, books we go back to, often to the neglect of other chunks we can't get on with. Come on, every reader of the Bible however conscientious, risks losing their footing in Leviticus, or even losing their way in Numbers, like those first pilgrims stumbling towards the promised land.

So, confession time. My favourite chunks of text; my canon within the canon; the parts of the Bible that for me reach the parts other parts of the Bible more often than not don't reach. Oh, there are surprises, beams of light, food for the soul, a slap in the face, a hefty shove in the right direction, and these can come from the most unexpected texts. But more often there are corners and plots of text that unfailingly do it for us, connect with those deep and not always understood longings and prayers and anxieties and hopes that are part  of the life we bring to the text, wanting to hear God's voice speaking the right words from the Word. 

The Gospel of John is an obviously treasured text, of which more another time. Psalms, all of them, but several of them known by heart because in them deep speaks to deep. Ruth and Jonah, two very old stories that reverberate down the centuries and hammer at the doors of our prejudices and contented exclusions. 

Then there's the Sermon on the Mount, the radical realism of Jesus the King proclaiming the reign of a different kind of Kingdom. From all of Paul, my favourites have long been the Prison Epistles, the Colossian Christ 'making peace by the blood of the cross'; the Ephesian Christ, Lord of the Church and "breaking down dividing walls of hostility"; the Christ of Philippians, the divine love of the Son spiralling downwards from equality with God to the form of a human slave, now exalted in the power of resurrection and promised life.

Oh, and Isaiah 40-55, that chunk of text the critics call Deutero-Isaiah, with some of the most fabulous poetry used to vision-cast even more fabulous promises of streams in our cultural deserts, peace between weapons manufacturers who agree to reconfigure their production lines and produce ploughs instead, deserts blooming with new possibilities for beauty, truth and goodness.

And, of course, the three Gospels, Synoptics we call them, three perspectives on Jesus because one viewpoint could never capture the glory and the grace of the Word of Creation become flesh and living amongst us. The parables and the healings, the arguments and the parties, dumb disciples and amazed crowds. And at the centre of each telling of this story of divine love let loose, a carpenter teacher, showing us what compassion looks like, and anger at cruelty and unjust systems, and ways of thinking about God that dismantles our fears and reconstructs the foundations of what a human life can be.

And at the end of all four Gospels, the cross, and our struggle to find words that describe it – horror, tragedy, judicial murder, deterrent of all dissent from empire. In historical terms, perhaps that lethal word, 'deterrent', whether the Roman military machine crushing any refusal of its authority, or the religious obsession with controlling the sacred to the point where even when confronted and contradicted by divine goodness personified, they (and sometimes we) don't see it.

And each Gospel ends, not with the end, but with a new beginning, which we call resurrection, the triumph of life over death, love over hate, hope over despair, and light over darkness – "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."

Such is my canon within the canon, my favourite plots in the garden of the biblical text, the corners I've worked to a fine tilth where seeds grow, flowers bloom, fruit is there year round. That doesn't mean neglecting the rest – the Apocalypse which power washes lazy imaginations encrusted with far too much accumulated normality; Acts of the Apostles as a permanent reminder of the Church as Spirit filled and impelled communities of grace and forgiveness, a Church animated by the restless energy of young life let loose in a world too preoccupied with power, profit and status.

Genesis that sweeping saga of creation and fall, promises made and broken, and the journeys of those who would learn to call God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the God of Joseph and his brothers and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat. Exodus the most filmed book in the Old Testament from eminently solemn The Ten Commandments, to the Dreamworks version Prince of Egypt, to  Exodus. Gods and Kings; the book itself is the identity conferring text for the people of Israel, and woven boldly throughout the Hebrew Bible's narratives, prophecies and Psalms.

My point in this long biblical catalogue of good bits, is that, one way or another, these texts that make up the Bible can be quite risky to take seriously. But it's worth the risk. In a world as broken as ours now seems to be, we need some of Isaiah's vision of streams in the desert. We could do with Ruth telling us how migrants ought to be treated. And the divine compassion and resistance to all that dehumanises and diminishes people that we encounter in Jesus in the Gospels, aye, we need a complete re-education in compassion and neighbour love, the cruelties of sin and the healing of forgiveness. And much more. Go read your Bible, find the good bits, and stay with them till they stay with you. 

 

It is this close affinity between Holy Communion and Christ’s real presence, between created things and the uncreated but incarnate Lord, that is the clue to George MacLeod’s implacable resistance to nuclear weapons. The reality at the heart of all things, the power and energy that holds all things together, is Christ the light and life, the energy and vitality of the universe.

When the constituent element of matter, locked into the atom, is split to release the creative energy of the cosmos, and then that same energy is harnessed for purposes of mass killing, then something happens which transcends science, technology, politics and military hubris. Matter is defiled, the substance of the physical world, sanctified by the creator, incorporated by the Word become flesh, is now turned against flesh. Creation is thrust into reverse, human life faces obliteration, and humanity created in the image of God pursues power over others with suicidal intent.

One of his addresses on peace indicates the theological and moral outrage of one who always saw atomic war as inexcusable blasphemy, the abomination of desolation, the holiness of created matter commodified into the searing sacrilege of a mushroom cloud.

"Spirit and Matter. [Christ] is both these because he is the Light and Life of the world. He is ‘in and through’ the material, [all things]. We have so spiritualised our message, that when atomic warfare was first used we did not grasp its appalling nature. The day that Atomic warfare was first employed (at Hiroshima), happened to be the Day of the Feast of the Transfiguration, when Jesus revealed himself to His chosen disciples as both physical and spiritual. What we did at Hiroshima was to take the Body of Christ and use it for bloody Hell.

The aeroplane shot up to 33,000 ft and in seconds the mushrooming cloud from the explosion encircled them even at that height. Captain Lewis, the co-pilot, amazed at the cloud going so instantly above them looked up and said, ‘My God what have we done?’

Well what had they done that Aug 6? You remember another cloud that circled the Mount of Transfiguration … Jesus the atonement between heaven and earth; His body translucent; a sort of preview of His Resurrection Body. Was He spirit or was He matter? He was the atonement between spirit and matter. He is the Life of the World and the energy of the world."¹

^1. Address on Peace, Acc.9084/582, 2, 13 (Macleod's papers are held iat The National Library of Scotland)

The article from which this extract comes, was originally a paper at a colloquium on George Macleod, held at the Scottish Baptist College in 2008, subsequently published in Theology in Scotland in 2009. It is available as a PDF free access at the link below. Please note that it remains copyright to the author and the Journal.

https://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/TIS/article/view/53/73

When I remember, which is most days, I read the selection from A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I have to say, I've often smiled at the likely response of Pastor Bonhoeffer to the thought his writing would one day be a daily devotional.

Reading Bonhoeffer is an exercise in expansion, deepening and toughening;

1) expansion so that devotional isn't about a theology of my spiritual demands, but a theology of the cross;

2) deepening because for Bonhoeffer devotional is a word redolent of sacrifice, cost, consequence and daily dying; 

3) toughening because everything Bonhoeffer wrote that has enduring value for the Church is a distillation into words of the experience of confronting, subverting, challenging and having to live under the oppressive controls of National Socialism.

The July 24 reading has these words: " The people who love, because they are freed through the truth of God, are the most revolutionary people on earth. They are the ones who upset all values; they are the explosives in human society."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were—the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them.”

― John Calvin, Commentary on Psalms, Volume 5.

 

It's Monday morning, and I guess not many beyond certain constricted Christian circles will think a quotation from the severely stern Genevan Reformer John Calvin is a good way of starting the week well. Beyond the church the name of Calvin is more likely to be part of the brand names Calvin Klein, or Calvin and Hobbes when you put it in an Amazon or Google search without a filter.

So far this summer has been a joyous time with my camera when we've been out walking. I happen to subscribe to Calvin's idea of the world as a theatre of God's goodness. But that's probably because I also see something profoundly mysterious in the beauty, resilience, connectedness, adaptability, fragility, diversity, fecundity and recurring source of wonder that is the world in which I live. 

Late in life I look back to those beginnings when for the first 15 years I lived on farms where my dad was in charge of the dairy herd. In the 1950's and 1960's in South West Scotland, at times more than three miles from a village or town, it felt I became part of a landscape, placed in a living environment where I could flourish. A place where the burns were well populated by minnows, trout and 'beardies'; where post war trees were planted and were now young forests filled with all kinds of birds; where fields were made noisy by peewits, curlews, snipe and skylarks; where there were hills that took an hour or two to climb, small deep lochans with water hen, coot, mallard, grebe and sometimes swans; and where I became familiar with a variety of small birds that has long since been reduced to levels of scarcity that now tests the resilience of species to survive.

In any summer we would see swallows, house and sand martins, swifts, greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, yellow-hammer, pied and yellow wagtail, house sparrows, hedge sparrows, starlings in huge numbers, and the sound if not often the sight of the cuckoo. Around the farm in those early years Clydesdale horses, cows of various breeds, several working dogs, and any amount of fields to trek, trees to climb. burns to trace for miles to source, and levels of freedom I've never known since.

I mention all of that as the context and environment in which I grew up. Later, the idea of the world around me as a created masterpiece was never a theological problem issue for me. I've always found the world a source of wondering curiosity, a stimulus to joy understood as contentment, at-homeness, a sense of fitting in and belonging alongside whatever else lives around me.

So Calvin's idea of the world as the theatre of God's goodness resonates with much of who I am and have become. I've little interest in trying to prove the existence of the Creator, or defending a particular theory of creation. The biblical accounts at the beginning of Genesis are both wonderful texts, and texts intended to evoke both wonder and gratitude. For myself, a walk in a wood is an exercise in both wonder and gratitude. With eyes open and ears attuned, in the theatre of God's goodness you can hear the orchestration, see the stage with the curtains pulled back, and watch countless performances of swan and cygnet, yellow-hammer and Ringlet butterfly.

Then there is the garden, where we get the chance to plot and plan our own small theatre, and direct our own home made performances with roses and geraniums, livingstone daisies and clematis, hydrangea and heathers.

Of course you can be closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth. But the 'anywhere else on earth' is the essential background and justification for any garden. Alongside the sense of the natural world as gift, there is the responsibility to care for and cherish this living environment on which our lives depend.

I'm intrigued at the popularity of Eleanor Farejohn's poem, 'Morning has Broken', originally written to celebrate her local village, Alfriston, in East Sussex. Cat Stevens (now Yusuf) turned it into a hymn to both creation and Creator. In the past year or two it has been sung at weddings and funerals in which I've shared – and seemed entirely appropriate at both. I have a feeling the hard to please John Calvin, would have been reasonably satisfied with such a simple Psalm-like piece of praise, and the sheer enjoyment of a world coming awake with life, energy and wonder. Calvin and Cat Stevens – a good Monday combination!