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Amongst the books that would make up any single bookcase of the books I need to have easy and frequent access to is Jesus Through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan. I used it as a textbook and based an entire module around the title. It is a selective but authoritative and diverse guide to the multitudinous approaches to portraying the figure of Jesus. Every single artistic attempt inevitably portrays the artist's own assumptions, cultural imagination, historical context and religious tradition.

This particular image was displayed on screen throughout the sermon this morning, which was on Mark 4.25-31. You know, that bit where Mark tells us Jesus was asleep, on a cushion!? I love that detail, Jesus making himself comfortable and sleeping through a Galilean squall until he was awakened by the panicky noise and hurt hollering of his disciples.

The service had begun with Psalm 107.23-32. Only when you read that passage do you realise that Mark's description of Jesus the storm chaser and wave calmer reveals him to be more than an exhausted carpenter turned Rabbi. "So they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. The storm sank to a murmur, and the waves of the sea were stilled." (Ps 107.28-29) No doubt about it; this passage is right in the foreground of Mark's telling of the story. And the disciples' question, "Who is this that even the wind and sea obey him?" is as theologically loaded as they come. 

For us in worship this morning, the contrast of the disciples' fear and Jesus asleep on a cushion, faced us with the reality of our own fears, and the reminder that Jesus wasn't asleep because he didn't care. In the storm, Jesus in in his element. What the disciples feared most could only happen to them with the permission of the calmer of storms. That for mark is the game-changer. The disciples' question has only one answer – this is the one who comes into the world as the saving presence of God, the one who announces and begins to demonstrate the reign of God.

Oh there's more to think and wonder about, but that one question, "Who is this?", goes on whistling and roaring in the mind long after the wind is silent and the waves are gentled. The picture my Monica Lui Ho Peh is an astonishing capture of that nano-second just before the divine fiat that transforms chaos into creation is spoken. Perhaps the truth is that when fear is at its strongest and our hope at its lowest, the one asleep on the cushion is neither complacent nor unaware. But yes, perhaps faith has an essential energy of desperation when, like those disciples, we shout in God's face and ask for deliverance.

To read Mark 4.25-31, then look at that picture on screen is to discover the power of visual exegesis, and to recover the theological precision of art. Sometimes I am helped by text and image, exegesis and art, perplexity and prayer, and the comfort of knowing that sometimes I'm just as scared, and just as slow on the uptake, as those first followers of Jesus who faced their worst fears, and left us a story about how to face our own.         

This what I wrote as a pastoral letter for our church this week. 

Afghanistan, Haiti, and Yemen. These are just three places where human crisis and suffering are on a scale that makes us feel helpless. Effective aid will require international co-operation, and long term commitments towards peace-making, humanitarian aid and new partnerships to empower people to build a better future.

We are still struggling with the uncertainties of the pandemic even at the personal and local level. It’s very difficult for ordinary folk like us to make any big difference to the huge problems our world currently faces. That’s why it’s important that we take time to read and consider information that comes to us from reliable sources such as BMS World Mission or Tear Fund. What seems to us to be a global problem beyond our help, becomes much more local, personal and immediate when we read and hear stories of families and individuals caught up in horrific circumstances they had no part in creating.

As Christians we believe in the dignity, value and significance of every single human being created in the image of God.

So when we see the bewildered faces of starving children in Yemen, in each one we see the face of one dearly beloved by God. And we pray, Lord have mercy

When we watch footage of rescuers scrabbling with bare hands in the rubble of what used to be a thriving town in Haiti, we realise that an earthquake on the other side of the world has reverberations that reach across humanity to our heart, if not the ground on which I stand. And we pray, Lord have mercy.

 The people of Afghanistan have borne so much over decades, and once again their country is a place of chaos, fear, anger division and fast disappearing hope. The political fallout will come, but leave aside the recriminations and blame games, and focus on the face of this frightened child, and that weeping woman, these young students whose futures have just evaporated, those older faces lined with suffering and eyes in which hope fades, again. And pray, Lord have mercy.

Whatever else the church of Jesus Christ is for, it is for what God is for. As the Body of Christ we are called to embody the reconciling love of Christ. We are agents of God’s purpose of making right. We are builders of peace. In our faith and worship we stand beneath the cross of Jesus the place of mercy and reconciliation. In God-given hope we stand at the empty tomb as witnesses to the good news of new hope. As proclaimers of the outbreak of new life in Christ, we stand as believers in the defeat of death by a Love stronger than sin and death and hell.

But what does that mean, practically? What can we actually do that will make much difference? The obvious answer is that we pray, and we will do that. Below is a prayer for Afghanistan. Make it one of the ways we affirm and focus our concern. This coming week we will pray this prayer, before we ever get to praying for ourselves and our own daily and even pressing concerns. To love our neighbours as ourselves should at least mean we will pray for them with the same persistence, faith and intention as when we pray for ourselves.

We can give money. There are various agencies now predicting a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Tear Fund is a recognised evangelical mission agency who have a widely recognised track record in using emergency relief funds strategically and effectively. https://www.tearfund.org/campaigns/afghanistan-emergency-appeal

When many people contribute what they can, that collection of modest merciful intentions becomes a funding resource that can save lives. The apostle Paul spent the last year or two of his life taking up a collection to take to Jerusalem for famine relief. From the letter he wrote to Corinth come words that raise money from finance to faithfulness. “God loves a cheerful giver!” Giving money to help save the lives of people we have never met is a deeply Christ-like thing to do. It is generous, loving, not looking for a return other than the wellbeing and valuing of others.

We can train ourselves in compassion. What do you do with those images on TV of desperate people falling from planes, of traumatised children and shell-shocked and shattered communities? Switching off from others’ suffering by switching channels or scrolling past isn’t really an option for followers of Jesus the suffering servant who died for the very sins that give rise to so much human anguish. Prayer for those who suffer is a refusal to scroll down past what makes us uncomfortable. Below is the prayer I mentioned earlier. Use it in coming days as the news unfolds, speaking to the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and trusting the one who was rich but for our sakes became poor.

 

PRAYER FOR A TROUBLED WORLD. (from Tear Fund)

God of love and light, the world feels dark today. Tragedy looms large. The air is heavy with grief. The tears of the people of Afghanistan.

The tears of the people of Haiti; the tears of the people of so many places – it is a tide of anguish. A tide of loss.

Yet we will not despair, for we know that you are God. We know there is no darkness so great that light cannot overcome it. We know that love never fails.

Let light pour out upon the land – upon Afghanistan, upon Haiti, upon all the places that weigh upon our hearts. Let their cries for deliverance be heard.  

"Do you think that preachers should see themselves as professional speakers?"

My friend Stuart, who teaches Homiletics, and who is himself one of the finest preachers I have heard, asked this question on his blog (Politurgy) and on Facebook, evoking a lot of helpful and clarifying responses. The question is meant to provoke thought, examine lazy assumptions, push back against answers given too quickly without digesting the meat of the question.

My own thoughts were as follows:

Sometimes what we mean by a word can be clarified by experimenting with synonyms and antonyms.

Professional speaker can mean, expert, trained, adhering to accepted standards, experienced, proficient, accomplished, efficient, effective, practised. Most of these sit comfortably with 'preacher'.

Antonyms of professional might include adjectives such as amateur, untrained, inexperienced, ineffective etc, and few of us would be comfortable with such descriptions.

Professional need not have a financial referent, but can be used to affirm the importance of excellence, effort, humility to go on improving, continuing discipline and accountability, and commitment to skill development.

Likewise professional can refer to personal commitment to the activity as art, craft, gift, talent and a focused development and practice of the skill set which characterises preaching.

Perhaps the text that best describes the tension (but not contradiction) between professionalism and vocational commitment is, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, inspiring both the will and the deed for his own chosen purpose." (Phil 2.12 REB) 

Behind all of this for me is the won't go away question of what it is any of us think we are doing when we dare to describe what we are doing as preaching. On the string of responses on Stuart's post distinctions were made between preaching, speaking and teaching. Others wanted to ensure the word 'professional' was not exclusive of those who were 'lay' preachers, that is non clerical, non stipendiary, in any case, unpaid. 

My own concern, goes back to my earliest serious thinking about "what it is we think we are doing" when we preach." The text from Philippians 2 above helps us understand the dynamic tensions that arise in the heart, mind and conscience of one who believes they are called to preach. That desire and whatever ability we have to preach, has complex origins in this person who so desires. It inevitably also involves the communities within which the preacher belongs and amongst whom they will preach. Preaching is both calling and discipline, both gift and skill, both charisma and art, engaging imagination, intellect, affections and one's own inner life and being; and all this expressed through the media of words, personality, character and relatedness to others.

Preaching is emphatically not the same as lecturing, or class teaching, or address on every and all kinds of matters of public interest. Preaching in a Christian worship context is an activity that has far reaching claims and consequences for those who speak. But it also has claims and consequences for those who listen and respond, positively or negatively, to this person who has been invited to speak into the life of a faith community, out of the Bible as sacred text. The preached words are mediated through the earthen vessel of one who, if they are wise, recognises the foolishness of preaching, and have come to rely on the power and wisdom of God who uses such ordinary cracked humanity in sometimes extraordinary whole-making ways. 

I have no problem with the descriptor professional, if by that is meant to give God our best, and to do so at God's invitation and calling, in humility and gratitude that is earthed, foundationally, in Philippians 2.12: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, inspiring both the will and the deed for his own chosen purpose." (Phil 2.12 REB)

It's worth finishing with George Herbert's lovely poem about preachers as "crazie glasse"!

The Windows

 

The arrival of a big book on a favourite subject is always a pick me up event. By which I mean not just a large book, but an enlarging book, one that is the distilled concentrate of long and deep reflection.

For a long time now Luke Timothy Johnson has been one of my go to scholars in my study of the New Testament. His commentaries on Luke, Acts, I&II Timothy, Hebrews, and James, and from its first edition, The Writings of the New Testament, have been well used reliable guides, marked by independent thought and serious engagement by a first rate scholar in the service of the Church. Add to that a range of monographs intended to earth such scholarship in Christian experience and the ecclesial life of the people of God, and you can see why I found in Johnson a trusted and enriching guide.

Last year during lock down I read through Constructing Paul, the first of two volumes on the canonical Paul, by which is meant Paul as revealed and interpreted through study of all the letters attributed to him. Johnson has little patience for the assured and unquestioned claims of the scholarly guild that almost half of Paul's letters are not by Paul (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, I&II Timothy, Titus). That first volume was refreshing, provocative, and for myself, largely persuasive. It sits now with several other large and valuable studies of Paul produced in the past 20 years, most of them reluctant to attribute the disputed letters to Paul – which significantly shapes, Johnson would say distorts or at best unnecessarily diminishes, their portrayal of Paul's life and thought.

What I wrote about Johnson's first volume you can find here: https://livingwittily.typepad.com/my_weblog/2021/04/constructing-paul-a-brief-review.html

Well, Volume 2 has arrived. It's made up of 23 chapters, 13 of them previously published essays and 10 of them written especially for this volume. They are not intended to be an integrated whole providing 'a theology of Paul', a term Johnson finds deeply problematic. They are essays on Pauline texts and themes as they arise from the selected texts. So far I've only read the Introduction and the first essay.

In that essay "Romans 3.21-26 and the Faith of Christ", published in 1982 in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Johnson jumps straight into the deep end of current Pauline studies by facing head on the ongoing controversy over the meaning of the phrase faith of / in Christ, the celebrated subjective vs objective debate. I realise the essay is now 40 years old – but interestingly Moo and Longenecker in their Romans commentaries continue to count it as 'the most thorough defence' of the subjective genitive position.

So, does the phrase mean faith in Christ, or the faithfulness of Christ? Johnson concludes it is the subjective faith of Christ, and his way of getting there is typical of Johnson's independence of mind. By paying attention to this particular text text he seeks to disqualify unacknowledged prior theological commitments; additionally, he has no hesitation in ignoring the critical consensus which disqualifies the disputed letters. Instead he analyses Romans 3.21-26, as the key text in the debate, comparing it with other related Pauline texts, and argues his way towards establishing Paul's intended meaning as the faith of Christ, that faith best expressed as 'the obedience of faith, a phrase which Johnson believes acts as an inclusio to the whole letter -  see1.5 and 16.6. 

This essay is typical of Johnson's well researched material and independent conclusions. He is quite explicit in what he believes is at stake if interpreters push the objective genitive to the exclusion of the subjective. Doing so with a theological bias, produces both skewed exegesis and flawed theological interpretation. Throughout this article, on the basis of the text itself, Johnson insists upon 'the soteriological significance of the faith of Jesus'. To avoid this conclusion on the basis of prior theological rather than exegetical grounds risks significant misunderstanding of Paul.

"The importance of recognising the proper place of Jesus's faith within the heart of the Pauline gospel may ultimately be that we do not allow a (properly) kenotic theology to become an (improperly) docetic one." (Page 26).

It's such comments that make Johnson such an interesting exegete belonging to neither extreme in the ongoing exegetical debate and theological argument. However this is a classic 40 year old essay, and it has not been updated by engaging with developments in the debate since. Much of that debate is explored in The Faith of Jesus Christ, (ed. Michael Bird, 2009) a collection of essays from the varying perspectives on Paul's intended meaning(s), from old and new, objective and subjective, to justification and participation. Surprisingly there is no interaction with Michael Gorman's work spanning 20 years, of Paul's cruciform – resurrectional – participationary theology of Christian experience and existence.

Increased interest in 'union with Christ' is a major research seam opened up again in the last two decades by scholars such as Michael Gorman, Frank Matera, Grant McCaskill, Douglas Campbell and Richard Hays, and much of their work bears significantly on the objective / subjective genitive debate. Likewise recent works such as Nijay Gupta's monograph Paul and the Language of Faith, on the polyvalent meanings of faith in the Pauline letters, caution against the binary tendencies of those arguing either side. At the same time the continuing debates since Johnson's essay was published in 1982 between key platers such as J D G Dunn, N T Wright, Francis Watson, Michael Gorman, John Barclay, Douglas Campbell and Richard Hays have enriched and developed this debate with important new research to the point where Johnson's essay is now only the 'most thorough' starting point in making the subjective case. The current state of play is much richer, more nuanced and more variously contested, so that the absence of familiar contemporary voices creates in the reader a strange temporal dislocation. The wisdom of starting a crowning publication with an unrevised classic essay remains to be seen, and only when the whole book is read. So, more on this book later. 

In the photo used for the book cover, Luke Timothy Johnson looks like he enjoys what he does! And I enjoy reading what he writes 🙂

I met Mr James Kerr the year around the time I first sensed God’s call to ministry. By that time he was an elderly man whose eyesight had faded to the point where he could not read any more. He had heard me give my testimony, and after church one morning he asked if I would come up to see him and Mrs Kerr after the prayer meeting on the Wednesday following. I should say, Mr Kerr was a gentle, thoughtful and deeply spiritual man whose prayers were a lesson in conversation with God. There was no doubt that he and God were on good speaking terms.

I walked with them from the church to their home and Mrs Kerr put the kettle on. Mr Kerr took from the mantelpiece three books, placed them on his knee, and leaned forward to speak to me. His words were a warm affirmation of the reality and life-changing significance of my call to ministry. He was himself a lay preacher, though his failing eyesight had limited opportunities for him to preach any more.

Amongst the words he spoke that night was the verse he gave me. Over the years several fine saints of God have “given” me verses that had the power to make their own words become true. These are exactly the words as he spoke them; I know this because he had memorised large chunks of the Bible in the King James Version:  

^“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim 2.15)

He then gave me the three books he had picked up earlier. He couldn’t read them now, but they had been of great value to him in his preaching and when he spoke (for at least half an hour) at our mid-week bible study. One was on the parables of Jesus, another was a volume of beautifully written devotional essays, and the third was a book about the meaning of the death of Jesus on the cross. These books were the first substantial Christian books I read all the way through.

After supper of tea and toast, Mr Kerr prayed for me before I went to get the late bus back home. I’ve never forgotten the love, faith and understanding that took form in the words he spoke to God, on my behalf. It is one of the rare moments of grace that touches and transforms the way we will live from that moment on.

I mention all this for reasons other than telling my own story. James Kerr was around 80 years old. But he prayed for a lad he had never physically seen, but whose future he believed in. His encouragement, his belief in God’s grace and gifts and call, and his experience as a man of deep and faithful prayer, made his intervention in a teenager’s life a defining experience. His prayer bound me even closer to the Christ who had called me, though I wasn’t sure where all of that would lead.

Who can ever know the impact of such Spirit-led interventions, such graced interruptions, such initiatives of kindness, generosity and encouragement? Mr Kerr was in church the first Sunday I took a full morning worship service in Carluke Baptist Church. A year or so later he died, and was enfolded into the everlasting mercy of the Lord he had so faithfully served.

All these years later the verse I was given remains one of the reference points in my own spiritual life. But it is more than that. Paul’s concern was that every Christian should try their hardest to demonstrate all that God has done and is doing in their lives. In the service of Christ, each of us has work to do. To do everything in a way that shows how much we love our Lord means we won’t offer to God less than his grace enables and his love deserves.

These past 18 months have disrupted our shared life as a congregation. We haven’t been free to visit, to have a blether, to meet for coffee after the service, or even expect to meet each other accidentally when we’re out and about. Even out and about has been pretty limited! Those who have felt that particularly hard are those who are older, and have to be especially careful. And for them that can lead to feeling useless, undervalued, with little to contribute. At which point I want to gently disagree, and call Mr James Kerr as a witness.

Encouragement of others, and intentional prayer for others, are Spirit inspired gifts that build up, strengthen and nurture our togetherness in Christ. But they are also ways in which God inspires and guides and puts fresh energy and love into others, especially young Christians and those looking to find the direction for their lives. This summer some of our own young people will go from home to study, or take up the next chapter of their lives.

Pray for them. Encourage them. Remember this, Timothy was a young inexperienced Christian being guided and supported by Paul. That ministry of encouragement of our young people is one of the essential ministries of our church congregation. By our prayers, encouragement and care for them, we who are older fulfil a key role. James Kerr did that naturally and with great grace. We can do the same.

I remember learning to swim in first year at secondary school. I don’t like chlorine, and I didn’t like taking my feet off the bottom. You never know, you might float towards the deep end, and I’ve never had long legs!

The PE teacher, who had previously played top flight football, was entirely unsympathetic, and he thought the most effective tone of encouragement was sarcasm and mockery. Even now, I rehearse what I might have said to him as an adult if I had met him in later life.

One thing he said though, which was true if only I could have believed it then, is that if you relax into the water, and breathe in, the natural buoyancy will keep you afloat. Eventually I discovered that rhythm of breathing and moving and away I went. I still don’t like chlorine, and swimming I can take or leave. But when I do go to the pool I enjoy lying on my back, floating. So you will see why it is I like ‘The Avowal’, a poem by Denise Levertov. Late in life she became a Christian, so she understands what we mean when we pray for the enabling grace of God:

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them;
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.  

What Levertov is teaching us, is what Paul wrote over and over again to the small, young Christian communities learning to swim in the deep water of a culture and society that was pagan and hostile to them. As the community of Christ we are borne by the buoyancy of the Spirit of God, held in the embrace of our Creator, and our lives are hid with Christ in God.

Trust and surrender are some of the most difficult, risky and rewarding experiences of our lives. By grace we are saved, through faith which is the gift of God. Faith is when we allow ourselves to be upheld by the God who will not let us fall. Faith is the risk of trusting God with all that matters most to us in our daily, sometimes messy human lives. Trusting faith isn’t some kind of special spiritual positive thinking. You can’t just work yourself up to believe and have faith. Levertov had read her Bible: “By grace you are saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

Faith is when we stop trying to prove we have it all under control, and receive the gift of God’s grace, the surrounding, buoyant presence and power of the living Christ. You don’t have to exhaust yourself proving what you’re worth to others; your value is index linked to the cross of Christ and to the Eternal Love which comes to us in the grace of Christ.

We don’t have to find the resources within ourselves to believe more, or have more or stronger faith, as if faith itself was a work that could save us. God’s grace is sufficient for your weakness, and is richer than all your debts. The grace of God in Christ is generous enough to outbid the claims of our neediness, and patient enough to outlast our most persistent fears.

When Levertov writes about all-surrounding grace, in the background are some of the most powerful words Paul ever wrote to struggling Christians. They are worth reading carefully, prayerfully and gratefully. They describe the grace that surrounds us, upholds us, guides us, and guarantees our ultimate safety in Christ:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2.4-10)

Years ago I had booked to go to a pastor’s conference at the St Ninian’s Conference centre in Crieff.  Sheila and I met there in 1970 so it’s a kind of special place. I led several annual Summer Missions in Crieff in the early 70’s with daily children’s meetings, sports days and open air singing. Crowds of children and parents as helpers spent two weeks of the school holidays doing all this in Macrosty Park.

In 1997 I had booked to spend several days at a conference with one of the finest men I’ve ever met. Not that I had met Eugene Peterson at that point. I had read most of what he had written about the work of being a pastor. His books have been and remain deeply formative of how I think and seek to live, work and preach as a Christian minister.

The week before the Conference Sheila’s mum died, and our family funeral arrangements coincided with the Conference. I couldn’t go, so I cancelled. I was travelling home to Aberdeen the day after the conference finished, so I telephoned St Ninians on the off chance I could speak for a minute or two to Eugene and say thank you for all I had learned from him. He came to the phone and said if I could drop by St Ninians he would be happy to meet, sit on a bench and talk for a while. This man was simply being the kind of person he wrote about; considerate, caring, being gladly inconvenienced, making a gift of time, listening, and happily enjoying the company of those who came his way in the Lord’s good time.

When he met we sat on the bench looking down across the tow towards the hills. He asked me to tell my story, told a little of his own, prayed with me and for our family, took me into the bookstall, bought one of his own books and wrote a lovely greeting inside. That’s the only time I met a man whose love for God and devotion to Jesus were a natural part of who he is and how he relates to people. We emailed a few times after that, and I still have and often use that book, Praying with the Psalms. Eugene died three years ago.

I tell you all this because what happened on that morning diversion to Crieff to meet Eugene Peterson, was nothing all that significant as human affairs and the big moments of history go. But make no mistake. what happened had its own special meaning in the economy of God, showing how God works through the quiet ministry of friendship. I met someone who walked as he talked, and in our sitting and talking together he embodied the welcome he wrote so much about, the welcome of God.

Every time I remember Eugene Peterson taking a phone call from someone he had never met, I remember a particular Bible verse: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (Rom 15.7) This man had just finished a three day conference with over a hundred pastors, and must have been tired and needing some peace. He could have passed a minute or two being polite on the phone, graciously accepting my words of thanks, and then get on with the day. But welcome was for him, a habit of the heart, his default disposition towards others, part of his calling to treat others as Christ had treated him throughout a long life of faith.

Which finally brings me to the point of this week’s pastoral letter, apart from the telling of a story that still vibrates with good memories of a Godly man who would be surprised, even embarrassed, to have this story told. Welcome of others is the pulse of pastoral ministry, and the heart of an authentic mission in Jesus’ name. Paul’s words at the end of Romans were not to the church leaders, but to the whole church. Us.

We are still some way away from life opening up into the freedoms and opportunities we knew before the pandemic. But as we begin to think about our future as a church community, that word “welcome” is a fundamental and essential descriptor of our Christian presence in our town. The glory of God is made known in the welcome we give; in the friendships we build, the words we share into others’ lives, the prayers we say for the help and health of our town, the ways we use our money, our premises and our gifts and skills in service of others, our willingness to shape our worship to the world we live in as ambassadors of Christ. All of this, and much more, is to welcome others as God in Christ has welcomed us.

As God leads us forward, we know the world has changed, and church cannot stay the same in a changing world. We could do worse than make Paul’s instruction our own habit of the heart towards all who come into our lives and our church: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

(This week's pastoral letter to our church folk in Montrose.) 

Reading the text of the prophet Nahum is an exercise in theology in the service of imagination and imagination in the service of theology. Yes it is a text of terror, a tour de force description of the defeat, fall and ultimate humiliation of Nineveh, the greatest imperial power of Nahum's times. Nahum reads like a series of taunt songs, strung together with poetic narrative and sparkling with metaphors and images of military manoeuvres, besieging strategies and punishing campaigns that overthrow and overwhelm the power base of the Assyrian Empire. All that is clear from even a first reading of Nahum.

Re-reading, and lingering over the text, the reader is drawn into the emotional payload delivered by Nahum's words. The dialectic between theology and imagination electrifies the text which at times is shocking in its explicit celebration and gloating at the humiliation and destruction of the rhetorical target – Nineveh. That city was the seat of Assyrian power, and the symbol of a power-base unimaginably strong, durable and indestructible. Except that Nahum imagines the unimaginable, and portrays the supposedly impregnable imperial city being easily invaded, violated, humiliated and utterly dismantled as a political entity.

The devastating truth that shatters the walls and foundations of this Empire and each Empire is stated by God: "I am against you, declares the Lord Almighty." (Nahum 3.5) There follows one of the most controversial and coarse passages in the entire Hebrew Bible. Many commentators feel the need to become apologists for the crudity, misogyny and dangerously abusive imagery of 3.1-7. I have every sympathy with them. Nahum's choice of imagery and words are shocking in the intensity of the mockery, cruelty and humiliation that is heaped on a city that specialised in the mockery, cruelty and humiliation of other peoples they had conquered, plundered and slaughtered. Now the boot is on the other foot, and it is Nineveh's neck it stands on.  

But how else to confront the hopelessness of those whose horizons of hope have long been shut down? How else but by a re-educated imagination can a prophet create a new and vocal defiance of the very hopelessness that would guarantee permanent subjugation? How else conquer the powerlessness of those facing intolerable abuse?

Much of Nahum brings comfort to Judah by portraying a different reality in which Assyria is on the receiving end of what it had handed out to others for centuries – irresistible power, remorseless cruelty, and the destructive energy of an enemy who could punish with impunity. What we have here is a strategy for defiance of that hopelessness that Empires always strive to instil. "Resistance is futile" has been the strap line of the earth's empires long before the Borg cast its shadow across the crew of the USS Enterprise!

The flashing images in chapter 2.1-4, of military power invading the invader, are there to help people witness the devastation of the powers that enslaved them and whom they had thought invincible. As I have read through Nahum, worked through this terrible and terrifying text, playing at the back of my mind has been the theological tension which is first clearly stated, and then woven throughout the entire book. "The Lord is slow to anger but will not leave the guilty unpunished. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God but the Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him, but with an overwhelming flood he will make an end of Nineveh."

Chapter 1.2-7 weaves these statements into the one fabric. This is the God who is against Nineveh, and yet promises to restore the splendour of Jacob. The prophet Nahum would laugh to scorn as sentimental, self-indulgent, anthropocentric and theologically one-sided, an emphasis on God's steadfast love that ignores the realities of human suffering, the evils of the powerful, and the blatant signals of defiance to all that God purposes for created and human life. No. God is not mocked, And yes. The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.  

In the end this is a book about divine judgement. The three chapters are almost entirely devoted to an Empire getting its comeuppance. Nothing about repentance, mercy or forgiveness for Nineveh. They have met their nemesis, the mirror image of their own ways of being. Kingdoms may rise and fall but the word of the Lord endures forevermore – and that word to the complacently powerful, and to those who flourish on the suffering they inflict on others, is unequivocal, uncompromising and swiftly approaching judgement.   

Myanmar. Uyghur. Yemen. Name your oppressed people of choice. Human history is replete with atrocity, oppressive policies, military suppression, and violent discrimination. Ask how the text of Nahum would read to such peoples faced with endless trauma, long drained of hope, many never having lived free of fear. Words that imagine the defeat of your worst enemy are hard to find and formulate. But words that take the imagination in hand and compel us to think the unthinkable, conceive inconceivable possibilities, teach us to say again after ages of silence, but what if – such words must have some substance, some hold on reality, but also a capacity to reframe how we think of that reality. 

I think that is one way of taking Nahum seriously as a text for today. For Nahum, God is not mocked – and every time people and peoples made in God's image are brutalised by the powers that happen to be in those moments of history, those powers mock God. And Nahum will have none of it. He brings a theology of God's judgement into the service of imaginations long trained to operate in the interests of the Empire. But the Empire, whatever imperial power it is, Assyrian or Babylonian, Persian or Greek, Roman or British, and whether in our own times the militarised nations inflicting untold suffering on other, such powers that be are not unaccountable.

That is Nahum's message. To those who inflict suffering on the innocent and powerless – "I am against you says the Lord Almighty." To those whose trust is in militarism, materialist consumerism, and / or economic leverage against others, and whose political shenanigans make life Hell for other people – "I am against you says the Lord Almighty." To those who create and sustain institutions of discrimination, who form and inhabit systems of oppression of others, whose ruthless pursuit of profit, gain, power and influence ignore the cost to others who are simply ground under the wheels of the global machine – "I am against you says the Lord Almighty." This is not so much a text of terror, but a text for building resilience in the hopeless, and hope in the despairing.

No, Nahum is not a comfortable guest to have in your head. Reading him is like – well, I remember on an early holiday in Austria, the hotel manageress, a former Olympic downhill skier, took us up the hill for early breakfast. She came round with a glass of Schnapps for everyone, and insisted, (and I guessed it might be futile to resist) she insisted we drink it down in one large gulp. I did – and my head felt as if fireworks had been set off inside, and tears ran down my face. Reading Nahum is like that! 

I'll come back to Nahum one more time when I've thought some more. It still sits uncomfortably alongside what we have come to know of God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. Which doesn't make Nahum wrong or his message contradicted. But it is a reminder that the Bible is a complex and complicated collection of texts in which diversity and argument are part of the challenge as we try to makes sense of unfamiliar ancient words and how they might apply to the more familiar world in which we try to live wisely and obediently in the light of Christ, the Light of the World.