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Whether it's the first or one hundredth reading of Nahum, it's hard to make a constructive alignment between that prophet of vengeance and violence, and the Sermon on the Mount. And they both sit between the covers of the Bible. I've never liked Nahum. To be honest, I've never studied this angry prophet with anything like the care and humility that I bring to Isaiah, Amos and Micah; even Ezekiel and Jeremiah seem to have more to offer than rage and poetic genius dedicated to gloating.

So, recently I have read Nahum again, and again…This time I'm trying to listen to what he says and pay attention to what he writes. Listening to the text gets harder as you get older, I find! Because familiarity breeds assumptions, often unexamined assumptions. For example, having read it those first times, I concluded it was about vengeance, and vengefulness as a settled disposition is a sub-Christian and unethical mindset. Consequently, it seemed like a good hermeneutical move to put this prophecy into quarantine where it can't infect essential Christian values of peace-making, forgiveness, and love of enemy.

Which is the old trick of setting the Old Testament God against the New Testament revelation of God in Christ, and thereby avoiding the discomfort and theological potency of competing voices within the Bible. But as I've read Nahum recently, I've also re-read another prophet for whom I have much more time – Jonah. Mind you, Jonah too was out for vengeance, so much so that he managed to be offended by God's mercy and opposed to God's steadfast and faithful love in forgiving those who repent. 

What makes Jonah more palatable is that vengefulness, the desire to see retribution and justice through punishment, is finally and at the last moment thwarted by God's steadfast refusal to go back on his promise of forgiveness to those who truly repent. And, of course, both Nahum and Jonah have Nineveh in their sights. For those who suffered under the excessive cruelty and merciless power of Nineveh, that city was the focus of their greatest fears and most intense hatred. Those who suffered most at Nineveh's hands prayed to see it destroyed, dreamed of witnessing its violation and humiliation, and wanted to gloat over the impotence of mighty Nineveh before the unstoppable judgement of Israel's Almighty omnipotent God.

That longing for a changed world where the oppressor is oppressed, where the practitioners of cruelty experience some of the torture and trauma of the victims, is a deeply human form of psychological survival. In recent years trauma studies have begun to be used as an hermeneutical key to unlock the nature and motivation behind texts of terror, trauma, lament, grief and rage. The application of trauma studies to Lamentations and Jeremiah has opened up new ways of reading lament and texts of judgement as they issued from the experiences of the Exile, and the people's lived horror of suffering, loss, forced migration, cultural dislocation, and religious failure and humiliation.

Against such a background, and allowing for Nahum being written before the final Fall of Jerusalem, the end of the Judaean state in 587BCE and subsequent Babylonian exile of the people, this too is a text written out of trauma and the threat to the religious survival of a people. The book is unabashed in its language. The poetic skill of Nahum is in full flow, using a conveyor belt of fear-inspiring metaphors and a pervasive tone of joyous gloating over Nineveh getting its come-uppance with a vengeance! There is mockery and relief, rage and laughter, at long-remembered grievances and concentrated hatred of Assyria for unforgivable atrocities. The fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE was cause for unrestrained celebration by Assyria's conquered vassal states. The dam that had held back hatred and grief, rage and despair, collapsed under the weight of historical circumstance engineered by the God of Israel, vindicating the religious faith of an entire people disillusioned by the long nightmare that was Nineveh. But even in their worst nightmares, they had refused to disaffiliate from the Covenant God. No wonder what we get in this short prophetic book is Nahum unplugged.

But what to do with such a text of terror aimed at enemies who deserve all they get? How as a 21st Century Christian do I read Nahum and find some valid and viable application to where our world now stands? Why do we feel it necessary to harmonise the diversity of voices and biblical theologies that form our canon of Scripture? Is there an important place for those biblical voices that cry out in complaint and express longing for freedom, justice and the right to live without fear of oppression, suffering and the whim of the powerful? If so, have we any right to sanitise, or quarantine those voices born out of pain and sufferings borne, that many of us will never know in our own so limited and protected experience of life in a world broken, and we hope not beyond repair.

Over the next few weeks I'll try to work some of that out, and report back here when there's more to say.   

Now here's a thing. Some time last year I went looking for this wee book. It's a special little thing, fewer than 70 small pages, less than 30 pages. But I've read it and re-read it. I know some of the poems by heart. But could I find it?

Earlier this year I renovated the study and took every book out of it, and still no sign of Levertov's little gem of a book.

Then, just over a week ago I went to the University Library for the first time in over a year. I took out my wee satchel thing I use for such visits, and in one of the zip pockets there was my wee book!
Today looking for something else by Levertov there are copies of this 70 page book for £41.83 on Amazon – glad I found my copy!

Here is one of her finest poems from the volume:

For the New Year, 1981

by Denise Levertov

I have a small grain of hope–

one small crystal that gleams
clear colours out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send to you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source–
clumsy and earth-covered–
of grace. 

When I first gave my life to Christ, at the age of 16, I was given money to buy a Bible. I went on the 240 Bus from Lanark to Glasgow, and found my way to Pickering and Inglis, in those days the leading Christian bookshop in Scotland. I chose one in soft black leather and with a zip. The sight of a long haired teenager in jeans and a leather jacket, reading a shiny new black Bible sitting in the top front seat of a double decker bus, on a Saturday afternoon probably bemused some of the other passengers. For the next year or two I read that Bible till it began to wear through, the spine split and the zip became detached. I wish I had kept it.  

A month or two after buying my first Bible, I was at the Filey Christian Convention on the Yorkshire coast, a huge annual gathering of Christians at the Butlin’s Holiday Camp. This was Spring Harvest for families in the 1960's. They had books. Oh they had books, a huge tent filled with tables, groaning under the weight of Christian books by the thousand. I bought a book – the first of so many! It was my first Bible study book, and it introduced me to the joy and the wonder, and the formative discipline of Bible study as a form of Bible reading. The book I bought was Only One Way. The Message of Galatians, by John R W Stott. Soon after, I also bought his Tyndale commentary on the Epistles of John. These are two parts of the Bible I have loved and studied ever since, and that’s now a long time!  

Let’s stay with Galatians. There are verses in this passionate and sometimes angry letter of Paul that are now part of the way I think. Isn’t that true of each of us? Aren’t there one or two verses of Scripture that we know have changed us, have made us think of God differently, that strengthen us when life has been hard to get through, and they live somewhere deep inside and are the bread of life to us? They are just like the hymn says:

Lord, for that word, the word of life which fires us,

   speaks to our hearts and sets our souls ablaze,

teaches and trains, rebukes us and inspires us,

   Lord of the word, receive your people's praise.

Galatians 2.21 is such a verse. Early on I learned this verse by heart, and it remains one of the words of God that pulls me back to Christ as the centre of my life. “I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2.20)  At times when it is hard to know what to pray, or how to thank God for the grace that saves, just saying these words in the presence of God is itself a prayer of thanksgiving, confession, and renewal of love. As the hymn says, it’s a “word of life which fires us, speaks to our hearts and sets our hearts ablaze.”

That Bible study book written by John Stott was the start of a long education for me, culminating 25 years later in the publication of a book with a chapter exploring the spirituality of John Stott! But further education is for every Christian. Lifelong learning through Bible study is open to all of us, and is a journey to which every follower of Jesus is called. This isn’t a course for those who can produce qualifications and academic credentials to gain admission. We are saved by grace through faith which is the gift of God. What qualifies us for a lifetime course in reading and praying and living Scripture, is the call of God. What enables us is the grace of God, and the one who teaches us is the Spirit of God. The set text is the Bible whether a black leather one surrounded by a zip, (can you still get these?), a brick sized study Bible, or one of the multiple available Bible Apps.

So a final verse from Galatians that has been remembered and internalised as a reminder of what Christian living is about. “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (Galatians 5.25) For years now, Strictly Come Dancing has been a highlight for those who are into such reality shows. What makes for a good performance is timing, movement in unison, anticipation of the moves, mutual understanding, shared enthusiasm, familiarity with the music and rhythm, and practice; lots and lots of practice. If we keep in step with the Spirit, and perform the music of Scripture with practised precision, then we become like those Paul described as those who live by the Spirit, and receive the promise: “The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 5.8) And it all started with a Bible, and a paperback commentary on Galatians, written by a writer to whom my personal debt remains on the books.

(The tapestry above was designed and worked for a friend for whom it is an important theological image.)

Weekly Pastoral Letter for our church in Montrose:

written the day of the Elections to the Scottish Parliament

I am writing this just as the polling stations are about to open. You will be reading it before the final Scottish results are announced some time on Saturday. Campaigning is finished, the promises are made, the policies are stated. An ocean of words and a forest or two of paper have been used to persuade, warn, promise, criticise, and even scare us into voting for ‘us, not them’. And perhaps that’s the point really. We are presented with a them-or-us mentality, reinforced by political arguments and competing visions of what is best for us, our families and our country.

Words are so powerful. Strap lines and sound-bytes, slogans and dog-whistles, truth and lies, fairness and prejudice, promises and trust; words can unite or divide, give hope or increase despair, encourage understanding or fuel anger. In our own country of Scotland we are deeply divided about how we see the future, how we navigate the present, and how we understand our past.

As Christians we are citizens of heaven. That comes first and last, because our allegiance is to the One who is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. For us the most important events of the past took place in Bethlehem, Calvary and a tomb in a garden. Likewise, the future we envision has Christ at the centre, the one we call Lord and whose coming we await. And as for the present, we pray every day, regardless of who forms the Government, “Hallowed be your name; your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Politics is about power. Who has power, who is in power, how power is used. Whoever is Prime Minister, First Minister, or President, Christians are citizens of heaven, and our first allegiance is to the one we call Lord, the crucified and risen Christ. The Lord’s Prayer is precisely that, the prayer taught to us by the one we call Lord, who claims, and shall have our allegiance.

So however we have voted, and whoever forms the next Government, we are still called to follow faithfully after Christ As agents of the Kingdom of God we will live our daily lives for Christ as individuals, and as part of a country and community, where we are sent as salt to season, as light to shine, as messengers of love and peace and hope, and as ambassadors of Christ.

“Jesus is Lord” is for Christians not a political slogan, but a confession of faith, a cry of worship, and a statement of intent about how we will live our lives. Christ calls us to a radical obedience to his way of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace-making and compassionate service to all who are our neighbours.

Political elections come and go. I’ve never been all that impressed by the cynical observation that an election is nothing more than one lot of sinners out and another lot of sinners in. Our responsibilities under God are deeper and too important to buy into such cynicism. Rather, we are citizens of Heaven, living in Scotland in the here and now. We bring to the life around us different values, a different vision of human community, a commitment to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.

That has consequences. Every time we hear exaggerated promises, divisive rhetoric, dishonest claims, distorted statistics and power plays of those aspiring to political power, it is time for a reality check.

We are called to hear the sound of a different voice, the One who says it is truth that sets us free, and it is service that brings greatness.

We will be reminded by the prompting of the Holy Spirit of Truth that every word we speak is overheard by God. And as for the daily lives we lead, we will remember that peace-making is the family trait of the children of God.

We will go on believing that the love of God in Christ is the benchmark of our behaviour, and that we are ministers of reconciliation in a world with far too many divisions already for us to add to them.

In our prayers and actions, our attitudes and decisions, may we be good citizens of Scotland because good citizens of Heaven,

“He has shown you, every one of you, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6.8

Creator God, thank you for the goodness of your creation,

for the fruit of the earth, human work and skill,

and for food and home, clothes and comfort.

Lord God, when we come to worship you,

what else can we bring but ourselves?

We come not because we are worthy,

but because you are worthy – of our praise.

 

And so we come to praise and pray

and to be changed by your Holy Spirit.

We come to worship,

and then to go out into your world in your peace,

and by your grace, to live the life of Christ within us.

 

God of justice and what is right, help us to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Teach us to care about justice in our world, our country, and our town.

Help us to care enough to do something about it

when people are struggling – and we can help.

 

Lord of compassion, you are merciful and kind,

and you call us to be the same.

Give us eyes that look for and find opportunities

to make a difference in other people’s lives.

 

Lord we have a lot to be humble about,

especially in the place of worship.

In our daily lives we depend on your grace,

and trust in your goodness and mercy.

Keep us humble in heart and mind.

 

God of justice, make us a people hungry for justice for ourselves and for others

God of mercy, so fill us and surprise us with your love that

we cannot contain it and your love overflows in deeds of kindness to others.

God of humble love, who in Christ came amongst us

to live human life as you intended,

humble us in gratitude, love and service.

 

All this we ask, so that our worship may be real and true,

and so become acceptable in your sight.  AMEN

This Week's Pastoral Letter for our folk in Montrose.

In Germany in the late 1930’s a young pastor called Dietrich Bonhoeffer became involved in training other young pastors. But this was to be a very different theological seminary, and a very different kind of pastoral training. With the rise of Nazism, the German Church came more and more under the control of the National Socialist Government. The swastika flag was to be hung in churches, an oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer to be sworn, church youth groups were subsumed into the Hitler youth activities and even what was preached was increasingly censored and directed towards pro-Hitler propaganda.

There was an increasing threat to Jewish citizens, and a growing menace towards synagogues, Jewish businesses and families. Those who resisted all of this organised themselves and formed the Confessing Church. They were forbidden to train pastors for their churches, but Bonhoeffer was put in charge of a secret theological seminary in Finkenwalde. It was there that Bonhoeffer wrote one of the most powerful Christian books of the 20^th Century. Translated into English it was called The Cost of Discipleship. It has never been out of print since.

The thing about Bonhoeffer and his book is, his writing still speaks with deep power today. Teaching young pastors in secret, risking his freedom, and ultimately his life, Bonhoeffer understood the importance of formation. Every day he taught the disciplines of Christian living that enable Christian faithfulness: prayers of intercession, deep reading of Scripture, worship together, love as humble service, standing up for justice, and speaking truth to power. Against the Nazi ideology of power, force and divisive prejudice, Bonhoeffer trained pastors in service to Christ, love as generous self-giving and community building centred on Christ.

In a world like our own, those same social forces swirl around us; love of power, hanging loose to the truth, free for all greed to acquire and possess, social divisions of ‘them’ and ‘us’. For Christians seeking to faithfully follow after Jesus, Bonhoeffer’s words still speak. They are worth pondering:

“Where will the call to discipleship lead those who follow it?…Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows where the path will lead. But we know that it will be a path full of mercy beyond measure. Discipleship is joy.”  

Yes, you read that right. Discipleship is joy. What it must have been like to hear such words spoken? For young men in training for ministry, in a secret seminary, knowing that soon they would be pastors of congregations many of which would meet in secret, and under threat of imprisonment, and later for many of them, death. Discipleship is joy.

Over this past year the big theme amongst Christians has been hope. Our need to be a hopeful people, to be communities of faith and love that bring a message of hope to a troubled, anxious world. And that has been right. But there is something deeply subversive about those words of Bonhoeffer, “Discipleship is joy.” Following Jesus might be hard, costly, and at least inconvenient. It will certainly mean that we are out of step with much that is the expected norm in a society fixated on material security and possessions, and where life satisfaction is linked to connectivity, social media presence, even entertainment as escape from the harder truths of life.

But the follower of Jesus, the Christian believer, is a citizen of another world. Our deepest joy is not personal freedom, accumulating money and things, the status and rewards of our job. It is to follow the path of mercy beyond measure. It is to love God who first loved us. Joy is the deep fulfilment of knowing that how we are living our lives is pleasing to God, and in grateful obedience to our Saviour.

The joy of discipleship, of taking up our cross and following Jesus, mirrors what Jesus himself did: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12.2)