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The restrictions of the past year have been a downward drag on much that we often enjoy. Meetings with friends wherever and whenever; not allowed except under strict conditions. Going shopping without a care about who is near us, what we touch or what we wear; now it's face mask, distancing and hand sanitiser. 

We all find our ways to cope. For me it has been walking with a camera. The aim is not to be fussy, or pretend professional, and not to overthink it. Just click, and see what happens. The results are always mixed. I delete more than I keep.

But occasionally an image announces itself. I mean that. When you're not looking around for what to photograph, suddenly you notice, your attention is apprehended, what you hadn't realised was there suddenly speaks. 

The other day walking on a now familiar path, scarred deeply by huge machinery tracks which had filled with rain water, I looked down and saw my own reflection. Then I stepped back far enough to remove my face and looked at the trees and sky reflected with astonishing clarity. The resulting photo is joyfully ambiguous. Is it trees on a steep hillside, or a blue sky reflection of trees in peat dark water? Use your imagination. It's either, or both.

One of the most difficult to process parts of this past year's experience has been relentless sameness. It's the tethered goat syndrome; unless the rope attached to the pole has a loop, the goat eats its way round and the rope gets shorter and shorter. Sometimes it has felt like that, walking the same paths and pavements, unable to travel beyond whatever 'local' is, no shared hospitality in our homes, and we can each add to this list of limited horizons and confined perspectives.

And then a photo reminds me that how we see life might change what we see. Different perspectives – pines on a steep mountainside as a gift from a puddle. A gift from whom? I choose to believe that this wonderful world we walk through is itself a gift, the outflowing love of the Creator God. And every now and again I have been apprehended, arrested in a non-threatening way, by unexpected insight, a glimpse of alternative ways of seeing, a helpfully unsettling nudge that awakens us from boredom and sameness. 

Augustine's words are true enough, as far as they go. "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." But there is that in the ways of God that disturbs a too easy rest, and triggers a healthy discontent with sameness. Sometimes restlessness is the stirring of something new, a gift of urgency to look again and see new possibility. The photo of the pines in the puddle is infinitely more significant for the absence of my face! Looking at myself looking back at me from a puddle is itself a powerful image of self-absorption, and of that niggling thought we all entertain that the world should dance to our tune, serve our personal agenda, and make allowances for my hopes.

Instead, step back, and look again at the world. Those pine trees on a mountainside, that blue sky looking back up at you instead of you looking up at it! In those moments of discovery – can we call them revelation? – I sense the quiet movement of the Spirit of God creating newness, opening eyes, changing perceptions, replenishing hope. "…and hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit." Aye, that! 

Monday

Psalm 1.1 “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers…”

This Psalm sets the tone for the whole book of Psalms. And it starts with a Beatitude. To be blessed is to walk with God, to know God’s company in daily life, to be on God’s side of holiness, justice, mercy and peace. Our culture measures success differently, but for the Psalmist the true measure of life is the blessing of God

Tuesday

Psalm 1.1 “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers…”

Who do you walk in step with? Whose company do you keep? Important, life changing questions. In the choice between reverence for God and mockery, where do we sit? This first verse is a three times warning. Beware the places and the company, the behaviour and the words, of those who would be embarrassed if your friend Jesus was there!    

Wednesday

Psalm 1.2 “but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

Delight isn’t a word we use a lot these days. The Psalmist used it often – here’s another time from Psalm 37: “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.” Delight is when you are doing what matters most, with the One who matters most.

Thursday

Psalm 1.3 “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.”

A tree beside a river has an inexhaustible supply of water, nourishment and life giving resources. To delight in the Scriptures, and to live by them, hold them in the heart and mind, that too is to stay near the streams of living water. A Bible guided life bears the fruit of true worship, fruitful living, and all year round human flourishing in justice, mercy and neighbourly love.

Friday

Psalm 1. ^“Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.”

The Psalm is an exercise in contrasts between being blessed and being lost, reverence and mockery, law and disobedience, the righteous and the wicked. The contrast is between flourishing and withering, being a seed kernel or disposable chaff. Blessed are those who delight in the law of the Lord, think about it constantly, and allow the Lord to lead and guide us on the journey of our lives.

Saturday

Psalm 1.5 “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.”

To stand is to have a firm foundation. This verse is about integrity of character, a track record of righteous obedience to God in our way of life. We don’t have our own righteousness, we are righteous in Christ, saved by grace through faith. We are not accepted by our good works, but having been accepted in Christ, we are called to righteous living. Ephesians 1.10 – "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Sunday

Psalm 1.6  “For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”

So here is the final contrast. Jesus closed the Sermon on the Mount with the same choices – the narrow way and the broad way, the house on rock or the house on sand. Psalm 1 invites us to walk with God, to live by faith and trust in the righteousness of Christ, to practice the way of Jesus, following after him. The alternative leads to loss, destruction, life wasted, and a judgement before which we cannot stand. Psalm 1 is a Wisdom psalm; like the old advert for seatbelt wearing, “You know it makes sense.”

I still remember the first edition of Luke Timothy Johnson's The Writings of the New Testament forty years ago. It is still in print in its 2010 third revision. From there his commentaries on Luke-Acts, Hebrews, James, and a wide range of other publications on New Testament background, theology, religious experience, and hermeneutics have continued to flow. But now we have a two volume magnum opus on the Apostle Paul, the first volume published in May 2020.   

Constructing Paul vol 1 by Luke Timothy Johnson is readable scholarship, authoritative and persuasive, independent in its conclusions, and is a constructive account of Paul's life, social context, cultural environment, and relations with the churches with which he corresponded. Johnson does two things that make this book an important contribution. First, he uses all the canonical letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament. His defence of this approach is based on his deconstruction of the critical consensus that there are only seven "undisputed letters". Johnson insists that using the thirteen letters provides a much more rounded picture of what he calls the canonical Paul. I have always been hesitant about the confidence with which Pauline authorship of certain letters has been dismissed; I found Johnson's reasoned rebuttal persuasive in itself, and more so when the results are then set out in a way that allows for the complexities and ambiguities of Paul's personality and compound identities as Jew, Greco Roman, apostle and controversialist.

In addition to using the entire canonical corpus of Paul's letters, Johnson gives decisive weight and substance to the New Testament accounts of Paul's personal experience of Christ. Johnson is known for considering religious experience an essential body of evidence in constructing a credible account of Paul's life, the lives of the earliest Christian communities, and indeed for understanding the faith and practices of contemporary Christians. Paul's encounter with Christ, his experience of life in the Spirit, and the reconfiguration of his worldview, created for Paul a radically new understanding of God's purpose for Israel, the Gentiles and the new mission of the communities formed by faith in Christ. But that radical newness was not seen by him  as a final discontinuity, but a fulfilling of God's purposes through Messiah Jesus. While Johnson has long insisted that the religious experience of believers is relevant data in trying to understand the historical, social, cultural and ecclesial context of those early Christian communities, it is in this book that he pursues that line of investigation in constructing Paul. The result is a tour de force, readable, persuasive, and for me, convincing in its portrait of Paul.

The one time famous Methodist preacher, W E Sangster, once advised someone who was struggling with ill health, family problems and money worries, to “take time to enjoy the Sabbath moments of the soul.” Now I have to be honest, if I was crumbling under the weight of so many difficulties, I’m not sure I’d even recognise “a Sabbath moment of the soul”!

But Sangster was a wise pastor, a man who experienced fragile health himself, and wrote some of his books to supplement a very low stipend. He knew the depths of depression and the long climb upwards. So his advice is worth hearing. Ever since I read that advice in the biography written by his son, I’ve tried to do what this experienced spiritual guide advised.

Last Tuesday I stood at my study window watching five geese in line, heading for Loch Skene. For the first time ever, I noticed they took turns gliding for a few wing beats, pulled along by the others. Like a well-oiled machine, they each took a few moments respite, then resumed the hard work. They were out of sight in thirty seconds, but my inner grin lasted longer!

The Sabbath moments of the soul are those brief glimpses we all have of unexpected wonder, unlooked for surprise, being ambushed by beauty. “Consider the lilies…” “Look at the birds of the air…” “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills…” Sangster taught me to look for joy, to pay attention to what’s going on, to hold life carefully as the precious gift it is, to notice when God is nudging us awake to blessing.

Even when life turns darker, and we know the deeper valleys where the sun is hard to see behind looming horizons, God is there, and blessing is to be found. Not the answers to all that we need or want; and not easy ways out of hard places. But those small signals of hope, those touches of goodness and unlooked for moments when kindness, comfort or laughter come as gifts.

The life of faith isn’t a life immune to the hard knocks of life. We all bear the consequences of our humanity. We experience suffering and illness in ourselves and those we love, and there are bereavements and losses. We have times of mental ill-health, or difficult work or family circumstances. And then, this past year and more, we have lived with the grinding realities of a pandemic. Covid 19 has so disrupted our lives with restrictions, losses and anxieties, that it has been hard at times to keep going, stay hopeful and do much more than pass time, till life gets better.

Recovery from the pandemic will take a long time, and will mean large scale investments of energy, money, skills, new knowledge and commitment to the common good. But at the individual level, as we live through these next months, take time to enjoy the Sabbath moments of the soul. Live in the moment God gives you. And perhaps like the five geese, we will enable each other to take a rest and be carried for a while. Look for joy, pay attention to what’s going on, hold life carefully as the precious gift it is, notice when God is nudging you awake to blessing.

Who knows what church will look like in another year, and where we will have reached on our shared journey? But in our travelling together, be sure of this. God is with us. And in the thick mixture of our lives, if we look daringly and trustfully, there are clues to God’s presence. Often those clues will come in the unexpected moment, as for example, when five geese fly past, heading home. Let us learn together to live gratefully, and enjoy the Sabbath moments of the soul.

Every couple of months I meet with a group of friends online to talk about a book we have chosen to read and discuss together. Forget the book! It’s the meeting, the seeing of faces, the interactions of laughter and shared concerns, the small talk and the deep talk that matter most. We are a group of friends who have stayed in conversation for much of our lives since we came into ministry. We are either retired, or pushing in that direction.

But the important thing is that we have stayed together in our friendship, and accompanied each other through the varied experiences of our lives. We all have connections with the Scottish Baptist College. We are collegiate. That gave us our group name, The Eejits. We are now pretty scattered, one in Nova Scotia, one in Alabama, and the rest of us from different parts of Scotland. But we are there for each other, and there are deep ties of affection, commitment and shared life experiences going back decades.

I mention this because we’ve just had a Zoom meeting, with the usual laughter, banter, serious discussion, and asking after each other. Contrast that with the experience of many folk in our communities, maybe including some of ourselves. On Wednesday loneliness made headline news. The most recent report about how the Covid crisis has affected people in Scotland identifies loneliness as a widespread experience. Indeed one reporter described the results as pointing to “an epidemic of social loneliness”

 Around 27 percent of our young people report that feelings of isolation, loneliness and lack of social contact, are having an effect on their mental health and emotional wellbeing. Amongst those over 55 years, 71 per cent have struggled with lock down and the prolonged restrictions on social mixing with friends, family and the wider community. It isn’t hard to imagine the sadness and emotional struggles of folk who need to see familiar faces, hear friendly voices, and be in supportive company where they know they matter.

Whatever else the church is, it is a place where loneliness is acknowledged and friendship is offered, to everyone. Christian community is about welcome, belonging, sharing, understanding, listening, laughing, reassuring, encouraging, valuing, and caring. We are called to embody and practice all of these, but the energy source and motivation is, and must be, the love of God.

When Paul wrote, “Hope doesn’t disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us”, (Rom. 5.5), he was telling the church where it could find the resources to be the loving Body of the compassionate Christ. “We love because God first loved us”; our love for others is the overflow of God’s love, channelled through our words, actions and relationships to others. Those early Christians, and just as much, you and I, “Once we were no people, but now we are God’s people; once we had not received mercy but now we have received mercy.” (I Peter 2.10) And so, having freely received, we are called to open our hearts and freely give.  

It’s hard to know how and when this pandemic will be over. But however that comes about, here is a cry of the heart from all around us. In a lonely society, we Christians can be conduits of friendship, a community where love and compassion flow freely. We are God’s people, a community of the Gospel, a place of welcome, a safe place in a world that feels unsafe and uncertain. I can think of few more important acts of mission and Good News sharing, than us becoming a befriending community reaching out with the welcome of God to people brave enough to admit they are lonely,

Joy. That’s the word to think about over the Easter weekend and into whatever the summer brings. Don’t take my word for it. Joy. It’s the gospel truth. Go and see for yourself. Luke’s Gospel starts and ends with it.

The angels told the shepherds and anyone else who later read Luke’s Gospel, “I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be for all the people.” Thirty three years later after the trauma of the crucifixion, and the shock of an empty tomb, the disciples were confronted by the risen Jesus. “Look”, said Jesus and showed them his hands and feet, unmistakably nail-marked, the wounds of crucified love. “And they disbelieved for joy.” The joy of good news, the birth of a baby who is God with us, and meeting the risen Jesus who is God with us!

Joy for the Christian is more than happiness, that inner effervescence that bubbles up in laughter, good feelings and celebration. Oh, it is all these, but it has a deeper source and more enduring impact. Christ is risen! Death is overcome! Love has won! Because of Jesus’ resurrection life erupts in hope, and light radiates from the darkest of human experiences.

This past year we haven’t done a lot of rejoicing. It has been difficult enough just to get through each day, week, month, with much of what brings joy into our lives either closed down, restricted or unable to be shared with others. Christian joy is not some superficial denial of how hard life can sometimes be. But for us as Christians the resurrection is the anchor truth of faith, hope, love and peace.

The joy of the resurrection comes to us when we look with as much honesty as we can on life in all its brokenness. The cross helps us to do that. Our Saviour bore in his own body, heart, mind and soul the full weight of sin, evil and a broken creation: hate, violence, lies, betrayal, cruelty, all the dark forces that together inflict suffering on human lives and insinuate themselves into human cultures, societies and systems.

The world did its worst, and God acted for the best. The resurrection is God’s victory over all that breaks human hearts, destroys our hopes, wastes every joy, and dares defy the Eternal Love whose response is the sacrifice of God’s own Son. No wonder Easter is about joy!

The last two verses of Luke’s Gospel show that the great joy of the Saviour’s birth where the story began, had come full circle in the mighty purposes of God. The bleak sorrow of the Saviour’s death where it looked like the story ended, was eclipsed by the rising of the sun, and the rising of the Son. “Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. ( Luke: 24.52)      

Such joy has a permanence happiness can never have. Such joy depends not on our life circumstances, but on the pivotal circumstance of that historic moment when the tomb became redundant, and Jesus burst the powers of death by being raised in the power of the God of life, love, hope and peace. Jesus is risen!

Of course we still have the everyday struggles of trying to make our lives work. We still go through situations of bereavement and grief, illness and weakness, anxiety and depression. But Jesus is risen!

This past year’s losses and sorrows, the tedium and the loneliness, the restricted freedoms and uncertain future, are not going to disappear. We remain in the grip of a pandemic and the world still seems unsafe, uncertain and often either afraid or defiant. But. Remember Luke’s bracketed occasions of joy. This is still a world in which Christ was born in joy, and God made himself known; a world where Christ died for the sins of the whole world; and a world in which resurrection has happened, to the rejoicing of heaven and joy to the world.

Christ has come. Christ has died. Christ has risen! Hallelujah.

Joy is to know in mind and heart that we are held in the eternal love of God in Christ.

Joy is to know our sin forgiven, and our hearts reconciled and at peace with God.

Joy is when our life is given purpose, direction and meaning in worship and service to the God who calls us in Christ.

Joy is trusting the guidance and gifting of the Holy Spirit, and the grace sufficient.

Joy is to pray as God’s children, to the one we call Father, in the name of our Saviour, in the power of the Spirit.

Joy is the environment of heaven, and we are citizens of heaven on earth.

“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him.”

1 Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
rolling as a mighty ocean
in its fulness over me:
underneath me, all around me,
is the current of his love,
leading onward, leading homeward,
to my glorious rest above.

2 Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Spread his love from shore to shore:
how he loves us, ever loves us,
changes never, nevermore,
watches over all his loved ones,
whom he died to call his own,
ever for them interceding
at his heavenly Father's throne.

3 Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Love of every love the best:
vast the ocean of his blessing,
sweet the haven of his rest!
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
very heaven of heavens to me,
and it lifts me up to glory,
evermore his face to see.

Here is a particularly powerful version of this hymn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLTu1xv2-Us

God of grace, when life was in crisis and too much was being asked of him, you said into the heart and mind of your servant Paul, “my grace is sufficient.”

So we pray for ourselves, in the difficulties and disappointments we have to go through, may we be given strength for each day, the resilience that comes from your Spirit, and the grace that is sufficient.

God of peace, when your servant Paul was imprisoned, isolated and struggling to find meaning in his work, he discovered and bore testimony to a peace that passes all understanding standing guard over heart and mind.

So we pray for ourselves as during this past year we too have felt imprisoned, isolated, and struggling. As each day we experience anxiety, and feel the frustrations of restriction, and are desperate for life to come back to something more satisfying and less stressed, may our hearts and minds be fortified by your peace that passes all understanding.

God of hope, writing to the Christians in Rome near the end of his life, your servant Paul prayed, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy in believing as you trust in Him.”

So we pray that we too will experience a resurgence of hope in our imagination, a return of joy to our hearts, and a new trust and hopefulness about this life we are living.

God of grace, peace and hope, bless us now with your presence throughout this day, and into whatever future lies before us.    Amen