Over the summer part of my work will be preparing a course on Reconciliation: Theology and Practice. There are few areas of human experience, cultural challenge and Christian theology that touch on so many of the fundamentals of human existence. Conflict and peace, prejudice and inclusion, grievance and forgiveness, fear and trust, hatred and love, alienation and belonging, despair and hope, violence and non-violent peacemaking, vicious circles and healing cycles, tears of rage and tears of compassion, the face of implacability and the face of compassion, the way of death and the way of life - that list has no logical completion, and will never become a comprehensive catalogue of human alternatives.
But whatever reconciliation is about, it is about real alternatives, moral choices, theological possibilities, options for life, investments in the human community that are costly yet creative, troublesome but transformative, realistic but visionary. Because reconciliation lies at the very core of the Christian story. That it has not been the beating heart and moral imagination and spiritual commitment and intellectual grandeur of the Church's way of living out the Gospel is, for me at least, one of the scandalous questions that is still looking for an adequate answser - and perhaps even before that, an adequate asking of the question.
Few issues lie more obviously before the world than how human beings learn to live together. In exploring the theology and practice of reconciliation we will encounter some of those depths of Christian thought and practice when we hear what James Denney called 'the plunge of lead in fathomless waters'.
For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself..... and he has given us this ministry of reconciliation...
Reconciling all things to Himself, making peace by the blood of the cross....blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God...
Ephesians - The Triune God of love eternal and grace immeasurable...
Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached through Ephesians and the published sermons fill 8 thick volumes. By the way the volume on chapter 3, "The Unsearchable Riches of Christ" is a profound account of Christian mysticism illumined by evangelical experience and textual discipline, providing a deeply satisfying exposition of what it means to be in Christ, and for life to be grounded in the eternal love of God made known in Christ. Here more than anywhere else in his writing. Lloyd-Jones expressed his Welsh fervour, his revival instincts, his theological passion, and through the intensity of his personal experience of Christ, he rhapsodised on the grace unspeakable, the riches inexhaustible, the love unfathomable and the wisdom unsearchable of this God who in Christ reveals His purposes of love and mercy hidden in the ages but revealed in Jesus.
Every now and then I'm drawn back to Ephesians, just as at other times I'm drawn back to other parts of the Bible that to use the old Puritan phrase, 'speak to my condition'. Sometimes Isaiah 40-55; or the Psalms; the Gospels often, and John most often. But when it comes to Paul the Prison Epistles are where I instinctively go - especially those first chapters in Ephesians and Colossians when Paul sees the universe through the lens of Christ. And my own story is not relativised and reduced by the comparison; it is drawn into it and given a significance that is rooted in precisely that "grace unspeakable..., those riches inexhaustible, such love unfathomable and the wisdom unsearchable of this God who in Christ reveals His purposes of love and mercy hidden in the ages.
All of which arises because I've had on my desk one of the first commentaries I ever bought and which I treasure as a spiritual artefact, a sacred gift to myself, a trusted exegetical companion - Paul's Letters from Prison,G B Caird (Oxford, Clarendon: 1976) Bought in the John Smith Bookshop on the Campus of Stirling University, in March 1976 - cost then - £2.25! I doubt I ever spent money on a book more wisely and for better reward. Yes there are the big heavies - and I have most of them (Markus Barth, Ernest Best, Andrew Lincoln, P T O'Brien, and just arrived Clinton Arnold and Frank Thielman - no space for Hoehner's encyclopedic doorstopper). But there is an elegance in Caird's 90 pages on Ephesians, and for me an affection for this careful scholar, that makes this small book special. It's one of the very few commentaries I've ever slipped into a flight bag and read at an airport! I know - sad - better to read Lee Child, or Henning Mankell, Ian McEwan.
Maybe so. But for the umpteenth time I'm keeping company with G B Caird on Ephesians, trying to live with the tensions and paradoxes of grace unspeakable, unsearchable riches, all summed up in Ephesians 2.4-5, "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". That's the greatest paradox of them all - our transgressions and God's great love for us. Who would ever have thought they could be reconciled - except God, who is rich in mercy?
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