Living Wittily

On the Virtue of Virtue Signalling....

 

"Virtue signallers": a phrase used to reduce the moral validity of those who call for social justice, compassion in politics, responsible care of our planet, and most recently, those who are outraged at the 322 MPs who voted against a motion to provide free meals for children during the October holidays.

 

Oh yes, virtue signalling is a thing. But so is genuine compassion, care for others, commitment to the common good, moral values that question the priorities of Government policy, and good citizenship that holds politicians to account for the decisions they make and the consequences for others.

To dismiss all moral protest and reasoned disagreement as "virtue signalling" is political cynicism at best, and a sign of being morally tone deaf at worst.

 

Oh, and is it not the case that to call out "virtue signalling" is to virtue signal? It is also to avoid the moral argument and opt for ad hominem attacks on those we want to silence.

 

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most powerful ethical documents in human history. I guess it could be called out as virtue signalling by those who want to give its teachings a body swerve.

 

The photo is of a small print sent to me by a friend - David Hockney "The Sermon on the Mount II".

Thought for the Day for our Montrose Church Community for this Week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thought for the Day 

Monday 19

Psalm 23.1 “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

The first word is the name of God, the one who promised to be the faithful guide and strong protector of Israel. And it’s personal, because the Lord is my Shepherd; he knows your name, your face and your heart. In Scripture the shepherd is often to illustrate God’s strength, care and always promised presence. The Lord is the Shepherd of the ninety nine, and the one who is in trouble. 

Tuesday 20

Psalm 23.2 “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.”

There is both tenderness and toughness in the shepherd who knows how to look after sheep. Rest and nourishment are needed to keep the body healthy; but the Shepherd of our souls cares for our whole being. Sometimes our inner spirit is frayed, and our heart is weary. The Lord, our Shepherd looks after us, providing the nourishment of his Word, inviting us into the stillness of prayer, and the ministry of the soul-restoring Holy Spirit.

Wednesday 21 

Psalm 23.3 “He guides me in paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake.”

This Psalm is about God taking initiatives. “He makes me lie down…he leads…he restores…he guides.” God leads us in right paths. Sometimes we might think we know better, but God knows the future, as well as our past and present. He will bring us to the right place. God’s name is true and his promise is faithful, and for his name’s sake he will go ahead of us, guide us and be there with us and for us.

Thursday 22

Psalm 23.4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

Faith sometimes has a note of defiance. “Even though, no matter what, I will fear no evil…” Fear isn’t a choice; sometimes we are afraid, scared and anxious. Faith is not the absence of fear, it is the movement of the heart turning from whatever we fear, to the God we have learned to trust no matter what. Even though life becomes scary, God is still there, “you are with me”. Comfort is the sense of being surrounded by a strength greater than our own. “The Lord is my Shepherd…..you are with me.”

Friday 23

Psalm 23 5 “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.”

This is God as host, the hospitable God who provides rest, friendship, food and his own presence. To anoint the head is a sign of honour and welcome. The table is laden, the cup is never empty. We are shepherded to the best seat, at the best table, to eat the best food. In the presence of all in life that threatens us, God sets a table, and anoints us with the Spirit. Think of bread broken, and wine poured out, Christ’s presence and the communion of saints.

Saturday

Psalm 23.6 “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” 

The Shepherd goes ahead, leads, guides, protects and looks after the sheep. The Psalm finishes by saying that all the way we have travelled we have been followed, by goodness and mercy. God’s blessings are often most clearly understood when we stop and look back the road we have come. Then, looking forward, the confident hope that “in my Father’s house are many dwelling places”, and one of them has our name on it.

Sunday

Revelation 7.17 “For the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Psalm 23, and this verse are often sung or read at a funeral service. There’s a reason for that. Sometimes we need pictures and memories to express our faith in the hard to describe grace, love and mercy of God. The Lord is our Shepherd, Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Through Christ we come to springs of living water, springing up to eternal life. The image of God wiping away tears is one of the most tender verses in the whole Bible. The Lord of all creation moved by the tears of his creatures.

Trees, Texts and Photos 1. The trees of the field shall clap their hands.

We've all had to find our own ways of coping with a restricted way of life while we co-exist with Covid 19. Apparently lots of folk have been tuning in to Bob Ross, the American painter, instructor and television host on his own programme, The Joy of Painting. It helps them sleep during the anxieties of daily life that have become everyday experience for all of us, they say. If you've never watched him, he can be found on BBC 4 IPlayer and there are dozens of programmes.

His soft playful voice, gentle enthusiasm, conversational style, make watching him at work a form of therapy for the imagination. Even the titles, often in unapologetic clichés,  sound like an invitation to somewhere not far from Eden: Twilight Meadow, Bubbling Brook, Winter Stillness, Cabin in the Woods, Lazy River. But nearly all of his paintings have trees; foreground, background, on horizons, up close, forests of fir trees, dominant, solitary majestic pines, unobtrusive thickets, low hanging branches over lakes and streams - all over the place, trees. This is the man whose words became a meme, “There is nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.” I agree. Wholeheartedly. Without reserve. 

I don't paint, at least not with oil, acrylic or watercolour. If mixing and working stranded cotton counts, then I paint in textiles. But I do take photographs, and amongst my favourite subjects are trees. During these past months we have done a forest walk most days. The paths, the trees, the flora, lately the fungi, the wildlife, all have been sources of healing and quietening. But the trees? They have become familiar companions, known faces, and we have enjoyed them through early spring, summer, and now well into autumn. 

Trees are a big deal in the Bible. From the Tree of Life to the avenues of trees in the Holy City, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. My favourite prophet, Deutero-Isaiah,had a soft spot for trees. There is that word painting of nature's loud applause of the Creator at the end of chapter 55:

You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.
   Instead of the thornbush will grow the cypress,
    and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
    for an everlasting sign,
    that will endure forever.” 

Walking along the banks of the River Dee yesterday, these trees were applauding in colour. Isaiah 55 is a chapter deeply rooted in faith and hope, faith in the God of new beginnings, and hope that the prophet and people will be part of that new thing which God will do. That phrase, "Instead of" is a summons to comparisons. Instead of this, that!  Instead of the wounding scrubby thornbush, the elegant tall cypress; instead of tearing briars, the beautiful myrtle, its flowers and leaves used by brides and in victory parades. Isaiah is anticipating the reversal of the curse and the fall, when God renews the earth and the whole creation rejoices and bursts into applause.

Going back to people who have found some solace and quietening in watching Bob Ross painting, it isn't difficult to imagine the sheer tedium of chronic anxiety, and for many the slow erosion of emotional nutrients as we all try to cope with distancing, face coverings, and the prohibitions on gathering together for mutual comfort, support and companionship. Isaiah's words are a promised interruption to the tedium, and a confident looking forward to the shared rejoicing of those who may now be near despair. The words that come before the promise of applauding trees are the words from which faith springs and hope flourishes:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.
 As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

The uncertainty and widespread suffering caused by Covid 19 has taken a huge toll across our world. There is no end in sight and while there are many reasons to be hopeful, and much that encourages us in the kindness, cleverness and commitment of all kinds of people, it's clear that life will not be back to normal any time soon.

Isaiah, and his love of trees, is a contrary voice to those inner anxieties and persistently negative voices that are in danger of undermining our faith and our hope. We will rejoice together again. Our thoughts are always limited, often self-concerned, and understandably preoccupied with those corrosively worrying what ifs. God's thoughts are different. There is a heaven of difference between God's thoughts and ours, between God's words and our speechless fears. God's promises are made in words, and his words don't bounce back empty - they accomplish and achieve God's purposes.

These trees I have come to know as signposts on our walks. One day they, or their seeds some time down the years, will clap their hands at the surprising joyfulness that surges through a creation being made new. The cypress will point the way, and the myrtle will clothe the roadsides with the flowers and foliage of a cosmic celebration. Sometimes, just sometimes, theology requires imagination unplugged. That's how hope is sustained, by thinking the previously unthinkable, and by a vision as ludicrously hopeful and Godlike as trees applauding a world made new.  

On Sifting and Filleting Back Issues of The Tablet.

Over the years I have subscribed to and read a number of regular papers, journals and magazines including: The Listener, The Guardian Weekly, The Church Times, The Cistercian Quarterly, The Expository Times, Third Way, Life and Work, The Tablet, The British Weekly, Scottish Journal of Theology, Sojourners Magazine.

 

Some of these are now defunct, and nothing similar has replaced them - I so miss The Listener. The wide range of subjects, book reviews, cultural comment and the model of excellent journalism supported by lucid and sharp writing made it a weekly tonic for jaded spirits.

 

While doing a long term research project on Benedictine and Cistercian spirituality I subscribed to the Cistercian Studies, which at that time was distributed quarterly from Caldey Abbey, administered by a Brother with whom I was in regular correspondence for some years. Reading it  was a deeply enriching and hearty shove out of my evangelical comfort zone! I read articles on Aelred of Reivaulx, William St Thierry, every issue with commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, and in one editorial scoop newly edited lectures on contemplation by Thomas Merton. I eventually cancelled my subscription when it changed its format and content. But ever since reading Esther de Waal's, Seeking God, The Way of St Benedict, I've continued to drink from the rather deep wells of Benedictine spirituality, .   

 

Then there was Third Way, one of the best reads around for all the years it was produced - I miss that intelligent, culturally alert mixture of intellectual curiosity, faith commitment, generous enquiry and affirmation of the arts and humanities, science and technology, and a constant willingness to open up avenues of ethical and biblical engagement. Its Evangelical ethos was never "cabined, cribbed, confined", but open to truth and to new ways of thinking, exploring and engaging with cultural changes as they inevitably impacted on church life, Christian experience and traditional norms of behaviour and moral understanding.

 

I could write in praise of all those magazines, papers and journals. But what brought all this to mind has been today's time at the desk. I have a friend who passes on his back issues of The Tablet. I haven't seen him since March 23 and lock down. We had coffee the other day and he handed me a carrier bag full of Tablets!

 

The last day or two, on odd half hours and occasional longer periods, I've browsed, skimmed and filleted through the thirty plus issues looking for whatever might bring sustenance, new perspectives, spiritual and mental stimulus, and just the pure enjoyment of a well written article - of which there are plenty. For example, an article flagged as, "A Catholic moral theologian and former law enforcement officer from a midwestern culture seeped in racism, reflects on his own personal experience of white privilege." Where else in rural Scotland would I find an article of personal testimony, rooted in raw experience i  the United States, by someone who has lived within, that is, inhabited racist culture as a law enforcement officer, now a Professor of Christian ethics?

 

Ever since reading W E Sangster's advice that pastor preachers should always be reading biography, I've more or less done just that. Over the years I've read quite a few shelves' worth. The Tablet regularly reviews some of the latest biographies and my current list now has some new suggestions: Dorothy Day, Graham Greene, Martin Buber, Seamus Heaney. and the reflective memoir of Dr Amanda Brown, "Prison Doctor: Women Inside." 

 

In one issue a two page article by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on his new book Morality (essential reading as a map out of our cultural despair); a full length interview with Jurgen Moltmann, his disposition and theology as hopeful as ever - who when asked the secret of his remaining energetic, theologically engaged and physically active life now into his 94th year, gives a shrug of the shoulders and the one word answer "God"; a brilliant review of Hilary Mantel's final part of the trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, in which the reviewer takes the novelist to task for airbrushing the character of Cromwell into something less than the hardened and self-preserving ruthless political operator he was; and much else.

 

Then modestly placed in the middle page, a small picture of the current Editor, Brendan Walsh. I only met Brendan once, for a lunch in London when he was a senior editor with SPCK. We corresponded for a while afterwards, and then life moved on for both of us. But seeing him again, 28 years later I still remember the animated theological discussions and the warm, urbane, generosity of mind of someone I remember being genuinely interested in and appreciative of faith traditions other than his own. 

"Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore..."

(Pastoral Letter to our Church Community in Montrose)

Dear Friends,

During my time as a student in the 1970’s at the Baptist Theological College of Scotland (as it was called then), the Principal was the Rev R E O White. From him I learned so much. The best teachers are those who teach us to think for ourselves, and who model what they teach. REO was a demanding teacher, and sometimes assumed we knew more than we did. But those who sat under his teaching learned the importance of argument, evidence, organised thought, and a willingness to follow truth wherever it led. That meant too, careful and reverent study of the biblical text, learning to think and act pastorally, with humour and humanity, as one who, in following Christ will care for Christ’s people with the love and humility of the Servant Christ.

Every day at College started with prayers led by each of the students on a rota basis. Mr White always sat behind the lectern, his face visible to the class but not to the one leading the prayers. One morning I chose to read from Psalm 119. I knew the passage well, but I didn’t pay attention to the verses that followed my text. I read out to the class: “O how I love your law, I meditate on it all day long” (v 97) This was my text for the day. But I thought I would read the verses before and after – and then, committed to reading my announced passage, I read v 99 to the class, “I have more wisdom and insight than all my teachers….” I was aware of the class looking at Mr White, whose shoulders had started shaking with hard to suppress merriment at the very thought!

I became friends with Mr and Mrs White when I left College, and visited them regularly. When years later I became College Principal he spoke to me with warmth and that same wise encouragement to grow into God’s calling. I reminded him of that morning, that text, and my embarrassment, and this time we both laughed. When Mr White died I spoke at his funeral on behalf of the College, and gave thanks to God that this man, of such wisdom and insight, had never stopped being my teacher.

These are times when as Christians we are perplexed and uncertain about the way the world is and the way the world is going. Wisdom and insight are at a premium. We are still in the full flow of a global pandemic which is disrupting all that has been familiar to us; we are right to be concerned about the political divisiveness in our own country, in the United States, and increasingly across Europe; every day the flow of refugees and the building pressures of migration challenge governments to act with justice and humanity; the growing inequalities between rich and poor likewise raises questions of justice and peace; and the inescapable consequences of climate change for our world threaten to overwhelm: these are huge challenges for humanity. They cannot but compel the church of Jesus Christ to reflect long and deeply about what God is saying through these events and movements in our times. 

More than ever, in our own Christian lives, and as a local gathering of Christ’s church, the words of James carry an important promise: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given him.”(James 1.5) Then there is that foundation text for wise living: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9.10) If we forget the Creator, we will neglect the creation, to our peril. If we despise other people made in God’s image, then we insult the One in whose image every human person is made. If economic gain is the goal and bottom line of life, then money and profit, not God, is our god. If division and conflict with others is the new way of politics, then what role the peacemaker and ambassador of Christ whose message is reconciliation?

Wisdom is the ability to look at the world as a God-loved world, into which Christ came and died and rose again, and to be a people of faith and faithfulness. Wisdom is to face honestly the enormous problems our world faces, and to pray with faith and hopefulness, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Wisdom is to know and believe the love of God, and to be agents of that love, inspired and energised by the love of Christ crucified and risen wherever God has placed us.

We are back to the three great virtues of Christian discipleship – faith in Christ and in the faithfulness of God; hope in the good news of Christ’s death for the sins of the world and his resurrection as the foundation of all hope in life and death; love as the eternal truth of who God is, and the final word God has spoken in Christ who, “while we were still sinners died for our sins”, “and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world.”  (I John2.2)

Lo! the hosts of evil round us,
scorn thy Christ, assail his ways!
From the fears that long have bound us,
free our hearts to love and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
for the living of these days.

Save us from weak resignation
to the evils we deplore;
let the search for thy salvation
be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
serving thee whom we adore.

That was one of R E O White’s favourite hymns! Make it your prayer this week.

Your friend and pastor,   

Jim Gordon