Living Wittily

Reflections on the church set on a hill and built on a rock. (1)

One of my favourite places is Findochty, up on the Moral coast. Sitting above the fishing village is the Parish Church, a building which has been there well over a century and a half. Every time I see it, built on the rock, I hear again that strangely reassuring promise, "On this rock I will build my church..."  

That time when Jesus said to Peter, "You are Simon. From now on you shall be called Rock, and on this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not overcome it..ever!" Not the shifting sand that was the volatile Peter, as if such fragmented liquidity could bear the weight of the mission of God. The Rock of faith, embedded in what is revealed. That's what Jesus meant. "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God", said Peter. True enough, said Jesus. But flesh and blood haven;t revealed that to you. It was my Father in heaven.

So brilliant as his insight was, it wasn't Peter's genius that made the penny drop. It was God, opening the mind to understand, opening the ears to hear, and opening the eyes to see, and opening his heart to the truth and demand of Jesus. That is the rock on which the church is founded, secured, rooted and grounded in the love of God. The church is made up of people; fallible but forgiven, human but called God's children, as far as the world is concerned, followers of Jesus are daft and deluded, but in truth, they have found a truth that unlocks life and opens up possibility.

Faith is not certainty; it is risk, but it is trustful risk. Faith is not something we work ourselves up to, as if it was about will power; faith is that strangely disruptive responsiveness to something that calls us beyond ourselves, to a different way of looking at the world, and a changed way of living.

Poor Peter, brilliant Peter, big-mouth Peter who spoke first and tried to edit it later. As soon as he had blurted out that impossible truth about Jesus, he's told he's got a new name, a different identity, a changed purpose for life, and he is called to a new faithfulness and obedience to this travelling carpenter Rabbi.

Such faith, risk, trust and obedience has a durability and stability that goes beyond flesh and blood. It's like granite. It lasts and endures and bears enormous weight of circumstance and change and challenge. It's a rock, and on that kind of rock-faith, Jesus said, I will build my church.

(This is the first of several reflections on the church set on a hill and built on a rock.)

 

Credo, Julian of Norwich: "and in the same way everything exists through the love of God."

Regular readers here will know that one of my interests is designing and working tapestry. Over the years I've completed around 20 original pieces, some of them as gifts to special people on special days.

More recently I've been experimenting with the use of tapestry as a form of visual exegesis. During the design and working of a particular tapestry, I 'dwell' within a text, reading it regularly and absorbing what the words seem to be saying, especially before working the next phase. Colour, image, shape and form are each allowed to emerge in an evolving design.

Most times there is no inner idea of the finished work, and often the design changes as I go along. At some point the design of the piece, which began as an undeveloped attraction to the text, and grew in the working, takes on a final form and is worked from a roughly sketched outline. 

The current piece (detail below) is based on Julian of Norwich, and in particular, two of her most famous passages from The Revelations of Divine Love. Her parable of the hazelnut has long been a favourite of anthologists; and any who have read her Revelations will immediately recall the simplicity and theological profundity of her vision of her own hand, and in it "a tiny thing the size of a hazelnut."

"And in this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind's eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, "What can this be?" And the answer came to me, "It is all that is made". I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, "It lasts and will last for ever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three attributes: the first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that God cares for it." 

Out of that everyday ordinary miracle of a kernel in its protective shell, Julian drew a wondering sense of the immensity of God's creative and sustaining love, and a corresponding awareness of how small, fragile and dependent is the whole of creation. But that whole and entire Creation is held in the hand of one whose love pervades and sustains all and everything that is, including every 'dear soul'. 

The second theme, which follows logically and theologically from her vision of God's love sustaining in existence all that God has made, is Julian's famous cry of hope:"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Invariably quoted out of context, it reads like saccharine optimism, life's artificial sweetener. And when fitted within the universe of her revelations, it is a powerful cry of eschatological hope which, given her historical context of tragic and terrifying events, sounds even more like a classic denial and evasion of reality.

Not so. Few writers have faced up to the swathes of suffering that swirl around human life with more realism and look-the-world-in-the-face honesty. But she refuses to make sin the defining reality of the universe; indeed her faith in the cross as the source of redemptive and renewing power is a red thread woven throughout her Revelations. As James Denney, (another of my theological guides) once said to a Victorian Free Church of Scotland congregation in Greenock: 

"What is revealed at the cross is redeeming love, and it is revealed as the last reality of the universe, the eternal truth of what God is. It is before the foundation of the world; nay the very foundations of the world are laid in it....You wish to know the final truth about God? Here it is, eternal love bearing sin." (The Way Everlasting, p.24-5)  

I doubt there is a better summary of Julian's vision, notwithstanding Denney had no patience for either mysticism or metaphysics. But here's the thing. Where these two theologians of the cross intersect is precisely in their assertion that the love of God is cruciform and Christlike. And they agree on the most fundamental of truths, that it is that same Divine love which is the last reality of the universe, the eternal truth of who and what God is. 

"All shall be well is therefore a cry of the heart, but of the heart that has been broken by sin and suffering, and is now remade in hope of a New Creation. Julian writes in graphic detail about the lacerated head of the crucified Christ, the drops of blood on thorns, each one evidence of a love that bears all sin and speaks a love which draws from an everlasting and infinite mercy. 

So the current tapestry which is being stitched around these two texts, the hazelnut and the credo "all shall be well", will try to show the beauty and form of the world, encapsulated in the hazelnut as "all that exists". And all that vast universe of 'all that is', including our own jewel like planet, the size of a hazelnut, is for Julian interwoven with the Passion of God in Christ. The Divine love is redemptive, renewing and restoring, and is traced by a red thread of redemptive love running through and around a God loved Creation. 

A third voice to finish. Maria Von Trapp wrote a number of inspirational books. In one of them she reflected on life as a tapestry. She too sensed that the mystery of life finds its best understanding in the colour red, traceable in the fundaments of the universe, and in our own lives. 

“It will be very interesting one day to follow the pattern of our life as it is spread out like a beautiful tapestry. As long as we live here we see only the reverse side of the weaving, and very often the pattern, with its threads running wildly, doesn't seem to make sense. Some day, however, we shall understand. In looking back over the years we can discover how a red thread goes through the pattern of our life: the Will of God.”

When this tapestry is finished, there will be red thread.

Bringing Brexit into the Church - Intercessions.

Prayer of Intercession

Our Father, your kingdom come,Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. You have called us in all our life together, to seek first the Kingdom of God and your righteousness.

We pray for our country, this place where we live, and where so much that is important in our shared life is under threat, and we seem to be stuck in a mess of our own making.

Brexit has made us stressed and angry, afraid and divided. We have strong opinions and not enough understanding; we take sides, point fingers of blame, refuse to listen to others and shout all the louder ourselves. God, forgive us.

We pray for our Parliament, and all those we have elected and appointed to represent the interests of our country and our people. Father that is one of our greatest fears – we are starting to choose who are our people. We use words like LEAVE and REMAIN as slogans and insults. We use phrases like ‘enemies of the people’, ‘no surrender’, ‘disaster capitalism’ ‘do or die’ as if we are at war with ourselves.

We pray that you will give wisdom and humility to those who have power; undermine the pride and arrogance that often closes off good ways forward; enable those who speak for us to do so with truth and integrity, and to refuse acceptance of lies as if the truth doesn’t matter.

God of the nations, our country must make far reaching decisions soon. Guide and direct us into the paths of peace; stem the flow of invective and hostility; bring minds together to find understanding and a way ahead that enables justice, the common good, and care for each other. Our continent has known terrible wars, and these past 75 years we have lived peaceably and constructively. Whatever the outcomes of these next weeks, may we find ways of living in friendship as partners rather than as competitors and rivals.

 

Father, in times of crisis and anxiety your prophets spoke words of comfort and truth. May we hear and obey their words, and make those words our prayers in these next weeks:

In our hearts, and in all places of power and decision-making, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever rolling stream."

In our prayers for ourselves and for all who exercise power on our behalf, may we and they hear your command, "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

Eternal God, remind us, because we forget far too easily in the heat of argument and in our determination to get our own way; You have shown every one of us what is good, and what it is that you the Lord requires of us, "to act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God."

Teach us once again as a nation to be a place of welcome and refuge for others; lead us as a people to a new understanding of our place among the nations; bring us to repentance and changed ways; give us hearts less selfish and more generous, less afraid of others and more welcoming to each new stranger; give us minds less angry and more peaceable; show us how to turn down the volume of our own shouting and so to listen more carefully to what others say, and think, and feel; give us courage and wisdom to be impatient with lies and defenders of truth.

Forgive our own part in the divisiveness, by ways we speak, or treat others, or refuse to listen to those we disagree with; forgive the faintness of our light and the lost savour of our salt; make us peacemakers and seekers of justice; fill us with passion for a society where people are safe, where compassion is on the increase, where we learn again the joy of kindness, and in which we walk the way of Jesus with arms open in welcome to the stranger, hands reaching out to the hurting, and feet walking in the narrow ways of loving God and neighbour for Jesus’ sake,

Amen