Living Wittily

Proud to be Scottish, and not the slightest embarrassed.

Scotland 1- Italy 2

Fair enough.

But just how good were Scotland today, and in this whole Euro 2008 campaign? Hard not to be flat after losing a goal at the end, and to a seriously dodgy refereeing decision. But not the slightest critical of a Scotland team who have given us some of our best footballing moments for decades.

Think ah'm gonnae buy a tartan tie - saw wan in yon Tie Rack at Braeheid, so they must be cool. In fact think ah might get a wee tartan tee shirt - no believe me. Here's a wee photie o' wan. Noo, kin ye wear a tie wi' a tee-shirt?

Proud to be Scottish, but occassionally embarrassed

Earlier this week I sat watching the evening news, and the report on the first SNP budget since coming into government. The ditching of the commitment to write off student loans rightly raised the temperature and deserved some serious debate. What we got was a slanging match, and the First Minister behaving like a yah-boo schoolboy. It doesn't matter which party the First Minister represents, he or she represents the public face of Scotland and the pubic image of Scottish politics. Mr salmond was an embarrassment. So I emailed him, and so far have no response. But here's what I wrote. Tell me if I am being unreasonably optimistic about the public role played by poltiicians who represent the Scottish people

Dear Mr Salmond

I have just listened to the TV coverage of your response to questions about non fulfilment of election commitments. Now I realise that there are ways of interpreting election promises, such as those made in relation to student debt. I work in academia and see first-hand the impact of debt on student morale and motivation. No doubt you have more substantial arguments / responses / excuses.

However my question is much more straightforward - are we to assume that the First Minister of Scotland, can only respond to opposition questions at the high intellectual level of worn out cliches such as over the moon, and sick as a parrot. The dignity of office, and the right of the Scottish Parliament to be taken seriously within and beyond Scotland, deserves better than this ranting rhetoric more suited to a playground show-off than one who aspires to lead this country to Independence. Funny it was not - embarrassing it certainly was, coming from a senior politician, and playing games with the disappointment of many of the young people whose commitment to Scotland will matter in our future

 

Yours with considerable disappointment,

I am posting this 2 hours and 25 minutes before our date with destiny.....and Italy. I met some of the tartan army in the centre of Glasgow, outside the Central Station, again exchanging pleasantries, Greggs pastries and handshakes with the vastly outnumbered Italian fans. Hope none of them watch the news on Scottish TV; hope their view of the Scottish people as generous, hospitable, and contributors to European Enlightenment is based on such encounters, and not on the level of debate and snide silliness so ably demonstrated on the floor of our Parliament.

OK. now I feel better and can settle down to watch the outcome of the greatest game ever watched by Scottish fans in the last half-century. And whether we win or not, we walk away holding our heads up cos, as big Eck said, 'This is the team that won in Paris'. Still the mood and tone of tomorrow's blog will reflect the outcome.

Darkness is My Only Companion 3 The pain of theological probing

  People who live with the difficulties created by Bipolar Disorder have to confront some of the most demanding and harrowing of human experiences, and absorb into their being the pain and desolation it can cause. Describing or explaining to others such complex and disruptive symptoms can be helpfully negotiated in some of those very helpful practical books aimed at helping sufferers or carers to cope. Then there are the more objective and descriptive accounts, packed with information and practical advice. But then there are the biographies and autobiographies which become significant personal testimony, brought back from those dark and dangerous territories of psychological and psychic disturbance, and which deserve our compassion, our admiration and not a milligramme of patronising critique.

It may be that in understanding such a difficult and complex illness we need all three style of writing- 'the how to cope with', 'the how to understand the nature of' and 'the what it feels like from the inside'. This book is a bit of each, but its importance is in the autobiographical narrative within which the personal impact of severe mental ill health is described, its personal implications thought through from a theological and pastoral perspective, and clear advice given as to how to support, accompany and care for the person suffering from Bipolar Disorder.

Kathryn Greene McCreight is unflinching in her steady gaze at the multi-faceted reality of her condition. Depression as mental illness - yes. Mania as euphoric loss of control and accountability, yes. Feelings of suicide and fear of life yes. Anxiety about possible treatments, and long terms effects, yes. Dependence on the love, reliability and sheer dogged love of those closest, yes indeed. A lifetime of medication, therapy and lifestyle changes, yes, that too.

  But also she faces the pain of theological probing. What is the connection between her mental suffering and God? What is a human being, a human mind, the nature of that deepest core of the self we call the soul and how does mental illness cut so deeply into a person's sense of self, and self worth? What is God up to? And what about suffering and sin? Is there any way of understanding how various forms of human brokenness fit together? Other thoughts are shared about despair, the dark night of the soul, the hiddenness of God - these aren't dealt with at length, or in theological depth; which isn't to say they aren't dealt with in a deep way. because this is theological autobiography by a woman who has taken her illness, her faith and God with total seriousness and has clarified the hardest questions even if she hasn't always found the clearest answers. How could she? There are mysteries and enough in a human life, which are in some ways multiplied and  intensified by mental ill health.

Here is one extract amongst many, that is both poignant and important:

I thought I knew who Jesus was. I thought I could sense his presence. But in mental illness, I weep like Mary, "They have taken away my Lord and I don't know where they have laid him." My presuppositions about the love of the Lord have been turned upside down. my brain, my cognition and my memory can't find Jesus. Only my soul itself is safe in the Lord, without my awareness. (page 111)

The last section of the book is required reading for those who want to be of help, and avoid venturing uninformed advice or offering theological superficialities. Staying too long on a hospital visit, the importance of Scripture and a Daily Office, the difficult human hermeneutical task of interpreting other people's tears and responding non-invasively to what may be a cry of the heart, choosing the right therapy - all are discussed, matter of factly, by one who knows both sides. And a final, and fine chapter on 'Why and How I use Scripture.' Tucked away as an appendix, it is a gem of hermeneutical common sense.

This is a good book in several sense of the word. It is well written, honest and drawn like water from a deep well of experience. It is theologically informed and spiritually reflective, allowing the writer to explore the spirituality of her suffering. It is a book that will do good for those who struggle with the ravages of mental illness, and reassures by showing that no human being is defined or devalued by their suffering.

A Baptist Apology

No need to say much about the content of yesterday's statement of apology and repentance issued by the Council of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. It is an acknowledgement of our inevitable implication in all the chapters of our story, including the tragic story of Britain and the slave trade. As a Scot whose country and society benefited financially from trafficking in human beings I want to identify entirely and without reservation with the words carefully chosen and humbly offered.

So instead of any paraphrase or precis I can offer, you can read the full text at the Baptist union of Great Britain website. It is a document framed in the values of the Kingdom of God.

The simple pleasures of big learned books!

As promised here are some Haiku verses I wrote to celebrate the beautiful, critical commentaries publishes as the Hermeneia series. They are also a tribute to Sean Winter who shares my enthusiasm for the aesthetics of book production, who like me gloats without conscience in the visual and tactile pleasure of handling and reading a beautiful book in which the knowledge it contains and the form that contains it are equally important. And near the end a three line tribute to a three volume masterpiece, Luz on Matthew.

Hermeneia  Haiku

Hermeneia, is

An ancient Greek speaking word

For hermeneutics.

.

Hermeneutics, the

Modern term for biblical

Interpretation.

.

Sumptuous volumes,

Book-buying extravagance

So hard to resist.

.

A thing of beauty,

Aesthetics and scholarship

A joy forever.

.

Luz’ magnum opus,

Winter’s desideratum

Matthean triptych.

.

Haiku PS

.

Lesser mortals ask

‘What is wirkungsgeschichte?’

Is it important?

Augustine and the Mother's love of the Holy Scriptures

It is a wondrous and beneficial thing that the Holy Spirit organised the Holy Scriptures so as to satisfy hunger by means of its plainer passages, and remove boredom by means of its obscurer ones.

If you cannot yet understand [a passage of Scripture], you should leave the matter for the consideration of those who can; and since Scripture does not abandon you in your infirmity, but with a mother's love accompanies your slower steps, you will make progress. Holy Scripture, indeed, speaks in such a way as to mock the proud readers with its heights, terrify the attentive with its depths, feed great souls with its truth and nourish little ones with sweetness.

Both quotations from Augustine, quoted in Greene-McCreight, 164,167.

Darkness is My Only Companion 2. "A love that bears out to the edge of doom..."

For sixteen pages Kathryn Greene Mccreight writes a first chapter entitled simply, and bleakly, 'Darkness'. She attempts to describe the inner world of mental ill health, the deprivations that afflict emotional responsiveness, self-confidence, physical appetites, essential relationships. She walks the narrow path between self-pity and understatement of just how bewildering and  threatening depression can be. Throughout her illness she has struggled to 'make sense of my pain with regard to my life before the triune God..and the apparent incongruity of that pain with the Christian life'.

Sometimes distraction helps, but to constantly know you need to constantly distract yourself is itself both tiring and subversive of the process, because you always remember what it is you have to distract yourself from. And then there is the loneliness. 'Human love can seem particularly unreliable and fleeting. At times it is unattainable, at others inexpressible, and usually for the depressed human love is unsensed, and indeed nonsense'. Yet she persists against all the emotional and inner sense of love's absence, to argue at the theological level that the love of God in Christ remains a fact even if all that is experienced is absence.

'If it is the love of God that we see in the face of Christ Jesus that is promised to pull us through, a love that bears out to the edge of doom even for the ugly and unlovable such as we, then the statement that love heals depression is in fact the only light that exists in the dark tunnel.' (page 24)

That is not trite optimism - that is a theologically grounded conviction that acts as a sub-structure to a faith at times searingly tested. And the darkness isn't only the inner emptiness of a heart scooped clean of hope. There is the mania, the euphoria that threatens to push life beyond control by overspending, dancing wherever, singing loudly whenever. And deciding to be disciplined doesn't help, 'mania is almost defined by lack of discipline'.

And so Kathryn tells the story of an illness, which is also her story, and though she would not allow herself to be defined by her illness, there is no doubt that life has had to be lived through it, around it, with it. And that is the truth that Christians need to get clear. Mental ill health is a form of suffering and anguish that requires levels of courage, endurance and sheer resilience often as demanding as, at times more demanding than, many more visible physical conditions with their accompanying pain. What makes this book an important gift to the church is the honesty, courage and theological integrity of the author, whose faith is strong enough to bear the weight of her hardest questions. This is pastoral theology from the edge, the theology of a pastor who is familiar with the edge, and has looked over it, and has come back to speak of what is there with a hopefulness that is theological rather than emotional, and a realism that is both pastorally and personally informed.

These books cost twice as much as my first car, and will last longer!

Caution - long sentence looming. When someone spends more than half their life studying one of the Gospels, and takes over twenty years to write a three volume commentary of 1750 pages on Matthew, and remains an enthusiastic learner and teachable interpreter of all things Matthean, and writes out of a deep faith commitment and a familiarity with the vast range of previous Christian scholarship on the text, and the books themselves are the last word in sumptuous, crafted, book production....well then, it's hard not to gloat without guilt, to handle each volume with exaggerated care, to imagine that the weight of knowledge must at least be equivalent to the heft of the book, to make space on the desk to lay it down, but carefully,to open it and do what you always ought to do with a good book and a piece of refined art, read it, contemplate it, enjoy it, let its truth soak into whatever part of you is thirsty.

So I did!

And so I have since these volumes thudded onto my desk a couple of months ago. Ulrich Luz has gifted to the church one of the greatest commentaries ever written on a Gospel. For years I've used his commentary on chapters 1-7 of Matthew. But now it's been revised and expanded and along with the two other volumes completes the Hermeneia commentary on Matthew. The liturgical year 2007-8 focuses on the Gospel of Matthew - it will be serious fun and intellectual joy exploring the lectionary readings on Matthew, with Luz as guide.

A couple of months ago I played around with a few Haiku verses on the Hermeneia commentaries and posted them on Sean the Baptist's blog, cos Sean is just as much of a bibliophile as I am, just as much of a Luz fan, and just as fond of the aesthetic pleasures of handling, reading and affectionately caring for beautifully produced books. Later this week I'll post my Hermeneia Haiku as a celebration of these volumes, magnificent in content as in form. And come Advent I'll take time to learn from Luz, about genealogies, annunciations, the baby called Jesus and three magi whose GPS Sat-Nav went on the blink and they found themselves in Bethlehem.

Prayer for remembrance Sunday

Was privileged to lead worship and preach at Hillhead Baptist Church, and to consider the hopeful imagination of  Isaiah 25.1-9. There were several beautiful if poignant moments - the thoughtful, compassionate and challenging five minute multi-media presentation by the Bible Class; music that included the trumpet and the violin accompanying important words from hymns old and new. And near the end a prayer for ourselves, for the Church and for the world, that we might learn the words of the song that will silence the song of the ruthless.

Lord lead us in the ways of peace –

make us witnesses of reconciliation –

give us a holy impatience with short cuts and political expediencies.

And yes, give us courage to question assumptions

that conflict is inevitable in a globalised, polarised and destabilised world.

Help us to see all those structures of violent power,

of oppressive ideas, of instilled hostility,

as part of that great song of the ruthless,

and help us to silence it –

by persistent, patient actions of peace,

by resilient, responsive acts of reconciliation,

by gentle, gracious words of goodness

by faith-filled, faithful prayers of friendship

by holy, hopeful gestures of  healing,

So may the song of the ruthless be silenced,

by the song of the redeemed.

When is a sermon past its use by date?

Friday afternoon I spent a while sifting through an impressive pile of my previous sermons stretching back at least 20 years. Fascinating how what I preached then doesn't seem to cut it now; and the contemporary engagement with political, historical and ecclesial events now dates them, in the negative sense of out of date, but also in the positive sense that when they were preached, they were taking the life and events of the world seriously.

Sermons referring to Piper Alpha (when I was in Aberdeen), the invasion of Kuwait, Nelson Mandela's release and the overturning of apartheid laws, the Berlin Wall, numerous Balkan conflicts (appearing in several remembrance Sunday sermons), the crushing of student protests in Tianneman Square by the Chinese military, the Omagh bombing when on the Saturday afternoon I went into the study and did an entirely different sermon;

numerous harvest sermons asking increasingly serious questions about ecological concerns, globalisation and non-accountable economics; the Ethiopian famines, the Lockerbie bombing, the Dunblane and Hungerford massacres;

various attempts to think Christianly about consumerism, the lottery, genetic science developments; affirmations and questionings about changing views of church, mission, faith and work;

regular explorations of the meaning of the Lord's Supper, the blessings, the challenge, the frustrations and the guilt trips associated with praying or not praying; the nature of the church as community, agonising about inter-faith dialogue and the uniqueness of Christ.....and so on....and on....and on.

A quick scan of the texts preached caused no surprise - the Gospels are well ahead of Paul, some of the OT narratives are well represented including Moses, Jacob, Joseph, Elijah and Samuel and David. Ruth and Jonah I've preached through twice! But the thick pile of sermon notes in one bundle shows Isaiah has been a key text in my ministry and in my life ever since as a 19 year old I sat in a car, beside the River Tay in Perth, and prayed really hard that I'd manage not to make a fool of myself when I preached for the first time in a 'real' Baptist church. I opened my Bible at Isaiah 43 and the first words I read were 'Fear not I have redeemed you; I have called you by name....' I've never doubted that random anxious flicking through Scripture was whatever the divine equivalent is to a reassuring arm round my shoulder. I still have the handwritten sermon, in a brown paper covered notebook - it was on Philippians and the AV text "I press on towards the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus". I'll never chuck that one out - it's one of those holy relics that remind me of grace that takes our ordinariness and makes it sing. If forced to have only one book in the Bible other than the Gospels it would be Isaiah then, a book I've learned to call the fifth gospel.

Anyway and anyhow, I've been preaching for over thirty years so there's a lot of this stuff despite previous clear outs. James Denney claimed to have burned all his sermons when he left Broughty Ferry in 1897, but fortunately there's still a few hundred of them so he must only have burned the ones he thought unpreachable elsewhere. Whatever, it's time to engage in some discriminating sifting to see how many might be worth keeping. Having made a start I've got one carrier bag full of sermons now well past their use by date.

Question 1. What criteria should be used to decide if a sermon preached in the past is worth keeping now?

Question 2. Should an old sermon ever be re-cycled?