Living Wittily

The Transformative Authority of the Bible

One of the finest spiritual writers in the Evangelical tradition is only read today in edited versions. Like the Puritans, Andrew Murray's writing could be 'prolix', and like a certain washing machine advert of some years ago, he could go on and on and on. But Andrew Murray (if you Google the name you're likely to encounter a tennis player!) was a profoundly influential teacher in the Holiness tradition in South Africa and in England through the Keswick movement. His commentary on Hebrews, The Holiest of All, was very warmly reviewed by no less than James Denney who didn't call geese swans. What Denney liked was the thoughtful application of evangelical truth to Christian sanctification and behaviour, and the centrality of Christ in all Murray's writings.

Murray wrote one of the best accounts of an Evangelical appropriation of the Bible. Rather than argue for the authority of the text as artefact, he pleaded for a use of the Bible that depended on openness to God and a receptiveness of heart to the transforming work of the Word of Scripture. Here's what he says:

God's Word only works its true blessing when the truth it brings to us has stirred the inner life, and reproduced itself in resolve, trust, love or adoration. When the heart has received the Word through the mind and has had its spiritual powers called out and exercised on it, the Word is no longer void, but it has done that whereunto God has sent it. It has become part of our life, and strengthened us for new purpose and effort.

Andrew Murray, The Inner Chamber and the Inner Life, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1950), 72

Truth that transforms, a Word that is living, dynamic and provocative of response, words through which God speaks now, that is the Word enfleshed, embodied, lived, obeyed - and that is the authority of Scripture that matters most - it authors our lives.  

(Learning slowly how to use my new camera. The photo was taken in the Aberdeen Botanic Gardens)

Dag Hammarskjold - and the importance of saying yes!

Dag Hammarskjold's Markings is another of those books I've had on my shelves all the years of my ministry. I first bought it in 1972. It cost me £2.25 and is a Faber paperback. I bought it because it was quoted in an article in the Expository Times and that single quotation has sometimes kept me afloat when not much else was giving buoyancy.

For all that is past Thank You;

For all that is to come, Yes.

We've become used to Journalling now. But in the 1950's and 60's there is something remarkable about this narrative told without plot but with purpose, a slow accumulation of received wisdom, distilled at times to sentences of Zen precision, with poetic rhythms reminsicent of Haiku, and occasional self revealing paragraphs of a mind and spirit refracted through profound moral awareness of the world around and the world within. If you don't know this book, then you are missing an encounter with one of the most fascinating and enigmatic minds of the 20th Century in which political conscience, personal faith and social vision combine so that you could equally say political faith, personal vision and social conscience.

Markings is the published version of those occasional jottings, found in a black note-book discovered after his still unexplained death in an aircrash. As the then Secretary General of the United Nations he had been on a peace making trip to the Congo. Since then his personal thoughts have given comfort, clarity, insight and encouragement to the readers of Markings. I have a 90+ friend whose yellowing copy is still to hand. Had Hammarskjold lived he would have been about ages with her.

Here he is on what it means to live a human life:

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

What does that mean? Wrong question. It isn't an argument - it's a confession of faith in the worth of human life, and the conviction of Ecclesiastes the Preacher, 'that to be human is to be b orn with eternity in our hearts'.

 

 

Tariq Jahan - a noble and conciliatory presence....

Our culture has degraded the ancient art of rhetoric to strap lines, sound bytes and spin. Or the noble art of rhetoric is diminished by the prior qualifier 'empty' or 'mere'. But every now and then there are examples of rhetoric at its best - humane, memorable, impassioned, reasoned, persuasive and above all ringing with truth. It happened yesterday.

Tariq Jahan, father of one of the young men killed by a hit and run driver while trying to defend their homes and businesses, spoke with immense courage and passion, out of deep wells of grief and bewilderment, but with a human dignity that was profoundly moving. And at one point, with a weight of seriousness perhaps only a bereaved parent could carry, he said, "Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, go home."

That is rhetoric - humane, memorable, impassioned, reasoned, persuasive and above all ringing with truth. And it is rhetoric that is neither empty nor mere - it was the instinctive skilled use of words that have been heated in the furnace of grief and tempered with the pain  of loss. And at that moment, all that was in me was standing alongside Tariq Jahan, a noble and conciliatory presence in the midst of much that was ignoble, ugly, destructive and hate filled. Cultural pluralism, inter faith dialogue, ethnic diversity, racial equality, multiculturalism, communities of respected difference - use whatever phrases you like, a moment like that dissolves all our political posturings and sociological analyses and politically correct discourse and what we are left with is the cry of a human heart, a wail of anguish reduced to powerful words intended to stop such pain spreading to afflict others.

And as a follower of Jesus I stand alongside those neighbour friends in our country, Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jewish and of no professed faith, and I hear that cry, and cry in fellowship at such tragic violence and inexplicable absurdity.

And today in Parliament the debate is about what caused the riots, how to control them, what to do in the aftermath. In time the reflection and learning will begin. Are the rioters angry or having fun? Is it the loss of civic and police control that has created opportunity for freeloading? Why are so many people angry, destructive and hell bent on vandalism and looting? What is the connection between economic recession and civil disorder? All seem to be agreed it is 'sheer criminality'? But that still doesn't answer the question why this upsurge in violent discontent, destructive looting, burning homes and businesses as the articulation of what - hatred, the resentment of the have-nots, the fun of knowing that looking through broken plate glass at a jewellers shop window filled with watches, those who have no money realise 'yes we can'? All of these, some of these, a mixture of these.

But what is beyond dispute is that three young men were killed in an act of callous violence while protecting property. And throughout the news coverage much has been made of the cost to the retail trade and the cost of repairing and replacing burned, stolen and wrecked goods, houses and cars. Not counting the cost of the police responses, estimated now into many millions not easily available in a service with huge cuts looming. There is something both sad and salutary when the cost of rioting is measured in the financial cost of burned houses when the real cost is communities searing with hostility against the system. Something unacceptable about cliches like 'feeling the full force of the law', when amongst the lawbreakers are those who reckon they have nothing to lose in a society that in their experience offers no hope, no open doors, no future chances to participate and have a stake in the local community and the wider society.

I'm excusing nothing. The riots and the looting, the violence and intimidation, the appetite for inflicting damage on people, the outpouring of hostility and rage - all are wrong, destructive and no part of a society in which mutual respect, consensual policing and political freedoms are key principles. But neither is there an excuse for political decisions and social consequences that are driven by an economic agenda that has ignored the actual costs to people who already see much of their lives constrained and controlled within a system that leaves little room for maneouvre and no effective voice for change.

It is against that chilling contrast of riot and politics, of criminal looting and inflexible economic policies, of community violence and communities under pressure, and the collision of despair and hopelessness on one hand, with the inequity of opportunity and life chances on the other, that the deaths of three young men are to be seen. because they died as a direct result of violence fomented on the streets. That violence needs not only explanation as to its originating motives; that violence also needs a response of moral vision and imagination to create a social environment where the dominant voice that is heard is not the roar of rage and the sound of violence. Blessed are the peacemakers - peacemaking is not populist politics, it is a social, moral and communal necessity. It is also the church's theological, ethical and missional imperative.

An update on this remarkable man can be read here

Going on retreat, toasted muesli and the Go-Between God.

I was recalling with Ken the other day the time we went on a clergy retreat to Scottish Churches House. The Director was the late Bishop John V Taylor and we looked forward to a rich time of thoughtful and theologically literate reflection. We weren't disappointed. Out of an A5 spiral notebook, with full written notes he spoke of the Christlike God and the ministry as service to the God of Creation, Reconciliation and Communion in the Trinity.

However there was not a little consternation when with episcopal authority of a unilateral kind, he announced it would be a silent retreat, with strictly designated times for talking. That was a problem for two friends who wanted to catch up. It was more of a problem when he said that meal times would be silent - I mean, how do you ask politely for the salt without which chips are incomplete? But problem became difficult to suppress hysteria at the breakfast table when in silence, around 20 people are munching the toasted muesli. My immediate memory was of my boyhood on the farms and heard the munching of bovine jaws in the byre after feeding cattle cake to 40 cows. Unconditional love of the brothers and sisters is stretched painfully when trying to chew muesli, not choke and hold back guffaws of laughter which if they erupt are likely to spray the table with semi-masticated oats much to the spiritual benefit of no one!

                                                                                                     

 Nevertheless, that was a rich encounter with Bishop John. I went on the strength of reading his The Go Between God.

That is a book of seminal importance in my thinking about the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in the created order, in the church, and in my life as it impinges on all the others who are affected by the ripples of influence that emanate from this one life.

Here is one paragraph which says so, so much:

 

 

The Holy Spirit is the invisible third party who stands between me and the other, making us mutually aware. Supremely and primarily he opens my eyes to Christ. But he also opens my eyes to the brother ans sister in Christ, or the fellow human being, or the point of need, or the heartbreaking brutality and the equally heartbreaking beauty of the world. He is the giver of that vision without which the people perish. We commonly speak about the Holy Spirit as the source of power. But in fact he enables us not by making us supernaturally strong but by opening our eyes.

Van Gogh, Thomas Merton and Rowan Williams - and the connection is?

Had a good day yesterday when important things have been done, said and enjoyed.  Journeyed to Glendoick to meet my friend Ken where we spent several hours at the garden centre. In the taciturn and occasionally nasty summer we're having the day was sunny, clear views for miles and the roads still quietish at the end of the school holidays. We don't get the chance to meet often so we tend to make a meal of it. This time we made two meals of it, a bacon and egg roll and a pot of tea, an hour's walk, then Carrot and orange soup with herb scones.

We've been friends more than half our lives and though we'd planned another bookshop crawl in Edinburgh, a civilised conversation over good food for three hours was much to be preferred.

Got home and listened to Albinoni's Oboe Concerto in D Minor while writing and reading, and gloating (no other word will do) over recently bought books. The slow movement of this concerto should be played quietly while reading one of the great narratives of divine and human tenderness in the gospels - for me the encounter of Mary Magdalene with Jesus in the garden.

Of the books being gloated over the one I read next will be The Yellow House, Martin Gayford, (Penguin) is the account of Van Gogh, Gaugin and nine turbulent weeks in Arles. Two geniuses with all their psychological complexities, artists at the zenith of their talent and the extremes of innovation, both eager for friendship but encountering in each other the greatest obstacle to mutual friendship! While working on the Sunflowers tapestry I'm keeping in touch with Vincent in different ways - not trying to understand him, which I think is neither possible nor necessary. But to know the whence of the chaos and the wherefore of the genius, to accept and respect the relationship between his illness and inner turmoil and the immense achievements of his art, and to have an emotional context out of which to work an impression of his favourite painting, and the focus of his desperate longing for sunlight, hope and inner rest.  

 

One of the traits of the bibliophile is gloating over a forthcoming book yet to be printed! This one brings together the Christian whose writing has shaped my own spirituality and thinking in ways decisive for my view of ministry, myself, human relationships, the nature of prayer and the paradoxical imperatives of community, silence and solitude as places and times where and when God is to be found. Ever since I read The Seven Storey Mountain, followed by Thoughts in Solitude I have never had a year when I haven't read Merton's writing. This forthcoming book is by Rowan Williams, and I can't think of someone I'd rather have exploring and reflecting on Merton's continuing relevance in a world where the things Merton made deep concerns remain deeply concerning - cultural conflicts, violence, consumer greed, cultural superficiality and human creativity turned against human interests and flourishing. Merton's great insight that the contemplative was a necessary presence in a world in desperate need of redemption, righteousness, peace and justice remains a major portion of his legacy that is of enduring value. He spoke into the cultural urgencies and reconfigurations of the 50's and 60's and much that he wrote remains valid half a century later. Is that because human nature, our profligacy and pretensions, our anger, angst and anxiety, our propensity for self-preservation and self-harm, remain humanity's greatest threat? And thus a great and fallible human being like Merton can bring together the contemplative and the active, the promise of divine grace enabling human goodness, the monk as holy person in whose prayers are gathered up the broken pieces of a God loved world?

Confessions of a Bibliophile - The Hound and the Falcon

I was recently asked to look through several boxes of books which came from  a house being cleared. If there was anything there I wanted just feel free to take it!

That's a hard ask then, isn't it?

Could I  make an appointment to come and browse them?

Yes - how about this evening I said.

Now the problem with browsing several boxes of books, any one or any hundred of which you are free to take, is that you begin to have daft ideas that you have enough time in life to read everything. Or if that unreasonable rationalisation isn't convincing, you begin to see each book as a possible masterpiece you have just overlooked so far for lack of opportunity - no matter that it is brown, cracked, smells musty and dusty and looks rusty. So there's a need for the fruit of the spirit which is self control, and a reminder that greed and acquisitiveness, possessiveness and an all embracing yes to intellectual appetite is indeed a work of the flesh.

So from those five boxes I only took half a dozen, and three of those were novels which will find their way soon to one of the far too many charity bags now coming through the letter box. Another was one I knew someone else would like, Wild Swans, (in bookseller speak, ' nice fresh copy, hardback, binding solid, dustcover very good and unclipped). The other two I have kept. C S Lewis once said the sign of the well read person  is one who looks over the gathered miscellanea on the second hand book barrows in the market (O for such events and literary adventures to return alongside the book chains and Amazon) - anyway to look and find something you haven't read and now want to. And though you don't know the book you now have an instinct for that which is mentally nutritious, emotionally satisfying, and promisingly interesting - and this previously non-existent book now presents itself and demands to be read.

The Hound and the Falcon, by Antonia White answers all three criteria, and I'm nearly finished it. Not a novel, but the letters she wrote to someone called Peter in 1940,41 during the London Blitz. The letters are intense, regular accounts of a woman struggling to return to and hold on to her Catholic faith. At times searingly honest, she is both a profound critic of her Church and a conscientious practising Catholic. But for her practice is more important than dogma, and what she does and who she is matters more than the specific articulations of what she believes. In mind and conscience, in her spirit and emotions she collides with much popular piety and official dogma, and the result is a glimpse into the inner life of one who genuinely loves God and struggles with the institutions which claim to represent God on earth.

Amongst her heroes (of whom she is also critical) is Baron Friedrich Von Hugel, whose letters are a strange mixture of teutonic reasoning and spiritual insight, stern doctrine and compassionate understanding of spiritual struggle. I've only read a few other books in which the authentic and costly struggle for integrity in spiritual life is so movingly recorded, so convincingly honest, and articulated in such penetrating yet personal prose to a friend she clearly had come to love and trust.

They only ever met twice. The correspondence is one sided as Peter's letters are not extant. But she responds so fully and frankly that it's possible to piece together some of the content of the letters she answers. But it is her own search and struggle that is of interest here. Reading these letters from a woman impatient with metaphysics but who reads Aquinas, highly intelligent and likely to tear a strip off me for pointing that out as if that were unusual, devoted to the Gospel but sharply critical of the Church, Catholic to the core without buying into much she saw as superfluous or unnecessarily obstructive to faith, I have come away once again aware of two things.

First, the letter is a magnificent lens into a person's heart and mind. The combination of personal relationship and inner journey is ideal for the articulation of faith. An exchange of letters is a thoughtful, considered dialogue. Some of the finest theological and spiritual writing is woven into correspondence. Second, the journey of the soul towards God, the longing for intimacy and belonging, the search for truth that can be lived, the love of beauty that can be adored, the yearning for goodness in ourselves and in others, the desire for God and the love of learning, - these are the signs of a soul alive, the evidence of spiritual awareness, the result of life received as gift so not taken for granted, but taken as granted, from God. Over the years I have met many in the communion of saints, which has absolutely no denominational barriers, who have so enriched my own faith and helped my own life, by the honest telling of their story.

Books come into our lives by accident, by providence, by chance - who knows? And what does it matter? The Hound and the Falconis one of a number of special books on my shelves which could be labelled 'serendipity'. I choose to believe that the Holy Spirit is the bringer of possibility, the Divine opportunist whose nudges and pushes are as far as divine coercion will go, but whose wisdom is unsearchable yet searches us to the core of our being, and speaks truth. Maybe that's what Jesus meant when he spoke of the Paraclete who leads into the truth, but taking the things of Jesus and explaining them to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the pure in heart, the meek, the person for whom Beatitude is to be found in God.

Words that recover from chaos and push back darkness - and Prayer for such words

In the beginning was the Word…..

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and God said….Let there be light’.

Speech,

Holy Word,

the articulation of divine intention and purpose,

‘Let there be…’

Made in the image of God, we too speak,

and what we say vibrates with possibility.

Words call into existence,

make possible,

shape relationships,

communicate meaning,

become freighted with significance because...

once we speak, words are let loose.

They cannot be recovered,

unsaid,

and their healing or hurt may have a long afterlife.

Made in the image of God,

we are wise if we listen not only to what God says,

but to how God speaks;

and if we pay attention to why God speaks.

 

When James tackles the fundamental spiritual disciplines

he says little of contemplation,

mystical joy rides, charismatic gifts,

exciting worship, or relevant programmes

 – he speaks of wisdom and words,

and therefore wise speaking and even wiser listening.  James 3.1-12

 

Prayer 

Lord we all make many mistakes in our conversation;

     the way we choose words and construct sentences,

     which temper and tamper with truth.

The tone of voice, the pace of diction, the volume of our speaking,

     communicating impatience and self-importance.

 

Lord forgive us when we use words as weapons to hurt others,

     or as shields to hide behind when we are criticised:

Lord forgive us, when our words are arrogant and self serving,

     when we would rather speak than listen

     and rather be seen and heard than seen and serving

 

Lord, whose words called worlds into being,

     Make our words creative and life-giving;

Lord whose words wrestled order our of chaos,

     and still speak light out of darkness

Put words in our mouth which call chaos to account,

     challenge injustice and defend the vulnerable.

So may we too speak light out of darkness,

through Jesus Christ,

the Word and the Light of the world,

Amen

 

Recovering a Neglected Text: Songs Based on the Song of Songs

The Song of Songs is one of those hidden treasures of the Bible that is more hidden than treasured in contemporary preaching and liturgy. Its explicit sensuality, its celebration of love in all its emotional fervour and poetic physicality, and its unmistakbable affirmation of love as the utter giving up of the self in deepest longing and passionate embrace, tend to mean that those committed to expository preaching give it a skilled body swerve. 

That's a pity, however understandable.  Some of the most lyrical writing, and spiritually perceptive devotional expression, and profound theological imagining has been produced by those in the Christian tradition who have studied and sung and prayed over this collection of Hebrew Love songs. From the mystical Bernard of Clairvaux and his eighty odd sermons on the first couple of chapters to the equally mystical if evangelical Charles Haddon Spurgeon's communion meditations, from the speculative and extravagant Origen to the restrained devotion of the 19th C. Lutheran Franz Delitzsch, from Samuel Rutherford the intense and volatile Scottish Puritan whose letters are marbled with the sensual imagery of the Song, to Marvin Pope whose Anchor Bible Commentary remains the vade mecum of previous interpretations, from such diverse directions in the tradition the Song of Songs has been a rich source of devotional and theological nourishment.

But no. It isn't necessarily the text to read out in church of a Sunday morning, either before or after the children leave. And yes, it is probably wise not to decide to do a long detailed series of expositions verse by verse - though that was done 30  odd years ago by the Rev Willie Still in Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen.

But still, this book about love and passion and longing is there, right in the middle of the Bible, and it won't go away. So what to do with it. Read it. Think about it. It has much to teach a culture saturated by overstated desire, tone deaf to tenderness and delicacy, suffering an ennui of the heart and losing the capacity for imaginative and winsome discourse (a recent article mercilessly mocked the crass opening chat up lines that now pass for respectful introduction and consideration for the other).

Alternatively, buy Patrick Hawes' beautiful arrangement of 6 songs on the Song of Songs. The soloist Elin Manahan Thomas has one of the clearest and sharpest voices I've heard. The CD is a really good example of exegesis by lyric and music, a genuine expansion and exposition of ideas that lie at the centre of the Song. These ideas give content and substance to those words we try to use when we speak of love, desire, longing, passion, anticipation and fulfilment, devotedness given and received, the move from fear to trust and therefore to that joy which, if never complete, at least finds its home in the mutual enjoyment of human togetherness.

The Song of Songs has been understood as an allegory of  the love between Christ and the Church, between Christ and the soul, and between a man and a woman. That such rich resources to explore divine and human love lie in this earthy but sublime poetry is one of the great miracles of the canon of Scripture. I guess there are those who, if it were up to them, would have wanted it excluded for reasons of modesty.  And the Holy Spirit thankfully thwarted them! So here it is, between Ecclesiastes with his probing mockery of faith that comes too easy, and Isaiah with his defiant imagination in face of exile and imperial power, daring to hope - and between them, Sage and Prophet, this love letter, this unabashed celebration of love, divine and human, love which in the human heart and in the heart of God is the foundation of existence and the meaning and purpose of life itself.

Why Jesus wasn't interested in winning popularity contests!

Headline this morning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chris popular - but loses listeners.

..........

Headline 2000 years ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christ popular - but loses listeners.

 

The Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity of A J Heschel.

"The beginning of prayer is praise.

The power of worship is song.

To worship is to join the cosmos in praising God. . . .

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive,

unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin

the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.

The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement,

seeking to overthrow the forcest hat continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision."

("On Prayer," pp. 257-267, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. [Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996]).

And you wonder why I think Abraham Joshua Heschel is one of the great spiritual teachers of the 20th Century?

I bought this book while with Bob and Becky in Vermont, and the essays are amongst the finest examples I know of Jewish spirituality, passed through the bloodstream of a modern day prophet, and gifted to his generation and ours as wisdom that has, as the title says, Moral grandeur and Spiritual Audacity.

Can you think of a better description of prayer as subversion, as God's questioning of our cultural values, and of the role and mission of those who dare say they are followers of Jesus, lovers of God and bearers of the Spirit? 

"Ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods". Now there's a mission statement worth putting on sleepy church agendas!