Christ of the Upward Way, My Guide Divine...

This week is the anniversary of my Ordination to Christian ministry. Every year that's a special date for me, and I find ways of marking it as another milestone on my own Emmaus Road.

I have a list of the books I've bought to mark this date, 36 of them now. You know you're getting on when some of the early ones show their years- not just the ageing of the book and the signs of reading, and in some cases re-reading. But the contents were for a different time, the analysis emerging from a previous cultural cusp, and revisiting some of them the realisation that this isn't just where we are now. But most of them are not so timebound, and remain valuable teachers and conversation partners.

I'll never part with J V Taylor's The Go-Between God, one of the most refreshing books on the creative work of the Holy Spirit in the world, the church and the Christian's personal life.

My hardback edition of the two volumes of The Victorian Church by Owen Chadwick are thick and solid, in contrast to the writer whose prose is lightly erudite and seductive in the way he makes Church History a joy to read.

Belden Lan'es The Solace of Fierce Landscsapes, is a book about the experience of the desert as the place where God is encountered in the experience of absence, loss and longing, and it is that rare thing - a book about loving God for God's sake, and hanging on in trust when all that keeps us going is the grace of the God who is there, and the only evidence of God's presence is the being held.

Brueggemann's Old Testament Theology is a ridiculously provocative book, and apart from a couple of other things I've read on the Old Testament the most stimulating, annoying and persuasive thing around. I've read Brueggemann throughout my ministry, and he is that most helpful of friends - the ones who don't go in for bland niceness, but like a good argument about what's most important.

And David Bosch's Tranforming Mission remains, depsite so much work done and change experienced in the whole wide world, a defining classic of how a theology of mission should be constructed, from the biblical, theological and cultural resources of the church in the world.

Which brings me to Frederick Dale Bruner's commentary on the Gospel of John. My love for this gospel was instilled by a verse by verse Greek exegesis in College, over two years. I don't need another commentary on John given the embarrassment of riches in my own and other libraries. Except Bruner is a different kind of commentator, and his two volumes on Matthew published in the 1970's were early examples of a commentary that takes seriously the tradition of exegesis. So in this commentary several classic treatments from  Augustine to Westcott, by way of Aquinas, Calvin and Godet, are treated as respected voices, alongside the contemporary approaches to exegesis. Bruner's interest is to hear the text, and hear it through the voices of those who have studied it and lived it. It is a commentary for the church before the academy; but it is an academic commentary that takes seriously the text, the Christian intellect and a Church rooted in a faith that calls for our deepest thought baptised in prayer.

From now to Advent I'll let Bruner convene the round the table discussion on John, and hope to learn more about what it means to be ordained to the service of Christ in the Church - maybe by then I'll have reached that story about the basin and the twoel.

Comments

[Poetreehugger.blogspot.com]

Happy anniversary! And a happy anniversary it is for the (I'm sure) many of us who enjoy the blessing of your blog. I especially appreciate your reading recommendations, and have been encouraged by many of the books you have blogged about.

[chris]

Happy anniversary - and a happy shared enthusiasm for The Go-Between God, by one of the most important figures in my early Christian journey.