Living Wittily

The Remedy for Perplexity and Dulled Conscience

Both for perplexity and dulled conscience the remedy is the same;

     sincere and spiritual worship.

For worship is the submission of all our nature to God.

It is

     the quickening of conscience by his holiness,

     the nourishment of mind with his truth;

     the purifying of the imagination by his beauty;

     the opening of the heart to his love;

     the surrender of the will to his purpose…

and all of this gathered up into adoration,

the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable....

Archbishop William Temple, Readings in John's Gospel.

Ever since I was introduced to these words by my own College Principal many a year ago, they have set the gold standard by which to measure what we mean when we use the noun to define worship, and the verb to refer to the act of worship.  The submission of all our nature and the integration of all our life into adoration and self-giving love describes a deep rootedness of mind and soul in the love of God.

William temple was far too alert to the social and moral problems of society and church, the dangers and tensions of national and international politics, to ever be described as other-worldly, vaguely mystical or naive about human capacities for evil and destructive purpose. What I find interesting, and enduring in his words, is that they still identify the deficit of life meaning and the dissolving of moral imperatives which contribute decisively to our 21st Century malaise. 

Readings in John's Gospel is a two volume series of meditations written between 1939 and completed in 1945; precisely the years when the world was confronted by dictators who demanded obedience of conscience, mind, imagination, heart and will, and ultimately self sacrifice in the name of the human will to power. These words of Temple are much more than a prose poem for devotional souls; they provide a set of criteria as specific as a barcode that enables us to critique and unmask those lesser, life diminishing, penultimate goals of human life too often presented to us as life's ultimates. Conscience, mind, imagination, emotion and will are precisely those aspects of our humanity which require to be dedicated to recognising, cherishing, healing, loving and enabling to flourish the very humanity in which such remarkable capacities exist.

A christian anthropology is open eyed about human sinfulness, and open hearted to the grace that renews, restores, enables and recreates the image of God in us. Temple knew this - here is the rest of the quotation, which balances the urgency of worship with the realism about human waywardness and a distorted sense of our own importance:

and all of this gathered up in adoration,
the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable,
and therefore the chief remedy of that self-centeredness
which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”

I wonder if a key part of the church's mission today is to demonstrate attractively, enact convincingly, perform persuasively, live credibly, witness faithfully, by worship which has the height, depth and length and breadth of the love of God, that immense gracious love drawing from us and answering adoration which distils into a new and radical discipleship. 

Father Frans van der Lugt SJ - faithfully following Jesus b y Staying with the Suffering

I read this story and was moved to thankfulness for the faithful witness to Jesus of this good man. Amongst the most strategic gifts of the Holy Spirit, is the gift to the rest of us of the testimony and witness of a Christian life lived in sacrificial joyfulness and faithful compassion. .

Calvin, Christian Humanism and Christian Commitment to the Common Good.

Jason has a review of John De Gruchy's new book on John Calvin over at Per Crucem ad Lucem. De Gruchy is a Reformed theologian who in South Africa experienced the best and worst of reformed Christianity as both crtigue and implicate of the social and political history of that country.

His overall portrayal of Calvin as a Christian humanist reflects a growing consensus in Calvin studies which recognise the tranformative and constructive influence of humanism in the thought and work of Calvin. Jason quotes in full De Gruchy's conclusion of six affirmations which define the vision of mature Christian Humanism. Here they are - a searching checklist of what it means in practical, social and moral terms, for Christians to take the humanity of others, and themselves, with the faithful seriousness the Gospel of Jesus Christ demands.

First, Christian humanism is inclusive in its vision of humanity. It recognises that being human is our primary identity – coming before those of religion, race, culture, social class or gender.

Second, Christian humanism affirms both the God-given dignity of being human and the concomitant responsibility of being human. Given human brokenness, it understands the gospel as God’s way of restoring human dignity and awakening our responsibility for the world in which we live.

Third, Christian humanism is open to knowledge and insight from wherever truth is to be found, but it draws most deeply from the Christian Scriptures and the long history of their interpretation through the centuries, embodied in what is called ‘Christian tradition’.

Fourth, Christian humanism insists that love of God is inseparable from love for others; that faith and discipleship belong together; that theology and ethics are part of the same enterprise, and that the renewal of church life and public life are intrinsically connected.

Fifth, Christian humanism places justice, good governance, ecological responsibility and global well-being above national and sectional interests. It is concerned to ensure that scientific and technological development serve the common good and the well-being of the earth.

Sixth, Christian humanism encourages human creativity and cherishes beauty. It insists that goodness, truth and beauty are inseparable, though distinct. Just as it places a premium on moral values and the search for truth, it also regards the development of aesthetic values and sensitivity through the arts as essential for human well-being.

A Gift of Walter Brueggemann's Sermons

Last week a parcel arrived from my friend Rev Rebecca Maccini, all the way from Henniker NH, in the US.

A supply of Constant Comment tea, available only in US, a blend mixed with spices and citrus which with a wee half teaspoon of sugar, makes this tea my default beverage.

But.

Also.

Well.

A book.

Not just any book.

But a book of Brueggemann's sermons.

And.

Inside it is inscribed to me by the Prophet Emeritus of Columbia University himself :)

Yes I like an author's signature in a book, especially those given me by people I know. But then there are those one or two signed books by authors I've never met. One friend brought me back one of Moltmann's books on Jesus, duly signed.

Now I have Walter's signature and good wishes. To complete this more or less holy trinity, I did actually meet Eugene Peterson in Crieff a dozen years ago and he gave and signed for me, a copy of his wee books of prayers and reflections on the Psalms. I had missed the conference he was taking due to a family funeral; I'd phoned ahead to see if he was still there and found that if I got a move on, on my way back to Aberdeen he'd hang around and I could meet him at St Ninians. We had a blether, a stroll, a coffee and a book signing all inside an hour.

But this isn't only a quite outrageous name-dropping post. I think what I'm trying to say is how such encounters occasionally come as unlooked for blessing. A Brueggemann signature and greeting, and though we will almost certainly never meet, he yet wishes blessing on my ministry; a signature from Moltmann, one of the living theologians to whom I owe most in my mature theology, and inside the cover of a book entitled Jesus Christ for Today's World a greeting; and a wee Psalm prayer book which at different times Sheila and I have both used over the years, finding there words of orientation - a term I learned from Brueggemann's work on Psalms. Oh, and today I finally, at last, after a prolonged delay, got an email from a bookseller that Brueggemann's new commentary on Psalms is ready for collection. And is now duly collected and perused and is now being read daily.

Thank you Rebecca for a gift that is its own testimony to the communion of saints, that ultimate network of relatedness, connectedness and communication, held together in the Body of Christ, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, and gathered and scattered in the rhythms of worship and witness.

Evangelical Spirituality and Evidence of an Alarming Absence of Grace.

Grace is a hard word for Christians to take seriously. In the past couple of weeks I have heard that blessed word used and misused and even implied but absent. The problem seems to be the radical nature of grace, our too easily yielding to the temptation to put conditions on the unconditional, our inability to take a gift at its true value, let alone at its face value. Grace is a word that requires a humble heart to understand it. As soon as grace is critically analysed, coherently rationalised and carefully explained, we betray what P T Forsyth calls our 'lust for lucidity', and therefore give in to our all but irresistible attraction to name, control, comprehend and encircle mystery with our thoughts.

Grace isn't so easily domesticated. But in much that passes for evangelical spirituality there is an alarming absence of grace as the source and resource of all Christian living. Even the great slogan 'justification by faith' can be so triumphantly trumpeted that its champions forget it is condensed, compacted theological shorthand, which once it is allowed the expansiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is found to contain realities of much greater dimensions than a polemical formula has any right to hold - to merely begin with, love, grace, reconciliation, that trinity of divine attributes gathered into the true shorthand of the Gospel of the love affair of the Triune God - "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit", and that rich eternal life of God, overflowing in creation, redemption and renewal of a fallen world.

What brought this on? I think it might be the incipient pelagianism of what is sometimes called challenging preaching, or my awareness several times recently of good Christian folk, struggling with their own views of their own inadequate Christian lives. Sometimes in a heartfelt determination to do better, they say something like, 'We need to strive harder to follow Jesus....". I know what they mean, I feel it myself. To try harder, to pray more, to feel more deeply the affections of the Christian soul - gratitude, praise, repentance, surrender, joy, peace - as if we ever really could command our emotional lives, or perfect our moral selves.

Which brings me back to grace. Paul often enough warned about abusing the grace of God. What he had in mind was the disastrous complacency that might ever think that since God is gracious, and I am forgiven, sin is no longer a problem in my life because it's forgiven anyway. That kind of spiritual chancer will get their come-uppance seems to be Paul's answer to anyone who thinks they can continue in sin that grace may abound. But on the other side Paul would still insist, and this is the astonishing truth that seems to have stopped astonishing us - "Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound". No, we don't 'need to strive harder to follow Jesus' - more important is a recovery of the affections of the soul, kindled by trusting again the grace that saves, that grace which is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. That doesn't mean we don't strive - it means not in our own strength, not by ourselves. Ours is the call to faithfulness, God's grace is what enables, sustains, is sufficient.

I wonder if our difficulty is that we take our failures and inadequacies more seriously than God's sufficiency? That in a strange way we fail to trust the love of God to love us? Maybe that the inward curve of our self-importance acts like a concave mirror and makes our sins seem more prominent than the cross on which they are gathered, absorbed, redeemed and forgiven.

Old Samuel Rutherford, that Scottish pastor who was remorselessly critical of his own heart, nevertheless held to his own advice in a letter to someone making the mistake of thinking a Christian life is lived by trying harder. Speaking of taking up the cross he wrote: 

"Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is as far removed Rutherford the cantankerous Scottish Puritan as to make a conversation between them all but inconceivable - or so you'd think. Here's Bonhoeffer's take on the mistake of substituting our own striving  for God's grace:

"To be conformed to the image of Christ is not an ideal to be striven after. It is not as though we had to imitate him as well as we could. We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ which seeks to be formed in us (Gal 4.19) and to be manifested in us. Christ's work in us is not finished until he has perfected his own form in us. We must be assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarante, crucified and glorified." Testament of Freedom, page 321

So. To finish with Paul - "I am crucified with Christ. I live, yet not I. Christ lives within me, and the life I now live in my body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me".

Gave himself, made himself a gift, became what he ever is, Grace. 

"The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all"

Haiku On Looking After Ourselves

Six Haiku:“On Being Good to Your Self.”

 

Lists are false charge sheets,

conferring permanence on

sins of omission.

 

No!

 

Lists are promises

of rest, laughter, gifts, and time

we make for ourselves.

……………………………….

 

It isn’t a crime,

to be towards our own hearts,

gently generous.

 

So

 

Love your neighbour; yes,

but learn to love yourself too;

be your own heart’s friend.

……………………….

 

If caught beneath an

unexpected avalanche,

you can’t move mountains.

 

Thus

 

Being overwhelmed,

trust your friends; your personal

mountain rescue team.

....................................................................................................

This is the kind of photo I like to take when I have time to look after myself

Beware of....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captions please? This road sign is down at St Cyrus beach car park.

Back Again - What's it all for?

The Typepad platform has been down for a couple of days. Seems to be back up and running. More laster. Meantime a wee prose poem from Rebecca Elson's notebook, which currently sits between the bookends on my desk:

"We observe the universe, predict it, calculate it, expose it to rationality, we ask it carefully phrased questions. We ask the reason for the universe, and look for the answer in the state from which it came, not the end it serves...."

 

George Herbert's "Sepulchre" - A Poem of Holy Saturday

This poem by George Herbert is the best poem I know for Holy Saturday. The rich use of the stone / rock image is fully exploited in biblical image and allusion. In Helen Wilcox's magisterial edition of The English Poems of George Herbert she offers a running commentary on all of the poems in the form of Notes and review of Modern Criticism. No point in duplicating that here. If you love the poetry of George Herbert then  buy the paperback from Amazon for around £25 - 700 plus pages of literary illumination!

“SEPULCHER” – by George Herbert

Oh blessed body!  Whither art thou thrown?
No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?
So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
                                      Receive thee?

Sure there is room within our hearts good store;
For they can lodge transgressions by the score:
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
                                      They leave thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.
Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,
Which holds thee now?   Who hath indicted it
                                      Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,
And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;
Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,
                                      And order.

And as of old, the law by heav’nly art,
Was writ in stone;  so thou, which also art
The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart
                                      To hold thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,
And so should perish, but that nothing can,
Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man
                                      Withhold thee.

 

Holy Week and The Colossian Christ 5. Making Peace by the Blood of the Cross.

One of the stitches I learned while developing this tapestry is the crossed gobelin. The bronze circle which overshoots the frame and is therefore only partially visible is worked in various threads, and is a surrounding circle of strength which contains the background panel, worked in crossed gobelin. This background is deliberately pastel, but with some parts of it showing stranded red.

The close-up shows the crossed gobelin is exactly what it says, a stitch in the shape of a cross; and some of them coloured red. The intention is clear enough; against a background that is formed in cruciform stitches, held in the golden bronze circle of divine power, the redemptive love of the Triune God is shaped in a circle of light, creation and suffering, and at the centre the co-inherence of Father Son and Spirit, an eternal kenosis of grace and love, overspilling in creation, redemption and reconciliation.

Much of this is now interpretation of a work which at the start was developing much more naively, and yet with a repeated reading of the text, and a  continual searching for colours and shapes which conveyed the essential power of Colossians 1.15-20. From then on the work became more intentional, responsive to what was already worked, new ideas coming in the process. The blue canopy of eternal life at the top, and the foundation red of suffering love at the base, complete the imagery. It is surrounded by a ribbon of gold blocks, and a border with variations of key colours, especially blue which brackets the whole.

Today is Good Friday, when once again, we remember "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their tresspasses against them". It is a day when the historic realities in all their ugliness were on display, an exhibition of human ingenuity in the pursuit of power, self-interest and the alleged safeguarding of 'the truth', 'the nation', 'the faith'. The betrayal and the violence, the cruelty and indifference, the mob and the cowards, the political expediency and religious zeal, all the mechanisms of social organisation which crush the life and humanity out of those who dare oppose a status quo which will not be questioned. And yet..."though him the reconciliation of all things, making peace by the blood of his cross". These are words deep dyed with the blood of God in Christ. And on this day, we bow our heads in gratitude, worship, and wonder. Because in Him, incarnate, crucified and risen, "in Him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...."