Living Wittily

How Many Bibles Do You Need?

I've just bought a new Bible. It isn't that I've worn the other one out completely - it's still serviceable enough. I've had it since 1992. So, why buy another Bible? How many Bibles does someone need for goodness sake?

Come to think it, that question could be interesting if we drop the rhetorical flourish and simply ask;

How many Bibles do I need for goodness sake,for the sake of goodness, that is, before I get the point, in order to begin to be transformed by words that are life giving, or to be touched by grace that is heart changing, or troubled by stories that are conscience building, and grabbed and graced by good news that is mindset changing?

The answer is one,

just one, if it's read faithfully, angrily, routinely, in perplexity, expectantly, reverently, honestly, even guiltily

just one, if it's held prayerfully and pondered slowly for guidance or grabbed desperately  and ransacked for, well, guidance too

just one, to be read falteringly with broken heart, or joyfully with soaring thoughts, or in the confusion, fatigue, boredom and frightening array of options that is life at high speed in high definition at a too high price

just one, to find answers which might not be there, or in search of the right questions which we might just discover

just one, to look for some comfort and love in our sorrows, or to remember again why laughter is a way of thanking God twice for the same blessing

just one, to find guidance, wisdom, mercy, judgement and grace, gifts already there for the finding and each of them underwritten by the promise of God

just one, because a hungry traveller needs one good meal at one good inn to make the next miles possible.

Yes one Bible is enough, if it shows sufficient signs of use. Years ago, one of Scotland's more spectacular Baptist preachers, in a wee corrugated iron church in Lanrkshire, Scotland, demonstrated, with stunning unintended improvisation, the cost and consequences of using and abusing a Bible for a lifetime.

He was lampooning the thought that a Bible should be kept in its box, treated with reverence and deference so that from one year to the next it kept its pristine appearance in keeping with its sacred status.  When he preached that morning he held up his own Bible, and waved it wildly as he thundered and threatened about the tragedy of the unread, under-used over-protected gilt edged Bibles he believed were languishing in drawers and cupboards all over the town. Then he loosened his grip on his Bible, and was left holding the covers as a veritable blizzard of pages began to fall from the raised pulpit, and wafted with sacramental slowness, left to right, like sacred text snowflakes, settling on the choir seats, the floor and occasionally brushing the heads of the few choir members within range.

He never faltered. Forty years later, having taught homiletics and biblical studies, philosophy and systematic and pastoral theology, and preached over 3000 sermons myself, I still remember the hairs on the back of my neck being raised, by those slow motion india paper pages, loose-leaves of testimony to a Bible that had seen better days, but which had sustained and nurtured and given life and passion and purpose to this man's story.

How many Bibles do you need? For all practical purposes, just one.

Caring for Words, Living Speech, and Christian Courtesy

"In the beginning was the Word", the first clause of the theological masterpiece which is the Gospel of John. "And God said, "Let there be light....", the first words of God at the beginning of all things, according to that equally remarkable meteor of theology, the creation story in Genesis. For Christians, those two moments of divine articulation should be enough to teach us respect, indeed reverence, for words. Whether written or spoken, words have performative power, they make things happen, they have an impact, they influence for good or ill, persuade of truth or lie, affirm or diminish, enlighten or deceive, liberate or oppress, heal or hurt.

As a Christian I have a responsibility to give an account of my words; indeed Jesus warned that the day would come when we will give an account of every word we have spoken. Now there's a warning for the biblical literalist self-righteously ramming their words of truth down other people's throats. Elsewhere in the Gospels there's a quite different scenario; of a Roman Centurion, a man of few words and most of them were orders to other people. His personal servant is about to snuff it, but he has heard Jesus is a healer, someone who speaks with authority. So he uses his networks and his influence, he sends Jewish Elders to bring Jesus. To cut a short story shorter, the centurion gets a message to Jesus, "Say the word and my servant will be healed." Now there's a man who knows what words are for, who understands the power of the spoken word, someone used to seeing the performative power of words.

We live in a culture buried under words and blinded by an endless supply of new or familiar flickering images. We hear so much, we are losing our hearing; we see so much our sight is blurring from image overload. But stayng with words for the present, Marilyn Chandler McIntyre in her book Caring for Words in a World of Lies states with prophetic frankness, "Like any other life-sustaining resource, language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants."

I am persuaded - I like the confidence and settledness of Paul's phrase in older translations - "I am persuaded" that an ethic of language, a care for the words we speak and for the words we hear, is a crucial aspect of Christian witness. From the praise songs we sing to the texts we send; from our conversations at work to the confidences we hold in trust for others; from the jokes we tell and laugh at to the lies we refuse to tell; from the clever put downs of those we dislike to the caring affirmations of other people's worth; language carries with it obligations the follower of Jesus has to attend to.

That's why this Lent - only a week or two away, - I want to consider the nature of language, what it is that we do when we speak words to each other, how to endow words with sacramental significance so that speech becomes a means of grace, a strengthening of the soul in ourselves and others, and an influence for good, compassion, truthfulness and conciliation in our society. I'm tired of cliche and spin, of the conspiracy, not of silence, but of unworthy words spoken in half-truth, evasive rather than clarifying, cruel rather than compassionate, empty of human communion rather than full of attentive human presence.

I've just bought James Boyd White's book, Living Speech. Resisting the Empire of Force. I've read some of his writing before. As a Professor of Law at Harvard, and an accomplished literary critic, and a Christian, he knows about words. At a time when the Western world near absolutises freedom of speech and expression, it's time to examine much more closely the proper constraints on speech and expression; time too to recognise the power of language to dehumanise and diminish other human beings in the interests of our own agendas, prejudices and unacknowledged as well as confessed enmities.   

It would be wrong to scrap Trident! It would be wrong to replace Trident!

The Scottish Labour Leader, Jim Murphy, has said an unequivocal no to scrapping Trident. That's no surprise! He also said, and I quote, "The nuclear deterrent is too important to get involved in that sort of horsetrading on the nation's safety. I want a world free of nuclear weapons but you should negotiate that away with other nuclear powers, not negotiate it away for party political gain." More about this over here.

For now though, I want to pick up two words, which isn't nit picking, but a serious scrutiny of the discourse used in the political manoeuvering and rhetoric evident in the way words are used.  First, Mr Murphy said it would be wrong to get rid of Trident. Now would that be strategically wrong, economically wrong, geo-politically wrong, party politically wrong, internationally tactically wrong or any other kind of wrong? Except the one sense in which used in this context, and about a matter of such grave human consequence, I think the word wrong would be correct. That is, on the grounds of moral principle. Would it be morally wrong to get rid of Trident? If so on what ethical grounds can this argument be made?  

Second, Mr Murphy uses two synonyms which are not synonymous - horsetrading and negotiation. He is absolutely right that the question of a nuclear deterrent, the nation's safety and therefore the question of renewing and upgrading our nculear weapons is too important for party horsetrading should it come to a coalition Government. So the question of whether we renew Trident is too important for part political horsetrading. Renewing Trident allows us to negotiate (not horsetrade) with other nuclear armed powers in hypothetical multilateral discussions some time in the (distant) future. My problem with this word negotiate is that such a soft word can obscure the reality that the content of the discussion is the commitment of nuclear powers to the ideology of mutually assured destruction as ultimate deterrence. Which brings us back to the use of the word "wrong".

Mr Murphy thinks it would be wrong to scrap Trident - he doesn't mean morally wrong. I think it would be wrong to renew and keep a nuclear deterrent, and I do mean morally wrong. Now where is the ground for negotiation there? The moral argument for maintaining a deterrent threatening massive obliteration of millions of human beings I'm sure can be made, but Mr Murphy doesn't make it. That is perhaps because there is a category confusion in the current debates around nuclear weapons, Trident replacement, and international and geo-politics. The moral question is marginalised in the political discussions, even when politicians say their opposition is principled, as Nicola Sturgeon has said on repeated occasions.

I'm well aware of the complexities, or at least as aware as any other person interested enough to go looking for the moral cases for and against nuclear deterrence. My point in this post is more modest than stating the moral case for scrapping Trident. I simply want to put the case for the moral arguments being included for consideration in the intellectual, political, strategic, military, economic discourse of such a far reaching dilemma. If Jim Murphy thinks it would be a political mistake, an error of defence judgement, a tactical faux pas, an economic own goal, that would be his privilege and he would be entitled to be heard. But to say it would be "wrong" to scrap Trident, uses a word that imports substantial questions of ethics at the personal, social, national, international levels which he has no intention of addressing.

Or am I the only one who suffers ethical dissonance when I hear someone say "it would be wrong to scrap Trident". All along I've argued it would be morally wrong to replace it just as it was wrong in the first place to buy into the brutal game of deterrence. The other ways it might be wrong are secondary - principled opposition to nuclear deterrence arises in my case from a refusal to countenance the possibility of global scale destruction of humanity and our planet as a way of ensuring my personal survival. That brings me from morality to theology, and that would be a quite other, but deeply related, form of discourse.

 

The Marburg Sermons of Rudolph Bultmann - Beams of Light into Cultural Darkness

In the Old Aberdeen Book Shop yesterday for a long trawl through the shelves, a browse amongst the novels, a meandering nosey around the art books, and then a final quick reprise up and down the theology bookcases. And the providence of God rewards my perseverance!

This World and the Beyond. The Marburg Sermons of Rudolph Bultmann. Published in English in 1960, but these sermons were preached in Germany between 1936 and 1950, in the heart of Hitler's Germany. Bultmann was one of the giants of 20th Century New Testament scholarship, whose programme of demythologisation earned him bogey man status amongst more conservative biblical scholars. But even his most severe critics acknowledged the genius, brilliance and erudition of a scholar who dominated the discipline of New Testament Studies for two generations.

But these sermons are something else. They are the flip side of Bultmann the demythologising critic; they are the words of a kerygmatic theologian proclaiming the Kerygma, and extolling the reality of the crucified risen Christ. But they are also fearless preaching from the pulpit of a persecuted and pressured church, targeted by the most ruthless and ultimately godless of ideologies, and in danger of selling its soul and betraying its own family by colluding with an increasingly anti-semitic and lethal regime. Bultmann lived the Christian faith with a courage and hopeful forthrightness that is too easily forgotten by those opposed to his theology, and arrogantly dismissive of his Christian credentials. These sermons are Bultmann at his most devoted to Christ. Some of them positively ring with a confidence and boldness that was the last thing a regime seeking to domesticate the church wanted to hear.

Here are some lines from December 1939 - they should be read slowly, then once again imagining words like these proclaiming the Word in Germany 3 months into war:

He bestows upon us the light of life, that unquestioning transparent luminosity of our being. For in Him the love of God shines fully; because, if we are so prepared, he becomes understandable to us as the very act and initiative of the divine love, as the gift to us of the Divine love. It is the love of God which has always sustained us and ever will sustain us. To be sustained and held by the love of God means to have an attitude of unquestioning childlike acceptance, to be comforted and commit ourselves to the control of a hand which guides everything for the best even when we ourselves do not know what the best for us is.

By this means our life gains clarity and peace. This does not mean that in the ground plan of our life, in its purposes and aims, we embody an intelligent solution to the riddle of existence. Every question which is aimed at mastering the secret pattern of existence must in fact be silenced; and we remain ignorant of the goal to which God is leading us. No, our life gains clarity only because everything He sends us we may and must receive as the gift of His love.

"Let his loving glance deeply penetrate your soul, and His eternal light and joy will flood your being. Heartt and mind and spirit shall then awaken to new life."

That is the pure Gospel according to John. That is devotional writing of a quite different order from much of today's fast written, quickly thought, and swiftly forgotten Christian equivalents of the Mind, Body, Spirit and Self Help genres. What a generation of theologians in Germany in the second third of the 20th Century. Barth, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, Brunner, Lohmeyer; these were heroes; but there were others whose scholarship and academic weight was thrown behind the Nazi will to power and allowed themselves to be used as justification for anti-semitic policies that would lead like iron rails to Auschwitz. Bultmann was not one of them.

Jesus shows us how to turn food into a means of grace....

Cooking is a humanising activity. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours preparing food for other people. Buying the ingredients, gathering everything together, using a trusted recipe for a dish I already know they enjoy and anticipate, adds to the sense that, in cooking for other people, we offer a different kind of gift. The cost of the ingredients, the time and energy preparing and cooking, the setting of the table (or trays), and the clearing up and doing the dishes afterwards. A meal to the grateful recipient is like a package holiday. You arrive, enjoy, and there's no tidying up before you go. 

I've always been moved and intrigued by the way Jesus handled food, welcomed guests, arranged meals and parties, and knew what to do with loaves and fishes and hungry folk. When he took bread and blessed it, poured wine and gave thanks, he was doing something deeply characteristic. That particular gesture of inclusion was enough to open the eyes of two disciples who couldn't see past their own sadness. But the Word who became flesh understood the wonder and fragility of human flesh. Through bread and wine He was respecting and caring for human bodies, serving and nourishing human beings, using food as a sacrament. Jesus shows his followers how to turn food into a means of grace, a tangible blessing which tells the other that they are welcome to this space, and to this food, and that the trouble gone to is a privilege, inconvenience being willingly enjoyed for the sake of blessing these others.

Celebration doesn't have to be tied to a special occasion; the coming of a guest is occasion enough. Not extravagance and anxiety to impress, but the simple offering of who we are and what we have, but with trouble taken to make the occasion happen as a memory in the making. And hand-made memories of food shared are later powerful evocations of gratitude which nourish the roots of friendship, making hospitality an essential activity in any community intentionally shaped around Jesus and his table. 

So two hours of my time, making Italian meatballs in a home made tomato and olive sauce and served with spaghetti and garlic laden buttered bread is the spiritual equivalent of attending serial prayer meetings. The sacrament of hospitality, the grace of welcome, the joy of food, the companionship around a table, the gratitude of friends in conversation and laughter accompanied by the clink of cutlery and glass, these are experiences impossible to replicate in any other way. A meal cooked and shared and enjoyed fills the stomach, but in so doing it courses through us to those deep places where life obtains its equilibrium, and roots itself in substance and builds sources of hope. Food does that. It instils hope.

Conversely, hunger undermines hopefulness, and those who have no food are often also those who have no friends to cook, share and welcome. A proper Christian theology of cooking presupposes food is for sharing, and will insist that we incorporate and embody, companionship. Com panus - sharing bread with; and I wonder what the consequences might be if Christians in their neighbourhoods were known as companions of the community, people who make and buy and share and eat bread with others.

A favourite poem is a reminder that bread is sacred as well as staple, and that the One who taught us to pray for our daily bread, also teaches us reverence for food;

Be gentle when you handle bread.

Let it not lie uncared for,

taken for granted or unwanted.

There is such beauty in bread,

beauty of sun and soil,

beauty of patient toil.

Wind and rains caressed it.

Christ often blessed it.

Be gentle when you handle bread.

The Letter of James 1. Showing Rather than Speaking Our Faith

Here's one of the things that make a Bible commentary the real thing. Scot McKnight has written a superb commentary on James - I hesitate to say the best because there are several other very good ones that do different things, or do what he does differently.

A big question is what kind of document is James? Calling it a letter or epistle or sermon or homily doesn't quite describe the tone, contents and assumed audience of this New Testament book - even the word book seems a misnomer. So McKnight asks the question, what is a letter intended to do, and he quotes some of the words of Seneca when he was accused of writing cafrelessly and informally:

"Now who talks carefully unless he also desires to talk affectedly? I prefer that my letters should be just what my conversation would be if you and I were sitting in one another's company or taking walks together - spontaneous and easy....If it were possible I should prefer to show, rather than speak, my feelings."

So, through Seneca, McKnight gives us the handle on this letter of James:

James is speaking, sometimes forthrightly and prophetically and other times more didactically, as if he were in the recipients' presence speaking to them. The letter is not an abstract "epistle" designed for posterity or intellectual reputation. It is a gritty in your face pastoral letter zippered up at times with some heated rhetoric" (61)

Reading James as a 21st Century Western middle aged white male kind of removes me from the immediacy of a relationship between James and those who would have heard his voice not only in the words but in the tone and the history of the relationship they shared. McKnight's suggestion is very helpful, especially as a caution when we try to over-exegete what at times is a Christian leader's exasperation or anxiety, or annoyance, or sadness or genuine anger. Students of James have always known the practical, in your face, this is what being a Christian sounds and looks like approach of James.

McKnight sees no compelling reason to deny that the author was, as tradition affirms, the brother of Jesus. And I wonder if there are memories and echoes of his brother's actions and words in his words, "Religion that is pure and undefiled is  this: care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." Compassion and purity, mercy and single-minded faithfulness to God. Not for James the world-rejecting ethic; he is more interested in followers of Jesus being themselves the evidence of God's faithful mercy.   

Ornithology as natural theology, a theology of nature, ornitheology.

The photo is of a sparrow hawk which flew into our patio doors and knocked itself out. It flew away a minute or two later with a headache, but posed long enough for a selfie!

In Scotland this week a gamekeeper was convicted and jailed for trapping and killing a goshawk. Wildlife crime is a significant threat to a number of rare and protected species in Scotland, often committed by estate workers trying to protect stocks of game birds, or by those stealing eggs or young birds for the black market in hawks and falcons. Now it seems Dundee University have developed a forensic technique for recovering human fingerprints from flight feathers. One further weapon against those who persecute and threaten the viability of some of Scotland's finest and rarest wildlife.

In a separate news item the house sparrow, the starling and a cluster of field and garden birds are in serious decline across the country. I remember on the farms in childhood the common sight of starlings congregating on trees or under eaves to roost, preceded by the dusk starling flight ballet which is one of the wonders of bird watching. And the noise of a clutter of several dozen house sparrows in the hay shed was regular background music. But it seems modern houses are too green now; there aren't as many gaps and holes, fewer undisturbed outbuildings, there is much less noise free and menace free space and spaces.

In a piece of badly stretched eisegesis I hear the words of Jesus, "Consider the birds of the air", and wonder what we are doing to our world. There is an entire multi-million pound industry in wild bird food, evident enough at garden centres and supermarkets, so obviously some people consider the birds. We've just had the annual garden birdwatch and await statistics which help us understand what's happening to bird populations. The onward trend has been downwards year on year On the radio yesterday a Professor of Environmental Studies who specialises in the impact on the environment of wildlife populations and species extinction raised concerns that human beings seem oblivious to, or wilfully ignore the fact, that in destroying living space and pushing species to extinction we are permanently impoverishing the biosphere that is our planet.

So what would Scotland be like without starlings, sparrows, blackbirds, chaffinches, greenfinches, robins, blue, great, coal and long tailed tits, wrens, yellowhammers, thrushes, siskins? And in the fields curlews, lapwings, partridges, skylarks, snipes, wheatear? "Consider the birds of the air" - there's a sermon in those words that goes deeper than not worrying about clothes and food. Because here's the irony. In the Palestine of Jesus' time birds weren't threatened with extinction - otherwise Jesus wee illustration wouldn't have worked very well as an anxiety reducing image. "Consider the birds of the air, how the starlings have fallen by 90% in four decades....." No. Doesn't work as reassurance. 

My lifelong interest in birds goes back to earliest childhood, so my own perspective is now over 6 decades. I still thrill to the cry of a curlew, my favourite Scottish bird call, but it's a sound heard now only rarely, and in special places. In Ayrshire in the late 50's and 60's it was part of the usual accompaniment of a walk in a field. My inner life is still smiling from memories of roosting starlings, squabbling sparrows, diving lapwings by the score, soaring skylarks several to a field, and in every farm I lived on, 8 in 16 years, there were also pied wagtails, on several farms yellow wagtails, and in the burn, dippers.

It's hard to see the bird population ever recover from the human footprints trampled all over the countryside. So Jesus' words are increasingly difficult to take at face value in a world where we cheerfully or carelessly consider only ourselves. They need to be heard in a new context, as a reminder of creation care, stewardship of life, and human wisdom. Ornithology as natural theology, a theology of nature, ornitheology.

Sentimentality, Sentiment, Sensibility and Commonsense.

The word sentimental has variable currency value for most of us. Sentimentality is often portrayed as over-emotional responsiveness, the heart rules the head, and then our feelings get the better of us. The assumed better course is to be rational and cool, to look at things in the cold light of reality, to make decisions or responses based on evidence weighed. Most times that's fine. It works. Sentimentality has a lot to answer for. Much of what we hoard is kept not because it has inherent value or usefulness, but because of what it means to us. From pets to cars, from a favourite shirt to a crumpled photo, we value and hang on to stuff that nobody else would give house room. 

I've quite often caught myself out being sentimental. I have a shirt that is worn, frayed, is still just about wearable, but only about the house. On my computer is a photo of my mother when she was 21, it sits on my desktop and can be opened to full view with a click. In my desk drawer are assorted items of greater and lesser value if you mean what they cost, or what they could now be sold for. But their Ebay value isn't even irrelevant to me; it's a non question. These objets d'art are life-savers, gifts and fragments of kindness that have come my way over the years. They include a pewter dove, an olive wood cross, a cold chisel a century old that belonged to my great grandfather who was a miner, a letter opener and a beautifully lacquered and gold fountain pen. There are books on my shelves I won't read again, but I did once, and they were the right words at the right time. I could give them to a charity shop, a good few of them would sell for a good price, but I've not managed to be as ruthless and utilitarian with them during my periodic purges. See. Heart ruling head, feelings dictating, the emotional blackmail of the object!

There's a serious point to these meanderings. While sentimentality may be an undesirable trait, and may be a self-indulgent weakness for the emotional payload, it isn't always the cheap option of the immature. A much older word we might do well to recover is sensibility, and that word is about emotional intelligence, capacity for compassion, commitment to understanding and a predisposition to courtesy. Sentiment is about our inner sense of things, and is at its most significant precisely when it challenges the cool head, the decisions and actions that are dictated by rational thought in the cold light of day. Sentimentality is no worse and no better than rationality if either of them excludes the other as a way of knowing, of understanding the world and of encountering wisely and relating well to other human beings.

And here's the point of all this. The other day I realised my ring was loose on my right hand. It was an engagement gift from Sheila, and the carnelian stone had come out. No idea where it is, and unlikely to find it. So should it be repaired with a new stone, or not, or get another ring? Well another ring replaces a ring but the new ring will always be a mere reminder of the original, and will have none of the history, wear and tear and deep emotional connotations of the first. If I don't repair it or replace it I'm left with an unwearable piece of gold in the shape of a ring, with neither beauty nor usefulness.

If I get it repaired it will cost a fair amount of money. And you know what. The ring is worth it. Not in hard cash terms as gold. But for what it signifies; for its sentimental value. Economics don't come into it, so long as it can be afforded. Commonsense cutting of losses, or going for something more modern (Hah! I've had it long enough for it to be a very young antique!) - these thoughts, and others like them were dismissed by the jeweller who peered at the hallmark and at the stoneless ring and said, with what can only be described as a categorical imperatival tone, "You must get it repaired." And she wasn't talking about the gold value either. She was upholding deeper values, and implicating me the customer in what was really a conspiracy to outwit all the pragmatists, rationalists and economists. This ring isn't about anything else but two people's stories told as one story for over four decades. That ring fits my finger because it has worn itself into the slightly off-circular shape of a human finger impressing for years on soft gold.

Sentimentality at its best is the recognition that feelings are important indicators of truth. The fixing of my engagement ring is a statement to a culture where barcodes and bargains, best value and disposability are systemic. Some things are not disposable, best value doesn't always have to mean cheapest, and barcodes are for markets but not, ever, for those peopled events in our lives that are without price.     

Wild Geese and Wendell Berry: "all we need is here".

Loch Skene is less than two miles from our door, and year on year it's the roosting and resting place for thousands of geese. A couple of hundred of them honked happily flying over our house just before it was finally dark. Something in the wildness held to nature's rhythm gets to me every time I hear that, and see them, in an informal but efficient formation, driving along their own motorway to the Loch Skene Service Station.

Wendell Berry's poem about Wild Geese is a gentle articulation of that humane common-sense that encourages us to be content, and to enjoy what is here and what is now. The last four lines of this poem always make me aware of what we lose through discontent, what we miss by looking for more, what we might gain if we too followed the ancient trails of community caring, contented kindness and a sense of home. Quietness of heart and clarity of vision are the gifts that reveal the richer deeper giftedness of life.

So tonight, after all is said and done, I'm content to have heard the glad honking of geese pleased to be nearly home. And Wendell Berry's definition of contentment, "...all we need is here".

Photo by Planetstillalive.com

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

 

A Prayer of Intercession Following Terror Attacks in France

The following Prayer has been written for the service at Crown Terrace Baptist Church on Sunday January 11. The Kyrie Eleison is the sung Taize version.

Living God, Giver of life to all through Christ,

Creator God, Maker of all things through Christ,

Peace-making God, Reconciler of all things through Christ

Father of Mercies, from whom blessing comes to all through Christ:

We are shocked by the violence of those who claim to act in the name of their God; we share the sadness and fear of the people of France; we have witnessed the power of hate and vengeance to destroy and devastate lives;  we too are sad, afraid, or angry.

We pray for all who gather today in Paris to protest against this brutality and to stand in solidarity with a nation feeling shock, fear, anger and defiance.   We pray for the comfort of victims and the wounded, for strength to the emergency services who had to deal with the carnage and suffering; for the safety of the special forces whose role of protecting others places them in grave danger.   Today we hold in our hearts and in our thoughts, all whose lives are forever changed by these events.

Living God, giver of life to all, restore the hope of life to those affected by terrorism

Creator God, maker of all things, recreate in the places of despair, new hopes.

Kyrie Eleison

Eternal God, we live in the creative opportunities for good and flourishing in our times, but also in the broken order and threatened chaos of a world divided and jagged edged.

We confess the potential for fundamentalist religion to go toxic, for hatred for the other to distil into the nitro-glycerine of hatred, and then to explode into bloody violence, shattering communities into fragments of death, suffering and fear.

We pray that out of this great evil, there will come wisdom and understanding between peoples and faiths. In these early days when it’s easy to blame and hate and retaliate, give voice to those who seek conciliation; help people to grow in understanding, to find a shared commitment to the common good of Christians, Jews, Muslims, those who claim no faith.

With chastened hearts we pray this morning, as a community of Christ’s people, as those entrusted with Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, as patient persistent peace-making children of God, fellow human beings sharing the tears and bewilderment of the people of France.

Peace-making God, reconciler of all things through the blood of the Cross of Christ, bring out of this lethal hatred and hideous hurt, the possibilities of new life and the healing of faiths.

Father of Mercies, from whom all blessings come, and whose faithfulness never turns from this sinful world, we bring our broken words and bewildered thoughts, and without even knowing what blessing could possibly look like in this tragic mess, we ask the only blessing that makes sense,                                          

Kyrie Eleison.