Living Wittily

Why the Word "Biblical" Should Be Used as a Compliment and Not As a Debating Technique.

There was a time when I found a rant satisfying, a kind of cathartic putting right of the world, or at least a therapeutic binge of self expression that even if it didn't persuade others, made me feel better, a lot better. If I were to revert to the rant as default setting for responding to that which hurts, or is unfair, or untrue, or biased, or prejudiced or just plain annoying, then one of the frequent triggers for such a rant would be the debating strategy amongst evangelical Christians, of arguing a case, persuasively or otherwise, but finishing it with the claim that the view articulated is "biblical". The implication being that differing views are less biblical. It happens time and again in discussions about matters of controversy between Christians, from same gender marriage to pacifism, from sexual ethics to economic justice. More recently it has resurfaced about gendered approaches to ministry and the two main schools of complementarian and egalitarian. Judging by the way people are objectified in these arguments about abstract principles, cultural prejudices, theological preferences and, yes, biblical hermeneutics it might even be argued the arguments from both sidesa are dangerously utilitarian.

Ah, yes, that slippery soap in the bath phrase, biblical hermeneutics. The problem with using the word "biblical" as an exclusive truth claim is that by so doing all who disagree with the point being made are deemed to be less biblical, with a weaker view of the authority of Scripture, a willingness to accomodate error for the sake of contemporary relevance or cultural acceptability for a position held. So for example, those who hold a complementarian view of the role of women in relation to ministry and leadership, can quote chapter and verse from Paul, and argue plausibly Jesus only had male disciples, and find alternative translations of the name Junia in Romans 16 to show either that the name was male, or that her apellation as apostle meant something other than apostle in the full sense. On the other hand those who support an egalitarian approach to women's ministry will likewise quote chapter and verse, point out the crucial role of women as witnesses and disciples in the gospels, and celebrate Junia as a female apostle showing Paul meant no universal limitation on women's leadership. The debate is deeply and decisively influenced by biblical hermeneutics and the preferred approach to biblical interpretation.

Yes, I am egalitarian in my own view of the theology of women's ministry and I believe responsible and faithful exegesis and hermenetutic respect for the text of the New Testament lead to that view. But I will not claim that my view is "biblical" and those who think differently are unbiblical in their conclusions and hanging loose to the authority of Scripture in favour of their own prejudices bolstered by inadequate exegesis. Both sides of such a debate are at their best exploring the texts, discussing the issues, respecting the views of those who differ, acknowledging the faithfulness and seriousness with which each seeks the truth, weighs the evidence, and argues the case.

Yes, I think that the clarion call of the church's freedom in Galatians 3.28 and 5.1 affirm and assert with all the vigour of an angry apostle that in Christ there is neither male nor female. Full stop. But I recognise, and respect, others who read those verses differently, and I acknowledge they too are wrestling with the texts, seeking to be faithful to the biblical witness and obedient to the Scripture principle. It would be the height of arrogance and indeed a barrier to my own learning and obedience if I simply dismissed those who hold views contrary to mine as being "unbiblical".

So, yes, by all means let's debate and discuss, explore and argue, listen and speak, read and write, but in a spirit of openness not only to what others are saying, but to what God is saying to us through their words, ideas and insights. We may or may not be persuaded, we may think others are mistaken and we are right, we might even shake our heads that someone can't see the plain biblical truth that we claim to see. But that's the point at which I would urge those with such clarity, certainty and conviction to remember that it is the Holy Spirit's ministry to take the things of Christ and make them known. And that sometimes it is our own clarity, certainty and conviction that closes us to new truth, shuts off new ways of seeing things, because we have it all sussed, we have the exegetical conclusions nailed down, and our hermeneutical approach is the only game in town. Because we are "biblical" in our theology, for us the final authority is the Bible, as if that could not possibly be the case for others who read the same Bible, with the same faithful reverence and desired obedience, but who come to different conclusions.

By all means let us discuss the biblical arguments, the textual evidence, the hermeneutic principles, the theological implications of such shared learning in the school of Christ. But let us do so without claiming the word "biblical" for our own arguments, by implication disenfranchising others in whom, and through whom, within the community that is the Body of Christ, the Holy Spirit also works, and speaks, and moves us towards a deeper apprehension of what it means to follow faithfully after Christ. For myself, I have read and studied the Bible for half a century; my theology, ethics, spirituality and way of looking at and living in the world is decisively shaped by this book, its witness to Christ, and its application to my own life and heart by the Holy Spirit. I have learned that the Spirit of Christ is the Bible's best interpreter, and the communitry of Christ seeking to follow faithfully in the way of the cross is the best context within which to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest those Holy Scriptures given for our learning.

A Christmassy Poem by Wendell Berry.

A Christmas poem from Wendell Berry.

For those jaded by the whole thing before it's even here

For those excited by the whole thing and can't wait till it's here

For each of us, longing to find again a way into a

future where peace on earth and goodwill to all peoples

is prayer, promise and possibility,

because of this Child.

REMEMBERING THAT IT HAPPENED ONCE.....

Remembering that it happened once,
We cannot turn away the thought,
As we go out, cold, to our barns
Toward the long night’s end, that we
Ourselves are living in the world
It happened in when it first happened,
That we ourselves, opening a stall
(A latch thrown open countless times
Before), might find them breathing there,
Foreknown: the Child bedded in straw,
The mother kneeling over Him,
The husband standing in belief
He scarcely can believe, in light
That lights them from no source we see,
An April morning’s light, the air
Around them joyful as a choir.
We stand with one hand on the door,
Looking into another world
That is this world, the pale daylight
Coming just as before, our chores
To do, the cattle all awake,
Our own frozen breath hanging
In front of us; and we are here
As we have never been before,
Sighted as not before, our place
Holy, although we knew it not.

 

The Rewards of a Life in Ministry: Gold, Mirth and Thanks Intense

The other day one of my friends who teaches in a Baptist College asked a question something like this, "If the three Magi could each bring you a gift for your ministry, what would you want?" There are some obvious, standard and boringly spiritual answers to that kind of question, and I wasn't in the mood to be any of those. So I replied, "Gold, mirth and thanks intense." Which when the phonetic puns are duly appreciated translates as money, laughter and gratitude. Now all joking aside at least two of those are pretty near what I would want, and once I;m allowed to explain, all three would do just fine.

Take gratitude, thanks intense. For 40 years I have been a Baptist minister. That's high mileage pastoral ministry, representing a long personal journey, and most of those miles in the company of other sojourners. On such a journey the full spectrum of human emotion is explored and the glorious diversity of human experiences enjoyed, endured and engaged. The word privilege is an honoured cliche that should not be devalued because of its overuse. The privilege is this; being invited to share in people's lives, and to accompany them in their walk with God through the valley of the shadow, across the wilderness, up the mountian, into the hospital, as guest at their weddings and dedications of families, in living rooms and coffee shops, each place made ordinary because we are ordinary folk, and each place made holy by the extraordinary faith that God walks with us. For a life spent doing this I am intensely thankful.

Or take laughter, that shoulder shaking mirth because life itself shows itself to be a joke. No not the cynical trick that disillusions and disappoints and laughs at hopes unfulfilled. But the loveability of people who know how and when to laugh; the odd coincidences that are either accidents of time and space or the Holy Spirit nudging us awake to see that life is surprise and gift. Not all of life is a big laugh; often enough there are tears, inner brokenness, loss that seems inconsolable, part of the journey we would rather not have had to make. But laughter, mirth, is a generous and gentle defiance of all that urges us towards despair, resignation and cyncism. Laughter is to see the joke, to trust the dawn, to pull back the curtains, to think new thoughts about life seen in a new way. There are few gifts  which enrich ministry more than laughter shared at the incongruity and wonder of how life turns out, or in, or outside in.

Take money. We all need it, and we'd prefer if we had enough of it. Christian ministry is not for entrepreneurs however much that word is (mis)used about ministries which are innovative, blessed with fruitfulness and scintillating with imagination. You don't go into ministry for the money; but it;s hard to stay there unless there is money enough to live and move and have your being in a community. I remember a stunning line in a good book about excellence in ministry: "The pastor is not the designated self-denier of the congreagtion." That seems to say most of what needs to be said. Enough to live, and to be free therefore to give energy and time to sharing the journey of the community through the journeys of its members. Such thoughts are quite urgent just now as I correspond about pension arrangements, being 65 in February.

So there they are - three gifts for ministry. I don't need to be given them. They are already enjoyed. And maybe when Epiphany comes, and we celebrate those ancient travellers following their star, it will be time to thank the One whom they looked for and found, that these same Magi have brought to me those same gifts, gold, mirth and thanks intense.

A Poem for the Churches' Lost Credibility, and How to Recover It.

This is a poem for times when we hate, oppose, differentiate on the basis of fear and mistrust, and when we need people who will give credibility again to the God who is love. It was written by George Bruce, a Scottish poet, whose work is deeply coloured and shaped by the North East of Scotland. This poem about Martin Luther King is part lament, part hope and laced with both anger and sadness at the human capacity for waste and the churches' loss of credibility traced directly to the loss of a living and vitalising connectedness to Christ. 

After the Death of Martin Luther King

"Little children it is for the last time."
and each time it was.
He spoke with his body and tongue
           for love.
God knows why in our bad times.

Credibility had long since gone
that the churches had something to do with the
Christ,
that the bombs dropped for humanity
could not deceive any longer
even the Americans

But that he, such as he could for
      the last
                   time
and again the
                   last time
for love of, for the possibility of
healing, holding together,
possibility of resurrecting
the dead God of
                           love
Walk.

The Lark sings Christ in the clean air.
O Memphis. O Jerusalem.

On Not Settling For Less Than Life Can Be.............

Mary Oliver is one of the very finest exponents of the prose poem. This is one of her wise and visionary rebukes to those who settle for less than life can be with effort, commitment, sacrifice, risk and an intentional unseating of the selfish spirit that either wants to possess or wants to play safe. Somewhere beyond these is the call of life itself, or perhaps God, daring us to stop playing at living, and start seriously paying attention to what life could be..... this prose poem is about that.

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life toward it.

(New and Selected Poems, page 136)

Review: John. A Commentary. Marianne Meye Thompson

There are more commentaries on the Gospel of John than any one of us needs to study it, at whatever point of entry we choose. I have a shelf full of 12 commentaries and about 20 monographs, and that excludes books I've borrowed from libraries over the years. And I am still intrigued by fresh work, new scholarship and all the undiscovered country of this familiar, strange, demanding and perplexingly profound book. Despite all the early scholarly ink and papyrus, the plethora of academic paper and print, the ocean of digital, electronic and online resources, the Fourth Gospel continues to speak deeply and clearly to those who read John's Gospel itself with uncomplicated faith and readiness to listen.

The latest substantial commentary was published a few weeks ago and I am reading it each day Advent through Epiphany. It is readable, learned, thoughtful, written by an author who writes for church as well as academy, and does so out of her own confessional commitment to the Christian faith. That makes her no less a scholar with a critical mind, reverent and respectful of the text and therefore not prepared to short change this Gospel by foreclosing on problems, avoiding questions or claiming more interpretive authority than the evidence allows.

Marianne Meye Thomson has worked on this commentary for 17 years, which is a large chunk of her professional life. In an interview held at Fuller Theological Seminary where she is Professor of New Testament, she spoke openly about the joys, demands and disciplines of writing a commentary. Sometimes those who write commentaries are criticised for not covering all the issues of background, social context, textual developments and pre-history, rhetorical strategy, theology and reception history, while also interacting with the waterfall of monographs and other commentaries. In her interview Thompson conceded there would be those in the academy discontented that the commentary is not a vade mecum of recent scholarship; but her aim is to write for students and pastor-preachers while also making a contribution that other Johannine scholars will also appreciate.

Her approach is succinctly stated: "I have not endeavoured to reconstruct or pass judgement on the historicity of events, words or accounts in John. John;s Gospel is assuredly a selective, interpreted account of some of the things that Jesus said and did; it presents Jesus and his works and words to be the life giving deeds of the one God of Israel for all the world. The goal of the commentary is to illumine the witness of that narrative. (p.23)

This clarification is important, ensuring the reader is aware of the author's stated purposes and intentional omissions. Thompson makes no attempt to carry on a multi-sided dialogue with all the secondary exegetical and historical literature. She seldom engages in prolonged discussion with other commentators except where they add further interpretive clarity to the text in hand. Footnotes are rich in additional information and comment, and are the more valuable for being limited in number, reserved for the more important matters. That said, there are approximately 1100 footnotes, and she spoke ruefully of the large file of footnotes cut from the text to keep the volume within the publisher's word count! Some of us would like to see and follow those scholarly footprints!

There are nine Excurses and each is a richly textured essays on crucial theological and historical issues in John, as for example the signs, the I am' sayings, faith and discipleship, and the one she confesses she struggled with most, "The Jews" in the Gospel of John. Reading the excurses is a mini course on Johannine theology and history. The Excursus on the woman taken in adultery is an exemplary piece of textual criticism in which the pericope is not seen as original, but is nevertheless expounded in an exercise of canonical exegesis. A 23 page Bibliography, and around 82 pages of indices enhance the usefulness of the volume, pointing the reader to further resources and gathering page references to a host of subjects as they are treated throughout the commentary. 

The water into wine pericope is a favourite of mine, and one I have preached on several times and studied and returned to ever since C K Barrett and Raymond Brown showed me what could be done by digging into the Old Testament texts and establishing bridges between John's storytelling and the Jewish and Greco-Roman world out of which such writing came. Her exegesis is laced with cross references to the OT and other Second Temple literature, is written in lucid and imaginative prose with an eye to the theological payload, so that she brings a freshness and, on occasion, a surprising light to bear on an already well worked text. Likewise her understanding of the story of the Temple cleansing is to respect John's chronology in placing it at the start of Jesus ministry, but also to acknowledge the Synoptic account may be the more historically plausible. Rather than seek to harmonise, she works at explaining what John was about, and why the Temple cleansing sets off foundation shaking Christological reverberations. These are two examples of her approach.

I had occasion to preach on John 14.7-11, a typical passage of Johannine theology suggestive of long rumination on the meaning of the Word made flesh, and how the one who was close to the heart of God is the only one who can make God known: "He who has seen me has seen the Father" is a statement that takes the reader to the highest ridges of Johannine Christology, and containining ideas far seeing in their suggestion of a nascent Trinitarianism. Thompson shirks none of the hard questions in exploring the identity of Jesus the Son and his relationship to God the Father. In a couple of paragraphs she unravels John's meanings with the clarity of a scholar who previously published two substantial monographs on God in John's Gospel. She is a reliable guide and a good commentator on the theological landscape of John.

The NTL commentary series is intended to be medium sized, mid range and deal with paragraphs and flow of thought rather than treating the text in the more atomistic, comprehensive and detailed analyses of larger scholarly commentaries, such as Keener, Michaels and from a previous generation Brown and Schnackenburg. This is a commentary which sits alongside its nearest competitors Lincoln, Beasley Murray, Ridderbos, Moloney, and Carson. I would compare it in quality, freshness and usefulness to Gail O'Days fine work in the New Interpreter's Bible.

In her practice of exegesis Thompson has little interest in competing or arguing with other writers for the sake of showing her control of the field. Of course she is often in conversation with other scholars, and there is wide and deep learning informing this volume. Her concentration, however, is on the meaning of John's narrative and witness, which is unbroken throughout as she opens up the message of the Word made flesh, dwelling amongst humanity, and displaying the glory of God. The pivotal verse for her is "In him was life and the life was the light of all people."

Her own translation (a feature of this series) is supported by textual notes, and in working at it she was aiming for idiomatic English, but staying as close to the actual text as possible. She is both modest and sensible in acknowledging that just as John had to select, choose and omit material, she had to do the same in order to keep the commentary within the parameters of the series. In doing so she has produced a commentary that will be of genuine usefulness and stimulus for preachers and students. Scholars will likewise encounter a commentary that has deep roots in both learning and faith, and which offers an engaged and energetic wrestling with this complex, infuriating, comforting, disturbing but intentionally tendentious text. 

Thompson is cautious in the use of criticism but honest about wrestling with the text; ready to offer new conclusions but rarely speculative; her writing is readable, which is to say I am reading it through over several weeks, and at times have been drawn to read on further to follow the flow of a well written exegetical narrative. I've waited eagerly for this book since Thompson was announced as its author. This book was worth the wait. The time taken has resulted in a mature, lucid, authoritative commentary, qualitatively different because the writer has demonstrably lived with, and within, this text.

When Mary Kissed the Face of Her Son and Came Face to Face with God.

One of my favourite Pre- Raphaelites. Few do Nativity better than Burne-Jones. Victorian imagination, sentiment and biblical literacy all inform this work.

 

This sketch reminds me of Christina Rosetti's Carol, and the verse:

 

Angels and archangels, may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim, thronged the air:

But only his mother, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the Beloved, with a kiss.

I'm wondering which one inspired which, who borrowed from whom; or is it artistic coincidence?

Advent: When the Word Works Wonders With Water and Wine!

The story of Jesus turning water into wine is one of the great surprise moments of John's Gospel. John's word for those surprise moments is "sign". The surprise is only the start. John isn't trying to pique our curiosity, like the clever novelist who ends each chapter with a mini cliffhanger. Each of John's signs is like a dig in the ribs of those not paying attention, or one of those pings that says you've got mail.

The Fourth Gospel started with a hymn to the universe, or at least a hymn to the One who spoke the universe into being. The Word that calls all things into being is the Light that lightens every human being, and diffuses a glory that shines with brilliant persistence agaisnt all kinds of darkness. The Word has become human and is full of grace and truth and from that fullness those who receive him are filled with that fulness, and grace after grace after grace.

John isn't one for understatement it seems, but the truth is (and that too is a Johannine way of speaking) to describe the grace and truth and fullness of what God is doing in Jesus needs more superlatives than are easily and grammatically fitted into a sentence. What does it mean to talk about grace after grace after grace; blessing upon blessing upon blessing; gifts that keep on coming? If only John could illustrate, give an example, a sign. Yes quite, a sign!

So there is this wedding and for reasons not hard to imagine, the wine runs out. Wine on tap at someone else's expense isn't likely to last long. But a wineless celebration would be an embarrassment to the hosts and a diminishment of joy. So, Mary tells Jesus, as if she expected him to run to Tesco and bring back some of their BOGOF specials. Or just maybe, because she had more than an inkling that Jesus would know what to do.

And sure enough. As problem solver extraordinaire Jesus tells the servants to fill the huge water jars with water, take them in and serve the guests. The clue to John's story is in the weights and measures implied in the telling. Six stone water jars of the kind recovered by archaeologists who confirm that yes, such jars held 20-30 gallons. All told 180 gallons of water, except it was now wine. 818 litres of wine. In a village where 100 guests would be a big gathering that's 8 litres each on top of what has already been swallowed!

So what is the coming of the Word made flesh like? What is grace upon grace, the fullness from which we all receive. These are great Advent questions, and John gives his illustration by telling of what happened at a young couple's wedding, in Cana. In celebration terms Christ gives more than we can contain, more litres of the wine of the Kingdom than we can drink, more blessing than we can think.

John knows his Jewish Scriptures and those places where there are promises of free flowing wine when the Messiah comes. One of the funniest and happiest texts is from 2 Baruch, and I have a feeling John knew this text, which looks at what happens to vines when the Messiah comes: "on one vine will be a thousand branches, one branch will produce a thousand clusters, and one cluster will produce a thousand grapes, and one grape will produce a cor." Yes I know, what's a cor. It's a measure of 400 litres! Grace upon grace upon grace, from grape upon grape upon grape!

This Advent in a world needing to recover hope and hopefulness, love and loveableness, peace and peaceableness, joy and joyfulness, this story comes like an ancient blessing which looks at the world through the eyes of God in Christ, the Word made flesh, the grace of God come close. There is no denying the darkness, and the forces of evil and violence, the voices of hate and fear. It is precisely into this kind of world that Christians are called to bear witness to the one whose glory we have beheld, full of grace and truth. Of his fulnness we have all received, grace after grace after grace. So the Light shines, in us and through us, and the darkness cannot understand it, has not extinguished it, and will never eclipse it. The good wine comes at the last, as does grace, in quantities we can never imagine.

What would have happened if instead of Facebook exchanges we had met together to pray?

On and off today I have found myself enmeshed in various social media exchanges about last night's decision to extend British military activity into Syria. In short, to bomb Syria. Some are regretful but supportive; others are uncompromising in their support to bomb Isis off the map. On the other hand a sizeable minority believe it is wrong to bomb anybody, some of them as an absolute principle that bombing is state funded indiscriminate violence that inevitably kills and maims innocent civilians.

Others oppose bombing at this time on the pragmatic grounds that to justify bombing there needs to be a coherent overall strategy that includes but is not limited to the following: i) cutting off Isis funding from banks which begins by identifying these financial institutions, ii) closing the conduits that enable Isis to sell oil (and asking who it is that is buying it), iii) blocking the channels through which weapons are supplied to Isis, some of them so sophisticated they can bring down a commercial airliner, iv) seeking a UN resolution to create and deploy a UN coalition of ground troops. v) dealing with the disastrous aftermath of previous incursions into the sovereign territories of Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya. That is a huge, complex, costly and precariously poised shopping list of elements which might begin to sound like a strategy. 

Add to that list the requirement for a clear exit strategy, a set of recognised criteria that would indicate the need for military action was over, a long term presence and security to ensure political stability and safety of citizens, and no coherent let alone at this stage realisable political serttlement that would come close to satisfying the major players in the region - Iraq, Syria, United States, France, Turkey, Russia, Iran, Israel and now Britain.

All of the above is the stuff of debate, discussion, agonising and exhausting in its intensity, for those who take seriously the cost and consequence of firing modern munitions with their enhanced payloads and blast range, into targets which must have civilians present, and from a height of 35,000 feet and distances measured in tens of miles.

However what I found interesting though not surprising was the diversity of Christian voices arguing about what Jesus meant about loving enemies, what the cross is about, and what the message of the cross in a world confronted with Isis. Claim and counter claim as to whether the Book of Revelation is about God the warrior or the Lamb in the midst of the throne, was given further edge by arguing about whether Jesus was non-violent and even a pacifist, and if not what was the relationship between the ethic of Jesus for disciples and the duties and rights of a state to wage war in self defence and in defence of the weak and oppressed.

Here too there are no straightforward answers, no short cuts to clarity, no privileges of claimed certainty and no court of appeal that can rule definitively on how we should live in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even a plain reading of Jesus words about loving enemies, and turning the other cheek, became an exercise in exegetical evasions, qualifications and exceptions. Similarly a reckoning with Paul's fuller and even more specific words in Romans 12 about out-manouevering the enemy by doing so much good the person who sees me as enemy could find no purchase on the levers of the Christian believer on which to compel a reciprocal hatred.

I am not troubled by difference of opinion; I expect that. Nor do I need only to hear what supports and confirms what I already think - I try to hear and to weigh the words of those who think I am naive, radical, unrealistic or plain daft to take Jesus words so seriously. I am however intrigued, and singularly concerned when such discussions and differences are fuelled by our strong opinions and convictions so that we become tone deaf to Scripture, colour blind to green and red and looking for ways of construing Scripture to give our views the green light and wave in front of others arguments and opinions a red light. 

It is at this point something deeply embedded in my own Baptist tradition comes into its own. If only all those interlocutors today could have gathered in an open public space, say the seating area in a shopping mall. Each of them, me included.

And then we had prayed together our fears and angers, our urges to violence and longings for peace, honestly confessing our bewilderment and admitting "Lord we don't know - we think we do, we shout we do, but we don't know." If in that praying we were not trying to persuade each other, win arguments, prove ourselves right, or shrewd, or pragmatic, or tough, or informed - if in that praying, instead, we were humble and determined to hear what the Spirit of God is saying, to seek the mind of Christ, to discern a way for Christians to be faithful to the Crucified and Risen Lord, I wonder what might have happened in our hearts, in our minds, and then what we might do and say?

I don't know. But I wish I'd had the chance to find out.