Living Wittily

Thoughts for Advent Week 1: From Isaiah, the "Fifth Gospel."

Since lock down in March 23, and in the following months of the pandemic, I have written a daily Thought for the Day for the folk in o8ur church community. Sometimes one of our deacons contributes a week.

During Advent I will be doing all of our Thoughts for the Day scripts. Below are those for the first week of Advent. The photos were taken while out walking on a frosty blue sky day in a local forest. 

 

Advent Sunday

Isaiah 9. 2 “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

We light a candle each Sunday in Advent to announce the coming of Jesus, the light of the world. Dawn is not the same as midday, but it is the reassurance that daylight is coming. For Israel, long years of exile was their experience of lock down. This promise comes to them, and to us this Advent, as God’s promise that “the true light that shines on everyone, is coming into the world.” (John 1.9)

Monday

Isaiah 40.3 “A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Jesus rated John the Baptist as one of the most honoured of men. He took this text and declared the truth of Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God who carries away the sins of the world.” Advent is when we make way for Christ the King, a way that leads from Bethlehem towards Calvary, and beyond to the empty tomb. This is the time when we prepare our hearts for the coming of the King and his kingdom.

Tuesday

Isaiah 11.1-3 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

This is an ancient text, which tells us Jesus is born from the house of David. Jesus will grow in wisdom with God and man, and Jesus will reveal the heart and the purpose of God. The Holy Spirit plays the main supporting role in the Advent story of Jesus, from prophecy to conception, from his birth to his baptism in Jordan, from Gethsemane to Golgotha, and from the resurrection garden to Pentecost. God is at work and will do all that he promises and purposes.

Wednesday

Isaiah 55. 11 “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Advent is about God in action. The Word became flesh and lived amongst us. Jesus is the coming of God in human flesh to redeem, renew and restore through the forgiveness of sins, the healing of the nations and the liberation of creation.  

Thursday

Isaiah 35.3-4 “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come…”

Waiting isn’t only an exercise in patience. The longer we wait the more tired we become. Israel’s exiles had waited 70 years, three generations. After that length of time hope is near exhaustion. Isaiah is God’s encourager. To every heart that has waited too long for hope, “do not fear, God will come.” Advent is about God keeping his promises; sure enough, in God’s time, but sure nevertheless.

Friday

Isaiah 7.14. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

When Matthew told the story of Jesus birth he quoted this verse, and said everything that took place at Bethlehem was a fulfilling of this promise. Except he tells exactly what the name means, “God with us”. We only grasp the wonder of Advent when we say this word and ponder its meaning. God with us, here, now, always.

Saturday

Isaiah 9. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders.”

The word government is a political word. No getting away from that. The child will grow to be a king. Standing before Pilate, the Roman Empire’s Governor, Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world.” He is a different kind of king, exercising a different kind of power.  His government is not oppressive, exploitative, self-serving, concerned with exerting power over others. Advent is about the coming of a new kind of power, to redeem rather than defeat, to forgive instead of condemn, and to set free not oppress.

Sunday

Isaiah 9. “And he will be called, Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

And there you have it. The qualities of God’s government. Wisdom, power, protection and peace, each joined to the other in the person of Jesus Christ, who comes in this gift of God’s child. Isaiah’s prophecy is both a foretelling and a forth telling of God on the move in the world. Advent is the time when all earthly forms of power are called in question. “Make way, make way, for Christ the King, in splendour arrives…”

The Patient Slowness of Caring: Pandemic Pastoral Newsletter 36

This letter was written for our church community in Montrose Baptist Church, Scotland. It may be of interest to some who visit here. Welcome to those who do. 

Dear Friends

Last week, I stood behind an elderly lady in the paper shop. She was struggling to make herself heard behind her face covering, leaning on her walking stick, and fumbling with the change in her purse to pay for her two purchases – a People’s Friend, and a Milky Way. Given physical distancing rules, the queue of several people behind me began to stretch back and round the shop. Nobody seemed that bothered. She slowly put her purse away, picked up her loot for the day, deposited them carefully in her bag, nodded to the shop assistant, and slowly moved away.  As she exited right I was left with a feeling of joy at the simplicity and humanity of those two or three minutes.

On a raw morning in Inverurie, while waiting to buy my own paper, to read while having coffee at The Kilted Frog, a tiny drama of human courage played out, and shone like a light into the pervasive gloom of a year that has been hard for everyone. A queue of people, without words, and faces half covered, being patient, and an almost tangible air of kindness which was more than making allowances, and nowhere near patronising. And so a People’s Friend and a Milky Way, taken into hands with a slight tremor, became occasion of blessing for the rest of us.

I’ve thought about what was going on in those moments of encounter, when folk in a hurry slowed down, and the usual outbreaks of impatience in a retail queue were held in check. And I’ve thought about an elderly woman going down to the shop, keeping her routines and valuing the small stuff.

What was going on? Personally I think we all witnessed what happens when we opt for the common good, rather than our own rights, and when understanding and compassion for one person becomes a new strand in the fabric of our shared life in community. No, I don’t think everyone in that shop thought like that. But there are times when maybe, just maybe, the Holy Spirit creates something beautiful out of the ordinary, and when we sense the presence of Christ in the patient slowness of caring.

We are nearing Advent. It will be a Christmas like none we can remember, with all kinds of reasons to be anxious, negative, and wishing life was other than it is. Family gatherings, parties of friends and colleagues, shared meals and much else will be constrained. But there will still be Christmas. What doesn’t change is the coming of Christ into a broken world, on a dark night illumined by a star, and in the crowded resentments of a country under Roman lockdown for tax purposes.

In all the understandable anxieties and fatigue following nine months of pandemic upheaval, certain things are still true: Christ comes as Immanuel, God with us; the child is called Jesus, the saviour of the world; the angels sang of God’s promised purpose of peace on earth and good-will amongst all peoples; shepherds worshipped, wise travellers brought gifts, Mary pondered all that was happening. All still true.

There’s a lot we won’t be able to do at Christmas; but caring for others isn’t one of them. As a community of Christ we are witnesses to the love of God in the gift of Christ. Perhaps a more limited Christmas will enable us to reflect on the love of God for our broken world, and then to reflect that same love of God upon our broken world.  At the close of our service last week, these words were sung:

Such love, springs from eternity
Such love, streaming through history
Such love, fountain of life to me
O Jesus, such love.

Which believe it or not, brings us all the way back from Bethlehem to Inverurie! The sense of spontaneous good-will in a newsagent’s shop is a tiny hint, no more, but no less, of what God’s purpose is for the church that represents Christ to the world. That means our words, attitudes, actions and the way we live every day, re-presents Jesus to others. To take my words above a step further, when we give our lives to Christ, and give ourselves in love to others, the Holy Spirit creates something beautiful out of the ordinary, and others will sense the presence of Christ in the patient slowness of caring.

The star of Bethlehem pointed the way to Christ. When Paul wrote to disgruntled Philippian Christians he told them they were stars. No, not the celebrity kind, the Bethlehem kind, pointing the way to Christ, telling them to live as “children of God…then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.”

During a Christmas like no other we have known, remember the connection between a People’s Friend, a Milky Way, the star of Bethlehem, and our calling as stars, pointing to Christ and shining with glory reflected from Bethlehem,

You friend and pastor,  

Jim Gordon

Thought for the Day for our Montrose Church Community this Week.

Over the past week these are the Thoughts that were shared with our church community at Montrose Baptist Church. Every week we have done this since March 23, and it has become an important part of our shared life. It will continue beyond the current crisis.

We have resumed services, with all health measures in place, and are adapting to the strangeness. But whatever the limitations, there is something deeply hopeful about us gathering to pray, to read Scripture, to see each other, and listen to music and word. 

Thought for the Day

Monday

2 Corinthians 1.3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort…”

Compassion and mercy have their origins and starting point in the heart of God. Jesus taught us to call God our Father, and Paul gives praise that the God and Father of Jesus is one whose compassions never fail, and whose presence is comfort enough, because it is the presence of eternal love in the daily time scale of our lives.

Tuesday

Romans 15.13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Read that verse again. Pick out the big words. Hope. Joy. Peace. Trust. But the first one is hope. Hope is so closely tied to God, that God is described as the God of hope. All hope starts in the eternal purpose and inexhaustible love of God. And as we trust in Christ who is the hope of God incarnate, so joy, peace, trust arise in our hearts.

Wednesday

Hebrews 13.20 “Now may the God of peace…equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen.

The God of peace has his work cut out, in a world that is fragmented and divided by all kinds of differences, prejudices, hatreds and inequalities. But all the resources of eternal love, infinite grace, and creative power came together in our Lord Jesus, crucified and risen. The God of peace is at work through the church, and through every follower of Jesus who shines like the stars on a dark night, as we bear witness to the Gospel of truth and life.

Thursday

James 1. 17 “Every good and perfect gift is from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” 

“Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who brings out the stars by number and calls all of them by name.” (Isaiah 40.16) If God is the absolutely trustworthy curator of the stars, he can be depended on to look after us. In all the shifting shadows of life circumstances God is the one true constant. “Great is thy faithfulness….thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not.”

Friday

John 4. 24. “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

The Bible is very clear about what true worship is. “Surely you desire truth in the inward parts…” cried David. He went on to pray, “Create in me a pure heart O God.” Integrity is when what we say to God in our hearts, is lived out in our actions, spoken in our words, and thought in our minds, so that our prayers and actions are integrated. That is true worship, the integration of prayer and life.

Saturday

I John 1.5 “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

Light is one of John’s most used ideas. If we want to know what it means to live in the light of God, John said that very clearly in the Gospel: “Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” In the end truth isn’t only about telling the truth, it is about living the telling truth, that we are followers of Jesus, and witnesses to the love of God.

Sunday

1 John 4.16 “God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in him. In this way love is made complete in us…”

‘God is love’ doesn’t mean we have a free ticket. If we say we love God but hate someone, we are not doing the truth. If we can’t bring ourselves to love people we see every day, family, fellow Christians, neighbour or colleague, how can we say we love God whom we haven’t seen? To ask the God who is love into our lives, is to commit to being a person through whom the love of God is there for all to see. 

The Christian Community at its Best.

I will quote the inestimable F F Bruce somewhere in the service tomorrow:

"The Christian community is to be a little welfare state,

a society practicing mutual aid among its members

in spiritual and material respects alike.

Within its fellowship those who need help should be given the help they need....

it is a ministry in which all can have a share.

The timid must be encouraged,

the weak must be strengthened,

those who stray must be led back to the right path,

and all must be treated with patience -

especially those who make the greatest demands on the patience of their fellow Christians."

(Thessalonians, Word Biblical Commentary, pp. 126-7.)

Some Words for Remembrance Sunday

Act of Remembrance.

Today we remember those who are casualties of war and military conflict – men and women of armed forces; families who live in dread and those who have lost sons and daughters, parents, wives and husbands; those who now live with the ongoing legacy of injury to body and mind, traumatised in spirit, memory, and seeking to rebuild their inner world.

We remember all who are caught in the crossfire of conflict, the wrong place at the wrong time, acceptable losses, collateral damage, civilian casualties, the vocabulary of evasion because we know that such loss and suffering is wrong, however right any cause.

So we acknowledge our capacity to hurt and to waste, to see the other as the enemy. Yet we ask with anguished hearts, how else can we protect our lives and our own nation – the double bind of making peace by conflict, of making secure by making war, of having to threaten and retaliate when threatened or attacked.

May God lead us in the ways of peace – make us witnesses of reconciliation – give us a holy impatience with the short cuts and the political expediencies. And yes, give us courage to question assumptions that conflict is inevitable in a globalised, polarised and destabilised world. God help us to see all those structures of violent power, of oppressive ideas, of instilled hostility, as part of that great song of the ruthless, and help us to silence it –

by persistent, patient actions of peace,

by resilient, responsive acts of reconciliation,

by gentle, gracious words of goodness,

by faith-filled, faithful prayers of friendship,

by holy, hopeful gestures of  healing.

Let us, therefore, remember in silence before God, all those who died in the two World wars, and those who have died in the conflicts that have continued to ravage our world. In the silence we pray to the God of peace, for those whose lives have been taken in conflict, those who have suffered injury of body and mind, and we will seek the healing peace and reconciling forgiveness of God.

Bonhoeffer: "Your 'yes' to God requires your 'no' to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies..."

The life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer persists as an essential and critical voice even seventy five years after his death. There are so many reasons to pay attention to the occasional writings and speakings of Bonhoeffer; but in our time of fractious politics, slow and sometimes blatant power grabs, growing support for right wing populism and uncritical adulation of the strong leader, it is the radically uncompromising call and cost of discipleship in following Jesus that challenges Christian communities to decide where ultimate allegiance lies. This is Bonhoeffer the pastor, preaching a Confirmation sermon in 1938. The date is essential context, and the words are explosive in their political as well as theological and spiritual reverberations:   

"You have only one master now...But with this 'yes' to God belongs just as clear a 'no.' Your 'yes' to God requires your 'no' to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor, to all ungodliness, and to all mockery of what is holy. Your 'yes' to God requires a 'no' to everything that tries to interfere with your serving God alone, even if that is your job, your possessions, your home, or your honour in the world. Belief means decision."

Preached to young Christians facing what we now know as life in one of the most violent, lethal and merciless regimes in European history. The use of the word "master" is likewise laden with intentional contrast, and implies an either-or from which there can be no compromising third choice. One master. Who is it to be? Yes to God means 'no' to all other powers demanding final loyalty of mind, heart, soul and body. Belief means decision, not only one single decision after which it is business as usual; but a confirming decision that means all other decisions take their direction from that living and central commitment to Jesus Christ.

What makes Bonhoeffer such a necessary discomfort to those who are at ease in Zion is his reiteration of the radical, risk-laden demands of the Gospel of Christ. Earlier translations of his book on discipleship were titled, The Cost of Discipleship.The critical edition is more accurate in the technical sense of the one word title: Discipleship. However commendable that title, it remains the case that Bonhoeffer's relentless emphasis on the nature of Christian following of Jesus focused on the cost of discipleship. That cost was inevitable and the sine qua non of faithfulness to God, and the authenticating hallmark of a life following the way of Jesus Christ, bearing a cross and headed for Calvary.

The words from the confirmation sermon were not intended as comfortable invitation to convenient respectability, but as warning and call to a lifestyle and inner orientation at odds with all that is at odds with the way of Jesus. In other words this ongoing 'yes' compels a recurring 'no' to all that demands a different loyalty to alternative values and competing life goals. The life goal of the disciple is to be faithful to Christ, the values are rooted in the commitment of God in Christ to a reconciled world, and that 'Yes' carries within it a lifelong capacity for saying no; and Bonhoeffer is explicit in what is to be contradicted.

"God requires your 'no' to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor, to all ungodliness, and to all mockery of what is holy."

Those words are freighted with responsibility for the way we live our lives in the 2020 world of political and social divisions. One of the more easily overlooked features of contemporary life is the mockery of what is holy. That isn't new either, it was a social toxin flowing through the veins of National Socialism and its effect was the weakening of the immune system, making minds and wills less receptive and increasingly resistant to moral values of human worth, dignity and fundamental rights. 

The mockery of what is holy is a theological version of the cliche 'nothing is sacred anymore'. But when that which one group in society reveres and holds as of essential value to their lives is mocked, ignored, or treated as trivial, the result is a dangerous diminishing of human capital and ethical safeguards. Bonhoeffer saw that happening over the years before the 1938 sermon. The mockery of what a society has deemed to be holy, pushes back boundaries and rewrites in coarser and less humane language what is acceptable, decent and for the common good. Eventually people themselves, those who hold on to what is holy and to be respected by consensus, are themselves mocked, diminished, and devalued.

At that point Bonhoeffer could see with prophetic clarity, the fundamental Yes to God which orients the whole of life, demanded a faithful No to all in life that contradicts justice, goodness, truth, freedom, care for the weak and poor, and reverence for the holy. Yes implies No. You cannot serve God wholeheartedly and something else at the same time. The criterion for the Christian is the cross of Christ, a dying to all other claims on our will, conscience, heart, mind and body.

I find these words of Bonhoeffer so uncomfortably apt in 2020 Britain and beyond. But I know of no other way to be faithful to the fundamental Yes I've said to God as a Christian, than to say with continuing conviction, and with relentless faithfulness, No. No to words that are lies; No to policies which humiliate and threaten the poor; No to policies of injustice and callous disregard for refugees and immigrants; No to hostile environments, to racism and antisemitism; No to the abuses of power when it is used to remove the very levers put in place to hold power accountable; No to the rhetoric of division; No to the deifying of capital, money, wealth, stuff and its consequent global inequity; and No to the laying waste of the only planet we have, in pursuit of all the above.

And in all those sayings of No, those who follow Jesus faithfully in the 21st Century do so fully  recognising that the cost of discipleship is stated very plainly. Say Yes to God, and you say No to much else that is taken for granted as the way the world works. 

(The sermon 'The Gift of Faith', was preached on April 9, 1938. See The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (ed) Isabel Best, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012, pp. 201-206)   

In a Time of Small Things Held in the Hand of God.

One of our walking routes takes us past a hazelnut tree. These two hazelnuts were blown off the tree some time yesterday.

 

They now sit on my desk as reminders of how smallness is no diminishment of value.

 

"I saw a little thing the size of a hazelnut...."

 

Those who know me, are all too aware of my admiration for Julian of Norwich, and those words about all that is made being loved by God and ever shall be.

 

Here they are in all their beauty:

"And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”

 

Today we had our first Church Service in our building since March 23.

 

It wasn't easy, there was much that was strange, and seemed uncongenial to worship as we have known it.

 

We were hymnless; if that isn't a word, it should be for now, but we were there, as safely as we could make it.

 

And we prayed, listened to music and words, read the Bible, shared Holy Communion.

 

We gathered, and we scattered, a small community of faith, a little thing the quantity of a hazelnut. 

 

We are part of all that is made, we are loved by God, and ever shall be.

 

In our little church community I saw three properties:" The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”