Living Wittily

Shalom: A Story in Five Psalms

Psalms 1, (S) 8, (H) 104, (AL) 23, (O) 121 (M). A few years ago I designed and worked on this tapestry at a particularly difficult time of transition.

 

Each panel was completed before the next was started. It was an exercise in contemplative prayer, emotional as well as textual exegesis, and it allowed me to dwell within a word that has always seemed to offer both promise and invitation. Shalom is a word about life being made possible, and about peace as a word so richly and thickly textured that its embrace extends beyond the self-contained horizons of what we think is possible. 

 

In the late 1970's I read a book by a then little known Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann. The title was Living Toward a Vision. Biblical Reflections on Shalom. Reading that book was a mind changing experience. In revised form it is back in print, and it remains one of the most thorough and searching explorations of shalom as God's call to faithful Christian living.

 

So looking back, it isn't surprising that at a time of deep self-searching and inner sifting I returned to a word that had often before brought reassurance, hopefulness, and a willingness to again take the risks of trusting that "all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Julian's words provide the theological and emotional sub-structure of what that Hebrew word shalom seeks to articulate about what God is about in our lives.

 

So every day for a few minutes, or an hour, I sat stitching - panel 1 and what it means to be a tree planted by a river of water; panel 2 and the puzzled wonder of star gazing and asking "What is a human being that you are mindful of me?"; panel 3 about God setting the earth on its foundations, springs flowing through the mountains and the heavens spread out like a tent, or hanging like the curtains of a theatre for God's glory; Panel 4 with a cup running over, dark valleys and still waters, and somewhere near at hand, the shepherd; and panel 5, looking to the hills and asking where help comes from, and listening for the echoing riposte, "help comes from the Maker of heaven and earth who will keep our going out and coming in from now to whenever."

 

This particular tapestry is a fragment of autobiography, a story in five images held together by the word SHALOM, a word that promises the lived holding together of life and faith, of love and loss, of peace and growth, or risk and trust - SHALOM. These five psalms became windows for faith to gaze through, a way of seeing beyond the immediate and urgent, and finding the resources and resilience to deal with the immediate and urgent. Because suffused through all our experiences are realities we may never fully discern - rivers of water, the mindful care of the Creator, awareness of foundations beneath our uncertain feet, the determined confession "surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, and being told "henceforth thy going out and in, God keep forever will."

 

So this tapestry hangs where it can be seen day and daily. Shalom - my prayer for the world, my blessing on those I love, my hope for my neighbourhood, and the longed for disposition of those who know themselves guarded by the peace that passes all understanding. Shalom.     

God is Love. Credo not Cliché

God is love. An entire creed condensed into a phrase. In the age before sound-bytes one of Jesus' closest followers was writing letters littered with sound bytes. God is love. God is light. God is spirit. The First Letter of John has been a deep well of water to which I return regularly for inner refreshment, restored faith, re-energised devotion, and no nonsense reminders of what it is I'm saying when I use the words God is love.

Autobiography first. Not long after my conversion I was thirsty for knowledge, not knowing what I needed to know. I was pointed to the then premier Christian Bookshop in Scotland, Pickering and Inglis in Glasgow. For reasons now forgotten, I picked up the Tyndale Commentary on The Epistles of John, by John Stott, and bought it, my first purchased commentary, and the start of a lifetime's immersion in exegesis as devotion.

Ten years later in my first pastorate I was preaching through John's Letter. My companions were John Stott, Robert Law's quite outstanding The Tests of Life (1909), and the just published Epistles of John in the prestigious NICNT series by Howard Marshall. My memory is the congregation appreciated, sometimes perhaps affectionately tolerated, my attempts at communicating the passionate confession and defensive polemic of an apostle whose entire core was energised by the eternal coincidence of Divine love and human response - "we love because He first loved us", and in an older translation, "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us."

1982 saw the publication of Raymond Brown's ridiculously massive commentary in the Anchor Series, 800+ pages on a letter of 2000 words. It's brilliant, exhaustive and exhausting to use, but crammed with information and deep scholarship. Names like Schnackenburg, Brown, Smalley, Lieu, Youngblood and many other mid level commentaries, demonstrate a diversity of theories and interpretive options.

I've kept up with much of that scholarship, learned new ways of reading and understanding John, and had to think and rethink again. But what remains constant is that urgent voice arguing and commending, expounding and defending, explaining and contradicting, reassuring the faithful and condemning those who mess with the heads of "his little children."

The relevance of my own journey with John, for me at least, is the attractiveness of his mixture of passion and precision - passionate love for Christ because in Him we see the passion of God. In words like these:

"God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (4.9-11)

The love of God is both centre and circumference in my spirituality and theology, and therefore in my preaching and understanding of the motives and energies of pastoral care. The letter of John runs like a continuous thread through the story of my life and how I've tried to live it as a Christian, a minister and a human being called to live responsibly and responsively before God. This text is a vocal, persistent and penetrating critic of my failures in the Tests of Life. But it keeps me honest, it keeps me wanting to be more faithful, and it keeps me hopeful.

For John there are unbreakable links between being loved by God, loving God in response, and proving that love by loving others. You can't say you love God if you hate your brother - not shouldn't, can't! The commentary by Robert Law I mentioned earlier says it in the title: John's letter provides the Tests of Life, the criteria by which we can claim to be Christian. John doesn't do compromise or exception clauses. John delivers an ultimatum like Jack Reacher, perhaps without the physical intimidation! Love! You're loved by God who is love. So love in the same way, to the same extent, to the same people. That's how it works. God loves you, you love others. Give what you get. Freely you received, freely give.  

Oh yes, John has a lot to say about sin, confession, cleansing and being made righteous. But the test of righteousness is love. And yes, John insists that a Christian is someone who confesses that in Jesus the fullness of God's love is revealed, but the test of such confession is love in practice, that is, the same love of God revealed in Jesus is to be evident in those who confess they have experienced and live by the love of God. 

At this stage of my life, half a century on from my first reading of Stott on I John, I'm ready to try to preach the message of 1 John again. Maybe five sermons, core samples of a text that really ought to upset us as much as uplift us; that is, if we can be honest before God and confess the sin of not loving. And if we can seek again the inner renewal of the heart that comes from opening ourselves to the love that opens us up in vulnerable, humble and determined love of others.

Meantime here's John the pastor, who manages to be both compassionate and uncompromising: 

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

    

Saturday Sermon on Compassionate Giving, and Giving By Using Cookie Cutters.

This was for the Aberdeen Press and Journal for last Saturday 12 March. Nothing in the current world news requires it to be edited or changed.

Saturday Sermon 

With saturation news coverage from all directions it’s impossible to avoid the hard thoughts and distressing images that war brings. Why the wicked prosper, or how it comes about that one man can command an army and threaten world peace. Far less can I understand the broken hearts of mothers shielding their children from missiles, with no one able to stop the bombardment; or figure out how it’s possible to bring about a peace which is more than the surrender and oppression of an entire people, culture and nation.

What I do see, clearly and unwaveringly, is God’s call to us to care for the broken, and to share the burdens of suffering, to give generously to purchase and procure food, medicine, clothes and shelter. And yes, to pray without ceasing for peace, and the justice and righteousness that alone makes peace possible.

In the face of suffering on a scale beyond our experience and imagining, it seems trivial to talk about what we are giving up for Lent. So instead, let Isaiah the Prophet readjust our ideas of what matters, and what matters most.

“Is not this the fast I have chosen, to loosen the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke….is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the wanderer with shelter.” (Isaiah 58. 6-7) These are the values of the Kingdom of God, the moral landmarks of the Christian church. These are the key objectives of our praying, giving, protesting and active discipleship as followers of Jesus. This isn’t about what we give up, it’s about what we give – to others.

That is what we pray for in those words that now need to be hoped and lived, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” I know. It’s hard to even imagine something we can actually DO that will end the brutality and danger of war. But don’t underestimate the power of the prayers of millions, the moral force of courageous acts of protest, and the strategic value of financial kindness.

Someone defined charity as “reading statistics with compassion.” Refugees, millions of people, are being processed. The statistics make grim reading. Isaiah tells us the humane ways and human values that are evidence that we read statistics with compassion, and answering actions.

 

Some Afterthoughts.

 

Today a good friend told me he and his daughter Charlotte designed a cookie cutter in the shape of a map of Ukraine. Charlotte who came up with the idea is happy for me to tell the story, and sent a couple of pictures. Cookies were baked and iced with blue and yellow icing for the flag of Ukraine. Sometimes it's the young who have the sharpest eyes and the imagination to dream of making the kind of difference Isaiah dreamed about too. 

The cookies are being sold by the church and in the community. The cutters can be downloaded for 3D printing at this link for as little as 50pence! the link is here, just click

All proceeds going to the European Baptist Federation Appeal which delivers aid direct to refugees on the Polish-Ukrainian border and other immediately responsive locations.

Charlotte's dad (who is also quite clever) told me "our cookie cutter was downloaded by someone in Lviv yesterday." In case you don't know, Lviv is one of the cities currently under missile and artillery attack. And someone is baking cookies in the shape of their country. Just think about that. 

“Is not this the fast I have chosen, to loosen the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke….is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the wanderer with shelter.” (Isaiah 58. 6-7)

Isaiah didn't say anything about cookie cutters. He left that to the imagination of those who look for ways of living his words!

 

A Tapestry and Its Stages of Development (Part I)

My latest tapestry is finished and will go to the framer next week. For those previously following this wee saga, and for those new here, here's the first five stages. The finished work is based around Revelation 21.9-21. When it's framed and photographed, I'll try to say more of what I've been attempting in this piece of exegesis in shape, colour and image.

 

The first photo was January 18 - so exactly two calendar months to complete. Mostly done in small increments, now and again a longer session to push it on. Photo 5 the work is about half done, all the metal thread work was still to be added at this stage, plus the final surrounding development.

 

OK. We all have ways we spend our time that other folk might smile at, baulk at or otherwise be glad not to have to bother. But somebody has to reorganise the several dozen skeins of thread once the work is done.

 

That means unfankling the fankles, and deciding to live with the odd unfankleable knot. 'Fankle' is a wonderful Scottish word for an unholy mess of thread, string, rope so tangled and entangled it takes inordinate patience to restore it to a useable skein.

 

Then putting the skeins back into the broadly similar colour groups so there's a chance they can be found again. No need to be over fussy - the rainbow spectrum does fine.

 

Oh, and the metallic threads, including the wonderfully precise DMC Light Effects Metallic Embroidery Thread colour E135. Thing is, metallic threads are fiercely independent, once loose from the packaging they spring all over the place. So they are confined in their own (metal) box!

 

Then the inventory - I need to replenish yellows, greens and blues - I have way too many reds, pinks and browns, gift bundles from well meaning friends - and not colours I use much. I know a charity shop that will happily take them.

 

By the way, if an embroidery shop was ever to want rid of one of those whirly kaleidoscope effect thread carousels........

"I sing in the shadow of your wings..."

Recently I wrote this Lectionary Reflection for the online website Good Faith Media over here

The tapestry is an original design of my own based on Isaianic texts about streams in the desert and the desert blossoming. 

“I sing in the Shadow of Your Wings…” Psalm 63:1-8

This Psalm is not for the nonchalant. It vibrates with emotional intensity and assumed intimacy. Body and soul, the whole person is defined at least for this moment, by longing for the felt nearness and accompanying assurance of God. Thirst for God and prolonged longing for God is experienced as the persisting presence of an absence. As parched land languishes for want of water, so body and soul suffer the want of the presence of God. There are parched episodes in every life, miles of the journey when we thirst for rain, times of emotional exhaustion and bone weariness that make prayer seem a waste of time.

These verses, and the images of this Psalm inspired a hymn that anticipates how to survive the desert, and emerge from the wilderness.

Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand;

The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land.

A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way

From the burning of the noontide heat and the burdens of the day.

That beautiful fable, The Little Prince, is a story of a pilot whose plane crashed in the desert. One of the many wise sentences in this slim masterpiece has found its way into many an anthology: “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.” The Psalmist knows this.

Actually so did the apostle Paul, making one of his boldest rhetorical moves. This from another of our lectionary passages about God’s provision for the children of Israel in the wilderness: “They drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” (I Cor.10.3-4) 

Whether a subterranean well, or a mobile rock doubling as a fountain, the promise of refreshment and recovery are woven throughout these 8 verses. The spiritual psychology is sound. First remember, think back, and recall God’s goodness and mercy that has followed you all the days of your life. (v2) Second, take hold of that covenant word love, and speak that steadfast, faithful love that can be trusted whatever. That love of God is better than life because it makes life possible and alone guarantees life’s meaning, purpose and fulfilment. (v3) Third, praise God every day into the future, because that future is safe and enfolded in purposive love and sustaining mercy. Praise is an act of faith, anticipating blessing going forward because born of past blessing (v4)

The result of remembering God, speaking God’s faithful love, and praising God for the future is summarised in v5. Lips that were parched will sing God’s praise, and a soul hungry for God will be “satisfied with the richest of foods”. (5)

Faith is much more than a grim hanging on when life seems barren, and God far away. This Psalm is defiant of despair. It resonates with the trustful optimism of one who knows, just knows, that somewhere, beneath the desert, is a well. And if that sounds like a miracle, you’re on the right track. Because wherever we are in the wilderness, and however weary, a spiritual rock accompanies us, and that Rock is Christ.

Then the Psalm moves from the desert to the safety and comfort of bed! This time the Psalmist isn’t tossing and turning, anxious and restless. When I’m awake “I remember you, I think of you through the watches of the night.” We’re back to the importance of memory, the recalling of our story, the restorative power of trustful optimism; trustful because God has proved faithful and God keeps his promises.

For years that remarkable Christian and United Nations diplomat, Dag Hammarskjold, kept a notebook by his bed, in which he noted thoughts of deep spiritual honesty and wise counsel. My guess is he knew the wisdom of Psalm 63 when he wrote this brief prayer: “For all that has been, thank you. For all that is to be, Yes!”

Such words presuppose levels of confidence that must find their energy somewhere. “You are My help. I sing in the shadow of your wings.” Is that mothering image of the eagle’s wings, or the gathering close of a mother hen, or perhaps the wings of the cherubim on the altar in the sanctuary? No need to choose. It is an image of protective care and dependable safety.

The Psalmist settles down, and as we read and pray his words, so do we. Our soul clings to God, we are held in the strong right hand of God. There are desert journeys, wilderness wanderings, times of weariness and thirst, experiences that bring us to our wits end. But note where this Psalm starts – verse 1 naturally enough! “O God, you are my God.” This Psalm can be distilled to the lines of another hymn:

“O Love, that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee.” That’s for the desert, and those times of thirst and seeking that have to be lived through.

“I give Thee back the life I owe, that in Thine ocean depths its flow, may richer, fuller be. That’s for the bed, the place of rest and peace, when the soul is satisfied with good things, and we intentionally remember the goodness and mercy that has followed us all the days of our life, think of God who is our help, and sing praise in the shadow of God’s wings.

Arrested by a Flower.

Wandering in someone else's garden (centre),

three degrees under a dazzling sun set in a sky blue sky,

inwardly sorrowful at the ugliness, cruelty and culpable intransigence

of those bent on stealing someone else's country, culture and identity,

I stopped, or rather was arrested,

by the miracle that is the possibility of such astonishing beauty,

and its power to argue back against the ugly nihilism of human hubris,

simply by announcing its loveliness,

without rancour, violence or noise,

as a vision of grace, a moment of gift,

a coaxing tug towards hope for a heart tempted,

however briefly, to despair.

Finding a Home Midst the Ruins.

What used to be a small house, the interior now exposed, the red brick crumbling, the ground colonised by buddleia, the wooden lintel above the door bleached, cracked, but still holding. Who used to live here? How long ago? What was their story. The ruin sits beside a large busy roundabout, in part of the city run down by neglect, unattractive to investors, space that's just too much hassle to reclaim, repair and restore.

 

Except above the lintel, to the left of the surviving granite facia, there is a small square hole. That's where two sparrows are building their nest. I watched them come and go. Aye, in a broken world, even the sparrow finds a home. (Psalm 84.3)

 

And at that moment, something inside nudged me towards hope. You know those moments when you breathe deeply, look at the blue sky, and decide yet again not to give in to despair? And like that other poem by the Psalmist extraordinaire, we hear that still small voice, the birth of defiance which is the backbone of trust, "Why are you cast down and sick to your heart's core? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him!"

 

Tonight I hope in God for the return of peace and safety for the people of Ukraine. May those who have to flee find a home and a welcome in the human family where borders are not walls, but lines of safety and help.

Finding a Home Midst the Ruins.

What used to be a small house, the interior now exposed, the red brick crumbling, the ground colonised by buddleia, the wooden lintel above the door bleached, cracked, but still holding. Who used to live here? How long ago? What was their story. The ruin sits beside a large busy roundabout, in part of the city run down by neglect, unattractive to investors, space that's just too much hassle to reclaim, repair and restore.

 

Except above the lintel, to the left of the surviving granite facia, there is a small square hole. That's where two sparrows are building their nest. I watched them come and go. Aye, in a broken world, even the sparrow finds a home. (Psalm 84.3)

 

And at that moment, something inside nudged me towards hope. You know those moments when you breathe deeply, look at the blue sky, and decide yet again not to give in to despair? And like that other poem by the Psalmist extraordinaire, we hear that still small voice, the birth of defiance which is the backbone of trust, "Why are you cast down and sick to your heart's core? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him!"

 

Tonight I hope in God for the return of peace and safety for the people of Ukraine. May those who have to flee find a home and a welcome in the human family where borders are not walls, but lines of safety and help.